Guns

Lessons we can learn from dash-cam footage of a knife-wielding assailant

/ hsoi

Take a look at this dashcam footage of a guy pulling out a knife and attacking a deputy during a traffic stop.

There’s much we can learn from this.

First, take a read of PoliceOne’s examination of the footage (and another video of it). (h/t Karl)

Situational awareness. The Deputy was aware of his situation, tho it’s arguable he could have been better aware. I’m guessing the assailant was walking down the road towards the traffic stop, out of view of the dashcam. Then… out of nowhere he goes crazy, pulls the knife, and attacks. It was good that 1. the assailant hesitated (suicide by cop? act of a crazed loon?), 2. the Deputy did see him when he did. You can see how quickly things unfold, how quickly things can go south and the flag can fly. We aren’t supermen… we will fall into “condition white”, we will fail at being situationally aware. We’re human. We can only strive to do our best.

The Deputy moved. It’s better to not get shot (or stabbed) than it is to shoot. As soon as the Deputy registered what was going on (as soon as his OODA loop kicked in on this), he moved. He “got off the X”. While going backwards is not ideal, it’s all he could do with a car on his right and unknown traffic to his left. That was good situational awareness — he knew where he had to go, and went there. Moving bought him time, time enough to draw his gun.

3 yards, 3 seconds, 1 shot. So, lower than the statistical average by 2 shots, but still… there’s your average.

What was this guy’s motive? Who knows… and who cares. Well, in the aftermath we care as the legal system does what it needs to do. But in the moment? Who cares. It doesn’t matter WHY someone is attacking you, just that they are attacking you and you need to get them to stop. Don’t worry about the why… worry about keeping yourself alive and stopping the attack, so you can be around later to ask why.

The Deputy shot “right”. That is, he shot to stop the assailant. No “shoot to kill”. He shot, the attack stopped, that was it.

For those that wish to ban guns or look down on guns for self-defense, I ask you what you would do in this situation. I reckon the attacker had something against police, given the history the videos tell us. But so what? Maybe the attacker will have something against women… or against blacks… or against gays… or against you just because you look funny. Or maybe they’ll have no rational reason at all, which seems possible given this video. So someone gets up close to you, pulls a knife, and lunges at you. What are you going to do? If you think violence is wrong, then you’re dead. If you think fighting back is wrong, then you’re dead. If you think shouting “NO!” is going to make him stop, then you’re dead…. because if I’m close enough to palm strike him in the nose, he’s close enough to stab me. Sometimes violence is the right answer (it took me years to accept that). Sometimes a gun is the right technological solution — it overcomes distance, which is my friend when being attacked by someone with a knife; it gets people to stop doing what they’re doing, which is attacking me.

There’s a lot we can learn from this video. Watch it over and over. Learn what you can.

New gun shop in South Austin

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Recently discovered a new gun store in South Austin: “Guns and More LLC“.

I haven’t had the opportunity to stop by yet, but from the website it seems like a humble “mom & pop” startup, small, but eager.

They are lacking operating hours on their website, but I emailed them and found out they’re open M-F 9-6 and 9-4 on Saturday’s.

I’ll stop by sooner or later, when schedule permits. Meantime, I felt a little publicity wouldn’t be a bad thing. 🙂

 

It’s how you use your time

/ hsoi

How does the saying go? “Speed is fine, but accuracy is final.”

It matters in many places in life. For example, I love to allude back to the Pentium Pro floating point bug. At the time, it was the fastest microprocessor out there, but who cares, because it gave wrong answers. This even held up in the classroom… that student that raised their hand first only mattered if they were the first one with the right answer; the teacher always kept going around until they got the right answer, not the first one. If you can be both fast and accurate, great. But it matters more to be accurate than fast.

So when it comes to shooting, we tend to tell people to go fast. Why? Because you don’t have time to waste. SuburbanDad just returned from Rangemaster with some data:

Speaking of timing, one fun fact – the FBI reports (again, according to Rangemaster staff) that for citizens using a gun in self defense, 92% of those gun fights occur between six to ten feet. The fights usually involve the citizen firing just over three shots, and the entire fight is over in 3.5 seconds. As Tom Givens, the boss man at Rangemaster often says, “you will run out of time before you run out of ammo.”

