Interview with a future criminal
I hadn’t planned on having a real life example of Know the Rules in relation to Decision Making but sometimes life gives us opportunities. In this case, it didn’t concern legal rules but social rules.
Out on my walk this morning, I had an interesting encounter with a future criminal, perhaps several potential criminals. It brought to mind something that I mentioned in my guest lecture at The Complete Combatant last weekend. Know the Rules, including the rules of the criminal interview.
The setting was a typical suburban area with sidewalks on both sides of a two lane arterial street. Three middle school aged boys were walking toward me on the sidewalk. There’s nothing unusual about that, although the time was a little late to be going to school. They were twenty to thirty yards away from me. When I first saw them, they had just passed the traffic signal on the corner I was walking toward.
As soon as I saw them, I identified them as Green shoes, Red shoes, and Brown shoes. This is a habit I got from Jimmy Cirillo, as he mentions in his book Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights. I don’t even know if it has any general value but it’s fun to me. A variation of the technique worked very well for me during one stage of an IDPA Championship that had a multiple moving target array.
As they walked along the sidewalk, they stepped aside in the bank driveway and had a pow-wow. Right away, I knew something was up. Secretive pre-contact activity is a clue. Then they got back on the sidewalk and started walking again.
I made an immediate decision. Although I had both a pistol and pepper spray on me, this was unlikely to shape up as a situation where those would be the appropriate tools. “If he pulls a weapon, I’m going to grab it from him or grab his hand and twist his arm to give him a radial fracture.” In any criminal encounter that I can’t avoid, my primary objective has evolved into “I’m going to fuck you up. Win, lose, or draw, you’re going to have to go to the Emergency Room.” Then those difficult and uncomfortable questions by the police begin.
As we closed, Mr. Green shoes, the largest, made the approach. Mr. Red shoes and Mr. Brown shoes looked younger and were noticeably smaller. Green shoes was clearly the Alpha in the group.
His initial approach was so tentative I couldn’t hear what he said. That set the tone for the interview. Clearly, he wasn’t practiced at his craft, so I could have a little fun with the situation.
“Excuse me?” was my response. This was in a decisive firm voice. Something criminals are looking for is indecision. If you don’t display it, they frequently don’t know what to do. As I said it, I started to rub the palms of my hands together. This isn’t an unusual gesture but it pulls the hands up into a low fence position.
“Do you have any money? I’m going to …..”
Before he could even finish, I cut him off. “No, I don’t” and put my left hand up to accentuate the point. The hand up would have allowed me to block or divert a weapon if he had produced one. Then, I immediately started back on my way and left them in the dust. Once again, decisiveness is key. I.e., ‘this interview is over.’ I kept an eye on the shadows to make sure they didn’t follow, which they didn’t. One of the reasons I like this walk route is that the sun is at my back and throws the shadows where I can see them.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Green shoes will graduate to full-fledged robbery, either strong arm or armed, fairly soon. Probably in less than a year, he’ll go for it. He was just getting accustomed to his skills, much in the way boys play catch before they start actually playing baseball. Since I didn’t interact with Red shoes or Brown shoes, I have no opinion about their future plans.
Good points
When I walk, I don’t walk around in la-la land listening to music, talking on my cell phone, or being task fixated watching my dog take a dump. My head is up and my eyes are on the horizon. Consequently, I saw them at a distance and had time to adjust my Awareness and mental DefCon appropriately. This is also a good approach to driving, rather than being visually fixated on the rear bumper of the car in front of you.
Having my hands in a low fence position would have allowed me to respond much more quickly than if they were at my sides. I prefer a low fence in general because I live in a mostly normal world. The high fence is actually a superior defensive posture but it’s weird looking and off-putting if you usually deal with benign people.
Being decisive is important to controlling the situation. If you can maintain control of the situation, you can often walk away without conflict.
Items for improvement
I let Red shoes and Brown shoes get behind me while I interacted with Green shoes. They were both small and I have no doubt I could have easily nailed either of them. But if they had weapons, the situation could have become much different. I need to practice getting into a position where I can see them all.
Taking a short ‘breather’ a few steps after breaking contact would have allowed me to maintain surveillance on them and be sure they had continued on. Or turning off route and going into the bank parking lot. If their moving off had been a feint, watching them or eluding them would have precluded them from bum rushing me from behind.
