The Cornered Cat
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Dressing room
December 11, 2012

When shopping for a new pair of pants while armed, Jennifer wanted to know how other people handle the dressing room. Good question! Here’s what I do.

First, the rules: I do not leave the firearm unattended, even for a brief moment while I step out of the stall to look in the mirror. Also, I do not unnecessarily remove the firearm from its protective covering, which is my secure holster.

I didn’t used to be quite so … emphatic … about that first point. What harm could it do if I took six steps away from the gun? After all, it would be completely out of sight, inside its secure holster and hidden either inside my purse or under a pile of discarded clothing. I would literally be six steps away at most, and would certainly see anyone stepping into my room. How could that possibly cause a problem? Nobody could get into my dressing room stall without me seeing them, so no big deal… I thought.

My thinking changed the day someone’s rowdy three-year-old went galumphing at full speed into my stall while I was looking at the mirror just a few steps away, grabbed my pile of clothes and started throwing them out the door behind her. Of course I saw her running in, so I immediately dropped what I was doing and went to shoo her out (and then the child’s nasty obnoxious mom gave me a cussing-out for daring to tell her child what to do, when I asked her nicely to leave my things alone, not that I’m bitter or anything but really, lady, just control your sprog…)  Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes. After that, I realized that leaving the gun out of my direct control was simply not good enough in this poorly controlled public space. Or around other people’s poorly controlled children.

So.

The procedure is: leaving the firearm inside its protective holster, I remove the holster from my belt and place the whole thing into my purse. If I don’t have a purse with me that’s large enough, I set the holstered gun on the bench underneath the first item of spare clothing I can grab.

Change pants and look in the stall mirror.

If the pants make the first cut, it’s time for the second test: I put my belt on and slide my holster into place. Check the stall mirror. If it passes, then it’s out into the hallway, with gun still in place on my belt, for the distance check.

Yes, this implies I get completely dressed for the distance check in the three-way mirror, including whatever cover garments I need. Pain in the backside, but hardly the end of the world.

I can’t expose my waistband in the hallway mirror if there are people around. So I either wait until people are gone, or I check it in the stall mirror before stepping out, or (if there is no stall mirror and no sign of the crowd thinning out even for a moment), I sometimes leave the holstered gun in my purse and carry my purse with me into the hallway. Also, of course, it’s not that hard to gather up the loose ends of the cover shirt in one hand, holding it just over the holstered gun, so you can see all of the waistband except the holster itself. Whatever works.

What? Try on pants that won’t let me carry concealed? No way! It’s one thing to have a relic left over in my closet from the days before I cared about my safety, but now? Uh uh, no way. I refuse to buy clothing that won’t help me protect myself. If it doesn’t pass the “it can take a belt and can help conceal the holster” test, it stays in the store.

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QOTD
December 10, 2012

“In asocial or predatory violence, particularly in a predatory ambush, the purpose of presence and verbal skills is to keep you off the victim list. As such they must become habits. You may never even know if they worked. If a predator scans you–which will happen several times a day in the crowded part of a big city–and decides to pass, chances are good that you will not even notice. Success, in this subject, is often invisible. If your habits of presence—how you walk, how you scan, what you do with your positioning and your hands—are good, the bad guy quietly moves on, never even coming to your attention.” ~ Rory Miller and Lawrence A. Kane in Scaling Force: dynamic decision-making under threat of violence

I love all of Rory Miller’s work, and this book is one of his best. Strongly recommended!

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Lessons from a mistake
December 8, 2012

Not long ago, there was an unintentional discharge from a gun in Colorado. Unintentional discharges are rare, but they aren’t as rare as we would like. In this case, a woman wanted to show her carry gun to a group of friends and co-workers while she was on a break at work. Her carry gun was an NAA Mini Revolver in .22 Magnum, like the one below.

