The Cornered Cat
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Permission
February 10, 2013

I keep a running list of blog-post titles and ideas. Some of them are long enough they’re practically posts already and just need to be polished and thrown up there when the time is right. Some are brief and cryptic.

Here’s one that’s been on my to-do list for awhile: Permission. Giving yourself the power to act, to defend your life, to do whatever it takes to survive. Sometimes we want this power to come from outside ourselves, but ultimately it’s something that comes from inside. To be fully prepared to protect yourself from violence means that you must be prepared to act — no matter who has or hasn’t spoken to you about it, and no matter who says otherwise.

This idea jumped up and bit me when I listened to a 911 call last year, the call from the Sarah McKinley case. You may remember this event. McKinley is the young mom and widow who used a shotgun to defend herself and her baby when a violent intruder broke into her home. Here’s part of the transcript from her call to the Grady County emergency line.

DISPATCHER: What’s going on?

SARAH MCKINLEY: There’s a guy at my door. I’ve got some dogs that keep coming up missing. This guy’s up to no good. My husband just passed away. I’m here by myself with my infant baby. Can I please get a dispatch out here immediately?

DISPATCHER: Hang with me a second. Are your doors locked?

SARAH MCKINLEY: Yes, I’ve got two guns in my hands. Is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?

DISPATCHER: Well, you have to do whatever you can do to protect yourself. I can’t tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.

Did  you see what just happened? McKinley asked someone else for permission to defend her life. It’s not uncommon for crime victims to ask for that permission, but it’s somewhat unusual for them to receive it from a 911 dispatcher. More often, the dispatcher tells the frightened victim not to shoot, tells them to put down their firearms, tells them to just be patient because police are on the way.

Even when they aren’t.

There’s another aspect of this, too. When I’m teaching a class for people who are new to defensive firearms, a student will sometimes ask a series of increasingly unlikely scenario-based questions. To an outsider, these questions might seem really contrived and almost bloodthirsty. For a long time I wondered what was up with these weird, unlikely stories people were asking me about. I don’t wonder any more, because I finally figured out that it had very little to do with the specific situations they invented.  Instead, at some deep level, these students just needed to hear someone else say, “It’s okay to defend yourself.” They needed permission.

Rory Miller once addressed this issue in a brilliant post on his blog. He wrote:

You have permission to defend yourself.

You have permission to be rude.

You have permission to survive, no matter what it takes.

You have permission to act when the scary man reaches for his belt. You do not need to wait until he draws the weapon or until he points it at you or until he hurts you.

You have permission to act.

…

You have blanket permission to grow and live and survive and fight and run and scream and talk and play and learn and experiment.

You have permission to win, and you have permission to decide what winning is.

Your life is worth defending, and you have permission to defend it.

 

 

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Weekend reading
February 9, 2013

Just in case you missed these stories earlier this week, here’s some reading material to get you through the weekend.

Oh, wait. I should first mention the reading material on my nightstand. Right now it’s a book that isn’t out yet. Hint? Sure: it’s written by someone on the blog list to your right. Tease, tease!

Mom With a Gun did an excellent interview with Dr. Alexis Artwohl, author of Lethal Force Encounters. Although focused on law enforcement officers, a lot of the data Dr. Artwohl collected and put into usable form applies to all of us. The interview focuses on a really critical question:  As regular people, how can we best prepare for the emotional aftermath of using a gun in self-defense?

Marty Hayes, one of my mentors and the founder of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, offers a thoughtful explanation for why you need an “assault weapon” (and why you shouldn’t call it that).

