Thoughts on defending your home.

If the alarm goes off at 2 a.m. what are your kids going to do? If the kids sleep near your bedroom, do they know how to keep safe? Is there any difference between a fire alarm and a burglar alarm to a ten year old at two in the morning? Will they come wandering our of their rooms half asleep wondering about all the racket? Think ahead. Teach.

Your prime responsibility is your family. Nothing else matters. The protection of the defenseless is the only valid reason anyone has to put himself or herself in harm’s way. Not possessions, for sure. Lives. If you have children, they must be protected. Have a plan. Have a back-up plan. Have a back-up back-up plan. Plans fail. All situations are unique, and they are always dynamic. It could be a fire or a break-in. Be prepared to modify or alter your plan accordingly.

Your death won’t help anyone, and most of us are not qualified to complete a tactical sweep of a building, not matter how many books or magazines we read, or how many videos we watch, or what some shooting coach tells you. I don’t understand why dressing in tactical black or fatigues makes certain folks think they are SWAT members. That’s like putting a racing stripe on a VW Beetle. It’s still a Beetle.

If it is just you and your spouse, or you alone, here’s the plan. Siege mentality. Have a defensive position you can establish. Think cover and concealment. Limit exposure. In my home, it’s a walk-in closet. Inside the closet is an ADM biometric safe housing a .40 S&W. I’d go bigger, but that is the most the Top Sergeant can handle, and after 39 years of her putting up with yours truly, she generally gets her way.

The drill is as follows…alarm, grab the wireless phone, dial 911, get in closet, leave door ajar. Through the opening at the seam, I can see the bathroom dressing mirror, and from there, the entrance to the Master Bedroom. The dead line is the bathroom. If an intruder crosses that, I go “weapons-free”. From that point on, I consciously decide I have the necessity to shoot if it is required, not to kill the intruder, but to keep the intruder from killing me.

There are a lot of accounts of Joe Homeowner going after the intruder, only to be shot by the intruder’s partner, the intruder himself, or some other party that got involved with all good intentions. Wait for the cavalry if you can. Defend if you must. Don’t be a hero if you can avoid it.

Marine Corps Rules for Gunfighting

1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.

3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)

6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.

7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.

9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

12. Have a plan.

13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.

14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.

15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

16. Don't drop your guard.

17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.

18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.

19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.

20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.

21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.

23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."

Navy Rules for Gun fighting:

1. Go to Sea

2. Send the Marines

3. Drink Coffee

Random Shots...

In a gunfight, ammunition is cheap. Misses and hits are expensive.

In a gunfight, ammunition is cheap. Lawyers are expensive.

Consider every bullet as a lawyer's business card.

Personal Defense Ammo

There is a whole lot of ammo available for every size and shape firearm. I will limit my rants to handgun ammunition.

"Honey Guns" aside (see previous rant), I see a lot of folks at the range with REALLY powerful ammunition. I am sure the ego thingy comes into play when a purchase decision is made. After all, these are the same folks who bought the biggest honkin' gun in the case based on flashy ads, Hollywood he-men, or advice from the clerk. Sure a Magnum Research .44 Remington Magnum Automag seemed like a good idea. The Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum is looks really wicked. But then our Barney Fife pulls the trigger the first time, a full house round detonates. It not only scares the living crap out of him, but inflicts some serious hurt on a woefully undermatched human body trying to hold on to that cannon as it creates damage to his wellbeing equal to a stare from his high school sweetheart's father when trying to sneak her in a 4 a.m. Don't ever buy too big a gun. Buy a right-sized gun.

If it's comfortable to shoot, you will practice more with any gun. It might actually be fun. Buy target ammo. Look for it. It is an entire category of ammunition with which a plinker can take the biggest artillery out to the range and actually shoot it more than once without putting an orthopedic surgeon on retainer.

If you bought a wheel gun, shoot the lightest load the gun handles. If it's a .357 Magnum, shoot .38 Special target loads. Even better, buy cowboy loads. These are especially light loads, and you can shoot them all day without tiring. If it's a .44 Magnum, shoot .44 special loads, again in a target load or lighter. You go to the range to learn mechanics and technique, not masochism.

Semi-automatic pistols can be likewise adjusted in power. While you must always buy the exact caliber of the pistol, looks for boxes marked "practice" and "target" loads when you shop.

Next beginner mistake is loading a magazine ( or "clip" if you prefer. It's not correct terminology, but Shakespeare I'm not). I say a beginner mistake so I don't irk old-timers, who are just a guilty.

First, we all know a pistol is designed to be carried with one in the tube. So here's what this "beginner" doesd. He takes an 18 round magazine, and loads it up. We know the palsy sets in about round ten, and the rest of the rounds are about as much fun to load as a visit to the dentist who's run out of xylocaine. Bleeding knuckles, torn fingernails and all, he shoves the magazine into the well, and racks a round into battery. Here's the fun part. He then extracts the magazine and tops it off, fighting all over again with the 18th round. Try this Buck-o. Take one round, load it into the magazine, rack it into battery, and then extract the magazine and fill it. Now he only needs to fight the battle once.