NAA Mini Revolver in .22 Magnum

NAA Mini Revolver in .22 Magnum

Now, I’m not going to talk about whether an itsy-bitsy tiny little single-action gun chambered in an anemic caliber with a finicky manual of arms would make a good carry weapon (hint: no), but I will tell you that I own several and I love them. One of my favorites has pearlite grips, and I have a penchant for naming my handguns, so this one is—of course!—Mini Pearl. It’s a fun little range toy, a miniscule marvel of engineering. It’s about as dead simple as a firearm can get.

Mini Pearl

Mini Pearl

I understand the temptation to show off a beautiful little firearm like this. Really, I do. It’s cute. You can’t believe how small these things are in the palm of your hand.

NAA Mini Revolver chambered in .22 Short

NAA Mini Revolver chambered in .22 Short

(Oh, wait, I cheated. That’s not the already-tiny NAA Mini in .22 Magnum; that’s the even smaller .22 Short frame. Isn’t it charming?)

Adorable as they are, these little guns don’t belong in poorly-trained or untrained hands. They don’t belong in the hands of people who don’t practice with them. And even competent hands shouldn’t show off a carry gun unnecessarily, especially not at work.

Let me explain. An NAA Mini Revolver does not have a one-round-at-a-time loading gate like other single-action revolvers do, and its cylinder does not swing out on a hinge like the cylinders of most double-action revolvers. Instead, to unload the gun and make it safe to handle, you must remove its cylinder entirely from the frame.

Simplicity itself -- a disassembled NAA Mini

Simplicity itself — a disassembled NAA Mini

In order to do that, you first rest the hammer in the half-cock position, and then press the tip of the cylinder pin.

Press the tip of the cylinder pin

After you have pulled the pin out …

After you have pulled the pin out ...

… you can then remove the cylinder from the frame.

Removing the cylinder from the frame makes the gun safe.

Removing the cylinder from the frame makes the gun safe to handle for dryfire and for showing others.

Pulling the hammer all the way back is sometimes called, “Cocking the hammer.” This makes the gun ready to fire when you press the trigger. With the cylinder removed, the gun can safely be handled even by novices, and it’s possible to dryfire it with the cylinder out, as you can see below.

Hammer cocked on an empty .22 Magnum frame.

Hammer cocked on an empty .22 Magnum frame.

Reloading this little gun requires you to reverse the process above, then add one more step after you put the cylinder back into the frame and pin it in place with the rod. To get the gun ready to carry, you hold the hammer slightly back, then gently spin the cylinder so that the hammer will line up with a notch at one of the halfway points between chambers.

Lowering the hammer onto a notch located halfway between chambers makes the gun safe to carry.

Lowering the hammer onto a notch located halfway between two chambers makes the gun safe to carry.

Putting the hammer down on one of these in-between notches makes the revolver safe to carry.

Gently spin the cylinder to align the hammer with a safety notch.

Gently spin the cylinder to align the hammer with a safety notch.

Of course, it’s possible to make mistakes during this process. For example, if you pull the hammer too far back, it will lock to the rear—making the gun ready to fire with just a press of the unprotected trigger.

Cocking the hammer makes the gun ready to fire.

Cocking the hammer makes the gun ready to fire.

This isn’t a big deal, really. If it happens, you just need to safely lower the hammer before you finish what you’re doing. In order to do that, take a firm grip on the hammer.** Press the trigger to release the hammer from its catch point…

Hold the hammer tightly to prevent it from slipping, them press the trigger to release the hammer so you can gently lower it onto the safety notch.

Hold the hammer tightly to prevent it from slipping, then press the trigger to release the hammer.

… and immediately straighten your trigger finger to get it off the trigger.

As soon as the hammer has been released, immediately remove your finger from the trigger.

As soon as the hammer has been released, immediately remove your finger from the trigger.

You then gently lower the hammer, keeping your finger far away from the trigger.*

Critical safety tip: you must immediately get your finger off the trigger, before you begin lowering the hammer. Failing to let go of the trigger is a bad mistake, sometimes a noisy one—and it very well could be what happened here. As long as your finger is holding the trigger back, the gun will fire if the hammer slips. Taking your finger off  the trigger resets the gun’s internal safeties, which will keep the gun from firing even if the hammer slips out of your grip and falls more quickly than you can control.

