Brazil To Vote On Firearm Sales Next Sunday: Article portrays widespread disagreement over the upcoming referendum that seeks to ban sales of firearms to private citizens. http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/10/15/tough_clash_ahead_in_brazil_referendum_to_ban_guns/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News --- Some Troops Get CQB Training: Article contains vague descriptions of close-quarters rifle training provided to Signal Corps soldiers preparing to cross into Iraq. Note the the Army uses private contractors to provide this training. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1016kuwaittrain16.html --- A Word From Our Sponsor: Since John Farnam took on the issue of competition shooting this week, I felt it might be appropriate to share this article that I wrote a few years ago, which may be new to some of the newer members of the list: The following article was originally written as a series for a shooting club newsletter. It is not intended to belittle those who enjoy the action pistol sports. Rather, it is an effort to create tactical awareness among those who may use a firearm in self-defense by comparing examples from the different arenas. The article has been published previously in the SMITH & WESSON ACADEMY NEWSLETTER.. DOUBLE TAPS: A staple of the IPSC crowd, the double tap has two sets of problems on the street: When faced with a single assailant the best course is to shoot until the threat ceases. If the assailant goes into surrender mode after the first shot, the second shot is no longer justifiable. If the assailant is still charging you it is foolish to pause after the second shot. When faced with multiple assailants it makes more sense to put a round into each aggressor as quickly as possible, then go back and place more rounds into anyone who is still a threat. About ten years ago there was actually an incident in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where an IPSC-shooting cop went up against three assailants. He double-tapped the first two and was shot and killed by the third. Had he shot each assailant once initially he might have had a better chance of prevailing. SCORING BY THE CLOCK: Virtually all of the action pistol sports use a timer. Speed is certainly a useful attribute in a gunfight, although it is worth remembering the words of Bill Jordan, "Speed is fine but accuracy is final." I'm not trying to discourage people from developing speed in placing accurate fire on the target. My concern is when rewarding the shortest time over a course of fire encourages people to do things like leaving cover and reloading on the move. If the cardboard targets or steel plates were shooting back, would you want to leave cover with an empty gun? Even if you have a high-capacity gun and it isn't empty yet, wouldn't you rather have the gun fully loaded when circumstances dictate your move to the next piece of cover? What if you get shot in the leg and can't make it to the next piece of cover? MOVING TO COVER: Most sport shooters try to shorten the distance to the target to make the shot easier. Couple this with shooting against the clock, then set up a stage where the shooter starts in the open and has to move to cover which is somewhere downrange. Most competitors will run directly to the point where they intend to shoot, on a straight line. Years ago the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center disseminated a concept known as the "FLETC L." If you're really under fire, you want to get the cover between you and your assailant as quickly as possible. Move laterally to get behind the cover, then turn, making an "L," if you need to move closer to the cover. DISTANCE FROM COVER: Most sport shooters try to shorten the distance to the target to make the shot easier. Most sport shooters have also learned to use "barricades" to gain support to steady the gun. One IPSC-style shooting academy teaches resting the back of the support hand on the side of the barricade when shooting from the gun-hand side of cover. First of all, this technique will usually expose greater than 50% of your body to the target, but that's all right when your target is just a piece of buff-colored cardboard. Secondly, if the target and the cover were real, shots fired by the target could "skip" off the side of the cover, such as a wall surface parallel to the direction of the incoming fire, and strike you if you were within six feet of the cover. For this reason people who train for the real world generally try to leave at least six feet of space between them and cover which is large enough to permit it. LATERAL FAULT LINES: To protect the competitor from hostile fire from cardboard or steel targets, most action shooting sports which use cover in scenarios place fault lines to the side of the cover. If your foot strays over the fault line you lose points. If your head and body hang out there, that's okay. Cardboard and