FATAL 

SHADOWS





By Darrell E. Mulroy

Copyright 2001





All rights are reserved. All text and content are the exclusive property of the author.   Excerpts permitted with permission of publisher. 







This book is about staying alive in a harsh world.  Our past shows us there will always be a need for us to achieve the best possible skills to protect ourselves, and our families from harm.   











 



















A NOTE FROM THE

AUTHOR



I expect to take hits for what you will read.  You have choices. They include following the old and worn concepts that have given us a horrid level of performance in self-defense efforts and shootings.

You donít have to change one single thing you are doing.  The odds are good you wonít ever know if you made the right decisions. We just are not involved in that many events that are high risk.

However, if you think something is wrong with the present systems we are using and suspect that we can do better, this work is for you. If you can open your mind to many   ideas,  and be willing to replace the old ideas, you are my kind of person.

If you disagree, I urge you to find the answer and/or solutions and bring them to me, and the world. We are in a state of crisis when it comes to training in the use of force and how we perform.  We are running out of excuses and need solutions.  

Almost a decade ago the Rodney King affair showed us the total collapse and failure of police training. The cases out of New York City also reinforce this.  Regardless of your views the evidence is in. We are in trouble.

Darrell E. Mulroy





ABOUT THE AUTHOR



Without a doubt Darrell has his share of critics.  Several things make Darrell a target. One is his dislike for anyone trying to teach self-defense that hasnít done it.  He claims,

 ìthey are virgins trying to teach sex.î  Of course the big critics are those that havenít done it.

The next group of critics, are those that come from a formal target shooting background and try to take those tactics into the streets.

ì It isnít a sporting event and nobody has ever shown a connection between target shooting scores and survivability,î Darrell claims.

Get the idea now?  The list is almost endless as he attacks the most basic concepts of present day self-defense training.  

His blatant and in your face exposure of the police miss rate in actual shootings has earned more critics, but just as many converts, that have figured out something is wrong.

With thousands of shooters on the street that have been trained by Darrell, and his company Plus P Technology Inc., it was only a matter of time that his students would be involved in shootings. To date their performance and hit rate has been pristine which upset the critics even more.

Darrellís web page on the Internet is red hot with hits and often used as a resource for those seeking answers to questions on self-defense 

                                                                            









If you have your mind made up about such things, you probably would be better off to hand this book to someone else.  You wonít find support for much of what you have learned in the past and his manner isnít inspired by Dale Carnegie or Miss Manners.  

Darrell takes self-defense much to seriously to be bothered by fads and trends.  He sticks to the reality he sees in real videos of actual shootings and talking to those like himself that have taken this most lethal step.  

With almost 40 years of shooting under his belt, he has the background to give opinions and share his exposure to the realities.  He has ìdone itî as he puts it, and has been on scene at hundreds of shooting incidents as a news reporter or police officer.

He experienced the most serious riots of the 60ís including Detroit on July 23rd, 1967, to the Chicago Democratic Convention in Chicago in August of 1968.  He has indeed been around the block and up the alley.

Weíll let him tell you about his own reality and the reality of others and shoot holes in the ìtheoriesî of others you have probably read about.  Donít expect Darrell to give the armchair critics much quarter. That isnít his style. His style is to beat you over the head with reality and experience and get you home alive.

You wonít find any orchids in his presentation. But you will learn.



WHAT WE ARE MADE OF



Our ability to defend ourselves, or others may have been decided hundreds of thousands of years ago.

There is a strong and constant effort to debunk the role of genetics in self-defense issues. It is new technology leaving in the dust the old antiquated and well documented to fail logic that claims we can acquire self-defense skills with the right training.

Self-defense is like being a musician or even an auto mechanic.  Some have ìitî and some donít.  Not everyone can be trained to sing or be a quality musician.  Some people should not own guns or attempt to use them for self-defense.  To be blunt, they just donít have ìitî whatever ìitî is.

You know some people who you would get into a fight with and others you wouldnít.  You know whom you can depend on in a tight emergency and those you feel would be worthless. Can you explain what ìitî is that you use to make that decision? Of course  not and that  isnít  surprising.

I have worked with police officers over the years that I felt were a hazard to themselves and others when on the street.  They completed the same training I had received and worked in the same areas.

They passed all the tests and met all hiring requirements, but any police officer can tell you some are best left to work behind a desk and others make great street cops.  

With the best psychological efforts and intense psychological testing and examination we still produce cops that badly fail on the job for a wide variety of reasons.  It is far from an exacting science.

In fact, you find cases where one department will refuse an officer for psychological reasons and another will pass the officer with flying colors.  Amazing how administrations put much weight on such evaluations considering the history and accuracy of those evaluations.

One measure we canít find in these evaluations is if the person has courage.  We donít know how they will respond to fear and the next level up.  Fright is a strange creature and we donít like to talk about it.

In the past, a Chief of Police would recruit and hire officers based on what that Chief felt would make a good cop.  For the most part that method was as accurate as any.  It is still used in many rural areas to this date and little logic prevails to show it doesnít work.

Books have been written on such issues, but I think we can agree we know people who would make good cops and some that wouldnít.  Those choices at times are very obvious to us and we all know cases where we just could not make such a decision.

There are some old sayings that come to mind.  ì Some have, it some donít.î  ì A chip off of the old block.î  ìLike father like son.î  ì An apple doesnít fall far from the tree.î

Those sayings are very old and we have all heard them, but new science tells us that they may be far more accurate than we thought.

Behavioral genetics is a science that has recently exploded and allowed us to see that we are creatures of genetics.

Science has shown that what we do for a living has a genetic input.

The University of Minnesota did a study over the past few decades of twins that were separated at birth or close to it.

The study has shown a clear and absolute link to genetic behavior versus environmental impact on behavior.

For example two twins were located 40+ years after their separation at birth.  The similarity of their lives was remarkable.

Both were firemen.  Both had a hobby of woodworking, and both enjoyed or disliked the same foods.  The list was endless at identical traits in the pair and this is not uncommon.  It went far beyond any consideration of coincidence.

Genetics decide on our eye color, size, hair color and even muscle tone and body build.  The list of genetic traits that impacts us is long and growing with each day.

Doctors are now highly interested in your medical genealogy to determine how to treat you.

If you even attempt to dismiss genetics in self-defense issues, you are in the stone age of science.  The scientific research is clearly showing it has to be taken into consideration when we discuss this subject.

The start to self-defense is a strong look at what we are made of mentally.  Firearms give us a distinct advantage if we have physical impairments.  Sam Colt was right on the mark when he said, ìGod created man, but Colt made them equal.î

A firearm can provide a person with limited physical skills, the ability to protect themselves and others.

We have to look at our mental ability to defend.  Self-defense is far more mental than physical. We have to take a long and careful inside look at ourselves to determine if the ìartî of self-defense is something we are willing to study and learn, and if it is something we can do.

It is not for everybody. Some are best off to buy a dog and a good alarm system and hope for the best.  Some people should not own guns. Some people should not take martial arts training. 

It is difficult, but understood, that our self-evaluation has to be honest with ourselves.  We can throw out our chest and get into some bravado logic to make ourselves feel good or feed an internal insecurity.  We have to ask the hard questions and give honest answers.  

If you canít do that, you should be the one to buy the dog and alarm system.

Letís look at some basic things in your life that will help you decide if you can take the steps needed to use a firearm for lethal force.

How do you respond to an emergency?   A common event is a near miss car accident.  Did you do a good job of avoiding an accident? Did you see the danger as fast as you should?  Do you often avoid problems?  Did you make many fast and rapid decisions?  Did you freeze or fail to use the brakes?

Such simple things can tell us a lot about you.  Some people respond very well to driving emergencies.  

Auto accidents are a very common event in our lives and it is interesting to see the response of drivers and bystanders in such cases.  Even with just a fender bender you can find highly interesting behavior.

For just a fender bender, some will panic. They cry, canít answer questions and seem to operate in a fog with little ability to clearly see the event is not a big deal.  

Drivers will sit numbed with fear.  Others will fly off into a rage even when they are clearly at fault.  

It shows us the ability or inability of the drivers to handle such matters.  If it works that way with a simple fender bender, imagine if guns were involved or a violent criminal attack and shooting.

We are human creatures that function from genetic and environmental history.

A number of scholarly efforts have clearly shown genetics are now considered in criminal behavior, showing the genetic link to behavior.  That behavior can and has to include the ability to apply lethal force.  

"Not Guilty, by Reason of Genetic Determinism" by Mark Philpott is a modern work on this subject.

Chapter 5 in: Tam, Henry (ed.) 1996. Punishment, Excuses and Moral Development. Avebury, Aldershot. ISBN: 1 85972 260 1

We quote from this work.



Introduction

ìThe possibility that genetic research might identify ëgenes for criminal tendenciesí has stimulated intense controversy. Media interest in the case of Stephen Thomas Mobley in which a ëgenetic defenseí was pursued, together with news coverage of a conference in London in 1995 on ëThe Genetics of Criminal and Antisocial Behaviourí, brought the question of a link between genetics and criminal behaviour to wide public attention.

Since then a steady output of newspaper articles and television documentaries have reflected continuing interest and concern over the suggestion that criminals might be born, not made.î



As you can see here, genetics are showing up in criminal defense cases.  It is new science, but few argue that genetics do indeed play some form or part in our behavior.  The debate is how much?  There is no room to rule out genetics in our ability to shoot and/or defend ourselves. 

Another interesting item is the genetics involved in our ability to just learn the skills and apply the information needed to defend ourselves.



Princeton University micr- biologist Joe Tsien, Sept 1999,



Studies indicate that a single underlying gene may hold the key to how we process and recall memory.

The gene called 2B, or NR2B, is present in all mammals, including people.  It directs production of a nerve protein that helps the brain recognize that two things are linked, such as ringing of a bell and delivery of food.

Drug firms are racing to find a drug that will enhance the genes activity within the brain.  It wonít make us Eiensteinís, but it will raise our cognitive levels.

The science is confirmed by Larry Squire, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California at San Diego.



It is interesting, and has long been suspected, that our ability to learn is indeed genetic.  Reports such as Larry Squireís are surfacing constantly and supporting each other.

We canít offer you or anyone else a magic test to decide where you fall into the main scheme of things, but most are what we call ìnormal.î  

Genetics can control our ability to learn.  If indeed training is the key, we have to look at our ability to learn. In any class you have students ranging in grade levels from A-F.  

Of course some have no problem with algebra, others curl up unable to do simple problems. Both were instructed in the same classroom. That is interesting, but clearly shows once again that some of us are a ìnaturalî in some areas but not others.

Some are 4.0 students and it seems they do so with little or no effort.  Self-defense is in the same category.

Not only does genetics play a part in our ability to learn on most any subject, but our physical structure is almost all genetic. We can add muscle mass, remove fat and make other changes, but some need to do this and others donít.  

The physical requirements for self-defense are highly debatable, but firearms do allow those with limited or even restricted physical ability to participate in effective protection of life.

There is a huge impact of genetics on learning ability, physical assets, and other areas of concern.  As humans we have the brain power in most cases to take a realistic inventory and see how much we can apply to our needs.  That, however, can be a tough logic to follow and apply.  Nobody said it would be easy.

For the most part, the majority of us will fall into a ìnormalî category with others going to the other two extremes.  The vast majority of us will not be Superstars of self-defense anymore than some of us would be medal-winning soldiers.

There is considerable debate on the ethics of genetics.  We will soon be able to make a baby to order. This can include removing fear of certain diseases, choose eye and hair color, increased intelligence, control body weight and muscle mass, and other factors that can be designed to impact ones ability to fight.  The mere thought should be rather chilling if you think about it. Some of us are ideal packages of genetics.  Others are not so lucky.  

If you decide to ignore the impact of genetics you may do so. But when you hear those constant news reports on the new findings in genetics you will have to ask yourself if that does reinforce our claims of the value of understanding how they effect us.

Whatever you are now, you will always be when it comes to genetics at least for now.  You have to do the self-inventory on yourself including spotting your flaws and weaknesses and put together a program that will work with both assets and liabilities. You canít try to claim some unfounded bravado that will send you in some wrong and fatal directions.  

No fancy gun school or training program is going to change your genetics.  No books, videos, or lessons will change your basic foundation.  You will find a level of skills and ability and it will remain constant for the most part.  

Our continuing problem is that we well never get a dress rehearsal in most cases to figure out how well we may do in a real fight. We can go all our lives and never put our efforts to a realistic test.



SELLING SNAKE OIL



A good friend of mine got into a discussion on self-defense. He said something that is very applicable.  ì If the chief had given me a rubber gun when I came on the department 25 years ago, he would have been right. I never needed it,î he smiled.

The same will apply to training. We can come up with some weird far out logic and sell it and 99.9% of the students will never apply it. And if one student does apply it and it doesnít work you blame the student. Kind of like ìpilot error.î  You never hear the pilotís instructors made an error.

We have smothered self-defense firearms training with a huge field of buzzwords and clichÈs and let them float about without challenge.  The school of ìsounds goodî is very alive and well.  There are things we want to believe.  It makes sense to us and we want to feel comfortable with the subject. As a kid, my Mom got onto my case if I didnít clean my plate. One day she said, ìThere are kids starving in India.î  I thought a minute and said, ìName one.î  

Some ìschoolsî have students diving behind things, rolling around on the ground, and other nonsense.  Nobody seems to ask if they can find cases where the logic was used.  All that will bring is blank looks and a frown. But based on movies, it seems logical weíd dive behind things and roll around on the ground like Chuck Norris because it works in the movies.















THE ONE TIME LOGIC



Frequently in training someone will come up with a brainstorm.  When asked why this is introduced into the program the first words out of their mouths is, ìONE TIMEÖÖî  Then you get a horror story about how training would have prevented that ONE incident.

The decades old Newhall California deaths of four Highway Patrol Officerís brought a storm of training modification based on this tragic loss.  What they failed to note, as in so many other similar disasters, is that the police were out shot.  The officers missed a lot. THAT is the issue.

In that shooting, it was reported that one officer put his empty brass into his pocket and since they did this in training he resorted to that fatal error when trying to reload. NONSENSE!

They failed to take into account what happens when we are shot and/or think we will die. The brain goes into a defibrillation like mode where the mind and body fail to process information. Nerves are short-circuited.  You can see cats hit by a car and before they die they wag their tail. Does that mean they enjoyed the experience?

I helped remove a female from a car involved in an accident and she was near death.  Her main concern was for her purse.  Another involved a man seriously injured and was worried about his car being towed and what it would cost.

Such mental confusion and irrational acts and thoughts are not uncommon. To use the one time last actions of a dying officer to justify some crazy form of training logic is the real tragic issue.

When a department has a shooting and their gun or caliber donít do the job they will make massive and costly changes because of that ONE TIME incident.

What is sad is Department A will have a failure and dump and abandon one caliber and Department B will have a failure with their caliber and the two departments will in reality switch to each others loads etc.  The 9mm 147 grain loads are a prime example. One department fails with them and dumps it and adopts the 115 grain and another has a failure with 115 grain and they adopt the 147 grain. Kind of silly isnít it?

Another favorite was in rookie school they told us as we walked up to a car to check and see if the trunk was open in case someone was hiding in it and could jump out and shoot us as we walked by.  When pressed to justify the logic we heard, ìone timeÖ.î  We never did locate the exact department that had this happened to, or if it ever did happen in reality.  What we did find is a movie in the 1960ís that used this tactic.  But it  ìsounded good.î

Another long standing logic was that we needed to carry the same caliber guns in case we ran out of ammunition we could borrow from another officer. To date nobody seems to have found a case where that was ever needed.  But again, ìit sounded good.î  I am sure someone could research to the ends of the earth and find an isolated case.        









THE BIG MENU



We have been given a menu of information so huge that there is no way we can remember it or apply it in reality from most training sources.

The mind can only process so much information in a crisis.  The mind is not an unlimited processing center for information. It has limits and they are well defined.  

We have so bogged down training with everybodyís favorite fads and trends that new and older shooters become confused.  One time the class says to do ìAî and the next class ìAî is out and ìBî is in.

The key to self-defense survival is to REDUCE the amount of information we need to call upon. This sounds like a way out concept, but medical science clearly shows this is what we must do if we are to have a menu we can process.

We need to master very BASIC issues and concepts.  We donít need to wander off into Lah-Lah land with an encyclopedia of knowledge.  What we need is to remember and be able to recall the most basic information.  

The constant claim of, ìwe need more trainingî has to be challenged by asking two basic questions.



What kind of training?

How much of it?í



If you ask those questions you get a blank stare and waving of arms and stuttering for words. It just ìsounds good.î



KNOWING MIND AND BODY



Our mind and body is a rather predictable creature when it comes to some self-defense issues.  We have states of awareness.  We wonít bore you to tears with color-coding. Life isnít a bunch of traffic lights in your brain.

Our first mental condition is SLEEP. For one third of our life we are for the most part defenseless. We sleep through storms and other noises. We go into a deep sleep and many will die in fires while sleeping or not know a burglar was in their room and left with their wallet or purse.

The best-trained person has to sleep.  That medical fact is vital. We are defenseless for a full third of our life. Hard to argue so far. 

The other level is ìtask oriented.î  We go about our business, driving and getting things done. We are not in any way shape or form in a self-defense frame of mind. We are ìtaking care of businessî to quote a great song.  We can think out problems and get the jobs and tasks done.

The next level is ìconcern.î  If you hear a car door slam late at night or voices outside you may be concerned. We do good work when we are concerned. We can plan out which way to go to check out the problem. We can remember to get our cell phone, a gun, or ask for help from others. An officer can ask for backup, unlock the shotgun, or plan a alerted approach to a vehicle.

When we are concerned we can put a lot of planning and design into what we do.  



The next level of mind is ìfear.î  Fear is a strange creature. It starts a process in our body that is designed for physical survival.  We donít have much control over this level of our  mind, but it has some room for our input on issues.

Fear, is when you hear someone try to force your door open at night. Fear is hearing footsteps outside a bedroom door at night. Fear is thinking the wolf is at your door. Fear is seeing a sudden move by a suspect, or a sound where there should be none.

Letís not even mention the worn clichÈ word of ìstress.î  It has no realistic application to self-defense. Stress is a late car payment or having a flat tire.  Stress is not a state of mind that exists when we think we will die.  It has always been a poor choice and more confusing than educational. Those that think self-defense at the moment of confrontation is ìstressî are way off the mark.  

When we are hit with fear we have a very limited ability to apply training, but fear is somewhat manageable. We can apply experience and training to some degree.  In fact, the more training and experience and the better we can control fear. 

For example, if someone ignites a firecracker outside your bedroom window, a shooter or person familiar with guns will know it isnít a gunshot and may not even flinch.  Someone without such experience will often confuse it for a gunshot and respond accordingly.

Training will tell you to check it out, and you may plan your path to a window to look out, and maybe take some objects along with you like a cell phone and or weapon.  Fear has some degree of manageability.  Yes, training can indeed give us the edge if we cross into fear.  No argument there.

Fear does start some physical changes.  Heart rate can increase, various hormones and chemicals begin to enter the body, and the mind is starting to change into a survival mode.  It is enough to notice and may come on slowly in fact.  Our hearing is increased, our vision is more acute and we get into a physical ìalertî mode.

Fear is seldom encountered by civilians but may be frequently encountered by police or security people.  I recall having ride-a-longs in my patrol car. On one occasion I had a city council person along and stopped a car in a remote area with four men in it and out of state plates.  I finished the traffic stop and noticed the fellow was shaking. He said it was the most terrifying experience he had ever done.  He was shocked I had no problem approaching this car with four men on a dark remote road.

ì I have no idea your job was like this. God, I was shaking like a leaf.  You donít get paid enough. I couldnít do this job,î he said with a tremble in his voice.  I had done it so often that it wasnít a problem and I had experience and training to greatly reduce the problems that could take place. He had no clue that I put into effect for his and my protection a long series of planning and logic.

If I trained this person and over a period of time and he/she did enough traffic stops he/she would probably find it as normal as I did.  I didnít tell him that in my early years I was as terrified some nights as he was. 

I was only in a state of concern, but his was going past fear and into fright.  That shows what training and experience can do.

Frequently when civilians would be with us in police cars they found simple things we did shook them up pretty well. I had my father in-law with me and got into a high-speed pursuit. When I got the driver stopped and cuffed I noticed my in-law was sweating and speechless.  To me it was a normal activity.

He didnít know a passenger car could perform like that on asphalt and gravel.  He never got into a police car with me again. He said I was nuts to work that kind of a job.

We can see the value of not only training, but experience.  In fact some forms of experience are far more helpful in survival than training.

Since civilians may go a lifetime and never experience fear from a criminal matter, they have to ask themselves what kinds of training would apply to them. It is like going into a sex shop to buy things and having no experience in sex. Sorry, but it is a good analogy.

That is the prime reason we pound on basics so hard.  We know basics will cover 90% of any situation a civilian will encounter.  Civilians donít clear houses, do fugitive searches, make traffic stops or other dangerous activity.

Police work is also frequently 7 hours 59 minutes of boredom followed by one minute of terror.  That is an old clichÈ but very true.

 In police work, dangerous encounters and situations are very rare except in isolated cases. Most police effort is in self PROTECTION doing very routine things.  Traffic stops, answering calls etc., can be very boring and routine.

Depending on where a police officer works the risks are pretty low.  If you look at the statistics the chances of a police officer needing a gun are very remote even in some big cities.

Having worked both urban and rural areas I found that a gun was not a commonly used tool.  Days would go by and I wouldnít even think about it.

Some of the ìstudentsî of self-defense who can get a carry permit have the latest fads and toys and find carrying a gun to be almost a fashion statement.

The reality is that a gun is heavy, gets in the way and is not fun to carry.  Any veteran cop can tell you that.

When an officer does something routine like stop a car the officer has done it so often the moves and effort is routine to a fault.  The civilian in the police car seeing this for the first time may find it a fearful experience.

It is a mixed blessing that civilians may find self-defense an experience that they can be over paranoid about and get their blood pressure up over little things and even over react.

Civilians have limited exposure to events that will trigger fear or even concern.  Those that live in high crime areas soon pick up street smarts to handle potential problems.  But if you live in a mundane area of town you may have never had an event that caused you concern or fear.

 Military veterans can go through the military and their actual ìcombat trainingî is rather simple, basic and mundane and seldom addresses the terror of actual combat.   

My daughter went through Naval Basic Training in Orlando, Florida and her shooting instruction was very basic and mundane.  She was by no measure a ìcombatî person by any logic.  She had more training from me than the Navy gave her.

Even in the Army or Marines the training is in fact called BASIC.  After leaving basic training the soldier may have little actual exposure to what it takes to be combat ready.

Of course special select units are not in that category.  

Very little of police training is about guns or survival methods.  Some academy courses may be 6 months long and only a few weeks will have anything to do with shooting or survival.  In fact, at no time in the training will the officer ever experience fear and hardly achieve the level of concern.

Today we smother the officers with training that is almost exclusively designed to protect the employer from liability and NOT to protect the officer from harm.

It is vital we dwell on the levels of concern and fear.  This is what 99.9% of us will experience.  My critics have claimed I say that NO training will work. That is true, but we will discuss that later.  

The right training and the training that is applicable to the largest portion of our actual experience will work if it is kept basic and simple.  Self-defense is not rocket science.

Self-defense is a menu of basic truths and until we can MASTER the responses to those basic truths we have no right to move beyond that.  

We have to walk before we run. We have to play the scales before we play a concert.  We have to know our ìABCísî before we write a novel.  We have to master what we know are the basic elements of self-defense.

As a civilian or police officer, we do have other concerns in our lives. Self-defense is not a primary concern even for an on the job cop.

You have family matters,  business matters,  paying bills, buying things, and other events in our lives that smother us.

I can recall the years of being in a police car and not even thinking Iím a cop.  I sang along with songs on the radio, had partners that we swapped war stories with and our experiences with girls, kids, hunting, sports and other events.  Some nights you found it hard to stay awake. You didnít run around with your hand on your gun thinking danger lurked behind every tree even in the big city.

