U.S. Concealed Carry
“Armed American Report”
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September 5th, 2008
Dear Friend,
For the last couple weeks I’ve been dropping hints about something that I’ve been working on for the month of September. Well, it’s September now, but I’m not quite ready to break the secret to you yet!! All I can tell you is that it’s going to be even bigger than I imagined at first. When I first got the idea for my ‘big plan’, it was pretty basic.. but I knew it was going to be a lot of fun.
But the more thought I put into this project, I began to realize… this thing could get REALLY big!
So anyway… I am not quite ready to let you in on my secret yet… but soon!
Lastly, before we begin, I just wanted to say THANK YOU once again to Cody Alderson, the guy who has began to write gear reviews for the Armed American Report. His first review, last week, was excellent!
Okay, let’s get to it!
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== USCCA Laugh of the Week ==
See all of Chaim’s Cartoons at his website:
http://www.chaimcartoons.com/
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== Lt. Col Dave Grossman’s ==
Bullet-Proofing the Mind
A MUST for every concealed-carrier
by Chad Baus
Amateurs talk hardware. Professionals talk software. It doesn’t matter what’s in your hand or between your legs. It matters what’s in your heart and in your head.”
- Lt. Col. Dave Grossman[1]
It is every bit as important to spend time and money getting training for the mental aspects of defending oneself in a deadly force encounter as it is to spend time and money on preparing for the physical aspects such as obtaining the right equipment and learning how to use it. Enter Lt. Col Dave Grossman’s powerful mindset-oriented seminar, “Bullet-Proofing the Mind.”
Speaking from Experience
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is a West Point psychology professor, Professor of Military Science, and an Army Ranger. He is the author of On Killing, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is on the US Marine Corps’ recommended reading list, and is required reading at the FBI academy and numerous other academies and colleges. He has testified before U.S. Senate and Congressional committees and numerous state legislatures, and he and his research have been cited in a national address by the President of the United States. Today he is the director of the Killology Research Group[2], and in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks he is on the road almost 300 days a year, training elite military and law enforcement organizations worldwide about the reality of combat.
Recently, I attended Col. Grossman’s course, along with about 100 other men and women, a crowd that I estimate to have been about a 60/40 mix of Fulton County (Ohio) Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #135 Members and fellow Buckeye Firearms Association supporters from all over the state.
Four Steps to a Bullet-Proof Mind
Grossman spent the day walking us through the four steps to a Bullet Proof Mind:
1) Understand the magnitude of the threat.
Grossman struck hard on this theme from the minute the all-day seminar began, setting the stage with two powerful questions:
“Can we take the lessons learned in blood and lives at Columbine and the World Trade Center and apply them so we’ll never take this [path] again, or do we have to wait until our kids die?”
and
“Could we agree our responsibility is to keep our kids and grandkids safe?”
To set up his next theme, Grossman delivered the first of what became throughout the day a host of riveting real-life case-studies, recounting the story of an officer who took a .22 round in a non-vital area, yet collapsed, not because he was incapacitated but because Hollywood had taught him that he was supposed to fall down when he got shot. Thus his second step to a Bullet-Proof Mind:
2) Don’t focus on the minority who were hurt.
Grossman advised that “stuff you think you know about combat can destroy you. …Basing what you think you know about combat on Hollywood is like basing what you know about eloquence on Disney’s ‘Dumbo’.”
“Hollywood loves the pity party,” Grossman observed. “Don’t fall for it. Chew it up, and spit it out.”
Grossman’s next complaint about Hollywood leads to the third step toward Bullet-Proofing the Mind:
“Hollywood creates the macho man myth.”
3) Don’t be a macho man.
This third step toward a Bullet Proof Mind takes on a bit of a dual meaning. “Every good cop knows there is no shame in calling for backup,” Grossman noted. He used that truth to encourage people who have survived a deadly-force encounter to call for back-up in dealing with any level of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Grossman spent 75% of the all-day seminar on the fourth and final step toward a Bullet-Proof Mind:
4) Hunt down and eliminate every bit of denial in our lives.
“Denial is the enemy,” Grossman repeatedly warned. Citing examples ranging from the 9-11 terror attacks to a litany of school shootings, including one in his hometown of Jonesboro, AR. Grossman’s own son was attending school in Jonesboro that day, and when Grossman first learned of a shooting at a middle school he had to turn on the television to find out whether or not it was his son’s. It was not.
“The worst thing that can happen is someone coming to kill our kids. Folks, someone is coming to kill our kids.”
