(A Guest Post by blogless Peter, for Carnival of Cordite)

We've done all we could, taken every precaution and now we're faced with the choice of using our gun or else. What now? What training program or practice can prepare us for using a gun on another human?

There is a dirty little secret among all the shooting schools and just about every book ever written on the subject of gunfighting. That secret is that they are for police and military types and of only tangential interest to the armed civilian. We civilians don't give a rat's patootie about taking Hill 363 B nor are we going to be arresting anyone. Our strategic goals are different, and so are the tactics and tools. The next time you see a Police Officer, take a look at that belt he's wearing. Count the items you won't have. You won't have that radio, nor a set of cuffs and it's real likely that you won't have two high capacity magazines in a convenient pouch. You aren't going to have a big can of Mace or Pepper Spray, nor a baton or four cell Mag Light. You aren't going to be wearing Kevlar, either.

Still, practice and planning are essential. Without a plan we've practiced, the natural thing for us to do is panic. This, by the way, has nothing to do with courage. The bravest fireman ever can panic in a gunfight just as the bravest Police Officer can panic in a fire.

The plans will be different for personal defense outside the home and inside.

Life threatening situations happen up close. The armed citizen outside the home will be within feet, not yards of the threat. Forget the idea of standing in the perfect Weaver Position and picking out what button to put the first bullet through. The odds are you'll have to shoot from a weapon-retention position. Most civilian gunfights happen within touching distance. If we hang the gun out at the end of one or both arms, odds are we'll never get a shot off. Learn the weapon-retention position. The gun hand will touch the short ribs with the body slightly angled away from the bad guy, the other hand balled in a fist across the chest. Assuming only one bad guy, fire the first shot, then punch the gun out hard into the upper chest and fire the next. A contact wound with any cartridge big enough to carry for defense ends the fight. That white hot, high-pressure powder gas will follow the bullet into the chest and just destroy the bad guy's clockworks.

Do not try learning to shoot from the weapon-retention position with live ammo. In a future Carnival we'll discuss the primer powered wax and plastic bullets and BB Pistols. Learning weapon-retention and 'fast draw' shooting with real ammo is a very good way to put orifices in ourselves that God didn't design.

Criminals rarely work alone, if you need your gun you'll probably be outnumbered. This is another problem with the shooting schools, they teach using a lot of ammo. Double taps and what is called the Mozambique Drill, two shots to the chest and one to the head. This works fine if you are only up against one bad guy, if you end up against two or three then the others will ventilate you while you are blasting the first one. There is also the little problem of the cartridge capacity of most concealed carry guns. The most popular are the five shot revolvers and the smaller autoloaders. Your tactics must take your ammo supply into account. You don't win a gunfight if you kill two and are killed by the third.

Don't forget that the bad guy gets to make the first move and it's very likely to be from behind. That's why I like those pocket holsters, I can have my hand casually in my pocket as I amble through the crowd and already have my hand on iron.

Keep an eye on who is around you as well as any available cover and concealment. Learn the difference between cover and concealment. A bush is concealment, an engine block of a car is cover. So is a wheel and tire. Learn to shoot from around cover.

Try your best to walk on the outside of the sidewalk. If I can duck between two parked cars I limit the directions they can come at me.

The best friend we have is distance. Criminals have to get close, if they have to shout to tell us we're being robbed, well that kind of defeats the purpose.

Speaking of distance, don't believe that crap about a guy so dumb he brings a knife to a gunfight. If a guy with a knife is close, you are going to get cut. The only practical way to deal with a determined knife man is to keep him busy with something unimportant like your off hand while you shoot the foo out of him with your gun hand. With a little luck, your knife man won't be that determined. Distance is our friend against knife or gun. The crook is a criminal, his weapon is illegal. That's your only advantage, you can spend time at a shooting range, he can't. Those jailhouse tattoos raise questions.

Remember, he has the advantage of the first move. Most of the time there are ways to take the initiative once he does. If he demands your wallet, give it to him, toss it to his feet, when he looks down, make your move.

Remember that a gun isn't a magic wand, a wave of a gun doesn't make people do your bidding. If you are up against an armed assailant, shoot. Don't stand there talking, pull the trigger. The wallet toss trick will gain you a half second to a second at the most, if you don't have a hole in the ten ring by then you're screwed. Practice until you can get that shot off and remember the maxim of the old west gunfighters. Speed is fine. Accuracy is fatal.

There are two schools of thought about multiple assailants. One school of thought is pick the leader and shoot until he's down before going on to the others. I'm not a big fan of that school - suppose I guess wrong or they're anarchists - I'm of the school that says one shot per bad guy and then shift fire to anyone still standing. If our weapon has the ammo capacity and we've practiced enough a double tap is almost as fast as a single shot each. The downsides to the double tap are that word 'almost' and the fact that to make those double taps that fast we must practice until they're almost automatic. In learning the double tap I had to practice it so much that a single shot became difficult. Then I'd put that five shot revolver in my pocket. See the problem?

