The Dangers of Returning Home

 Home Protection, Personal Protection, Training  2 Responses »
May 012012
 

Suburban paradise and safety? Read how an occupied house close to these three was attacked by four youths.

So there you are – returning home after a tiring day at the office, or maybe after an equally tiring time at the mall or supermarket.  Perhaps you have your hands full with shopping bags and other stuff you’re bringing in from the car, trying to bring it all with you in a single trip from the car.

Most of all – now that you’re returning back to your home – your place of greatest comfort, safety and refuge – you’re already starting to relax, to unwind, and you’ve already dropped down the color code of mental alertness from your usual outside the house level of yellow to the semi-sleepwalking condition known as white.  (Read about the color code here if you’re unfamiliar with it.)

What happens next?  Perhaps you’re just a few steps into your house when – all of a sudden – three armed robbers who had already broken in while you were away jump you.  The next few seconds could go either way, from a sudden and very bad outcome to you, to a still not good outcome.

How likely is this?  More likely than you might think.  Here’s a terrifying list of statistics that suggests, among other things, that a home invasion occurs somewhere in the US once every 15 seconds, and that 47% of home invasions result in severe injuries for people at home.

But let’s look not at the abstract statistics, but at a specific reality.  Please read this Seattle Times article about what happened in the decidedly upmarket and supposedly ‘good’ and ‘safe’ neighborhood in the 9800 block of Marine View Drive, Mukilteo WA 98275 (click the link for a Google map and choose the streetview option).

This was a story with a happy ending.  The sudden return of apparently at least four other people caused the home invaders to abandon whatever they had been doing; but it could have gone the other way and resulted in a much more serious tragedy.

Lessons From This Real-world Example

This is a very useful example of a real world situation.  Although the article is brief, we can learn several lessons from it.

First, although the neighborhood this happened in is definitely upmarket, the four youths who carried out the home invasion/robbery were not locals.  They came from Kent, which is 45+ miles away.  There’s no way they’d end up on Marine View Drive in Mukilteo (the town is off the major arterials and the road is not really a through road at all and there’s not a lot of local night-life to attract out-of-town youths) unless they’d deliberately gone looking for places to burgle.

Yes, these days the bad guys also have to put up with long commutes on their way to and from ‘work’.  Living in a good neighborhood is no certain guarantee of safety.

Second, there were a lot of bad guys.  Three of them invaded the house, with at least one gun, and apparently unconcerned by the fact that an adult man was currently at home.  Remember to always plan for encountering multiple adversaries.  ‘Rats hunt in packs’.

Third, not only were there three bad guys in the house, there was a fourth guy outside the house, in their getaway car.  Remember that just because you can’t see additional bad guys doesn’t mean they’re not somewhere close by.

Fourth, the girls returning home probably saw lights on, knew that Dad would be home, and never thought for a moment that just because their father was home, their house wasn’t therefore guaranteed to be safe.  Not all burglars only attack empty houses.  The most dangerous ones happily commit ‘home invasions’ and break into occupied houses.

Fifth – and we’ll write more on this another time – note how the four youths shot back at the home occupants when driving off.  Normally you’d consider an assailant to no longer be a threat when they are running away from you.  This is just one of many examples that contradict that assumption.  Remain behind cover and/or continue the fight until they are safely out of range.

So, how do we apply these lessons and include them into our daily routines.  Here are some semi-rhetorical questions for you :

  • Do you ever stop to check your house security before entering it after returning from somewhere?  Almost certainly not because the only thorough way of doing this would be to walk the entire perimeter, checking all doors and windows for signs of forcible entry.
  • Do you enter defensively and quickly scout the house for signs of any current or recently departed intruders?  Probably not, and we’re not necessarily suggesting you should, every time you come home.
  • Do you have a weapon with you and ready to quickly deploy as you enter your home?  Hopefully yes – hopefully you always – including at home – have a weapon close at hand.

Bottom line – you should always be alert when entering your home after an absence (short or long) and aware that arriving home does not necessarily mean you’ve finally arrived at your safest place and you can relax.

Sometimes it might be quite the opposite.  You’ve placed yourself out of sight and earshot of the outside world, and until you are certain there are no threats inside your house, rather than being a place of safety, it is a place of possible danger.  In addition, just because there are other family members in the house does not mean they’ve not been joined by home invaders too.

There’s no reason to become paranoid upon returning home every day.  But two simple things will help reduce your vulnerability at this time.

All Clear Code Word with People in the House

First, have a system arranged with your family members, so that whenever someone enters the house after an absence, they call out some sort of phrase, and the other people in the house respond with a specific safe-word reply.  It doesn’t matter so much what the greeting is that the returning home person calls out, but the response must be exactly the ‘all clear’ response, and anything else that is said instead is a signal for danger.

For example, you get home and call out ‘Honey, I’m home’.  If your spouse calls out ‘Welcome home’ maybe that is the safe-word signal.  But if your spouse calls out ‘Welcome back’ or ‘I’m in the kitchen, dear’ or anything else, that means there is a problem.

In such a case, you should immediately run away, out of the house and take up a safe position where you can watch the house from a distance.  As soon as you are safe, call the police and tell them the situation.  If you stay in the house, you risk becoming a part of the classic tv/movie cliché of the bad guy confronting you with a gun pointed at your spouse’s head and demanding that you too surrender.  Leave the hostage rescue (a very difficult task) to the experts.

If you call out your greeting and get no reply, that might mean the people you expect to be in the house didn’t hear you, or maybe they’ve gone outside, or maybe they are under duress and can’t call out.

If there’s no reply to your greeting, stop where you are, look around you and listen.  Call out again loudly.  If no reply, evacuate the house, take up a safe position, and phone your spouse or whoever else you expected to be in the house, either on the home/landline or on their personal cell phone.  Ask them where they are and why they didn’t hear you.  Have a code word/phrase that means ‘all safe’ or perhaps use the same code word/phrase as if you were exchanging phrases in the house.

If you can’t reach whoever you expected to be home by phone, and if this is unusual (ie your spouse is usually 99% of the time always with their cell phone and it never runs out of battery, etc), then you have to decide what to do next.  Call the police, perhaps.  Wait a while and try phoning again, perhaps.

There’s no point in sneaking around your house looking for any external signs of forced entry, because if someone was at home, what could have happened is the home invaders simply walked up to the front door and rang the door bell, and your spouse or whoever opened the door for them.  That procedure would leave no sign of any forcible entry at all.

A Simple Check Upon Returning Home

If you return home in a situation where you do not expect anyone else to be home, then clearly there’s no point in calling out to announce your return, because there shouldn’t be anyone answering.

Instead, as you approach your house, first be aware of any unusual vehicles parked on the street reasonably close to your residence (easier to do if you live in a single family dwelling than if you live in a block of condos/apartments of course).  Then, as you get closer, do a quick visual inspection of the door frames and windows of your residence.  If all looks normal, you can proceed to cautiously enter.

Now, once you get into your home, move away from the doorway slightly (this is a ‘fatal funnel’ – a point where bad guys would be expecting you to transit through and so may be ready to attack you there) then pause and strain all your senses to see if anything seems out-of-order.

Listen for any strange sounds.  Smell for any strange smells.  Look for anything unusually out-of-place.  It is amazing the type of unconscious clues which you might pick up.  You might hear an unusually loud sound from outside, suggesting there is a door or window open somewhere else in the house.  You might notice something out-of-place.  You might sense the slightest whiff of an odor that you’re not familiar with.  The house might be unusually hot or cold.  A light might be on that you didn’t expect to see on.

You might pick up on one of these clues without even consciously realizing it – you might simply sense that something is wrong.

What do you do if something feels somehow wrong?  Do you urgently bolt out of the house and call the police.  You can guess how that conversation would go :  ‘Hello, 911?  I just got home and, I don’t know, but something felt wrong, so I ran away and I’m calling you – would you send a team of officers over to check my house please, just in case there’s a burglar inside?  No, I didn’t see any signs of a break-in or anything.  It just feels wrong to me.’

That’s a request that might get you a low priority response some time later (depending on your police department), but if you were to repeatedly call on that basis, you’d soon end up with zero response or worse, a request to stop wasting the police’s time.

Instead, we suggest you stay doing exactly what you were doing.  Stand still, using your senses as best you can, and particularly now your sense of hearing.  If there is someone in your house, either they know you’ve just returned home or they don’t know this.  If they don’t know, you’ll hear them moving before too long.  If they do know, and if they are hiding somewhere, time is on your side, not theirs.  You are in your home.  They are out-of-place.  Before too long, they’ll start to wonder what you are doing, and start to worry about what else might be happening.  Standing perfectly still and silent will spook them.

Of course, as part of this, you’ll adopt a defensive posture and position, you’ll make sure no-one can creep up from behind you, and you’ll get ready with your self-defense pistol.

If nothing happens in a short while, you’re probably okay.  If you’re still a bit concerned, leave the house and patrol around the perimeter, looking for signs of break-ins.

A Quiet Word About Silence

Note – at the risk of stating the obvious, it is best, when you leave your house, not to have any televisions or other sound generating sources operating.

Noise can mask what intruders are doing.  You ideally should return to a totally silent home so any unusual noises are immediately obvious.

On the other hand, some people like to leave a radio playing or television on when they go out, so as to portray an impression of the house being occupied in the hope this would dissuade burglars.  There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but if you do, make sure you have some type of way of turning off the sound source before you enter the house.  Maybe there’s an app on your phone for doing this, or maybe you simply have an X-10 type remote control that can turn off the power to the radio or television.

Summary

Our homes can be safe places, but their usual safety can lull us into a false sense of security.

When we leave our residence, anything can and might happen in our absence, and we need to take some prudent simple precautions upon returning home to ensure it remains safe for us before and as we enter it.

Updates :

1.  Please see our subsequent article ‘When Going to Help Your Elderly Husband is the Wrong Thing to Do‘ for another example of a home invasion/attack and where a codeword signal could have helped save an 84 yr old woman from being raped.

2.  Please also see our subsequent article ‘Being Politically Correct Can Be Dangerous‘ for an example of the danger that is also present between when you exit your vehicle and enter your residence.

Two Lessons from a Tragedy

 Firearms, Outside the Home Protection, Personal Protection  No Responses »
Apr 162012
 

The scene shortly before eight police officers fired more than 90 rounds at a crazy youth.

There’s a lot of valuable experience and skill to be gained from time at the range.  We all need regular range time to maintain our shooting skills, because they are ‘perishable’.  Unlike riding a bike – something you learn once and remember always – if you don’t keep practicing your shooting skills, they fade away.

However, there’s another sort of learning and experience we can, we should, we must gain as well; and this is the knowledge and understanding we can get without ever leaving home and without even touching a firearm.  This learning comes from studying real world events and encounters, and learning the lessons to be gleaned from them.

Here’s an interesting example of a real world encounter, which leads to two important self-defense lessons.

To quickly summarize the situation, a ‘troubled’ Muslim youth with prior convictions who seemed to have some sort of police fixation lead Los Angeles police on a chase around Los Angeles, driving a former police car.  While doing this, he phoned 911 and uttered various threats of violence against the pursuing police, and said that if they drew and pointed their guns at him, he’d do the same to them.

Eventually the strange chase came to an end on the 101 freeway.  The youth jumped out of his car after the police had rammed and immobilized it, and many police in turn rushed out of their cars and towards the youth.  A strange sort of semi chase then occurred across the freeway lanes, with the youth alternating between running away, dancing around, and turning to the police while adopting shooting stances, hands outstretched with some sort of object in them.

It was night, the distances were short, and several of the police were out in the open rather than behind cover.  Add to that the youth’s threats to 911 which had of course been passed on to the pursuing officers, and his past arrests/convictions, so of course, and completely understandably, when the youth did this the police switched from pursuing the youth to defending themselves against what likely was a crazed madman with a gun, about to make good on his threat and shoot at the officers.

It is unclear how many police were present at this point, but at least eight officers fired more than 90 shots at the youth before he collapsed and subsequently died.  The shooting went on for at least ten and probably 15 seconds.  There’s a good video linked at the bottom of this page that provides helicopter filmed coverage of the final parts of the chase and then the fatal encounter after the youth’s car was stopped.

There are two lessons to be gleaned from this scenario.

1.  Number of Shots Fired

We don’t know exactly how many shots were fired, all we know is that the total was more than 90, which of course could be any number greater than this.  We don’t know how many of the shots were fired after the youth collapsed, but it is probable that most of the shots were fired prior to that point.  We also don’t know how many of the rounds hit the youth prior to his collapsing.

If you look at the video you’ll see more or less when the police start shooting, and you’ll notice the youth remains active and seemingly unimpaired, even though on at least a couple of occasions he seems to pause as a result of being hit before then resuming his crazy behavior.

Now put yourself into this picture – not as the crazy youth, of course.  But perhaps imagine that you’re in a situation where some crazy person gives chase to you in your car, perhaps as a result of some imagined discourtesy you exhibited while driving.  Your attacker eventually forces your car off the road, and you are forced to respond to his aggression with lethal force.

How many rounds will you have to fire at him to end his attack on you?

Most of us, when we mentally role play scenarios like this, usually envision shooting two or three or four times maximum.  We also, truth be told, probably cherish a major hope (fantasy?) that the simple presentation and brandishing of our handgun will scare the bad guy away, and as a backup to that first level of optimism, we hope that as soon as we fire a single shot at the bad guy, he’ll surrender or run away.

Let’s think about this.  Do you see any sign of rational behavior or submission/surrender on the part of the youth in this scenario?  And he has at least eight police officers, first all chasing him, then secondly all shooting at him.  He doesn’t at any point surrender or stop.  He stays ‘in the fight’ in his strange way all the way through until being fatally stopped.

We all of us have to plan for worst case, not best case scenarios.  If we want to live our lives based on the hope of exclusively enjoying best case scenarios, we don’t need a gun at all, we don’t need locks on our doors, and so on.  But if we are willing to plan for worst case scenarios, we need to plan all the way, not stop half way.  It is a bit like insuring your house.  You either fully insure it or you don’t insure it at all, but it makes no sense to half insure it.

So, back to the question.  How many shots will it take to stop your own crazy guy/attacker?

Let’s think about one more thing as well.  In the encounter we are talking about, you have at least eight professional trained policemen, who go to work every day in the knowledge they might end up needing to use their weapons, and who practice regularly.  Each of the eight was supported by the rest of the eight, and probably they all had body armor on.  The confrontation was clearly one that they would win, and even if one or two officers had the misfortune to be hit (and as it turned out, the youth had no gun, and so obviously never returned fire) they knew their brother officers would support them, and that paramedics would be on the way there in short order.

This is not to say it wasn’t a high stress situation.  Of course it was.  But as high as the stress level might have been, imagine how much higher your stress would be, as a single person, forced to respond to an unreasoning attack by a crazy person.  You have no backup, no body armor, and have probably never shot at a person before.  Your shooting will be much more panicky and less well controlled than that of the eight (or more) police officers.

So, and here’s the point :  If it takes eight police officers at least 90 shots to get this crazy youth out of the fight, how many shots will it take you in a similar situation?

It would seem reasonable to assume that you would need at least as many shots, but let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you only missed half as many shots as did the LA police officers, and let’s also say that the rounds you did get on target were better placed.  So perhaps you ‘only’ need at least 45 rounds to stop your own crazy attacker from continuing his threat.

Sure, there are cases where the mere sight of a gun will stop an attack, and other cases where a single shot fired will stop an attack.  Sometimes a bad guy will collapse from a ‘lucky’ first shot.  But look at the video again – you are looking at a case where it took eight police officers more than 90 shots to get this guy down.  Don’t reject the evidence in front of you – accept it and incorporate it into your training and your preparedness.

Now for some implications of this calculation.

  • Do you have at least 45 rounds with you at all times?  Sure, you have however many rounds are in your pistol to start with, but how many extra magazines (for semi-autos) or speed loaders (for revolvers) do you also have with you?
  • What say your attacker had a second (or third, possibly even fourth) person with him.  How many rounds would you need to stop two, three or four people?  Do the math – you won’t like the answer.
  • Look at the distances in this encounter.  The crazy guy was never more than one or at the most two seconds from the officers.  So consider this :  You’ve emptied your gun at your attacker, and he’s still pressing the fight.  You need to reload.  How long will it take you to reload?  Clearly you’ve got no more than perhaps 1.5 seconds to get your gun running again.  Can you get your gun reloaded – not on the range where you’re standing calm and still, with spare magazines in pouches on your belt, but in the real world where you’re having to move, to defend yourself, and to retrieve spare magazines from wherever you keep them on your person?

2.  Aftermath of a Justified Use of Deadly Force

The first of the two linked articles does a reasonably good job of reporting on how the dead youth’s relatives instantly make him out to be a saint rather than a sinner, while also providing some rebuttals to the claims of the relatives.

Some of these claims are so ridiculous as to almost be amusing – he didn’t hate police, he wanted to be a police officer himself and was slain by the very people he admired and wanted to join.  He wasn’t pretending to point a gun at the police, he was extending his arms in peaceful prayer.  And so on.

While it could be argued that 90+ rounds was perhaps a few more than needed, watch the video, understand the background, and you’ll agree this was a fully justified use of lethal force.  But not in the minds of the now grieving relatives – and potentially not in the mind of the public at large (who seldom understand the ugly realities of self-defense) and potentially not in the mind of prosecutors and jurors, either.

Every crazy attacker is probably also some mother’s son, maybe some wife’s husband, some children’s father, and so on.  Even the worst of people have friends.  And the certain truth is that if any news media has to choose between a sobbing grieving relative talking about how the loss of her son/husband/father is now destroying her own future life and how ‘he didn’t deserve to die’ on the one hand; and on the other hand to show a happy laughing cheering mother/wife/child rejoicing in how their son/husband/father survived a deadly encounter and was coming home safe, which do you think they’ll feature in their story?

Happy survivors are not news – if anything, they strike a discordant note.  Unhappy grieving ‘victims’ make for good stories and compelling viewing.

Even in the most extreme and justified situations where you have validly used deadly force to defend yourself, you’ll find a lot of negativity focused on you.

