WARRIOR TALK NEWS

Scope Reticles 101

     Which scope do you recommend? I get asked this question several times a month. I wish the answer was as simple as the question. There are several factors we should consider before making a choice. The next few questions will help clarify the proper response to the question.

     What gun is it going on? Is it a semi auto 22 or a 300 WM bull barrel target rifle? Is it a 30-30 lever gun or an AK? The type of gun and the caliber are important factors in the scope and reticle choice. What do you plan to do with the gun? Self-defense has different requirements than hunting or target shooting. What caliber is the rifle? A 22 rim fire runs out of energy past 300 yards. What are the external ballistics of the round?  How fast does it loose velocity?

     It makes no sense to put an optic designed to shoot a thousand yards on a rifle/ cartridge that is not accurate at that distance. Here is an example. The 7.62x 39 cartridge velocity is approximately 1150 fps at 500 yards; at 600 it falls below 1000 fps. Generally 1000 fps is about the speed at which rifle bullets become unstable. This instability causes the bullet to yaw and wobble. The wobble changes the flight path. Based on my experience unstable flight path can vary greatly. I am talking about variation by feet, not inches. If you add in weather and wind factors the variation is increased. So a 7.62x39 or a 30-30 would not be a good rifle for a 6-20 x 50 target scope. A 1-4 or 2-7 or a low power fixed scope would be a better choice for these calibers.

     On the other end of the spectrum is the 338 Lapua. This round at 1000 yards still has a velocity of 1680fps. This means the cartridge is accurate well past 1500 yards. Installing an Eotech red dot or a 3-9 power scope is limiting the capabilities of the cartridge. Generally speaking having 1 power of magnification per hundred yards is good if you are shooting man size targets.  If the man ducks behind cover or goes prone you may need more magnification to find and shoot this now smaller target. Higher power will also aide in range estimation. On the down side, higher power can amplify movement as the shooter moves the gun. It can also be difficult to shoot through the mirage on a high power setting.

    Now that we have the basics as to what we want to do with the gun/ammo scope combination (also called the weapon system). We can look at reticles for the scopes. There are hundreds of different reticles available for scopes. The early scopes had crosshairs and nothing else. Since the invention of crosshairs in scopes man has looked at ways to improve the basic idea by adding thicker lines or removing a portion of the crosshairs (also called stadia lines). Today scopes have 4 categories of reticles.

       Standard Reticles Fine, Crosshairs or Duplex

       Illuminated Reticles; Eotech, Aimpoint or Trijicon

       Hold Over recticles; a bullet drop compensator type

       Ranging reticles; Mil-dot or MOA hash marks

      (Combinations of 2 or more can also be found.)

 

    This article will examine standard reticles and illuminated reticles.

    The standard reticles group includes the t-post, target dot reticles. The stadia lines may be tapered or have two different widths. Standard recticles are used to zero a rifle at a specific distance. That is about as basic as it gets. The turrets on the basic scopes normally do not have numbers or revolution marks to adjust them to different zero points. They are meant to be zeroed and left alone. These types of scopes work well on rim fire and hunting rifles designed for 200 yards or less. With some practice the shooter can use them for longer shots by holding over on the target. They have no value in ranging to the target and adjusting for wind or weather changes.

     The variable power scope with a duplex type reticle can be used for ranging by using the points where the stadia line reduces from thick to thin. This method works by adjusting the magnification so that a known object will fit the reticle between the horizontal line and the point where the vertical line changes width. This requires practice and the shooter should develop a range card to record this information.

     Here is an example. Your target is a deer.  It’s size from the top of the shoulder to the bottom of the belly is 18 inches. Now use the zoom to set the horizontal line on the top of the deer’s back and the point on the vertical line at his belly. Now determine the power setting. Reference this number to your range card and read the distance to target. Then you can use the hold over you established during practice to make a hit. For this to work the shooter must put in the time to gather the information and build the range card. This same principal works for many different types or styles of reticles.

    The newest style of reticle is an illuminated reticle. There are 3 sources of illumination, battery power, fiber optics, and tritium.  Combinations of the three can also be found. The most simple of these is the battery power models with a round dot in the center of the lens. The red dot reticle can vary in size, shape and clarity. With variable power scopes and red dot scopes the quality of the glass can vary. Better quality glass will result in a crisp edge to the dot type reticle.

     Try this little test. Pick up a cheap red dot and turn the power up to its highest setting. Notice the dot is not perfectly round; it can look like a star. Or it may have streamers coming from the center. While taking a sight picture rotate the red dot. See if the streamers rotate with the scope body. No streamers means the glass is of high quality. Another test is to take the red dot scope into the full sun and check to see if the dot is visible. In some of the economy models the dot will almost disappear. Next look at in in very low light. The dot should be visible but not so bright that you can’t see the target past the sight. The size of the dot makes a difference as well.

     An EO Tech has a 1 min dot in a 65 min circle. These are designed to use the small dot for accuracy and the large circle for speed. The Aimpoint models have a 3.5 min or 8 min dot. For a rifle or carbine I like the 3.5 min dot. Why the smaller dot on a carbine? The dot covers up 3.5 inches of the target at 100 yards or 7 inches at 200 yards. I can still make a head shot at 200 yards with it. The 8 min dot would be 16 inches at 200 thus making a head shot hard.  The average head is 8 inches wide. The Leupold Delta sight uses an illuminated triangle instead of a round dot. This gives the shooter an option: fast shooting at close range when referencing the entire triangle on target or using the top point of the triangle if a more precise shot is needed. I recommend zeroing the rifle at 200 yards to the top point of the triangle or the top edge of the round dot. Bushnell has a multiple reticle red dot that has a circle dot, a small dot and “T” style reticle. The shooter can select all three if needed.

     Battery life is a big factor when using a red dot scope. The first models lasted about 24 hours before the battery died. The latest model Trijicon RMR will run more than a year before the battery dies. The Leupold has a motion sensor that shuts down after 5 minutes of no movement. The standard red dot sights do not have any magnification. Therefore, long range precision is no better than when using sights.  If these are used on a rifle the shooter is limiting the performance of the weapon system. Power failure while using battery powered sights is the main reason for having back up iron sights on a gun. The other option is to use the scope itself as a huge ghost ring and put the target in the center and press the trigger.

     Fiber optic illuminated red dot sights have the advantage of not needing a battery for illumination. No battery means no power failure. A benefit of the fiber optic system is the brightness level automatically adjusts to the ambient light. This also means it is always on. A few models even have a shade so the shooter can block some of the ambient light to reduce the reticle brightness. There are 3 styles of reticles for fiber optic scopes, a solid round circle, a triangle and a chevron (an inverted “V”). There are also color options of red, green and amber. I have used all three and I like the green the best. The red can disappear on a red target or on the red dirt here in Georgia. The green is a fluorescent green that has a good contrast in foliage. Also green is in the middle of the light spectrum and is easier for the brain to pick up. The amber blends in on fall days with flat light or in reduced light. To me green is the easiest color to pick up in a wide variety of light conditions. The size of the reticle is just as important on a fiber optic scope as it is on a red dot scope. Fiber optic scopes have one big advantage; the availability of magnification with them. There are fixed power and variable power scopes available with fiber optic reticles.

       There are a limited number of scopes with tritium illuminated reticles. They work well in low light but are not bright enough by themselves to work in sun light. Normally these are combined with fiber optics to give the shooter a sight in very low or no light. One down side to tritium is they do not last forever. The half- life is 12 years.

     For a fighting rifle I would only use a scope that will continue to work when the battery dies. If the battery dies and I can’t use the scope my effectiveness as a rifleman just diminished. We should all have the knowledge and skill to point shoot the rifle in CQB without the use of any sight system.

     We covered the 2 basic types of reticles in this article. Both have their good points and drawbacks. Remember any time you get to look through a scope outdoors take the opportunity to learn about the scopes. Learning experiences are valuable specially if they are free.  Part two of this article will cover hold over style reticles and ranging reticles.

Please join me for the Guerrilla Sniper I in Blakley GA March 8-10

 

Scott Vandiver

SI Staff Instructor

www.centerfiretraining.com

 

Home Invasion Countermeasures



By Alex Nieuwland, Suarez International Staff Instructor

In my area of operations, home invasion is gaining in popularity as a tactic used by criminals. Apparently, cold burglaries with very precise information are preferred, but if that won’t work home invasion is considered as a perfectly acceptable alternative.

Recently, I started looking for more information on countering this specific tactic. Most of what I found was well-meaning but impractical advice or products. There was, however, some good along with the bad that I thought was worth passing on.

Types of home invasion
We typically think about home invasions as starting with a kicked-in door. That is not necessarily the case. Home invasions can be subdivided by their means of gaining entry: force, deception, stealth, garage, and carjacking. Force is what we commonly think of when we think of home invasions: a kick to the door knob. Deception means a ruse is used to get an occupant of the house to willingly open the door. Stealth means picking or “bumping” the lock, or entering though an unlocked door. Garage means gaining entry through the open garage door. And finally, there have been cases where home invasion victims were carjacked before being forced to drive to their own homes.

By thinking about home invasions in this light, we can better prepare our defenses against them. I also found some countermeasures that were new to me:

The surprise doorstop
While you may have resolved to never open your locked house door for a stranger if there is any doubt about their intentions, never is a long time, and not every occupant of the home (your spouse?) may have bought into that. The surprise doorstop is some kind of device attached to the floor behind the door that allows the door to be opened a few inches while preventing someone from opening it further and entering through it. Unlike a door chain it is not apparent to the criminal until the criminal tries to force the door open further, showing his true intentions, and initiating the rest of your countermeasures.

The fatal funnel
Most readers will probably be familiar with the “safe room” concept, wherein one of the rooms in the house is hardened and equipped to act as the keep of your castle. Typically, a solid reinforced door is suggested for this purpose. Instead, a strengthened matte glass door could be used. If the home invaders try to force it, it would provide additional physical evidence that they were not satisfied with the valuables in the portion of your house already under their control, but wanted YOU and your family. At the same time, it would position the (backlit) home invaders in the kill zone of an ambush with a well-protected and well-armed defender on the inside of the door and a bullet trap in or on the wall facing the door on the outside.

To my mind, the shotgun would be the most suitable type of weapon for this application due to its ability to put multiple projectiles into the target with a single shot. A shotgun, however, is not the “wall of death” some claim it is. For example, at 7 yards, all of the pellets from my 18.5” barreled shotgun are still well within an 8” circle, so your marksmanship skills are still essential to your success.

The fatal funnel concept can be extended to other choke points in your house. For example, if there is a narrow doorway leading from your hallway to the rest of the house, an unexpected locked glass door or locked security gate would be unwelcome news to any home invaders forcing their way in.

Final thoughts: active countermeasures
Unfortunately, we live in a world where some don’t respect basic rules of human interaction. They’ll come to your house and try to do harm to you and your family for reasons we sometimes can’t even begin to fathom. How the story ends when they come knocking depends on you

In America, unlike in most countries around the world, homeowners are in a strong position when it comes to home invasions, particularly in states with castle doctrine. My state (South Carolina) is one of those states. The barriers around our homes, and even the walls of our homes themselves, don’t need to be 4 feet thick and 20 feet high with bars on the windows. What they need to do in the case of home invasions, is provide us enough warning to deploy our active countermeasures.

This is where most of the well-meaning advice proves to be impractical. Some suggest carrying a can of bear spray at all times or keeping a firearm locked up in your safe room. In my area of operations, I can expect the home invaders to be armed and bear spray would leave me seriously outgunned. Lone law enforcement officers don’t use non-lethal force in the face of a deadly threat, and I’m not planning on it either. In addition, as I’m sitting here typing this, there’s a pretty good chance one or more forceful home invaders could get to me, before I got to my safe room. So a locked up firearm inside my safe room just isn’t going to cut it by itself either.

