Boyfriend Wants a Gun
A few days ago, a customer said to me:
“My boyfriend wants to get a gun but I don’t like the idea. He says he was a Marine and knows how to use it.”
Since I have heard something similar somewhere between 100 and 1000 times, I gave her the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network http://armedcitizensnetwork.org/ pamphlet What Every Gun Owner Needs to Know about Self Defense Law. The latest 2023 version can be downloaded at https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/images/stories/Hayes_SDLaw.pdf or you can request a free printed copy.
What does “knows how to use it” mean? For most veterans, it means that they, at one time, were reasonably capable of acceptable marksmanship on a firing range with the service rifle at the time they served. Unless they were Military POlice or members of a Special Operations unit, it is unlikely they had more than a Familiarization Fire with the service pistol of the time and perhaps not even that. Familiarization in the military means firing one magazine or less on an unscored basis.
FamFire hardly even fulfills the CAN requirement of the CAN/MAY/MUST/SHOULD http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=19028 paradigm. The MAY part gets people in trouble much more often than the CAN. The ACLDN pamphlet focuses on the MAY. It’s free and consists of 5676 words of content. At the average adult reading rate of 238 words per minute, that’s 24 minutes to read. While the pamphlet is certainly not the be-all and end-all of knowing self-defense law, it’s an excellent start and provides food for thought.
I know my readers get tired of me harping about knowing more than just how to shoot yourself but I wouldn’t be much of an educator if I didn’t.
I’m reasonably certain she will read the pamphlet. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.
Fair disclaimer: I am a member of the Network, however I receive no commission nor other remuneration based on anything you do as a result of reading this post.
Don’t Shoot Through Windows
Another sad and unnecessary incident for the Negative Outcomes database.
Texas maintenance worker checking pipes killed after he was mistaken for intruder
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-maintenance-worker-checking-pipes-killed-after-mistaken-intruder
The resident, mistakenly believing his apartment was being burglarized, grabbed a gun and shot Montelongo through the window.
The only element of the Can May Must Should paradigm http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=19028 that was fulfilled was CAN. There’s a good chance now that the shooter will end up doing time in prison.
Serious Mistake and Negative Outcome
To paraphrase ‘the great Morpheus’:
Chasing Criminals -Serious Mistake
This past Sunday a man decided to commit an armed robbery of clerk working in a California convenience store. When the robber fled with the stolen goods, the clerk retrieved his own gun and pursued, firing at the fleeing robber. The robber then used his own gun to shoot and kill the clerk.
Branca – Law of Self Defense
Both tactically and legally, this is a problem. Although it usually doesn’t result in getting killed, I have numerous incidents in my database where the victim was then charged with a crime for various aspects of the pursuit. Like it or not, it is what it is.
Many were surprised when Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton then decided that she would not press a murder charge against the armed robber, on the grounds that the robber was acting in lawful self-defense when he killed the clerk.
Branca – LOSD
I’ll let Andrew comment on the idiosyncrasies of the decision but this would be the ultimate indignity to me personally. My sympathies to the victim’s family.
Negative Outcome from Holsterless Carry
“A man has died after a gun accidentally discharged while in the pocket of a sweatshirt”
Brown County Sheriff’s Office
https://www.wlwt.com/article/brown-county-ohio-accidental-gun-discharge-death/41854707
The man was found dead by his girlfriend in the backyard with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. That single wound resulted in his demise.
“Authorities say a 9mm handgun was found in Hauser’s front sweatshirt pocket, with a single shell casing found in the same pocket of the sweatshirt. Officials added that fabric from the sweatshirt was found to be lodged in the [ejection port] of the firearm and the gun appeared to have gone off while inside the pocket of the sweatshirt.”
I have carried double action revolvers using a Barami Hip-Grip with an uncovered trigger guard for many years without incident. As my colleague Chuck Haggard has noted, both the trigger and cylinder have to move through a relatively long cycle to make the gun fire in that configuration. Striker Fired Autoloaders are a completely different story. As Massad Ayoob noted many years ago:
“What’s the good thing about a Glock? It’s easy to shoot. What’s the bad thing about a Glock? It’s easy to shoot.”
It takes very little to make a Striker Fired Autoloader go off. Holsterless carry with them is foolish. Numerous manufacturers make trigger guard covers for SFAs. If you need a minimalist carry option, at least use one of them.
Shooting in the leg
Investigators say Marquez claimed the shooting was self-defense and that he only intended to shoot his brother in the leg after his brother assaulted him during a fight. Instead, Marquez shot his brother in the stomach.
Bad decision. The brother died.
Marquez was arrested and booked into jail. He is accused of multiple charges, including second-degree murder.
This was a Serious Mistake that resulted in a Negative Outcome. To purchase my book about Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make, click the link below.
https://store.payloadz.com/details/2617872-ebooks-true-crime-serious-mistakes-gunowners-make.html
The perils of holsterless carry
“The gun was in his waistband not holstered and loaded. The gun slipped down his leg, he attempted to grab it, and was somehow manipulating the weapon and discharged the firearm,”
Sgt. Akeem Turnbull with Lovejoy Police
Hit himself and three other people with one Unintentional Discharge. A modern day William Tell.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxZfZu2hpwPow-gMthA-ucaBLUnIqMPB9A
Firearms are relentlessly unforgiving
Firearms are relentlessly unforgiving of the smallest lapse in attention or good judgement.
The shooting of a special police officer during a training exercise at a D.C. library came as the group of trainees had gathered to take a picture and were ‘joking around,’ according to court documents.
[The shooter, a retired POlice lieutenant], who conducted the training as a private contractor, was arrested Friday and has now been charged with involuntary manslaughter in Manyan’s death.
Before, during, and after training or dry practice, there’s no room for “joking around.”
One of the very first things I learned in the Army from the men who had just returned from Vietnam was:
F8ck around, f8ck around, get yourself or someone else killed.
It’s a lesson I’ve kept in mind for 50 years. RIP Officer Manyan.
Gun Training from Friends and Relatives
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.
VP 40 In the News
Don’t hang your gun on the hook when you’re using the facilities. This story is a good illustration as to why. Pictures this detailed are seldom available.
Imagine if you were changing your baby’s diaper at the Koala Kare station when his gun went off. Your baby might not be the only one who needed changing.
When things go wrong
This post is a little different because the subject is a submarine, specifically the USS Connecticut, a US Navy nukuler attack submarine. The Connecticut had an incident in the South China Sea on Oct 2, 2021. Initially, there was speculation on the internetz that it had collided with a Chinese submarine. However, it turns out that the boat simply crashed into an underwater terrain feature, which the Navy calls an “uncharted bathymetric feature.”
The Sub Brief YouTube channel has an excellent video on what happened and what went wrong.
What does a submarine running aground have to do with Personal Protection? The stack up of numerous problems, some of which had been going on for quite a while, and others that were immediate, caused the grounding.
Just one thing after another and this is how casualties happen. Casualties are very rarely isolated incidents, they cascade. This casualty, this collision cascaded all over the boat from the sonar being destroyed forward to the engine room believing they had lost propulsion to the machinery room catching on fire. Everybody’s having a bad time all of a sudden because casualties will cascade and that’s what’s happening here. Immediate actions of this crew is outstanding and probably is what saved the ship because whenever they were losing … buoyancy, sinking past 74 feet without propulsion, they were screwed. That is a dying submarine. Whenever you do the emergency blow and you still have negative buoyancy and you don’t have propulsion, well guess what, you know you better start making plans for the next life because you’re almost done with this one.
https://youtu.be/IPr7Yrwgly4?t=2396
Laxity, failure to pay attention to detail, and poor or absent communication all contributed to what could have been a tragic loss of a submarine and its entire crew.
Executive Summary [from the Final Investigative Report]
14. (U) On 2 October 2021, CONNECTICUT grounded on an uncharted bathymetric feature while operating submerged in a poorly surveyed area in international waters. This mishap was preventable. It resulted from an accumulation of errors and omissions in navigation planning, watchteam execution, and risk management that fell far below U.S. Navy standards. Prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in any of these three areas could have prevented the grounding.
Here is a short summary of the incident and findings of the investigation. https://news.usni.org/2022/05/24/investigation-uss-connecticut-south-china-sea-grounding-result-of-lax-oversight-poor-planning
The link to the full redacted investigation report is here. https://news.usni.org/2022/05/23/command-investigation-into-uss-connecticuts-south-china-sea-seamount-grounding
Consider how many things can stack up to cause additional problems in a Personal Protection incident as you watch the video.
tacticalprofessor 
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