Protecting Yourself and Others – Page 8

Fun with Medieval Weaponry

I enjoy learning how to use a katana. In fact I enjoy it so much I plunked down too much money to buy one (although, granted, it’s not sharp but the point is a nasty little bitch). When I discuss that I’m learning how to use a katana with friends their first reaction is usually to ask why (and insinuating that there’s no point and my time is being wasted). Obviously a katana, like any medieval weapon, is pretty lame when compared to modern day lead throwers. But once in a while I come across a story that proves that medieval weapons are still effective at what they do:

Morgan Jr. says McGowan entered his home through a window.

Morgan Jr. says he reached for the spear which he keeps close to his bed.

“This door is open within five seconds, probably within three seconds; this door was open and he was standing no more than two to three feet away from me,” Morgan Jr. says. “I looked at him, I didn’t see any weapons however I was terrified.”

Morgan Jr. says he was able to stab McGowan once.

Polearms: fucking up people’s shit since forever. While a pointy stick may not be the epitome of weaponry today it can still wreck a day if you get within its range.

Oh, and to answer the question of why I’m learning how to use a katana, it’s because I’m a history nerd and the katana has always interested me as a weapon.

Be Afraid You Stupid Slaves

It’s been apparent for a while that the amount of gun-related articles on this site has decreased. Part of this is because I’ve already covered a lot of topics related to firearms and I don’t like to repeat myself. But the other part is because I’m sick and tired of the fear mongering common in many firearms publications. When making an argument for self-defense you don’t need to delve into fear mongering. Statistics and human behavior provide all of the reasons for legal self-defense that you need. Yet many people in the firearms community demand boogeymen and right now, as is so often the case, that boogeyman is who our masters are telling us to fear: Muslims.

Take this story of the Oklahoma man who entered his former place of work and supposedly beheaded one employee and stabbed another before being shot dead:

Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says the alleged suspect, 30-year-old Alton Nolen had just been fired when he drove to the front of the business, hit a vehicle and walked inside.

He walked into the front office area where he met 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and began attacking her with a knife.

Sgt. Lewis confirms the type of knife used in the attack is the same kind used at the plant.

Lewis confirms that Hufford was stabbed several times and that Nolen “severed her head.”

At that point, Lewis claims Nolen met 43-year-old Traci Johnson and began attacking her with the same knife.

Officials say at that point, Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy and a former CEO of the business, shot him as he was actively stabbing Johnson.

As with any story the important part of this one are the actions that occurred during it. Details about the attacker and his history are interesting but there’s seldom irrefutable proof that those details were what lead to his actions. In this case the attacker had a criminal record and was a Muslim convert. You know what that means, make the story about the dangers of Muslims because they’re the new boogeyman. And that’s exactly what some gun publications are doing:

We warned earlier in the week about the threat of “soft target” terrorist attacks by organized terror cells sweeping over our undefended southern border. What we forgot to mention in that missive is the threat of Islamic converts on our own shores, who seem every bit as zealous and dangerous.

Emphasis mine. That’s the opening paragraph to the article. The takeaway seems to be that we, as gun owners, should be afraid of anybody who has converted to Islam, which is a stupid thing to be afraid of. Let’s look at the statistics. There are an estimated 6 to 7 million Muslims in the United States. With such a high population you would think people would be getting murdered by Muslims in this country left and right. But they’re not because Muslims, just like the rest of us, are predominantly nonviolent. Just like any other major religious group, the number of violent individuals within Islam is a minority.

What proof does anybody have that the attacker’s conversion to Islam played any part in his violent actions? Unless concrete evidence exists showing the man’s religious conversion was the reason for his attack implying that it was is speculative at best.

So what should be taken away from the actual story? That predicting when violence will occur is very difficult. This is because violence is often immediate and can happen anywhere. Just because you’re at home or at work doesn’t mean you are shielded from violence. Likewise you usually can’t predict when violence will occur. Any self-defense plan you create should taken these points into consideration. Having a self-defense plan that doesn’t rely on accurately predicting when violence occurs or where it will occur will do you far more good than a plan that relies on such predictions (and that’s why a plan based entirely around avoiding certain areas isn’t very good). Fear mongering encourages people to focus on the details that are seldom useful when developing a self-defense plan. Self-defense plans, being risk management strategies, needs to be developed around solid facts not speculation.