Is bear spray or a locked up firearm really going to improve your situation if home invaders kicked in your doors right now? If the honest answer is “Probably not”, I’d like to recommend you carry your carry gun(s) concealed (loaded, of course), including when you are in and around your house, get excellent training and practice until it’s a deeply ingrained habit. The same skills that are taught in the Suarez International handgun gunfighting curriculum for use outside your house are still applicable inside your house.

In addition, there is a whole Suarez International class (CQB: Fighting in Structures) dedicated to teaching civilians how to search structures that may (or may not) contain armed bad guys and how to neutralize them. Yes, it’s dangerous, particularly if you are by yourself, but it can be done and in some cases it should be done.

Finally, shotguns are highly effective at the distances found inside homes. This Veterans Day, I will be teaching a one-day Dynamics of the Shotgun class in Columbia, SC that would make an excellent primer on the use of a shotgun for self defense.

Join the discussion on Warrior Talk here to add your views, experiences and other comments.

Update added on September 20:

Earlier today, a Tulsa homeowner used his shotgun on a stealthy home invader. The criminal, who may have attempted a forceful home invasion yesterday afternoon, died at the scene.

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?

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.

Avoiding the gamer trap

By Alex Nieuwland – Suarez International Staff Instructor in South Carolina

I’ve heard all of these comments, some of them recently.

“All of this realistic training to win gunfights is getting in the way of my IDPA.”

“Practicing with my reloads that barely make power factor and barely cycle my gun has made my gun handling worse instead of better.”

“I can’t stop myself from walking backwards instead of pointing my toes in the direction I’m going. I’ve been a gamer for too long!”

All of these shooters had fallen into the gamer trap. I know I had, so I could relate.

Participating in gun games, just like most things, is good in moderation. When taken to extremes, however, it becomes easy to fall into the “gamer trap” where winning the game instead of winning your upcoming gunfight becomes priority #1. As Jim Cirillo, who was an accomplished competition shooter as well as the winner of many gunfights, put it: “It may take extra time in a sports match, but in reality it would save lives. To hell with the score!” [1]

To head off the criticism that I’m just a hater bashing gun games, let me say this: Gun games are fun, and I’m a big proponent. In every Concealed Weapons Permit class I teach, I spend some time explaining the various attractions offered by Steel Challenge, IDPA, and USPSA. For example, Steel Challenge is a great way of testing your draw, sight picture, and trigger press, and finding your balance between speed and precision. IDPA and USPSA offer marvelous opportunities to come try out your carry gear for a very reasonable fee. In my area, where indoor ranges don’t allow drawing from the holster, rapid fire, or shooting on the move, they are a great gift to the shooter inclined to get better at those things. In addition, they offer a great opportunity to spend time with some like-minded individuals.

As part of teaching any Suarez International defensive pistol class, however, we always ask the question: “What’s more important: Shooting the bad guy or not getting shot?” Occasionally, we get a taker for “shooting the bad guy,” but most folks wisely opt for “not getting shot” first, immediately followed by “shooting the bad guy.”

This is where the fundamental difference between winning your gunfight and winning your favorite gun game comes in: there is no bad guy shooting at you during the game. As a result, gun games allow one to focus entirely on the “shoot the bad guy” part of the equation, to the detriment of the “not getting shot” part. Sure, IDPA enforces the “IDPA lean” that places 100% of your lower body and at least 50% of your upper body behind cover, but that still leaves a LOT of your body sticking out from cover for the BG to shoot. This is particularly evident when a right handed shooter tries to take a left-handed corner without switching the gun to his left hand, and vice-versa. When we teach taking a corner in our HRO-CQB: Fighting in Buildings courses, we reduce the amount you expose to the bad guys to no more than the arm holding your pistol and an eyeball by switching hands depending on the tactical situation.

In addition, in IDPA there’s no penalty for shooting from close to the cover where debris and bullets skipping off the edge of the cover would still be a concern to you if someone were actually shooting at you, in addition to giving away your exact position and exposing you to a potential gun grab. When I started shooting IDPA 10 years ago, I did what I saw most of the other shooters do and hugged the cover. This placed me closer to the targets so I could shoot them more easily, and made it easier for the safety officer to see that I was leaning out properly. It also meant I had fallen into the gamer trap.

To overcome my gamer habits and squeeze the maximum benefit out of the time and ammo I spend at a match I have come up with some personal guidelines that have lowered my scores, but have allowed me to climb out of the gamer trap I had fallen into.

Here they are:

1. Mindset: I realize that this is “just a game”, but I want to maximize its potential for realistic testing of my skills and equipment. I realize that using these guidelines will probably hurt my score, but I’m willing to accept that because my overall goal (winning my upcoming gunfight) is more important than my score in a gun game.
2. Use of cover: I will take left handed corners left handed, and right handed corners right handed. I will strive to stay as far back from cover as the stage design allows.
3. Concealment: I will use a concealment garment whenever the rules of the game allow it.
4. Equipment: I will use what I carry as much as the rules of the game allow. For example, in IDPA’s Stock Service Pistol division I use my Glock 19 with Warren Tactical sights from a strong-side outside the waistband holster (Dale Fricke Gideon Elite). In USPSA’s Open division, however, I will use my Glock 19 with Trijicon RMR red-dot sight from an inside the waistband appendix carry holster (Dale Fricke Seraphim). Clearly, I have no hope of winning in USPSA’s Open division competing against true raceguns with an RMRed Glock 19, but that’s not the point. As long as they let me use it in their game, I’m happy. Click here for more info on using what you carry for competition.
5. Proactive reloads: I will do a proactive reload (retaining the partially used magazine) wherever it makes tactical sense, whether I need to or not to finish the stage.
6. Emergency reloads: I will rip the magazine out and retain it during emergency reloads, unless the targets are very close.
7. After action assessment: I will ask the first two questions of the Suarez International after action assessment (“Did I hit him, did it work? Does he have any friends?”) before I unload and show clear.
8. Use of ammo: I will be generous with my bullets. If I feel that a target needs to be shot again, I will shoot it again.
9. Ammo selection: I will use ammo that closely replicates the felt recoil and point of aim/point of impact of my carry ammo.
10. After Action Review: I will videotape my performance in the stages for later critiquing. Did I do my reloads correctly? Did I stay away from cover? In other words: What do I need to be working during my upcoming practice sessions?
11. Competition: I will strive to bring a shooting buddy who is using the same guidelines and only compare my score with him or her.

Hopefully, these guidelines can serve as encouragement to shooters who have so far avoided falling into the gamer trap, and perhaps allow some that have to realize the problem and climb out as well.

Want to share your thoughts? Join the discussion here on Warrior Talk.

References
[1] Jim Cirillo in Guns, Bullets and Gunfights: Lessons and Tales from a Modern-Day Gunfighter; Paladin Press, 1996, page 65.

The Flash Mob Attack - How To Defend?

 

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - All eight suspects are in custody after a brutal attack in Five Points early Monday morning which left the teenage victim in critical condition, according to Columbia police.

CHICAGO, IL (WLS) -- The recent series of mob-style attacks on Chicago's Near North Side mark the first major hurdles facing Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago's new police superintendent Garry McCarthy. The latest attack happened Tuesday night. A witness tells WGN 15-20 teens beat and robbed two people at Chicago and Wabash

AKRON, OH -- Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ''This is our world'' and ''This is a black world'' as they confronted Marshall and his family.

NO. VIRGINIA -- Three people were beaten by mobs in Northern Virginia in two separate incidents that occurred within five minutes of each other on Saturday night, authorities said.

These events have consumed the discussion at most self-defense focused websites in the last few weeks.  Accompanying the discussion is the usual hand wringing regarding what to do if one is beset by a gang of thugs bent on your destruction. Well, I have my views on this which will no doubt shock the senses of the Doodley Doo Rights of the gun world.

First, this was not some group of young teenaged honor students.  In all cases it was a group of urban thugs.  Second, they were not there to practice for their debate on the ills of capitalism.  Third, they understand only one thing...violence.  So understand who they are and be ready to speak their language.

1).  Don't go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things.   Simple but often ignored.  Listen, we do not live in a fair world where everyone respects everyone else.  Nor where everyone gets along.  You may in fact be totally color-blind in a socio-ethnic sort of way, but not everyone is.  So even if your liberal sociology professor thinks it is a cool thing to take a stroll at midnight through a ethnically homogenous part of town (different ethnicity that you), it is still a stupid idea. 

 

 

2).  Always have a method to defend yourself.  Even if it is not socially acceptable, or in line with the rules of the day, having some sort of weapon is essential.  Right about now, some of the Doodley Doo Rights are screaming that I am telling people to violate the law.  Well, go and google these stories.  Look at the faces of the victims...specially the one on life support right now.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Your choice is to arm yourself in violation of the rules, or to take the raping, beating and robbery?  What would you choose?

3).  Avoid if you can.  If you are standing around and see a group of twenty young urban thugs about two blocks away yelling, "kill whitey", and looking at your reflection in the store window, realize that you have not been in the sun in a while, here is my advice - "RUN".  If it looks like trouble, it probably is.  The gang is not there to debate the effects of american corporate expansion on the development of the urban neighborhoods with you.

4).  If you cannot avoid, attack...brutally and viciously.  This is not the time to worry about some goofball fear monger's articles about being sued, nor about anything of the sort.  It is time to deploy your weapons and attack the leaders.  Listen folks, there is disparity of force by the sheer number against you and the knowledge you have based on these prior flash mob events. 

If you have limited yourself by the rules and only have a knife, be certain you know how to use it.  Make it big enough that it will cause extreme pain and bleeding when you stab the attacker.  This is not the place for a legally carried tomato peeler that is two inches or less.  You need a fixed or folding knife that is at least 4 inches long. 

When the time comes, do not flash the knife like you are some crocodile dundee type guy ("that's not a knife").  Stab the first man deep and hard in his face and move to the next guy and repeat the exercise.  Do the same to anyone within reach.  When their buddies reel back, screaming in horror and pain, holding their bloodied faces with eyeballs hanging out, it will create hesitation.  Use that time to disengage. 

If you have a pistol, please make sure it is a modern high capacity weapon with a couple of spare magazines in your belt.  The Suarez International company gun, a Glock 17 with three magazines, yields a sum total of 52 rounds.  Figure three rounds per man, and you can reduce an angry mob of panga swinging killers into a fleeing group of bloodied bad guys.  Draw it and yell, "Get The F*** Back!" If they do, run away.  If they do not, shoot the first man in the face. The rest will take care of itself.

It really is very simple.  Might you get into trouble?  Sure, but being in jail because you stabbed three guys on the street is far better than being in the hospital having holes drilled into your head to relieve the pressure on your brain while the female members of your party are getting HIV exams in the next room.  The only way to defeat brutality is with extreme and greater brutality.

Keep that in mind, arm yourself properly and if it comes, be brutal.

Perception vs. Reality

 

By Don Robison, Staff Instructor Suarez International

How people perceive what is happening (perception) versus what is actually happening (reality) are often in conflict with each other.  Quite often they are the exact opposite of each other.

We’ve all seen or heard things that we thought were one thing, but in reality turned out to be totally different.  When I was in the military, flying on a very dark nights we would often see lights on the ground that you would swear in court were other aircraft, but as you got closer you would realize that is was a porch light or tower marker light. When my girls were little I would sometimes be called in the middle of the night because someone was outside their bedroom window. However, upon investigation it would be a tree limb brushing the side of the house. 

