“Gentle justice” meets mass murder
I’ve got a new piece up at PJ, entitled “‘Gentle Justice’ Meets Mass Murderer.” It discusses the Norwegian policies of unarmed police and short penal terms in light of Breivik’s attacks.
That was one of those articles that could have easily been 100,000 words rather than 1,000, there was so much information. So of necessity, the piece just skims the surface of what I would like to have said.
The research for it was quite fascinating, although very disturbing. As part of my reading, I studied the reactions of the victims in a number of other mass shootings and tried to compare them to Utoya. This part of my reading never appeared in the PJ article, which already had threatened to become too long. But I discovered that, in general, it is extraordinarily difficult for unarmed people to mount any sort of effective response to someone with a gun, even if the former way outnumber the latter.
It’s not that no one ever tries. It’s just that, in order to be successful, the response usually needs to be co-ordinated in some way, and that is nearly impossible under the circumstances of most surprise mass shootings. At Columbine, for example, there were two gunman rather than one, and the students were fragmented geographically. Several were taken by surprise while walking around or sitting outside. The bulk of the victims already knew there were shooters in the school, and were hiding under tables in the library. When Harris and Klebold entered the room, the other students couldn’t get an overview of what was happening—which was that the murderous pair went around, seemingly randomly, firing at the students under the tables (sometimes without even looking to see who was there).
Contrast to the situation at Ft. Hood, where instead of high school students the victims were soldiers, and there was only a single perpetrator. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to mount any sort of defense until armed police appeared on the scene and shot Hasan. The Ft. Hood shooting lasted a lot less time than the Columbine killings (which in turn lasted for a shorter time than is commonly thought, somewhere between 19 and 25 minutes or so). But at Ft. Hood there were still at least three attempts by unarmed soldiers to stop Hasan in his murderous rampage. This is what happened to them:
According to witnesses, Army reserve Captain John Gaffaney attempted to stop Hasan, either by charging him or throwing a chair at him, but was mortally wounded in the process. Civilian physician assistant Michael Cahill also tried to charge Hasan with a chair before being shot and killed. Army reserve Specialist Logan Burnette tried to stop Hasan by throwing a folding table at him, but he was shot in the left hip, fell down, and crawled to a nearby cubicle.
With a few exceptions, it’s generally only armed people that can stop an armed gunman. That, or the gunman running out of ammunition—or running out of steam, like the Columbine killers, who still had plenty of ammunition but unaccountably decided to stop killings others and to kill themselves instead.
I may write a longer post some time on this topic. Till then, go to PJ and read about Norway. You can comment there, or here, or both.
Imagine that you were standing on a tree lined boulevard, about to enter a coffee shop. At a distance you see a uniformed man with a gun shouting at some people across the street and then begin firing his weapon.
How do you even know initially, that he is doing something “wrong”?
Suppose that you are English, or live in Great Britain at least, and you have been raised up in a culture where legal scholars have observed that they doubt that the right of self-defense even exists under law anymore. If you are not under immediate threat, and assuming fear is not an issue, you intervene under what cultural assumption?
In our own country as has been pointed out here before, the common law right of resisting unlawful arrest that every Appalachian hill farmer took for granted since the founding of this country, has been systematically abolished through statute in state after state. Thus a man in a police uniform, who doesn’t even know your name and will not say why you should do what he says, commands you to lie down on the ground.
You, being a well socialized citizen of the community. respond how?
I grew up in the mountains and encountered police for the first time, in reality, when I was 19 and visiting Disneyland. I got into an altercation and the police arrived. They put their hands on me and being a wrestler I promptly put the policeman on the ground. It was instinctual. The other cop drew his weapon and my sister screamed, “Don’t kill him.” Well, with a gun on you and people screaming it kind of tends to make you think, “I might not be taking the right approach here.”
I’ve been in other situations where the instincts take over and you just “know” how to react where there’s no conscious thought. Getting into that mode is a result of training and background. I was just raised to respond to a threat by action not acquiescence. In a non-city environment, you don’t have any police to protect you. You protect yourself. But it’s more than that as well. It’s a culture which is still alive and well and coming back of “Don’t tread on me.” Watch “Kill the Irishman” about Daniel Green. That’s a good description of the culture. The problem with that culture is that you need a good underlying value system so one isn’t overwhelmed with a thirst for vengeance and violence. I believe the term “meekness” is the value. Meekness is the idea of controlled power and force.
“In a non-city environment, you don’t have any police to protect you.”
In a city environment, that’s still pretty much true.
The previous commentators are correct in that it is a cultural thing. In the past it was expected that bystanders would jump right in to stop/apprehend a criminal. While a lone person trying to stop a gunman is at high risk 3 or 4 together stand a good chance. It took the passengers of Flight 93 a while to size up their situation and decide to act but they were ultimately successful. I wonder if McKinley’s assassin would have been stopped as quickly today (a revolver or two is just as deadly as a semi-automatic.)
The tendency to wait for the authorities is debilitating. Even if you are motivated to act it holds you back.
I’m going to say something that isn’t politically correct.
This mass murder incident in Norway reinforces my feeling that we in the USA should be allowed to have guns as per the Second Amendment.
Furthermore, in my opinion, the framers didn’t mean to limit the use of arms to just hunting, self defense, or formation of militia. I think they meant that ordinary people should be able to bear arms against an unjust government if all other democratic processes have been exhausted. In other words, they felt that a situation shouldn’t exist where only the government owns all the guns.
If you carry that argument a little further, it means that automatic weapons should be allowed, even though they might not be very effective against a government’s tanks and missiles.
texexec: Yes.
We could get into a long discussion of gun control here, and probably will. So let me just cut to the chase now.
As far as I’m concerned, 2nd Amendment debates boil down to this. If you’re unarmed, there’s a chance, small but measurable, that you will need to defend yourself against attack and be unable to do so. If you’re armed, there’s a chance, small but measurable, that your weapon will be used to injure or kill someone you love. Which of these two scenarios scares you more?
Or, to put it another way, which scenario are you willing to live with? Do you prefer to keep your home gun-free, content in the knowledge that your kids can never get their hands on guns that aren’t there, and try not to think about how you’d respond to an armed burglar / rapist / Breivik? Or do you prefer to arm yourself, stay in training, train your family as well, and worry that someone might get hurt or killed accidentally someday in spite of all your precautions?
