When Can You Shoot Someone in Self Defense

Whether you keep a gun in your home for self defense or choose to carry concealed, every person who owns a firearm needs to be able to recite their jurisdiction's gun laws backwards and forwards.  Since gun laws vary by country/state/county/city/town, there is no "one size fits all" advice on shooting in self defense.  In some countries you can never shoot someone in self defense (or for that matter own a gun) and in other places its pretty much a free for all for gun owners.

In the US, while there are a lot of varying gun laws that impact everything from the kinds of firearms you can own to the number of bullets you can have in a magazine, the general standard is that you can only shoot someone in self defense when you are in fear for your life.  Needless to say, this can sometimes be a pretty subjective area when it comes to presenting your case to a jury.

We've had a number of shootings in our city that range from completely justified to "you'll probably end up in prison for shooting that guy" like this case that happened a couple days ago.  You generally can't shot someone who is trying to steal your car, you can't shoot shoplifters, you can't shoot someone who pisses you off, you can't shoot someone who is fleeing from you...you need to literally come to the point where you will end up dead if you don't shoot first.

Since you want to be in the right if you ever end up defending your life with a firearm and since you don't want to ever end up on trial for a self defense shooting with a heavy prison sentence hanging over your head if you lose your case, you need to know all about using a firearm for self defense.  To do this...

• Know your state gun laws and follow them.
• Seek information on local carrying from multiple sources.
• Be properly licensed if you are going to carry concealed.
• Be properly trained to use a firearm for self defense.
• Don't make any statements to the police if you do shoot in self defense, lawyer up immediately.

10 Classes for New Shooters

If someone is new to shooting, it can be extremely beneficial to take shooting and shooting-related classes from a professional.  Generally, people learn about shooting from friends or relatives but their education can be incomplete or occasionally downright dangerous.  Here are some suggested courses for a new shooter:

1. Basic shooting range/firearm safety course.
2. First aid/AED/Stop the Bleed training courses.
3. Concealed Carry course.
4. Intro to Pistol course.
5. Intro to Rifle course.
6. Intro to Shotgun course.
7. Defensive Handgun/Rifle/Shotgun course.
8. Advanced Personal Protection course.
9. Intro to Reloading course.
10. Specialized courses: Night shooting, H.A.R.T shooting, close quarters shooting, Hunter's Ed, etc.

5 Basics When Teaching New Shooters

This article came across my news feed a couple weeks ago.  While the situation was sad all the way around, and I have no idea what the range's protocols and procedures are, there appeared to be many things that weren't done correctly when it came to instructing new shooters at the range.  Here's some tips if you are working with new shooters:

1. Explain everything.  After being a shooter for many years, we often forget to explain the basics because they are such ingrained habits.  How to stand, how to hold the gun, repeated reminders to keep the business end of the weapon pointed down range, what a hot range is, how to safely un-jam a weapon, keeping your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot, ascertaining what is behind your target each and every time you shoot, etc.  New shooters don't know these things yet every bit of this knowledge is critical for the safety of the shooter and everyone else at the range.
2. Always insist on safety.  Eye and ear protection anytime a shooter is on a hot line is a no-brainer.  Showing new shooters how to safely bring their weapon to the line, going over the four rules of gun safety, showing how (and when) to safely reload their weapon and how to correct their aim if they are shooting over the berm, not allowing people to shoot if they appear to be intoxicated or under the influence, not allowing any horse-play at the range, etc.  There is no excuse to not take safety extremely seriously when deadly weapons are involved.
3. When instructing new shooters the instructor should always be within arm's length of the person's body/shooting arm.  I've seen some people give new shooters a gun then wonder off while they are shooting.  I've also seen plenty of new shooters get so excited about hitting the target they swing around with their firearm, covering everyone on the firing line, saying "see what I did!" as everyone else is ducking and weaving to get out of range of the weapon.  The instructor should be able to firmly and carefully re-point the shooter's arm (and weapon) down range immediately if this should happen.  This is also effective if there should be recoil which startles the shooter or knocks them backwards.
4. Start small.  You wouldn't give a chainsaw to someone who had zero knowledge of even the most basic tools, likewise you shouldn't give big guns to someone who has never held a weapon before.  Whether the new shooter is a nine year old girl or a 29 year old linebacker, everyone should start with a firearm that is "fun", easy to shoot, and easy to control.  This may mean a BB gun for a five year old or a .22 rifle for most other shooters.  Save the Desert Eagle .50 for more experienced shooters and for God's sake, if you are teaching a new shooter to use a full auto rifle, DO NOT give them a full 30-round magazine and tell them to have fun.  Mostly it is a waste of ammo, but, as shown in the article, it causes the weapon's recoil to be quite different than what people who have never shot a full-auto weapon expect.  Three or four rounds in the magazine to start is a better way to do it.
5. Pay attention.  When you take a new shooter to the range, your entire focus should be on them.  When you do shoot, it will only be to show the person what they should be doing (how to load the weapon, how to hold it, how to fire, etc).  An experienced shooter will be paying attention to everything that is happening and is more likely to see (and stop) problems or potential safety risks immediately (which won't happen if you are also on the line concentrating on your own shooting).

