Good lessons even for us civilians

I found two very interesting articles on police survival and deadly force.

This one is filled with insight and lessons learned:

STAYING ALIVE ON THE JOB - A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR PEACE OFFICERS

Not everything is applicable to civilians and some of the lessons require modifications. For example:

FBI’s annual “Officer Killed” summary, the statistics show that officers tend to die in close, not just at 7 yards but at 7 feet, and they tend to neutralize their attackers and survive unscathed as the distances increase.

Distance buys time. Waiting buys time. Time buys survival.

There are few “immutable laws” of police officer survival that go to 100% but this one reaches about 99%. Distance and time will generally favor the police officer that is the first to respond to a life-threatening crisis that involves armed criminals.

Very true, but sometimes hard to apply in self-defense situations. Often, trouble (i.e. the criminal) finds us; we do not have the option to wait for reinforcements or maintain a safe distance. Nonetheless, it is always smart to train with the idea that distance is (usually) our friend.*

This advice, however, is true for everyone:

W- Have a plan, Twining and Davis had a plan and they out gunned twice their number of highly trained lawman. The responding CHP officers didn’t…and they died.

A - Always Maintain the Advantage over the opponent. Gore and Frago initially had the tactically dominant position and officer survival experts who interviewed the surviving Bobby Davis believe that he and Twining would have surrendered if the two officers had not abandoned their tactically superior position.

This refers to the Newhall Incident when two ex-cons murdered four CHP officers. This defense trainer has a slide show that illustrates the events of that night.

I especially like it because he proves that you do not need fancy CGI software to make a useful training tool.

This article has a chilling glimpse into the mindset of one of the Newhall killers.

“I talked to him for quite a bit,” he recalls. According to Madden, Twining described for him the moments leading up to the shooting of Gore and Frago. The two cons had briefly contemplated surrendering as they were pulled over.

“He told me that he was looking in the side-view mirror and they were debating whether they were going to give up. And he looks in the mirror and he could see [Frago] with the shotgun as he walked up to the car and there was still tape around the slide, which means there was nothing happening,” Madden says. The tape around the slide meant the patrolman had not cycled a round into the chamber – he wasn’t locked and loaded.

For a criminal like Twining, that was like the scent of blood in the air.

“He told me the patrolman actually looked embarrassed, like he didn’t want to be there. So [Twining] just said ‘Fuck it’ and bailed out and started shooting.”

I've heard (and read) too many people talk about the wonderful intimidation power of their chosen weapons. "All i have to do is rack the slide on my shotgun and they will run away." "Once they see the size of the hole at the end of my .45 they'll give up."

It is hogwash and dangerous to boot. Unless you are prepared to use the gun, it is just a hunk of metal. Twining's confession shows that criminals can be frighteningly savvy in sizing up the threat. (Hint: they are seldom scared of a chunk of steel and wood.)

It also is important to remember that it only took 2 or 3 seconds for Twining and Davis to seize the tactical initiatve.

So mindset matters and so does focus.

* This is a problem i have with many "practical pistol" courses. I've seen many that require the shooter to move toward distant targets. Dumb idea. It makes for a good game but represents poor tactics.

School shootings and civilian response

I have some thoughts on my other blog.

Michael Bane says it all

Why I Never Fell in Love with the .40 S&W

He is not knocking the .40 S&W as a cartridge, just explaining why he prefers to carry what he does. This point can't be repeated enough:

Finally, "stopping power" is wildly secondary to bullet placement. Let me say that again...in a handgun round, bullet placement is everything. What I want in a carry gun is the absolute knowledge that I can deliver the shot with that gun and that load. The little .40s required more from me than the 9mms and the .45 ACPs.

Bane is in good company. I remember seeing an interview with Jeff Cooper in which he explained that the .45 ACP was not the be all and end all of defensive cartridges. {GASP!} He thought the .45 Colt and .455 Webley were also fine rounds. He shot the .45 ACP because that is what the 1911 shot. Like Bane it was platform first, cartridge second.