Answer these questions, and you’ll know which side of the gun-control debate you’re on, and why. You might also gain some insight as to how the other side feels.
If you’d like to understand the pro-2nd-Amendment crowd a little better, by the way, check out A-Human-Right.com, or search YouTube for the videos of jpfo.org.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Sorry, that link doesn’t seem to work. Try this one — A-Human_Right.com — or just type the URL in by yourself.
*sigh* One of these days I’ll type a blog comment with no typos. The link is this: A-Human-Right.com.
And for my future reference, HREF links in Neo’s comments seem to prefer the whole shebang, complete with “http://”, e.g.
<a href=”http://www.google.com”>A Link</a>
-DiB
I read a report that, at VaTech, one of the dead was a ROTC cadet whose wounds and body position indicated he had been trying to rush the gunman.
Thankfully, as at Utoya, nobody was armed, or something unfortunate might have happened.
Best you could say is that the time it takes, and the ammo it takes, to kill the person rushing the gunman is time and ammo not available for killing somebody else. You could die worse. Drunk and driving into a tree, I suppose. Or perhaps you take his attention long enough for somebody else to blindside him.
The Norwegian cops have gotten some heat for being ill prepared.
To be prepared, and some of them must at least have thought about it, requires certain things be done. Get another helicopter. Don’t let the pilots go on vacation at the same time. Improve commo. Train. Change doctrine. All of which takes time and money which may either be taken from another budget item, or additional funds from government. That means justifying the need. In public. That could not be done. Not in Norway’s cultural climate.
Although guns are very common in the U.S. the recent bad massacres have occurred in what are gun free zones — Pearl High School, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Waco, Northern Illinois.
Mr. Frank. You should include Ft. Hood. Only cops are armed. If soldiers are armed, they draw weapons from the arms room, ride out to the range or manuver area, meet up with the ammo supply truck, and then they can shoot. There is no way that they could return fire when something like this happens on main post.
as a quick aside.. check out who breviks father is and his connection to the island..
seems like after feminism, there are a lot of men and women now with serious father issues…
Even unarmed people benefit from the 2nd Amendment, because people intending to do harm may not have a clear idea who is armed. The attacks in gun-free zones like VA Tech and Ft Hood were made simple for the gunmen, whereas in 2007 attack at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the gunmen was taken out quickly (I doubt he expected guns at church).
Richard, I meant Ft. Hood when I listed Waco. At the time I thought how strange that a bustling Army base was full of unarmed soldiers. Even the MP’s are unarmed. The police that came were civilians. That policy needs to be reviewed. I’ve seen talk of allowing senior NCO’s to carry.
Artfldgr Says:
July 28th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
as a quick aside.. check out who breviks father is and his connection to the island..
seems like after feminism, there are a lot of men and women now with serious father issues…”
I took your suggestion and checked it out. Looks like he took his personal resentments against his self-involved left-wing parents, political.
Mr. Frank.
That might be a good idea. You don’t want a bunch of late adolescents armed and bored. Senior guys are pretty responsible.
Daniel in Brookline,
This:
http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/
is one of my favorites. Marko Kllos is a great writer in general but he really nailed that one. And unless there is absolutely no way for me to conceal it, I always carry my weapon on me.
“”And unless there is absolutely no way for me to conceal it, I always carry my weapon on me.””
Exactly. I think i’ve had my pockets checked once in 51 years (excluding airport scrutiny). Who bothers with a CC permit with those odds?
Fine discussion, as always.
My dilemma: In Canada where I live, or in the USA which I sometimes visit; I am seriously at odds with the police if I choose to carry a firearm, other than a rifle on a hunt, with the proper paperwork. (Disregarding shooting competition.)
So do I break the law and risk prison, or do I go bravely unarmed and risk being robbed, maimed or killed?
I think there are likely millions now facing this dilemma.
Just a word or two about things from the policeman’s point of view. My neighbor is a a retired cop. A veteran of 30 years of police work in one of the tougher areas in Washington state. He and I have had many discussions about the joys of being a polcieman. He has convinced me that the police, for the most part, are level headed but spring loaded to protect themselves. Give a cop some lip or worse, make a sudden move, and the reaction will be swift and violent. Everyday they see the worst side of human nature – that is their job. They do not want to die or suffer a job ending injury because they were too cautious. They use force to protect themselves and let the legal eagles sort out the problems later.
A young friend of mine had mental health problems. (He was bi-polar.) Once when he had not taken his meds, he failed to pay for a fill up at a gas station. When the cops stopped him, he acted aggressive and incoherent. They took him down and, in the process, dislocated his shoulder. Too much force? Well, only if you knew my friend was not a threat. My advice to anyone who is stopped or confronted by the police – even if you are in the right – be very polite and cautious. Violence can escalate quickly and easily go very bad.
As for Breivik, he has provided a reason for the Norwegians to rethink their policies, but unless there is a series of such murderous acts, I doubt they will change much. Their reaction may well be to try to limit access to anti-multi culti literature and blogs. We’ll see.
What does one do when in a life or death situation such as Ft. Hood, Columbine, or Utoya Island. Those who carry weapons and stay up to date with their training hope to react properly and make a difference. The New Life Church incident indicates that havin a gun can make a difference. Charging a gunman when you are unarmed is a courageous act, but if the gunman is well trained (and they usually are) it would take several people attacking simultaneously from different directions to be successful. There is no perfect security, particularly in a free society. We all have to analyze the risks and act to protect ourselves as we see fit. I like Daniel in Brooklyn’s analysis of the decison to own guns or not. Very thoughtful.
Come to think of it, I did training as an infantry soldier but none of it, that I can remember, was how to take out an armed combatant when you have no arms. They did teach how best to run away from such a situation. Basically, zig zag to the best cover. If I had to, I would look for something to throw, zig zag to the shooter until I was about 10 feet away, hit the ground and roll. You are a much smaller target and present less vital areas. You could take a hit to the legs or other areas and keep on rolling. With enough adrenalin, you might make it to the target.
Part of why Ft. Hood “worked” was because nobody expected it. (The *muttermutter* Clinton nobody-is-armed policy just helped. They really should let anyone with a CC pack, at least.)
