Weight transfer and stance
A good stance helps us minimize the effect of recoil on our ability to deliver multiple shots quickly. It also prepares us to rapidly move to another position, should that be necessary.
The entire post and YouTube link is available on my Patreon page.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/52312807
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
- Real Shootouts of the LAPD https://realshootoutsofthelapd.com/
- Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
- Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
- Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
- Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
- Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
- Package deal of Serious Mistakes, Indoor Sessions, Concealed Carry, and Shooting Your Black Rifle (20% off) https://store.payloadz.com/details/2644448-ebooks-sports-shooting-drills-package.html
How Recent, Relevant, and Realistic?
#fridayfundamentals
Your training must be Recent, Relevant, and Realistic.
–Tom Givens
A related comment.
The purpose of almost all training provided by a POlice agency is to shift liability from the agency onto the individual officer.
The Assassin, a very smart street cop with 30 years of experience.
Those quotes always come to my mind when someone says they were trained by a relative or friend who was a cop or military. Putting the Givens comment onto the issue brings up some questions.
- Recent – when did the cop/veteran receive their training?
- Relevant – does the training the cop/veteran received apply to our personal context of METT-TC? How different was their mission?
- Realistic – Did the training even work when actually applied? What was the object of the POlice/military training, officer safety or agency protection? The Assassin’s comment is particularly applicable to that question. Note that The Assassin has 30 years of experience not one year of experience 30 times the way many cops do.
When did the person receive their training? Training doctrine changes over time, sometimes quite rapidly. For example, in the early days of chemical sprays, the doctrine was to soak the front of the adversary’s shirt and let the fumes waft up to the adversary’s face. We don’t do that anymore because we know it never really worked.
Does the training the cop/veteran received apply to our personal context of METT-TC? This is a key question that often is overlooked or ignored. The Mission drives our strategy, tactics, and tools. Both the POlice and military Missions are radically different than ours as Private Citizens. POlice and military operators doctrinally must close with their opponents and make contact with them. That is exactly the opposite of our Mission in which we want to force a Break in Contact. BREAKING CONTACT PART 1: THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF PERSONAL PROTECTION
Did the training even work when actually applied? Over the years, we’ve learned that many of the things we thought were the hot ticket and taught weren’t really that good. There are both strategic (what’s the right thing to do?) and tactical (how do we do things right?) aspects to the question.
It’s also important to remember that POlice/military training is, by definition, a ‘one size fits all’ approach. What’s realistic for one Private Citizen may be completely inappropriate for another. The training community’s fascination with ‘The Struggle’ is a good example.
My point in this post is not to repeat the “Get some/more training” mantra. Rather, my point is to not fall into the Dunning-Kruger trap of thinking you know more than you do. When you say to yourself that you don’t need any training because your father/mother/uncle/brother/friend has already ‘trained you,’ please keep in mind there are some questions you should ask yourself. The word ‘training’ has broad implications in this context because it doesn’t just address physical skills but also mental aspects of how you think about your Personal Protection plan.
My thanks to Mr. Paul Sullivan for stimulating my thoughts about the topic. He will receive a free download of The Tactical Professor ebook Package Deal with my compliments.
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
- Real Shootouts of the LAPD https://realshootoutsofthelapd.com
- Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
- Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
- Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
- Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
- Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
Package deal of Serious Mistakes, Indoor Sessions, Concealed Carry, and Shooting Your Black Rifle (20% off) https://store.payloadz.com/details/2644448-ebooks-sports-shooting-drills-package.html
Deadly Conduct and Attempted Murder
Those are the charges in two incidents where Negative Outcomes resulted from gunfire. Both situations occurred when people thought they were making good decisions about employing a firearm for Personal Protection but the legal system doesn’t agree. Unfortunately, both incidents are material for the updated and expanded Second Edition of Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com that will be published later this year.
Mom charged [with Deadly Conduct] after shooting her 5-year-old son while trying to target loose dog, H[ouston]PD says
A mother [who was riding a bike down the street] has been charged after accidentally shooting her 5-year-old son [who was also riding his bike down the street] while trying to shoot a dog that was running across the street in north Houston, according to Houston police.
FBI agent charged [with Attempted Murder and other crimes] in off-duty shooting of man on subway
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fbi-agent-charged-off-duty-shooting-man-subway-78019158
Valdivia shot and wounded the man from a distance of roughly 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 0.9 meters) after repeatedly telling the man to back up, county prosecutor Robert Hill said in court.
The man had approached Valdivia on a train, sat across from him and asked the agent for money, Hill said. The man muttered expletives and began to walk away when the agent said he didn’t have any money to give, the prosecutor added.
‘Watch your mouth,’ the agent told the man, according to Hill.
After the man turned and approached him again, Valdivia pulled a gun from a holster and shot him, the prosecutor said. Another passenger was in the agent’s line of fire, about 15 feet (4.6 meters) away, [which resulted in an additional charge of Reckless Endangerment] but wasn’t harmed, Hill added.
Note that getting the last word in, e.g., “Watch your mouth,” is not the way to Break Contact. Breaking Contact (Part I) The moment a criminal, or in this case undesirable, breaks contact, let it go. If possible, increase your distance by going in the opposite direction. Moving away from an adversary is a good skill to practice, probably far more useful in everyday life than practicing shooting on the move.
Guns are not general purpose tools for Personal Protection. They are special purpose tools that are useful only in a very limited set of circumstances. The legal system did not believe either of these incidents fell within that set of circumstances. Probably both persons charged will end up pleading to lesser offenses. Whether those will be felonies or not remains to be seen.
The mother’s relationship with her son is unlikely to ever be the same and she may lose her right to own a firearm forever. The FBI Agent’s once promising career is over, even if he is acquitted on all the charges, which is unlikely. At best, he can hope to keep his job as an FBI Agent, if he wins acquittal. The chances he will ever advance or get a good assignment again are minuscule.
If you carry a gun, carry pepper spray, PERIOD. Lacking a non-lethal force option implies that all you are willing and capable of doing to defend yourself and your loved ones is to kill someone. That’s not a rational decision.
Whether it was necessary to do anything in the dog incident at all is questionable but using pepper spray as a defensive tool would have had less consequences. Also try to avoid or deal with having irrational fears about dogs.
The important thing in viewing these stories is not to harsh on the persons involved because that’s easy but non-productive. Rather, try to learn something from their misfortunes.
- Do you consistently carry a non-lethal force option?
- Have you practiced with your NL force option using an inert version?
- If you have irrational fears, have you confronted them and programmed yourself with a rational response to the trigger?
- Have you mentally and physically practiced breaking contact?
Gaining knowledge from others’ experiences is one of the useful legs of Will Rogers’ learning triad. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/116468-there-are-three-kinds-of-men-the-ones-that-learn
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
- Real Shootouts of the LAPD https://realshootoutsofthelapd.com
- Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
- Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
- Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
- Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
- Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
- Package deal of Serious Mistakes, Indoor Sessions, Concealed Carry, and Shooting Your Black Rifle (20% off) https://store.payloadz.com/details/2644448-ebooks-sports-shooting-drills-package.html
Children are creative
The statement was that the child put a speaker next to (the shelf) to crawl up and get (the gun)
Crawford County Prosecutor Matt Crall
Grandmother charged after her 4-year-old Galion grandson shoots himself dead with her unsecured pistol.
The woman had left a loaded.22 caliber, semi-automatic pistol on top of a shelf.
Leaving loaded and unsecured guns lying around, even on a top shelf, is irresponsible. I’ve known a number of people who think that’s an acceptable practice but it’s actually idiotic. When children live in the household, as the boy did in this case, it’s even worse, if that’s possible.
I’ve been encouraged to write a Second Edition of Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make. Sadly, I’ve acquired a lot of new material, although all of it follows the same pattern.
OTOH, this murderer should simply be thrown into an active volcano forthwith.
According to police, the shooter fired bullets at a residence from a nearby alleyway, and one of those bullets struck Trinity, who was jumping [on a trampoline] with friends.
Minn. Girl, 9, Is Fatally Shot While Jumping on Trampoline with Her Friends
https://people.com/crime/minnestota-girl-fatally-shot-jumping-trampoline/
Breaking Contact (Part 5)
#mindsetmonday
Our goal in personal protection is to force a break in contact. We want them to go away, or we want to go away. One or the other.
The final segment of the CCW Safe Series about my concept of Breaking Contact is posted.
https://ccwsafe.com/blog/breaking-contact-pt-5
This edition focuses on success stories. I like those.
[W]hen a concealed carrier enters a self-defense situation with the goal of breaking contact — as opposed to a goal of killing or disabling an attacker — the defender has a substantially higher likelihood of avoiding a deadly shooting or making a successful self-defense claim when all else fails.
Shawn Vincent
Leg shots
Initial investigation revealed several individuals were in the home watching tv and playing games through the night. A 37-year-old Ridgely, Maryland man became enraged and began attacking the other occupants with a knife. At some point during the altercation, one of the stabbing victims retrieved a shotgun and shot the male subject in the leg.
