Having gone to Army Basic Training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. This brings back a lot of memories!
Category: Cops
Anti-Gun Democrat Running to Become Texas Governor Lost Service Pistol
Lupe Valdez misplaced her service weapon in December of 2017 when she resigned from her position as Sheriff of Dallas County to make a bid for governor of Texas. (Photo: Facebook)
Texas gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez is in a bit of a pickle right now. The Democrat, who is hoping to take down incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R) this fall, misplaced her service pistol, local media reports.
Valdez apparently lost track of her Beretta 9mm in December of 2017 when she was transitioning from her role as publicly-elected sheriff of Dallas County to private citizen running for governor. As part of the move, she was required to return the handgun to the county.
Last month, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office issued a report about the missing firearm fearing it may have been used in the commission of a crime.
This week a spokesperson for the Valdez campaign told The Dallas Morning News that the candidate is working with investigators to “locate the firearm.”
“As mentioned in the [police] report, it is possible that this weapon could have been stolen or misplaced during Sheriff Valdez’s moving transition and she is working with the Dallas County Sheriff Department to locate the firearm,” said spokesman Juan Bautista Dominguez.
SEE ALSO: She Ran for Congress on Gun Control, Now She’s Charged with Murder
Valdez may have an out if it’s discovered that the gun was lost after she turned it over to the department. However, Dominguez offered no comment about whether it went missing on her watch.
Complicating matters for Valdez is that she openly supports gun control. In the past, she’s championed criminalizing private transfers, banning certain magazines, and has opposed expanding campus carry on Texas universities. All of which has earned her support from the anti-gun lobby.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the gun-control organization fronted by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), endorsed Valdez for governor in May.
“Law enforcement and first responders like Sheriff Valdez know how a firearm ending up in the wrong hands can lead to tragedy,” said Giffords. “Sheriff Valdez also knows that both law enforcement and elected officials play a pivotal role in keeping our communities safe from gun violence.”
In what might be the understatement of the year, the optics of the situation are très mal for Valdez. And, it didn’t take long for Gov. Abbott’s team to take note.
Texans for Abbott✔@AbbottCampaign
If Lupe Valdez can’t keep track of her own gun, she can’t be trusted running the state of Texas.
“If Lupe Valdez can’t keep track of her own gun, she can’t be trusted running the state of Texas,” said Gov. Abbott on Twitter Wednesday, above a video montage of media members discussing the faux pas.
Just to get things straight. Valdez is an anti-gun Democrat running for to become the next governor of Texas. Texas! She is a former CLEO who lost her service weapon. Call me crazy but I don’t see a major political victory in her future.
** If it had been me, I would of offered to buy it back. Then a couple of days later report it as lost. I think Texas deserves better than this Lady’s offer of Service. Grumpy.**
Should Gun Owners Fear The Deep State?
by James Bovard – Friday, August 10, 2018
President Donald Trump and his opponents have loudly wrangled in recent months about whether a “deep state” is out to get the president. The term “deep state” commonly refers to the officials who secretly wield power permanently in Washington, often in federal agencies with vast sway and little accountability. According to a March poll, 74 percent of Americans believe that a deep state probably exists.
Unfortunately, the deep state could increasingly focus on gun owners in the coming years. The number of Americans who are violating firearm laws and regulations is increasing by tens or hundreds of thousands almost every year. This is not the result of a violent crime wave, but because politicians are continually criminalizing the possession of items that were previously legally owned.
Five years ago, the Connecticut legislature decreed that all owners of so-called “assault weapons” (which included any semi-automatic rifle with a pistol grip) must register their firearms. Perhaps as few as 15 percent of gun owners bothered to comply with the new law—meaning that Connecticut had up to 100,000 “criminals” living within its border. A 2016 Albany Times Union editorial lamented that 96 percent of roughly 1 million New Yorkers who owned so-called “assault weapons” failed to comply with registration requirements. California gun bans have been met with similar, massive non-compliance. Undeterred, local governments have begun jumping on the bandwagon. Deerfield, Ill., recently decreed a $1,000-a-day penalty on anyone who fails to surrender or disable their semi-automatic firearms with cosmetic features that frighten politicians and editorial writers.
While such laws were made by elected officials, it is unelected bureaucrats who are largely left in charge of enforcement, and that can cause big problems for gun owners. Just before press time for this issue, it was reported that a California farmer who was simply trying to meet the state’s ever-changing restrictive gun laws by registering his rifle is being charged with 12 felonies after the state DOJ determined his AR-15 to be “illegally modified.” That determination served as grounds for the agency to raid the man’s home and confiscate 12 firearms, 230 rounds of ammunition and two suppressors. He was later released on $150,000 bond, and at press time the case was still pending.
In addition to such state actions, there is a growing clamor on Capitol Hill to impose a nationwide ban on AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms. If that happens, most gun owners are unlikely to surrender their prized possessions in response to a D.C. dictate. As a result, millions of Americans could technically become felons overnight for refusing to obey what they consider an unjust law.
The deep state’s surveillance and investigative powers make it far easier to target firearm-ban scofflaws than in earlier times. Anti-gun sentiment will seek to legitimize any surveillance or enforcement efforts carried out by federal agencies. At a time when politicians are shamelessly comparing the National Rifle Association to a terrorist organization, gun owners may face much wider assaults on their rights and privacy than have previously occurred.