If you were lowering the hammer gently by hand and then the hammer slipped out of your grip and fell forward while your finger was still on the trigger, the gun would fire. If the gun wasn’t pointed in a safe direction when that happened, you might injure yourself and other people. Even if the gun was pointed in a “safe” direction, if the thing you pointed it at was solid enough that the bullet bounced off it, things could get messy. A bouncing bullet usually isn’t quite as deadly as a direct hit, but it can still be plenty unpleasant for the punctured party. And in the right wrong set of circumstances, it could make you the star of some ugly news stories.

Unfortunately, handling a gun while distracted—as one might be when surrounded by a group of chattering friends at work—could easily lead you to make that series of small mistakes. In the right wrong set of circumstances, you could lose your job for that, and the authorities could even decide to press charges. (Police reports in .pdf format here.)***

So what did we learn, here?

Start with the idea that people make mistakes. Now add a simple gun with a finicky manual of arms. And one more key ingredient: it was being handled (unnecessarily) by someone who was surrounded by a group of chattering friends. Kablowie. It’s a recipe for a noisy and expensive mistake.

Of course, we all make mistakes sometimes. This is true no matter what type of firearm you choose to carry. To err is human, and nobody’s perfect. The timing of this incident really stunk for the gun rights movement, but the fact of it stunk even more for the women who got hurt. Compassion never goes out of style.

So here are the lessons as I see them.

  1. When you decide on a carry gun, choose one with a simple manual of arms.
  2. Remember that no matter how “simple” your gun is, you still need to learn how to handle it safely. You must become so well-trained at handling it safely that you can stay safe (and keep the people around you safe) even when you’re distracted.
  3. Don’t handle your carry gun unnecessarily. With very few exceptions, “showing co-workers how my gun works” is unnecessary handling. When you want to show your firearm to a friend, invite her to come with you to the range, where you can show her how it really works … in an environment where gunfire is expected, and where there is a safe, reliable backstop.

These rules — learn to handle your carry gun safely, never handle it unnecessarily or while distracted — always apply no matter what gun you choose to carry. As the inimitable Tamara is apt to say: “Stop touching it!”

 

* Note: in the last two pictures, I flipped the images over, which is why the shadows look weird and the printing is odd. It was necessary because I could not photograph the angle I wanted with the gun pointed in a safe direction with a good backstop, so I chose to take the pictures from a weird angle and flip the images later. Safety first!

** Edited to remove a goof. (See comments.)

*** Edited to add the obvious: I do not know what happened in this particular case. The above is simply one potential explanation for how a discharge such as the one described in the news and police reports could occur using this type of firearrm. There are other possibilities, including ones that do not involve mishandling the gun.

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House clearing
December 3, 2012

Over the weekend, there was a heated discussion on a firearms board I moderate. The basic question was, What should you do if you come home and find the front door to your house wide open?

Several people — including yours truly — said that the smart thing to do would be to call the cops. Let them go looking for trouble while you stay safe.

The idea of staying out of unnecessary danger didn’t sit well with the tactical crowd. Many wanted to immediately rush in and “clear the  house,” playing hide-n-seek with a potential intruder. Some people feel that calling the authorities would mean they were too wimpy to take care of their own homes, and many didn’t (and don’t) realize they could literally die of embarrassment if they let their fear of social awkwardness dictate their actions.

You might remember reading my own point about this not all that long ago: “Don’t go looking for someone who wants to kill you. Not by yourself, and not without extreme need.” To reinforce that point with some additional perspective, here’s a truly excellent post from “Powderman,” who is a law enforcement officer in a western state. I have used it with his permission.

This is addressed to those who say that they will clear their homes alone in this eventuality; those who would hesitate to call the police, and those who are concerned about false calls or false alarms, and “crying wolf”.

