Category Archives: Weapons Usage and Employment

What (and how) We Can Learn From Bad Shoots

No one seems to really be studying the problem of bad police shootings in the context of what’s known about human performance and safety systems. There’s a body of knowledge and scientific theory on that that’s very far ahead of the pop psychology that informs most undergraduate courses, police training, and Dave Grossman lectures. This knowledge has come from several fields: beginning with military mishap investigators, a system of investigation has been developed that’s been used by aircraft accident investigators, other transport investigators, nuclear accident investigators and other sober professionals.

The results these groups achieve speak for themselves. Military aviation accidents are at or near historic lows, despite a high optempo in recent years. Airline accidents have become so rare as to be incapable of statistical analysis — each one is an outlier, frequently featuring a strange and previously unseen and unimagined chain of causation (indeed, some accidents have been caused by human-factors problems instilled by responses to previous accidents). Meanwhile, private aviation hasn’t gotten much safer — year in and year out, about 300 accidents claim about 500 lives.

Everyone in aviation knows what airlines do that general aviation operators do not do, and how it produces commercial aviation’s maximal record of safety.

But we certainly haven’t seen a similar reduction in police shooting deaths — we think. We have to say think because these data points, unlike aviation accidents, are poorly collected.

There are a number of reasons police shootings are not like aviation mishaps. For example, the police often face a deadly, armed adversary. The aviation mishaps are, almost always, accidental. (Sometimes, looking at one, you think the pilot was asking for it — flying visually into bad weather is a major contributor to small-plane deaths, for example, and it’s just stupid). But both are characterized by chains of events and of decisions that either end well, or don’t. The aviation case has been beaten down from something incredibly risky before WWII to something safer than taking a bath in your own house today.

The way to begin that is with systematic data collection and examination. It’s unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. Unlike aviation, there’s no one governing body for police. And unlike accident investigations, which are non-adversarial (and their product is inadmissible in courts, to keep them that way) police shootings often trigger adversarial proceedings (and reinforce the us v. them mentality and in-group morality of the police and their managers).

Still, just as a gunfighter studies good and bad shoots for tactical lessons, we should study them for judgment and decision-making lessons. The improvements that came in air safety have come in part because pilots were willing to examine judgment and work on judgment skills, after it became clear that improving stick-and-rudder skills above a certain threshold was not preventing accidents (which more usually are failures of judgment than of skill). Likewise, the shooting that gets you in the paper and not in a good way is more likely to result from judgment error than from lack of shooting skill. But everyone in the community (cops and civilian carriers) who works on his skills — and that’s a small subset of the people who ought to do so — ought to be working on judgment drills as much as on ball-and-dummy or response drills.

Here are some assumptions that underly this concept:

No officer wants or intends to shoot a hostage, bystander, other citizen, or (perhaps especially) another officer. (Chris Dorner and Lon Horiuchi are not typical of law enforcement; they’re sick puppies who squeaked through the selection process, to the everlasting regret of their agencies).
No officer intends to shoot an unarmed, non-threatening, or immobilized suspect. (The nature of suspects being what it is, we’ll concede the want and recognize that policemen are generally above acting on that temptation).
Shootings of folks who ought not to be shot do occur. While they are rare in a well-run department, in a nation of 330 million and a world of billions, they do occur.
There are identifiable errors in judgment that lead to many if not most of these shootings.
The errors can be departmental (bad training or bad policy) or individual in nature.
Adversarial proceedings and placement of blame detracts from the purity of evidence and the honesty of testimony. (Put another way: once the lawyers get into it, it’s all lies from that point).
Only a dispassionate examination by disinterested parties with significant subject-matter expertise can produce an untainted result. Think of the National Transportation Safety Board, or its military or foreign analogues. (The NTSB is actually modeled after the old Army Air Corps independent accident investigation process).
The goal needs to be understanding, not blame.
There is no such body of disinterested parties at this time.

Whatchu Gonna Do When they Muzzle You?

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Bad boys, bad boys, what’chu gonna do? Whatchu gonna do when they muzzle you?

Well, when an instructor muzzled him and his brother, Sean Sorrentino walked out, and wrote it up on his blog. (This is a gross oversimplification, so Read The Whole Thing™).