steel targets generally stay in one place whereas people intent on harming you move around. If you're in an upright position it's not likely that your foot will project noticeably wider than another part of your body. People who train to deal with targets that shoot back will usually "slice the pie." This means that if they are approaching a doorway or a corner they will stay back about six feet, keep the gun in a low ready position of some sort and inch themselves past the edge of the cover. Every inch yields a new fan or pie-slice of view and if a threat is found in one of these slices, the gun rises and the shot is taken. If they were to insist on hiding the feet while incrementally exposing head and body, they would merely place themselves off balance at a time when balance might be very valuable. RIGHT TO LEFT OR LEFT TO RIGHT: Most right-handed sport shooters, when faced with a bank of targets, will shoot them from left to right. When faced with real threats, you want to shoot the most immediate threat first. This is going to be a split-second judgment, but those come easier if you have dealt with them in training. However, in cases where two or more threats are of comparable urgency and similar distance, it makes sense to protect your gun side first. An awful lot of gunshot wounds are to the gun hand, the arm of the gun hand or the shoulder of the gun hand. Eliminating or reducing the threat on your gun side increases the likelihood of being around to finish the fight. For a right-handed shooter this means that when you've got a bank of targets it makes more sense to shoot from right to left. --- From John Farnam: 10 Oct 05 One of our students, a rancher in Colorado, gives this account of a shooting incident in which he was involved last week: "Per your recommendation, I've been carrying a S&W M57 revolver in 41mg caliber while going about my duties on our ranch. Glad I had it! Last week, a belligerent cow charged me as I was riding a four-wheeler. She hit me broadside, toppling the vehicle and sending me sprawling on the ground. As I looked up, she was coming at me. My training kicked in! I drew, found the front sight, and fired without hesitation. The single round struck her in the head, several inches below the eye line. She immediately broke off the attack and stumbled backward. One shot was all that was necessary. She expired a short time later. I don't like to have to shoot livestock, but, in this case, it was necessary. Glad I was armed, trained, and willing to do what was necessary to keep from getting hurt. I never anticipated anything like this would ever happen to me!" Comment: "Readiness" is a term that embraces many aspects of personal commitment to victorious living. Being "ready" involves personal preparedness, training, and a mental commitment to boldly confront any threat with decisiveness and a willingness to commit to action. Good show, my friend! /John (To alter a line from Candid Camera, trouble usually comes when you least expect it. While I, personally, would probably not carry a .41 Magnum on the street, a .38 Special would probably not have worked on an angry bull or cow - choose your equipment on the basis of you best assessment of possible threats.) 12 Oct 05 Tough times require tough attitudes, from I WAS A SOVIET GUERRILLA, by Leo Heiman: "After showing us how to strip the rifle and reassemble it after cleaning, a Russian, named Lionka, declared that a rifle was a partisan's best friend and, indeed, his whole family: 'You sleep with your rifle, 'he said, 'as you sleep with your wife. You treat it with respect, as you treat your parents, and you care for it, as you care for your children. In return, you get all the service you need. Try to put a rifle aside when you sleep, and you'll wake up only to find it stolen. Try to handle it without respect, and it will shoot you accidentally! Fail to clean it, and it will jam at a critical moment when only shooting can save your life. Remember lads, never eat or sleep without your rifle at your side!'" Comment: The world is cascading, headlong, toward exciting times, once more. Tough men, with the correct attitude toward their weapons and other critical gear, will live through it. Grasseaters will not! Tough attitudes must be acquired during training. Soft, sterile, "let's pretend" training will not produce tough people who know how to use, and live with, deadly weapons. What is "too dangerous" to do routinely during training, is indeed too dangerous to do at all! /John (While I don't believe in restricting the training that I offer to those who can meet a military standard of toughness, I certainly agree that if it's not safe to do something in training, it's not safe to do it on the street. While I cannot currently provide targets at all angles, my students move safely in directions with loaded firearms in their hands.) 