In other words, no matter what the situation, any time you can, your best strategy is always to avoid the fight.  To run away, not as a coward, but as a wise person choosing to win the broader battle for the quality of the rest of your life.  The most essential skill to develop is how to avoid fights – how to anticipate and get out of potentially dangerous situations before they become fully dangerous, and how to happily run away rather than stick around.

But if you do run out of options, and have to fight for your safety, make sure you don’t also run out of ammunition!

Prepare for Multiple Intruders/Assailants

 Firearms, Home Protection, Outside the Home Protection, Personal Protection, Training  No Responses »
Apr 062012
 

It is alarmingly common for bad guys to work in groups rather than alone. You need to plan and prepare for this.

It has been our general experience that most people, when taking training or buying a gun, are doing so to protect themselves against a single attacker.  A lone rapist.  A solo mugger.  An independent burglar.  One crazed drug addict.  You get the picture.

But this is not necessarily the way it will go down, if/when you end up in a deadly confrontation.  You know that if you see one rat somewhere in your house, that usually means there is a whole group of rats making their home in your home.  Rats are social creatures, ‘rats hunt in packs’.

This is true not only of rats.  It is commonly true with bad guys.  They’re also social creatures, and not only do they enjoy each other’s company, many times being a bad guy truly is a two person job.  It makes it easier for them to carry televisions out of a house they are burgling; gives them much more dominance and control if mugging a person on the street, gives them mutual encouragement, protection, and all those other good things.  It even gives them someone to brag to, and someone to confirm their boasting subsequently when telling other acquaintances about what they did.

So, here’s the thing.  If you’ve become aware of one person in a threatening position/demeanor, don’t stop looking and focus in on that single person.  You should anticipate that this person has at least one accomplice, and if you can’t see their accomplice, that doesn’t mean they’re not there; it just means you haven’t found them yet.

This is true on the street, and it is also true in your own home.  This article is being offered to you now in response to this story of a retired former police officer who was taking an afternoon nap in his home in Puyallup.  He woke to find not one, not two, not three, but four intruders in his house, and upon seeing him wake up, one of them rushed at him with a crowbar.

Fortunately, it seems the ex-police officer had read our recent article ‘Where Are You Most Likely to Need a Gun‘.  It isn’t clear where he was having his snooze – perhaps in his favorite comfy chair in his living room – but wherever he was, he had his gun with him, and was able to instantly defend himself.  He fired multiple shots fatally wounding the crowbar wielding attacker, and the other three ran off.

It is relatively unusual to have to fight off four bad guys, but as the article clearly demonstrates, it is not entirely unheard of.

Are you ready to defend yourself against multiple attackers?  There are two things in particular to keep in mind.

First, don’t think the fight is over once you’ve stopped the first attacker.  That’s why we teach you after shooting to physically force yourself to break your locked focus on the bad guy you were fighting – we teach you to ‘look and move’.

This reflexive action both physically reminds you of the need to find other bad guys and also gets you started in doing what you need to do to reduce your exposure (moving) and to help you find other potential attackers (looking).

The Problem With Revolvers

Second, just how effective do you think a revolver with five or six rounds in its cylinder will be against two or three or four attackers?  If we estimate that you’ll miss half the shots you take, and that you’ll need to place three or four shots on an attacker to stop them, go and do the sums.  Each bad guy will need six to eight shots to be taken out of the fight.

You’ve got enough rounds in your revolver for one bad guy – maybe two if you’re lucky.  You know that – and so too do the bad guys.  Everyone ‘knows’ that a revolver has six rounds (there are exceptions to this, both up and down, but the general belief is that a revolver has six shots) and the bad guys can sense when you’ve probably fired off all six rounds just as well as you can, and they also know that reloading a revolver takes time.

Most people will be out of the fight for somewhere between 5 – 10 seconds while they single-mindedly focus on reloading their revolver; and that’s way too long in an open fight with the bad guys on one side of your lounge and you one the other side.

At least with a modern semi-auto, you’ll hopefully have 15 or more rounds in the pistol, so by the time you’ve shot those 15 rounds off, you’ve probably massively changed the dynamics of the encounter in your favor, and instead of taking 5 – 10 seconds of concentrated effort to reload, you can swap magazines in your semi-auto in as little as 1.5 seconds and without taking your eyes off your surroundings.

Better still, you can do a ‘tactical reload’ at an advantageous lull in the gun fight with a semi-auto (also something you should be able to do in under two seconds with a bit of practice), but doing the same sort of thing with a revolver again takes you out of the fight for 5 – 10 seconds.  It is possible to think of situations where you can steal a couple of seconds to swap magazines, but it is hard to think how in an ongoing encounter you’ll be able to safely take yourself and your gun out of the fight for up to 10 seconds.

Don’t get us wrong.  We love revolvers, and most of us have one or two of our own.  But they are never our primary gun of choice in a ‘real’ deadly encounter.  And with sufficient training, it is possible to get stunningly fast at reloading a revolver.  But for ordinary people with ordinary levels of training, forget it.

Summary

Bottom line?  Plan in advance to anticipate any encounter as involving multiple bad guys.  Make sure your tactics and your weapons are appropriate for a one on many situation, and most of all, don’t let your guard down at any point in the encounter – just because you can’t see the other bad guy(s) doesn’t mean they’re not there, and just because they are running away right now doesn’t mean they mightn’t regroup around the corner, circle around, and come back at you.

Where Are You Most Likely to Need a Gun – And Least Likely to Have One?

 Firearms, Home Protection, Personal Protection  2 Responses »
Apr 022012
 

In less than five seconds, your home could suddenly change from a quiet refuge to a killing ground with home invaders attacking you. Where are you, and – more to the point – where’s your gun?

The chances are, by the very fact you’re reading this article (and thank you for doing so), you’re at least somewhat sensitive to the need to prudently protect yourselves and your loved ones.

Maybe you have a home defense gun of some sort in your bedroom somewhere.  Maybe you carry a concealed pistol with you, too, and if you do so, you’re probably more likely to carry one if/when you’re going somewhere you perceive to be less safe than other places.

But, where is the place you’re most likely to need a gun?  Hint – it is also the place you’re least likely to have one with you.

The answer is, of course, when you’re ordinarily at home, doing ordinary normal things.  Cooking in the kitchen.  Doing the laundry.  Mowing the lawn.  Watching television.  And so on.

Just like the old (and true) saying ‘most accidents occur in the home’ and ‘most car accidents occur within five miles of home’; the chances are typically greater – for most people leading normal lives – that they’ll have a violent encounter in their home rather than anywhere else.

There are several reasons why the place we perceive as our safest refuge is actually not.  The biggest reason – whether we’re talking accident statistics or risk of becoming a victim of violent crime – is simply the fact that it is the place we spend most of our lives at.  We probably spend more than 50% of our lives at home, compared to perhaps 25% – 30% of our lives at work (which may be more than just one fixed location), 5% – 10% of our lives in the car, and so on.

So, okay.  You might be thinking ‘Not a problem; I’ve got my trusty revolver by the bed; I’m always ready for anything that goes down’.  But – may we ask this :  You’re seated at the dining table having dinner when suddenly CRASH!  Someone kicks in the front door and bursts into your house.  Now tell me how useful the gun in your bedroom is, while you’re at the dining table, and potentially the bad guys are standing between you and your bedroom.

Similar scenario for if you’re outside mowing the lawn.  Or in the laundry.  Or maybe relaxing on your deck on a warm sunny summer afternoon.  The gun in your bedroom is only good while you’re within arm’s reach of it, also in your bedroom.

One more scenario.  Instead of the bad guys drawing attention to themselves by kicking your front door down, what say they instead politely knock and stand back, waiting for you to come to the front door and open it for them.  That’s easier on them – you open the door for them.  But don’t expect a thank you as they then rush you from a distance of only three or four feet away and knock you to the ground.  If you don’t already have your hand on your gun when opening the door to strangers, you’re completely at risk of a sudden attack.

Here’s another thing to consider.  We all know that concealed carry is a bit of a hassle, requiring us to accept compromises in terms of comfort, convenience, concealability, and caliber/power.  We accept such compromises in return for the massive boost in safety and security we get in turn.  Now, when we’re at home, we don’t need to worry about concealability.  We can wear a nice comfortable on-the-belt range style holster, and wear a dual magazine holder on our other side, too, and carry as big a gun as we wish to.

Some people might think ‘Oh, this would never happen to me.  I live in a good neighborhood.’  But, from a criminal’s point of view, ‘good’ neighborhoods are the best places for them to visit.  The chances are there are more valuables inside homes in a good neighborhood, and – sad to say – the chances are also that ‘good’ people are going to be more trusting and less likely to be suspicious and ready to defend against a sudden surprise attack.

Do you commute to work?  Guess what.  So too do the criminals.  It is actually considered impolite for criminals to attack each other; and they’re more fearful of recriminations if they should do so.  But they all know that if they do a reverse commute out into the better ‘burbs, they’re going to find street after street lined with tempting tasty targets.

It seems that the prevalence of violent ‘home invasion’ type burglaries might be slightly increasing.  Home invasions – when the criminals don’t care if there are people home or not (or, worse still, if they expect and are pleased to find people at home) are extremely dangerous for the home occupants, because the criminals have the privacy of the house they’ve taken over, and the luxury of uninterrupted time, during which they can do anything at all to the house, its contents, and its occupants.

