Dressed for the Streets

Ready for the streets in a comfortable T-shirt, pants and the S&W M&P Shield and a spare magazine.

Now that you've read the caption, you might think you can spot the Shield and magazine somewhere. The fact is that you and 99% of the other people who saw me dressed exactly like this last week had no idea that I was carrying a weapon. That's the idea.

Concealed under the shirt: M&P Shield with LaserMax, mag in Kytex holder and the holster

When one first begins carrying concealed the temptation to check every wrinkle and bulge is difficult to resist. When you look down and see a fold out of place in your shirt, you know it is because your gun is printing. Maybe it is, but to the uninitiated, one fold or small bulge looks very much like all of the other folds and bulges, if they are aware of them at all. Which they usually are not.

If you have gone to all of the trouble and expense to satisfy the local and state bureaucracy in order to obtain your concealed carry permit it is important that you use it. In a recent survey there were a disturbing number of responses from people, with permits, who carry their guns only when they think they may "need to". What does this mean? That these people are fortune tellers, read the future, have spent the morning with a deck of Tarot cards perhaps? It's wishful thinking.

No one can foretell when and where the need to protect oneself or others from the threat of deadly violence will occur. A few minutes perusing the internet for incidents of self protection by citizens will quickly reveal that these things happen any time, any place, often for no discernible reasons other than that the perpetrators want your money and, or your life for twisted reasons of their own.

"Ooops..., wait a minute, I forgot my gun," is not the response one wants to have when bad trouble starts.

The only sane alternative is to pack your gun legally all of the time. All. Of. The. Time.

This is called playing the odds. Odds are that you will never need it. However the consequences of the odds not falling in your favor can be serious and vicious in the extreme, especially if you've foregone the means to protect yourself. This is not to say that the outcomes of violent encounters won't be harmful to you and other innocents, but at the least you will have the option to effectively fight back.

Maximize your odds.

Carry whenever possible. Find holster combinations that will not inhibit this. No holster makes a gun "so comfortable that I didn't know I had it on." That is just advertising bull. There are holsters that are less obnoxious to wear than others, but you are going to have to find a few that are tolerable, that you can get used to having on, like your belt or your shoes. 

Wear your gun in a place on your body so that it is accessible whenever you need it. Standing, sitting, lying down, driving while belted in your car. Pocket holsters and behind the hip carry are popular, but when one is seated, which is more than half of the time during the day, they are very hard to access. The best places to carry are, 1. appendix, 2. cross draw, and 3. shoulder holster.

You can find excellent holsters made for these carry positions from many reputable makers. Spend some decent money to get quality holsters. They are as important to you as carrying a quality handgun. If you invest in holsters for more a couple of effective carry methods, you will have some flexibility in where you carry that you can vary according to circumstances such as weather and dress.

You should pactice shooting, of course. But also practice (without ammunition) drawing, presenting and dry-firing your guns from your holsters wearing the clothing you would normally wear with them. Violence most often happens quickly and by surprise. Most self defense shootings take place within three to five yards, or closer. You must be quick and you must be effective. 

Practice how to aim your fire in close and quick situations. The old advice to line up the front and rear sights into the standard "sight picture" is not going to do you much good in these quick, close self defense scenarios. Practice focusing on the front sight only. It should be larger and well marked to stand out so it can be quickly acquired by your eyes. Better yet, combine a good, highly visible front sight with a laser sight.

Many of the objections to a laser concern reliability, operability and taking the time to pick up the red or green laser dot on the target. I consider a laser to be an aid which is useful in practicing target acquisition and trigger discipline during dry firing sessions, and as a possible sighting aid in a real gunfight situation. The important thing to remember is that the laser is another option in your tool kit. If you learn to shoot quickly and instinctively with your front sight, you also have the option of engaging with the laser should the situation permit. A laser is especially important in low light conditions, a period in which most criminal encounters tend to happen.

If you train without the laser, and again with the laser, you will have the option to engage with it or not. It is a good tool to have, yet does not make you dependent upon it.

In the photographs below, note that the LaserMax is designed to complement the form factor of the pistol, doesn't interfere with the grip or trigger guard and is light weight so that its presence on the pistol is not really felt. Is it always necessary? No. Is it there if I need it? Yes. Nice thing about the LaserMax is that one can control when it is on or off since it is not dependent on the shooter squeezing the handgrips. Sometimes I want to have a proper shooting grip, but I don't want the laser engaged. My choice.

Carry as comfortably as possible, with more than one good holster for options, train to be quick and accurate, consider a laser to increase your options and stay safe.

