Creating dryfire recordings
A friend of mine emailed me the following question.
Claude, what device do you use to make a digital audio recording? How do you transfer the digital recording to your computer?
I had mentioned to him the recording I recently made for an Enhanced Standard version, i.e., not so easy I could pass it blindfolded, of the State of Ill-Annoy Police Qualification Course. I made the recording for dryfire practice but I could use it for livefire, too.
One of the few apps I have on my phone is an audio recorder called Mini Recorder Free. I have a Windows phone but the app is also available for Android. It’s very easy to use and records the input as MP3 files.
First, I look at a course of fire and write a script for the recording. When I’m happy with the script, I record the narration of the course of fire, usually as one file. Where the beeps are supposed to go, I say ‘beep beep’ as a place marker.
Then I record the beeps from my CED 6000 timer by putting the microphone next to the timer. Each of the different times is recorded as a single set of beeps. I can insert each beep file multiple times into the narrative, where that’s appropriate.
I connect my phone to my computer and copy the narrative and beep files to the computer. Finally, I edit them together with Wavepad Sound Editor, which I downloaded from the Internet. Undesirable noises get edited out and I standardize the spacing between the stages so there’s enough time to re-holster, change hands, or do other preparatory work for each string.
Since I don’t have a 15 yard range in my apartment, I create reduced scale targets to use for dryfire. I create the targets by scaling them with Excel.
A reduced scale target also allows me to conceal my target when I’m not dryfiring, which is something I believe in very strongly. The 12 shot drill is on the back of my wall hanging.
On some of my recordings, I substitute a gunshot sound for the start beep. It just depends on how involved I want to make the recording. For my dryfire recording of the LAPD Bonus Course, I downloaded an audio file of the actual course being shot on the LAPD range. I had to clean that one up a lot but it’s fun to dryfire to because there’s all the range noise, LAPD Rangemaster commands (which sound like a subway conductor), sounds of empty magazines hitting the ground, and gunfire in the background. That’s as close as I can get to an actual range experience in my living room dryfire practice area.
A few of the recordings stay on my phone to use when I’m traveling. I also keep a PDF of the target on my phone so I can print it if I forget to take one along. It fits on one page so it’s easy to print in a motel business center. ISP 7 foot target
At this year’s Rangemaster Tactical Conference, someone mentioned wrapping a zip tie with a piece of colored duct tape on it as a safety insert. It’s a great idea and I’m using that now along with the Rogers Tap-Rack-Trainer. A round can’t be chambered with the tie in place. No disassembly of the gun necessary to put it in and it’s easy to take out, too. A bag of 8 inch ties costs about $2. The zip tie isn’t a snap cap, though, so keep that in mind.
The audio recording of the ISP Course I created is available as a download for 99 cents on my CDBaby store if you don’t feel like doing all that. There are a number of other recordings of interest, too.
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.
Thoughts about the Rangemaster 2016 Tactical Conference – Part II
The Rangemaster 2016 Tactical Conference was held March 11-13, 2016 in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m continuing to coalesce my thoughts and observations about the Conference.
A friend emailed me today with this question.
For 30 years I have heard the term Dry-fire. The term has been used in articles, in classes, on training videos. Now it is called Dry-Practice. Have we gone politically correct?
Since dryfire is something I work on quite a bit, that’s a question worth addressing in the context of the Conference. Dry Practice, to me, expands the boundaries of what we can work on beyond trigger manipulation. For instance, if you practiced clearing your house with an inert gun, there wouldn’t be any firing, so it would be dry practice.
I considered including a decision-making component, using decisional flash cards I’ve been developing, in my presentation. Due to time constraints, I had to leave it out. That would also be a form of dry practice even though there wouldn’t be any weapons, live or inert, involved; purely a thought exercise.
So, dry fire is actually a subset of dry practice. When it’s used that way, I can accept both definitions.
My class for the Conference was Developing a Dryfire Practice Regimen. I focused the class on fundamental manipulation skills of a pistol that were parallel to what could be seen on a square range. For instance, practicing trigger manipulation, presenting from ready or a holster, malfunction clearance, etc. Fundamental skills should be practiced until we are Unconsciously Competent at them. The more repetitions we have at a task, the more likely we are to develop the UC necessary to free our minds for situational input and decision-making.