This is where that “3 shots at 3 yards in 3 seconds” being the statistical average of a gunfight came from, and formed the basis for KR Training’s “3 Seconds or Less Drill“.

So you don’t have time, but to just say “go fast” really isn’t the whole story.

First yes, you must go faster. I can see students in class that move at the speed of “mosey”. You cannot do this. You must move faster. But how fast should you move? It’s tough to quantify, but it should be the maximum speed at which you can move and still get acceptable hits. It may not be as fast as Todd Jarrett and that’s fine, but I’m sure you can move faster than you are. Basically, keep moving faster in small increments until you get to a point where your accuracy is no longer acceptable. There you go. You just have to push yourself to find your limit, then back off within that limit.

Second, you must realize that faster isn’t a singular thing for the whole operation. You must move at different speeds for different tasks. Drawing the gun and getting it on target should be a very fast movement and should always be fast no matter how you’re shooting. But then how fast you get the sights and press the trigger? That will vary depending on what you’re shooting: a large, close-up target can have a coarser sight picture than a small, far-away target. But the only way to ensure you have enough time for those slower things is to make sure you are using your time correctly on other tasks.

Third, use your time efficiently. Most people shoot by pressing the gun out, then pressing the trigger in. For the sake of simplifying the math, let’s say it takes you 1 second to press the gun out and 1 second to press the trigger in. If you perform this as a serial task (press out then press in), that takes you 2 seconds to complete the whole task. What if you performed the two tasks simultaneously? Thus as you press the gun out you also press the trigger in? You have done nothing to speed up the work as it still takes you 1 second to press the gun out and 1 second to press the trigger in. However, by performing the 2 actions simultaneously, you’ve now taken only 1 second to complete the whole task. There was no speed change, no rushing, no hurrying, just more efficient use of the time available. In fact, you could even move a little slower (e.g. 1.5 seconds to press out, and press trigger) yet still take less time than doing the two actions sequentially!

So it’s not really as simple as “go faster”, tho that’s certainly the first step many need to take. In the end, it’s about using what time you have in the most effective manner.

You really need to play it out — beforehand

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

This past Saturday was one of the tougher days at KR Training. A couple of times a year, AT-1A Low Light Shooting is offered. It can only happen a couple of times a year because we need the sun to seat early (e.g. 6-7 PM). And since we offer two other classes prior to the low-light class, in this case Defensive Pistol Skills 2 started the day and the afternoon was AT-2: Force-on-Force Scenarios, which is a bit more physically involved for the instructors and well… I’m still recovering from the weekend. 🙂

While long — and many of the students came for all 3 classes — I think days such as this offer some of the most important training blocks. Not only are you getting some higher-level skills, but you’re starting to really move beyond the mechanical skills of self-defense to the more mental and mindset skills — which I’d argue are more important.

OK, so you just shot someone in self-defense. Now what do you do? Now what will you deal with?

Or how about we back up to 5 minutes before the shooting. Could you have avoided the need to shoot in the first place? Did you make the right choices leading up to and going through the situation?

If you’ve never actually role-played out some serious situations, I guarantee you will make mistakes — perhaps critical mistakes. Why? Because we’re human. The way humans work, we don’t “just know” how to do things: we have to be taught. Pick any sort of pressure situation that can exist in life, be it playing the big game, being on a game show, the big presentation at work, whatever. Did you just drop cold into that situation? Or did you prepare? Did your coach run you and the team through plays and drills and exercises to prepare you? Did you rewrite your presentation and rehearse it in front of the mirror a few times before the meeting? We set up and prepare ourselves before “the big moment” so when the moment arrives we can do it “just like we rehearsed” and it goes off without a hitch and a problem. If we drop in cold with no prep well… maybe we’ll make it through unscathed, maybe not. Is your life worth “winging it”?

