What can the USA Navy SEALs and research teach us about getting through life’s tough times? James Waters, a former SEAL Platoon Commander, offers the following:
1) Purpose And Meaning
Without a good reason to keep pushing, we’ll quit. Studies of “central governor theory” show our brains always give in long before our body does.
2) Make It A Game
What’s one of the things people who live through disaster scenarios have in common? They make survival a game. The best way to deal with stress is to see problems as challenges, not threats.
3) Be Confident — But Realistic
Lack of confidence isn’t an option but neither is denial. Hope and despair can be self-fulfilling prophecies.
4) Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Marathons aren’t as hard after a few months of training. But if you had to run one tomorrow you’d probably cry. Who survives catastrophic scenarios? The people who have prepared. Reducing uncertainty reduces fear.
Col. Jeff Cooper, creator of the “Color Code” that sharpens a person’s situational awareness, is also the author of the booklet, Principles of Personal Defense, in which he describes 7 characteristics a person should strengthen in themselves to best be able to ward off a violent attack. They’re primarily technique-oriented.
SemperVerus® has added the component of biblical insight as a foundation to each principle, in keeping with the understanding that Scripture inherently supports the right of self-defense as presented in the booklet, The Case for Biblical Self-Defense.
1. ALERTNESS — “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8 (NLT)
2. DECISIVENESS — “An indecisive man is unstable in all his ways.” James 1:8 (HCSB)
Invite SemperVerus® to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.
Comprised of 5 Catalysts + 1 Tactical Agent:
Prepare, Aware, Be, Know, Do, +Self-Defense
SemperVerus™ (Latin for “Stay True”) is a new dynamic motivational communications operative that has as its mission to inform, inspire, persuade, impel, and invigorate men and women to personal life-changing positive commitment, decision-making, and responsible self-defense awareness. It accomplishes this objective through its website and Twitter stream (semperverus.com and @semper_verus), publications, reminder wristbands, the SemperVerus Brotherhood™ and SemperVerus Sisterhood™ pledge, and group presentations.
“The best antidote to a culture shifting to bad behavior is to re-normalize good behavior,” says social observer and author Seth Godin. SemperVerus (the “V” in Verus also stands for the Roman numeral 5) believes the best way for a person to avoid drifting off-course into bad behavior—deviating from his or her life’s “true north” of fulfillment, happiness, and civic well-being—is by attending to 5 transformative catalysts that culminate in 1 tactical agent:
I. Prepare: putting your life into proper condition and readiness to successfully handle material and spiritual foreseen and unforeseen circumstances.
II. Aware: heightening attentiveness to be alert to—and anticipate—dangerous potentialities and temptations, as well as edifying opportunities.
III. Be: developing rich personal leadership character of exemplary moral and ethical quality.
IV. Know: becoming a life-long learner to clearly, and with certainty, apprehend situations from which to benefit personally and others.
V. Do: resolving to intentionally and skillfully act to accomplish positive and fruitful outcomes.
+ The sum total of these 5 catalysts cultivates the strategic and tactical agent of Self-Defense: the intelligent ability to responsibly protect yourself from menacing spiritual and physical threats.
The SemperVerus website blog is a regularly updated source of developmental information and curated resources for personal leadership and self-defense, with articles focusing on the Prepare, Aware, Be, Know, Do, and Self-Defense categories, such as:
A list of links to organizations that support the Second Amendment.
A list of links to self-defense training resources.
A list of links to mobile apps for instruction in dry fire, self-defense, survival, travel, personal leadership, and more.
A list of important judicial decisions regarding self-defense law.
A collection of every USA state’s constitution article that establishes the right of armed self-defense for its citizens.
The 4 basic rules of gun safety and links to basic gun safety videos.
As a motivational impetus, SemperVerus invites people to join the SemperVerus Brotherhood™ or SemperVerus Sisterhood™, where adherents are invited to pledge to stay true to common virtues as outlined on the website (semperverus.com/brotherhood).
SemperVerus is also the publisher of the pocket-sized booklet, The Case for Biblical Self-Defense (ISBN 978-0-692-08979-8; 26 pp.; $10; available by emailing staytrue@semperverus.com). For those who consider the Bible to be their authoritative guide for life and personal behavior, this booklet answers in the affirmative the question, “Is it biblical and in accordance with Christian faith to be ready to employ lethal force to protect your life from an imminent and wrongful life-threatening attack?”
Invite SemperVerus to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.
The following legal decisions concern the law of self-defense. Some of the rulings are final and others are not. They’re presented here, along with salient excerpts, to be read for their excellent judicial logic about the absolute civil right of armed self-defense as established by the framers of the US Constitution.
Dissents by US Ninth Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson, US Ninth Circuit Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, and US Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence J.C. VanDyke in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling: Duncan v. Bonta (March 20, 2025) (pdf).
This majority ruling upholds California’s ban on standard-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 cartridges. The following are excerpts of the dissents to that ruling.
Circuit Judge R. NELSON: “[T]he majority didn’t just butcher the Second Amendment and give a judicial middle finger to the Supreme Court. It also spurned statutory procedure for en banc proceedings.”
Circuit Judge P. BUMATAY: “As a sovereign State, California may of course do what it thinks proper to protect its citizens. But what California may not do is encroach on its citizens’ constitutional rights. We cannot ignore that California’s actions continually whittle away the Second Amendment guarantee. While California may pass laws to address gun violence, California’s choices must give way to the Constitution.”
“[T]he right to keep and bear arms is a ‘fundamental right necessary to our system of ordered liberty.’”