My Anachronistic Self-Defense Tools

When you discuss self-defense tools it’s inevitable that what you use is wrong. There is only one valid set of self-defense tools and that’s the set I personally use! At least that’s how the conversation usually goes whenever I see it crop up. A recent blog post explaining why the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) chose the 9mm has rekindled the defensive caliber wars. Once again we have the “Why carry anything other than 9mm” crowd arguing with the “Everybody should carry a caliber that starts with .4” crowd.

I got drawn into this conversation because, well, I like to troll. My daily carry gun is a Glock 30SF, which is Glock’s sub-compact .45 for those who don’t know. When I mentioned this in the conversation somebody asked why I’m stupid enough to “carry a 100 year-old round?” Setting aside the fact that the 9mm is older than the .45 I fully admit that my choice of defensive rounds is anachronistic. Resources for handgun ammunition research and development is predominantly going towards making a better 9mm. If you want the best modern research can provide in your handgun then you should go with 9mm. Combine this with the fact that handgun ballistics suck regardless of the caliber you use and it’s much smarter to have more small rounds in the gun than fewer larger rounds (to a point obviously, a .22 wouldn’t be my go-to defensive caliber).

So why do I carry a .45 when I admit that a 9mm would be a better choice? Because I like the .45. It’s that simple. And since I’m not constantly involved in gunfights or am likely to be in a situation where having 16 rounds instead of 11 rounds will be the defining factor in whether or not I survive I feel as though I can choose my caliber based heavily on personal preference. While the 9mm is a great handgun cartridge, one that I would argue is superior to the .45, it just doesn’t have that timeless feel, at least for an American like myself, as the .45.

The bottom line is I like anachronisms and combining old with new. I wear mechanical wristwatches, my go-to rifle is an AR chambered in .308, most of my code is written with command line tools, and my toothbrush isn’t electric. On the other hand my wristwatches are made of superior modern materials, go-to rifle is chambered in .308 but based on a more modern platform, code is written using a modern computer with a modern operating system, and manually operated toothbrush has been designed for superior plaque removal. Likewise I choose to carry a .45 but have it loaded in a more modern tactical Tupperware pistol (I like the 1911 but it’s heavier, more expensive, and has more sharp angles to dig into my side).

This justification throws most tactical Tommies into a fit of impotent Internet rage and that amuses me. I guess the fact that my defensive plan doesn’t revolve around what is objectively best and instead takes into consideration what I personally prefer is some kind of mortal sin. And admittedly my plan is unlikely to save my life if the Golden Horde invades the Twin Cities. But I’m happy with what I carry, like to shoot it and therefore practice with it regularly (huge plus side to carrying what I personally prefer), and am covered for a vast majority of defensive situations I’m likely to encounter. Life is too short to throw personal preference to the wind and one can strike a balance between the bestest tools evar and the tools they prefer for reasons unrelated to self-defense.

I also realize that this post, along with other self-defense posts I’ve written, will been seen as bad self-defense advise by many others. Let me make a preemptive rebuttal to those people. Nowhere have I ever claimed to be a good source of self-defense advice. I’m not a certified anything outside of the computer industry and have never claimed to be. The number of defensive situations I’ve been involved in can be counted on the fingers of a double arm amputee. And I’ve never claimed this blog to be anything other than a giant opinion piece. What I offer here is an insight into my thought process when developing a defensive plan in the hopes it helps others think about their defensive plan from a different angle (because the more angles you approach something from the better the overall plan is likely to be).

If You Hire Specialists You Should Probably Listen to Them

Since the breach at Target several other high profile cases of customer credit card data being stolen have arisen. Home Depot is one of the stores whose credit card data was obtained by unknown third parties. What’s interesting about the Home Depot case is that it’s beginning to appear as though the company’s internal security team issued a warning about the problem several years ago:

But despite alarms as far back as 2008, Home Depot was slow to raise its defenses, according to former employees. On Thursday, the company confirmed what many had feared: The biggest data breach in retailing history had compromised 56 million of its customers’ credit cards. The data has popped up on black markets and, by one estimate, could be used to make $3 billion in illegal purchases.

Yet long before the attack came to light this month, Home Depot’s handling of its computer security was a record of missteps, the former employees said. Interviews with former members of the company’s cybersecurity team — who spoke on the condition they not be named, because they still work in the industry — suggest the company was slow to respond to early threats and only belatedly took action.