You can eat up your life with paranoia and keep yourself in the concern or fear mode without much effort. Iíve worked with those types and met them. The line is thin, but paranoia can produce some serious errors.

In the mid-70ís I worked in a suburb of Minneapolis and an officer in a neighboring jurisdiction was noted for being a ìhot dog.î  He saw danger in every activity.

As I checked a building for an alarm call I saw him pointing a gun at me. ì Youíre lucky I didnít shoot. You donít have a hat on.  I might not have seen you were a cop.î He smiled.

My response was, ì I hope I lived to see you explain why you shot a 6-6 officer in full uniform because he didnít have a hat on.î

The officer then offered to sell me a revolver he had. He had it nickel-plated including the internal parts.  If you cocked the hammer and shook the gun it would drop the hammer and fire.

I passed on the gun. A few months later on a cold Minnesota night the officer stopped a car that was towing an antique car without taillights on the trailer.

As the motorist exited the car he was hit with the subzero blast of air and the officer saw him shove his hands into his parka pockets. The officer drew that gun and fired. The single slug hit the motorist in the chest and a fragment of the jacket came off and tore the aorta and the man staggered to the car and leaned on the hood and said, ìwhy did you shoot me?î  He slumped onto the ground leaving a huge smear of blood on the car and a pool of blood in front of him.

The man was shot in front of his two teenage sons and was a church elder. The ultimate ìMr. Clean.î

The officer was not charged, but the city did pay out $400,000 in that case.  The officer retired from that department many years later.

In a subzero setting, people put their hands into their pockets all the time.  You expect them to.  Yes, based on the most narrow and optimistic review the officer was justified, but common sense and logic has to take over. I donít think another officer in a five state radius from rookie to veteran would have fired in that situation.

The department was small and the officer had little experience on the street and was defined as a ìhot dog.î He raced to trivial calls and made mountains out of molehills.  As a rookie we all have our over zealous moments.  No denying that, but we have to have balance.

The civilian on the other hand has little opportunity to find situations that require concern or fear. The limited experience can lead to fatal or costly errors.

There is a way to help find this experience. Many areas have a police volunteer or ìreserveî unit.  They are a great source to get a taste of street experience even in rural areas. I urge everyone to look into helping your community by joining such groups. Many offer armed participation. Working as a security officer can also aid in understanding the events involved in use of force issues.

Self-defense is more about what you do BEFORE a shooting than during or after.  We will discuss that later.

There is a fine and thin wall between fear and fright. Fright is a strange animal.  It can be triggered in all of us, but like many things, we each have our own unique standards before we cross that line.

We have our phobias. I know a female who was terrified of flying.  If you got her NEAR an airplane she started to react.  If she got close enough to touch it she showed signs of fright.

She lost the ability to form basic speech patterns, couldnít form thoughts, jerky movements and flight. Sheíd RUN from the plane.  To some of us that seems funny.

I once read the number one phobia in America was fear of speaking in public. Having a radio/TV background I found that amusing. Heck, my first public appearance was speaking before 40,000+ people.  Whatís the problem?

If you research most areas of the Internet on fright you find ìstage frightî the most common problem and concern.

Imagine what your ìfrightî is.  Snakes, spiders, or flying?  

When in rookie school in the early 80ís we were told about stress in shooting.  We all fired and I had a score of 98.2%.  Not bad for a ìrookie.î  When we returned from lunch, we were told they had killed a rattlesnake near our shooting area and that two snakes got away.  

We were then told weíd shoot the next session prone and kneeling.  Guess what?  The scores werenít so good and time consumed shooting increased.  

Our shooting skills or self-defense skills are very fragile and very much at risk if we hit fear and our ultimate enemy FRIGHT.

We now know that a number of genes control our response to fright. This is new science and in the near future will clearly allow us to tell in advance to some degree if we are at risk of grid locking or freezing when hit with fright.  

Donít blow off the genetic predisposition to our response to fright.  It is strong and now verified to a big degree. It is just a matter of how much it will impact us, NOT IF.





FRIGHT AND MIND



When we cross the line from fear to fright the mind will switch to a total survival package and we have NO choice in this matter. NO training will impact it.  Our training only works UP TO the fright trigger.

Once we cross the line, the mind does not care nor is concerned about your job, legal issues, morals, values or anything else. It is in a pure survival mode and will do ANYTHING to survive.  

The mind will strip everything from the thought process that isnít needed for pure survival. You will lose four of your five senses.

To live, you donít need a sense of touch, taste, smell or hearing. Hearing will be blocked via auditory exclusion.  Nobody comes out of a shooting bitching about the noise.  Four of five senses are GONE.  How fast they leave or come back is not predictable.

No training will allow you to defeat this attempt to live.  It is genetic and influenced by the input of the brain to what it sees as a threat.

The response we are hit with is evolutionary and based on manís past experience with dangers over hundreds of thousands of years.  Our brains still think we are in front of caves.  From an evolution point of view the mind and body hasnít even figured out we have clothing and shelter.  We have hair to keep us warm.  If you notice those of an ethnic origin of tropical existence have little or no chest hair or hair that is designed to keep them warm

We still have remnants of K-9 teeth, claws and other physical things that are from our past and uncivilized history. The body and mind have adapted well to survival.

When hit with fright, the body and mind switch to the pre-programmed system that it knows works. Follow me now to see how well the mind and body perform.

Our minds have not adopted the concept of a firearm yet.  Most defense and weapons of the evolutionary process are designed on throwing the weapon or striking with it.

I recall myself using a revolver to hit a suspect holding a knife and trying to stick me with it.  When I decided to shoot, the gun was damaged and would not shoot.  I ìforgotî to shoot the fellow.

Using a gun as a club is not uncommon. The gun may be totally obsolete by the time we find the mind and body putting the gun into our self-defense plan.

Another defense pre-programmed is the desire to run.  A race for life is a real gamble, but some people will do just that and flee the thing causing fright. I recall a girlfriend seeing a snake in some grass we were walking through. She bolted and ran a considerable distance before she stopped. A very natural reaction.  She doesnít recall making the decision to run.  A pre-programmed response.

Stripped of four of our five senses isnít a good start to self-defense.  Our vision will remain and be turned into a form of ìtunnel vision.î  Known in the psychological community as ìweapon threat focusî it is a fact we cannot train out of.

There are some ìexpertsî out there that will tell you that you can train out of this.  NOT!! Sorry, science isnít with you on this one.  They of course have some other very non-science theories but they donít work in the real world either.

Weapon threat focus, hits us many times a day.  It is in a milder form but the same. When someone claims they can train officers to defeat this concept I remind them that if Pam Anderson walked past a group of male officers in a red swimsuit, how many could tell you what color her shoes are?

When we are facing a serious threat that triggers fright, we WILL focus on that threat.  This is normal and to be expected.  Why fight what we will do? We need mental resources for far more important issues than trying to defeat a response designed to help us. The ability of the mind to think in fright is not unlimited and silly be those that think it is.

In a shooting you wonít know if there is a marching band behind the person that is a threat to you. You wonít know if a school bus full of kids is behind the threat once fright hits.

You will have intense tunnel vision and focus on the threat right down to the muzzle of the gun or tip of the knife.  

When someone is bitten by a dog they donít tell you how long the dogís tail was.  Criminals know if they stick a gun or knife in your face you will not look at them, but look at the weapon.  It is what we will all do.

Interesting so many want to try and divert the mind from something that is as natural as sneezing.

I hope you get the picture that you are now into the fight with four of five senses gone, and the fifth being vision is tunneled.  I also hope you are seeing how we respond to fright.  It isnít pretty.

The next response is from the body. Triggered by the mental response it starts a LONG list of changes that will take place instantly.

Of course everyone loves to talk about ìadrenaline.î  We will discuss it, but it isnít like in gun magazines.  Yup, there is an adrenaline ìdump.î  But letís look at it.

Adrenaline is where the expression, ì I didnít know my own strengthî came from.  It allows us almost super human power and is designed to increase our ability to run, throw things and hit with things.  It is not something that aids us in shooting. It would help us throw the gun or use it as a club rather than shoot it. We donít need this super exaggeration of our gross muscles to shoot a gun. In fact, adrenaline is a serious liability to shooting.

One gun magazine writer had a big thing where he had shooters injected with adrenaline to show the effect of ìstress.î  Doctors were shown this article and fell down laughing. Pure ìjunk scienceî and voodoo logic.  It had nothing to do with anything.

Adrenaline also impairs judgment to a degree because we arenít interested in liability or morals and laws when faced with danger. It is an accepted science that adrenaline is a survival drug and nothing else.

A nasty little side effect that comes along with Adrenaline is the impairment of the little muscles that are drowned out.

The little muscles that move the eye are blocked. The little muscles that allow dexterity are defeated. For example if a NFL football player that scores on a 99 yard run is confronted in the end zone and told to count out some small change I think you know what the result will be.  And that isnít dealing with fright. Again, this is not something that helps us shoot better.

New science has shown an interesting chemical shows up. Called Cortisol, it is a fairly new discovery, but it appears to have only one purpose. It blocks memory. Memory blocking is very important to survival.  The mind does not want to process more information that it needs. It wants economy of thought so it can focus all of its effort on survival.  

The impact of Cortisol even in small amounts is toxic and destructive.  Saliva tests can determine the amount of Cortisol in your system and this test is often done to diagnose stress in the body. 

We know small amounts can cause some memory problems, but what science wants to know is the impact of the massive flood released in fright.

We have long suspected memory blockers when it comes to fright. People run back into burning buildings, canít find exits, canít remember phone numbers, and even forget they have a gun.

When we look at the fact 88% of cops killed died with their guns IN the holster it brings up a serious question that most want to ignore and hopes it goes away.  It wonít go away. We have to tackle this serious problem head on.

Letís look at what Cortisol does in SMALL amounts. Keep in mind this study was done only on Cortisol in ìstressî like taking a final exam or an upcoming medical procedure. It does not address the incredible impact of fright.

ìCortisol is a steroid hormone that is released from the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex in response to stress. The stressors that stimulate the release of this glucocorticoid hormone may be any number of things such as drastic changes in temperature, heavy exercising or even falling in love and fright. Cortisol is considered to be such a reliable indicator of stress upon a system that many physiologists define stress as an event that elicits increased levels of Cortisol.

Although Cortisol is not essential for life it helps an organism to cope more efficiently with it's environment.

 If it's been a really, really tough week at work and you can't remember where you put your car keys, it may be that high levels of the stress hormone Cortisol are interfering with your memory. In the recent Archives of General Psychiatry, investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provide the first direct evidence   of exposure to Cortisol at levels associated with major physical or psychological stresses can have a significant negative effect on memory.î 



(authorís note)  If you are a serious student of self-defense you canít ignore this material. To think you are immune or to use denial isnít very smart. Donít get upset with me. If you doubt this effect take it up with the scientists.



ìWe tested memory and other cognitive functions before treatment, after one day of treatment and again after four days, in individuals receiving either a high dose of Cortisol, a lower dose or an inactive substance," explained lead author John W. Newcomer, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology.  

Cortisol is produced in the body during stress. It belongs to a family of stress hormones called glucocorticoids that, among other actions, can interfere with energy supply to certain brain cells involved in memory. Newcomer's previous work showed that treatments with a synthetic glucocorticoid called dexamethasone impaired memory. But this is the first study to demonstrate that prolonged exposure to high levels of Cortisol--the hormone actually produced in the body in response to high stress-- has that same negative effect. 

"The dexamethasone work came pretty close to telling the story of what actually happens with large amounts of stress and high levels of Cortisol," Newcomer said. "But this study more accurately represents the effects of Cortisol in the brain when a person is under high levels of stress." 

A total of 51 people participated in the study -- 25 men and 26 women between ages 18 and 30. They were assigned to one of three groups. One group of seven men and eight women received a high daily dose of Cortisol. A second group of eight men and eight women took a lower dose, and the remaining 10 men and 10 women received an inactive substance. All took their capsules twice daily for four days. 

The amounts mimicked Cortisol levels secreted in response to stressful medical procedures. The high dose corresponds to Cortisol secretion after events like abdominal surgery. The lower dose was similar to Cortisol secretion during a minor medical procedure such as getting stitches or having a skin growth removed.

 The volunteers also were asked to listen to and recall parts of a paragraph so the researchers could asses their verbal declarative memory. This type of memory involves several brain regions, including the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped brain structure related to memory and learning. The memory test, as well as tests of other cognitive functions, were given before the Cortisol treatment, after one day of treatment, after four days of treatment and six days after the subjects stopped taking Cortisol. 

Newcomer, who also is a staff psychiatrist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, found that memory performance suffered only in those subjects who received the high dose of Cortisol and only after the subjects had received the hormone for several days. Fourteen of the 15 individuals taking the high dose experienced a decrease in memory performance after four days of treatment. No effects were found on the other cognitive tests. 

In addition to explaining the memory problems that could occur during hospitalizations for surgery the results may be relevant to other situations as well, Newcomer said. Major psychological stresses, which can be different for different individuals, also could produce similar effects on memory. For example, if a student studying for a test has just experienced a major trauma such as a death in the family, he or she might not be as efficient at learning new material. A few people may experience high Cortisol levels in response to less profound events, such as the pressure of upcoming final exams. So Mom and Dad may have been right when they told us cramming for exams is not a good idea. "These high Cortisol levels are relevant to the kind of memory that helps us function moment-to-moment," Newcomer said. 

The remaining questions involve how much stress must be present before memory suffers. The Cortisol levels produced in the study were significantly higher than those that occur during an average bad week. Most people would have to experience a severe medical situation or severe physical or psychological trauma. But Newcomer believes there may be some effects from long-term exposure to slightly lower levels, though those experiments have not yet been done. 

The glucocorticoid effects on memory appear to be reversible. Therefore, Newcomer does not believe the memory effects demonstrated in this study are part of any process associated with loss of neurons or permanent damage in the hippocampus or other brain structures. 

"The evidence suggests that these kinds of Cortisol levels are not neurotoxic themselves," Newcomer said. "Perhaps sustained, high levels make neurons vulnerable to other types of injury, but we don't believe the memory impairments we saw in this study are in any way associated with an irreversible process. In fact, our evidence shows that this memory impairment is quickly reversible." 



References



Guyton, A.C. and J.E. Hall. 1996 Textbook of Medical Physiology. Ninth Edition. W.B. Saunders , Philadelphia.



Vander, A.J., J.H. Sherman and D.S. Luciano. 1994. Human Physiology. Sixth edition. McGraw-Hill Inc. New York.



What this information also tells us is that stress can start a memory blocking process. Yes, police work is stressful.  Stress is toxic to memory and the body and we know the impact it has on us and our hearts and circulatory system and other body functions.  But even low-level stress can start the memory blocking process and impair our ability to retrieve information such as training.

We know Adrenaline impairs some logic in the mental process, but we now know the impact of even low levels of Cortisol.  It is also clear that just concern or fear will trigger this and other hormones (chemicals) that will impair memory. This situation doesnít get better.

Nobody in the self-defense community has looked at this scientific effect on skills and survivability. They have been stuck on the logic that survivability is about guns and bullets. Nothing could be further from the truth. Survivability is based on what you do BEFORE you need the gun.  If we live or not, will be based on our ability to apply training long before we have a need for the gun.

We could linger on the impact of Cortisol for many more pages, but you should get the hint by now how important it is.

This is only the START of problems we will face when we are in a fright mode.

Our second consideration is the effect of Endorphins.  Endorphins were uncovered in the 1970ís.

 In 1975, Endorphins were discovered by Dr. John Hughes and Dr. Kosterlitz.

ï It has been confirmed that Endorphins have both neurological and spinal effects.

ï Twenty different types of Endorphins have been discovered in the nervous system.

ï The most effective, beta-endorphin which gives the most euphoric effect to the brain, has been found to be composed of 31 amino acids.

ï The word Endorphin is abbreviated from 'endogenous morphine' which means a morphine produced naturally in the body.

ï Endorphins are renowned worldwide as anti-stress hormones that relieve pain naturally.

ï They are secreted to remove stress or pain when you have pain or stress. In other words, they block the signal of pain to the nervous system. This being an effect that reduces the pain and causing an

euphoric effect to occur.

Unfortunately Endorphins cannot work for a long time because our body also makes enzymes, called endorphines, which chew up the Endorphins. This is the reason why Endorphins cannot work for a long time causing people to suffer from excruciating pain as they become old.

Endorphins block pain. The body and mind has not figured out we have painkillers so it produces itís own. This is great. Endorphins are so effective that if you are shot or stabbed in the chest and you get to an ER fast enough they will cut you open, crack the chest and work on you with NO anesthetic of any kind in many cases.

When discovered, the scientists were confused why the brain would have receptors for a cocaine or morphine drug.  Neither is a natural substance to the body.  What they found is the body produces its own form of morphine and is many times more effective than what doctors can use.

Being such an effective painkiller we have to wonder what it has to do with self-defense.  Good question and we will address it.

Note that the scientists say Endorphins have ìneurological and spinal effects.î 

Pain researchers began testing the endorphins by administering them to experimental animals and to human pain patients. The results surprised and impressed patients and researchers alike: The endorphins were much more powerful than morphine, the strongest painkiller we have. One of the endorphins, beta-endorphin, was 18 to 50 times more  

effective than morphine. Another endorphin, called dynorphin, was over 500 times stronger than morphine in some biological tests.

You may want to read that over again.  The body is an incredible device. This might help explain assailants who receive massive trauma from gunshot wounds and donít react. You donít see this topic discussed in gun magazines or training.  

Here is what a medical encyclopedia says about Endorphin.



endorphin

any of a group of NEUROTRANSMITTERS, affecting mood, perception of pain, memory retention, and learning. Chemically similar to opium-derived



Note the mention of ìmemory retention.î Endorphins are indeed a factor in memory.  When we are hit with FRIGHT the amount of endorphin injected into our system is MASSIVE.  Any effect it has under normal conditions is exaggerated by fright. And it is exaggerated many times over.  Again, we have a memory blocker at work and science backs this up.  It became known as far back as the 1970ís, thus showing the ignoring of this chemistry for so many years has to have been via neglect or design by the training community.

We canít keep ignoring so many problems associated with fright.  The ability to use memory keeps showing up. We have to wonder why the body and mind wants to block memory. Youíd think memory would be vital to survival.  We will discuss this memory problem later as it shows up often.

The body to stay alive in a confrontation does not know we have doctors and modern medicine. The body will rely on its own ability to survive combat. This includes the prevention of blood loss. When hit with fright we are hit with chemicals that clot our blood.

Blood clotting is vital to survival.  The body injects this chemistry based on amount of induced fear/fright.  The term ìscared to deathî comes from this. When frightened the body kicks out the clotting chemicals to prevent bleeding. This can be triggered by an event where there are no injuries. A roller coaster ride or loud noise can do it.

If we have some blockage to a blood vessel such as a blockage near the heart the blood will clot and cause a heart attack or a stroke.  This lifesaving chemical can honestly be the cause of our death. What is unique is that this chemical increases when we age to around 40. The body knows that as we age we lose the ability to fight and thus the body compensates to provide more clotting power. An interesting but great concept.

The clotting factor plays a part in self-defense because it will help us to survive . 

A new danger surfaces when we are hit with fright. That new danger is the blood pressure spike that will take place. It will vary with each person and event, but it can be severe.

To prevent blood loss the body will clamp down all the blood moving vessels.



BLOOD PRESSURE SPIKES



This effect is interesting. It is the bodies attempt not to bleed to death and the effect causes all the blood to be pushed to the center of mass or chest area. This is where ìthrills and chillsî comes from. When we experience fear we feel a chill.  The arms are the most effected. The body wants blood to move away from the arms and legs, which would probably be the first injured in a fight.

When we experience fear and fright we may feel rubbery legs and chills and cold. That is normal as the body is preparing to fight and survive.

The carotid arteries to the brain also clamp down starving the brain for oxygen and blood.  This is why some will faint.  Do you think this will improve your survival skills?  Of course not. It is an effect that is not conducive to recalling training and planning.  

If you had a kid or dog run in front of your car and you had to dynamite the brakes, you probably felt light headed for a few seconds. The same effect takes place when you are confronted with a life and death situation.

The immediate effect of blood clotting and clamping down of blood vessels is a ripe environment for a stroke and/or heart attack if the prevention of blood movement hits a blocked artery or vein and a blood clot forms.  

It is not uncommon to have officers die while in pursuits or physical confrontations from this problem.



TRANSIENT GLOBAL AMNESIA



TGA has long been known to exist in humans. It is a chemical produced by the brain that seems to block memory and perhaps smooth out traumatic memories for us.

The saying, ìtime heals all woundsî seems to relate well to this.  New research has shown that stress can trigger this problem, but scientists are comfortable saying that FRIGHT can cause a massive release of this chemical.

It is a complex issue, but fright can cause a person to not remember the event or only fragmented parts of it.  

Fright can cause problems to the brain as we have seen, including TGA which block memory.  

Letís stop and think about what we have discussed. We have clearly shown a serious list of problems with memory/recall for the human brain when we face fright.

Of course each experience and each person will have a unique response to the event but it is obvious the brain goes into a mode that blocks out our ability to bring into the event complex information.  If any information can be processed it will have to be bone simple.

The mind is so tuned to survival that it only allows us so much room to apply what we have learned. If the body and mind feel survival is at risk they will both switch to a total instinctive/genetic mode.

The logic that we resort to our training has some merit but only when we are at levels of concern or fear.  The logic is blocked by the reality of science when we cross into the world of fright.

The fact that almost 9 out of 10 cops die with their gun in the holster screams for an explanation. Part of that has to be the impact on the officerís mind and body to fright.

Cops and most gun owners are often creatures of bravado.  That right is well deserved. Cops and often gun owners live in an environment that others may miss out on.

They may have jobs or reason to be in areas that require a firearm for self-defense. They often are involved in situations that you donít know if you should laugh or cry and often you cry out of sight of others.

Nobody wants to defend themselves with the attitude that they canít do the job. Sometimes they have to constantly sell themselves first and then those around them that they can do the job.

Some are in denial that there is realistic fear. I once worked with an officer that constantly boasted he never had to touch his gun in over 25 years of big city police work.  

Some of those that had used their guns often wondered why he was spared this fact of police work. We could do another book on that issue, but each gun owner has to look at what we have spoken of so far and decide how much of it may apply to them.

We have to make it clear that some self-defense issues can be complex.

Critics contend I claim there is no training that will work when needed most. That has some merit and logic.

What they fail to note is that the real focus of my training is not about shooting.  It is about NOT shooting. It is about NOT being in a situation that requires the use of a firearm.

Few training programs focus on what is needed to avoid a shooting. We have our share of survival type schools, but few have any basis in reality. They are complex and try to justify cost with highly complex material that will seldom be retained, used or ever discussed again.

To find students, some programs they have turned their facilities into Disneyland with guns.

The key to self-defense is seeking out and finding information that will sharpen your skills at avoiding problems and that is experience and follow that with a plan that you compose for YOUR needs and what YOU face each day.  

Go back and pound into your brain what we discussed so far.  Think about it often.  Do a long self-evaluation on your personality and environment.

Look at your  physical and mental capabilities and what your body can do for you.





TGA resources



Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Dr. Russell Lane of the West London Neurosciences Center at Charing Cross Hospital in London.



COP KILLER INTERVIEWS



When I started to research why and how we get killed I soon figured out I wouldnít ask any police sources. They get killed. I went to the source of the people that kill cops. Over a dozen in all.

What surprised me was the candor of the prisoners. One thing everyone said without hesitation is that there was NOTHING the officer could have done to prevent the attack. The DOJ study of ìViolence Against Law Enforcement Officersî pretty much backed that up.

They didnít slow down when describing how and why they carried out their attacks.  They almost took pride in their effort.  

Every single prisoner made it clear that they choreographed the event. The officer had NO input on what they wanted or were about to do.  They also said the attacks were always to their advantage and they felt they were taking very little risk.  