Lawdog rants, as only he can, that gun-free does not mean violence-free. Really, Lawdog’s writing is so thought-provoking and complete that there’s nothing to add. But I am so wordy that I will say the obvious again: if you need a restraining order, you need a personal safety plan that includes the tools and training it will take to keep you safe. Nobody else can provide that protection for you. Nobody. 1

Smith&Wesson has a handy tool you can use to contact your politicians. So does Ruger. This week, I’ve heard from several people who feel discouraged about doing this. One of them asked me, “Kathy, why am I even bothering to call them? I have one of the most anti-gun senators in the country!”  Even though we won’t directly change their minds, the anti-rights politicians still need to hear from us. Why? Because they live in an echo chamber. They really believe that you don’t exist. They think an intelligent, reasonable woman who believes in her right to protect herself is just a made-up fiction, a lie, that lobbyists use for their own dishonest reasons. So when we call or write, we undermine their idea that we don’t exist. We make denial harder.That makes it much easier for our side to stand firm against them at the bargaining table.

PolicyMic wants to remind everyone that homicides and violent crimes have dropped by over 50% over the past 20 years. Clayton Cramer says rape rates are much higher in Great Britain than they are in the US. Hey, maybe that’s something you can use when you write to your politicians.

Chad Baus of the Buckeye Firearms Association asks, “Can anyone think of a reason why this man [a convicted rapist] doesn’t want law-abiding citizens to have the ability to defend themselves with firearms?”

Rory  Miller confesses he was not a good father: “When my kids were little we would sometimes play a game I learned from my parents– Hide and Don’t Seek.  I’d send them to hide and remind them to be extra still and extra quiet and that I would not only find them but stalk them silently.  Then I would get done whatever job I needed the peace and quiet for. After that I would go look.  ‘You guys did so good!  It took me almost an hour to find you!'” I wish I’d thought of that.

 

 

Notes:

  1. Sometimes other people go away, but you never do. (Think about it…) ↩
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The holster pile
February 8, 2013

It’s safe to say that I have a few more holsters than the average. I sorted through them this week and boy howdy was that a big job. But now they are all neatly organized, labeled,  entered on the spreadsheet, and sorted into specific boxes so I should — at least theoretically! — always be able to find the one I’m looking for from now on. Although I suspect a few of them escaped the cataloging, and are hiding underneath the furniture somewhere.

How many holsters, you ask? Well… there are enough to let me use a new one every single day for six months without repeating any. Plus another six weeks or so of holstered purses. Hey, it’s my job!

The funny part is, I’m still carrying the same model of gun I chose when I first started shooting. That’s weird. Even weirder: I carried my first holster for nearly three years before I even bothered sampling anything else, because my first holster worked so well for me. After more than a dozen years, I still carry the same gun model and the same basic type of holster when I’m not deliberately trying something new for the job. So I guess you could say I struck it lucky right off.

That’s not normal.

Normal is going through a half-dozen holsters the first few months you carry. Normal is choosing a first gun, then selling it, then buying another, going through at least three or four other guns — smaller, bigger, thinner, more capacity, round and round and round we go — until you find your One True Sword. Normal is doing that until you run out of either patience or money. But I wasn’t normal. I was fortunate.

I chose my first gun like this: I wanted something really, really reliable. I didn’t want a revolver, because they didn’t hold enough ammunition. I wanted the least-expensive ammunition that would do the job, because we were always broke. The gun had to be small enough to carry. Also, did I mention reliable? Reliable was really important. I gave my list to my expert friend, and he said, “Hm. You want a Glock.” That’s how I ended up with my Glock 26 in 9mm. Since neither of us really knew what we were looking for, it was sheer dumb luck that the gun turned out to fit my hand so well and suited me in so many other ways. 1

Holster shopping was even more fortuitous. My permit to carry came in the mail one day, and the next day my friend said, “Let’s go get you a holster.” Well, okay. We got in the car and drove up to the Blade Tech factory. When we got there, the person behind the counter asked what I wanted. I wasn’t sure. She showed me some choices. I said, “That one.” Then I sat down and waited while the guys in the back melted one into shape for me. 2 When the holster was done, I stepped aside to try it on, anxiously adjusting my clothes around the awkward new bump on my hip. Then I turned around and worriedly asked, “Does the holster make me look fat?” 3

Nobody had told me not to do this, so I immediately loaded my gun and carried it home in my new, untried holster. 4 Hmm? Oh, because I’d never drawn from it, of course, and had no real idea how secure or insecure it was. You should always try out a new holster using an unloaded gun or a dummy gun, to be sure everything’s working well before you go live with it. I didn’t know.

