self defense

Carry a gun in National Parks? This is why.

/ hsoi

Authorities confirmed tonight it was a stranger who stabbed and sexually assaulted a woman in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park earlier today.

Full story. (h/t Unc)

There was much uproar a couple of years back when it became permissable to carry concealed weapons in national parks (so long as you still had credentials and obeyed the local laws).

Folks wondered why in the world would you need a gun in a national park?

Let’s ignore how much of our national parkland is used for the drug trade and wandering into a marijuana farmer’s camp is probably one of the most unexpected and undesirable things that you could do.

Let’s ignore the reality of wild animals and that your stumbling upon a baby bear will not elicit a warm hug from the momma bear.

And now, we have a stabbing and sexual-assault.

It wasn’t like the woman was in some remote area of the park either. She was on the Gatlinburg Trail, which is “frequently used by joggers, walkers, and bicyclists.”

“Things like this don’t happen everyday. It is definitely a rare incident,” Melissa Cobern with the Public Affairs Office of the National Park Service said.

That may be true. But just how much comfort should the victim take in being told “but it’s a rare event you were brutally stabbed and sexually assaulted”? Statistics are of little comfort when you’re the anomaly.

 

So much can be taken from this

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Napoleon Rutledge, a 67-year-old Chattanooga man and Vietnam vet, was the victim of an attempted robbery in a grocery store parking lot.

Rutledge refused to be a victim.

In fact, he was mad.

When the gunman held the gun up Rutledge said, “Why you wanna rob me? Why don’t you get a job? What I got, what I get, what I spend in this store, I earned it! I said if you gonna shoot me then shoot me. I got a wife and three kids that you’ll have to take care of.”

The gunman apparently got scared and took off, tho was apprehended along with two others.

Rutledge just doesn’t understand the mentality of people like Malone. “What is wrong with them? I got drafted to go to Vietnam, I didn’t have a choice. They got all the opportunities in the world now to make something of themselves but they don’t want it,” he said.

In hearing this story, I think about so many different things.

First, Rutledge is black, and his robber was black. So those of you wishing to inject race or racism as the root of all conflict are just out of luck here… sorry Jesse Jackson, sorry Al Sharpton, go pander somewhere else. Or better, how about you come and support Mr. Rutledge?

But it also demonstrates that race isn’t the issue. It’s an issue of people who work and earn their keep in this world, that are productive, and just don’t like people who come along and wish to take it from them… that expect a handout, or are unwilling to earn their keep, or are otherwise unproductive in society. And yes, the parallel between this robbery and the robbery going on by our government and so much “liberal compassion”, desire to “redistribute wealth”, and so on well… it’s about the same, both in behavior and in the anger it produces in the victim.

The there’s the coda to the article:

It should be noted this is not how the Chattanooga Police Department recommends you react in a similar situation, but in Napoleon’s case it seemed to work.

If you watch the video, it’s slightly different saying “it’s nice to see the good guy win for once”. Folks, if you want to keep seeing the good guy win, then the only way to do it is to stand up to the bad guy. Handling things the way the Police say will always let the bad guy win. No the good guys won’t always win, but if you always permit yourself to be the victim, you’ll never have a chance to be the victor.

 

“Tactical Bible Stories: Personal Security Tips from the Bible”

/ hsoi

Rob Robideau, the man behind the Personal Armament Podcast just released his latest book, Tactical Bible Stories: Personal Security Tips from the Bible.

From Rob’s press release:

The Bible has fantastic examples of tactics, concepts, and ideas that are still used and taught by modern security professionals. This stereotype-busting book takes the most important aspects of personal security and uses Bible stories as illustrations to make them fun and easy for anyone to understand, remember, and apply.

  • Was David’s sling a wise choice for his fight with Goliath? Why?
  • How did Jesus show us the importance of keeping our distance?
  • Did Gideon’s minuscule army make sense tactically? Why?

Tactical Bible Stories is written very simply for those who aren’t self-defense experts or tactical aficionados and the author hopes that the different perspective will help the information to reach a new group of people and help them to become safer.

Rob was kind enough to get me a copy of the book, but alas I have not yet had time to read it. I am looking forward to it because it appears to be an interesting take on both personal defense and The Bible. If nothing else, it shows that just because you’re a religious person doesn’t mean you have to stand by and be a victim. There’s much to learn.

Class is done — Now what?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

After students leave a KR Training class, of course we implore them to practice what they learned. The day after class, run through your notes, do some dry practice. This will help with immediate retention of class material. Then continue to run through it in the days after class to maximize retention, even if all you can do is read notes, memorize, and do a little dry work at home. Retention is important.