Me, i'm that way with the .357 mag. I don't like it's loud bark. But i recognize it's unmatched versatility. But the clincher is the S&W Model 19. It is the platform that i shoot best that can also be carried easily.

Be prepared

Here's a man who takes the injunction seriously.

Email to Shooting Times

For the first time that i can remember, i disagree with Sheriff Jim Wilson. He is a courteous gentleman so i understand why he apologized for his earlier comments about IPSC. (Although, calling it an "armed track meet" with " cute, pastel-colored pajama outfits" is pretty funny.) But he went too far when he wrote: "The majority voted, the majority rules, and life goes on."

If Col. Cooper and the guys at Big Bear believed that, we would all be shooting .38 Specials out of the FBI stance. Progress does not come from going along with the majority; it comes from cantankerous individuals who are willing to challenge conventional wisdom and figure out what really works.

The Zumbo Mess

The Smallest Minority has a nice response to Zumbo's idiotic statements.

Some see his comments as representative of hunters and see a faultline between hunters and other gun owners. I do not. I think Zumbo is representative only of cranky, arrogant, pampered gunwriters and has little in common with hunters as a whole.

The tip-off is in the column that started all this.

I must be living in a vacuum. The guides on our hunt tell me that the use of AR and AK rifles have a rapidly growing following among hunters, especially prairie dog hunters. I had no clue. Only once in my life have I ever seen anyone using one of these firearms.

Yes, he is living in a vacuum and that is why he saw so few ARs in the field. As a gunwriter he does much of his hunting on private guided hunts on land where the dirty masses never intrude.

Zumbo tried to wrap himself in the colors of "traditional hunting" and stand as a defender of the right and the true spirit of the hunt. In truth, he is closer to being one of the "tourists with rifles" who populate the gun and hunting rags.

Shot show

I'm late noting this but Gun Blast has a bunch of great pictures from the SHOT show.

Good idea in theory

Mossberg has an interesting new package out for their model 500

JIC: Just in Case

My reservations are two-fold. First, i don't like the pistol-grip only configuration. It's not a good configuration for effective shooting especially if the user practices very little with the gun.

Second, i'd like to know more about the associated knives and hardware. There is a lot of crap out there masquerading as heavy-duty multi-tools or "tactical" knives.

Don't' be French

The German victory in France in 1940 is one of the most decisive campaigns in military history. In six weeks, the Blitzkrieg re-ordered the balance of power in Europe.

The striking thing about the German victory is that the defeated Western allies enjoyed both a qualitative and quantitative superiority in men, tanks, guns, and planes. The Germans won because they had superior doctrine and training.

The French expected to fight methodical battles in which their material advantages would blunt the German offensive and roll back the invader. The Germans were able- through superior strategy and initiative- to disrupt the French plans and win operational victories that paralyzed the French High Command.

I have to admit that I hear French accents in a lot of self-defense advice on the web and in the gun rags. There is an obsessive focus on the material-what bullet/caliber works 'best', shotgun versus AR15-and little attention to the decisive factors-mindset, planning, practice.

I mean, a tactical shotgun is great, but how do you use it when you have to answer the door late at night? What's the best way to carry a 1911 so that you can deploy it in the event of a carjacking? (Is it even possible to get it into play with seat belts on?)

An effective personal defense strategy should not begin with the abstract evaluation of various weapons, calibers, or loads. Rather, it should start with an honest risk assessment: what are the likely dangers, what weapon is best suited to meet them, what are the best actions to counter those dangers if they arise?

There is one other applicable lesson from this historical period. Some of the propagandists for rearmament actually ended up strengthening the forces of appeasement. They overstated the might of Hitler and claimed that only massive rearmament could let the French and British catch-up. This helped create a sense of resignation and hopelessness that Hitler exploited in 1937-39.

I wonder how many newbies are dissuaded from buying a personal defense firearm because of the advice they receive from pixilated Rambos. Here is a man or woman with limited experience with firearms who is pondering whether to take that first, crucial step. When they ask a simple question, they get flooded with the macho posturing that made the internet famous.

