Book Recommendation: The Power of Awareness

How to stay safe and save your life

From time to time I like to share a book recommendation with my readers, it’s time again. The last one was Triggernometry, a great book for those interested in the gunfighters of the old American west and the guns they used.

Today I offer The Power of Awareness by Dan Schilling. Schilling has an exceptional history of service to the country with a decades-long career in special forces which includes fighting in the Blackhawk Down battle in Mogadishu in 1993.

Schilling draws on the training and experience from that career to create a book full of information to help civilians stay safe in our increasingly dangerous world. Schilling lays out this important information in an entertaining and easy to understand way distilling knowledge gained over his career into tools applicable in the civilian world.

The book covers situational awareness by splitting the term in two with situation evaluated in terms of familiar/unfamiliar and safe/unsafe. Awareness progresses from unaware to openly aware to attentively aware and finally to threat. The author emphasizes the importance of planning, from having a plan prior to the activity to hasty planning during an event.

The book is organized into two areas, the first being Rules which is further divided into subcategories of Know, Prepare, and Act. The second area is Tools which is more specific and addresses six subjects beginning with Preparedness moving to Reducing Your Criminal Target Profile and finally progressing to Travel Planning.

While the book overall is very good and contains a wealth of valuable information, I do have one minor criticism and that concerns the author’s apparent lack of understanding regarding guns in America. This only occurs on a couple pages near the end of the book and were I not a Second Amendment activist I probably wouldn’t mention it but as such it bothers me when people who should know better repeat anti-gun propaganda.

Schilling states the 434 mass shootings in 2019 number as fact when those who pay attention know that it’s from an organization using a contrived definition that doesn’t even require fatalities, rather than the standard FBI definition. In another outrageous example, he states that in America the rate of people killed by others using firearms is 120 people per 100,000. If that were true, given a population of 340 million, 408,000 people would have died in firearms related homicides in the US annually.

According to the FBI, in 2018 there were 10,265 firearms related homicides. Actual 2023 numbers can be seen here (for those who still trust the CDC). Even CNN reports the number at less than 10 per 100,000. I would hope someone who spent decades defending the Constitution would be a little more knowledgeable in that area.

Aside from that, the book is very good, and I highly recommend it for anyone who chooses to take responsibility for their own safety and for that of their loved ones.

©2024 Joseph T Drammissi

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