In effort to shake his students from their denial, Grossman noted that we are facing both Internal and External Threats The Internal Threat is that “kids and perverts are coming to kill our kids.” The External Threat is that “terrorists are coming to kill our kids.”
Citing the horrific attack by Islamic terrorists on the Russian school in Beslan, Russia[3], where after more than three days of rape and murder, more than 350 people died - half of them children.
To illustrate the level of denial in this country, Grossman noted that when HBO did a special on the Beslan terrorist attack, they completely omitted any mention of rape.[4]
Grossman posed the question of how many kids have been killed by school fires in the past 25 years in all of North America. The answer, ZERO.
He then noted that in 1998 alone, school violence has resulted in 35 dead, 250,000 injured. And lest you think 1998 was an anomaly, Grossman noted 48 died from school violence in 2004.
The reason fire doesn’t kill school kids, Grossman explained, is that “fire guys have set up multiple redundant, overlapping layers of protection.” No one calls such extravagant fire prevention efforts into question, “yet we try to prevent violence,” Grossman observed, “and people think we’re crazy. DENIAL!”
“Denial has no survival value” became a repeatedly used phrase throughout the day, usually to punctuate another case study example of a place where the lack of preparation for a potential deadly force encounter (no one prepared because they were in denial) got people killed. Thanks to denial, “teachers aren’t prepared for violence. …If they had done a fraction of preparation for violence [at Columbine] as they had done for fire…”
“Why did we have to wait until after Columbine to change our training and coin the word “active shooter?” Denial!
Observing that the Virginia Tech mass-murderer chose the building he attacked because it had no ground-floor windows and only three double-doors that could be chained from the inside, Grossman asked “how many kids have to die before every class has two exits and a securable door?”
“If teachers can be fired for failure to do fire drills, how much more mean and ugly should we be to those who refuse to prepare for violence?”
The NEW Factor
Grossman noted that every one of the actions the Columbine kids committed was a felony. Yet many of their actions had been illegal for 100 years before that, with no problems. “Something is going on, and it ain’t the guns,” he warned.
Whatever is going on, it is world-wide phenomenon. We medicate ourselves, police ourselves, secure ourselves and imprison ourselves at rates unprecedented in history, and yet aggravated assaults and other violent attacks are at their highest. What the hell is going on?
“It is a myth that most school killers are on Ritalin,” Grossman noted. “It is a lie. Only two were prescribed, and we’re pretty sure they were off their meds [when they attacked].”
“They’ve all trained on the video games,” Grossman observed. Citing research conducted for his book Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, Grossman advised that “the average kid has practiced over 1,000,000 kills in a simulator” (video game). Video games these days are “total virtual reality simulators”, “simulating rob, kill, steal for hundreds of hours on end.
Grossman displayed a series of brain scans showing that kids of violence have underdeveloped forebrains and overdeveloped midbrains. In other words, there is scientific evidence proving that video games shut down the portion of the brain that is logical and predictable. “The safety catch is turned off.”
Not willing to allow anyone to think violent media is the only factor, Grossman warned students not to “get caught in a single-cause model”. He stressed that while the violent media is definitely not the only factor, it is most definitely the NEW factor. “take existing factors, add one new factor, and you double or triple the risk. Take the factor away, you reduce the risk by two or three times.”
Adopting the Warrior Mindset
“As the fire-firefighter knows fire, so you must know violence.” Citing an analogy that he would use throughout the discussion on the warrior mindset, Grossman explained that “1% of people are wolves. 98% are sheep in denial. 1% are sheepdogs. …Only a predator can face a predator.”
“Sheep have only two speeds - graze and stampede. They quickly sink back into denial. …At Virginia Tech nobody put up a fight,” said Grossman. “They waited to die. The only survival trick they knew was ‘Freeze’. We’re raising a nation of sheep. …Once upon a time, America was full of sheep dogs.”
It is important to note that “sheep are leery of predators. …Sheep can’t comprehend the mindset of a warrior sheepdog. Sheep wake up every day like it’s 9-11.”
Grossman said that the great destroyer in combat is stress, and the way to defeat stress is mental readiness.
“The most complex fine motor skill you’ll ever need is to shoot a human being who is trying to shoot you,” the veteran advised. “If we train so much for sports games, how much more should we for our lives in combat?”
So how does Grossman recommend we avoid the symptoms of extreme fear response? “Inoculate. Expose yourself to the ‘disease’ in a controlled manner. Firefighters face fire to train, we must face stress and fear. Through force on force training. The first time you go through a force on force scenario, your heart rate can jump to over 200 bpm. The more times you do it, your heart rate comes down. Inoculation.”
