The Lethal-Trust Secret Handshake

by Alan Korwin

There is a moment when any normal American, one who is gun savvy and not hoplophobic, notices that another American is armed, considers a dozen factors in a brief moment, and experi­ences the lethal-trust secret handshake.

If you’re a JPFO member reading this you understand implicitly what this is. You’ve experienced it often. However, if you’re member of the media you likely experience fear and life-threatening ter­ror at that same moment. It likely de­fines you as a journalist, and why you went to that dark side.

The lethal-trust secret handshake that armed people experience is com­plex and simple at the same time. Everyone you meet under any conditions—which includes your best friends, relatives, police officers, politicians, total strangers, sales staff, lunch-counter employees—can sud­denly reach out and kill you. That’s the way life is on this planet, we all know it. You take it in stride. That’s life. They can have kitchen knives. People whose guns you can see peeking out under their shirts, or right out in the open, it doesn’t matter. Some people prey on other people (Col. Jeff Cooper said that). Anyone could be a deadly threat. Almost no one is.

When you notice someone deliber­ately armed, and that person notices that you notice, an ease of tensions nor­mally takes place—because decent peo­ple don’t kill each other. Everyone knows that too. Whether you’re armed or not, we the people don’t kill each other. Criminals do. That’s what happens in the brief moment when you size each other up, gauge body language, get the vibe, and secretly invisibly shake hands. I’m OK, you’re OK. You’re armed—and for all you know, I might be too. An armed society is a polite so­ciety. Maybe there’s a subtle smile, a meeting of the eyes.

“An Armed Society
is a Polite Society”

Now if you’re hoplophobic, which includes basically most reporters, the entire left wing, most (but not all) de­mocrats, and, you know if it includes you, this doesn’t work, but I repeat myself. The desire to run, freak out, abandon all faith ye who entered there, that’s your lot until you seek treatment, which most won’t. Refusing help is a symptom of the malady—denial and refusal to seek help. Sufferers fester. It’s why dialog and debate works so poorly. It’s not a political problem. It’s a medical one.

People who never get to experience the lethal-trust secret handshake could never attend an open-carry annual ban­quet, like the one recently held in Tuc­son for the Arizona Citizens Defense League. Hundreds and hundreds of us gathering, openly armed, once again, it’s almost boring. Maybe that’s as it should be. We’ve done it so many times it’s routine. The fact that everyone around you can be deadly—but isn’t— is a fact of life.

The difference is that some people recognize that fact, live with it con­sciously, and veer to the right and the righteous. Other people, denying the reality they live in, live in fear of others, project their fear onto those around them, and are left with those on the left, left out of rational thought.

Alan Korwin owns and operates Bloomfield Press and gunlaws.com. This is the largest publisher and distributor of gun-law books in America, nationally recognized as an expert resource in this narrowly focused niche.

Article courtesy of Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership