“I saw him, and I heard the gun shots. My first thought was, ‘God, this is not real, not on our campus, not here,’” sophomore Tanisha Bush said.
Yes. It can happen there, on your campus. It can happen anywhere. Evil knows no bounds.
self defense
Awareness by any other acronym is still Awareness
In motorcycle rider safety classes they have SIPDE:
Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute
or sometimes it get simplified to SPA:
Search, Predict, Act
The book, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere says:
Perception, Evaluation-Decision, Reaction
Detect, Defuse, Defend
There’s the good old OODA loop:
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act
Whatever acronym you choose, whatever paradigm it’s used in, they all start with the same thing:
Awareness
You need to be aware of your surroundings. Your eyes need to be seeing. Your ears need to be hearing. There may things for your nose to smell, your tongue to taste, or your body to touch and feel. You cannot have your nose in a book, in an iPhone or iPad, headphones blaring music into your ears. These things keep you from being aware of your surroundings, and then… what are you missing? and is missing that a good thing?
It’s not just self-defense either. It’s useful while driving. It’s useful because maybe that cute girl or guy across the room is trying to get your attention. Because that job opportunity may be fleeting. Because that business prospect may be a diamond in the rough.
It all starts with Awareness.
Good health is self-defense
When people talk about self-defense, typically they think of defending themselves from an attack. They might think about martial arts, or guns or awareness and avoidence strategies. If someone then cares further about self-defense, they’ll start to study these areas in preparation for an event that hopefully will never happen, but if it does you want to be prepared for it may mean your life.
However, did you ever consider more mundane things that threaten your life and daily well-being?
How about your general good health? Can you touch your toes? Can you walk a flight of stairs and not get winded? How much flab are you carrying around on your frame? Heart happy? Does the doctor give you a clean bill at your annual physical?
How about falls? More people die each year from falls than gunfire. Do you know how to fall correctly? This was a great thing I learned in my martial arts study is how to fall correctly so as to minimize injury.
These things are also self-defense. Defending yourself against pain and injury, against medical bills, and the effects of aging.
Class AAR: AT-2A (My) Home Defense Tactics
Last night KR Training hosted its AT-2A Home Defense Tactics class. While I attended this class a few months ago, this time I hosted the class.
After experiencing the class myself, I wanted to host the class for a couple of reasons. First, it’d be nice to see what Karl thinks of my house from a defense/tactical perspective. Second, I wanted Wife to be involved. Wife cares about defense, she’s very keen on awareness. What I wanted her to get what some “formal schooling” and also some other perspectives on how our house stacked up. Plus hey, it’d be nice to let her finally see what it is I do all of those Saturday’s away from her and the kiddos. 🙂
This class ran like most instances of the class, just different due to it being a different house. There are numerous things I have already thought about, addressed, and tended to, but certainly some new and useful things came out of the event. There are a few things I’m going to work on to improve in the house, and some ideas I’m going to reject. For instance, making ground-level windows undesirable to go through. A suggestion from Karl is to put painful plants at such windows, like grow a holly bush or a rose-bush (all those thorns hurt) to discourage entry. While the suggestion in and of itself is a good one, it will not specifically work in my case due to botanical reasons (e.g. too much shade, those things just won’t grow). However, the alternative is putting things on the inside by the windows to discourage entry, such as large heavy objects in front of the window, or having lots of things that if a window was breached would cause lots of noise (e.g. lots of cheap fragile knickknacks on the window sill that get knocked off). That’s covered.
One very useful thing was addressing some of the “downstairs” issues. I hadn’t thought about one particular area being a “hunker down” spot, but Karl’s examination of things raised a lot of good points. Wife and I are looking at how we can tweak that spot to make it even better. It’s certainly going to be part of our plan.
The main thing to note is that no house will be perfect, all situations are going to have problems (e.g. stairs are just a problem that’s tough to overcome). But the best thing you can do is plan ahead. Examine the home from the exterior and the interior, looking at it with a mindset of “OK, if I was a criminal, what would I do?”. Look for those vulnerabilities. What can I do to make my house less attractive? Do you have children? How could they play into the situation? If say I have to run from my bedroom to the children’s room, what is that path like and what do I have to concern myself with? Can I do things to help improve that (e.g. motion detecting light switches, use of light and darkness)? How are things in the daytime? How are things at night? Every house is different so there’s no one blanket solution, but so long as you take the time to figure it out (and having an expert like Karl Rehn is certainly useful), that’s the key. Plan ahead so when the flag flies you can just go.