The immediately preceding two articles concern what happened to a couple when a person invaded their home late one night.  Fortunately, they had gone to bed and so were close to their bedroom, but re-read that story and wonder what would have happened if they were still up and watching television when, without warning, all of a sudden a propane tank crashes through their outside door and is followed seconds later by a berserk deranged attacker.

Here’s another example of how home invaders suddenly swoop down on a house.  Note, in this story, that the police, while promptly called by a girl already in the house, didn’t arrive until much later.  We mean no disrespect to the police at all when we repeat the mantra that you must understand, accept, and build into your planning :  When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

Are you ready to respond, right now, if your home is invaded?

Lessons from the Public Reaction to a Justified Shooting part 2

 Firearms, Home Protection, Outside the Home Protection, Personal Protection  2 Responses »
Apr 012012
 

No matter how extreme the need for self defense, many people will condemn you for doing what you are forced to do

If you haven’t already done so, can we suggest you first read our article ‘Excellent Example of Public Reaction to Justified Shooting part 1‘ then after reading that, come back to this article second.

There is a scary lesson in the way too many ill-informed and un-informed comments posted in response to the account of the homeowner who shot a violent intruder who was hellbent on killing the homeowner.

The scary lesson is simply this :  What say if the homeowner wasn’t so fortunate, and ended up facing a criminal charge?  Or (as he still may) if he faces a civil charge?  What say some of the people on the jury have the same opinions these posters do?

It isn’t really a ‘what say if’ scenario at all.  It is close to a certain fact.  Statistically, there’s much more than a one in 12 chance of getting a juror who implacably hates the use of lethal force even in the most obvious case of necessary self defense.  Read again through the list of complaints that readers posted about this – which ones do you think jurors would have as well?

Some people quite literally and truly believe it is better to allow themselves to be killed than to instead kill a fellow human being.  One can perhaps almost understand this element of self-sacrifice in a one on one situation, but these people usually go further than that and say ‘Yes, and it is better the violent criminal be allowed to kill my children too than I should kill him’.  They add with a triumphant conclusion ‘Nothing can justify taking another human life’.

It is even crazier than this.  When it is pointed out to them that their selective ‘sanctity of human life’ belief has now not only caused them to allow a crazed murder to kill them and their family, but has left the murderer free and enabled, encouraged to murder again and again with impunity, they might start to realize they’ve painted themselves into a bit of a corner, and when one then says ‘So, in other words, your refusal to kill this one man has resulted in the deaths of four or more other people, some of whom rely on you for their protection and safety, and others of whom are total strangers simply relying on a just society to protect them as much as possible’ they will then say something like ‘Well, I still don’t agree with killing anyone’ and change the subject.  They don’t say ‘Oh yes, I see your point – perhaps the lives of four good ordinary innocent productive members of society are worth more than the life of one violent criminal’.

Sadly, there’s no more way you can reason with these people than you can with the violent criminals they’re so determined to protect.

Our point is simply this :  You need to keep in mind that your actions will be judged not just by people of similar values and beliefs as your own, but by people with unfathomably different values.  Apart from a very limited amount of pre-screening, there is little quality control that goes into the make-up of juries (and even less quality control that goes into the make-up of district attorneys and judges – success at politics and winning an elective position does not necessarily correlate with general ability and common sense – just look at most of our elected officials in DC for further evidence of that!).

You need to be able to justify your shooting to people who view a shooting as impossible to justify.  You need to explain why you selfishly took your attacker’s life to someone who believes you should have instead generously sacrificed your own life.

It isn’t only potential jurors you need to explain it to.  How about your friends and colleagues?  Your employer and your customers?  Maybe even your spouse, children, and parents.

And it isn’t only immediately after the event that this will be an issue.  Any time anyone Google searches you or does a background check on you (perhaps a credit check, perhaps an apartment rental background check, perhaps an employment check) the fact that you killed someone is likely to appear.  Your life will change, enormously, unpredictably, but absolutely not for the better, and will stay changed for the rest of your life.

In other words, you need to do everything you can to always avoid any situation where you’ve ended up needing to use lethal force.  Maybe the people who offer to sacrifice themselves have got it half right!  Because the consequences, even of the most righteous acts of self defense, will be appalling.

If you’re not convinced of this, go to part one of this article and then re-read the justifications/excuses from people who thought the intruder shouldn’t have been shot.  The people who posted those comments could be your boss, your future boss, your bank manager, your (formerly) best friend, your church minister, and so on.

Excellent Example of Public Reaction to Justified Shooting part 1

 Firearms, Home Protection, Personal Protection  3 Responses »
Apr 012012
 

What should a person do when a violent intruder attempts to kill them in their home at night?

Here’s a short and to the point story about a clearly and completely justified shooting – so clearly justified that it took the police less than 24 hours to announce not only that the killing was justified but that the homeowner had shown extreme restraint.

Go read the short report.  It is a short and simple story.

A couple were asleep in bed, and woke to the crashing sound of an intruder smashing their back sliding door by throwing a propane tank through it, just before midnight.  The couple hid in their bedroom and called 911.  The intruder gained entrance to their house and started noisily smashing stuff up, while calling out ‘Where you at, I’m gonna (expletive) you up. I’m gonna kill you’.

The homeowner called out to the intruder to go away, and warned the intruder he had a gun.

The intruder ignored the warnings and next broke into the bedroom where the couple were hiding.  The homeowner thereupon shot the intruder who died from his wounds.

We know what happened because the 911 tape recorded a lot of what transpired, and deputies were quickly on the scene, having already been called out by a woman one block away – the intruder had first banged on her door and tried to get in (and apparently had also created a ruckus at a local convenience store earlier in the evening).

This is as classic a case of a ‘perfect’ justified killing as there ever could be.  You’re at home asleep, when a total stranger violently breaks into your house and starts smashing it up, while calling out threats that he will kill you if he finds you.  You call the police, you call out to the intruder and warn him to leave because you have a gun.  You wait in your bedroom, but when the guy breaks into your bedroom, you shoot him.

This is exactly as how we and most other schools teach home owners to behave.  You don’t go looking for the intruder, you don’t lay in wait for them, you don’t set a trap and catch them.  You call the police, you retreat to the safest place, you call out to the bad guy and warn him you have a gun and tell him to leave.  But if he persists and enters your safest place, you resolutely then shoot to stop the threat without further pause or hesitation.

The police clearly agreed.

But.  And it is a huge but.  What about other readers of the article?  Did they sympathize with the two homeowners who were terrified out of their wits, who experienced a horrific event, and the man who was forced to break the ultimate taboo in our lives and kill another human being?

Sure, some people did.  But a lot of people did not.  Go read the huge number of reader comments that quickly started piling up (at the time of writing this there were 202 comments already).  Some comments are way off topic and some are unfathomable as to if the person agrees or disagrees with anything at all.

Let’s look at and respond to some of the very wrong comments.  It is helpful to read things like this, because it reminds us of the misinformation and misperceptions out there.

Shoot to Injure/Disable Rather than to Kill

There was the sadly predictable rhetorical question ‘Why couldn’t they just have shot him in the leg?’.  This is perhaps the most common complaint by people objecting to the use of deadly force, no matter how justifiable it may be.

Two quick responses.  The first response is that there’s no such thing as a shot that is guaranteed to only wound.  The asked for shot in the leg might have hit the femoral artery; meaning that 20 – 40 seconds later, the attacker would be dead.  Any shot is a potentially fatal shot.  If you’re not in a situation where lethal force is needed, you shouldn’t be using a gun, period.  Which leads to the second point.

When you’re in a life or death situation, and when the bad guy is almost on top of you, there is no time for feats of marksmanship.  Your priority must be simply to stop the threat before it stops you.  You shoot for the biggest target – the ‘center of mass’ – ie more or less the center of the guy’s chest.

One extra thought, here.  What if you did shoot to wound.  Does this attacker sound like the sort of guy who would then break off his attack?  Or would this just enrage him even further and propel him faster towards you with more determination?  When he’s across the bedroom from you, it is not a good point to start indulging in social experiments.  You must stop the threat urgently and fully.

Let’s understand the moral obligations here.  The homeowner had no moral obligation to do anything other than defend himself and his partner as best and as certainly as possible.  This strange crazy man broke into their house, ignored warnings, and called out threats to kill them.

But some people think we should risk our own safety so as to diminish the risk to our attacker.

Attempt to Crawl out a Bedroom Window and Run Away

Washington state law imposes no obligation on people to run away.  We can ‘stand our ground’ when we’re somewhere lawfully.

But, quite apart from the letter of the law, what makes the best sense?  If you leave the safety of your ‘safe room’, what might happen outside?  Maybe the mad man’s friends are waiting outside?  Maybe the mad man is a faster runner than you, and catches you halfway down your driveway?  Tactically, it is usually a mistake to leave a safe room where you can take cover and defend yourself and the room’s space.

But some people think we must be prepared to risk ourselves rather than defend ourselves.

These Sorts of Situations are Never Black and White

Some commenters attempted to adopt a statesmanlike tone of wisdom and said that these sorts of scenarios are never black and white – in other words, they were implying that some fault or blame must lie on the part of the attacked homeowners too.