For whatever reason, the eggs I made when I returned home tasted even better than usual.
Decisions about what you’re capable of
While researching personal protection incidents in 2015 involving armed females, I came across a story that I found disturbing on several levels. The incident actually took place in October of 2014 but was featured in the Armed Citizen® column of the NRA Official Journals in January 2015.
The incident began when a woman discovered a man raping her pet pit bull one morning. The NRA synopsis is as follows:
Alice Woodruff heard noises outside her home around 10:30 a.m. When she went to investigate, she found a nude man attacking her dog in the backyard. Woodruff grabbed her pistol as a family member dialed 911. She then ran to her car to retrieve the gun’s magazine. She kept her distance from the man and warned him not to come toward her as he ranted about being with ISIS and having Ebola. He then claimed to be the anti-Christ. Woodruff held the man at gunpoint until police arrived shortly thereafter. After a nearly two-hour chase, the assailant was arrested and is expected to be charged after his release from psychiatric placement in a local hospital. (/Republican American/, Waterbury, CT, 10/24/14)
Let’s leave aside the issue of raping a dog, which is disturbing enough. A friend in the animal rescue community has informed me this is far more common than any sane person in the civilized world could believe. Several other more commonplace decisional issues are apparent.
First, in an interview with a local TV station, the woman stated:
I ran in, got my [.380 pistol] out of the bedroom, and realized as usual the ammunition is in my car locked in my glove box.
This is a serious problem of mindset and decision-making. Perhaps the woman is attempting to ensure there is no unauthorized access to a loaded weapon in her home. However, her protocol carries this rule to unreasonable extremes. Fortunately, the situation allowed her to “[keep] a picnic table between herself and the man as she opened the car to grab the magazine” Then:
I showed him the clip went in but I always kept the gun at my side while I was talking to him.
This is yet another decisional issue. She should have loaded the gun the moment she had accessed the magazine. Waiting to demonstrate to the man that she was loading the gun actually demonstrated to him that 1) she wasn’t ready to respond in the first place, and 2) she was not mentally prepared to shoot him.
The standoff with the man continued for several minutes as the man made numerous irrational statements. Although she warned him not to move toward her during the standoff, he eventually did. According to the story, the man was standing about 20 feet away from her. While the intent of the Tueller Principle has become heavily misconstrued in the training community, its applicability to a situation like this is clear. As a result of his moving:
Woodruff fired into the ground nearby when he moved toward her, though she said she wasn’t going to kill him.
The warning shot didn’t deter him. He tilted his head back, stretched his arms to his sides as if he was on a cross, and told her to shoot him, she recounted.
As more people own firearms for protection, it’s likely we will encounter an extrapolation of the ‘suicide by cop’ into ‘suicide by citizen.’ While I have said in the past ‘never say never’ about warning shots, we have to also consider that they may not work and a Plan B will be necessary.
But the single most inappropriate decision by this lady was to have a gun at all. A statement she made clearly indicates a firearm is not an appropriate tool for her to own.
And now I have to be the judge and jury and god for him? That’s not fair.
There’s nothing wrong with deciding you are not able to take another person’s life. We all have unique moral principles that guide us. This is why I never proselytize about gun ownership. Having a firearm for protection purposes is a deeply personal decision of the same magnitude as deciding to lose one’s virginity, get married, or have a child. However, someone who cannot bear the thought of taking another’s life in self-defense should not have a firearm as a protection tool. Pepper spray, a Taser, or some other alternative would be indicated.
Eventually, the authorities decided that the woman will not face any charges.
“She feared for her safety,” Deputy Police Chief Christopher Corbett said. “She fired a warning shot into the dirt.”
That warning shot was a reasonable thing to do given the circumstances, Corbett said.
“Every situation is unique,” the deputy chief said. “If you fear for your life, or if you fear for someone else’s life, you can use reasonable force to defend yourself.”
A consideration is that a warning shot may be no more legally justifiable than actually shooting someone. Gunowners do sometimes face criminal charges for firing warning shots.
This incident show a number of nuances to the decision process that we as gunowners should consider ahead of time. Although things worked out in this particular case, it had the potential to turn into a Negative Outcome in a number of ways.
Mindset and decision-making (2016 Tactical Conference)
Mindset and decision-making are intimately related. One of the phrases we use for having made a decision is ‘I’ve made up my mind.’ While not a formal topic, the concept of mindset and decision-making was a clear subcurrent of thought at the 2016 Tactical Conference. While this wasn’t a formal topic, per se, it was a theme that ran through several presentations and side conversations. As my friend Mark Luell put it, “This [my life and my family] is important to me and I won’t let you take it from me.”
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.
The article’s comment about developing individual decision-making skills resonated with me. I continue to be less sanguine that Force on Force training is the panacea it’s thought to be in the training industry. If we don’t teach people the process of decision-making and then just throw them in the deep end of the pool, how helpful is that in teaching them?
“The thing that makes elite players is decision making,” Lemov told me. “They need to integrate not just how to do something but whether, when, and why.” He sees parallels to the difficulty many American students have solving problems independently. “If you give [American] kids a math problem and tell them how to solve it,” he said, “they can usually do it. But if you give them a problem and it’s not clear how to solve it, they struggle.”
John Hearne’s presentation FBI Research: The Deadly Mix got me wondering if being a nice guy is just another form of trying to control the situation. Granted, it’s a different approach to control but maybe it’s just a matter of tone and style rather than substance.
Two of Tom Givens’ presentations had an undercurrent of decision-making. Deciding whether or not our personal protection equipment is ‘needed’ during the course of our daily lives is a serious choice. As Tom puts it, the only failures in his student incident database are the result of ‘forfeits,’ i.e., the victim was unarmed and therefore unable to resolve their problem. Being unarmed was a decision that didn’t work out well in those cases.
John Murphy provided me a video I had previously seen that relates heavily to decision-making. The officer’s action in the video demonstrates the clarity of his decision and how unhesitatingly he applied it.
Those of us who have actively been at this for decades have a very clear idea of our options, their consequences, and how to appropriately apply those options. Choosing options and being clear in your own mind about when and where to apply them is a critical part of the personal protection process.
How to think ahead about your decisions
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When an Albuquerque couple caught a man burglarizing their garage, they asked him to stop.
When that didn’t work, they pulled out a rifle and a handgun, and held him at gunpoint until police officers arrived.
As reported in the Albuquerque Journal
The above story is referenced in this month’s issue of The Armed Citizen®, published as part of the Official Journals of the National Rifle Association. It is also available in the online version of The American Rifleman magazine. A similar story is published at least weekly and available online at the American Rifleman.
The Armed Citizen® is very worthwhile reading because it describes actual incidents that armed Americans face when dealing with criminal predation. Reading the columns shows the difference between real life and the ludicrous ‘ninjas coming from the ceiling’ figbars of their imaginations that people frequently cook up.
For space and copyright reasons, The Armed Citizen® only publishes a summary of each incident, which the NRA does not copyright. The NRA summary of the above incident goes as follows:
Two New Mexico burglary victims used a rifle and a handgun to keep a thief under wraps until the police arrived. One of the Albuquerque residents came home and noticed a stranger loading items—including a generator the homeowner recognized as his—into a vehicle. He approached the alleged thief and asked him to stop, but the bad guy scoffed at him. The man went into his house, armed himself and his wife, and the two confronted the suspect, holding him at gunpoint until the police arrived. (Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque, N.M., 11/21/15)
It’s useful to backtrack and find the original article. In many cases, there’s a lot more detail in the original story. Sometimes there is a wealth of information that we can learn from and think about our own situations ahead of time.
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
The Albuquerque Journal article even includes video from the bodycam worn by the arresting officer.
What can we learn from the article and bodycam footage in this case? What questions are worthwhile to ask ourselves while we have the opportunity of cool reflection? Are there decisions we can make ahead of time to keep us out of trouble? Here are a few points to consider. There are probably more.
The couple has the alleged burglar at gunpoint. So far, so good. Let’s consider, however, that they were no longer on their own property at that point. Depending on the state you may be in, once you leave your own property, even by a few steps, the rules (Know the Rules) can change quite a bit. Let’s pose the question “What if the perp takes off running when the officer arrives?” Shooting him in the back at that point probably wouldn’t be a good decision, even in Texas. Remember that YOU have a good idea who the good guys and bad guys are, but the Officer has to sort that out. Don’t assume the Officer has all the pertinent information (Understand the Situation) or that he or she even believes the information given so far. It’s not like a false report has never been phoned in.
It appears on the bodycam footage that the Officer goes between the perp and the couple to handcuff the dude. The woman lowers her pistol as the Officer moves in; good for her. Unless you’re familiar with Contact and Cover procedures, how you’re going to react when the PoPo arrives is best thought of ahead of time. Given that it’s a physical skill, (Have Adequate Skills) maybe even a little practice is in order. Given the circumstances, the woman probably didn’t even have a holster on. What are you going to do with your heater at that point?
The perp was released on his own recognizance the same day and then arrested again a few hours later for armed robbery. What if instead of going after someone else, he came back to the house he burglarized? It’s not hard to tell he’s a nitwit. Keep in mind that criminals don’t think the way we do. What state of alertness and readiness are you going to be in, post-event? If an entryway to your home has been damaged, are you going to stay there? What if your weapons have been taken into evidence? Do you have backups, not necessarily at your home?
Peeing on the fence isn’t much of a strategy. We have a lot of information available that we can use to put together at least a rough plan for circumstances that are foreseeable. And it’s not like we have to make it into a heavy duty wargaming exercise. There are typically five or six incidents referenced in The Armed Citizen® each month. There’s one or two a week listed online. Five minutes thought per incident still works out to less than an hour per month.
The Armed Citizen® online at American Rifleman.
The Armed Citizen® database of all incidents ever reported is available on the NRA-ILA website.
Decisions determine outcomes
The decisions we make almost inevitably determine the outcomes that result. Good Decisions lead to Positive Outcomes and Bad Decisions lead to Negative Outcomes. We all know that decision making is difficult in a broad array of situations. Having a framework for decision making can be helpful.
Skill development and to a lesser extent, ‘situational awareness’ are the most often taught or talked about aspect of personal protection. In the broad scheme of things, though, those are only a couple of aspects to the process of not being criminally victimized. Ultimately, skills and awareness are just inputs to our decision making process. The decisions we make are what will determine the outcome of any encounter.
It’s trendy now to view Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop as if it is a model that can help us ‘think faster,’ i.e., make tactical decisions more quickly than our opponent. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. The O-O-D-A Loop is a representation that describes in a strategic sense how one party thinks during the course of the decision process. That is a far cry from being a usable decision model or even framework. Colonel Boyd never mentioned O-O-D-A as a tactical decision model, nor do I believe he intended it as such.
Those who wish to look to Colonel Boyd for a decision model would be best advised to read his Aerial Attack Study. Over 50 years after its publication it is still considered the manual for fighter combat. The Aerial Attack Study describes a decision process almost completely the opposite of the way most common taters describe the O-O-D-A Loop. By performing an in-depth analysis of the situations fighter aircraft could encounter, Colonel Boyd described exact maneuvers and counters our fighters could use to defeat the enemy. That’s a better framework for defining tactical decision making.
This post is the first in a series describing a conceptual framework for decision making. Several other people contributed thoughts to it and I thank them for their input.
Know the Rules and Have Adequate Skills were proposed to me as inputs to good decision making by my friend LTC (Ret.), JAGC John Taylor. In addition to them, I include Understand the Situation.
Next, we have to consider four levels of priority as developed by Steven Harris, Esq. and published on the Modern Service Weapons blog.
- Can
- May
- Should
- Must
If we overlay these two sets of inputs, a graphic would look like this.
Finally, to make Good Decisions, we need to consider two levels of focus:
- Tactical – doing things right, our techniques and procedures
- Strategic – doing the right things, what is in our and our family’s best long term interests
What rules do we need to know?
- Legal
- Use of force
- Use of deadly force
- Employer policy and cultural peer pressure are corollaries to the legal
- Other rules
- Firearms and other weapons’ safety rules
- Our personal core values
- Proxemics
- Rules of ‘the interview’ (between predators and prey)
- Difference of criminals’ psychological rules from our own
- Changes from the (your) past
Knowing the legal rules bears some discussion. There are several excellent books about the legalities of using deadly force, such as:
The Law of Self Defense
Deadly Force Understanding Your Right to Self Defense
What Every Gun Owner Needs to Know About Self-Defense Law
However, there isn’t much material about the use of non-lethal and less-lethal force. This leads to some confusion in people’s minds about tools like pepper spray. One common tater opined that pepper spray couldn’t be used legally unless the victim had already been physically battered and the battery was continuing. While this might POSSIBLY be true in some States where citizens, or perhaps subjects, exist in an almost perpetual state of arrest, it’s certainly not true in most of the US, where the citizenry remains free.
