Preventing Negligent Discharges While Eating at a Restaurant
#Saturdaysafety
OMG – Another Tactical Professor rant
Simple TTP to Prevent Negligent Discharges While Eating at a Restaurant
1) Have a decent holster that keeps your pistol from falling out of your pants and use it any time you carry your pistol. Even if you’re just getting out of your vehicle to eat something or put gas in the tank, don’t just stick your gun in your waistband.
2) Let falling guns fall and then pick them up deliberately and without haste. Keep your finger out of the trigger guard as you do so.
If you do have a Negligent Discharge in a public place, don’t try to run out the door immediately. Check to see if anyone has become a casualty.
Note that I generally agree with my colleague Marty Hayes’ https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/ comment that most Unintentional Discharges don’t fit the legal definition of ‘Negligent.’ However, someone who is walking around with a pistol stuck in their waistband in such a low level of security that it easily falls out and causes someone else to get injured is being Negligent. That activity can be foreseeable as reckless and likely to cause someone else to become wounded.
THE STORY
Normal day at Cracker Barrel’ ends with shrapnel stuck forever in Charlotte man’s leg [when someone else has a Negligent Discharge and injures an innocent bystander]
https://news.yahoo.com/normal-day-cracker-barrel-ends-213119642.html
SYNOPSIS OF THE INCIDENT
A traveling man eating at Cracker Barrel in North Carolina dropped his pistol. According to the police report, the pistol was a .45 1911 Colt. He tried to catch the gun from falling and it discharged. The bullet hit the wall, broke into pieces, and several pieces embedded in another man’s leg.
Image courtesy of Charlotte Observer
The shooter then tried to run out of the restaurant but was stopped by a customer at the cashier’s stand.
A Social Security eligible out of state man from Ohio was the shooter. He was cited and released by local POlice for violating North Carolina concealed weapons law. Whether he had a permit for concealed carry is unclear.
Upon being taken to hospital, doctors recommended the victim leave the pieces of metal in his leg. He said they told him it would be riskier to take them out.
MOST LIKELY EXPLANATION OF HOW THE INCIDENT OCCURRED
Because he was traveling across several States with a large heavy pistol, the gun was placed somewhere off-body in his vehicle. Serious Mistake. https://store.payloadz.com/go/?id=2617872 As my colleague Karl Rehn https://krtraining.com/ has noted, most people who obtain concealed carry licenses/permits do so in order to keep a gun in their vehicles and off-body in the console or door pocket. Or even worse, if that’s possible, on the floor underneath the floor mat or stuck between the seat and the console.
Upon stopping at the Cracker Barrel, he didn’t holster the pistol but rather just stuck it in his waistband without a holster. It is possible he wasn’t even wearing a belt but that’s conjecture on my part. Then because autoloaders are butt heavy, when the gun came out of his waistband because he was shifting around in the unpadded chair, it fell outside of his pants toward the floor. A point in favor of revolvers in such a situation is that they will slide down the inside of the pant leg like an Unintentional Turd Discharge (UTD) rather than falling rapidly to the floor. Ask me how I know this.
The no longer concealed carrier tried to grab the gun as it fell. His finger got into the trigger guard, as will usually happen when trying to grab a falling pistol, and the pistol discharged. Whether the thumb safety was even engaged when he tried to grab the pistol will never be known.
The shooter’s court date is June 9 for the citation. If he doesn’t return from Ohio to face the charge, a bench warrant will probably be issued for his arrest since it is a criminal charge. Whether the injured man will press charges further has not yet been decided.
HOW TO PREVENT SUCH AN INCIDENT
1) If your gun is too big and heavy to carry in a holster when it’s not in your safe or arms room, then you need a smaller lighter gun. The 1911 pistol was designed to be carried in a sturdy flap holster on a cavalry trooper’s 2 ½ inch pistol belt or kept in the unit’s arms room. One or the other, no in-between. That’s the other part of “the 1911 was designed to ….” people don’t much talk about.
Image courtesy of FrankD on the CMP Forum
2) If your holster isn’t comfortable for all day carry, including while you are seated for long periods, then you need to get a more suitable holster and/or pistol. Although the platitude “A pistol should be comforting [to carry] not comfortable” is heard periodically, it is in severe conflict with the reality of most peoples’ lives.
3) Practice letting a fallen gun fall to the ground before trying to pick it up. Brian Hill of The Complete Combatant http://www.thecompletecombatant.com/ calls this “Rule 5” and I agree with him completely. If you don’t want to practice with your $1000 cool breeze carry pistol, then get some kind of inert dummy gun and practice with it. If you don’t want to spend the money on a Blue Gun https://www.blueguns.com/ , serviceable training aids are available on Amazon. There are training aids available even in the toy section of Walmart, assuming you don’t live in Chicargo where Walmart has decided to close.
This kind of incident makes those of us who are responsible gun carriers look bad. There’s more involved in Every Day Carry of a Deadly Weapon than just buying a gun and sticking it in your pants or purse. Consider the number of incompetent drivers you see who you know should only be riding the bus; not operating a two-ton murder machine.
1) Learn what you need to be able to do, 2) get the proper equipment, 3) practice the skills you need, and then 4) live the lifestyle.
That’s the proper sequence. Don’t be deliberately ignorant and irresponsible.
If you are interested in more in-depth writing about Point Shooting or Personal Defense Incidents and Analysis, please subscribe to my Patreon page by clicking on the image below.
Unsighted Pistol Shooting
“You have a large target in front of you and the natural qualification of being able to point your finger at a certain object; by handling your revolver a short time you will be able to point the barrel of the revolver as you would your finger, pulling the trigger double action as the barrel swings into line with the target. When you have accomplished this you have the principle of quick shooting at short range and quick draw will be taken up later.” —
One of the early pioneers of defensive pistol shooting, J. Henry FitzGerald, wrote that in his book Shooting in 1930. Beginning in May, I will begin a four month series on my Patreon page about Unsighted Pistol Shooting.
https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor
The concept is variously described as ‘point shooting,’ ‘reflexive shooting,’ ‘instinctive shooting,’ and several other terms. They all refer to the concept of firing a pistol without reference to the sights. Some systems call for the pistol to be brought into the eye-target line and others do not.
Although the historical documents are readily available, much Internet commentary about unsighted firing is not well researched or documented. The standards of what the founders of the various systems said could be accomplished, marksmanship-wise, are almost always ignored.
To shed more light on the subject, my Patreon series will be a survey of the actual historical literature with regard to technique, training methods, and standards. There are four distinct periods that the literature can be divided into. They are the Great War and Interwar Period, World War II and its Post War Period, the Vietnam War Era, and the Post Vietnam Era. Delph (Jelly) Bryce and other famous point shooters who didn’t write about training will not be included because they produced no literature.
The cost of the Unsighted Fire Tier will be three dollars ($3) monthly. You can unsubscribe at any time and not be charged for future months.
Most widely known of the unsighted systems is Fairbairn and Sykes Shooting to Live along with US Army doctrine developed during WWII. Those will be the topic for May’s Unsighted Tier.
The second component of the series will be a separate Tier concentrating on current incidents and how unsighted fire would or would not help solve the occurrence. Integrating actual incidents into training and practice has been something I’ve focused on since the early days of IDPA, when I was a Match Director.
Each week the Incident Analysis Tier will feature an incident from the current Armed Citizen column of the NRA Journals. Many people are not familiar with The Armed Citizen column, which is a very useful start point for doing Incident Analysis pertaining to Private Citizens instead of the POlice. Part of my Analysis will be the marksmanship problem posed and what was needed to solve it.
The cost of the Incident Analysis Tier will be Five dollars ($5) monthly. It will also include all the posts of the Unsighted Fire Tier. You can unsubscribe at any time and not be charged for future months.
This will be a new type of education and instruction available to my readers. I am excited about the series and I hope you will join me for it.
LAPD Shooting Re-enactment
An LAPD officer, using a Red Dot Sighted pistol, was forced to shoot a hostage taker at a range of five feet in July of 2021. The Board of Police Commissioners number for the incident is Categorical Use Of Force number 041-21. Tactics, Drawing and Exhibiting, and Use of Deadly Force by Officer A in the incident were all adjudicated as In Policy by the BOPC.
This video re-creates the marksmanship problem faced by the officer. The target was moving for the officer, which this video does not re-create. The pistol used in the video is a Glock 42 supplied by Glock for my Subcompact Pistol Training Tier on Patreon.
In keeping with the LAPD theme of the video, the second part of the video contains a demonstration of a permissible variation of the LAPD Retired Officer Qualification Course, also shot with the Glock 42. This Course has value to the Armed Private Citizen as a self-evaluation of some good to have marksmanship skills for concealed carry.
Can-May-Must-Should in One Incident
In a road rage incident on Sunday February 26, 2023, a gunowner who was driving erratically and then threatened another driver was subsequently shot and killed by yet a third party who intervened on behalf of the driver who threatened.
All of the elements of Can-May-Must-Should http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=19028 are readily apparent in this one interesting incident. It also involves Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make. https://store.payloadz.com/details/2617872-ebooks-true-crime-serious-mistakes-gunowners-make.html I may have to add a chapter about Bluffing with Guns or “Don’t write checks with your mouth that your ass can’t cash.”
I’ll be writing more about this in my Patreon Personal Defense Incidents and Analysis Tier https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor/membership but the essential elements are as follows.
- A 71 year old man, Alden Jones, was driving erratically and cutting off other cars.
- At a stop light, he got out of his car with a pistol, went back to the car stopped behind him, and banged on the window with his pistol.
- The driver of the third car in the incident, who was stopped behind the second car, got out of his car and attempted to verbally intervene on behalf of the second car’s driver.
- The initial aggressor, Jones, then turned his attention to the third driver and began to walk toward him, pistol in hand.
- The third driver warned Jones that he was also armed.
- Jones continued to approach the third driver.
- At “a very close distance,” the third driver opened fire, killing Jones on the spot.
- The third driver remained on scene and waited for the authorities.
- Upon the arrival of the POlice, the third driver stated he had shot in defense of himself and his wife, who was also in the car.
- Witnessed corroborated the third driver’s account of the incident.
- He was not charged by the POlice with any wrongdoing. The District Attorney’s Office will make the final decision.
The incident plays out almost in complete reverse of the paradigm’s order. Decisions always precede the technical aspects of shooting.
Should he have intervened? That’s a Moral choice; some people may have chosen to, others may not have. Must he have shot? When an angry person, whom you have witnessed threaten a third party, approaches you with a pistol in hand, your options are limited. As M5 said in Star Trek: The Original Series, “Consideration of all programming is that we must survive.” May he have shot? The POlice seem to think so. “The investigation thus far is indicative of self-defense.” Could {Can) he shoot adequately to solve the problem? Jones is dead and the third man and his wife are unharmed. The Can aspect was satisfied.
The proxemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics aspects of the situation are also interesting. Since the cars were stopped in line at a traffic signal, the verbal warning was most likely door to door distance, making it less than 21 feet. A Toyota Camry is 16 feet long as a distance reference. The POlice media release indicates that the shots were fired at “a very close distance.” The distance from the driver door frame of a Camry to the front bumper is 7 feet. So the shooting most likely took place around the boundary between the Near and Far Phases of Social Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics#Interpersonal_distance in proxemics.
The report doesn’t indicate that the shooter had his gun drawn prior to the actual shooting. If this is true, then this incident demonstrates that you Can, in fact, draw against an already drawn gun. So much for the popular belief that it isn’t possible. That belief is usually based on scenarios where the person with the drawn gun knows you’re armed and are going to draw, is just waiting for your move, and has pre‑determined to counter your draw. The “real world” is often much different.
The incident also contradicts the popular slogan “Don’t talk to the POlice.” Better advice might be “Don’t get arrested,” coupled with “Don’t talk your way into Jail.”
Guns stolen from cars
In other relevant gunowner news, 217 guns have been stolen from cars in Nashville so far this year. https://www.nashville.gov/departments/police/news/more-200-guns-stolen-vehicles-so-far-year That is 76% of the guns stolen in Davidson County, the county Nashville is located in.
If this rate continues, more than 1,000 guns will be stolen from cars in Nashville alone in 2023. Some of them will end up involved in criminals activities. This one is a no-brainer; don’t leave unsecured guns in your car. If you have to leave a gun in your car when you go to work or other prohibited places, get a car safe and use it. And certainly, don’t leave your gun in your car outside your home at night. https://patch.com/georgia/alpharetta/entering-auto-suspects-stole-more-40-firearms-during-crime-spree-police
Don’t Play with Guns in Vehicles
“A student is dead after a firearm was accidentally discharged in a vehicle in the parking lot of Dalhart High School.
…
According to [Superintendent] Byrd, a student not enrolled in the district went to the high school at lunch and picked up three students when the firearm went off in the parking lot.”
Just don’t do it. Fooling around with guns in cars is a Serious Mistake that can easily lead to a tragedy.
If you have to put it in a lockbox, have a lockbox that’s big enough for the holstered gun and put the gun in the box without removing it from the holster.
Duel at the Dumbster (Part VIII)
“Hey Claude what are your thoughts on the dad getting convicted and the son getting acquitted in the ‘Duel at the Dumpster’ Trial?”
The “Duel at the Dumbster” saga has finally concluded after almost five years. For those unfamiliar with the incident, it started as the 2018 killing of a man in an Abilene, Texas alley over the disposal of a mattress. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/father-son-texas-shooting-neighbor-trash-video The elder shooter will now spend the rest of his life in prison but his son will go free, except for the debts he owes to his lawyers.
As a friend of mine commented:
“We aren’t supposed to kill each other over who is king of the landfill until *after* society collapses.”
My thoughts about it are remembrances of what other knowledgeable people have said about personal protection in general. This incident shows the wisdom of their words.
“Any time you go into court, there is a greater than zero chance you will be convicted.”
–Andrew Branca Law of Self Defense
“Stupid people, stupid places, doing stupid things. Avoid them and you’ll probably be alright.” and “The best way to win a gunfight is to not be there.”
–John Farnam https://defense-training.com/
“Forget Stand Your Ground.” and “Don’t Go Outside.”
–Steve Harris http://modernserviceweapons.com/?author=12
“The process is the punishment.”
–John Murphy https://www.fpftraining.com/
Note that their combined bond was $500,000, which means they had to give a bondsman at least $50,000 to get out of jail. They don’t get that back, it’s the bondsman’s fee for posting their bail.
Also, assume that in any confrontation you will be on video, most likely from the perspective least favorable to you. The framing of the story in the media will also be as unfavorable to you as can possibly be made. The picture of the participants in the Buzzfeed story is a good example. Both the shooters are portrayed as shirtless toothless gun-armed rednecks. The shootee is portrayed as a happy smiling person, not the hulking angry foul-mouthed behemoth with “Intermittent Explosive Disorder” holding a baseball bat that the video shows.
There are so many lessons to be drawn from the incident that I wrote a series of articles about it.
https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-i/
https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-ii/
https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-iii/
The year after the Duel, I made a visit to the site as part of my trip to the SHOT Show.
Visit to the Site of the Duel (Part IV of the series)
Visit (continued) to the Site of the Duel (Part V of the series)
This is a quote from The Godfather that is worth repeating.
“There are men in this world,” [Don Corleone] said, “who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their automobiles in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender, they humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. I have seen a man, a fool, deliberately infuriate a group of dangerous men, and he himself without any resources. These are people who wander through the world shouting, ‘Kill me. Kill me.’ And there is always somebody ready to oblige them.”
That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences for such a killing, as the Duel at the Dumbster demonstrates. In The Godfather Sollozzo noted:
“Blood is a big expense.”
How to Make a Bad Decision
A woman in Chattanooga detected a bum aka ‘homeless person’ in her backyard Monday morning (2/6/23). After verbally warning him to leave, she decided to fire a ‘warning shot’ at him. However, the shot hit the man in the ankle. When the POlice arrived, the man was taken to hospital in an ambulance, the woman made a statement to the POlice about the incident, and she was arrested for Aggravated Assault. As in every other State, Aggravated Assault is a felony in the State of Tennessee.
All three of the inputs to Bad Decision-Making were part of this incident.
She didn’t Know the Rules – In most places, you can’t shoot at people who are trespassing without having some consequences. The consequences may only be getting arrested but the bail bondsman’s fee (10-15%) comes out of your own pocket. Fortunately for her, Affordabail Bail bonds is nearby. $50,000 bail means that decision costs at least $5,000 just to not spend a night in jail surrounded by ne’er-do-wells.
Her Skills were Inadequate – She didn’t intend to shoot the bum but managed to hit him anyway. A ‘warning shot,’ by definition, is intended to miss.
She didn’t Understand the Situation – at 4:30 am in your backyard where there is no lighting, you can’t tell what’s going on 20 yards away without a flashlight.
“the distance between Teem’s back porch and the place where the victim was shot was about 60 feet.”
Bottom Line: Don’t go outside.
My thanks to Reed Martz of Freeland Martz PLLC https://freelandmartz.com/ for the heads up about the incident.
Don’t go outside and don’t chase criminals
Since it’s a recent theme in the training community, let me reinforce the principle that going outside your home to confront thieves and other criminals is a bad idea. Stay inside and let them come to you. Conduct a Defense not a Movement to Contact. A military axiom is that the defense has at least a 3 to 1 advantage over the Offense.
http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=18502
Not only does it make justification iffy but you could become a casualty in the process.
Another bad idea is chasing criminals you encounter while driving around when you suspect them of having stolen your property.
Shooting at them makes it even worse.
“At about 4:45 p.m., a man spotted his stolen Chevrolet truck in the Mt. Baker neighborhood while he was out driving in his Toyota Camry. He followed his stolen truck until it stopped, and then confronted the driver. When the driver sped away, the man fired two shots, striking two nearby residences.
…
Officers booked the 27-year-old man into King County Jail for drive-by shooting and submitted his firearm as evidence.”
Drive by shooting in Washington State is a Class B felony. https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.045 It is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and a $20,000 fine. Odds are that since no one was injured, he won’t do hard time but, as a felon, his Second Amendment rights will be gone.