One inmate had a strong impact on me. When I left the prison I was shaken. I had my world turned upside down because he had managed to put into a few words what a college course would take to teach us about self-defense.

His words should be standard material in any self-defense training. It puts into perspective what we have to do and what we must address.

He found the fact that cops are trained as amusing. It didnít interest him at all and in fact laughed it off as a factor in what he did to kill a cop.

The inmateís brother was shot and killed by police only months before.  The mother claimed the police picked on her sons.

The inmate had been stopped for shoplifting and the police were called in a rural community.  The inmate smiled as he recalled the night in question.

ì You cops think you make all the decisions.  Thatís bullshit. I make the decisions.î He smiled as he leaned forward in his shackles to make his point.

ì I can give up.  You have to agree to that. In the past I did just that.  I wanted to. Nobody else made me do it.î  He fell back into his chair.

ì I can run away and Iíve done that as well.î  He now crossed his legs and a smirk came over his face.

ì I can also wait for you to give me a chance to  kill you and I donít have to take it. It is my choice not yours. You have no say into which decision I will  make. ì  He waited and got my response. I was speechless.  Read again the underlined part.

I had to wonder on basic traffic stops how many opportunities I had given to people to kill me.  Iíll bet there were plenty on each traffic stop.  More on answering calls, walking beats etc.  

When I looked into shootings I was involved in I had to look at myself and I understood I gave someone the chance to kill me and they took it. His words still stay with me.  

It is hard to live inside an iron suit and aim a gun at everybody you have contact with. Even as civilians we have to live, we have to move around, we have to go about our business.  Do you think that in a days time you give someone the chance to kill you if they wanted to? Of course we do.

Yes, we are at the mercy of those around us.  If someone wants to take us out they can do it.  Do you think they will meet us at noon in the middle of the street? Of course not.

Most cops are killed in a flat out street ambush. A series of events that take only seconds from start to finish.  Offering the officer or even a civilian little chance to respond.

As a clerk in a store the thug walks in and without any warning sticks a gun in your face. What do you do now? Not much.

You can wake up with a thug in your bedroom. Do you jump into a modified weaver stance, do a speed rock, crush grip, flash sight picture and do a double tap?  Kind of funny, isnít it?    The real world doesnít work that way.

After 40+ years of dealing with crooks you soon learn their mindset. It is not one of fair play.  They donít see the streets as a sporting event.  They see it as a game where they make all the rules and decide when it is time to play.

What we need is a massive amount of humility so we have total respect for their ability to hurt and kill us.

A hunter has nothing but respect for animals like a bear or rattlesnake. They donít have our brainpower but they often find humans easy prey.

Most criminals will have more experience in actual street encounters than most cops.  Their scars and criminal records are often evidence of that.

Our dangers can range from a middle-aged housewife to a seasoned criminal.  Each has the ability to make a decision about whether or not they will harm us.  They will make that decision and it will be when they feel safe to do so.  Of course exceptions are there, but our logic is a great rule of thumb.

A friend of mine answered a call to a very upper income area of town and was met by a housewife in her 50ís.  She was nearly 100 lbs in size my friend walked into a hallway to hear her reason for the call. She was complaining about her husband who was nowhere to be seen.

As the woman told her story her voice started to rise.  My friend tried to subdue her and they struggled and fell into an open closet. She got his gun out of a security holster and they struggled for the gun. My friend is 200 lbs and he was in a fight for his life on the floor of a cluttered closet.

He never heard the shot but felt the scorching pain in his groin. He had been shot in the groin with his own gun. He struck the woman repeatedly until she went limp. He crawled to his car to radio for help.

I havenít seen him in years and he got a medical retirement.  He will always need treatment for the wound.  Were her actions spontaneous? Perhaps, but he did indeed give her an opportunity to kill him. She made the decision to take it in that closet

The challenge is to come up with a plan that works to prevent someone from taking advantage of an opportunity we will give them.

Once the attack begins our chance of survival are greatly reduced.  Bill Jordan a retired Border Patrolman and well known self-defense author said something that I will never forget and it made sense when I read his classic book on the subject,

 ì No Second Place Winner.î  Bill said, ì if your gun isnít in your hand when the trouble begins, chances are you wonít ever get to it.î How true those words are.  When I had lunch with Bill at a few Shot Shows he often would smile when I told him I found those words were right on the money.  He once smiled and said, ì experience sure shows you what reality is all about.î  It sure does. Bill is missed. He passed away a few years ago.

Criminals will wait for your every screw up. Most officers have had a prisoner bolt and run from the scene of an arrest.  The reason the prisoner was able to do that was an error on the part of the officer. Every cop has had to  kick themselves for making an error that resulted in a foot chase or other event that could have been serious.

Cops have had prisoners get out of handcuffs, break out of police cars and of course even break out of jails. Criminals spend much of their time practicing ways not to get caught or not to be taken into custody. Those methods work against civilians as well.

Criminals know you will make certain errors or try to get you to make certain errors.  Many times they are very good and successful doing just that.

One criminal I interviewed refers to us as ìchumps.î  He boasted that he could rob us by taking advantage of our good nature. ì I gotta get close and I gotta surprise you. Iíve had people freeze like deer in the headlights and that includes cops.î

When hit with fright or even fear we do have a form of built in denial.  We want a reasonable explanation for what is happening to us.

What it all boils down to is somehow having a plan that will greatly lower the ability of the criminal to surprise or ambush us.  We have to remember it is self-DEFENSE, not self-OFFENSE.  

We have to remove the opportunities.  Do we do weeks and hundreds of hours of training? Hardly, as we just donít have that much time to spare. What we need is something SIMPLE, something that will work, and something that will give us a huge return on decreasing the risks we face.  That is a huge task considering the many variables that exist in our lives. But if we fall back to basics, we can put together something that all of us can put into place and practice.  We need something that requires only a few chunks of information processing and can be carried out without giving us major roadblocks to going about our lives.

The problem is to do something that will remove the opportunities we give criminals to hurt us.  It is a very difficult and complex problem that needs a simple effort. 

  

JUST THINKING



We have seen the many documented barriers that will get in the way of applying training or experience.  There is little we can do about that or what the criminal will do.  Self-defense is an animal of perils that await us.  The perils change constantly and are never the same thing twice.  When we are defensive we are at a great disadvantage. 

The question has to surface for us to ask ourselves about our ability to think.  We can get very complex about memory and thought process. It is highly complex and constantly changing, but we do know something that applies very well to the subject at hand. It is the concept of ìchunkingî information.  How the mind breaks it down so we can put it into long-term memory and/or access that information.  

There is no disagreement that simplicity is the name of the game when it comes to remembering something and the constant refreshing of that information.

Most experts agree that if we sit in a training program we will retain only about 15% of the information we were exposed to.  That isnít much. We can increase that if the instructor understands a number of learning concepts including ìchunking.î  A chunk of information is something like a number. ì5î is a chunk of information.  I will now give you a slightly scholarly explanation of what this concept is. It is VITAL that you understand it so you can aid yourself in memory

This long established and well-defined process is something the training community has ignored.  There is a good reason for that. It is scientific and would turn into a shambles 99% of what methods are used in police or civilian training for self-defense.  

This common learning science is about our ability to remember.  We have levels of memory.  

Episodic memory- the recall of events, which is in detail and sequence.

Semantic memory - intentional learning, which involves encoding, storage and retrieval of information.

Semantic memory is storing information to use later and retrieving it when needed.  Memory is a complex issue and I ask some latitude for my layman efforts. I have hundreds of hours of research on this subject and have found in conversations with experts in the field that my grasp is indeed applicable to the subject at hand.

Short-Term Memory and Rehearsal means we transfer what we see and hear to STM and that information such as watching a car drive past will remain active for 15-20 seconds without rehearsal.  If the event is unusual we may store that information for later retrieval or it will be lost.  Here is a problem with training.

Most experts agree we retain only 15% of what we learn. Stop to think about school. You had 12 years of schooling if you finished high school. Break that down into the number of months, days and hours you spent ìlearning.î  The mind is a wonderful thing, but it has a limit on how much it can store in long term or short-term memory.  If you had 25 other students in each class you could have attended class with as many 300 students and perhaps had over a dozen various teachers by 6th grade. In grades 7-12 you may have five classes in each grade with 25 students. That works out to over 700 different students.  Can you name them all? Of course not and each year you forget more and more names.

Regardless of the amount of training you have received it also decays with time if not refreshed.  Some will claim it is like riding a bike, and that is true to some extent, but that is rather crude information compared to complex information needed in self-defense.  How many can recall the entire list of Presidents we may have learned in school, and the longer we are away from it the fewer we can remember?  

A serious problem is how much we can recall in STM.  George Millerís 1956 study on this is a standard in the learning community.  He determined the ìchunkî is the unit in memory.  He also said we are limited to 5-7+/-2 to recall from STM.

Like it or not, believe it or not, that is our limit on memory recall because it is how information is easily remembered.  A number for example is a ìchunk.î  This science is so well known that few know they are exposed to it daily. Your social security number is ìchunked.î  Your phone number is ìchunked.î  In fact when your house is on fire you call what number?  911 is three chunks and at the low end of what we can recall in an emergency.  If this theory wasnít correct the national police emergency number might be 1-800-669-7621. Could you remember that number if your house was on fire or a loved one is having a heart attack?  For years we were told to post police and fire numbers near phones because they were not the same and were often 3 plus four digit affairs.  Even today, some cannot dial 911 or remember their own address when asked as the house burns around them.

A shooter has to understand that what you do at the range and what you do in real life will not be related for this and other reasons.  Regardless of your intelligence or your experience your mind is limited on the amount of information it can retrieve.  

Many of my critics are convinced I donít feel training works. Training works, if you can keep it in the parameters that the mind can deliver it.  The problem is that we have made the training so complex we canít recall it when needed.

Everything we teach is done in chunks of 3-4 whenever possible so that a student has a chance of retrieving that information when needed.  There are many barriers in the way to try and stop you from doing any chunking.  There are memory-blocking efforts at work trying to stop us from recalling information we need to survive. Remember all those   memory blockers?

Years ago an effort was started to try and convince shooters they could recall information by inventing a term called, ìmuscle memory reflex.î This totally bogus term hits a brick wall of creditability from the start. First of all a muscle cannot remember a thing.  Secondly, this term is not a medical term and we defy you to find it in any medical journals. The only mention we find similar, deals with a damaged muscle returning to perform as it did before an injury.  

Amazing how this bogus term was grasped and given any creditability. It is one of the things that ìsounds goodî so we grasp it.  It does not exist and we will firmly establish that with the help of some of the best scientific minds we could find.

We have to burst the bubbles of the armchair experts who insist on using non-scientific and purely emotion based amateur logic to market training that wonít stand up to scientific scrutiny.  Such training can be lethal to the student who falls for it.

We can only recall training if it is broken down into chunks. That is a labor-intensive effort on the part of the instructor and that process has to be done so that it can be practiced by the student,  on a regular basis, so the student can recall it. The training has to be repeated to remain fresh and prevent memory decay not the bogus logic of MMR.

Those that attend various ìschoolsî will attend for a few days and return home unable to recreate what they were shown in those schools, thus the information will decay with each day they are away from the school.  

That is one reason we have decided to offer students the opportunity to return for our basic training classes as often as they wish FREE of charge.  To have a clear conscience on our studentís ability to defend themselves we had to do this.  We urge at least once or twice per year re-attendance with plenty of practice on their own in between our classes.

To be honest it should be far more often than that and perhaps as much as once per week or more.  It is an issue of keeping the ability of the brain to process information in a limited amount, viable and workable.  It has nothing to do with muscles. It is a total mental issue.

New knowledge is interpreted from the beginning within context supplied by existing knowledge.  That is why new shooters or shooters with little experience need to be instructed in a manner that takes into consideration their prior experience. You donít teach students with no experience the same as you would a person with a long history of exposure to firearms related information. In fact, the more experienced shooter is a difficult student as they attempt to use their previous exposure to shooting with what they are presented.  Most shooters are amazed how well new shooters do when taken to a range.  The old saying, ìthey havenít learned any bad habits,î has some merit.

A problem is the exposure to movies and TV.  The viewers store that information and they think shooting guns for real will be like what they have been exposed to and in fact if we can expose them to reinforcing training of those exposures they will attempt to grasp it and store it as training.

This explains why so much of what we see in conventional police training can be traced back to a movie.  Shooting the gun sideways is a prime example, or showing how to stand etc., based on what we have seen in a movie. It looks good to us, and if we can replicate what we have seen on the screen, it must produce the same results.  

In fact shooters may be exposed to more information from movies and TV then they will get in real life training. 

This also explains why so many manufacturers will pay to have their products used and displayed in films.  It dates back to our youth when we thought we could tie a dishtowel around our neck for a cape and fly like Superman.   When the TV series ìSix Million Dollar Man,î was on TV, kids tried to run in slow motion like the opening of the show.  That type of copycat behavior spills over to us in later years.  We even change our language for the things we hear in a movie or on TV.

To process the information we need to survive, it has to be simple and lack complexity. It has to be limited so that we donít try to use a menu so massive that we canít make a choice in time to survive.

You can recall those huge menus some cafes have.  Imagine someone handing you one and putting a gun to your head and demanding you choose a low fat low calorie meal in 15 seconds.  It isnít going to happen. If we have a menu with a very few items on it we have a chance of making the deadline.

The idea is to condense the training to the point our menu is limited to a few select items. 

The theory of muscle memory reflex is a very lame term. It is better to use a term that would tell us we can do something that may appear automatic if we have few items to chose from and can successfully process that information and then apply it within the time restraints and mental and physical conditions we are given. 

You donít need a PHD to know enough to take a gun out if faced with a deadly threat.  It was obvious it wasnít a training issue.

Training is also like being in a big library and told to get a book on African history within a few minutes.  It is easier if we are in front of a set of encyclopedias and better yet if he are holding the ìAî volume in our hand, and better yet if we are allowed to open the book to the Africa section before the question is asked.  

It is a bankrupt logic to have a menu of so many options that you become grid locked in your ability to call up the information when you need it.  

One thing about self-defense we have learned is the simplicity of the need.  We want to plan for the worst including massive amounts of ammunition, gadgets, toys, things, and tools hanging onto us.  Police equipment belts are so crowded that officers need a 40+ inch belt line to carry it all.  Itís become almost impossible to sit down in a car with all the items digging into your side.  Equipment belts that run 15-20 pounds are not uncommon.  

The videos we now have of actual shootings show the simplicity of the affair.  Close range, low light and only a few seconds in duration.

The act may be simple, but it is so fast, we have to process our information to live within those few seconds.  That is why we have to reduce the menu we have in front of us if we get into a situation like that.

We wont be given the time to access a big menu.  We will have to make our decisions in a second or two with no room for error.  

Using known facts about chunking we have to get down to the 7 chunks plus or minus 2. We learn easily if information presented to us is ìchunked.

It is hard to get into deep detail, but the thought process, when we are in stages of fear, and/or fright are complex. 

Hunters know the importance of knowing how game acts and moves to be a successful hunter.

We are the hunted and we have to know how the hunter hunts us. We have to avoid traps and making a wrong move that can put us in harms way.

A realistic self-examination of our skills, weaknesses and environment are needed. Failure to address the issues we have discussed will leave you on the short end of survival.  You wonít die from having the wrong gun or bullet.  



FRIGHT GENE



When I first wrote of this in a 1999 issue of Law & Order Magazine, I wasnít prepared for the response I got. It ranged from claiming I had to be insane to being a loose cannon.

As I worked on genetics and our response to fright, I found a 1997 series of studies that become a legal and moral landmine in front of us.

One Chief of Police emailed me and said, ì This is the last sort of thing I needed to worry about.î  He went on to say he was now facing far more serious potential legal issues than an officer in an unjustified shooting.

When I found out the high percentage of shots that miss by police at close range and the large number of officers that fail to respond to a threat I suspected the problem had nothing to do with training. After all, what officer would not know enough to take a gun out of a holster if they faced an obvious threat?  

 Failure to respond to an obvious threat is a seldom discussed issue in training for self-defense.  We have large number of cases where the officer or civilian should have had more than ample time to respond to an obvious threat.

In 1999 a gunman killed three security officers, and wounded another in a confrontation in California.  All four had some training we are sure.  Even with limited training the gunmanís performance was effective.

How much training do you think the gunman had? Three dead and one seriously wounded is very  effective effort by any measure.

Cases where multiple officers are wounded and killed clearly show something is wrong.  Do we just come up with more excuses?  How many excuses do we come up with before we see a problem and address it?  

When a cop is dead with a holstered gun we have to pay some form of homage to the attackers skills, or ask ourselves where training has failed.

When I first wrote of the fight gene I was thought to be amusing and well outside the loop.

More research is showing the fright gene issue is now up front and has to be addressed.

The University at Colorado at Boulder and the State University of New York in Albany conducted a series of experiments to find out more about the anthropocentric neurotic behavior. In Nature Genetics Magazine Jonathan Flint of the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England explained this new discovery in detail.

Located on the first chromosome the two studies agreed.  It is estimated that about 15% of us will carry the fright gene.

As Dr. Jeanne Wehner at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado, and Lorraine Flaherty, of the Wadsworth Center and the New York State Department of Health in Albany,  found the same conclusions.

We can now check to see if we have this gene, but what follows is a series of potential problems, some of which are legal in nature.

The triggering of the fright gene will cause us to freeze and gridlock when it is time to react in some way.  The entire thought process is frozen and remains frozen for various lengths of time.

It is individual, but we donít know what will trigger the gene.  We donít know how much fright it will take.  This gene is the source for comments like, ì I  didnít know what to do. I just stood there. I froze.î  

Researchers refused to even attempt an answer at how this fright gene(s) are distributed among us based on sex or race. Imagine the uproar that could create regardless of how they answered that question.

What if an officer is killed,  and didnít defend themselves?  What if we checked the DNA and found the fright gene?  Do you blame the employer for not checking for this gene?  

If the employer did check would you tell anyone carrying this gene they have to quit their job?

Do we refuse to hire anyone with a fright gene? Do we now examine new employees with a DNA screening?  Interesting legal questions,  that will have to be addressed in the future.

We may find we can alter or engineer that gene. Do we do that? Who will pay for it? How much will it cost?

Even if we locate the fright gene we are stuck with what to do with it.  I assure you that most will ignore it until they get beat over the legal head with it.

Combined with behavior determination of genetics we have a very long laundry list to be concerned about in self-defense issues if we are to follow the safe and educated road on this issue.

If a small percentage of what we have discussed is true, there is an unquestionable need to review our present training procedures to address more realistic issues than guns and bullets.  

What we have covered so far is not about guns or bullets. It is not about tactics. It isnít exciting and it isnít fun to cover. But it is mandatory to address these issues.

The critics will attack every comment and they may do that. It will require them to see and look for themselves at what the real issues are.  They wonít be coming back to guns and bullets.

The critics will have to talk with the scientists. They will have to review the research. They will have to take my comments on that research and look into it to prove it doesnít apply or is wrong.

As a result they will either add to what I have put on paper or ignore it. Educated and logical minds will see the application to survival.  

Iím only a layman on all of this and I assure you there is room for error or misinterpretation on my part.  However, I urge more insight and research on applicable science.

If we ignore it and stick to our old ways we come back to the 92% miss rate and almost 9 out of 10 cops being killed with their gun in their holster.  Performance and failure to respond.  Ignore it, or give us a solution for improvements. Figures and videos of real shootings is showing we havenít improved a thing in the past several decades. If anyone can claim a solution let them step forward now.  I think it will be a short line.

In mid-2000, scientists announced a major break through in genetics. They have now finished mapping the human genome, the bodyís instruction manual both for lifetime development and daily operations.  This was the largest biology project in history that cost billions of dollars.

This science will impact each of us within a few years on how we age and perhaps how we behave. Many mental illnesses including depression are known to be genetic in many cases.  Such things as a sense of humor or even our ability to learn and how we react to our environment are genetic.

There is no question that we will see an impact on such things as genetics being used to select certain individuals for specific personality traits. It may be the ability to avoid fright and fear, or the ability to carry out legal violent behavior.

Vocational predisposition is without question now on the visible horizon. Genetics will start playing a part in self-defense to some degree within a short period of time.  

You have to be out of touch with reality and modern science to think it wonít have an impact. It is just a matter of how soon and how much.

I doubt if we will produce super shooters with genetics, but we will be able to predict with some degree of certainty who may or may not be cut out for such matters.  Most of us will fall into that large ìnormalî category, some will be stars and some will not.  Only time will tell us. 

The genetic link to performance in self-defense is here.  Now we have to understand it.  



RANGE SCORES AND 

SURVIVEABILITY



We have searched for years, but cannot find one study or person to claim high range scores have any connection to staying alive on the street. I assure you that if such a study existed it would be printed on targets for all to see. It would be shouted from the roof tops.  Look all you want. It is not there.

Trainers will wash their hands of this issue and ignore it of course.  I think they know what we will find. 

If we took the annual or other range scores of officers killed weíd find some interesting information. I think you know what it would be.  We wouldnít like to hear that.

In recent years training has gotten away from keeping score vs. a ìpass-failî concept.  That sure takes away from the ability to connect scores with survival.  How comfortable that concept must be.

So now we know that most if not all officers killed ìpassedî their certification, whatever that involves.

With the average officer being killed with 9-12 years of experience it brings up the question that needs asking. If training or performance were an indicator of survival wouldnít the rookies get killed more often?  It seems strange that those with the most training and experience are getting killed and not responding to the threats they face.

So if someone has proof of range performance and survival, bring it out.  We said, ìPROOF.î



VIDEO GAMES AND 

SURVIVAL



We are now awash in video ìgamesî designed to train officers.  It sounds good that we can have officerís face ìscenariosî and make decisions.  The entire concept, which can run $50,000 or more for cash strapped departments, has an interesting logic.

When a salesman contacted our firm about buying one of these games we asked a simple but needed question.  For $50,000 we needed an answer.

ìCan you prove they work and increase survival or performance?î  Now that is a reasonable and good question.

Our response was shocking. The salesman told us that NOBODY had EVER asked that question and they had no such proof.

Seems strange that grown and educated adults would spend $50,000 and not know if the darned thing even worked.

Most of those we have seen (we havenít seen all of them) have scenarios that are pretty predictable and very unrealistic.  But they are FUN. Wow, are they FUN.  

Training to be realistic should have physical consequences.  We will dwell on that later, but video games are just that.  Officers and civilians love to play with them and find themselves laughing and making light of poor performance.  Nobody will take a dollar out of their check for shooting a innocent target or missing.  There is no penalty.

The money could and should be spent on more effective efforts.  It is interesting that we have seen video games for kids that are every bit as effective in content as the ones used in police departments.

If you bought one, use one, or are thinking of buying one, you have to clearly understand that nobody can prove they work or even help.

We can only wave our arms in confused response claiming they ìshould.î  We can claim that it canít hurt.  Spending that kind of money on a toy can and does hurt.

Argue all you want, but it is up to the defenders to find the proof the things work.  Who has looked at shootings and checked to see how many of the officer participants were trained in these systems and if they performed well or not?  We canít find one.  

Such video games hardly even make you breath heavy. With the best systems officers will make serious errors with little or no induced levels of fear and no induced fright. The reason is that there is no consequence for a failure.  

If we assume the video games show us anything it is that even in such low levels of mental challenge the officers are screwing up. That should be a clue as to what a real encounter can produce.  

Officers walk into the room KNOWING they will face a decision making process involving the use of force. Such a luxury is not possible in the streets and real world.  We never know when a problem will surface.

In summation any video arcade and a handful of quarters can produce the same results.  That should get some folks off of their chairs.



DISNEYLANDíS WITH GUNS



There has been a flood of ìschoolsî coming on line.  The fight is on to show who has the best movie set like facility.  They build towns, courses and other features better suited to making a movie than addressing real life effort.