Memories…

Anyway, the holster pile’s a lot bigger now. It started growing when I started writing, and has kept growing ever since. Because I absolutely refuse to write anything about a holster I haven’t worn, almost all of my holsters have some wear marks on them. Some of them I’ve worn quite a lot, while others I’ve worn just enough to know how they work (or, sadly, how they don’t work for me). I’ll be introducing you to some of them over the next few weeks.

 

 

Notes:

  1. I even thought it was cute, which — my friends assured me — was also not quite a normal way to think about a Glock. ↩
  2. I don’t think they do that anymore. The company’s a lot larger now, and uses a different manufacturing process. Back then the company was tiny, and I think they used the founder’s wife’s hair dryer for melting stuff. Well, maybe not. But they weren’t a big business by any measure. ↩
  3. No, I didn’t know why my buddy laughed. It’s a reasonable question. ↩
  4. Yes, we stopped at Wally World on the way home. ↩
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What I Do

So lately I’ve been thinking about Things I Do and (more important) about Things I Don’t Do. That second column is important, because nobody can be everything to everyone.

Things I Do

Things I Don’t Do
  • Focus on self-defense skills
  • Focus on competition shooting skills
  • Teach and learn for a living
  • Sell stuff for a living
  • Function as a bridge between the new shooter and the serious training world
  • Badmouth other instructors
  • Help beginning instructors improve their teaching and shooting skills
  • Encourage complacency
  • Problem solve – help ccw people find their specific ways to carry, and help businesspeople design or refine products for the ccw market
  • Badmouth small businesses or small business owners
  • Tell the truth with as much kindness and discretion as I can
  • Lie or hide the truth
  • Focus on principles of gear selection
  • Focus on individual product reviews
  • Tell others about the work of good people who are doing good things
  • Live by advertising income 1
  • Share information about good products I’ve found that solve some specific problem
  • Live by sponsorships 2
  • Write how-to’s and tutorials that teach people how to choose good gear,  or how to use the gear they already own
  • Write articles  telling people they need to buy more stuff
  • Tell people when they really do need to make an investment in their equipment
  • Pretend bad gear is as good as good gear
  • Provide realistic but optimistic information about tough subjects
  • Deny or sugarcoat unpleasant truths
  • Honest homework, honest research
  • Plagiarize or take shortcuts
  • Focus on what the student needs, and on what the shooting community needs
  • Focus on my own tiny little world, and miss the bigger picture
  • Keep the pie growing
  • Fight over slivers

Do you have a similar list? Please share it with me — either in the comments below, or by linking from your own blog. Thanks!

Notes:

  1. I’m a capitalist. There’s nothing wrong with making money! My objection to ads and sponsorships is that so often they translate into, “I won’t tell anyone about this cool thing I found, unless someone pays me to do it.” Since my goal is to maximize good information getting to the hands of good people, I can’t go there. ↩
  2. See previous note. ↩
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Web walking
February 7, 2013

Here’s an older article (May 2012) about the number of justifiable homicides in Georgia. The article notes a small increase in the number of lawful uses of deadly force. It goes on to say:

“Meanwhile, Georgia’s overall murder rate has decreased between 2000 and 2010, from a rate of 6.1 per 100,000 people in 2000 to 5.4 per 100,000 in 2010. Georgia’s population has increased 20 percent during that time.

“Prosecutors and criminologists aren’t certain why the number of justifiable homicides has jumped…”

My theory: The justifiable homicide rate has gone up, and the number of murders down, because the intended victims used lethal force to stop their own murders. That’s a good thing.