I often hear people say “I’m a good guy, I won’t go to jail” or something similar. To that I respond; you may be the good guy, but if no one else at that point in time knows you’re the good guy it won’t matter. You could be Mother Theresa’s sister, but the witnesses might be saying you were the aggressor because of the way they perceived what took place. Which statement gives the perception of you being the good guy to bystanders who may not be able to see what is going on, but are within ear shot of what is taking place; A. “I’ll kill you if you don’t get away from me!” or  B. “Stop, get away, leave me alone”.   I suggest that B. would paint you as the victim more easily than A. There are studies that suggest at least 55% of communication is non-verbal. If your witnesses can’t see, you need to be able to paint a picture for them that you would like to be relayed in your defense.  You may be justified using deadly force regardless of the words spoken prior to the incident. But if your witnesses paint the same picture as you, it could be the difference between you going home from the scene, or having to figure out how to post bail.  

How do you present yourself after the incident?  How do the responding police and investigator(s) perceive you?  Are you evasive or combative with them, telling them you won’t answer anything until you talk with a lawyer.  Or, are you helpful to the extent your lawyer has advised you to be?  You have consulted a lawyer before the incident, haven’t you?  The lawyer I consulted gave me the same advice given by Suarez International, “I’m the victim, he tried to do X to me, his weapon is there and those people over there saw/heard what happened.”   Is that always the perfect answer, probably not, but in my opinion it’s a better answer than “I’m not talking and you can’t make me” while the thug’s friends and family paint a picture of him being the model citizen who was soliciting money to donate to the orphanage in between working at his home based pharmaceutical business.

Perception starts long before the shots are fired. Perception starts when you decide to carry a weapon and continues every day when you wake up, get dressed and walk out of the house. It takes a little work to make people’s perception a reality. Prior to the incident how have you presented yourself?  Are you known as the kooky guy at the end of the block who is always threatening people? Are you the helpful, thoughtful neighbor, or maybe just the person that no one really notices?  I’m not going to say that one is better than the other, but being the kooky guy obviously puts you in a different light once the newspaper starts interviewing neighbors. If you have refused to give a statement of any type to the investigators and are sitting in jail, it just adds fuel to the fire of blaming you, instead of the real aggressor.  Being known as the thoughtful neighbor can garner support and character witnesses should you need them.  Being the unknown person can go either way which is why in my opinion that it’s important for the unknown person to have their ducks in a row prior to any type of incident. Myself, I border on the thoughtful neighbor and the unknown guy.  I have enough contact with my neighbors that they know I exist, but not enough that they know much more than I helped them clear a fallen tree off their fence or helped them round up loose livestock. 

The next part of how you present yourself is often a touchy subject because it’s subjective. Do you look like a militia member or some other form of outcast from society?  There is a time and place for everything and in this day and age it’s seldom you see a man in a suit and fedora, but I suggest that while the “Kill a Commie for Mommy” type t-shirts are humorous and appropriate around the yard or on the range (I own several), you’ll present a more different image and draw less attention to yourself with plain t-shirts or company logo t-shirts.  What I mean is blend in with your environment. If it’s “normal” in your area to be decked out in multicam while having breakfast at the main street diner then wear it, but if it makes you stand out, looks odd, or out of place you may want to reconsider.  

Now before anyone gets bent out of shape with the idea that I think you need to be some form of Mr. Rogers, that’s not what this article is about.  It’s about creating a reality based on the perception of others.  When you look at some of the most prolific serial criminals the world has known they often created a perception of the model citizen when in reality they were demons praying on the weary.  Sometimes to beat a criminal you have to think like a criminal.

 

“By the Skin in my Teeth”

By  Frosty26

I laid in my bunk in the “North Compound” of our PPD training facility exhausted physically from a 12 hour day of grueling PPD drills, but excited mentally, reflecting on the whirlwind of events that had transpired in the last few months. After returning home from various cess pools around the globe including 3 tours in Iraq and jumping feet first into the PPD game, I thought for sure my first assignment would be right back in the sand box, but surprisingly I had received orders for south of the border as a replacement for a PPD Team member who had had come down with an appendicitis and whose return was not certain. The area that I was heading was rife with cartel violence. The previous week there had been six kidnappings, all of them ending with the principal murdered. This particular assignment involved the detail protection of an international businessman. I was to fly out in the morning. My bags were packed and my passport in order. I tried to close my eyes for a few hours of sleep, it never happened and one minute before the alarm was to go off at 4am, I raised up and started gearing up.

The flight was uneventful and I landed around Noon. I was met by our advance team leader at the airport and we took the short 15 minute ride to home base. Upon arriving I was introduced to the detail and briefed. Afterwards I headed to the armory to gear up, taking a G19 and 5 mags and a sweet little MP-7 PDW with a custom under the sport coat sling and 3 mag bandoleer…Nice and urban. The Principal was set to arrive from a International flight in 4 hours, we then used the remaining time to plan our routes and get the vehicles ready to roll. We headed out in a standard 3 vehicle convoy 2 hours before wheels down. The main security team sealed a loose perimeter and the advance team which I was on went to meet the principal at the gate. He was escorted by two of his Personal BG’s, 2 guys that looked like they ate a moose for breakfast and enjoyed it. We moved briskly from the gate to the vehicles and in under 20 minutes were back on the road, choosing route C due to some congestion on the Routes A and B. I had what is called the “hot seat” position which is at the right flank of the principal, besides me we had the driver and 2 other shooters in the Tahoe.

Our destination was the Business residence of the Principal, some 45 miles from the Airport. The ride was uneventful, except for the Principals cell phone calls that entertained us ..in the span of 40 minutes, he managed to fire 2 people, threaten somebody with a lawsuit, talk dirty to a young Albanian Lady and tell his wife and kids he loved them…ahh the life of the rich!!! Pulling into the gated residence I was taken back at the opulence of this place, according to the Principal, it had been a former Cartel Boss’s “Summer Home” before he snatched it in a foreclosure auction. We got the principal inside and settled and I got started on a roll call and position assignments so we could relieve the advance team. After a brief team turnover, where we got briefed on the principals itinerary and approved visitor list, the advance team departed for a 12 hour turnover. That evening I spent with out TL, planning our A-B-C routes for tomorrows stops, it was going to be a busy day.
　
That night was uneventful, except for a wild cat knocking over a flower pot around 3am. I had to chuckle to myself as I watched the pesky critter trot off into the bush, a laser from one of my guy’s weapons tracking on it’s shoulder the whole way.The principal first meeting was around 9am, so we were set to depart the house shortly before 7:45am. With the vehicles gassed up and triple checked, we departed the front gate on time. Our first destination was 32 minutes away, to keep things interesting, our TL opted for a figure 8 to check for tails. 7 minutes later, after being satisfied of no tails, we proceeded on route B just to keep our driver on his toes. I told all the guys to check their ear/mic radio sets for volume, after everybody was good, I clicked the unit on my hip to tie in our advance team’s net. I felt my cell buzz at approximately 8:34am and knew it was my Advance team.. “Frosty” I whispered into the phone “Area Secure-Green” the voice replied. “Comms are up”. I gave a quick knod to our TL and we got set to do our”Two Minute Shuffle”. This is something we drilled on time and time again..getting the principal out of the vehicle and inside the secured location in under 2 minutes..our record was 1 minute 27 seconds. If we broke that, our TL had to buy the whole team a new Stryder knife.

Before the vehicle rolled to a stop, I had my door open and was ready to do 1:25. As I exited, the entrance to the office building was clear, I had 2 females at the end of the street, 20 yds away and 1 elderly man across the street. “Frosty counts 3 downtown““Roger-3 outside” I heard our DM check off on the net. “Uptown is clear” I hear our inside man check off. Once all the men were in place outside the vehicle, we knocked on the door for the principal to exit. As he had been trained, he exited quickly and once we had a semi circle formed, we started moving with purpose toward the entrance. We hit the elevators and were in the meeting in 1:17..looks like a new Stryder was in my future!

The meeting lasted about one hour, I occupied my time making rounds to the various post, I wandered outside to our vehicle element to BS with our driver, himself a former Marine, fresh from A-Stan. As we were chatting about the best way to spice up a Pork MRE, I noticed that the traffic today on the street was minimal, glancing back over my shoulder, I saw 2 guys appear from a side alley about 100 yards up the street. They were walking our way. “Frosty has 2 males inbound from the south” I whispered in my mic. “Gotcha Frost” our DM checked off. From the roof...I now was reassured that a scope reticle was on them. As they got closer, they walked across the street and entered a small café. I saw they took a seat by the window and started sipping coffee. With my back to the café I talked into my mic, “Whatta you see?” “Not much, one of them has been on the phone since they sat down and they got eyes on the vehicles” our DM replied. My spider senses tingling, I clicked over to TL’s channel. “We need to go exit 2..we got a couple of lookers out here.” “Roger that” our TL Chris replied. Exit 2 was the back alley on the north east side of the building. “Vehicles moving” I said. I slapped our driver on the back ..”Exit 2 bro ASAP.” Without a hitch, we were moving around the building and setting up.

Ten minutes later, our Principal arrived and we were off. As we turned out of the alley I glanced up the street toward to café and spotted the same two guys..both were on their phones eyeballing us the whole way. “Looks like we are popular” I said. Chris looked at my eye direction and glanced back..”Yep” I could see the gears turning in my TL’s head..Chris was smart, ten years my senior, he had been in the PSD game 7 years and before that he worked for the State Dept in Diplomatic Protection and had proved his mettle more than once. “Echo Victor” he spoke into the mic. “Go for Echo”..“I need you to peel off and make a circle of that block, we got two white males outside the café that seem interested in us, give me a sitrep when you get eyes on.” Five minutes passed and our radio came to life. “Able Victor” “Go for Able”..”Yeah they are definitely interested, they had moved to their vehicle and were still on the phone when we rolled by, we got plates.” “Outstanding” “Able out”.

The plates came back on a rental car to no surprise to us. After a little digging and few favors we found our our little visitors were of Albanian descent and had a nasty history of hijacking and kidnapping VIP’s. Since it did not take a lot of foot work to discover these guy’s and their game, we knew they were low level players, but still dangerous all the same. After a team de-briefing on our new Albanian friends, including handing out photos of these idiots, me and Chris sat down with the principal and gave him the great news. Needless to say he got nervous fast, but we had agreed it is better for him to know, after all, wouldn’t you want to know if somebody wanted to kidnap/kill/hijack you?

