http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?81462-So-you-want-to-buy-an-AR-15-huh

http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?170304-quot-The-Gun-Is-Civilization-quot

Criminals fear armed citizens more than they fear cops

John Stossel had a report on guns and included the fact that inmates are more afraid of citizens who are armed than they are of cops, simply because they know instantly more often than not who the cops are. The portion on guns starts at 5:05, he interviews inmates at 6:30 and talks about what they are afraind of at 7:15.

This reminds me of a story I recently read at the following link:

I ran into a kid at the carwash this past Saturday, I remember him and his brother from church when they were ankle-biters. Sadly both this guy and his brother ended up doing time in the state pokey (His brother is actually back in) while he has turned his life around. He recognized me and came up to start chatting- saw my sidearm and asked what I was carrying these days. Spent a few minutes talking about my firearm and he says, "you know, guys like my brother fear people like you."

I said, "armed people?"

He said, "no, armed people who don't bother covering it up."

I asked, "Why not just regular armed people?"

He said, "can't tell who is strapped and who isn't. Someone carrying concealed looks just like everyone else. See, when guys like him case a joint, they make sure that everything is in place. As soon as they see someone with a piece hangin' off their belt it messes with their rhythm. That throws them off and makes them shaky."

Then he said something that has stuck with me since, "my brother said it took him almost a week to get the picture of a guy with a gun out of his mind before he got the nerve up to go rob another store. It really freaked him out because it reminded him that there were people out there with guns that could shoot back."

I said (in my most sarcastic voice), "you can't tell me a hardened criminal is actually scared of a private citizen with a handgun."

His answer? "Thugs ain't no heroes... too lazy and it takes a lot of energy to get nerve up to go somewhere and do it. If you mess with that flow they gotta wait until they get jacked up enough to do it again. Could take a few minutes or a few days, but they won't go back to where they know somebody's packin'"

Thought provoking conversation. I just hope this kid has learned his lesson and stays out of trouble.

Use a password on your cellphones

In California, they have already allowed police officers on routine traffic stops to be able to take a cell phone phone and search through it for any incriminating evidence of any wrong-doing. And since my policy is to listen to the experts (lawyers and cops) when they say to never talk to the police, it stands to reason that I should also limit their access to my cell phone. Sure, this law is not in my home state, but it could come up.

You can’t win if you can’t hit

Found this article in an online forum that did not supply the original link to where it came from. However, I am posting it here simply because it is a very good article. And since I am very pro-self defense, it is imperative that if you own a gun that you can fire the gun safely and accurately during moments of crisis.

One of the first skills to degrade under stress is trigger control. One of the biggest problem facing shooters is learning how to control and manipulate the trigger under tight time limits and stress, both in qualification courses and on the street.

Trigger control is composed of two parts—mental control and physical manipulation. On the mental side, control of emotions and arousal comes into play. On the physical side, learning how to manipulate the trigger correctly keeps us in control at higher rates of shooting speed.

The arousal level necessary for fast precise shooting is a lot lower than that needed for most physical confrontations. I refer to this type of arousal as “calm or cold aggression.” You are definitely determined, confident and focused; you just need to stay a lot calmer while doing so. This involves a lot of specific training to develop this mindset and is beyond the scope of this article.

Trigger Manipulation Concepts
No matter how you choose to manipulate the trigger, the number one thing you must learn to do is to isolate the action of the trigger finger. This is part mental control and part physical manipulation.

Two things make this difficult.

1.) The shooter must deal with noise and recoil at the end of the trigger press. This leads to anticipation of recoil and noise and a subsequent flinching response while manipulating the trigger.
2.) The faster you go, the greater your tendency to move other fingers while you manipulate the trigger.

In order to deal with the first problem, I was taught the concept of “surprise break” when I was learning how to shoot. The theory is that you keep adding pressure to the trigger until the firearm discharged and you didn’t know the exact moment the shot would break. This was supposed to help with the anticipation problem. The difficulty with the theory is that in a very short time, the shooter knows pretty much when the gun is going to go off and starts to react to the anticipated recoil at the moment they are finishing the press.