The trouble is, we don’t know what we don’t know. Most people don’t realize the advantage of this sort of training — I know I didn’t. But I can still clearly remember how I felt after my first FoF scenario… and how horrible I felt. How sobering it was. How I didn’t know what to do, how I picked the wrong thing. Because all too often, we think that because we have a gun, we can and perhaps should use it… that we’ve got the hammer, and we’re looking for that nail. But you find out that most of the time the problems can and should be solved by some other means.

I was so happy to see students going through the AT-2 class and having their awakenings. There was one student in particular that I know got a good dose. During one of the restaurant scenarios, he was the CHL holder. He found himself wanting to just slip out of the situation, but as he got to the door he found himself turning around and struggling with an internal dilemma to get involved or not. We asked him why he did what he did, and it was just that internal struggle. We know we can do something, can we live with ourselves if we could have stopped it but didn’t? but should we get involved because I could get hurt and then who is going to pay my medical bills, my lawyer bills, take care of my family if I die, etc.? It’s a HUGE issue, and if you have not thought about such things before, you’re going to have trouble when the flag flies. We must draw our lines now, beforehand. We must sort out our feelings, beforehand.

Force-on-force sounds so scary, so intimidating. And yes, some levels can be (a SouthNarc ECQC may not be the best way to ease into the notion of FoF training). But KR Training AT-2 is a great way to start. It’s not physical — no contact, no wrestling, no striking. At most you might just be moving around, but I think the only reason people broke a sweat was from wearing long sleeve clothing and some extra gear out in the near-90 degree heat. 🙂  Your heart will get pumping tho, especially if everyone plays their roles well. You will get a mental and a bit of an emotional workout. But this is the place to get that workout. This is the place to make your inevitable mistakes. This is the place to start to figure out how to actually apply those hard skills of sight alignment and trigger control — and that you may be able to avoid applying those skills entirely.

If you’ve never done FoF, please do. It’s one of the more useful educational experiences you can have.

In other news about the day….

It was great to see some women taking these higher-level courses. In fact, Mrs. Groundhog was there for AT-2 and AT-1A, which was awesome. Great to see her and Mr. Groundhog too, who by the way is looking great (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go catch up on their blog). For a reason that still alludes me (tho I have some guesses), women tend to not take higher-level training. It makes me happy to see this, because need for these skills aren’t gender-based — everyone needs them.

Skill take home: slow down.

Monster Magnet lyrics are a perfect thing to recite when you need to play the part of a mentally unstable person thinking the aliens are coming. Hey… I had to play off the weekend’s meteor shower. 🙂

My ankle is most unhappy with me again… too much time on it.

It’s always fun shooting at night. Muzzle blast is so fun to watch. It just doesn’t get old with me. And yes, I really need to bump finding a new EDC flashlight up my priority ladder (more on that some other day).

And I’ll end with a little love for the guys I work with: Karl, John (TXGunGeek, with his weekend writeup), and Tom. I’ve had the privilege of learning and working with these guys for a number of years now. I am thankful for their encouragement, the opportunity they give me to teach, and the ways they still teach and educate me. Thank you, guys. It’s always a pleasure, and I consider myself fortunate to be able to hang, run, and work with you.

Good for her

/ hsoi

A 12-year-old girl took matters into her own hands during a home invasion in southeast Oklahoma.

It happened on Wednesday when the girl was home alone. She told police a stranger rang the doorbell, then went around to the back door and kicked it in. She called her mom, Debra St. Clair, who told her to get the family gun, hide in a closet and call 911.

…

During that time, the intruder made his way through the house. St. Clair’s daughter told deputies the man came into the room where she was hiding and began to open up the closet door. That was when the 12 year old had to make a life-saving decision.

“And what we understand right now, he was turning the doorknob when she fired through the door,” said the Bryan County Undersheriff Ken Golden.

Full story, including some of the 911 call made by the little girl.

Good for her.

Good for Mom and her instructions.

This is a Right Thing to do. She didn’t confront, she hunkered down in as safe a place as she could to do her best to avoid the intruder. I personally might handle things differently, like using a command voice to tell them to get out. But for a 12-year-old, I consider what she did reasonable. And she got 911 on the phone and I’m sure kept the phone going… I’m guessing the gunshot is on the recording.