A heads up from an anonymous former employee isn’t solid evidence but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is true. Companies have a history of putting aside time and money to hire security specialists only to ignore their advice. This is something that I never understood. Why would any company invest resources to hire specialists only to ignore their advice? When you hire security specialists you should expect them to deliver bad and costly news, especially between the time you first hire them and have a chance to implement their recommended security practices. Yet so many companies seem dead set on ignoring any bad news delivered by their security specialists. It’s stupid, that’s the only word for it.

Number One Reason to Upgrade to iOS 8

iOS 8 was released yesterday. I have it installed on my iPhone 5 and can say that it’s a decent upgrade (LastPass can now fill in my user names and passwords in Safari, which is the highlight of the upgrade for me). But the best feature of iOS 8 is one that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of coverage:

On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode. Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.

Security changes to iOS 8 seem to have made it technically impossible for Apple to fulfill warrants demanding it extract data from a customer device. I’m glad to see Apple taking security against government agents seriously. It also goes to show just how untrusting companies have become towards the government after Snowden released the National Security Agency’s (NSA) dirty laundry. Before then I doubt Apple would have invested resources to ensuring it couldn’t comply with government data requests and it almost certainly wouldn’t have advertised the fact so prominently.

However it is important to keep in mind that the scope of this protection is only on the device itself. If you upload data to iCloud Apple can still comply with any warrants demanding it turn over customer data. So if you value your privacy it’s a good idea to upgrade to iOS 8 and not upload your data to online storage services.

Trunk Guns

I recently had a conversation with a fellow gun nut in which the topic of trunk guns came up. He asked me what kind of gun I have in the trunk of my car and I replied that I didn’t have one. This was apparently the wrong answer as I was informed that having a gun, namely a rifle, stored in my trunk is critical to my survival. Without a long gun sitting in my trunk there is no way that I will be able to survive major civil unrest such as rioting. And he topped it off with the famous line, “A handgun is for shooting your way to your rifle.” He must have attended the My School is the Only Valid School of Gun Fighting. I hear it’s quite popular but most of the instructors and students that I have met from that school are assholes, which has dissuaded me from seeking training there.

Instead of telling you what the one and true proper self-defense plan is I’m going to explain how self-defense plans vary from person to person based on criteria unique to each individual. I will do this by explaining why I don’t have a trunk gun and why I don’t feel as though I’m going to die a horrible death due to my lack of preparation. As always your mileage will vary. Your situation is almost certainly different than mine and therefore requires a different set of plans. Don’t take this post as me saying trunk guns are stupid and nobody should have one. What I’m trying to explain in this post are some of the criteria I use to develop some of my self-defense plans and why I have come to the decisions that I have.

It’s no secret that handguns, in general, suck when it comes to stopping power. To compensate for lack of stopping power most schools of self-defense recommend firing two shots into a target immediately and then assessing whether or not more are necessary. Seeing this it’s pretty easy to understand why military personnel rely on rifles for their primary weapon and have a handgun as a backup. It’s also easy to see why people would prefer a rifle over a handgun in a self-defense situation. Needless to say a rifle in your trunk is much closer than one in your safe at home.

Let me first say that I live in the Twin Cities, which is Minnesota’s largest metropolitan area. Obviously that has a lot to do with my situation and shapes my self-defense plan. The chances of me getting mugged are higher than somebody living in a rural area but the chances of me encountering a large (relative to Minnesota) animal such as a black bear are practically nil. Another factor worth mentioning is that periods of civil unrest in this area are rare. That brings me to my self-defense plan. Statistically the defensive scenarios I am most likely to be involved in are immediate in nature. Things like muggings, drunken assholes looking to start a fight, or getting stuck in the middle of two gang members’ relational issues. In these scenarios my ability to access defensive force must be immediate and if I’m able to get to my car I have most likely escaped the danger. And if I haven’t the time it takes me to access my trunk, retrieve my rifle, and continue the fight isn’t that dissimilar to enter my vehicle, start my car, and get the fuck out of there. For me the mobility my car offers almost always outweighs the firepower a rifle brings to the table.

But let’s discuss the primary justification for trunk guns: civil unrest. History shows that civil unrest in Minnesota, and the United States as a whole, is pretty rare. The chances of me being stuck in the middle of a civil unrest situation are much smaller than, say, my car being stolen or broken into in Minneapolis. A regular auto theft sucks but it sucks a whole lot more if the thief not only gets a car but also a loaded rifle. Furthermore, in a time of civil unrest, I believe you’re highest chance of survival comes from not drawing attention to yourself. There are two risks when you draw attention to yourself, which toting a rifle does in a metropolitan area, rioters and police. Rioters act in a slightly more random nature than police but as a general rule it’s best to not stick out if you want to avoid being targeted for violence. In fact it’s probably a better idea to attempt to appear to be a rioter when rioters are near than it is to be toting a rifle. Police, on the other hand, are less random. During a time of civil unrest they’re looking for people that appears to be rioting or otherwise acting dangerously. Carrying a rifle is likely to raise red flags with local police officers and those red flags will likely increase the chances of them shooting you first and asking questions about your innocence later. After all the words “office safety” justify almost any violent action taken by police and the fact that you were visibly in possession of a weapon during a riot will give them the ability to claim their safety was in jeopardy.

As I said earlier, the most common self-defense situations I am likely to encounter are immediate in nature. If somebody pulls a gun on me and demands my wallet I don’t have time to get to my car, pull my rifle out of the trunk, and shoot the mugger. Periods of civil unrest usually have a lead up time to them. Consider the events that occurred in Ferguson. Riots didn’t break out immediately after the shooting. There was a lot of news coverage of the shooting beforehand as well as signs that the local population was very upset by it. The best way to survive a period of civil unrest is to be elsewhere. Pay attention to your local news. If there are signs of impending civil unrest in an area make sure you’re not in that area. While I do understand that that’s not always possible in most cases it is. Being somewhere else will increase your chances of survival much more than being near the unrest with a rifle in your trunk.

There you have it, some insight into why I don’t have a trunk gun. Let the ridicule from the students of the My School is the Only Valid School of Gun Fighting begin (which is to say let the impotent rage flow through their keyboards)!

Low Speed, High Drag

I spend a lot of time making fun of the high speed, low drag crowd. Some might be surprised to learn this since everything I wear is “tactical” (which means operator who operates and areas of operations to some but means lots of useful fucking pockets and light-weight materials during the summer to me) but I find most of the firearm advice from the Super Awesome Operator (SAO) crowd to be stupid at best and dangerous at worst. Thankfully I’m not alone:

Something else that disturbs me is the desire to look cool while shooting. Way too many shooters are learning their skills from You Tube from people who have a particular look versus having skill and experience. Just because an instructor has a beard, wrap around glasses and tattoos does not mean he is an “operator” even if he does talk the lingo. Nonsense cool sounding terminology does not mean the instructor has greater skill or insight, it just means he/she spends time making stuff up. A “non-diagnostic, linear stoppage manipulation” is still just a “tap-rack” and giving it a cool sounding, complicated name does not make it better. In reality, it makes it more difficult and if you take the time to truly study armed conflict you will understand that simplicity is often times the key to prevailing in the pandemonium that results. It is not “dumbing down” training to try and make it simpler and easier to accomplish.

This is one of my biggest gripe with the SAO crowd. A large majority of them choose form over function. You can go on YouTube and find any number of people wearing a tactical vest covered in AR-15 magazines with a sidearm in a drop-leg holster doing fancy transitions, Captain Kirk rolls, and absurd shooting drills. These SAOs will wax on about how important the skills they practice are and why you should pay them money to teach you. What they almost seem allergic to is the concept of simple is generally preferable. Yes, you can Captain Kirk roll between targets to engaged them. Yes, doing so will keep you on the move. But doing so will also cause your barrel to cover a lot of things it shouldn’t be (because if your muzzle should have been covering them they would be threats you were engaging not space you were transitioning the point of impact through). It will also increase the amount of time it takes for you to aim your firearm at the next target since the motion of rolling is pretty jarring and requires the entirety of your body to move. Meanwhile a simple turn will allow you to cover less unintended space (since you can just aim your gun towards the ground during the turn) and increase the speed of target acquisition since you don’t have to realign every fucking muscle and bone in your body. Turning doesn’t look as cool though so SAO shy away from it.

Furthermore most people aren’t going to be wearing a tactical vest cover in AR-15 magazines while carrying a rifle. And most of us aren’t going to be in a situation where we have to engage the entire fucking Mongol Horde (not to mention few people survive an encounter where it’s just them versus ten or more opponents). Shooting drills that involve a bunch of targets are fun but they serve little practical purpose for a majority of people who carry a defensive firearm outside of a war zone.

As a general rule when seeking firearm instruction try to find an instructor who uses plain English, focuses on simplicity, and spends more time teaching you how to property operate a firearm than performing acrobatics. In other words if an instructor looks low speed, high drag they are more likely to teach useful skills than if they look high speed, low drag.

Wolf Blitzer Demonstrates That He Doesn’t Understand Firearms Use of Force

Wolf Blitzer has never stuck me as a particularly intelligent man. No intelligent man would willingly stay on board the sinking ship that is CNN. Then again he could still be there simply because nobody else will take him. Either way he decided to demonstrate his lack of intelligence by asking why police officers shoot to kill:

Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Mo. over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”

Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”

A firearm is considered a deadly force weapon and for good reason, they cause major bodily harm that can lead to death. Using deadly force is only acceptable in most areas if there is an immediate risk of great bodily harm or death. If anybody, whether they be a police officer or a peaceful human being, doesn’t feel that they are in immediate risk of great bodily harm or death they shouldn’t be employing a firearm in any way.

But what’s the harm in firing a shot into the air? The fact that Blitzer even asked that proves that he doesn’t understand how a firearm works. What goes up must come down (unless it achieves enough velocity to escape the effects of gravity but no man portable weapon can do that yet). If you fire a shot into the air the damn bullet has to come down somewhere and there is no practical way for the shooter to know where in the hell the bullet is going to land. It may land in an empty parking lot or it may land of grandma’s head. And attempting to inure somebody with a deadly weapon is really fucking stupid. Even if you put a hole in somebody’s extremity they still risk the possibility of bleeding out. It’s the same risk somebody would face if you ran a javelin through them.

The reason use of force continuums usually discourage using deadly force weapons for any situation not needed deadly force is because employing a deadly force weapon necessarily makes the situation potentially deadly. This isn’t rock science, it’s common sense. If a police officer needs to scare somebody they can grab a baton and extend it.

A Gun isn’t Always the Answer

I’ve picked up an interest in martial arts over the last year or so. This interest has lead me to start studying two arts (one being judo and the other being too rare to mention without giving away exactly where I study). Of the two judo would probably be considered the practical art by most of my readers since it can be applied in self-defense (although, honestly, my primary interests in judo are sport and physical fitness). Whenever martial arts enter the self-defense discussion in shooting communities there are one or two people who have to say some variation on “I carry a gun. Why would I waste my time with martial arts?” I’m fairly certain that the people who say this are just disinterested in studying martial arts and feel as though they need to justify that disinterest in practical terms. They don’t, which is perfectly fine. Nobody should be ashamed to admit disinterest in something. But trying to justify your disinterest by giving a practical sounding, albeit bullshit, reasons is stupid.

And I do believe the guns-exist-so-martial-arts-are-stupid justification is bullshit. The argument makes the assumption that firearms, which are arguably the best weapons an individual can reasonably carry, can solve any and all self-defense scenarios. That’s not the case. Just as there are many self-defense scenarios there are many solutions. Martial arts, as they relate to self-defense, are like pepper spray, Tasers, and batons in that they give you more options. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can find solutions for.

It’s story time. Not too long ago I was at a party. As one would expect this party involved a lot of drinking. I refrained from imbibing as I was a designated driver but there was a good number of drunk people present. One of the drunk people strongly disagreed with something I said and decided the best way to resolve our disagreement was with force. He took a swing at me and I was able to block the blow, get his arm behind his back and place a majority of his weight on one foot, and slip that foot out from under him so that I could gently lower him to the ground. Take note of the word “gently”. This was one of those situations where I felt minimizing the amount of force used was important. Everybody at the party was socially connected to one another through no more than two degrees of separation. In such an environment pulling a gun on a fellow party goer would have caused everybody else there to hate me (and it would have been way more force than the situation warranted). With absolutely trivial martial arts knowledge I was able to resolve the situation in a way that didn’t cause too much of a ruckus.

Carrying a gun gives you an option to deal with specific self-defense cases but they don’t work for every self-defense case. There are a lot of places that prohibition firearms. Many self-defense situations don’t warrant deadly force. Social settings can greatly limit your responses. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can resolve satisfactorily. It’s impossible for any individual to have a tool for every potential self-defense situation so you must decided what situations you are most likely to face (risk assessment) and plan accordingly. As I said in the beginning of this post, my interests in judo are primarily sport and fitness, but it also gives me an option for a class of self-defense scenarios that I feel are common (which is a relative term because self-defense situations in general are very uncommon for most of us): somebody engages you in a way unlikely to cause great bodily harm or death but needs to be countered to prevent injury. It’s a situation that a gun is ill suited for and is a counterargument, in my opinion, to the claim that one doesn’t need [non-gun self-defense opinion] because he or she carries a gun.

Training at a High Rate of Travel with Low Atmospheric Resistance

If you read enough gun forums, watch enough gun channels on YouTube, and talk to enough gun owners you will come across somebody who constantly says the phrase “Train how you fight!” While the advice itself isn’t bad I think a lot of people who parrot the phrase fail to understand some of its key points.

Most of the people who I heard use the phrase imply that you need to train high-speed low-drag and come up with some rather humorous drills that they practice religiously. These people also create scenarios that are often absurd even for police and military personnel. They’ll come up with a drill that involves some kind of ninja-esque tactical roll between cover positions to engage twenty Mongol warriors that just happened to raid the American mall you’re shopping in. Of course the scenario also implies that you are the only person in the mall that can stop this Golden Horde. Unless you have a friend who wants to train with you, then you two are the only people who can save the lives of every man, woman, and child in the mall. Did I mention that these drills must be practiced with an AR-15, a chest rig full of spare magazines, and a sidearm in a drop-leg holster? Let’s be honest, who doesn’t wear that when they go shopping?

Most of us don’t live in a war zone. We’re not carrying around rifles, wearing chest rigs, or having to fight off Mongol hordes in busy shopping centers. Some of the videos I’ve come across on YouTube made by people who “train how they fight” must live in an area where attacks from paramilitary forces is common and nobody hassles them for walking around looking like a discount soldier. I don’t live there and I’m guessing you don’t either.

While I won’t try to dissuade you from coming up with cockamamie scenarios requiring ninja tactics to overcome, because let’s be honest that’s fun, I wouldn’t refer to it as training. If you honestly want to train how you fight consider the following drills:

Place your tail in between your legs.

This drill should be practiced more than any other. In it somebody tries to start a fight with you by insulting your mother, implying you enjoy sexual relations with people of your gender (which you might, but they won’t know that and thus will still try to use it as an insult), shoving you, slapping you, or otherwise acting like an aggressive jackass to you. Upon being engaged by the aggressor you walk away. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything aggressive in return, just walk away. A variation of this drill is the aggressor pursuing you. In this case increase your walking speed until it is quicker than your aggressor’s (the high-speed part of these drills).

The goal of this drill is to overcome your ego. Egos are scientifically proven to be the source of most really stupid decisions. Divorcing your ego from your actions is the surest way to avoid getting involved in a bad situation.

Remove your weapon from concealment.

So your aggressor pulled a weapon on you or running away isn’t viable for some reason. It’s a bad day and it’s about to get worse. Thankfully you have a weapon. But it’s concealed so you need to clear your weapon from concealment.

In this drill you find yourself facing a surprise attack from a Mongol warrior (for the record, Mongol warriors are always armed). Because you live in a constant state of condition yellow the Mongol didn’t get the complete drop on you. But you didn’t have your primary weapon ready. To engage the attacker you must draw your firearm from concealment. If you’re wearing a tuckable holster and normally tuck your shirt into it you must now untuck it quickly. If you wear an untucked shirt you must quickly lift it enough to gain access to your firearm. If you wear a vest you may be safe as the Mongol warrior is probably busy laughing at you but you still need to move it out of the way enough to access your firearm. Once the concealment has been removed you must draw your firearm and bring it up on the pissed off Mongol warrior’s upper torso.

The nice thing about this drill is that it can be done in your home since firing at the Mongol warrior is not necessary. This drill is meant to improve your ability to draw your firearm from concealment.

Shoot the mother fucker attacking you.

You’ve successfully drawn your firearm from concealment and it’s mere presence didn’t cause the Mongol warrior to rethink his actions. That’s unfortunate for many reasons including paperwork, legal battles, and being in a position where you may have to take a life.

This drill is a continuation of the previous drill. In it you’ve successfully drawn your weapon from concealment and have it aimed at the chest of the Mongol warrior. For reasons unknown to you this hasn’t dissuaded him from continuing his jackassery. Fire two shots into his upper torso. A variation of this drill is the Mongol warrior being drugged out of his mind and thus not stopping after two shots. To resolve this situation continue firing until he does stops.