First of all, the schools to survive have to be FUN.  Every person I have spoken with to attend such a school spoke of the FUN they had.  If that is your goal and worth the money to you, go into it and have FUN.

The attempt to take a novice shooter and have them do complex things for a few days doesnít make much sense. It compares more to a fantasy baseball camp.

The first problem is the rapid decay of information obtained in those few days. That decay begins the day you leave the facility.  In fact, we know you will only retain about 15% of what you learned based on known science about learning.

Once out the door the decay process begins unless you can practice what you learned at home on a regular basis.  Much of it will require the facility you learned at for such practice.

Also the major portion of the effort is not designed for realistic encounters. If it was youíd shoot 85% of your time in low light or darkness and about 90% of the time at 21 feet or less. Of course that is not the case and at best such effort is only touched upon in favor of jumping and running around the place.

Few want to grasp the fact that self-defense shooting is a very SIMPLE matter and void of complexity.  The movie logic of what it is like doesnít go away very easy.  

If you review some of the tactics they seem to ASSUME you will have various things like people, geography, and hardware to apply to a given situation.

If a training facility is to be applicable to the real world the focus must be on CLOSE and in low light and darkness.  That sounds like the most simple shooting of all and few would find it entertaining. In fact it is boring. Like doing scales for musician.

Trying to gain and keep a plan for way out, one in a million events in your future, is a real poor use of resources.

Of course those that endorse or own such facilities will be real upset with our view on the subject, but they have the opportunity, skill and resources to make the effort more applicable to real life.

There is a need to repeat over and over again the SIMPLE things, not the complex.

It is hard to charge a lot of money for SIMPLE repetitive training.  Doing 85% of our shooting in low light at close range (21 feet or less) does indeed seem boring and mundane, but at that range we are MISSING 92% of the time.  Regardless of your view of the miss rate, I think we see a need here.  It sure doesnít seem to be at ranges beyond that.

A little common sense vs. fantasy will clearly show us the way to go on this.



WHO CANíT SHOOT STRAIGHT?



A famous TV host once fired a regular on his show for not having ìhumility.î  In self-defense a little humble thinking is a lifesaver.  I recall mentioning the 92% miss rate to an officer and he made a face and said, ì I donít miss.î  I had to smile at his bravado and asked him, ìwho does?î  He looked around at the other officers and said, ì They do.î

Now you see the problem. Denial isnít a river in Egypt.  I might have said the same thing before I missed an arms length shot.  

I was working an amusement park in the 1960ís as a security officer. I had a report of an armed robbery of a young student in a rest room.  I found the suspect and as I approached he pulled a knife and faced me with it at about 10 feet. I pulled my .357 and fired.  I MISSED. I was so sure I hit him I returned to the scene later to look for blood. He ran at the sound of the shot and wasnít found until a few days later without a scratch.

Years later I would run into him and he said he couldnít believe he wasnít hit and had hidden himself in a wooded area thinking he would die.

For those gun writers that tried to report I emptied my gun, note I fired ONE shot. Wrong again! This event will be covered in more detail a few pages from now.

At the time I had some national awards for shooting.  I was of the idea I couldnít miss. This event haunted me and I finally figured out why I missed.  I think the previous of what we have discussed make that real clear.

Some of the greatest competitions in the sports world have been lost from a simple error.  Self-defense is like sports, but the loser dies. 

The very best of the best in sports can make tragic errors under the stress of a sports game. Imagine the open door for errors under the pressure of FRIGHT if you think you will die.  

Nobody can claim to perform any task well in a state of fear or fright.  We know how seriously our errors can and will be in such things as work related efforts not to die.  

Would you want a doctor to operate on you and say, ì bet I can do this in under 30 minutes?î 

What few shooters understand is that if you do NOTHING wrong, you can still get killed. Perfection of performance is no guarantee of living.  Many cops have done everything right and still lost.  Perfection in performance is seldom found, but in cases where it has been found the good guys can still lose.

Imagine if you make errors, and most will.  There is little in any training that can compare with real life.  

Even with unlimited resources the best we can hope for is training that MIGHT have a 10% reality base.  We canít replicate fear and fright in training as we know it, mostly for legal reasons. Our training has no consequences or potential for harm in it.

If you think you wonít miss, you better stop and rethink your logic.  Itís a game you  have to hit only a perfect batting average to survive, a batting average of even .999 may  get you killed or hurt.  





LOOKING AT THE THUGS SIDE OF THINGS



Training as we see it today, ignores the thugs side of things. We are constantly told what we will do.  ì Youíll do this and youíll do that,î I recall from my police training.  

Most men recall when they were about 13 years old and we thought about girls. Our pals we hung out with, worked with us on the great plans of seduction of females.

The advice was sound. Go visit her if her folks were gone from the house for a time. Maybe get on a couch and turn down some lights. Oh my, the plans were so sound and sure fire.

What our pals didnít tell us is that the girls had a plan as well which was NOT to invite us over when her folks were gone, or to meet us at the door with their coat and suggest we go for a walk.

Self-defense is like those great plans that sound so good and seem to fall apart when applied.

We can have the best possible plans and they wonít work if we donít include what the thugs will do.

The first thing you have to understand is that they donít play fair. It is not a sporting event. They wonít meet you in the middle of the street at noon.

Ask yourself, if you thought youíd kill a cop if they tried to arrest you, how would you do it? How would you break into a home and what would you do if you thought the house has a gun in it and the occupants are home?

Most training is about what we will do once we are aware of a threat. Nice thought, not reality.

In most occupied home burglary cases the occupants will wake up with the burglar IN the bedroom.  Do you think they will let you reach for anything?

If the burglar is detected in the home their best defense is to exit as fast as possible. Not only the fear of an armed homeowner, but of identification  and/or police notification.

The very vast number of burglars will flee if they think you know they are there.  Those that donít are the most dangerous of all, and they have a plan to deal with you.

Attacks on people in their sleep, is not uncommon. Upon confrontation, attack is common and routine.

Even when faced with a known threat there is a moment or two of denial. We are nice folks and we hope for a reasonable explanation. We want to see the situation presented to us as a misunderstanding on our part.

We seldom think ìcrimeî when we are faced with something unusual.  If someone knocks on our door we donít think it is a home invasion. We think it is a friend or neighbor.  When we open the door and it is a stranger we think it is someone we can help or needs our assistance.

Often the victim will claim when they saw the weapon they thought it was a joke.  The average person just doesnít walk around in a paranoid condition seeing criminals under every tree.

When something makes noise in the night we think it is the cat or dog playing around.

When we hear a door open we think it is one of the kids or the wind.  When someone walks towards us on the street we think they need directions or other assistance.

If we get a visual or audible warning, we will seldom see it as a threat.  That isnít our nature.

Criminals can use a direct approach. Pretend to ask for directions and suddenly attack.  Once such a situation takes place your chances of fending off the attack are greatly reduced even with formal physical self-defense training.

Not long ago in Minnesota a man was carjacked by two drunks.  The victim had two state titles for various martial arts and everyone was shocked that the two untrained drunks beat him to death and took his car.

When arrested they said they got into a verbal confrontation with the victim and it escalated to the point one of the attackers took a baseball bat out of the bushes and used it on the victim.

This sounds like plenty of warning and at least an opportunity to defend himself, but both assailants claimed his defenses were all but nonexistent.  

Little doubt there was plenty of denial of a threat by the deceased. Once realized, the messenger of fright impacted the victim, making response almost impossible. The massive background of training couldnít be processed.  The victim couldnít think fast enough.  Two minds absent of fright can think and act much faster.

Jerry Haaf was a Minneapolis police officer with over 20 years of experience. They donít get better than Jerry.  He worked the tough streets.

At the time of Jerryís death the city was awash in gang violence with a near record murder rate. The gangs were boasting theyíd kill a cop and police were very concerned about a disaster in the making. The gangs seemed to fear nothing including the police.  

There was no shortage of experience or training for Jerry Haaf.  He was GOOD.  

On the evening of his death he had a reserve officer riding along. They stopped in a pizza place two blocks from my home in the late hours for a break. The reserve officer noted a draft and Jerry being the ultimate gentleman exchanged places and sat with his back to the door.  He violated on of the basic rules of police work.

This pizza place is frequented so often by police, it is all but impossible to find a time when there arenít multiple officers there.  In fact several exchanged greetings and smiles with Jerry when he came in.  A few minutes later they left, leaving Jerry as the only officer in the cafÈ.  What is ironic is that this was a very rare event.

A car drove up near the cafÈ and an occupant got out of the car and walked into the cafÈ. Without warning he approached Jerry and fired a single .357 Magnum into his back.  Haaf fell to the floor trying to radio for help.  The gunman walked out.

A nearby diner grabbed Haafís gun and fired at the gunman who fled unharmed.  Haaf died a short time later.

There were arrests made and convictions.  But this was little help for a great cop.

Haaf didnít get a chance to use his training and experience.  Criminals donít work that way.  They donít want a fair fight or even playing ground. There are no gentlemanly rules.  

They treat you the same way.  Shooting you in the back is no problem.  

In the early 1990ís I managed a gun store in a suburb of Minneapolis.  We were aware of attacks on guns stores and several in the area were violent and bloody.

On the evening in question I was working with Mike Carter, now a San Antonio police officer. Mike and I worked well together.  We often talked of our plans to avoid an attack.

For example we would always move apart if someone walked in we didnít know.  We were armed and had a shotgun for back up.

Two men walked into the store early in the evening and I recognized one as a fellow I had sold a gun to.  Unknown to me, both had no criminal records and no gang affiliations of any kind. In fact, one was the son of a Federal Judge and both were attending college.  Hardly material we should fear.

When they walked in, Mike and I separated. Mike walked to the other end of the store.  I asked the men if I could help them.  They looked around and walked out.

Unknown to us they went directly to a gun shop north of us.  

The two men walked into the store and were greeted by Tim Foseen. Tim was a good friend, capable shooter and carrying a 1911. Tim was a sharp and good man. 

One of the men asked Tim to show them a gun on a rack.  Tim turned his back and reached for the gun. As he turned around towards the two men, he was shot in the eye with a Davis .380. He died instantly. His gun was still in the holster.

His friend Brian tried to flee to an office but was gunned down and killed trying to get a gun. He had stopped by to visit with Tim and was unarmed.

The two gunmen loaded dozens of guns into their car and fled to Chicago where they were soon arrested.

After a time I learned one of the shooters was defended by a lawyer friend of mine. I had the opportunity to ask one or the gunmen why we werenít chosen for the crime. The response was not surprising.

The first problem was we separated. We were the first target of choice, but they knew they couldnít get both of us.  The odds were not in their favor.

We were also told that the counters I had designed were too high for them to shoot over.  

Knowing you have been chosen as a target for shooting is not easy to handle.   You look back and wonder how close was it?  Both men had no trouble killing two men for a few guns.  

Had they decided to shoot myself and Mike, it would be at best even money. We had our guns in holsters.  If we spotted the threat at once, we had to get our guns out and fire.  I doubt if both of us would have survived without injury.  It would be easy to be boastful, but I have to face the reality.

Between Mike and myself we had a ton of shooting experience including my law enforcement background.  

Mike and I should have been the obvious winner, but it doesnít work out that way.  The reality was the odds were not in our favor.  Mike and I both agreed on the fact we could have been defeated. It would be silly to think we would win every fight.

A Department of Justice study in 1997, had a small aside that was incredible.  It related the hit rate by thugs against cops.

Thugs, you know the untrained morons with junk guns?  The hit rate was 91%.  Stop and think of that.  Your odds of hitting a target can range to about 8% and your chances of being hit are 91%. Doesnít sound like a fight I want to get into.

How can anyone in training for self-defense ignore this incredible lopsided statistic that is so far out, there isnít much room to see a possible error that would help us?

If a criminal decides to attack you and shoot, their hit rate is 91%.  How can that be with no training?  Donít blow this statistic off. It is the reason most cops die with their gun IN the holster.  It is why so few of us get an opportunity to defend ourselves.

On the street and in your home or business the criminals make all the decisions.  They decide on the time, place and method of attack.  They make the decision of weather or not they will do it.  

The only hope we have is to put up a defense in ADVANCE of an attack. We have to put up an offense to make the criminal chose another target. There is no such thing as crime prevention. We only change the location of the crime. If they donít attack us, they will attack someone else.  

I have come to the conclusion that, ì if we have to go for a gun, all of our defenses and training have failed us.î

Using a gun is a failure of our defense and training on how to avoid a problem.

If I would use a video training system, Iíd have the officers or shooter face the screen and then have someone shoot them in the back of the head with a water pistol. That is more realistic than what they will face on the screen.  

They know on that screen there is no consequence of failure. They KNOW they will be given some possible threats to face. There is no mystery. Police work and just living our lives is 99.9999% mundane no risk existence.

Many will go an entire police career or about a life without ever facing a peril.  In fact the odds of being in a shooting as a cop are almost nil if we want to be realistic about it all.  

Criminals seldom claim they start out with killing someone in mind. Most attacks are random and spur of the moment. They may look for a home to break into, but in most cases they will pick the home at random.

This is to your advantage, as the criminal will not have a good idea about how your home is laid out and what protection you have. They will assume however, that you are armed.

The decision to enter an occupied home is in almost all cases the work of the most dangerous type of criminal.  Those are the ones that will cause you the most danger. They are prepared to harm you. That is part of their job

A Department of Justice study in 1997 (Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers) asked criminals who killed cops if there was anything the officer could have done to prevent the attack.  Every killer said a strong , ìno.î  

When a killer has the advantage they can decide weather they attack or not. Many will pass up a very good opportunity that is presented to them. It is their choice, not yours.

It isnít easy to cave in to the fact we are so incapable of defending ourselves.  But the facts are clear and show that once we are aware of a danger the criminal has decided to make the attack and the race for life is even money at best.  A more realistic fact is that our chances of survival are slim.

It is trendy and popular to ìrah-rahî for our side when it comes to survival.

Once we address the serious peril of being in a position where the criminal can take advantage of our failings, we might be able to increase the odds a substantial amount.

We can self-reinforce ourselves all we want. That doesnít change the perils.  

The study of criminal methods is as important as anything we can look at about guns or bullets.  If you understand how criminals work we can AVOID the perils.  If we have a clue about the methods criminals use we can take action and put into effect our plans to avoid the problems.  

You seldom find any effort to train shooters in how criminals work. Playing of videos of real crimes is seldom done and if it is, it is glossed over in lieu of more ìwhat you will doî logic. 

In reviewing the concern of home burglary, take this into account. In a report (you can get a similar report from almost every department) we see this affluent community had 71 burglaries between July-December of 1998.

Of those, 43 (66%) involved NO use of force.  The thugs walked in via an unlocked door or window. Stop and think about this.

We contend the figure may actually run close to 80% of all home burglary is via this method as some departments make it a ìtheftî if there is no evidence of burglary.  Keep in mind 50% of all crime is unreported by most estimates.

If you are seriously worried about burglary, LOCK YOUR DOORS AND WINDOWS.

There can be a major decline in burglary of homes if we just lock doors. Burglars frequently go from house to house until they can just walk in.  There will be no noise and far less chance of getting caught and less evidence for the police to use against the burglar.  

We have been convinced the burglary will be violent and the thugs will crash through the doors with guns in hand.  Granted, some take place, but that is not the reality you will probably encounter.

Carjackings are almost unheard of where the car had locked doors.  There are just to many cars without locked doors that are easier targets.  Something so simple can reduce the majority of your concerns about being a victim.  

 The criminals laugh at the ease they encounter in many crimes they commit.  Some days they canít even believe it. Criminal attack has some predictable traits. One common trait is the fact most will take place in low light or darkness.  Crime is often a night activity, but once indoors even in daylight the lighting can be reduced.

This makes it real clear about where we need to practice our shooting. It has to be done the vast majority of the time under those conditions. Many cops or shooters never shoot in those conditions. That is a real disaster in the making if you donít practice in reduced lighting and darkness.

The second obvious fact is that self-defense is a very close range affair. Crooks know that to trigger your fright response that the attack has to be fast and close.  You donít worry much from a threat across a parking lot.

When the threat is in your face up close you have your fright mentality triggered.  The potential for harm from a close-in target is great and you will know that, thus the triggering of fright, which puts you at a very big disadvantage.

Criminals will operate close-in using low light and/or darkness to their advantage. That has to be the primary focus of our training.

We also know that criminals will do everything they can to surprise us and not allow us a response to the threat.  

As one inmate said, ì I want to scramble their mental marbles.î  This can be done with inducing fright and criminals know how effective it can be. Victims often seem to go into mental defibrillation 

When attacked.  Denial and surprise can combine to be a lethal blow to what you want to do to defend yourself.

If we are to survive an encounter it has to be a result of what we did BEFORE the attack was initiated.

We have to position ourselves so that we reduce the risk of harm. We have to put as much distance between us and the threat, and we have to have a barrier between us.

Often police work makes this all but impossible, but if another officer is available the other officer (or at least someone on hand) has to be in a position that makes the risk to the criminal substantial.

We have long advocated having a ìsecurityî officer when officers are handling even routine situations. They have to stand off a ways and watch and observe for threats. It will be far easier for them to react than those on top of things.

In a security officer or police setting everybody wants to get into the action and be hands on. That creates an escalated risk of peril for those involved.  

Citizens are at a great disadvantage. Many will go a lifetime and never point a gun at someone. They arenít used to confrontation with a potential criminal situation.  

Criminals know we are what they call ìchumps,î and will treat us accordingly and probably be right in how we respond. The first thing we do is go into denial and when we figure out we are in trouble we donít have time to respond.

Criminals will target the weak and easy targets. You donít hear of many pro-wrestlers being mugged. The criminal will focus on females, the old, infirm, and those that appear lacking in self-confidence.  

If the criminal can also catch you in a position where you donít have a weapon so much the better.  That is why crimes against person are more common in warm weather and property crimes go up in winter. In summer we canít conceal weapons and footing may be marginal on ice and snow for escape. Thus criminals switch to property crimes.

Criminals are like animals in that they have predictable patterns of behavior.  They like darkness, vulnerable victims, and ideal selection of location for a crime like a secluded parking ramp etc.

The late 1900ís has shown a serious change in criminal behavior. Often the rewards of the crime are very secondary to the application of violence. Often criminals will not even both to take anything of value and just apply violence to the victim for little or no reason.  

We are now finding the motive is not always things of value, but the harm to the victims. 

A common method of attack is to strike the victim for no reason. Imagine if you are walking to your car in a parking lot and you donít see someone walk up to you and they smack you in the head with a fist.  Iím amazed how many have never been struck in their lives.

I assure you the hit will stun and disorient you. You wonít leap into a modified weaver stance, do a speed rock, get a crush grip, a flash sight picture and shoot.  Few would even reach for a gun if they had one.

You will be in full denial that it happened. You want a reasonable explanation for what has happened.  Youíll be stunned, youíll find it difficult to process information.  The fright grips you and your only concern is self-protection. You may run, or curl into a fetal position.  

If the original blow is followed with a second strike your instincts go into deeper denial and protection efforts like curling into a ball and covering your head. By now your watch, wallet and other items are probably gone and the thug is on a full run from the area.

Some may have been involved in some fights or even boxing and martial arts. They may have some clue as to what such an attack may feel like. 

Imagine your wife or daughter and what they would do if someone smashed them in the face without warning.  How much of a fight would they put up at first?  Would they grab a gun from their purse or pocket? Probably not.  The disorientation is just too great which includes serious emotional disruption of their thought processes.

Our constant thread is to avoid the problem. If we donít our chances of survival are greatly reduced. Our entire focus has to be avoiding problems.  It is amazing how little effort is put into this by most training programs. It isnít fun and it does take input from someone with a lot of experience in these issues and that is not easy to find.

To much of our training comes from those that have obtained bad information and they just keep repeating it because it, ìsounds good.î

Unless they can relate to actual experience in such issues, the danger of repeating bad or inaccurate information remains. Not a good thing for the rest of us.

A solid form of education and training is talking to victims of crimes and asking them what they did or did not do and what they thought of the experience.  I also urge you to look at videos of real crimes and read the reports in the newspapers and other sources to get more information on tactics used by thugs.  

Most police will tell you they learn from their experiences, which is a result of the criminals being the teachers.  Police in all honesty will also tell you that most of what they learned in rookie schools didnít have much to do with the dangers on the street.

As a law enforcement officers time on the street increases they may be exposed to more training, but little of it is designed for safety or survival. It may include topics that are more about social issues than risks or perils.  



MY FIRST SHOOTING



I was attending broadcasting school and had turned 21 years of age, which was required to work for a security agency.

The good old days were sure grand. I walked into their office (Busch Detective Agency) and was handed a badge and uniform and given an assignment and told to wear a gun.

I chose my S&W Model 28 .357 Magnum.  Keep in mind I had a long history of  formal target shooting and won many awards and trophies. I belonged to Woodrow Wilson VFW rifle team in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In one national competition our team won second places and I was ranked 12th.  Not much doubt I understood formal target shooting.  In fact, we were getting ready to move into NRA national competition and visited Camp Perry to not only get more details but do advanced scouting on what it would be like.  

Because of problems at home, I left competition shooting and missed it.  But I still did plenty of informal target shooting behind me as well.

One assignment I was given was to work at the Excelsior Amusement Park in a suburb of Minneapolis.  It was crowded with kids and not much took place.

A few hours into my shift a teacher reported that two students had been robbed at knifepoint in a bathroom. I was given a description of the assailant and went to find him. I told the woman to call the police. I was 21 years old and pretty green and in those days you didnít get any training.   

You would get hired and tossed into the street to work. I soon saw a young man that matched the teachers description and approached him. He saw me and turned towards me with a knife in his hand. It was about 5 inches long and what you might call a ìhuntingî knife.

All I recall is drawing my gun and firing.  I assure you that in that crowded amusement park I had no clue nor interest if anything was behind him or not. All I saw was the knife (weapon threat focus) and I knew with one step he could stick it into me.

I donít recall the gun going off (auditory exclusion) and suddenly saw him turn and run. I was convinced I had hit him. Heck, at about 6-8 feet I couldnít miss. I was just surprised he didnít fall down.

The thug ran into some nearby woods and vanished.  I just stood there.  Suddenly a police officer arrived and he called for help and we looked for the thug to no avail.  

I got a hard ass chewing from the local Chief of Police for shooting in ìhisî city.  He also made it clear since I was white and the thug black that he feared the blacks would now return and burn his city.  It was a time of heavy civil unrest in the black community in the United States.

I expressed my total lack of concern for ìhisî city and more concern for my lily white hide.  It wasnít a color issue, but a ìme or himî issue.  He didnít see it that way. His logic was common in those times. 

I was so convinced I had shot him I returned to the area late that night looking for bloodstains.

I found out months later they found the kid with the knife but didnít prosecute him because they feared heíd seek revenge on the community because he was shot at etc.  Fun world, isnít it?

I mentioned  this incident on the Internet and an often published gun magazine writer had to mention it to try and discredit me and claimed I emptied my gun. His record of accuracy took yet another blow. At least Iíve had more experience in real shootings than he has. He hasnít had any. 

What I learned was that I MISSED. And it was in bright summer daylight. I donít like to think I could at that range when I was such a well trained shooter.  I was baffled how this could happen.  It didnít seem possible. I carried this puzzle with me for years, but I think by now if you recall what I have discussed we can understand it.

I had no clue what it was like to shoot someone and no clue how I would respond to fright.  I also assure you that if we had the incident on video tape my story  may not reflect the most accurate actual events for a long list of reasons.  More on that later.

I dedicated myself to more practice and learning about the subject of self-defense shooting. This was in the mid-60ís and little was available on the issue except efforts at making cops and self-defense shooters the best TARGET shooters around.  Nothing I ever did on the range related to this incident and others I would be involved in.

It wasnít like in movies and it wasnít like in the gun magazines. I just blamed myself for not doing things right.  I was blaming an innocent man.











THE LIQUOR STORE



In 1976 I was owner of the Ranger Security Corporation. I had about 100 employees and a large uniformed security staff.  Part of our business was a uniformed patrol division. 