When under stress, Grossman explained, the human voice shows stress. There is a loss of blood flow to the vocal cords, to the hands, etc. “You need to get to a place where we call for help after combat and sound like a pilot [during an emergency landing].”
To insulate the point of how simulating stressful or fearful encounters can inoculate against the destroyer of extreme fear response in combat, Grossman told the story of deputy sheriff Jennifer Fulford.[5] When she surprised three home invaders in a garage, she took incoming fire from all three, and was shot ten times (the bad guys were hitting her with about one in ever four shots). All the time, however, she was returning fire, and hitting with every shot. She killed one, lost use of her strong hand, did a left-handed, one-handed reload, killed a second one, and the third ran away. Today she has recovered and back on the beat. Fulford said “I am the product of my training,” and went on to say that the whole incident was less stressful than her simulation training.
Having this kind of “steely determination is about having made the decision ahead of time” to kill or be killed, Grossman explained.
Grossman went on to expand on his earlier advice to seek help in dealing with the emotional aftermath of a deadly force encounter, and then examined four things held in common by people who don’t get PTSD:
1. Previously stress inoculated
2. Internal locus of control (predator vs. rabbit)
* Note: the predator feels no combat stress, predator IS combat stress
* Note: the predator on his own turf has enormous advantage
* Note: Grossman advised that “one of the best things you can do to prepare
for combat is to hunt,” calling it “the ultimate predator neuron training for
combat.”
3. Faith
4. Controlled emotions
* Courage is grace under pressure
Grossman noted that the goal of stress-inducing training is to avoid PTSD. “If there is no extreme fear response [feelings of intense fear, helplessness, or horror], there is no PTSD”
Surviving Gunshot Wounds
“All things are ready if our minds be so.”[6]
Grossman taught the following tips for surviving gunshot wounds:
- If the threat is no longer viable, and if you’ve been shot, get yourself out of the line of fire. “Don’t make your friends expose themselves to get to you.”
- If the threat remains, stop the threat. “You can take a bullet to the heart and have 5 to 7 seconds before you will be out of combat. You’re not dead! Keep going!”
Grossman’s 5 D’s for Securing our Kids
Denial
“Denial kills you physical, mentally, and financially. It has no survival value. Chew it up, spit it out, get rid of it. Moment of truth today - no more denial. Rid yourself of every ounce.”
Deter
“We don’t want to kill anybody. Deterrence is the goal.”
As an example of a failure to use Deterrence, Grossman citing the example of the school massacre at Red Lake, MN[7], where a young school murderer shot his grandparents with the police-issued weapons he had stolen from his grandfather (a police officer), went to his high school and shot one of two unarmed guards who was manning the front door. “If [that guard] had been armed, odds are 10 to 1 he’d never have tried,” Grossman said. “DETER. Those guards were given a responsibility for human lives without the tools to do the job! Never call an unarmed man ’security’. Call them ‘run-like-hell-when-the-shooting-starts’.”
Detect
“Every time he bounces off a hard target, it’s a chance to Detect.
Delay
The goal is as many hard targets as possible. Once he is in the school, the only question is how many kids die.”
Destroy (Defeat)
“We are at war. Our armed citizens and cops are the front line.”
Grossman, who tailored this section to speak primarily to his F.O.P. hosts, preempted any police bureaucrats who were already starting to add up the cost of the security they were imagining Grossman would recommend:
“The most important things we can do cost nothing. Our problem isn’t the money, it’s Denial.”
He implored officers to carry off-duty, saying “If you’re legally authorized to carry and you go out without your gun…everytime you see a fire-fighting sign, sprinkler system, etc., tell yourself the fire-fighter is more professional than I am.”
Secondly, Grossman reminded officers that “Armed Citizens are the militia. Integrate concealed-handgun license-holders (CHLs) into your plan. We are at war. The idea that cops can do it all themselves is wrong. Use what is available to you. Integrate them into your plan from the beginning. One or two people in the first few minutes are worth 1000 people hours later.”
Finally, Grossman advised his audience to “stay in shape. Piss on golf. Real Americans go to the range. Choose a sport with cardio or survival skill benefit. If you see a cop carrying golf clubs, do one thing for me. Look him in the eye and say ‘baaa!’” Plan A is the British Model. Disarm everyone. It’s not working. Plan B is the Israeli Model. Train/ arm everyone. Israel has few golf courses and a lot of rifle ranges!”