The following week our Principal had one last social event gala to attend before jumping the pond. Me and Chris agreed the prep and execution of this event had to be flawless due to the increased risk. After looking at the layout for this shin-dig, I concluded that the best thing would be for our principal to cancel due to health issues…he disagreed, so we set out on a plan to get him thru this thing alive. The night of the gala, I personally carried our principals body armor to him and made sure it fit sung. He disliked it because it added 10 lbs to his frame, but I told him “Better fat than dead”. Once we got to the gala, I had never seen so many Millionaires under one roof, the opulence and pomp of this thing rivaled a Roman feast. As Zebra 1 (Principal’s call sign) made his rounds, glad handing the fat cats, I scanned the room, looking for our Albanian friends, to no avail. About 2 hours into this thing, our principal had downed near a gallon of scotch and was nearing shit face status. Chris decided it was time to end this party and called it over the net. We started moving Zebra 1 toward the rear exit to save face. As we turned a corner nearing the exit, I saw the Albanian.
　　
He was dressed in food service garb and had dyed his hair blonde and was wearing glasses..if I had not been close enough to see his eyes, I would not have recognized him. At the moment I made him, he was about 7 feet from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris and Ian cover up Zebra 1 and make a quick turn into a kitchen door. I quickly scanned around looking for #2 Albanian, but did not see him. I covered the 7 feet in 1 big leap, meeting him as hard as I could with my shoulder and we both went to the floor. I knew he had something in his right hand, but could not make it out. The guy was much smaller than me, but was strong and was not giving up easily. I could hear the commotion going on around me, women screaming and people in general panic. After getting his arms controlled, my knee found his kidneys and liver,my goal was to drive my knee through his backbone. My plan was to wait on the Calvary and get this guy restrained...this guy had other plans. Without blinking, this guy pulled a Mike Tyson and started biting at me, snapping like a pit bull, spitting some type of Albanian curse words in between. After about a minute of grab assing on the floor, Ian arrived and started helping me get this moron restrained. I saw Ian pull what looked like a tazer baton out of moron's right hand, and then suddenly a sharp pain shot thru my arm. I looked down to see this idiot had bitten me and was trying to tear flesh by wrenching his head side to side like a wild dog. I was infuriated. I saw red. Without thinking, I came across with a right hook, knocking his front incisors cleanly out and knocking him unconscious.

Ian quickly slapped flex cuffs on him and frisked him, finding a map, a small Seecamp .32 and cheap Chinese made knife. Ian chuckled to himself. ”This dumb ass bloke planned to taze somebody” holding up the 10” baton. "Guess he wanted his cargo intact" As I was getting myself together I glanced down at my arm and winced at the nasty gash. I thought about the stitches and shots I had in my future and that pissed me off more, so I swiftly kicked the unconscious moron in the gut as payback. I happened to look down on the ground and noticed the morons teeth, one of them looked funny, so I looked closer and busted out laughing..there in this dude’s teeth was a piece of my arm flesh. Quickly I picked it up and showed Ian..’Looks like we made it out by the skin in my teeth” I proceeded to Laugh my ass off and almost piss myself as Ian did the same with that big bellowing British Laugh.

(Autors Note: This story is dedicated to Ian and his beautiful Wife and Daughter, Elle and Petra. Ian was killed next to me in a ambush in Iraq in 2008 on Convoy Escort...a Former decorated Royal Marine, he was my best friend and a Professional Soldier. I like to think he is up there right now, still laughing his ass off. Go Easy Bro.)

Why - What - How? The Purpose We Share

The world is a complicated place.  And every few years, it is good to refocus and reorient in the event that distractions have taken place.  And, we must admit, that in the past couple of years, we have all had our share of distractions.

What is our purpose? Everyone needs a cause or belief that motivates them and drives them to action.  It is the why of what we all do.  Everyone who is anyone of substance or consequence needs this purpose, otherwise they will stumble through life by accident, like a cow or..dare I say, a sheep.  This is ours.

We believe that every man and woman is free, but with that freedom also comes a great responsibility of self reliance and individuality.  The freedom to fail or to excel.  No earthly authority or government has that responsibility…only you.  While we would like everyone to excel, we cannot stop those who self-select for failure by anything other than example. Our message may inadvertently reach them, but our message is for those who self-select for excellence.  And, since our path is that of martial pursuits, our purpose is to make you, the excellent, as good and dangerous a fighter as possible.  To steal a cliché phrase from the Army, not be the best you can be, but be the most dangerous warrior you can become.

A part of that responsibility is to prevail in any conflict that comes your way, not only for yourself, but also for those entrusted to you, the loved ones who rely on you for provision and safety. Survival is not enough friends, as one who seeks excellence, you have a responsibility to win decisively. We will make sure you can.

How do we do this?  We do it by giving you access.  We give you access to the basic level training that will keep you alive tonight.  And we give you access to the levels of follow up training at the intermediate and advanced levels that will rival that given to the world’s most dangerous professional operators.  What you do with that is up to you, but you have already chosen to be excellent, so we are not worried about that, but we will never require a military ID nor a police ID, nor even a CCW card. “Police/Military Only” are bad words in our world.

We do it also by giving you access to online and print publications and videos to help you maintain your hard-earned skills.  Additionally, any support equipment that helps your mission is available.  The excellent might have to make do with substandard gear and can make it work, but if better gear is available, it is obtained and added to the skillset.  The excellent use technology, they do not fear it.

Finally, we give you the environment to share with and learn from those of like minds in a safe tribal online community called warriortalk.  Free and open to all who self-select for excellence, it is the foundation of our international tribe, and serves as a basis for exchange of ideas, introduction of new concepts, and networking with tribal bands in each man’s area for sustainment of skills and friendship.

Most people want to see tangible proof, or results.  Why is what we are doing and offering the way to go?  First, you can see that we believe in it.  Any organization that gives away as much free information as we do is clearly driven by the passion of belief.  Second, what we teach you works.  It is not for the self-limiting underachiever, nor for those who live to win a little silver cup by defeating their friends.  But if you are a self-selecting warrior seeking excellence, our system will immediately appeal to you.  Third, we test everything we offer you in both the crucibles of battle field and street, as well as in force on force simulation training.  Unlike other organizations, you don’t have to take our word for anything.  When you realize that you have just evaded a live opponent’s gun muzzle and shot him four times as you drew from street concealment, full speed, you will know what we mean.   

Life is too short, and precious to live by accident, or to survive its dangers by happenstance.  Choose today to excel.  Be the best and most dangerous warrior that God will allow you to be.  Take the first step.  Come and join us.

Finger Off The Trigger - Sacred Cow In Need Of Butchering

 
 
My article of 17 December about Finger On The Trigger generated a great deal of interest, and even some hate mail (imagine that).  Most readers agreed with my perspectives, but many did not.  Of those who did not, their main issues were those of liability, startle effects, and something we will call “interlimb reaction”.  So in this article I want to examine each of those and shed light on the matter. My focus is simple…to help my good guys win their gunfights.  A department’s liability averse policy is not even of marginal interest to me. Neither is whether something is “established” or “accepted”.  Good heavens if we followed that line of thinking we would still be trying to perfect our weaver stances and sight pictures for groups at 3 yards. 

One thing that I saw was a very lock step “all or nothing” world view.  Thus if I said finger on, it was always on, and vise versa.  If gunfighting were so simple, we would not need any training in it would we since everyone would be an expert.  In the circles I move in, it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with another martial adult if one takes such a point of view.  In the real world, things are not black and white, all or nothing, and one size never fits all.

To reiterate.  I am advocating the finger off the trigger as a default position.  In other words, unless there is a better place for it, the finger will be indexed along side the frame of the firearm.  This is where it would normally be when moving or generally covering a danger area.  But when approaching a specific danger point, or challenging or covering a human adversary at gun point (only a fool covers from low ready) the finger should be touching the trigger to reduce your reaction time, and thus increase your safety.

So here we go.

First thing that I did was to contact Shawn Dodson at FirearmsTactical.com.  Shawn has a very thorough collection of Dr. Fackler’s work and since his article was one of the reasons I conducted the research I did, I wanted to go over it again to make sure I did not miss anything.

The article in question was written by Dr. Martin Fackler and Ernest J. Tobin.  It was titled Officer Decision Time In Firing A Handgun, and appeared in the International Wound Ballistics Association magazine – Wound Ballistics Review.  It is a scholarly study on how long it takes the average officer to decide to shoot.  They determined that it takes approximately .677 seconds to react and fire a handgun that is already pointed at a threat with the finger out of the triggerguard.  That is an additional time of .312 seconds over those whose fingers were already on the trigger. Fackler suggested, quite correctly from my perspective, that it was unsafe  to require officer’s fingers to be outside the triggerguard until they had made the decision to shoot.

Now as a trainer of some experience I will be the first to say that it makes the training job very easy to require novice shooters to keep their fingers off the trigger and out of the trigger guard until they are well aligned on the target.  But that is simply a vehicle to get them to a point in their development safely and I know that people do not fight like that outside of the learning environment. The problem is that very few officers ever really leave the range in the sense of their development as gunfighters.  Most are not interested and would be just as happy to show up, be driven through the game of qualifying, and go back to whatever else they were doing once finished.  You will not find the state of the art in the rank and file of police officers thus few will ever leave the basic level of development.

Something else that Fackler points out in some later correspondence relating to his article is that police administrators are not so much concerned about combat competence as they are about liability avoidance.  In fact, police policies are largely created to reduce a department’s liability whether or not that reduction creates more danger for the officer. What invariably happens is that officers, not being fools, will ignore such policies at critical times.  That means that should there be any fallout over a certain event, it is relatively easy for a department to find the officer at fault, transferring the liability to him.  In turn it creates a situation where an officer will say that he has in fact done as the policy demanded…even though he had not.

I saw such a development first hand at a force on force class that I taught a few years ago.  The man in question was an officer at a very modern technique based school.  Looking at how they handled themselves on the range I would have half-expected to see a small raven logo on their badges.  In any case, after a particularly hairy force on force scenario, I queried the officer about what he had seen as far as a sight picture.  He stood tall and reported to everyone that he had seen a perfectly clear and sharp front sight.  It was then that I asked for the airsoft pistol he was using.  It was one of mine and had no sights on it at all.  One can imagine what sorts of inaccuracies such an institutionally forced thought process creates.      

Now the problem may be limited to the police world, but since so many firearms instructors either come from the police world, or are affected in training by it, what the cops do trickles down, for good or for ill, to the private citizen CCW crowd. Since so few private citizens actually get involved in gun battles, and since few police officers talk openly about their experiences (can’t tell internal affairs one thing and the students in gun class something else) these perspectives get passed along.    

The startle response is another matter. 

When we are startled will our hands clench?  Will our trigger fingers automatically and reflexively contract? That has not been my experience. Several times in the old days other officers fired their weapons around me and the shots did in fact startle me, but my hands did not register the sort of reaction the gun gurus say we will have.  Two events were notable.  One a flash bang thrown into a room hit an obstruction and bounced right back at our feet.  Very exciting but no involuntary clenching.  Another time an officer fired a shotgun slightly to my right side rear at an approaching pit bull dog.  No involuntary anything took place.

Finally, I want to discuss the issue of “interlimb reaction”.  This is another thing that inexperienced gun trainers talk about for hours.  They heard it somewhere, read it somewhere, and accept is a fact of life.  The issue was first presented at an IALEFI  conference.  You can guess what happened next as gun writers and inexperienced trainers began parroting the theory. The original piece had to do with the human reaction to a sudden loss of balance and not evident anywhere else.  It has nothing to do with exertion as a matter of fact.  At a recent class we had advanced students hold a Glock 17 on a target, finger on the trigger and slack taken out while they did very rigorous kettle bell snatches with a 24kg KB.  No unintentional shots were fired due to so called interlimb reactions.

I suggest that students of the art look at these so-called theories for themselves and test them.  Open your minds and your eyes.  It is far better to kill a sacred cow, than it is to worship one.

In The Land Of The Blind, The One Eyed Man Is King - Or You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

 
All combat systems, from archery to jujitsu, need to be blooded and tested if they are to true fighting systems rather than sports. The farther away from the combat experience a martial system becomes, the more stylized and artificial it becomes.  Its advocates will relate how the “founder” did it way back during the war, although their own experience on the matter is based on third or fourth hand knowledge. 

The reader may not immediately see a problem with this. After all, not everyone can be a soldier or a cop, or even a street fighter.  Moreover, many cops and soldiers never actually get combat experience, even though they may train for it.  Those that do get it, many don’t really know why they prevailed, and of those that do know, few feel compelled to teach others how to do so.

