“Like you, I like ky-dex holsters, particularly those made by Comp-Tac,
Brian Hoffner, and Tim Wegner.  Occasionally, however, they require
maintenance.

This morning, I noticed one of the screws had worked loose on my IWB C/TAC
Holster. I grabbed the allen-wrench, kindly supplied by Comp-Tac, tightened
the  screw that was loose, tightened the others while I was at it, placed
the holster  inside my belt, holstered my pistol, and glibly headed off for
work.

All was well until I had to use the restroom.  I unhappily discovered  that
my holster wanted my pistol more than I did.  It refused to let my  pistol
go!  Yes, I had inadvertently over-tightened the screws.

Fortunately, I was not confronted with this issue during a tactical
episode!

Of course, I soon had the matter resolved, but it was a lesson,
well-learned!”

Lessons:

(1) Don’t work on your equipment when you are distracted.  Pay  attention
to what you’re doing!

(2) Test your gear!  When you make a change in your equipment, double,  and
triple-check the results.

We are blessed with a current generation of tactical equipment that is so
well-made and reliable that we get lazy, and take flawless dependability for
 granted.

Do so at your peril!

/John

In any domestic personal-security emergency, where a deadly-force response
is clearly indicated, or reasonably anticipated, getting pistols deftly
drawn  from concealment and aimed, or at least leveled, at the threat(s)
requires a  finite amount of time, usually exceeding a second, and for many,
approaching  two.

But, that is the fastest component!

We must add the time it takes us to mentally go from condition “yellow,”
through to “black,” so our deadly-force response can even download, and
ultimately initiate.

It is here that denial, indecision, and dithering represent fatal  errors.

You can practice extensively, responding to a whistle or any other signal,
drawing and firing.  And, as you progressively eliminate unnecessary parts
and motions, you can get your times down to about as short as they will
ever  be.  And, without doubt, we should all do that!

However, without the addition of scenario-based exercises, dithering will
still predictably add as many as five seconds to your response time,
rendering  your lightening-draw, and the balance of your finely-tuned physical
skills, all  but irrelevant!

Through scenario-based training, we learn what to look for.  We also  learn
how to integrate verbal, postural, movement, observational, and
deadly-force skills into a coordinated strategy.

We learn how to disrupt our opponent’s plan, slowing his ability to
concentrate, disturbing his focus, dis-coordinating his deception scheme, and
delaying/befuddling his physical attack.

These skills are every bit as important as gun-skills, and, like
gun-skills, must be hard-wired through extensive practice.

Just because you skillfully operate a toaster, doesn’t necessarily mean you
 can “make breakfast!”  “Making breakfast” calls for a number of
integrated  skills, of which “operating a toaster” is, for all its grandeur, only
one.

By itself, “operating a toaster,” no matter how masterfully, will not get
breakfast served!

/John

Contact Victor at 805-482-0307

nanadan@verizon.net

When to act?

During early-morning hours, in a hotel lobby in TN last week, a police
officer who was armed, but not in uniform, was confronted by three masked,
armed, robbery suspects.

The robbery was already in progress when the unsuspecting officer walked in
 on the scene!

At gunpoint, the officer was confronted and ordered to prone-out on the
floor.  All three suspects, although only in their 20s, were already
multiply-convicted, violent, career criminals.

The officer, started to comply, but then suddenly drew his pistol and
fired, striking all three astonished suspects.  The injured trio  immediately
fled, but were apprehended shortly thereafter.  Two are  ‘critical,” one ”
stable.”  The officer was not injured, nor were any other  innocent parties at
the scene.  Not one of the suspects ever fired a  shot!

This question comes up often: When thus confronted at gunpoint, or, when a
VCA is in the process of taking a family-member hostage, how long do I wait
 before taking unilateral action?

The answer is, as always: It’s your call!

But, here are some things to consider:

Your attackers are at their weakest and most disorganized at the beginning
of the ordeal.  As the confrontation goes on, they will increase their
control, as your options dry up, one by one.  When you assume the posture  they
demand, allow them to search you, allow them to tie you up, et al, in the
end you’ll have no options.  Likewise, when you allow them to escape with a
family member under their control, you’ll likely never see that family
member  alive again!

A student says, “… when someone has me at gunpoint, if I move, they’ll
likely shoot!”

There is no satisfactory, nor comfortable answer to that.  All I can  say
in reply is, “You’re dead anyway!”

When you act with precise, but overwhelming, force, you may yet  prevail.
When you dither, there is little hope for your survival.

