The Myth of "Stupid Places and Stupid People"

Friday are Free for Everyone at this Substack, 15 May 2026

Every week on this Substack, I provide readers with a free article anyone can access. This week, I want to talk about the old self-defense advice, “Just don’t go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things, and you’ll be safe.”

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think you should go to stupid places, or hang out with stupid people, or do stupid things (or any combination thereof). But often this advice is recited as gospel: Why, if you simply never break this rule, nothing bad can happen to you, ever.

Just Don’t Fight Back

There is a corollary piece of advice in the self-defense world that is just as stupid. No, now that I think about it, it’s even worse. It’s the “give him what he wants and you’ll be okay” strategy.

See, what it comes down to is that there are a lot of people who don’t want you to defend yourself. This attitude typically comes from a place of projection: They can’t picture themselves fighting back or standing up for themselves, so they don’t want to picture anybody else doing this. If they see someone doing it, it makes them feel bad about themselves.

Colonel Jeff Cooper called these people “non-copers.” I don’t mean “cope” in the way that it has come to mean rationalizing or justifying your losses. I mean cope in the classical sense, as in, dealing with life and making your way through it.

“In my opinion,” Cooper once wrote, “neither money nor greed (cupiditas) is the root of all evil. The root of all evil is envy. The non-coper hates the coper, and thus the non-shooter hates the shooter. I see no other explanation for the pointless and irrational activism of the gun grabbers on the political scene. They know that their machinations can have no effect upon crime. Guns have no effect upon crime, but they do make all men equal, as the saying goes. This puts the coper on top, and infuriates the non-coper.”

Understand that if someone tells you not to fight back, they’re simply peddling defeatism because your success in self-defense makes them feel worse about their unwillingness to do the same. It’s just a next-level assertion that, “Well, if you don’t go to stupid places, nothing stupid can occur.”

Defeatism isn’t just a weak way to live your life. It’s actively more dangerous to you. Sanford Strong, in Strong on Defense, explains that even untrained people are more likely to escape violent attacks, rapes, and even murders if they fight back aggressively and quickly. To put that another way, if you don’t fight back, if you just comply with the attacker so as to “not make him angry,” you are much more likely to be hurt, raped, or killed.

Never, ever give in to this type of defeatism, to this type of emotional blackmail. The attacker wants to rob you, injure you, rape you, or even kill you... and you’re worried about making him angry? His feelings should be the last thing you worry about. Instead, focus on fighting back as hard, as quickly, and as loudly as you can. That’s the ONLY thing that’s going to save you, at least potentially. Giving in absolutely will not.

Hell, as vicious as some crimes have gotten today, the attacker may just kill you anyway, even if you complied meekly every step of the way.

Remember, too, that some crimes are committed simply because the criminal thinks it’s fun. Thugs will randomly punch people in the street, especially people who are elderly or otherwise unprepared to defend themselves. They do it only because it amuses them... and you’re worried about making a monster like that mad by not cooperating?

Real Life Doesn’t Work That Way

Real-life doesn’t work that way. Forget the aggressor’s feelings. Forget compliance. Dismiss defeatism. Fight back. Fight back hard and fight back immediately. That’s the only way to increase your chances of not being victimized. Complying will simply get you victimized according to the attacker’s timetable.

By the same token, when it comes to avoiding dangerous places and dangerous situations, you can do everything right and evil can and will still find you. I’m reminded of the case of Dr. William Petit, who was at home in 2010 when vicious home invaders beat him in the head with a baseball bat while he was asleep in bed. The invaders went on to rape, murder, and set on fire his wife and daughters. They were caught because they forced the wife to go to the bank and take out money (the teller called 911), but by the time police arrived, Petit (who suffered a brain injury) was the only one alive.

It doesn’t get any less “don’t go stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things” than home in your bed asleep next to your wife. There are countless less extreme examples. A self-defense altercation is, by definition, something you don’t plan. It happens on the initiative of the attacker(s). You must react and only rarely do you have the option to preempt it.

Don’t Go Along to Get Along

For this reason, while avoiding stupidity is a good general principle, you can’t operate under the assumption that this magically keeps you safe, any more than you can simply “go along to get along.” You can do absolutely everything right, but still encounter someone whose path intersects your own in life and who simply cannot be reasoned with (or even avoided, depending on the circumstances).

More broadly, I’ve known people who lived their lives in blissful ignorance who were fond of saying things like, “Well, I’ve never felt unsafe.” They say this as if their feelings determine whether they will be assaulted.

I hate to break it to you, but your feelings are irrelevant. If I throw a brick at the back of your head, it’s going to hurt even if you didn’t know about it, weren’t afraid of it, and had no feelings about it. Likewise, self-defense situations can and will happen without your input and control. You can reduce their frequency by avoiding stupid situations, stupid people, and stupid actions — but please, do not repeat that advice and think it solves everything. It never has and it never will.

When bad people enter your life, they won’t always be as extremely dangerous as murderous home invaders, but they could be pretty bad. I’ve encountered self-defense situations leaving the movies, leaving a bookstore, and walking to a restaurant (although I’ll grant you that in the latter case, it was in a poor neighborhood). Sometimes we take on risks in order to, you know, live life. To me, some amount of risk is unavoidable, even if you’re not being stupid.

Oh, and Dr. Petit? You might be pleased to learn that the poor man eventually remarried, to a beautiful woman who was volunteering her photography skills to Petit’s victim-advocacy foundation. As of 2015 they had a son together and, as far as I can determine, they are still married to this day.

What you’ve just read is an excerpt from my book, People Who Carry Tactical Pens Can’t Fight: And Other Dumb Things People Say About Self-Defense. It’s available on Amazon right now.

See you next week.