Something else that happens is that a trainer may have had a number of contacts, but their scope and nature was limited to a particular environment.  For example, consider the SWAT shooter that disdains all reactive point shooting because during his time in service, he never shot on the move, point shot, or ever gave his adversaries a chance to shoot first.  The casual reader might say, “Wow…what a gunfighter”. The reality however is that although that man may be a fine tactician, and a great marksman,  in the SWAT context, his fights reflect only the SWAT and Spec Ops experience.  And such experience is not applicable to the civilian CCW lone operator, or unsupported operator.

A third phenomenon affecting the training world comes from the term – L.C.D. That refers to “Lowest Common Denominator”.  The LCD is a term thrown around in police training, and in some military circles when large numbers of recruits must be qualified and brought up to a minimum performance standard. There will be some recruits that shine in that environment, but most will not.  The Drill Instructor is then faced with either teaching those that shine and flunking the rest, incurring the ire of his commander, or teaching to the minimum standard, checking off the boxes, and moving on to the next class.  Which option do you think the career-seeker, or position protecting instructor will choose?

And so what happens is either a gradual diluting of training material to meet the low capabilities of the LCD, a very distant relationship to the chaos of fighting, or a very unrealistic method of training that is only applicable in very one-sided confrontations. 

To present an analogy, imagine a boxing school that never allows the students to do anything more than practicing moves in front of a mirror or hitting a heavy bag.  The students look great, and boy they sure can make that bag sound off, but the entire notion of doing it outside in the parking lot on someone’s head is totally foreign.  Or better yet, a swim coach that was a great Olympic swimmer telling his students that all they really need to do is want to win the race and that their attitude will get them through as they practice their swimming strokes on specially prepared swimming benches that seek to replicate water. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?  But that is exactly the state of modern American gun training.  They are boxers that don’t box and swimmers that don’t get wet.

Merely saying that makes the speaker a hated individual in those groups as they realize that their emperor is in fact buck naked.

Horrors!

 

The worshippers of the emperor will literally hate you for that and do what they can to destroy you since the message cannot be destroyed.

Does that need fixing, and if so, how do we fix that?

To answer the first question, yes it does.  It does if the objective is to prepare fighters to fight.  If you are a person that carries a weapon for self defense, you are self-selected as a fighter. 

You can call yourself something else if you wish, but when you have to draw that blaster to save yourself, you are fighting. And as such, the vast majority of gun training in the USA will not prepare you fully to prevail in a gun fight.

 

An unprepared person will only win by happenstance.  We certainly want more than that.

How to fix this then, and train properly? Most gun training today entails learning to shoot cardboard or steel targets on a measured range, often under time limits.  Very impressive when done correctly, but like the hopeful boxer and the heavy bag, there are things missing.

1).  There is no initial reaction to what the “target” is doing.  In a CCW street fight the bad guy will get to start things.  Think of it…if you know a gunfight is about to start, you would not be there.  You would leave if you could. 

And while there are “proactive events” where the good guy sees something beginning to unfold and is able to stop it, it is usually not as clear as that. 

 

Good guys will usually wait until they are 100% sure of what is happening because the penalty for a mistake here is very costly.  And in that built-in hesitation he allows the event, more often than not, to turn into a reactive one.

2). The target does not try to shoot or stab the good guy. The target stands there…waiting politely to get shot.  In a street confrontation the “target” will try to shoot you, or close in to smash, cut, or stab you.

3). Range training is static and dead training.  The martial arts people would call it “dead patterns”. 

It is all very predictable, and no matter how much shooters work to make shooting dynamic, it doesn’t change at all in the end.

Compare that to a gunfight.  Thanks to today’s technology, anyone can bring up YouTube, or Google videos and type in gunfights, or gang shootings, or police videos or whatever and get a view into that world…into what really happens. 

 

Here is what you see. You see few shooting stances and plenty of dynamic movement.  You see few perfect sight pictures and lots of point shooting.  You see movement…or guys getting shot when they stand still.  In short, you see all the things that cannot be “safely” done on the classic American shooting range. So what that should tell the reader is that either those videos of gunfights do not represent real gunfights, or that the range training they are doing does not represent preparation for a gunfight. 

Anyone care to bet which is the right answer?

Fixing the problem requires some form of training that allows for a dynamic representation of the gunfight.  Fight trainees need a method that allows for non-cooperative opponents, that presents a penalty for making a tactical mistake, and allows extremely dynamic moving and shooting. Their training environment needs to accept chaos and the techniques need to thrive in that chaos and allow for things going wrong and for mistakes being made and learned from.  As well, it needs to be affordable, unrestricted, and widely available.

The form of training that supports what we need is simple.  It is called force on force and has been used conceptually in one form or another since the duelists and shootists of the previous two centuries shot at their training partners with wax and wooden bullets. Flash forward a few years and we see the US Military’s MILES gear and the police world’s Simmunitions.  Both of those incidentally, are quiet expensive and impractical.  MILES loses on the affordability and availability areas because it is not available for every system out there and because it is expensive.  On an additional point, it does not hurt.  Simmunitions is closer but owing to the company’s anti-civilian stance and onerous safety policies, it loses out on all points.  Even police agencies that had been using simmunitions have dropped in favor of other methods.

Now to airsoft.  For the first time, dynamic, affordable and unrestricted force on force training is available to the common civilian.  No need to show a badge, or a police purchase order.  All you need is a credit card.  Airsoft is affordable.  An airsoft gun, with face mask, and accessories and pellets will run you about the price of a Simmunitions conversion kit…maybe $200.  Get two of them and a training partner and in an afternoon you will know more about staying alive in a gunfight than the stodgy old range instructor telling you to “tighten them groups boy”.

Of course, this concept will be attacked by those who either do not understand it, or worse yet, do understand it but fear it.  Imagine the guy running a No-Sparring boxing school suddenly realizing that there are people outside in the parking lot throwing punches at each other.  Or the swimming coach we spoke about, seeing all his students in class soaking wet from a few laps in the pool.  They have a choice. They can adopt the new standard, or rail against it.  Those that can adopt it do, and we see more and more force on force being done today.  Heck, even Gunsite, the stodgiest of the stodgy, is now using Airsoft in some of its training evolutions.  But there are those that won’t adopt it because they do not know the first thing about personal combat and would not do well if they suddenly had to get up off their lazyboy much less off the X.  And thus the anti-force on force rhetoric gets thrown around as they settle their posteriors into a new more comfy stop on their recliners. But, the cat is out of the bag and students of the gun everywhere are changing the way they train.  You can too.

On the range, there is an old phrase, often attributed to Bill Jordan (a man who did know about killing and did his fair share), “Speed is fine, but accuracy is final”.  I think we can add a second line to that which we take from the old sword masters – “In Ferro Veritas”, or loosely translated, “when swords clash, we will know the truth”. 

 

Counter Fractricide: How NOT To Shoot Good Guys

How NOT To Shoot A Good Guy

A few months ago I wrote a piece on “How NOT To Get Shot By The Police”.  It dealt with the dynamics of an after-action meeting with responding officers, focusing on what the CCW operator should do to not be mis-identified as a bad guy.  

In this article I want to explore the other side of the coin.  How a CCW Operator or a responding Police Officer can avoid shooting a good guy.

My understanding is that the police mistakenly shoot one of their own almost once every year.  There are no statistics kept on good guy on good guy encounters involving CCW personnel.  I hope that this piece not only saves some lives, but also helps the CCW operator and Police Officer make sound tactical  decisions.

First I think we need to establish some fundamental truths for our day and age.  The police perspective comes from the street.  The police are good guys and have good intentions when they respond to a call of a crime in progress. 

They have no way of really telling the good guy from the bad guy before they arrive and oftentimes, not even then.  Sometimes it may be obvious, such as a man in a mask shooting at school children, but other times it is not so clear.

They come at the problem with the view that everyone is considered a threat until proven otherwise.  This thinking comes from prior tactical experience ranging from studies on the “Princess Gate” operation in London, when the SAS stormed the Iranian embassy to rescue hostages.  Some of the terrorists mixed themselves in with the hostages in the hopes of avoiding capture. Some of the women hostages, suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” actually tried to shield the terrorist from the SAS. The point of this is to understand the mindset of the police as they arrive on scene. Until otherwise established, everyone is a suspect.  It may not be “fair” but it is reality.

In some agencies, in regions where the existence of the “armed civilian” does not exist, the danger of good guy on good guy shootings is even greater.  The attitude of “anyone with a gun and not in uniform is a bad guy” is pervasive.  Improper training and agency attitude often supports that view.

The CCW operator, or Off Duty Officer have generally established procedures as well in that they generally try to avoid direct involvement and tend to reach for the cell phone rather than the pistol when they see something taking place.  Unless the event involves them being victimized directly, or is such a horrible incident that it offends the human senses, staying out of it is a wise course of action.  But in those two situations, where they choose to get involved, we see the danger of being misidentified as a bad guy.

Here is a story to illustrate some points.  A month or so after the Los Angeles riots, I was working a surveillance team waiting for some bank robbers to show up. We had been sitting in position for several hours and I needed to stretch the legs.  I was parked in an alley, waiting for the "eye" to tell me the bad guys had arrived on scene. I had been sitting for a while and my outer shirt rode up over my pistol. When I got out of the vehicle, someone must have seen the pistol and called the police. I got back into the car and waited for the word about our bad guys.

About 20 minutes after that, an LAPD unit screeched into the alley, both doors on the police car flung open and two officers pointed guns at me from about ten yards away.

I had a sawed off shotgun on my lap, and a couple of handguns on my belt. What a dilemma...specially since this was taking place right after what must have been the most violent time in L.A.'s recent history.

Here is what I did. I slowly stuck both hands out of the car window slowly...slowly pushed my head out after wards and yelled at them - I AM A GOOD GUY...DON'T SHOOT. Then I waited.  They seemed to get that as they looked at each other for a moment. They walked up, still pointed in, and opened my door.  They ordered me to get out without lowering my hands. At that point I knew we were cool...as they saw the radio, the police vest, the suspect sheet, etc. Sure they verified, but I was not in danger of getting shot anymore. 

My actions created doubt about whether I was a bad guy, as they were assuming I was. I can immediately recall at least a dozen times when I had similar experiences working plain clothes surveillance or UC work.

So how can you tell what you have?  How can you tell when there are more armed good guys than ever before…where the concern over terrorism has made many police administrators realize that the reality is that there will be armed good guys on scene that they do not know about?  Quite truthfully, the first responder will probably be an armed good guy, private citizen or off duty cop, that just happened to be there when the shooting began.

 

While everyone wants to shoot the bad guy, nobody wants to shoot a good guy. Shooting a good guy is fratricide, whether he is wearing your “uniform” or not. Some will invariably say they have no time for such things and will shoot first leaving the questions for later.  Well, if that is you don’t forget that you may easily be the one in another good guy’s sights.  Wouldn’t you want him to have considered this?

 

Since the vast majority of “blue on blue” fratricide events occur as a result of misidentification, we need to examine some ways to address the problem.  Here are some suggestions for the good guy to consider:

 

1).  Look at the “subject’s” appearance. At the Trolley Square Mall shooting..... The police were on scene BEFORE the fight was over, and had to evaluate the off-duty cop before linking up with him; His physical movements, weapons handling, use of cover and clean cut hair cut sent a strong message to the first uniform on scene that this might not be the bad guy. Does the subject of your attention look like he is trained?  Does he dress and look like a “good guy”. Certainly not all good guys look the part, and that is why we have additional points of reference.