As an example of relative importance, most law enforcement officers will never apply deadly force in their entire careers. On the other hand, they will use some kind of physical force on a regular basis. As private citizens, there are only a few situations that justify the use of deadly force on our part. Having the ability to employ some form of non-deadly force is an option that needs much more serious consideration than it is generally given.
Note also that of the ‘Other rules,’ only the Safety rules for firearms are commonly taught. Although the balance of the Other rules aren’t thought of, they will definitely be inputs to our decision making.
Since it’s probably the first thing we should consider, we’ll go into Know the Rules in more depth in the next installment. Far too many people don’t consider the Rules very much, especially the Other rules.
There’s a Safariland holster blowout sale on my webstore. Glock 17 and S&W M&P holsters at prices you can’t afford to pass up.
Ballistic Radio interview about Boyd
John Johnston and I had the opportunity to discuss the nature of Colonel John Boyd’s theories on Ballistic Radio recently.
The OODA Loop isn’t as simple as many people would like it to be. In some cases, it hardly applies at all.
The podcast of our conversation has now been posted.
Thinking ahead
If we get carjacked, as long as you and I can both get out of the car, they can have it; I have insurance. But if either of us can’t get out of the car because we get hung up in the seat belts or something, turn your face away from me and close your eyes because I am going to start shooting. I don’t want his loathsome blood-borne pathogens to get in your eyes.
–my personal policy/Standard Operating Procedure, as related to a former girlfriend who lived near Murder Kroger in Atlanta
A California man shot the carjacker of his van Friday as the carjacker drove away. The carjacker died shortly thereafter and the shooter was arrested for Murder. Once the threat of Death or Serious Bodily Injury has passed, the time for gunfire has ended.
“Nice people lock their doors.” –my mother
‘Don’t sit around in unsecure parking lots working on your czechbook, writing reports, texting, or talking on the phone.’ –paraphrased from Bill Rogers and Craig Douglas
“Firearms shall not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is immediately threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle. The moving vehicle itself shall not presumptively constitute a threat that justifies an officer’s use of deadly force.” —LAPD Manual Volume 1 Section 556.10 POLICY ON THE USE OF FORCE
Policies, SOPs, or whatever you wish to call them are simply committing to memory, or writing down, actions that you have thought about ahead of time. For some reason, the word ‘policy’ evokes a great deal of resistance on the part of people I talk to about it. Not thinking about things ahead of time is probably the most Serious Mistake Gunowners Make and I will have to add that to the next edition.
In a crisis, the conscious mind has an extremely short life span, probably less than a second. Once the conscious mind expires, either training/practice or the amygdala will take over. Trying to make up a plan on the spot is an extraordinarily difficult task.
Perhaps the inability or lack of desire to think ahead is the reason for the popularity of the OODA Loop. Relying on the OODA Loop implies that you can out-think the situation in the moment. This is just being lazy and an excuse for not thinking ahead. No plan survives the test of combat, as the saying goes, but it is ALWAYS easier to modify a pre-existing plan than to make one up on the spot.
Fighter pilots have been at the forefront of developing policy and procedure for ‘in the moment’ encounters. Their creations over the past century have shown increasing sophistication as they have evolved.
- Dicta Boelcke, a list of principles, was formulated during WWI by Hauptmann Oswald Boelcke, a German fighter pilot and squadron commander. It is interesting to note that he was killed when he violated one of his own dicta, never close in on a single combatant when others are also pursuing it.
- Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Thach recognized the superiority of Japanese fighter aircraft in the early days of WWII. To counter them, he developed, using matchsticks on a tabletop, the Thach Weave as a defensive maneuver. Then he tested the maneuver under conditions simulating the disadvantages US Navy fighters would face.
- No Guts, No Glory, a USAF training document, was written by Major General (then Major) Frederick C. Blesse shortly after the Korea Conflict. It was an explanation of his experiences flying F-86 Sabres against MIG fighters and how to defeat them.
