American View: A Key Indicator of Future Reckless and Dangerous Behaviour

Risk Management23 Jul 2024

The best predictor of future professional success is a person’s willingness to actively listen. Yes, I know; the online consensus from would-be influencers and pundits barely mentions this, favouring characteristics like being organized, confident, or ambitious. I respectfully disagree. While I’m surely biased, my experience has taught me that the critical difference between a young professional who will thrive and one who’ll get themselves drop-kicked out of their organization for-cause is their ability and willingness to understand and act on good advice.

This subject came up Saturday morning while chatting with the contractor who’s replacing our storm-thrashed roof. We’d just settled our account and were relaxing over coffee when the state of the world came up (how could it not?). Our contractor – let’s call him “Max” – expressed concern over the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from the American presidential election pundits and the recent assassination attempt against one of the candidates. Max mentioned he was thinking of purchasing his first personal firearm to protect his family.

Max’s concerns are reasonable given the Zeitgeist, and his proposed solution comes straight out of the American solutions playbook: the only way to stop any theoretical “bad guy” with a gun is to be the ideal “good guy” with a gun. This idea is so deeply ingrained in our national character that we have convenient ammunition vending machines for people who can’t wait in a checkout line for their next magazine of hollow-points. Max is rationally considering what he’s been told countless times by politicians, preachers, and pundits is the only responsible way to protect his spouse and children.

Setting aside the morality of the “solution,” Max and I chatted about the risks and ramifications of him becoming a first-time firearm owner, specifically in regard to home defence (as opposed to buying a firearm for target shooting, hunting, etc.). I counselled Max that he’d need to address five critical elements if he intended to safely keep and employ a firearm in his home:

First, he needed to buy a practical weapon: one that was wieldy enough to employ in tight spaces (like a suburban home’s hallways) and one that wouldn’t “over-penetrate” on a miss. Second, he needed to practice with his new weapon until he was confident that he could reliably hit his intended target. This also addressed the over-penetration risk. I explained that he would be legally and morally responsible for everywhere and everyone his rounds impacted. Whether he hit his intended target or missed, his bullet could still pass straight through a thin wall or window and hurt of kill an innocent neighbour.

I grew up directly across the street from an elementary school, so my mental image of a “next door neighbour” has always focused more on innocent children than disagreeable adults.

Third, I told Max he’d need to drill with his weapon until he developed the muscle memory to load, ready, and clear stoppages by feel alone. Soldiers learn how to do this in the dark while fatigued through endless repetition, so their weapon is always ready to fire. It’s a learned skill, and it’s slightly different for every make and model.

Fourth, I told Mad he’d need to teach his family members both gun safety and intruder drills. When a person’s adrenaline is surging because of a perceived threat, the sudden appearance of human silhouette can produce an instinctive trigger pull. No one wants to kill a family member on accident while “protecting” them.

Finally, Max needed a secure place to store his weapon; someplace where it can’t be accessed by curious children, visitors, or burglars. Hidden spaces don’t count; he must assume that someone will eventually access the hiding place. They mustn’t be able to access the firearm – loaded or not – without authorization.

All five of the things I advised might be considered “common sense,” especially in a gun crazy society like the United States. Still, I make these same five points every time someone talks to me about buying their first firearm. I feel strongly that this is a decision that mustn’t be made lightly because the potential cost of failure is simply too damned high. There is no “control+Z” undo on a “bad shoot.”

I’ve had this conversation dozens of times over the years, to everyone from close family friends to complete strangers. This being Texas, I’m more likely to be asked a random question about guns than to be asked to change my religion (which happens a lot). To me, it doesn’t matter who asks; I always urge people to be responsible with their lethal implements.

Max not only listened to me, but he also enthusiastically engaged with my statements. He asked clarifying questions, expressed what he already knew or believed to help me put idea in context, and freely admitted the limits of her personal experience. Max was genuinely interested in learning from someone else’s experience and was swift to admit that he hadn’t considered some aspects of my advice (like over-penetration danger). Max is a good man: he wants to protect his family, but not further endanger them. That’s how I know he’ll be all right in the long run. Maxs is not going to let his ego get in the way of doing the right thing.

One of the main reasons we keep going back to Max and his company is because he’s a darned good person in addition to being a competent and honest businessman.

Compare Max to the countless workers I’ve had over the years who wanted to reject the advice they were offered – or even attempt to argue with me over topics they knew little to nothing about. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that I’m the sole font of Absolute Knoweldge™ on this planet; rather, I believe that when an experienced practitioner offers their heartfelt advice, that advice deserves to be heard and considered in context. Strive to understand, not to rationalize reasons to ignore or discount what’s been said. Even if the senior’s advice turns out to be wrong, you can learn a great deal about why the speaker said it by understanding their experiences, biases, and frames of reference.

I’ve found that a younger or more junior worker who snubs reasonable advice is demonstrating an arrogance that’s likely to manifest in terrible mistakes later. Someone who believes they’ve already figured everything out is an active danger to themselves and to others … especially when it comes to topics like firearms ownership, process compliance, or elevated system rights.

I encountered a good example of that first example back in the 1990s when one of the twenty-something lieutenants in my battalion purchased a semiautomatic pistol for “home defence” (or so he’d claimed). He’d purchased and installed a “clip on” laser sight for it. When he showed me his new Baretta 92, I checked the laser against the iron sights picture and realized – to my horror – that the sloppily mounted laser was pointing to a spot 3/4s of a meter down and to the right of the actual path of travel at 1.5 meters range. If the dingbat had tried to use the laser to aim his pistol he’d be shooting over his opponent’s right shoulder by a terrifyingly wide margin.

I advised the lieutenant to go to a range and adjust his laser to converge with his iron sights picture at a specific range (2 to 3 meters max) so he could employ it in confidence. That, or remove it entirely so he didn’t shoot a random neighbour. The dingbat haughtily dismissed my advice, claiming that his bullets were “laser guided” and would go wherever the laser touched. Based on that, I never went near the lieutenant’s flat again. Wouldn’t ride in any vehicle he was driving either.

I ran into this guy years later in D.C. I’m still amazed that this dude survived to reach forty.

In that vein, I’ve had far too many conversations with junior workers about less-dangerous professional topics that have ended in similar haughty dismissals. If I advise someone to “do a thing” or “don’t do a thing” and they immediately reject my advice, I mark them as someone highly likely to be dangerous to themselves and others.

I’m convinced that an inability or unwillingness to listen to seasoned professionals reveals a recklessness and arrogance that’s sure to go wrong eventually … potentially with irreversible and horrible consequences. Hopefully without “death” being one of the potential consequences, but … No matter where you work, safety is nothing to treat lightly. Working at a desk might not be inherently hazardous but workplaces always feature preventable risks. Servers fall out of racks, Forklifts’ breaks fail, etc.

Additionally, the downstream effects of one’s perfectly-safe office work can have disastrous consequences for one’s customers. Preventable mistakes can take critical services offline, deny people access to crucial information, bring time-sensitive processes to a dead halt, and much, much worse. Ignoring good advice on how best to perform a task and avoid a disaster should be an immediate “red flag” for management. An individual or group that’s too arrogant to follow mandatory safety protocols or who bypasses required protocols shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a high-risk function.

Not that this week’s topic has anything at all to do with last Friday’s CrowdStrike EDR whoopsie-daisy. Totally unrelated. Completely coincidence … He typed in accordance with the lawyers’ well-reasoned legal and professional advice. Consider this me leading by example.

Risk Management