 

2).  Look at what is he armed with?  Is it a modern high quality weapon, or is it some cheap firearm.  The police would not use a Tech 9, nor an SKS, nor even a shiny revolver today. Black modern pistols and black modern rifles are quite common however.  There is even an agency issuing Arsenal AKs in 5.56!

 

3).  Look at his actions. Obviously, if they point guns at you, or begin to, all bets are off and you stop them from doing that.  But that will not always be the case.  In video of the Mumbai murders, the terrorists were very relaxed.  They were not worried about being shot and were doing all the shooting themselves.  Contrast that with the movements of the victims and Indian police responders, who were running and making use of cover. In other mass shooting events, the bad guys were described as moving casually with their weapons.

 

One member at my forum relates how the Israelis found it relatively easy to determine bad guy from good guy with only a few seconds of observation based on actions.

He writes: "In the words of one army responder: ‘There were armed people shooting at women and children, and there were armed people who were not. I shot those in the first group. No civilian responder was the victim of friendly fire, despite the fact that none of us knew each other and none of us was in uniform.’ "

 

If you choose to get involved in an incident as CCW Operator, or Off Duty Officer, or if you are sent as a Uniformed Officer to a call involving gunfire, consider these three elements before making your deadly force decision. If you have time to analyze what is going on, you also have time to evaluate what you see before you. Everyone wants to shoot the bad guy, but nobody wants to shoot a good guy.     

The Beauty Of Simplicity

I recall a student I had many years ago. He was a kenjutsu aficionado. Kenjutsu, for those who missed that day, is the old martial version of samurai swordsmanship. In any case, after training he remarked on the similarity in concept of what I was teaching him and his sword studies.

I'd never seen a sword form so I asked him to show me. Immediately he grabbed up a katana and demonstrated. He drew the sword, cut once and twice and sheathed. That was it.

Astounded at the brevity, I asked him about it. He remarked that simplicity had a beauty and sophistication all its own. The old fighters did not need many complex methods, just a very few that they could pull off any time, any place and with quickness and accuracy.

Flash forward a few years to a conversation I had with a Tier One staff member. He'd worked in the middle east in a PSD for many years. He related about the time when he worked with Gurkhas. Always a bladesman, he asked one of the high ranking Gurkha fighters about his kukri, and about how one day, when there was time, he'd like to learn about their system of combat.

"There is time now Sahib", related the Gurkha. "Please...pick up Kukri...raise it up...up". Our staff member di as he was instructed and raised the sharpened Nepali machete over his head.

"Very good sahib...now bring down fast...very fast. Good....now do it again". Our man raised and brought down the Kukri in a rapid two shot chopping action as he was instructed. "Very good sahib...now you are finished...you move to the next enemy".

Simple actions that can be done instantly without a great deal of planning, positioning, or forethought is what warriors have sought from the days of the samurai to the modern day gurkha. Collect a series of simple methods like this, gathered around a common theme or concept, and you create a system. Use that system with a variety of weapons and you create a martial art. Its not hard.....as long as you keep it simple.

But today, many seem to want to eschew simplicity because it is, well, too simple. Too simple to be tactical, or so says the subtitle in one of our DVDs.

Compare that theme to that of other rifle-based DVDs where the methods are equipment focused, diagnostic dependant, and force positions that do not allow for freedom of movement. Compare that theme to a school that wants to teach seven methods for doing a reload....count them "SEVEN". This under the guise of being thorough and giving the student choices.

Well, not to offend, but the student is there because he ostensibly does not know what the instructor does. He is there not only to learn what the instructor knows, but to learn why the instructor thinks what he is doing is better. He wants the how and the why.

An instructor that is simply a catalog of what everyone else is doing is simply an opportunist that has failed to create his own system. And one may ask, "what can he teach me that a thousand others cannot?" In a word....catalog instructors teach "nothing".

A viable system must be simple. It must be simple for a number of reasons.

One, we have a finite time to train. A workable system that can be learned in a weekend is better than one that takes two years.

Two, since we have a finite time to train a system that can be maintained with a couple of hours work per week is better than one that requires a couple of hours per day.

Three, the system must be applicable under all conditions. Thus a system that is fantastic when moving forward, or standing still, but not so good when moving sideways is less desirable than a system of movement that is equally useful to all possible angles.

Four, the system must be stress proof. It must be able to function under the most stressful situations. One reason we have abandoned many of the gun game based, albeit faster and more clever gunhandling methods, is simply because they are not repeatable under physical duress. Same goes for the draw. How many draws are there? One.

In that simplicity there must be some "adaptability" as well. We are not suggesting the creation of modern technique androids that walk around in weaver stances. Rather within the simplicity of execution, there can be adaptability to what the fight brings you.

Thus, for example, your draw is your draw, whether sprinting off the X, hanging one handed from a rope ladder, or punching a man in the face. Your "displacement" off the X is the same whether standing by for the draw in FOF, or walking out of a Starbucks with a latte in your hand....and equally to all points on the compass.

So simple that you have done it tens of thousands of times, the same way, over and over and over until your active mind has disconnected from the process and the entire execution becomes as natural as breathing. When the test comes to you it will not be on a training ground with you ready to go, it will be when you have your head firmly planted in your rectum as you walk out of the store with your cell phone up to your face carrying a bag of groceries in the other and you look up to see a gun moving your way. There will be no time to decide which sort of move you will do, if you will move right or left or if you will do this or that drill.

You will either do it, or you will not.

Execution without active thought about "how to execute", requires mindless understanding of simplicity of methodology - and while some may want to argue the point, you will not have this if your system has complexity and diagnosis instead of simplicity.

If your method does not allow for what I depicted above, regardless of where it came from or who invented it - delete it and begin again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________________

Gabe Suarez

Warrior Talk Blog
Tactical Gear For The Civilian Fighter
Training For The Martial Civilian

Making you dangerous to your enemies since 1995

High Risk Operator - Rural Patrolling

 

“Just what is this business of Patrolling and why should I as a regular guy want to learn about it?”  Was a question posed to me the other day. Well lets examine the ‘what it is’ first.  Patrol(ling)  as defined in my Webster’s dictionary states as follows.

 

A) the action of traversing a district or beat or of going the rounds along a chain of guards for observation or maintenance of security.

 

B) the person(s) performing such action.

 

C) a unit of persons or vehicles employed for reconnaissance, security, or combat.’

   

The military description places it into the two distinct categories  of ’combat’ and ’reconnaissance’ patrolling, with a clear task or purpose for the mission . Combat patrols are further defined as raid, ambush, and security patrols. Which may be conducted in close proximity to a main party or facility for the purpose of defense ( the security patrol) or they may be sent deep behind enemy lines with the  intent of  attacking and/or harassing the enemy.

 

Reconnaissance patrols are generally tasked with the gathering and confirming of information and are dispatched with the intent of avoiding direct contacts with an enemy. The information sought can very from determining the size, activity , or location of an enemy or tracking their movement .It may be tasked with identifying a route for movement through an  area , such as locating a place to conduct a river crossing or possibly establish a secure  perimeter to base operations from. The reconnaissance patrol may be utilized to establish contact with  friendly forces or sister units to report intentions, status, locations, etc.

   

Military patrols may be very small entities such as a fire team, or they may be conducted at squad or platoon strength, and likely have subordinate teams with in the structure. The overriding conditions of their existence and effectiveness at the task at hand must allow them to operate in an independent manor, relying on its self for immediate security, maintenance, navigation,  and its ability to perform the operational orders that it is tasked with , such as breaching obstacles, securing of prisoners, the seizing of objectives, documenting intelligence, photographing/mapping terrain, etc.

   

The civilian police world incorporates  patrolling into a variety of circumstances, some similar and some less so than the military application in a infantry context.  Again we can identify a task or objective as the governing factor determining the methods utilized, as well as size, capabilities, and expectations of the patrol. The ‘street’ officer may be assigned with a general ’security’ task such as simply responding to any calls for service in a particular precinct or jurisdiction, maintain  presence in an area for the purpose of identifying and deterring  crimes, or tasked with a more specific purpose such as enforcing traffic laws in a congested area and/or conducting collision investigations as they occur.  The ’security’ application of patrolling is applied in the protection of VIPs in both public and private sector. Prisons and correctional institutions conduct such activities outside the perimeters of the facility as well as with in the walls, layering security patrols on foot,  in vehicles, and in fixed location such as control pods and towers for the purpose of maintaining order and custody with in the facility.

 

 

Special operations with in the police world call for more specific applications of patrolling with  certain objectives to achieve.   I have conducted patrolling operations tasked with the purpose of  gathering information, collection of intelligence, observing and surveillance of locations for evidence of criminal activity ,etc. Having conducted counter narcotic interdiction/eradication operations with multi-agency/jurisdiction task forces,  many of these activities focused on gathering information for the purpose of securing warrants by means of placing video cameras and audio recording devices, photographing  people, places, vehicles, and establishing the presence of trafficking and manufacturing of drugs.  These  details often incorporated support elements  such as forensic technicians, aviation support, the use of crime informants or undercover personnel. 

 

We always performed reconnaissance patrols  prior to the service of arrest/search warrants for the detailed planning of those operations, maintaining real time current information on the  location and its inhabitants, and to maintain ‘eyes on’ surveillance of persons of interest to the legal system. At times, providing protection of persons/places resulted in the tasking of similar patrols to survey the ‘arena‘ ahead of time.  The circumstances that I have conducted such details have varied from camo fatigues and painted faces laying in a creek bed behind a spotting scope and note pad, too t-shirt and shorts sitting in the beer garden of a busy pub taking photos of  ’the band’ and  certain persons of interest that might be conducting business in the area as well, or on several occasions  sitting in a  U haul trailer positioned in a parking lot all night, taking shifts starring through a fish eye lens with some other lucky fellow. The nature of these type operations were similar  to the ‘reconnaissance’ category found in the military circles…covertly maneuver to a location, occupy a ‘hide’, gather Intel, with draw undetected.

 

Police Patrol operations at times share  attributes with the ambush/raid flavor of military patrolling, but having much different rules of engagement. My involvement in such has  included fugitive/inmate recovery teams, conducting activities traditionally referred to as ‘man hunts’ for  individuals or groups that have taken flight to avoid prosecution or escaped containment of an agency or venue having custody over them.  These patrols usually take on a more aggressive pace, conducting road blocks, check points, and tracking operations with the intent of capture . Similar patrols may conduct searches for missing and/or abducted persons, locating a downed aircraft, all using movement techniques designed to search and contact.

   

Police patrolling may employ  a couple of detectives, a dozen members of a special response team, or consist of multiple agencies with various specific tasks assigned to them numbering hundreds.  As with the military unit, the activity revolves around a specific task or purpose, (although sometimes with secondary mission considerations),  that the ‘patrol’ carries out with the purpose of achieving the  objective or task at hand.

   

 

Now that we have an example of what traditional ‘patrolling’ activities may entail, lets identify why the civilian operator should study them and incorporate them into the ‘tool box’. First though it is important to establish where this fits into our training path.  Mission number one needs to focus on individual operator skills- your shooting disciplines, hand to hand skills, emergency  medical knowledge, vehicle operation,  an understanding of how a single operator might negotiate a building or structure, etc.. We move from there into our multi-operator training as Suarez International provides via our HRO Team Tactics 1 & 2, CQB, etc. The application of everything we developed as an individual gets performed in groups, thus allowing larger and more complex tasks to be performed in a safe,  efficient manor as a group. The formation of  family members, neighbors, friends ,etc. into a functioning unit, where several operators actions are used to compliment each others efforts for a greater task  is critical. The old adage of two working together can do more than ten working alone reigns true.