Institutionalized Anti-Gun Conniving
Politicians have long relied on the secrecy of deep-state agencies to carry out campaigns intended to undermine the Second Amendment. After the 2014 showdown at a Nevada ranch, the FBI created a bogus independent film crew that spent a year hounding and videotaping the Bundy family and their supporters to gin up federal charges. Last January, a federal judge dismissed the case against the Bundys, in part because of pervasive FBI lying (including three years of denials that an FBI sniper team was deployed near the Bundys’ home). But the FBIsuffered no penalty, and there is no reason to expect the agency will not try the phony film crew gambit again.
The deep state has more levers than most Americans recognize. Because Congress has designated more than 4,000 criminal offenses and federal regulatory agencies have greatly expanded these through interpretation and rulemaking, bureaucracies have vast discretion to target whom they please. In 2012, the Obama administration launched Operation Choke Point, supposedly to “choke” illegal businesses’ access to financial services. The Justice Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) targeted firearm dealers, resulting in legitimate businesses having their assets frozen based on mere suspicion that they had failed to complete federal background checks on purchasers.
Emails from FDIC officials showed they were “scheming to influence banks’ decisions on who to do business … [to ensure] banks ‘get the message’ about the businesses the regulators don’t like, and pressuring banks to cut credit or close those accounts, effectively discouraging entire industries,” according to an analysis published by The Daily Signal. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg testified to Congress in 2015 that “bank examiners had misinterpreted regulatory guidance to suggest that entire categories of businesses [including firearm dealers] should be barred from traditional banking services,” The Hill reported. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., complained that fdic officials were “weaponizing government to meet their ideological beliefs.” Operation Choke Point has been terminated, but legions of laws and regulations that could permit federal agencies to deny due process to any business that politicians dislike remain on the books.
Second Amendment As Subversion?
Some gun owners might assume that their patriotism exempts them from mistrust by government officials. But Second Amendment advocates have been vilified thanks to the 70-plus Fusion Centers bankrolled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), purportedly to track terrorist threats. To justify their existence, Fusion Centers concoct expansive definitions of suspicious activities. They have attached the “extremist” or potential terrorist tag to gun rights activists; individuals and groups “rejecting federal ice authority in favor of state or local authority” (even though many of the Founding Fathers shared the same creed); and people who were “reverent of individual liberty.”
Federal agencies or federally funded organizations have also declared that individuals can be considered dangerous extremists for “stockpiling” ammunition, displaying the Gadsden (Don’t Tread on Me) flag, asserting a “right to keep and bear arms,” having a “Know Your Rights or Lose Them” bumper sticker, or visiting online “extremist websites/blogs.” Some of those definitions seem designed to cause people to burst out laughing at their absurdity. But the fact that politicians are seeking to use catch-all notions of “suspicious” activity to disarm peaceful Americans is not funny.
Two years ago, Democratic senators conducted a filibuster in favor of prohibiting anyone on a terrorist watch list (which together now include 1.5 million names) from buying guns. “We’re just asking for terrorists not to be able to walk into a gun shop and buy a gun,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, declared.
The fact that the lists contain the names of vast numbers of people who are not terrorists was irrelevant to anti-gun politicians. Names can be added to those watch lists based on the scantest evidence—or even no evidence at all. Obama administration officials boosted tenfold the number of people included on the so-called no-fly list, which was so slipshod that it repeatedly blocked the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D–Mass., and Rep. John Lewis, D–Ga., from traveling. Once someone’s name was added to that list, he was left in bureaucratic purgatory and had to fight for years to even learn why he was on the list to begin with. Even a Los Angeles Times editorial opposed the “no fly, no buy” ban, declaring that owning a gun “is a recognized right, and we find it dangerous ground to let the government restrict the exercise of a right based on a mere suspicion.” But when anti-freedom politicians want to disarm Americans, “mere suspicion” is apparently sufficient.
Federally Funded Vacuum Cleaners
The proliferation of anti-gun laws and regulations in recent years has strewn the nation with tripwires for firearm owners. DHS has given local and state governments more than $50 million to purchase license plate readers for police cars. John Filippidis was driving with his family through Maryland when he was pulled over by a Maryland transportation policeman outside a Baltimore tunnel. The policeman ordered Filippidis out of his car and angrily demanded to know where his gun was. Filippidis has a Right-to-Carry (RTC) permit from Florida—where he had left his firearm. Police spent hours questioning him and searching his minivan before permitting him to move on, leaving his wife and daughters utterly distraught. Maryland police have targeted and rigorously searched other out-of-state drivers with RTC permits (which Maryland does not recognize). Federal grants enabled Maryland to equip hundreds of police cars with license plate scanners that create almost 100 million records per year detailing exactly where and when each vehicle travels.
License plate readers are also being used to create federal records of individuals who attend gun shows. The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2016 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arranged for local police to scan license plates of attendees at a southern California gun show. ice officials told the Journal that ice “has no written policy on its use of license plate readers and could engage in similar surveillance in the future.” A 2015 ACLU investigation concluded that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and ATF also used license plate readers to round up information about gun show attendees. If you have attended gun shows in recent years, that information could be on a federal dossier. More importantly, that fact might be used by law enforcement to justify further investigation of you.
Depressed And Disarmed
At the local and state level, gun owners can be imperiled by deep state-style mandatory reporting requirements spurred by politicians who seek pretexts to disarm as many citizens as possible. After railroading a prohibitive gun bill through the state legislature in 2013, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared: “People who have mental health issues should not have guns. They could hurt themselves, they could hurt other people.” But tens of millions of Americans visit therapists each year, and “mental health issues” is vague enough for lots of political mischief.
More than 85,000 individuals have lost their Second Amendment rights as a result of the law. As columnist Jacob Sullum observed, the “law effectively gives ‘mental health professionals’ the power to disarm people, and they do not even need a judge’s approval.” New York University law professor James Jacobs observed that, “based on as little as a single short emergency room interview,” an individual “need not even be notified that his or her name has been added to a database of persons whose firearm license must be revoked and whose firearms must be surrendered.”