This morning, Wife came up to me and suggested some things from her own thinking. It wasn’t stuff that came directly out of the Karl (i.e. direct suggestion from Karl), but rather just how some scenarios played out, some examination of things, some other suggestions… put them all together, and Wife had some good thoughts on other improvements we could do. I must admit, it just tickled me that the class went over so well with her. I know she wasn’t looking forward to the class (she was thinking it’d be akin to some other classes I did, like maybe force-on-force classes), so I was happy to see how engaged she was in the class and how much she took from it.
That Wife got a lot out of it pleased me. Plus it put her a little closer to my wavelength on a few things, or at least she could see where I was coming from. We both got something out of it, individually and as a couple. I think the goals I set for hosting the event were met.
And of course… my “honey-do” list just got longer. 😉
Austin murder rate up 38%
The city of Austin’s (my city) murder rate has climbed 38%
The City of Austin’s murder rate continues to be higher this summer than the previous year. While year-to-date crime statistics show a decrease in amount of overall violent crime, Austin’s murder rate is up by over 38-percent. The Austin police department’s Shelia Hargis says a large amount of those homicide are closely related to another crime. “One thing that seems to increasing this year versus in the past is the city’s robbery-related homicides” says Hargis. The latest Austin crime report also shows a 14-percent decrease in overall robberies, which points out even the small number of robberies here in Austin are now escalating to murder.
One can ponder as to why the rate climbed. Could it be because Austin claims itself a “sanctuary city“? Could it be due to the economy and folks being more desperate? Could it be due to illegal drugs (and “repealing prohibition” could stop it)? Could it be because folks are going crazy from the heat? I’m sure Austin Police have an idea, but so far they’re not sharing.
But whatever the reason, a key take-home point is that homicides in conjunction with robberies are starkly rising. That means the question is no longer “your money or your life”, it’s now “your money AND your life”.
Stay safe.
South Austin cyclist robbed and almost executed
A cyclist here in Austin was robbed at gunpoint and yes, almost executed:
Robbery detectives are hoping to catch with two men still on the run after they rob an Austin cyclist at gunpoint. Police Det. Phillip Hogue says during his regular commute home a South Austin cyclist was approached by another man wanting to borrow his cell phone. Investigators indicate it was then that James Ray Perkins, Paul Rios and another unidentified man forced France Dulles to give up his bank account pin number and ATM card. “He didn’t have a lot of money in his checking accountant and the armed men were not satisfied at the amount of cash they were able withdrawal from the ATM” said Hogue. According to arrest reports, the three men decided Dulles should be executed and as Perkins aimed to shoot Dulles in the head the 19-year old cyclist took off on foot. After firing several rounds, Perkins managed to hit Dulles once in his buttocks. All three men have been charged with an Aggravated Robbery and Kidnapping, Attempted Capitol Murder and Organized Criminal Activity. Austin police have managed to arrest Perkins, while Rios and the other unidentified man remains on the run.
Things to note:
- Wanted to use his cell phone
- Robberies and other such criminal/violent acts don’t happen at long-distances. The criminal needs to approach you, they need to talk to you, they need to “interview” you to see if you’ll make a good victim. You need to have skills to keep unknowns at distance.
- The cyclist “just gave ’em what they wanted”, and look what it got him.
- You cannot think that giving them what they want will make them go away or that they won’t take any more than that. The cyclist almost lost his life.
- Executed. Just let that sink in a bit. You cannot apply your standards and values to that criminal. They were willing to kill a man just because he didn’t have enough money. That’s pretty fucked up.
- It was good that the cyclist fled. Our goal isn’t revenge, it isn’t to kill people, it’s to stay alive. He fled, he’s alive.
It’s getting to be an ugly, dangerous world out there. Take steps to keep yourself safe.
Fighting in your house
Gabe Suarez has an article about fighting in your house.
Fighting in houses…or fighting in your house can take on many forms depending on your mission. Having clarity of mission is essential so you know how to comport yourself in each event.
While the article doesn’t discuss tactics or strategy, it does bring up contexts and situations. The article gives you a lot of things to think about, and it’s worth thinking about these things and role-playing through the situations now. If you do it now, you have a gameplan should it happen. If you wait until the shit hits the fan, you’ll be scrambling for a solution.