I was on the street in uniform as I often did to get away from the house or office at times. I saw a liquor store late one night with some cars in front of it. Several men were outside the store and I asked them if they had a problem. It wasnít business, just being nosey.

The owner said he had been robbed over two dozen times in the previous few months.  He was terrified. The same robber kept coming back and had hit the store at the same exact time and exact day several times in a row. He asked me about our services and he signed a contract on the spot.

I figured if the robbers hit the same time and day Iíd wait for a return. It was nonsense but it might work.

A few nights later I parked my patrol car near the store and watched with binoculars.  At the time they were expected they arrived.  Two stayed in the car and one went inside. In seconds he came running out with the loot in his hand. I raced my patrol car to the front of the store and radioed for assistance.

I got out of the car with my S&W Model 19 in my hand and saw the thug race into an alley.

I raced from my car and stopped short of entering the alley.  It was very dark.  I saw his figure in front of me. One error I had already made was being exposed with no cover and not thinking about the other two. I had no clue where they were. I never claimed I do it right, nor will I ever.

I aimed the gun down the alley and I never looked at it. I was looking at the threat (weapon threat focus) and I saw the bright shine of a chrome object in his hand.  It started to come up and I fired.  The distance was about 50 feet. I never heard the gun go off or noticed the hefty recoil.

The robber turned to his left and fled. I had missed.  Later examination would show I missed his head by inches. The slug went through a fence behind him and hit a parking ramp about 25 yards behind  him.

I knew he would come out from behind a building to his left and I waited. By now I was going from fright to fear. I was thinking of some options.

Suddenly the car that had brought him there came out of the alley behind that building. I expected him to be in the car.  The occupants turned the car towards me and I raised my gun and they turned toward a drive-way to flee. I didnít know if they would turn back towards me again and felt they were fleeing with the armed person I had just shot at. I fired twice at the car and again didnít look at the gun.

One shot hit the top of the trunk and went through the back window and hit the top of the front seat and went into the dashboard while traveling between the driver and passenger. The robber was not in the car unknown to me.

The second shot hit the back quarter panel and left a slit like cut and smudge for several inches. The car sped off and was soon spotted by arriving police cars and led the squads on a high speed chase that resulted in a crash and  injury to some police officers. The car was also stolen.

Back at the scene I saw the suspect run from behind the building. He was about 27 yards from me and I brought up my gun. It had night sights put on it by Julio Santiago who invented them.  I followed the suspect using the sights. I am the first to admit sights are seldom if EVER used in real cases, but it is also rare you get a suspect at this distance that isnít posing a close up threat, so my mental level had reduced to just low grade fear.  I was now starting to think and process information.

The suspect suddenly turned towards me and raised his arm and I fired again aiming for his lower torso since he was sideways to me. I know I hit him. He flinched but didnít stop or slow down much. I stood there and he ran across a street vanishing into a dark alley. Since the threat was gone I didnít shoot again and I had only two shots left.

 I told arriving officers what had taken place and we went up the alley where the suspect had stood when I fired. On the ground was a chrome plated socket drive. The moron had aimed a tool at me. Not very bright. I was glad we found it, as it would document my concerns. In the dark alley ANYONE would think it was the barrel of a gun.

We found the bullet hole in the fence.  Officers looked for blood, but there wasnít any.  They were convinced I had missed him.  I was told theyíd get a more detailed report from me the next day and I went home. My wife had listened to the entire affair on our radio system at home. I still wanted to go look for the suspect.

My phone rang about 8:00 a.m. and it was a detective and he wanted me to come to his office for a statement and he mentioned they found the robber.

He had run almost a mile or more and was in a hallway of a building and had almost bled to death. The slug had hit him in the upper thighs. He was using a belt to stem the bleeding. He was 17 years old and had admitted to the other robberies.

I had hit him with a 158 grain soft nosed bullet. The detective said it didnít seem to do  much damage except cause bleeding, and had he stopped when hit, he would have had few medical problems.  He was now in serious condition from loss of blood.  The lack of performance of the .357 surprised me.



ON THE STREETS AS A NEWS PERSON



In 1965 I started working for KDWB radio in Minneapolis. I wanted to be a rock & roll DJ, but I was just out of broadcasting school, so I got a job in the newsroom. It was unheard of for a kid out of broadcasting school to get a job at such a popular station.

My big break came when Dick Harris, a newsman at KDWB suggested I try for the job of doing morning traffic reports and covering local news.  Jack Douglas the News Director hired me and at the age of 20, I was a major market newsperson.

Most of the local news is auto accidents and other spontaneous  events.  It is known in the business as ìspotî news.  I also had my share of news conferences and the mundane political items to take care of. I was on the air each morning starting at 5:00 a.m. with traffic reports using the news cruiser.  

The rest of the time I was on hand when called to cover big fires, shootings or other items as the newsroom found them.  I also was able to go out and find my own stories and get paid for them.  I was making a sensational $8 an hour, which by 1965 standards was a very hefty sum.

It also gave me the chance to buy a fast 1963 Stingray and enjoy the good life.

I wontí attempt to say Iím sorry that I came from a rock jock background or news background.  Most of the items I had to cover were the crimes and fires and other disasters.

One thing dawned on me and that was that I could also take pictures. I had been my high school class photographer and Jack Douglas, the News Director at KDWB said it would not compete with what I did for radio if I wanted to take pictures.

I bought a 35 mm camera and decided to carry it with me on items I covered for KDWB.

I had the camera only a few days when I was at my home close to downtown Minneapolis and heard a report of a shooting a few blocks away. I got into my car and arrived with the first police car.

A man was in the crosswalk  in the street shot through the chest.  His eyes were open, and he was wearing a suit. It didnít look like a typical slum area shooting.  A young attractive girl was nearby sobbing and being questioned by Art Elfsner, a police officer I knew well.

I got out my camera and tried to take a picture, but a hippie looking type fellow was standing over the body. I gave him a dirty look and waved him away from the body so I could get my picture.   I raised the camera and he didnít move, so I told him to move so I could take a picture. 

He wouldnít move so I shot some film anyway, showing the body, the girl talking to Art and the man looking at the body. I got several good pictures and left to call in my report to KDWB. The shooting was blocking traffic in the area.

After calling the radio station I went to the nearby Minneapolis Star newspaper office. I handed the photo editor my film and told him what I had. He said they already had film from the scene but would look at it anyway.

Veteran and award winning photographer, Earl Suebert took the film and headed to the darkroom with it. I followed along impressed I got to meet this legend.

After the negatives were processed he looked at them in the enlarger.  He wrinkled his nose at the body in the pool of blood and the eyes open wide.

ì We canít use anything this bloody,î he smiled. He kept looking and suddenly stopped.

ì When did you get there?î He asked. I told him just as the police arrived. He made a print of a frame of film and took it to the photo editor.

ì Look at this.î Earl smiled. The photo editor did a double take.  He picked up a picture taken by I believe Pete Hohn another photographer on staff and looked again.  ì Iíll be goddamned.î He said.

I soon saw what was impressing them. I had taken a picture of the shooter standing over the body before anyone knew who did it.

It seems the shooter took random aim at the man in the street with a .30-30 rifle and fired at him.  The shooter then seems to have gone to look at his handy work and then returned to his apartment. Residents told police where they thought the shot came from and police soon figured out who did it. The shooter was just aiming his gun out the window and forgot it was loaded and pulled the trigger killing the pedestrian in front of his girlfriend.

I was paid $250 for the picture which was an unheard of sum in those days and it is claimed to be the bloodiest photo ever published by that newspaper before or since.  

I started shooting spot news items as the newspaper didnít have anyone on the street.  I was getting pictures published almost daily and paid a good price for each one. I was making more shooting pictures than working at KDWB.

I had a bank of police and fire monitors in my car and in the house.  I seemed to be on the run at all hours with seldom a day off.  Living near downtown Minneapolis was a bonus as I was close to the hot areas of town and the emergency hospital.

I found out United Press International and Associated Press would buy the pictures as well, and since I covered a wide area of over 2 million people, the area was thick with local newspapers. 

I soon had a long list of sources to sell pictures to, and my income went up even more.

It was not uncommon to cover several shootings a night, fires, and auto accidents.  I was buying film in big bulk rolls and had a darkroom of my own.

Frequently the police had no quality photo equipment available and relied on news people to take pictures. I was often invited to the morgue to photograph autopsies.  This wasnít easy at first, but by doing so I soon had full and total cooperation from most law enforcement agencies because it was to their advantage.

I also photographed accidents for them, and evidence at crime scenes.  Some events burn into your mind like a picture.  

I also had sources in various dispatch centers that would call me at home if they monitored news items in other areas or saw them coming over teletypes.

A fellow at United Press International took a liking to me and had me cover many events outside the Minneapolis area.  So much was going on in those years that they didnít have enough staff to cover it all, and local newspapers werenít always cooperative in providing them film.

I was sent to Detroit on July 23rd, 1967.  In Minneapolis I had run over a week without much sleep covering riots and looting there. I also drove to Newark, New Jersey and dodged bullets on Springfield Avenue for a few days. The National Guard was on the street.  It had slowed down, but Detroit was a hot spot.

The Detroit riot started over a ìblind pigî raid. That is an after hours bar.  When I arrived late that night I could see the glow and smoke on the horizon long before I got there.

We got to 12th street and National Guard troops were everywhere and shots rang out non-stop. At the Fox Theatre I noticed Martha Reeves and The Vandaliaís were appearing.  Smoke was everywhere and we just didnít know where to start taking pictures.

We were told that the military was setting up at Selfridge Air Base on the edge of town. In fact the base opened for business that Sunday. What a grand opening act, I thought.

We were there several days. It was rare when you didnít hear shots or hear bullets fly past or strike things.

Cops were using shotguns with great effect. Many cops had M-1 Carbines, and some brought hunting rifles from home.  Plenty of bolt actions and even long barrel shotguns were in use.

 Over 50 cities were on fire and our nation was close to anarchy.  My pictures were being used by UPI, and I was piling up some nice income as a result. I had an eye for news pictures and got along well with cops.  Unlike some photographers who wanted to look rather liberal and counter culture like, I was clean cut, short hair and no facial hair. I could also talk the cop talk and they didnít see me as a radical liberal anti-cop type. They had that right.

I spent a lot of time with Ralph Hughes who was a photographer for KMSP-TV in Minneapolis and we used to ride around in each otherís cars to save gas and enjoy each others company.

We parked the car and Ralph, known to us as ìTinyî stayed near a command center with his 16 mm camera near a precinct.  

I rode with a police Captain and did an interview and took some pictures of him. Always nice to photo the command officers and it pays to be seen with them.  It opens a lot of doors.

I got into an area where sniper fire and looting was going on. Most of the cops looked exhausted and I got talking to one. I had found a soft drink machine still working.

I was exhausted myself and hadnít slept in a bed in days.  It was hot, humid and nobody could find the energy to smile. I handed him an ice cold Coke and he lit up. ì Whereíd you find that?î He asked. I pointed down a street and said, ì Next to that store.î  

ì Lucky someone didnít shoot at you. But thanks just the same.î He smiled.

I had tossed two more cans into my camera bag not knowing when Iíd get another chance for something to drink. The smoke combined with tear gas was everywhere.

The officer asked me to join him in a squad car and we drove around for a few minutes. He was a Sergeant and trying to find a place to take it easy for a few hours.  Shootings had declined and it appeared there was a break in the action. He gave me some good stuff to include with my photos and I also wrote for various publications.

I was now considered ìstaffî for another Minneapolis newspaper, ì The Minneapolis Daily American.î

We heard that officers had been shot at on a side street not far from us. We got there in seconds and on the way he asked me if I had a gun. I didnít know what to say.  I decided to be honest about it. When I told him I was armed he was glad to hear it. ì I donít have to watch out for you and myself.î He smiled.

We got to the call just as a shotgun blast pelted the car with bbís. 

The Sergeant didnít flinch. He acted like it was routine business.  I jumped out of the car and got behind a truck parked along the curb and tried to get my flash unit into operation. I didnít use it unless it was safe to do so. At times it was so dark I couldnít get a picture. Some I got using headlights, streetlights or even spotlights.

I was trying to see if anything was photo worthy when a number of shotgun blasts sent pellets spraying a large area. Several officers fired into the darkness.

You couldnít tell where to hide because you donít know where the shots are coming from.  The Sergeant soon came scooting along the parked cars to my location. There was a call that more shots were fired in a nearby business district.  ì Not much to hit here, so let him shoot. I have to get to that other call. Can you fire into that upper window on the corner house while I get to the car? Iíll be back in a few to get you.î  He got up ready to run.

I took out my S&W Model 39 and aimed at the window. I had just gotten several boxes of Super-Velís which were considered to be the Corbon of the 1960ís.  I fired one magazine and then another with no clue at what I was shooting at.  I had two more magazines but didnít want to use those.

It seemed longer but in about 10 minutes or so the Sergeant was back and joined by two other squads and an ambulance. They raced to the corner house and caved in the door.

In just minutes the officers brought out a man in only trousers. His feet were bare and he was shirtless. He was bleeding from his right arm. Another officer came out with a single shot shotgun in his hands. The man was taken to the ambulance, handcuffed and taken to a hospital. The Sergeant came over to me.  ì Iíll bet heís the asshole thatís been shooting at us and others. We found two dozen or so empty casings in that upper bedroom.î  I was curious about his wounds since I didnít see anyone shoot at the house before I did.

ì He called for an ambulance. Said he was watching TV and a slug came in the window and hit him in the forearm.  Looked like a 9mm wound.î He said with a big smile. I didnít say anything, but watched the ambulance leave.

That summer was non-stop riots and disturbances.  UPI was buying a lot of my material and I sold some to various local newspapers as well. I knew if it was a great shot that the locals would pay more than UPI or even AP.  Being on my own I was able to market my material as I wanted.

I canít begin to figure out how many shootings I was at. It has to be well into the  hundreds.  Being interested in shooting I found the shootings of great interest and always asked questions well beyond what any news reporter would ask.  It was a PHD in street shootings that few enjoy.  I saw more in a week than most cops would see in an entire career.










Covering riots were common. This building was fire bombed and contained chemicals. Suddenly the chemicals started to explode and this fireman turned to warn me to RUN. I took this picture and suddenly the fireball came up the alley. I had much of my clothing burned and burns on my face, neck, and arms.



A problem was trying to figure out where to hide or run. In such cases sniper fire is everywhere and you donít know where to run. You can easily run in the wrong direction. The firemen were saved by protective clothing, but they let the building burn and left.










In high school I was the class photographer for the school newspaper. I loved taking pictures and thought about being a news photographer, but the lure of being a rock & roll DJ was far greater.  Little did I suspect I could combine both and did so for many years. Most radio jobs allowed a 3 hour air shift, allowing plenty of time to chase news.

Many radio stations I worked for also liked the bonus of having a DJ that did news.  At WEBC-AM in Duluth, Minnesota I often covered news events and did my radio show in the evenings. It seemed the best of two worlds and allowed for a comfortable income and plenty of excitement.



Late on Saturday night I was in The Chef CafÈ near downtown Minneapolis. It was an all night cafÈ and frequented by the local bar crowd and cops. Some days youíd see some local politicians in the place.

I ordered a hamburger, and a nearby loud mouth got up to leave. As he walked past me he lost his footing and reached out to my table to catch himself. He put his thumb right into my burger.  He looked at me, put his thumb into his mouth and smiled and walked off. I didnít feel like a fight.

I heard on my police radio, there were some officers chasing three robbery suspects. I left my thumb damaged burger and raced to the area just a few blocks away. As I got within a block I saw the police cars stopping a car at an intersection. I got out with my camera and knew Iíd get some great shots being right on top of the arrest.

The three thugs fled the car and one ran up an alley with an officer in pursuit. I raced for the alley and heard a shot fired.  The other officer knew me and had two of the thugs against a wall with his gun out. ì Hold these guys. I gotta help my partner,î he said and raced up the alley. I took my gun out and the thugs thought I was a cop.  I set my camera on the ground and kept them on the wall. The officer that had the thugs against the wall raced past me and got onto the patrol car radio screaming for help, claiming there had been a shooting.

I had no clue if the officer or thug had been shot. In seconds it seemed like dozens of police cars arrived. One officer knew me and took over guarding the other two suspects. I took my camera up the alley and found the third thug dead from a gunshot wound to the head and a gun laying near him.  Looks from other officers made it clear they didnít want me taking pictures, so I went to the end of the alley, and got pictures later of the body being loaded into the coronerís wagon and some of cops holding the deceasedís gun.

It wasnít uncommon to be on top of such events and I often got involved because I knew so many of the officers, many of whom were friends since I was a teenager.

Dick OíBrien was a Minneapolis Detective who I met when I was a neighborhood teenage delinquent. Dick got me into the Woodrow Wilson VFW shooting program when he heard I was carrying a gun, which wasnít illegal in the early 1960ís.

Dick also handled one of my shootings and had me take photos for him at various crime scenes. He often invited me into crime scenes to show me what was going on. He knew I only reported information that wouldnít endanger an investigation.  Things were rather open and easy going in the 1960ís when it came to things like that.  

Dick was a mentor and a friend and I bought many guns from him as he was also a dealer and his prices were always decent.

I asked Dick about a shooting I had heard he was involved in.  Dick had been a sniper in Korea and one day while sitting at my house he was looking down the sights of a rifle I had.  

ì Do you go hunting?î I asked.  Dick had his ever  present cigarette dangling from his lips and said with stone cold inflection, ì Naw, I only like to hunt men.î  He meant it and I let it go without comment.

The shooting I asked about was one of his favorites.  Dick, I was sure was the model for Peter Falkís TV character Columbo.  If you saw that TV show, you knew Dick.

He said he was looking for a local street punk and found him.  He was talking to him and told him that he would have to go to jail.  The punk didnít want to go and reached for a gun. Dick fired his .38 special into him.  The thug never saw it coming. Dick had his hand in his trench coat pocket and fired. It is the only such case I know of that I can validate of someone shooting in that unorthodox manner.

I met Dick when he caught me stealing a car when I was around 14 years old. I was a little brat and delinquent when I was a kid.  Dick taught me how to associate pain with trying to drive someone elseís car. But Dick saw something worth saving in me and was a mentor until he died years ago of throat cancer. That cigarette caught up with him.

Cops like Dick are rare and I wish he could be here today to teach the young cops coming on line how it is done.

It was from cops like Dick that I learned my most valuable lessons.  I found incredible logic and wisdom in those long conversations in the patrol cars and greasy spoon cafÈs. 

As a young man I often found myself wanting to disbelieve what they had to say.  I would remember their words very well when I learned the ìhard way.î  

In later years I found myself with the rookies and ìlow timersî as we called them.  I am sure my words fell on deaf ears like my own had been in my youth.  Some things will never change I guess.

Survivability is not about guns or bullets. Your time on the range and your performance there will not be what decides if you live or die.  Nobody has ever found a study or even attempted one that would connect range scores and its relationship to survival. I think we now know how that would look if it was done. It is well worth repeating AGAIN.

Avoid those that will waste your time and give you false hopes based on systems and efforts that we know will fail more often than succeed. Avoid those that havenít ìdone it.î  They are the virgins teaching sex.



THE 92% MISS RATE



Most are shocked when told that police will miss 92% of the time at 21 feet or LESS. It attacks the very heart of self-defense training. This miss rate sweeps over all departments regardless of size or money spent on training. It wonít go away, it is probably getting worse and excuses no longer work.  

Iíll start with a 1993 report from the NYPD on their shootings that year.

They fired 928 shots, hit 173.  That is an accuracy rate of 18.6%.  So they show 80% miss rate.  Why do I claim 92% miss rate? For two very logical reasons.  If you want to accept 80% be my guest. I wouldnít shout that one from the rooftops.

That is a lot of bullets flying around a very crowded city with no intended place to go. Do you want to get into a liability discussion?  Youíd think they would see this and have chest pains at city hall.

Police are notorious for UNDER reporting the number of shots they fire, or very inaccurate totals when more than one department is involved.  At times they canít figure out how many shots were fired or by whom.

Also many departments make no effort to report such stats.  It is never flattering.  If we refuse to confront this fact of life, we endanger every one of us as citizens or police.

Letís look at some other departments. I did not obtain the information and it was sent to me, but I think it has merit.



Los Angeles County Sheriffs Dept.  37 % hit rate (SWAT excluded) distances lees then 25 feet.



Los Angeles Police Dept.   49% hit rate (SWAT excluded)  distances less then 25 feet.



Ventura County Sheriffs Dept.   61% hit rate (SWAT included) distances less then 20 feet.



San Francisco Police Dept.   24% hit rate (SWAT excluded) distances of 20 feet or less.

**************************************



Interesting to note the wide variation from 61% for Ventura County Sheriffs Department to San Francisco Police Department.  We donít know what time period or total number of shootings were involved. Letís accept the above numbers.

That is still a lot of lead floating around without a destination by any measure.

Also including a SWAT percentage either way can taint the numbers.  

I hope nobody will surface and claim the figures are acceptable. Critics will mumble various trash talk, but the figures are not getting any better and no solutions are mentioned beyond doing more of what we have been doing. Letís look at some more.

Denver Police Department 18% hit rate (SWAT included) all distances



Dade County Sheriffs Dept. 23% hit rate (SWAT excluded) unknown distances.



New York Police Dept. 21% hit rate (ESU included) distances of 25 ft or less



Dallas Police Dept.  Would not give exact number but estimated 38% & hit rate

**************************************

Dallas of course is suspect because they donít tally such things and you can be sure any estimate is going to be in their favor, but the best they could do for a spin on it is a 62% MISS rate. Isnít it interesting they all reported a HIT rate and not a miss rate?  Get the picture yet of how this subject is viewed in police circles?

It is also obvious that departments do not keep a standard tally of any kind that can be used for comparison. It is almost a concentrated effort to cloud the issues or make them confusing so they canít be reviewed in an educated manner. 

Many will try to defend their departments or the police training community for obvious reasons, but at some point we have to drop the macho posturing, spin doctoring, and address the issue head on. The TARGET shooting community and training community are like a dog trying to guard their bone. They wonít give it up easily and try to stick with it.

In war miss rates are high for various obvious reasons. Letís start with our own Civil War where the rifles were becoming of age and far more accurate than guns before them.

I found this quote from a Confederate General.



 ìAbout 3 o'clock the picket came quietly in and reported about 100 approaching." .... "After waiting anxiously, with ears strained to catch the sound, for about ten minutes, the carbines of Chiswell's men rang out." .... "Strange as it may appear, only one man was killed by the fire of Chiswell's men, although they had a rest and the distance was scarcely twelve yards, but that one man had seven bullets through him. That was the usual result of ambuscades, for under the most favorable circumstances they seldom did much damage." 



Here is another quote on another Civil War battle. John Opie, of the 6th Va. Cav. related the following incident after the battle of Brandy Station.1 



"At any rate, I saw them raise their carbines, then a line of smoke, then a crash; when heels over head, both horse and rider tumbled through the air and fell, headlong in a pile on the side of the road. My right leg felt as if paralyzed, but, seeing and feeling no blood, upon examination I found that a ball had struck the toe of my boot and plowed a furrow through the 

sole. I jumped up, still having my saber in my right hand, my horse lying beside me dead, not having uttered a groan or made a struggle. I found, the next day, when I went to get my saddle and bridle, that four bullets had penetrated her. How I escaped remained a mystery, as I was only 20 yards distant from the enemy, and received the fire of several hundred men." 

Footnote

Edward R. Crews, Arms of the Confederate Cavalry, Dixie Gunworks Annual, 1996, Pioneer Press



You can see that in military combat that not only individuals but mass groups of soldiers can miss at close range.

The mental condition in such cases is often not as pressured as a cop in an arms length encounter.  The line of fear and fright can be crossed back and forth many times in a military battle, but most civilian and police encounters will be from a total fright position.  This level of fright is far more serious than fear as we found out.  It would be safe to assume the troops in the above cases probably were more in a mental arena of fear than fright. Either way it isnít a pretty or optimistic picture.  Such cases are not uncommon in combat.  Training for marksmanship in the civil war on both sides was hardly text book, but most had a history of shooting to provide themselves and families with food and hunting.  

