Knowledge to make your life better. If you have some free time, check out some of these links this weekend.

Steve Tarani identifies the ways criminals evaluate their victims and how they set the victim up for attack. If you can short circuit the process, you will prevail.

How rain, snow and fog affect your optics. H/T to Practical Eschatology for finding the link.

“Filming, he says, “seems to be a very immediate way to come to grips with [an event]. It gives you the sense of doing something — instead of just being passive, you become some kind of active witness.” Filming gives people agency when they might otherwise feel unable, or unwilling, to step in and lend a hand.”

Take a look at this wild video. This would have been an active killer attack, but it was stopped by unarmed resisting victims.

The bad guy locks and barricades the door. He kills the store clerk. He starts to try to shoot all the hostages, but his gun (which appears to be a revolver) malfunctions. They guy he was trying to kill attacks him. All the hostages jump in and beat the bad guy to the point of unconsciousness and then run out of the store. I write a lot about being able to recognize common weapon malfunctions and use them to your advantage. Here is an event caught on video where the intended victims did just that.

This article is related to firefighter training and mission. The tenets described therein could equally be applied in the police or military world as well.

If we had a culture based on the defiance described in this article, I probably wouldn’t be retiring the earliest day I’m eligible for a pension.

“We will offer no remorse for having a high standard of performance for ourselves, our crew, for others in the department, and for being uncompromising in these convictions. Sometimes we’re enthusiastic in sharing our vision. We will not apologize for the zeal that drives our mission, not to you or anybody else.

Apologies sound like excuses to us. We are tired of excuses.

Let it be known that we do not wish to participate in any endeavors that are without vision, clear direction, and forethought. To this end, until the organization pulls itself together we will engage in an informal resistance against the status quo.

This is a stand against MEDIOCRITY.”

I’ve only had one instance where I was “made” when carrying my gun. My girlfriend and I had just touched down at home after a trip outside the country. In that country, I wasn’t allowed to carry my pistol, so I didn’t bring one with me. Our airplane landed and we were hungry on the drive from the airport to my house. We stopped at a pizza place to get some food.

I hadn’t packed a gun on the trip, so the only gun I had at my disposal was a Ruger Speed Six .357 magnum that I carried in my car as a “truck gun.” I no longer believe that “truck guns” are OK, but at the time of the incident, I was young and naive. I pulled the Ruger out of the safe in my car and stuck it into my waistband before I walked into the pizza place.

As soon as I sat down, the unsecured gun in my waistband fell out. The gun went crashing to the floor and slid about 10 feet. All of the restaurant customers saw what happened. It was before concealed carry was legal in my state. I quickly gathered up my gun and girlfriend and went home before we were even served.

This information might be of interest to some of you.

“We often don’t recognize that things that seem too good to be true are, in fact, too good to be true.”

Claude Werner has a new book out. It’s about training with your AR-15. I just started reading it. You should too.

A very interesting interview with Massad Ayoob covering a lot of gun and holster history as well as some hot weather carry options. I learned some things I did not know. Consider joining the ACLDN. I am one of their affiliate instructors and I think it’s one of the best bargains available.

Please don’t vacuum seal your CAT tourniquets.

“The vacuum seal of the tourniquets causes a deformity of the tourniquet clips which causes a malfunction to occur. The sealing of the tourniquet inhibits the optimization and efficiency by creating a barrier in life threatening situations as evident by creating extra time to remove the tourniquet promptly. Additionally, due to the durability of the seal, breaking the seal with sharp objects (i.e.: knife and/or shears) increases the risk of damaging the tourniquet and self.”

This should be self-evident, but obviously it is not.

Your tourniquet should be completely unwrapped and staged for use. It isn’t sterile. It doesn’t need to stay in the package.

A valuable skill-assessment drill to be fired from concealment with your defensive handgun. Looking for more drills? Check out 5 Free Shooting Targets You Can Download and Print Now.

“Would you tolerate your partner’s negative behaviors in your best friend?

Why do we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships that we would never ever, ever tolerate in our friendships?”

Important considerations for anyone using cover in a gunfight. Bullets “bounce” off of hard surfaces and continue to skim along those surfaces, deflecting at a slight angle. Stay off your cover!