- Colonel John Boyd wrote the Aerial Attack Study, which is the most comprehensive manual on fighter combat ever written, in 1959. In it, he methodically worked out all the possible attacks and counters a fighter could make in relation to both bombers and other fighters. His study was heavily based on a thorough understanding of the flying and weapons capabilities of both US and Soviet aircraft.
In every one of these documents, specific principles, procedures, and pitfalls are worked out in advance. Speed of decision in tactical situations is achieved by picking from a list of possible options to best solve an unfolding incident rather than trying to ‘think faster,’ which is physiologically impossible. The distinction between ‘thinking faster’ and picking from a menu of possible decisions escapes many common taters about the OODA process. Boyd’s description of the process is much more involved than generally assumed and explained using a simplistic circular diagram. That circular graphic does no justice to the concepts that Colonel Boyd developed.
In order to make decisions in advance, it’s necessary to think about likely scenarios, at least, ahead of time and decide how to solve them. This includes the legal ramifications of your possible actions. Thinking ahead is a key component of avoiding becoming a victim or incurring a Negative Outcome in the criminal justice system.
John Johnston and I will be discussing this timely topic in more depth on Ballistic Radio tonight. Ballistic Radio is available over the Internet.
Serious Mistakes now available as a download
There have been many requests for the Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make recording as a download. Despite being something of a Luddite, I figured out a way to do it.
The recording is now available as a download for $9.95. Link
Practicing for your real world
This morning, I had an opportunity to do some work on putting my money where my mouth is. I’ve been haranguing about Negative Outcomes and wanted to come up with some actionable practice. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, as the saying goes.
Around 5 a.m., someone was loading a pickup in the parking lot outside my apartment. There was quite a bit of ‘bumping,’ which woke me up. Everything was still dark and otherwise quiet. I was satisfied that it was indeed a truck being loaded and what was being loaded wasn’t mine. While lying in bed, I realized I had been awakened by a ‘bump in the night.’ So, I decided to clear my apartment as a dry run.
First, I cleared my pistol and put an orange dummy round in the chamber. I then dryfired it once. If I hadn’t done that sequence correctly, I would have had a Negligent Discharge in my apartment. At 5 a.m., that would have been a Serious Mistake. No doubt an ND would have led to the Negative Outcome of Police Involvement when police officers showed up shortly thereafter. Putting an actual possible consequence into the equation makes it a little more realistic as a practice exercise. Being exposed to real consequences is something most gunowners don’t allow themselves to experience very often.
From this clearing task came my first observation; if one isn’t awake enough to competently perform a simple unload, load, and verify manipulation, is it wise to go through the house in the dark making life and death decisions? Probably not. One of things John Farnam taught in his classes I’ve attended is that it’s a good idea to be awake before you start handling firearms. His counsel is that having a pistol right next to your bed may not be the best idea if you are the type of person who requires a minute to wake up. Having your gun a few steps away might be a better idea. One incident in my Negative Outcomes database is of a man who shot himself in the foot when he picked up his bedside pistol before he was completely awake.
Having cleared the pistol and sterilized it, I then picked up my flashlight. Just to get out of my bedroom, I have to unlock and open the door while holding a pistol and flashlight. As I do this, it’s important that I scrupulously observe Rules 3 and 2, Finger off trigger and Don’t point the gun at [myself] while my support hand is extended in front of my body and holding a flashlight. Using the gun’s laser to check, it was clear that avoiding sweeping my hand is not as easy as might be thought. If there actually was an intruder, the worst possible case would be that he was on the other side of the door when I opened it. How to handle that is something many people don’t think about.
As I worked my way through the apartment, the night lights I have in every room were sufficient for me to see if someone was there. However, I would have needed the flashlight to make an identification. I do have some entertainment signs in my home, so I used them as substitutes for making a suspect identification.
The first thing I did upon encountering a sign was to practice the Challenge, “Who’s there?” It doesn’t have to be loud when practicing, but it’s important to get into the habit of verbalizing. If the ambient light wasn’t sufficient for me to read the sign, then it’s probably not going to be enough for me to make an identification. By lighting it up with the flashlight, I could read the sign, so I can probably make a good ID.
Maybe this seems like a somewhat involved exercise but let’s keep in mind, there are competing sets of probabilities in a home defense situation. The most likely probability is that the 3 a.m. bump you hear or shadow you see is, in fact, a member of your household.