I am the one who gets the call from Dispatch saying that a person has an open door; possible burglary in progress, (address), homeowner/occupant is (insert location here) and is watching the residence.

My reply is, “Received. Do you have a description of the homeowner?”

Dispatch then gives me your description.

By this time, I’ve got every light on the vehicle going, but no siren. Why? I want to CATCH them, not scare them off. Usually, there are at least two units responding to back me up, as well.

My lights go off a couple of blocks away. I and at least one other officer will contact you and ask a few questions.

Does anyone else have a key?
Have you given anyone permission to enter?
Did you leave anyone home; is everyone accounted for?
Are there any pets inside?
Did you leave any firearms or other weapons accessible inside?

Finally, do we have permission to enter and clear your home?

Units will set a perimeter to observe and secure all sides of the home.

I’ll prepare to go in with a partner. We’re both wearing body armor and radios with earpieces. Both of us will grab our patrol carbines (AR15 type) and chamber a round. We’ll make sure we have a couple of reloads as well.

I’ll then tell you, “Stay behind cover, and whatever else you do, do NOT approach or enter the house until you see us come out.”

We will then enter and clear the home.

We are wearing body armor and carrying rifles. We do NOT, except under extreme emergency, enter a home alone.

We accept that if someone is there, there is a good chance that we’ll get into a fight–possibly a gunfight at VERY close quarters.

My son was in Fallujah in 2004. He cleared buildings with other Marines for two solid months–and Fallujah is a pretty big city. And yes, he told me that he did encounter hostiles while clearing buildings and houses. If you think trading a few shots inside is a daunting challenge, try getting into a gun fight, with both sides going full auto at almost muzzle contact range.

HE has told me that he will NEVER clear a building or house alone–and this is a guy with more experience than most of us can ever think of.

For those who still want to do it, think of it in this way–what is a more somber trend of thought–you waiting for the police to arrive, with the possibility that your hard earned belongings are being taken…

…or having someone approach your wives, husbands, sons or daughters to tell them that one of the people they love most in the entire world just got shot to death?

Folks–PLEASE do not attempt to clear the house by yourself. Call us. It doesn’t matter how many times you call–I would rather respond 100 times to your address to clear your home with no result, than have to respond ONCE to collect your dead body.

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Aftermath
November 27, 2012

From Minnesota comes the news of a burglary, a shooting, and an arrest. I had intended to write a long post about it, but in strolling around the blogs this morning I found one that had already covered it perfectly — Lagniappe’s Lair. He got it right.

Read here. It’s the story of a homeowner who had been burgled eight times in recent years. When two teenagers broke into his home while he was there, he shot them. Clear self-defense, right? Not so fast…

… he shot Schaeffel when he came into view. When the teenager tumbled down the stars, Smith shot him in the face as he lay on the floor, looking up.

‘I want him dead,’ the complaint quoted Smith as telling an investigator.

He dragged the body into his workshop and then sat in the chair, the complaint said. When Kifer began walking down the stairs, he shot her and she fell down the stairs.

He tried to shoot her again with his rifle, but the gun jammed and Kifer laughed at him, the complaint noted.

‘If you’re trying to shoot somebody and they laugh at you, you go again,’ Smith, 64, told investigators, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

He then shot her several times in the chest with a .22-caliber revolver, dragged her next to her cousin, and with as she gasped for air, fired a shot under her chin ‘up into the cranium’.

‘Smith described it as “a good clean finishing shot”,’ according to the compliant, and acknowledged he had fired ‘more shots than (he) needed to’.

What’s the lesson for us? Very simple: guard your mindset!

When I talk about why we “shoot to stop the threat” rather than “shoot to kill,” I am talking about exactly this mentality. This man allowed his emotional reaction to the repeated burglaries to dictate his actions under stress. And … it isn’t good. The homeowner is in jail, charged with murder. If the facts that come out at trial are substantially the same as the facts reported in the news, it seems very likely that he’ll be in there a long time.