My aim point is the upper chest. There is a box: the nipples are about the two sides, the top is about three inches above, the bottom two inches below. That's where the heart and upper lungs live, along with a lot of major blood vessels. My goal is to hit those on the way to breaking the spine. There are simply no wounding shots that are reliable enough to put an armed assailant down. Well, there are... trouble is they only work when the good guy is behind solid cover and out of range of the bad guy's weapon. If I were twenty yards away from a guy with a knife and had a car between me and him, then I could think about trying to break a hip. Of course a civilian would have a very uncomfortable time before the Grand Jury after taking such a shot.

Understand that I'll do almost anything to avoid a shooting scrape, especially with multiple assailants. I can make more money. I don't care what strangers think - if I can run away, I will. The only way I'm going to stand there like Marshall Dillon and shoot it out is if there is no other way.

If I'm unlucky enough to be in a business when an armed robbery goes down I'm going to stay out of it if at all possible. The money is probably insured.. Before buying into a play like an armed robbery, be aware that most professional robbers send a 'customer' in to hang in the background and shoot anyone who gets heroic. We're civilians, it's not our job to arrest robbers. Try to get out of the immediate line of fire and hunker down. If we start a shooting war in a crowded business the wrong people are going to get shot. Of course, if the bad guys start shooting, all bets are off.

Understand that if it gets to an armed confrontation, my only interest is my own survival, unless ensuring it means I must put innocent people in danger. I haven't the right to peg shots at a bad guy when there is a crowd of schoolchildren in the line of fire. And, of course, I'm old school enough that the survival of my family takes precedence over my own. If I have to play Horatio at the bridge to buy them time to get away, well that's my bad luck.

The inside the house defense is simpler, a single person or childless couple only have to defend the room they're in. Go to ground and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Children or other people in the house - your aged mother for instance - complicate the situation. Figure out a plan to get everyone you care about into one room and then defend that room. Keep your cell phone in the bedroom. Bad guys can cut the phone line from outside the house. Next to the phone and the bedside gun there needs to be a flashlight. A couple can divide the job. One on the (primary) gun, the other on the phone and flashlight.

There are a lot of techniques touted as the best for using a gun and flashlight together. My preferred is to hold the gun in my strong hand and the flashlight on the other shoulder. Yes, my aim is steadier with two hands on the gun. Still, with the light on my off shoulder and the gun in my strong hand I can see both sights. I'm more accurate with a good sight picture and a little more shake than I am with no sight picture and more steadiness. Your mileage may vary.

Women face additional challenges. Outside of penal institutions, there isn't a whole lot of man on man rape. We aren't going to worry about penal institutions, since it's pretty unlikely that we'd be using a gun for defense Inside, anyway.

Sisters, it's tempting to carry your shootin' iron in your purse. That's not the best idea. If you are attacked, the purse is the first thing they go for. A little acting ability can go a long way to buy you time to unlimber the artillery. Try blubbering something like 'don't hurt me, I'll do anything you want' and show some skin with one hand while drawing with the other. You can reclaim your dignity later when you spit on his grave, right? You are doubly behind the eight ball because - just like us hairylegs - you have to give the bad guy the first move, as well as the fact that the average man is bigger, heavier and has more muscle mass than the average woman. Not to mention that half the time y'all wear shoes that ya can't run in.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that rapists aren't the brightest of all God's little door prizes. If you keep your cool and use your heads you'll figure out a way to distract the sumbitch for long enough to ventilate him. Carry your purse in your offhand and chuck it in his face while you draw and fire with your gun hand. Get together with your girlfriends and brainstorm it. Think up ways to distract him if he's grabbed you from behind. All you need is the half second to a second that it takes to draw and fire. Do what you have to do to buy that time. You aren't just doing it for yourself. Rapists are almost invariably repeat offenders and they escalate the violence. In saving yourself there is no telling how many other women and girls you will save.

Don't fall for that tired old 'don't resist or he'll hurt you' crap. Too many graves are filled with women who believed that. Let me repeat. Rapists always repeat and they always escalate. Sure, a beginning rapist might not injure you too badly, but don't bet the farm that you're up against a beginner. The chances are you're going to be up against one that needs to kill to get off. Buy yourself that half second and put him down.

It's going to be very difficult to find a shooting range that will allow practicing real-life and real-death scenarios. A public range will not allow turning and engaging threats from behind. and almost none will allow draw and fire drills. The answer to this problem is the same as the answer to practicing firing from the weapon-retention position, primer-powered wax or plastic bullets. The average single car garage can become our shooting range with these. How does a one-time set up cost of about thirty dollars or so and then a practice ammo cost of less than twenty dollars per thousand rounds look?

I mentioned that most books and training classes offer little value for the armed citizen. There are two books that are good, both available from Amazon.Com and both by the same author. Look for Massad Ayoob's In Gravest Extreme and Stressfire Vol. One. Stressfire is a little police-centric but the insights on shooting under extreme stress are worthwhile. His courses are also great - again a bit police-centric - but if one can afford the class, it's worth it just to see the only living human that cusses more than the Emperor Misha, Jen Martinez and me...combined.

Posted by: Harvey at 09:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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