A father mistook his 14-year-old son for an intruder Tuesday and shot him in the neck, killing him, according to Cincinnati police.
People think I’m exaggerating when I say this sort of thing happens on a very regular basis. Well, I’m not. An awful lot of people regularly babble about ‘the worst possible case.’ This incident represents ‘the worst possible case,’ not some ridiculous fantasy about “providing covering fire one handed with your shotgun in your home while dragging wounded friendlies to safety.” Ugh!
Learn to Challenge before shooting and practice doing it regularly, to wit: every time you go to the range. Two words, “Who’s there?”, probably would have prevented this tragedy. People have no problem running their mouths at every possible opportunity except when it’s most important.
Have a flashlight to identify a suspect and learn to use it in conjunction with your pistol. Just turning on the flashlight in the general direction of the suspect will probably get a response from the suspect and the overwhelming probability is that the response WON’T be ‘the light draws fire.’
Does anyone think that this father will ever have a peaceful day or decent night’s sleep for the rest of his life? The saddest thing to me is that the solution to this problem isn’t rocket science, it’s actually easy if you think about it ahead of time for just one minute.
There are 11 possible categories of Serious Mistakes. Purchase my CD so you know them all and how they happen and don’t make them yourself. It’s the price of a box of ammo, for God’s sake. I’m sick of writing about this sort of thing.
tacticalprofessor 
[…] Source: Another Serious Mistake […]
Always good stuff here in the past but I am starting to see less content and a strong trend toward more marketing of goods. I guess it is human nature to turn good training “nuggets” into cash.
Always amazing to me when people expect quality content and services to be provided for free. “Marketing of goods! The horror!” I very much doubt that the people holding such a perspective THEMSELVES work for free. Expecting value in return for value provided isn’t merely “human nature” it’s how a well-functioning economic system determines what product and services are available in the market.
TANSTAAFL.
–Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
If you knew Claude you would know how totally inaccurate your comment is. Believe me, he could make a lot of money putting out more “tacticool” products but he focuses on important aspects that others do not. If someone else already had this type of information out there then Claude would be pointing you to that product. Spend a few dollars, buy the product and you will be glad you did.
Sometimes teaching people to do the right thing costs money. On the other hand, free information sometimes falls on deaf ears. Either way, people need to start listening. I think that is the message.
That’s certainly one perspective.
Don’t worry Brown, I will happily add an additional copy to my order after reading that.
Claude, thank you for putting so much valuable information out for all to see on a practically volunteer/ by donation basis.
Ordered
Reblogged this on RealDefense and commented:
Must read.
Reblogged this on Growing Up Guns and commented:
Another avoidable tragedy.
Reblogged this on Women and Guns and commented:
Tragic…if you own a gun, get training…
[…] An early conversation I had was about our Mindset as Americans. The focal point of our conversation was an article in The Atlantic Monthly. The article described the difference between US soccer competition and soccer in the rest of the world. A key dissimilarity is that in the US, our children typically spend much more time playing and less time practicing individual skills. We’re eager to confront and control/dominate early as part of our culture in a way that is less common in the rest of the world. The common attitude of “I’ll shoot someone who’s in my house” is rooted in this piece of our American Mindset. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn’t. […]