   

Based on the above descriptions of patrolling, we can describe the action as the application of moving about our area of operations in a overt/covert  manor, using persons arranged in a tactical formation to observe  people, places, and events, for the various purposes of learning about them, assessing their capabilities, equipment, indentations, sometimes contacting them, avoiding them at other times, possibly inflicting our will upon them, and on occasions attempting  to influence, effect, or eliminate situations favorable to allow others to inflict there will on us. It is the activity that allows us to be the ’king of the hill’ so to speak, and function in our given environment. It allows us to maintain control over areas deemed ours and it also allows us to explore areas that may belong to others.

 

Patrolling skills are necessary so that you,  those you are responsible for, or have common interests with, can conduct activities to include securing properties ,locations, buildings, etc. from threats in the event of societal breakdown (think: your neighborhood watch on steroids) or if your business requires you frequent more dangerous locations around the globe, good patrolling skills allow for a element of safety while you  travel! Do any of you live in one of the rural counties of this nation that have been advised that there isn’t enough capital left in the budget to provide for law enforcement services….who watches the ranch then folks? The ability to maneuver and negotiate our way around the planet in small groups is critical when the need to escape/evade/relocate  from an area that has become untenable, sometimes requiring flight on foot  and maintaining safety in your numbers. The understanding of how to conduct counter surveillance on a foe that may be targeting you and yours for abduction, assault, or theft,  is most important in this day and age. Wouldn’t it be desirable to be able to deploy a patrol to discover the whereabouts and perform the rescue of a lost or abducted family member or friend in times of trouble.  What if you need to reach a downed comrade in an emergency. Many times in our nations history  (as well as most others) and seemingly with a greater frequency, we find ourselves left ‘on our own’ to provide for the safety of our family and communities for varying durations and in different scenarios, as our elected officials fail to respond in a timely manor or are under equipped to deal with overwhelming events.

   

 

As civilian operators,  responsible citizens, prepared  families/communities , guerilla fighters, what ever  banner you rally under- a knowledge of and application of patrolling should be a familiar topic  in your bag of tricks. It must include ambush/counter ambush techniques, the understanding of conducting deliberate raids or assaults…do you know how to assemble your team into a line, file, or wedge and take the fight to the enemy ? How bout  immediate action and contact drills to break the enemies attacks?  Tracking/counter tracking operations….are you being followed? Do you have the skills to button hook your trail and conduct a hasty ambush? Traveling techniques, small unit formations, security halts,  proper crossing and negotiation of various terrain, identifying bottle necks, fatal funnels, and other danger areas. Can you move your group safely up a ridge or conduct a river crossing?  Is enemy contact likely? Do you understand how to move your team with traveling or bounding over watches through an open area? Can you keep the group together and on course in the thick timber?  Can you establish a tight 360 degree perimeter for the night and allow every other member arranged like the spokes of a wheel to get some much needed rest, yet retain the ability to instantly and silently kick them to alertness in the event of compromise or danger? These things performed much easier having an understanding of how to do them and prior practice at it.

 

General navigation skills are a must. Can you read a topographical map and orient your self in the big scheme of things. Can you position yourself using terrain association and  triangulation? How about the use of satellite navigation technology?  I am of the opinion that it is a good thing to know where you are, how to get where you need to be, and  return to where you came from, at all times! The understanding of how to organize, plan, and conduct  patrol operations in varying terrains, environments, and conditions is critical. The knowledge required for establishing patrol bases, hides,  security/ defensive perimeters in both urban and rural environments is important . If you are being watched, would you want to know about it and have the ability to loose your tail and conduct counter surveillance?  All very important stuff for the civilian operator to know in our uncertain world! Remember the one person you can always rely on is you, and in hard times it is likely others will look to you as well. Will you be able to lead them? Be as reliable as you can.

The safety of your ‘team‘, particularly over protracted events,   boils down to your ability as a group to be able to shoot, move, and communicate. Those three things are the foundation.  The study and application of patrolling is the method in which you maintain that safety in both the reactive and proactive side of events while on the move or ‘in camp‘. If you don’t possess the skills to advance to the fight, pick the fight, avoid the fight altogether, or flee from the fight  if it found you- I submit you are not as combat effective as you ought to be and its time to develop these skills. Lots of material in this area of study will be available  from Suarez International and its many talented instructors in the very near future. I encourage you to take advantage of these opportunities to become as complete of a warrior as you can be. ….your life and other’s lives just might depend on it.

Eric W. Pfleger

Staff Instructor

Suarez International

 

INFO ON OUR HIGH RISK OPERATOR COURSES

The Case For Two Guns

One thing that I have always tried to do is keep an open mind to new ideas that cross my desk.  Rather than dismiss things with a dictatorial wave of the hand, I have taken a “let’s test it and see” approach.  One of the recent things, as one example, has been the addition of the Trijicon RMR Red Dot sight onto a pistol. Another has been our focus on the Kalashnikov Rifle and its subsequent acceptance on the US Market. And yet another has been the ambidextrous deployment of rifles or pistols in our classes.

It was with that attitude that I considered the issue of carrying two pistols.  The idea is not new by any stretch, but it came up recently during a discussion with SI Staffer Roger Phillips on the ambidextrous pistol training we were working on. Earlier, I had seen the concept at a Zero To Five Feet class.  A student, "Frankdude72", wore two AIWB Glocks during the force on force work and did quite well. 

Truly, to develop ambidextrous capability with a handgun involves the draw as well as all the manipulations normally trained in class.  And to do that of course, requires a second holster.

I walked downstairs to the warehouse and grabbed up one of our Archangel holsters for a Glock 17, but in left hand configuration.  I have been carrying two Glocks this way for a couple of weeks, but before I tell you what I think, I want to put out some perspective on the matter…historical perspective.

Any look at our history of the Old West will quickly reveal the two gun concept was alive and well.  Men like Hardin, Hickok, and others made it a habit of carrying two guns on a daily basis.  This was not so much for using them simultaneously, but rather subsequent to one another.

Massad Ayoob wrote on this back in 2002 for Guns Magazine. He quoted John Wesley Hardin’s biographer Nordyke several time relating how Hardin made it a habit to carry two revolvers with him and that he always regretted it when he did not.

He outlined some very reasonable reasons for doing so, specifically; When the First Gun Fails, When You Must Arm a Companion, When A Second Gun is More Accessible, When Your Primary Gun is Empty. While I may not agree with Mas on many things, it is hard to disagree with this.

Let’s examine the concept from a modern perspective -

As A Back Up Gun – It is very common to carry two pistols in the law enforcement world.  The difference is primarily one of presumed mission.  While we are looking at this as two primaries, the backup gun concept is of an additional weapon carried as a back up in the event the primary is lost, or inoperable. The interesting thing is that the proposed mission does not change the use as a backup weapon, but it still allows for as quick an access as the primary weapon.  

When Your Companion is Unarmed – I recall one evening when a number of us ran out of the station to apprehend a drive by shooting suspect.  The officer that got in the car with me forgot his pistol in the jail lockbox.  While all I could offer him was a J-Frame revolver, he was now an additional shooter rather than just a witness.

When The Other Gun is More Accessible – This is an area where many guys shrug and wonder what we are talking about.  Yet the first time they do one of our classes, where we will not be standing in perfect weavers or isosceles shooting at a piece of paper, but rather doing some very dynamic shooting on the move from zero to ten feet, often while involved in a hand to hand situation, the notion of not having access to the primary becomes quite clear.

When Your Primary Gun is Inoperative – Anything man-made can fail, and if not, it will invariably run out of ammo.  We have proven that an immediate action unrelated to any weapon diagnosis is faster than any weapon manipulation.  The concept is widely accepted in rifle schools, where an operator will transition to the pistol if the rifle fails and the threat is inside pistol ranges.  No difference here really.  If the primary pistol fails, go to the second pistol immediately.  Much faster than any reload or any malfunction fix.

Some counters to the idea of carrying two pistols might be the weight.  I weighed the “two spare magazines” that most guys carry on their support side. In my case it was two Glock 17 magazines fully loaded.   Together they weigh 1 pound 4 ounces.  The fully loaded Glock 17 weighed in at 2 pounds exactly.  So you are adding 12 ounces.  Is that a big deal?  It wasn’t to me.

Another issue might be problems with concealment. I think that if your daily attire will keep one handgun hidden, it will provide you enough room to conceal a second one as well.  This will be an individual matter.

My findings after working this way for a time –

I carried a second Glock 17, in the Appendix IWB position, to the left of the belt buckle, for left handed use. The slightly oversized shirts I wear offered ample concealment and I had no issues with keeping the guns hidden.  I am what I consider physically fit so there is plenty of room in the mid section to emplace the pistol IWB, but for those that are still working on the six-pack, the same can be done OWB (outside the waistband).

It took a few days for the left side of the body to mirror the skills on the right side but it was not much of a problem verifying that the one side will teach the other.  I carried empty chamber for the first few days until the left hand got accustomed to doing things right.  Now it is not much of an issue…right hand or left hand.

Setting up truly ambidextrous deployment opens up all manner of shooting, moving and combative possibilities for the operator. 

This may not be for everyone, but like appendix carry, red dot sights, and point shooting, those with an open mind should give it consideration. 

AFTER-ACTION DISCOURSE - WHAT TO SAY TO THE COPS

One of the things that is incessantly being discussed in the CCW/LEO community is the after-event-discourse. In other words, what do you say...or not, after you have whacked an attacker. As expected, the variety of advice is as different as people's choices in guns and ammo. A prevailing attitude is to simply shut up and say nothing under any circumstances. I disagree and here is why -

I have been in more than a few of these and also investigated quite a few of these. I noted some trends and tried to use those trends to my benefits when it was my turn at the plate.

First is the fact that the bad guys will not be "keeping quiet". They will be telling the cops you pulled your gun on them, perhaps create some appearance of racism if they can exploit it, and generally make it look like you are the over-reacting, racist, bad guy. What happened may not be obvious to the cops who come out to investigate...specially if the majority of witnesses are against you.

So picture this scene. Two guys have been, as we used to say, "eye f*cking you", and followed you for some time, maybe yelling threatening stuff at you. While you did your best to avoid the issue, you were unsuccessful in getting away and they pressed the confrontation, attacking you with sufficient force to justify a gun solution.

You shoot one of them, maybe wounding him - maybe killing him, and the other one runs off into the night. You saw the first man drop his pistol in a clump of ivy and the other man throw his knife on a rooftop as he ran away.

You immediately call 911 and give a very cryptic account of what happened..."there has been a shooting...I'm the victim...send help".

In the meantime, one of the assailants...the one who got away, is also calling. His story is a little different. According to him you called them "Dirty Ghetto Norwegians", and pulled your gun on them, shooting his buddy. As far as the police know...they got two calls. One a cryptic call, from someone who seemed to be concealing something, and another reporting what amounts to a racial hate crime by a right wing Nazi.

They arrive on scene and after controlling the event, ask you what happened. What you do now will have a bearing on the rest of your life.

The guys who advocate saying nothing will not be able to point to the two weapons which were discarded...and which will disappear as soon as the scene is cleared. The police may not even look for them since no one told them they were in existence. No one will tell them you are a good guy who was a victim of an attempted robbery, as the ONLY info paints you as some KKK wannabe.

Sure...you'll have a lawyer...but all of the evidence the police may have collected will no longer be available, and the investigation will not have been an even and equal one, but rather one where you alone are the suspect.

See the point?? I know a man who did just that...kept his mouth shut because of what a shooting instructor advised him to do and he spent several weeks in jail, had two criminal trials, and is now facing a civil suit from one of his attackers.