There have been several attempted school shootings where they weren’t very successful because some of the initial targets had considered what they’d do in that situation. It’s not as good as a weapon, but it gives you a better chance. (See also, the reactions the last couple of times idiots have tried stuff on planes. Or the ever-popular “granny beating up thieves” type stories. Unexpected resistance has a better chance of working.)
Cover, coordination, weapons. Even if you have to improvise them– I bet that industrial strength air freshener would be painful to someone coming through a door.
(There isn’t a room in my house where you can be cornered without some defense, and we know what walls wouldn’t stop a BB and which have some sort of stopping power.)
Curtis- my uncle was in some sort of special unit, and they taught him the same thing. Ditto for his martial arts teacher, although he made an elaborate joke of it so the point would stick. (Something like: “when facing an opponent who has a gun, and you do not, and they are more than five feet from you, you take {something stance, standing crouch} and put your hands in {up like for punching} position… then turn on the balls of your feet and run like hell.”)
My husband’s security training was that if you have a gun and someone is less than ten (may have been twenty?) feet away and makes a move for you, you treat it as them being on you. It is an eternal eye-roller for me when people talk about how someone “only” had a knife and were “a whole five feet away” when they were shot.
We all possess a natural right to protect ourselves and others. If I want to carry a gun, I carry a gun. I refuse to ask permission although my state does ‘allow’ concealed carry with a permit. Channeling Mel Brooks, I don’t need no stinking permit.
Firearms are like an insurance policy. You don’t anticipate a tornado will blow down your house, you don’t anticipate a fire will burn down your house, but you buy insurance anyway to protect your investment in your house. When I choose to carry concealed I don’t anticipate I will be assaulted, but if I am assaulted my chances of surviving are greatly increased by carrying a pistol.
Daniel in Brookline says, “If you’re unarmed, there’s a chance, small but measurable, that you will need to defend yourself against attack and be unable to do so. If you’re armed, there’s a chance, small but measurable, that your weapon will be used to injure or kill someone you love. Which of these two scenarios scares you more?”
This canard about your weapon being used against you or others is just that, a canard. Yes, incidents occur where some idiot does not educate his/her children about gun safety and an accident happens. Yes, there have been a few cases where idiots have accidentally harmed an innocent person or allowed through fear a criminal to disarm them and use the weapon against them. These incidents are extremely rare compared to the number of times a firearm is used to stop a crime in progress. Most often pointing a gun at a would be criminal is sufficient to make the criminal flee. That has happened to me twice. It happens many thousands of times each year.
A good time to have something to throw and be Roger Clemens.
JJ writes in part:
“A young friend of mine had mental health problems. (He was bi-polar.) Once when he had not taken his meds, he failed to pay for a fill up at a gas station. When the cops stopped him, he acted aggressive and incoherent. They took him down and, in the process, dislocated his shoulder. Too much force? Well, only if you knew my friend was not a threat. My advice to anyone who is stopped or confronted by the police — even if you are in the right — be very polite and cautious. Violence can escalate quickly and easily go very bad.”
This reflection highlights an interesting social dynamic, which I am going to characterize rudely here: the more loonies and behaviorally incontinent that run free and are at large, the more it is necessary that the authorities treat everyone as a potential loony.
I am not blaming you bi-polar friend for being bi-polar, but if one cannot expect that those one encounters in supposedly “normal” society will act normally, then what can one expect?
As the extension of a logical class is broadened beyond normal or traditional limits, (i.e., the non-rational are legally imputed as being equal in civil rights and freedoms to the self-governing) the intention of a term like say, “normal citizen” changes, as does the psychological meaning of it to those using the term.
Since some “normal citizens” clearly can no longer be presumed to be rational and responsible by those dealing with the class of normal citizens, then the predicate attitudes and assumptions they bring to these dealings will change, as will the law.
We all devolve into more or less presumptive incompetents.
DNW-
similar dynamic up here in Washington, where a cop who was trying to stop a couple of high school girls from jaywalking (under the very expensive elevated crosswalk…) ended up surrounded by a REALLY OBVIOUS potential mob, was shoved by the (bigger than him) female, and punched her. All on video. (held by one of the potential mob)
A freaking proto-mob over telling a couple of fat teenage idiots that they can’t jaywalk. And the mob is mad at the cop when he punches someone who shoves him!
DNW:
Agree.
We now have 50yrs or more of pretense, of dumbing down, of lowered standards of personal conduct. Da chickens is cumin’ home ta roost, indeed.
Parker: I addressed the issue of “your weapon being used to injure someone you love”, not because it’s common — in fact I said it is not — but because this is what the anti-gun folks are afraid of. Whether you’re afraid of events you think are outside of your control (and therefore try to avoid them entirely), or try to control those events as best you can with preparation and training, says a lot about a person.
Foxfier: I agree completely. In Massad Ayoob’s excellent book on concealed carry, he cites a study that shows, consistently, how a man with a knife can cover ten feet and be upon you in a second or so. It is a fallacy, and a highly dangerous one, to think that a man brandishing a knife is not a threat “because he’s way over there”.
In re Ft. Hood: I do not understand why trained soldiers, on a military base, are required to be unarmed. During my basic training, I was required to carry an (unloaded) automatic rifle with me at all times, with ammunition always close at hand. (For a soldier, a gun is not equipment; a gun is clothing, and you feel naked without it.) The situation feels upside-down to me, like requiring a percentage of lifeguards to NOT know how to swim.
A “gun-free zone” is an invitation. It is a flashing beacon to the sort of sick minds we are discussing, saying that here they will encounter no opposition. That a military base should be such is worse than absurd; it is criminally (and fatally) stupid.
Jim Sullivan: An excellent article! Many thanks for the link; I’ll have to remember that.
Mike F.: there are other options open to you (albeit not as effective as carrying a concealed firearm). As the man says, the most dangerous weapon you can carry is the one between your ears. Think outside the box: what could you use to protect your family that would not cause problems with the police?
