WARRIOR TALK NEWS

Acts of Terrorism – what have we learned?

 By Uli Gebhard, Suarez International Staff Instructor Los Angeles, CA

It’s just a couple of days to the ten-year anniversary of the Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Ten years of time to learn, review our defenses and improve them. When I say “we”, I am not referring to the United States and its intelligence apparatus and the collective law enforcement.

What I refer to is what the individual person can do to prevent or stop a terrorist attack. Richard Reid was stopped and subdued by other passengers on his plane. United Flight 93 crashed in an open field when passengers of this flight fought back against the terrorists and prevented this airliner from hitting a fourth target packed with innocent civilians.

Now, ten years later the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks has finally been brought to justice and it seems that we are back at a point where people seem to be more likely to throw their arms up in surrender than to fight. Unfortunately, Al-Qaida is not completely destroyed and the US has an abundance of soft targets:

Soft Targets in the USA
The Virginia Tech massacre showed us painfully how easy it was for one deranged scumbag to kill a large number of victims, even with the police already on campus. He lined them up in a “weapon-free” environment and executed them one by one. These students had never learned to fight back. They were too overwhelmed by the violence of the attacker. They had been told all of their life to depend on police handling the bad guys. They had never developed the mindset to take the initiative and try to take the shooter down.

Five years ago, I went back to school for a couple of semesters. California is for the most part already a restrictive state, but the Campus was a non-permissive environment just like Virginia Tech.
Back then Columbine had already happened and my first actions were to take a look at the classroom, the building and the surrounding area to determine my options in case someone would try something like this here. The steel classroom door was a good start. A nook next to the door offered concealment to ambush anyone trying to force his way in from behind with a blade. Far from ideal, but the best I would have been able muster under the circumstances. However, I wonder how many of the other students had any form of plan what to do in case things went south. I had at least ten years on the majority of them plus five years of carrying a concealed weapon. Developing defensive plans had already become second nature.

Terrorists are cowards. They go after soft targets where they can kill a high number of innocents while encountering little to no resistance. In case of Jihadists, they will most likely embark on this mission with the intent to die in the process. The School Siege at Beslan showed horrifically that Jihadists have no qualms about murdering children. John Gidduck shows in his book “Terror at Beslan” that this was not the work of only Chechen terrorists, but that they had support from Al-Qaida Arabs. They attacked this school knowing that on this day, they would be able to take a maximum number of hostages. Beslan being far from Moscow, they also knew that it would take a long time for the authorities to bring a counter-terrorist team in position.

Mumbai is another example of the cowardice and cruel efficiency of a small group of terrorists who carried their mission out with low-key equipment. This attack was nowhere near as complex as the 9/11 airliner hijackings or Beslan, yet it kept an entire city off-balance for several days. Again, India is a country that does not readily allow its citizens to own let alone carry weapons. Municipal police in India is neither equipped nor trained to deal with this level of violence. The terrorists could be sure that they would encounter little to no resistance.

With Osama bin Laden and several of his high-level aides dead the chances of another complex attack like 9/11 are reduced. However, individual jihadists such as the Fort Hood’s Nidal Hasan are very unlikely to show up on the radar of our intelligence agencies. Consequently, it is very unlikely that law enforcement will be able take action against individuals or small groups before an attack happens.

If it comes to this, people on-site will have to deal with the situation as it unravels.

What have we learned about things we can do to deal with an active shooter/small-scale act of terrorism?

Educate yourself about terrorism: Know the ways of your adversary. Read “Terror at Beslan” or “through our enemies' eyes” and get a feeling for the mindset behind these attacks.

Be vigilant and observant: Once you have an understanding of what our enemy is after, you will see your surroundings differently and see certain areas in your city no longer as a nice place to go to, but also as a potential soft target for an attack. If you have to go to such a place be alert and evaluate your options.

Be prepared: Preparedness by itself is a topic that could fill several articles. I want to abbreviate it to core issues: Be mentally and physically prepared to fight back. Be prepared to help the victims.

 
Ideally this is what I would want to have on my person to fight with:  RMR Glock 19, spare magazines, two blades, flashlight and a tactical pen

Jeanne Assam stopped the active shooter at the New Life Church in Colorado,
Kenneth Hammond cornered the Trolley Square Mall shooter. Both individuals decisively put their lives on the line to stop the attackers on their killing spree. Both were armed with handguns and knew how to use them efficiently. Both happened to be on-site long before law-enforcement could arrive at the scene.
In contrast, CCW-Holder Brandon McKown tried to stop the Tacoma Mall shooter, but instead of firing and stopping the shooter he tried to verbally engage him. This action directed the shooters’ attention to him. He did not get any shots off, but was shot five times by the attacker and is now paralyzed as result of a spinal injury.
Be mentally prepared to apply lethal force regardless of appearance and age of the shooter. McKown held his fire because he perceived the shooter as “a kid”.

Learn how to fight with a handgun that you can keep on your person. If you live in a restrictive area such as many places are in California, learn to fight with the weapons that are not restricted such as knives.

Most likely , this is what I will have available here in California: Knives, tactical flashlight and tactical pen.  Center in the back:  Emergency bandage primed with hemostatic agent - a minimalist approach to trauma care.

At the New Life Church and at the Trolley Mall, several people were injured by the shooter. There is a good selection of tactical trauma care courses available. Consider them as part of your individual disaster preparedness.
There is also a good selection of pocket-size trauma kits available today. Get at least two of them, use one to get familiar with the contents and how to use them and take the other one with you wherever you go. After all, it may not be a stranger after and active shooter incident but one of your loved ones after a car accident that could need you trauma care skills.

Our "standard" family first aid kit.  Emergency bandage, coagulant, tourniquet and gloves in addition to the boo-boo kit in the right compartment for the occasional scraped knee.

Talking with co-workers about some of these events they dismissed the probability of being involved in an active shooter event as “highly unlikely”. I bet many of the people at the New Life Church would have answered in a similar way. They were lucky enough to have a person on-site who was equipped and willing to stop the gunman.

Do not rely on others to come to your aid in case you get caught up in a horrific incident like this. Instead be the one who is prepared, willing and has the capabilities to end it.

Active shooters and individual jihad can only be stopped by individual preparedness.

To find out more about Trauma Medicine Training and Uli Gebhard's courses for Pistol and Knife, please follow the links in the text.

Uli Gebhard is Suarez Interantional Staff Instructor in the Los Angeles Area. He lives with his family in Orange County, California

The Shotgun - Force Multiplier for Civilian Small Unit Tactics

JD Lester

Suarez International Staff Instructor

The role of the shotgun in Civilian Small Unit Tactics should be as a specialty weapon, as it is in MIL / LEO operations. 
There are several uses of the shotgun in this role. The two that most often come to mind are breaching and its use by the lead member of a patrol moving through terrain that has dense vegetation. 
For some LEOs this is the only authorized long gun available to patrol officers. Some areas are not rifle friendly for citizens to own, or they simply think the shotgun is good enough to do everything they might need it to do. (The countless times I have heard phrases that would make one think that the shotgun imparts great marksmanship skills to the user or that no skill at all is required….) 
As previously discussed in several threads on WT, the shotgun is a niche weapon and not a “Do All, Only Gun You Will Ever Need.” Pump actions and semi-autos can both be used and each type has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages.
By considering the MIL / LEO applications, we can establish the shotgun’s use for civilians conducting SUT type operations. 
Considerations for both urban operations and conducting rural patrolling operations will be discussed here. 
Both uses should be as a supplement to the primary weapon carried when possible. Don’t let it slow you down as it will not be a force multiplier if you are not in condition enough to carry the weight of an additional weapon and its ammunition. 
If a shotgun and a pistol are the only tools at hand, knowing how and when to employ the options in the shotgun’s wide array of ammunition choices is critical.

 Urban Use of the Shotgun: 

Breaching: Use of the shotgun to gain access through an exterior or interior door by defeating the lock or hinges using the ballistic force of the shotgun round.

Structure Defense: Using the shotgun’s ability to launch projectiles rapidly into threats, coupled with the ability to use slugs for mounted avenues of approach allows choke points in or near the ingress / egress points of structures to be covered by fire. 

Rural Patrolling Use of Shotguns: Terrain is a limiting factor not only for our movement techniques but also for the employment and capabilities of the weapons we carry. Some of the lighter, faster cartridges in use can be deflected from their intended point of impact by heavy vegetation, as seen in some of the IMG DVD offerings. This can be where a shotgun supplementing the primary carbine can be of use, as has been done during past wars by military units. 
I am not saying abandon your favorite carbine and just carry a shotgun in the bush. I am saying that the light weight carbine firing a light weight bullet might not offer the optimal performance you desire in certain types of terrain. 
During movement in heavily vegetated terrain the shotgun can provide a high volume of projectiles to facilitate a break contact drill. 
One type of patrol where a shotgun would be devastatingly effective would be a deliberate ambush in an area that has moderate to heavy vegetation. Think small waterway or rural road denial operations. 
We like to use the most causality-producing weapon we have to initiate an ambush. The shotgun can fill this role as it is unlikely that civilian operators will have belt fed machineguns, claymores or other anti-personnel mines. They are more likely to have the capability to employ a shotgun to initiate the ambush. Semi automatic shotguns shine in this area because of the rate of fire they can bring to bear onto the bad guys moving into the kill zone. 

We know the Saiga 12 is the premier fighting shotgun. However, employment of this system might not be the best option for this mission. Remington models 11-87 or an 1100 might be a better choice. Some Pros and Cons of each system are covered below. (Please note: Less common shotgun designs like the MKA 1919 are not discussed here.)

When we reduce the length of our barrels to make the shotgun a faster and easier to employ long gun we also reduce the capacity of the tube fed guns. When we add large capacity magazines or drums to the S-12 the height and weight are affected. As with most things there is a tradeoff: What you are willing to accept or what you have on hand will dictate how you can apply the shotgun to your specific mission requirements.

Let’s look at the options in the semi-auto shotguns that could fill this role and compare them.

 
Saiga-12 (converted to AK configuration)
Pros: 
Same manual of arms as our AK rifles. 
Rugged and reliable. 
Accessories and spare parts are available.
Folding stock option for compactness.
Drum and large capacity magazines are available which lead to the ability to rapidly reload the shotgun and rapidly change to use of slugs for anti-vehicle use. For example: 20 rounds of buckshot or slug before need for a reload. Buck and slugs could even be mixed in the drum. 
Cons: 
Platform availability and cost to convert to AK configuration.
Reliability and cost of drum magazines and other high capacity magazines. 
Size of drums and high capacity magazines can impede a good low prone position, but can be mitigated by careful selection and preparation of the firing position. 
Another trade off for noise and movement once in the ambush to prep the firing position. 
Loaded weight of drums is another consideration.
Requires a little more maintenance than the AK rifle. 

Remington 1100 or 11-87 
Pros: 
Cost and availability make it more apt to be found in gun cabinets in the US than an S-12. 
The availability of extended magazine tubes, which require the trade off of added barrel length and weight for the extra capacity. For example, The 22 inch barrel with magazine extension would offer 8+1 rounds of buckshot.
Tube magazine does not interfere with low prone position.
No additional magazines are required.
Repair / spare parts are readily available. 
Cons:
Minimum of 5 rounds before needing to reload on a standard configured gun with no extension tube.
Reloads take additional time and are slower under stress and the accompanying reduction in fine motor skills.
No folding stock option. However, pistol grip full stocks with shorter length of pull are available. 
Frequent operator level maintenance required to ensure reliability. 
System uses gas seals which, if they become worn or fail, can cause the gun to not function properly. 

Some thoughts to consider:
Should it be a purpose driven force multiplier or a supplemental one? 
This is what I have on hand, how can I best employ it? 
I have my AR or Pistol Caliber Carbine how can this added weight help me/us inflict greater damage to the bad guys?


End Part I

Are You Afraid of Change or just too Comfortable to be Cutting Edge?

-Suarez International Tier 1 Staff Instructor Jon Payne

 

We often are so comfortable with the past that we can stagnate and fail to see progress or recognize what the future can be? With technology changing so fast, can you really afford not to be on the cutting edge?

Let’s talk about the AK for a moment. We’ve all seen the Chicom Poster “Keep That Crap off My AK!” How long did it take us to get past that? First we added folders because it just made sense to make the rifle easier to store and carry. The next move was to add a flash suppressor because we wanted to dampen the fireball coming from the AK’s muzzle and a compensator just isn’t needed on a semi-automatic rifle. It wasn’t long until we began mounting Aimpoint Micro’s on our AK’s using the Ultimak Rail. If you add a flashlight to the package you have a real squared away CQB rifle. Up until a short time ago an AK set up in this fashion was the apex of the Kalashnikov Fighting Rifle. If you had a Rifle Dynamics custom build with all these features, it just didn’t get any better, could it?

