Combat Mindset and Self Defense #5

In this 5^th installment of my posts on Combat Mindset and Self Defense I am going to cover a scenario with you that should show you why having situational awareness and a tactical posture all the time is so important and this scenario can be modified to fit pretty much anywhere along with a corresponding pistol shooting drill that I developed while training in a Protective Services Detachment (protection of important people like movie stars, state governors, and even musicians) course in Kuwait to go along with it.

            The scenario is as follows: You are exiting a building with your wife, the building could be a grocery store, your house, or pretty much anywhere, she is walking on your weak side (i.e. the side of your body that you don’t use to write with), probably holding your hand or your arm (because hopefully you are still in love and normal people in love do these things) ;). And you notice upon  exiting the building and walking for about 5-10 meters, that there are 3-4 young males quickly approaching you and you begin to feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that they are all staring at you and your wife as they close the distance with you. When they are approximately 20-25 feet away from you they begin to pull weapons of varying types from under their jackets and you realize that their intent is to rob or hurt you and your wife. WHAT DO YOU DO!?!?!?! The weapons can vary with the scenario but the purpose of this scenario is to get back inside the building under some form of cover and to protect your wife or other person with you at all costs.

The first thing to usually happen unless you train her otherwise is that your wife will panic and unintentionally cling to your arm, which is why it is so important that she always walk on your weak side of your body so your gun arm is free to complete your draw stroke. (it would probably be a race between me and my wife as to who can get their gun out first and as she is a better shot than me I really have to hurry to get it out and get a couple of hits before she does).

            There are several ways that you can take here and the first being you use your weak hand to grab the front of your wife’s shirt and pull her behind you while you draw and engage while simultaneously back peddling towards the door. This is the least preferred as it just makes the two of you a nice big target and rounds that hit you can still pass through with enough velocity to kill her as well. Also it is a lot of movement and many chances to trip and fall.

            The second method and more preferred is to push your wife away from you and sidestep away from her at the same time to open up distance between you and hopefully draw the attention to you and away from her (at this point she should be running back inside to get cover and call the police). As your sidestepping away you should be drawing your weapon and engaging the threats in order of the precedence of the threats imposed by their various weapons (i.e. a knife at 30 feet is not as much of a threat as a pistol or a shotgun that is closer) take the biggest threats first and shoot until you know you scored a good hit and then shift. You can always come back to re-engage the threats if you see that they were not totally incapacitated by your hit. Speed and accuracy are both very important here but accuracy is always more important. Remember that typically the bad guys will most likely try to run away once they see you are armed and ready to defend yourself, however this is not always the case. Also never stop moving once you have committed to action as a moving target causes anyone shooting at it to constantly shift their aim to hit you. It is also necessary to point out that you should be practicing drawing and shooting on the move.  

            Remember that once you commit to action there is no turning back and whether you live or die will depend on your violence of action. You never rise to the occasion you simply fall back to your level of training.

Combat Mindset and Self Defense #4

This is my 4^th installment of the posts on Combat Mindset and Self Defense. In the previous posts I have covered marksmanship, the actual definition of combat mindset as it applies to self defense, and lightly covered knowing your house from a tactical standpoint. In this post I will cover home invasions and things of importance that you will need to take into consideration when planning your home defense.

            First off when planning for home defense, I assume you have already gotten the poor idea of “This won’t EVER happen to me” out of your head. Home invasions are a fact of life now and the trend of home invasions, while the target house is occupied, is on the rise. The reason for this startling change of events is simple. Thieves have figured out that when the homeowners are home so is their wallet, checkbook, and jewelry ect. Not to mention if it is someone that is after more than your possessions, i.e. they want your wife, the best time to hit you is when you and your loved ones are at home in your comfort zone, where your guard is least active, especially after dark in the evening after you have had a nice big dinner and are lounging in your comfortable easy chair watching TV.

 There are no official home invasions statistics due to the fact that these are usually characterized under robbery, rape, assault ect. The best estimate though is that every year this variant of robbery accounts for 11% of incidents of theft that takes place in the United States. This is a startling figure as 11 out of 100 incidents of theft involve an occupied home being forcibly entered and robbed typically with weapons of some sort. Some other statistics taken from www.articlebase.com show that 1 out of every 5 homes will have a home invasion at some time.

