Duel at the Dumbster (Part VI)
Something similar to the Snow Murders happened several years ago. I call it Duel at the Dumbster and wrote a series of articles about it.
Part I https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-i/
Part II https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-ii/
Part III https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-iii/
The Snow Murders prompted me to find out what had transpired for the shooters in the meantime. Whoops, Covid affected the father and son also. Their trial has been delayed indefinitely.
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article242568611.html
The Dumbster Fire video was previously available on LiveLeak, entitled Two Fat Hillbillies Kill [Man whose mouth writes checks that his ass can’t cash] Over Garbage but it doesn’t seem to be available there anymore. Fortunately, the star-telegram update article also includes the full video of that foolish confrontation and killing.
Unlike Jeffrey Spaide, who committed suicide after killing the Goys, no doubt the legal fees for the Millers are continuing to run. Even if they are found Not Guilty, they will be in hock to their lawyers for the rest of their lives.
The year after the Duel, I made a visit to the site as part of my trip to the SHOT Show.
Duel (Part IV)
Duel (Part V)
“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.”
–Mario Puzo in The Godfather
More surreal than I thought
I rewatched the video of the Snow murders. It was even more surreal than I initially realized.
Lisa Goy got her phone out of her pocket after Spaide re-emerged from his home. Once she had the phone out, she said “Go ahead” three times as she closed the distance toward Spaide. She held the phone up in the air. Between Spaide’s sixth and seventh shots, she said, “You’re on video.”
Spaide then fired his seventh shot, which hit James Goy. Lisa Goy then holds the phone even higher as she takes another step toward Spaide. Note her foot placement as compared to just before her husband was shot.
Spaide then shoots her with his eighth shot.
As someone said, it’s like they were in separate realities at the moment. Sort of like Tenet.
Someone correctly commented on my Facebook post, “Your last words shouldn’t be ‘Go Ahead!'” To which I added, “Or ‘You’re on video.'”
Don’t encourage people
If someone threatens (to kill) you with a gun, don’t encourage them. We saw that in the Duel at the Dumbster also.
“Lisa Goy at one point returns to her shoveling, but stops again to call Spaide ‘scum’ in the seconds before he returns with a handgun.
‘Go ahead,’ she urges her armed neighbor. ‘Go ahead.’
The group continues to shout until Spaide opens fire on the couple, striking them both several times.”
https://www.aol.com/news/surveillance-video-shows-pennsylvania-couple-160733616.html
Nuances
The Spirit of the Bayonet
“The will to meet and destroy the enemy in hand-to-hand combat is the spirit of the bayonet. It springs from the fighter’s confidence, courage, and grim determination, and is the result of vigorous training. Through training, the fighting instinct of the individual soldier is developed to the highest point. The will to use the bayonet first appears in the trainee when he begins to handle it with facility, and increases as his confidence grows. The full development of his physical prowess and complete confidence in his weapon culminates in the final expression of the spirit of the bayonet — fierce and relentless destruction of the enemy.”
Field Manual 23-25 Bayonet –October 1943 edition
Note the subtle distinction between the ‘spirit’ of the bayonet, “The will to meet and destroy the enemy in hand-to-hand combat” and the ‘final expression’ of the spirit of the bayonet, “fierce and relentless destruction of the enemy.” The first is philosophical, the second operational.
Recognizing how to put a concept into operation is an important step in turning information into knowledge. For instance, how can we operationalize the “O-O-D-A Loop?” My colleague Melody Lauer once asked me:
How do I use the OODA Loop? That’s not clear to me.
At the time, I didn’t have a good answer for her.
Now, I would say that the basis for making Boyd’s process operational is to dig deep into Orient. Boyd himself said:
Orientation is the schwerpunkt. It shapes the way we interact with the environment–hence orientation shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. [emphasis mine] –Organic Design for Command and Control, slide 16
“I’ll shoot anyone I find in my house” is an example of an input to Orientation, probably a Cultural Heritage artifact from English common law of centuries ago. When we acquire New Information through training, observation, or experience, that also becomes an input to our Orientation. Then comes the hard part, Analysis / Synthesis. All the other inputs to Orientation coalesce through Analysis / Synthesis into decision-making that occurs ahead of an incident rather than during the incident. We may need to modify the plan and decisions as an incident unfolds, but that’s much easier and faster to do than making a plan up on the spot.