Grossman summarized the goal of his training as being better able to deter, less likely to panic, and more likely to live. A sheepdog says “I will lead the way. I will set the highest standards. …Your mission is to man the ramparts in this dark and desperate hour with honor and courage.”
This sheepdog hopes for a day when we once again are a nation full of them. With Lt. Col. Grossman as our Instructor, we are headed in the right direction.
***
Chad Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman and Northwest Ohio Chair.
Footnotes:
[1] Lt. Col Dave Grossman’s Bullet-Proofing the Mind - A MUST for every concealed-carrier, February 15, 2008, http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/5437
[3] http://www.youtube.com/v/j2Xf2P92fS8&rel=1
[4] HBO Documentary Films, Children of Beslan, http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/childrenbeslan/index.html
[5] ” ‘I Wasn’t Going To Die There’ (Deputy Sheriff Jennifer Fulford)”, September 18, 2005, http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_09-18-2005/featured_0
[6] The Life of King Henry the Fifth, Act 4, Scene 3, William Shakespeare
[7] Red Lake High - Another in the sad legacy of victim zone tragedies, March 22, 2005, http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/2328
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== The KatyBar ==
written by Cody S. Alderson
USCCA GEAR REVIEW
Two issues of personal security that are on the minds of people in these perilous times are carjacking and home invasion. There are plenty of simple tactics one can employ to avoid being carjacked, but what can we really do about preventing home invasion? We are more vulnerable at home because home is the sanctuary. Home is where we retreat to from the evils of this world. The bottom line is to keep intruders out, and to do that effectively is to use a little thing that people have used throughout all history.
When we read about both real and fictional accounts of castles, which are the epitome of strength in many an imagination, we know that a castle survives attack when it is fortified. To fortify something is to protect or strengthen against attack, and even though most homes today don’t have giant stone walls surrounding them along with a mote, there are still some very simple things one can do to fortify the home. Fortification of the entrance doors to the home is a great place to get started since that is the main entry point of home invasions, and I really have an ingenious product to tell you about.
The KatyBar is designed to fortify your entrance doors to a strength that has been independently tested to resist fifteen hundred pounds of force. The inventor could have stopped the testing at the standard acceptable force of three hundred pounds, but he knew he had a product that would provide a significantly superior level of protection against forced entry for standard residential doors.
As you can see in the photo above, the KatyBar is decorative in its design, and will fit in right along with most any residential design scheme. It is available in chrome (like the sample in the photo), antique, and brass. The only caveats that I could come up with for the KatyBar is that it won’t easily fit a door that has a lot of raised decorative work, and it should be mounted out of reach of any windows on or beside the door being protected. Also, if you have a family member who comes home after the home is locked someone on the inside will have to let them in. The KatyBar can only be operated from inside the home. This is a good thing and part of why it is such an effective locking mechanism.
The function of the KatyBar is simple. It doesn’t require any keys or complex manipulations to work. After installation, the KatyBar can bar the door in place by sliding the steel slide bolts into the locking cams that are mounted into the frame of the home. When I was a kid, lots of people would bar their basement doors using steel straps and a two-by-four. The straps that formed a U-shaped channel were screwed into the framing, and the two-by-four was dropped down into that channel to bar the door. One could use that approach on their main entrance doors, but they will appear to be a little bit paranoid when company sees it, and Martha Stewart won’t be giving them an award for design. As for the KatyBar, I would think that Martha would love the design. I like its functionality and strength. But hey I’m a guy. I don’t really have much of a problem with the two-by-four and the steel straps at the front door. Of course my wife wouldn’t let me do that, but she likes the KatyBar.
The KatyBar looks good. It looks quite elegant in fact. The device looks so stylish that it will actually make a plain door look better—the same as the choice of a stylish lockset makes a door look better. And when company sees it they will want one too. But style isn’t the only thing the KatyBar has going for it. It has strength and function going for it too. Take a look at the photo below to see a locking bolt in place in the cam. The bolts are hardened RC 34-38 steel, and the bracket assemblies that hold the cams are hardened T51 aluminum. The decorative slide handles that the user grabs to move the steel bolts are made of a nylon composite.
The adjustment cam that the bolts slide into can be rotated during installation to get a perfect door-to-wall alignment. The standard KatyBar will fit doors from thirty-two to thirty-six inches in width. The bolts ride in plated barrels that are made of the same T51 type of aluminum that the brackets are made of. The barrels are attached along their whole width on a track that is securely mounted to the door.