 

Early this year I witnessed an AK that shot under an 8” group a 300 yards! That is hitting heads at 300 yards. This AK had an American made 12.5 inch barrel, a Texas Weapon System Dog Leg Rail Gen II, and a 3x ACOG. That rifle more than proved to me that when it comes to the AK you get out of it what you put into it! I don’t think we would’ve ever seen an AK capable of that kind of accuracy if SI had stayed with, “it’s good the way it is, it can’t be improved” attitude.

 

One of the groups of people that get stuck in their ways is handgun shooters. I remember back in the late 80’s when several Police Departments issued revolvers. You could hear the rank and file, “Automatics jam”, “I’ll take my 6 for sure.” You would’ve thought they’d still be carrying wheel guns on the Space Shuttle (I did guard a Space Shuttle carrying a S&W model 15 a few years back). As a matter of fact, if you had transported Wyatt Earp forward in time to 1988 and shown him an issue revolver off a cop’s belt, he would have stated how similar it was to his revolver! By 1991 most Police Departments either issued semi-automatic pistols or allowed their officers to purchase their own pistols.

 

Not all pistols are created equal and some designs rose to the fore-front. One of those designs was the Glock. Glock was the first successful readily available polymer framed pistol and is about as tough and reliable as a handgun can get.

 

When I was introduced to carrying the Glock pistol it was out of necessity. The town I used to work in had been hit by a 15-20 foot tidal surge during Hurricane Ike and was several feet under water. I was not about to use my $1600 Custom Shop Kimber in water that had so much stuff in it, it could be referred to as H3O. I happened to have a spare Glock 23 that I kept around for a training pistol so I strapped it on got in my boat and began doing what I got paid to do. I never went back to carrying the 1911. Soon after during a class with Gabe it became apparent my issued night sights were great out to 50 yards, but after that the front sight was just too wide. I learned in that class there were more modern and effective sights available.

 

 

The most important upgrade a Glock service pistol needed was good sights. Just adding Warren Tactical Sights improved the Glock quite a bit. The Warren’s give you a clean sight picture with a wide notch in the rear and a thin defined front sight blade. Getting reliable hits at 100 yards with a Glock 17 equipped with Warren’s is very do-able, but require strict adherence to the marksmanship fundamentals. Things were about to get easier. Almost like “cheating”.

We have all seen red dot sights on race guns and they were huge ungainly affairs, but the guys using them in competition were beating those who weren’t using them. Like I said, things were changing. Trijicon introduced the RMR as a backup sight for their ACOG. The RMR (which stands for Ruggedized Miniature Reflex) was small, light, and tough. When the Technical Service Division Combat System’s ran with the idea of putting a concealable reddot sight on a pistol something different emerged.

 

Can you really compare an RMR’ed TSD Combat Systems Glock to a stock Glock 17? I really don’t think so. With TSD’s package, chest hits at 100 yards isn’t such a feat anymore and they’re eye ball accurate out to 10 yards. Besides being so much easier to shoot, they hardly add any weight to the pistol, and don’t interfere with your ability to conceal your sidearm. Learning to use the RMR on the TSD Glock is as easy as getting you’re sight alignment and sight picture with your iron sights. The beauty of using suppressor sights with a RMR is it allows you to co-witness and really shortens the learning curve. Once you pick up the dot on top of your irons, you no longer have to focus on the front sight. You can focus on your target and just superimpose the dot to get surgical hits. Currently, I’m the only peace officer in Orange County Texas to be qualified with a TSD Glock.

 

This is a very exciting time to be a part of the Firearms Industry. I’m beginning to see things that were science-fiction become science-fact. I’m seeing platforms continue to evolve with improved accuracy, and improved ergonomics without loss of reliability. If all this technology is available why wouldn’t you use it to its full potential? Are you afraid of change or are you just too comfortable to be cutting edge?

 

 

 

 

Flashlight in the Hand

Avoiding  the Profile Individual/Deterring the Profile Individual/Dominating the Profile Individual by Roger Phillips, Suarez International Specialist and Tier One Instructor

This is basically the same lecture that I have been giving since 2005 inside of my low light courses. This lecture is a combination of Col. Cooper's lecture that I heard through a third party back in 1999, teachings from Gabe Suarez from 2002, and some very recent formatting tips from Randy Harris. This information has been around for a very long time, but I have never seen it combined with the "flashlight in the hand" philosophy.

 

"The flashlight in the hand" philosophy is the tactic of carrying a small, powerful, tactical flashlight  in your non-dominant hand whenever you are in a risky area after the sun has gone down. Whether you are walking the dog, exercising, or making a run down to the grocery store/Wal-Mart, if you are going to be in a public place after sundown, it is the tactic of always carrying your flashlight in your hand.

The main reason for you to do this is because the vast majority of the times that you may need your flashlight, in a self defense situation, if it is not already in your hand you will most likely never get it into your hand. The number one reason for carrying a flashlight is for making the identification (ID) of the hands and the waistbands for weapons, since our visual acuity is cut in half in low light.  It is the hands that kill and the waistband is where bad guys (BG) usually keep their weapons. The number two reason for carrying a flashlight is to disrupt the vision of the adversary. A bright light in the eyes not only disrupts the adversaries vision but it allows the good guy (GG) to work behind a wall of light. When the adversary can no longer see you, that causes doubt and uncertainty. This uncertainty may be all that you need to deter an attack.

 

A flashlight is not necessarily a fighting tool. I do not need the flashlight to make the hits. It is much more valuable as a physical deterrent (BG cannot see GG) and a visual disruptor (BG's vision is 5% of what it was just a second before.) If you need to fight with the light on you are creating a constant focal point to attack. If you can disrupt that adversaries vision, turn the light out and move, there is no focal point to follow, there is only blinded bewilderment! Even if they recover, you can take their vision again. We have all heard "A flashlight is a bullet magnet" but this does not have to be the case if you "see what you need to see" and "blind as you need to blind" then turn the flashlight  out. If you remove the constant focal point the liabilities of the bullet/knife/club magnet decrease. It is the lessons of when to use the flashlight and when not to use the flashlight that are the most valuable of the lessons. Being able to shoot with the flashlight in conjunction with the gun is mildly interesting, that is entry level knowledge. Knowing when to blind, when to turn the flashlight off, when and where to move, and when to turn the light back on is the advanced knowledge. This knowledge is not possible without thorough testing inside of low light FOF and from both sides of the coin. You have to be both the GG and the BG to learn the lessons as they need to be learned. The reality is that all of this knowledge is useless if your flashlight is at home, in your car, or even in your pocket. If it is not in your hand when you spot the profile individual, it will probably never make it into your hand.

The term "profile individual" (PI) speak for itself. This has nothing to do with race or sex. Trouble and danger comes in all races and in both sex. Trouble and danger has a very distinct look and feel, if you have been around the block a couple of times, you know what I am talking about. If you cannot recognize trouble and danger you may just need to be removed from the gene pool. Recognizing  trouble and danger starts with profiling. Forget about all of those politically correct idiots out there and let's get down to the bottom line. If you do not profile you are a fool! There is a very low danger level from a well groomed man in an expensive business suit or a elderly couple taking a walk in a park. But there is a higher danger level from groups of urban youths, especially in bad parts of town or where poverty is rampant. This is all just common sense here.

If you are out at night, doing whatever it is that you have to do, and you see a PI that is going to cross your path here is a very quick overview of how to handle the PI.

 

Profile; It always starts with profiling! We must profile who is in our general vicinity while we are out after sun down. BG use the cloak of darkness to hide themselves and to hide their intent. Without profiling everything else that follows is worthless. Making the ID on a PI is the first piece of your back story. Back story is very important stuff, nothing happens inside of a vacuum. Collecting and building good pieces of back story allows you to build the information to facilitate making  the decisions that you are going to have to make. The more pieces the better the back story, the better the back story the quicker you will be able to work through your OODA loop. If you make a PI and he has orientated to you, the next thing that you need to do is as follows.

Avoid; Make a directional change to your movement and begin looking for other players. Choose a direction that will require the PI to re-orientate to you. If there is no re-orientation, that is a good thing, but keep your eye out for any other players/accomplice's along with the original PI. If the PI re-orientates to you, you have just succeeded in forcing the BG to show you his hand. You have created the second piece of the back story to further facilitate your decision making process. You now know the BG is keying on you. There are not coincidences! In low light you cannot allow the BG to close ground on you. You must stop his ingress! Here are some basic concepts to help stop the BG from closing ground you. The next two thing listed may need to be put into action simultaneously, but they are set down in order of importance.

 

Command; With a commanding voice and in conjunction with a flashlight in the PI eye's order them to "Back off!" In low light, with a quality flashlight the PI will see nothing but the light. You will have disappeared to him and all he will see is the source of the light and you will be cloaked behind a wall of light. If the first "Back off!" and blinding does not work, that is the third and another huge piece of the back story. Give them one last chance (the fourth piece of the back story) and  get louder and more "street." Sometimes the street only understands "street"........."BACK THE F**K OFF! While the commands and flashlights are being used you will most likely want to doing two other things simultaneously.

Move/Monitor; It is my opinion that you should mitigate the urge to stop and square up to your adversary. I feel that you should keep moving in order to disrupt the adversaries ability to begin working through his OODA loop. By continuing to move you take away the adversaries ability to take a snap shot of the battlefield which is very important to developing a plan of attack. As you command/blind/move you should again monitor the area for any other accomplices. Since you are hidden behind a wall of light to your primary adversary, you should be able to look around quickly for other players, without the primary adversary even knowing that you have taken your eyes off of him. If the PI is still re-orientating to you, you probably have enough back story (fifth piece) to articulate reasonable fear. Some people feel that they need to ID the weapon, but FOF training has proven that action beats reaction. If you are unable to ID that something is very wrong, with all of the back story that has taken place, you may be deep into the very worse of positions.......denial! This is where all of your training comes to the forefront. This is where you find out if "your line in the sand" has been thought through well enough. This is where all of your "what if" mental preparation has really prepared you well enough. This is where you find out about the reliability of your gut feeling, and your ability to act on it. This is where it gets as personal as anything that you have ever dealt with.

If in your mind you can articulate that it is go time, then it is on.

If the threat or weapon has been identified that leads us to the next phase of the fight.

 

Access; When the line in the sand has been crossed, keep moving, access your weapon, and get to work. It is time to fight with everything you have. Accessing your weapon, from concealed carry, with a flashlight in your hand is a skill set that you must own. There are two methods that you need to know, the one hand draw stroke (circular flagged thumb) and the clearing of the garment with the flashlight hand (three digit crab claw.) Which one you use is situational and user dependent. This draw stoke from concealment is the most likely thing that you are going to blow, your "flashlight in the hand" draw stroke needs to be to the point that you have it down cold while moving. With these two draw stroke methods you have the option of keeping the flashlight in the eyes or turning if off. Either way, the adversaries vision is going to be extremely limited. If you keep the light on and draw, everything that you do is cloaked by the wall of light, but the direction and pace of your movement can be tracked through the visual connection to the light source. If you turn the light out, you cannot be tracked periodically, but the adversaries vision will eventually return. Of course you can always give him another blast of light and take it away again. Once you have accessed the weapon and driven it to the focal point it is time to take care of business.

Negate; Negate the threat with fast and accurate hits while either hiding behind the wall of light or under the cloak of blinded darkness. I cannot possibly express how important it is to have the "double edge sword" knowledge and experience of fighting from both sides of this confrontation. Without this firsthand knowledge and experience, you have no clue of the true dynamics of the fight and the power and the limitations of the "flashlight in the hand" philosophy. Experience leads to confidence, confidence leads to absolute knowledge, absolute knowledge leads to total domination. This is where you want to be, anything short of that means that you have not put in the work and you are not as ready as you think are. Fighting at night is a skill set that can only be obtained through proper preparation to prevent piss poor performance. If you have not put in the time......face that fact for the fact that it is. Reading this article is simply not going to get it done!

Once the  primary adversary has been negated and determined out of the fight it is time to move on to the next progression.

