Guns

1 in 1,000,000? Not so much.

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Everyone wants data. So, here’s some data and perspective that derives from that data.

We all go through life dreaming of winning the lottery. We all go through life hoping to never be the victim of a violent crime.

We like to think being the victim of a violent crime is “a one in a million” chance of happening. Now, I don’t think anyone actually believes it is truly 1:1,000,000 chance; rather, it’s being used as an expression to say it’s a very remote possibility it will ever happen to me.

Let’s look at numbers.

The FBI maintains this nifty database called the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. As of this writing, the latest data is from 2010. Let’s see what the UCR reports regarding violent crime (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) across the US in 2010.

I generated the table and saved it as a screenshot because it was the easiest way to get it here into the post. Let’s extract and look at the summary numbers.

In 2010, there were 308 million people living in the US, and there were 1.25 million violent crimes reported.

So what was the crime rate? There were 403.6 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Or about 1 in 247.

Really though, it’s lower. Consider there’s a number of folks in the population that are extremely unlikely to be either the perpetrator or victim of violence, like infants, the infirm, etc.. So really, chances are what? 1 in 200? Maybe even less? Really hard to say. Plus, this is only reported violent crime. There are crimes that go unreported (especially rape), so you can be sure the actual number of violent crimes committed is much higher. So simple math says if we’re calculating with less population and more crime incidents, the ratio gets smaller. We’ll have to base upon 1:247 since that’s the best number we can calculate, but keep in mind the ratio is likely smaller.

Let’s put this in perspective. I found this article from 2007’s NY Times that contained numerous ways to die and the chances of dying from them. The data apparently comes from the National Safety Council and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Heart disease – 1 in 5
  • Cancer – 1 in 7
  • Stroke – 1 in 24
  • Car accident – 1 in 84
  • Accidental Poisoning – 1 in 193
  • Falls – 1 in 218
  • Drowning – 1 in 1,134
  • Air/space accident – 1 in 5,051
  • Sun/Heat exposure – 1 in 13,729
  • Lightning – 1 in 79,746
  • Fireworks – 1 in 340,733
  • and my favorite —- worldwide, 62 people died from shark attacks, but 150 died from falling coconuts.

This infographic from PopSci.com gives some other interesting chances:

  • Chance of getting cancer – 1 in 2 (the above seems to be dying from, vs. this just getting it)
  • Being selected on The Price is Right – 1 in 36 (but you have to be in the studio audience)
  • IRS audit – 1 in 175
  • Getting injured and dying in the next year – 1 in 1820
  • Going blind after laser eye surgery – 1 in 85,714
  • Dying in an airplane accident – 1 in 354,319
  • Being struck by lightning – 1 in 700,00 (again, this is struck, the above is dying from)
  • Winning $1000 in McDonald’s Monopoly game – 1 in 36,950,005
  • Winning Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot – 1 in 49,836,032
  • Winning Mega Millions – 1 in 135,145,920

Given this data, it seems we should primarily care about our general well-being: eat right, exercise, mind your sun exposure, etc.. We should also keep our taxes in order.

When you put the UCR number in there, it’s really not too remote a possibility to be a victim of a violent crime.

Think about this.

More people on a daily and weekly basis put more effort into playing the lottery than they do keeping themselves healthy and well. Whether it’s eating right and exercising, or it’s having a ready-means of defending themselves against violent crime, people put far more effort into something that has almost no chance of happening than effort into something quite likely to happen.

Does that make sense?

We could also make the case for something like abolishing the TSA, where we put 2-tons of effort and billions of dollars into an unlikely event, but the .gov works hard at keeping the citizenry from being able to address things they are far more likely to die from on a daily basis! But that’s another topic for another time.

Certainly make your own value judgment here about what’s important to you and how you wish to utilize this data. I just think it’s important to look at the general chances of various things happening, and take it as some perspective and reality. You’re far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than you are to win the lottery; it’s far from a “one in a million” chance. I mean, winning the lottery technically would make you the statistical anomaly, and how cool would it be to beat the odds, right? Well, even if being the victim of a violent crime was a “one in a million” chance, you still accepted that it might happen, and you have to admit it would really suck to be the one that beat the odds.

…but what do they know

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Seems to be generally accepted that listening to the police is A Good Thing.

I mean, these are the people actually out there, dealing with crime and criminals on a daily basis. They might know a thing or two. Certainly when your job causes you to get shot at on a semi-regular basis, you might know something more than someone that lives in an Ivory Tower surrounded by armed guards and never has to look violence in the eye every day.

So with that, PoliceOne surveyed 15,000 law enforcement professionals about gun policy.

Bottom Line Conclusions
Quite clearly, the majority of officers polled oppose the theories brought forth by gun-control advocates who claim that proposed restrictions on weapon capabilities and production would reduce crime.

In fact, many officers responding to this survey seem to feel that those controls will negatively affect their ability to fight violent criminals.

Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.

The officers patrolling America’s streets have a deeply-vested interest — and perhaps the most relevant interest — in making sure that decisions related to controlling, monitoring, restricting, as well as supporting and/or prohibiting an armed populace are wise and effective. With this survey, their voice has been heard.

You can read the complete survey questions and results here.

KR Training – 2013-04-06 Report

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

This is the time of year where it’s awesome to be outside in Central Texas.

Come August, not so much. 😉

So we’ll enjoy the days on the range while we can. And this past Saturday was an ideal day. Temperatures were cool in the morning and mild in the afternoon, a slight breeze all day, sunny. Just a great day.

And so, we had another round of Basic Pistol 1, and also held AT-4 – Pistol Skills Development. AT-4 doesn’t happen all that often, but it’s a unique and interesting class where you get to do a lot of things you don’t do in any other class or can do at many other ranges. Truly a class worth taking.

So what’s my take-home from the day?

Basic Pistol 1

You know what stood out to me the most about that class?

Every student wasn’t just on time, but was early! We were even able to start class a few minutes early, which meant 1. we had more time for class material, 2. we got to wrap up on time.

Yes, unfortunately this is an exception, not the rule. Typically there’s always 1-2 “car loads” that are late, or show up right at start time and don’t calculate the time needed to park, walk in, gear up (depending upon the class), go into the building, hit the bathroom, wait for the person in line for the bathroom ahead of you, finally use the bathroom, orient yourself, take care of paperwork, etc.. Yes, lots of things need to happen before you can just sit and take in the class.

If class starts at 9:00? Aim to be there 15-30 minutes prior to the start time. You’ll be better off and have a better class experience.

I really appreciated this start to my day. Not only because in my own life I strive to be early to all my appointments, but because I know arrival time affects not just you but everyone else involved. So your arrival time to class affects not just your class experience, but the experience of the other students and the teachers as well. Granted, shit happens, Apple Maps gives you incorrect driving directions, and all that. I grant that happens. But I just have to express how tickled I was to have everyone there early and we started so smoothly.

Apart from that, the class itself was fine. Since Karl was at the helm, I took some additional notes and am working to refine my class presentation. I’ll be lead instructor on this class starting next month, so I want to have my act together. 🙂

AT-4

I didn’t get to participate much in the class. Karl’s working on an article and needs to gather data for it, so I got to be his data collector. I don’t want to expose too much of Karl’s article prior to publication, but I can say what I did was take each student individually to the small range and had them shoot a very simple course of fire using their gun and another gun. I recorded their times and hits. I wasn’t there to really teach them or test them, just have them perform the course of fire and record their performance.

That said, since I did get to see them perform, if I did notice something about their shooting that was a problem, I did mention it to them.

With only a couple exceptions, I saw much of the same problem: trigger yanking. One string of the COF was: from the ready, both hands on gun, 1 shot, body, 1.5 seconds. Very do-able, but certainly some pressure. So in a rush to get it all done, the gun got thrown out there, mash the shit out of the trigger, and get an unacceptable hit.

It goes along with what I saw at the start of class, when we had everyone on the line working dry. We had them just drawing, presenting, and “clicking off” a shot.

It was slow.

But over the past some whiles I’ve been struggling to come up with a good way to present and convey what I think is an important differentiator to make. It’s about going faster without necessarily going faster. Here’s some of my preliminary ramblings on the topic (click and read, it’s too much to rehash).