The Minnesota National Guard Counter-Sniper School is a 7-day course for sniper teams, including those of law enforcement. At the beginning of the course, instructors issue one live round to students and caution them that during the final course of fire, they must hit a specially designated target with this single round or fail the course. Throughout the training, students are continually reminded that their success depends on hitting one target with this round. 

After 7 days of training, and a 10-shot record fire, instructors provide students with a fresh round for the one they've carried for the past week. Then, each student is called upon to engage one special half-size silhouette. The stress accompanying this shot is purely psychological and largely self-induced. No one shouts at the students; no physical stress accompanies this special one-shot kill. 

Yet, based on experience, some 33 to 40 percent of all student snipers fail what is a relatively simple shot. 

Gosh, this is rather surprising.  33-40% miss rate shooting a precision target rifle at a stationary target.  The mental condition is probably more of concern than fear or fright.  What if we moved the shooters up to fear or fright?  Think the miss rate would be higher? Of course it would.  

We could fill many more pages with material of 100+ shots being fired by police at short range in daylight and nobody gets hit.  Some will never accept the miss rate or just come up with more excuses.  By any measure, from any source, it is not acceptable to anyone serious about this issue.

We could do an entire book on the issue of missing what we shoot at, and how well documented such cases are. They are so common that any further discussion is meaningless. What is surprising is the total denial the problem exists, and if someone nods agreement they claim we can do more of what we have been doing and make it all better.

The critics of this problem are common, but fail to offer a solution.  They attack the messengers of this problem with intensity.  They feel if they attack those trying to bring the problem to the surface it will solve itself or go away.

It is best to attack it head on and find a solution so we can get on with other business. It wonít go away, it is getting worse and it needs addressing.

We can argue the percentages,  but even the best and most optimistic claims are tragic and disturbing.  

It is amazing the news media hasnít pick up on this potential scandal and done more with it.  The general public would be outraged to see this level of performance, or should we call it ìlack of performance.î  It is obvious out tax dollars havenít been well spent.

The other problem, is those that claim it is not their problem, but the problem of others.  Denial has been as deadly as any killerís bullets, and more denial wonít move us towards survival.  Time to lift the rug and clean up this mess.



INTER-ACTIVE VIDEO TRAINING



Many years ago I recall a training system that used photographs put on a screen to create a, ìshoot-donít-shootî situation.  Later a version with movies and then video showed up. 

Today we have $200,000 video inter-active video systems showing up. I was offered one similar system by a firm and I emailed them back asking to show me a study that would claim their system or ANY similar system worked.

The response was a shock. First of all, they said ìnobody ever asked.î  I sat speechless. Are they saying folks will spend $50,000 to $200,000+ dollars and not ask if it works?

Iíve seen or used most of the popular systems. Most are totally unrealistic and they miss the entire training boat.

Each participant KNOWS they will not be injured. There is NO risk.  They KNOW they will not face legal actions or penalty for failure.  The makers claim it increases the heart rate etc. Sure it does. So does a video game or even an exciting movie.  What does that have to do with much.

They have shooters claim, ì it seemed real to me.î  They should ask that question of an officer that was in a REAL shooting.

A good analogy is that the video systems are like showing someone a dirty movie and they claim it was just like real sex because it made them breath heavy and turned them on.

FRIGHT is another animal.  Also, most show situations in good lighting.  Hardly realistic. You also see the officer standing in near perfect conditions.  Many of you live in areas where it rains, wind blows, and temperatures go well below zero and you have to wear parkas, coats and gloves.

The participants also know they will face a danger.  It would be interesting if officers came into the video games and never faced a darned thing that was a threat and was told when they finished to ìgo home.î  THAT is more realistic than the dangers shown.

The list of problems with such systems is endless.  Another interesting consideration is if the officer hits ìfriendlyî targets.  Is that recorded? It is a potential legal landmine in a criminal or civil case.  If an officer is hitting innocent targets in low stress training (and it is low stress) why would they let that officer go face a REAL threat with that record?

When you finish most of these games you are wound up and many officers can over react on the street later feeling dangers are behind every tree.  

When they are hammered with the fact that simple traffic stops or encounters are almost always deadly they can embrace that logic.

Many chiefs have claimed officers returning from such training are ìhyped-upî for days afterwards.   A legitimate concern we will say.

The systems using fake guns and ammunition are interesting.

One logic we have had around for years is that you MUST use the same ammo for practice as on duty.  That idea came when many departments qualified with .38 Special ammunition, when they carried .357 Magnum ammunition for duty work. That logic is still held for most firearms training.

Suddenly it is acceptable to shoot splatball type ammunition if you face a video threat that is claiming to be ìrealistic.î  Interesting logic.

Even if the system allows real ammunition to be used the shooters will wear eye an ear protection.  The list just keeps growing on why it has little application to real life.

There will be a day we will have virtual reality and that may help to some degree. But no training will trigger a FRIGHT reflex because the participant knows there is no realistic physical threat that will take place.

When departments are complaining about a lack of money for training and even limit to low levels the amount of ammunition fired or even purchasing bullet resistant vests, they want to pour $200,000 into a video game.

And to make that more interesting, nobody can show with any scientific evidence that they work.  Very interesting logic by any standard



VERY DANGEROUS 

CONCEPTS



There are a lot of assumptions in most training programs. One big problem is the logic that all shooters will enjoy it and train to the level of the instructor.

To most, training is a pain in the ass and they only do it to keep their job.  They will accept the minimum standards and they have been consistently lowered over the years.

I saw one study many years ago that the ìaverageî shooter fired less than a box of ammunition per year.  I have little reason to dispute that figure.

Many of our students leave and never return to the range we use. They have records to show that.  Some return very seldom.  Most readers of a book like this are students of the art and canít imagine why people donít shoot more or as often as they do.

The gun magazine crowd thinks readers are going to shoot as much as the writer.  That is also logic laced with nonsense.

Finding places to shoot is more difficult each day for those in city areas and lands where you can shoot are also more rare in rural areas.

There are a lot of reasons many gun owners do not shoot as much as they like or should.

A very few shooters can make the art of self-defense a serious study.

There is a need for intense and serious training for those rare and select few students  who need such effort.

Training may have unique slants to it. Some is designed for using a firearm in a city environment. Another is for more rural areas. Still another may be a total military or police application. The key is to find what fits YOUR needs. 

The line between seeking entertainment and serious life saving instruction is often clouded by the shooter.  Training can be ìinterestingî but it has to be applicable as well to what your situation is.

I can run down a list of ìfadsî and concepts that will get you killed if you think they will apply. There is room for debate, but I can only go by what I know from working the streets and my own experience. I come from that position which few of the fantasy types seem to have in their background.



DOUBLE TAP



This is one of my favorites. It defies logic. There is the assumption that you would only normally shoot once at a suspect.  Since that might not work the idea is to shoot twice.  A good ìtheory.î  

What is interesting is this logic fails to take into account that two might not work.  One silly concept is to shoot twice and ìevaluate.î  Then if you need more to shoot again.  Huh?

This shows the lack of real world experience in actual shootings.

It is common for a shooter to fire numerous shots in a shooting incident. In fact, shooters often empty the gun.  

Few will ever have the discipline or state of mind to shoot just two nor should they.  You shoot until there is no threat, whatever that is.

There are some reports of officers firing two shots and stopping only to have the situation continue or escalate.  

I refer to this logic as, ìdouble tap crap.î  It will get you killed.  There is NO limit on the number of shots you fire.  

When ìdouble tapî wasnít enough someone had to come up with ìtriple tap.î  And the fads continue without regard for the impact they will have on the lives of the shooter. But they help make a name for those gun magazine types.

There is NO limit. You shoot until you feel safe. Much easier to explain why you fired all the cartridges in your gun then why you didnít fire enough.







MOZAMBIQUE DRILL



AHHH, the ìdrills.î  Self-defense shootings are terrorizing and most of us will face only ONE in a lifetime if that. 

This concept came out of the Rambo age of gun magazines attempting to out Rambo each other. 

Noted writer Jeff Cooper (whom I respect) was one of those that brought this concept to us, but fails to qualify why we need it and readily admits it does not work but we should know it. It makes a lot of possibly fatal assumptions.



ìThus we have the Mozambique Drill derived from an actual circumstance in Mozambique many years ago, in which the victorious contestant was one Mike Roussou, later killed in action in the Rhodesian War. The Mozambique Drill is a very definite addition to the repertoire of any qualified pistolero. ì Jeff Cooper



The first problem is this comes from the ìone timeî school. If something happens just once we attempt to use it as a foundation for a total application to most and even every situation. Cooper tell us we need this in our ìrepertoire.î  Self-defense shooting is hardly a ballet, concert, or event where we have time to process a long list of options. Mr. Cooper tells us the logic behind this.



The classic Mozambique Drill, in which the student fires two shots as fast as he can at the center of mass, then, after pausing to observe the effect of his first two shots, he slows down and places one round carefully in the head. The idea is that if the first two shots do not quiet the adversary, this is either because he is not interested in the cartridge employed or he is wearing body armor. Speed is no longer a dominant consideration, but turning the adversary off is. The way one turns his adversary off is with a shot to the brain. A shot to the pubis, even if perfectly delivered, is unlikely to stop the conflict. It may annoy, inconvenience, or enrage the adversary, but it will not stop his shooting. Only a head shot will do that. Jeff Cooper.

 



The first problem is the firing of just two shots.  Again it seems odd we would stop shooting. And shooting at center mass is difficult enough and has that classic high miss rate.  With such a high miss rate firing at the largest possible target, it is strange we will now stop and go to a smaller target.  Jeff says to fire as fast as we can. Iím sure that is what we will do.

Jeff says we now ìpause.î  What color is the sky in THAT world? Pause?  That gets your sorry ass killed.  We will almost always start from behind the life curve and we pause?  There is no regard nor mention of what the thug will be doing while you ìpause.î  I think we have a clue about that if we think about it. The thug doesnít ìpause.î  Evaluate?  I donít think so. Shootings are not that well organized.  It is common for thugs to take very good hits that will surely be fatal and still perform. Even a split second pause can cause your death. What about the ìdrillî of 21 feet is only 1.5 seconds away from your warm pink tender body?  A pause any less is useless and any longer puts you at deaths door.

Slow down?  Time stands still in a real shooting and trying to manage time is out of the question in the real world.  Your internal timing mechanism is out to lunch for you.  It would be like trying to count strokes while having sex.

Place one ìcarefullyî to the head?  Again, there is the assumption the thug will allow you to do that and NOT move.  Huh? And 85% or more shootings are in low light or darkness. How do you do that? AND with a high miss rate trying to hit center mass we go to a SMALLER target?

This is a good example of movie logic trying to be pushed onto the shooters.

Keep in mind that in ideal conditions IPSC shooters MISS A LOT with no fear or concerns other than competition. When it is life and death, trying to put up this complex plan is dead in the water from the start in the real world. If you can wait, there is a legal question about the presence of a threat.

Cooper also fails to take into consideration the fact the skull is like a helmet and bullets can fail against it.  It is not 100% effective even with a solid hit.  At least it isnít with a handgun.

This concept sure sounds ìcool.î  It makes us think we can do something to solve a problem, but that solution will be well beyond our reach. Even if the fact it happened once (and it hasnít even in Coopers comments where we get the popular unverifiable incident) doesnít mean it has mass or common application.  

Cooper is right in believing any handgun is a marginal performer, but to think we will come up with a complex, highly organized effort in an actual shooting defies logic.  

The question is if we pack a huge menu with so many options , can we process that menu in the time of need?

We know police die with their guns in their holster.  A primary concern should be to have the gun IN hand and then try to at least perform to the level the threat is removed.  Increasing the thought process to such complex efforts, even if we practice often, is pretty dangerous ground.  And NO practice will prepare us for a real target.

Iím not bashing Cooper, but I am bashing concepts that even students of shooting cannot and will not be able to process or apply.

Cooper, like so many others is convinced most of us, or at least many of us, will attempt to achieve some high level of excellence. A rare few will, but even those will be unable to put into application such concepts for the reasons we covered earlier.

Cooper leaves out the activity of the bad guy totally, and fails to address the effects of FRIGHT.  Even the most liberal interpretation of Coopers thoughts fall on dangerous ground when applied on a comfortable indoor range with a non-moving target.  Misses  from the best shooters are common with no fear or concerns.  

It is a RARE area I disagree with Cooper on and hope he doesnít take this personal.   

Cooper and others ASSUME a headshot if it connects will work. They are in for a real shock in the real world and should ask some ER doctors about this subject.

Those that tell you it isnít possible to shoot a gun out of someoneís hand or to shoot them in the arm or leg will tell you to shoot for the head. That is real strange in my thinking.

The ìpauseî that is required in this silly thing is a legal hand grenade.  Here is how   New York courts look at the mere presence of a pause in a shooting. Cooper and others never seem to give this legal issue a thought.

As the prosecution continued presenting its case against four officers charged with murder in the death of Amadou Diallo , a pause in the fusillade of 41 shots that the officers fired  became   almost as central as the gunfire itself. 

Three witnesses for the prosecution   testified to a pause in the 41 shots fired -- one witness said it was as long as five seconds.  

While defense lawyers say the pause was so brief as to be insignificant, prosecutors  used it to show that the encounter with Mr. Diallo on Feb. 4, 1999, did not unfold as quickly as the defense has maintained and that the officers had time to realize that Mr. Diallo did not pose a threat to them. 

The brief absence of gunfire proved troubling for defense lawyers. In past police shootings in which there was a pause in gunfire, state courts have ruled that the pause was a legitimate issue for the jury to consider. 

In one case, the 1984 shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs, a mentally disturbed woman killed by the police in her Bronx apartment, the State Court of Appeals cited an interval between the two shots that killed her in upholding the indictment against Officer Stephen Sullivan, who was ultimately acquitted of manslaughter. 

 In the other case, a decade later, an appellate court upheld the conviction of Officer Peter Del-Debbio for assault in the shooting of a fellow officer who was undercover. The court ruled that the judge had correctly instructed the  jury to analyze each shot fired by Officer Del-Debbio separately in determining whether the shooting was justified. 

Even if a defendant is justified in using deadly physical force at the beginning of a single, ongoing encounter with an assailant," the court said, "his right to use that force terminates at the point he can no longer reasonably believe the assailant still poses a threat to him." 

 In the Diallo case, the question is whether any pause in the gunfire was long enough for officers to realize that Mr. Diallo, who did not have a weapon, did not pose a threat. He was later found to be carrying only a wallet and a beeper when he was shot outside his Bronx apartment building. 

Defenders of the Mozambique thing will claim the pause is such that if no threat is present the shooter wonít shoot. Nice theory. The reality is that it will probably be in low light or darkness as the Diallo shooting was, and your vision will be distorted from fright and you will have no clue what time has passed as the ability to define and evaluate time is lost or at the very best badly distorted.

I doubt if the Mozambique Drill is worth risking going to jail for or your life.  

As a court approved expert witness I assure you I would hammer such a case and a jury would see the folly of it and the inability of a person to realistically make those decisions that fast in those conditions even with the best of training.  

The pause was a MAJOR foundation of the prosecutions case in the Diallo shooting as it should be.







SPEED ROCK



This one is real cute. The ìtheoryî is that you extend your gun arm and take the other and place it over your chest to protect your chest from bullets.  Suggested for use in close combat.

WELL!  The truth is that this thing is so old it has hair on it. Here is a picture of the first version of it being used in the very early 1960ís.






It seems pretty silly to think an arm will stop most bullets.  We have enough trouble hitting targets using both hands, so this hardly will help with that problem.

There is a great endorsement of learning to shoot with the weak hand because your right arm (if right handed) will be bloody and mangled by your side. Here the off arm is put into the line of fire. What if the right arm is hit?  

It sure gets confusing.  It is another attempt to make something simple very complex.

Thanks to the hundreds of videos of real shootings, it is interesting this has not shown up. We doubt it ever will.  We also will not have the mental processing ability to think this out in a real shooting.  You can see the potential menu some are asking us to access and review in a real shooting is huge and complex.



FLASH SIGHT PICTURE



Really?  First of all,  most shootings are at 10-11 feet and seldom beyond 21 feet. Sights?  Self-defense is an arms length affair.

Also the genetic concept of , ìWeapon Threat Focusî will cause us to look at what is trying to kill us. We cannot train out of this no matter what someone claims. It is established science.

The vast majority of shootings are in low light or darkness.  How will we see that front sight? If we do look at the sight, the muzzle blast can blind us causing us to loose our vision. Not very smart. Few shooters care nor will ever check their ammunition to see how bright it is in the dark.

Few shooters will ever practice shooting in low light or the dark to boot.

Videos of real shootings show the shooters do NOT look at the gun.  It is so rare you seldom even see a video of a shooting that even implies the officer is looking at the gun. 




This famous scene shows the officer NOT looking at the gun.  He looked OVER it and this picture catches the gun in full recoil. At this range nobody was hit.  Even in good lighting there is no flash sight picture and no stances.  Things move to fast and other things are far more important. After this shot is fired the officer tried to move backwards. What you donít see is he fell flat on his ass into the street? He learned that in training? NO, he couldnít process the information needed to perform the physical move. He didnít trip over anything but his own feet. Simple functions fail us in shootings including things like walking. So much for ìmuscle memory reflex.î



Defenders will attempt to find single or a few isolated cases to prove their points, but the hundreds of videos clearly show what the vast majority of us will do.  Keep in mind those videos are capturing highly trained officers in actual use of lethal force. Not much room for a theory when you are in that situation.

It simply becomes another issue that eats up the highly limited thought process that we have available to us.  Nobody wants to address the impact of fright and the great debilitating impact it has on us.  There wonít be room for any sight picture if the threat is serious.

STANCES



Sorry, they arenít to be found in the real world. There is a long list of ìstancesî and some people think we will stop to think about how we are standing when we shoot someone and are facing death.

Videos again have shown stances donít exist. The best we can do is try to claim the natural position assumed by a shooter is connected to a stance.  But the shooter had no clue how they stood and it wasnít important or even considered.  Do you think a shooter will suddenly be faced with death and think, ì this calls for a Weaver stance?î  













MUSCLE MEMORY REFLEX



I fell for this one. It sure ìsounds good.î  The theory is that if we do something often enough we will do it automatically.

The first shocker is that muscles canít remember anything. NOTHING is automatic in memory.  We have to THINK to do anything. The mind must process the information to accomplish a task. Repetitive motion can aid us with certain tasks if there is no problem with processing information.

If you check medical sources you wonít find this term. It was made up. Nobody questioned it, because it sounded so good.

The only reference to it in medical environments is the ability of a muscle to return to itís original condition and performance after a serious injury.  That has no application to the subject at hand.

This theory again falls apart if we look at real videos of actual shootings.  

Several years ago a student used a computer program to create a stick figure from actual shooters in real shooting videos.  He then converted those stick figures to a program where the shooters gun arm motions were connected to a robotic arm.  It duplicated movement of the shooters gun arm.

This software and hardware is used to aid athletes in improving performance of their skills.

What we saw shocked us. It clearly showed a grossly distorted, uncoordinated and almost spasmodic motions.  

It was obvious that the shooters mind was sending distorted signals to the muscles.  The mind was having difficulty processing the information needed to shoot and sending those impulses to the arm to allow it to respond in an effective manner.

It seems MMR is a cheap term to convince a shooter that they learned something that will aid them in a real shooting.

If you watch the Ohio video from the 1997 shooting with two suspects in a blue suburban you will see one officer try to get his gun out of the holster. He makes four or five attempts to just remove the gun and finally rips it out of the holster. How many times in his career do you think that officer had removed that gun?

The bone simple process of taking his gun out of the holster became a task that exceeded his ability to process the thinking to perform it.  Such cases are common to see on those real videos. The shooting was not a ìone timeî event by any measure. It is often found where simple tasks cannot be accomplished such as opening a door or holding a flashlight.

It is amazing the muscle memory concept has held up this long.  If we can say that because of custom and usage it is a valid term, I have no problem with that, but it doesnít apply to the application of physical movement in a state of fright.

Your mind will not do nothing as complex as shooting a gun ìautomaticallyî.  The brain will process precious little information and it wonít be able to pull complex information from long term memory.

Shooting a gun and the complexity to do that is not part of our genetic survival package. The gun becomes an intrusion in the survival concepts of our mind.  We are programmed to throw something or beat the problem with objects.  Guns are a recent, new and modern choice for the human species to use for self-defense and we have not been programmed to use them when in a state of fright. It isnít on our menu yet and will probably never make it. Guns will be out dated before we figure out to code ourselves to consider them. 

 

WHAT BULLET?



This has been a long debated subject, but it is a subject we spend more time worrying about it than it is worth.  The choices for bullet types, is almost endless. If you are a worshipper of Brand A, you will find a following that disagrees with your choice. Your critics will prefer brand B or brand C.  Few shooters will ever be able to make a realistic or educated choice.  They will rely on almost total anecdotal information that has little to do with reality or science.

Gun magazines have been legend for pimping one brand or another. It often depends on the advertising budget of the ammunition maker or their relationship with the writers of those publications who seldom have more experience then the readers.

Over the years those magazines have told us to make decisions that could life and death for us on theories they make up as they go along.

They have shot into phone books, wet newspaper, clay, cows, pigs, jelly substances, water, wood and iron trying to show us something that makes sense when it comes to shooting people.  It is odd they resort to this P.T. Barnum type hype in lieu of going to an ER, morgue, or even discussing at length the issues with top medical professionals. A few brave science oriented types like Dr. Martin Fackler have gone into the shooting arena and have been met with nothing but hostility and disrespect. It is amazing that a 

grown and educated adult that can sit up and take nourishment would have the balls to take on scientists like Fackler and others with nothing more for education or experience than a high school diploma or a few years as a cop.  

I have some areas I would debate with Fackler and those like him, but they are trivial compared to the big picture we have to look at.  

One thing about trauma and bullets is that nothing is 100%. You can shoot two twins in the same spot with the same gun and ammunition and not get the same results.   There are however, some areas that are well accepted if you think about it.

Few would disagree that a shot to the brain is sure better than any other.  However, finding cases where brain shots failed or werenít as effective as the shooter wanted are not hard to find.  I recall watching a TV show where a young man had half of his skull and brain gone and was carrying on a conversation with the host. He not only survived, but didnít drop like a rock when hit.  We donít know what bullet was used, but it took about 50% of the brain and skull away. Sounds pretty devastating to me.

The spine is good, but we have cases where that didnít work either.  John Wilkes Booth was shot in the neck and the big heavy lead slug put a nice hole in a vertebrae and he lived for several hours and functioned.

William McKinley was hit in the spine and the slug put a nice hole in the vertebrae and he didnít stop instantly and lived several days.  

If the brain and spine shots arenít 100%, which  they are not, we have to settle in and remember that a handgun will never be 100% effective regardless of placement.




Actual photo of John Wilks Boothís gunshot to the neck. He lived several hours after taking this hit, which might be viewed as capable of incapacitation within a short time. History tells us it did not.






President Garfieldís hit to the spine wasnít instantly fatal or incapacitating like we would think. This is the actual photo of his injury.



Using any figures you like, it is clear the vast majority of slugs fired will not hit the intended target and bullet design will be meaningless. In fact, if you miss youíd probably prefer the slug was the lowest velocity solid FMJ type your gun could fire in your gun.

The medical community and those involved in shootings are always surprised at thugs that go down with trivial non-fatal wounds.  Arm, leg and flesh hits often prove effective   with any caliber or bullet type.   

Some fantasy writers in gun magazines think they can pass off an unverifiable statistic/study and get away with it.  Nice work if you can get it.

To date nobody has ever tabulated much information that would aid us in knowing or even making an educated guess as to what bullet caliber or design is the most effective even if we could use our best science to make a conclusion.