 

Scan; BG's tend to travel in packs. Just because you did not make any accomplices early on does not mean that there are none. You are going to need to scan 360 degrees to make sure that there are no other players that may need your attention. Scanning may  best be done while moving to a place of cover or tactical advantage. Whether you scan with your flashlight or not depends on the ambient light and the presence  of darkened areas. Remember the rule of thumb, "if you are in the dark, stay in the dark, if you are in the light, light up the dark." Once you have verified that there are not other players to engage and verified that the primary has not reanimated it is time to move onto the next step of the progression.

Reload; Now that there is a lull in the fight it is time to top off your gun. If we accept the fact that "if the flashlight is not in your hand at the start of the fight, it will not make it into the hand" philosophy then it would seem wise to be able to load your gun without stowing your flashlight. The "three digit crab claw" allows for a "reload with retention" all while keeping the flashlight in your hand. If you are concerned about the effects of the adrenaline dump, you can stow the flashlight for your reload. Either way, get that gun topped off.

Evaluate; The next step is a medical evaluation of yourself. Since the fight is still not guaranteed to be over I would try to mitigate lighting yourself up or putting away the flashlight. The "three digit crab claw" can still feel the body for wet spots. Another option is to shove the flashlight in between the pinkie and ring finger of the gun hand, bezel up (consistency across categories) A quick lighting of the ground for blood droplets may be acceptable. If you find a wet spot in the groin area, you are going to have to ID the color of the fluid. If you find yourself to be ok medically, it is time to proceed to the next step.

 

Proceed/Police; Due to the fact that there are some places that if you do not get the heck out of there immediately , you could be fighting the whole neighborhood. It is not always as clear as "call the police and wait for them." Sometimes you are going to have to get the heck out of there, then call the police and arrange to meet them somewhere. Unfortunately, it can be even worse than that. You may have to get out of there and never say a word to anyone. There are places in this great Country that do not allow good people to defend themselves or their loved ones from evil. In this case, since you primary mission is to get home and continue to take care of your loved ones you may just need to proceed on with your life without bringing the police in. It is a shame that there are places in America that are like this, but it is what it is! A good person needs to make it home to his/her family and not allow laws that are contrary to God's law from keeping you of fulfilling your primary mission in life.

 Like I said at the start of this article, much of this has been around for a very long time. I have just put my spin on it from within the "flashlight in the hand" philosophy. If we look at these ten things that we need to do to make it through dealing with a profile individual, it may look like it is next to impossible to remember. This is where Randy Harris suggests uses a mnemonic device to help aid this philosophy in being easy to remember. Most mnemonic devices are a little cheesy but easy to remember.....this one is not different.

PACMANSREP

Pacmans rep was if you were smart enough and fast enough you could succeed in life and avoid all of the goblins. From the very start of the encounter......and all the way through the encounter, If you can remember this cheesy little mnemonic device, you can avoid the profile individual, deter the profile individual, and dominate the profile individual.

See Roger's schedule here

Discuss this here

 

Grazing

Dr John Meade

Director of Tactical Medicine

Suarez International

 

I was emailing back and forth with a friend, who sent me this about a coworker.

Other than being both shooters and about the same height, the two of you are polar opposites.

He is all MT/IDPA and doesn't seem interested in wanting to learn anything else. He has two custom Kimbers and an AR15, but mostly uses them for matches. He does carry regularly, but it is a J-frame (though he does at least carry a reload). I am foreign to him as I carry more and better arms and ammo in more places and more times.

He fits the description Gabe uses quite well (although he eats cupcakes and drinks Dr. Pepper for lunch instead of Krispy Kreme). We were just talking the other day and he seemed to be struggling with his breath, weighing probably close to 300lbs.

Trying to work with him, but it is a long slow process.

In thinking about this, I believe his issues are much deeper than simply chatting with him at lunch can address. Some of this is truly an approach to life. Think about this. We have all heard the phrase: “Ignorance is bliss.” It is distressing in many ways to realize that evil lurks, just waiting to pounce on the good. Just like most Christians would rather hear platitudes from the pulpit, telling them that everything is good, love your fellow man, “coexist”, blah blah blah. When you realize that bad things happen to good people, and are actively working to deal with that, it is a complete change in your life.

Most people don’t want to change their lives very much. Think about what Suarez International preaches.

• Physical fitness (lost 99% of adult males right there).
• Carrying a fighting gun with reload and dress around it (lost 99% of those who claim to be shooters).
• Actively train to deal with any confrontation or catastrophe (you want me to miss watching the ballgame this weekend?).
• Work really hard to improve your lot in life, to provide for your family in a way that relieves them of stress (It is easier to whine and moan about “the man” keeping you down).
• Trust in God, and devote your efforts to His glory (Whoa! You can’t be a Christian and believe in all that gun stuff, can you?).

While I am not a huge fan of the sheep/sheepdog analogy, it does fit in certain ways. At least, as far as the sheep are concerned. It is easier to relax, graze and ignore the wolves circling on the perimeter of the herd. Those wolves probably won’t attack if we leave them alone. And if they do, the odds of them going after me are so low, it isn’t worth worrying about, right?

POUNCE!

Dr. John Meade is Director of Tactical Medicine for Suarez International , and a board-certified Emergency Physician. He is a reserve police officer on a multi-jurisdictional SWAT team, an EMS medical director and an NRA certified instructor. He may be contacted on WarriorTalk, or his website at www.statdoc.com .

The Best Defense is a Good Offense……

By

Don Robison

Suarez International Tier 1 Staff Instructor

 

It’s a bit cliché’ but often said that the best defense is a good offense.  What does that mean?  To me; that means always be on the offensive.  All over the internet we hear people expounding the idea of the “defensive mindset”; I say hogwash.  A defensive mindset is the mindset of a person who doesn’t plan or take measures to better ensure their safety or the safety of their loved ones; they sit around waiting for something to happen so they can defend themselves against it.  A person with an offensive mindset is always thinking, they are always planning ahead and doing things to mitigate the risk of being attacked. 

What kind of a person are you?  The defensive mindset person pulls into a gas station hops out of their car and fills up with gas.  The offensive mindset person pulls into a gas station takes a look around and assess their surroundings, looking for possible problem people, areas, and avenues of approach and formulates a plan of action for the what if scenarios.

It’s 1 a.m.; you need to stop at a gas station along the interstate because you are down to an eighth of a tank of gas. You find a gas station and pull in to the end pump and get out of your car and start pumping gas.  Out of the shadow on the end of the building a young misunderstood youth walks to the back of your car without you noticing and demands your wallet or he is going to kill you.  You have three choices fight, flight, or comply with his request and hope he goes away. The gas hose is behind you cluttering your exit route and you didn’t notice that the gas station had put trash cans and displays between the pumps.  You’ve been to some training classes so you’re going to fight.  You waited until something happened and then were forced to work out a plan to defend yourself.

Let’s look at what you did wrong in the above scenario.

1. You didn’t assess the area you were pulling into.
2. You pulled into the pump on the dark side of the building where those up to no good have good concealment.
3. You had poor situational awareness of your surroundings after you exited the car.
4. You left yourself really only two options; comply or fight.

I won’t say comply is never a good idea because there are always exceptions. I also don’t think starting the fight from behind the OODA loop is a good option either. Trading punches, slashes or bullets is never truly a win, even if you come out on top. Your victory cost you more than it should have cost you and how is your family going to fair while you’re recovering from the trading physical damage?   In the above scenario a lack of attention backed you into a bad scenario where you didn’t need to put yourself. In my opinion; this is a defensive mindset.  You waited until something happened and then worked out how to defend yourself.

 

It’s 1 a.m.; you need to stop at a gas station along the interstate because you are down to a quarter tank of gas. You find a gas station and pull in to the parking lot.  As you pull in you’re looking around the area and notice the only pump open is the one on the end nearest a dark corner of the building and there are some misunderstood youths hanging out by the store entrance.  You decide to drive to the gas station up the street and not possibly place yourself in a situation where you’re uncomfortable.

Let’s look at this scenario and see what you did right.

1. You assessed the area before you fully committed yourself to it.
2. You decided to go somewhere else rather than put yourself unknowingly in a bad situation.

What are the downsides to following this option? You can only do it so many times before you have no choice but to use whatever gas station you find yourself at or you run out of gas. Me personally; I start looking for a gas station just as the needle moves below a half tank and try to stop before it reaches a quarter. I like to give myself options.

It’s 1 a.m.; you need to find a gas station along the interstate because you just went below a half tank of gas and want to find a station before you reach a quarter tank. You find a gas station and pull in to the parking lot.  As you pull in you’re looking around the area and notice the only pump open is the one on the end nearest a dark corner of the building and there are some misunderstood youths hanging out by the store entrance.  You also notice that there are tire displays set up between the pumps so you decide to go to the next station. Upon pulling into the second station you find a middle pump open and there is nothing blocking you from moving between the pumps. You also notice some shady characters hanging out at the entrance and the end of the building. This is the only other gas station for 100 miles so you decide this is the station you need to use.  Before you get out of the car you take a moment to decide what avenue of approach you would use if you wanted to rob someone and take notice of what the shady characters are doing, where they are and if they are paying any “special” attention to you. You get out of the car and begin to pump your gas while keeping a scan going looking to see if there is any change in the attitude of those hanging out. You’ve positioned yourself so that you can get back into your car and drive off if you detect something out of place early. You’ve also placed yourself so that you can exit on foot between the pumps if you need to create distance and can’t get into your car.  With a little prior planning you’ve given yourself several options.

What did you do and what are your options?

1. You assessed the situation at both stations and decided on your best option.
2. You positioned yourself to be able to scan the area and continually assess what is going on around you; you increased your situational awareness.
3. By giving yourself the extra space you have an increased chance at stopping someone with a stern word before they can get close enough to be a significant danger to you.
4. You gave yourself two routes to escape should you choose flight over fight or comply if someone does get closer than you would like.
5. By giving yourself the extra space to scan you have also given yourself increased time if you decide you need to go to a weapon. You’ve also given yourself time to get a weapon in your hand first; discreetly of course.

 

From my perspective those who advocate good situational awareness, don’t go to stupid places, do stupid things, hang out with stupid people (the 3S rule) and plan ahead aren’t setting the stage for a defensive mindset, but are actually setting the stage for an offensive mindset.  Anytime you are proactive in thwarting possible threats you are putting up an offensive posture.  If you’re sitting around until something happens so you can defend yourself; you’re in a defensive posture.  Who do you want to be?

“Only You Are Responsible For You”

By Roger Phillips, Suarez International Specialist and Tier One Instructor  

This is the last sentence inside of the Suarez International videotaped liability release. These are not just words! It should be the very core to your gun safety philosophy. It does not matter what you know or where you learned your safe gun handling habits. It does not matter where you train right now. Only you are responsible for your own safety habits.

This means that you need to look at what you have been taught or what you do and decide if it is really good enough. Remember, the most likely person that you are going to shoot IS YOURSELF!

“How good is good enough?”

 Is your gun handling safety habits really good enough?  When it comes down to putting unexpected holes into vital areas of your own body are you really doing the best that you can to mitigate this possibility, all while still learning to be combat effective?

Gunfighting is dangerous! Training to gunfight is also dangerous. The reality of the matter is that the more advanced that you get inside of your training, the more dangerous your training becomes. When we look at the reality of the fight and the likely issues that will arise inside of a fight, it is clear that we need to learn a lot more than just the optimal skill sets for the optimal situations.  The reality of the reactive gunfight puts us in sub-optimal positions that require our safety habits to be the very best that they can be. We need to understand that the whole competition based safety habits simply may not be good enough inside of a fight or inside of fight focused training.

 

We all should be at the point where we at least know the Four Basic Rules of Gun Safety.

(1)    Treat every gun as if it was loaded.

(2)    Do not cover anything that you are not willing to destroy

(3)    Keep your finger off of the trigger and outside of the trigger guard until you have made the conscience decision to shoot.

(4)    Know your target and what is in line with your target, behind and in front.

But these are very general rules that do not nail down specific safety habits.

In the past, Gabe Suarez has done an outstanding job of bringing a little common sense and reality to these rules. I would highly recommend that you check into Gabe’s take on the Four Basic Safety Rules. 

The point of this article is to talk about overlooked liabilities and bad habits, more so than rules. It is the overlooked liabilities and bad habits that really define your personal safety level. The mitigation of liabilities and bad habits are what allow you to proceed into advanced levels of training, all while keeping yourself as safe as you possibly can. I will be covering the top five overlooked liabilities and bad habits that I see inside of my courses.