Let’s put it this way. For the sake of easy math, let’s say it takes you 0.5 seconds to press out and 0.5 seconds to press the trigger. If you perform these simultaneously, you will have taken 1 second to press out and shoot. If instead you do these simultaneously, which you can, it will have taken you 0.5 seconds to press out and shoot. So, you’ve performed essentially the same thing, achieved the same goal, and it took you half as much time. Notice however that you never moved faster (or slower) — the press out and trigger press moved at the same speed they always did. But by performing the tasks simultaneously, you moved more efficiently and the overall time taken was less.

So of course, imagine now if you then moved faster, how much better it could be. I mean, if you took the press out down to 0.25 and the trigger to 0.25, simultaneous becomes 0.25… so you know, it’s really a combination of truly moving faster and also moving simultaneously that brings about decreases in time expenditure.

Of what I saw in the AT-4 students, I think y’all need both.

I think you need to truly move faster when it comes to getting the gun out of the holster. When the buzzer sounds, when you hear the “B” in “BEEP”, you need to start moving. Anticipate the start of the buzzer, don’t wait for the buzzer to finish then move. As well, when you start moving, move really damn fast. Move your hands fast, clear your cover garment, get your hand on your gun, get the gun out of the holster. Move FAST. You have no time no waste, no time to lollygag. If your life is on the line, this matters. If it’s competition, it can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Watch this video of Ben Stoeger (shooting the FAST drill, which was shot during the AT-4 class… so compare your time to his time)

Watch carefully. His hand is on his gun and drawing it before the buzzer finishes. That’s fast. I’m not that fast, and I’m not saying you have to be that fast either, but it demonstrates the concept of getting on the gun, getting it out, and how doing THAT allows you to achieve better shot times.

So for things like drawing? Y’all just need to flat out move faster.

Then during the class dry practice, I would watch the press-out, and it would be a consecutive action: press out then press trigger. Here’s a place where you can gain “speed” by just moving simultaneously. I wrote enough on that above.

Here’s the thing. Everyone tries to beat the buzzer. From the moment the buzzer sounds, time is ticking and you know it. Because you didn’t start out fast, you now are feeling extra pressure because you know there’s not much time left, and so you rush everything and it all falls apart. Don’t rush. Instead, don’t waste time; use your time wisely and efficiently. If you move on the “B” in “BEEP”, if you work to get out of the holster faster, you will find that you have a lot more time to press the gun out and press the trigger. If you press the gun out and press the trigger in at the same time, you’ll get more done in less time. And y’know what’s weird? You’ll notice that you got done WAY before the second beep, you put up a great time, and you’ll find that you didn’t feel rushed at all. It’s a really weird feeling, but a really cool feeling too. It won’t feel like much effort, because now you didn’t rush: you were swift and efficient.

Strive for that.

 

If the ACLU is expressing concern….

/ hsoi

… that’s gotta tell you something.

The ACLU has never been much of a friend to gun rights, so when they come out with some hefty reservations about the .gov’s gun control bill?  that ought to tell you something about how crappy the legislation is.

Again, I know of no gun owner that doesn’t want to solve the real problems. But so far there haven’t been any proposals that actually solve the real problems. We just keep getting crap laws like those being passed in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, and now being proposed on the federal level. Again, if the ACLU thinks the wording of the bill is dangerous, perhaps y’all should listen.

I’ve been a card-carrying member of the ACLU in my past, and I still generally support them because we need groups like them. I wish they weren’t so pick-and-choose about what Constitutional rights they opt to support, but I’m still glad they’re here.

The key to being fast

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

During the Rangemaster Instructor Certification course, Tom Givens showed us a video of him shooting the FAST Drill.

The story is that Tom was hosting Todd Louis Green at Rangemaster. Tom had been out and about, returned to the building, poked his head onto the range to see how things were going, and Todd had Tom shoot the FAST Drill. Tom shot it cold, in his street clothing (heavy coat on, must have been winter), with his carry gear.

He cleaned it in less than 6 seconds.