One of the first victims of the law was a librarian who was forced to surrender his firearms to local law enforcement, in part, because he (like millions of other Americans) had received a prescription for Xanax. A New York City public radio station reported the case of “a retired police officer who went to a Long Island hospital complaining of insomnia. A week later sheriff’s deputies confiscated his guns.”
The law intended for county health officials to vet the recommendations that nurses, social workers and others made for disarmament, but the vague standards produced a tidal wave of notifications. As a result, county health officials effectively become “clerical workers, rubber-stamping the decisions,” The New York Times reported. Now, some anti-gun activists consider the New York law a model for imitation in other states or at the federal level.
A nationwide attempted “mental health” gun grab occurred in the final weeks of the Obama administration. Under spurring from the White House, the Social Security Administration ruled that up to 75,000 disability recipients a year who were labeled “mental defectives” would be forced to surrender their firearms. Tens of thousands of Americans filed comments protesting the new regulations, and the Social Security Administration denied that it was implying “a connection between mental illness and a propensity for violence, particularly gun violence.”
The new regulation was bizarrely overbroad. As U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, pointed out, “The disorders list [for banning gun ownership] included eating disorders and other disorders that merely impact sleep or caused restlessness or even ‘feelings of inadequacy,’ illustrating that the regulation was not limited to people with serious mental disorders that caused them to be dangerous.” The rules turned the Bill of Rights upside down. Individuals targeted for gun bans would have received no hearing to prove they should not be disarmed. Instead, as NRA-ILA observed, “The rule forces affected beneficiaries to file a petition for ‘restoration’ of rights and to somehow prove their possession of firearms would not harm public safety or the public interest.”
Even the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the new mandate, asserting that it “reinforces the harmful stereotype that people with mental disabilities, a vast and diverse group of citizens, are violent.” Congress and the Trump administration speedily overturned the new rule last year. But the fact that such a policy was even promulgated is a bellwether of future attacks on the Second Amendment.
Fading Legality And Rising Surveillance
Gun owners who are confident that they will have no problems with the authorities should recognize how quickly government officials can shift the lines defining licit and illicit conduct.
As more gun bans are enacted at the state, local and, potentially, federal level, the number of violators who refuse to surrender their firearms will likely skyrocket. Widespread non-compliance would provide a pretext for demagogic politicians to proclaim an emergency that justifies destroying the privacy of gun owners across the board. How bad could it get? The feds could even commandeer living room and bedroom conversations that are continually captured and uploaded to the internet by Amazon Alexa or Google Home devices. Last year, Amazon gave Arkansas prosecutors Alexa recordings automatically made in the home of a murder suspect.
Some gun owners believe the deep state poses no peril to them because they are entitled to due process, a presumption of innocence and other constitutional rights. But such assurances can quickly become mirages when many politicians portray every privately owned firearm as a massacre in waiting. Many liberals will champion any “show us the gun and we’ll find a crime” crackdown.
“Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear” is an old saying designed to breed docility. But gun owners can afford to accept this adage less now than ever before. The deep state stands ready to exploit the rising tide of laws that turn gun owners into criminals who can be destroyed for political and bureaucratic profit.
James Bovard is a usa Today columnist, a frequent contributor to The Hill and other publications, and the author of 10 books, including Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.
| November 30, 2015 Manly Skills, Tactical Skills
It’s a sad fact of life in the 21st century that active shootings have become a regular occurrence in the United States. In other parts of the world, terrorist groups are using active shootings to, well, terrorize. While the media focuses on the firestorm of political debate these events cyclically create, I’ve rarely seen them discuss what people are actually supposed to do in these situations.
According to the FBI, active shootings in public places are becoming increasingly common. Which means it would serve everyone to understand how to respond if they ever find themselves in the line of fire.
Over the years I’ve talked to a lot of military, tactical, and law enforcement professionals who’ve spent their careers training and dealing with violent individuals: U.S. marshals, SWAT officers, and special forces operators. And I’ve asked them all this same question: What’s an average joe civilian like me supposed to do when faced with a gunman who’s indiscriminately firing on people?
They’ve all answered the same way.
In today’s article, I share expert-backed advice on how best to react if you ever find yourself in a situation with an active shooter. Learning how to survive a shooting is much like learning how to survive an airplane crash: such an event is statistically unlikely to happen to you, and simple chance may make you a victim before you’re able to take any volitional action. But if there are things you can do to increase your odds of survival even slightly, you ought to know and practice them.
Something to Keep in Mind: You’re Probably On Your Own
In a study done by the FBI in 2014, it was discovered that most active shootings end in 2 minutes or less. That’s not enough time for law enforcement to arrive. So when you start hearing gunshots in places you shouldn’t be hearing gunshots, understand that you don’t have very much time to think about what you should do.
That’s why…
You’ve Got to Know What You’d Do Before It Actually Happens
When any sort of emergency situation strikes, be it an active shooter or even a fire, the natural response for most people, surprisingly enough, is not to do anything. We highlighted several of the reasons for this passivity in our article about why most people freeze up in emergency situations. For example, the “normalcy bias” causes victims to act like everything is fine even though things are far from it. Our brain is predisposed to assume that things will carry on in a predictable way. When the pattern is broken, it takes a long time for the brain to process this aberration. This is why many people who witness traumatic events report that it felt surreal, like they were watching a movie and it wasn’t really happening. They also often say that at first they thought the gunshots were fireworks or a car backfiring or a book falling — things that would fit better in their usual paradigm of daily life.