Overlooked liabilities can be fixed inside of a two day course, but as an advanced instructor teaching advance students advanced skill set, I should not have to constantly babysit people through their safety awareness. I should not have to constantly point out that safety issues are being over looked. These are all issues that should be taken care before the course by wrapping your head around the safety concerns involved with overlooking basic concepts. Sure I will remind you, but really, shouldn’t this be something that I should not have to remind people of. The whole “You know that you are jeopardizing shooting yourself because you are overlooking some very basic concepts” conversation gets very old, very quickly.

Top Three Overlooked Liabilities

Loose Garments Around Your Holster

This is by far the most commonly overlooked liability by the students. It feels as if I could spend an entire course reminding people to tuck in their loose garments around their holster. Getting a loose garment caught inside of the trigger guard while reholstering will but an unexpected hole in you. Why would you risk such a thing over something so simple as keeping your under garment tucked in tight and your over garment clear of the holster?  All of my under garments tuck in a good 12” past my belt line to insure that that do not come untucked and end up in my holster or trigger guard.  When I reholster it is seen as an administrative process that is all geared toward a “Don’t shoot yourself stupid” mindset. My over garment is cleared completely before any reholstering is done. I have zero concern for speed or coolness factor. If I need to look, I look, because it is just administrative. It is my opinion that every time you head back to ammo up, you should take a look at your garments around your holster. A couple of seconds of cheap insurance mitigates your risks substantially. If your under garment is coming untucked, tuck it in. Furthermore, take that lesson to heart, go home and find a garment that will not come untucked. It is not brain surgery or rocket science, it is basic common sense! This is something that an advanced instructor should not have to point out!

 

Why do under garments come untucked?

They come untucked because of the “elbow up” portion of the draw stroke and the pivoting during “the turret of the tank” concept.  “A” shirts and Under Armor type garments work very well for me. They are tight, tuck in deep, and deal with the manipulation of the shoulder, without coming untucked.

Dress around your gun and test your garments before you show up in a course.

An instructor should not have to show you how to dress.

Untested Gear Inside of a Course

When you show up for an advanced course, it is all about the skill sets and the corresponding mental aspect of the fight that are being taught. Your entire focus should be on these two things. Heck that is what you paid for, right? This is not the place to try out untested gear! This is not the place to “try this and try that!” This is not the place to experiment! This is the place that you show up with what you know best and put it to use inside of the framework of the course.  It is my opinion that you should plan on working with the one set up that you know the best, plan on working one gun, one holster, and one ammo supply method that you know the best. This is not the place to try out four different guns or four different set ups. You are there to learn what is being taught. Take that knowledge home and dry practice with all of your other gear. Inside of a course, where the learning curve is steep, concentrate on the course…..not your gear. Some of the most unsuccessful students that I have ever had were hardware focused and not software focused. While everyone else progressed rapidly…..they struggled to keep up. While struggling to keep up, their safety levels suffered. An advanced course is a challenge all in itself. Do not make a difficult and dangerous endeavor even more so because you are hardware focused.

Some will read this and think that it is contradictory to the whole “Dual Appendix” form of training inside of SI’s most advanced courses. That would be a huge misconception! It has been written out many times to not show up in an advanced course expecting to go dual appendix unless you are absolutely ready for this type of training. These courses are not where you learn to go dual appendix, they are designed to take your advanced skill levels to the next level. You learn to go dual appendix in your dry practice, your airsoft training, and inside of the basic courses. If you are not ready to hit the ground running, do not participate in these advanced applications. Just because some students in the course have prepared themselves appropriately, does not mean that you have. And if you have not prepared yourself appropriately, deal with that reality and learn what you can without needless putting yourself at risk by biting off more than you can chew.

Having the intellect to say to yourself “I am not ready for that” is a positive trait. SI will never force you to do something that you are not comfortable with. We want to challenge our advanced student base, but even more so, we want you to go home with the same number of holes that you showed up with.

Watch for and get rid of any gear that might impede with your draw stroke. There should be nothing above your holster that could cause a snag on the gun or the hands. Take the lessons that we learned about chest rigs and CCW holsters and apply the same concepts across the board.

 

Untested Skill Sets Inside of a Course

The last topic touched on this issue. It is very common to learn untested skill sets inside of a course. The vast majority of the time this is not a safety issue. The vast majority of time that is perfectly ok and acceptable. It is when we get to the advanced training and the increase safety concerns that these issues need to be looked at more closely. This is the point where we (the instructors) need honesty from our student base. This is the point that we need the student to be honest with themselves and with us on what they are truly and safely capable of.

Everything that we learn should be run through a natural progression. This natural progression is what keeps us safe and what keeps us from biting off more than we can chew. Let’s look at one single skill set and take a look at the progression that should be involved to reach the advanced levels of the skill set. Let’s look at “Completely Ambidextrous” with the handgun skill sets. This is not something that you look at for a couple of minutes and then plan on jumping into an advanced SI handgun course to put into action.  That would be very unwise for everyone involved. Even if you are an advanced student, there are skill sets that require you to step back to the basics, to nail down the skills that will allow you to be safe. I went through a very specific progression to be at the point that I am comfortable with my skill level, to head into completely ambidextrous shooting with a handgun.

Here is what I would recommend.

Step back to the basics and run a “secondary hand” Defensive Pistol Skills course. Run the whole two day course with your off hand. All manipulations, all draw strokes, and all shooting with your secondary hand. Take those skill sets and bring them home and dry practice them until you have it down cold. Have the ability to run your secondary hand at, at least 80% of your primary hand. Take a “secondary hand” Close Range Gunfighting course and do the same thing, including the dry practice. Only then, after you have put in the time, step into an advanced course that runs dual appendix. We all need to recognize that it is secondary hand draw stroke and the uneducated secondary hand trigger finger that makes the dual appendix training a very high skill level skill set and high safety risk.

Put in the work and never bite off more than you can chew!

Inside of an advanced course is not the place to try to figure this all out!

Top Two Bad Habits

 Slamming Your Gun Back Into Your Holster

In the past, I have covered in depth my concerns with this epidemic.

I've trained a lot of places and proportionally Suarez International students are the most squared away group of students I've ever worked with. But even some the very best have ingrained slamming their guns into their holster.

Ingrained "slamming your gun into the holster" is not something that I can fix in two days.

The solution to the problem is not going to come out of taking a course with an instructor. The only solution has to be made by the person that has ingrained such a reckless and dangerous habit, to reprogram not just the way that they reholster, but to reprogram the way that they think.

The slamming of the gun into the holster comes across like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. It's like the final emphasis put on something explosive.

The thing is that our explosiveness of the draw stroke, our movement, and our fast and accurate hits needs to be separated from the reholstering process. The "reluctant reholstering" process begins with our after action drills. We need to ingrain the fact that we pulled our guns out for a reason, in defense of life. We need to take that thinking and realize that you never want to reholster until you know for a fact that the confrontation is over. "Is he down?" "Did it work?" "Does he have any friends?" "How’s my 6:00?" "How’s my ammo?" "How am I?"

"Is this really over?"

This process allows us to change gears from the explosiveness of our initial response, to the slow, methodical, administrative act of reholstering the gun safely.

Let me make this clear. I am reminding myself just as much as I am reminding everyone else. As an instructor, when I am giving demo's, it is possible to think so much about the technique that I am teaching that I do not run through the after action drills as much as I should. But it is the after action drills and the mental aspect attached to them that allows for the down shifting the will dramatically cut down on the desire to slam that gun back into your holster.

IMHO, there is no way to over stress the dangers of slamming your gun back into your holster.

Murphy is a ruthless bastard. He will jump up and pound you mercilessly if you are not careful. I do not care if you have slammed your gun in the holster one hundred thousand times without a problem......eventually Murphy will take his pound of flesh!

 

Non-Robust Trigger Finger Index

This is my new pet peeve and the real catalyst for this article.

I am seeing all kinds of trigger finger indexes that would be considered all well and good inside of “The Four Rules.” But once again, this is not about target shooting holes into pieces of paper…..this is about preparing for a fight! How robust your trigger finger placement needs to be during target shooting is completely different from how robust it needs to be inside of the reality of the fight. This in turn, is simply not good enough for advanced fight focused training.

It is my opinion that your trigger finger should be indexed completely straight and up as high and possible/reasonable on the frame/slide.

If the trigger finger is straight, it is less likely to be effected by any sort of impact, jolt or jostle.

If the trigger finger index is up as high as possible/reasonable, this leaves us a larger “margin of error” if the gun is snagged on something during the draw stroke. This snagging, which could be due to an unwise gear choice or a Murphy moment on your garments, can lead to the gun feeling as if it is going to be ripped out of the hand. At speed, the gun feeling like it is being ripped out of the hand will probably lead to a convulsive gripping/tightening of the gun hand which can lead to a non-robust indexed trigger finger ending up inside of the trigger guard and on the trigger.  

Even something as simple as a grasp reflex, out of the startled response, can allow one to blow right through a non-robust trigger finger index.

This is something that I lecture on at the start of every course. But it is also a habit that I will simply not be able to reprogram out of an advanced student inside of an advanced course. The proper robust trigger finger index is something that needs to be ingrained before the student ever arrives inside of an advanced course. The more advanced the training is, the more important a robust index is. When we are talking about speed of the draw stroke, speed of the movement, versatile drawing/shooting positions, and possible awkward drawing/shooting positions we need to make sure that we are mitigating our risks. One of the very best things that you can do for yourself is to ingrain a robust trigger finger placement.  

As it stands, I have not “sent anyone packing” from inside of my courses. But this one issue (robust trigger finger index) may change that very soon. If you think I am making sense here, great! Show me your robust trigger finger index inside my courses. If you strongly disagree and plan to show up to one of my courses with a non-robust trigger finger index, please do not be surprise if I send you packing.

Remember, shooting yourself affects more people than just you!

If your overlooked liabilities and bad habits look as if they might affect Suarez International, my other students, or myself……I will ask you to leave.

This is the optimal trigger finger index that Suarez International  is now looking for.

 

Discuss this here

Find Roger's schedule here

 

 

 

You don't go to tank driving school to learn how to handle a car

The myth of learning from “professionals”

By Uli Gebhard, Suarez International Staff Instructor

 

I started taking firearms classes more than a decade ago and back then what really intrigued me and drew me into training was that the instructor was accredited by the FBI, an active SWAT officer or a member of a SOCOM group.

Sure – those guys look tough on their websites with their thigh holsters and M-4's but looking back, except for the basics of marksmanship they have little to offer for us lowly civilians.

Eight years ago I took a low light instructor course with one of these groups and while the systematics behind flashlight use and the coordination of flashlight and handgun were valuable, the tactics were geared towards the community of law-enforcement that the instructors originate from.

Most of it has very little relevance for me. If I have to use my gun in self-defense, I will not have a stack of guys behind me that will cover every angle of the room that I will be searching. Worst case, I will be alone in an unfamiliar area. Best case, I will be in my house and have my wife with her weapon watching my back. I need to learn from people who can relate to these boundary conditions and to fighting in a reactive mode.

What do I mean with this? As a civilian CCW operator, the only equipment that I have available when things go south is the gear that I carry. All I know about the situation that I am involved in is what my own senses tell me. I need to rely on what I see and hear to make my decisions.  I do not have the luxury of a dispatcher or fellow officer radioing information.

I can't hunker down and wait for backup. Our hometown has an average response time of seven minutes to 911 calls. With this in mind, the training I need has to consist of instinctive, stressproof and caveman-simple responses that will work to either end the fight decisively or tactics that allow me to get me and my loved ones out of danger.

Find the instructor in this picture - (hint, he's not the guy with the 5.11 vest)

 

Here is another point that law-enforcement based trainers often overlook – as a civilian I will most likely start from a reactive position. Other than most officers that have a dispatcher or fellow LEO telling them that they are heading into a dangerous situation, I will most likely find out that I am in trouble when things start unraveling.

Sure – most tactical operator based training will lecture on the OODA loop and to stay vigilant in your alertness. However, very few will teach you how to go from reactive, seeing things going south and you being the target, to proactive, where you force the bad guy to react to your actions, which provides you with a critical tool to dominate the fight.
And sorry folks – just planting the feet, followed with a fast draw, double or triple tap and quick scan left and right does not cut it.

I did a little test with my eight-year old today after seeing a turn-stand-and-deliver video on youtube. At first he thought it was cool. I had him stand behind me point his finger gun at me and told him to yell "bang" when he saw me move. When I copied the movement from youtube, I was three-quarters through the turn when I heard "BANG". We did the same thing again, this time with me moving aggressively off the X. His "BANG!" came with his finger-gun stretched out at the empty space before him. My eight-year old's perspective of "cool" changed somewhat after that.