Everyone wants the “no-risk” solution.  This is fantasy!  There  is no
such thing.  “Doing nothing” is never risk-free, nor is any other  solution you
‘re contemplating.

The officer in the case dared boldly, and he snatched a stunning victory
from the jaws of certain death.

Good show!

The rest of need to think about it.  As I’ve made it a habit of  saying,
your Test is coming!

Who are not armed, trained, ready, and courageously prepared to act
decisively, right now, have surrendered most of their options before the fight
even starts!

John Farnam

“There are certain lessons students report over and over again.” In his mind, these comprise critical habits you need to develop and continually drill in order to win on that fateful day when you face a determined armed adversary for real.

1. Keep Your Head Up
“Officers often say an attack ‘came out of nowhere,’ ” Farnam says. “No, it didn’t. They probably had their head down and missed seeing danger cues, and the assailant was just waiting for that distraction.

“When you’re in public, whether you’re on duty or off duty, you’re in a dangerous place. You need your eyes up, watching other people and what they’re doing. Notice details. Look to each side and behind you.

Farnam says that in his training shootouts, “if something unexpected happens, like a stoppage or running out of ammunition, many officers plant their feet in cement and gawk down at their gun. That seems to be very natural but it’s also very lethal.

“You need to practice in the dark so you can smoothly do everything that’s necessary to keep a gun functional without having to look at it. Your eyes should be busy feeding you information, not tracking your fingers.”

2. Learn to Identify What’s Significant
“As you work your shift or move through your daily life off-duty, you’re bombarded by visual and aural input,” Farnam says. “Most of this information is worthless distraction. Some of it may be interesting, but not important.

“What you need to know when you’re out in the world is what affects your safety and your continued existence. Develop the habit of paying attention to things you may have to react to quickly. Distinguish the significant from the insignificant. You want to perceive as far in advance as you can anything that might represent a threat so you can alter your behavior to protect your best interests.”

3. See with Honest Eyes
“Developing the skill to rapidly size up threatening situations is important,” Farnam says, “but the key is then having the courage to admit the facts even when you don’t like them.”

In his scenarios, as on the street, “denial is often a problem. Officers may see danger signs compounding but they don’t want to confront what they’re seeing. So they make excuses in their mind: ‘Yeah, this looks bad but it isn’t, really,’ because they don’t want it to be.”

Sometimes denial and delay are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, Farnam believes. “Take a scenario in which an officer confronts a bad guy who’s with his family. The officer may not face up to pre-attack behavior exhibited by the suspect, thinking he wouldn’t try anything because he’s with his wife and kids. In truth, suspects are likely to be more dangerous in that circumstance because by backing down they risk embarrassing humiliation in front of people who are important to them. The same with a gangbanger who’s with a group of his peers versus one who’s alone when you stop him.”

Farnam says that you “need to avoid imitating an alcoholic, pretending reality isn’t true, and face the situation squarely, whatever the circumstances.”

4. Have a Plan
“You view the world through a filter that’s composed of your collective life experiences,” Farnam says. “The more diverse your experiences, the more sophisticated you’re likely to be in analyzing and reacting to what you see.

“Extensive and varied scenario training, like real-life time on the street, adds to that diversity. The more exposure you have, the more likely you are to recognize a potential threat situation and relate it to something you’ve already confronted and controlled in the past. You’ll have a greater sense for what will work and what won’t, based on previous results.

“You can’t lock in to a detailed plan from start to finish, and you should not expect that whatever you do will be perfect. Aggressive action is far more important than perfection. But you should have in mind at least the beginning of what you will do — a starting point — when things go bad with any contact. Rehearse potential responses in your actual training and in your imagination as you patrol.

“Having ‘When/Then’ options in mind is critical. Your worst enemy is dithering — not knowing what to do because you haven’t thought about it. Don’t depend on making up a blueprint as things are going to hell. The action may unfold so fast you can’t keep up with it. The creative part of your brain will shut down under the sudden stress load, and you’ll be forced to rely on what you’ve already practiced and embedded.”

5. Avoid “Cerebral Fibrillation”
That’s Farnam’s term for panic. “It doesn’t take much for most of us to become overwhelmed,” he observes. “During World War II, many soldiers froze up or didn’t shoot at all in combat. Or they fired into the air with ‘comfort shots’ — making themselves feel ‘comfortable’ by making their gun go off.

“Scenario exercises that are progressively more difficult can help you learn to flow through your plan, moving smoothly from whatever you’re doing to what you need to do next to stay ahead of a developing situation.”

And keep breathing! That’s another important discipline you can develop through repeated scenario training. “Holding your breath is a part of panic,” Farnam says. “When you don’t keep oxygen flowing to your brain, you can’t think clearly.”