"You need a tactical shotgun, and an AK-47. A high-capacity .40 S&W and a back-up subcompact that uses the same magazines. Yeah, always have four spare magazines with you at all times. Plus two for the AK. Get a tactical vest. Oh, and a bowie knife, an Akita, and a high-end home alarm system…"

I wonder how many potential new shooters just throw up their hands and do nothing?

That's sad because the 80/20 rule applies in the defense realm as it does in most aspects of life. Even worse, to return to my first point, this obsession with ordnance-lots and lots of hardware-ignores the crucial lessons of 1940.

Cold facts about "stopping power"

Go read Coyote at the Dog Show:

It seems that we Americans have a real predisposition for substituting technology for skill. If 6 shots from a .38 won't do the job, perhaps 18 shots from a high-capacity 9mm will make 'glockamole' out of 'em, eh? Problem is, even a shot from a highpowered rifle that turns everything in the chest cavity into something resembling that red jello and whipped cream stuff your great aunt Agnes brought to Thanksgiving dinner often will not put a target down immediately.

See also:

Training to survive

In Defense of the 38 Special

Arming teachers

Some thoughts on my other blog.

Jeff Cooper


Here’s a remarkably good obituary from the LA Times.

I see some similarities between Cooper and another giant who recently passed-- Peter Drucker.

Both were giants and pioneers in their specialized fields. Each brought a broad, liberal education to a field dominated by technocrats and faddists. Both could be cranky and did not suffer fools for the sake of bonhomie.

To me the most striking think is that both were frequently ignored by their biggest fans.

Our current gun rags hype an endless stream of new calibers, new models, new add-ons. I’m sure most of them will do stories on Jeff Cooper in the coming months. Yet, Cooper was acidly skeptical of the hot new things. He wondered why any hunter needed more than two or three rifles. With a 30-06 plus something for the big stuff the North American was set. Add a really big bore if you hunted Africa and you and your grandson were set for life.

A lot of the gear that gets advertised is designed for long shotsmagnums, big scopes, range finders. Cooper, OTOH, always emphasized that the mark of a hunter was how close he got before pulling the trigger.

Any fool can send a bullet flying at a deer standing 400 yards away. It takes skill to get close to the deer and take a 75 yard shot.

Jeff Cooper, RIP

Col. Jeff Cooper...A Giant Has Fallen

Serious thinking about home defense

Two great posts at To which i replied. The discussion continues at South Park Pundit.

41 Mag: Bad timing?

Clint Smith (Thunder Ranch) offeres some interesting perspectives on the history of the .41 magnum and its failure in the police market.

The .41 Mag: if only we could do it over

See also:

The Wrong Compromise

Carnival

A great edition of the Carnival of Cordite.

Jerry Ahern talks sense

However, one can safely assume that someone who has been shot with a .22 Magnum is not going to be jumping about merrily proclaiming how healthy he feels. I believe it was the late Bill Jordan -- a man with whom I was privileged to interact on several occasions -- who said that a hit with a .22 was better than a miss with a .44 Magnum. I would append that as follows: a hit with a .22 Magnum you have in your pocket is better than no hit at all because your heavier caliber pistol was too big to carry and you are unarmed.

RTWT.

Handgun cartridges in carbines

Some interesting performance data here at Leverguns.

Speaking of Rangers and their guns

When Frank Hamer was hunting down Bonnie and Clyde his long gun was a Remington Model 8 semi-auto in the .35 Remington. He believed the old brushbuster was superior to a Tommygun and the .45 ACP. See why here.

Highly recommended


One Ranger: A Memoir

I was especially interested in Jackson's discussion of the firearms he carried as he worked the border region of Texas. Since he had no SWAT team on call, his trunk was a rolling gunsafe-- riot gun, AR-18, hundreds of rounds of ammo. But the rifle he carried close at hand in the passenger compartment was a Model 94 in 30-30.