It’s advisable to practice under conditions that resemble the ones you will encounter in YOUR real world, which is different than everyone else’s. Those who have been through shoothouse training will probably notice that the above exercise doesn’t even begin to look like making entry into the shoothouse with your carbine and shooting everything you see. There’s a reason for that, I’ll let you figure it out.
The importance of gunhandling
Over the course of the holidays, I had several short notice taskings, one of which was to provide initial firearms training to a woman who has a stalker problem. Although it was a short session, she and I were both pleased with the outcome, so I shared my notes and outline with a few of my colleagues.
A colleague made the following comment:
One, it’s your usual excellence, and most likely as good as it gets for focused firearms training for the civilian … I do notice that the vast majority of what you present is focused on manipulation, handling, live fire, and some lecture/interactive discussion about legal aspects.
He is a very high level thinker and we exchange thoughts regularly with no reservations about defining and challenging each other’s views. My response to his query was that I have been immensely changed by my Negative Outcomes research over the past two years. I have come to question much of what I thought was important before. One thing that I have become sure of is that at the raw beginner level, which is where this lady was, teaching students how to avoid Serious Mistakes is of primary concern. My list of firearms incidents with Negative Outcomes, gathered over the past two years without even a serious research effort, is seventeen pages long single spaced. That’s a lot of Serious Mistakes.
In addition, I have become even more aware of how dangerous complacency is. The more often the gun is manipulated, the more it is likely to discharge. This has its basis not only in statistical reasons but also in the natural human process of ‘familiarity breeds complacency.’ When complacency is combined with incompetence and/or ignorance, the seeds of disaster have been sown.
The story mentioned “His injuries are not life-threating but he is receiving treatment from a hand surgeon.” Shooting oneself in the hand at close range with modern service ammunition carries a high probability of being permanently crippled. One of the things that I notice in the Self Inflicted Gunshot Wound section of my database is how often the person involved is a high level Law Enforcement Officer, either Sheriff or Police Chief.
There are two possibilities for this strong correlation: 1) it’s just more newsworthy when a higher up experiences a Negligent Discharge, or 2) higher ups, who are administrators, tend to be not that interested in firearms and perhaps a little more complacent than line officers whose gun is a tool of their work. It could be either, there’s no way for me to say.
Firearms ownership is somewhat like a minefield. You might take one step and get blown up, you might negotiate it quite a while before getting blown up, or you might get lucky and make it through. Putting your fingers in your ears will not protect you one bit from the consequences, that’s for sure.
When using a firearm, regardless of the circumstances, always follow the Four Rules of Safe Gunhandling
- Treat all guns as if they are ALWAYS loaded.
- Never let yourself point a gun at something or someone you don’t want to be shot.
If the situation forces a choice, point the gun at something not someone. - Keep your finger out of and above the trigger guard until the gun is pointed at your target and you are ready for the gun to fire.
- Be sure of what you are shooting at and what is behind it.
In addition,
- Store weapons where they are not accessible to unauthorized persons
- Know the law
- Immediately check the readiness status any weapon you handle
Whether in a morning Private Lesson or in my six month Total Immersion Program, I find that both new and experienced gunowners frequently don’t have an appreciation for the nuances of the mechanical complexities of firearms manipulation. A firearm is a mechanical device that has more moving parts in it than almost anything else you can hold in your hand. There are definite sequences and multiple conditional values that have to be observed with them. Some people dread hand tools as much as Kryptonite. Folks like that need to be shown, and then practiced, on how to operate complex mechanical devices, such as firearms.
In addition, smart people tend to assume there is logic involved in the making of laws. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consequently, the vagaries of the legal system are an alien concept to many well educated and intelligent people. I have personally known of several very smart people who got into a fair amount of legal problems in the course of trying to apply logic to both the Code of Federal Regulations and the Official Code of Georgia Annotated. Some things we can figure out ourselves; the law is not one of them. It requires research and/or specific education.
That’s why I am currently prioritizing my training efforts the way I do. It’s also why I created the Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make audio presentation. Many of the events in Serious Mistakes did not happen to novices but rather to gunowners of long standing who became complacent or finally ran into a situation they had never encountered before. The link for Serious Mistakes is at the top of my page. It’s now available on a Flash Drive, for those who prefer that format.
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