That’s about as good as you can shoot that test without gaming it (e.g. releasing the slide with the slide latch vs. doing an “over the top” grip rack, which Tom did and will only do).

And of course, Tom makes the point that he’s old and fat and still beats us all, so what’s our excuse! He’s right, you know.

His takeaway? Presentation is the key to being fast.

You may not have to shoot.

You may not have to reload.

You may not have to do a lot of things.

But you will have to present.

Practice it.

 

facepalm

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

In remarks at the Denver Police Academy in Denver, Colo., [President Barack Obama] said that, after campaigning in rural Iowa, Michelle Obama told him, “You know, if I was living out on a farm in Iowa, I’d probably want a gun, too. When somebody just drives up into your driveway and you’re not home, you don’t know who these people are, you don’t know how long it’s going to take for the sheriffs to respond, I can see what you’d want some guns for protection.”

Source (h/t Unc)

I don’t get it.

Are the Obama’s being well… not racist but classist? stereotyping “Iowa Rednecks” or Iowa as a scary place to live? elitist attitude? or is this simple ignorance? Are they saying guns are fine in rural areas, but not in cities? for rednecks but not cityfolk? or… what?  I’m not sure what to make of the implications of their comments. But let’s just set that side and look at the plain words.

When someone drives up to your home…

You don’t know who these people are…

You don’t know how long it’s going to take for someone else to come and save you (because apparently your safety is someone else’s responsibility)…

well, in that case, they can see why people might want guns.

OK.

Well… all the people around you right now. Maybe not those immediately around you there at home or even the office (but perhaps even at the office, because I’m sure you don’t know everyone in your company or your building), but look at all those around you in the greater area. Heck, next time you go out to lunch or dinner, next time you’re out shopping, next time you’re at the gas station… do you know all those people? Do you know who they are?

Was there ever a time when some strange person drove into your driveway? Or came and knocked on your door?

Do you know how long it takes for your local law enforcement to arrive? You probably don’t. I’m not sure where this guy got his stats from, but you can see the average for these large cities runs about 10 minutes. That’s about par with my experience in Austin. Even if you don’t know the precise time, consider simple realities of time and space. There isn’t a cop standing right next to you right now, so that means if you want one, one has to travel to you. First, you have to have a way to communicate that you need one: so you or someone needs to dial 911, wait on hold, talk to an operator, explain what you need, they patch things through, depending how your 911 center is organized they might dispatch from there or the operator might have to relay your information to a dispatcher who then can send out the police… how many minutes did all this take before a cop was even starting to travel your way? Now they have to fight through traffic to get to you. Yeah sure they can turn on their lights, but I’m sure you’ve seen it — police car, fire truck, ambulance… lights and siren flashing, and it still takes them a while to get through an intersection because cars can’t or won’t get out of the way. All the while… the clock is ticking…. and your attacker continues their attack.

So… Mr. & Mrs. Obama….

What makes it about Iowa that can have guns (in your mind), but someone living in not-Iowa couldn’t? Don’t these things happen in The Big City too? Aren’t there strange people, willing to commit horrible acts, in cities too? Aren’t police in cities subject to the same rules of time and space and that it takes time to respond? I mean, not all of us are surrounded by Secret Service agents.

So please, explain to me the thinking behind your statement.

Maya Angelou appreciates her guns

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Maya Angelou appreciates owning (and using) her guns:

“I do like to have guns around,” she told Time’s Belinda Luscombe when asked if she shared her mother’s fondness for firearms. “I don’t like to carry them. But I like — if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.”

Apparently she’s used her guns too:

“Have you ever fired a weapon?” the interviewer asked.

“Of course!” Ms. Angelou affirmed. “I was in my house in North Carolina. It was fall. I heard someone walking on the leaves. And somebody actually turned the knob. So I said, “Stand four feet back because I’m going to shoot now!” Boom! Boom! The police came by and said, ‘Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how that happened.’”

I’m not going to comment on Ms. Angelou’s tactics or legal proceedings, nor the misconceptions about home invasion realities vs. where crime (attacks) typically happen.