“California calls these magazines ‘large-capacity magazines.’ That term suggests that their capacities are greater than the usual magazine. But, in truth, magazines holding more than ten rounds are the most common magazines in the country. They come standard with the most popular firearms sold nationwide. As the district court observed, ‘in the realm of firearms,’ these magazines ‘are possibly the most commonly owned thing in America.’”
“By the most conservative estimates, more than a hundred million ‘large-capacity’ magazines exist in the country today. To put it into perspective, if California’s law applied nationwide, then half of all magazines in the United States would be taken from nearly 40 million Americans. And so these magazines should be more accurately termed ‘standard-capacity magazines.’ Simply put, the ban deprives Californians of the most popular firearm magazines for self-defense and other lawful purposes.”
“Nothing in the historical understanding of the Second Amendment warrants California’s magazine ban.”
“[N]either the text of the Second Amendment nor our country’s historical tradition of firearm regulation supports California’s magazine ban. Still, the majority once again upholds California’s regulation. In doing so, the majority defies the Supreme Court.”
“[T]his is now the third time we’ve had to warn against the majority’s violation of Supreme Court instructions. We sound the alarm yet again—but this time, it’s more dire given the extreme nature of the majority’s ruling. Its implications are vast and lead to a dangerous expansion of government power….Adhering to the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding, California’s magazine ban is unconstitutional.”
“Magazines—whether they hold ten rounds, more than ten rounds, or fewer than ten rounds—are unquestionably “Arms” under the Second Amendment.”
“Although the majority begrudgingly concedes that magazines are generally protectable ‘Arms’ and that ‘large-capacity’ magazines ‘enhance…a person’s ability…to defend” himself,…it nonetheless excludes the ‘large-capacity’ magazine from the protection of the Second Amendment. And it does so using questionable reasoning.”
“[T]he magazines California bans are the furthest thing from highly unusual in modern America. In fact, firearms with magazines holding more than ten rounds are the overwhelming choice of Americans for self-defense and other lawful purposes. While estimates vary, easily more than 100 million of these magazines exist in the country. According to one estimate, these magazines account for half of all American magazines—that’s 115 million out of 230 million magazines in circulation today.”
“In sum, the right to keep and bear firearms that use a magazine able to hold more than ten rounds is presumptively protected by the text of the Second Amendment. These magazines constitute ‘Arms’ because they are necessary components of firearms and facilitate the firing process.”
“At each step of this case, the majority has made clear its disdain for the Supreme Court’s Heller-McDonald-Bruen Rahimi jurisprudence….Because California’s magazine ban violates the Second Amendment’s text, history, and tradition, we respectfully dissent”
Circuit Judge L. VANDYKE: “[W]hether a firearm component is an inherent and ‘necessary’ part of the arm itself, or instead merely an ‘optional’ and unnecessary accessory to the arm, is a hopelessly indeterminable and inadministrable distinction.”
“Initially, I planned to explain my reasons for dissenting on this conceptual point through usual judicial means alone: describing in writing some real-world illustrations to explain how the majority’s supposed ‘arms–accessory’ distinction collapses. But at argument it became clear to me that a visual illustration would greatly aid my colleagues and the parties in better grasping how this rather obvious conceptual problem specifically applies to firearms. So instead of straining to use written words to explain the many different parts of a gun and how each part could easily be deemed an ‘accessory’ under the majority’s vacuous test, I have decided to deliver part of my dissent in this case orally—via video—under the established wisdom that showing is sometimes more effective than telling:”
“Just as the First Amendment doesn’t apply only to ‘necessary’ or ‘essential’ speech, the Second Amendment cannot apply only to firearms containing just those parts that a state like California deems essential and necessary.”
“[T]he written portion of my dissent makes the same conceptual argument as the video: it talks about the same firearms parts except in written form. Yet the majority has never complained that the written portion of my dissent ‘includes facts outside the record.’ The difference between the two formats (written and video) is not the supposed factual content, but rather that for some reason the video format is harder to ignore. So the majority has fabricated a sham procedural reason to justify ignoring it anyway.”
“[T]he majority’s rationale in this case, followed to its (il)logical conclusion, means that now—perhaps even more so than before Bruen—only the jankiest guns are even facially protected by the Second Amendment. And even those can be banned outright consistent with the Second Amendment so long as the government can find a historical analogue with the flimsiest connection to the challenged law….. [T]his court once
again improves its undefeated record against the Second Amendment, demonstrating both its misunderstanding of firearms and its disdain for the People’s constitutional right to have them in the process.”*
This ruling grants a preliminary injunction blocking Maine’s 72-hour waiting period law for firearm purchases.
“The acquisition of firearms is covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
“If a citizen cannot take possession of a firearm then his or her right to possess a firearm or to carry it away is indeed curtailed….Acquiring a firearm is a necessary step in the exercise of keeping and bearing a firearm. Any interpretation to the contrary requires the type of interpretative jui jitsu that would make Kafka blush.”
“Firearms have always been articles of commerce. There is nothing novel or nefarious about that basic reality that would warrant torturing the concepts of keeping, bearing, or carrying to exclude from their meaning the acquisition or purchase of a firearm.”
“Because the act of acquiring a firearm, including by purchase, falls within the ambit of what it means to keep and bear arms, it is presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.”
“[S]tatutory disarmament in the absence of individual cause is inimical to our Nation’s history and traditions. It is to the Second Amendment what a prior restraint is to the First. I have little trouble finding irreparable injury in this context. As with cases involving the First Amendment, even a temporary deprivation results in irreparable injury.” *
The following legal decisions concern the law of self-defense. Some of the rulings are final and others are not. They’re presented here, along with salient excerpts, to be read for their excellent judicial logic about the absolute civil right of armed self-defense as established by the framers of the US Constitution.