Examining, expanding, and integrating all of our Orientation inputs is what allows us to ‘make’ good decisions quickly. When we have formed a solid Orientation, we are actually not making decisions in the moment, rather we are ‘choosing’ from a menu of pre-made decisions available to us because we’ve already considered the benefits, objectives, and consequences and made a rational decision about what’s in our best interests. It’s how we avoid making Serious Mistakes. http://seriousgunownermistakes.com/
My thanks to Melody and Joseph Edward Timbs for provoking me to write this post. Also thanks to Steve Moses, Shawn Vincent, and Don West of CCWSafe for inviting me to participate in a thought provoking podcast about the topic.
Tactical Decision Making (Part I)
What’s more important; keeping your leg or chasing someone and trying to get them to “do the right thing?” Intervention, especially on behalf of a commercial establishment, is rarely the way to set yourself up for success.
Customer says he lost a leg trying to stop thief at NC grocery store. Now he’s suing[sic]
https://news.yahoo.com/customer-says-lost-leg-trying-174917434.html
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-– Inigo Montoya
My main presentation at Paul-E-Palooza 2 was entitled Tactical Decision Exercises. I wanted to do it because I have come to feel we in the training community concentrate on teaching marksmanship and manipulation skills at the expense of tactics and decision-making skills. As strange as it sounds, coming from someone of my background, I think that’s a problem. When I look at incidents that have had negative outcomes for the Citizen, it’s rarely because of a failure of mechanical skills. Most of the time, the failure is due to a bad decision, poor tactics, or a combination of both.
Trainers often refer to the Holy Grail of achieving ‘unconscious competence.’ However, good decision-making is usually a thoughtful conscious process. Consequently, I’m not sure that focusing our training methodologies on an…
View original post 687 more words
Classic Book Review – Principles of Personal Defense
If one lives through a fight, we will assume that he is better off than if he does not, even though he may be thereafter confronted with legal action.
One of the little jewels in Jeff Cooper’s book Principles of Personal Defense.
My review of the book is a Public post on my Patreon page.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/46379912
If you would like to subscribe to all of my Patreon posts, here is the link.
Working with .22s
#ttptuesday
Yesterday’s post mentioned the M&P 22 Compact pistol. It’s an excellent pistol and worked well on the range. Once we found the ammo it liked, it worked flawlessly. I suspect it may have had a dirty chamber that caused the initial functioning issues.
Here are some tips about working with .22 caliber pistols, in general.
First of all, keep them clean. The .22 Long Rifle round is dirty. The small size of the ammunition and guns make the gun’s tolerances more critical and dirt in the process isn’t helpful. The gun doesn’t need to be as clean as a dinner plate but gobs of goo certainly don’t help functioning.
Helpful accessories when shooting .22 LR firearms
- Coghlan’s Aluminum Hooked Tent Peg, 7 inch (69 cents at Walmart)
- Dry lube
- Portable cleaning rod and brushes
- Bore snake
- #4 drywall anchors ($3.99 at Home Despot)
The tent peg is for pushing out cases or rounds that don’t eject and the extractor won’t pull out. You could use the cleaning rod but the tent peg is stiffer. It’s aluminum so it’s not going to harm your bore. Until you find the ammo your gun prefers or you’re shooting cheap bulk ammo for practice, this is a good tool for clearing stuck cases. Make sure you lock the gun open before inserting it in the bore.
Using a dry lube for .22 firearms goes a long way to keeping them from getting so dirty. The carbon and unburnt powder doesn’t stick to the dry lube the way they do to oil. .22 firearms don’t get very hot so the extra lubrication provided by oil is unnecessary.
When you get finished shooting, run a brush through the bore and chamber a few strokes. Follow up by pulling the bore snake through. Even if you don’t clean the rest of the gun, doing those two things will keep it running for quite a while.
The #4 drywall anchors are to protect the firing pin and breech face when dry practicing. Most .22s need this protection. Snap caps of the centerfire type are not desirable for dry practicing with .22s, they’re for czeching feeding and extraction. Use a new drywall anchor each session and then throw it away. Rotate it slightly in the chamber periodically during each session.
There are magazine loading tools for .22 magazines that make the task of loading the magazine much less of a thumb buster. I don’t have one for the 22 Compact yet but there are two different types I will be trying in the near future.
Test different types of ammo to see which functions best in your gun. Guns will usually work better with some brands than others. CCI Mini-Mags are a good all-purpose ammunition but even they need to be tested in your gun. If you, or someone you know, keeps a .22 for Personal Defense, use good quality ammo in it for that purpose. Don’t use the cheapest bulk ammo you can find and then say the gun is unreliable.
