Remember the Lone Star Medics Med-X EDC class I took back in September 2012?
Karl Rehn of KR Training wrote an article on the class, which was printed in the April 2013 issue of Concealed Carry magazine. (link to PDF, article starts on page 80).
Coincidental timing to my prior post about getting medical training. But maybe the extra exposure here might prompt you to get some training.
I saw somewhere else someone making a worthwhile observation.
Bomb goes off killing and injuring many people, we blame the bomber.
Gun goes off killing and injuring many people, we blame guns.
We haven’t called for a ban on pressure cookers, or background checks, or licensing, or registration, or whatever… because we know that’s silly because the pressure cooker isn’t to blame. We haven’t called Martha Stewart evil or demonized the NRA (you know, the National Restaurant Association).
Why is this horrible event about the person that committed the act, and particular other horrible events about the inanimate object that the person used to commit the act?
I’m not trying to politicize the events, I really don’t want to do that. But it’s a fair observation that bears repeating.
Austin Police Chief Acevedo admits his department cannot keep you safe. That the FBI can’t keep you safe. That the government cannot keep you safe.
“It really illustrates the importance of vigilance,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said. “The police department can’t do it alone. The FBI can’t do it alone, government can’t do it alone. Ultimately, we’re all responsible for safety.”
Ultimately WE are responsible for safety.
You are responsible for (your) safety.
And yet, he testifies against campus carry and recently went to Washington DC to testify in favor of gun control proposals that won’t do much to impact crime but will affect your ability to do as he says and be responsible for your own safety.
So Mr. Acevedo, which way is it? I mean, great that you say you support CHL but again, your actions don’t exactly jive.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to see the Austin Chief of Police admit and acknowledge that the only person that can be responsible for your safety is yourself, and that “others” cannot truly keep you safe.
As they say, admitting it is the first step.
You don’t have a choice.
When you were rear-ended at the stoplight? You didn’t have a choice in the matter — you were the unfortunate recipient of the fender-bender.
When the teenager was more concerned with texting than driving and t-boned you? You didn’t have a choice.
When the drunk-driver veered across the double-yellow line and smashed head-on into your car, you didn’t have a choice.
Actually, you did have some degree of choice, and you likely exercised it. The moment you got in the car, you chose to buckle your seatbelt. In fact, you may have exercised some greater choice prior to driving the car. When you bought the car, you may well have researched things like the crash ratings and other safety features of the car, and chose your purchase at least in part based upon the car’s safety features.
We accept that life has risk. When we get into our car, we accept that risk. We may not consciously think about that risk every day, and we may only buckle up out of habit, but it’s a pretty good habit to be in if the statistics are correct and there’s a 1 in 84 chance of you dying from a car accident.
We buckle up not because we expect to be in an accident, but because we understand it can happen. If we could expect it, if we knew it was going to happen, why would we go there in the first place? Why wouldn’t we avoid it to the fullest extent of our capabilities? But since we can’t know when, since we can’t know where, and since we cannot choose when or where it will happen, since it takes us by surprise, since we have no choice, we take measures so that if it does happen, we can improve our chances of coming out on the other side alive.
No one considers you paranoid for taking steps to preserve your life. No one asks you what you’re afraid of. That’s because they understand that such things happen, and your actions are wise towards the preservation of your life.
When I put on my gun in the morning, it’s not because I’m afraid of anything. It’s not because I’m paranoid. It’s because I understand that violent crime happens. Rough numbers are what? about 1 in 250 of being the victim of a violent crime in the US? It’s not too far fetched that in your lifetime you’ll be the victim of a violent crime.
When that crime occurs, you won’t have a choice. You don’t get to choose when it will happen. You don’t get to choose where. Some people decide they’ll carry their gun when they go here but not there. Why? Is “there” somehow invulnerable? and if “here” is bad enough that you know you need a gun, why are you going there in the first place?
Some just want a gun in the car, in the glove compartment. What good does that do when you’re attacked while in the parking lot (which is where many victimizations occur). Again, you didn’t get any say in when or where you’d get attacked.