Stand-and-deliver technique is used for the lowest common denominator in the Police Academy. It is used to make sure that even a class of cadets with no gun exposure and minimum understanding of firearm safety will be able to practice safely.

Do those tactics work for the civilian who starts fighting by himself or herself from a position behind the curve? Most likely not. The OODA loop lecture and being aware of your surroundings is nice, but local LEO's taught me without knowing that this as your only tactics has severe flaws. I've had several instances where a plainclothes police officer or Sheriff's deputy was in the checkout line in front of me. His jacket was off, his gun exposed in a level 2 holster and the badge nicely visible on his belt. Low-risk neighborhoods seem to foster complacency, since these officers more often then not let me get close enough that - had I had bad intentions - their gun would have violently changed owners.

No one is immune from being temporarily distracted. Strapping your three-year old into the carseat while trying to get the overly tired older sibling to quit whining can have a slightly negative effect on the way you keep an eye on your surroundings. There are times where you will not be able to spot every potential threat that comes within your sacred 21-foot safety perimeter.

When that happens stand, draw and deliver – the standard police operator response - does not work.
Look at all the videos that tacticool schools field on youtube – you will barely ever find an instructor, let alone a student that employs aggressive movement or combatives to change the odds in his favor. You also may want to ask yourself if these schools will truly teach you the sophisticated movements that their advertisement shows executed in perfection only by their instructors.

On top of this I live in California. We are limited to 10 rounds in the mag. This means that reloads need to be stress-proof and allow reliably holding onto a partially spent magazine. Again, standard police training is dropping the mag. Of course, equipped with let's say a Glock 22, an officer carries a whopping 46 rounds on his person. A civilian in CA with the same gun and two spares has 15 less than that – if he or she carries two spares. Absent of swift and reliable backup carrying two spares would be advised.

Let's take a look at the instructors. Often times they will wear fatigues of some sort, carry their guns on a duty belt or in a thigh holster. It does not take a rocket surgeon to figure out that this is not exactly a CCW suitable attire. This kind of gear may deliver an outstanding performance during a high-risk entry with a five-man team, but it does not work for a civilian operator who needs to bring his weapon into the fight from concealment. To take this further, training with such gear on the range while using something different on the street will deliver false confidence.

To come back to the California or New York State type restrictions: Those nice AR's that most schools show as their main rifle are a ten-shot-then-toss-fixed-mag-weapons in these states. Yes, most have a bullet button or something similar – a device that makes a swift and stress-proof reload close to impossible. A rifle with this kind of limiter installed is unsuitable as a fighting rifle. Don't get me wrong, the AR15 is an outstanding weapon platform, but only if it can be run as it was intended. My rifle students stick to what they can legally use and bring Saigas, Mini-14's, M-1A's, SU-16's or even lever action rifles to class. Try finding a law-enforcement based training group that will advertise classes for these popular rifles.

Glock and Levergun - this may be all that is available to you. 

Can your training school teach you using these weapons effectively?

I'm not trying to bash Police Training, but let's keep it in the proper context. Civilian CCW operators have a completely different frame of reference and hence we need training that is tailored to these needs. I recommend you look for the civilian experiences that the instructor has. Has he/she been carrying a weapon for a number of years and do they show up to class with their CCW gear? Can they teach you how to change the odds in your favor with tactics of decisive movement? Can they prep you with combatives that will buy you the time and room to access your weapon if you start from a reactive mode? In short does your instructor live what he or she is teaching you?
Or will they tell you “Well, you know, when I see things going down, I call dispatch on my cell with “Officer in distress” before I hold out my badge and draw my gun."

You need training that covers your specific situation as an armed civilian and that training needs to come from an armed-civilian's perspective.

After all, you don't go to tank driving school to learn how to handle a car....

 

Find out more about Uli Gebhard's courses here.

See all of our California courses here.

 

Where Modern Technique Went Wrong

By CR Williams

 

Jeff Cooper intended for his Modern Technique Of The Pistol to be adaptable to any battlefield and to the needs of the day, whether the past day when it was developed, or the present day and the kind of threats we face now in the streets as we go about our daily lives. He meant for his instructors to grow and develop the art and make it a living thing that learns as it grows. But of the instructors that Cooper brought up and of the schools that he directly or indirectly got started, only Gabe Suarez (who once taught for Cooper) and Suarez International are doing what Jeff Cooper intended. Others were content with what was, and for various reasons have 'locked' Modern Technique up. They have turned it into a Traditional Martial Art, still useful, but fit more for the battles of the past than of the present.  How did they do that? Why did they do that?

 

It started before Modern Technique even had a name. A consideration of things Decided, and of things just Allowed, and why they're important to us today.

 

Colonel Jeff Cooper is remembered as the developer and founder of what is now called the Modern Technique of the Pistol, usually referred to as simply Modern Technique or MT. In the development of the system of techniques, concepts, and principles that were codified, collected, organized, and then at some point named Modern Technique, if he was not the primary mover in that effort, he was certainly the first among equals in the group of originators. To the Colonel, therefore, goes the credit for moving the Martial Art of Gunfighting forward in a definitive way.

That forward movement was not carried on after he died, however. Instead, Modern Technique was all but locked into place, it's methodology and skill-sets, concepts and philosophies codified and set firm and deep. As a result, today's Modern Technique has the same 'look and feel' as what are now called Traditional Martial Arts styles, often abbreviated as TMA, which are styles which have been kept (mostly) as exactly as possible the way their founders first developed them.

How was this allowed to happen?

Cooper believed MT to be a complete system and fully 'sufficient unto the day'. He said as much, more than once, in his Commentaries:

I am sometimes asked why I do not do more literary work on the subject of defensive pistolcraft. I hate to say it, but the answer is that I believe that I have discovered what I need to know about defensive pistolcraft.

Just so, I learned what I needed to learn, as did many others, by the same process, and now we know how to use the combat pistol. The purpose has been accomplished.

We did, over a period of some 30 years, discover the best techniques and systems for the use of the combat handgun.

In those same Commentaries, however, he acknowledged the possibility of gaps in the system:

No subject of this sort may ever be considered completely and finally closed...

Truly, pistolcraft has taken tremendous strides in the past thirty-five years, but we have not achieved the perfect solution even yet--mainly because there are too few people asking the right questions. (My emphasis.)

That acknowledgement, however, was apparently not taken to heart by those who followed the Colonel. Instead, it appears that they heard and remembered only the part about completeness, perhaps not understanding that completeness is sometimes relative to time and circumstance. The 'battlefield' that I, as a non-military-non-law-enforcement civilian, expect to face today is different than it was then. But like the long-historied martial arts that comprise the TMAs, Modern Technique has, for the most part, been locked into a battlefield displaced in time and space, becoming less relevant to me and people like me.

This does NOT mean that Modern Technique is totally useless. Like the Traditional Martial Arts it now mirrors, MT has saved uncountable good guys and I expect that it will continue to. So will the Traditional Martial Arts. But just like there are now ways to fight without guns that are more suited to the current environment than TMAs are, there are now ways to fight with guns that fit the needs of people in our time and our space, and not that of the military, of law enforcement, or of the past.

What troubles me is that the Modern Technique Of The Pistol could have been one of those ways. The factors were present when Colonel Cooper was examining and experimenting and conceptualizing and constructing his system. MT could have come from that past into the present just as flexible and 'alive' and adaptable as either Mixed Martial Arts or the renewed and updated Combatives that were originally developed during World War II are. It could have been just as applicable to a wider range of current and possible gunfight situations as MMA and Combatives are to the kind of empty-hand fight you'll have to handle in the 21st Century.

But--it is not.

I don't think that Colonel Cooper intended for MT to be, or become, less than adequate to any kind of gunfight the practitioner would face at any time. In that, he was like the old masters, who built their systems to fit what they saw as the fight that had to be faced, looked upon the fruits of their labors, and saw they were Complete. But the masters died, the students ‘froze’ the systems, things changed, and the systems that were locked in couldn’t stay current and equal to the kinds of fights that we see today. And so we have the Traditional Martial Arts. And so we have Modern Technique.

So what makes it, what made it, less than useful to today's civilian defender? What decisions were made, deliberately or not, that makes today's Modern Technique inadequate to someone who isn't fighting to make an arrest or overcome the enemies of the United States (such fights being proactive as much, maybe more, than reactive), but who is fighting to live and win and go home to his or her family when the fight is over?

Of the various decisions made about what to look at, what to test, how to test it, what information to accept and discard, what evidence would be valid, what to leave in or keep out of the system...of all the decisions made, I believe that three are important, perhaps even critical, to understanding how and why the Modern Technique system first became what it is and then how and why it got locked up the way it was. These three key decisions were:

Core concepts and key elements of Modern Technique were based as much, perhaps more, on the results of competition than of combat.

Actual combat results and reports from life-or-death fights were not ignored completely, mind you; they were part of the evidence and research that the Colonel gathered all through the creation, formation, and maturation of the MT system. But Cooper himself, in relating a brief history of the development of the best way to fight with a handgun, points to competitions he developed and oversaw as being core components of his research and development:

...In 1959 the Bear Valley Gunslingers were established in California with the avowed purpose of introducing realism and variety into sporting pistol competition. In due course the Gunslingers evolved into the Southwest ("Combat") Pistol League......The purpose of all this was to "get real" and to evaluate the systems by which fighting skills with the handgun could be properly evaluated and rewarded. (My emphasis.) The next step was IPSC (the International Practical Shooting Confederation) founded in 1976 in Columbia, Missouri, in an attempt to spread the new doctrine worldwide...

In other parts of his Commentaries the Colonel says the same thing in different ways: That he developed competitions with the central idea of researching methods and techniques best suited to fighting--not competing, but fighting--with a pistol. The Weaver stance, for example,  was one of the core elements of MT that came directly out of those competitions. Cooper took great care to design courses of fire, when he was in direct control of a contest, that mirrored actual fight situations in order to best use them as research tools. And he was much saddened and frustrated when IPSC competition devolved into the sophisticated game that it is to this day because it could no longer be used to develop the fighting method of the pistol like he wanted to it to do.

Understand something here: The use of competition as a primary research and development tool does not invalidate the usefulness, however limited it may be today, of the Modern Technique system. To this day, the strictly combat-oriented world of gunfighting continues to look at what is done in competition, and has drawn several useful things from that competitive world. Neither am I saying that any and all information/examples/evidence that came from combat experience, either direct or reported, was categorically rejected. What I am saying is that Colonel Cooper said plainly that core principles of Modern Technique were based directly on techniques used to win competitions. Competition results were apparently weighted at least as heavily as combat experience in the process of developing the system of gunfighting that eventually was called Modern Technique.

Further evidence of the primacy of competition results in the development of the Modern Technique comes from another of the three important decisions made that locked MT more in the past than the present:

Point-shooting techniques and principles were not integrated into the Modern Technique system.

As a matter of fact, the Orange Gunsite rules for instructor conduct included formal proscriptions against speaking favorably of point-shooting and provided for penalties to be applied against any instructor who made positive comments about point-shooting. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that Cooper previously taught point-shooting, which he called "pointer fire". The decision to not integrate point-shooting and to impose these proscriptions was made in spite of three kinds of evidence that supported the idea of including it:

A proven history of combat effectiveness.

It is possible to say that the revolution in pistolcraft in the 20th century began with Fairbairn in China, though his pioneering did not achieve wide acceptance.

Cooper was aware of Fairbairn's work in China and later in Britain in World War II. Not only that, but Col. Rex Applegate was a fellow NRA board member with Cooper. Perhaps Applegate's work training operatives for the OSS was still classified at the time, but Colonel Cooper would still have been well acquainted with what Applegate was teaching and I believe would have known something about Applegate's wartime experience. Still, this was apparently rejected, despite the fact that:

Both Cooper and the men that helped him develop MT could point-shoot very well indeed, thank you very much.

Cooper called it pointer-fire, but it was point-shooting by any other name, and they were very good at it. They knew the method, they knew the principles, they knew the concepts, and they knew it was combat effective. And some of what they thought was sighted fire that won their competitions was actually a point-shooting technique. Don't believe me? Look up Type 1 and 2 Focus sometime. It's used by top-line competitors to this day, and it's point-shooting. It was not left out of the MT curriculum because they didn't know how to do it. It was a deliberate choice, made despite the fact that:

They were fully aware of the most probable kind of fight you'd face with a handgun, which was the kind that point-shooting is most applicable for. At least the Colonel was:

I have been studying this matter of personal combat for many decades, and I have almost never run across a case in which outstanding marksmanship was influential in the conflict...Ordinarily lethal confrontations take place from arm's length to across the table, at distances at which the quality of marksmanship is almost irrelevant.

