Category Archives: deadly force

Gun Training from Friends and Relatives

By tacticalprofessor on | 5 Comments

This is a good example of why “My uncle is a veteran and he taught me to shoot” isn’t the hot ticket.

Watching the video in slow motion and looking at the track of the hits, it’s fairly clear that every hit on the roof and back of his car was created by the homeowner. Negative Outcome. There’s a hit on the side glass that probably came from the criminals and started it all.

This story was sent to me by a friend from the original tip on Gun Free Zone https://gunfreezone.net/thats-a-lot-of-dumb-luck-and-spent-brass/. I agree with this commentary.

He is very lucky to have survived and to have not been charged with a crime for filling a neighborhood with bullets.

Suppressive fire has its place in a combat zone but not in your own neighborhood.

Posted in: AR-15, deadly force, decision making, firearms, Negative Outcomes, Serious Mistakes, training

Duel at the Dumbster (Part VI)

By tacticalprofessor on

#throwbackthursday

“Another delay is expected this month in the murder trial of an Abilene father and son accused of killing their neighbor over a dispute about a mattress in 2018, a court official said this week.”

Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article264129071.html#storylink=cpy

“A new date has not been scheduled, but the Millers are expected to go on trial in early 2023, court officials said.”

They’re probably happy that they’re out on bond. It appears that they had to spend from September of 2018 until April 2019 in the can (jail). Whether they had their Man Locks during their jail stay is unknown.

Killing someone, no matter how obnoxious the person is, over a mattress is a Serious Mistake.

“Court documents said police reviewed the video and determined the Millers were likely tired of Howard acting out and threatening them verbally.”

https://www.reporternews.com/story/news/crime/2021/09/12/abilene-alley-shooting-murder-trial-father-son-michael-johnnie-dee-miller/8274926002/

As anyone who has been involved in the court process can tell you, it’s a living Hell, even before you go to trial. It will be around four and a half years for them, assuming they get to trial in early 2023. My colleague John Murphy https://www.fpftraining.com/ commented:

“The process is the punishment.”

This incident was so ridiculous and avoidable that I have written a series of articles about it.

Unjustified Killings

https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2018/09/20/serious-mistakes-unjustified-killings/

Lessons from the Duel at the Dumpster (Part I) https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-i/

Lessons from the Duel at the Dumpster (Part II) https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-ii/

Lessons from the Duel at the Dumpster (Part III)

https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2018/09/28/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-iii/

Duel Site Visit (Part IV)

The Tactical Professor’s SHOT Show Odyssey (Part II) – Site visit to the Duel at the Dumbster

Duel Site Visit (Part V)

The Tactical Professor’s SHOT Show Odyssey (Part III) – Site visit to the Duel at the Dumbster (continued)

Be dedicated to Stanford’s Paradigm.

  • Avoidance
  • Deterrence
  • De-escalation
  • Disengagement
Posted in: deadly force, decision making, Incident Analysis

P&S ModCast 306 – Optimal Is Not Universal

By tacticalprofessor on | 1 Comment

I rarely do podcasts because I don’t like hearing myself talk. But, legendary lawman Chuck Haggard talked me into joining Primary & Secondary ModCast 306 – Optimal Is Not Universal. The replay is up now. https://www.spreaker.com/user/primaryandsecondary/p-s-modcast-306-optimal-is-not-universal

The podcast mostly focused on a subject I’m always interested in, small pistols. It was refreshing to hear some viewpoints that were counter to “it’s only an arm’s length gun.” As I like to say:

It’s only an arm’s length gun if you’re incompetent.

In particular, a couple of discussion points struck home for me. The first was Chris Cypert’s explanation of how placement of gunshot wounds affects performance. Chris was a Special Forces medic and his experience with treating gunshot wounds is extensive. This segment begins at 46 minutes and is very worthwhile to listen to.

The other point I really liked was Darryl Bolke’s explanation of ‘towel carry’ for small pistols. I learn something new every day.

It was an interesting evening of discussion and many thanks to Matt Landfair of P&S for having me on.

Posted in: concealed carry, deadly force, firearms

Philadelphia robbery kidnapping and sort of home invasion

By tacticalprofessor on

They tied his hands with zip ties around his back and threatened to kill him if he made any sudden moves. That’s when our victim realized these individuals were not police officers

Police Chief Inspector Scott Small

https://6abc.com/philadelphia-deadly-home-invasion-police-impersonator-victim-shoots-would-be-invaders-mayfair-fatal-shooting/11762928/

The FBI calls this ‘a clue.’