Some of the more common ways for someone to break into your house includes posing as a delivery man, an utilities inspector, or someone looking for donations, also there is the obvious one where they just kick down your door (which is the one way that I prefer for them NOT to get into my house since I will not only have to clean up their blood from everywhere after I have shot them, I will ALSO have to fix my door which will piss me off). Here are a couple of simple ways to foil the first three methods. Have a chain on your door engaged before you open it and ask for official identification, if you are not expecting a package or an inspection call the company that they are from to verify that they are legit. Package delivery service persons are trained to show their ID upon request even to your peephole on your door or simply leave the package on your doorstep upon request. One of the major DO NOTS is for you to swing your door open all the way immediately upon hearing the knock.  Follow the above steps will have huge impacts upon your safety. If they kick down your door then you can assume that they are not there to chat or borrow a cup of sugar, so deadly force then becomes applicable if you feel your life is in danger.

Some people may call me paranoid but I have never really cared what people think, and that is why I always carry my weapon around the house with me. Every one that comes over to my house knows this and seems to be comfortable with it, and if not, well it IS my house after all. I refuse to be a victim, or have harm come to the woman I love, and in a violent home invasion there probably will not be time to grab your weapon and defend yourself, so instead of paranoid I prefer the word PREPARED. The way that I think about this is simple, how would I feel if something did happen and I wasn’t prepared and as a result my wife was hurt or even worse? I owe it to her to be as prepared as possible and if you have children then you owe it to them as well. Violence of action will carry the day in whatever precarious situation that you are in. Knowing within yourself that you have the capacity to kill to ensure the safety of yourself and your family is the singular most important thing in preparing for home defense. If you have not resolved this within yourself then the firearm that you possess will just be a liability to yourself and your family, no matter how much you train with it.

Combat Mindset & Self Defense #3

This is the third installment of my combat mindset and self defense posting. In this posting I will cover different shooting drills and situations where each one will be useful.

The first drill that we are going to cover is the controlled pair. Basically what this drill comprises of is two shots with two separate sight pictures. What this means is simply that you aim and fire your first shot then recover from the recoil and aim and fire your second shot. This drill is useful for making multiple accurate hits usually at an extended distance such as down a hallway, or across a larger room, or at a small exposed portion of a target. This drill typically takes approximately 1.5-2 seconds to fire. This drill is useful as a drill to get you used to quickly aiming and firing your weapon, and builds upon the next drill which is called the hammer pair. This drill should sound like “tap pause tap”

The hammer pair, also known as the double tap, is simply aiming once and squeezing the trigger twice rapidly. What you want with this drill is for both you your shots to impact within two to three inches of each other in less than one second in order to facilitate what is known as hydrostatic shock. To explain what this is, picture having a bucket full of water that you drop a single rock into. The ripples move out from the point of impact and hit the walls of the bucket and bounce back. Now picture dropping two stones into the bucket rapidly and the ripples cross and disturb the whole surface of the water violently. This is what happens when two rounds simultaneously impact close together in the human body as the human body consists of 80% water. It causes massive trauma, and with a lighter caliber pistol, this is often necessary to provide the instant incapacitation desired to end the assault upon your person.  This drill takes a lot of practice to be able to accurately and effectively engage with this at anything beyond very close range. Another note on this drill, the heavier the recoil with your pistol the harder it will be to perform a tight drill. This drill should sound like this “taptap”

The failure to stop drill, also known as simply the failure drill or Mozambique drill, consists of a hammer pair to the chest and a single shot to the head or pelvic area as quickly as can be performed in 1.5-2 sec. It should sound like “taptap pause tap” which is the hammer pair to the chest followed up with a second sight picture for the headshot. This drill is just a follow on to the previous hammer pair drill and you would perform this drill if the target that you engaged did not stop, hence the name for this drill. This drill is relatively hard to do on a moving target, however an easy way to do it is to simply ride the recoil up and squeeze the trigger for your third shot as your sights cross the throat area of your target.

My personal favorite is the box drill and is used for multiple target engagement. Multiple target engagement is when you are confronted by one or more hostile targets and you begin engaging them in order of greatest threat.  You fire a hammer pair to the chest of each target and then a head shot to the last target then working your way back over the targets reassessing and reengaging as necessary. Start with only two targets and practice the hammer pairs then headshots. It should sound like this “taptap pause taptap pause tap pause tap”. A total of 6 shots for 2 targets. If you use a revolver realize that you will be empty at this point and need to reload.

 

Combat Mindset and Self Defense #2

There are several ways to improve your combat mindset, the most basic of which simply making yourself walk with your head erect, and observe as much as possible. This does not make you paranoid, this makes you AWARE. This is the first step into getting the proper combat mindset that you need to defend your home and loved ones.