It's Not Terrorism, and It Is Predictable

Last week Ayoub El Khazzani, a 26 year Moslem who was living in Europe after returning from Syria, was about to shoot up a French train car of innocent people but instead got his ass severely kicked by American, British and French passengers. Without these people immediately putting their lives on the line to stop Khazzani, the world would have yet another “terrorist” massacre to worry about and argue over.

I understand the worry, but I am becoming increasingly intolerant of the arguments. With instant access to social media and internet sites, such as this one, anyone can and do broadcast their opinions to millions of other people. Yes, opinions are part of free speech, but that does not preclude many of opinion pieces crowding the social media-verse from being ignorant, ill-informed or purposefully distorted. The two most frequent and equally ignorant opinions – giving the benefit of the doubt that their authors are mis-informed rather than merely stupid or biased – claim that acts of “terrorism” are always the result of societal and political disenfranchisement or maltreatment of oppressed people, and that the real problem is guns.

I want to address both of these opinions, but first, a word about what happened on that train in France. According to the New York Times, “…the authorities in at least two countries already knew quite a lot about Mr. Khazzani before he surged into notoriety on Friday afternoon: He was on a French list as a security threat, and Spanish officials told news media there that he had traveled to Syria — not in itself an offense, unless he went there for jihad. Had he been living in France, a tough new surveillance law, approved at the end of July by France’s constitutional council, would have likely turned up even more on him.

Yet with all that the authorities already knew about him, he managed to board unhindered the heavily traveled Amsterdam-to-Paris high-speed train with a sack of weaponry, probably in Belgium, and was ready to inflict serious damage, with dozens of rounds of ammunition, an AK-47, an automatic pistol and a box cutter.”

There is no doubt that Khazzani intended to kill as many people on that train as possible. Unfortunately for the world, he won’t be the only one to attempt something like this, and France won’t be the only country where these so-called terrorists will strike.

“We are now faced with unpredictable terrorism,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French security consultant and terrorism expert.

Unpredictable? Terrorism? Not so much. The confusion inherent in the use of these terms is part of the problem.

These types of attacks are not really “unpredictable”. Much the same as mass shootings in the US, one can predict (supported by the basic statistics relating to those events) that mass shootings will almost invariably occur in places where people are unarmed. In this country, we advertise where those places will be. We call them Gun Free Zones, posted with prominent signs that No Guns Are Allowed. Why? It is not for the education of would be mass-shooters. Or for people bent on criminal acts such as armed robbery. When someone who is determined to shoot as many people as possible with minimum danger to themselves is searching for a target rich, low risk environment, gun-free zones are obvious choices. Gun-free schools. Gun-free movie theaters. Gun-free shopping malls. Any place where law abiding citizens are prohibited from carrying legal firearms will do. And, with historically one exception, that is where the killers go.

A case might be made that the entire country of France is a gun free zone, military and police who make up a minuscule number of the population excepted.

How might we deal with this? Mr. Brissard has an opinion:

“The most plausible scenario is some return to the situation prevailing in France in the mid-1990s after a series of Islamist attacks on trains and train stations. For a brief period, military personnel patrolled inside the trains [my italics] and baggage was checked. Mr. Brisard noted that such patrols have, potentially, a much more dissuasive effect than the mere sight of armed soldiers in train stations.”

Why wouldn’t a Boy Scout patrol, or large, muscular men in black T-Shirts with “Safety Patrol” be just as effective? Guns, that is why. Military patrols pack firearms. Police pack firearms. They do this for solid reasons. People like Khazzani don’t want to deal with armed opponents, they want helpless victims. However, if we were to take Mr. Brissard’s proposal to seriously, it would be necessary to dramatically increase the number of our military personnel, provide training, pay them and care for them in order to run patrols in all of the areas where they would be needed. This is just not possible. Nor, would I want to live in a military-patrolled society.

An obvious answer to this problem is to allow citizens to carry their own firearms for self defense and the defense of innocent people. Do not prohibit the ability of people to defend themselves and fight back effectively against violence that others want to inflict upon them. If Khazzani knew that there would be a number of armed individuals on the train who would not hesitate to fight back, my sense is that he would have searched for a different opportunity. Another gun free zone.