***

A man named Clare Niederhauser needs help. When prowlers broke into his rural Utah property, Niederhauser fired two “warning shots” at different times. He also allowed himself to be interviewed at the police station for several hours, without the benefit of talking with his lawyer first. Predictable but depressing result: he’s charged with reckless endangerment and facing some high legal bills.

It’s a stark reminder that warning shots are almost always a bad idea. And an equally chilling reminder that if you use your firearm, you need legal counsel before talking at length with the police.

[UPDATE: Niederhauser has agreed to a plea deal, but the details of the deal are not yet public. That’s why the earlier link no longer works.]

***

Stories like the Niederhauser situation remind me to be thankful for the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, which provides trustworthy practical support for ordinary people who prepare to defend themselves from violent crime.

The disclaimer is that Marty Hayes, founder of ACLDN, is a close personal friend of mine. He and his wife, Gila, have been amazing mentors to me from the time I first began learning to shoot defensive handguns. For this reason, I have absolute trust in their integrity and ability to do everything they promise they will do, and then some.

The Advisory Board at ACLDN includes some very heavy hitters such as Massad Ayoob, John Farnam, Tom Givens, Emanuel Kapelsohn, and Dennis Tueller, and these men will be available as expert witnesses should you need it. ACLDN promises “boots on the ground” as soon as reasonably possible after your event, to help you and your lawyer coordinate your response. You have to find your own lawyer, although the ACLDN does offer a vetted list of lawyers for you to use if you like. After an event, they immediately provide up to $10k to your lawyer right up front to get your legal defense going, and promise to work with you to help you avoid a court case. They promise to work with you throughout your court case, if it goes that far, and to provide monetary aid based on the merits of your case (not dependent on whether you get acquitted later, but on whether these use-of-force experts agree you were acting in good faith). The company has a deep warchest which is growing all the time, and they promise to provide legal grants based on the merits of your case up to a certain percentage of the warchest. Through the multiple dvds that come with membership, and through their excellent monthly journal, ACLDN gives its members a truly excellent legal education about self defense.

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do to legally protect yourself before or immediately after a shooting, this is the place to find out.

***

In New York state, we find that getting a permit to legally own a firearm now takes over a year and a half in some counties. A year and a half! Note that this lengthy process isn’t about getting a carry permit, which is a different process with its own delays. A year and a half just covers the bureaucratic hoops someone would have to jump through in order to own a simple self-defense tool and keep it in the house.

For those who wonder how any reasonable person could be against more background checks, more regulation, or more control of deadly weapons, this is why. When you allow more regulation of the simple tools needed for self-defense, you create a bottleneck through which your civil rights must squeeze, drop by strangled drop. You make it impossible for the young mom with a stalker to protect her life the very day she is threatened. You make it easy for grumpy bureaucrats to use paperwork excuses to keep older people away from the tools they need to defend themselves. You make it more expensive and thus harder for poor people to obey the law, and they suffer because they are more likely to live in neighborhoods plagued by violent crime.

These are the natural results of laws that infringe the most basic of all human rights – the right to protect your own life.

***

AGirl celebrates the anniversary of her self-defense awakening in a very special way: she’s sponsoring a giveaway. Not just any giveaway, either. Prizes include money toward training, a Cornered Cat training class, gift certificates from Gun Goddess and Midway, a custom holster from The Holster Site, and all sorts of other goodies. Obviously I believe in this effort, because I threw something onto the prize table. You can find the rules here and an easy entry form here.

***

Newbie Shooter explains how to talk to your elected representatives about guns. It’s really good.

***

James at Hellinahandbasket tells the story of how he intervened in a domestic abuse situation. Well done, James!

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Lessons from the headlines #4

Two links for this story: the original news article from 2010, and an interview with the victim in 2013 on PJ Media. Go read both (I’ll wait).

Back? Good. What we have here is the story of a young man who borrowed a friend’s car to run to the grocery store after dark. As the intended victim opened his car door, a panhandler approached him asking for money. The victim said no and the panhandler turned to walk away. As the victim got out of the driver’s seat, his attention was focused on the leaving panhandler. That’s when another man grabbed him from behind and held a knife to his throat. The pandhandler then came back to join in the robbery.

