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PPSH-41: The Soviet Bullet-Hose
In this parking garage, you may pass a drunk or beggar and get to your car without
incident, or you may be attacked by muggers with shock knives or UTM guns.
Over the past three days I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, wrestled, molested by drunks, thugs and muggers, stabbed some more and killed about a dozen times. Ahhh … it’s been a truly glorious few days.
On the plus side, I did manage to ward off a few dozen seriously violent bad guys using escalating combinations of voice commands, lights and UTM sim firearms. Creative problem solving was the name of the game. One determined student pummeled his attacker with an outdoor trash can when his gun went out of action.
After perforating role-playing thugs with hundreds of “bullets,” something occurred to me. I used precisely one traditional range skill.
Thanks to the professionalism of the self-defense trainers at W.O.F.T. Self Defense outside of Orlando, Fla., I’m still alive and well, albeit with welts, bruises and various aches and pains. Sometimes that’s the price of valuable life lessons and I was more than happy to pay it.
Over the past decade or so, I’ve been to a couple of dozen firearms and defensive shooting courses. I can say without reservation I learned more practical self-defense skills over the past three days than all the others combined.
Did all those others teach me how to shoot? Absolutely. However, I’ve not yet seen anyone doing deep and immersive training with real defensive scenarios most likely to be encountered in everyday life. How many shooting schools have you sitting in a coffee shop, minding your own business, when two of six role-playing instructors break out into a full-on domestic fight? Maybe a weapon comes into play. Maybe it doesn’t. Or the “drunk” appearing to be sick next to your car suddenly pops up with a knife or gun? Ever thought about what you might do?
In this coffee shop you might witness a disgruntled employee squabble or need to react to an armed attack.
Learnings
The make-believe notion of being the cowboy in a white hat, casually standing back and shooting to save the day, was quickly destroyed. If only criminals would cooperate and accept the easy fate.
Situational awareness, or paying attention, is great. I’m all for a switched-on lifestyle. But if you think you’re so good at master-level awareness, you’ll be able to spot and solve any problem with a gun, you’re deluding yourself. We each face dozens of moments every single day when other people, or objects and structures capable of hiding an attacker, are close enough to allow one to be in our face long before we can react and bring a gun into the fight. Other defensive tools, both physical and mental, are a must.
A light is a powerful tool, and I need a simpler one. We ran dozens of scenarios in a dark parking garage ranging from a drunk harassing us to a planned two- or three-on-one mugging. Whether there was criminal intent, the light was a useful tool to help separate the annoying from the truly dangerous. When things got ugly, the light was a valuable tool not only to identify targets, but to distract, buy precious fractions of seconds, and sometimes escape. My current model has different intensities and modes. Forget that. I want one power level — high — and one button.
Leaving doesn’t feel very macho, but is often the right solution. Remember, as much as you may want to see yourself as society’s designated protector, you have a bigger obligation to come home to your family. That’s hard to do if you’re dead or spending the next few decades in jail as a result of getting mixed up in someone else’s altercation. Think long and hard before getting involved. The real story is far too often different from what first appearances indicate.
Explosive and committed action is a powerful strategy. By acting with vigor, you have a 0.25 to 0.50-second action/reaction advantage over your adversary. This can save your life.
Don’t settle for grabbing the “little gun” and stuffing it in a pocket before you run to Walmart or out to grab some milk. Those are likely your most statistically dangerous errands. If you’re going to carry, do it right.
Angela from event host H&K commits to explosive action in hopes
of turning the tables on an attacker.
That Range Skill?
Oh, and the one range skill I did use throughout the force-on-force shooting incidents? Malfunction clearing. While UTM-equipped firearms are more likely to jam, most malfunctions were a result of close quarters combat. Shooting while yanking your gun back to a retention position because Joe McThuggNoggins is lunging for it tends to cause a misfeed. Pulling the trigger with your muzzle jammed into an attacker pounding you into the pavement is another winning cause of a stuck gun. The list goes on — with a common denominator. Fighting with a gun at contact distance doesn’t allow for a proper Weaver or Isosceles stance and grip, and the risk of jams skyrockets, so be darn sure you learn how to instinctively clear your gun.
I’ve always figured malfunctions were unlikely in a self-defense encounter because quality modern ammo and guns almost always go bang. But the best gear may not work right in the middle of a close-quarters fight. At one point I ended up pistol whipping an instructor (wearing protective gear) in the head with a jammed pistol. Clearing a malfunction would have been a great option, but my support hand was holding his knife at bay. Yet another scenario I didn’t fully appreciate until it happened to me.