No… just let it sink in that Maya Angelou understands that guns have a place in the lives of private citizens. She understands that guns can be tools used for protection (she apparently inherited the love of guns from her mother, who the Time interviewer referred to as ‘her protector’). She obviously considers herself a good, law-abiding, upstanding citizen, and appreciates that she was able to have — and use — a gun for her personal protection.

I don’t know when her home-defense incident occurred, but relative to that date consider…

…it could have prevented I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from ever existing.

…it could have prevented Ms. Angelou from speaking at President Clinton’s inauguration.

…it could have denied the world of a civil rights leader.

…she likely would not have received the Presidental Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011.

…and the world would have lost one of its great writers, speakers, and influencers.

If Maya Angelou understands this, why don’t you?

Acevedo supports CHL?

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Texas CHL process is what responsible gun ownership is about. Proud of our process & the overall excellence of our CHL holders.

@ArtAcevedo

Really? Color me a little surprised.

Well, now Austin’s police chief is on record, and I do thank him for his words. But, it seems contrary to prior words.

He apparently doesn’t think college students are responsible enough.

“When you start talking about 21 year-olds and college students, responsibility is the last thing on their minds,” Acevedo said. “With a lot of pressure and high campus suicide rates, the last thing we want to include in that environment, like a bar, is guns.”

(full story)

So let me get this straight. A 21-year-old Texas resident gets a Texas CHL. To have that CHL apparently demonstrates the person is a responsible gun owner — a person of excellence, according to Chief Acevedo.

But if that 21-year-old is a college student, if they cross over into the magical fairyland bubble of the college campus… suddenly somehow responsibility degrades to becoming the last thing on their mind.

Apparently I’m failing to understand Mr. Acevedo’s logic.

 

Improving my skills

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Of course, during the Rangemaster Instructor Certification Course I paid attention to my own shooting performance.

Shooting around 1000 rounds over 3 days actually isn’t a lot compared to numerous other “weekend training” courses, but again, this was predominantly a class about building instructors and not all the time was out on the range.

We shot the new FBI Qualfication course, the new Rangemaster Instructor qualification course, and a host of other drills and tests. With that, here’s some things I came back with regarding my own shooting skill.

25 Yards

In the past, long distance shooting has been a weak spot. Even 15 yards was tough. Not so over the weekend. I was fine at 15 yards, and 25 wasn’t horrible, but wasn’t good either.

I do know one problem was my gun. It had been shooting left, and upon closer examination we saw the rear sight had moved. TXGunGeek gave it a whack (this was a couple weeks prior to class), but the sight was much looser in the dovetail than expected and the sight really moved! TXGunGeek did his best to recenter it, and it looked good to both our eyes. In initial testing, I swore it was a little off to the right, but couldn’t eliminate that it might be me, then we ran out of time so I said “good enough” and moved on. Upon later examination, turns out that yes it’s just off to the right. It’s hard to see except under the right light conditions, but it is “just off”. And while you can’t notice it in closer shooting, it’s sorely evident in 25 yard shooting.

However, that’s only a small thing. And frankly, given how off I was in later drills, I can tell you the performance is all me and not the sights. 🙂  I could have corrected them but didn’t want to risk making the problem worse during the weekend. Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was all me.

Discussed with Karl, and he gave me some things to try. Alas, it’s mostly live-fire, which is a tough thing to do these days (ammo situation). So I asked if there was any dry fire stuff and he said: “Other than dry firing at smaller targets there’s not much to do to work on type 4/5 shooting dry fire.”  He also suggested I check out Ben Stoeger’s books.

Grip

Karl came up with a fun way to describe the grip you need: Homer choking Bart. 🙂  It works surprisingly well at getting the point across.

I’ve been inconsistent in my grip. I need to choke Bart. More specifically, I need to ensure my pinky is involved in the grip. This is something I learned back in Kuk Sool regarding grip. When you hold a champagne flute you extend your pinky, because it’s a delicate thing. When you grip a hammer, you use all your fingers and hold on. A gun has a lot more energy behind it than a hammer, so you really need to hold on. You will have MUCH more grip if you involve your pinky. Heck, when deadlifting, involve your pinky and your grip will be happier.

I just need to be consistent.