Here’s how the intended victim describes what happened next: “I grabbed the knife and pulled it away from my neck. After a brief struggle, I managed to push him away allowing me to create a few feet of distance, where I was able to draw my revolver from concealment and to fire in defense as he came back towards me with the knife.”

One criminal died at the scene, while the other ran away. The intended victim did get a cut on his neck during the fight, and was treated and released with stitches.

Lessons:

  • When I first learned to drive on a rural road, my dad taught me this: “Deer travel in packs. If you see one deer, slow down and look for the other one. If you see two deer, slow down and look for the third.” So it is with criminals. Bad guys have friends too. If you spot one person who gives you the creeps, congratulate yourself on your good awareness. Now look around to see if you can spot his buddy.
  • Avoid getting task-fixated to the point where you sacrifice your own safety. The victim in this case was focused on the task of getting out of the car so he could get what he needed from the store. He didn’t stop to reassess his plan after the panhandler approached. Should he have? (Note: it takes a lot of time to describe in words something that probably happened in less than two seconds. Also, this.)
  • If you need to make a decision, make a decision. Don’t just stand there and dither. This man is alive because he made a firm decision and did not hesitate to carry it out. Was it the right decision? Yup; he’s alive and went home to his family that night. Could another decision have also been the right decision, under the same set of circumstances? Maybe. That’s the way life is. We will never know what would have happened if. We only know what did happen. What did happen was that he was faced with a choice, he made a choice, and he did not hesitate to carry out his choice. And he survived.
  • Very few self-defense incidents happen at seven yards. Most happen a lot closer than that, and many require some skills for retrieving the gun from its holster despite a physical challenge. If you carry off-body, you would have little chance of drawing the gun in a situation like this. If you carry on-body, your odds are better. You improve your odds if you have practiced how to get out of entangled positions and how to draw from them.
  • The victim reported that he did not realize he’d been cut until after the incident was over. That’s fairly common under the influence of adrenaline. After an incident, look at yourself to see if you are bleeding anywhere. Don’t rely on shaky nerves to do that job for you; those nerves have been overloaded and might not bother telling you about it. Use  your eyes to check yourself for injuries.
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The speed-up drill
February 6, 2013

“Most people have only one shooting speed, which is too slow up close and too fast for precision work at distance.” ~ Tom Givens

Want to hear about one of my favorite little practice drills? It’s designed to help you 1) master excellent trigger control, and 2) maintain that same excellent trigger control as you speed up. I learned the drill from Marty Hayes at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, where it’s used in the Handgun Safety Seminar with beginning shooters. But don’t let that fool you. This simple but flexible drill is useful for everybody, and I frequently use it for my own warm-ups.

Start with your target set at 5 to 7 yards. It should be close enough that you can comfortably get all your shots inside a handspread-sized circle at medium speed. If you are a less experienced shooter, bring the target closer. If you can reliably put one ragged hole through your target at 7 yards in slowfire, you can move the target out farther — though you may want to keep it closer so you can really push your speed. Play around with it. You’re looking for that Goldilocks spot: not so close that you feel no challenge, and not so far away that you get frustrated.

To avoid blowing through too much ammunition, download your magazines to 5 or 6 rounds each. This will give you good practice at different speeds, and give you some work on your reloads. 1

Each string fires all the shots in your magazine or revolver cylinder, without pausing.

Do a good reload between each string.

String One is a slowfire string. Take as much time as you need to get good hits.

We sometimes call this string, by itself, the “concentration drill.” That’s because its essence is concentration. Concentrate all of your attention on the proper alignment of your sights, with your eyes sharply focused on your front sight at all times. Do not look at the target between shots, but keep your eye glued to that front sight. Work to make each trigger press as perfect as you can make it: slow, controlled, smooth. Ideally, you can feel each tiny little mechanical flaw in the trigger during this drill. Feel the sensation of the trigger’s movement, perfectly timed at the same speed throughout the entire trigger press. Then follow through with each shot. As each shot goes downrange and recoil happens, keep the trigger fully pressed — all the way to the rear — until you have snapped the front sight back onto target. After the front sight is realigned, then (and only then!) you can let the trigger come forward to reset for the next shot.