Excuse me, but this was completely and utterly black and white!  It doesn’t get any clearer than this.  You’re at home, a stranger smashes into your house and calls out he is going to find you and kill you.  He ignores your warnings, smashes into your bedroom; – some people say this isn’t black and white?

Some people just refuse to accept there is ever any excuse for self-defense and so pontificate about ‘shades of grey’ even in the most black and white situations.  Don’t be trapped into taking the ‘easy way out’ and agreeing with their pointless sophistry.  This was black and white.

Should Have Been Tolerant Because The Attacker Was Drunk/Drugged/Mistaken

Several people suggested that the guy was simply drunk (or on drugs) or in some other way acting out of character.  Maybe so.  But what difference does it make when you’re confronted by a guy who has been violently smashing up your house, telling you he is going to kill you, and smashing into your bedroom, ignoring your warnings?

Does the possibility that 12 days ago, at 3pm, he might have been in a good mood and helped a little lady cross the street make any difference to what he is doing to you, now?  No, of course it doesn’t.

Others make comments about the world crumbling today under various pressures.  Maybe life isn’t assuredly easy for all of us, but that’s no excuse for behaving the way this intruder behaved, and it is no reason for the terrified homeowner to submit to the attacker’s desire to kill him.

Does being drunk excuse one from liability from one’s actions?  Should we perhaps go easy on drunk drivers who cause accidents, rather than being much tougher on them?  Does it hurt any less if you are beaten up or killed by a drunk person rather than by a sober person?

And should we require a householder, in a desperate situation protecting their life against a raging intruder, to try and call a time out and ask the intruder if he is only doing this because he is drunk?

Of course we can’t expect that.

This Shows Why We Need Better Mental Health and Drug Treatment Programs

Maybe it does show this, maybe it doesn’t.  But what relevance does that have to the immediate issue?  Some people are quick to repurpose any event and situation to support whatever cause they wish.

Let’s keep it plain and simple.  The homeowners were validly in fear of their lives, and had no choice but to defend themselves as they did.

The Police Should Not Have Exonerated the Homeowners, Only the Prosecutor Should Do This

Here’s another oblique way of trying to subtly suggest that this is a grey area rather than a black and white fully righteous act, and also of trying to ‘punish’ the homeowners – perhaps with some gratuitous jail time, perhaps with days/weeks/months/years of mental anguish about possibly facing a murder charge, and perhaps with a legal bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for protecting their interests while prosecutors dig every which way to try and turn a justified shooting into an illegal act.

The police aren’t trained to do this, the poster said.  That rather begs the question – what are the police trained to do, then?  If they can’t tell a righteous shooting when it is so obviously apparent, what good are they at anything at all?

Innocent people who suffer terrible experiences and attacks from criminals shouldn’t then have to suffer a second time, at the hands of our justice system.  The police did the absolute right thing here.

They Should Have Used Pepper Spray

Pepper spray is sometimes a great way of neutralizing a threat, and it has a place in the continuum of escalation of forces.

But when you’ve a crazy man rampaging around your house, smashing things up, and calling out that he will kill you, and when you have warned him that you have a gun and told him to leave, if he persists in the attack and breaks into your bedroom, you’re way past the point on the escalation of forces where pepper spray is appropriate.

Pepper spray – especially in civilian strength sprays – doesn’t work reliably, against all attackers, all the time.  If a person is crazy on drugs, they might not feel the effects at all.  Pepper spray might work well against some youths making you fearful in a car park at night, but not in a case like this.

Lastly, when someone chooses to break into your home, and says he is going to kill you, why should you be under any obligation to do anything other than respond as affirmatively as possible to the threat?

If the Bad Guy was Given a Second Chance, He Might Have Been Able to Turn His Life Around

There are two responses to that.  First, that in giving the bad guy a second chance, that would have required the homeowners to risk and possibly give up their lives to the bad guy in his current violent rampage.  So, the person saying this has already agreed it is okay for two innocent people to lose their lives in the hope that a bad guy might turn his life around.

And what if the bad guy doesn’t turn his life around?  We’ve let an unstable killer remain loose to terrorize and possibly kill others.

We’ll use this statement again in a minute in the second part of this post, but after this terrible outpouring of nonsense, we need to freshen up a bit.  Happily, there were also some more sensible comments.  One is worth repeating in its entirety

So the police, responding to another call about the same man, heard the glass door break.  They were close enough to hear the door break and respond, but not close enough to stop the intruder from getting to the occupants of the home.

Those of you who have a false sense of security because you believe the police will come save you, should rethink that “logic”.  Once the police arrive and believe there may be an armed intruder in your home, do not expect them to rush in to save you.  You are on your own and you are going to have to save yourself and your family.

To believe, and prepare for anything less, is not only foolish but places your family in real danger.

Or, to paraphrase the comment, ‘When seconds count, the police are only minutes away’.

That is why we arm ourselves and train ourselves in how and when to appropriately use our firearms.  This homeowner was clearly well trained and clearly acted appropriately.

But, note the large number of people who disagree.  Which leads us to the second part of our analysis.  Please click on to read ‘Lessons from the Public Reaction to a Justified Shooting part 2‘.

How to Fight Off a Bear, and What to Use

 Firearms, Outside the Home Protection, Personal Protection  No Responses »
Mar 302012
 

Bear spray is the recommended means of dealing with most bear attacks

I sometimes work in a gun store, and one of the more common stories I hear from people is that they are buying a gun to protect themselves against bears.

Usually, they are buying a handgun rather than a rifle or shotgun, and it is sometimes of a dismayingly low caliber/cartridge power.  The store also has bear spray for sale, but we sell very little of it (even though I recommend it to everyone who says they are buying a gun for bear protection).

Now here’s the thing.  Bears are very difficult to kill at the best of times, and if a bear attacks, you’re going to be massively behind the curve in terms of how much time you have to react and respond.

Don’t plan on running away.  Bears can run at 30 mph.  How fast is that?  To put it in a more meaningful measure, it is 45 ft per second.

In other words, if a bear that is what seems to be a ‘safe’ 100 ft away decides to charge at you, it could be on you in just over 2 seconds.  And there’s the reality to consider :  If you have less than two seconds from sighting a bear to having it on top of you, what can you do in those two seconds?

How long would it take you to access your rifle/shotgun/pistol, possibly chamber a round and/or remove the safety, sight on the bear (which will be a moving target of course), and get a few rounds accurately downrange?  You’re going to have the better part of a second of reaction time, then another second or longer to deploy and make ready your weapon, and only now, with your finger reaching for the trigger at the far end of two seconds are you ready to participate in whatever the bear has in mind.  Meanwhile, the bear has gone from far away to right there in your face.

That’s not to say you could reach a can of bear spray any faster.  And although you’ve probably practiced hundreds (hopefully many thousands) of times at drawing a pistol or pointing your rifle – sometimes as a dry fire exercise and sometimes actually shooting at the end of the presentation; how many times have you practiced taking a can of bear spray off your belt, opening its lid, de-activating its safety, and readying it to spray, and how many times have you actually then gone the rest of the way and sent a stream of spray out there?

One more thing to think about up front.  So you’ve a bear charging towards you.  Let’s say you get lucky and you are reading to start shooting or spraying while the bear is still 50 ft away.  But think about this :  That 50 ft distance takes the bear only about a second to cross.  So within that second, your pistol/rifle/shotgun/spray has to do whatever it can to turn the bear around and change its mind.  That’s a fairly tall order, for sure.

Bears can weigh 500lbs or more (the heaviest black bear weighed in at 900lbs, grizzlies have been recorded at weights of up to 1500lbs).  That’s a lot of momentum barreling towards you – and don’t think about climbing up a tree.  Black bears can easily climb trees, as can young grizzlies, but adult grizzlies generally can’t/don’t.  On the other hand, a full size grizzly can simply reach up 10′ or so – it doesn’t even need to climb the tree to get you if you’ve haven’t reached the upper branches yet.

The good news is that bears seldom attack humans.  On average there are only two fatal bear attacks a year in the US and Canada combined.  Furthermore, the outcome of a bear encounter is largely dependent on your behavior, rather than that of the bear.

Another piece of good news is that not all ‘attacks’ are actually attacks.  A bear can charge at you out of curiosity to see what you do in return, or as a bluff, to try and bully you away.  In such cases the beer may veer off at the last minute and not actually run into you.  However, this really belongs in the category of ‘really useless information’ – what are you going to do if a bear charges at you?  Cross your fingers and hope it is a bluff charge rather than the real thing?

Bears charge at people for a number of different reasons.  According to the Alaska Science Center, the most common reasons are (from most common and then to successively less common reasons) :

  • Surprise
  • Curiosity
  • Invaded personal space (this includes a mother bear protecting her young)
  • Predatory intent
  • Hunting wounded
  • Carcass defense
  • Provoked charge

Wearing some sort of noise-maker can help reduce the element of surprise (on the part of the bear) and being very aware of your surroundings might help reduce the element of surprise (on your part).

But, what should you do if you do encounter a bear, and in particular, what should you do if it does charge you?  This helpful page from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources talks mainly about passive defenses against bears.  Its advice about what to do if you encounter a bear seems sensible, however; it is only when they start to talk about what to do if the bear charges that our disagreement arises.