When we remember that real gunfights take place at very short range - across the room - and that there is usually plenty of time, we see that the brilliant pistolcraft evident in competition is perhaps irrelevant.

As the after-action reports keep coming in, we notice that most defensive shooting situations take place under circumstances which do not call for expert marksmanship. Of course the shooter must know the fundamentals of hitting a target, and he must know correct gunhandling, but in a street fight he is almost never called upon to shoot with match-winning precision.

Colonel Cooper did make a valid point--that becoming confident of your 'sighted shooting' ability provides a great and good help in even an across-the-room face-off situation. Not only that, in his book Fighting Handguns  he recommended his pointer-fire methods for just those situations. Still, point-shooting techniques that were ideal for that combat environment were not integrated into the Modern Technique, a factor that has held MT in the past instead of pushing it to the present.

The third key decision, one the Colonel made, that concerns the development of Modern Technique, and one that I believe to be the most critical to it's being frozen in time as it is today, is simply this:

 

Colonel Cooper stopped working on it.

 

He did not stop completely, but if you read through the Commentaries, you will notice a place in time where the Colonel in a practical sense stopped paying much attention to developing the fighting methodology of the handgun any further. He did this despite, as quoted earlier, acknowledgement that what he had discovered to date might not be all there is to it.

This, I believe, is the key decision that locked Modern Technique into its current 'TMA mode'. It was not an abrupt, instantaneous decision, nor was it a conscious one in my view. It was just something that happened gradually over time. But it was a decision made nonetheless, and a very important one.
Why did he, mostly, stop? I can only speculate, but an examination of the Commentaries indicates three reasons why the Colonel turned his attention mostly away from the development of the art of fighting with a handgun and toward other areas of inquiry:

In spite of acknowledgement that more could be learned, he decided that he knew what he needed to know and that was enough.

His quest for how to fight with a handgun started as a personal investigation that developed into a public and commercial success, but still apparently remained a personal investigation throughout. It is possible that he developed the training program he did as much to provide ongoing feedback about the validity of his conclusions as it was intended to propagate and spread the method to others who would find it useful. What I cannot see, but suspect, is that the feedback was unconsciously filtered to support the conclusion that what there was was Enough, and that little more if anything was to be found or was necessary to add to the perfected methodology.

He was always more focused on the rifle and ways to properly employ it.

The more I read the Commentaries, the more I become convinced that Cooper was in heart and soul a Rifleman and nothing else. So much so that some aspects of Modern Technique practice appear to be a subconscious attempt to make a pistol into a handier, very portable rifle. Yes, he had an interest in and a focus on the handgun, but that only went so far. I read much more in the Commentaries about the rifle than about the pistol, especially as the Colonel travelled through the latter years of his life. The method of the Modern Technique was interesting, yes, but mainly a necessity. The Method of the Rifle was a thing of both interest and a kind of beauty to him though, and once he had what he needed of the first, it was to be expected that he would devote himself more to that which called him the strongest.

The most important reason he stopped? He probably expected his successors, the instructors and students he trained, to move the art forward after him.

I say 'probably' because it's not clear to me that he did, in fact, expect this. It's possible, though evidence does not support it, that he did not encourage additional research, experimentation, and innovation because he really did think that Modern Technique contained all that was necessary. What does seem clear is that he did not take pains or go out of his way to encourage additional development of the art after a certain point. Evidence such as the very careful crafting and control of the curriculum and course content and his careful training of instructors to do certain things a certain way, supports the possibility of a lack of such encouragement. I don't believe it was a deliberate thing to not encourage additional development, though. I think instead it was that he was satisfied with what was and that there were other things on his mind.

So the Colonel stopped. And because the Colonel stopped, so did those who followed him, students and instructors both. So large was the forward step in gunfighting that Cooper had made, so large his contribution to the method and ways to teach that method, so great was his contribution and so large had the Colonel become in the eyes, minds, and hearts of his followers, that when he stopped his personal investigations they, not understanding what he really was doing, also stopped their forward movement in the art. His satisfaction with his own work became their satisfaction with the entirety of the system, and so the Modern Technique of the Pistol became stalled on the battlefield of the past.
In this, they misunderstood, I think, both the man and the intent. Colonel Cooper was not as rigid and dogmatic about technique and methodology as some people think:

Over the years I have concluded that certain body and hand positions are helpful to deliver better and quicker hits, but if a student chooses to disregard my teachings it is all right with me, as long as his results are good.

Statements like this are confirmed by those who knew him and who worked for him. But because of the way he conducted himself and because of the way he conducted his work of training and taught others to conduct it not everyone that was close to him, personally or professionally, came to understand it. So Modern Technique stopped moving, and other developments, other instructors, other thinkers and innovators and experimenters went ahead of it and beyond it.

Think of what Modern Technique would be today if those others had understood.

 

There would be ongoing investigation, research, and testing. Every concept that was a part of it would have been re-examined. The concepts that were discarded would be re-examined. All of this would be undertaken in the light of what went on in today's threat and combat environment. New technologies that allowed combat simulations and testing against independent, thinking, resisting opponents such as Simunitions on the LE side and Airsoft on the civilian side would be incorporated into not just the research and testing, but actual training curriculums. Feedback and communication between class and test and the street and the field and the alleyway would be ongoing and regular. Martial disciplines such as knife and sword fighting and empty-hand styles would provide ideas, concepts, and techniques for incorporation. Everything would be tested by experienced fighters and instructors, and nothing that worked would be discarded because it didn't somehow fit someone's idea of The Way It Should Be.

 

It would be what Jeff Cooper wanted it to be. It would be what Suarez International is teaching today. SI is continuing Cooper's legacy. SI is doing today what Jeff Cooper wanted his students and his instructors to be doing from the beginning. And we will keep doing it in the future.

 

The others? They appear to be content to join the ranks of the Traditionalists. They appear to have succeeded in doing so.  And so there is what Suarez International does, and there is Modern Technique. Present and past, ongoing and stalled, open and locked...

Will Modern Technique ever be completely superseded? Will MT move into the historical records of gunfighting systems and become something to be studied only by scholars and hobbyists interested only about how it was done, not how it is? In some ways it already has. If and when it finally goes into memory, though, it won't be because of Jeff Cooper. He did not intend it to be that way. If MT does go onto the shelves of history, it will be because those that followed him--some of them, at least--for whatever reasons and rationales they had, were unwilling to do what the Colonel was doing until the day of his death, which was pushing forward and looking ahead.

That, in the end, is Colonel Cooper's real legacy and his most important message: To Go Forward.

It is sad that some people did not get that message.

The TSD Combat Systems 870 Shotgun

 
First off guys...I think we all know that we are not going to discuss "making do with what you need". In truth, as elaborated by the war chief Geronimo, the only thing you need to fight your adversaries is a freaking rock. We will be dicussing wants here.

The shotgun has been around the combat scene for a couple of centuries and it is a particularly american weapon. As such, it has suffered at the hands of american marketing and wrong thinking about what a shotgun is used for, should be used for, and what can be expected of it.

So some dispelling of gun school nonsense first, then establishing what-why-how.

 
The shotgun is not a pistol - The shotgun is something you go and grab, not something you carry around on your belt everyday. Thus is is not a reactive-defensive weapon but rather an offensive proactive use gun. It benefits from being short, but there is a limit to its usefulness there both legally-economically, as well as tactically.

The shotgun is not a rifle - The rifle is an offensive weapon intended to force others (the enemy) to do what you want them to do. It can project force in massive volume and great accuracy over long distances. The shotgun cannot do that as it suffers from a low ammunition capacity and extremely short range, as well as less-than-surgical precision.
The shotgun is a short range weapon that can deliver overwhelming power on a given target, with a far wider impact area than a single projectile weapon like a rifle or pistol. Its impact, even a partial impact, is devastating on the adversary. It has been said that one round of buck shot striking a torso is the phisiological equivalent of a five round burst from a rifle. I tend to agree.

The advantage of the shotgun is what many consider its weakness. Being short range and low penetration on cover or other materials, it is a prime choice for urban applications specifically for close range work in bult up areas as a defender.

Another advantage often dismissed as a weakness by the unenlightened is the spread of the shotgun's pattern. When we say "spread" some think of the precision of carpet bombing, but that is not the case at all.

We are not talking an alley broom, but rather a reasonable and anticipated spread. Why is this desirable? Because unlike many shooting schools idea of reality, there are many times in gunfights where you will simply not have time to take a proper stance and a proper sight picture and press ever so carefully.

To the contrary, shotguns tend to be used in the same situations as handguns and involve high speed, short duration events with multiple bad guys and reduced light. Circumstances where the exact placement of a choked and tightened charge in the "A zone" will simply not be possible. But what will be possible is hitting with a partial charge. Several times in my past I was able to bring down a rapidly moving adversary with a partial charge of buck shot by using the weapon's characteristics to my advantage.

The desire to turn the shotgun into a rifle came from the commercial shooting schools in the late 1990s. Having saturated the pistol market, they began to delve into other platforms, the shotgun being one. What you see today is what happens when you put a classic precision seeking rifleman, and a liability-averse police administrator in a room and ask them to write up doctrine for the shotgun. What they produce will be vastly different than if you put sweaty men with bloody hands and combat knowledge in there and ask the same of them.

So what will make the existing shotgun better? We will begin at the back.

1). A pistol grip stock that is both strong and comfortable. It should have some adjustments so it will fit smaler members of the "team" as well as be adaptable to the ever-prolific use of armor.

2). While I prefer ammo seperate from the weapon, we have enough people ask for this that it is a near requirement. If you do, keep it to a minimum. The receiver mounted side saddles are far better than any other place. Go for four not eight shells.

3). Somewhat extended controls are a good idea. The shotguns in the 870-500 category were not designed for combat and do not take its needs into consideration. Reasonable larger buttons and levers are a good idea.

4). Sights. Bead sights are "OK", but since we add red dot sights to even our handguns, it goes with reason to add to the shotgun as well. Adding a short rail to the top of the receiver is a simple idea that will allow the running of these such as the Trijicon RMR.

For those that do not want a red dot system, I suggest staying away from the ghost ring concept and using standard rifle sights instead. Not only will you be more accurate with the short range slug, but you will be faster with the buck shot loads. As well, you will have a commonality of sight systems with your handgun in the same close quarters environment.

5). Lighting units. I like lights on the shotgun, but I don't like them there all the time. As well with the prevalence of the smaller Mini Lights, like the X-300 from Surefire, you can move the light from one gun to the next with no issues. To that end, we elected to use the Surefire handguard.

Notice the VFG on the fore end of the shotgun? We have been experimenting with this and it not only makes manipulating the shotgun far faster, it makes it easier to maneuver in the CQB environment.

6). Barrel treatments. I do not believe in over chocking the shotgun to produce tight patterns, or in setting one up for exclusive use of slugs. Rather we want a predictable and controllable pattern, coupled with the reduction of recoil to a degree. Neither of which is so important that we reduce the advantages of spread and of power.

Finally, since the shotgun will be used hard, a strong rust resistant finish such as Cerakote or even Nickel Boron (preferred for maritime environments) is a far better idea than simple factory finishes.

How A 1911 Can Get You Killed

Dave Sauer, Suarez International Instructor

There is nothing quite like a finely tuned 1911 trigger; zero pre-travel, a light, crisp break; no over-travel, and an amazingly short reset. My one and only 1911 has such a trigger and I love shooting it.
Mine is built on a Para Ordnance high capacity frame, so it holds 14 rounds, but I do not carry this gun for fighting. It sits in the safe as a reminder of what I have seen and learned. I should probably
sell it and use the money to buy another TSD RMR package. I mean what good is a handgun you’re not going to fight with? I do not carry my 1911 for the same reason I no longer carry my Beretta 92F or my HK USP .45. I know that all of these guns have been successfully used to fight, but so have sticks and rocks. In a fight for my life I want the best I can get. And I certainly don’t want any inherent design flaws in my equipment to make my fight harder.

First, let’s remind ourselves of what we are talking about here. We are talking about gunfighting. Using a handgun to save your life or someone’s life you care about. Under what conditions might such a fight take place? Close, fast, dark, reactive and intense. How close? The fight may begin so close you have to fight your way to your gun. That is, you have to deal with the initial attack with your hands and open up the opportunity to access your pistol, maybe while trying to control the bad guy or his weapon with one hand at the same time. In our 0 to 5 feet Gunfighting class, we teach you how to prevail in such situations. In Force on Force you learn that perhaps the only opportunity you get to access your gun is with your non-dominant hand. Depending on from where you are drawing your gun, like AIWB for example, you may end up holding you gun upside down and having to pull the trigger with your pinky. Try that with a 1911. Not only are you going to have a hard time getting the thumb safety off, but that unconventional grip will probably not disengage the grip safety either.