Your group should be one ragged hole at this speed and at this distance.

String Two speeds you up a little.

If you were driving the gun at 20 miles an hour in the first string, try driving it at 30 miles an hour this time. It’s not twice as fast, but it is definitely faster. Keep doing everything you were doing — eye on the front sight, smooth controlled trigger press, good follow through on each shot — just do it faster.

String Three goes as fast as you can hit the target. Not as fast as you can shoot, but as fast as you can hit.

Again, keep doing everything you were doing in that first slowfire concentration string: focus on the front sight, smooth controlled trigger press, good follow through. Just do it faster, going as fast as you can hit. You should be able to keep all your shots in a handspread-sized group at this speed. 2

You can play with this idea in a lot of different ways. For example, you can add a superfast string that pushes you beyond your current speed limits, then immediately follow it with another slowfire concentration string to reinforce good trigger habits. Or go the other direction: challenge yourself to shoot one ragged hole in slowfire, then very gradually increase your speed without allowing your group to open up even a little bit.

Where’s your sweet spot for speed right now? Find it. Then work to make it faster.

 

 

Notes:

  1. Practice tip: always do an efficient reload between strings. Don’t waste this opportunity to work on your reloads just because your primary purpose is another skill! ↩
  2. That’s a six- or seven-inch circle, or well inside the sweet zone on an IPSC or IDPA target. ↩
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Lessons from the headlines #3
February 5, 2013

News anchors never can resist the bit about “gun-toting grandmother,” can they? Ah, well, we can still learn something. (Do click the link. It includes a good interview with the woman who defended herself.)

Here’s the story, and it’s a common one: an older woman is working alone in a convenience store when a criminal comes in. He nonchalantly walks through the store, grabs a soda from the case, and then pulls a knife on the clerk as he demands money. She reaches under the counter and pulls out the revolver she has taken to the range only twice before. He panics and scrambles out of the store. She never fires a shot.

Here’s the official surveillance video released by the local police:

It’s probably time to remind everybody how to watch a crime video. There are a ton of really good lessons inside this one, if you know how to look for them.

Lessons? Coming right up.

  • Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Derp!
  • With that out of the way, let’s not be flippant. A knife is a deadly weapon, and justifies using deadly force in response. The criminal did not “only” have a knife. He had a freaking knife, which is the instrument of death in one out of every seven murders in America. 1
  • Even a poorly-trained or untrained person can use a gun to defend herself, as we see here. This untrained woman was no danger to bystanders, because there were none. But if she had been unarmed and unprepared to protect herself, we do not know how this story would have ended. Maybe the criminal would have taken the money and walked away. But maybe he wasn’t after only money. He might have been after a power rush or worse. Her decision to be armed was a good one.
  • That said, you can see her lack of training in her non-confident body language and in the way she held the gun. A little training would go a long way in helping her look more determined to defend herself, in helping her feel more capable of dealing with the situation, and in helping her actually protect herself should she need to fire the gun. This particular criminal needed none of those things, but another criminal might not back down as easily as this one did.
  • The beauty of a firearm is that it allows you to defend yourself at a distance. This is especially important when the bad guy has a knife, because it can’t be used at a distance. 2 If there is a counter between you and the assailant, stepping back as you draw the gun gets you out of the criminal’s lunge zone, while still allowing you to take charge of the situation.

Should she have reached over the counter to protect the cash? What do you think?

Notes:

  1. FBI Uniform Crime Reports, expanded homicide data, table 7. 2011 numbers. ↩
  2. A knife-armed attacker can cover a lot more distance a lot more quickly than most people realize, however. To learn more about that, see the section under “Opportunity” here. ↩
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