J.J. — thanks for adding the cop’s perspective. In my experience, being polite and respectful to a policeman nearly always pays off. They have a tough, dirty job to do, and they never know when a moment’s inattention could cost them their lives. You don’t have to thank the cop who gives you a speeding ticket, but show some respect nonetheless. You know that you’re not a homicidal maniac, who will gun the cop down as soon as he approaches your car window… but he doesn’t know that.
Neo: many thanks for writing about this! And thanks also for your concise summary: “With a few exceptions, it’s generally only armed people that can stop an armed gunman.” The natural corollary is: a “gun-free zone” is a collection of people who will not be able to stop an armed attacker. (Or, in simpler language, sitting ducks.)
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Twelve years ago, if anyone had asked, would you have thought a blog run by a shrink with an abiding interest in ballet would include lengthy discussions about how to, when unarmed, disarm a gunman?
Not that this blog is the only one, but still….
There’s basically two options for unarmed people against range weapons.
1. Take cover
2. Escape
For a successful attack, you must first find cover or concealment, then find a way to engage the enemy within the distance of your arms without being shot. This means leaping from cover to cover or by stealth approach using concealment. If you know where the person is going, you can setup an ambush for him by using the fundamentals of CQB in buildings.
You can lure the gun men to you, and if he is so focused on shooting you and you’re under cover so he can’t, he may actually approach you close enough for you to rush him diagonally without too many bullets to stop you physically. A truly determined charge from 21 feet will still reach the enemy and decapitate the enemy, even when the person has 2 bullet holes in them. At least for 9 mm this is true. Not so true for .45 ACp or .50 cal.
The issue is primarily people seeking to engage the gunfighter aren’t focused enough. Their idea is to retrain. The gunfighter’s intent is to kill. Which intent do you think is smoother and faster. The chair is not going to do them much good, at that distance at least. Against a knife or melee weapon, very good, against gun user at a really far range to the point where you cannot surprise them before they fill you with some holes… not so good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21Mc9IxpYRM&feature=related
The first two minutes shows some examples of truly determined knife attackers.
That’s how determined you must be if you want to run someone down with a gun. You need to ambush them, preferably at point blank range and surprise them. If you can’t do that, run diagonally so he doesn’t just point up and shoot you. If all else fails, just hide behind cover and wait until he walks over to you and tries to execute you with a bullet to the head, and use body evasion to move yourself past the gun and through the shooter.
Of course you can always escape and evade. Let him get busy with the other people. That’s how human groups always survived massive predator or other human raids. Scatter. But of course if you want to do something so bad you’d charge a gun user and close the distance… at least make sure all the odds are in your favor.
But that’s not something the Army trains. Of course.
“disarm a gunman?”
There’s that word again, disarm.
A lower tier intent. Unless you really want to kill the gunman, his intent to kill you will surpass your intent to disarm him, even if all else are equal, which this certainly isn’t.
Now the obvious problem is that many humans believe they can’t kill with just their bare hands. They think they need a rock or some tool or a gun.
That kind of self-limitation isn’t worthy of the human brain.
Good training combined with courage and proper intent, will boost the odds dramatically. Courage and proper intent, 30 30. Just courage, not much of a chance there.
In re Ft. Hood: I do not understand why trained soldiers, on a military base, are required to be unarmed. During my basic training, I was required to carry an (unloaded) automatic rifle with me at all times, with ammunition always close at hand. (For a soldier, a gun is not equipment; a gun is clothing, and you feel naked without it.) The situation feels upside-down to me, like requiring a percentage of lifeguards to NOT know how to swim.
It’s a bureaucratic safety regulation thing. People got tired of filing paperwork for accident discharges and so politically correct generals (you know who) just decided it was better to get rid of hot firearms on base.
Problem solved. Now they could work on Diversity… the real challenge. You know, the real challenge. The real value. The real mission.
“That a military base should be such is worse than absurd; it is criminally (and fatally) stupid.”
A couple of months before then, I was talking about a red scenario with Grim where Islamic jihadists, either working alone or with the Obama administration, would come in and kill/kidnap the families living on base in platoon strength. Grim figured the base was “hardened” against such attacks.
But it looks like the military bases in America (Iraq bases are more aware and weapons hot) are only hardened for the outside. If an internal saboteur was able to get detailed plans, security information, and other things and could pass through 33 enemy agents into the base, who knows what kind of havoc those 33 heavily armed jihadists could have done to the families and loved ones of American soldiers fighting overseas, believing that their families were safe in America…
Hasan wasn’t the “red case” scenario. He was far from the worst case scenario that could have existed. AQ basically wasted their asset. He could have killed a lot more. They probably wouldn’t have caught him either, if he had pretended to be gay as well as Islamic. People would have just looked the other way whenever he did something weird. Just like they did.
“That policy needs to be reviewed. I’ve seen talk of allowing senior NCO’s to carry.”
That’s why Diversity Casey said after Ft. Hood, that if we lost our diversity due to this incident, that would be an even greater tragedy than the deaths at Ft. Hood.
ymar.
Good point about disarm vs. kill. Thing to do is kill the guy.
I was in the Army, including Infantry going on forty years ago. Only the MPs were allowed ammo on main post. Visited Ft. Hood about four years ago, drove around the main post, saw the 4th ID museum, so forth. Nobody except the civilian gate guards was noticeably armed.
Were you, perhaps, in the IDF?
Oh, yeah. The FBI thinks twenty-one feet with a knife is a good chance of killing the guy with the gun. So they say, shoot if the knife man is within twenty-one feet.
Crap. What is it with this thing? Anyway, there are other items besides fighting knives which can do a job and, if you’re within twenty-one feet, the FBI says you have a fighting chance.
I include bare hands, if you’ve trained some.
But it looks like the military bases in America (Iraq bases are more aware and weapons hot) are only hardened for the outside. If an internal saboteur was able to get detailed plans, security information, and other things and could pass through 33 enemy agents into the base, who knows what kind of havoc those 33 heavily armed jihadists could have done to the families and loved ones of American soldiers fighting overseas, believing that their families were safe in America…
If it makes you feel any better, the military families I know are individually hardened. I almost– almost– pity any jihadis that walk through the door of a deployed military guy’s on base housing when his 14 year old son had time to reach the katana collection, or his wife reached into the coat closet for the baseball bat, or his daughter got the wasp spray.
