Guns

Facepalm

/ hsoi

One of the men lifted his shirt to display a handgun tucked into the waist of his pants, [Lt. James] Espinoza said. Moments later, five or six other men began beating up the 37-year-old coach. One of the men used a set of brass knuckles, Espinoza said.

(full story)

What would a reasonable person conclude?

A group of 6 or so men come up to you, with obvious ill intent (I’m sure they didn’t have smiles and rainbows on their faces, given the backstory). One flashes a gun at you. Then they start beating on you.

I would think any reasonable person would conclude the coach was in grave danger, that his life was at stake. If you wouldn’t reach this same conclusion, please tell me why.

Seeing the attack, the coach’s wife pulled out a gun and fired a warning shot into the air, Burris said.

The coach broke free of his attackers and went to his car for a second gun, which he pointed at various people in the crowd, Espinoza said.

I believe the wife’s response to be reasonable. I don’t think it was tactically sound nor safe (insert discussion of why it’s bad to shoot into the air, why warning shots are a bad idea, why it’s good to receive education in not just marksmanship but also threat management and legal implications of use of force, etc.), but generally speaking her response was reasonable. As well, I believe the coach’s response was reasonable as well. Again, I don’t think it was tactically sound (insert discussion of why it’s important to have gun on person and not stored far away, although in his case he may have had to do it for “youth coaching” reasons). Nevertheless, in the eyes of the law, the response by the man and woman are considered reasonable.

The coach who was involved in the clash and pulled out a gun after being attacked has been relieved of his coaching duties, [Jeremy Burris, director of the Tigers football program] said. His wife was also dismissed from involvement with the team.

“He’s been a great role model” for kids, Burris said of the coach, who has been with the Tigers for a few years and worked in the league for at least 15 years. “He’s really helped.”

Despite that background, Burris said, “you can’t take weapons out around children.”

Facepalm. Major facepalm.

Why can’t you take weapons out around children? Please, Mr. Burris, explain your statement.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in this organization,” said Burris, who said he has been affiliated with the Tigers for 20 years. “We pride ourselves on zero tolerance for anything that goes on.”

Ah, the beloved – and brain-dead – “zero tolerance” policy.

Was either the coach or his wife pointing their guns at the children? Were they threatening the children? Were they endangering the children?

Or have you considered that the coach was getting the living tar beat out of him? Have you considered what would have happened to this man if he and his wife did not take out a weapon around children? Maybe that “great role model” would be in the hospital, or dead. What good would that have done the world, to lose someone that’s contributed to the betterment of our youth for 15 years? Please explain how such a good man becoming crippled or dead would be a better thing.

Have you considered the message your action sends to those very youth?

That defending yourself is a good way to lose your job. Your choice is to lose your job or lose your life.

That hiding behind blind policy is an unthinking and cowardly thing to do. There is no consideration of the man’s years of service and demonstrated commitment. No, because this man was committed to continue living so he could continue to serve your community’s youth for another 15 years, that commitment deserves punishment.

If he’s “really helped”, why don’t you try to help him as a small return for all his years of service.

Is this what our society is coming to?

Challenging human predators

/ hsoi

Reading this, I think about KR Training’s Defensive Pistol Skills 1 class. That class teaches both presentations Claude mentions: challenge, and shoot. In light of the most recent DPS-1 class (the rains forcing us to do more dry fire and discuss dry fire), I think it’s important for people to realize that one’s dry fire practice shouldn’t just be about pistol fundamentals or other such hard-skills. But one’s dry fire practice, if you are practicing for the purpose of self-defense, should practice all such relevant skills, which includes things like yelling those challenges (e.g. “STOP! DON’T! MOVE!”).

tacticalprofessor's avatartacticalprofessor

Pointing guns at people you have no intention of shooting to force compliance with your demands is poor business.

