ARMED CITIZEN – JUNE 2025
Visualization is a powerful tool for survival. Here are some real life incidents from the Official NRA Journals as food for thought.
In Chicago, a 66-year-old man was walking his dog around 6 a.m. on April 8 when he saw two men tapping something on the glass of a vehicle. He later told reporters that initially he thought it was a cellphone but then realized it was a gun pointed at the person inside the vehicle. One of the two men called out to him to “get the […] out of here before I shoot you,” but before he could comply, they fired shots at him. Thankfully, the man had his own firearm and returned fire. The men continued shooting toward him, but soon got into a waiting car and fled. The legally armed citizen suffered one superficial gunshot wound through his leg but was quickly treated and released. “It’s getting rough in Chicago,” the defender said. “And, Mayor Johnson, you ain’t got enough police force.” (abc7chicago.com, Chicago, Ill., 4/8/25)
https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/content/the-armed-citizen-may-30-2025/
In Tulsa, Okla., a man was working on a car in his driveway on March 24 when a homeless man with a baseball bat approached. The homeowner knew the man approaching and had sometimes bought him meals. The homeless man, however, said he was going to teach the homeowner a lesson and suddenly struck him in the face, breaking the bat in two. The homeowner defended himself by shooting the man twice. He then tried to help the assailant, but the man died of his wounds. Police allowed the armed citizen to return home after reviewing security camera footage. (newson6.com, Tulsa, Okla., 3/26/25)
A man in Hardeeville, S.C., attempted a string of armed assaults the night of March 23. Police received a call about the man attempting to carjack a food-delivery driver, but, as they responded to that call, they heard gunshots nearby. The man who’d attempted the carjacking had reportedly fired several shots near a motel, but police weren’t sure if he was targeting anyone in that incident. The suspect then attempted another carjacking outside another motel, firing at the driver once, but this driver was armed and returned fire, striking the assailant at least three times and killing him. The investigation revealed the carjacker had also been encountered trespassing and also in a drug-related investigation in the days leading up to the armed assaults, but his behavior had not been violent in those incidents. Police indicated this investigation remained open, but they believed the armed citizen had acted in self-defense. (islandpacket.com, Hilton Head, S.C., 3/26/25)
https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/crime/article303168656.html
https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/content/the-armed-citizen-may-30-2025/
A man in Philadelphia broke into a home around 1:30 a.m. on March 27 and was shot in the chest and killed by the 70-year-old homeowner. Police indicated the investigation was ongoing, but they believed it to be an attempted burglary and lawful self-defense situation. (nbcphiladelphia.com, Philadelphia, Pa., 3/27/25)
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/suspect-arrested-man-killed-point-breeze/4144722/
Several people allegedly forced their way into a home in Los Banos, Calif., around 2 a.m. on March 28. The homeowner heard a commotion and discovered the armed intruders. He ran to get his own firearm, whereupon the suspects and homeowner shot at each other (details are vague in reports). The suspects fled, with some leaving in an unknown vehicle, but two suspects with gunshot wounds were later found and taken to the hospital for treatment. The investigation remains open. (kmph.com, Fresno, Calif., 3/28/25)
https://kmph.com/news/local/homeowner-shoots-two-after-home-invasion
In San Antonio, a 47-year-old man entered a shop on the afternoon of April 1 and confronted an employee because he was dissatisfied with the electronics repair service performed on his phone. The unhappy customer then produced a firearm and shot the 35-yearold clerk. Another employee saw the altercation and attempted to defend the clerk and other employees by shooting and killing the assailant. No other injuries were reported, and the armed citizen is not facing charges. Police told reporters “[The] suspect was actively shooting somebody in the store, so that employee stepped up and took care of that. [He] neutralized the threat.” (ksat.com and foxsanantonio.com, San Antonio, Texas, 4/1/25)
Two people allegedly broke into a home in Chino Hills, Calif., through a glass door on a second-floor balcony around 8:30 p.m. on April 2. A homeowner fired at them, causing them to flee. It was unclear whether either of the suspects were struck. Police were unable to locate them and no arrests were made. (ktla.com, Los Angeles, Calif., 4/3/25)
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/homeowner-fires-at-suspect/
A 40-year-old man in Jackson, Mich., fired one shot at a 47-year-old man who was coming up his stairs after breaking a basement window just before 6 a.m. on April 7, striking the alleged intruder in the neck. The suspect was taken to the hospital in critical condition and reportedly admitted breaking in, thinking no one was in the home. (mlive.com, Grand Rapids, Mich., 4/7/25)
https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2025/04/man-shot-in-neck-while-breaking-into-jackson-home.html
Anyone is free to quote or reproduce these accounts.
For bonus features, visit “The Armed Citizen Blog” at americanrifleman.org. Share this column online at nrapublications.org.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – August 2024
The August edition showcases mindset and tactics. This month, I’m including some supplemental incidents that came to light after the initial post.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/good-bad-and-111172309
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – August 2024
The Good
Robbery suspect pepper-sprayed Norwalk store owner, who shot him
Just because you start out behind the Power Curve, that doesn’t mean you can’t regain the initiative. Keep your wits about you and fight through it.
