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You may not know this, but I’ve recently started blogging over at the Personal Defense Network site. Of course I’ve written articles for them for years, and have done a couple of DVDs and some videos for the site, but now I’ll be sharing things over there on a more consistent basis. You’ll be able to find everything I write for them at this link.
While what I share here tends to be of immediate, practical use the posts on ...
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Oregon is a wonderful state, generally very peaceful and tranquil. That isn’t to say crime doesn’t happen here, however, and there is the need to be prepared — just like you would anywhere else. Today’s case comes from the Medford Mail-Tribune and offers some lessons to heed.
On the evening of July 14th, a man tried to break into the secluded home of Charles and Jeanine Buckman. The Buckmans heard a man — later identified as Matthew Durbin, a transient ...
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By now you’ve no doubt heard about the tragic incident in Garland, Texas. For those who missed it, on Sunday a “Draw Mohammed” Cartoon show was held in that town; contestants vied for the best cartoon in celebration of free speech. There were speakers who are active in the free speech movement, including a Dutch citizen who has earned a spot on an al Qaeda hit list.
Two men — one of whom since identified by the FBI as having ...
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I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: intervening in another’s incident is risky, and more so when you do it with your firearm!
I usually catch all kinds of flak from the more militant corners of the shooting world when I say things like this, but the reality is that if you don’t know exactly what’s going on it’s very easy to find yourself at the wrong end of an arrest — or worse.
Take this recent case from Salt ...
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You may have more schooling and diplomas on your wall, but criminals are smarter than you are in some surprising and important ways. Take social conditioning, for example.
Late last year there was a death in Atlanta, the result of a Craigslist sale gone bad. One Daniel Zeitz had gone to an apartment building parking lot to sell his Playstation 4. There he met the alleged buyers, a Mr. Nathaniel Vivian and his 16-year-old girlfriend (whose name was not disclosed.)
It ...
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Lots of folks were out partying on Superbowl weekend, and Matthew Haight of Snohomish, WA was among them. After the game he headed home to his apartment, but what he couldn’t have known is that he was about to fumble a self defense attempt.
When he got to his apartment he noticed the door was unlocked, and he entered to find himself face-to-face with a burglar. Matthew instantly decided that he needed to retrieve his unloaded gun from the closet where ...
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Wisconsin has, from the time I was a kid, seemed like it should be a quaint place. Their largest city, Milwaukee, is smaller than the largest city in my home state of Oregon — and Portland isn’t known as a large city by most standards. Famed for dairy farms and agriculture, Wisconsin isn’t the first place you think of where crime is concerned.
Wisconsin is also a latecomer to the topic of concealed carry of a handgun. Their “shall issue” law ...
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A big part of “situational awareness” is managing distractions. Here’s what happens when you don’t.
Rancho Cucamonga is an upper-middle-class city in California, known for it’s nouveau riche attitudes and lifestyles. It’s home to people who’ve made a decent amount of money (by California standards; anywhere else they’d be seen as quite wealthy) and like to show it off. You’ll see lots of expensive automobiles and nice homes, and the city’s overwhelmingly ...
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The recent attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has brought organized terrorism back into our consciousness. What can we, as legally armed citizens, learn from this tragedy?
Of all the things I’ve learned in the training world, the value of team tactics ranks up there with the scariest. Not in terms of being scared while attempting a room or house clearing (though those things are unnerving), but rather the realization of ...
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One of the trickiest self defense concepts revolves around “disparity of force”. Do you know what it is, what it means when you’re faced with it, and how you’d defend it in court?
In the training world we have two separate but very interrelated disciplines: the mechanics of defensive shooting, and the legalities of the use of lethal force. I say they’re interrelated because the latter determines when we are allowed (and to what degree) to employ the former. Having a ...
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Your neighbor has just been thrown out of her car by a carjacker — and he’s about to drive off! What’s the right response?
Last August a Phoenix, AZ woman was pulling into her driveway when she was approached by a male who asked to use her phone. Still in the driver’s seat, she said no. That’s when the suspect opened the car door, pulled her from the car and threw her ...