–Ed Head in his article Pistol Provocation

I agree with this statement and feel it can be even further amplified from the perspective of training people how to Control a Confrontation. The statement can be, and has been, misconstrued by the inexperienced into “I believe that the first time any bad guy should know you are armed is when he sees the muzzle flash.” As a philosophy, reluctance to display a firearm without firing is a mistake. The majority of criminals are looking for a victimization not a fight. The display of a firearm by the intended victim, along with the obvious intent to use it if necessary, is an indicator that the victimization has the potential to turn into a fight. That’s not what economic predators are looking for.

Let’s…

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KR Training 2014-09-13 – BP2/DPS1 Quick Hits

/ hsoi

Sometimes, it’s “just another day” at KR Training. But this past Saturday was an exception to the rule.

It was a Basic Pistol 2 (Defensive Pistol Essentials) and Defensive Pistol Skills 1. Many students stayed for both classes, which is typical, but what was atypical was…

Weather

…the weather.

The first major cold front came through, and it seems summer is officially over. We dropped around 30º in a day, from being in the mid-90’s going to the mid-60’s. It was wonderful! However, with that drop in temperature also brought a lot of rain. I don’t know how much rain fell at the A-Zone Range, but at my home in Austin we got about 2.5″. It certainly felt that way at the range, with much rain coming on Friday and making for soggy, muddy range conditions. Then despite the weather reports, the rain kept going throughout most of Saturday. Sometimes a light drizzle, sometimes a break, and sometimes it went so hard for so long we just had to go or stay inside.

The weather made things challenging, and I want to give credit to all the students for their positive attitudes and willingness to keep working regardless of the conditions. You don’t get to choose the conditions when the flag flies for you, so it’s good to get used to less than ideal circumstances.

One thing this changed up was exactly what we did in class. We just couldn’t run the same drills. But major props to Karl Rehn for his ability to improv — it’s probably because he’s also a jazz musician. 😉  Seriously, if I can brag on my boss-man for a moment, this is something I’ve long admired in Karl: his ability to adapt. It could be because the weather isn’t cooperating, it could be because he sees the class as a whole is struggling and needs more focus on some element, or maybe he sees everyone is exceeding expectation so he can push further. But he’s always able to call an audible and do what’s right and best for the class, even if it’s not specifically what’s on the lesson plan, it’s still within scope for addressing what the students need within the scope of the class goals. It’s a rare trait, and I’m not sure students can appreciate it because they only see a small slice. But I’ve been around Karl in a teaching capacity for 7 years now and have seen a lot of how he operates. He’s got talent.

Back to students….

One take home? Preparedness. Not just things like carrying your gun or loading all your magazines before coming to class and such. But simple things like if it’s going to be sunny, wear sunscreen. If there’s a chance of rain, wear boots and a raincoat. Windy or chilly? a jacket or windbreaker would be wise. Don’t just think about your gun and ammo for class.

Speaking of equipment.

Equipment Matters

Another way the classes were atypical were the guns we saw. Some years ago you’d see wide variety in classes, but the past couple years it seems that everyone’s pretty much settled on Glock and M&P, with some XDm and the occasional other thing (Sig, H&K). But then suddenly this class was loaded with all sorts of different guns. Not a bad thing, just interesting.

Still, I think a lot of people were able to see how much equipment matters.

Gun fit? Very important. We had a few people with small hands and short fingers, and it was challenging to find a gun that fit them. But now that you know about gun fit (here’s a guide if you need a reminder and reference), now it’s time to go back to the store and just go through everything in the case until you find something that fits you. Yes, that might mean less than ideal calibers like .380 Auto or even .22 LR. But those are better than nothing, provided it means you can find a gun you can shoot, shoot well, and are happy to shoot (meaning you’ll practice). Also, don’t neglect potential for custom gunsmithing to help as well. You may need to get a grip reduction to reduce the mass in your hand, or a different trigger that doesn’t change the weight or safety of the trigger but does change the position so your finger can properly operate the trigger.

