The Cornered Cat
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Operator
November 17, 2012

Just so everyone knows, my grandma was a real operator.

She worked for Ma Bell.

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Practice time
November 14, 2012

One of the things I love about my life right now is that I have friends who call me and say, “Let’s go shooting!” You’ve gotta love that.

Last week, some friends and I ran through the FBI QC-09 qualifier, which was cool. This closely-timed qualifier finishes up with 12 shots at 25 yards (from three different positions, and with a mandatory reload). To my horror, I found that I’ve apparently been slacking on my distance work.

Here’s my defense: there was totally a freak gust of gravity while I was shooting, so that explains the shot that went low. Also, I was shooting bullets that were a few grains lighter than usual, which would explain the shot that went high. The one to the right was probably driven there by equinoctial variance (I hear the sunspots have been acting up again) and the one to the left—well, did you see the election results? The country recently tilted that direction, that’s all.

Ahem.

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When blog posts get out of hand…
November 13, 2012

So I started blogging because my Facebook posts were usually too long for the format. Facebook works best with one or two short sentences, but I was often writing two paragraphs. I thought, Well, that’s blog length, so perfect! I’ll start a blog.

Not so fast. Moving over into the blog meant I had a little room to spread out, and I did. Most of my blog posts have turned into half-articles, rather than the two-paragraph shorties I’d expected. Go figure.

In other news, there’s a new article on the site today. It started life as a blog post, but the length got a bit out of control. You can find it on the main Contents page under the title, “How to Watch a Crime Video.”

Or just go here.

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Lessons from a close encounter
November 11, 2012

Last night I added a new blog to my sidebar, called She’s a Garand Gal. I wanted to draw your attention to the story that Garand Gal shares here.

There are lots of good lessons in Garand Gal’s story, so it’s worth the read. Maybe the most interesting is this: she did not recognize the sound of gunfire when she heard it “in real life,” and could not immediately process what was happening. I suspect she’s beating herself up over that, a little bit, but she shouldn’t. It’s normal.

Although she wasn’t on high alert, and she wasn’t ramped up with a huge load of adrenalin, it’s very common for people who are ramped up or  fighting for their lives to not even hear the gunfire at all… not even their own. I’ve talked to several people who defended themselves with a firearm (and have read more such accounts), and nearly all of them told me that the gunshots sounded “muffled,” or “quiet,” or “wrong.” Some of them didn’t hear a thing. Some thought their own guns had malfunctioned, because they just couldn’t figure out the sound. Even those who were simply bystanders sometimes say the same thing, as Garand Gal does in her story.

 Continue reading →

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Help a friend out
November 10, 2012

Weird thing about online life: you can know someone for years, and even think of them as a friend, without ever meeting them. For example, this summer, I finally met a friend I’d known for more than a dozen years. She’s a smart, snarky, funny woman, a brilliant writer whose work makes me laugh almost daily. Of course, I’m talking about Tamara of the View from the Porch blog.

This week, we got the word that Tamara’s schnozz has a problem: it’s got a wee touch of basal cell carcinoma. As Tam writes, “… I could have done without it being on the nose. I am not going to wind up disfigured from this. The Henry Waxman look just isn’t for me, and neither is Tycho Brahe’s.”

As if that weren’t enough, Tamara refers to herself as a “self-unemployed writer.” Like many freelancers, she has no health insurance. So she’s looking at surgery without insurance, a spendy proposition.

Now, if you don’t regularly read her blog, you really should. But if  you don’t, this post isn’t really for you. I’m talking to the people who do read her work and get as much enjoyment out of it as I do. If she’s entertained you, or if she’s taught you something, it would be nice to give something back if you are able. Even a few dollars would help.

That’s why I suggest you step over to OldNFO’s place and enter the raffle he’s got going on her behalf. It looks to me as if there are some Darn Good prizes, but the best prize of all comes from knowing you’ve helped a friend at a time when she needed you.

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Home invasion
November 9, 2012

Here’s a horrible story with a (reasonably) happy ending: two men break into a family home in the early-morning hours. Downstairs, the father is dozing on the couch. Upstairs, his wife and daughter are just beginning their day when the intruders enter. The father wakes up to find one intruder pointing a gun at his face, while the other intruder runs upstairs with zip ties to “secure” the wife and daughter.  Continue reading →

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2013 Calendar
November 8, 2012

Lately I’ve been very busy — and very excited! — with filling up my 2013 teaching calendar. So far, it looks as though I will be headed to Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Virginia, Wyoming, and South Dakota. I’ll have those dates and locations up on the website within a week, so that’s good.

If you’re interested in bringing Cornered Cat to your area, please drop me an email. I’m pax@corneredcat.com.

Also, I’d like to hear your advice about something. I’m looking at changing the name of my core class. It’s been Cornered Cat: Concealed Carry for Women, which was good because it is intended for concealed carry people. Unfortunately, I’m getting a lot of confusion where people think I’m handing out state-required training for people to get their carry permits, and that’s not what I’m up to. Rather, I’m offering the next step after whatever state-required class concealed carry people have taken, and that’s a different thing entirely. So…

The new name for the same class will probably be Defensive Handgun for Women. Um, except for the co-ed classes, in which case it will just be Defensive Handgun. I’d rather have something more catchy and distinctive, but clarity matters most of all. Defensive Handgun hardly sounds original or brilliant, but it does at least accurately describe what we’re doing in this class. 

Would love to hear your thoughts about that. Does the name of a class matter to you? If so, in what ways does it matter? Are you more likely to take a class with a really catchy title? More likely to get friends to take such a class with you? I’m not really into the ninja-warrior-fantasy-tactical thing, but I do have to confess a certain level of attraction to classes with really badass names. What about you — what do you think?

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Storms coming?
November 6, 2012

The best protection against violent crime is not to be there when it happens. Don’t give in to irrational levels of fear, but don’t ignore warning signs either.

This is similar to the way we treat winter storms around here. We don’t panic about them, and we don’t fixate on them. We do watch the weather news so we have some advance notice of potential trouble, and we do stay comfortably prepared.

We keep the pantry well-stocked so we can ride out storms if they come, and we have alternate heat sources for when the power goes out. Because we’re prepared to avoid trouble, trouble is less likely to find us and less likely to harm us if it does.

When we hear smart, capable people saying there’s an increased risk of violence, as Massad Ayoob does here, that’s a good time to look around at your own levels of basic preparedness. Pantry stocked so you can avoid crowded stores? Gasoline in the tank so you can drive away from trouble if you need to? Awareness in place so you can get away from a mob before it starts? Good. Now relax and go live a happy life, knowing that you can be cheerfully comfortable even in troubled times because you know how you’ll cope if something bad happens.

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