I know there are a lot of illegal weapons in base housing, too, just from knowing the people involved. (It’s amazing what inspectors will “not see” when it would mean their family being unprotected.) Don’t even get me started on the effects of a nice F150 4-door on a group of gunmen…. and the housing is usually old, and built from stone, so it’s REALLY good cover.
For someone trying a repeat of the Hassan tactic of getting people in a work environment, I know that in my husband’s office there’s a sudden rise in the number of folks that are keeping sports equipment at hand. For PT, of course. *cough* Then there’s the spare screwdrivers, and silverware for packed lunches….
I really don’t like talking about ways that a base could be effectively attacked on blog sites, but I’m always happy to be able to maybe put someone’s mind at ease about vulnerabilities they saw!
The civilian type folks I tell about my home defense prep tend to either look uncomfortable or laugh at me; the military type folks discuss tactics and make suggestions, since it’s in the same category as “have a plan to get out of the house if there’s a fire.”
Richard, Ymarsakar –
Thank you! I forgot to ask Elf this morning what the actual distance was– looks like it was probably 20 feet, then.
Good point to focus on the way that folks tend to think of “disarming” the gunman. Being Catholic, I I can’t go: “I want to kill him.” What I want is to stop him– but, given the imbalance of force, and that he wants to kill me or mine, I have to accept that I may have to do so. Doing less is basically suicide. I really don’t WANT to try to take out someone’s eyes with a sharpened pencil, but it’s better than trying to knock a gun out of his hand!
(When that mad man went into that meeting about a year ago and the little old lady councilman attacked him, I was sure she was going to be killed because she was so focused on “get the gun away” and not on “stop the GUNMAN.”)
I’ve been told that one tactic when you have absolutely nothing is to try to bite them– it tends to freak people out, even if you miss. Ears are good for gripping, and even a bad hit on the nose hurts. If you have a chair or something, the knees are a good target, especially when they come through a door– most guys will assume you’re aiming higher, and if you can knock them down, you can stomp a mudhole in their throat and kick them in the head/nose.
*laughs* I’m so glad this came up– I’ve been meaning to talk tactics with my husband again, since he always has such great ideas and a much better notion of my physical abilities than I have!
I carry a coping saw handle. It looks innocent but would multiply the damage my fist could do. Blunt on one end, bluntly sharp on the other.
Also, a small jackknife I can open one handed. If I can’t open it one-handed, I get another. People cannot help themselves flinch at a sharp blade. I think it’s instinctive. So a wide-arm swing with even a two-inch blade would change the bad guy’s intent from offense to defense. Then you have some choices.
Quite the interesting discussion of tactics here! Many thanks, folks!
In re options that are not firearms, one outfit that comes highly recommended is coldsteel.com. You can buy an honest-to-goodness two-handed broadsword from them if you want… but they also have the one-handed jackknives Richard mentioned, and a non-metallic stiletto hidden in a woman’s hairbrush, and various other things. I’ve been happy with my purchases from them. (One day I need to learn more about throwing knives.)
Richard: I won’t speak for Ymar. I did serve in the IDF as a military policeman, twenty-plus years ago. Good guess!
DiB
I discovered that, in Michigan, you need the same kind of license to carry a two-edged knife as to carry a pistol.
I have been learning cane fighting (“le baton”). It can be very effective, and carrying a cane, regardless of length or weight, is perfectly lawful.
I have no training in this sort of thing, but I have heard that a sharp blow with the heel of the hand to the nose can disable, and even possibly kill, an attacker.
I’ve never actually tried it. It’s just something I heard from a guy in a bar once. I have no idea whether it’s true or not. But I keep it in the back of my mind.
rickl.
Either the nose or under the chin. In either case, you need to drive through the object as if you’re trying to hit the wall behind the guy.
Richard Aubrey: Never been in the IDF. My training is strictly civilian in origin. Although you might guess that it is a particularly… militaristic kind of civilian training. That’s not the right description, but close enough.
My training mostly, but not solely, comes from Target Focus Training. I mentioned that to Grim (the guy who writes at BlackFive) before, and so I’ll mention it here as well.
http://www.targetfocustraining.com/
I’ve told people that H2H training comes in two flavors: lethal and non-lethal. While Martial arts has lethal applications and techniques, it is mixed in with non-lethal ones and so you need a lot of time invested before you can figure out and use such. TFT teaches you the lethal applications first off, because that is the ONLY THING they will teach you. They do not teach non-lethal variations or blocks at all. Even the weapons disarms are designed, with the sole intent, of killing the person H2H, and then acquiring his weapon (so you can kill his buddies if you really wish to with somebody else’s weapon).
The idea behind training in melee or H2H up against assault armed enemies is really simple. You ambush one guy, take his handgun, use it to kill somebody armed with an assault rifle, take his rifle, use it to kill someone armed with grenades and an RPG, and use the grenades and RPG to kill a whole squad full of enemies from ambush.
It’s a progression. Your real weapon is your brain and your body. Everything is simply an attachment you can fold up, put on, or throw away. The only thing you cannot RE-ATTACH is your arm or head, etc.
Just like the military trains civilians to think in terms of taking orders and risking their life for their comrades in arms, TFT teaches you to think of enemies armed better than you as “weapons arms depot opportunities” that you can acquire for yourself. An upgrade. A threat, surely, but a dead person is no threat. And a dead person with a weapon, is just someone handing you a weapon you can use for free. No license, no payment required.
Not even Leftist propaganda can re-attach a dead person’s head back unto their body and re-animate the corpse. Death is sorta final when you think of it, thus it is a guarantee against threats of any kind. Where there is life, there is hope, right. But when there’s no life, there’s also no hope of anyone hurting you. Most people think that applies to their own life, which is true. But it also applies to everyone else, for they are mortal as well. Don’t get stuck on thinking you are the prey and the enemy is the predator that is going to kill you and eat you up.
It’s just a mental attitude shift, combined with hard training and brutal methods.
The reason why intent is so important is for reasons other than the obvious. Meaning, other than the obvious if you don’t have intent, you won’t try to get it done.