Press-out / Present

I was taking an approach of extreme slowness. I think it was after watching so much FAST Drill stuff, like this video of Mike Brook. You can see how the press-out looks so slow. Well, that’s what I was doing, but I was slower. I received constant feedback about how smooth my present was, but it was slow and I know I wasn’t getting out with enough time to then do the rest of the work I needed to do — which was all the work (drawing is just the first step to get you there). I could get things done, but I’d have to rush it a bit.

Why was I doing that? Well, primarily I was doing it in an effort to “see enough”. I was really working on getting the gun into my eye-target line, ensuring I could see what I needed to get, getting a good sight picture, and not letting one go before I knew I’d get an acceptable hit. I didn’t want to just be throwing the gun out there, pushing it out there, hunting for the sights, etc..

Well, it wasn’t quite getting me there.

At one point Karl told me to just get it out there as fast as you can, but decelerate on the press-out. He actually told me that some time ago and I tried it, but it wasn’t working for me. But I immediately took his advice and did it during the rest of the weekend. I was shooting much better. Buzzer sounds, move as quickly as possible to clear garment, grip, draw, move to position 3, all as quickly as I can. From there, change gears and start to slow down. Actually probably about 75% of the way out it’s still fast, then a sudden and smooth stop. And lo, it worked.

Perhaps it was that I needed to work on things a lot slower for a while, to get smoother. And now, deceleration works better.

There were times I was on the line shooting next to Karl. A few times my peripheral vision caught me pressing out with Karl or even faster than he did, so hey… guess that’s good. 🙂

But it brought to light a more important thing….

Visual Knowledge

I don’t know how else to phrase it.

I know in my head that when shooting at closer distances you don’t need a perfect textbook sight picture (e.g. Brian Enos’ “type 2”) to get acceptable hits. So I know and I go as fast as I need to, and I get acceptable hits. It works well and good. BUT there’s always this thing in the back of my head nagging, wondering, and telling me — that’s wrong! That I am shooting too fast for my sights, too fast for my vision, that I’m not seeing enough, and that I’m getting unacceptable hits. Of course after I’m done shooting, everything’s in the A-Zone, because I KNOW what I’m doing is alright and within parameters, but still… my brain doubts.

I realized why.

I don’t have the “visual knowledge”.

I think the seed for this realization was sown by my friend Tim Meyers, who is a Master-ranked shooter in IDPA. He said something to the effect of how he got there because he was able to learn what he needed to see.

This is also something I know, but I don’t know. That is, I know you gotta know this, but I don’t yet know it.

See, usually when I’m doing live fire work, I’m trying to work on other things and so I’m concerned with those things and not necessarily recording what I see. Well, that’s what I need to do. I need to shoot not to work on a skill or get all hits in the A-Zone. No, I just need to shoot at X speed and let my eyes record and register what I see. So do something like a Bill Drill at 3 yards, 5 yards, 7 yards. Just shoot. Just try to go “as fast as possible” and what I need to pay attention to and record is what my eyes are seeing. That I will see “X”. After I’m done, look at my target. If everything is good, then what I saw was ‘good enough’ for what I needed. Of course, repeat this numerous times to ensure it’s how things actually are and not a fluke run. If I have unacceptable hits, was I going too fast? do I need to see more? can I see less? And just play with it. The goal isn’t to work on grip or stance or trigger control or draw or press-out or hits or anything. The goal is to just shoot a bunch and “gather data” about what the eyes should be seeing. If the eyes see X, what results does X bring, y’know?

So in the near-future, that’s what I do with any live fire. Of course, it sucks to have this come at a time when ammo is expensive and hard to find. 🙂

In fact, it’s kinda what I need to do with my 25 yard shooting, but there it’s type 4, and here it’s type 2.

General

Of course, practice on all things is good. Working on reloads, working on draw, trigger control, you name it. Everything can always use more practice.

Some things to also work on are general defensive “response”, like to side-step, draw, shoot, ready, scan, 360 scan, reload, reholster, etc.. Insert MUC into the mix, etc..

But if there’s any one thing to focus on right now, in my dry work it’ll be draw and present (with deceleration). And in live work, gathering “visual knowledge”.