If you encounter a bear, they say :

  • If you see a bear that is far away or doesn’t see you turn around and go back, or circle far around.  Don’t disturb it.
  • If you see a bear that is close or it does see you STAY CALM.  Attacks are rare.  Bears may approach or stand on their hind legs to get a better look at you.  These are curious, not aggressive, bears.  BE HUMAN.  Stand tall, wave your arms, and speak in a loud and low voice.  DO NOT RUN!  Stand your ground or back away slowly and diagonally.  If the bear follows, STOP.
  • If a bear approaches your campsite aggressively chase it away.  Make noise with pots and pans, throw rocks, and if needed, hit the bear.  Do not let the bear get any food.

So far, so good.  But what if a bear does charge you?

First, let’s see what the AK DNR website says :

  • If a bear is charging almost all charges are “bluff charges”.  DO NOT RUN!  Olympic sprinters cannot outrun a bear and running may trigger an instinctive reaction to “chase”.  Do not try to climb a tree unless it is literally right next to you and you can quickly get at least 30 feet up.  STAND YOUR GROUND.  Wave your arms and speak in a loud low voice.  Many times charging bears have come within a few feet of a person and then veered off at the last second.
  • If you have surprised a bear and are contacted or attacked and making noise or struggling has not discouraged an attack, play dead.  Curl up in a ball with your hands laced behind your neck.  The fetal position protects your vital organs.  Lie still and be silent.  Surprised bears usually stop attacking once you are no longer a threat (i.e. “dead”).
  • If you have been stalked by a bear, a bear is approaching your campsite, or an attack is continuing long after you have ceased struggling, fight back!  Predatory bears are often young bears that can be successfully intimidated or chased away.  Use a stick, rocks or your hands and feet.

Now for our advice.  If a bear charges you, we don’t think you can risk the small chance that this is merely a bluff charge unless you are a bear expert and are willing to bet your life on your understanding.

We do agree you shouldn’t try running away, for both the reasons the DNR puts forward.  This is correct.

But we suggest you do something more than passively wave your arms and speak in a loud low voice.  Urgently start fighting back – start protecting yourself against what could be a lethal bear attack.

Which is Better – Bear Spray or Bullets?

And now we’re at the key part of this article.  Should you spray the bear or shoot the bear?

That depends a little bit on what you’re carrying and how quickly you can deploy it.  If you’ve a large-bore high-powered rifle that is good to go and which you’re sure you could use to land a couple of accurate shots on the bear, that is probably going to do the job, albeit in a very permanent way.

But if you’ve got bear spray dangling from one side of your belt and a pistol of pretty much any ‘normal’ caliber on the other side, we’d recommend reaching for the bear spray first.

There is a sort of study that claims to show that bear spray is a better choice.  Here’s a recent write-up of it with a link within the article to more information on the study.  In summary, it says that 98% of people who used bear spray to defend themselves against a bear attack walked away unharmed, as did the bears, too.  On the other hand, 56% of people who used firearms suffered some degree of injury themselves, and 61% of the attacking bears were killed as part of the encounter.

This is not a scientific study per se.  It is a collation of two different sets of reports and records; with lots of limitations on the data it collected, lots of subjective elements (starting from such fundamental things as ‘is this really a bear attack or not’) and the interpretation that can be placed on it.  It has also been suggested that some of the people who promulgated their conclusions are predisposed towards disliking guns (and wanting to protect bears).

However, even if one makes large allowances for these points, the results, such as they are, seem to be startling and overwhelmingly in favor of making bear spray your usual best choice.  Bear spray seems to work, and seems to work very well, if used in a situation where it is capable of working well.  The US Fish & Wildlife Service seems to agree.

The problems with bear spray are limited range, susceptibility to wind and rain (the spray doesn’t work nearly as well or far in the rain, wind is a problem too, and on hot days it will disperse more quickly), and possible ‘collateral damage’ on you or other bystanders (if the spray blows back on you).

If you get even the slightest whiff of the spray yourself, you might lose your own capacity to fight and even suffer severely compromised vision.  On the other hand, with a rifle or shotgun, there’s much less chance of doing something that takes you out of the fight; you’re there and fully fighting all the way to the point where the bear is on top of you.

Some Do’s and Don’ts For Bear Spray

Do practice with the bear spray.  Be prepared to use up an entire canister with a series of trial squirts, each of 0.5 – 1.0 seconds in duration.  Try it in cold and hot weather, still and windy weather, rain, in obstructed bush and open plain.  Get familiar and comfortable with the product and how it works.  After all, you spend much more in training with your firearms – a can of bear spray costs not much more than a box or two of ammo.

Do spray slightly lower than the bear when it is some distance away.  The spray tends to rise; but if you spray high, it won’t appreciably fall back down again.  When the bear gets closer, spray straight for the head.

Do spray from side to side as well as directly at the bear.  Sometimes bears might zig zag a bit on their way to you, and by putting up a cloud of spray you get the bear even if he goes a bit off path; plus maybe a bit of wind will shift the cloud one way or the other as well.

Do standby for the bear returning.  Just because it gave up the attack doesn’t mean it won’t come back a minute or three later.  You might need to spray a second time.  Which leads to –

Do buy the biggest canister of bear spray you can, and consider packing at least two of them with you.  No – that’s not excessive; after all, how many full magazines and rounds of ammo do you carry with you?

Do make sure that every member of your party has their own bear spray.

Do make sure that your bear spray shows an official EPA certification (here’s their current list of approved bear spray products).

Do buy some bear spray ‘antidote’ that will help alleviate the effects if you accidentally get some spray on yourself or other people in your group.

Do remember to shake before use.

Do keep an eye on the expiry dates of your bear spray.  When the bear spray has expired, don’t just throw it away.  This is your opportunity to use the canister for more practice.

Don’t defensively spray bear spray around your camp perimeter or on your tents.  The very strong pepper agents are volatile and evaporate over time, but the carrier chemicals they are in (which make up about 98% of the total contents of the spray) are things that bears actually like, or at least are curious to know more about.  You’ll find that laying down a field of spray may actually attract bears a few hours later, rather than repel them.

Don’t use too little spray.  Know how many seconds of spray your canister holds and what its range is, and start spraying shortly before the bear reaches the point of maximum range and keep spraying/spraying/spraying until the bear has turned around and run away.

What to Shoot a Bear With

If our comments on bear spray haven’t been persuasive, or if you want a backup, here’s what you should keep in mind about using firearms for protection against bears.

Although we’ve read stories of people successfully deterring bear attacks with 10mm and heavier calibers of pistols, we’re far from comfortable suggesting you rely on any caliber of handgun at all.  Well, maybe a .454 Casull or a .500 S&W Magnum, but nothing much else.

Our feeling is that the people who have successfully fought off a bear attack with most ‘normal’ calibers of pistols have been very lucky on a basis you can’t be sure of recreating; sort of like people who tell of successfully fighting off a person’s attack with a .22 pistol.  For sure, sometimes .22 pistols ‘work’ and they have even been known to kill people, but do you really want to rely on such a weak underpowered pistol?  The same applies to your choice of firearm for protection against bears, only more so.

Remember also that, the same as with people, most bears are going to die by bleeding out rather than by instant incapacitation.  And, sort of the same as a drug crazed felon who is too ‘out of it’ to realize he has been fatally wounded, and who keeps fighting effectively until his body finally expires, a bear is not necessarily going to pay much attention to the minor stings it might experience from pistol wounds.  By the time it decides to lie down and die, it could well have thoroughly finished you off.  Remember the bear is probably only a couple of seconds away from you at the start of your encounter.  You don’t have the luxury of being able to safely wait a minute or two for the bear to lose interest in the fight.

If you want to be able to seriously change a bear’s attitude, you need either a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with solid rifled slugs, or a heavy-duty sporting rifle – the AK DNR recommends a .300 Mag rifle (as a minimum).

Note that if you do shoot and kill a bear, you probably have some obligations to report the kill and possibly even to ‘salvage’ the bear in some form or another.  You should check with your state’s Hunting/Fishing department, whatever it is called, to understand your obligations, and be ready for the lecture on how you’re not allowed to shoot bears to start with unless your life is in danger, etc.

Some Final Thoughts

Neither bear spray nor bullets, of any size, will guarantee you triumphing in an encounter with a bear.  Luck and other random factors always plays a part.

Just the same as you behave on the street, observing and anticipating and preparing for problems, it is essential that you act so that you have plenty of reaction time, plenty of distance, and plenty of options when coming across a bear.

And, the same as with bad guys on the street, always adopt a defensive posture and do anything/everything you can to avoid the situation escalating to one where your life becomes at risk.

2011 Christmas Gift Giving Guide

 Firearms, Home Protection  No Responses »
Dec 132011
 

Choose an item from this article to delight the shooter in your life this Christmas

You probably don’t need much advice on what to buy yourself.  This is an article you might find useful to print out and leave lying around somewhere where the people in your life who will probably soon be wondering what to buy you for Christmas might find it.  It might even help to draw rings about the better ideas, and add smiley faces and stars.

So what sort of gifts are appropriate for someone who owns firearms?  The good news is there are a lot of things you can give to a gun owner, ranging in price from as little as $10 to as much as, well, the sky’s the limit.  Best of all, many of these items are ‘universal’ – that is, the firearms owner in your life will appreciate and use the gift, no matter what his personal tastes and preferences may be.