I have moved away from the “surprise break” concept in favor of teaching my students to learn to accept recoil. The outcome is the same, not disturbing the sight alignment and sight picture, but the methodology is different.

Trigger Isolation
I have devoted a great deal of time to study and research on how to teach high level defensive shooting for those wishing to pursue higher levels of excellence. The Skills Hierarchy© is one of the new concepts to come out of this research.

Before you can precisely isolate the trigger, the shooter has to have a feeling in the mind that they are in control of the shooting grip and the gun will not slip in the hand while it is recoiling. Also in the mind is the feeling that the recoil cycle is smooth without a violent flip of the slide. Only then will the shooter be able to relax, isolate excessive tension, and be able to focus precisely on the manipulation of the trigger at higher speeds. The shooting grip is “alive” in that it will respond to inputs from the brain and the firearm. The key is to build awareness and skill in processing what is really going on and how to make it work for you.

We just finished a couple of instructor schools with some advanced instructors from the US Border Patrol and FLETC at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, NM. During the courses, we explored the Skills Hierarchy on a variety of levels with different topics and specifically explored trigger control and manipulation.

What was amazing to me was the amount and speed of learning when things are done at the correct level of the hierarchy in the correct sequence of training. Bad habits that had been built over many years were corrected and students remarked on how much more they had learned about their shooting that they did not realize they did not know.

These were not basic instructors with only a few years on the job. They were advanced level trainers.

Concepts
Most instructors use ball and dummy drills to show the student their flinch and help them become aware of it. What I have found is that while ball and dummy drills may help identify flinch, they do not of themselves correct flinch. The student’s mind must be reprogrammed with a different way of thinking, believing and dealing with recoil and noise.

Simply put, these reactions are tied to the survival reflexes. When you KNOW you have a live round in the chamber you must be able to deal psychologically with the effects of noise, recoil and muzzle blast on a level that allows you to still isolate the trigger.

Getting Started
In order to better isolate the trigger, you must first have control of the handgun as well as proper balance. A proper grip allows the hands and the handgun to move as a unit, without slipping, through the recoil cycle. Proper balance allows the body to relax and compensate for the effects of recoil without tensing up or moving. The proper balance for shooting is with the center of gravity slightly forward.

Proper control of both the grip and balance allows the shooter to acclimate to recoil and muzzle rise and start to relax mentally and physically. In doing so, the brain is reprogrammed not to become alarmed when the gun is fired.

Further acclimation can occur in relation to noise and muzzle blast if you let yourself shoot the gun below eye level at a safe backstop. Just look at the backstop and shoot. Then look at the gun and shoot without blinking. George Harris from the SIG SAUER Academy will have the student look at the gun from each side while shooting it to help them acclimate. George and I have similar thoughts when it comes to teaching acclimation before teaching other components of marksmanship.

As the shooter learns to relax, isolate tension and let recoil happen, the capacity to isolate the trigger will increase.

Excessive/violent muzzle rise and a loss of friction between the hand and the handgun will invariable result in tightening the grip as you press the trigger. This results in muzzle movement and a change in point of impact. Whatever type of shooting stance or grip you are currently doing, staying consistent on grip pressure will lead to much more shooting success.

Here are some tips that will help you become a more consistent shooter.

Exercise #1
With either your empty firearm or a blue gun, establish your shooting grip and, while holding the grip firmly, have another person hold the firearm behind the muzzle with one hand and give a tug on your support hand with the other hand using approximately 20 lbs. of force to see if it comes loose. The goal is to create enough pressure and friction to keep the support hand firmly connected to the gun.

Exercise #2
After completing exercise 1, establish your shooting grip. Without changing grip tension, dry fire the handgun. Hold the grip pressure the same before, during and for three seconds after you have finished pressing the trigger. Repeat a minimum of 25 times.