As a serious aside to this, here's a pearl of wisdom. You all clean your guns regularly, even if you don't shoot it. After all, you are staking your like on a self-defense gun and you want it reliable. You carefully unload it by dropping the magazine, ejecting the battery round, and checking for empty. Then you clean and oil it, reinsert the magazine, rack a round into battery, top off the magazine and you're ready to go. If that's the case, you're cycling the top two rounds in the magazine, and none of the other rounds below the top two. After half a dozen cycles like this, the rounds will exhibit wear, both by being fed, reloaded, and ejected. Look for nicks and scratches. These might just impede a clean feed in a tight spot. Pull a new round out of the ammo box each time and retire the ejected round back to the ammo box. Stack the odds in your favor.

Last word about ammo. There are two types of folks out there sharing the same DNA. For some reason, folks who take lousy pictures think a more expensive camera will cure the problem and change their pictures from snapshots to photographs. Likewise with guns, this brach of the family thinks a more expensive gun and really expensive ammunition will make them better shooters. I have many students ask me what personal defense ammo they should buy. My answer is always the same. If you can't hit what you're shooting at, you can spend $5.00 a round for pistol ammo, $1800 on a Les Baer Custom 1911, $240 on a Mernickle Holster, and it won't do you any good whatever in a life and death situation. Practice. Learn. Practice a lot.

Honey Guns

Honeyguns

Twelve people are on the firing line to shoot the qualifying test for the Texas Concealed Handgun License. My assistants are each watching an assigned group of four, while I watch the four shooters closest to me, and look down the line for safety issues. The last thing on my mind is how they are scoring. The first thing on my mind is ensuring everyone leaves the shooting range with the number of holes in their bodies equal to the number of holes in their bodies when they arrived.

There is usually one shooter in each class, a woman, experiencing a lot of muzzle flip. I’ll call her Maude. At a nine foot range, Maude places every other shot into low earth orbit, or at least another ZIP code. As soon as I notice this happening, I watch Maude’s face. As I say “fire”, she aims, closed her eyes, turns her face away, grimaces, and pumps the trigger like she’s dispensing hand lotion. Obviously not a Clint Smith graduate. If there isn’t a safety issue, either with her, or to other residents within the county, I allow her to finish the course of fire. Odds are, she will need a requal. After the nine foot range, we move to 21 feet. After that we back off to 45 feet. In both these cases, after all, she may help the other shooters qualify. Not by making them look good. That’s another issue. No, actually, she helps them by scoring hits on their targets…and the support cables…and the barricade wood. Get the picture?

After class is done, I take Maude aside and explain the requalification procedure. She can take a private lesson as a one-on-one, and then schedule another day to shoot the required course of fire. She agrees. As we talk, I can see in Maude’s eyes a fear and loathing of handguns in general, and of hers in particular. I have seen it before too many times to count. I offer words of encouragement. It helps somewhat, but there still is a dread of doing this crap again reflected in her baby blues. We set a lesson date.

The appointed day rolls around. I arrive at the range early, loaded down with my Shooting 101 gear. I consider Maude a newbie. We start with a blue practice gun. We discuss safety, stance, hold and breathing. Then comes a CO2 pellet gun. I teach sight picture, and review the previous building blocks. We shoot a lot of pellets. I watch to see if a light bulb comes on suspended in the air above Maude’s head. I look for a comfort zone. When it happens, we move up to a Ruger Mark III .22. Now we go to loading, clearing, safety, and most importantly, trigger control. Then to a S&W 9mm. Now she is grouping 6 inches at 21 feet. She smiles after each three round group as improvements compound. Now she is talking herself through the corrections. Just when she is thinking she is all through, I make her strip her own gun down and reassemble it. Six times. If taught correctly, this all happens in a few hours. Two hours, 150 .22 rounds, and one hundred 9mm rounds. Maude might not be ready for IDPA, but she can shoot a qualification.

I didn’t have her shoot her own gun. Way back at qualification, she demonstrated exactly what I mentioned I have seen so often. The gun she was shooting was too much for her. Either it was too big, it was too powerful, or both. Most assuredly, I see men guilty of the same thing. For guys, it’s because they believed the gun ads or the store clerk, and bought the biggest, baddest, most evil gun. That was Mr. Ego exercising his own innocent gullibility.

But, for the ladies, 99% of the time, it is because some well-intentioned fellow, be it spouse, boy-friend or “guy who knows all about guns”, bought that .45ACP full sized Kimber night-sighted, camouflaged 1911A1 ego trip, and with a genuine smile, gave it to her and said, “I bought a perfect gun for you, Honey!”

I bet that is the very same guy who, years earlier, gave a baseball glove to his dad as a Father’s Day present just so he could borrow it. Maude would probably have hand-made a card for her dad with a heart on it.