Legally speaking, this was a kidnapping.

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/consCheck.cfm?txtType=HTM&ttl=18&div=0&chpt=29

According to police, the 25-year-old victim was able to free his hands and grab a gun from his pocket. The victim fired several shots toward the men, striking the police impersonator three times.

The three hits resulted in the kidnapper/POlice impersonator to be neutralized and dead. The Rule of Three appears again. Good thing he had his pistol in his pocket.

Posted in: deadly force, Incident Analysis

CCW Safe Podcast – Encountering Home Intruders

By tacticalprofessor on

CCW Safe interviewed me about my Five Year Analysis of the Armed Citizen for a podcast recently. The emphasis of this interview was incidents in the home. It is now available to read and listen to.

In Self Defense – Episode 97: Claude Werner on Encountering Home Intruders – CCW Safe National … https://ccwsafe.com/blog/in-self-defense–episode-97-claude-werner-on-encountering-home-intruders

Significant points for me in the interview were:

  • Timing of the incidents
  • Misapplication of the Tueller Principle
  • Distinction between self-defense and personal protection
  • Accessibility of weapons

Here are some Home Defense examples that have occurred more recently. As always, there are Positives and Negatives.

It is was an interesting interview and worth listening to.

Posted in: deadly force, decision making, home defense, Incident Analysis, The Armed Citizen

Special Forces – The Big Picture

By tacticalprofessor on

#throwbackthursday

February’s weekly episodes of The Big Picture will feature the role of Special Forces during the Cold War. https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history

Guest Narrator for the first episode is Mr. Henry Fonda, the famed screen actor.

This man wears the uniform of the Special Forces. To use the word special in describing him is no mistake as you’ll see during the next half hour. He’s a mature, dedicated, and skillful professional and his line of work is demanding. It takes in a full scope of unconventional or guerrilla operations.

Special Warfare involves three types of activity; unconventional warfare, psychological warfare, and counterinsurgency operations. This last includes the complete range of military, political, economic, and sociological action. New emphasis is being placed on unconventional warfare and the reason isn’t hard to see.

Today, the threat of war takes three forms; general nuclear war, conventional war, and guerrilla or unconventional war. Fortunately, the world has never yet seen a general nuclear war. Conventional warfare, the regular forces of two or more nations in combat but without using nuclear weapons we know all too well but at the moment no such traditional war is going on. Unconventional warfare is a different story.

In a number of key spots around the world intense guerrilla operations are underway right now. It makes little difference to the people of a country whether they lose their freedom to an invading army of regulars or through the action of guerrilla forces sponsored by an outside power.

My book Shooting Your Black Rifle seems appropriate to this series of films. If you would like to purchase it, click on the image below.

Posted in: deadly force, decision making, firearms, Rifle, skills, training

Fundamentals of Pistol Shooting (Part 8)

By tacticalprofessor on | 2 Comments

#fridayfundamentals

My friend and colleague Shelley Hill of Image Based Decisional Drills https://www.imagebaseddecisionaldrills.com/ has generously contributed the following post about the importance of the Use of Force decisional process and training for it. We’ve been slapped in the face by the news about good and bad Use of Force decision making. It is the most important, consequential, and least practiced aspect of the Fundamentals.

Decisions Come Before Technique

by Shelley Hill

In the process of Personal Protection, from the time that a bad guy chooses you, you will have a limited amount of time to make a decision. THEY choose how and when. YOU have to respond to their actions. YOUR reactions need to be confident, quick, and decisive.

Seeing, recognizing, and believing danger is the first task. Having a plan for avoidance, deselection and escalation is second. If these fail, the fight is on, and it must be won. The first time you have to use the different levels of force, with everything on the line, should not be the first time you practice your skills. A wide variety of options are available for responding to an attempted attack. The choices you have include:

  • Non-lethal (mindset, verbal, walk away, flashlight, etc.),
  • Less than lethal (OC/pepper spray, Combatives, etc.) and
  • Lethal options (firearm, knife, advanced Combatives, etc.).

Your decision or decisions will come first, ideally before the incident ever begins. After deciding what to do, you will apply a technique to implement your decision. We must commit to a course of action and take advantage of making decisions ahead of time. Our instinctive responses to danger are fight, flight, or freeze. If we have thought about and practiced our decisions before the incident takes place, we have a better chance of expanding our instinctual reactions to something more effective or appropriate. When pre-need decisions have already been made, the techniques we have practiced will usually fall into place.