The school of hard knocks teaches us quite a few things but when deadly weapons are involved, this is not the way to learn.  For more tips on working with new shooters, check out this and this.

Identify Your Target. Please.

First off, Happy New Year!  It's been a quiet weekend around here, but, as with any big city, we have already had a couple of shootings to welcome in the new year.  While most shootings in most cities are gang/drug related, and other shootings are law enforcement related, we have had a few incidents around here recently which emphasize a very important point if you are going to use a gun against another person--identify your target THEN pull the trigger.

As you can see from this incident, it's a stupid idea to shoot someone through the door.  Unless shots are coming into your home, firing at a random person who happens to be pounding on your door is really dumb (and should be really illegal).  If you can't identify your target, you should not be shooting at it.  If someone is pounding on your door in the middle of the night you have a few options.  First, look to see who it is.  If you don't know who it is or what they want, tell them to get off your property.  If they don't comply, call the police.  Obviously you will want to have your firearm at the ready because you don't know what the person's intentions are but while some drunk fool on your door step can be scary, it isn't a reason to kill someone.  Now when said fool breaches your door or window and is coming into your home and you can identify that the person is #1 unknown to you and #2 a decided threat, by all means open fire (from a position of cover, of course).

And then there was this incident where two local off duty police officers mistook their relative for an intruder and shot her.  My first thought was that #1 these people (should) have had enough tactical training to know that they need to identify their target before shooting, and that #2 they should have had enough common sense to know that if someone has access to your house that, duh, it might be someone you know coming in during the middle of the night, and that #3, again even as trained law enforcement officers it seems like they could barely hit the broad side of a barn since the person was only slightly injured.  That in itself was slightly concerning.   Anyway...

A similar incident happened to me some years back.  The spouse was out of town, the kids were at their friend's house for the weekend, and I was awoken in the middle of the night by the dog flipping out and someone creeping around the outside of my house shaking the door handles.  Now I was behind a locked bedroom door and had a couple of minutes to act so first I picked up my bedside firearm, next, I took a look out the window to see if I could tell what was happening (I couldn't see anything but could hear a couple of people trying to open the back door), then I called 911 to inform them that there was an intruder trying to get into my home.  I also informed the dispatcher that I was armed and was in my locked bedroom and for them to let me know when law enforcement arrives (I didn't want to unintentionally shoot a cop).  Then I took cover behind the bed and waited.  From what I could hear, no one had entered my home, there was no reason to leave my room as there was no one in the home to protect, and police response in the area was reasonably speedy.  If someone had breached my bedroom door, they would have ended up dead but there was no reason to go running outside to engage people in what could have been a firefight (odds of winning one of these are pretty iffy, BTW).

So I waited.  The police arrived almost immediately and they approached the people in the back yard with guns drawn.  Turns out one of my sons and his friend wanted to pick up some stuff from the house and he had forgot his key and hoped to be able to somehow get in the house without waking me up.  Needless to say it was a learning experience for all involved and the situation could have went sideways pretty quickly.  It was fortunate someone wasn't shot.

To this day, there are a number of people who have keys to my house and who routinely show up in Las Vegas and need a place to stay.  They know they are welcome to show up any time, and of course I emphasize the fact that they must call before they arrive even though they have a key and that they can call at any time.  They also know I am pretty much always armed and have the good sense not to just show up unannounced and come into my house.  Even if someone should do so, there would be no reason to break down my bedroom door so the idea of being armed and ready but not confrontational unless absolutely necessary is still one of the rules I live by.  YMMV.