Here are some suggestions :

Ammunition

So what does anyone who owns guns always need more of?  Ammo!  The good news with choosing ammo is that most of the time, we are just plinking the stuff at a range.  So go buy a few boxes of the cheapest range ammo you can find.

Note that for hunting and self-defense ammo, the different variations within a caliber are more important and better not guessed at, but for simple plinking fun, just about anything should work and would be sure to be appreciated.

Ammo Cases

Ammunition usually comes in thin cardboard boxes; sometimes with each round nicely packed in some type of ‘egg carton’ type frame holder, and sometimes bulk, packed loose.

Many shooters like to transfer their ammo to plastic storage cases like you can see on this site and also on Amazon in all sorts of different sizes and capacities.  Some people like to color code the boxes for different types of ammo, others like to have clear ones so it is easy to see what is inside.

Magazines

Most shooters would like to have another magazine or two for each of their guns.  We generally have anywhere from a minimum of four up to a maximum of – well, let’s just say, a lot more than four.  We know people with twenty or more, for each of their guns.  We’re not saying you really truly need that many, but we are saying you can probably safely buy another magazine or two for any of the guns a shooter owns.

Generally, you should buy name brand magazines for guns – ie, magazines made by the same company that made the gun.  You get what you pay for with magazines, and it is a bad idea to buy cheap magazines, because they have an increased change of causing jams.

The one exception to the concept of always buying name brand magazines is with 1911 .45 semi-auto pistols.  These wonderful guns can be quite fussy as to the magazines they use, and shooters pretty much unanimously agree that the absolute ‘gold standard’ for 1911 magazines are those made by Wilson Combat.  We use the eight round Elite Tactical magazines ourselves.

Magazine Pouches

Everyone should have a magazine pouch/holder – something that fits on your belt to hold a couple of magazines.  This is essential when practicing malfunctions and reloads, and useful for general range work and plinking.  Generally we have been very happy with these holders made out of Kydex (eg made by Blade Tech), and prefer those to leather or loose nylon pouches.

You’d probably want a different way to carry spare magazines for concealed carry purposes, but for regular range work, the Blade Tech or similar double mag pouches are excellent.

Range Bag

Here’s another thought.  If your shooter doesn’t already have a range bag for his pistols or just general ‘stuff’ (for a rifle/shotgun shooter), that could make a useful gift.  You’d want to choose something that is large enough to hold a pistol or two, hearing protection (think bulky headphones), eye protection (glasses in a protective case), half a dozen magazines, a similar number of boxes of ammunition, maybe some additional clothing, spare parts, and/or who knows what else.

A range bag typically has several different internal compartments so you can separate things from each other and have a bit of layout and organization in the bag.

We’ve been very happy with bags something like this Uncle Mike’s Deluxe Range Bag .

One thought is to buy a regular/generic travel duffel bag (or a camera bag) instead of a range bag.  The price will probably be the same, or possibly even a bit lower, and your shooter will get a bag that looks more nondescript and anonymous, rather than one which shouts out ‘Hey, I’ve got a gun in here’.

Cleaning Gear

An unavoidable part of shooting (unless you have Glocks, of course – Glocks are renowned for not needing much care or cleaning) is cleaning the guns afterwards.  There are three products that we swear by.  In the order of application to a dirty gun, they are :

Hoppes No. 9 solvent is our favorite bore cleaner.

Gun Scrubber is our favorite ‘dissolves anything’ cleaner and makes light work of getting in all the ‘hard to get at’ but important places in a gun where guck and gunk accumulates (don’t ask what the difference between guck and gunk is!).  We’ve no idea what sort of noxious poisonous cancer-causing solvents they might have in their product, but the more the merrier, we say!  All we know for sure is that it smells very strong and makes the dirtiest of guns magically clean with the least amount of hassle and effort.  Best used outside with plenty of fresh air!

Break Free is our favorite lubricant/gun oil.  It is available both in a CLP formulation and an LP formulation.  The CLP product stands for ‘Clean, Lubricate and Protect’; the LP stands for ‘Lubricant/Preservative’.  Because we’ve used the Hoppes No.9 and the Gun Scrubber, we feel we only need the LP rather than the CLP product, but see below for a situation where the CLP product might be a better choice.

These three liquids can be used together with a traditional gun cleaning kit – a combination of rods, push/pull handle, hooks, brushes, patches, fluids, and various other things (we use nails to help us get into far away places and also toothbrushes too).  Or, if you prefer, there’s a much simpler approach these days, too.

All In One Cleaning Approach

Gun cleaning usually involves a lot of time, a lot of materials and chemicals, and a lot of hassle.  But if you get a Bore Snake, one single product takes the place of all the other components of barrel/bore cleaning.  Sure, the rest of the internal parts of the gun aren’t cleaned by a Bore Snake, but the barrel surely is.  Note that Bore Snakes come in different sizes to match with different caliber guns and barrels.

A Bore Snake and CLP is a great way to quickly clean your gun; perhaps between days of shooting if you’re on a multiple day shooting course (but if you’re doing that, be like us and whether you need to or not, give your whole gun a lavish amount of cleaning and care before your last day and any qualification shoots/competitions you might have).

Electronic Hearing Protectors

An interesting technology that is becoming more commonplace and more affordable are electronic hearing protectors.  These look like normal ‘headphone’ type ear muff things that fit around a shooter’s ears, but they have a clever extra function.

For sure, like normal hearing protectors, they block out sound.  But they also have microphones on the outside of them and speakers on the inside, and a clever electronic amplifier that amplifies quiet noises but not loud noises.  This means that you can end up hearing more or less normally what is going around about you, but when loud noises (ie gun shots) occur, the amplifier switches off and those are blocked.

This makes it easy to carry on reasonably normal conversations on the range, and to hear what your instructor is telling you, without having problems when the shooting starts.

These can now be found for as little as $25 at Walmart (but – warning – neither of the two pairs we’ve bought at Walmart have worked reliably).

You want to look for a pair that has the highest possible noise rating (NRR) – look for something greater than perhaps 22dB, and ideally better than 24dB.

Belt

Okay, so your shooter probably has plenty of belts for his trousers already.  But a shooting belt is different in two respects – it has an internal stiffener so the belt stays rigid rather than flexing and sagging, and it is designed to be able to hold a weight of gear – it is easy to end up with five or more pounds of gear on a shooter’s belt.

The strength of the belt is both in its material and also in its buckle mechanism – obviously the belt as a whole is only as strong as its weakest component, so you want a belt that is very strong in all respects, not just one which is selectively strong.

If a shooter is doing fast draw/timed competition shooting, he needs a very stable strong belt to provide a good platform for his holster from which he can powerfully plunge his hand down onto the gun and then draw it up and out of the holster.

An ‘instructor belt’ such as this from Uncle Mike’s is an excellent choice of belt.

Tactical Light

There have been enormous improvements in flashlights over the last decade or two.  Do you remember back to the ‘bad old days’ where flashlights were enormously big and similarly heavy – the Maglite series of flashlights made out of metal, with anywhere from three to seven or more huge D-cell batteries inside them?

These monsters weren’t even all that bright, and they chewed through batteries at an impressive rate.

These days, any decent flashlight will use LEDs rather than ‘old-fashioned’ lightbulbs.  Ignore regular light bulbs, ignore halogen bulbs, ignore Xenon or any other type of bulb, and only choose an LED type flash light.  There are several reasons for this – the LED uses as little as one tenth as much power to create the same amount of light as old fashioned bulbs, while being much more robust and having a huge long life (tens of thousands of hours).  They are also very small, allowing for good results from small reflectors.

Most flashlights these days have their power measured in lumens.  The more lumens you can get, the better, and don’t settle for anything less than 100.  We also recommend you get a flashlight that is powered by regular (ie available everywhere and inexpensive) AA or AAA batteries rather than one which requires some sort of special battery that is more expensive and hard to find.

A flashlight that has both high and low power settings is also very good – most of the time we use the low power setting on our lights, and that is all we need, and we get wonderfully long battery life.  But if we have a situation where we need extreme light, then it is great to have the extra power on hand.

We have been delighted with just about every light we’ve purchased.  We always have tiny Fenix lights in our pockets – they are lightweight and bright and versatile.  But for situations where only the best will do, we use Streamlight brand lights and you should too.

Guns

Well, of course, there’s one other thing to consider buying for the shooter in your life – another gun.  We shooters can never have too many of those.

But if you’re going to buy a gun as a gift, you’ll want to be sure you’re choosing exactly the make and model that your recipient wants.  There are lots of different options that can make it hard to get the right one – this is probably something you should consult with your shooter before choosing.

Which brings us to the other important consideration :

What Not to Buy

Don’t buy your shooter a new holster, unless you know for sure exactly what he wants.

Most shooters (ourselves most definitely included) have a ‘holster drawer’ – whether it be a real drawer or not, it is a resting ground for way too many (and often way too expensive) holsters that we’ve bought and ended up not liking.  This is particularly so of concealed carry type holsters.

So perhaps best not to buy a holster.