Accessories matter too. Lots of people with plain old belts, and they got to experience how they just don’t work well. They cannot support the weight, they twist, they sag, they give, the are too thin and narrow and holsters flex and move. Good belts are important.  I’ve used belts from TheBeltMan, and these days I wear a Wilderness Tactical Original Instructor Belt. The Wilderness belt is NOT fashionable at all, but no one ever sees my belts and I like the “infinite adjustability” because of all my weight fluctuations. There are many good makers of gun belts; use them.

Same goes for holsters and magazine pouches. You will NOT find anything good or useful in the stores in town. Hooray for the Internet tho, because there are people like Comp-Tac, Blade Tech, Raven Concealment, Custom Carry Concepts, Dale Fricke, and many others making quality holsters. A key factor is you want a holster whose mouth stays open so you can reholster without problem. Kydex is good for this.

But while equipment is good, once you have it settled, that’s enough. It’s time to move up the ladder to more important things.

Dry Fire

One side-effect of the weather was we got to do a lot more dry fire work in class than we normally do. I know it’s not as exciting, but I hope the students were able to see the value. I mean, they learned how to draw from a holster and draw from concealment all inside and dry — didn’t have to fire anything, ammo was not necessary.

Many of the skills learned cannot be practiced at local ranges. But about the only thing you can’t work on dry is recoil management. That’s one skill out of the many involved in pistol shooting, so focus on what you can. It’s easy, it costs you nothing but a few minutes of time every other day.

Check out Ben Stoeger’s books and other material on dry fire.

I’ve also got a bunch of stuff right here on my website about dry fire.

Extraneous Movement

We saw numerous people making extraneous movement.

This is simply movement that doesn’t need to be made, and probably shouldn’t. The most common thing was on drawing the gun, squatting down.

I totally understand. I did this for a long time myself.

The thing is, it’s unnecessary movement and can work counter to what you’re trying to do. The biggest problem? When you move your body like that, you now affect where your eye-target line is. So not only are you trying to bring the gun up to the eye-target line, you are also making a moving target because the eye-target line is moving! All this movement makes it harder for you to quickly acquire a sight picture.

The only way to overcome it is to be aware of it, and work on it in dry fire.

Video yourself. Or watch yourself in a mirror. It will tell the truth.

So much of what we do is about economy of motion. For example, how instead of serializing the movements of pressing the gun out and pressing the trigger in we do them simultaneously? We don’t have to move faster, but the simultaneous motion allows us to achieve the end result much sooner. Economy of motion.

Good Day

Despite the rain, it was a good day. The temperature remained cool and it was wonderful to have a day on the range where we weren’t soaked in sweat afterwards. Still soaked, but I’ll take the much-needed rain.

We had full classes, and each class was majority female. We had students aging from college to retirees. People of various backgrounds too. Again, I like to point out the wide diversity of students in classes because it shows that you cannot pigeonhole nor stereotype gun owners and people that take responsiblity for themselves.

And while I bragged on my boss-man, I also want to brag on my fellow assistants, Tom and Tracy. It’s great when you can have a well-oiled machine.

Thank you all for coming out and giving us the privilege of teaching you. I hope you had a good day, learned something, and we hope to see you out on the range again soon. 🙂

KR Training 2014-08-30 – DLG-E Quick Hits

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

This past Saturday was an especially good one for me. KR Training was holding two classes: Defensive Long Gun Essentials and Skill Builder. But it was a slightly different day for me.

I was Dad, in addition to assisting.

Oldest was a student in the DLG-E class. You see, all this summer, Oldest has been “chore boy” at the KR Training ranch, mostly doing a lot of the lawn mowing (it’s a lot of acreage to mow). Karl gave him a slot in the DLG-E class as a bonus for all his hard work this summer (thanx, Karl!). Oldest is just starting down the road of formal firearms education. Sure I’ve showed him things and we go shooting when we can, but I firmly believe in the benefits of formal education and schooling. Plus, sometimes kids listen to others better, or at least differently, than their parents.

How’d he do? Fine. There’s certainly things for him to work on, but it seems he did well in the class. He certainly had a lot of fun and got to experience new things. One of which was going through the shoot house.