Sean was amazed how hard it was to walk away. He and his dad and brother (literally!) had invested a lot of time, planning and money in this turkey of a course. That “investment” is, of course, what an economist calls a sunk cost. Economists are always puzzled that people persist in doing things because of the sunk costs that they can’t recover, no matter what happens. That’s because economists make decisions using mathematical formulae, and human beings make decisions based on common sense and emotion. Sunk costs will cease around the time that Skynet completes the revolt of the machines and eliminates the last human. (Of course, Skynet may spare the economists out of professional courtesy).

After Sean posted, a number of other course attendees commented on Sean’s blog post. Generally, the comments by third parties don’t advance the football a whole lot, but the other course attendees’ comments are extremely interesting. They vary widely; it’s almost a Rashomon experience to read them. Some didn’t see any muzzling. Some thought Sean was a know-it-all, a cross every instructor in every subject has to bear from time to time (and every instructor should be able to deal with). We weren’t there, but totality of the evidence sounds to us like an antler-rattling contest.

There are times on the range when professional gun users have to pass in front of others. There are times in CQB and fire-and-maneuver when you have to trust your buddy not to plug you. We can’t think of a time when this is needed on a course for civilian concealed-carry pistol shooters. If you have to engage with your legal handgun, odds are about 99% its going to be just you.

Yeah, Rangers and probably other elements do lots of live fires where you might be lying next to a bunker’s embrasure waiting for the right time to toss a (live) ‘nade in, while your squad’s base of fire is slamming rounds into the bunker. The risks of that evolution are clear, while the benefit is increased speed and confidence for the unit in combat. But if you’re not Rangering for a living, the risk of that kind of training can’t really be justified. Units kill guys and wound them seriously doing this kind of training — it’s rare, but it’s a reminder that this is some dangerous stuff.

There are no requirements to be a firearms instructor, and no agreed-upon standards. There’s no criteria for evaluating an instructor, either. If people go to the guy’s courses and leave feeling good, they naturally think, “what a good instructor!”

By what standard?

Ah, the wages of loose gun laws!

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Because all right-thinking people know, as received wisdom from the bien-pensants of the press, that crime proceeds always and everywhere from guns; that criminals would not exist if it were not for “root social causes” that can be cured with liberal (no pun intended) application of public “investment”; and that a gun in the home is always more hazardous than simply trusting in the warm heart of your fellow man, and the ever-ready forces of The State.

And criminals, Hollywood teaches us, are always high-functioning businessmen, scientists and military officers, driven by grade-school morality-play greed and lust for power. TV criminals, unlike the 3D flesh-blood-and-attitude variety tend to be white guys, rich guys, and usually well-connected WASPs who just want to be whiter, richer, and even better-connected. Cops watch these films, and wonder why they can’t spend their days arresting those guys in their nice clean labs and boardrooms, instead of, you know, the actual criminals they see every day. Real-world crims tend to be sketchy, marginal, disproportionately minority, low-IQ and often mentally-ill individuals, who tend to be found in dysfunctional and filthy places. Real criminals often have no more reason behind their crime or ability to explain it, than a shark with its similarly primitive nervous system has.

And then we get this. Hollywood detectives would be closing in on the wealthiest inhabitant of the mid-sized (by NH standards: pop about 7k) town, or on the nearest particle physicist or genome sequencing guru. WeaponsMan suggests they’re going to find it’s someone bug-house crazy, whom everyone would have locked up in 1990 if not for the Glories of Deinstitutionalization which have left us with no place to lock him up. Here’s what he did:

Authorities say a man and a woman whose bodies were discovered in a central New Hampshire home were those of a 39-year-old man and his mother, who were chopped to death.

The victims were identified as 59-year-old Priscilla Carter and her son, Timothy. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

Homicides! No $#!+, Sherlock?