6. Stay in Motion
Stopping and standing still is a frequent reaction to scenario attacks, Farnam reports — “just the opposite of what’s desirable.” To maximize his chances of a successful attack, “a predator needs to get you stopped in a particular place. The longer you stay in one spot, the more likely his plan will progress to completion.

“Get off the X. When you sense danger, move laterally to the threat. When you move forward or backward in a straight line, your relative positioning doesn’t really change.

“Keep moving until you’re behind cover, when it’s available. Your moving will cause your attacker to continually reset his plan and keep you harder to hit.

“If you’re driving when attacked, stay in motion. Don’t stop. Bullet penetration is much less likely when a vehicle is moving.”

7. Actually Use Cover
Many times in his scenarios, Farnam says, he sees officers “stand right next to cover and fire from there” without ever moving behind it, where they’d get some actual protection. “Standing beside a tree is common,” he says.

“Always be conscious of your nearest cover possibility. That means something that’s big enough to allow most of you to get behind it and stout enough to stop bullets, particularly lower-caliber handgun bullets, which you’re most likely to encounter. They’re stopped by a good many common items, from utility poles to kitchen appliances. Refrigerators, for instance, have multiple layers of construction, and bullets tend to break up as they go through the layers.”

When nothing better is available, getting behind even something that probably wouldn’t impede most ammunition — like a stuffed sofa, say — may be superior to standing stock still in the open. “Attackers usually will try to shoot around any obstacle rather than through it,” Farnam explains. “If the bad guy hesitates to shoot because he thinks you’re behind cover, then it is cover in his mind.

“Your goal is always to present your adversary with a more difficult target, without compromising your ability to defend yourself.”

8. Fight Through “Speed Bumps”
In scenarios, Farnam sees officers needlessly “turn solvable problems into Mt. Everest. Running out of ammunition, stoppages, being wounded — they’re all just speed bumps. Get over or around them quickly and move on.

“People tend to make more of problems than they actually are. Don’t spend time looking for excuses to lose. Get out of self-defeating thinking and focus on ways to win! Outcomes are often determined by who gives up first.”

9. Maintain the Offensive and Finish the Fight
“To win, you have to overwhelm the suspect with so much precise force that he can’t deal with it and he is defeated. You eliminate his options until he has none left but surrender,” Farnam says.

“Often this can be done without a shot being fired. That’s the ideal. Establish control early on. Don’t hesitate in applying your best justifiable force option to shut down resistance fast. Agencies that properly designate the TASER by policy as a low-level force tool give their officers a great advantage and usually end up protecting officers and suspects alike from serious injury.

“Once you seize the offensive, don’t give it up. Stay in control and carry through to completion. You don’t want a protracted give-and-take battle. The longer resistance goes on, the likelier you are to get injured. Pitched battles make great novels, but they’re lousy police procedure.

“When things go well and the suspect appears to be cooperating, officers tend to slack off, relieved. Actually, this can be the most dangerous time. Don’t drop your guard. A strong finish is as important as a strong start.”

10. Reinforce Rigorously
“Drilling in good tactics through scenario training is not an entertainment enterprise,” Farnam says. “Done right, it’s arduous, it’s challenging, it’s sometimes frustrating—it’s work. But regular, repeated rehearsal is the core component of warrior performance. When your life is on the line, it’s the habits you’ve cultivated that make will the difference.”

John Farnam is a nationally-known firearms trainer who is fond of saying, “We learn more from our failures than from our successes.” And that’s why he’s a strong proponent of live-action scenario training that incorporates simulated ammunition. When you fail to use good tactics, you get slammed with sham rounds that punctuate your mistake and teach you not to make it again, especially in a genuine gunfight.

Conventional marksmanship training has little to do with winning a gunfight!

We are a full decade into a new century, but the way we train police officers to employ deadly force is no different than we did a decade before the 21st century began. According to FBI statistics, 80 percent of officers killed each year in gunfights die at seven yards or less, a figure little changed in the past 30 years. Officers routinely score 100 percent at the seven yard line on the training range, but in gunfights far more than 50 percent of the bullets they fire miss the target. The low hit rate scored by police officers on the street is not a marksmanship problem.

One large agency’s officers scored a gunfight hit rate of just 11 percent during a 10-year period I analyzed. That’s a staggering statistic, but another number was even more shocking. Though the sample was admittedly small, the bad guys in those incidents also scored an 11 percent hit rate.

