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U.S. Concealed Carry
Weekly Newsletter
April 20th, 2007
Dear Friend,
It is hard not to think about the tragic events that occured on the Virginia Tech campus this week. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. I can only imagine the grief they must be feeling.
When I reflect on what happened, I can't help but think about my little sister who used to attend college at Marquette University.
In case you don't know, Marquette is located in downtown Milwaukee. Right smack in the middle of a crime-ridden neighborhood. But by the grace of God, and a lot of prayers from my Mother, my sister made it through there without so much as a scratch!
Unlike the victims at Virginia Tech, my sister was lucky.
But luck doesn't have to be a factor in situations like this! We live in an imperfect world. There will ALWAYS be evil among us. Heck, our elected officials can pass laws all day and all night trying to make us safe. But the evil will still be there.
It is OUR responsibility to prepare ourselves to be able to fight against this evil. I hope and I pray that YOU never come face to face with the type of evil that those folks at Virginia Tech faced. But if you do, I trust you'll be prepared to face the situation and survive.
Our of our regular contributors, Bob Heinritz, wrote and excellent article on these recent tragic events.
Here it is...
-Tim
"Gun-Free" School Zone Again a Failure
by: Robert G. Heinritz, Jr. J.D.
"We're all ignorant, just on different subjects." -- Will Rogers
"Without data, we're just another schmuck with an opinion." -- D. Chris Anderson, Ph.D.
All of us should feel a little sick, and great sympathy for the victims and their families, as a result of the tragic series of shootings by a deranged killer in Blacksburg, Virginia. Unfortunately, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the killing-spree at Virginia Tech is precisely what the anti-self-defense forces have been waiting for.
(1) Predictable, the followers of Sarah Brady - and perhaps many of the Democratic candidates for President - will call for more gun control.
(2) Second Amendment advocates, with knowledge of the scientific data, will observe that, in that terrible nightmare-situation in Blacksburg, if just one civilian with a firearms concealed-carry permit had been among the shooter's intended-victims, he or she could have stopped the killing and saved many lives - long before the police arrived. This is exactly what happened on January 16, 2002 at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia, where three individuals, two of whom were legally armed with handguns, stopped a disgruntled former student who was trying to kill everyone.
But self-defense was impossible at Virginia Tech. In an incredible act of "feel-good" ignorance, "Policy 5616 - Campus and Workplace Violence Prevention Policy" prohibited all firearms for self-defense from the Virginia campus. Lawful gun-owners - who had submitted applications, paid all fees, submitted fingerprint-cards for national police-checks, and confirmed knowledge of the law and proficiency with their firearm - were told by Virginia Tech they do not have the right to defend their life, even though the State of Virginia has said they can. The foolish desire to "feel safe" prompted this university policy, which actually made people less safe. Virginia Tech's "Policy 5616" enabled the needless carnage on their campus. The cost this day - over 30 killed, plus more wounded and possibly dying in a premeditated murder-spree.
It could have been avoided. All credible data confirms in the United States roughly 2.5-million crimes are stopped or deterred by armed civilians every year - most with no shots fired, and fewer than one in a thousand resulting in any death. 2.5-million crimes! There have been scores of credible, independent, criminological-studies which confirm guns in the hands of the law-abiding save lives. You might start by reading John Lott's MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, and his later, MEDIA BIASES AGAINST GUNS. There are dozens of such publications - many by well-known, liberal Constitutional scholars - on the Constitution, history, and current criminological data. There is no - repeat, NO - valid data that indicates so-called "gun control" laws prevent violence, or keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The data indicates just the reverse - where the law-abiding are deprived of their right of self-defense, violent crime increases.
So-called "gun control" laws harm innocent people. My friend, Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, lost her parents in the Luby's massacre in Killeen, Texas. Dr. Hupp, who kept her gun locked up that day in compliance with the law at the time, said "I blame the deaths of my parents on the legislators who deny me the right to defend myself." Just 2-months later, in an eerily-similar incident in a restaurant armed-robbery in Anniston, Alabama, all innocent lives were saved by a lone customer who happen to have a legally-concealed pistol in his possession. The national press, which had such an anti-gun feeding-frenzy over the Killeen incident, never bothered to mention the 21-lives saved by the lone gunman in Anniston.