 The second step is to arm yourself with a carefully selected weapon that fits your needs, budget, and situation. When it comes to self defense and the defense of others, there is no set price to pay for that defense, however there is no need to go out and buy the most expensive weapon that you can find simply because it is the most expensive. What you need to look for is suitability, which includes how the weapon fits you, how well you can use this weapon, the probable lethality of this weapon that you have chosen, and most importantly the reliability of this weapon. It is necessary to point out here that ammunition selection is important as well. If you do not have the knowledge or the ability to decide what will work best for you, than you can simply choose to use whatever ammunition that your local police department has chosen to carry as they will have done much more exhaustive testing on it and all the other types of ammunition than you will ever do, and if you do have to shoot somebody in self defense then that is one less thing that the prosecutor can use against you in the courtroom, if it comes to that.

The third step to being self capable is to get quality instruction on the functions and safeties of that particular firearm. This does not only apply to yourself but also anyone else that may end up using it. Once you have done this, spend some quality time at the local square range getting used to the weapon, make this a family event if possible, get everyone that may use this weapon some trigger time, and ensure you drive the five safety rules into them and yourself as you do this. Also use this time to see if your method of employment, be it a holster of some sort, or simply leaning a shotgun against the wall of your bedroom, is viable and not more hindrance than useful. Practice all the basics of marksmanship, reloading, and your malfunction and stoppage drills.  

Once you have practiced all of this and have a good foundation in the basics, move on to more advanced drills such as hammer pairs, failure to stop drills, and my personal favorite, box drills. Practice shooting and moving, utilizing cover, and reloading and shooting under pressure. All this falls under training like you fight and is the fourth step in becoming adept at self defense. There are documented cases of police officers who were trained on the range to empty their expended brass from their revolvers into their hand, and then put that brass in their pockets so it did not end up on the range floor. Some of these same police officers after a gunfight found brass in their pockets, and they had no idea how it got there. They had taken precious seconds in a gunfight to put that brass in their pockets instead of just dumping it on the ground. This is an example of what is referred to as Habit of Action. If you do something often enough for long enough it will become a subconscious action and you will do it without thinking about it. Make sure the actions that you practice like this are the right ones. You want all the basics to become a habit of action because the first thing to disappear under stress is your fine motor skills that are necessary to pulling the trigger, finding the slide release button, or the magazine release.

 When you are back home and have a little down time practice moving through your house with your weapon, learn your house from a tactical standpoint because you will possibly have to defend it at some point and time and you should know it as thoroughly as possible. Practice moving through it with the lights out, from room to room, and see what furniture will present an obstacle to yourself or someone else in your house that may or may not be friendly. Practice dry firing your weapon, reloading it, and even employing it from different places in the house such as your bedroom, the living room, and even the bathroom. The people breaking and entering into your house to steal and possibly cause death or serious bodily harm to you and you loved ones will not wait until you are in a defensive posture and ready for them, they will come at whatever time suits them best.

Your Combat Mindset and Self Defense #1

           
In my world of fighting, firearms, and warfare, I have discovered the importance in the meaning of the old adage, “Train like you fight”, and it has been driven home very deeply within me. When I  first that I heard that ‘salty’ one combat deployment Lance Corporal tell me that a few days after I got to the Fleet Marine Force in Hawaii I thought it sounded cliché, I mean that’s what Marines are supposed to do right?  Until I got into combat in a little town called Karma a few minutes outside of Fallujah, Iraq and realized that no training will totally prepare you mentally for close-in combat. The training that we receive is the best in the world, and the U.S. military as a whole is the best trained and equipped military to ever walk the face of this earth, the whole act of “pulling the trigger” on someone is over-rated as being a life changing event. I would postulate that it’s not the act of actually pulling the trigger, but seeing the aftermath of that deed that is the life changing event.  This is the crux of the matter that we are about to discuss. In home defense, training can only take you so far, you have to be willing and able to not just point your weapon at someone, but be willing to actually pull your trigger and send them to wherever it is that they are headed. This is called your Combat Mindset.

     Proper Combat Mindset is simply being ready to kill if necessary, and with a violence and lethality that will shock your opponent(s) with its ferocity. When you are defending your home and loved ones, nothing less is acceptable. People in today’s society tend to shy away from accepting the natural lethality that is bred into our nature as human beings. We did not become a dominate species only because we are smart, but also because we have a pre-disposition to kill. The people that cannot accept this are commonly referred to as sheep, and they rely on the people that HAVE accepted this fact of life, commonly referred to as sheep dogs, to keep the wolves of life at bay for them. This is fine with me as long as they do not try to hinder me from doing MY job as a sheep dog. Those that have also accepted this responsibility need to be aware of the sheep around them that need to be protected. These sheep are characterized my the subservient way that they walk around the streets of life, with their head bowed, with no situational awareness as to what is going on, and not meeting the eye of passersby as if  they are afraid of what they might see if they do. A prime example of  these sheep are the sheer number of people who are hit by cars each year while they are walking across a road. If they simply observed what was around them, they would see or hear that car that is about to hit them, and not walk out in front of it. When something bad happens to these sheep, they are typically shocked into inaction which sadly often results in their untimely death.