But while it’s good to drill into specific situations, I think what’s good to do in trying to solve those situations is to eventually seek the guiding principle. That is, the situations are specific and what happens when you find yourself in a situation you didn’t specifically prepare for? What to do? This is where you need to have a higher-layer of guiding principles. If you don’t know what your guiding principle is, going through the specific situations can help you find it — just see what and why you make the choices you do, look for patterns in your choices, then step back and get a higher-level view. Then test that principle out to see if it still holds in other specific situations. Continue to refine from there.
For myself, one guiding principle is protection of myself and my family. I was just thinking about this the other night. We were out at dinner. As I sat down I took a moment to orient myself to the room, including looking for exits. My family was with me… if something went down, my #1 task is to keep them safe (generally, get them out of the area). I have thought that if I could do something to stop the event yes I’d want to — I would find it hard to live with myself thinking “I could have done something” but didn’t. However, keeping my family safe is more important, and so that guides me and my decisions. I cannot go engage the problem if it means my family could be endangered. If I am alone, then things are different. But by the same token, is it more important for me to stop someone being stupid, or to ensure that I get myself home alive and safe so I can continue to work and provide for my family?
These are the things you have to figure out for yourself so you can know how you can and should react, should something happen.
Reality check – just because you legally can doesn’t necessarily mean you should
The following comes from Karl Rehn of KR Training.
I’ve talked with dozens of people who have firsthand experience in lethal force incidents: armed citizens, cops and military personnel, including several who were in multiple incidents.
One of the best comments on the subject came from one of them, who said that it was “like being in a car wreck. Fast, loud, scary. When it’s over you are glad to survive it, but it’s not something you are in a hurry to experience again.”
Several of the people I’ve spoken with were involved in publicly debated incidents, and they suffered the additional stress and loss associated with getting fired and/or becoming publicly known/vilified as a result of the incident.
No one that is armed wants to imagine any outcome other than victory and exoneration, and sometimes that lack of concern over the consequences of a bad outcome leads to bad decisions….
The decision should be made based on what the worst case outcome is, not the best case. For example, “if I do nothing, I will die. If I do something, I still might die but my odds of dying are less than if I do nothing.”
Not “if I do nothing, I lose a TV, but if I act, I’ll have to use up all my vacation time from work going to meetings with lawyers and the grand jury, and spend my vacation money paying a lawyer, and have people on local talk radio Monday-morning quarterback my actions, and have everyone I know (neighbors, co-workers, family) forever treat me differently, and spend the rest of my life getting awkward questions about it.” Every single person I’ve talked to that’s been in a shooting has had one or more of those post-shooting issues, even if they had no (or will admit to having no) PTSD after the incident. You can’t wave your hand and say those things don’t matter and all that matters is what the Penal Code says.
Positional Dominance
A dominant position is when one has a significant time and/or manuever advantage.
It was a discussion about a possible situation. Guy went into a fast food place and was at the counter ordering. Dude comes in and acts very odd and suspicious. Guy is able to use some verbal and positioning tactics to get Dude to leave. Win. SouthNarc complements Guy on how well he handled the situation and offered a suggestion on how to improve handling. In this case, instead of staying at the counter and immediately adjacent to Dude, move away (e.g. to the drink or condiment bar).
What’s important to understand is the core concept that drives this and being able to apply it across a range of tactical problems. Divergence, orientation resets, kicking the guys ass back to the second O in the OODA loop…..whatever you want to call it, is all the same.
Here’s the core concept:
What you’re trying to do constantly to create a dominant position is narrow your field of responsibility while broadening the field of the adversary. This closes the time deficit for you and opens it for the bad guy.
One creates a 90 or 180 degree angle for the bad guy and inversly [sic] shrinks their own field of responsibility. In the example laid out by [Guy] the reason the bad guy is un-nerved is because of the amount of time it takes to constantly scan between his victim and the other customer.
Ponder that for a bit.
On Shotguns
Like many (most? all?) people, I started out in the “shotgun for home defense” camp. For whatever reason, it’s the mantra firearm to utilize in that situation.
However, if you think beyond that towards the actual realm of application, plus if you do any actual work in that realm of application (e.g. a class like Defensive Long Gun), you start to see it’s not the best tool for the situation. For example, consider the longest shot you may have to take in a home defense situation. What if it’s something like 25 yards? Take a look at The Box O’ Truth #20 and notice the size of the spread at 20 yards: from 9″ to 17″. That’s a huge variance. Even at best, can you be sure to get all 8-9 pellets on target and not in an innocent person? Maybe, but maybe is of little comfort when the flag is flying. It’s due to that and many other factors that I’ve settled on an AR for home-defense. It’s the entirety of the platform that makes it a better fit for the context.