There is an old legal maxim, "Hard cases make bad laws." As I am writing this, all major TV networks are rehashing every past school-shooting incident in their TV libraries. I have no doubt they will dig up Sarah Brady, Bill Clinton, or some other politician to once again call for their discredited and dangerous laws. What every TV-report has failed to mention is every one of those schools were by law, "gun free" - meaning the killers knew their victims were defenseless. In Israel, attacks on schools were abruptly stopped when teachers and (where appropriate) adult-students were permitted guns for self-defense.
What position will the media take? A rational policy based on the data? Or still more hysterical calls for useless anti-gun laws, which are ultimately more dangerous to our values and public safety?
Bob Heinritz is an honors graduate in management, economics, law and a member of the Bar of the states of Arizona, Illinois and Missouri. He is a former trial lawyer, and now is a business attorney and management consultant, specializing in strategic planning, productivity and business turnarounds.
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- Tim Schmidt
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Holy Moly! Can This be true?
A USCCA member recently posted this link in our discussion forum. The link goes to the results of an MSN-Zogby poll. I had to rub my eyes in disbelief the first time I saw it.
This is encouraging news. I'm guessing that if the question would have been asked in a more neutral way, the results would have been even better!
Here is the link...
MSN-Zogby Poll: Gun Control
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If you haven't joined yet and would like to take advantage of the offer we're extending to the NRA members who see our ad, well you can click below. It's a great offer that will end on May 31st!
Here is a tiny picture of the ad we're running in the May issue of American Rifleman. We've got a great promotion in this ad... if you want IN, just click on the link below.
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HANDS vs. GUNS : One Perspective
From Suarez International
You shiver slightly from the cold evening air as you reach up to retrieve your receipt from the ATM machine. Your stretch your neck around, muscles are still sore from yesterday's workout. It's been a long hard day and you're glad it's almost over. The hunger in your belly reminds you of the next errand on the list. Just one more stop at the all-night grocery store and...
"Alright Mother------! Give me your f...ing money, and your keys!"
Startled, you turn around at the sound of the voice, the content of his words not yet registering in your brain. He's a rough looking street person, about 20, unshaven, hairy, dirty, and he smells bad. He looks like he's on drugs. Your eyes survey him and then surprise turns to sudden shock as you see the chrome-plated revolver in his trembling and tattooed hand!
The situation you just read about has happened many times, both to accomplished martial artists as well as to armed off-duty police officers. Hopeless? Not at all. But this situation carries with it, some dynamics that cannot be answered with a speedy fast-draw nor with a spinning back kick. To win this encounter, and by all means it is very winnable, you must understand several things about the realities of human conflict at close quarters.
Primarily, you must have your "warrior mind" set correctly. Winning a real fight requires controlled violence. You must be able to call up your "dragon" on demand and become a fierce feral creature instead of the domesticated human you have been raised to be. If you are not emotionally and psychologically prepared to rip your adversary's heart out of his chest and barbecue it in front of his fading eyes, forget about trying anything. Your best bet, if you lack for a killer attitude, is to simply submit, be nice to him and give him what he wants, and hope for the best. I do not believe that giving in is a viable option to consider, and presumably, neither do you. Even if you think that you'll never stand up to the gun, I can paint many scenarios where you might choose to do so. If you agree, then lets have a look at how to solve this problem and win the day.
First of all, I am not advocating that any secret skills or ancient martial art, nor any new technique can withstand a bullet. Any martial artist that thinks otherwise has been smoking too much rice paper. But if we understand the adversary's motivation, we can find a way to defeat him. Let's look at his motivation.
If he simply wanted to kill you, the hoodlum in the story would just walk up to you, unannounced, and summarily shoot you without warning. Regardless of how many years of training you have or how many arts you know, nobody will be able to defend against that! If it's your day to die, then there's not much you can do except die with style.
The hoodlum in the story, as well as most people who will point guns at you (as opposed to simply shooting you), are doing so for reasons of intimidation. Their objective is to place you in a position of tactical disadvantage and "bargain" with you for something they want. The bargain is typically that if you do as they say, they will not kill you. (Your money or your life is the classic line, although females often receive a modified offer). By the very fact of their intent, they provide you with the opening you need to defeat them.