It’s important to accept that bad things happen that you have no control over. You get no say, you have no choice. But there are aspects where you can have a say, and where you can choose. When you make these choices, you don’t do them out of fear or paranoia, you do them out of acceptance of life’s risks. You do them because you understand the realities of life, that “shit happens”, and the more you can do to deflect the shit, the better your chances are of continuing your good life. It’s why we always buckle up when we get in the car, and it’s why some of us chose to carry a gun… always.
Check out this video of top-shooter Max Michel drawing, shooting 18 shots, 2 reloads, under 5 seconds
Yeah, with an open gun, but let’s see you do it with an open gun. 🙂
After you’ve watched it a few times and picked your jaw up off the floor, there’s a few things worth pointing out.
But the biggest thing that struck me was how even as fast as he’s going, he still shifts his eyes to look at the mag well when he’s reloading. It probably stood out to me due to all the recent classes I’ve been involved in, since reloading was a skill to be used. Too many people reloading without looking (I was guilty of this in the past). Too many people dropping the gun and reloading down at their belly, etc.. So that just stood out to me when I watched the video.
Another thing? It’s all fundamentals. Oh sure he’s got a race gun and race gear, and that does help the overall time. But if he didn’t have the technique, the equipment wouldn’t matter. It was sights, trigger, follow-through, etc.. All the basics.
I can’t shoot anywhere on the level of Max, but I know there’s wisdom in modeling after success.
(Edited to add): sometimes I write and queue up for publication at a later date. This was one of those times. Well, after having written this but before publication, TLG wrote an article that touched on this very thing about looking while reloading. Give it a read.
Watch the video in this news article. I wish I could embed the video, but the link is all I have. (h/t KR Training)
In short, 2 guys trying to rob a store. They failed because the shopkeeper and employee fought back. But in watching the video, one thing really stood out to me.
Fencing.
The shopkeeper was trying to fend off the robbers by using a baseball bat. Not a horrible choice, but it was generally ineffective. It didn’t really deter the robbers until their second attempt, when the guy with the gun jumped over the counter (probably to get a key or some such to unlock the front door) and then the owner could get some better hits in. All this “fencing” did was kinda keep the robber at “arm & bat distance”. The swings didn’t connect, nor was there anything behind the swings (if they did land, they wouldn’t have done anything). The robber kept pressing his attack, trying to grab the bat or at least swat it away, and the “fencing” really wasn’t doing much.
Here’s the thing.
The bat didn’t do much because the gunman was out of (effective) range of the weapon.
Of course, the gunman could have easily overcome this by shooting, but he didn’t. From how he was shooting and behaving, I reckon he can’t shoot worth a damn and figured he had to be up close in order to try to hit anything. So, that works in YOUR favor because yeah, most bad guys with guns can’t shoot (but don’t count on that since some studies and surveys have shown that many criminals actually practice more than cops).
That’s a strong advantage of a gun: the ability to overcome distance.
Many people advocate other weapons: knives, baseball bats, tasers, pepper spray, as some means of effective self defense. But the reality is, do you really want to get up close to the bad guy? I mean, if this guy would only shoot at close distance, since he obviously had no reserved about grabbing people by the throat… do you REALLY want to get up close with this guy? Because up close is the only way for those other tools to be effective.
But a gun? It traverses distance. Distance is your friend in self-defense encounters: creating as much distance as you can works in your favor. I mean, isn’t that what fleeing is about? creating a LOT of distance between you and your attacker? So in a case like this? Yeah, a gun would have been more effective than a baseball bat.
The store owner is quite fortunate, and I’m glad he fared as well as he did. The main reason for that was his choice to not be a victim and to fight back. Next time tho, choose a more effective weapon.
Sheriff Shayne Heap of Elbert County Colorado. Notable is that he chastised all politicians, regardless of political affiliation — it’s more about their intent.
(h/t ENDO)
Yeah… a lot of recent posts based upon the words of law enforcement. But I figure if you’re going to talk about crime and violence, maybe those that deal with it every day might be worth listening to. I mean, going to Joe Biden for leadership on violence issues is like going to Fred Phelps for leadership on gay rights issues.
After the last class I took some time to work on my own shooting.
Per my latest self-assessment, I need to work on my “visual knowledge”. Again, I know that I can shoot at different distances, at different sized targets, with different types of sight pictures (see Brian Enos) and still get acceptable hits. And while I do it, my brain still screams “THIS IS WRONG!”. It gets so ingrained to have that textbook sight picture. I know I don’t need it, I do shoot as I should, but I want to get my brain to stop objecting because the objection, the doubt, it holds me back and creates uncertainty.