Obviously this was caused by the loose gun laws in the Granite State, where a Boston-values prosecutor can’t even convict a guy for shooting a criminal on his own property, no matter how histrionic the closing arguments. A sure sign they’re clingin’ to their God and guns, although in this tragic tale, somebody didn’t cling to the latter and got sent to the former prematurely:

Autopsies were performed Saturday. The medical examiner’s office determined Priscilla Carter’s cause of death was multiple chop wounds and blunt force injuries, while Timothy Carter’s cause of death was multiple chop wounds. The office did not say what kind of weapon was used.

via Medical examiner: Woman, son were chopped to death | SeacoastOnline.com.

If you’re a writer for, say, the Associated (with terrorists) Press or the Boston Globe, the official lack of definition of the weapon is a great excuse to pencil in “assault weapon” or the old newsroom standbys, “AR-47″ or “AK-15″.

Exercises for the reader:

Exercise 1

Reenvision this scene, but with Timothy or Priscilla Carter as a gun owner. To steal a subtitle from Laurence Gonzales, “who lives, who dies, and why?”

Exercise 2

You live in this town. Here’s the authorities’ position: “Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin said no one has been arrested in the case and that authorities continue to investigate.” Translation: “Beats us with a stick.” And the guy’s still out there. Pick from one of the following options:

Move out. Preferably to somewhere which has no bad naughty evil people, or the guns that inspire them to violence, like ~~Chicongo~~ (well, we’ll think of a place. The Emerald City?).
Put your faith in your fellow man and 911, like the Carters did.
Get a Brady Campaign/Bloomberg approved rape whistle and be prepared to blow it vigorously.
Sign up for tae kwon do at the local dojo.
Get a double-barreled shotgun and be prepared to fire it into the air, out the window.
Get a handgun or carbine and some instruction on how to use it.

Nothing much hangs on your decision. Just life or death. (After some creep kills you, the mutilation adds a bit of horror for your survivors, but you won’t feel a thing).

The Carters, poor, doomed wretches that they were, didn’t even know they were playing this game. You do. What’s your move?

Don’t bring a gun to a sword fight

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Wait, what?

As we say, over and over again, a weapon is what you have, and self- and home-defense is about mind state more than arms locker.

A California man proved this recently when two home invaders wielding an ax and a gun barged in, intent on whatever deficiency in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that home invaders are addressing (we’ll guess, self-actualization). The news report from the Fresno Bee is so brief it’s practically telegraphic, so we don’t know if the crook left behind, one Aaron Baeza, was Gun Man or Ax Man, but he was unquestionably Dead Man when five-oh rolled up.

This other story identifies the EDW (Edged Defensive Weapon) as a samurai sword. If one must use a sword, a samurai sword is an excellent choice, with a single curved edge (for maximum “terminal ballistics” in a slashing weapon, which is why they — and all but the last generation of cavalry sabres — are configured that way) and a blunt-shaped but sharp-edged point for penetrating thick clothing or armor. Personally, we prefer a double-edged sword, and just as it is with guns, shorter is more maneuverable in CQB. Think a gladius iberius. But the Japanese had swords so advanced that they didn’t mess with firearms for hundreds of years, and serviceable replicas of the katana and wakizashi are widely available.

As it is, the same article suggested that the point of that sword terminated Baeza; that it was a stab rather than a slash that saved the citizenry costs of trial and incarceration for the fellow (and in that jurisdiction, incarceration is a luxury good, with prison cage-kickers paid about as well as New York’s infamous Nassau County PD.

Back to the scene of this crime. While they had no problem locating Baeza (at the center of the pool of blood, at ambient temperature displaying an absence of vital signs), the police are still seeking the other invader, reported as one Christopher Rupe, 30, who “left the home and remains at large.” Now, we’re just gun bloggers here, but if you just saw your fantasy of a criminal score, along with your partner’s mortal existence, sliced and diced, or speared like a cocktail shrimp by some madman wielding cold steel, would you too “leave the home?” With rather more than deliberate speed?

Indeed, Rupe could scarcely be blamed if he’s still running next Tuesday.

While we don’t recommend a sword as a go-to, first choice home defense weapon, we admit we have a few lying around. They’re legal in more places than guns (although Presser v. Illinois set the open carry of swords back to the status quo ante the Bill of Rights of 1689 in some jurisdictions), definitely intimidating (especially if wielded with a display of confidence), and 5,000 years of history speaks to their lethality.