13 Oct 05 On Competition Shooting, from an Instructor: "John, you're quoted a couple of times in an article by Barrett Tillman, 'Can IPSC Get You Killed?' in the current edition of American Handgunner Tactical Annual. Interesting, but it carefully avoids the essential issue, that of the shallow, self-consumed personality that lives only for games, scores, points, times, trophies, and assorted other juvenile twaddle. Nobody wants to come out and say that IPSC, and most other shooting competition, attracts lightweight dingleberries, just as nobody wants to say that most 'qualification' exercises are little more than group masturbation with guns. Mass pretending is destructive, but we go on pretending, so politicians can continue to attract votes from grasseaters." Comment: Problems arise when gear, attitudes, and methods of competitors get mixed in with what is supposed to be legitimate "training" that is supposed to be preparing real people for genuine, lethal encounters with VCAs who are unfamiliar with the "rules!" All training, worthy of the name, produces tough, hard, heavy-hitters, both in attitude and method. Who care only about scores and personal aggrandizement rarely fill then bill. /John Comments on competition shooting from friends and colleagues: Positive: "Competition shooting does things for a practitioner that 'training' can't; ie: tests oneself against others. To learn to deal with emotions, to conquer fear of failure, to develop self-control. I agree that, when one sees competition as merely entertainment,' he is not fully 'engaged' and will continue to lack the will to be successful in a real fight. I personally see competition as one way to keep my martial spirit in tune and not allow myself to 'cruise' in training. When one trains to defeat all comers, he doesn't get lazy." "I only wish more cops would come to matches and work on their weapons skills." "IPSC and IDPA would more resemble useful training if, as is the practice at the NTI, all matches were unscored, or, if scores were not posted but only conveyed privately to individual participants. Take away self-glorification, and most dingleberries would quickly find something else to do. At the NTI, this is exactly what has happened." "We explain to the Safety Officer that we will end each exercise with a holstered, loaded pistol, and subsequently redraw and 'show clear,' as required. Of course, we never mention the always-loaded, back-up guns that we unfailingly carry concealed, and no one ever asks!" Negative: "One reason I'm still alive and free is that I have most often handled serious events alone. On rare occasions, when I took somebody along, they had to be determined and competent. I looked especially for the ability to see things through when plans went in the toilet. With all due respect, nobody I have met in the world of competition, either karate or shooting, is anyone I would ever want with me." My comments: Those who enjoy competing and breathe life into various competitive shooting disciplines render to history a great service when they relentlessly call back their heedless colleagues from the brink of irrelevance, when they remember the reason their discipline was started in the first place! Shooting disciplines which have already been lost to irrelevance, like PPC, have allowed themselves to become a little more than a grotesque, disconnected diversion. That same sad fate awaits IPSC and IDPA if those immersed in it think only in terms of short-term, personal glorification and fail to grasp their place in history. /John 15 Oct 05 Surefire's and Blackhawk's latest: Surefire is now producing handheld 'LumaMax' flashlights. They have a high-output, LED rather than a xenon/gas filament. The LumaMax L2 has a single, LED that generates fifteen lumens on low output and one hundred on high output. The L2 is longer than the Z2, but is still thin and light. With the LED, there is no central, bright area. The light field is evenly spread over a large field. As a result, you can see a good deal of lateral space without having to point the light. However, while it illuminates a large field, it does not project as far as filament lamps. If you want to see what is going on behind a tree fifty yards away, the LED light is inferior the xenon lamp. With regard to 'blinding capacity,' xenon lamps have an advantage, but only when they are pointed precisely into the suspect's eyes. The LED, while less 'blinding,' can produce night vision disruption from wider angles of aim. It is thus easier for a suspect, using lateral movement, to 'get out of' the intense light of a xenon lamp than is the case with an LED. Blackhawk's 'Gladius' flashlight also uses an LED, and it features an extremely useful 'strobe' option, where the light flashes on and off rapidly. I've found it to be extremely disorienting, in addition to blinding, for anyone at whom it is pointed. This is a great feature. Highly recommended! /John -- Stephen P. Wenger Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .