Self Defense – Page 9 – A Geek With Guns

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.

If at First You Don’t Succeed

You know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. But then again sometimes it’s smart to quite while you’re ahead, which is what this dude should have done:

Beaudoin broke a door lock and entered a home about 5:20 a.m. in the 4200 block of Hwy. 53. Homeowner Neil Reller grabbed a shotgun and struggled with Beaudoin, striking the intruder on the head several times with the gun so hard that the stock broke off the weapon.

Were I hit in the face with a shotgun stock so hard that it broke the stock I think I would have called it a night. Mr. Beaudoin was obviously a more determined man than I:

Beaudoin, his face covered in blood, fled in his vehicle about 8 miles to the southeast and showed up at the Himes’ home in the 5700 block of Hwy. 53. He told Ethel Himes that he had been assaulted. When Himes let Beaudoin inside, he threw her onto the living-room floor, choked her and beat her head on the floor.

Brad Himes came upon the struggle and went to his bedroom for a handgun. Beaudoin followed the son and lunged at him, prompting Brad Himes to shoot the intruder.

A sheriff’s deputy gave first aid to Beaudoin, who died at Rainy Lake Medical Center.

See what I mean? Sometimes it’s a better idea to just say “Fuck it.” and give up. While I’m sure Mr. Beaudoin thought he clever plan of claiming he was assaulted was fool proof it’s never a good idea to get into a physical confrontation after recently getting your ass severely kicked. This is especially true when getting shot is a realistic outcome, which is always the case when invading a home.

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.

Not So Heavily Armed

My fellow denizens of the Twin Cities we may be having a guest from Wisconsin in the near future (heck, he could already be here). The dude, who goes by the name Eric “Buck” Hall, is a recently released felon who stole a truck with a couple of guns in it:

On Saturday in the same county, Hall allegedly stole two vehicles, with one of them containing a scoped rifle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a pump-action shotgun. The weapons have yet to be recovered.

On Sunday, Hall is suspected of stealing yet another vehicle in New Auburn, Wis., this one a tan 2000 Chevy Silverado pickup truck owned by a volunteer firefighter. That vehicle remains missing.

Hall is described as 5 feet 10 inches tall, 170 to 190 pounds, with blue eyes. He has numerous tattoos, wears glasses and has a goatee and beard.

The truck has Wisconsin license plate JE7691. It has several pink and hunting-themed stickers, as well as emergency lighting and siren.

Anyone with information about this case is urged to call the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office at 1-715-726-7714.

OK, now that the public service announcement is out of the way I do want to point out the phrasing of the article. It states that Hall is heavily armed:

A scoped rifle and a pump-action shotgun aren’t things to laugh at but I don’t think possessing them really qualify as heavily armed either. In my book heavily armed implies the ability to lay down sustained fire for an extended period of time. Doing this generally relies more on the accessories than the weapon. Unless Hall has a good number of magazines and the scoped rifle is a magazine fed weapon I don’t think he’s that heavily armed. If he only has one or two magazines or the rifle is a bolt-action then he can’t really sustain firing for very long before he has to open a box of ammo and insert rounds into the gun’s magazine(s).

Again, neither weapon mentioned in the article are something I’d sneer at. But I think saying he’s armed would be more accurate than heavily armed. Anyways if you see this bloke steer clear of him, it sounds like he may have a few screws loose (oh, and if you’re anti-gun you might want to put one of those “guns banned here” signs around your neck so Hall can’t shoot you).

Check Your Gun Control Privilege

If you can’t beat them, join them. The social justice crowd spends a lot of time talking about privilege. What started out as valid point, that is some individual in society do enjoy privileges over others (for example, as a white male I’m less likely to be the target of police brutality), has become a mechanism to silence any and all opposition. If you don’t agree with somebody you are automatically accused of being privileged and therefore are no longer allowed to have an opinion (which, in my book, would mean the other person has an opinion privilege).

As this mess has gotten increasingly absurd I’ve tried to avoid it as much as possible. But the more I think about it the more I realize that gun control is a form of privilege. Specifically it’s something that only those who the social justice crowd traditionally label as privileged can enjoy.

Consider Michael Bloomberg. He’s arguably the most influential advocate of gun control in modern times. Granted it’s pretty easy to be the most influential advocate of gun control when you’re a billionaire and can personally fund several gun control advocacy groups. But those billions of dollars allow him to fund something else: armed body guards. Bloomberg even has enough cash to pay for armed body guards for his fellow gun control advocates.

Gun control, as the name implies, is about controlling who can have access to firearms. One question that should always be asked when the topic of gun control comes up is who gets to decide who can own a gun. The answer is always the state. And who makes up the state? A president who enjoys a lifetime of Secret Service protection and millionaire white males. In other words most of the people deciding who can have a gun are the very people most social justice advocates point out as being privileged.

So gun control is great if you’re on the top of society. It just sucks if you’re not. Unless the state has deemed you worthy of possessing a firearm or can afford to hire people who have been deemed worthy to shadow you 24/7 you’re mostly reliant on the police for protection. That’s not a good position to be in as police response times increase. And if you live in poorer neighborhoods, places where people arguably need protection the most, you’re going to suffer even longer response times. The further you are from the top the longer it will take to get state protection, if you get it at all.

This brings me to the main point of this post. Gun control works for those who social justice advocates consider privileged because they control who can possess guns and can afford body guards. The rest of us are more or less on our own. Sure we’re given access to police officers who may respond to our call for help if they’re not too busy, tired, or hungry. But if you need immediate defense you’re screwed.

There are bad people in this world, which is unfortunate. But so long as those people exist the need for self-defense will likewise exist. Whether you like guns or not you cannot argue against them being effective tools for self-defense. They’re equalizers that render physical ability and skill mostly irrelevant. A woman bound to a wheelchair can effectively use a gun to defend herself against an athletic male who means her arm. An African-American male can effectively use a gun to defend himself against an armed police officer who is attempting to brutalize him. Any social, physical, racial, or gender privileges an attacker may enjoy are meaningless when his or her target has access to a gun for self-defense. Even targets suffering from most physical disabilities can render their attacker’s ableism irrelevant.

In the end it is the people who social justice advocates label as privileged thate are the primarily advocates of gun control. They are the ones who can decide who can have a gun. They are the ones who can afford armed body guards. They are the ones who can live under gun control without concern.

Punching People in the Face Less Effective Then It Used to Be

Evolution is a fascinating thing to study. Looking at the way species developed over time you can get a small understanding of what potential difficulties they encountered and what adaption best suited them to overcome them. The Guardian has a piece about how our faces have evolved overtime to better take hits:

Five million years of slugging it out with fists has left its mark on the human face, scientists believe. Evidence suggests it evolved to minimise damage from altercations after our ancient ancestors learned how to throw a punch.

Researchers studied the bone structure of australopiths, ape-like bipeds living 4m to 5m years ago which predated the modern human primate family Homo. They found that australopith faces and jaws were strongest in just those areas most likely to receive a blow from a fist.

Granted the face is still a good target if you’re looking to strike somebody in a way that will quickly end the fight. There are just too many small, fragile bones in the face. But it’s interesting to see that evolution has apparently made us less susceptible to strikes in the face and even with that we still often focus on striking the face.

Personally I prefer grappling over striking because it allows more control over the situation. More control allows one to resolve a situation with less violence in most cases. But striking appears to be popular enough amongst our species to change the way we’ve developed and that’s kind of cool.

Why I Bike With a Gun

I’ve noted several times how I always carry a gun when I’m biking. Many people, who generally don’t carry guns themselves, find this behavior odd. They demand I justify my action to which I usually inform them that I have no duty to do so (My polite way of saying “Why? Because fuck you, that’s why!”). But Every Day No Days Off posted video of a mountain biker being robbed a gunpoint that pretty much makes my case for me:

You never know when somebody bad is going to target you or what reason they will target you. That being the case it’s usually a good idea to be a prepared as possible. The biker was lucky that the thief only took his bike. It’s not difficult to imagine the thief simply shooting the biker since they appear to be out in the middle of nowhere.

Women Must Be Tiring of the Patriarchy

Social justice warriors spend a lot of time complaining about patriarchy. Well it looks like women in Washington state have took those complaints to heart and have taken steps to smashing patriarchy:

Between 2005 and 2012, the number of state residents receiving new concealed-carry permits tripled to 62,939. Now some 451,000 Washington residents are allowed to carry a hidden handgun almost anywhere they go, more than 100,000 of them women.

Notably, the growth rate for women getting new permits is twice as fast as that of men.

The thing that annoys me about a lot of social justice warriors is that they spend a lot of time demanding equality but seem to scoff at the idea that guns offer exactly that. Oppression generally requires force disparity. In order to ensure compliance an oppressor must have greater force than the oppressed (this is probably why governments have such a hard-on for gun control). As soon as the oppressed can command equal or greater force then the days of the oppressor become numbered.

I’m also a firm believer that using one oppressor to combat another oppressor still leaves you oppressed. The common strategy for social justice warriors is to use one of the greatest oppressors of our time, the state, to combat oppression by men and whites (ironically though the state is mostly made up of white men). This doesn’t actually solve the problem of oppression. On the other hand if you give women the power to fend of prospective oppressors then patriarchy isn’t easy to achieve.

So fight the patriarchy, encourage women you know get carry permits and assist them in whatever they need to do so.

Police Officers Aren’t Lawyers

I must confess that I made a poor decision last night. Needless to say I’m not proud of myself. Although I would like to blame a shortage of newsworthy events to write about that is hardly an excuse. Last night I broke down and visited the Star Tribune’s opinion section, which is known to have some of the lowest hanging fruit in existence.

Not surprisingly I found something stupid. This stupidity comes in the form of mistaking police for lawyers. The author, after running down and tackling a woman who broke into his home, called the police. After they took the suspect into custody the author asked what they could do to prevent future burglaries:

In stunned amazement, we asked the police what we could do to prevent future burglaries. A friendly female cop replied: “You can either get a burglar alarm or a gun …. But if you get a gun, shoot to kill, because the wounded, breathing burglar will claim, ‘I was just looking for a warm place to sleep for the night.’ And you, sir, will be charged with attempted manslaughter.”

You know what that was? Really shitty advice, that’s what. If you’ve taken a Minnesota permit to carry class (which I’m betting most of my readers have) the legalities of self-defense were likely explained to you (and if they weren’t your instructor sucked). You don’t shoot to kill, you shoot to stop. It doesn’t matter if the aggressor is dead or just incapacitated. Once the threat of immediate death or great bodily harm is no longer present you stop using deadly force. Any lawyer versed in Minnesota’s self-defense laws will tell you this. And this is why you ask lawyers for legal advice not people who have a badge that allows them to break the law without consequence.

The author goes on to point out that Byron Smith followed the officer’s advice:

Byron Smith did what the cops recommended, except that he also produced evidence against himself with the tape recordings. Was this self-incrimination?

Byron Smith isn’t in prison because he produced evidence against himself. He’s in prison because he followed the officer’s advice. In other words, Smith’s case is proof that the officer’s advice was shitty. If the author asked a lawyer he would have been informed that shooting home invaders to the point of incapacitation, dragging their bodies to another part of the house, and finishing them off is not allowed under Minnesota’s self-defense laws (nor, in my opinion, is it allowed under common decency).

So we’ve learned to valuable lesson today: don’t go to the Star Tribune’s opinion section and don’t ask a police officer for legal advice.