Right now, while you are calm and not under stress, make the decision that you will use deadly force only when legally justified, and that you will stop as soon as the threat stops. No one reading this page should become the next headline in a case like this. Don’t fall for legal myths about self-defense. Guard your mind!

More lessons to learn here? Sure …

One thing that made this story so bad — although it was certainly already bad enough! — was that the homeowner hid the bodies and did not call the authorities for more than 24 hours. He panicked after the shooting, and did not know what to do next.

If you own a firearm for self-defense, but don’t know what you should do immediately  after defending yourself, I’d suggest you join the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network so you can watch their videos. The ACLDN provides legal  education for good people — not just about when you can or can’t use the firearm to defend yourself, but also about how to manage your legal safety before, during, and after a self defense event. When you join, they send out a good handful of very educational DVD lectures. Those six DVDs are alone worth the price of the membership ($85/year), but that’s not all  you get when you join.

The main reason to join the ACLDN: they provide immediate financial and practical help to people facing the aftermath of a defensive shooting. This is not insurance. Insurance is good! But it pays out only after trial, if you get acquitted — it won’t help you avoid trial, it won’t provide up front money to pay the lawyer in advance as all lawyers require, and it’s to the insurance company’s advantage if you plea out or are convicted rather than acquitted. So instead of insurance, ACLDN exists to help you avoid those problems from the outset. First with prior education, then with practical help, expert advice, and immediate financial assistance after a self-defense incident.

There are other ways to get good legal information about self-defense, including classes from the Massad Ayoob Group (MAG). I can firmly recommend MAG-40 as an amazing, mind-blowing exploration of the legal, ethical, emotional, and practical decisions that surround the use of deadly force.

For those who want the short, simple version, I suggest reading the excellent article at this link: http://www.armedcitizensnetwork.org/3-most-common-post-shooting-errors. It’s enough to get you started down the right path.

I should add that there’s also a lot of very bad and very dangerous advice out there to avoid. Because I want you to stay safe and keep your family safe, I’d rather see you get it from a good source than from a questionable one. That’s why I recommend the  resources above.

Good people should not end up in bad situations like this. While I’m sure you would never make all the mistakes this homeowner did, I’d like to see every one of my readers avoid making any of them. That’s why I say we — good people who own firearms for self-defense — should learn as much as we can, guard our mindset, and be prepared to protect ourselves after a criminal encounter just as we’re prepared to protect ourselves during one.

UPDATE #1: You can read the criminal complaint directly at http://www.scribd.com/doc/114525666/Criminal-complaint-for-Byron-Smith-charged-in-Little-Falls-shooting. Meant to include that link above, but somehow left it out.

UPDATE #2: Guilty. Sentenced to life in prison. Jury took only three hours to decide the case.  http://www.startribune.com/local/257169671.html

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Smart phone use
November 26, 2012

There’s a double whammy on smartphone use in public: it makes you less aware of your surroundings, and it attracts thieves.

On the “less aware of your surroundings” front, there’s the story of a California teenager who stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes while talking on her cell phone. Thankfully, she survived and, according to the news articles, will likely make a complete recovery. The money quote: “Be careful where you step,” she said. “If you don’t need to, just wait until you are somewhere that you can call people.” Good advice.

While you’ve probably never stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes while talking on the phone, most of us can tell stories about times when using the phone meant we weren’t quite as alert as we maybe should have been. While it’s true that awareness is important, it’s also true that perfect awareness is impossible. We live in a distracting world, so of course sometimes we get distracted.

But did you ever stop to think that thieves might take advantage of your distraction when you’re on the phone? They sure do! Criminals find smartphones particularly attractive targets because they are high-value items that can easily be resold, and because people using them rarely notice the criminals’ opening moves. This means “smartphone mugging” has become more common over the past few years.

In some ways, this type of mugging often mimics the classic purse snatch. Remember that purse snatching can be a violent crime, as can any other type of grab for your belongings, so this is something to take very seriously. For more information about how cellphone mugging happens, read this story from the SF Chronicle. The story is almost a year old, but it’s a timely reminder.