If you carry a gun for self-defense, by all means, learn how to shoot. “Range” skills will help when you’re shooting at high speed from awkward positions, even if you’re not planted in your official gunfighter stance at standoff distance. But be sure to consider some real scenario training to learn tools and strategies for problem solving, with or without that gun. The past three days changed my life, and it was only a taste of what I still need to learn.
We don’t try our cases in the press” has to change. Here’s why.
There’s a Latin saying: Silentium est consensus. It translates to “silence equals consent.” When a wrongfully accused person does not answer the charge, most people read it as an admission of guilt. It’s a legal principle of our law that this is not so, but unfortunately, only attorneys and cops seem to realize that.
Those same lawyers and cops have all been told in law school and the police academy, “We don’t discuss our cases in the press; it will all come out in court.” Unfortunately, in recent years, things have changed. Greed-motivated plaintiffs’ lawyers and politically motivated prosecutors have taken to trying their cases in the press, and when the accused do not respond in the same venue, well … silentium est consensus becomes the uncontested verdict in the Court of Public Opinion.
Kenosha: Kyle Rittenhouse fires the shot that “vaporizes” Gaige Grosskreutz’s
gun arm, which is holding a GLOCK 27 aimed at his head.
Riots
Los Angeles, 1992. A hulking suspect became violent during a traffic stop. An early version of the TASER had no effect, and when four LAPD cops “swarmed” him each grabbing an arm or a leg, he threw them aside like a terrier flinging rats. A citizen named George Holliday turned on his new camcorder in time to catch the man, Rodney King, trying to jerk Officer Lawrence Powell’s Beretta from its holster. The batons came out, and a bit over a minute and 50-some PR-24 swings later, the man was in handcuffs. The video found its way quickly to the media.
The suspect was black, the officers white, and the “Rodney King beating” became a national outrage. The public saw, again and again, the ugliest 10 seconds of the video, though King’s gun snatch attempt was never shown until the trial and then seen by only a small percentage of the public. When the cops were acquitted, riots followed, taking more than 60 lives, injuring thousands, and wreaking economic devastation in what was already one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the city.
Kenosha, 2020. Almost three decades later, another video surfaced in a city of 100,000 in Wisconsin. It showed police officers with drawn guns following a black man, Jacob Blake, from the right rear of an automobile containing two little kids, around the front to the driver’s door, where one officer finally shot him seven times behind lateral midline. It became an instant cause célèbre: “Unarmed Black Man Shot Seven Times in Back.” The police department said not a word in defense of the officer’s action. The city burned and incurred tens of millions of dollars in damages, and three men were shot on video in demonstrable self-defense, two fatally, by a young man subsequently tried for murder.
From the beginning, a knife had been visible in Blake’s hand, and the officer fired only after he perceived the man turning on him with it within arm’s reach. In truth, the story should have been “Cops Save Black Children from Knife-Wielding Kidnapper.” Yet the “unarmed” narrative continued even after Blake himself confessed he was armed and the state Attorney General’s Office at last released the truth — weeks after the riot and the killings.
Circle shows Jacob Blake’s knife in his left hand, as cops follow him with drawn
guns shouting commands to drop it, moments before he is shot.
By Con
Years after the King conflagration, when Charlie Beck became chief of LAPD, he created a policy whereby after any potentially controversial OIS (Officer Involved Shooting) a press conference would be held. It would include the original 911 call, dashcam and bodycam video, scene photos and a narrative of what actually happened. It would be widely disseminated to the public, with the promise the investigation would continue, and the public kept apprised.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department followed, setting a high standard for thoroughness. So did a number of other police departments.
LAPD to LVMPD and beyond, except for disturbances caused nationwide by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, every department following this policy has escaped major rioting. The reason is, they have “gotten ahead of the story” and kept false narratives from gaining traction.
We have seen the same principle in armed citizen self-defense shootings. A few years ago in Austin, Texas, John Daub had to shoot and kill a home invader who broke through the front door of his home while his wife and children were present.
He was a member of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network (armedcitizensnetwork.org), which had attorney Gene Anthes on the scene before the blood on the floor dried — telling reporters what had really happened. The result: a justifiable homicide ruling and public support and sympathy for John and his family.
A rule of human conflict is when one’s opponents change their attack strategy, one has to alter defense strategy accordingly. With today’s twisting of the truth by journalists and lawyers with less than honorable motives, we need police departments and attorneys who will not leave those who righteously pull the trigger undefended in the unforgiving Court of Public Opinion.
I am told by reliable sources that they have some shall we say bothersome triggers? Grumpy
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