Many reading this are probably thinking right now, “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. I’ve never practiced that.” Yep. We can show you all sorts of things you’ve probably never seen or heard
about before. The reality of the fight, of your fight, is going to be whatever it is. Reality won’t care what your favorite skill is, or if you’ve never practiced the skill you need right then. It won’t care if you can’t get the safety off your $2,800 Nighthawk; or if you missed the safety lever on your 92F; or if you were pushing up on your HK USP safety instead of down. I have seen ALL those deadly mistakes in training. I cannot emphasize enough: The fight will be what the fight will
be. It’s up to you to be ready.

I know enough of Murphy to know that if it can go wrong it sometimes will. I have seen officers miss their 92F safety in training and when their gun didn’t shoot they tap and racked trying to fix it. The record that I have personally witnessed is SEVEN live rounds tap and racked out trying to “fix” a gun with its safety on. Is it a training issue? Yes, but it is also a desperation issue created by the adrenaline induced tunnel vision, non-thinking monkey brain that shows up in the stress of a fight. As a result of knowing what can go wrong in that critical moment, I have developed the philosophy that if you can eliminate some of these monkey brain possibilities by making an equipment change, do it! That is why I do not use or recommend a fighting pistol that has an external safety that must be manipulated before I can fight; and that includes a grip safety.

Like Gabe Suarez says, “It’s 2011, not 1911.” Take advantage of technology to give you whatever edge you can get. Sell your $2,800 Nighthawk and buy a TSD Combat Systems Glock. You’ll have enough left over for holsters, training mags, a weapon light and an SI training course. We’ll show you some things you’ve never seen before.

TSD COMBAT SYSTEMS G-17 SLIDE NON-REFLECTIVE STAINLESS STEEL

 

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These upper end units exceed the quality, reliability, and accuracy of any after-market components to the extreme, and  surpass the hardness and durability of OEM units, with an impeccable flat stainless steel finish.

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That is what has driven TSD since inception.  That is what drives us today, and that is what we promise our customers.  TSD Combat Systems – “Eyeball accuracy at room distances with 100% reliability, and first round hits at 100 yards with unsurpassed elegance”. Guaranteed!

 

These TSD Combat Systems Match Quality Slides come complete with the;

• Trijicon RMR RM02
• All Slide Internals
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If you use a TSD Combat Systems RMR-Equipped Glock Package to legally and successfully defend yourself, TSD will replace any ammo you used, and loan you an equivalent TSD Combat Systems package while yours is tied up in the legal proceedings. What other gun company is going to offer a guarantee like that? I'll tell you....none.  Spread the word.

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OVERCOMING FEAR IN A LIFE-THREATENING ENCOUNTER

If you suddenly found yourself in a life or death crisis and had to make a decision that could either save your life or end it, would you make the right choice? 

Most people have never faced such imminent, lethal danger and can't possibly know how they will react to the extreme fear that will confront them. 

In the next few paragraphs, we'll explore some of the realities and myths of dealing with fear and some constructive techniques for confronting debilitating fear and coming out on the other side alive...

What Is Fear?

The dictionary defines fear as "the physical and emotional result of a lack of preparation, awareness or confidence".  To understand how fear works we must first understand a little about the human brain's physiology.  

There are two distinctly different aspects of how our brains function.  At one level it functions at an instinctive, autonomic level.  We don't have to think about breathing, walking or other reflexive functions which frees us to exercise the other level, the more cognitive, higher reasoning brain.  

The instinctual level is very tightly coupled to the sympathetic nervous system.  We have very limited control over this type of brain function.  A tiny organ in the center of the brain called the amygdala is where we experience the primal feelings of fear.  Responses that originate in the amygdala are literally hardwired into the nervous system and occur almost instantaneously when a threat stimulus occurs.  

An example of this response is your "Startle Reflex".  This primitive survival response is part of the "flight or fight" mechanism which triggers rapid physiological changes designed to help you escape or overcome potential threats.  

Consider a bungie jumper about to take his first jump.  Looking over the precipice, the instinctive brain considers its chance of surviving such a fall and immediately kicks into survival mode.  

Norepinephrine is dumped into the bloodstream causing respiration and heart rate increase.  The blood pressure rises and capillaries in the extremities contract keeping blood near the core organs.  As the stress hormone levels in the blood increase, they provide an anesthetic effect in the event of injury and cause glycogen levels in the blood to rise providing additional fuel for extreme muscular activity.  

All this originates in the amygdala and begins in an instant.  And then the jump occurs.  For an instant all senses are on overload and the instinctive brain floods with abject panic.  We are literally out of control.  Many first timers later remember screaming uncontrollably.  

Then, a few seconds later the jumper is bouncing at the end of a long rubber band and the conscious mind realizes it has nothing to fear and the body starts to relax and return to normal. 

While we all envision ourselves being fearless and calm in the face of a lethal threat, in reality, most people have little if any ability to predict or control their reaction under extreme stress, unless they have been there before.  

The million dollar question is "what can I do to avoid the panic and complete loss of control that so often occurs in the face of extreme danger and overpowering fear?"

 

Here are the best techniques you can use to learn to combat and control fear:

Habituation

One of the most powerful tools used to combat fear is the process of "habituation".  By constantly exposing yourself to things that produce fear you can reduce the intensity of the response.  Typically the process starts with low intensity exposure and then ratchets up the intensity level to higher and higher levels until the thing that causes a fear response is familiar and becomes the new 'normal'.  

Think about the wildlife we see around shooting ranges.  We see them go about their activities normally.  Birds land on berms, rabbits nibble the grass underneath shooting shelters, oblivious to the gunfire on the range.  Yet a bird not accustomed to gunfire flies in a panic when a shot is fired.  

Consider our bungee jumper after a few dozen jumps.  Standing on the the edge preparing to jump, while possibly still exciting, no longer elicits the same fear response. 

Habituation, while powerful, is somewhat specific as it requires repeated exposure to a particular stressor to be effective. 

Reframing

Unfortunately, in many situations, the amygdala in your brain gets to decide what it is afraid of.  It generally makes this decision without involving any cognitive processes.  Simply put, it reacts.

Having a lack of knowledge or familiarity with a threat often results in a heightened level of fear.  On the other hand, more familiarity can result in an ability to reframe the situation based on past experience.  

I recall my own first close encounter with a rattlesnake in my yard.  It was a little scary as I had never seen one up close and personal except in a zoo.  While the encounter ended badly for the snake, I gained a better understanding of the behavior and motivations of the snake. Having had many more experiences with rattlesnake since that time, my brain has reframed the experience.  Now, coming upon a rattler is a situation that requires caution, but no longer evokes fear.

Assessment

Recognize the situation for what it is and be realistic about the assessment.  Denial only serves to delay the ability to execute useful action in a situation.  Immediate, decisive action in the face of a threat is essential in your ability to shape the outcome of the event.  

Action

The less control people feel they have over the situation, the greater the stress level.   People that feel they have some level of control in a situation have much lower anxiety.  Those that are able to take action to solve the situation reduce stress even further.  You are simply too busy executing to worry about the outcome.

Emotional Redirection

In situations involving high stress, it can be nearly impossible for the cognitive system to regain control over the instinctive survival behavior of the brain.  However, it is very possible for other primal emotions to override the fear response.  Anger is particularly effective at canceling fear.  By redirecting fear into anger, the fear response can be diminished and the physiological responses can be refocused in a more positive direction.  If controlled effectively, the enhanced speed and strength associated with the stress response can provide real advantage in a fight.  

Combat Breathing

Controlled breathing has long been associated with relaxation techniques.  Yoga and transcendental meditation have a long history of using controlled breathing to slow the heart rate and increase mental focus.

SWAT teams and Spec Ops teams worldwide have recognized the value of this technique and use 'combat breathing' techniques to counteract the stress encountered in violent confrontations.  The simple technique of inhaling, holding the breath for four seconds, exhaling and then holding the breath again for four seconds has been proven to significantly reduce stress levels, regardless of circumstances.  

 Physical Fitness

Physical fitness also seems to have a positive impact on a person's ability to handle themselves under stress.  In 2008 and 2009 two studies showed that individuals with enhanced fitness levels and lower body fat percentages showed both physiological and cognitive resistance to the impact of stress.  

The bottom line is that scientific study tells us that individuals can physically and mentally deal with stressful situations more effectively if they are in good physical condition.  

Training

Another powerful tool to control fear is training.  Training is a critical element on many levels as it performs several vital functions:

1. It raises the level of awareness regarding what the full set of outcomes might be.
2. It provides guidance on what actions will produce desired outcomes. 
3. It helps to identify skills that will produce the desired outcomes. 
4. It teaches you those skills. 
5. It reinforces those skills. 
6. It stress-proofs those skills. 

Remember that definition of fear?  Fear is caused by a lack of awareness, preparation or confidence.   Training certainly addresses all of these by helping you understand what you will likely be up against, teaching you the skills required to deal with the situation and provides you with a high level of confidence that when called upon, your skills will be up to the task. 

Over-learning 

A key variation on the application of training is the development of essential skills through the process of 'over-learning'.  In this type of training, skills are practiced well beyond the point necessary to master the skill.  Continued repetition ‘burns in’ the skill to such an extent that conscious thought processes are no longer required to perform the action. 

In a series of studies around the turn of the last century, two psychologists, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson found that these over-learned skills could be effectively employed during extreme stress.  They found that by over-learning, we simply default to the behavior learned during training without the need for thought or analysis.  This philosophy is neatly captured in the phrase, "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat".  

A key variable in this type of training is insuring that the core skills have been solidified before stress is introduced into the equation.  Mark Taylor, a psychologist with the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego concluded after an exhaustive study of Navy SEAL candidates, that an individual must achieve at least an intermediate level of the desired skill before introducing stress into the process.  

In order for over-learning to work properly, there must also be some method to insure that the skill being practiced is done correctly.  Clearly there is much to be said for constructive feedback from a instructor or coach during the over-learning process.

Confidence

Achieving a high level of skill as part of the training process provides an additional benefit.  It gives one a level of confidence that studies have shown leads to greater effectiveness in dealing with critical situations.  Confident people feel empowered by their skills and feel that they are up to meet any challenges that may come their way.  In psychological studies, confidence has been show to deliver benefit in crisis situations often beyond that associated with simply possessing the skills to handle the situation.  In addition, continued success in the application of a skill under stress increases confidence.  There is much truth in the saying, "Success begets success". 

Mastery 

As one continues to train, the ultimate objective is complete mastery of the skills necessary to insure survival in a violent confrontation.  Mastery is achieved when the level of skill goes beyond the cognitive processes and enters the realm of instinctive response.  You no longer have to think about what to do in a situation.  You just 'know' what to do and execute the skill in a flawless way.  

Consider for a moment the ability of "Sully" Sullenberger, the US Airway pilot that was able to ditch a wide-body jet in the Hudson River with 154 passengers on board without a single fatality.   

While he was undoubtedly fortunate, the fact that he had 30,000 flight hours over a 40 year flying career and a deep background in flight emergency management enabled him to execute perfectly when the situation called for it.  

He 'knew' exactly what he needed to do and though he later admitted to being scared out of his wits, he was able to suppress his fear and get the job done.  He was not flying the plane at a cognitive level so much as the plane's controls became an extension of himself.  He executed a picture perfect landing in the most extreme conditions imaginable.  This is what true mastery is all about.  

What you can do...

In nearly every situation discussed above, we can achieve the desired results through the effective application of reality-based training in conditions that simulate as nearly as possible those that will be found in real world situations! 

Suarez International is the only training venue available to civilians that want this type of training experience.  We aren't "gun camp".   We are a place to learn real world skills that will keep you alive in a gunfight.  Our training curriculum is designed to start you down your path to Mastery whether you are a beginner or a more advanced shooter.

The next time you think about the importance of training and it's role in survival of a life threatening encounter, remember this:

The key to survival in a life-threatening encounter is overcoming fear and the key to overcoming fear lies in having developed the mindset and skills necessary to overcome your adversary.   

Training is not just important...it can save your life!

