“We have not put law enforcement in a position where they are going to win. We’ve put them in a very hard position. There are ways to set them up in a much better position. There are ways to fix it.

“But until an incident happens, we won’t fix it.

“That’s not how we work.”

That is the assessment that haunts me when professionals talk about what will happen when a simple terrorist cell with basic small unit tactics attacks a soft target in the United States, such as a school, or mall, or a sporting event. The man who made these comments should know; his thrown-together five-man cell ran a counter-terrorism exercise against 150 state troopers in an elementary school, and “killed” 50 of them in a slaughter, discussed in the following video.

It’s sobering, isn’t it?

But it gets worse.

ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah terrorists have been infiltrating over our southern border for years; four more were just arrested, though an amnesty-minded media doesn’t want to address the story, as it shows how the Democrats (and Republicans, going back decades) have utterly and intentionally failed to secure the border.

No one wants to think about Westgate Mall,  or how it could have been in Raleigh, or Tampa, or Sacramento, or Cleveland, just as easily as it was Nairobi.

It took four days for the Kenyan police and military (and rumor has it, elite military units from outside the country) to end the attack. 67 people died, including the four terrorists. More than 175 people were wounded.

I think about such things when a trailer loaded with machine guns is stolen in a professional-looking theft, and then I think to the horrors of what can indeed happen here.

When such an attack hits the United States—and most professionals agree that it is merely a matter of “when,” not “if”— Shannon Watts and Michael Bloomberg and Barack Obama and their craven ilk won’t save your lives. No, they’re scurry for their secure rooms and hide behind their armed guards, and stare in mute horror, protesting with the lie, “but we didn’t know.”

But they will have known, because we’ve long known what will happen.

When these events unfold, it will be those few law enforcement officers and even fewer prepared citizens inside the target areas who will stand virtually alone against those intent on slaughter, saving lives and risking their own in the process.

We will need our concealed carriers like Nick Meli, our armed security guards like Jeanne Assam, and our off-duty police officers like Lisa Castellano.

Such a man, a former Royal Marine, is credited with saving a hundred lives at Westgate by going back again and again to rescue those who could not rescue themselves due to shock and fear.

Undercover police officers and others armed with nothing more than handguns did much to save lives in those first horrifying hours, when mindset and training proved to be all important to saving as many lives as possible.

You can choose to be the kind of person who makes the decision to prepare for the known reality of evil people in this world, or you can choose to be a pawn and a sure victim.

Choose wisely.