“It is usually impossible to know when you’ve prevented a bad outcome”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Summer activities, and risk!
Last Thursday near Asheville, NC, a female hiker was on the Bent Creek Trail, a popular place for hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts who are looking for a non-wilderness, short walk.
While hiking, she was attacked by a single VCA who habitually hangs-out in the area and is well-known to local authorities, as he has been arrested for, and convicted of, numerous other such ambush attacks of female hikers.
Fortunately, other hikers scared-off this VCA before he could do serious harm.
The perpetrator was arrested (again) shortly after his attack, but as he snickers he knows his incarceration will only be temporary, and in the end “The System” will do nothing, and he’ll be back out in short order, just as before.
Of course, he should be in prison where he can’t hurt anyone, but liberal politicians want this kind of VCA out and committing violent crimes, so citizens ever-remain nervous and frightened. Heaven forbid that citizens be confidently safe and secure. Then, they might get the crazy idea they don’t need all this “snoopervision” and all these bureaucrats!
In the aftermath, the USFS graciously shared these ever-so-helpful “safety tips” with a local news reporter:
1) Let a friend know that you’re hiking.
2) Carry a whistle.
3) When something “feels uncomfortable,” move away
4) And of course, scream when you need help
Of course, no mention of going armed
More than simply regurgitating the above dubious “advice,” many believe the USFS has a responsibility to protect hikers from these kinds of habitual predators who endlessly haunt USFS property, but that notion is clearly not shared by “upper management”
Lessons:
By design, our nation is currently awash with un-institutionalized EDPs, un-incarcerated VCAs, illegal alien criminals, uncontrolled animal predator populations, all of whom are volatile and dangerous. And, during summer months, they are all “out and about.” There is no such thing as a “safe place,” even when among familiar surroundings!
We have be extremely skeptical with regard to often-repeated boiler-plate “safety advice” from government officials. Some is sound to be sure, but reasonable precautions about your personal safety with regard to dangerous predators (human and animal) often reflects more concern for the safety of the predator than for you, as we see!
Curious that our government strictly mandates certain “personal safety equipment” for certain activities. Helmets for motorcycle riders, seat-belts for drivers, hard-hats for construction workers, fire-extinguishers for commercial buildings, safety-glasses for industrial workers, and no one considers the foregoing unreasonable.
Yet, “carrying personal firearms when hiking” is not only never mentioned (never even so much as whispered), but the practice is prohibited on most government property and numerous other “sensitive areas” and “gun-free zones,” even where significant personal risk is demonstrably present, as in the above narrative.
Politicians and bureaucrats carefully exempt themselves from obeying their own rules, of course. It makes one wonder how genuinely “concerned for our safety” politicians really are.
They’re apparently extremely concerned for their own safety!
“The shallow believe in luck or circumstance. The strong believe in ‘cause-and-effect’”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
/John