The 37-year-old Ridgely man was transported by EMS to Bayhealth Kent General where he was pronounced dead.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-stabbing-spree-home-shot-killed-victims/story?id=77936754
So much for the idea that shooting someone in the leg isn’t the application of deadly force. The Village Idiot JRB has no clue but that’s no surprise.
The Delaware State POlice initial report for the incident.
https://dsp.delaware.gov/2021/05/26/update-homicide-investigation-police-activity-hartly/
Cover is your friend
The teen ducked behind a tree. The prosecutor’s report said one of the rounds fired by the deputy was recovered later from that tree, and several other rounds were recovered from other trees between the teen and the deputy.
A deputy and a trooper mistakenly fired 8 rounds at an innocent boy.
Be aware of not only who is around you but what is around you, including things that can prevent you from getting ventilated.
Trooper 1 stated to investigators that at the time he exited his patrol vehicle he believed the gunshots he was hearing (Deputy 1’s gunshots) were actually that of LEATHERMAN towards himself. He stated he fired in self-defense at LEATHERMAN believing he was being shot at.
My Battalion Commander made the comment during Civil Disturbance training that the POlice are, at most, used to operating in pairs. Pairs generally only exist in large urban areas. When an ad hoc group of POlice come together, such as in this case, it’s very easy for things to go South quickly. The LAPD has very strict requirements for a supervisor to assume command as Incident Commander when groups of officers assemble. In cases such as this no such control mechanism is possible and things can easily get out of hand, as they did. My advice is that if you see a group of POlice from different agencies gathering, leave the area immediately.
Note also that Officer 1 was downrange of Deputy 1 and Trooper 1 while they were firing at the innocent bystander. Struggling with Subject 1 on the ground to take him into custody might have saved that Officer’s life.
The full 27 page report from the State’s Attorney about the incident is available to download from the news article.
Another of my rules is that if I were to hear shots fired, I am going the other way as quickly as I can. Nothing good comes from ‘running to the sound of guns’ as a Private Citizen. Something something, curiosity killed the cat, something something.
Being Mindful Of and Avoiding Danger
#mindsetmonday
Dr. Sherman House, the Real Dr. House™, https://civiliandefender.com/ was an armored truck guard for quite a while. He turned me on to the fact that such robberies often begin with unannounced gunfire by the robbers. When I see an armored truck at a grocery store or other place, I wait in my car until after it leaves.
Armored truck guard shot in the face during robbery attempt at NE Houston bank, HPD says
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
Real Shootouts of the LAPD https://realshootoutsofthelapd.com/
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
Package deal of Serious Mistakes, Indoor Sessions, Concealed Carry, and Shooting Your Black Rifle (20% off) https://store.payloadz.com/details/2644448-ebooks-sports-shooting-drills-package.html
Dry Practice Essentials – Part 1
‘Dryfire is boring AF’ is a common complaint in the firearms community. Paradoxically, Abraham Lincoln addressed that issue with his comment. Preparation is the way to make dry practice more interesting and productive. Doing some preparation for your dry practice session is the essential first step. As the late William Aprill was fond of saying:
Spontaneity is overrated.
To keep it from being boring, make your sessions into a creative endeavor. Have a plan for the session, include something other than pure dry practice, e.g., make a target, and use some outside stimuli to add to the experience. Having a specific target that you use only for dry practice and then conceal or take down also contributes to improving the safety aspect of your sessions. Dry practicing on light switches, TVs, the dog, etc. is dangerous and can lead to a Negative Outcome.
Your plan might consist of nothing more than practicing your State’s (or any State’s) Carry License qualification course. As an example, here’s what the Louisiana Qualification Course looks like.
The session itself, without the explanations in the video, takes about five minutes. Although this session looks simplistic, there are 10 different skills practiced. They’re explained in the post What does effective Dry Practice actually look like?
It also helps to keep in mind Tom Givens‘ comment about the recency of your practice; whether dry or live:
How much you last practiced isn’t as important as when you last practiced.
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
Real Shootouts of the LAPD https://realshootoutsofthelapd.com/
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
Package deal of Serious Mistakes, Indoor Sessions, Concealed Carry, and Shooting Your Black Rifle (20% off) https://store.payloadz.com/details/2644448-ebooks-sports-shooting-drills-package.html
Breaking Contact (Part 4)
Breaking Contact Part 4 is up.
https://ccwsafe.com/blog/breaking-contact-pt-4
Marissa Alexander, Alexander Weiss, and Jerome Ersland are the cases discussed in the post.
The lesson for concealed carriers is that if you manage to break contact with a perceived aggressor, do not re-engage.
tacticalprofessor 
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