Another bias that keeps us from taking action is our natural tendency to follow the crowd. If we see that everyone else is cowering in fear or locked up by inertia, then our natural tendency is to act the same.
The way you overcome these inclinations towards passivity is deciding exactly what you’ll do in the event of a shooting — before one ever happens. You’ve got to have a plan.
I know it seems morbid, but you really should visualize what you would do in various situations were an active shooter to suddenly intrude upon the scene. What would your plan be if you were in the office and heard shots coming from the floor beneath you? Would you have time to run? If so, where would you go? If you heard the shots just down the hallway and there’s no place to run or hide, what would be your next step? Visualize your plan in as much detail as possible.
In an active shooter situation, seconds matter. You don’t have time to figure out what you’re going to do when a guy starts spraying a building full of gunfire. By having a general preconceived plan, you give yourself a head start. This all goes back to our article on the OODA Loop. Remember, in any conflict there are multiple loops going on. It’s your loop versus the shooter’s, and the first to complete their respective decision-making cycle usually wins the fight.
OODA Loops can begin way before an actual encounter starts. By coming up with a plan of what you would do in an active shooter situation before one ever happens, you’re already engaged in the second step: Orienting. Should you encounter a shooter, you can act immediately because you’ve already begun the cycle and already have a plan in place. Remember, ABO: Always Be Orienting.
Maintain Situational Awareness Wherever You Go
Besides having a general idea of what you’d do in an active shooter situation, another thing you must do to increase your chances of surviving is constantly maintaining situational awareness.
We’ve written in detail about situational awareness before, so rather than getting into the nitty gritty here, let’s review a few important principles as they apply to shootings:
Stay in condition yellow. Condition Yellow is best described as “relaxed alert.”There’s no specific threat situation, but you have your head up and you’re taking in your surroundings with all your senses. Most people associate situational awareness with just visual stimulation, but you can also learn a lot about a particular scenario from sounds. This is especially true for active shootings. If you hear gunshots — or something that sounds an awful lot like gunshots — that should be a sign that you need to start immediately preparing to take action.
Though your senses are slightly heightened in Condition Yellow, it’s also important to stay relaxed. Staying relaxed ensures that you maintain an open focus, which allows you to take in more information about what’s going on around you. Research shows that when we get nervous or stressed, our attention narrows, causing us to concentrate on just a few things at a time. A narrow focus can therefore cause us to miss important details in our environment.
Bottom line: Don’t have your nose constantly in your smartphone and don’t zone out; rather, you should open your eyes, ears, and nose, and calmly and constantly scan your environment to take in what’s going on.
Establish baselines and look for anomalies. As Patrick Van Horne notes in his book Left of Bang, a key component of situational awareness is establishing baselines and looking for anomalies. A baseline is what’s “normal” in a given situation, and it will differ from person to person and environment to environment. A baseline in an office would be people working at their desks or chatting in a lobby. A baseline at a restaurant would be people in uniforms coming in and out of the kitchen and customers entering and exiting the restaurant through the front door.
We establish baselines so that we can look for anomalies. Hearing gunshots at a college campus is definitely out of the ordinary, and should immediately trigger your active shooter plan of action. But let’s take a look at a subtler anomaly. If you’re at a movie theater and you see a guy entering the theater from the exit near the screen, that should definitely put you on alert. It could just be a guy sneaking in for a free movie, but it could also be a gunman. You don’t need to go and immediately tackle the guy, but you’d certainly want to keep your eye on him and make sure you’re prepared to quickly move out.
Know where all your exits are. If there’s one actionable takeaway you get from this article, let it be this. Wherever you are, always know the locations of the nearest exits. As we’ll see in a moment, running should be your first line of action in an active shooter situation. You want to get as far away from the gunman as possible and that often means getting out of the building where he’s shooting. So whenever you enter a building, the first thing you should do is look for exit signs and make mental notes of them.
You also need to consider not-so-visible exits. For example, most grocery stores will have an exit door in the very back in the “employee only” section. If you’re near the back of the store and you hear gunshots from the front, you’ll want to head directly to this rear exit. Another example of not-so-obvious exits is in restaurants. Most restaurants will have an exit in the back of the kitchen. If you’re near the kitchen and you hear gunshots near the front of the place, you’d want to hightail it to this back door. Because these exits are in places considered “employee only,” people have been conditioned not to even consider using them. But in an active shooter situation, these kinds of norms obviously go out the window, and preparing yourself to disregard them is a must.
Your Active Shooter Triage: Run, Hide, Fight
So you’ve heard shots and screams. There’s an active shooting happening. What should you do? All the experts agree that you have three possible actions: run, hide, and fight.
Run
Running away should always be your first line of action. As soon as you hear gunfire, leave the premises immediately using your preconceived escape plan and get as far away from the shooter as possible. Ideally, you’ll be able to escape without having to cross the shooter’s path.
Keep in mind that in an active shooter situation, most people won’t want to leave because 1) they’re cowed in fear, 2) they’ve let the normalcy bias take over, or 3) they think hiding should be their first recourse. But you need to run, regardless of what others are doing. Do all you can to convince them to come with you, but if they don’t comply, leave them, and get out of the building or danger area as soon as possible.
Don’t try to gather your belongings. You can replace your laptop; you can’t replace your life.
As you make your exit, tell others to come along with you. Once you’re out of the danger area, prevent others (except for law enforcement) from entering the premises.
When you’re running, keep your hands visible. Law enforcement will be checking you to decide if you’re a threat.