The pros and cons of using a .22 for Personal Defense have been endlessly debated, so let’s not do that here. The fact is that people do, so let’s do it right. Keep the gun clean, lube it, and use good ammo. Odds are that if the ammo comes in a plastic box with individual rounds separated it will work. Ammo that comes in paper boxes tends to be suspect. That’s okay for practice but use good ammo for Defense.
Shooting a .22 can be a lot of fun. If you have a few accessories; it will be even easier. For some segments of the population, they’re the only viable choice.
FTC Notice: all the products in this article were purchased and no compensation is received for mentioning them.
Positive people are a joy to be around
#mindsetmonday
Saturday, I went to a range dedication. Without going into a lot of detail, Corky’s Day, which was the inaugural event for the Hamilton Steel Range in Dahlonega, was a great example to me of how nice it is to be in the company of positive people. In the troubled times that are coming, we all will need to surround ourselves with positive people as much as possible.
The rest is on my Patreon page for Public viewing.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/46101857
Your car is not a holster (again)
Someone entered the unlocked vehicle
Gun, other police equipment stolen from Salina officer’s personal vehicle
https://www.ksal.com/police-equipment-stolen-from-unlocked-car/
“Meanwhile, two more unlocked vehicles were broken in to [sic] in Kipp overnight, as well as one parked in front of a rural Kipp residence. “
In case anyone wonders what ‘Kipp Kansas’ (population <500) looks like, here’s a Google satellite view.
Kipp is part of the Salina, Kansas micropolitan area, a Census Bureau area consisting of two COUNTIES of Kansas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salina,_Kansas_micropolitan_area The two counties had a total population of 61,697, according to the 2010 Census.
My mother used to tell us “Nice people keep their doors closed and locked.” That includes your car and garage door, too. Please don’t leave your gun in there either, just because you’re too lazy to take it into the house with you. Being a POlice is irrelevant.
Goal Setting for 2021
The book The Practicing Mind https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007C8NRSA/ was written by an accomplished musician and concert piano renovator. It contains the following story about when he started playing golf as an adult. The lesson in the story is well worth considering.
even though they had played golf weekly for many years, they still couldn’t accomplish basic things, such as getting the ball up in the air.
…
What I learned from golf was that all my failures in music had stemmed from my lack of understanding the proper mechanics of practicing, of the process of picking a goal, whatever that may be, and applying a steady effort toward achieving it.
The passage about ‘picking a goal, whatever that may be’ is particularly important in developing competency with firearms. The ‘whatever that may be’ part should be well considered as part of the goal setting process. It’s not uncommon for gunowners to place a high priority on marksmanship tasks. However, in the context of using firearms for Personal Protection, there are many implied tasks that complement or even surpass marksmanship in importance.
- Being aware
- Verbalization
- Accessing a weapon
- Moving from place to place safely (e.g. without having an Unintentional Discharge)
- Making reasonable and appropriate decisions
- Coordinating with friends and loved ones
- Etc.
The ammunition deficit will give us all time to work on non-shooting tasks and skills that are, or at least should be, an integral part of our Personal Protection plan. For those who place a priority on their safety and their loved ones’ safety, range time can be re-prioritized to time to practice other skills. Some of those complementary skills do not even involve handling firearms. Others are easily accomplished with an inert or even toy gun.
The enjoyment aspect of the shooting sports is another worthwhile goal. My shooting goal this year is to achieve my Distinguished Expert rating in Shotgun from the NRA. Since I already hold two DE ratings, I will become one of the few Triple Distinguished Experts. My gun club is rebuilding our rimfire range, so I’ll also be able to get back into smallbore rifle shooting, a highly disciplined activity.
On the other hand, my interest in ‘Boyd’s Process,’ of which the ‘O-O-D-A Loop’ is part, has been rekindled. I am going to make a concerted effort to delve deeply into the entire process and produce a written piece and presentation for my Patrons about integrating all the parts of Boyd’s thinking into a cohesive paradigm. That falls into the ‘making reasonable and appropriate decisions’ and is only peripherally concerned with firearms, other than as a backup tool.
Think about what your goals are for 2021 for firearms and Personal Protection. Decide what a measurable indicator for reaching each of your goals would be and then make a plan for getting there. That is a different process than ‘New Year’s resolutions,’ which generally are ephemeral and therefore more easily dismissed than a goal with a concrete plan.
FTC notice: I receive no commission for any links mentioned in this post.
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