Now the secret of the strength of the KatyBar is in its materials and its design. And the design of the bracket attachment system is integral to its superior strength. Take a look at the photo below to see how three-and-one-half inch number nine screws can bear that fifteen hundred pounds of force. The angular screw alignment adds an incredible strength factor to the wall brackets.
The KatyBar provides fortification not only on the knob side but also on the hinge side of the door due to the two sliding steel bolts that engage the cams in the wall bracket assemblies. There is nothing that tells the person on the outside, who may be trying to kick your door in, that you have a KatyBar installed. They would be battering away at the lock point on your door handle and deadbolt while the KatyBar has things under control even when the home invader defeats the strength of your other lock and deadbolt.
Some people have wondered if firefighters would be able to enter if they needed to. Firefighters carry gear such as axes, which you won’t find most home invaders carrying. A firefighter would be able to get in using the standard equipment that they have available to them. However, even if a home invader was wielding an axe one would still have time to know what was happening and appropriately respond before the KatyBar was defeated. For most residential doors in my neighborhood an average size person would be able to kick them in with one kick and without much effort. Some people are still relying on a flimsy door chain to stop an intruder. Let me tell you something. That door chain won’t even slow them down! The KatyBar, in my opinion, will stop just about any intruder who is trying to bust your door down.
I would recommend a KatyBar be installed on every exterior door of a home, and even on a home’s safe-room door that opens inward in the direction of the safe-room. At night, when the doors are checked, just slide the steel bolts into the cams and your door is solidly locked. Even the sound of the bolts engaging the cams tells me that this is a serious safety device. It only takes two seconds to lock or unlock the KatyBar. The device is so easy and smooth to operate.
I really like this product, and no matter what style a person wants it is the same price. For a hundred bucks you can’t buy a better lock that has the combination of ingenious design, style, and safety that the KatyBar offers. It’s actually less expensive than a good lockset and deadbolt that won’t provide near the fifteen hundred pounds of independently tested entry resistance that the KatyBar provides.
The door requirements for installation are simple. The door needs to be within an inch and a half of the wall. It can’t be a deeply recessed door. Two to two-and-one-fourth inches of door trim width is required. A flat surface across the entire installation area of the door is needed for attachment, and it would be the most secure on a door with no windows or side windows. It will not work on double, French, or all-glass doors.
In the package is the KatyBar along with all of the screws and parts needed to install it, including an allen wrench and even a drill bit and driver for an electric drill. There isn’t any need to go out to the store to hunt down any extra parts to complete your install. You provide the tools, and KatyBar provides the parts. It doesn’t require extensive carpentry skills to install either. If you can drill some holes and drive some screws, there shouldn’t be any issues with installation.
Take the steps needed to fortify your castle against invasion by installing a KatyBar. If there is anything that I can think of being worth a hundred bucks, the KatyBar is one of those things.
Check out the website site at www.katybar.com
.
This photo courtesy of KatyBar.
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== USCCA Members-Only ==
Forum Highlights
Every paying website member has complete access to the USCCA forum, which is constantly being accessed by members sharing information, knowledge, insight, and fun. With well over sixty-thousand posts and growing by the hour, this is one heck of a valuable resource!
If you have never logged in but are a member, visit THIS location to watch help videos, including how to find out your username and/or password!
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Thoughts on the Sarah Palin speech by ‘Desert Lion’
If you didn’t listen to the convention speeches tonight and missed Republican Vice Presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin’s speech tonight, you might want to read the text. I’m not sure the power of it really comes through, though - the video will no doubt be posted soon. I thought it was a really great speech. Even the commentators on CNN were giving it good reviews. I thought the introduction in Dayton was pretty decent, but this was really amazing. I was chatting with a life-long union family Democrat during the speech - her comment: “She’s an amazing speaker - very very talented.”
It’s not very often you get to the end of a politician’s speech and which there was more, but this was one of them. Unless you’re Barack Obama. Comments, anyone?
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Home Tactical Landscaping
by ‘UJ2744e’
Something I’ve been interested in for awhile is making landscaping choices that also work to my own tactical advantage.
For example:
I plant roses which typically have really impressive, nasty, thorns, under in front of basement and upper story bedroom windows.
Roses of certain varieties, mainly the low maintenance ones, are great to put around employee entrances so there’s really no way anyone can “jump out” at the ladies when they have to leave work late at night.
