I’ve just been talking about natural disasters in the Midwest. Disasters hit other places, of course, and, in some of them, the reaction by the populace is vastly different from the relative calm and common sense Midwest people seem to exhibit. Look at New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. It was not only proof of how inept FEMA is when it comes to dealing with disaster, but it also showed what can happen when the local populace considers this sort of disaster as an invitation to help itself to other peoples stuff. It also demonstrated that local police will leave their post, and that still others will seize the only means of defense (the gun) from the defenseless (like 67-year-old women living alone and armed with a .38 revolver).
In Katrina or L.A. riot-type situations, it is much more likely you will need to at least brandish that firearm. “Brandishing’ is a term used in some state or local laws that means, in reference to weapons, “to wave or flourish menacingly,” and in those locales, it also generally means that doing so is illegal in many circumstances. In some places, such as Washington, D.C, brandishing is likely illegal no matter what the reason. In other places, brandishing a firearm or other weapon is permissible if it was done in the lawful defense of yourself or others. I bring all this up to point out that merely brandishing a firearm is often enough to change the thinking of individuals and groups bent on committing a crime against you. In the L.A. riots, it was enough for the Korean store owners to merely brandish their firearms (mostly) without having to fire a shot, for you see, the criminal element is far more fearful of an armed civilian than an armed cop. They know that the police go through extensive amounts of training to find creative ways to deal with their criminal activity without shooting antagonists with anything worse than pepper spray or a Taser. Just watch the episodes of Cops or any other reality law enforcement show. How many times do you see an officer actually fire a gun on camera? I think I’ve seen it exactly once, and I have watched Cops from its inception. I’m sure there are other times I may have missed gunplay, but the act of police officers shooting criminal suspects just doesn’t happen very often, especially when you consider the number of times police are called to deal with wayward members of the public.
On the flip side, the criminal element knows that civilians have not gone through anywhere near the same amount of training that law enforcement officers do. And the majority of training participated in by civilians who can afford it deals how to shoot people better, not how to avoid shooting them. You, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Civilian, are an unknown quantity to them. Criminals have no idea how you will react to their predations beyond that your tolerance level will likely be far lower than a cop’s. You the civilian are not likely to hear the comments we hear, like, “What are ya gonna do, shoot me?” when you point a gun at them. What you are likely to hear are their feet moving quickly in a direction away from you.
It doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes you will have to shoot a criminal bent on doing you in, or at least at them, to get their attention and turn it away from you. Just look at the compilation of accounts in the “Armed Citizen” column of the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, as I have since age 15 or so. At least 50 percent of the accounts, sometimes more, reveal that brandishing works much of the time—but be prepared if it doesn’t. You should never point a firearm at a person hoping to just scare them off. You must be willing to pull that trigger if need be.
Perfect Practice
There are a lot of ways to train to become expert with your cache of firearms. Paper or steel target shooting at basic square ranges is better than nothing and certainly has its place in getting down the basics of marksmanship. If you can afford to take advance courses like those offered at Gunsite, Thunder Ranch, or TDI here in Ohio, take advantage of it, but don’t think it is a necessity. Read materials from well-known experts such as the late Col. Jeff Cooper (I learned to shoot a handgun and shoot it well just by following the directions in one of his books from the 1970s), or others like Bill Jordan. I also commend to you the book On Combat by Col. David Grossman, which explains the intricacies of deadly combat and what you may experience in those situations.
Dry-fire practice and become so familiar with your weapons systems that you can operate (including field stripping) your weapons even in the dark. Dry-fire saves ammo. (Just don’t do that with your rimfire guns, as there’s a strong probability you’ll break a firing pin).
To be most effective, your survival weapons should be of limited types. This doesn’t mean that the only rifles you can have are ARs. It just means there shouldn’t be a bunch of different action types involved. There’s nothing wrong in my book with relying both on AKs and ARs, which would be only two weapon types to be proficient with. But start throwing in bolt guns or HK- or FN-style weapons on top of your preferred type and you’re setting yourself up for human-induced malfunction. I think I’m pretty good with operating just about any type of commonly encountered action system out there for small arms, but that’s under normal day-to-day conditions. It is not while fighting for my life under extreme stress. Ideally, I would want to work with only one type of system per weapon, be it rifle, shotgun, or handgun.
We have all heard that practice makes perfect, but I’m here to tell you that is wrong. It’s “perfect practice that makes perfect,” which means that, if you’re doing stuff wrong, you are ingraining bad habits into your patterns of behaviors and skills—and you will perform as you have trained.
When it comes to firearms training, it is not a matter of round count (“Yea, dude, I just blew up 1,000 rounds at the range today—there wasn’t a beer can left in sight!”), it’s the rounds that count. In other words, you’re going to learn to be judicious in your training. Each round you send downrange must be effective. When the time comes, you can’t afford to spray and pray to get the job done, not because of the danger to innocents per se, but because you won’t be able to run to your favorite gun store the next day and get more ammo.
In addition to constantly striving to put round after round through the same hole with your survival weapons at all the distances you train, there are two other particular areas I think make good basic range training. These are weapon transition drills and magazine retention.
Addressing the first one, you need to train to switch from one weapon to another in case of a weapons failure. For instance, at CQB ranges, it may be quicker to switch from an empty or jammed AK or AR to the holstered backup pistol until you can obtain some distance from your threat and find cover to fix the problem. So, at varying distances, load and fire a few rounds from your shotgun, AR, or AK for example, (five to 10 rounds is good, avoid two-shot drills), and then sling or simply hold onto the empty or “jammed” gun with one hand, draw your pistol, and fire four controlled rounds on your target or targets from the pistol. You should learn to transition from the pistol to the long gun, as well. Vary the round counts and distances. The use of cover should be incorporated into all your training if you can.