Recognition -primed decision making (RPD) is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations. In this model, the decision maker is assumed to generate a possible course of action, compare it to the constraints imposed by the situation, and select the first course of action that is not rejected. RPD has been useful for diverse groups including medical professionals, fire ground-commanders, chess players, and stock market traders.

It functions well in conditions of time pressure, and in which information is partial and goals defined only in a limited way. It appears, as discussed by Gary A. Klein in Sources of Power, to be a valid model for how human decision-makers make decisions. The result of pre-need decision-making is a decision that may not be perfect but is good enough to help keep you, or a loved one, safe.

With the help of Brian Hill and Claude Werner, I produced a decision learning system called Image Based Decisional Drills (IBDD). It is an evolution of the technique of visualization that has been used successfully for decades to help athletes, competitive shooters, and others make their decisions ahead of time and then carry them out as a programmed response instead of improvising decisions as they go.

It is called it IBDD because you are learning to quickly make ONE good FIRST decision based on visual stimuli. The word “decisional” means “having the power or authority to make decisions”, and drills means practicing. Image Based Decisional Drills is a system that can be used in either dry practice or live fire. It consists of a deck of 21 Image Cards that provide IMAGES that will help you to recognize danger and to make smart decisions ahead of time.

There are benefits to practicing good FIRST decisions through IBDD and then following up with GOOD techniques.

  • Visual cueing and pre-need decision making.
  • Learning distance management through “Reactionary Zones.”
  • Tool cycling and strategy changes that can be practiced repeatedly.
  • Pressure testing decisions under realistic time constraints with feedback for improvement.
  • The ability to practice your skills whether you are ON or OFF the range. The actual mechanics of shooting can be practiced separately while the IBDD drills will help with tool handling and selection.

Whatever system you use to practice your decision making skills, it’s important to keep an important concept in mind. It is easier to adapt a plan you made ahead of time to the situation than it is to improvise a plan on the spot. Make a plan, practice your plan, and then work your plan if the need arises.

Part 1    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-1/

Part 2    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/12/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-2/

Part 3    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-3/

Part 4    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/03/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-4/

Part 5    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-5/

Part 6    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/17/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-6/

Part 7    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-7/

Tactical Professor books (all PDF)

Purchase of any book includes Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make.

Strategies, Tactics, and Options for Personal Protection presentation at Rangemaster Tactical Conference

https://www.payloadz.com/go?id=3381307

Posted in: deadly force, decision making, firearms

100 percent standards

By tacticalprofessor on

‘Tragic’: Teen apparently killed by stray police bullet in LA Burlington dressing room identified

https://abcnews.go.com/US/14-year-girl-dressing-room-killed-stray-bullet/story?id=81919639

This is an example of why I believe in 100 percent standards, not 70, 80, or anything less. My guess is that those officers will not last long on the LAPD and it’s not because they will get fired.

They will leave because the overwhelming majority of cops are decent people who want to do the right thing in life. That poor girl’s killing will haunt those officers forever. Whenever they put on their duty weapons, it will remind them of the consequences of the incident. No decent person wants to be reminded of that every day.

I’ll be following the investigation of this one closely.

Posted in: deadly force, decision making, Incident Analysis, Negative Outcomes, skills, standards

Fundamentals of Pistol Shooting (Part 7)

By tacticalprofessor on

#fridayfundamentals

My friend and colleague Brian Hill of The Complete Combatant http://www.thecompletecombatant.com/ has a unique perspective on one of the decision-making aspects of the Fundamentals. It was touched on in Part 1 of this series https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-1/. He has generously contributed the following post to expand and explain his viewpoint.

The Three Choices

The act of drawing from concealment to the first shot is the essential skill for the armed citizen, whether we are practicing, competing, or protecting ourselves. To improve the probability of success, the action requires a “recognition primed decision,” to use Gary Klein’s phrase. There are only three possible courses of action for the shooter once the decision to shoot has been reached. The need for a mental model which is conducive to quick decisions can be explained as follows.

1-Shoot

If the shooter can perform a clean draw, align the sights or index the pistol relative to the target, then the decision should be primed that the pattern is correct and to execute the process of shooting. This decision will be compressed to a short period of time; therefore, the intuition will recognize the correctness with feedback from both vision and feel. This observation will be based on the feeling of fluidity and efficiency of the movement with a visual confirmation of alignment allowing the pattern to be recognized as “good enough” relative to the size of the target. The shooter is not using a comparative analysis but a recognition of previous successes.