The thing is, when a person goes into an alpha state, an altered conscoiusness, they do through various means. But one of the normal ways to do so is to prepare yourself for death, and one of the ways to do that, is to accept that your intent truly is to kill the other person. At that moment your lizard brain automatically recognizes that this is not a “social” situation and that you cannot hope to “surrender” and accept imprisonment for your mistakes. Any mistake would cause your own death. Once you prepare yourself mentally to kill, you are also prepared mentally to die if you make a mistake. For those with training and the methods/tools, their intent automatically goes to the tool they think will let them kill. For those without a tool, but with the intent to kill, they will FIND a way to do it, or find a tool to do it with. The important thing is intent.
I haven’t interviewed the people who charged the gun man or any gun man. NOr have I heard their stories as told by themselves. I am not judging their worth or abilities. I am just saying, that when it comes to it, you’re going to be the one deciding to charge or not. Not me. I’m not going to give you any orders. You’re the one that will decide to risk your life or not. And if you are the one doing so, I think you deserve to put some preparation into it, since it’s going to be your life that will be gone if you make any mistakes.
There will be no time to think on these philosophical issues at the moment of danger. So you might as well use the time you have now, to prepare and think on it.
People who think in non-lethal solutions are also thinking of social rules. That is what limits you and allows someone with killing intent to destroy you. Because they have no such limitations. No mental limitations. No physical limitations. But you’re limited by all these social rules and you just Do Not Have the Time to spend even .1 seconds in thinking about or rejecting any “social rules” when it comes time to Do It.
It is social rules and regulations that command we should not harm each other or kill each other, because if we wish to preserve our own safety, we must have the cooperation of our peers and fellows. Killing them, will endanger us for it will promote viciousness and violence. That no longer applies in an asocial situation ( a situation that is not in any society’s rules at all).
People naturally get this when they are motivated to protect their family. They just naturally get it. But when it comes to defending their own lives… sometimes they get it, sometimes they don’t. And if they don’t get it… they may not get a second chance. Where there is life, there is hope.
Foxfier, my tentative conclusion was that AQ couldn’t do it. They didn’t have the manpower or training to form even a cadre of 33 well armed and trained killers with firearms. They don’t have the team tactics down. They don’t have the weapons training down. They can’t even shoot right, for one thing. And their timing and tactical communications doctrine tends to suck, due to the extent that they have had to discard electronic communications (man those CIA Drones are annoying). The only thing that couldn’t be stopped would be the insider, the Obama administration giving tacit support or a traitor like Hasan who gives more than just tacit support on the inside. Such would allow the enemies in, and allow them a chance to cause havoc, but the damage would be limited because they just don’t have the training it takes.
After all, those houses are spread apart and they would have to simultaneously hit them in fire team strength of 4 or more (to overwhelm local resistance). Cause such weapons fire would alert the entire neighborhood and they would lose the element of surprise (the biggest force multiplier). They can use silencers, but again equipment and training issues come to the fore. These things take logistics. Not just digging up a 20 year old Soviet cache of rusted munitions and ammo, trying to use it, and having it blow up in your face… which has happened at least once with the Islamos.
And I’ve considered private military contractors (who do have the training for such and the equipment), but none that I know of would take such a suicidal mission… regardless of the money.
So my conclusion, tentative before Ft. Hood, was that this wasn’t feasible. Ah, but what’s not feasible for 33 attacking separated targets… is perfectly feasible for a lone gun man who doesn’t hope to live afterwards and who just wants to kill whoever is in front of him, with no tactical or strategic objective whatsoever.
My conclusion after Ft. Hood was that the damage could have been worse if they had even half way competent planning and strategy.
For good steel, I recommend www trueswords.com
or chenessinc.com/
For home defense, I can’t recommend a blade length of any longer than 30 inches. That means a wakizash or tanto, not a katana or a European sword.
You will find that it is extremely difficult to draw and cut with a long sword in CQB situations. So don’t get into such. Use a dagger or a short sword (wakizashi) which have total lengths of under 30 inches.
Cheness is a reputable manufacturer which makes sword steel that is almost indestructible. In battle, it’s not razor sharpness you want, but dependability. Something that will not bend, shatter, or break when you accidentally try to cut through metal pipes and rifle stocks.
Cold Steel also has that reputation, but the balance point on their swords is more for hacking and less for cutting. So the balance point on their wakizashis and katanas are wrong. Too point heavy. With proper technique, you don’t need that heavy a point. It’s not like you are trying to penetrate armor.
Richard makes a good point about penetration. Visualizing a target behind your actual target, makes you go through the target, not stop at the target. Stopping at the target transfers little to no force. Injury or death, results from force being transfered.
If you are having a hard time visualizing time, try to remember to the last sports related injury you saw on tv. Like say, two football players smashing together and then seeing someone’s shin bone at a 90 degree angle.
What did you feel when you saw something like that?
That’s basically what you’re going to have to do to another human body using your body.
I’m not too big on talking about techniques, meaning methods in way to acquire a desired end result. I’m more interested in talking about the principles that go into all techniques or tactics/strategy/logistics.
However, to give people an idea of what I am speaking of and how it is possible, here are some examples of potentially lethal consequences in H2H. Look up the news about the last time someone died in a bar fight due to a single punch or falling to the ground. I’m sure some of you can remember at least one such thing you’ve heard about. Now realize this. The reason they died is because they fell, unconscious most of the time, to the concrete and busted open their skull because their own body weight hitting via gravity is enough to do that. Now visualize yourself adding your own weight to the top of their head, and slamming their head into the concrete, so that it hits with both his own combined body mass plus your own. That is an intentional attack designed to crack someone’s skull and kill them. And people do it accidentally all the time in bar fights. Manslaughter charges there. Or peeewee sports and some enraged parent hits a coach and whatever happens happens. Manslaughter, 20 years.
So don’t think it’s “impossible”. If people who are entirely untrained can do it by “accident”… you sure as hell can do it on purpose with the right training and intent.
Another example is the destruction of the throat or wind pipe, resulting in tissue bruising and enlargement, thereby cutting off the air. Death by strangulation soon unless someone gets a trasioectomy. Forgot how to spell that and spell check isn’t helping. It’s where you slice a hole into someone’s chest into their wind pipe, put a straw there, and let someone breath that way. This type of injury can be caused by two simple things. Your forearm smashing into their throat when you lunge your body past his legs. Or when you just stomp on his throat as hard as you can when he is prone and you are standing.