Yes, I can now anticipate the blow-back, the outrage among those who think that all guns are evil and more guns just lead to more violence, a conclusion not supported by objective fact and research. However, I’d like to quote Sam Harris who has what I consider to be one of the best reasoned responses to these objections. Sam is an intellectual, an atheist, a liberal in most senses of the word, with degrees in Philosophy and a doctorate in NeuroPsychology. Sam has a very practical and common sense approach to violence and guns:

“Although I might find a few useful things to say to such readers [of his article on The Riddle of the Gun], let me concede that the bar is probably set too high. Thinking about violence is not everyone’s cup of tea...It is irrational, however, to imagine that such insouciance can pass for an informed opinion on how best to respond to violence in the event that it occurs. I have now heard from many people who have never held a gun in their lives, and are proud to say that they never would, but who appear entirely confident in declaiming upon the limitations of firearms as defensive weapons. Before proceeding, perhaps there is general rule of cognition we might all agree on: It would be surprising, indeed, if avoiding a topic as a matter of principle were the best way to understand it. [my italics]

With respect to guns, I need to make a practical and ethical decision about whether or not to own one, given my specific security concerns and the level of violent crime in the society in which I live. ... The choice to own a gun comes down to this: If I hear a window break in the middle of the night, I want to be armed with more than my idealism.”

Or, in this case, if some whack-job pulls out an AK-47 in the midst of my shopping experience, train ride, or Walmart parking lot, I want to be armed with more than idealism or a can of pepper spray.

Anyone who seriously opposes the right of people to protect themselves from violence have no business trying to impose their paranoia and fear on others. I could go on to argue against all of the themes anti-gun people have put forward, but I will save that for later. I now want to turn to the other term which I think is confusing and misleading: terrorism.

The handy term terrorism has become a general catch-all to explain acts of violence in support of an opposing philosophy, political system or religion. To call people like Khazzani terrorists is to dilute the nature and definition of the threat they pose, and thereby to dilute the appropriate responses to them and the threat the pose to the world. These people are Islamic zealots who are determined to establish a world caliphate in order to rule in obedience with religious laws that date from the middle ages. They believe that God has mandated that they enforce his will, as dictated to an illiterate merchant fifteen hundred years ago, or kill anyone who opposes, disagrees or “insults” these dictates.

This is not a joke. These people are not disaffected, poor minorities who have been driven to violence by injustice and oppression. The 911 hijackers who killed over 3000 American were all well educated, well to do or wealthy and living well in the United States. What they had in common was belief in the fundamentals of Islam, in “holy war”, in the world caliphate that God demands they establish.

These people are religious fanatics. Not “terrorists”. This makes them immune from the frequently proposed solutions their apologists put forward. Better living conditions. Jobs. Relief from “oppression” by a foreign government. Democracy. They really don’t care about that. They care only about what Allah and his representatives tell them they must do or suffer Allah’s consequences.

Which can be severe.

Insult the Prophet. Death. Leave the faith. Death. Speak out for reform. Death. Don't surrender. Death.

Pretty effective it appears.

What can one do in the face of violent fundamentalism? Not much except to educate as many people as possible, especially the children. As long as their societies remain closed to education (remember the young Moslem girl Malia who at 14 was shot because she wanted to go to school? If not, you should learn about her.) that approach is also closed to us.

I don’t have any answers to this terrible world problem, but I do have an answer to what is coming – more religious violence here and in Europe. Stop incidents of violence as soon as they begin. Let the violent people, religious and otherwise, know that they are not safe anywhere from armed citizens willing and able to fight back.

Is this perfect? No. Will innocent people suffer? Yes. Innocent people are and will be suffering anyway. Why let this continue without fighting back?

be armed

Another Lesson Learned

Sunday I went out with a good friend to get in some shooting – target practice, a bit of training and fun. It turned out to be a learning experience for me as well as a fun afternoon. What did I learn? Well, that I cannot shoot a Ruger LCP well enough to justify keeping it as a self defense gun. Now, I love the Ruger LCP. I've had the older model, and, later bought this one, the newer model with the improved trigger. I have shot a good number of rounds through the LCP platform, but this weekend, I learned that I can't shoot it accurately enough.

This is not a gun problem. This is a shooter's problem. My problem, and not necessarily yours or anyone else's problem. I spent a few years moderating a gun forum that had quite a number of LCP owners and entusiasts as members. I'm certain that many people can perform up to expectations with their small .380 handgun, but my experience has been different.

What happened was this. I have a new LaserMax CenterFire sight on the pistol. I believe firmly that on small, self defense handguns, a laser is a necessary accessory. Most bad things happen in the dark, or darkness, and a laser can help ensure one hits what is being aimed at, especially with a gun like the LCP which has minimal sights to begin with. I fired some close range, steady rounds to ensure the alignment of the laser was correct, then moved to a steel target set up about chest high, and about chest size. Drawing and firing the first magazine at ten yards was enlightening. I shot more plants and dirt than steel, even with the pulsating red dot to aid my aim.

Not good. Reload. Shoot without the laser, still quickly, although slower than one would take in a real crisis situation. Six shots. Two hits. Again. Same speed but closer. Two hits again. Moved to about five yards and repeat. Better, but only 50% hits. Even with more attempts it didn't get any better.