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A woman in Indianapolis had a little trouble defending her home during a late-night break-in. What did she do wrong, and what can we learn from her experience?
Marta (last name not given) lives with her two children in an older two-story home in Indianapolis. She has a gun for the protection of herself and her kids, but as we’ll see owning a gun isn’t the same as knowing how to use it properly!
Late one night she woke to the ...
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A household is missing a husband and father at the hands of rampaging criminals. Did it need to end this way?
First, please read the news account of how Richard Ramos lost his life. Then come back for the rest of the discussion!
Now that you’ve read the story, let’s look at this a little closer.
Hopefully you’ve picked up on the fatal mistake that Mr. Ramos made: he opened the door to strangers early one summer morning. Even his wife said ...
Continue Reading →One of the sure ways to get a certain number of gun owners up in arms is to post a story about someone being arrested for firing a warning shot. The attitude seems to be that if the person didn’t shoot at someone else, and didn’t hit anyone accidentally, where’s the harm?
Warning shots seem to be grossly misunderstood by a large percentage of gun owners, who are confused about their legality and practicality. It’s really quite simple: they’re virtually never ...
Continue Reading →From Toledo, OH comes the story of a homeowner who did something stupid: she took her .357 and confronted a petty thief who her boyfriend reportedly caught stealing a bicycle from her front porch. Why is this stupid? Because the thief’s actions did not rise to the level that justifies the threat of lethal force.
In general, lethal force can only be used when the defender is in immediate and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm through the ...
Continue Reading →Last week I became aware of a YouTube video of a fellow shooting himself in the leg after making ready during a match. He starts the video off by proclaiming that it wasn’t his fault – it was his gun which malfunctioned and was in the hands of the maker’s service department for analysis of the “failure”.
I knew, ten seconds into the video, that it wasn’t the gun. I knew, just due to the fellow’s demeanor, that he’d had his ...
Continue Reading →Over at the Schneier On Security blog, Bruce Schneier talks about the concept of risk in relation to the Aurora movie theater attack. I found his analysis interesting, inasmuch as gunnies everywhere are talking about how they’d respond to such an event — and how they’re changing their preparations, “just in case.”
Some of the blogs, Facebook posts, and some forum discussions I’ve seen in the wake of the Aurora shooting are almost comical. There are people who suggest ...
Continue Reading →The Armed Citizen’s Legal Defense Network (of which you should be a member) has published an interesting look at the Martin/Zimmerman case in their June newsletter. The Florida courts, as their law requires, released all of the evidence related to the case a couple of weeks ago. In his article, Marty Hayes looks at a portion of that released evidence and makes some observations which might be useful to those who carry a firearm ...
Continue Reading →A video of a petite woman shooting a S&W .500 Magnum made the rounds last week. At issue was an uncontrolled (negligent) discharge, occurring as a rapid “double tap.”
Watch the video, and you’ll see that as the gun recoils from the first round, a second round is ignited. The barrel is nearly vertical when the second shot fires, raising all sorts of concerns about its eventual landing place. It’s definitely an unsafe situation!
The various comments made (not ...
Continue Reading →One consistent theme amongst the less informed is that all you need worry about in a defensive encounter is that it’s a “good shoot.” Nothing else, according to these keyboard commandoes, matters – you can do anything, as long as the shoot is “clean.”
The trouble is that neither you, nor they, get to decide what’s “clean” and what’s not. In my state, a Grand Jury makes the first decision, and if they say it isn’t “clean” it then goes to ...
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According to AZcentral.com, a man was shot in the abdomen at Gunsite a few days ago. If you’ve seen pictures of their facility, you’ve seen the shoothouse with catwalks above which allows observation of the proceedings. Apparently a man was on the catwalk and silhouetted by overhead lights; the student saw his outline and shot it. Luckily the man survived the incident and is recovering.
Gunsite says that students are instructed not to shoot toward the catwalk, but ...
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