So, I just need to shoot a bunch and burn it into my brain as to what it looks like and that this is OK.
So instead of trying to do everything right with sights and trigger, checking the holes on the paper, checking the timer, and worrying more about the location of the holes and if I made time, I need to do it the other way. I have the timer beep to start and record times, but I really don’t care about the times nor the target, at least while shooting. The goal is to shoot “fast”, focus on nothing but the front sight and what it’s doing, and just take in what I see. After I shoot, look at the target. Was anything outside the -0 or A-Zone (depending what target I’m using)? No, then good enough. Now look at the timer, see what the splits and overall time was, realize “OK, that’s what it takes to get that”. So, it’s kinda a backwards approach, but it’s about caring what the front sight is doing, then using target and timer validation to say “OK, that’s what you get”.
Karl suggested I just shoot Bill Drills. I set up at 3 yards because I wanted to start there (I figure, start at the beginning… a very good place to start. Figure 3 yards, then move to 5, 7, 10, 15, 25). Set the timer for a 3 second start delay, then go. I ripped off a bunch of Bill Drills as fast as I could. Start from full press-out so this is nothing but visual focus — eyes can start focused on the front sight, and I’m just ready to go, nothing but working the eyes. I was pulling off 0.15 to 0.20 second splits and having no problems. What did my eyes see? A lot of bouncing. But I saw the sight picture was never textbook perfect. I did see front sight, it was basically where it needed to be, just not like a textbook. I played around a few times and tried slowly down and getting a better sight picture. I found those tended to have consistently 0.20 second splits and felt really slow (weird).
I then stopped doing 6-round Bill Drills and just emptied the magazine. It was about getting more feedback. I’d fire 6 shots and my brain would start to parse things, but then the shots were over. So basically I just kept going to let my eyes and brain have a lot of information flowing in. It was more helpful to shoot longer strings; more input.
Karl then came over and told me to alternate between the near and far target (so about 3 yards and about 8 yards). I did slow down a bit on the far target, but it wasn’t enough shooting to actually register precisely how much sight I was seeing. I just didn’t have enough ammo to run this so I stopped. But all holes were acceptable, so obviously at 8 yards I still don’t need to see as perfectly as I expect, but obviously more perfect than 3 yards. But then, maybe not… maybe I can go faster… that’s still TBD.
What’s next for me? I need to do 1-shot drills from the holster. Same basic drill, just from the holster. Again, it’s about finding how fast I can push myself and how much sight is needed and how much isn’t. Letting my brain know and have permission to do it that way.
After that, I figure repeat the same at 5 yards, tho I might just skip back to 7. And so on from there.
Dry work is going to be much of the same: draw, press out, click. Working on speed and “one shot” drills.
Fine. The gun nuts are nuts. The NRA is fucked. Ted Nugent is fucking nuts. Don’t listen to them.
It seems to be accepted that it’s OK for police to have guns. We seem to be alright with the notion of relegating our protection and safety to them. We consider them the experts. Everyone I speak with and hear from that’s anti-gun seems to agree with the above. So let’s go with that premise. (BTW, I started writing this before the PoliceOne survey came out, and frankly in light of that, I think that survey and this article go together to say maybe we should consider what the police have to say, instead of Joe Biden; you know, people that have a clue instead of those that don’t).
The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help.
That’s from the New York Times. I’ll be using bits of the full article throughout. The article continues:
The shift represents a “sea change,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recently held a meeting in Washington to discuss shootings like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.
The traditional advice to the public has been “don’t get involved, call 911,” Mr. Wexler said, adding, “There’s a recognition in these ‘active shooter’ situations that there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with.”
The change started after Columbine. Traditional response was to have everyone assemble outside, set of a command post, wait for backup, wait for SWAT, then go on. All that waiting? Too much time. It allowed too much time for more people to be killed. It allowed too much time for more damage and death to be done. It was unacceptable to wait. Police procedure changed to the whole “first responder” concept, that whomever gets there first you must engage swiftly and immediately. Yes we’d all like to wait for backup, but who knows when that’s coming. We do know “you” are here now, and if you don’t act immediately then more people will die. And it tends to work out in the modern “active shooter” scenario because in the majority of cases the moment any sort of resistance appears, the shooter offs themselves. However we get them to stop, they stop and that’s the goal. Thus, we must respond and act as quickly as possible.