A similarly difficult thing to buy is clothing, which is a shame because it is something we almost always need more of.  Most shooters can always do with more ‘tactical’ or concealment gear – shirts, trousers and jackets, but trying to get the right mix of size, style, color and function is tremendously difficult.

For More Inspiration

Here are the results of a survey of hunters and shooters who were asked ‘What hunting or target shooting gear are you most hoping to receive this holiday season?’.

Whatever you choose, have a very Merry Christmas, and a very safe wonderful New Year.

Daylight Saving Switch – Time to Check Your Guns and Other Defense Items

 Firearms, Home Protection, Training  No Responses »
Nov 072011
 

Use each Daylight Saving switchover to remind you to run through this checklist

They say (whoever it is that ‘they’ are) you should check the batteries in your smoke detectors every time daylight saving switches on or off.  That is probably a good idea, but don’t just stop with checking the batteries in the smoke detectors.

We recommend you use these six monthly occurrences as a prompt to check some other things that, the same as smoke detectors, might make all the difference in an emergency between safely surviving and, well – let’s just say ‘not safely surviving’, shall we!

Here’s a check list of home and self-defense items to check over too.

1.  Light bulbs

Check all your exterior and key interior lights and make sure the bulbs are all functioning correctly.  If you have any lights that are essential to your home defense plan, consider swapping the bulbs for new ones every six months.  Take the still working bulbs and use them, as needed, for other lights in less critical locations.

Most lights give no warning or indication of their pending failure, and while bulbs have an average life, they are a bit like people.  Some keep working perfectly way beyond their promised lifespan, but others fail tragically early.  This is as true of ‘long life’ bulbs as it is of regular bulbs.

Of course, if you have a ‘must work’ light somewhere, you should consider having a twin head to the light, with two lamps, so that you have built-in backup in the event either bulb fails.

Flashlight bulbs

If you have defensive flashlights – well, of course you do, right?  For your defensive flashlights, make sure they do not have ‘old fashioned’ incandescent type bulbs, or even newer style Xenon or halogen or whatever.  There is only one type of light source that is acceptable these days for defensive flashlights – LED lights.  This is for two reasons.

First, they have a very long life indeed (think tens of thousands of hours).  Second, they are very efficient – they use very little power to generate a huge amount of light.  Third (a bonus reason!) they are small and don’t generate a massive amount of heat, allowing you the flexibility of much tinier flashlights that are easier to carry and operate.

2.  Batteries

Don’t just check the batteries in your smoke detector.  Check the batteries in any and all other things you might use for self/home defense purposes too.  Of course, flashlight batteries are an obvious thing to check, and the rule of thumb is that you’ve always used more battery life than you think.

What other devices do you have with batteries in them?  Go through all the gear in your emergency kits and make an inventory of what you have that is battery-powered.

Make sure that batteries are still at least six months away from their expiry date, that they haven’t started to swell or corrode/leak, and that they can fully power the device they are with.

If devices use rechargeable batteries, check that they are being correctly recharged, and also check that once you take the device off its always-on trickle charger, that the battery has reasonably good life.  Batteries can sometimes fail over time, even if they are never used.

Perhaps under this category can also be considered your emergency power generator, if you have one.  You should run this for 5 – 15 minutes or more every month or two or three, and definitely at least once every six months.  And keep it with only a little fuel in it so you can burn through the fuel and replace it rather than end up with five-year old fuel that will not work and/or which will damage the generator when it is finally operated.

Make sure also that you can access and activate your generator in an emergency.  If you have no power, and your generator is in your garage, how will you get it out of the garage (if the garage door won’t open electrically)?

3.  Inventory of Supplies

You probably have various things as part of your emergency kits – in your cars, in your home, maybe at work, and take-along kits that you always keep with you.

Check each of these different emergency kits and make sure that they are full and everything is operational.  Maintain anything with moving parts.  Check expiry dates on other items – because you won’t be checking again for six months, make sure you’ve still got at least six months of validity in them.

Replenish anything that has been taken from the kits.

4.  Guns

Field strip, clean and oil all your guns, whether you’ve fired them or not in the last six months.  Even if they haven’t been touched, they may have gathered dust or in some other way now could benefit from a bit of TLC.

As part of this process, you’ll see if there are any problems with corrosion, or any other unexpected issues.  Maybe you’ve had a moth lay eggs inside, or rodent infestations, or anything at all.  You need to check your guns on a regular basis, at least six monthly.

This also means you are inventorying your guns, too, and confirming their locations and readiness states.

Part of inventorying your guns should also involve checking your logs for each gun and totaling up the rounds fired.  Is it time for some gun-smithing?  Do you need to give the gun an overhaul and get some springs replaced?

5.  Ammo

You should inventory the ammunition you keep at home, and make sure you are properly rotating ammunition so that you are shooting the oldest stuff first.  Don’t end up with a box/case in the back of everything that stays untouched and almost forgotten about, while you buy newer boxes of ammo, shoot them off, and replace them, on a regular basis.

This will also give you a feeling for what your supply levels are like.  Is it time to check around for a bulk pricing deal on a large re-order?

Critical Defense Ammo

By this we mean the ammunition you keep loaded into your magazines and in your primary defense guns.

Although most modern ammunition has a long shelf life (five, ten, maybe even twenty or more years depending on how it is stored) the ammunition you keep loaded in your guns will have a much shorter life, while also needing to have the highest degree of reliability.

The ammunition that you carry is all the time being attacked by corrosive sweat, humidity, temperature changes, and, if in your gun, possibly by gun oil and other cleaners/lubricants too.

We suggest that every six months you shoot off the ammo that is always in your guns, and replace that with the ammo that are in your extra magazines (which will then get shot off in six months time too).  That way the ammo in your gun never sits there for more than six months, and the other carry ammo spends probably six months being carried, then six months in the gun, before also being used up.

Shooting your ‘real’ defensive ammo is of course more expensive than your plinking ammunition, but needs to be done from time to time just to reassure yourself that it is still working perfectly, feeding perfectly, and to remind you of the different shooting experience you’ll get from shooting possibly hotter loads than you use for plinking and practice.

6.  Magazines

No, not the things you buy at the bookstore to read.  The things that hold your ammunition.  🙂

We generally recommend that you never load magazines all the way to maximum capacity.  Single stack magazines should have one less than the maximum number of rounds, and double stack magazines two less.

This reduces the stress on the spring in the magazine, and also it seems that if a semi-auto is going to jam, it is most likely to do so when the magazine is completely full (also can jam when nearly empty).  So by not filling your magazines all the way to the top, you give yourself a bit more reliability.

We recommend that every six months, you rotate your magazines.  Empty out the ones you normally carry loaded, and fill up a matching set of spares.  That way, your magazines and their springs get six months of duty followed by six months of recovery.

Yes, do the math.  If you typically have a magazine in your semi-auto pistol and two extra magazines, that does mean you’ll need to have six magazines total.  It is a small price to pay.

7.  Range Visit

Several of the things you need to do every six months might involve shooting some ammo.  Even if nothing causes you to ‘need’ to go shooting, when did you last spend some time at the range?

Skill at arms is a ‘perishable’ skill.  While it is probably true that you never forget how to ride a bike, your skill at arms definitely drops off if you don’t practice it from time to time.

In truth, you should visit a range much more than once every six months.  But if other things get in the way of spending an hour at the range on a regular basis, you’re far from the first person to mean to go to the range more often than you actually make it there.  But do make it a high priority item to go at least twice a year – and this is as good a time trigger as any other.

This is even more true if you’ve never built up a basic mastery (is that an oxymoron – ‘basic mastery’) of your weapons in the first place.  If you don’t instinctively know how to work your safety lever, if you can’t almost without thinking respond to and clear a jam, if you don’t always focus solely on the front sight, then you should invest more time to build your skills up to the point where they are more readily maintained.

8.  Everything Else

What else is part of your home/car/personal defense gear?  All sorts of things.  Well, for sure, you have fire extinguishers in your home, right?  Check those for pressure and expiry dates.  Check the pressure in the spare tire in your car(s).  If you keep spare cans of gas in the garage, even after treating them with fuel stabilizer, you need to use those up and replace them perhaps every six months.

If you keep a bulk supply of emergency drinking water, that needs to be flushed and replaced, perhaps also every six months.  Frozen food and dry goods also has finite shelf life.

How about other things not so obviously related to defense?  Emergency contact details, both your own that you’ve given to other people, and those of people you in turn want to be able to reach in an emergency.  Are your present emergency routes – for example, to the nearest hospital – still correct?

If you have children, you may need to update details of their school contacts, their probable friends, and such things too.

You should consider also having a ‘family meeting’ to quickly go through the family plans for emergencies of all kinds.  Again, if you have children, their roles will be changing as the grow up and mature, and with other changes in your life and situation, other aspects of how best to respond to all emergencies – not just those involving lethal force in a life or death self-defense situation – are ideally revised and reviewed every six months too.

Have there been any legal changes that might alter how you should respond to an emergency?  You should check with a reliable source every so often to see if the laws have changed – either for the better or worse.  Remember that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

A little time spent going through a checklist such as this every six months will help ensure that if you ever need to use any of these emergency items or strategies, they are likely to work as needed at the time when they are indeed desperately needed, and also means that you are more likely to be familiar with how to use these items and best respond to whatever the emergency is.

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