It does appear that in medical/science forums and among those that actually used lethal force or were witness to it, the larger calibers are most effective, and the faster the better.

You do not find in real autopsy reports or in reports filed by officers much information on bullet types.  You may find a reference to FMJ or ìdeformed bulletî etc.   Nobody cares if it is a Silvertip or a Starfire. That is never an issue.  Bullets are used to connect a specific bullet to a specific gun, which may lead to a specific shooter

Nobody cares how much damage the slug does etc. It is not uncommon to find an autopsy report that makes NO mention of the bullet type and frequently when the person doing the autopsy puts into the report what the slug is upon removal the information is not correct.  They may claim it was a 9mm when it was a .380, which isnít totally off the mark, but shooters would be surprised to see how often this happens.

The forensic people will pin down the exact caliber, and rifling characteristics to pin down what kind of gun it came from.  

If the bullet is damaged and canít be connected to a gun because it was damaged, the forensic person may try to connect and empty casing to the gun, or perhaps use metal tests to tie the bullet recovered to other cartridges found in a gun etc.

When you talk with ER doctors they agree pretty much across the board that a hollowpoint will be more of a medical problem them a FMJ, but only in certain specific cases.  Figures are floating around that in good solid center chest hits that about 50% of hollowpoints do not expand. I find few that disagree with that figure.

Also ER reports show that only about 15% of all gunshot wounds are to the chest area, the majority being limbs or other areas.

So if you take into account the number of shots that MISS and the number of shots that hit other than chest (center mass) areas you have very few that are the classic frontal center mass type of wounds.  Damn few in fact.  Where the armchair types come up with their ìone shot stopî crap is beyond me, and any serious student of medical issues and firearms instantly see the folly of such amateur attempts.  

Any hollowpoint needs time and distance to expand.  When it hits the human skin, which is elastic, it has to enter. This causes rapid speed dumping.  The bullet continues to slow down from the point of impact onward. Your 1,200 fps may lose 25-50% of that speed just after impact.  We canít time such things in the real world of course.  We can only guess.

Once it hits flesh and we will rule out pesky belts, buttons, clothing, zippers, ink pens, wallets, and other items, the bullet has to meet resistance to open up and expand. If it arrived in good condition that process can start and it takes time.  Things have to be pretty much working to perfection to get a soft nosed or hollowpoint bullet to expand.

Frequently recovered slugs show more deformation than expansion.

If the slug expands, it will be well after entry and most of the large expansion will be at the end of the wound channel where it does us the least good.

If you look close to a bullet wound channel under a microscope viewing tissue and blood vessels you can see a sharp edge of a bullet will tear/cut very nicely causing bleeding and damage.  A SWC type slug will do this on impact.  Round nose bullets seem to slip and slide past that tissue and bruise unless it hits pretty solid and does tear from speed and size.

This explains the success of the SWC in .38 Special using soft lead hollowpoints. Such slugs will do damage even if they donít expand from the sharp shoulders that punch clean holes out of paper.

It does the same to skin and Iíve seen a few SWC gunshot wounds and the entrance wound is a little more obvious as to what type of bullet impacted than any round nose design. A hollowpoint will operate and function as a round nose slug unless it can expand. A fact few like to think about. If an arm or leg is hit you may just get a hole that is a clone of a round nose slug.

IF a hollowpoint slug expands, the wound channel shows more damage to tissue and blood vessels (cut and tears) and you see evidence of bleeding increasing.  

For a person to bleed to death it takes much longer by any measure than we would like. Even if the aorta is hit, it may take minutes to cause enough drop in the blood pressure to cause medical problems and the heart to stop.

Using experience and some available data, we can only make an educated guess at what the ìstopping statisticsî are.  And those educated guesses would be far better than the non-verifiable voodoo junk studies floating around with nothing more than ìtrust meî logic behind them.  If the authors have an opinion they should call it that and say so. I for one would have far more respect for what they are saying.

With 40+ years on the subject and my experience as a news photographer, police officer and lethal force training my best ìguessî is this.

If you have 1,000 shootings, which would qualify as a self-defense category, you will find at LEAST  800-900 will result in nobody being hit.  The most optimistic information claims 400 will be total misses.  So bullet choice wonít count here.

Of those that hit, only 15% are frontal chest type wounds. So we have at best about 12-60 at most will be a frontal chest wound out of a 1,000 shootings if we assume only ONE shot is fired.  If you want to be a real big optimist go ahead and claim 100 shootings.  Of those we have to break it down by caliber and then bullet type.  

If you think those one-shot stop claims are valid, do the math. Try and figure out how many it takes to reach the claims of the snake oil types making those claims.

Of course you would have to have all the information available to make those claims.

Youíd need the autopsy reports, ER reports, witness statements, and other information.

What the gun magazine bullet salesmen try to do is use some fast smoke and mirrors. One is to use a one-time incident to show how something does or does not work. The famous FBI shooting incident in Miami is a prime example. The claims were that the 9mm Silvertip ìfailed.î  They didnít look at hundreds of shootings where it worked. The ìone timeî school came into session for this wisdom.

It also became a case for the failure of the 9mm.  Remember the FBI did their ìtestsî to show it was the best and what they wanted.  Interestingly enough the next set of ìtestsî they did showed their original first place winner came in LAST and the 10mm was given the nod. Isnít that interesting how you go from first to last place so quick?

We can tap dance all we want.  The facts are that it is rare and seldom we can get enough information on a shooting to come to any realistic conclusion.  Medical privacy, data privacy and other issues prevent disclosure of that information. Also, few police departments will share this information for many reasons. And if we have all the information we still may not be able to come to a conclusion that will withstand investigation or show us much of anything.

The President Reagan shooting in the early 80ís was very interesting. We saw a Secret Service hit with a marginal wound from a .22 Long Rifle and fall flat on his face. A Washington D.C. cop was hit and fell like a rock.  Jim Brady was hit and dropped instantly.  Reagan was hit and pushed into the limo and almost died from his wound.

Not bad for a wimpy .22 Long Rifle.  Iíd call all four shots a ìone shot stopî by any measure.  Again, we can tap dance it, but two armed men never touched their guns on their way to the pavement from those .22ís.

That shooting gets less review than the Miami FBI shooting and you can see why that would be.

We have to deal with the big picture and come to OPINIONS that are based on experience.  Dr. Fackler, and others like him have used war wounds for some assistance.

We are pretty well educated on what a FMJ .223 or 7.62x39 will do in the real world of war, because that information is readily available from military sources.   You donít see the bullet salesmen in the gun magazines trying to convince us which brand of ammunition to buy for our AR-15ís or SKS rifles. They wonít go on those grounds, as the databases and information is just to documented to try and defeat and sell bullets.

The bullet salesmen have to stick to handgun ammunition to do that, knowing you will never be able to dispute their theories and claims.  Pure ìtrust meî logic without an ounce of validation, other than non-existent claims of goats being shot to test ammunition or claims without verification, peer review or any way of showing they are for real.

If we want to get down to the real issue, it is always placement. Where YOU put the bullet is the real issue. We canít ignore our responsibility for placement and expect a bullet design to save our hide or make a big difference.  If your choice of a bullet performs to perfection, you may still have a thug on top of you knocking the crap out of you for a much longer time than you like.

The expectation of performance has to be realistic and there isnít a bullet on the market that will make much of a difference if you donít hit what you shoot at, and the bullet is given a decent opportunity to perform.

You canít take the responsibility off of yourself and put it on a bullet. That is very unrealistic and possibly lethal. Your efforts have to be dedicated to placement foremost with bullets a very secondary option.

In all honesty, the folks that design and manufacture bullets are not morons.  Today with computer aided design and manufacturing tools that have never been available before we have a long line of good bullet designs.  Many have been tested as far as they can go without shooting actual humans.  Starfire, XTP, Silvertip, Gold Dot, and others are well designed and will perform to satisfaction if you do your part on placement.

If we could get exacting science on such things and shot 1,000 people that were clones, in the exact same place, and at the exact same time, from the exact same guns and bullets, we suspect the results not be surprising. Youíd find each brand about equal in performance.

The non-stop debate over which caliber and which bullet will continue, but until someone makes a realistic effort at attempting to compile scientific information, it will be impossible to come to any conclusion that has enough weight to make the selection of caliber or bullet design a choice based on realistic science.  It becomes at best an ìeducated guessî and nothing more.

To please advertisers and to attempt to fill the pages with something that will resemble ìinformationî the gun magazines have fallen into the ëwhich is bestî logic and it has worn thin long ago.

It doesnít matter when it comes to shooting deer, varmints and other critters.  But when it is your hide on the line, it becomes serious and nobody apologizes for the junk science and totally inaccurate information.

It is YOUR job to make a choice.  You have to decide on how much recoil you can work with, how much punch you need and what your situation is. Nobody can do that for you.

In all honesty the choice of bullet will have little to do with your survival.  If it missed or was badly placed you know where the problem was. If it was placed right, you may be dealing with a target that doesnít share your trust in any bullet and still hurt you.

You have to keep in mind a handgun is your SECOND choice, but we have to live with a lot of second choices when it comes to guns, bullets and related issues. It is not nor will be a perfect world. 

I recall in the 1960ís when Super-Vel came out with their line of highspeed hollowpoints the gun magazines praising the 9mm 88 grain HP load.  They sold as fast  as dealers could stock them. What the gun magazines missed was the fact most 9mm guns wouldnít feed the short light slugs, and  the speed was so high the slugs disintegrated on impact in many cases and  soon failures from the street were flooding in after seeing the wounds on x-rays and in the ERís.  It didnít matter to the armchair types that shooting into wet phone books or clay, that their effort had nothing to do with reality and that someone may have been killed from their junk science. .

It is not, nor will be a perfect world.  Any gun or bullet beats NO gun or bullets when you are faced with a danger.  Hard to argue with that. If you want to argue, ask someone that was ever in that position.  Reality bites.





WHICH GUN?



We can make short work of this subject.  The first and most important consideration is the fit of the gun to YOUR hand. Often in gun shops you see shoppers come in and want to check out a gun because they, ìread an article.î  What that article canít do is tell you is how it fits your hand.

Recoil control is one of the few things we can do that will help us hit what we shoot at. It is probably the ultimate choice we can make that will make a real difference in our ability to hit a target.

First rule is a rubber grip. When shooting in darkness it is possible to watch a shooter firing  a gun, and watch it move around in their hand and that results in bad placement.  

Guns like a K-frame S&W, Models 10, 15, 66 and others all share the same grip. There are probably dozens of various rubber grips out there for these guns. It is your job to check out as many as possible in shops and at the range to find the one that fits your hand to perfection. In my case it is a Model 10, with an Uncle Mikeís rubber grip.  Others are such I could sure qualify with the gun, but that one grip is the grip for my hand that out performs all others. I have a small hand and I find females also enjoy this grip if they have small hands and/or short fingers.

A gun like the Glock is polymer, which is very slick when your hands are cold or dry and or wet.  They tried to change the grip to make it more effective, but most shooters didnít find it much of an improvement.  Most shooters will add a rubber slip on grip for the gun and they work well.

Guns like the 1911 types allow you to use arched housings, flat housings, short trigger, medium triggers, and long triggers. You can toss in a wide selection of grips to boot and almost custom design the gun to your hand.  This is a seldom thought of concept that sure makes an improvement in performance.

The big question is how can you tell if the grip fits. It is like shoes. You will have to try on a lot of grips to find the one that stands out. An easy way to go at it is to ask yourself if the gun would be easy to wrench from your hand. Could you hang onto it if someone was doing his or her best to get it out of your hand? Recoil is a time when the gun is trying to leave your hand and it is your job to find a way to prevent the gun from moving as little as possible.

Shooters will often buy a $600 gun and balk at a $20 pair of grips. That is strange logic.

Many gun shops will balk at letting you try on various grips. Keep checking used guns or guns with various grips and try them out.  

Most revolvers allow a wide range of grip designs, and some semi-autos are very limited on available grips. Take grip into consideration with equal value of which caliber and style of gun. It is that important.

The big questions seem to be revolver vs. semi-auto.  I have, use, carry and shoot both.

It is like tools. You use the right tool for the right job.  When in trouble you donít wish you had a smaller gun in your hand.

A .45 ACP, or a 4 inch barrel S&W Model 29 in .44 Magnum would be a good choice for serious trouble, but they both have limitations that are obvious to even novice shooters.

Iíve also carried a .25 ACP on occasion when maximum concealment was the primary issue.  When you go to a potentially violent protest that could turn into a riot, and folks bumping and pushing you, by accident, surround you, you donít want someone to spot you carrying a gun or feel it. When you are sent in to work a drug deal they will check you for transmitters and weapons.  A stainless steel Bauer .25 ACP will fit into a 7-11 Big Gulp cup under the ice with ease.  The Coke does taste bad however. When you need a gun for work, you do what you have to do.

It may make you think you are the ultimate pistolero if you have the latest most modern trendy gun and holster on the market to carry and make a fashion statement, but the reality is not a fashion statement.

When you talk with real street cops or those that worked a lot of undercover work you find a range of weapons and methods of carry that may surprise you.

I recall one incredible narc that carried a stainless PPK in the strangest places.  You have to figure out what you need and then search for it and buy it.

In hot weather over 90 degrees my choice may not be the same as when it is ñ20 and I can wear a parka. It isnít the same when I donít think I will carry outside of my car, compared to wearing a suit on a job.  The choice in a crowd may not be the same as when I am in a highly rural environment.

You can debate how many guns you should have, and again that is YOUR choice. Donít let someone else decide for you.  Be realistic about your situation and what you want.

To be honest it is not uncommon for police officers to carry a wide number of guns. At one time I had over two dozen choices I carried at various times while in uniform. It ranged from a 6 inch .357 S&W Model 19, to a 1911-A1 .45 auto.  One of my first guns was a S&W Model 28, 4 inch .357.  










Today my primary carry guns are a Colt stainless Series 80 1911-A1, S&W Model 10, 4inch .38 special, and a Browning Hi-Power clone from FEG that shoots like a dream.

For very small, I have an old airweight S&W .38 special, with a 2 inch barrel, and a Russian .380 Makarov.  .If I had to narrow it down to just two, that would be the Colt, and the S&W Model 10.  Keep in mind that is MY choice.  They would work for my situation and environment.

I have found great entertainment in how some gun owners react to their guns and it almost becomes a religion.  

Few shooters understand that their own personal experience with ONE gun has little to do with the quality or performance of  specific model of a gun.  To be realistic, you have to look at how thousands of guns work out.

A police department may have thousands of identical guns on line and over time they can sure see some common problems surfacing.  

The major manufacturers donít make junk. Sig, Ruger, Glock, Colt, Smith & Wesson, and others make some well designed, and well-built guns.  

Many thought the Sigma line from Smith & Wesson was a major fiasco, but many departments used the gun with no problems.  I doubt the gun will become a classic of sorts, but it is well enough made to consider purchasing. Are there better guns on the market? Perhaps there is, but do they apply to what you need and what you can spend?

Whatever the choice is, it is up to you to determine the guns reliability if used for self-defense. 






You had better decide on ONE choice of ammunition for carry and ONE choice for practice.

Each gun is unique in what it likes to shoot. My Series 80 Colt does not like military FMJ ammunition. It shoots fine, but accuracy is lacking.   The same gun fired PMC 230 grain FMJ like a dream and most other brands.  

I have a S&W Model 10 that shoots +P 125 grain JHP in all makes very well, but is not good with lead slugs.  I have no clue why that happens.  Any shooter will tell you how individual each gun can be.

You may have a favorite choice of bullet design but your gun may have other plans for you.  I like to stick with one bullet for each gun and let it go at that.  For practice I can use about anything that is on sale or I can reload. I have pet loads and choices and go with them.  It doesnít have to be rocket science.

If you shoot a semi auto you have to make sure the magazines work with your gun. If you get a failure, mark that magazine. As your get into other failures you will often notice the same magazine showing up.  There may be nothing wrong with the magazine, but that individual magazine and gun may not match up.  The same magazine that failed in your gun may work in another.

One thing we have learned in our classes and experience is that one of the primary causes of failure in semi auto guns is, non-factory magazines.  If one is serious about self-defense they have to stick with factory magazines regardless of cost or capacity.

I just bought 30 magazines for my .380 Russian Makarov. I paid $1.50 each via an advertisement in Shotgun News.  All 30 perform to perfection and were made in East Germany.  That sure is an attraction to buy a Makarov. Not many guns around that have such inexpensive magazines around.  The Makarov isnít a Sig, but it sure does perform, is well made and easy to carry. It is also a gun that I doní t feel bad if it takes a few bumps and bruises.  At $99 new, the gun is a gem worth considering on if you are on a budget or need a gun of that type.









THE .25 ACP



In the mid 1960ís I was working as a street news photographer in Minneapolis, Minnesota and working nights.  I was with Ralph Hughes a good friend and shooter. Ralph was also a news photographer for KMSP-TV there.  We often cruised together to save gas and keep each other company as we went from call to call.

We were in the area near downtown Minneapolis and suddenly saw two men mugging a sweet old man I knew from  my own neighborhood nearby. They were beyond robbery and just knocking the hell out of him.

I had only a .25 ACP with me and I jumped out of the car to defend the helpless old soul now on the ground. The pair of thugs saw me running towards them and got up to run.

I had two of them to worry about and decided to go after the younger of the pair.  I was green as grass and not thinking, but I figured if they had a gun they would have used it or had it in their hands. 

I chased the young thug into nearby Peavey Park into the shadows and he suddenly turned on me.  I have no clue why, but I fired without hesitation. The gun sounded almost toy like and silly in that big park. I knew right then I had the wrong tool for that job.  The thug turned and ran and Iím sure I missed.  I quickly sprinted back to the news cruiser.

Ralph was helping the old man who was badly beaten and bleeding and told me the second thug went west from our location. I ran a block down the street and saw him run onto a porch of a house. Just then a police car came by. I waved them down and they ran into the house and found the man hiding in a closet. He was brought out and I identified him and he was taken off to jail.  You donít forget things like that. I had to testify in court, no mention or concern was made over me shooting at the first thug.  The second man Anthony Saice was given a year in jail for his part in the robbery.

That was the last time I carried a .25 ACP for any reason.  I donít consider this a ìone timeî school problem.  The sound of that .25 ACP and the size of it in my hand vs. the size of the young thug was a pure case of the laws of physics.

In the dark and at 15-20 yards distance this small palm size gun was far from an ideal choice for self-defense. As Ralph added later, what it accomplished was sending the thug on his way, rather than letting him think he could confront or hurt me.

My performance wasnít ideal. Today I would never think of chasing him a single footstep.  Of course this was the 1960ís when the anti-gun feelings were not so intense.  I was not only thanked by the police, but the old man weeks later, still showing the bruises, tried to buy me a coffee at a local cafÈ.  It was my treat.















THE HUNT



In the 1970ís I owned Ranger Security Corporation which I built from scratch to over 100 officers.  We had a several car patrol fleet and I spent most of my time in the office, but on occasion Iíd take to the street to work high risk jobs or things I enjoyed doing.

I was in a bad area of town near downtown Minneapolis late at night and had a construction location to check. It was a huge apartment building complex and had plenty of problems with thefts.

I got out of the car and was in full uniform on a nice summer night and enjoying being out of the office.

I walked into the complex and heard a noise. It wasnít a dog or cat. I drew my S&W Model 19 and waited. No flashlights in a case like this. It was pitch black and I wasnít about to give up my location with a flashlight.  I didnít want to attract bugs or bullets.

I stayed put and listened.  I heard more noise like lumber moving and knew I had a prowler in the area.  I didnít even want to touch my radio as the noise would alert the prowler. It seemed like forever standing there.

Suddenly he came out of a doorway carrying some large boards. I think I gasped to see him hauling that much lumber over his shoulder. He was built like a body builder.  

The first lesson you learn working highrisk areas is to not let someone like this get close. I waited until he was about 25 feet from me and I stepped out into the open area and challenged him with my gun aimed at him in the very low light.

I didnít expect his response. Most will just drop the lumber and give up or run. He ran, but right at me.  I had no reason to shoot, as I could see he had no weapon, and in a flash he put a shoulder into me knocking me to the ground like a football player.

I fell to my knees and got up and gave chase. We crossed Franklin Avenue and into an alley. I knew the area very well but made a critical error. I cut the alley to close.  Screw up #1 and I sure knew better. He was waiting for me.

He grabbed me and slammed me against the wall of a grocery store. I felt my head slam into the wall and started to feel faint.  I had put my gun in my holster. I was wearing one of the great Jordan Border Patrol holsters.

As I struggled from his grasp I felt him reach for the gun. I kept hitting him with my elbow and trying to press into him so he couldnít swing.  He was solid as a rock, 5-10 and at least 250 pounds. Iím 6-6 and was about 275, but it was a close match.

I felt him grab towards the gun again as we exchanged blows and felt his odds of getting the gun were 50-50 and increasing with each second.

It was a hot humid night and I was starting to feel the drain on strength. It wasnít a fight where he was trying to get away. He was trying to kill me.  You can tell when the tone of the encounter changes from flight to an attempt to kill you.  I was getting gripped with fright and thus losing my ability to defend myself.

My last organized thought was to get rid of the gun. To remove it from the picture. Iíd take my chances and perhaps get to use a chemical spray.

I managed to turn away enough so that the gun was just outside his reach, but I got a hold on it and made sure it didnít go above my belt line with his hands and arms trying to reach around me. Being large was saving my life at this time.

I tossed the gun with a flick of the wrist sending it bouncing down the alley into some brush. Once the gun was gone, he pushed me into the wall and fled, convincing me his entire focus was to kill me with my own gun.

I chased him down the alley and he ran into a house. I hit the door just as it closed and it flew open. I chased him through the house and out the front door. It wasnít his house.  The people inside didnít wake up until we awoke them later to get a report. 

He went outside and dived to the ground and raced into another alley.  I got to the alley and had second thoughts of entering. I had learned that lesson all to well.

I made a lot of serious errors.  I cut the alley way to close. I didnít have a second gun. Was tossing the gun the right thing to do? Iíve taken a lot of flack over it from hindsight specialists that claim a lot of things could have been done different.  

Here is the punch line. After it was over I noticed my hand hurt. My shirt was torn, badge missing, and plenty of scuff marks on my skin in various places including my knees from going down on the cement several times. I donít recall doing that which is interesting.

I looked at my hand and I had been stabbed through the hand with something like an ice pick. He had a weapon and I never saw it. I probably got stuck when I turned the corner and when it went through my hand it probably was knocked to the ground or he lost his grip.

Having a gun doesnít always mean you will get to use it.  I also wasnít taking into account the thug had a plan for me. I was being trained from various sources about what ìyou will do.î Nobody told me about guys like this and what they will do. I was learning the hard way and didnít like it. On the job training is far too expensive. It was another factor that started me to ask the old timers about such matters and get their advice. It seems the armchair logic I was getting on such subjects wasnít of much value. The gun was badly damaged and was repaired. If I had it to do over again Iíd still toss the gun.

50-50 is not good enough odds for me.



LEARNING FROM 

EXPERIENCE



My Mother used to tell me that, ìexperience is the best teacher and it can get very expensive.î As always she was right.

I sometimes wonder why I wasnít killed. Enough folks sure tried over the years.  One thing you learn is you will make serious mistakes weather you want to admit it or not. I cannot  think of a single shooting incident or most serious encounters I or others have had that were text book perfect. Life isnít that well organized. There has been some damn fine work, but in every case (even if it turned out alright) there were things that could have been done better.

If we are smart, we will look at the most trivial event and see what we did right and wrong. Being critical of ourselveís is vital for survival. We have to look at the situation and dismantle it over and over again.

Some incidents can be laced with humor.  I recall standing near a car asking a motorist for a drivers license and realized I had left home without my gun. The holster was bone dry.  I hurried the process and went home and got the gun. I had answered a phone call just as I was getting ready for work and got rushed etc.  Silly? Yup!  That is how you learn.   