The goal of this drill is to improve your skills at drawing and firing on an aggressor. It should be combined with the previous drill as often as possible. Running the drill against a shot timer can be done to introduce some level of stress.

Wherever you are is bad. Be somewhere else.

Why are you standing around and giving the Mongol warrior ample opportunity to kill you? Move away from him!

This drill is periodically referred to as “getting off of ‘the X'” where “the X” is wherever you’re currently standing. Even after you’ve moved from your initial ‘X’ it will continue following you so you need to keep moving away from it. In it you draw from concealment and shoot your aggressor while moving in a direction away from him (this is very important because moving towards him will make his task of kill you easier). You can combine this drill with only drawing from concealment if you want to practice it at home (assuming your home isn’t a firing range).

I believe the goal of this drill is obvious. Moving targets are harder to hit and the more distance between you and your aggressor the better. The whole point of carrying a firearm as opposed to a sword is that a firearm has a much greater effective range. Utilize it.

God hates you and your gun jammed. Unjam it before Genghis Khan runs you through with a spear.

You’ve overcome your ego, can consistently draw your firearm from concealment, and know how to fire your gun accurately all while moving away from your attacker. But sometimes life hands you a wildcard. What do you do if your gun jams?

If you carry a semi-automatic pistol this is a good list of failure types and the drills to recover from them. Those who carry a revolver have a slightly different set of drills. Ammunition failures in a revolver can generally be overcome by pulling the trigger again. Mechanical failures will leave you with a decision: run away or close range and attempt to use your paperweight as a bludgeon. I’d recommend the former in most cases. Regardless of the type of handgun you’re carrying time yourself when performing this drill. You want to be able to, as the high-speed low-drag crowd says, get your gun back into the fight as soon as possible. That Mongol warrior isn’t going to respect you calling a timeout while you unfuck your gun.

The goal of this drill is to prepare you for the worst when the worst is already happening. Don’t think of it solely as a drill to recover from a firearm failure. It should be thought of as an exercise in rapid analysis and decision making. Bad shit happens and you need to be flexible enough to deal with it.

Stop touching me!

I know we all exist in a perpetual state of condition yellow but even that won’t prevent all surprise attacks. Do you see that girl scout walking towards you? As it turns out she’s a Mongol warrior in disguise (she did smell pretty rank now that I think about it)! Of course you see through his ruse now that he has a grip on your dominant arm (make sure you clean that arm with degreaser after this encounter is over).

There are two things you want to practice in this drill: weapon retention and escape. The variations of this drill are practically infinite. Maybe the Mongol warrior simply grabbed your wrist, maybe he pinned you on your back, or maybe he came up behind you and now has you in a choke hold. Regardless your day now sucks and it’s only going to get suckier. You need to escape and prevent the Mongol warrior from taking your weapon because you’ll need it to engage him in the very near future. When practicing this drill keep in mind that there are these things called blue guns. They’re plastic replicas of real firearms. The nice thing about them is that they can’t actually shoot bullets. Use them for this drill because safety is important.

In reality this drill is probably the least important one on this list to practice. It’s mostly here to encourage you to try some hand-to-hand stuff because hand-to-hand stuff is awesome. The most important thing to practice in this drill is weapon retention. You carry a gun because it’s very effective against human attackers. For that very reason if your attacker realizes you have it he will want it. Keep that in mind.

This list shouldn’t be treated as all encompassing. It’s merely a guideline to better understand how you will most likely fight (again, if you’re not in the police or military). Most people want to spend their time doing things that are fun. For some reason a sizable number of gun owners feel a need to justify all of the shooting they do as being practical training. This leads them to call things that are fun practical when they almost always aren’t. It’s fun to load up the chest rig, design a course of fire around Mongol warriors invading your mall, and engaging them to save the day. But it’s not practical training because most of us aren’t walking around with a chest rig full of magazines or a rifle not slung across our back (unless we’re talking about Open Carry Texas but that’s a very special scenario). We’re carrying concealed handguns. For those of us living in the United States it’s also uncommon for paramilitary forces to invade our shopping centers. Most acts of violence only involve two people. Sometimes a few more are thrown into the mix but it’s seldom and entire army.

I encourage people to have gun but if you’re going to call something training then it should have some practical value.