They’re also affordable. Worst case, you can sell your cloak and buy one.

Hat tip: Jay G at MA-rooned, whose title we could not improve upon.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Packing

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Eleanor Roosevelt? Yep, Eleanor her ownself, the patron saint of Women In Sensible Shoes™, got a New York state permit (seldom a problem then or now for a white, impressively politically-connected, and stinking rich person) and toted a gun — we’d guess a small revolver but the source doesn’t say.

At Slate, a writer avers that Roosevelt carried the permit, not the pistol, but that’s not what she said at the time. According to the same writer (and period newspaper reports), Mrs Roosevelt’s pistol-carrying was intended to get the Secret Service to back off of their insistence on bodyguarding her.

This New York permit has a couple of features that persist to this day in New York licenses. One is that a license granted in New York City is valid throughout the Empire State, but licenses issued in the rest of the state are invalid in the City. And another is the requirement for a permit to purchase. (Again, this was and is a may-issue permit that is more likely to be issued to an organized crime figure than an ordinary middle-class person without political connections).

Nowadays, a New Yorker’s purchases are tightly bound to his or her permit. You must get each new handgun added to your permit. You can only buy ammunition in calibers for which you have a pistol on your permit. These restrictions predated the 2013 SAFE (Strangle All Firearms Entities) Act, the one written by governor Andrew Cuomo (D-Cinque Famiglias) on a napkin between hits on a crack pipe. They have, of course, had no impact whatsoever on crime, any more than making Eleanor Freaking Roosevelt get a permit served any rational public purpose (seriously, did anybody weigh the odds of her taking up bank robbery?)

Update:

Back to Eleanor, it seems de rigeur on the left (for example, at the dependably Democratic AARP blog) to say she didn’t actually carry the thing, but the AARP guy ultimately gives in and quotes testimony on both sides of the issue. A few years back, Narodniy Politicheskiy Radio mentioned the revolver in what was otherwise predictable propaganda about a Designated Role Model™. Dave Kopel has more on her revolver-toting, from 2002. He used those same facts in a 2012 New York Times symposium — pearls before swine, but you have to credit him for trying. This Kopel thread suggests (in the comments) that her gun was provided by the then-head of the Secret Service, and was more likely than not a Colt Official Police revolver. Some good commentary on other shooting Roosevelts at all those links, too. Finally, this instructor’s page has a grainy copy of her application for the 1957 license shown above, and it suggests that she has had a permit continuously since 1933.

It’s early, but this police shooting looks really bad

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A Hofstra University student is dead after being taken hostage by a career criminal, released (as is normal) by New York’s courts to prey again, and armed (as is normal) with a weapon illegal in New York (or anywhere, as its serial number was defaced) but obtained through criminal channels.

But the worst bit of it was that Andrea Rebello was not killed by the criminal, Dalton Smith. She, and the criminal, died in a hail of bullets from a Nassau County, Long Island policeman. The New York Post:

Smith also made his way down the stairs — holding Andrea in a headlock and using her as a human shield, police said. The officer began talking to Smith, saying, “Put the gun down and let the girl go.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Smith replied. Kourtessis ran into a bedroom. Then he heard the shots.

“I hear ‘pop, pop’ — two shots,” he said. “I run out and I run toward where they are.”

Andrea Rebello. RIP.

By then the cop had maneuvered the criminal into the basement area of the home, said Kourtessis. He then watched as the officer shot twice more. He saw other officers outside, and dropped to the floor.

“Andrea! Andrea!” he screamed.

But Andrea didn’t answer.

Both Smith and Andrea were felled by bullets fired by a Nassau officer, cops said.

It’s still early and it’s highly probable that initial media accounts (as is normal) are incomplete and incorrect, so we shouldn’t tee off just yet. But the message coming from Nassau County police is, essentially, that she had it coming for being a victim of crime. They’ve circled the wagons around the shooter, whom they’ve refused to identify, and given a few days of nonchargeable vacation. Their commissioner actually linehauled his “tough shit” message to the victim’s family in the middle of the night. That’s depraved, but our observation is that police senior management, like commissioners, tend to be rather lower on the character totem pole than those below them on the rank totem pole.

