Using Cover Effectively
#fridayfundamentals
Active Self Protection recently made a good video about last December’s murder of a retired Chicargo firefighter during a carjacking.
Unfortunately it won’t embed because it’s Age Restricted. If you care to watch it, this is what to search for.
John made an important point in his video that bears reiteration and amplification.
Appropriate and effective use of cover is an important tactic in protecting ourselves.
John Correia
Things to keep in mind about using cover.
- Cover protects us from bullets and contact weapon attacks.
- Any cover can be defeated, either by adequate weaponry or by maneuver.
Here’s my initial video commentary about the situation. It wasn’t as simple as it looks at first glance.
Whether the second Carjacker would have shot LT Williams will never be known but it cannot be discounted as a possibility. There’s a good chance he was the leader of the crew and probably very dangerous. It wasn’t his first rodeo.
The incident provides a good example of the difficulties faced when dealing with multiple attackers. LT Williams was in a very difficult position as a result of this attack. We will never know if he even saw the second armed Carjacker and could have realized that he was vulnerable to being flanked. This was a well-rehearsed Carjacking crew with a good SOP. One comment on the YouTube video about the incident opined that this same crew had tried to Carjack him earlier and he had only escaped by luck.
Here’s the complete video of the incident on YouTube.
Disregard the TV station’s gauche and inappropriate invitation to Like and Subscribe at the end.
This was the funniest comment on the YouTube video. It’s unclear which person the comment is about.
Another of John’s points was that it’s important to keep in mind our mission. As Armed Citizens, we don’t need to get the bracelets on a criminal, we just need to force a Break In Contact and then go home.
My first LAPD Shootouts book is based on off-duty incidents at home. It provides a great deal more documentation and explanation of what Home Defense with a firearm really looks like than news reports. The lessons learned apply whether you’re a POlice officer or an Armed Citizen.
What’s the likelihood that something unpleasant is going to happen?
Stupid people, stupid places, stupid things. This is a perfect example.
Going to a birthday memorial service (lasting until 12:30 am) to honor the memory of a person who was killed while conducting a carjacking. That fulfills all of the criteria. What’s the likelihood that something unpleasant is going to happen?
13 People Shot At Chicago House Party Honoring A Man Killed [while carjacking] In April
Note also that there were three different shooting scenes. 1) The initial shooting in the home, 2) one of the shooters outside waiting for people to come out and randomly shooting at them, and 3) another shooter firing at a vehicle going down the street.
‘We can’t normalize this kind of behavior,’ [Chicargo Mayor] Lightfoot said.
Roger that transmission.
Consistency
Consistent. Merriam-Webster defines it as:
marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity: free from variation or contradiction
During his Technical Handgun: Tests and Standards class last weekend, John Johnston of Ballistic Radio commented to me that the class had been heavily influenced by two conversations he and I had. In one, I said
You’re a good shooter but your consistency sucks.
He took that to heart and developed a personal program to increase his consistency. Technical Handgun is his road show about how shooters can use a personal program to increase their consistency and competency. Good shooting, even decent shooting, is the result of consistency. By that I mean the ability to perform at some level with a high degree of regularity. As we develop our consistency, the level we are able to perform at ‘on demand’ increases. Many shooters are perfectly content with being incompetent. Many others are not but don’t know how to go about increasing their competency.
Circumstances of a murder
In lieu of #wheelgunwednesday, an interesting and sad case study came up on Facebook. It is a personal experience and something I have never forgotten.
While I was still living in Chicargo, I often took public transit, especially the Elevated trains. One Sunday morning, I was going to play a softball game. However, the POlice had closed the Elevated station. A woman had been raped and murdered and a would-be rescuer stabbed within an inch of his life at 10AM on an otherwise beautiful Sunday morning on the platform.
A rare second cup of coffee kept me out of that situation. I never have a second cup. To this day, I still wonder if I could have done a hip throw (a Hand to Gland Combat technique) on the criminal onto the third rail. Or maybe I would have ended up like the would be rescuer. He was a runner; the paper said if he hadn’t been in such great shape he would have died too.
My Guardian Angel was looking out for me, as is often the case.
The circumstances of the incident were as follows:
tacticalprofessor 
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