It’s about time we stopped preaching that the correct response is to be a victim and “just give them what they want” (but then, isn’t that what modern social thought and politics is all about?).
But to Mr. Wexler’s last point… “they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with”. There are ways to remedy that, and I’ll discuss them later on.
The article continues:
Research on mass shootings over the last decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life.
In an analysis of 84 such shooting cases in the United States from 2000 to 2010, for example, researchers at Texas State University found that the average time it took for the police to respond was three minutes.
I’ve discussed this point many times: we cannot yet bend the laws of space and time, so it still takes time for other people to get here. But do you know who is “here” right now? You.
So if a “bad thing” is happening “right here right now”, who do you think is the person able to respond first? YOU! Police arriving are technically the second responders… well, that is if you respond at all. If you curl up in a ball and wait to be murdered, well…. I guess that’s a response. But you can choose to die, or you can choose to not die.
In the absence of a police presence, how victims responded often made the difference between life and death, Dr. Blair said…. “The take-home message is that you’re not helpless and the actions you take matter,” Dr. Blair said. “You can help yourself and certainly buy time for the police to get there.”
Emphasis added. Dr. Blair’s study shows how people’s choices made a difference. Those that chose to be a “fish in a barrel” died. Those that chose to flee or fight, lived. Some even chose sacrifice of their own lives, to buy time for others to flee and live. Your choices matter and affect not only if you live or die or if others live or die. This is what we’ve learned and can see by studying all the mass shootings we’ve had so far.
As further example of how your choices — and preparation — matter:
Kristina Anderson, 26, who was shot three times during the Virginia Tech attack, said that every situation is different but that she thinks it can help for people to develop a plan for how they might act if a mass shooting occurred.
“Everywhere I go now, I think about exits and doorways and potential places to hide and things to barricade and fight back with,” Ms. Anderson said. “Some person has to take action and lead.”
Instead of using her victim-status as a way to lobby for increased victimhood, Ms. Anderson has learned and grown from her experience. She doesn’t live in a fantasy world. She doesn’t live in “condition white”. When she goes somewhere, she looks for exits, she looks for ways to be able to manage the situation, should it happen again. Paranoid? If you want to define it that way, I guess. I think she’s a person that went through a horrible experience, is wiser for the wear, and realizes that even something with a remote chance still has a chance and it would be horrible to be caught in (again), so she’d rather not. She’d rather be prepared for what life may bring. Think how much better off she and others could have been if they knew before what they know now. So perhaps, be wise yourself and learn from her experience instead of repeating the mistakes of others.
So yes, fighting may be the right solution. Some people cannot fathom that, but I think it’s only because of the societal structure we’ve created. I know it, I was raised in it. We learned early on that “you don’t hit other people”. That hitting is wrong and not the way to solve problems. When I first became a parent, I preached the same mantra. But eventually I realized my hypocrisy in teaching this to my children, when I spent time learning martial arts and firearms and so on (because my wife had been sexually assaulted, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again) — I understood that sometimes you have to hit, that sometimes you have to engage in violence because the cost of not engaging in it could be worse. So I no longer teach or say “it’s not/never OK to hit”. Instead, I teach that it’s important to give the appropriate response. If your sibling took your cookie away, no, hitting them is not the appropriate response. If someone is trying to rape you, hitting them is a very appropriate response. What we need to shift in our culture is to accept that violence is OK, appropriate, and even our duty to utilize under the right circumstances. We need to stop understand when it’s right to utilize.
Susan Riseling, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the Virginia Tech episode changed her thinking about how to advise students because it was clear that Mr. Cho had “one goal, and that seemed to be to kill as many people as possible before ending his life.”
The department’s video, screened during training sessions around the state but not available online, tells students to escape or conceal themselves if possible, but if those options are not available, to fight. In the video, students are shown throwing a garbage can at an attacker and charging at him as a group.
“If you’re face to face and you know that this person is all about death, you’ve got to take some action to fight,” Chief Riseling said.