Other classes at the Conference refined, extrapolated, or demonstrated the need for dry practice. For instance, John Hearne’s presentation Dry Practice: An Evidence Based Approach included several items of physiological theory about why dry practice is an effective form of practice. John’s Master’s degree concentration was in Research Methods so he was very thorough about his research and how he applied it to our Art. Larry Lindenman’s Managing the Don’t Shoot was taught using inert weapons. The students undertook a significant number of progressively complex exercises with multiple repetitions about how to take a threat at gunpoint without firing. Tom Givens’ Low Light Equipment class included considerable material about flashlight technique. All the techniques Tom presented could be practiced dry without going to the range. Low light livefire should simply be a verification of the manipulation skills developed in dry practice. That is the approach used at the elite Rogers Shooting School.
One attendee was so kind as to bring a set of Dry Fire flash cards he had purchased. It was interesting to look at them. While they might have some long term viability for a few shooters, there were some serious barriers to using them for skill development. Most notably, the cards assumed the user was familiar with the drills indicated on the cards. I.e., the creator took his subject matter knowledge for granted. Second, there really was no information provided about how to use the cards as part of a practice regimen. It’s important that we either have a logical sequence for building our skills or that we deliberately work, at random, skills we have already developed to maintain instant recall of our UC. Without a program for doing one sequence eventually followed by the other, the cards’ usefulness is limited, in my opinion.
Caleb Causey and I had an interesting conversation about non-verbal communication. It made me realize how powerful non-verbals can be between an instructor and a student. Chuck Haggard and I have discussed the non-verbal communication that goes on between predators and potential prey. One of the most important components of interacting with predators is to ‘fail the interview.’ Predators frequently observe whom they wish to prey upon in order to make a decision about whether to proceed with the predation. This observation is the initial component of the ‘interview.’ Appearing to be uncooperative from a distance may avert the need for a verbal or physical interaction at all. Being uncooperative is something that can be practiced dry, as well, and doesn’t necessarily require equipment.
More about the Conference next time.
Initial thoughts about the Rangemaster 2016 Tactical Conference
The Rangemaster 2016 Tactical Conference is now in the record books. It was held March 11-13, 2016 in Memphis, Tennessee. The gathering included 200+ attendees, almost 30 instructors, and the fine facilities and staff of the Firearms Training Unit, Memphis Police Department Academy.
There was a great deal of material presented, more than could be attended. The Conference focuses on an inter-disciplinary approach to personal protection, so there is a lot more than just firearms and shooting involved. There was a challenging pistol match that could be shot, though; 158 people chose to shoot it.
The class I gave was Developing a Dryfire Practice Regimen. I was very gratified by the turnout of 50+ students. As the saying goes, ‘The best way to learn something is to teach it.’ Over the course of creating my presentation, my dryfire techniques became even more refined. One attendee also gave me a new training aid I wasn’t aware of. As in every class I teach, I also learn from the students.
The other classes I attended were:
- Managing the Don’t Shoot – Larry Lindenman
- Gaming the Streetz – Eve Kulczar
- Low Light Equipment – Tom Givens
- Optimizing Classroom Instruction – Tiffany Johnson, Esq.
- Metro-Tactical – Julie Thomas
- Urban Insurgency – Dr. Martin Topper
- Lasers, Red Dots, Iron Sights – Karl Rehn
- FBI Research: The Deadly Mix – John Hearne
- International Terror Operations – Gary Greco/John Holschen
- Dry Practice: An Evidence Based Approach – John Hearne
One of the pleasures of going to Conferences is getting to talk and catch up with my peers. Some of the conversations I had were:
- Cecil Burch – the Venn Diagram of Realization, instructor goals in attending conferences
- Paul Sharp – human gun interaction
- Skip Gochenour – Homicide trials
- Caleb Causey – Non-verbal communication
- Tom Givens – Standards that replicate incident skills
- Richard Jenkins – Dry Fire Flash Cards and skill development
- John Farnam – Attitudes of older fighters
- Gary Greco – American soccer team development, American Mindset (competition and confront/dominate)
- John Murphy – immediacy of action
- Mark Luell – I won’t let you take this from me
- Chuck Haggard – performance of .38 Special and .22 LR in gel and adversaries, S&W metal autoloader maintenance
- Karl Rehn – iron sights, lasers, and red dots
- Julie Thomas – tuning a class presentation
I’ll have more to report about the Conference in future posts.