To increase your safety while using the phone, I recommend using it only when you are in a secure place, not while moving down the sidewalk, or inside a crowd, or in a fringe area, or on public transportation. If you’re in a parked car, lock your doors before burying yourself in your phone call—don’t sit with your legs dangling out the open car door while you chat. On public transportation, avoid getting the phone out at all, and especially avoid standing near the doors with the phone in your hand. On public streets, keep the phone out of sight.

If you are on foot and need to check your map, stop moving and put your back against a nearby building so you won’t be surprised by someone coming up behind you. Look at the people around you before you check the screen, and keep your eyes on your surroundings while you wait for your map to load. Avoid looking at the screen for long stretches so you stay more aware of what’s happening around you.

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Weight loss motivator
November 25, 2012

I have been reading a book titled Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger, by Jeff Wise. In that book, the author tells the story of some important research about the mind’s reaction to intense fear that’s being done at a skydiving facility on Long Island. He actually participated in the study, as a subject, when he skydived (skydove?) for the very first time.

He writes about going to the hospital for initial tests, including a trip through an fMRI scanner that allows researchers to peer directly into the activity levels of a living brain. Over a period of two days, the researchers took multiple samples of his blood, saliva, and urine to be sure they had a good baseline understanding of his body’s normal chemical balance. He agreed that they could take other samples the day of his skydive, and agreed to participate in some other tests the same day. Finally, he writes:

And then it’s time to go. Duncan, the jump master, hands me a pair of gloves, a leather cap, and a pair of clear plastic goggles. He quickly reviews with me the procedure for the skydive, and then we climb into the back of the Cessna with a half-dozen other divers. As the pilot starts the engine and taxis to the end of the runway, I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t be worrying, but it’s no use. I’m suffering from all the symptoms of SNS activation: My heart’s pounding; my mouth is dry; my stomach is churning. I feel ill. I try to concentrate on my breathing as the Cessna climbs steeply. I can do this, I tell myself.

The story continues, but I was intrigued with the research, so I took a little sidetrip to Google to find out if the research people had published any of their results. They had!

Here is the title of one study they published: “Higher body fat percentage is associated with increased cortisol reactivity and impaired cognitive resilience in response to acute emotional stress.” The study authors are Mujica-Parodi LR, Renelique R, Taylor MK., and you can read the abstract here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19015661

Here’s part of that paper’s summary statement:

In response to the skydive, individuals with greater body fat percentages showed significantly increased reactivity for both cortisol (on both samples) and cognition, including decreased accuracy of our task of spatial processing, selective attention and working memory. These cognitive effects were restricted to the stress response and were not found under baseline conditions. …

Our results indicate that, under real-world stress, increased body fat may be associated with endocrine stress vulnerability, with consequences for deleterious cognitive performance.

Got that? The latest research indicates that losing weight might help you make faster, better, and more accurate survival choices when your life is in danger. Now there’s a motivator for you.

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Miscellany
November 24, 2012
  • Just hung up the phone after an excellent conversation with Paul of the Politics and Guns Podcast and his buddy Toby. We slaughtered a few sacred cows today. (They make the best hamburger!) The podcast airs next week, and I’m already cringing at the thought of the hate mail we’re gonna get.
  • Joel at the Ultimate Answer to Kings made a good point. Too short to quote, so you’ll have to go read this.
  • Related: John Farnam famously advises, “Don’t go to stupid places, associate with stupid people, do stupid things.” Fighting with other consumers in a Black Friday feeding frenzy pretty much fits all three categories.
  • There’s a Save Tam’s Schnozz update at Jay’s place. Still time to jump in on some of the raffles, and it’s for a good cause.
  • Congratulations to the winners of the raffles at Nobody Asked Me. I hope you enjoy your books and the primary goodies too.  🙂

Looks like that’s about it for now. I’m working on a couple of longer pieces which may be up by Monday — if everything goes well. Hope you and your are enjoying a wonderful holiday weekend.

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