This may go against every humane compulsion you have, but don’t try to move or assist the wounded while you’re making your exit. It leaves you vulnerable to attack; turning one casualty into two won’t ultimately help things. Even the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the scene will initially ignore the wounded so they can take out the shooter. Just as their top priority is to stop the gunman, your top priority is to get to safety.
If you’re in an open area and there’s distance between you and the shooter, run as fast as you can in a zig-zag pattern. Shooting a moving target is hard even for experienced marksman, and many mass shooters have little or no experience with firearms. So move as much as possible and take cover behind barriers that can stop bullets (cement pillars, vending machines, etc.).
As soon as you get to safety, call 911. Don’t assume someone already has.
Hide
Sometimes running isn’t an option. Maybe the shooter is in front of the only exit and you can’t jump out the window because you’re on the fourth floor. If you can’t make an escape, the next best thing to do is to hide in a secure location.
You want to hide in a place that’s out of the shooter’s view and that can provide protection if shots are fired in your direction. If you’re in an office or school building, find a room that has a lockable door. If you can’t lock the door of the room you’re in, barricade it with a table and chairs. You want to make it as hard as possible for the shooter to enter; he’s often looking for easy victims, and will move on rather than bother pushing through the barrier.
Turn off the lights in the room and be as quiet as possible. Be sure to put your cell phone on silent. You don’t even want it on vibrate.
Stay away from the door and crouch behind items that could offer protection from bullets like cabinets or desks. Hide in a bathroom or closet if you can.
If possible, dial 911 and let the authorities know there’s an active shooter in your building. If you can’t speak because the shooter is nearby, leave the line open so the dispatcher can hear what’s going on.
Don’t open the door unless absolutely necessary or if you can confirm it’s the authorities who are knocking. According to Clint Emerson, Navy SEAL and author of the book 100 Deadly Skills, shooters will often knock on doors or yell for help in the hopes of convincing people who are hiding to show themselves.
If you can’t find a room in which to secure yourself, hide in a location that offers cover and concealment from the shooter, but still allows you to see him. If the shooter passes you, you can make a run for it. If he doesn’t, it puts you in a position to attack if necessary.
Fight!
When running or hiding have failed or aren’t viable options, it’s time to resort to plan C: Fight!
Most civilians don’t think they can take on an active shooter because, well, the shooter has a gun and they likely do not. But here’s the thing: it is possible for unarmed individuals to subdue or chase away an armed shooter. Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, and Alek Skarlatos — the 3 friends who rushed a terrorist aboard a train to Paris — did it, saving dozens of lives. So did Frank Hall, a football coach who ran down a shooter and chased him out of a high school in Ohio before he could wreak massive carnage.
Yes, some studies have suggested that armed civilians can reduce the number of fatalities in an active shooter situation compared to situations where there were no armed civilians. But what these same studies suggest is that just having civilians — armed or not — quickly take action against a shooter can reduce the number of victims too. So even if you don’t plan on carrying a firearm yourself, commit to the idea that if you absolutely have to (and, again, we’re talking last resort here), you’ll attack an active shooter quickly and devastatingly.
Will you get shot? Possibly. But it’s possible to survive multiple gunshot wounds, and doing nothing will probably get you killed anyway. Sadly, history has shown that many active shooters will unflinchingly shoot people begging for their lives while they’re curled up in the fetal position. As Chris Norman, a Briton who assisted the 3 Americans in their attack of the train terrorist described his reason for taking action:
“My thought was, ‘OK, I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go.’ I’d rather die being active, trying to get him down, than simply sit in the corner and be shot. Either you sit down and you die or you get up and you die. It was really nothing more than that.”
How to Fight an Active Shooter
So you’ve made the decision that running and hiding are no longer options and that fighting is your last recourse. What’s the best way to fight an active shooter?
If you’re armed yourself, there are certain techniques you should employ in returning fire. A tutorial on how to take down a gunman lies outside the purview of this post, and must be practiced in the real world.
If you’re not armed, real world practice in hand-to-hand fighting will be an enormous asset, not only in giving you concrete skills to employ, but in offering you a greater comfort level with violence and a confidence in taking action. It’s not a coincidence that Spencer Stone — a U.S. Airman who was the first of the 3 Americans to rush the train-bound terrorist and choked him out while his buddies gave him a beat down — was trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Stone unequivocally attributed his training in martial arts to his survival, adding that even a cursory knowledge of self-defense is highly beneficial: “I 100% believe that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu saved my life at that moment. Every move I used on him was very, very basic — you can learn in five minutes. If we had a course like that in the Air Force for people to learn basic moves, it could help anyone in a situation like that.”
But even if you’re the most average of average joes — you’ve got neither a gun nor a black belt — you should still attempt to take on a gunman as a last resort, keeping these principles in mind:
Understand your advantages. Most violent gunmen work under the assumption that because they have a gun, people will do what they want or just hide. They don’t expect someone to come charging after them. As we discussed in our article on the OODA Loop, an important part of winning any fight is resetting or disrupting your opponent’s loop. As former US Air Marshal Curtis Sprague told me, you want your opponent to have an “uhhhh…” moment. By doing the unexpected (attacking), Sprague argues that “you’re disrupting the gunman’s OODA Loop which slows him down — even if it’s just a few seconds — and gives you more time to complete your OODA Loop and win the battle.”
So simply charging your gunman puts you at an advantage because he’s definitely not expecting it.
In 100 Deadly Skills, Emerson notes another advantage to keep in mind: “a gun can only be shot in one direction at any one time.” If you approach the shooter from behind or from the side, it’s going to be very hard for him to shoot you. What’s more, if you attack the shooter as a team (which you should), he can’t shoot everyone at the same time. An attack by multiple people, from multiple angles, will be difficult for a lone gunman to fend off.
Be aggressive and violent. This isn’t the time for pussy footing. Once you decide to fight, attack with violence and aggression. Alek Skarlatos grabbed the train-bound terrorist’s rifle and pounded him repeatedly in the head with its muzzle. This kind of violence may not be pleasant to contemplate, but remember, old ingrained norms like never hurting others go out the window in a crisis; victory will go to the swift and relentless. Use lethal force, and don’t stop fighting until you’re dead or the shooter stops moving.
Control the weapon and then control the shooter. The sooner you can get the weapon out of the shooter’s hands, without endangering others, the better. Without his gun, he can’t shoot anymore. Once the weapon has been secured, turn your attention to completely containing the perpetrator. Keep in mind every fight is different. Sometimes you’re not going to be in a position to secure the weapon first, so your priority would be to inflict as much violence as possible on the shooter until you can get the gun away from him.
Even if you can’t get the gun completely out of the attacker’s hands, do what you can to control it. Grab the gun so that you can exercise some influence over where it’s pointed. If the shooter has a semi-automatic pistol, use this tip I picked up from UFC fighter and Army Ranger Tim Kennedy at the Atomic Athlete Vanguard. Grab the barrel as hard as you can. First, this allows you to control where the gun is pointed. And second, if the gun does fire, it will prevent the slide from going back and chambering another round, thus preventing the shooter from re-firing.
Use improvised weapons. Just because you don’t have a gun, doesn’t mean you don’t have a weapon. A weapon can multiply force and almost anything in your environment can be turned into one: chairs, fire extinguishers, umbrellas, belts, coffee mugs. Heck, even a pen can be used as an improvised weapon.
Throw stuff at the shooter. Even if it doesn’t disable him, you’re creating hesitation which will give you more time to get closer to end the fight. Remember, disrupt that loop!
If it’s available, use items that can blind the shooter: flash a high-beam tactical flashlight in his eyes, spray a fire extinguisher or chemicals in his face, or throw a pot of scalding hot coffee his way. Be creative! Once the shooter is disoriented, rush him and take him down.
Work as a team. The more people you can get to help you in attacking the shooter, the better your chances of ending the ordeal with fewer casualties. But remember, most people’s natural reaction in these sorts of situations is to not do anything. You’ll need to be assertive and take the lead. Courage is contagious.
Conclusion
While active shootings are increasing, they’re still rare. We shouldn’t be cowered in our homes in fear. But there’s no downside to being prepared. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to survive a shooting; you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and you’re killed without warning. But you may get a chance to act, and will only have seconds to figure out what to do. Your stress will be through the roof and the situation will be utter chaos. If you hope in that moment to be able to protect your life and the lives of others, ready yourself now and have a plan of action wherever you go.
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Sources:
100 Deadly Skills by Clint Emerson
Left of Bang by Patrick van Horne
How to Survive the Most Critical 5 Seconds of Your Life by Tim Larkin
Active Shooter: How to Respond by The Department of Homeland Security
Right now, Britain is like the Wild West of Europe, and it’s been said our police have lost control of our streets.
I asked serving members of the British Police what it is like to be a police officer in the U.K. today. Their truths will make you weep.
This is Dave’s story:
“In 1999 I was suspended from the police over an allegation of assault against an Asian male who had beaten his girlfriend in the street.
“It was a night shift and I was crewed with a female probationer. Without backup or assistance, I needed to use CS spray and my baton to control the situation and arrest the man.
“My accuser is a 6ft 4” kick-boxing expert, an alleged enforcer for a local drugs baron. He’s suspected of one murder and has been convicted for various violent offences, including firearms. I am 5ft 6” and weigh 12 stone in all my kit.
“He made a complaint of racially aggravated assault and I was charged and suspended.
“I was told by my division commander, off the record, that the only reason I was being charged was because the police didn’t want to deal with the publicity of acknowledging I acted within the rules for the use of force. In fact, the force paid him £12k in compensation before the case even got to court, during which time my accuser was shot in a drugs feud and I was listed as a suspect. He survived.
“After a four-day trial at Crown Court, it took just 20 minutes for me to be found not guilty. Unanimously.
“I returned to duty broken. I lost my first marriage from the stress of it all.
“When I returned to work I was put on a race and diversity course, implying I had acted with prejudice despite the not-guilty verdict. I was also given a written warning over my conduct during the investigation.”
Now ask yourself why anyone would want to be a police officer in the UK today.
Why would anyone want to join when this is how we treat the people tasked to protect us? When crime has reached all-time highs and public trust is at an all-time low?
Machete gangs on mopeds race through London’s streets threatening to kill for a watch or phone, with no fear of recrimination. Shootings, stabbings and acid attacks are so commonplace they barely raise an eyebrow in the news. The Metropolitan Police Force has been accused of losing control of London.
And yet it has managed to assert a vice-like grip over its own employees, preventing them from speaking out about the impossible position they are in and the lack of support they receive from their seniors.
When I ask serving police officers to share their stories, they all begin the same way:
“Don’t use my name. I’ll be sacked for bringing the service into disrepute.”
I assure them I will use pseudonyms and keep their trust.
Sarah says:
“I am ashamed, as are all my colleagues. Serving officers are working in a PC environment with their hands tied behind their back, scared to actually make decisions. The police service has been destroyed and men and women who’ve given blood, sweat and tears over years have been badly let down.”
One thing is clear. Serving police officers want to get on with the job of policing and catching criminals. But they are prevented by a new breed of highly politicised police managers without practical policing experience.