Victims of crime aren’t exactly unusual in the violent, depressed cities of Hempstead and Uniondale that surround Hofstra. The University publishes a tendentious “public safety report” that glosses over the fact that the college sits smack dab in the middle of a ghetto teeming with drugs, crime and brutality. They do this by selecting the data to comprise primarily violence inside the private school’s gated, locked-down residential campus, which is, as you might imagine, pretty mild as violence goes. Meanwhile, Hofstra students warn the newly accepted that walking on the side streets around school is “asking for it.”

No doubt this incident will be seen differently by different people. Cops may see a guy who was trying to do his job, and had a bad outcome, but not bad enough that there should be any consequences for him. Hofstra administrators may see bad publicity needing to be broomed. Libertarians may find a way to blame the war on drugs, liberals may bog down in a battle to discern the “root causes” of Smith’s criminality, and conservatives may well see this as a predictable consequence of revolving-door justice for violent criminals.

And here at WeaponsMan we see another police shooting that speaks to bad training and worse personnel selection. But we’re self-aware enough to see that we, like all the others, are simply applying our own cognitive template — our bias, if you will — to the information we’ve received. Everyone’s ideas are subject to change when the investigation emerges from its present lawyered-up, self-protective cocoon and spreads any factual wings it might have.

Still, two things seem clear: even in California of all places, Dalton Smith would have been incarcerated under what’s left of their three-strikes law, after a violent armed robbery spree that began in 1999 and has only let up while he has been incarcerated. And his criminal activity is over now, but at a price a civilized society shouldn’t have to pay.

But then, this is New York we’re talking about.

Update I:

Nassau County actually had someone on the tube this morning suggesting that, because Dalton Smith was a really really bad guy, it was a lot better for Andrea Rebello that their cop shot her, too. Because otherwise, Smith might have left with her, and whatever he did would far worse than a mercy killing at the hands of the still-unidentified, still on “sick leave” (Nassau County’s term of art for “bad-shooting vacation”) copper. We do agree that Smith was a rotten guy, and the world is well rid of him; but we can’t follow the logic to where the police should be going all Kevorkian on his victims. Lord love a duck. They’re really going all out for this shooter; is he the Chief’s nephew?

Whatever he is, he apparently fired eight rounds at point-blank range and scored eight hits — 7 on Smith and 1 on Rebello. The Nassau County spokescreature said that Smith used Rebello “as a human shield” by way of justifying their cop’s unjustifiable marksmanship, but the other witnesses reportedly said he had her in a headlock. Again, early reports are usually pretty weak.

Several gun bloggers have pointed out there are standard IPSC targets and stages addressing this kind of hostage-taker shot under stress, and even a novice IPSC shooter wouldn’t miss. It comes back to what they initially said in justifying the cop’s manslaughter of the innocent hostage here, that standard guilty cop’s mantra: “he was in fear for his life.”

There’s a word for a guy who panics because he’s so afraid.

In a just world he would be in fear for his liberty right now.

Update II:

No markmanship skills or personal courage required!

No markmanship skills required or wanted! (The “courage” thing must have been a typo).

The Nassau County cops might be badly trained, but they’re staggeringly well paid. The shooter they’re still protecting might be on this list of cops pulling down CEO-level wages; even many patrolmen walked off with a half million or more. The 1% is out there — who knew it was blue-collar (literally) government workers?

As far as the leadership goes, top cops in the department were indicted for running a scheme where financial donors could buy immunity to arrest for themselves and their family members (note the many related stories linked at the bottom of that one, and the case is still ongoing). One of the cops is still awaiting trial; the first to face justice, Deputy Commissioner Bill Flanagan, was convicted on three counts including conspiracy, but beat the rap on the most serious one; shortly thereafter, former Chief John Hunter pled guilty to similar charges and accepted three years’ probation (Flanagan’s lawyers keep postponing his sentencing). The local gadfly paper suggests that the cops are now hostile to the DA, which may be newsman wishful thinking.

But taken together, all these reports suggest a department that was not focused on a mission to serve and protect the public, and did not select and train its officers to that end. Q.E.D.

