The Best Defense: Survival and the .22 “Liberator”

Recently The Best Defense: Survival! episode on earthquakes aired again on Outdoor Channel. One segment in this episode featured Michael Bane and I discussing the critical role that .22 rimfire firearms have in a well-planned survival battery. In addition to commenting on the utility of the .22 as a means of eliminating pests, hunting for food, and even as a commodity in a barter economy, I made mention of its potential as a tool analogous to the “Liberator” pistol of World War II. Apparently, the cold reality of that concept was too much for Murad Sayen, a knifemaker, artist, and blogger. His blog entry can be seen in its entirety at http://muradsayensblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/death-of-honor-part-3.html. To save you the suspense, let me summarize it for you.

After highlighting his accomplishments as a competitive shooter and making it very obvious that he doesn’t know the difference between The Best Defense and The Best Defense: Survival or their respective themes, Sayen states, “… as I was watching this show, one of the hosts–Michael Janich, see above–glibly volunteered the opinion that in a social emergency, when ‘…push comes to shove’—a situation referred to by hard-core survivalists as SHTF, i.e. S**t Hits The Fan, of course—you might find yourself in a situation where it becomes necessary to shoot your neighbor. Yes, that is exactly what he said, in plain language. HOLY COW!!!” Sayen goes on to claim, “On another segment of this show, Janich stated that having at least a small caliber .22 rifle was absolutely a necessity and that in a pinch you could use it to ‘upgrade’ your armament. He was saying that you should hunt down somebody with a better weapon and use the .22 to take it from them. He did not imply that you should merely ask them for it at gun-point, and common sense tells one that you will probably have to shoot them to get their gun.”

Sayen then provides several examples of his deeds as a good Samaritan to bolster his judgment of me as “amoral” and an “a**hole.” Fortunately, I’ve never met Murad Sayen and really don’t have a burning desire to. I also don’t particularly care what he thinks of me—or anything or anybody else. What does concern me is that someone might actually believe his accusations and, more importantly, that the loyal, intelligent viewers of The Best Defense might have misunderstood my comments on the show in question. To ensure that isn’t the case, I thought it might be helpful to provide a verbatim transcript of that specific portion of the .22 segment:

“Also you want to think about really the worst-case scenario. If things really go bad and people really start misbehaving badly, what you might want to think about is kind of the ‘Liberator’ pistol concept going back to World War II, which was basically having kind of a throw-away, minimal capability in a weapon that would allow you to essentially hunt for somebody who has a better weapon. I know it’s a terrible thing to think about, but again in a disaster situation, you may have to confront that type of reality, so it’s something you might want to consider as part of your survival strategy as well.”
I have carefully reviewed the entire content of that show and neither I—nor anyone else who appeared—made any references to shooting our neighbors. With regard to the above statement, please note that I prefaced it by putting it into context as a true “worst-case scenario” and “a terrible thing to think about.” I would also like to note that before the cameras rolled for that segment, I discussed that statement at length with the producer and co-hosts of the show to determine whether it should be included. In short, it wasn’t something that I included lightly.

Although Sayen is a “shooter,” he’s apparently not familiar with the “Liberator” pistol and the purpose behind it. For the record, the Liberator was a single-shot .45 pistol that was distributed in various theaters of war during World War II to arm resistance fighters. The intended recipients of the pistol were people who were caught up in a terrible situation in which there was a clearly identified enemy. They were unarmed and had no means to defend themselves or to contribute to the Allied war effort. The intent of the Liberator was to give them the means to kill one enemy soldier and arm themselves with his weapon.

Do I believe that things will ever get that bad in our society? No. However, if I want to be prepared to survive a worst-case scenario, I need to accept the fact that they could get that bad. And thinking about the unthinkable is a required part of survival preparation.

I learned about the Liberator through my research of World War II weapons, but I learned a lot more about it—and the logic behind it—from one of my mentors, the late Col. Rex Applegate. As close-combat instructor for the OSS, the Colonel was a big believer in the concept of “upgrading” your weaponry. His teaching of OSS and Military Intelligence personnel in World War II emphasized this very strongly because in many cases they went to war unarmed or very lightly armed. If they needed a weapon, the best place to get it was from the enemy. This concept is still taught to intelligence personnel today and applied in warfare worldwide.

My reference to the .22 as a “Liberator” was a concise way of expressing the idea that, in a truly desperate situation, it could be used against a well-armed bad guy to better arm a good guy. End of story. The fact that Sayen, as a “shooter,” was not historically knowledgeable enough to “get” that reference isn’t my fault.

It’s unfortunate that Sayen felt it necessary to misrepresent my statements to support his soap-box philosophizing. Again, I don’t really care what he or the nine people that read his blog think of me. However, when his “Death of Honor” essays begin with a massacre of the facts, I felt it necessary to set the record straight.