The quality of training
There have been a number of recent rants about the quality of training and why would students choose one trainer over others.
The following is my commentary from a thread on Facebook:
An issue with rants about the quality of trainers is the underlying assumption that people actually want to be ‘trained.’ That’s not necessarily true. In general, people either want to be entertained or have their tickets punched. Neither of those two objectives has anything to do with training.
Further, real training involves some kind of measurement. As Greg Hamilton succinctly put it ‘without testing there has been no training.’ There are many forms testing can take but it has to be a part of training. Many, if not most, adults have never left high school emotionally. Consequently, they have an inordinate and irrational fear of performance measurement. That’s another reason they’re not really interested in being ‘trained.’ Being tested requires taking a large risk of finding out you’re not the hot shot you like to think you are. Most people have enough smarts to realize that, at best, they’re Walter Mitty, and, at worst, they’re grossly incompetent. They take great steps to protect their egos because of this.
So, what people seek out is Entertainment, Comfort, and Convenience. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s face it, most people live boring lives filled with relentless drudgery and lack of fulfillment.
As the saying goes ‘you get what you pay for.’ The payment in the context of real training is not just money but also emotional energy and commitment. Very few people are willing to make that kind of payment; they limit themselves to paying with money only.
In the end, the market for training, as well as the training provided, will generally follow a bell curve. At the ends, really good and really bad, while the huge middle segment will be mostly mediocre. In most cases, that’s enough.
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.
The Medina, ND Shootout – 1983
In 1983, a very violent gunbattle took place in Medina, North Dakota. Although less well known than the Miami Massacre in 1986, it was every bit as bloody and violent. Something it had in common with the Miami Massacre was the decisiveness of long guns at pistol fight ranges and preparation for conflict.
On one side was a task force of US Marshals and local law enforcement officers. On the other side were members of a local Posse Comitatus group. Casualties were high on both sides. Four months later, a second related encounter, hundreds of miles away, brought more loss of life.
The Prelude
Gordon Kahl was a Midwestern farmer and Federal tax resister. He was a member of a loosely knit organization called the Posse Comitatus. The Posse recognized no authority above the county level and held many hateful beliefs. He had been imprisoned for Federal tax evasion but had been released on probation. However, he failed to report to his Probation Officer and a Federal warrant for his arrest was issued.
The US Marshal’s Office in North Dakota determined to take him into custody as a result of information received that Kahl was attending a meeting in Medina. The Marshal, Ken Muir, and three Deputies; Carl Wigglesworth, James Hopson Jr., and Robert Cheshire drove to Medina to make the arrest. There, they were joined by a Stutsman County Deputy Sheriff, Bradley Kapp, and a Medina Police Officer, Steve Schnabel.
On request of the Medina police Chief, the determination was made to conduct the arrest just outside of town. This was because Kahl was known to carry a Mini-14 rifle at all times. The Chief did not wish to have violence within the town itself that would endanger the townspeople.
A roadblock was set up on the route out of town by Marshal Muir, Deputy Wigglesworth, and Officer Schnabel. The remaining Deputies stayed in town to follow Kahl once he left the meeting. Deputy Kapp joined Deputy Marshals Cheshire and Hopson in the Ramcharger.
Accompanying Kahl to the meeting were his wife, Joan, his son, Yorie Kahl, his friends, Scott Faul, Vernon Wagner, and Dave Broer. Several of the males in the Kahl party were armed with rifles. Joan was not armed.
When the meeting finished, the Kahl party departed town in two vehicles, unknowingly headed toward the roadblock. The stage was set for a bloody shootout.
In the aftermath of the shootout, Muir and Cheshire would lie dead. Hopson, Kapp, Schnabel, and Yorie Kahl would be seriously wounded. Yorie Kahl and Scott Faul would be convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Gordon Kahl was killed, along with Lawrence County (Arkansas) Sheriff Gene Matthews, the following June. A nationwide manhunt had tracked him to Arkansas where a confrontation with local and Federal law enforcement officers took place.
The Marshals Service memorial to Muir and Cheshire can be found here.
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.
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