But for some reason I still had a desire for a shotgun.
Now, I still keep shotguns for home defense. Why? Easier manual of arms. It’s very simple for Wife or my kids to operate a shotgun, especially if something goes wrong (just keep pumping and shooting, and if all else fails it’s a club). Heck, it’s difficult for my young kids to operate that charging handle on an AR, but they can easily work the pump action on a youth 20 gauge shotgun. Some gun is better than no gun.
A few months ago it was maybe 10:00 PM. We heard a helicopter overhead, which isn’t usual because of medical helicopters. What became unusual was that the helicopter didn’t pass over but stayed in the area. We found a police scanner feed and listened in. Apparently the police were chasing someone and he hunkered down in a patch of woods close to my house. I went Code Orange. The reality was, he certainly could have run and wound up near or in my house. Slim chance? Yes. But better to be prepared and on guard.
What surprised me about my reaction to the situation? My gut response was to grab the 12 gauge, not my AR.
I’m not sure why.
On the one hand, I’ve been very handgun oriented lately and haven’t been practicing with my AR as much as I should. If I have been doing anything with a rifle, it’s been more along hunting or target shooting, not fighting. Monkey brain mode kicked in and brain reverted to “simple point and click interface” of the shotgun, not “OK, gotta figure out the holdover, blah blah”. While the logical part of my brain still buys into the AR for home defense, that night the shotgun just sung to me. In the end I didn’t have to pick anything up, eventually the police scanner provided no more information on the matter and the sounds of the helicopter faded. No idea what happened, doesn’t really matter.
Recently on the InSights Training Center mailing list, someone was asking about the SAIGA 12 for home defense. Now, these guys are big on the AR, but lead instructor Greg Hamilton gave the shotgun its due:
For general civil situations, the 7-8 shot, tube feed, pump shotgun is already more gun than is required to solve the situation. I’ve shot 1000s if not 10,000s of rounds though every type of shotgun over 25 years. Just shoot pumps now. I have a nice 11-87 that I don’t use and I would like a saiga with a really short barrel but it would just be for fun, as I don’t know what else I would do with it.
The shotgun is still a great weapon especially if you are poor. For $250 you’ve got something that you can take on multiple opponents with, with confidence in the reliability of the gun and in the cartridge. A screw on rail to the forend, weaver ring, and $50 flashlight and your looking good. Throw some extra ammo on the gun someway cheap and for <$400 you are ready to rock. It won’t win any picture competitions on AR15.com but it will smoke a couple scumbags with extreme prejudice.
and that’s what it’s all about.
Granted, this doesn’t take away some inherent limitations of the platform (e.g. those 25 yard shots). But with a little investment of time, money, and ammo, you can do you best to figure it out. For instance, back in that BOT #20 you saw that different ammo provided different patterns. You must take the time to seek which ammo will work best in your gun. Furthermore, if your shotgun has different chokes, try them out and see what difference they make. I’ve tended to lean towards whatever gives you the tightest possible pattern, minimize spread. Furthermore, with some additional way to carry ammo on the shotgun (e.g. side-saddle), throw a few slugs in there.
And practice. Pick up some dummy rounds and practice loading, reloading, getting that one slug in there, and so on. Take classes if you can.
So on that front, I opted to run the Team Tactics course a couple of weeks ago with a shotgun. I just wanted to see.
On the one hand, it was just plain fun to do. 🙂 There’s something viscerally satisfying about BOOM rack BOOM rack BOOM. 🙂 Of course, reloads were slow, but you manage the best you can. Even with a shorter 18.5″ barrel, it’s still cumbersome to move and navigate with the shotgun: an AR with a 16″ barrel and collapsible stock is overall much shorter and easier to move around with. Shooting weak-side (e.g. around the left-side of a barrier) was difficult with the pump, but do-able… just a matter of training those motor skills.
In the end, I’ve softened my “anti-shotgun for defensive purposes” stance. In the end, it all comes down to you and your particular situation — there is no blanket answer. I do look forward to doing more work with the shotgun, classes if I can. Curious to study it more in this context.
Stuff From Hsoi 