by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper:

One of the many adages of the prepper world is, “If you can’t defend it, you don’t own it.”

If you’re new to the preparedness lifestyle, this saying basically means that all of your supplies, your stockpiles, your carefully selected buckets of food, and the time and money you spent on preparation will be for naught if you can’t protect it against those who may seek to take it from you. This is generally accepted as a truth in the prepper community. Most of us believe that we must be prepared to defend ourselves and our property without relying on any type of “authorities” to protect us.

To me, preppers and guns go together like peas and carrots.I strongly believe that firearms are a necessary part of a home defense plan. So imagine my surprise when I got a negative response to a meme I posted shortly after the massacre in Paris a few years back.

Photo Credit

As it turns out, there are quite a few people in the lifestyle that actually do not believe in having firearms. Here are some of the comments that followed the meme, as well as comments from another discussion opened on the topic.

• I respectfully disagree. That is what has fueled this situation already.


• Only a coward thinks that everyone should be armed.


• Oh. What a shame that you posted this – and I enjoyed your page. Bail!


• I do not trust my fellow citizens to know how to safely take out a bomber without also potentially killing my loved ones! Do you want that bloodshed on your hands?

What?????????

Despite the noisy refrain of people begging for gun control, despite that ridiculous and misleading “mass shootings map” (more on that HERE), I haven’t changed my stance one bit. In fact, it just solidifies my belief that we need to be prepared at all times to protect our families. People murdered in San Bernadino by a mass shooter were at an office Christmas party when things went down, not a place one would normally expect to need to be armed. This said to me that there are no places that are immune to danger. In fact, “gun free zones” are seen as “target-rich environments” for mass shooters: statistics show that 94% of mass shootings since the 1950s have taken place in gun-free zones.

You have the inherent human right to protect your own life and the lives of others.

Social unrest just underlines this more.

Since I originally wrote this article back in 2015, the United States has had multiple episodes of civil unrest, and none so bad and widespread as the one we’re enduring in 2020, after the death of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. There are protests ongoing in every major city in America and these have spread even to the small, outlying towns. (Never let it be said it can’t happen where you are.)

Minneapolis itself looks like a war zone. It literally looks like the ruined base that Selco and Toby took us to for training in the Croatia survival course. Watch this video to see the massive scale of the damage done to this city and the fires burning unchecked. (You don’t need to be logged in to see it.) Now, this very same city wants to disband the police department. Imagine living there, with people who’ve expressed this kind of rage. Imagine being there unarmed. Nobody is coming when you dial 911 during situations like this.

As the situation in the United States continues to escalate, more people join protests and riots, and more cities call for the complete defunding of police departments, this scene is not going to be unique.

But not everyone believes preppers need guns

I understand not having a firearm if you live in a place where they are not available. (I spent 18 years in Canada and was unable to arm myself there.)  But when you’re blessed to be in a place with access to the tools you need to keep your family safe, it seems like just another prep to me.

But obviously not everyone feels this way. Check out this lady who was on an episode of Doomsday Preppers.

Hat tip to Erica from Living Life in Rural Iowa for the link to this video

The thing that I believe it’s important to remember here is that if you have stacked your supplies to the rafters but refused to plan for defending your home and family, you’ve basically just made them bait should a desperate situation arise.

Here are some reasons why preppers need to be armed.

Reason #1: Those who are desperate, unprepared, and feel entitled to be cared for

Remember Black Friday? People climbed all over each other for cheap electronics. Fistfights erupted over vegetable steamers. People were ready to throw down and do battle for sale items.

I’d hazard a guess that folks who spend time and money fighting over electronics are not the kind of people who prep. That means that these are the people who will be hungry in a long-term disaster. Look at those people, stampeding to get to a sale on things that they don’t actually need to survive. Their inhibitions are loosened because those around them are behaving in the same way.

You have to look at the psychology of this. People can justify pretty much anything when they or their children are starving. And I can understand that to a large degree – who could stand to watch their babies suffering? But if someone can devolve to the above degree just to because everyone else is doing it, the chaos we saw above is only a tiny sample of what could come if people were truly hungry. (Check out Selco’s article about mob mentality for more information on this mindset.)

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