I put solar light sets in various places so if the power is out, or gets cut off, the approaches, gates, and “best hiding places” are still lit up. One of my favorite tactics is to put a solar spotlight shining “off into space” where someone would have to stand to go through the gate. You really don’t notice a thing until you’re standing in the light, lit up for all to see. This type of a thing makes it hard to “sneak and peak” around my yard.
Tactical landscaping doesn’t have to look “tactical” to work; nor does it create any legal liability that I can think of. And it’s not expensive.
Does anyone have any other ideas about how to use landscaping around a home or business to improve the tactical situation for the owners, the employees, or customers?
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Bug Out Bag… for dog by ‘aisiguy’
Anyone compiled a bug out bag for their dog(s)? If so, what do you have in it?
Food, leash, … what else?
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== “Joe Biden’s Stance on Gun Owners…” ==
USCCA VIDEO OF THE WEEK
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== “Tim-spiration” of the Week ==
USCCA PHOTO OF THE WEEK
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USCCA QUOTE OF THE WEEK
- Sometimes a good quote will inspire or motivate you. Sometimes, they’ll just put a smile on your face! Here is the quote for this week…
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. ”
-J. R. R. Tolkien
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Self Defense Story OF THE WEEK
- Every day, thousands of Armed Americans use their firearms to preserve human life. Let this section of my newsletter serve as a record of this fact!
- “Man Holds Would-Be Robber At Gunpoint”
found at:http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html
A Muncie man whose home was burglarized Monday held a would-be robber at gunpoint after waiting in the dark for two hours to see if the burglars would return, police said.
Michael Angel returned home Monday evening to find his back door open and several items missing from his home, 6News’ Jennifer Carmack reported.
He said he called police to make a report and then talked to neighbors, who said they’d seen a few people and a black pickup truck near his home that day.
Angel said he wanted to see if the burglars would come back, so he sat in a back room in the dark with his gun. After two hours, Angel said he saw a pickup truck that matched his neighbors’ pull up to the back of the house.
“I heard the guy enter the house and he was shuffling through stuff in my room,” he said.
Angel said he walked down the hall with his rifle, cocked the gun and turned on the light.
“I started screaming at him and he dove onto the ground,” he said. “I didn’t want to shoot anybody, but I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if the guy had a gun or not.”
Angel said he called 911 and held the man — later identified as Michael Boykin, 50 — at gunpoint until police arrived.
“I think people around here should take a lesson and be more vigilant of the neighborhood and not rely so much on the police, because they’re busy enough, and rely more on themselves and their neighbors,” Angel said.
Boykin was arrested and preliminarily charged with burglary. Police said he has a lengthy criminal history, including a previous burglary conviction and several other theft arrests. Police are investigating if he may be connected to several other break-ins in the area.
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Closing Thoughts
The question I’d like to answer this week was sent to me by a retired police officer in Ohio. Here goes:
Tim, I’m a retired Police Officer. I teach CCW in Ohio. [Some of the people] in my classes say that they would use a gun first to try to scare, then shoot if necessary. I preface my classes with this statement “If you do not have the ability to take a human life then don’t waste my time and yours” as surely as I am writing this, one will say “are you?”. I usually say yes, but is there another way of answering this question?
Okay, most of you know that I am NOT a lawyer, and I’m hesitant to give any legal advice because I’ve heard of it coming back to bite some people… so just know that the following is ONLY my opinion.
In my experience, I’ve noticed that when someone begins down the path towards a concealed carry lifestyle, they go through a few phases. These include first, “I’ll only carry when I think I might need it”, then progress to “I’ll carry regularly… but I’m not going to keep a round in the chamber”, to what we have here: “I’ll fire a warning shot first, or I’ll shoot for the leg just to stop them.”
MOST people who carry concealed and experience these kinds of feelings get over them in time. If you are having these problems though, or know someone who is, here is my sage advice:
1) Again, I’m not a lawyer, but should you ever have to use your weapon in self defense, by saying that you fired a warning shot or fired for the legs first, you will be punching a BIG hole in your self-defense case. Here’s why:
You should ONLY ever draw your weapon if you are in fear for your life. The prosecution will argue that there is NO way that you were truly in fear of your life if you did ANYTHING other than shoot to stop the threat.
People who fire warning shots are not afraid for their lives. People who fire warning shots are in control of the situation. People who are in control of a situation are not afraid for their lives.
The same is true for people who shoot for a leg.
I hope this helps!!
Tim Schmidt
Founder - U.S. Concealed Carry
http://www.usconcealedcarry.com