Is it hard to control your mouth? Yes it is. But no harder than to control your trigger finger, your desire to drink to excess, or to control the vertical displacement of your zipper. On self control, it is a learned thing and must be practiced daily.  Maybe self control is too hard for the modern, self-indulgent, metro-sexual male, but as the Nike commercial said....Just Do It.

It, like many other things, can be trained and developed. If you ignore it, it will never be developed.

Think in these terms...you train gun handling and shooting skills to make them reflexive in the most stressful event someone is ever likely to face....and we tend to do fine. The guys who never train...thinking they will "rise to the occasion" invariably fail. To say, "I will simply say nothing", is in that same line of thinking is it not?

What I have done, with success, is this. I give a very limited statement, focusing on the actions of the bad guys, and them excuse myself from any further questions until my mouthpiece...I mean, attorney, arrives.
Anything I say focuses on what the bad guy(s) have done and not on what I may have done. Something like this -

"Officer. I am glad you are here. Thank God." 

"I am a good guy. I was minding my own business on my way home when those two guys attacked me."

"The one in the blue shirt had a knife. He threw it up there on the roof as he ran away. There should be some blood on it from my arm when I blocked his attempt to stab me."

"The guy on the gurney was armed with a pistol. He dropped it right there in that pile of ivy when he fell."

"I was terrified. I am still terrified.  Boy am I glad you guys are here. "

"Listen...I am still a little shaken up. I want to cooperate with you guys. This has never happened to me (or this hasn't happened in a while). I have heard stories of good guys getting sued later for saying too much. My attorney is on his way and as soon as he arrives I will be happy to give a full statement with him there. Until then, I think I need to sit down and calm my blood pressure."

At that point things are no longer in your control but you have set the investigation on the proper course, and the truth will be determined instead of being overlooked.

FOR MORE ON THIS SUBJECT ON DVD

Should You Act? - Get Involved Or Get Away?

Every so often we get a thread at Warrior Talk asking about what a CCW person should do if he sees a crime, or some apparent victimization.  The implied question of course is the quest for justification of the desire to jump in with both feet to save the day. That inherent desire, while noble, may also be quite foolish and self-destructive.

 

I am not saying to default to doing nothing, merely that you should think it through before taking action that could adversely affect you for the rest of your life.  Your decision will be based on three factors – location, companions, and information.  Let’s discuss it.

 

Location.  I have traveled in places that I refer to as Non-Permissive Environments.  Those are areas where the legality of being armed may be questionable, yet where it is so dangerous that going unarmed would be stupid. In such places getting involved in anyone else’s problem is a bad decision no matter the situation.   

In some places saving the day will get you a medal of valor, while in others, even if you saved everyone, the political environment would still cause you to be arrested and likely prosecuted. If you are in an environment like the latter, I suggest not getting involved in anything that does not directly endanger you or yours.

Look at it this way, will you trade your freedom, and finances to save strangers? That is what it boils down to. It is easy to be indignant at my suggestion from the safety of the internet in your living room, it is also quite easy to disagree when you carry the “Badge of America” card as an LEO with the full umbrella of protection your agency provides, but it is another matter altogether when you are sitting in the defendant’s chair, a civilian paying your own way, looking at a prison sentence because you decided to “do the right thing”. 

If you don't have a gun its a moot point. If its legal for you to carry its also a moot point.

In a free area where you are legal to carry your pistol, again the choice is clear. Good guys can intervene in times of danger and victimization secure that if they act properly, they will probably be fine afterward.  That is the reality of why places where gun laws are lax are far safer than places where gun laws are strict…because good guys are not afraid to be good guys.

 

Companions will also have an effect on your decisions.  I spoke to an LA County Deputy once whose daughter was shot and killed by two armed robbers when he elected to intervene at the store they were robbing. Listen people…if you have your family with you, everyone else is on their own. Unless the bad guys have targeted you and them specifically, go on your way.  Whatever is happening is none of your business. Certainly, call 911, but leave and keep them safe.  Sorry to sound “cowardly” but anyone who says they will risk their family to save someone else’s money is a fool. 

 

Whether you act or not also depends on how much information you have about what is going on.  The information present and available to you may over ride the presence in an NPE, but rarely.  The less Intel I have, the less likely I am to do anything but leave. The more Intel I have the better decision I can make. What you see may not give the total picture. 

Active shooter problems are easy.  When you see a man with an assault rifle shooting into the Toys R Us, you can venture a guess that that is the bad guy and that he is the one that needs to be shot.  But those are not the ones that cause us problem are they.

Two guys fighting? None of my business.

Two guys beating up a third guy? Do you act now?  Honestly, for me it depends on what they look like.  If they are two gang-type thugs beating up an old man, the choice is pretty clear.  I would have to intervene.  But if two gang-type thugs are beating up a third gang-type thug, its none of my business.  I may make a 911 call, but I don’t plan to stick around.   Is the fight you see two cops beating up a gang-thug?  Cool, but still nothing to do with you.  How about two homeys beating up a cop? Now we are back to helping out the good guys.  All different stories, eliciting different responses aren't they. Here are a few more.

One guy slapping a girl? None of my business. “Hey wait a minute!”, I can hear the chivalrous crowd yelling from across the nation.  Chivalry demands the presence of a lady.  Is the apparent victim a lady?  Are you willing to risk your life for her?  Think with your brain and not your sword.  Just on the face of the description I do not have enough to get involved, sorry.  Make the guy a gang-thug and the girl a typical soccer mom?  Things just changed because of the Intel.  Make the guy a gang-thug and the girl a meth-mouth whore? Sorry…not my fight.  My Glock will stay in the holster and my phone will be used for 911 instead.

Its 2010 and your CCW stands for Cary (of) Concealed Weapons, not for Captain America. The only time I will get involved in someone else's fight is when I have enough info on what I am seeing to determine who is who and what is happening, I am alone or with other combatants, and then only if not doing something would shock my personal conscience.

Tradecraft: Tail Checks

We used to do tail checks if we were working UC and wanted to know if the bad guys were now surveilling us. Some call this a "cleaning run" as well. We would often see the bad guys do this as well when they suspected they were being followed. The more thorough their cleaning run, the harder it was to follow them discreetly.

The purpose of the tail check is to identify and/or lose surveillance. When you've finished a tail check you should feel confident that no one is watching or following. The tail check can be done in various ways or combinations, or by traveling a confusing or unpredictable route. A thorough tail check could take several hours, could cover a large area and involve various means of transportation.

If you identify a "tail", it is always best to never acknowledges it. Some will want to go confront the tail, but that leads nowhere. After all, when you grab the tail by the lapels and growl at him, he can simply deny everything and that is that.

Use the tail check to observe and if you realize someone is in fact following you, there are some things that can be done to identify them, and/or elude them.

One option is to make a very obvious drop of something inconsequential...a manila envelope with nothing in it, a folded piece of paper, or a gum pack. Leave it on the table at the coffee shop, discreetly place it in someone's briefcase, etc. Or simply strike up a conversation with a total stranger and the abruptly leave. All of these will diminish the "tail team's" ability to stay up with you as they redeploy assets to retrieve things and follow inconsequential leads.

Another option - is to make a discreet call to the police identifying the possibly armed man "casing the store" across from your coffee shop. This is another possible use for a burn phone. Watch the police contact the "tail". Does he show ID? Do they arrest him? Do they act as if he is a colleague? How do they interact with him? This will give you a great deal of information on your "tail". This can also be used to elude the tail.

 

Your vehicle should be fairly common if this is a concern. Keeping track of the red corvette is far easier than the grey toyota. If you are really concerned, change modes of transportation often and randomly. Taxi, bus, tram, on foot, etc.

While on foot, notice who seems to be there repeatedly. Once may be a coincidence, three or four times? While "professionals" will likely be men or women between 21 and 65, "amateur surveillers" may be children as well. Watch for anything that seems unusual, unusually repetitive, or stands out. A guy in a suit may fit in downtown, but would stand out in a rural area. Oftentimes surveillers are not good at hiding in plain sight.

Your clothing should be layers and of varying shades and colors. Earth tones are far better than basic colors.  Surveillers keep track of colors and types of clothing. Those descriptors are easy to follow in a crowd. For example, if you are wearing a black hoodie with a logo on it, ducking into a store and shedding the black hoodie to reveal the blue t-shirt underneath may give followers several moments of confusion. Same for hats....blue baseball hat, black beannie, grey hoodie, no hat, changing will make it difficult to pinpoint you visually.

Faces are another matter. You will look differently with sunglasses on than without them. With a hat on will change your profile from what it appeared with it off. One man I worked with cultivated long hair and a scraggly beard. His reasoning was that if he needed to disappear, all around him would be fixed on his current look (which he sported for a year). Ten minutes in a public restroom and he would be clean shaven with greased back hair. Natures' Mask so to speak.

 

There is of course much more to this, but these are some basics.  Some of our staff have a great deal of experience in this area and at some point in the future, S.I. may offer a Tradecraft School.

THE SEARCH FOR MEDIOCRITY

I want to introduce you to an imaginary man - John Smith. John Smith is a private citizen. That means that he is not hampered by political directives at federal, state or local levels. But John thinks he is "just a civilian". John has sought mediocrity his entire life. It is what he was trained for since birth....don't make waves...be a nice guy...you can't do this...you can't do that.

Then John realized he'd better buy a pistol and carry it because his neighbor was robbed, beaten, raped or brutalized, and the police did not come in time for anything but the report.

So he went to the local gunstore and allowed the over-sized cigar smoking salesman to patronize him into buying a double action only Smith and Wesson because it had several safeties and a real heavy and long trigger pull. "It was great for a mediocrity-seeking civilian like John", announced the salesman as he wiped doughnut juice on his Police Revolver Club t-shirt.

John asked about the Glocks and XDs and M&Ps that looked so modern and cool. "Oh no...those are for professionals son....you are a civilian...you don't need anything like that". Being a mediocrity seeker, and not wanting to be guilty of the sin of arguing, he bought the Smith and Wesson and went home. He did go to a free handgun clinic at the local range after he passed his CCW class. But he was a civilian and did not need to go to one of those "commando schools", or learn how to kill things like that ad said. He was a civilian and didn't like carrying a gun in the first place.

So John went on with his life doing his best to avoid bad things, bad places and bad people. But one day, as much as he tried, trouble came to him. He found himself at church when some crazy guy decided today was judgment day and began shooting people. The congregation was also full of mediocrity seekers and those that did not get shot outright, ran away like properly conditioned civilians should.

But John was torn about running with the rest of the herd, or fighting. He drew his pistol and tried to aim it but it felt strange in his hands....after all civilians did not need to train like Delta Force so John spent his free time playing tennis instead. At that moment a round from the terrorist caught his frozen wife in the face and dropped her...as he turned to see her fall three rounds hit him in the chest, two piercing his heart.....and the last thought that he had before he lapsed into blissfully unconscious death was,

"......but I am just a civilian".

Look...you can be a warrior, or you can be a sissy. That is that. Remember when you were ten years old? What did you play? Did you play nice guy accountant? Or Nice guy dentist? How 'bout nice guy school teacher? Did you daydream about getting along with everyone?

NO!!

You played games where you were the hero....YOU killed the freaking dragon! YOU saved the maiden! YOU saved the day.

So what happened to you? You became.....socialized and civilized. You became...domesticated because you thought that was what you were supposed to become.

NO I SAY!!!

Become the warrior your heritage calls you to be - whether your profession is an accountant or a dentist or a teacher...or a gunfighter. A man is a warrior because he says he is, and he lives it.

Be the warrior in your heart. Live as a warrior. Watch how your life changes!