10 Good Shooting Habits

Here are a handful of habits to get into whether you are a new (or old) shooter:

1. Before you pull the trigger, ask yourself each time "what is behind my target"?  Do this every single time, even if you are at an indoor range and your answer fifty times in a row is 'a steel backstop with a water catch basin'.
2. Count your shots.  If you put 15 rounds into your magazine, you want 15 rounds to come out.
3. Count your brass.  It goes without saying that you should always pick up your brass but when you do pick it up, count it.  If you shot 50 rounds, you should pick up 50 brass shell casings.
4. Clean your firearm each and every time you use it.  Even if you are tired.  Even if you are busy.  Even if you think you can just do it tomorrow.
5. Fix bad habits ASAP.  Flinching, heeling, improper grip...you don't want bad habits to become ingrained so take care of the problem immediately.
6. Ask for help.  Obviously this is taboo in many people's minds but it can improve your shooting immeasurably and maybe even save a life on occasion.  If you are new to a range, ask about the rules, if you are new to shooting, take an actual class instead of watching a "how-to" video on YouTube, if your groupings look like a Rorschach test, ask a knowledgeable instructor for some pointers.
7. Practice discipline from the beginning of your shooting session to the end.  This means going to the range in the right frame of mind, properly handling your weapon at all times, focusing on your reason for being at the range (skill building, accuracy, etc), proper interpersonal skills with others at the range, etc.
8. Have the right equipment or don't shoot.  If you forgot your eye or ear protection, you should forget about going to the range.  If you picked up some reloads from some guy on the street because they were really cheap you should consider whether you would risk your life or safety to save a few bucks.  If you have a pistol that is continually misfiring or getting jammed, either fix the problem (the firearm or yourself) or buy a new one.
9. Go the range on a weekly basis if at all possible.  The only way to keep your skills sharp is to practice often.  Consider joining a weekly shooting league or participate regularly in competitions if you need the impetus to get up and go shoot.
10. Focus on your overall physical health.  Shooting skill is just one part of your overall ability to shoot in a tactical situation.  Can you immediately drop to the prone position without throwing out your back?  Can you do a regular three-gun competition without needing someone to haul out the oxygen tank?  When your breathing and heart rate are racing, can you still shoot accurately?  Being in good physical shape can have a dramatic impact on your shooting skills.

Some Thoughts on the Trayvon Martin Shooting

I'm sure you have heard about the Trayvon Martin shooting last week.  In fact there has been little on the news lately BUT this incident.  And since this relates to shooting, of course I have a few things to say about it.