All parents should print out this card and keep it with their hard-copy medical references. It is a list of drugs that children might accidentally consume and the dose threshold where a visit to the hospital is prudent. If our current health care system is operating properly, a call to the poison control hotline in your area would be the best bet. But if phones are down and/or poison control ceases to exist, this would be a handy reference to have.

I think quirky little experiments like this are incredibly awesome to read. This info might be useful for those of you who get your guns and ammo wet on a regular basis.

“This visualization is really quite simple: think of a plausible scenario (a place you’d go, and an attack that could believably happen.) Think about what the attacker would be doing, how he’d be armed, where’d he’d be moving, and how the people around you would react.

Then think about how you could respond to stop (or at least diminish) the attack. Would you have your firearm? What would be the likely target distance? Are there intervening obstacles? How about people jostling you as they rush away from the shooter, or responding officers who might think you’re the bad guy?

If you don’t have a firearm, what opportunities would the attacker give you? What weapons can you improvise in that environment? If none, what physical techniques would you use?”

What I’m reading…

Ben Stoeger’s new book is a fast read and full of useful information.

Gary V drops some knowledge bombs here.

A lot of you have patterned your defensive shotgun loads for common (inside the home) gunfight scenarios. Have you ever tried to pattern your defensive load at a longer distance? This article patterns two different buckshot loads out to 35 meters. It’s a useful exercise in the fact that you will know at exactly what distance your pattern size starts to exceed the width of the target you are shooting. That’s your maximal effective range unless you have an impeccable backstop.

The site’s 9mm Carry Ammo Range Report contains some useful information as well.

I discuss self-protection concepts almost exclusively on this site. Part of self protection is preparing for the contingencies involved in a natural disaster. This article has some good tips for staying safe in earthquake territory.

The history about how lasers ended up on pistols and what opportunities those devices create for us today.

“These gruesome murders are not about, nor caused by, politics. Rather, they are the unavoidable and perhaps unstoppable product of a deeply diseased culture. A culture which has become the perfect growth medium for psychopathy….

After all, who’s going to notice or care about garden variety insanity in a world which routinely describes everyone as murderous: baby killers on one side, Earth-destroying Nazis on the other. The stakes are absolute, the “other” is the enemy, and words are just words . . . until they become actions.

The social mechanisms which formerly prevented these massacres have crumbled. The bonds of family, friendship, and faith. A shared sense of community. Optimism about the future. Moral certainty and personal responsibility.

Instead, we now live in a crowded world of communal loners, all staring at their phones instead of the world and people around them. Politicians and media figures preach an unsubtle and dangerously divisive message of absolutes: you are either on this side or that, either all good or all evil. There is no middle ground – only calls for action. Calls that the wrong people are hearing.”

“Normal” people have absolutely no concept about how depraved some killers can be.

This is a Mexican cartel drug dealer who was murdered at a restaurant by a rival cartel. His dining companion casually leans against his dead and bloody body to compose a text.

The murder victim was this woman’s dining companion. Her actions are incredibly cold and callous. Imagine how much she would care about your (a stranger’s) death. Not one bit.

Don’t expect mercy or compassion from your attackers.

Given last week’s active killer events, this is an issue you must consider. At what point is it appropriate to engage someone openly carrying a rifle in a public space? The answer is not easy What will you do if you see a man openly carrying an AR-15 in this manner?

At minimum you should be wanting to escape as rapidly as possible. I can also argue the justification in shooting this guy immediately. It’s a tough call. I would encourage you to figure out your best possible response options before you find yourself in a situation like this. A similar situation happened just yesterday as well.

Something else to ponder…

Distance is not your friend when the bad guy has a rifle and you have a CCW carry pistol. Increasing distance plays to the advantage of the rifle-armed opponent. Most anything you hide behind in a store like this will not offer you ballistic protection against rifle rounds. The default idea of “run far away and get to cover” my not be the best solution for this particular problem. Have you considered that being very close to the suspect gives you the opportunity to deflect the rifle’s muzzle and takes away some of the rifle’s inherent advantages? Think about this one.

Tom’s monthly newsletter (as always) is full of good articles.

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