A senior officer tells me:
“For many their only dealings with crime are seeing police tape on while on a stroll to get their first Frappuccino of the day. They find it hard to envision a 13-year-old armed with a machine gun and in possession of over £1,000 and quantities of drugs. They believe the screaming man they see being cuffed on the floor could be spoken to rationally or in a more friendly manner, even though that man has been off his meds for two weeks and has just been on a 72-hour crack binge.”
This new breed of police manager knows that being politically correct and putting minorities first is the path to promotion and pension:
“The new management class is obsessed with social media and political correctness instead of getting in criminals’ faces. They pander to the whims of local minorities and in many ways treat them more favourably.
“Problems are dealt with only when they get in the press. They chase after ‘victims’ who are themselves criminals and the subject of some feud, rather than deal with real victims who deserve our time.”
I am sent a photo by a serving officer in the Yorkshire Police, sick of the endless courses on Islam or Trans Acceptance he is obliged to attend, another day of policing wasted to placate his PC masters.
READ New Year’s Address by Katie Hopkins
Andy shares his experiences from a football match at Crystal Palace:
“We were recently sent to assist with the policing of the Brighton v. Crystal Palace football game. In the briefing our sergeant told us we must be VERY proactive in dealing with any abusive homophobic chants. If a Crystal Palace fan was heard singing anything that could be deemed homophobic, we were to take immediate and decisive action.
“During the game a man drove by chatting loudly on a mobile phone. I said to my sergeant, ‘Aren’t we going to do anything about that?’ He replied: ‘We aren’t here for that but your enthusiasm has been noted.’
“So someone singing an immature chant in a pub is a priority but a driver on his mobile phone who could run over a child is not. That’s modern policing for you. It’s all about appearance and virtue-signalling.”
Many former officers have used their extensive experience to report crime, only to be ignored:
“I spent 30 years in the force. I once rang in to report scooter thieves heading into the West End. When I eventually got through and gave a full explanation of my experience and reasons for ringing, I was met with indifference. I no longer ring. The police have given the streets up to feral, dangerous youths. London is slowly declining into the sort of third-world city we have been warned to avoid when travelling.”
Officers working in specialist units dealing with child abuse and paedophilia have watched their jobs and status deteriorate as ‘new priorities’ around diversity and sensitivity to Muslim communities take precedence:
“I am a serving Metropolitan Police officer and have worked in some of the most rewarding units in the Met, from the Vice Unit that looked after Soho (CO14) and the Paedophile Unit based at Empress State Building (ESB) in West Brompton (SCD9). These forces have been decimated by new spending priorities.
“We were a specialist unit that was 100% focused on dealing with child abuse. Now? Forget it, they are made to feel worthless. It was a detective-level role because it was serious. Now it’s staffed with PCs. It’s a disgrace. I’m in regular contact with my old friends in the paedophile unit and they all want to leave. When diversity and minorities are the priority, child abuse goes to the back of the queue.”
Many officers say they cannot wait to get out of the force, sick of seeing the job they loved so diminished. Or new recruits accepted to tick the diversity box, who would never have made it through recruitment just five years ago. White males were not even invited to a day on how to succeed at selection. Only minority, LGBT, Muslim or non-whites were free to attend.
But my inbox is also full of stories from officers who were forced out against their will, after complaints against them from those they have apprehended – like Dave, whose story we began with:
“I was a front-line officer in Telford for 12 years. I was eventually hounded out of the job for using ‘excessive’ force to save a nine-month-old child’s life.”
(A force too excessive to save a baby’s life? Now there’s a contradiction in terms.)
The lack of support from those high up the chain of command has made policing an impossible task. Police officers make split-second decisions in real time. The law judges them slowly in the comfort of the court. Barristers are paid to ‘prove’ them guilty. And then they face time inside for doing their job.
Even senior officers acknowledge that they operate in constant fear of being seen to ‘victim shame’ offenders, or to be deemed confrontational and insensitive to an offender’s needs, vulnerabilities or minority status.
“These fears have been imposed upon us by people who feel that corruption, racism, brutality and incompetence are all prevalent within the day-to-day policing of the city. This is simply not true.”
The result is officers on the street who are expected to tiptoe around these sensitivities instead of policing from a position of strength, and criminals who are perfectly aware how shackled our officers are and who know they have the right to complain on racial or minority lines.
Which is why the crime stats rise, criminals are the new victims, and, in far too many cases, the good guys wind up in the dock.
But having seen the end results in Los Angeles Juvenile Hall Court Schools. I have to beg to differ on this issue.
I think that the time to legalise most drugs is the way to go.
As it is we have declared war on our Civil Rights & Property rights (Asset Forfeiture) Given the various gangs on both sides of the border a huge influx of money.
That and basically started a major civil war in Latin America. Because of our huge need by many Gringos to get fucked up by drugs.
YUBA CITY (CBS13) – A Yuba City man says law enforcement confiscated his money but he didn’t commit a crime. Now he’s fighting to get back tens of thousands of dollars.
Yuba City resident Josh Gingerich buys and flips trucks. A recent buying trip to do that cost him a bag of cash which was seized by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) drug interdiction task force at O’Hare Airport.
Yuba City resident Josh Gingerich buys and flips trucks. A recent buying trip to do that cost him a bag of cash which was seized by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) drug interdiction task force at O’Hare Airport.
“A little over 29 grand,” the amount taken said Gingerich who was not arrested and did not break any laws. “No marijuana, no drugs.”
He believes an airport TSA agent saw the money in his backpack and tipped off the DEA.
“They take you down to a dingy basement room,” said Gingerich. “No cameras…no nothing.”