Update III:

The weapon Smith had contained two cartridges, one in the chamber and one in the magazine. The police have confirmed that he did not fire a shot. The serial number of the weapon was scratched off, suggesting an illegitimate provenance (Smith could not legally purchase a firearm. He was a felon, and so violating Federal law, and could not obtain a New York permit with his record, unless he was politically connected. In New York, one cannot purchase or possess a firearm, even at home, without a may-issue permit).

We are told the weapon was a SCCY Industries CPX-2 9mm DAO pistol. If you’re not familiar with it (we were not), a capsule NRA review is here. If that is the right designation, the gun does not have a mechanical safety (the CPX-1 variant does). Manual here (PX-1) (pdf).

Defensive Gun Use survivor speaks

This video isn’t identified in terms of who the citizen is or when the event happened. He and his wife were clearing up a rental unit in a bad section of town, when two fellows with a TEC-9 tried to hold him up and told him, “you’re gonna die.” But dying was no part of his plans. He used a ruse to distract them, drew his .40 and drilled them. Both now dwell with all good criminals, in Hades.

“When I shot him, his eyes… like he was surprised.” We guess so.

The real punch line comes at the end, when the interviewer elicits from the citizen where the criminal got the gun: it was stolen out of police custody. (This is a lot less rare than you might think, and in cities, towns and nations where civilian guns are restricted heavily, it’s probably the leading source of crime guns). You might wonder who steals guns from the police: usually, insiders. Not always sworn officers but non-sworn personnel like evidence custodians and even janitors. But sometimes, sworn officers get into the act, too.

This is not a perfect DGU, but it’s pretty good, and you can’t fault the outcome.

He trusted his sixth sense and didn’t leave the firearm on the mantel.
He kept thinking. It’s clear from his recounting of the story that his mind was racing, constantly figuring the angles. Fighting skills are built drill-by-drill with the hands and the feet and the eyes, but fights are won between the ears.
He never gave up. This is the dirty little secret to a lot of things in life.
He fired first. Fair play is for Hollywood.
He kept firing as long as the two robbers constituted a threat in being.
He put the gun down, stood clear of it, and warned the police dispatcher where the responding officers could find it.
He has some good advice for everyone: “react quickly, and have something you can defend yourself with.”

It’s unfortunate that he has given himself so much of a moral beating over killing these two specimens. It speaks well for him as a decent man and a good human being, but it’s probably not psychologically sound. He shouldn’t beat himself up: the world is a better place with those two scrotes out of it.

It’s true that everyone who kills, and is not completely lacking a moral center, thinks about it. You are vulnerable to strange stray thoughts, like, “once that guy I killed was a gurgling baby with a proud mama.” Just as it is helpful for a pilot to banish hazardous attitudes, like antiauthority or resignation, by reciting an “antidote phrase,” it is helpful for the combat soldier, or we suppose, the police officer or defensive citizen shooter, to have a mantra ready for when the humanity of the creature you have slain intrudes on your thoughts. Some examples include:

It was me or him — so I’m glad it was him. (This is close to how this shooter views it).
I didn’t kill him, he threw his life away.
If I hadn’t shot him he’d still be out there (holding people up / being a Taliban / committing general mopery in the first degree/whatever). Good thing I did.
If he did it again, I’d blast his ass even faster.
I don’t grieve when I spray ants in my kitchen, I’m not going to grieve over him. Unlike the ants, he had free will. And look what he did with it.
Think of it as evolution in action. Somebody has to put the chlorine in the gene pool.
Damn straight I’m a hero.

Every one of those can have another sentence appended optionally: Intercourse him.

There are many more like them, and they all have the advantage of truth. You should never become a psychological casualty because you defended yourself, your home, your loved ones, or your property.

We found the video here at Front Sight. That place wouldn’t be our first choice for training, but it beats hell out of no training, and it was a public service for them to post this interview.

About those searches in Watertown

A lot of people are talking about the searches in Watertown, MA. Here’s a typical report from a right-leaning news site, complete with an embedded video that makes it look like something out of some black-hearted European dictatorship or other.