It’s not like you need training to stomp on something… right. You just need the intent. The point is, techniques aren’t going to help you. That’s not good training. That is just examples of what is possible.
There are also stories, bad ones, that I’ve heard about the Army’s anti-rape training, which consists of solely “power point lectures” every week or so about “avoidance”.
Like they can avoid their rapist while on base, in combat conditions… it’s not like they can hide or move anywhere hidden.
The point is, that is not good training. That is incredibly craptastic training. And it really angers that the Army would waste time doing ineffective things like that. The women are armed, as I am told, with either rifles or handguns. Yet they don’t use them in rape situations. Because they’re not trained how to shoot in CQB situations. There is a specific METHOD that has to be learned, as well as the whole social “do no harm” restriction people have, and normally women have more than men in social situations.
Anyways, such things as effective anti-rape training, aren’t taught by the Army.
Then again, what else is new. There’s the Army way, and then there’s the Right Way, and then there’s the SF way.
Another little “issue” that came up before Ft. Hood.
“The civilian type folks I tell about my home defense prep tend to either look uncomfortable or laugh at me”
Well, civilians are civilians, Fox ; )
What people don’t understand, they don’t understand.
I heard some good ideas about home defense on a phone conference some months or years ago. Mostly it was a layered onion type defense, with strategic early warning of trespassers set between deterrence (dogs or signs or lights that would come on via motor sensors OUTSIDE, which is more effective than people might realize for regular professional criminals), and between the hard tactical defenses of the gun, the trap, the auto turret, the head cutting katana, etc.
Okay, the traps and auto turrets are jokes. Mostly.
Wow. who could have foreseen the direction this thread went in.
Its threatening to turn Ymarsakar into Artfldgr, whose cup is always overflowing with knowledge. Now me.
I should have mentioned in my initial comment that I work in Law Enforcement, which enables me to carry a firearm regularly, on and off duty, legally. So a couple of things here piqued my interest as you might imagine, especially pertaining to the policeman’s point of view.
From my perspective everyday, I work with Officers that fall into roughly two camps:
1) Those that are tightly wound and see threats everywhere. These Officers expect compliance, whether they are owed it or not. I’ve seen people talk back to them, many times with justification, and been cuffed and restrained.
2) The second are the “Coolers”. They talk it out, sort things out, let people yell at them, photograph them (many Officers inexplicably fly into a rage at the sight of a camera), etc.
Now, I’d like to think I fall into catagory 2. But we all have our days. I will tell you, that when all is said and done, my “discussions” with the type 1 Officer can get rather “heated”. We often don’t see eye to eye and don’t get along (Yes, the Thin Blue Line isn’t always as unified as people think it is, at least back in the locker room). It has been my belief that such Officers are like Firefighters always putting out their own fires. They may not have started them intentionally but start them they did.
It has actually become easier and accepted when asked to say, “I’d rather not do the paperwork.” than to say, “Yeah,he was disrespectful but wouldn’t you be if someone spoke to him like that?”
As to Hand to Hand combat, I will say that in my experience (14 years of study, 7 years of instructing, including to LEO, Dept. of Corrections and some military) that the key is simply this: Be an animal. Fight like an animal. If you worry about getting hurt or worse, you will. This is why 80 year old ladies have beat off a larger attackers, while I regularly see guys with black belts get their clocks cleaned.
It isn’t about style or art. Its about mindset. Remove the “civilization” from your thoughts and fight like your life and your loved ones depend on it. Its really that simple.
But size and a weapon still help, whatever anyone says.
The idea that practically anything is a weapon is overstated. It’s like an instructor doing a slow motion technique on a guy standing still. Sure, grins, the instructor, this’ll kill the guy.
Not if he’s wired and moving. You’ll be lucky to get the strike home at the right place with sufficient force.
Ditto with using the fabled pencil. Among other things, it’s tough to hold a pencil firmly enough to get through the skin and gristle and what not. Too narrow. And if you don’t hit at exactly ninety degrees, it breaks and annoys the guy. He may have to find a band-aid later.
However, if you roll up a magazine, one of the thinner ones like an airline mag, or the new and improved Newsweek, and roll it tightly, it has tremendous resistance to compression along the long axis. IOW, you can thrust it into the lower abdomen and it won’t fold up. Not perfect, but at least they let you carry it onto the plane.
Get a jacket, from somebody else, if necessary. If the guy has a knife, keep swinging the jacket at him, at his head, over and over, fast as you can. About the sixth time, he’ll start swinging at the jacket.
Keep in mind that nobody lives forever. Sometimes we get to choose how we go out.
Richard-
don’t forget the heavy, blunt mace that is not only allowed on a plane, you pretty much have to carry it on if you don’t want it stolen.
Your laptop power block. Since I have a luggable, it’s a block on a rope. My brother’s cute little portable is more like a heavy cigar case, but you can still get some speed out of the thing.
It might be harder for folks who aren’t runts like me, but I can stand sideways in an airplane isle and swing that block by the cord– similar effect to the coat. Might be wiser to stand in the seat nearest the isle and get that thing whipping so it hits the enemy over the head–I prefer having maneuverability, but I’m a much better target for rushing than the average person. Yelling something like “throw luggage at the son of unmarried parents!” might be a good idea, too.
You might like a theme that comes up a lot in my mom’s family: “Better to die facing the enemy at the foot of the mountain than shot in the back halfway up.”
For the pencil thing, I prefer mechanical. Mostly because I’m constantly drawing blood on myself from the spares I carry in my coat pocket, and because a nice one is less likely to break (as you pointed out) and will have a built-in rubber grip. I have one in my winter walking coat as a if-I’m-grabbed counter, intended target being hands, stomach, or drop-as-dead-weight-and-go-for-the-back-of-the-knees stuff. Not perfect by any means, but I’ve been told that just having a plan makes me move differently.
Anyways, such things as effective anti-rape training, aren’t taught by the Army.
To be fair to the Army, if they had the same programs as the Navy their training comes from the same people who think the proper response to a home invasion is to lock yourself in the bathroom and yell “take anything you want,” and who respond to situations where someone used lethal force in response to a home invasion with “what do you own that was worth someone’s life?!?!”