2-Correct and then shoot

Often pressure or lack of skill will alter this process; therefore, the shooter will have to correct either the physical index or visual alignment of the sight and target, or both. The pattern will be recognized as not “good enough,” and a correction will be applied. This correction cost the shooter a quarter of a second to make a correction which is much faster than firing another shot which may be no better than the previous one. Of course, the other possibility is looking to the target for indication of success or failure, and the minimum amount of time for this type of correction is .75 to 1.5 seconds. The more we practice the correct pattern, the faster the recognition primed decision happens. Experts gain an advantage in processing speed and a significant probability of making the right decision sooner, hence the need for practice.

3-Assess new information

Finally, as the shooter commits to the shooting process, something changes, the target disappears, changes, or stops needing to be engaged; therefore, the shooter needs to assess a possible new course of action, such as stopping the process of shooting, going to a ready position and taking the finger off the trigger, or moving away. Using the previous two steps, if there is not a “good enough” solution and no correction can be made, requires the shooter to reevaluate the situation. If there is any doubt then the answer is no, and the shooter needs to adjust or stop.

Shooting happens in highly compressed time periods, but the properly prepared mind will be able to perform efficiently and consistently. The key is repeated exposure to both success and failure, allowing the priming of the process. Practice with this style of immediate feedback will allow progress rapidly and is the key to competency under pressure.

The Complete Combatant http://www.thecompletecombatant.com/

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

–Marcus Aurelius

In addition to the alignment process of the pistol to the target Brian mentions, the smoothness of the trigger press necessary will influence the success of the shot. Shooters are often victims of “urgency bias” with regard to trigger press. This is akin to the common human tendency to feel “I have to do something NOW.” Urgency bias can lead to “El Snatcho” and can negate the alignment of the pistol with the target. So, the necessary smoothness is also a decision that the shooter must make. What will suffice at two yards will probably not lead to good results at 10 yards. It is also a recognition primed decision that is only learned through practice.

The final part of the series will focus on the most important, consequential, and least practiced aspect of the Fundamentals, DON’T SHOOT/SHOOT.

Part I     https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-1/

Part 2    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/12/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-2/

Part 3    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-3/

Part 4    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/03/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-4/

Part 5    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-5/

Part 6    https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/12/17/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-6/

Tactical Professor books (all PDF)

Purchase of any book includes Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make.

Strategies, Tactics, and Options for Personal Protection presentation at Rangemaster Tactical Conference

https://www.payloadz.com/go?id=3381307

Posted in: deadly force, decision making, firearms, marksmanship, skills

Chicago Concealed Carry in the news

By tacticalprofessor on

It pains me that my hometown of Chicargo has now become infamous as perhaps the murder capital of the world. The situation is so outrageous that I give thanks regularly I no longer live there.

Nearly 50 Shot During Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/08/nearly-50-shot-during-weekend-in-mayor-lori-lightfoots-chicago/

The good news about Chicago now is that Private Citizens have the legal capability to carry firearms for personal protection.

Elderly retired firefighter with concealed carry [License] shoots Chicago robber dead: police

https://www.foxnews.com/us/chicago-elderly-man-firefighter-shoots-kills-robber

Chicago conceal carry [License] holder guns down car thief after being shot at in the street

https://www.foxnews.com/us/chicago-licensed-carry-holder-guns-down-car-thief-response-being-shot

It’s always entertaining when the media uses the term “guns down.” Makes it sound like an unlawful killing, even when it’s not.

Those of us who wanted to carry when I lived there either had to do so illegally or go through some rigmarole such as working an unpaid shift as a Cook County bailiff each month.

The story about the elderly firefighter defending himself pleases me so much that I’m offering Concealed Carry Skills and Drills and Indoor Range Practice Sessions along with a face target of the notorious BTK murderer for only $7.99. As always, my most important work, Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make is included at no extra cost.

Link to package:

https://www.payloadz.com/go?id=3384555

The custom face target, included as a PDF in the package.

Tactical Professor books (all PDF)

Purchase of any book includes Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make.

STOPP Presentation at Rangemaster Tactical Conference

https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/09/14/stopp-presentation-now-available/

The direct purchase link for the STOPP Presentation is:

https://www.payloadz.com/go?id=3381307

Posted in: concealed carry, deadly force, firearms, skills