But once you manage that concrete retention, what do you do to apply those learned principles in your practice?

Claude Werner has a good article about how you should practice after training.

A general outline:

  • Gather information
  • Recreate incidents
  • Prepare a practice plan
    • Drills
    • Scenarios
  • Document your results and plan your next session

You must read the article for the full skinny, but I wanted to touch on a couple of points.

When it comes to drills, it is important to measure your skill. To measure, you must have a way to measure it and then a way to keep track of it. There are numerous ways to do this. You could pick up a book like Steve Anderson’s dry fire book. You could attend some of KR Training’s new Skill Builder courses. You could use the DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS (once the update with Scoring is released… soon, I promise!). Or just look at various handgun drills or handgun standards (3 Seconds or Less is good, or maybe your state’s CHL test). Get a timer. Get a log book. Shoot things that challenge you, and include coverage of skills you’re good at and skills you need work on (that’s more important). Shoot the drills and keep track of your progress so you know where you lie. As Claude wrote:

Test yourself on your baseline and measure your results. By setting a baseline and testing it each time, you get an idea of where you are in your state of training. As your skill progresses, you may find that you want to adjust your baseline, but without a baseline, you have no idea of where you are in your training. Many times people tell me that they’re “good with a pistol,” but when I ask them what that means, I get a vague response like “I can hit the target every time.” If you’re serious about personal defense, that’s not much of an answer.

But a bigger thing to take from Claude’s article isn’t just how to shoot drills, it’s how to apply those drills. Keep an eye on the crime that happens around you. Learn what you can, study it. The more you know, the better you can address the problem. Reading things like your local police blotter can be useful.

Class is a time to acquire new skills and information, but it’s up to you to utilize what you got from class after class is over.

“Unarmed” doesn’t mean not dangerous

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Before I begin, I want to make it clear this is NOT commenting on the Martin/Zimmerman situation, nor is this to be taken as some sort of commentary in support of or against one party or the other. I am only using the situation as a vehicle to discuss a topic, because 1. the constant use of “unarmed” in all media reports about it (and the ignorance behind those statements) 2. that this article came up and motivated me to write.

In the Martin/Zimmerman case, one of the common mantras was that Zimmerman was armed and Martin was unarmed. The media desire in this mantra is to imply that this was all unfair, that Zimmerman was somehow worse because Martin didn’t also have a “dueling pistol”, or some other disparity implied by the gun or lack thereof. That somehow someone without a third-party weapon is somehow defenseless and can’t inflict harm, or enough harm to warrant someone using a gun and using deadly force in reply.

I find this ludicrous, tho not totally without some merit.

First, there seems to be some belief that an unarmed person — that is, a person armed with only their bare hands — cannot inflict damage or cannot kill someone.

You’ve never watched boxing or UFC have you? Or for that matter, just fire up YouTube, because there’s zillions of fight videos on there. Some might be schoolyard beatings captured on someone’s phone camera. Others are closed-circuit footage. There’s lots out there. And once you opt to remove your blinders and see life for what it really is, you’ll see that yes, bare hands can kill.

It happens more than twice a day, on average. Fists and feet were responsible for 745 murders in 2010, or 5.7 percent of all murders that year, according to FBI statistics. (The data on this have been remarkably stable in recent years. In the five preceding years, the percentage of murders perpetrated by fists or feet fluctuated between 5.6 and 6.1.) It doesn’t even take an experienced brawler to punch someone to death: An 11-year-old California girl appears to have killed a classmate with her bare hands in a February fistfight.

So to say that someone being unarmed is not dangerous or potentially at some sort of advantage, that having their fists reigning blows, having their feet stomping heads into pavement… that this couldn’t possibly be a problem? I don’t buy it.

We also need to look at situations. If a woman is being raped and her attacker has only his bare hands, are you going to seriously say that her using a gun to defend herself would be wrong? If an elderly person being kicked and beaten by an attacker used a gun to defend themselves, that’s somehow wrong?

But this is why I said there could be some merit, because it could be a matter of force disparity. A 100# woman being attacked by a 300# man, a 89-year-old person being attacked by a teenager, it’s arguable based upon those physical factors that there’s enough disparity. In a case like Zimmerman and Martin, it seems to be implied that Zimmerman was a big healthy male and Martin was a little wimpy teenager… at least, so were the initial reports, with accompanying photos. But as more details came out, Martin wasn’t exactly a little guy, and just because Zimmerman was in his 30’s doesn’t mean he’s automatically at some advantage. In this particular case the devil’s in the details and has to be worked out in court.