Gingerich said he was set up by the officers who he says claimed to smell marijuana on a plastic bag filled with dirty laundry in his backpack. He said officers dumped the clothes, filled the bag with cash, then brought it to the drug dog.
“They can just do what they want,” said Gingerich.
Within the United States, it is legal to carry cash, says Benjamin Ruddell of the ACLU.
“There’s no prohibition on carrying cash, or carrying a large amount of cash,” said Ruddell who points out what they believe is flawed with the DEA Civil Asset Forfeiture Program.
“If the purpose of this is to disrupt illegal drug activity…we’d see some of these people be arrested,” said Ruddell.
Last March, the U.S. Justice Department Inspector General released a report saying from 2007–2016, the DEA seized $3.2 billion with zero convictions tied to this money.
“It should be against the law,” said Gingerich.
Gingerich also questions whose being given this seizure power. In his case, there was a Chicago police officer working on the DEA drug interdiction team. The officer has at least 27 Chicago Police Department complaints. He was cleared on all but one. Six of the 27 were for illegal searches. He has also been sued, resulting in two settlements involving bad searches and a bad drug arrest.
This happened to Gingerich in February, and he hired Attorney Michael Schmiege to get his money back.
“It’s not a quick and easy process. It’s not like traffic court. It can drag on for years,” said Schmiege.
Schmiege also says drug dogs often hit on the money.
“Most United States currency has trace amounts of narcotics on it,” said Schmiege.
Another twist is that Gingerich lives in California, where marijuana is legal.
“You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,” said Gingerich who wants his money back and interest too.
If Gingerich fails to get his money, it will be divided up between the federal government and local police on the task force.
The ACLU says Illinois gets $20 million to $30 million a year from these seizures.
DEA Statement: “The Asset Forfeiture Program aims to employ asset forfeiture powers in a manner that enhances public safety and security. This is accomplished by removing the proceeds of crime and other assets relied upon by criminals and their associates to perpetuate their criminal activity against our society. Asset forfeiture has the power to disrupt or dismantle criminal organizations that would continue to function if we only convicted and incarcerated specific individuals. Seizures made during the course of interdiction operations do not rely on only one fact when determining probable cause. Multiple facts, circumstances, statements and other factors go into the decision to seize an asset. These must be taken as a whole in order to understand the probable cause for a seizure, each of which, has a process for contesting available to them.”
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So be careful out there Folks as there are a lot of thieves out there! Grumpy
Stand Your Ground
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- After being in the firearms self-defense instruction business for over 40 years, I have been asked many times what it the most important skill I could pass on to a new student. It made me think each time it was asked. And the answer has been and still is……. Awareness and mindset.
It never ceases to amaze me that most concealed carry permit holders have never been in a violent encounter or even a fist fight.
I have developed a syllabus that covers awareness and mindset in all our curriculum regardless of the platform. Pistol, shotgun or carbine.
We start with several issues, warrior mindset, both definition and application. Next the OODA Loop, history, and usage. Then on to Color Codes of Awareness of USMC and Jeff Cooper fame. The history and usage. How it applies to everyday use. Then on to the dynamics of a violent encounter or patterns of conflict.
The final piece of this puzzle is to know what the TELLS of a violent encounter with another person looks like. A TELL will give you an idea in advance of a violent encounter. A violent criminal does not start a violent encounter in a vacuum. There are many tell tale signs of the oncoming violent encounter, but you must know the signs or tells.
So here we go:
- Verbalization- “I am going to kick your ass” “So, you think you are a badass?” “You will be sorry” “. Those are easy ones. But they can be very offsetting also. “Hey, can you help me out?” “Have any spare change?” “I need some help” Those are meant to get you to lower your guard, gain sympathy and allow invasion of personal space.
- Visable overt awareness- Visible weapons, unusual nervousness, hidden hands.
- Asumption of a fighter stance or bladed stance.
- Looking around to see if they are alone, no witnesses. Looking for an escape route, a possible assistant assailant. Overall assessing their battle area.
- Invasion of personal space .
- Change in Body Language
- Clenching of jaw muscles, clenching and unclenching of fists.
- Blinking eyes unnaturally or squinting. Eye movement changes from the normal 20 closures a minute. Staring hard at or through you.
- Aggression redirected to other objects or people. Kicking cans, kicking or shoving chairs. Smacking walls, breaking pencils, or glasses and inanimate objects. Yelling at others.
- Sweating
- Flared nostrils, heavier than normal breathing. Lips part showing teeth to intake more breath.
- Tensed up posture.
- Stretching back and arms. Opening and closing elbows. Head rolls and neck stretches.
- Removal of excess clothing.
- Pacing, finger pointing shaking fists, over exaggerated hand, and arm movements.
- Facial discoloration, normally to red.
- Dress, what they wear and how they wear it.
Most of these have been noted in a survey that was done by two researchers from University of Toledo, Richard Johnson and Jasmine Aaron in “Adults’ Beliefs Regarding Nonverbal Cues Predictive of Violence. Criminal Justice and Behavior.
When we notice these TELLs, we want to create space and time to make the attack easier to manage or to Avoid, Evade and Escape.
Always remember violent encounters are a mathematical equation of time and distance. The problem is we do not know the digits until the encounter is over.
Time and distance are your friends or your worst enemies.
About Bob Harvey
Bob is a veteran Marine Corps veteran firearms coach PMI, Marine Security Guard, PPSU Instructor, NRA Training Counselor and Instructor. Owner of both South Florida Gun School and SDK Security Consultants. Subject matter expert, an expert trial witness for firearms and their use.
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