So according to Police Chief Riseling, here’s one of those right circumstances. Remember, the premise here is that the police are our protectors, they are the people our society grants such authority to, and we defer to as the experts on such matters. Thus if the experts and the authority are saying we should react this way… maybe we should listen.
Consider however that it’s again about appropriate response. The appropriate response may well be to flee. None if this negates the “beer & TV maxim“; in fact, it flat out encourages the maxim! You are certainly going to be able to enjoy more beer and TV if the best response for the situation is to flee! Your goal is to live, and if fleeing is the right thing to do, then do it. In fact, sometimes the right response might be to just give them your wallet. Say you have a dummy wallet with $5 and some fake cards on it; you throw that at the mugger and take off. You live. Is that a wrong response?
The thing is, a lot of folks are going to assume my solution is: get a gun. That we all should have guns, and bring back the OK Corral. Well, I do agree that firearms are useful tools and sometimes it’s the right and only tool appropriate for the task. But I am also aware that you cannot play golf with only one club in the bag (thank you, Tom).
Pepper spray can be a useful tool. It’s not necessarily going to stop an attacker, but if it enables you the window you need to escape, then it’s an appropriate and useful tool.
You know what’s even more useful? Awareness. Instead of having your head down in your iPhone and your ears plugged up with music, keep your eyes open, up, and scanning around; keep your ears listening for things. Do you know what most criminals want? an easy target. Do you know what most people say after an attack? “They just came out of nowhere.” No they didn’t, but it only seemed that way because you were unaware, they knew it, they took advantage of it.
Awareness can be even more mundane. When you enter a new building or room, look for the exits. Rather, look for the OTHER exits. Everyone knows about the exit they came in through; consequently, if something bad happens — like a fire — everyone stampedes for the door they came in. There have been more than enough stories of hundreds of people dying in club fires because everyone tried to go out the door they came in (dead bodies piled at the front door), but the back and side entrances were empty. It costs you nothing but a few seconds to find the exits, it doesn’t impede your life, and if something bad happens well… those few seconds spent are sure going to enable your life.
Do you have any medical training? Can you handle basic first aid like burns, cuts, bee stings, heat exhaustion, shock? Can you handle slightly larger issues like severe bleeding, broken bones? CPR? Heimlich Maneuver? (shout out to my buds at Lone Star Medics). If someone is choking, bleeding, or otherwise on their way to dying, again YOU are “right here right now”, YOU are the first responder. It will take time to dial 911, talk to an operator, talk to a dispatcher, convey all the information, get an ambulance dispatched, for them to fight traffic and drive to your location, to park, to come in, to assess the situation and orient themselves, then to act. It all takes time, time that may not be available to the suffering person. But what can you who is right there right now do to help?
So this isn’t about “having a gun”. It’s about having a lot of things. It’s about being prepared. As Mr. Wexler stated at the top:
There’s a recognition… there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with.
No one is asking you to be a hero. No one is asking you to rush in and save the day. What is being asked is to accept that the world can be full of unexpected unpleasant undesirable things. Many of these things are time-critical, where the first response is vital, and since those “right there right now” are the ones that can respond first, wouldn’t the world be a better place if citizens perhaps were trained and equipped to deal with those situations? Be it training in first aid and equipped with that knowledge and a small med kit in their purse, or training in how to run and equipped with a good pair of Nikes so you could flee, or in knowledge of how to operate a handgun and equipped with the right tools and mindset for its use.
There’s this notion of “finding common ground”. There’s this lip-service to “meeting us halfway”. To that, I offer this. We appreciate “first responders” because we know the first people on the scene are the ones that will save lives. That lives are saved because people have the knowledge, skill, and ability to act swiftly in the face of a bad situation. That the sooner the responders can respond, the better the chances are of lives being saved. That when it gets down to it, the person “right here right now” is truly the first person able to respond. Thus, shouldn’t we all work to be able to be a first responder? How you choose to respond, that’s up to you. But at least let’s come to find common ground on the premise that first response is vital to life, and there’s no one that can respond faster than those immediately there. There’s no one that can respond faster than you.
There is something seriously wrong when the only people who are deemed qualified to educate peoople about violence are those who have either never experienced it or aggrandize themselves for having been a victim.
Stuff From Hsoi 