What I wish to stress here is the fallacy that “unarmed” somehow equates to defenseless or without ability to inflict serious harm. That merely because your attacker is “unarmed” that they couldn’t cause you grave harm and put you in fear of your life. Yes, actual instances of death appear to be rare, but possible. But do you really want to be the statistical anomaly? This does not change matters when it comes to self-defense. It’s still a question of being able to go home at night, of being able to maintain your quality of life (e.g. not becoming crippled for the rest of your life), of being put in fear of your life. The attacker being armed or unarmed isn’t as important a question as the danger being presented.

A different self-defense checklist

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Mike Seeklander shares some, possibly unorthodox, thoughts on a self-defense checklist.

Most people think about self-defense in terms of hard skills, like shooting a gun, deploying pepper spray, shouting “NO!” and issuing palm strikes to the face. Sure that’s all part of it, but there’s so much more fundamental stuff.

I like how Mike’s #1 is to learn first aid. The need for first aid is arguably more important and something you’re more likely to use on a regular basis. I mean sure… we carry our guns because someday it may save our lives, but first aid skills save many more lives on a more common basis. Until I took Lone Star Medic’s Dynamic First Aid class a few months back, my first aid knowledge was still based upon what I had learned in Boy Scouts. I had been searching for a first aid course for some time, I knew my skills were lacking, so it was great when LSM’s course came up. I do consider seeking additional medical training a priority, an LSM is coming back to KR Training in September 2012. I’ll be there.

I also appreciate Mike’s #2 about physical fitness. Sometimes the best defense (see what I did there?) is to escape. If you can’t run 25 yards without collapsing from lack of breath, if you struggle to get up off the floor or just from a bended knee, you are at a major disadvantage. If you need somewhere to start, I’ll give you two suggestions. 1. Pick one thing in your diet to clean up, like stop drinking soda or cut back on it (e.g. at most 1 per day, or maybe 1 per week). No major changes, just 1 thing.  2. When you drive somewhere, park your car away from the store. Not in some “tactically unsound” way (e.g. that dark, unpopulated corner of the lot), but don’t keep circling or striving to get a space that’s as close to the building doors as possible. Parking a little further away means you have to walk a little more, and that’s a good thing.  These are small things, but these little things will add up.

Go read the rest of Mike’s article. It’s sound advice.

A lady’s perspective

/ hsoi

So, how am I supposed to fight off a male attacker, who is probably both bigger and stronger than I am? What if there are more than one of them? The same way thousands of other women accomplish this—by being armed and skillful in my handgun’s use. By being armed and knowing what to do I can take back control over my own life. I do not carry a pistol so I can impose my will on someone else. I carry a pistol so someone else cannot impose their will on me!

– Lynn Givens (emphasis added)

Lynn writes about firearms training from a ladies’ perspective in the May 2012 issue of the Rangemanster newsletter.

Gun control (anti-gun) advocates view guns as bad things that are only capable of bringing about evil things. They are tools used by bad people to bring harm and havoc to good people. They cannot see that good people can use them in good ways.

Let’s go back to Lynn for a moment.

I came to this realization some years ago when I was being stalked by a mentally disturbed man who made credible death threats against me, my family, and others. The police and private investigators were looking into these death threats, but were unable to do anything. I never thought I would have to pick up a gun until someone tried to take my and my son’s choices out of our hands. It then became very real when I found my picture on the front page of the newspaper in an article about crime.

So you tell me… what should Lynn have done? Do you truly think a restraining order would keep her and her son alive? Yelling “NO!” and issuing a palm strike to the nose wasn’t going to cut it. Pepper spray or a taser isn’t going to be all that effective against someone bent on killing her. So you tell me, what should she have done? What would you have her do, since you, the gun-banner, think she shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun to enable her to preserve her and her son’s lives against this man? Would you, the gun-banner, be willing to guard Lynn all day and all day, every day, every week, every month, be willing to put your life on the line to protect her? If so, awesome. If not, then why not? And then again, what should she do?

A firearm is a force equalizer. I know Lynn, and while I know what a determined fighter she is, she’s still vulnerable. That Smith & Wesson M&P on her hip allows her to even the odds. It allows those who are weaker, older, of lesser stature — and believe me, for every badass guy you can think of, there’s someone bigger and badder out there — to stand on more solid ground against those who wish to do evil unto them. Why do anti-gun folks want the elderly, the frail, women, children, anyone to be at the mercy of those who wish to do them harm?

 

Response to: The Perils of Open Carry

/ hsoi / 13 Comments

On her Facebook page, Kathy Jackson shared this link about “The Perils of Open Carry“.

Given my recent open carry oddness experience, a few things about the article struck me enough that I wished to comment.