(The correct answer to that last question, of course, is “I don’t know– the dead guy is the one that decided something here was worth his life, not me.”)
fox.
If you’re big, as I am, and your grandchildren are provided for, you can always be the berserker. Tie the bastards up with you, allowing the younger folks a shot.
Oh, my.
As I said, if, twelve years ago, you had to predict where neo’s potential blog would lead….
I was about to answer the same, Fox, but you beat me to it.
As for LEO training, that’s a more complicated field than life and death survival, because LEOs must be trained to handle both sides. To deal with anti-social with social controls, and to deal with asocial predators using lethal force. Making a mistake and using social controls with a serial killer, leads to obvious consequences. But the police unions have spent most of their training funds on their Democrat masters, thus the vice a versa of using lethal force on anti-social behavior, is also becoming rampant.
You can see it with SWAT teams that are about as well trained as high school sport teams. Some are good, most are average, and some are dangerously below average. Because SWAT gets the police more prestige and better funding… the unions want em. And they get what they want. They also tend to want to use them, because SWAT teams that don’t get used… won’t get funded. They, like the government, needs to “find” or “create” the reason for their existence.
There can’t be that many elite shooters and CQB specialists in this nation… and in California, you can bet that all the real specialists left to join real police units. And not union controlled ones.
Anyways, an LEO must be able to handle both sides of the coin with equal competence: social issues and asocial issues.
But how many people know how to handle real life and death issues and how many know how to talk down hostage takers using negotiation tactics?
The point is, the person that can do one really well, often can do the other really well as well, since they are connected. But the ones that are incompetent at one or the other… are probably going to be incompetent at both as well. So we got an issue where one failure equates to multiple failures. It’s a lot more complicated than to just teach people how to deal with one type of enemy.
For example, there’s this video around…
Can’t remember the link, but the police pulls some guy with a suburban down at night and walks up for his driver’s license. The LEO is looking at his pad or something and then he sees this silver gun being pointed at his head. The LEO then immediately reacts by backing up (still in line of fire), and then deciding he needs to go diagonally. The suspect then tries to drive away in a straight line and the LEO shoots some wounds and the driver collapse and the car hits a tree.
The gun had a very long delay and at first I thought it was some kind of bluff because he points the gun and doesn’t fire. But later I realized the driver was drunk and thus reacted slow.
The LEO was pretty surprised, which good training and awareness would have prevented. Instead of ducking underneath and shooting through the car, he could also have dodged to the side, forcing the driver to stick his head out and turn his body to shoot backwards, while the LEO got behind cover using the suspect’s car or his own. If the suspect wasn’t drunk, things could have ended very badly for this officer.
But any criticism of the officer in question is taken as a point of pride and emotions start flaring up to defend “police training”, to the point where one guy thought my comment “yea he was slow” after the driver’s drunkeness was mentioned, to be a comment on the officer’s “slowness of reaction”. That’s the kind of wrong judgment that results from using emotion to decide. Which in a combat situation, emotion will also lead to wrong judgments.
A lot of the “speed” which comes is due to proacting not reacting. Thinking ahead to what you can or will do if something bad happens. Walking up to someone you don’t know will do what, you run the scenarios in your head, choose your attack or defense methods, and have them locked in so that if something bad happens, you just automatically activate your fail safe plans. You don’t suddenly freeze up and react due to fight/flight, and then later stop to think about what to do. That’s not necessary.
Correct judgments come from being cold and rational, not hot blooded and emotion. That can escalate an anti social situation to a kill or be killed situation. Or it can misjudge an asocial situation to be some kind of meaningless bar fight where you can “apprehend” the suspect without losing your life.
What Jim Sullivan mentions as 1, are those who use command voice without any command presence, thus expect obedience when there’s nothing there to obey. If some woman officer is talking in a squeaking voice and commanding a person to obey, the suspect may just think they can take the officer and will be more likely to try something. That doesn’t change much if the woman is yelling out her lungs in her “command voice”. Against someone calmer and more in command of a situation, the result may be very different.
The point is, a lot of these police issues can be resolved with better training ,force standards, and firing of incompetent officers… but then again, that’s why we have police unions. To pay those who need to be paid and get rid of any “competence” standard. After all, Leftist corruption can be used to lay the blame of evil for almost anything. After awhile, when you find that a lot of evil, or almost all evil, can be traced to them or to someone they had a hand in dealing with, things start looking different.
Civilians have other issues to worry about. But police have their entire life to train for this. Yet they don’t get that training. ONe must eventually ask… why. Is it like the LEft’s operation at Kent State where they successfully got National Guard to shoot civilians by shooting at the National Guard with agent provocateurs? Is it the Left’s goal to turn the poor and the black against the police, and then use police unions to turn the police against the public at large?
“Instead of ducking underneath and shooting through the car, he could also have dodged to the side”
That should be in addition to ducking. The LEO leaped back and slipped and then went diagonal in the video.
Evading downwards and evading to the side, both were viable options. Although evading to the left and in front of the windshield is also viable, but tends to allow the shooter to retarget through the windshield. With down and to the right, the shooter has to stick his head out, which takes time, and then aim.
Regardless of what the situation is, an LEO must plan in advance so that he isn’t surprised and shocked when bad stuff happens and then… overreacts or underreacts.
I’d prefer not to use improvised weapons if I had a choice in it. If I wanted to do something specific, I might use a tool, but not with the idea that I would fail if I was without that tool. The tool just makes it easier or faster for me.
That’s because even a 100 pound woman can exert enough force to shatter joints and break bones, if she knows how to use the weight of her body.
If it was just a contest between strength, then people without muscles would just lose .The firearm made that equal, but American re-engineering of some Asian martial arts, like kung fu, have also begun to apply this concept to H2H as well.
The Chinese martial arts applied it to H2H because they didn’t use firearms until about after 2000 years of fighting using just muscle powered weapons or hands/feet. The Chinese era of warring states was in the 500 BC. The japanese in around 1000 AD to 1600 AD. The Chinese had a long time to figure out that maybe they needed a shortcut to bypass people with muscular strength advantages.
Btw, both the Japanese occupation as well as Mao tried to eliminate Chinese martial art lineages. For reasons of security. Mao’s China is not the traditional China, so to speak.
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