The Bad
DC man who said he shot 13-year-old boy in self-defense convicted of manslaughter
In military terminology, if you go outside, you have turned a Defense, in which you have a 3 to 1 advantage, into a Movement to Contact, in which the odds are, at best, even and possibly against you. In legal concept, the odds definitely turn against you. Maintain your advantage, don’t squander it.
The Ugly
Suspect shot by Bystander during Attempted Carjacking
The original incident is a candidate for the Good. But the comments on the Yahoo article are Ugly.
Enjoy!
If you like my work, join me on Patreon where I post more in-depth articles about shooting, marksmanship, and incident analysis.
https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor
The GBU isn’t drawn from The Armed Citizen column of the official NRA Journals but the August edition of The Armed Citizen is attached. Rather than an obsessive interest in ‘the worst case scenario,’ it shows what the vast majority of Defensive Gun Uses really look like.
Some relevant incidents from August surfaced later.
Good
SELF-DEFENSE: Boy who killed Cape Coral mother’s boyfriend will not be charged
“Police say when the brother got to the home, Mess Jr. was standing outside with a solid wooden rod and brass knuckles.
Detectives say Mess Jr. started beating up the brother in front of the young boy.
According to police, the boy got a gun and pointed it at Mess Jr. as a warning. However, police say the man kept beating the boy’s uncle.
‘At that point, the son was in fear for his uncle’s life,’ police said.
The young boy fired multiple shots, killing Mess Jr.”
Sad that the boy had to kill the man but Good that the facts of the case vindicated him.
Bad
Cincinnati area smoke shop manager sentenced for role in fatal shooting during break-in
“CINCINNATI (WKRC) – The manager of a Delhi Township smoke shop was sentenced to eight to nine years in prison for firing on a group of burglars during a break-in.
Thacker opened fire immediately and kept firing while the burglars were running and driving away.”
https://local12.com/news/local/cincinnati-area-smoke-shop-manager-sentenced-role-fatal-shooting-during-break-in-delhi-township-tony-thacker-vip-travis-johnson-amontae-carter-crime-accomplice-prison
Chasing criminals and shooting at them after they have broken contact places a righteous defender in a very precarious legal situation. Once they remember they’re late for their root canal, let them go, lock the door if you can, call the POlice, and get your gun out of sight. Preplan and mentally rehearse your post-confrontation actions just as much as your actions during the confrontation.
A 2-year-old accidentally shot and wounded his mother’s boyfriend, police say
“According to a preliminary investigation, the man was getting ready to leave the house Monday morning and had put the gun on a nearby chair when the toddler accidentally fired the gun”
Firearms are relentlessly unforgiving of even the smallest lapse of attention, such as putting a gun down on a nearby chair.
‘Smart and loving’: Colerain family mourns teen killed by friend in apparent accident
“My friend has a .2 long rifle. [sic] There was a bullet in, right, and you need to shoot it to prime it, and I didn’t know it was primed, and I had it, and I accidentally pulled the trigger.”
Rule #1 – All guns are always loaded
Ugly
Detective: Liberty Township grandmother said ‘sorry not sorry’ after shooting 6-month-old granddaughter
“I asked her, ‘Why her grandbaby?’ And she said, ‘That was not my grandbaby.’ And at one point she said, ‘Sorry, not sorry,'” [the detective] said.
She pleaded guilty to felonious assault last month.
https://www.fox19.com/2024/09/17/grandma-pleads-guilty-after-shooting-5-month-old-grandchild-2023/
I have no words.
Vallejo Parking Lot Shooting – Collateral Action
off-duty cop shoots and kills father-of-six
How about that as a way to describe a convicted felon who kept “a semi-automatic handgun with a 30-round magazine [in] its hiding place under the hood”
Hat tip to my friend and colleague Greg Ellifritz https://www.activeresponsetraining.net for bringing up the incident. Greg mentioned the fact that concealing weapons [and drugs] underneath the hood is a common technique for the criminal element.
The Vallejo POlice Department posted several videos of the incident on YouTube.
Video #4 is very useful from the collateral action (avoidance of becoming collateral damage) perspective.
It wasn’t these folks’ first rodeo; you don’t see them trying to get video for WorldStar.
Chinese Whispers and the FBI (Part I)
Chinese Whispers is the game in which a short message is whispered from person to person and then the beginning and ending stories are compared. Often what begins as “I like that girl’s dress” ends up as something like “her Grandmother slept with Batman!”
The FBI released its annual report Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report on October 17. LEOKA will eventually be the starting point for numerous Chinese Whispers in the firearms and law enforcement communities. Whispers will circulate about statistical data such as distances of ‘gunfights,’ lighting conditions, weapon disarms, etc. Often, these claims will not even be based on current data but ‘commonly cited information,’ ‘well known statistics,’ or other such dubious sources.