Other experience can be very informative and tragic.The civilians have a serious disadvantage when it comes to self-defense. They will seldom get any real life experience with criminals. They will see some on TV, and maybe have an encounter or two in their lives, but nothing serious.  

The average person will try to gain information from various sources, but most are always about stories where everything went right and there were no mistakes, so they claim.

It is easy to tell others what you will do if you confront a criminal in your home or on the street. I sure was like that until I had to put on a uniform, be it a security officer, or a police officer. 

The first time I pointed a gun at a man I was shaking so bad the gun seemed like a blur.  This was against the grain of everything I had been taught over the years. I was hammered constantly with, ì you NEVER aim a gun at a person.î

I had the gun aimed at the car thief and he looked at me and smiled. I didnít expect that reaction. He slowly got up and I told him to put his hands on the hood of the car. He kept smiling and started to walk away. I yelled at him to stop and put his hands on the car. He looked over his shoulder, smiled, and ran off into the night. I felt pretty stupid standing there with my gun in my hand and him ignoring me.

It isnít supposed to work that way. I always felt when you aimed a gun at someone they did what they were told to do.  What a shock that was, and I felt real silly standing there with my gun and no crook.

Looking back on that incident, I probably wasnít very convincing even with a gun in my hand.

If you canít admit to your errors you shouldnít discuss your successes.  You learn more from the screw ups than you will from the successes.

I once asked a 16-year old kid to leave a bowling alley and when he refused I took him by the arm to escort him out. That is the last I remember. They said he hit me a dozen times before I folded. He walked over me and left the place on his own.  Hate that when that happens.

When someone claims they havenít had the hell knocked out of them a few times you have to wonder where they worked.  

I sure had some good brawls where I performed like Rocky, but those were rather boring.  I find some failings humorous after all the years, but at the time they sure hurt ones pride. Never be to hard on yourself, but be sure to examine in detail the things you do when confronted with a risk, and ask yourself what you can do to, NOT do that again.

I canít imagine a time when I would perform textbook perfect in any situation.  Life isnít that organized. I just hope Iíve figured out how to do more things right than wrong.











FINGER ON THE 

TRIGGER



There is a lot of debate about having your finger on or off the trigger when aimed at a suspect.  Letís use some God given common sense.

First of all, the reason you point a gun at someone is that you think they might need shooting.

If you are going to shoot, think you will shoot, or MIGHT shoot, put your damn finger on the trigger.

The concern of accidental discharge is badly overblown. We canít protect ourselves from every possibility or we will grid lock from the massive amount of information we need to process on what not to do.  To fire a gun you need your finger ON the trigger. To do anything less will increase response time.

Dr. Martin Fackler did an interesting study on that and found an increase in response time.  I wonít get into the validity of the study, but ANY increase is a bad increase when you consider 88% of cops die with their guns IN the holster.  They didnít even have their hand on the gun when they died.

At least if we have our finger on the trigger we KNOW the gun is in our hand where it belongs.

The constant inventing of concepts to prevent liability problems has gotten many of us hurt or killed. 

From high security holsters, heavy trigger pulls, and heavy handed punitive actions for having a gun out of the holster, we have created a very fatal and dangerous climate for ourselves. It certainly hasnít increased our street survival by any measure.

We canít stop or prevent every accidental discharge or negligent act.  There is always some risk when we have a gun aimed at a suspect. The idea is to reduce the risk to US.  That is why it is called ìSELF-defense.î

If you think you are a moron with a gun, then take your finger off the trigger and spare yourself any problems resulting from having it on the trigger.

I recently saw a picture on a web page trying to show some ìhow toî stuff on self-defense and the officer had a gun pointed at a guy with a big knife and her finger was off the trigger along the side of the gun. The thug was about 10 feet away.

If I were chief of police Iíd give her days off for endangering herself and others.

Survival is hard enough without having to increase the odds of getting killed to comply with some silly nonsense like this.  

There is a place not to have your finger on the trigger, but when you are FACING a potential criminal threat you put it ON the trigger if you value your hide.  If you are a moron with a gun and shot some nice old lady off her front porch, someone screwed up by hiring you in the first place and it wasnít totally your fault.

If you are a civilian, and have an AD and shoot the wrong or innocent person, you also should have invested in dogs and alarms and not guns.  The subject is too serious to do otherwise.

More and more training is being brought on line that has only one serious goal. That goal is to reduce the liability to the employer. That is not always in agreement with what we need to stay alive. Such logic is more dangerous than any thug you will ever face.

I know that much of what you are reading is against the mainstream of logic. I also know it will come back to haunt me and have to be defended in courts or cases where the old logic and emotional feel good concepts will and are prevailing.  I could write to tell folks what they want to hear, but at my age I donít have time for that. I donítí have time to flip-flop on issues later down the road.  I will speak what is in my heart and mind based on research and experience.

We have to decide just how much we want to live and what sacrifices, if any, we will  make in that effort.

There are undeniable risks in any activity we engage in each day. The issues of self-defense deals with issues that we need to address long before we are faced with a danger. There are the factors that are at the door of danger, and the actual application of lethal force is the last arena we have to perform in.

It is easy to have a theory in a classroom or magazine. It is another to actually face the threat and have to make the decisions for yourself.

What it boils down to, is that we give no quarter and take all the advantages to ourselves without regard for employer liability. We want to live. Put your finger ON the trigger if you face a threat.



REALISTIC LIABILILTY CONCERNS



Nobody wants to be sued. Nobody wants to go to jail for a self-defense act.  The moment the shot is fired the entire event is frozen in time. We canít go back and change a thing. Everything we have trained for comes together in that second. 

We are stuck with whatever we have done. A number of things come to mind.  Most shootings result in a legal action at the civil level.  Lawyers will look for deep pockets.  They may look at your assets, the assets of your employer, or both.

They will look at any insurance that may be involved and even legal action against third or related parties.

Many will hope for an out of court settlement. Let us assume you shoot an intruder in an apartment. They may file a suit against you, who trained you, the building owner, and others.  

If each one pays off to settle it out of court as a ìnuisance suitî the lawyer may collect several thousand dollars from each party named.  Five defendants can mean a fast $50,000 or so without much effort. See how it works?

The cost to defend such legal actions could run you $25,000 or more with ease. So you might   spend that much to settle it rather than take a chance at losing more.  A game of numbers.

Legal actions can come as a result of doing nothing wrong. But you still have to defend the action.

When you are talking about the use of a gun and bullets that fly faster than the speed of sound and can travel almost a mile, you have the potential for civil litigation and criminal charges.

A good friend once said, ìYou can always file bankruptcy, or get out of prison. But you canít get out of the ground.î  There is a lot of logic to that comment.

In talking with others that have been in shootings, you soon learn that none were thinking of liability when they pulled the trigger. They thought of LIVING.

If faced with death a human will use any tool or method to stay alive.  We will fight, bite, scratch, and use furniture as weapons to live.  Those that try to go after those that have used self-defense will always use the argument that we should have done it in another way or used other methods.

How easy that is to say without taking into consideration the mental process of facing death or what we think is death or serious injury.

What weapons or methods would you use if someone tried to push you over a cliff?  I doubt if you would take into consideration the legal ramifications or run down a menu trying to figure out what tools to use.

We said much earlier that we donít have the mental processing to take into consideration very much information if we think we will die.  Liability will be way down the list of concerns. If it is to be addressed at all it will be long before the threat is serious

If you think you will die, will you worry about what bullet you are shooting or how your gun is made? Of course not.  If that concern is to be addressed it will be BEFORE the event takes place.

We can do some things in advance to protect us in civil and criminal actions.  That is a subject for another book.

It is your job to research the laws that may apply to you and then work on a possible defense well in advance of the shooting incident. 

You have to decide if your concern is realistic. You have to decide if the subject will apply to you.  It is easy to become paranoid and reach for almost silly logic because it ìsounds good.î Thanks to the Internet we can now research from our PC and find out realistic information.

Many of the old myths are falling fast. That includes the myth of ammunition or a gun being a legal liability.  

If you try to remove every potential of legal concern form the picture you will sell your guns and join a religious order.

The main focus will be the legality. Not the guns or bullets.  You will have to show you were within the law and knew what you were doing.

It would be wise to almost spend as much time doing legal research as shooting on the range. You donít want to be the best shot in jail. We say that as a constant reminder of what reality is all about.

This will upset some apple carts, but if you are taking any training in self-defense with firearms, make it clear to your instructor that if anything they teach you fails, or gets you into legal trouble, or hurt, you will file a legal action against them.

We are seeing more legal actions against instructors and for many years they have been allowed to teach unproven or pet theories without ramifications.  That day has to be over.

The easy way to dodge the problem was to claim ìshooter errorî if something didnít work.

Insurance for firearms instructions is getting more expensive as a result.

Instructors and the ìschoolsî have to take accountability for what they teach and the results it produces or does not produce in application.

The move to take legal actions against the police and what they train is gaining in popularity and it will increase in the civilian area as well.

We now have to separate a ìtheoryî from a ìfact.î  The facts have to document the source.

Training now must adhere to a ìYour mileage may varyî logic in content.

The blunt truth is that those trying to kill you are trying to EXECUTE you. They will make no attempt at fairness, rules, or formalities. You have to master the abilities to prevent that execution which will be with little notice or warning on your behalf.  Your fulltime job is to remove those opportunities as best as you can. 



EXPERT WITNESS STATUS



Being a court approved expert witness is rather easy.  It means you have to show an expertise in a particular area.

An auto mechanic with various levels of training or documented skills can be one. A good carpenter with years on the job can be one.

A serious problem is that a lawyer can find someone with a long list of ìcertificationsî which nobody will question but should. For example a person may claim in a firearms case they are a factory ìcertified armorer.î That sure sounds professional. The jury doesnít know that is a ONE day class in most cases. And you never have to touch a gun after that class.

Being a ìcertified instructorî in something isnít much better as most training on items such as chemical sprays, impact weapons and various firearms training take only a few days at most.

It is easy to find in firearms training ìcertified instructorsî with only a few years on the job if that.

Most juries will confuse those certifications with those in fields like medicine where it may take YEARS to obtain them.  

I have never seen a police expert witness ever asked how long those certification classes took to obtain.  Few lawyers think of going there.

Also the number of years on the job is helpful but ONLY if relevant to the subject at hand.

I have guided lawyers in asking questions of a police related ìexpert witnessî that has left  an officer rattled and shaken.

When one was asked his background he rattled off his ìcertifications.î When we pressed for the length of the training to become ìcertifiedî he became nervous and started to fall apart.

We asked what the credentials of his instructors were and he didnít know. He didnít know if the firm that certified him had legal actions pending. All are relevant to the quality and validity of the training he received.  

We asked him for a history of legal actions against those he had trained and he admitted to several pending and some where the department had paid claims.  

No expert witness will ever be perfect or above attack. The key is to know where to attack.

A lethal force expert has many areas of vulnerability if you decide to use one.

A key is to ask about actual street experience and actual use of the subject at hand. Having a ìtheoryî isnít a good foundation. Or just having a bunch of ìcertifications.î

You also ask about the cases they lose and there had better be some. Nobody wins them all. Ask why they lost them and speak with the lawyers involved.  Just because someone lost a case doesnít make them a bad expert witness.  

Ask them about the cases they won and why they won them.  Just accepting a long list on a resume will hardly make them effective for you.

Make sure they are deep into what you want to use to defend yourself.  This should be backed up with plenty of formal education, real life experience, and acceptance by peers.

A good lawyer also has to do a lot of research (that is very expensive at their rates) to find out the potential attacks to the expert witness and where they may be vulnerable. You have to know how similar cases have been decided and what factors worked and what didnít.

I was asked once in court to comment on an issue I was not admittedly familiar with. I said I wasnít familiar with it, but the lawyer pushed.  Most courts interestingly enough allow an expert witness to comment on just about anything including areas outside of their expertise.  

Depending on the courts of course, that surprises me.  But I didnít invent the system.

I responded and the lawyer that hired me was surprised that my answer seemed to make sense and the jury found favor with it.  I made my view on just experience and background of my time as a police officer, which was far less than the other expert witness.

At times how you present the material can be more effective than a lack of background on the material. Most of the background I obtained came AFTER being a police officer.  I figured my police time was a foundation for where I went with training.  The foundation however has to be applicable.  

One expert witness I knew was a nearby Chief of Police. He boasted that he had never worked one day in his career in uniform or worked the street. He attended countless classes and never applied what he learned in those classes.   He had a PHD from all that training but no experience. Nobody ever asked him if he had ever applied his expertise. The PHD seemed to intimidate those he faced.

He began as a part-time officer in a community of a few hundred and sat at the office and never patrolled. He got few calls. When the population exploded he moved right into the administrative job as Chief of Police and never worked a patrol shift in his career and admitted he had never written a traffic ticket.  He retired from the department of 50+ officers after 30 years.  

Some fields are very scientific and there isnít much room to attack an expert witness, but you may recall the attacks on the DNA evidence and other physical evidence in the O.J. Simpson case.

Everything is open to attack. Some information will always be an OPINION.

Attacking an opinion is easy.  Someone may think the force or tactics were pristine and another will tear that concept to shreds.

The expert witness has to be backed up with a lawyer that can see where the attacks will come from and head them off. That is as important as the expert witness.

If a lawyer leaves an expert witness on the stand fighting their own battles there can be serious damage to the case at hand.  Legal tactics must compliment the opinions and views of the expert witness in presentation to a jury or judge.



WHAT IN MY PANTS?



It is not possible to discuss self-defense unless we discuss the effects of fright upon us in mind and body. Keep in mind that fright canít be managed, it canít be changed by training and it is mostly genetic.  It is the one barrier we have to deal with when it comes to surviving an armed encounter.  It is a subject that is totally ignored by present training systems.   Once we cross the line into fright we have greatly reduced our chances of survival. 

Criminals understand the element of surprise.  It is what causes us to gridlock and become incapable of the most simplistic response to the threat.  How we will respond to fright is unknown. It changes with each event and may be brought out in different ways each time, but there are some constants.

Remember being a kid and being afraid?  Weíd hide behind things, cower under a blanket when the shadows on the wall looked like a monster and hear spooky things that made us huddle under the pillow and shake. We never got up and went to see what it was. We didnít go check out a noise.  We were kids and not capable of fending off a monster or space alien that we knew made it into our house.  

As we got older we learned such things werenít real and we started to like fright. We loved a spooky movie, a walk down a dark road and a roller coaster than seemed to be ready to leave the rails any second.  

Fright is something we will seek out and pay for.  We find the post experience mental rush enjoyable. We laugh about how afraid we were and instant combat and survival.

The result of this signal will depend on the genetics of the individual enteric nervous system receiving it. In some people, the result is a command to stop the digestive behavior, and the gut will kind of freeze in place. In others it becomes a command to ìLet it fly,î and the body goes to full efforts of diarrhea and will exit the body with little or no warning. The nerves may also say,  ìpuke,î sending the contents of the stomach into the atmosphere.

It is a highly individual response. Jackie Wood, an Ohio State University Neuro-Physiologist who has studied the enteric nervous system since 1968, is ability of the enteric nervous system to run set ìprograms.î  Those programs may specify certain actions such as cramp, run, or throw up.  The gutís so called ìbrain, î resembles simple invertebrate including nervous systems, which also repeatedly run simple programs.

It also converts food into available nutrients, but its major role of the enteric nervous system seems to be protecting the body from external threats.  By emptying the digestive system, it is one way to prepare the body for fight or flight.  Both of course would be easier on an empty digestive system.

The enteric nervous system can be more subtle. It turns out a danger signal from the brain in your skull, causing the immune system to help protect the body from modern hazards like be shot or stabbed.

When the brains signals danger, it tells mast cells in the lining of the small intestine and/or colon to release histamine and other chemicals.  These chemicals begin the inflammatory response inside the small intestine, attracting immune cells from the bloodstream into the area.  The body is then ready for trauma, which often introduces dirty and infections material into the colon.

 A puncture wound can send the contents of the digestive tract which is full of bacteria and can be very deadly in short order.  The ancient response can create a large number of inflammatory cells called neutrophils, Wood says, it has a better chance of controlling the infection and surviving the stabbing.  It is an incredible genetic response to a potential threat that triggers before the actual injury. The body and mind have a built in plan for any trauma it may receive.

So based on this accepted science do you think you can in away train to avoid vomiting or losing control of bladder or bowels if you are frightened?  It isnít an issue that can be addressed with training.  

Nobody wants to discuss it.   It isnít a fun issue, or one we want to   apply to ourselves.  It also doesnít mean we donít try to defend ourselves because of our fear of this effect of fright. 

It is just a reality we must accept as a possibility if we are confronted with danger and cross the line into fright.  It is worth re-reading several times to understand this is a very basic and common body change trying to help us survive.  It is as normal and natural as blinking.

Perhaps by now you are getting the hint that our mind and body is not going to pay much attention to recent training. In fact, the mind and body will over ride most training with a flood of instinctive behaviors. That is why it is important to train within those instinctive actions that will surface via genetics. You canít do that if you donít know what your instinctive reactions will be when faced with fright.  To ignore this effect can be lethal. Donít let pride get in the way. 



JULY 15TH, 2000



I drove to the store for a loaf of bread.  I had four blocks to go and parked in the lot of the convenience store.  

A few months previously the city of Minneapolis Police Department had denied my carry permit renewal because they claimed I couldnít show ìproficiencyî with a handgun. You read that correctly.

I wrote a letter asking what they need to demonstrate that proficiency and they never responded. For several years in the past they had accepted my police certification training and no circumstances had changed for me since the original permit was approved. Minnesota is a ìmayî issue state for carry permits.

I live in a very high crime area. In March of 2000 a young man was shot next to my bedroom window. Numerous shots were fired and my family hit the floor as the shots rang out at 10:00 a.m. in the morning.

Within a few seconds someone was trying to get into my back door which I kept locked.  The person wanted to use the phone and we suspected it was the shooter trying to hide from police.

I have a large collection of guns I need for training kept in my home, which is well fortified and alarmed.

Iíve lived in the same house for 30+ years and had to deal with numerous criminal events in that time. On July 15th, 2000, I decided to go to the store for a loaf of bread.  It was 8:30 p.m. and a great warm Minnesota evening.  I got the bread and walked to the cash register to pay for it. There were over a dozen people in the store.  Outside children were playing and people coming into the parking lot and leaving.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man with a mask over his face walk into the parking lot from behind the building. I knew instantly that someone was in trouble.  I reached for a gun that wasnít there.

Letís get one thing straight right now.  For those of you that think you want to carry a .32 ACP, .25 ACP or even a .22 LR, you better think long and hard about that.

I watched the masked man lift up a 9mm Taurus or Beretta and aim it at a car with two people seated in the car.

At this time you donít wish you had a small gun with you. When it is REAL you wish you have something of substance available.  You may think any gun is better than no gun, but when it is for real you donít want second best.  

I am a firm believer in the .38 Special, but it is and will always be a MINIMUM for such matters.  

The gunman began to fire into the car.  Customers screamed and I worried the gunman was only starting the carnage and may come into the store. I also worried he had another target in mind that might be in the store.  I dived behind a display case injuring my back. It isnít like in the movies.

The shooting stopped and the gunman fled to a nearby waiting car.  The couple were screaming in pain and the windows were blown out of the car.

The shooting could have been stopped. I was 10 feet from the gunman and he never would have seen what hit him.  But he knew (and was correct) that nobody would or could stop his effort. He wasnít worried about the police being on hand or even the laws making such acts illegal. He was also sure not concerned about any of us customers being a safety concern for him.  Criminals know well about how the system will protect them. It was like a scene out of a third world country.

Both victims survived. The female took a slug to the back near the spine and spent a short period of time in the hospital. Her male companion had multiple torso hits, but also has fully recovered.  Empty casings showed the shooter used a 9mm. 

We know the police canít be everywhere.  There just are not enough police in any jurisdiction.  The blue line is not enough nor should it be. There is a forgotten responsibility of the general public being able to supply additional protection.

We are not morons, we are often skilled with substantial training in such issues. We are a nation of retired police, ex-police, and even veterans of various wars that have served with valor.  It seems government thinks such types are incapable of performing in a satisfactory manner in such cases.

Some of do indeed live in hostile environments. We donít look for trouble, it often finds us. More often than not it will find those incapable of posing a threat to the criminals. That is not satisfactory to me.  An appeal to the courts is being made to obtain my carry permit.  Until the government can protect me I will depend on my own abilities.









REALITY BITES



If you discuss the logic and ideology of self-defense you soon learn that theories abound. Everybody knows what they will do in a crisis. They have plans. They have concepts and ideas that they feel will work.  Much of it is based on bravado and machismo.

It is interesting to see that females do not seem to express themselves in such a manner. They are far more reserved and willing to listen and learn.  A generalization of course, but based on decades of experience.

Shooters are willing to search for and then find and embrace logic that is flawed and more Hollywood than reality based.  Yes, we want to perform like John Wayne and Dirty Harry. We want to survive the worst possible events and behave like an Energizer bunny.

We picture ourselves diving over dumpsters, blasting the bad guys into oblivion and taking multiple bullet hits with no lasting effect to win the day.

We find the field of self-defense with firearms filled with a solid wall of ìwhat almost happened.î Even in the NRA publications listing self-defense shootings you wonít find the failures where the gun owner was killed. Many of the incidents are occasions where no shots were fired.

The Portland Oregon study shows on average, Portland police were involved in 7.3 shootings a year - although in one year - 1989 - there was just one shooting and no one was hit. Only 4.4 officers were involved annually in fatal shootings. In other words, and average officer could expect to be on the force 193 years without getting involved in a fatal shooting. The figure for other cities might vary a little, but on ìaverageî if we included all police from large to small departments it would probably be in that range. 

Imagine what the odds must be for a civilian.  They are so low they are almost off the charts. Based on available data it seems to be about one per million if we are optimistic.

When we boil the concepts down to the reality, we donít like the flavor of the broth. It isnít what we intended to arrive at.

Iím reminded of a cartoon many years ago of a figure known as ìPogo.î  He lived in a swamp and the cartoon showed him in a swamp and the caption said, ì when we are up to our ass in alligators we seem to forget the original job was to drain the swamp.î

We tend to forget what our job is. It is to LIVE. It is to SURVIVE.  That concept gets lost in our desire to present ourselves as masters of firearms, tactics and legal logic. 

We feel when it comes to knowledge more is better. That has some merit, if we know which knowledge to seek and master.

We think hardware will save us. We think our confidence in our skills will carry us through.  

Since so few will ever experience a real self-defense shooting and of those few will share their experiences, we are gullible to the smoke and mirrors that is offered.

Most people that are involved in self-defense shootings are either police and those will be a one time event, or a civilian who in all probability has little or no interest in firearms.











A STATISTICAL LOOK AT SHOOTINGS



Very little information is available on civilian self-defense shootings.  The best we can do is trying to look at some interesting information harvested from some police departments. Subject to debate, such information is informative and helps defeat some common threads of thought.

In 1998 there were a series of articles on the Washington DC police department.  Yes, this department is hardly an icon of how to do such things, but the information from such a large department is revealing.

In the six months before this article was done the department paid out over $8 million dollars in settlements involving shootings. That sum of money would sure pay for a lot of training of some kind. It seems this department is typical in that it has plenty of money to pay settlements, but precious few dollars for training in any area.

When Washington DC switched to Glock guns in the mid-90ís the number of shootings almost doubled.  Coincidence? Perhaps.

Officers fired at 54 vehicles claiming ìvehicular attacks.î There were 19 wounded and 9 killed in these cases and all were unarmed. You may try to claim the vehicle was a weapon, but courts in some nations, including France claim the officer can just step out of the way and such shooters are often not necessary. An area for debate of course



















































































One of the finest police or self-defense guns EVER produced. With the right ammunition it can do anything on the street that is required.  If you carry one you are not undergunned.



I have nothing but great respect for the Makarov line of guns. My experience has shown some failures to feed with some hollowpoints. You have to find out what works.