Some Weekend Reading: Active Response Training

First up, Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump up. A handful of the articles that particularly caught my attention:

• Clint Smith discusses concealed carry ("Assets of CCW") and offers some tips. He explains why "concealed" means concealed:

Concealed handguns are socially acceptable mostly because no one knows we have them. The unseen handgun is not offensive to the unwashed masses because no one knows you have it. Simply put, out of sight out of mind. Be guarded to conceal your equipment well, many small things from how you bend over — printing the butt of the handgun on clothing — to how you sweep your jacket open as you reach for your wallet all effect concealability.

• Candice Horner writes about "Actively Armed – Concealed Carry Options for Running and Hiking." Strangely, while she mentions Hill People Gear's Kitbag (be sure to get the right one--some models are intended for running while others are more for the backpacking/hunting crowd),  chest holsters and bellybands, she does not say anything about fanny pack holsters or the Phlster Enigma. I don't know, maybe she was only considering options that were good for both running and hiking, not either/or. 
• The Revolver Guy writes "More About Tactical and Partial Reloads" when using revolvers. Although I get the impression he does not advocate tactical reloads (i.e., removing spent cartridges and replacing them with new cartridges during the "lull in combat") he does offer a couple techniques. He mostly focuses on when you run dry. Rather than a full reload (unless, of course, you are using a speed loader) he suggests just loading 2 or 3 rounds (loose or from a Speed Strip) and getting back into the fight. He discusses techniques as to this as well.
• Keith Finch discusses "Firearm Pedantism": e.g., the person that feels obligated to correct you if you refer to an AR as "direct impingement" or use the term "clip" instead of "magazine". There are times when precise terminology is required, but many times being pedantic just irritates people.

    One example he mentioned caught me by surprise, but I guess there are people that get upset if you refer to a revolver as a "pistol". I guess I will be pedantic on this point: not all pistols are revolvers, but all revolvers are pistols because "pistol" is, after all, just another term for handgun. One source I consulted indicated that the word "pistol" was derived from the Middle French pistolet, meaning both "small firearm" and "small dagger." Another source said that it derived from the obsolete French term pistole, which in turn came from the German Pistole, which came from the Czech pišt'ala. In any event, it was adopted as an English word in the mid-16th Century. Probably it came into use because, at that time, "handgunne" meant any firearm that could be carried by an individual soldier up to and including small hand cannons. As for "revolver," that is just a shortened version of the original term for the weapon: "revolving pistol". (And before anyone corrects me in the comments, yes I understand that there have also been revolving rifles but we are talking about pistols here, not rifles, and the number of revolving rifles have been so small that they really are more in the nature of curios rather than serious weapons). 

•  Those of you interested in tactical shooting will enjoy "The Science of CQB, Gunfighting, and Not Getting Shot." The author describes tests to determine which was the best of three styles of room entry and clearing techniques: known corner (the lead man goes to the corner he can see), unknown corner (the lead man immediately enters heading into the corner he can't see to engage anyone that might be there), and a hybrid method (the lead man goes in at a diagonal). The results of the test show a statistical tie between the hybrid and the known corner methods (although the author notes that special forces operates prefer the hybrid) with the unknown corner the worst method.
• Finally, Greg has linked to a site that has collected information on "Stabbing Deaths by Country". As you would expect, with the exception of those countries that fell within the former Soviet Union or East Bloc, countries with lots of Caucasians/Indo-Europeans or lots of Far East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese) had low rates, while those with lots of Sub-Saharan Africans or Native Americans had high rates. The Mediterranean countries (Southern Europe and North Africa) also had low rates, so one could also look at the distribution as representing those peoples that had been civilized the longest as having the lowest rates and the least civilized as having the highest rates. 

    Greg had also posted earlier in the week an article by Ron Borsch on "Precious Foreknowledge to Recognize Threats" which purports to analyze the warning signs of a mass murderer. According to Borsch, the warning signs (or symptoms, if you will) are: (i) they are mentally ill; (ii) abnormal (i.e., don't fit in which actually is probably a side-effect of being mentally ill); (iii) immature or possessing a low IQ or unable to attract a girlfriend; (iv) a planner or researcher of prior mass murders or fan of Adolf Hitler (ed: okay, the last makes sense as Hitler was a big proponent of liberal causes and, as I've noted many times, liberals are evil); (v) close in age to the targeted population (excepting pre-school, kindergarten and elementary school massacres according to the author--and, I would add, mall shootings, theater shootings, and any other area with mixed age groups, which doesn't actually leave much where this is applicable); (vi) suicidal; (vii) play violent video games; (viii) a white male; (ix) cowardly (i.e., ambush rather than challenge to a duel); and (x) have access to weapons (which seems sort of a given). 

    I have to say that point (viii)--being a white male--is outright wrong. Borsch indicates that 98% of mass murderers are white males. But every source I have found simply state that 98% of mass murderers are males, period--i.e., of all races. (See this Time article and this NPR article). In fact, whites are under-represented among mass murderers compared to their percentage of the general population. See "Inconvenient fact about mass killings: White males are 'underrepresented' while Blacks and Asians are 'overrepresented'" from The Brunswick News. As that article notes, although non-Hispanic whites constitute 63% of the population, only 54% of mass shootings are committed by whites. Also:

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh noted that Blacks and Asians, from 1982 to 2021, committed 17.4% (12.3 % of the population) and 6.6% (3.6 %of the population) of mass shootings, respectively. Volokh wrote, “Non-Hispanic Whites don’t seem to commit mass shootings at greater than their share of the population. The groups that appear overrepresented are Blacks and Asians.”

    Also, Borsch is playing a bit with semantics. Although not mentioned by Borsch in his article, "mass murder" is a term of art that specifically excludes killings associated with other criminal activity. I wrote about this recently and noted, as an example, that per the definition of "mass murder" the St. Valentine's Day massacre in which seven men were killed would not be considered a "mass murder" because it was related to gang activity even though it quite clearly would be considered a mass murder by any normal person. I've seen other research indicating that if you just consider the number of people killed in a single shooting, most mass murders are committed by blacks. But because these murders are generally associated (rightly or wrongly) with gang activity or the illegal drugs trade, they are not considered "mass murders" by those that research the topic. 

     Point (vii) concerning video games also needs to be put into context. It may be true that the majority of mass shooters play violent video games--I don't know--but even the most puritanical anti-gun Leftists agree that "[t]here is no evidence of a causal link between school shootings and video games, according to an array of studies, meta-analyses and psychology and sociology experts." (See also this from CNN and this from a Texas NBC affiliate that did a series of reports on school shootings). People in the past used to blame violent television for increased violent crime rates, so one could just as well add watching television programs to the list of warning signs. And before that, people were blaming comic books and pulp magazines featuring violent stories (which is why characters like Batman and Captain America stopped carrying and using firearms and killing villains). And before that it was dime novels. And before that ... .