The police came to people’s homes, ordered them to leave immediately at the point of a gun in some cases, and then entered their place of residence. It’s never “consensual” when the person asking you for something has a gun in his hand. “Probable cause” is convenient, but in this case, very arbitrary.

Would you believe, the searches were not like the media has portrayed them? We know, the media have been so crowned with glory in this it’s hard to believe they got some facts wrong, eh? But here are some other facts that have not been in the media. Our local SWAT guys (a regional team) were part of this, as cops were called in from many miles around. And here’s what their instructions were, paraphrased:

Keep safe, but ask whoever answers the door for permission to search. (Most homeowners voluntarily exited and let the police search).
If the homeowner refuses, look for signs of duress.
Absent signs of duress, try to convince them to let you search.
If they continue to deny permission, and are not under duress, thank them for their time and move on.

It doesn’t seem wise to pass on the “event of duress” instructions. As it happened there were no such persons under duress. Two homeowners refused consent, and their homes were not entered or searched. They both said that they had searched their own premises and Flashbang was not hiding within. (This was a little alarming to the cops, who had visions of some unprepared householder coming across a man of such demonstrated violence… but no such event happened).

They followed these instructions, and made a point of thanking householders and apologizing for the intrusion, which may cut no ice with Constitutional lawyers, but goes a long way with the living, breathing members of the actual public. The cops were keenly aware that these were not crack houses, but honest citizens, and they had been quietly told, quote, “you’re not looking for contraband, you’re looking for the terrorist or evidence he was there, period.” Now, this is just one team of many, which searched only a handful of the hundreds of residences inspected, but it’s hard to believe that these cops were the only good and decent ones of the assembled army.

So these weren’t warrantless searches, they were consent searches, a very different animal. The above-linked column suggests that you can never really consent when the man at your door has a gun in his hand. Against that, we offer the fact that people did not consent, and no harm came to them.

There’s plenty to criticize the Massachusetts authorities over. They’re still stonewalling on the records of just how much welfare and school aid the bombers were getting, but they were both living middle-class lives without ever having held a job, so you do the math. And it really looks like the authorities (including the same Federal prosecutor who hounded Aaron Swartz to his death, and then made jokes about it) are going to botch Flashbang’s trial. But the search is not in that class of government misfeasance. If you think that what happened in Watertown was “Gestapo tactics,” you need to hit the books on how the Gestapo and other totalitarian secret police in general operated.

Laws of Weapons

We have in the past mentioned these truisms before, but the case of the knucklehead whose image you see to the right reminds us of them, and they they probably should be considered Laws, because they are natural, universal, and immutable:

A weapon is anything you use in attack or defense. It is a force multiplier that increases your area of influence or the degree of that influence beyond what is possible with hands, feet or teeth.
Corollaries to that Law: a weapon is where you find it. A wise combatant always arms himself as well as possible, before the fight is on.
A weapon is morally neutral. If your cause is just and moral, your weapon is properly employed. If it is not… well, meet Mr Jacob Walk.

While debating the merits of labor unions with a fellow diner at a truck stop restaurant counter, Jacob Walk grabbed a steak knife and threatened to stab the diner “if he said anything bad about unions,” according to police.

Walk, 33, of 207 Poplar St., Depue, Ill., is now charged with a felony count of criminal threatening with a deadly weapon, as well as a misdemeanor alleging simple assault.

Many people would not think of a steak knife as a weapon. If you’re a rabid trade unionist, or the guy he has by the stacking swivel whilst waving the steak knife, your eyes are open to its armament potential. In fact, many people have been killed with steak knives. Even though we’re not aware of any studies that have kept count, we’d not be surprised if many more people are slain by steak knives than by “assault weapons” in any given year. In several places, structures vital to human survival are two inches or less from the surface of the body, making any knife encounter an extremely hazardous one for anyone unarmed with a projectile weapon.

Furthermore, there’s a tendency to underimagine the lethality of a knife, leading people such as soldiers, EMTs and especially cops to close with a knife-armed assailant. This is a bad idea, unless you know there is someone right there backing you up who can act quickly enough to prevent you from bleeding out through a carotid or femoral artery. (There’s a number of other knife wounds that could be delivered to a person in the ED at Bellevue where they treat hundreds and hundreds of knife wounds annually, and the victim would probably die anyway). Moral: take knives seriously. Consider just shooting the guy.

