Weekend Reading #63

 Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:

• First up is Jon Low's latest Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter.  Part of the reason we practice is so many of our actions become automatic and we don't have to think about them. Years ago I came across an account of a police officer that had been training disarms (knife disarms, if I remember right) where to speed things up in the training, after each disarm, he would immediately return the practice knife to the hand of his training partner. Then one day the officer had the opportunity to use the technique on the street ... and immediately handed the knife back to the criminal! He realized his mistake and used a different disarm and no harm done, but it raises the issue that we will act how we train. Jon warns of a similar issue with combining draws or presentation of a firearm with taking the shot:

     Your shooting should always be a separate intellectual decision.  Your shot should never be part of a presentation or reload or stoppage reduction.  Tap, Rack, Bang! is wrong, on many levels.  

     It's fine to make the decision to shoot before the presentation.  It's fine to make the decision at some point during the presentation.  But the shooting should never be part of the presentation.  So, shooting every time you present is WRONG.  Because such practice engrains firing when you decide to present.   And if you have engrained such, it is impossible to present and not shoot.  That's why the NRA and many gun schools do not teach Tap, Rack, Bang!   Instead they teach Tap, Rack, Assess.  

    And some schools teach presentation without firing.  At Front Sight, they taught to present to the target, sights lined up, slack out of the trigger.  Getting up to that point should be fast.  But a lot can happen / change between your decision to present and the attainment of your sight picture.  So automatically shooting when presenting is not a good idea.  

 A few articles to which Jon linked that caught my attention in particular:

• "Defending Your Family From an Armed Attacker: A GA DGU"--Concealed Carry.  An analysis of an incident where a family was shot at by a drive by shooter armed with a rifle. 

    Two details stand out once the shooting started. People saw the rifle from a distance and were already moving before the first shot, which is awareness doing its job. And Green returned fire while moving instead of standing flat-footed in the open. I don't know if he was trying to close distance for an easier shot, get a better angle that removed innocent people from the background, or perhaps something else.

    Be honest about the matchup, though. A pistol against an attacker in body armor carrying a rifle is not a fair fight. The rifle reaches farther and hits harder, and the armor covers the high-percentage targets. What carried the day was not gear. It was a defender willing to move and put rounds on the threat instead of freezing. 

•  A couple on bear defense from John Farnam:
• "Bears!"--which describes an incident of a woman and a couple dogs that were ambushed by a bear. She was able to drive the bear off with a 9mm pistol, but one of her dogs was injured. Farnam faults her for risking her life to gather up the wounded dog when the bear could attack again and for carrying a gun not suited for defense against bear.
• "Bears, Cont…"--in which Farnam discusses ammo and firearms suitable for bear and makes his recommendations. And, while it may surprise many of you, he does not believe that 10mm is powerful enough for bear defense--at least not for brown bear.
• Commenting about this incident--"Woman attacked at Mobile gas station during attempted carjacking caught on camera" by WKRG--Jon writes;

     Don't chase the bad guy!  Your goal is always to get away from the bad guy.  The victim got body slammed.  She could have gotten killed or permanently disabled.  Don't chase the bad guy.  

     Don't get angry.  Getting angry makes you do stupid things, like chasing the bad guy.  If you have the chance to run away, RUN AWAY! 

      "What a cowardly thing to advise."  

     Running away is the smart thing to do.  Regardless of how cowardly it may appear.  Chasing the bad guy is stupid, no matter how brave it may appear.  

• So you have all probably heard about the active shooter incident in Montreal where a Rabbi was mistakenly shot and killed by a female police officer while outside the Porn Hub HQ in a Jewish neighborhood. Jon links to a couple of videos discussing the shooting. The first goes over the shooting from the perspective of the female officer lacking target discernment and stress inoculation; and how it could happen on a church security team.  Jon also linked to a video from Andrew Branca that was taken down by YouTube, but here is a YouTube short from Branca that probably covers the primary points: the officer was panicked and probably suffered from piss poor training. Jon also has a link to the shooter's 104 page manifesto. 
•  Finally, check out the reprint of an email "UNRAVELING THE RED DOT GORDIAN KNOT" by Gabe Suarez.

There is a lot more, though, so scroll through and see what interests you.

• Next up is this week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz. Some of the articles and links that caught my eye:
• One of things that only came to my attention in the past few years was the level of organization of some of the street crime groups: a saw a video from Seattle and an article of a similar incident in Portland of groups where one man (who was a good runner) would steal a laptop or bag from a car, then had 5 or 6 compatriots in place to block pursuers, hide the thief, and, finally, extract the thief in a vehicle if necessary. I suspect that a trained military or intelligence team could pull this off as well. So the first article that caught my attention was "Detecting the Covert Accomplice" which goes over the the covert accomplice ("sleeper" or "cover") in a robbery who hangs back monitoring the situation and providing back up, as well as the roles of the "scout," "holster," and "designated distractor". And speaking of the designated distractor:

If you are accosted by a group, the loud, mouthy one is the Double-D. He’s there to take your attention from the quiet one hanging back and looking around. If anybody has a gun, the quiet one does. Don’t get so tunneled-in on the loudmouth that you miss the others fanning out around to cut off your escape routes.

•  Swift Silent Deadly discusses "Straw Man Arguments Against the Defensive Shotgun."
• "The Golden Second - Ten Lessons in Crime-Fighting from a Counter Mugger Expert" discusses some lessons and tips from someone who has been mugged--as a police decoy--more times than any normal person will have been.
• "The Preemptive Draw and Preemptive Grip in the Cash-in-Transit Sector. Part 1" goes over the history of this tactic developed in the armored car industry of preemptively drawing and having a weapon in hand, which shaves a second or two off having to draw a weapon.
• Greg includes a few articles on the 1911--its history as a military weapon, using it in concealed carry, and a short piece on why choose a 1911. 
• An article on handguns for fiction writers who traditionally have been notorious for getting their gun descriptions and handling wrong. So of course the article begins with a mistake: that there are no revolvers with manual safeties. There are, but they are rare--I believe China's police forces use a revolver with a manual safety (see also here). Forgotten Weapons has a short video covering revolvers with manual safeties. And apparently the Heritage Manufacturing Rough Rider revolver has a manual safety up on the left side of the hammer. 
• An article with advice and information on carrying a knife for self defense. 
• An article discussing the "kit gun". I especially liked this explanation:

 A good kit gun isn’t meant to replace your deer rifle or defensive handgun.

Think of it more like a quality pocketknife.

You may not use it every trip, but when you need it, nothing else is quite as convenient.

A kit gun should be lightweight enough that you’ll actually carry it, accurate enough for small game, reliable enough to ignore until needed and durable enough to live outdoors.

Those four characteristics matter far more than caliber or barrel length.