Their Academy Commander summed it up perfectly: “My officers get a hundred hours of firearms training in the academy and quarterly qualifications thereafter, but are hitting at the same rate as felons with no formal training? We should save all the ammunition, because our training program seems to be worthless!”

In the late 1990s that agency’s training program still encouraged one-hand, slow-fire, bull’s-eye target shooting at the 25-yard line. After all, if an officer can shoot tight groups at 25 yards, they can easily handle a gunfight at 10 feet, right? Wrong! (89 percent of the time.)

A raw shooter can be scoring 100 percent at seven yards by the end of the first day of training. But, at least with that one police agency, upping the training time to nearly three weeks only produced 11 percent hits on the street. Recently released data on the gunfight hit rate of officers in the New York City and Los Angeles Police Departments mirror what I found in the mid-west. During a gunfight, about 25 percent of the shots fired by their officers hit their intended target.

Most programs “train to the test,” meaning they practice the skills necessary to fire a passing score on the qualification course. Many qualification tests are an adaptation of the old Practical Pistol Course. Many agencies are training to a “test” that has no similarity whatsoever to a police gunfight.

We need to prepare officers for the next gunfight, not the next competitive shooting match. We must train deadly force in a manner that will ensure officers pass the real test — winning a gunfight at 20 feet, not punching tight groups at 15-25 yards. Taking the “top shooter” award in your training class is cool, but winning your first gunfight is way cooler.

A training program which emphasizes the management of combat stress, without any marksmanship training, would create a better gunfighter than any program based solely on conventional marksmanship training. If they can master stress, even a below average marksman will score hits and win most pistol confrontations. If they master combat stress, marksmanship may prove to be a minor part of the gunfight equation. If they can’t master stress, even the very best marksman may miss — and die.

The only pre-gunfight way to gain combat “experience” is through Reality-Based Training (RBT). I’m not suggesting we ignore the development of marksmanship skills. Instead, we need to develop and test an officer’s marksmanship skills against interactive threats, not paper images on a shooting range. Once trainees can reliably hit paper targets out to seven yards and load/function/clear their sidearm, we should pit them against stressful computer simulators and human adversaries in RBT scenarios using paint munitions. Only when a trainee can deliver 80 percent hits — under stress, against live hostile targets, while on the move at between five and 25 feet — should we return to the live-ammunition range to develop more refined marksmanship skills.

Talk all you like about one of the rare 25-yard shots that have been made by pistol-armed officers, but, we still shoot poorly on the street and merely training more of the same won’t change that fact. If we never get back to the range to develop pistol shooting skills at 15-25 yards, so be it! That’s why all cops should have patrol rifles. With rifles, we can develop higher marksmanship skills, building upon the true gunfighting skills they learn with their pistols in the RBT scenarios.

Dick Fairburn has had more than 26 years of law enforcement experience in both Illinois and Wyoming. He has worked patrol, investigations and administration assignments. Dick has also served as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst, and as the Section Chief of a major academy’s Firearms Training Unit and Critical Incident Training program. He has a B.S. in Law Enforcement Administration from Western Illinois University and was the Valedictorian of his recruit class at the Illinois State Police Academy. He has published hundreds of articles and a book titled, Police Rifles

Three off-duty, OIS (Officer-Involved Shootings), fatal and near-fatal, in
NY, from a friend in the area:

“Three off-duty police officers, wearing plain clothes, fatally gunned-down
 knife, and bat-wielding attackers in three, separate cases last Tuesday.

Two officers fired their pistols at close range during separate car-jacking
 attempts.  “… car-jackers selected their victims most unwisely,” wryly
commented a police spokesman.   Suspects in both cases were DRT.

Later the same day, two suspects, armed with baseball bats, assaulted a
detective as he was vacuuming his personal vehicle at a local car wash.  In
the ensuing gunfire, one suspect, struck multiple times, was DRT.  The  other
fled, but was apprehended by responding officers a short time  later.”

Comment:  In all three cases, “victims” emerged victorious and  unharmed,
not because they happen to be LEOs, but because they were armed,  trained,
and eminently willing to defend their own lives with precision  gunfire.

Result: Three officers, none-the-worse for wear, three VCAs who will never
commit another violent crime (nor any kind of crime for that matter), and
one  VCA under arrest.

What’s not to like?

The only ones “disturbed” by this kind of happy outcome are liberal
politicians, who live for the creation of victims who will “need’  them!

The lesson here for the rest of us is: Always be  armed, because you can’t
know when the Test will come.  The chronically  unprepared have no right to
complain about perpetual “victim” status.

Once more: When it’s least expected, you’re elected!

John Farnam