In the next post of  "Your Combat Mindset and Self Defense" I will cover how to properly arm yourself and train to defend yourself and your loved ones.

5.56mm rounds

Well I just pulled the trigger on a 200 round purchase.. 200 rounds of M855 green tip for $87. Also I have a purchase for the new SOST rounds that the Marine Corps just adopted for Afghanistan pending the arrival of next paycheck. When I get home I will run a side by side test for everyone and try to get some terminal ballistics and reliability performance data. I am in the process of building my "war reserve" and am allotting about and average of $1-200 a month for ammo purchases. If anyone has ammo they dont want for cheap feel free to contact me as I am always looking to purchase 5.56mm (NOT .223!!!) 9mm (for the wife), and good ole American  .45ACP. If anyone needs links to cheap ammo feel free to hit me up as I have a few that aren't very well known.

Gun Control....

1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, Detroit & Chicago cops need guns.

2. Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.

3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."

4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into effect in 1994 are responsible for the decrease in violent crime rates, which have been declining since 1991.

5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.

6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.

7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a .357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.

8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should "put up no defense - give them what they want, or run" (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die - People Do, 1981, p. 125).

10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns; just like Guns & Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.

11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seat belts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for internal medicine, a computer programmer for hard drive problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.

12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917.

13. The National Guard, federally funded, with bases on federal land, using federally-owned weapons, vehicles, buildings and uniforms, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a "state" militia.

14. These phrases: "right of the people peaceably to assemble," "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumerations herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people" all refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the state.

15. "The Constitution is strong and will never change." But we should ban and seize all guns thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to that Constitution.

16. Rifles and handguns aren't necessary to national defense! Of course, the army has hundreds of thousands of them.

17. Private citizens shouldn't have handguns, because they aren't "military weapons'', but private citizens shouldn't have "assault rifles'', because they are military weapons.

18. In spite of waiting periods, background checks, fingerprinting, government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's, anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations, variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting, no background check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.

19. The NRA's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, but the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.

20. Guns are so complex that special training is necessary to use them properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.

21. A handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only has 20.

22. Women are just as intelligent and capable as men but a woman with a gun is "an accident waiting to happen" and gun makers' advertisements aimed at women are "preying on their fears."

23. Ordinary people in the presence of guns turn into slaughtering butchers but revert to normal when the weapon is removed.

24. Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings at gun shows.

25. A majority of the population supports gun control, just like a majority of the population supported owning slaves.

26. Any self-loading small arm can legitimately be considered to be a "weapon of mass destruction" or an "assault weapon."

27. Most people can't be trusted, so we should have laws against guns, which most people will abide by because they can be trusted.

28. The right of Internet pornographers to exist cannot be questioned because it is constitutionally protected by the Bill of Rights, but the use of handguns for self defense is not really protected by the Bill of Rights.

29. Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self- defense only justifies bare hands.

30. The ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other parts of the Constitution.

31. Charlton Heston, a movie actor as president of the NRA is a cheap lunatic who should be ignored, but Michael Douglas, a movie actor as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.

32. Police operate with backup within groups, which is why they need larger capacity pistol magazines than do "civilians" who must face criminals alone and therefore need less ammunition.

33. We should ban "Saturday Night Specials" and other inexpensive guns because it's not fair that poor people have access to guns too.

34. Police officers have some special Jedi-like mastery over handguns that private citizens can never hope to obtain.

35. Private citizens don't need a gun for self- protection because the police are there to protect them even though the Supreme Court says the police are not responsible for their protection.

36. Citizens don't need to carry a gun for personal protection but police chiefs, who are desk-bound administrators who work in a building filled with cops, need a gun.

37. "Assault weapons" have no purpose other than to kill large numbers of people. The police need assault weapons. You do not.

38. When Microsoft pressures its distributors to give Microsoft preferential promotion, that's bad; but when the Federal government pressures cities to buy guns only from Smith & Wesson, that's good.

39. Trigger locks do not interfere with the ability to use a gun for defensive purposes, which is why you see police officers with one on their duty weapon.

40. Handgun Control, Inc., says they want to "keep guns out of the wrong hands." Guess what? You have the wrong hands.
If you think about it... most of these are totally true..