Exercise #3
Once you develop a feel for keeping constant grip pressure, do it with live fire, paying particular attention to keeping grip tension the same as you finish trigger press and after the shot is fired.

These simple exercises, done correctly, will result in a much more educated trigger press which will increase your precision at speed and distance.

Try them out and let me know how it works for you!

A text book way to control a combative suspect

This video shows how using the Carotid Restraint is effective and easy to use without causing any injury to the suspect or the officer. Even though these guys are security they did a very good job on controlling the suspect. Now to get officers to use this instead of other approaches that could easily be construed as "brutality".

Another story of a bad cop

See, I don't have a problem with officers making mistakes. Getting too emotionally charged and snapping. I mean, they ARE people, and people have the tendency to overreact at times. I would like to see that officers are appropriately screened in order to weed out such people from such civic duty, but it can happen to anyone. But what pisses me off at police as a whole is when, after making a mistake, the officer in question lies about it. I have a strong suspicion that most people feel the same way as I do: that a mistake, even one that involves physical harm, might be excused by the general public (and by that I do not mean no discipline, just that the general public might not hate cops so much) if the officer were to come straight out and say "I am guilty. I screwed up. I apologise for my actions." This doesn't happen though. Officers seem to have a disposition to lie about what their mistakes and wrongdoing, and other officers back them up.

Just to showcase this line of thought, the story below contains a video where it shows a citizen speaking to an officer and then out of the blue, the officer punches the guy in the face, then punches him some more when the guy is down. It took first-hand viewing of the tape for the prosecutors to drop the charges because the officer was stating that the citizen was the one to attack him!

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/the_edge/video-shows-detroit-police-officer-beating-man-at-mgm-casino

The officer, however, claims Poisson made the first move. He was facing charges, but they were eventually dropped. "As soon as the prosecutor's office saw the videotape, the charges disappeared," said Mueller.
Poisson is now suing the department for money, as well as the officer's resignation.

It is stories like these that help the general public believe that cops are criminals (and in this case, this officer was since he blatantly lied about what happened). And if you watch the video in the link provided above, you will see that the cop was not alone. What did the other officer do? Tell the prosecutors and his chief what really happened? Doesn't seem that that is the case.

I honestly want cops to be the good guys, but with so many incidents lately that are showing how bad the cops are... it is easy to see why the public opinion of cops is so bad.

Some statistics, and why you should Openly Carry a firearm

According to Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, James Wright and Peter Rossi, Aldine, 1986 about 60% of convicted felons said they purposely avoided targets they knew to be armed. The same study showed that 40% admitted to avoiding someone they thought might be armed. It seems to me the criminals are more afraid of open carry than concealed carry.

According to, The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons, U.S. Bureau of Justice StatisticsFederal Firearms Offenders study, 1997: National Institute of Justice, Research Report, July 1985,Department of Justice 57% of felons said they are more worried about running in to armed citizens than cops.

In other words the studies show that criminals avoid those that can fight back with a weapon. They avoid the hard targets. They don't hide in bushes and wait to attack them in hopes of stealing their weapon. This "target me" myth is not based in the evidence of real world studies. It just doesn't pan out based on what is known of criminal behavior.

According to a study done in Missouri 2% of civillian shootings kill an innocent person. The tally for police officers came out to 11%. According to, Geller & Karales, "Shootings of and By Chicago Police: Uncommon Crises, Part I: Shootings by Chicago Police," Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 1813 (1981) 14% of lethal force incidents by Chicago police officers were "prima facie cases of manslaughter or murder."

Even the FBI admits that criminals don't OC & practically never use holsters.
The study was called "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers".
Published in 2006; PDFs available here.
Chapter 4 is where they talk about criminals, OC, & holsters.


So if you see a citizen with a pistol in a holster, you can be pretty sure they're not planning to cause trouble.