I did run the shoot house, and we did something different: we had verbal interactions. Instead of just using visual cues for target discernment, students were encouraged to interact with the photorealistic targets: “Stop!” “Show me your hands!” or whatever command they wanted to try. Then I would react in whatever way was appropriate, to help the student learn about the importance of making decisions.

What came out of this? While “bang bang” is fun, it’s just one — and arguable a minor — skill to master compared to others, such as threat management, or as SouthNarc calls it “Managing Unknown Contacts”.

As coincidence has it, Claude Werner was just on Ballistic Radio talking about this very thing. As I write this, I haven’t listened to that episode yet, but given the write-up, it seems quite relevant.

The other thing I recommend folks look at is anything from Craig “SouthNarc” Douglas regarding the topic of “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC). If you don’t get a chance to study with Craig, see if you can find a copy of his “Practical Unarmed Combat” DVD as it covers some basics of MUC. And yes, SouthNarc is coming to KR Training in March 2015 for his ECQC course.

Side note: one student in class (my friend Rog) was running a pump shotgun. He was shooting some Winchester PDX, both their buck and slugs. He had an extremely difficult failure to extract with a slug (probably a combination of a hot slug and dirty chamber — I put the muscles to good use and was able to eventually clear the chamber). The buck claims to have tighter patterns, and it is tighter than cheap buckshot, but it just cannot compete with Federal Premium FLITECONTROL buckshot. I wish Federal was paying me (or giving me free ammo) for all the promotion of their product, but alas they are not — we just have witnessed the performance and nothing can come close. Said it before, say it again: Federal Premium 12 gauge FLITECONTROL 00 buckshot, low recoil (1145 fps, vs 1325 fps)  if you can find it, and 8 (vs. 9) pellet if you can find it.

The weather was great! Things are getting unstable here in Texas, with some rain finally coming down, but the predictions for more changing every hour. The morning looked like it might come down, but it just got better as the day wore on. Couldn’t have asked for a finer day, weather wise.

Plus I got to spend more quality time with my son. He’s not just Oldest, but certainly getting older. Time is precious.

Alas, I didn’t get to stay for the Skill Builder class as Oldest had somewhere to be. But hey… I couldn’t ask for a better day. 🙂

How to fix the M&P auto-forward problem

/ hsoi / 18 Comments

How to fix the Smith & Wesson M&P pistol’s auto-forward problem.

Buy a Glock. 🙂

I’m half joking, but also half serious.

I love my M&P9. I’ve also got a 9c and a Shield. I really do like them. There’s a lot about the ergonomics, overall capabilities, etc. that are just great. I’m generally quite happy with things. Yes, I had some problems with the 9’s accuracy when I first got it, which was fixed by replacing with a KKM barrel (seems many M&P’s had this problem). And interestingly, my 9c shoots better than my 9.

But the one thing that continues to stick in my craw is the auto-forward behavior, where seating the magazine — sometimes — causes the slide to go forward. I could see this as a feature — if it was reliable — but it’s not. It doesn’t always go forward. And I’ve had a few times when it did go forward but yet it didn’t chamber a new round. To me, that’s not a feature — that’s a bug. And IMHO it’s a bad one. The solution tho is simple: always rack the gun anyways. But now you lose a round on the deck, or you don’t. Maybe not always a problem, but it can add up in classes or shooting particular drills that need a particular setup. Some people suggest that you just watch what happens and react: if it forwards, go; if it doesn’t, rack it. But that doesn’t help the failure to chamber problem. It also has another side-effect… which I just experienced.

I went to the gun range with my friend foo.c. See, I’ve been discussing with some people about switching to a Glock 19 and being done with it. So foo.c brought his 19 out for me to use for a bit. What was most telling? The first time I seated the magazine. Of course, the Glock doesn’t have this auto-forward problem, but yet I acted as if I was addressing it: I was reserved in how I seated the magazine, and I was pausing to diagnose what was going to happen — bracing myself for what may or may not happen. When you’re in a situation where the problem is fully removed, then the compensations you make for that situation suddenly become glaringly obvious. I didn’t realize I was doing what I was doing. It bothers me. I should just slam the damn magazine home and get to business, but the nature of the beast: if it forward or not, if it chambers or not… geez, that’s causing some behaviors that are not good.