Lets look at the two men in the story. A simplified view of the events: The hoodlum has the pistol pointed at the hero. The hero is surprised (I know, I know, we are always on alert. Let's just pretend that we are having a bad day and weren't paying attention). The hoodlum makes his demands and then "waits" for the expected compliance and response of the hero. In essence, the hoodlum is "Pause", waiting for the "Return" of the hero. The hero can go either way at this point: comply or fight. If he understands the dynamics of human reaction time, he can come out of this quite well.
Every conflict, whether between countries or individuals is a cycle whereby each party observes the other, orients himself according to those observations, decides on a course of action, and finally puts that decision into action. This is called the OODA loop. It is the theory of conflict professed by the late Col. John Boyd.
Col. Boyd was responsible for creating many of the aerial combat tactics now employed throughout the Free World. His findings were the result of projects and studies he conducted about the success American Pilots had over their North Korean adversaries in the Asian unpleasantness of the fifties. Boyd theorized that although the North Korean pilots had certain technical advantages with their airplanes, American pilots could generally see their adversaries first due to the cockpit design of their own airplanes. They could immediately recognize them as "enemies" and decide what to do quicker because of their recognition training as well as their flight training. And the controls on the American airplanes allowed them to put those decisions into play faster than the North Koreans. This allowed them to operate a decision-action cycle that was much faster than their adversaries. Boyd theorized that, in any conflict (whether between nations or between individuals), the party that was able to go through this Observation Orientation Decision Action loop the fastest, had a remarkable advantage over the competition.
We can take this aerial combat concept and apply it very neatly to the realm of personal combat. Studies at Suarez International have determined that, even for a prepared individual, each phase of the OODA cycle takes at least 1/25th of a second. That means that you may have up to one full second to act before the other fellow even realizes what you're doing. Even then he has to select a viable response to your actions and then employ it.
We tried this concept out with "marking cartridge" firearms. We placed two operators of comparable skill level facing each other at arm's length. Operator Number One (Aggressor) was told to "Command" his opponent to "Put his hands up", as the thug in the story might do. Operator Number Two (Defender) was instructed that as soon as he thought he could do it, to quickly move into the first portion of a weapon disarm. The Aggressor was told that when he saw the other man move, he should fire. The Aggressor had every advantage. He had the pistol already pointed at the Defender, his finger on the trigger and the hammer was cocked (less than 3 pounds of pressure required to fire). Furthermore, he was familiar with the techniques the Defender would do, as well as the fact that he knew the Defender would not be complying! Talk about bad odds for the defender!! To make it interesting, we added the stress of the loser buying dinner!
The results were very revealing, and supported Boyd's concepts. Out of ten tries, the Defender was able to deflect the muzzle of the pistol and trap it in a single move before the Aggressor was even able to fire. Lesson learned - All things being equal, action will always beat reaction.
If we understand how to take advantage of the dynamics of human reaction time, we can implement our responses and countermeasures before the adversary has even realized what we are doing. This doesn't require being particularly fast, or even technically proficient. All that is needed is a tactically-correct, pre-conditioned move that is simple to put to use, violent in nature, and technically correct for the situation.
With this in mind, our story could end thus.
You realize he's holding a chrome-plated revolver in his hand.
"Hey A.. H...! I said give me your f...ing money!"
"Alright Sir, Please don't shoot me, I'll give you everything I have", you reply.
Expecting you to hand him a wad of C-notes fresh from the ATM, the hoodlum's smirk turns into an expression horror as your left hand sweeps his pistol aside as your other hand smashes wetly into his nose...once...twice...three times! He doesn't even realize, in his watery eyed, stupor that you've taken his stolen handgun out of his hands and followed up with a strike to his temple. His final thoughts are unprintable as he sinks into eternal blackness.
Gabriel Suarez is an internationally recognized trainer and lecturer in the field of civilian personal defense. He has written over a dozen books and taught courses in several countries. He is also a regular columnist for Concealed Carry Magazine!
http://www.suarezinternational.com
http://www.warriortalk.com
Suarez International, Inc.
303 E. Gurley St., Ste. 461
Prescott, AZ 86301 USA
(Office) 928-776-4492
Wow. I love reading what Gabe has to write!
That's it for this week, folks.
I wish you and your family, safety, security and happiness.
All the best,
Tim Schmidt
Founder - U.S. Concealed Carry
http://www.usconcealedcarry.com
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