• If you are going to shoot someone, you need to be damn sure you are in the right (obviously I am not privy to the investigation so everything I write here is based on what has been reported in the media).  From what has been reported, the shooter was in an "iffy" position at best.
• Consider a range of "what if" scenarios (especially if you tend to carry a weapon).  My personal "what if" scenario boils down to this: if someone is in my yard, I'm going to call the police and let them deal with the situation (I live in an area that would receive a pretty quick response time; this may be different if I lived in a very remote area).  If someone breaks into my house, I will happily greet them with my firearm of choice (there is no question at that point about their intentions).  If I don't like the way someone is acting in public, I will move away from them, call the police and let them deal with the person if at all possible.  If someone comes up and accosts me, I would be pissed off but still try to diffuse the situation.  Pulling a weapon would be done only in the case of impending death or severe injury. Obviously these scenarios are on a case-by-case basis and each situation is different but I know where my personal line in the sand is and it isn't something I want to have to decide in the heat of the moment.
• Even if you don't have the duty to retreat (which goes along with some "Castle Doctrine" laws in some states), if you can safely retreat, do so.  Sometimes you get pissed off.  Someone is breaking into your garage, it's the third time it has happened in a month, and you decide you are going to stand your ground this time.  And sometimes the law will cover you if you shoot someone in your garage BUT if you look at the situation logically, you have to consider if what is in your garage is worth the money, time, legal hassle, psychological consequences, etc. of taking someone's life.  I would rather spend my money/time/effort making a garage that is as secure as Fort Knox than shooting some idiot kid that, while he probably had it coming to him, will have to get "it" from someone else.
• Always do your due diligence.  This applies to all aspects of your life.  When I learned that the police kind of skipped over nearly the entire investigation that should have been done at the shooting scene (read about it here on the 26th) no ballistics, no drug or alcohol test on the shooter, returning the weapon to the shooter, etc. I thought wow, someone didn't cover their ass very well...or at all.  This will definitely come back to haunt them.  If you are in the right, you will often have to prove you are in the right so make sure you have the...well...proof. Duh.
• Don't underestimate the power of social media.  There are probably some dictators from the "Arab Spring" uprising who should have got this message a bit sooner.
• Don't overestimate the media.  On a totally different track, I was watching a TV show about the Rutger's student who may end up in prison for a hate crime that resulted in the suicide death of another student.  I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the case but from what was reported in the media, the kid sounded like the most horrible person on the planet.  After I watched the show, I equated his actions not to a bully seeking vengence but a stupid teenager who watched 'American Pie' and thought he would try a similar prank.  There's two--sometimes more--sides to each story.  Before you get all spun up over media reports, seek out the facts first.
• Geraldo Rivera made an interesting point about the Martin case and got hammered.  I am, however, inclined to agree with him.  People size you up in a split second.  Yes we live in a free country and yes you are free to wear whatever you want BUT hundreds of thousands of years of anthropological conditioning have rendered humans to the point that...well, we still make snap judgments about people by taking one look at them and immediately correlating what we see to our own frame of reference.  I even remember making this point a few time to my sons years and years ago.  While I knew them as intelligent, loving boys with a penchant for tattoos, in the area we lived, kids who looked Asian were either headed to an Ivy League school or part of a gang.  Unfortunately--due to the clothing style that was popular (pants buckled somewhere around knee area), their penchant for tattoos, the fact that they liked to do their own haircuts (and often ended up shaving off the resulting mess)--someone passing them on the street wasn't going to invite them for tea and try to suss out their character, someone passing them on the street, whether it was a cop, a middle-aged white woman, or a real gang banger, was going to make a judgement about them and act accordingly.  Which was a scary thought, hit home by the fact that my oldest son's best friend was jumped by a gang for just this reason, even though he had nothing to do with gangs, he just looked the part because he thought it was "cool".  He ended up in the hospital for nearly a week.  Gah. It's a wonder teenager live to adulthood...
• And sometimes they don't...as exhibited by the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin.  The level of responsibility it takes when you choose to carry a firearm is huge and you don't want to regret a rash decision.  So receive training, tactical training if possible, don't go looking for trouble, stand down and avoid trouble if possible if trouble comes looking for you, and think long-term before you act.

Yesterday's Shooting in Arizona

If you have been anywhere near the news since yesterday, you probably heard about the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and 19 other people at a political event in Tuscon. Here's some random thoughts on the topic:

• By the time you start offing politicians, you've pretty much lost democracy. There is a political way to "take back" the government and it doesn't have anything to do with violence or political hatred on all sides.
• And yes, Sarah Palin, your "Take Back the 20" targets look like gun sites to me, not survey markers. This doesn't put the blame on anyone but the shooter but when you carry a lot of political weight, you need to use it responsibly.
• Like almost every other mass shooting, this situation seems to be a failure of the mental health system, not the failure of gun control. Note to people in Congress and other politicians...if you want to prevent many of these shootings you need to fix our horribly broken mental health system. It's the psychopath on the other end of the gun that is causing the problem, not the gun itself!
• A typical knee-jerk reaction was the ludicrous call for all in congress to arm themselves. That's a scary thought. When you choose to carry a gun for protection, you also need to educate yourself about your firearm and, most importantly, PRACTICE regularly. Just carrying a firearm does not protect you!
• If a person in the public eye is thinking that they would be able to carry a firearm to protect themself, think again. It is hard enough for the average (well trained) guy on the street to carry a gun for protection. In the case of your average citizen, they will have to recognize the threat (much easier to do when you are in a common one-on-one situation not in a large crowd) and then be able to shoot without collateral damage (shooting other people who just happen to be around...much more difficult to avoid in a crowd of people). The bottom line, if you are in a position where you need executive protection, hire a professional and don't try to do it yourself. It would seem to be a very difficult proposition to give a speech and smile nicely at the crowd while at the same time scanning for threats and being in the "ready" position with your firearm.

That's about all. I pray for those who were killed in the shooting and pray for a swift recovery for those who were injured.