Thanks to one of my correspondents for bringing the incident to my attention.
Terms
MOVEMENT TO CONTACT
2-8. Movement to contact is an offensive task designed to develop the situation and establish or regain contact. (Refer to ADRP 3-90 for more information.) It creates favorable conditions for subsequent tactical actions. The leader conducts a movement to contact when the enemy situation is vague or not specific enough to conduct an attack. Forces executing this task seek to make contact with the smallest friendly force possible. A movement to contact may result in a meeting engagement, which is a combat action occurring when a moving force engages an enemy at an unexpected time and place.
THE DEFENSE
4-1. A defensive task is a task conducted to defeat an enemy attack, gain time, economize forces, and develop conditions favorable for offensive or stability tasks. (Refer to ADRP 3-90 https://www.benning.army.mil/Infantry/DoctrineSupplement/ATP3-21.8/PDFs/adrp3_90.pdf for more information.) Normally, the defense alone cannot achieve a decision. However, it can set conditions for a counteroffensive or counterattack that enables Army forces to regain the initiative.
In other news, don’t defraud school systems of $1.5 million dollars’ worth of chicken wings. Even in Ill-Annoy, it will get you in trouble.
“District funds were used to pay for the food, according to prosecutors, who did not reveal what became of the chicken wings.”
Failure Drill?
A friend of mine sent me a link to the Maine [POlice] “Plain Clothes Course of Fire” Pistol Qualification.
https://www.maine.gov/dps/themes/dps/mcja/documents/PlainClothesPistolQualificationCourse2019.doc
As with many current POlice Qualifications, it includes a “Failure Drill = (2 to the chest and 1 to the head),” in this Course three times. The terminology evolved from what was originally called the “Mozambique Drill.” https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2017/5/18/the-mozambique-drill-a-history-and-how-to/
Consider the “Failure Drill” as it’s currently taught and evaluated. It has been bastardized the same way the “OODA Loop” has been. The drill isn’t actually structured to deal with a Failure. The concept of Failure requires an assessment of the efficacy of the original effort. Assessing the target’s reaction or lack thereof to the first two shots was an explicit part of the drill as originally taught by LAPD Officers Larry Mudgett and John Helms.
When the structure of the drill is such that the transition from the two chest shots to the head is immediate and pre-programmed, no assessment is involved. Rather such a drill is structured to ensure the recipient is killed from the get go. It should be called the “Anchor Drill” or “Kill Drill.” That’s not to say there might not be a justifiable reason to anchor the adversary. However, let’s not have any illusions about what the object of the exercise is and call it something it’s not.
Decision and Determination
“The document details how [Michaela aka Micky] Shunick fought back against her attacker by spraying him with Mace, stabbing him several times and fighting relentlessly until he ultimately shot her in the head.”
ABC News
Synopsis of the incident
- The Culprit intentionally hit Shunick’s bicycle
- Insisted that she enter his truck
- He put her bike in the bed of his truck
- The Culprit was in possession of a knife and a semi-automatic handgun
- When Shunick attempted to grab her cellphone to call for help, the Culprit threatened her with his knife
- She sprayed Mace [or some other chemical weapon] into the Defendant’s face
- Micky fought off the Defendant who succeeded in wrestling the chemical weapon from her
- She grabbed the Defendant’s knife and proceeded to stab the Defendant several times in what would later be called life threatening wounds
- The Culprit tried to grab the knife from Shunick, which caused him to cut tendons in his hands
- Micky struggled with the much larger and stronger Culprit
- He succeeded in taking the knife from her
- The Culprit then stabbed her at least 4 times and she fell over
- Micky lay motionless and the Culprit was unable to detect a pulse
- The Culprit then drove her motionless body to a secluded area 40 minutes away
- He planned to dump her body there
“Suddenly, Micky jumped up [after having been initially rendered unconscious], with the Defendant’s knife she had regained possession of and lunged at the Defendant stabbing him again in the chest, the court document said The Defendant pulled his semi-automatic handgun, which he had armed himself with, and shot Micky in the head, killing her instantly.”
That was one tough and courageous woman. She decided to make the crime as hard as possible for the Culprit. She had the determination to fight as long as she could, even after initially being rendered unconscious. I give her a lot of credit. We can all learn something from her example.
The Culprit pleaded guilty to her murder and to the 1999 murder of another woman, Lisa Pate. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he has proven to be a less than model prisoner. https://www.katc.com/news/around-acadiana/2018/10/25/convicted-murder-brandon-scott-lavergne-disciplined-often-in-jail/
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