I wouldn’t recommend shooting through the door because you can’t be sure of your target. But I’ll give the girl the benefit of the doubt, because I don’t know all the details and obviously she hit the guy. You can hear her voice calm at first, but as he drew closer she was certainly scared to death. I can’t say I blame her at all for her actions.

It also brings up safe storage laws. The fact she was able to “get the family gun” means a readily dischargable gun was accessible to a minor. Granted, Oklahoma’s laws could be different in specifics, but I’m going to consider Texas’ law and the general notion of this legal concept. It may well be that this is a legal violation because the child was able to get the gun. But Thank God she was able to… because, as the print story doesn’t report but the video does, this same man was previously arrested for abducting a 17-year old girl. What if he found this girl and all she was doing was hiding in the closet with no means of defending herself? Would she still have been in the closet when Mom finally arrived home? Or would we have a tragic event on our hands?

We can also talk about general self-defense concepts. I mean, girl was on the phone with 911 and police were on their way… but they obviously didn’t get there in time. The police want to protect, they try to protect, but they cannot bend the laws of time and space and be everywhere and show up instantly on-demand. What can YOU do to keep yourself safe? What are you doing to take responsibility for yourself and the safety and well-being of your loved ones?

Teach your children. Teach them what to do in a case like this. Teach them how to use firearms in a safe and responsible manner. Help them understand. Help them care for themselves… because that’s what a parent does.

 

Lessons to learn

/ hsoi

Dallas police said a woman shot at two people who kicked in the door to her house late Wednesday morning, killing one.

The shooting occurred at about 11:30 a.m. in the 7200 block of Concordia Drive.

Dallas police said the woman was home alone when she heard a noise — two men had kicked in the front door of her house.

She confronted the two men as they reached the second-floor landing and shot at them several times, police said.

Full Story. (h/t Guy)

Fits the typical profile for a home breakin: mid-week, mid-morning. Most home breakins happen during the work week between about 10 AM and 3 PM, because they expect no one will be home, off at the job working.

Failure of the victim selection process.

I’m not sure if the homeowner had any other lines of defense: alarm system (and using it), doesn’t seem to be sign of a useful dog, and not sure about the state of the home itself that may have made it seem appealing. But the more layers of defense you can have, the more you can do to make your home appear unappealing and “not worth the effort”, the better. It can help you keep a situation from progressing in the first place.

He said he will now teach his daughter how to forgive herself for taking a life.

I’m not sure this was some poetic hyperbole by the article author or fact, but assuming it’s fact well… this is one of those things that hopefully you think about and put into perspective before you consider a gun as a tool of self-defense. No, we don’t “shoot to kill”, we work to stop the threat. But in stopping the threat, yes a life may be taken. The better prepared you are for that reality before the fact, the better you’ll be able to handle it after the fact.

I’m glad the young woman is safe.

Is a pocket gun enough?

/ hsoi

When many people think about the right gun for concealed carry, their thoughts focus on “small, light, concealable”. So things like 5-shot snub revolvers (e.g S&W 642) or tiny semi-autos (Ruger LCP, Kel-Tec P-32, Kahr PM9) come to mind. There are many things one gives up in going to such a small gun, but there are also benefits — there’s always a trade-off somewhere.

But has anyone really quantified this data? Or is it just a bunch of internet gun-slinger bravado and anecdote about why you shouldn’t carry any gun other than a 1911 in .45 ACP the way God and John Moses Browning intended?

Claude Werner has done some study into this, and many people don’t like his results because they clash with their notion of reality.

Karl Rehn opted to do some study and data collection into this area himself. Remember that Defensive Pistol Skills BUG class I did back in July? Karl’s results are finally published in USCCA Magazine.

And Karl happened to get a picture of me looking like Trogdor.

Not everyone’s going to like the results, but data speaks for itself.

Equipment matters, and having better equipment — which does mean larger guns with greater capacity and that are easier to shoot and thus gain acceptable hits — are preferred. But a smaller gun is better than no gun.

But in the end? Training, practice, skill… that trumps equipment.