What can we actually learn from LEOKA about how to be safer? The best single source in the Report is the Summaries of Officers Feloniously Killed and a recent addition, Selected Summaries of Officers Assaulted and Injured with Firearms or Knives/Other Cutting Instruments. Rather than relying on tabular data, which is interesting but not instructive, reading the Summaries provides us clues about circumstances, positioning, and actions. The FBI uses the term ‘The Deadly Mix’ to describe the combination of officer, offender, and circumstances. Reading the Summaries can give us insight about how that mix occurs and its outcome.
The circumstances of incidents in LEOKA are categorized as:
- Disturbance call,
- Arrest situation, including pursuits
- Civil disorder,
- Handling, transporting, custody of prisoner,
- Investigating suspicious person/circumstance,
- Ambush,
- Unprovoked attack,
- Investigative activity,
- Handling person with mental illness,
- Traffic pursuit/stop,
- Tactical situation.
While LEOs have interest in all the categories, Private Citizens can learn from incidents such as Investigating suspicious persons/circumstances and Handling person with mental illness, too. For those who think intervening in others’ affairs is a good idea (I do not), looking at the incidents in the Arrest category is a worthwhile exercise to see how easily things can go bad.
The West Virginia incident in the Summaries of Officers Assaulted and Injured is an entertaining, if somewhat macabre, example of just how weird and unpredictable the life of a police officer can be. The rookie involved certainly got a baptism of fire that day.
On January 1, a lieutenant and a patrol officer with the Lewisburg Police Department were both shot during a traffic stop at 4:20 p.m. The 36-year old veteran lieutenant, who had 15 years of law enforcement experience, and the 20-year-old patrol officer, who been on the job for 1 month, were both wearing body armor when they stopped a man driving a vehicle that had been reported stolen by a law enforcement agency in Texas.
More about LEOKA in the next Part.
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.
Serious mistakes gunowners make
UPDATE: The recording is now available as a download for $9.95. Link
In the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, there have been increasing calls, even by the police, for legally authorized people to carry their guns wherever and whenever they can. In addition, the FBI recently reported a record number of gun sales on Black Friday.
While I firmly believe that Armed Citizens and off-duty police officers can make a difference in preventing and stopping such massacres, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Gunowners, whether carrying a gun or keeping a gun at home, can and do make mistakes, sometimes very serious ones. I have some concern about brand new gunowners carrying their guns with them everywhere without some education about how to do it safely. That may not be a popular view but that’s the way I see it.
I have often chastised the training community for failing to create non-traditional educational materials that can reach a broader array of gunowners. As a step toward alleviating that, I have created a new audio CD called:
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make – Real life examples of how they get into trouble and how to prevent it
This audio CD is a refined version of my Negative Outcomes with Firearms presentation at the 2015 Rangemaster Tactical Conference. My Rangemaster presentation was very well received as groundbreaking about issues that are rarely discussed openly in the gun community.
The ‘Concealed Carry Mistakes’ lists I frequently see usually revolve around simplistic issues, such as:
- Equipment issues; gun, holster, clothing, etc.
- Not getting enough training
- Not ‘knowing’ the law
But the really serious Mistakes that gunowners make are things like:
- Shooting yourself
- Shooting someone you shouldn’t have, either intentionally or unintentionally
- Getting needlessly arrested
- Getting shot by the police
- Leaving guns where unauthorized persons can access them, resulting in tragedies
- Frightening innocent people around you
- Endangering innocent people needlessly
The 12 tracks, over 1 hour, on the CD are:
- Introduction
- Brandishing/threatening
- Chasing after the end of a confrontation
- Downrange failures (shot an innocent while shooting at a threat)
- Intervention
- Lost/stolen guns
- Mistaken identity shootings
- Negligent discharges, including self-inflicted gunshot wounds and Unintentional shootings
- Police Involvement
- Poor judgement
- Unauthorized access (generally by small children)
- Unjustifiable shootings, including warning shots
Each track explains the topic and the issue, provides a real life example of an occurrence and the consequence, and gives some thoughts about how to prevent it. My object is to provoke thinking about the fact that firearms are deadly weapons and can be terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incompetence, and stupidity.
Note that I can’t possibly explain nor control every way to avoid the Mistakes so I don’t assume any liability for those who listen to the recording and still end up having an issue. Life is not fair; if you want guarantees, buy a toaster.
This could be your most important purchase of the year. Making any one of the Mistakes almost inevitably leads to tragedy or significant legal expense. The price of the CD is miniscule in comparison.
The CD is available on my mobile friendly webstore.
Final note: Because I want this information to be widely distributed, I am granting a limited re-distribution license to anyone who purchases the CD. People do it anyway but I will make it formal and encourage it.
Purchase of the CD includes a license to reproduce five (5) copies of the CD for distribution to fellow gunowners. This is a limited license. It does NOT include posting copies of the CD or any of its tracks on the Internet in a downloadable format. Nor does the license include widely broadcasting the CD nor its tracks via email.
Please be safe and encourage fellow gunowners to do the same. I hope I can make a contribution to that with this CD.
tacticalprofessor 
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