According to an affidavit by Greenland police Detective David Kurkul, the political debate became criminal at 1:49 a.m. April 26 at the Country Pride restaurant in the Travel Centers of America truck stop on Ocean Road. Officer James Cormier was dispatched to the truck stop for a report of a fight in the restaurant, where the two men wrestled, “spilling food all over the counter,” the police report states.

The restaurant in question is a rather low-quality buffet that serves fried chicken-parts nuggets and similar fare to long-haul truckers off Interstate 95. The emphasis is on quantity, and having a place to park your rig, and the various other services available at a truck stop. Let’s just say the police know their way to the address.

The alleged victim told the officer they were talking about unions when Walk “became very angry and starting yelling at him” while holding a steak knife and saying “he was going to cut him,” according to the detective’s report.

A cook and a waitress corroborated that story and said Walk grabbed the other man by the throat, while still holding the knife, and threatened to cut him, the police report states. The cook tried to separate the two men, but Walk “got back in his face,” threatened to kick the man and started poking him in the chest as police arrived, the affidavit states.

via Police: Debate about unions turned into knifepoint threats | SeacoastOnline.com.

Another lesson here: if Mr Walk hadn’t picked up the knife, the cop would probably have broken up the fight and given both participants a talking to. Don’t use a weapon to do something stupid; if you play stupid games, you’re likely to win stupid prizes. Like those Walk now collects: a criminal arrest record, months or years of courtroom entanglements, a probable conviction and possible prison time. While we’re sure the local business agent of his union is glad that Walk is on board with the union message, he’s probably not too thrilled with the way Walk gets the message out. Certainly not thrilled enough to do the time for him.

The key missing ingredient in the story is, what union is it that inspired such fervor in Mr Walk? While this kind of behavior seems to be part and parcel of the union mindset, we’re guessing the Teamsters. It seems to fit their reputation and history.

Now, while Walk’s motivations seem impure, his use of an improvised weapon should be a lesson to all. As should his choice of an improper occasion to want a weapon.

So once you are going to be in a fight, getting armed is smart. But, getting in a fight you didn’t need to is stupid, and at that point, arming yourself is just increasing the depth of the hole you’re digging for yourself. For these are Laws, and they are enforced remorselessly by the Gods of the Copybook Headings.

Thought Jimi was a badass Hendrix? Meet Kent.

Kent’s a martial arts instructor. He’s also a middle-aged guy, a Mormon bishop (something we think is a little less exalted and hoity-toity among the LDS than, say, a Catholic or Episcopalian bishop), and a guy who really wants you to get off his lawn. Especially if you’re beating up some lady on there.

Kent Hendrix woke up Tuesday to his teenage son pounding on his bedroom door and telling him somebody was being mugged in front of their house. The 47-year-old father of six rushed out the door and grabbed the weapon closest to him — a 29-inch high carbon steel Samurai sword.

He came upon what he describes as a melee between a woman and a man. His son stayed inside to call 911 while he approached the man along with other neighbors who came to help. The martial arts instructor didn’t hesitate in drawing the sword and yelling at him to get on the ground.

“His eyes got as big as saucers and he kind of gasped and jumped back,” Hendrix said by phone Tuesday afternoon. “He’s probably never had anyone draw a sword on him before.”

via Samurai sword-wielding Mormon bishop comes to aid of woman being attacked | Fox News.

Well, yeah, we reckon. What were we saying, just this week, about self-defense being a matter of mind more than weapons? Yeah, that thing. As the perp fled, Hendrix, who had enough information for the cops to track him down, yelled “You are so done!” at the retreating miscreant.

Who showed a considerably meeker side as he crept into the police station to turn himself in on multiple charges.

You really need to Read The Whole Thing because the Fox News writer had as much fun with it as we’re having.

Now, we don’t recommend a sword as a first-line weapon — you could be the guy who brought a sword to a gunfight, which really puts a premium on your kendo skills.