Could I overcome them? Sure, I could attempt to train around them, but again consider the side-effects it creates — that other guns do not.

So all things come back to… gee… is it time for me to dump my M&P and just get a Glock and be done with it?

All these years of not being a Glock fanboy, of jibing and jabbing my Glock-using friends. And now am I going to drink the Kool-Aid? Probably not that, but I’m certainly at a point where I care less about the gun and care more about myself. Glock: it works, it’s reliable, it’s got the track-record, it’s not sexy, it’s not frilly, but it gets the job done.

I’ve also said it before and I’ll say it again: the form factor of the 19 is tough to beat. Everyone makes “17-sized” and “26-sized”, but no one else makes a 19-size. I don’t know why, but it’s just such a perfect form factor.

So yeah… not switching yet. But I am thinking more and more about it.

In personal defense, physical fitness matters – Follow-up

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Greg Ellifritz posted on Facebook, coincidentally, the same day I originally wrote about how, in personal defense, physical fitness matters. Greg was sharing an article from Aaron Cowan on the very topic of the importance of physical fitness in personal defense. It’s very much in line with my prior writings on the topic.

In Greg’s Facebook share, my boss-man, Karl Rehn commented:

and examples of armed citizens who lost their fights due to poor physical condition are where, exactly? I’m not saying that getting in shape is a bad idea. Better physical condition has a lot of advantages. But as with a lot of things that we are told “will get us killed on the street”, examples of it actually happening are difficult, if not impossible, to find.

Karl is correct. But I take odds with his stance. Is the lack of examples because we’ve collected data and evidence shows fitness doesn’t matter? or because there’s no data at all? I believe it’s the latter. Use of a gun? that gets put on the police report. But “subject is able to run a 10 minute mile and bench press 200 lbs.” or “subject is an out of shape fat-ass” isn’t on the police report checklist. I assert lack of examples is because there isn’t formal data collection on the topic.

I’ll agree with Karl that we cannot presently prove that “being fat and out of shape will get you killed on the street”. But that’s not what I’m saying.  I’m saying that the stronger you are, the more “fit” you are, the better chances and more options you have available (and Karl does agree there). Plus, there’s a confidence and mindset factor that cannot be discounted.

Look at the Force Science articles I previously referenced. Is that not some scientific examination of how physical fitness can matter?

How about that store clerk in Houston who, earlier this month, used his semi-pro MMA skills to stop his store from being robbed? Granted his MMA skills contributed, but his physical fitness mattered a great deal as well because, as far as fights go, that was a long fight. Anyone can throw punches for a few intense seconds, but to keep throwing intense punches in a lengthy fight takes a good degree of fitness.

Or let’s bring it back home and look at how many students in our classes struggle because they cannot grip the gun hard enough to adequately manage recoil? Or get tired after an hour of holding a 5 lbs. gun at arms length. Or cannot handle the level of effort to get through a 3-4 hour class, especially in the Texas summer heat?

To me, it all comes back to a question I keep asking and no one has yet answered:

Name me one place – especially in this context of personal safety – where being weak is an advantage.

Granted, Greg, Aaron, myself, we’re biased because we all lift weights and are personally invested in improving our own physical fitness. We see the advantages. Heck, I see how getting fatter has hurt me in this realm, and am presently dedicated to getting off this fat-wagon. Yeah, maybe there’s no demonstrable proof that being fit and strong “will get you killed”. But to me, it’s more that being fit and strong is rarely going to be a disadvantage, and will do a lot to give you an edge. We always emphasize how you should take and make every advantage possible to maximize your ability to survive and win.

Again, I’ll leave you with something Mark Rippetoe said:

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.