If I had to place the errors anywhere it would have to be with two things, the very small form factor of the gun, coupled with a difficult and long trigger pull.

The short barrel, light weight and two-finger grip necessary on this pistol require the shooter to have an exceptionally steady hand, especially when pulling the trigger. Any slight variation will move the barrel way off target. Unfortunately, even with Ruger's improved trigger on this newer LCP, the effort and distance required to pull through to the break point is too great to maintain acceptable accuracy for me.

The LCP generates a significant amount of recoil which, coupled with the light weight of the pistol, jerks it off target with each shot so one must be very deliberate getting it back on target and trying to make a smooth trigger pull for the next round. Frankly, this was very difficult for me.

During the afternoon, I fired many rounds through the M&P Shield 9mm, an M&P 40, and a .38 special airweight, all with acceptable accuracy in slow and rapid fire. Not marksmanship competition accuracy, but with good "stopt the threat" accuracy.

Why do I have an LCP in the first place? It is small, very small, light weight, easily concealable and comfortable to carry all day, and it is effective with the modern self defense loads. All this is good, but not worth anything if the gun can not be used effectively and responsibly. For me, it's not effective, and perhaps more importantly, not responsible since I do not want to ever endanger innocent people by not being able to shoot at and hit the threat and nothing else.

I can not justify keeping the LCP for those two reasons. I will sell it and point the buyer to this article, so that he or she will understand the limitations and advantages of the pistol.

I encourage you to evaluate your carry arms for their effectiveness and responsibility when being used by you. You might be in for a surprise.

I certainly was.

Posted with Blogsy

A Naked Man, a Knife, a Hammer and LSD

Like many of us who carry, I am sometimes asked 'why?', and if I'm paranoid. I try to explain that although I live in a very peaceful community, sometimes bad things can happen. Any where. Any time. Case in point from a very liberal, and some would say, laid back town where I used to live:

"A Boulder (Colorado) police officer shot and killed a University of Colorado student believed to be high on LSD late Monday, after the man attacked residents with a knife, then confronted police with a hammer while naked, officials said.

Police said the suspect — identified by the coroner as Samuel Forgy, 22 — climbed onto a railing at the 19th Street apartment complex as if he was going to jump down on the officers on the landing below him.

Police said an officer tried unsuccessfully to use a Taser on Forgy before he was fatally shot by a second officer, but a neighbor who witnessed the confrontation said the stun gun and the handgun were fired almost simultaneously.

"There was a crackle and then 'pop, pop, pop,'" neighbor Nikki Larsen said Tuesday morning. "One after the other. It was less than a second. In an instant of time, Taser — then three gunshots."

CU officials confirmed Forgy was a student on the Boulder campus, where he was majoring in applied mathematics. He transferred to CU last year from the Community College of Denver, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Bouler police said they were originally called to the scene after a resident of an apartment at 1841 19th St. phoned 911 shortly after 10:30 p.m. Monday to report that a man was acting erratically and was outside the apartment, screaming.

When officers arrived, police said, they found a 23-year-old victim with cuts to his face. The man suffered multiple knife wounds, including a 6-inch cut to his forehead and a bite on his hand, police said." – from the Boulder Colorado newspaper, The Daily Camera, 7/28/15

That bad things happen unexpectedly, anywhere is not news. What is interesting as well in this sordid tale are the opinions and observations of people who were nearby or who head about this incident and have made their comments on it.

Note the neighbor who claimed that the stun gun [sic] and the handgun were fired "almost simultaneously". Less than a second. An instant of time.

Most probably not. Eye witness (or ear witness, in this case) testimony has been proven notoriously inaccurate. People are not video or audio recorders. Their brain interprets what they see and hear, and often, distorts or even creates memories of events, especially traumatic events. What is apparent is that there was the sound of a taser, then sounds of gunfire. 

Why would the neighbor say this? Probably because she believes it, but that doesn't make it accurate. Perhaps she doesn't like guns or violence and believes that the young, naked man, high on acid, already having cut up one person and threatening the police with the hammer, should not have been shot.

I read one account of this in the campus paper in which one person, allegedly at the scene, complained that the police should have only shot to injure the naked man instead of shooting him to stop him. Which, in fact, did stop him from harming anyone else. The police rightly pointed out that when someone is intent on doing you death or bodily harm, it is not a good idea to try a Hollywood shot to merely "wing" the person, or, like Roy Rogers, shoot the hammer out of his hand.

This is, unfortunately not an a-typical scenario or reactions to it, but similar to what one can expect should you ever have to use your weapon in self defense. There are those who will not accept, condone or approve your actions even though they are moral, legal and necessary to save your life. All the more reason for you to know your legal and moral rights and be prepared to act upon them should that awful necessity arise.