Before I start out tho, I should say that I’m not really an open carry advocate. Do I find it odd that it’s illegal in Texas? Yes I do. Do I wish open carry was free and legal here in Texas? Yes I do. If I could legally open carry, would I? Probably not, but I appreciate having the freedom of choice because sometimes it may be the right choice.

1) Open carry will cause hassles with other people and eventually the police.

Yes I can see this being a reality today, but the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve come to believe it’s something that has to be done to allow for change.

Let’s say the wording was changed to “Openly allowing black people to walk around will cause hassles with other people and eventually the police.”  Sure that was the case years ago, but today? It’s not perfect, but it’s better. Should we keep black people, or gays, or Jews, or Catholics, or women under wraps because it will cause hassles and eventually involve the police?

How about instead we let people freely live their lives, and work to spread education and knowledge?

2) Criminals are not deterred by openly carried guns

Yes they are. There’s the Waffle House case back in 2010. There’s also numerous stories in the Chris Bird book “The Concealed Handgun Manual”.

But I will grant, it does change the game for a criminal. The author presents a story that showcases that the crime in fact seemed to be motivated by open carry! He wanted to steal the open-carrier’s gun!  So it didn’t just not deter him, but it also was the prime motivation for the crime itself!

3) Getting your gun taken is a likely possibility!

It’s possible, but when we talk to private citizens about how retention holsters aren’t necessary, it’s backed by many years of looking for a case where this happens. We might see more now, and certainly we will change our stance if we see this is in fact an issue.

But that all said, the author is right. You don’t have magic abilities nor are you Billy Badass enough to keep all criminals from ever getting within 10 feet of you. Shit happens.

4) Most people who carry guns have crappy holsters and no weapon retention skills

This is the one that struck me most, given what I saw the other day. Two people with guns on their hips in crappy holsters. I have no idea if they have any retention skills, but the crappy holster alone was enough. And it may not be just the holster, but their whole equipment system, such as a really cheap belt.

I don’t totally agree with Mr. Ellifritz’s reasoning, but I’m not in total disagreement with him either. I know this can be a controversial and passionate subject for many, even within the “proud gun rights advocate” community. My personal preference is to minimize abridgement of good people, of maximizing freedom and choice. But always remember, just because it’s legal doesn’t always mean it’s the right nor best thing to do. Legality doesn’t equate to moral or right or just or good or sound. I would just prefer to have it as a legal option, because the more choices a good person can have, the more options responsible people can work with, the better decisions they can make.

Garage burglaries on the rise

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Austin Police Department reports that garage burglaries are on the rise:

“This is the season. It’s summer. Many people are outside working in their yards. They leave the garage door open, and then thieves are driving around looking for opportunity,” said Austin Police Department Detective Jason Jewett.

One of the victims in Jester Estates is Senior Judge Jon Wisser. For years he’s sentenced crooks. This is the first time he’s been on the other side of the crime.

“I wasn’t gone but two minutes,” Judge Wisser said. “My garage door was open. The guy came in and stole my $4,000 carbon fiber bike.”

Crime of opportunity. Open doors, unlocked windows… most criminals want an easy target, an easy score, which they can then pawn.

We all do it… mow the lawn, leave the garage open. Might not be a big deal when you’re mowing/working on that side of the house, but then when you go into the backyard, it’s all unattended. And you might live in a “good neighborhood”, but check out these crime databases and you’ll see that crime strikes everywhere around you. So maybe when out working, close the garage door and lock it. Keep the opener in your pocket, the keys in your pocket, whatever. Maybe that’s a pain, but think about how much of of a pain it’ll be for all your things to get stolen and to deal with the loss, the police report, the insurance, and so on.

One thing I thought was cool in this story?

Families posted fliers in the neighborhood after many people started noticing items missing. A mail carrier saw the sign and notified police.

“That tip came in, and in about three days we had our guy,” says Detective Jewett.

Active and interested neighbors. They communicated with each other, they worked together. Involved and nosy neighbors can be good things.

When opportunity knocks…

/ hsoi

… some people will answer:

Austin police say the man they arrested for an early morning burglary and sexual assault Saturday has a long criminal history and is in the country illegally.

[…]

According to police, Santos-Hernandez opened and crawled through an unlocked window before sexually assaulting a sleeping woman inside.

When I first read about this story (prior to the arrest), I wondered how a women could have woken up in her house at 4 AM with a man on top of her. I figured it had to be something like an unlocked or open window, because the weather has been very nice lately and so people will be more likely to keep their windows open at night to let the cool breeze in.

And here it’s confirmed… unlocked window.

Crime of opportunity… and that cool breeze turned rather chilling for this woman. 😦