Class was good

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

This past Saturday was another round of classes at KR Training. We had one of our good combo days: Basic Pistol 2 and Defensive Pistol Skills 1.

There isn’t much to say here that hasn’t been said before about these classes, because the things that students encounter, the enlightenment, it surprises, etc. is all pretty typical for those classes. Trigger control and sight alignment remain the order of the day. 🙂  Really tho, part of why there’s not much to say is because these two classes were pretty awesome. A fantastic group of students in both classes. One thing that we noticed in DPS1 was how little we taped the targets — students were really doing well! And apart from a little rain here and there, which was easy to work around, classes went smooooooth.

But I did see a few things worth mentioning.

M&P Shield – Saw a LOT of these during the classes. I should have counted, didn’t, but there were numerous and so quickly after introduction. Shows the explosion of this gun’s popularity. But I saw a couple of things that bothered me.

1. I’ve been seeing the Shield fail to go into battery more than enough times. It goes like 98% into battery, which isn’t enough, and the gun doesn’t work. And it happens over and over. I’m not sure why it’s happening, but I’ve seen it with my Shield, and I saw it happen to multiple students and their respective Shield’s. I have no idea what to call the culprit tho… but it’s just something that gives me pause.

2. One student had a brand new Shield with a magazine disconnect. Rumor has it that now every Shield is made this way because of Massachusetts? I don’t yet know if this is the case, but if in fact EVERY Shield is now made with a disconnect well…. since I can’t recommend a gun with a disconnect, then that means I can no longer recommend the Shield. That sucks. I’ll try to look into this more.

Demographics – This morning’s The Shooting Wire had this blurb about new shooters

Having said that, I admit some concerns when a new shooter is sporting body piercings, body art and a decidedly goth dress code. Today, however, that new shooter may be male or female. They’re just expressing themselves, albeit differently from anything I’d ever considered.

Instead of accenting differences, I’m increasingly trying to convince myself to take the things we agree on (like guns) and use them as the lubrication needed to get beyond my personal

We had a wide range of students in class: young to old, male and female, and while there were no goths, there were certainly some people who broke the stereotypical gun owner mold. And one of those guys was shooting pretty damn good.

I always point out demographics because I see the reality of what gun ownership is like, and who is shooting… and who is starting to learn to shoot. It’s growing, it’s widening, it’s diversifying. No pigeonholing here.

Personal note  – On a personal note, I need to remember to keep my voice relaxed… let the PA/bullhorn do its job. It’s hard to… you have ear muffs on, I’m deaf enough already, you start to speak louder… and that just kills the vocal chords. I did better… voice made it all the way through class. But still. 🙂

 

ACLDN interview with Glenn Meyer

/ hsoi

If you don’t know who Glenn Meyer is, hopefully you’ll do a little reading here and learn about him and his work.

Glenn is a professor at Trinity University, and breaks from the norm in academia in that he’s pro-gun. In fact, he’s done a lot of research into the area of cognitive psych and guns.

In 2005-2006 Meyer researched what has become his best-recognized study to date, identifying effects on sentences handed down by jurors based on the appearance of the gun used by an individual acting in home defense. Results from that research were first published in 2009 in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00467.x/abstract), a professional publication that isn’t as accessible as the briefer online article about his study that Meyer authored for The Jury Expert, the journal of the American Society of Trial Consultants Foundation that same year. (See http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2009/09/will-it-hurt-me-in-court-weapons-issues-and-the-fears-of-the-legally-armed-citizen/)

For that fully story and an in-depth interview with Glenn, read the October 2012 issue of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network newsletter. I believe non-members can read it, and if you like what they’re putting out you might want to consider joining the organization (they do a lot more than print newsletters).

If you’re curious to read more of Glenn’s work, USCCA has published some of his articles:

“Appearances and the Armed Citizen” – a well-done article examining appearances and the armed citizen. Given Glenn’s area of expertise, this is one article you should read.

“Close Encounters of the Snubbie Kind” – that weekend of snub training I did with Claude Werner? Glenn was there too and this is write up.

Glenn’s an old friend of the KR Training group (he and Karl go way back), and it’s always a joy to read his work and train with him.