Some Weekend Reading: Firearms And Self-Defense Articles Linkage From Greg And Jon

 It's getting metaphysical here! Just a reminder to check out the latest collections of articles and videos from Greg Ellifritz and Jon Low:

• Defensive Pistolcraft Newsletter (June 30)
• Active Response Training Weekend Knowledge Dump- June 30, 2023.
• Active Response Training Weekend Knowledge Dump- July 7, 2023.

For those of you that have taken a boxing or martial arts class, one of the first instructions given is to "punch through the target" to encourage powerful blows and not weak blows that only touch the surface of a target. Jon Low begins his June 30 Newsletter with a couple quotes from Tim Larkin's book, When Violence Is The Answer, that address this same point in a more general matter, including this one:

     "When you strip all the social baggage away, intent is nothing more than the business-like execution of a single-minded goal:  the infliction of injury to save your life.  A strike driven home with the intention to knock your assailant into the ICU gets the job done.  A strike with the 'hope' of discouraging him from hurting you does not.  The will to injure him is the spark that fuses all of your assets and your efforts -- your body weight in motion, your structure --into a single terrible unit that will hit him with everything you have."  

    Jon Low also reports that he took an active shooter class recently and has a list of points/notes from that class that you might want to check out: some (ok, a lot) of it has to do with being in good enough physical shape that you can be part of the solution and not part of the problem, but other points on avoiding being shot, hardening schools, etc.

    On that same issue--active shooters--Greg Ellifritz links to an article from Gun Digest entitled "Living In An Active Shooter World" which has a few tips and pointers (no where near as much as Jon mentions, though), and winds up by considering equipment: specifically, that your small, super compact 9mm pistol is probably not up to facing off with an active shooter armed with a AR15 and wearing body armor. "Sure, if you get close enough for a head shot," the author writes, "but in my world, closing on a hard target isn’t the optimum strategy. Instead, I’d like to take that shot from behind hard cover from at least 25 yards away. That means using a full-sized pistol, not a mini." I don't know--I think you should be able to hit a target from 25 yards even with a small pistol. In fact, I would suggest that if you are not at least occasionally practicing at 50+ yards with your carry pistol, you are making a mistake. 

    Jon Low also recommends a larger pistol (even if not a full-size, duty pistol), but for different reasons than that in the article cited above:

    ... You want to use the largest pistol that fits your hand.  It fits your hand if your middle finger points back toward you, and your trigger finger is perpendicular to the displacement vector of the trigger.  So your trigger finger is pressing the trigger straight to the rear; no vector component

of lateral force.   

 

     I think that carrying a smaller pistol than fits your hand is a bad idea.  You may think it is more concealable, but being able to manipulate your pistol in a high stress situation if far more important.  You can take care of concealment by dressing appropriately.  

I don't know if that latter statement is entirely correct. I don't know how Jon dresses, but most of the YouTubers and magazine writers that talk about how easy it is to conceal carry are slim guys wearing untucked shirts. As the Suited Shootist has explained, if you are in business attire working in a cube farm, it is can be problematic to carry even small handguns concealed. It is also harder to conceal if you are, shall we say, on the hefty side. 

    I'm not saying that it isn't advantageous to have a firearm that fits you. One of the reasons I like my snub-nosed revolver and continue to use it is because I switched out the factory grips for Ergo's Delta grips which give me a much better grip that fits my hand. It is also one of the reasons that I try and stick to handguns that point naturally for me, or modify them to do so. But sometimes, you will have the choice of a small, lightweight gun, or nothing at all.

    Speaking of concealed carry, though, Jon has a list of characteristics of a good holster that I recommend that you check out. And on that point, Greg links to an article entitled "Beware the emphatic holster" about the dangers of energetically and forcefully re-holstering your handgun. The author of that piece notes why re-holstering can be dangerous:

The motion is “pushing the gun forward”. When this happens, if anything comes in contact with the trigger, the gun itself is able (continues) to move forward — but the trigger does not. The trigger stops and basically is moved backwards, and that then causes the trigger to do what it’s designed to do – and the gun fires.

He mentions various reasons why something might come in contact with the trigger. You can reduce this danger by selecting a good holster with the characteristics Jon mentions.

    Finally, both Jon and Greg link to articles about defending against bear attacks, both by Dean Weingarten at AmmoLand (who has been researching this issue for years). Jon links to "Handgun Defenses Against Bears – 170 Documented Incidents, 98% Effective" which just came out in June 2023. Greg links to "Lessons From Handgun Defense Failures Against Bears" published in April 2022.