 

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT! Why Ladies' Gunfighting is Critical

Why Ladies' Gunfighting is Critical -

by Corinna Coplin, Suarez Internationals Instructor

Part One – The Here and Now 

 

The traditional roles of male and female have the man being the defender of hearth and home while the female tends to the children and household.  This is a 20^th century tradition and not the way things have always been.

 

Previously, women had a much broader spectrum of responsibilities.  Sure, they took care of the children and home but they also slaughtered animals, worked in the fields and were often left alone for extended periods of time to defend themselves and their families.

 

Virtually no one would argue that women are inherently helpless or necessarily weak. 

 

However, as a society we have come to narrowly define women as being less capable of defending themselves or their children and of being physically and emotionally weak.  Wrong!

 

I can absolutely verify that women are not weak or helpless.  I see that in every Ladies’ Gunfighting class I teach.  These are strong and very capable women.  They are also nothing unusual or special.  They are just your ordinary housewives, girlfriends, mothers and grandmothers who have decided to make a commitment to upholding the tradition of women taking responsibility for their own and their families’ security.

 

How many women have their husband or boyfriend with them twenty-four hours a day?  Not many.  How often are women left alone or with children to care for without a man being present and ready to defend them?  Most women would fit this description.

 

We as females cannot make our security dependent upon the presence of a man.  They are simply not always able to be there and frankly, in all too many cases in our modern society, are not equipped for that task.  We must take our safety into our own hands.

 

While males are typically stronger in the upper body than women, there is little strength difference in the lower body.  Leg strength is pretty equal between the sexes. 

 

If you give a woman a weapon, you further equalize the strength disparity.  How much strength does it take to pull a trigger?  Or hold onto a knife?  Women use knives on a daily basis in the kitchen.  With a bit of training that kitchen tool becomes quite a force equalizer.

 

A pistol is a very logical and viable force equalizer for women.  A pistol is easy to conceal and transport.  It does not require the “bad breath” proximity that a knife does.  It requires little strength to use.  It can be used multiple and consecutive times.  A pistol can be a girl’s best friend!

 

Women learn differently than men.  They respond in uniquely female ways to the integration of new information and skill acquisition.  Because of this it would make sense for women to receive female-specific training.

 

It is often written that women comprise the fastest growing segment of the “shooting sports”.  While I do not view what we at Suarez International teach as being at all related to the “shooting sports”, it is encouraging to note that women are becoming more involved in shooting.  What would be even better would be for more women to take up the call to arms and train to defend themselves and their families.

 

On a very personal note, in my own family, two of the three females have been the victims of violent sexual assault.  I have no intention of being the third.

 

When we as women acquire the training and mindset to confront evildoers we can truly say to the bad guy that while you may choose to attack me I will not make it easy for you to prevail.  I am not your victim.  Not Without A Fight!

 

 Part Two – The Future

 

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

 

Coming from a country that has no Second Amendment, I can clearly see the profound implications that simple sentence has. 

 

This single sentence defines much of what is great and unique about the United States.

 

In my homeland of Germany it took only two generations for firearms to be essentially outlawed for private citizens and to become an object of derision and disgust.

 

Much of this had to do with the disarmament of Germany post WWII.  The political wisdom was to demonize the military and any weapons including firearms.  While there are still hunters in Germany, they are few in number and very strictly controlled.

 

When I talk to my female university friends in Germany about shooting, firearms training and self defense I get blank stares and a pretty universal reaction of, “Why would you want to do that?  Guns are wrong and unnecessary.  What a waste of time.”

 

If women in America are not involved in firearms training and learning how to defend themselves, the Second Amendment will be lost.  Women constantly tell me that they “will not allow a gun in the house’.  I find this to be ignorant and very shortsighted. Women are essential to the heritage of this country and the continued support and exercising of the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms”.

 

Remember, it only took two generations in Germany to completely change the public perception to being anti-gun.

 

Ladies it is up to us to make sure we are safe.  It is up to us to ensure the safety of our children and homes.  It is incumbent on us to convey the significance of our freedoms to our children and to make sure that we never lose them.

 

I see a change in the demographics of classes.  More women desire familiarity with firearms already in their homes.  Once they have training, they begin to choose their own pistols and other gear.  This is a good trend and needs to be supported by fathers, husbands and boyfriends.

 

When women are involved in firearms training in sufficient numbers we become an excellent support group and system for each other.

 

Train with firearms and other weapons.  Become actively involved in your own safety and that of your family.  It truly is up to us to let the cry be heard loud and clear, “NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT!”

 

 

The Norwegian Paradigm

The Norwegian Paradigm

I was on vacation on Oahu when I first heard about the events in Norway. At first, like probably most of you, I thought, “Hadji is at it again”. And I must say that although Hadji was not in this instance, I am not by any means sorry for my first conclusions.

The shooter turned out to be the typical “nutjob”, maybe not as crazy as Cho at VT, but nonetheless crazy in the conclusive actions he took to punctuate his statements.

Breivik is shocking, but not surprising to those who stay up on current social events in Europe…and the western government’s inability to control their own country’s borders. If anything, the Oslo event is a harbinger of fourth generation warfare. As the onward march of unassimilating islam increases into the west, western governments will have to make hard decisions that go against all of their post WW2 self-images, or risk losing their nations to immigrants with no desire to abandon the habits of their old culture. That the indigenous people will take strong exception to this is evident to anyone who has visited Europe in the last five years. And it will give an excuse to killers like Breivik.

The solution is not a happy one for the west as they will have to abandon their culturally egalitarian views, and adopt a more socially protective stance in areas of immigration, language, welfare benefits, etc. That they will make the correct decision or not is still undecided, but I am not holding my breath. I expect we will see more.

It is troubling that the media is so quick to label Breivik as a Christian Fundamentalist Extremist, while at the same time it took nearly a week for them to even acknowledge Major Hassan’s connections to Islam. Unless the media grows a set and begins calling a spade a spade (something I am not betting on either), I would expect to see social persecution of Christians while simultaneously giving way to Islam in what have been modern developed countries.

This is a time for Christians to stop acting like pre-Holocaust Jews and take a position of strength, not only slamming the Oslo event as an abomination, but by getting off the road to social appeasement they have been on for the past decade. I am not holding my breath on that one either.

Aside from the socio-political impacts of the Oslo event, there are lessons for the individual man-at-arms.

1). No matter where you are on earth, from Bogota to Oslo, you alone are responsible for your own safety regardless of what anyone in or out of uniform tells you.

2). No place is safe. If they tell you it is, do not argue, but make a plan of action. As I write this I am on a trans-pacific flight, and I have several dual use items at my disposal that I can end a terrorist’s career with.

3). Gun laws are stupid, and anyone promoting gun laws as a vehicle to safety is a moron that should be in monitored care. Norway has some harsh gun laws, yet there you have it. No law can prevent the evil of a an evil man.

4). A target is identified by his actions. A man in a police uniform shooting at unarmed and fleeing victims needs to be taken down by bullet, or blade or fist. Don’t read anything else into this. It is what it is. It is the actions of the man, and not the color of his clothes, that should dictate your response. Hasan also wore a uniform.

5). Be discreet. My sources tell me the first man Breivik killed was an armed security guard. The typical “shoot me fist” type situation.

6). Be armed. Have a gun. If you can’t have a gun, carry a knife. And don’t tell me you can’t because I have carried knives into places that would curdle your blood. If you absolutely positively cannot have a knife then you had better have the physicality to kill with what God gave you because it is all you have. Doing so is not hard…but you have to know how. Yes, I know….it is against the rules. Get over it.

7). Stay away from political crowds trying to make a political point. Hey…do it if you must but my focus is on my own agenda and not that of “The Strong Man On The Horse” that wants to lead me.

I am certain we will learn more about Breivik and why he really did what he did. As we will see what the media decides to do about all those dangerous fundamentalist Christians out there. Stay hard my friends….hard and frosty. We live in interesting times indeed.

FREE TSD RED DOT COMBAT PISTOL SCHOOL

 

TO: PURCHASERS OF TSD COMBAT PISTOL SLIDES (OLDER OR NEWER GENERATIONS)

FROM: TSD COMBAT SYSTEMS - GABE SUAREZ

DATE IN QUESTION: DECEMBER 3-4, 2011

LOCATION:  PRESCOTT, AZ

CONTENTS: TSD Combat Systems in conjunction with Suarez International USA will be holding a Free TSD Red Dot Combat Pistol School to purchasers of TSD Packages, either the new system, or older systems, or systems done on personal OEM slides.

This will comprise of as much shooting as we can do and as fast and far as we can push these red dot sight equipped handguns.

REQUIREMENTS: TSD Pistol, Receipt From OST/TSD that shows you purchased the system from us, 1000 Rounds, and the usual stuff you bring to a high speed low drag "bitchin guy" class.

COST TO YOU: ZERO.

Let me repeat....this is a free event to those who have a receipt from OST/TSD for a red dot pistol system.

We will be taking reservations via studies@suarezinternational.com

Short Circuiting The OODA Loop

Short Circuiting The OODA Loop

The call had come in of a trespasser using the laundry at an apartment building. It was the sort of call we all rolled our eyes and cursed the ever liberal city council of Santa Monica for drawing all the stinking bums from Los Angeles county.

Regardless, patterns of movement established through years or knowledge tended to keep you safe so bullshit call or not, I parked my war wagon a few doors down and walked up to the laundry room adjacent to the alley.

He was standing there washing his clothes. A typical LA street dweller…but something about him was different. I could not put it into words if you had frozen the frame and asked me to describe it. It was the way he moved maybe…or his build – not overly muscled, but not malnourished. Something told me at the instant he turned to look at me that I was in serious danger.

The transient was in his mid thirties, and walked over to me, hand out stretched as if to offer it in handshake. “Hello officer, I knew you’d be coming by”, he said as he approached. I could see he was not armed and both his hands were in view. But damn something felt totally wrong. As he moved the last few steps toward me, his eyes shifted to my holstered Glock and he reached for it in a lunge. ……..


The OODA Loop, or Boyd’s cycle, is much used and abused in the training, combatives world today. Some trainers go as far as to totally plagiarize Boyd without any attribution given, while others, with zero practical experience, seek to adapt his theories with no basis for the adaption. Sadly, in the land of free speech, just because one can speak his mind does not mean one’s words have any worth…mine included for that matter. But the worth attributed to a man’s words is based in part, on what he has actually done, and in the context that he is speaking.

So if a man is making a statement, and bases the validity of that statement on say…his Pro Football experiences, one would assume that if the problem at hand is similar to what a quarterback for a Pro Team faces, his assumptions are valid…but maybe not so much if the issue is a single man lifting a weight, or surfing a big wave…or fighting another man in a ring.

We know that we all process information as Boyd discussed in his studies. That cannot really be changed. But some of those processes can be short cut. Specifically I am referring to the Orientation phase of the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act). Let me explain.

In a book by Malcolm Gladwell titled Blink, the author discusses how we make those split second, gut-based decisions. He calls it Rapid Cognition. No, its not a gun book. Rather it is a business book. The sort of book that more struggling gun instructors should read...if they wanted to stop struggling and actually become successful. But back to the point. Gladwell mentions that we make split second decisions on a daily basis. He tells of a meeting between Wall Street traders and USMC Generals and how they were so much alike in their ability to make snap judgments and decisions (one with lives the other with money) that is was amazing to watch them interact.

The problem Gladwell mentions, is when we seek to put words to the feeling…or when we try to analyze what we are seeing or feeling. Observation can certainly be heightened by, as Nike says, “Just Doing It”. The Decision, and Action phases are a matter of training and willingness (topics not strange to WTers.), but it is the Orientation Phase…the area where we seek to make sense of what we are seeing, that we can make up the most time.

And by simply accepting the initial impression we get from a particular individual or location, without stopping to be able to preemptively “articulate to the jury” why we feel that way, we may very well be able to move faster through the cycles. And as one member here is fond of saying, speed is, in point of fact, life.

Oh, the rest of the story? Yes, of course.

I more felt the situation than saw it. I actually had some fear after it was all over as to how I would explain it. As he reached for my gun, I dropped my front leg back and swept my right hand up and over with the C Cell Maglite I carried in my sap pocket. That light had not worked in years and I carried it simply because they had outlawed saps. It hit him hard on the crown of the head with the sound a watermelon might make as it drops from the plastic Safeway bag onto your driveway.

He went down hard, unconscious and bleeding and so fast I was still not certain of what had happened or why. He was still alive, although barely. I had hit him that hard. Turns out he was a parolee at large that had assaulted and disarmed a police officer a few years before.


Listen and act upon your first impressions gents…they will rarely be wrong.