The late, great gun guru Jeff Cooper popularized the Robert Heinlein quote “An armed society is a polite society.” Polite Society a few years ago became the name of a group dedicated to responsible, professional training with defensive firearms. Led by Tom Givens, who runs the excellent Rangemaster facility in Memphis, the Polite Society hosts an annual Tactical Conference. It was held this year at the outstanding United States Shooting Academy (USSA) adjacent to the Tulsa Police Academy in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

About a hundred twenty-five men and women from all over the country attended, most also shooting the challenging Polite Society defensive handgun match. Training included live fire on the splendid range complex, under the masterful tutelage of instructors such as Will Andrews, Mike Brown, Steve Moses, T.J. Pilling, Rob Pincus, and the undercover cop known as “Southnarc.” Karl Rehn led a bloc of live-action force-on-force training.

In the classrooms, Paul Gomez addressed immediate treatment (including self-treatment) of gunshot injury. Psychologists William Aprill and Glenn Meyer gave insights from their profession as related to the world of the gun and threat management, while Skip Gochenour gave additional insights into criminal behavior. Marty Hayes delivered a powerful bloc on reducing firearms instructors’ liability; Hany Mahmoud did a superb job of clarifying the tangled world of Middle Eastern terrorist dogma; John Farnam taught an overview of the urban rifle concept; John Hearne delivered an in-depth analysis of a classic gunfight and its lessons for both armed citizens and law enforcement personnel; and this writer addressed management of wrongful accusations in court after justified use of deadly force.

Tom Givens’ Rangemaster crew did an awesome job managing the diverse Polite Society match. A live-fire shoot-house with realistic 3-D manikins was set up to duplicate a Mumbai hotel, and each practitioner had to shoot his way to the exit past “terrorist” targets sprinkled among many “innocents.” On the square range we met a fifty-round skill test of high-speed shooting free-style and with either hand only, from three to twenty yards, then a speed run on Pepper Popper falling plates, and finally a rescue scenario, all live fire.

Congratulations to the winners. Hany Mahmoud captured the backup gun match…Gail Pepin won High Lady…and 63-year-old Myrin Young used his STI Trojan .45 auto to earn the overall Polite Society Championship. If old age and treachery really do beat youth and skill, then Myrin’s combination of old age and skill may be indomitable.

I enjoyed my first Polite Society/Tactical Conference event and hope to return next year. Police instructors and SWAT operators trained and competed alongside their natural allies, the responsible armed citizens, and you can join them next year. Information can be found at the websites for Rangemaster and USSA . I hope to return to USSA this fall to compete in the National Championships of the International Defensive Pistol Association.

With dummy “baby” secured behind wheel, Mas engages targets on right out of view as Polite Society range officer holds electronic timer. Pistol is Glock 9mm with white light unit attached.

Gail Pepin fires a 9mm Glock from kneeling position during Standards phase of the event. She won the high lady award.

Psychology professor Glenn Meyer gave a dynamic lecture that tied his field into shooting and the way guns and gun people are perceived by the public and the jury pool.

Event coordinator Tom Givens, right, presents the top shooter award to Myrin Young, left.

Share or Bookmark

I’m writing this in Wheeling, Illinois, two-thirds of the way through the six-day annual conference of ILEETA, the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association. Despite the brutal hits police budgets have taken in the current economy (see my earlier blog entry on this topic), we have some 800 police instructors from California to Maine, from Washington state to Florida, and Hawaii and Alaska, and several foreign countries in attendance. I talked with several who, faced with their department’s inability to send them, paid out of their own pockets to come. It’s that important to them. They understand what it means when your department names you the one who will train your officers to survive, who will train them for the moments when they risk their lives for the citizens they have sworn an oath to protect.

People write to forums and blogs (sometimes this one, in fact) to call cops jack-booted thugs and insist that they all want to disarm law-abiding citizens. I wish some of those folks could have been here. They wouldn’t have found a JBT in sight. Only hundreds and hundreds of men and women who have sworn that oath to risk their lives for the public safety, and who take with the deepest seriousness their assignment to train others to do likewise.

I’ve heard of one police chiefs’ seminar where the gun-banning Brady organization was welcomed for a demonstration booth, but the National Rifle Association was denied one. That may happen with some politically driven police chiefs, who serve at the whim of the city fathers who appoint them, and feel a need to hew to their benefactors’ political line and dance on the end of their puppet strings. It does not happen in THIS venue, founded and directed by famed supercop Ed Nowicki. Ed was in six gunfights in the course of a career that began as a Chicago copper, and eventually took him solely into training the next generations, at various times serving as a chief of police and even as a judge. At ILEETA, the Brady types were noticeably absent, but the packed vendor hall included booths for the NRA and also for USPSA, the United States Practical Shooting Association.

Thursday afternoon, I chaired the panel of experts discussion on deadly force issues. I had been able to assemble ten superstars of police training. Dr. Alexis Artwohl, former police psychologist for Portland, Oregon and one of our leading experts on the psychological and emotional dynamics of facing violent criminals in mortal combat. Attorney and police chief Jeff Chudwin, who had the day before received the coveted Police Trainer of the Year award. Attorney Adam Kasanof, a retired NYPD lieutenant whose career included a fatal gunfight. John and Vicki Farnam, top private sector instructors in armed survival. Brian McKenna, a retired Missouri cop who has spent most of his career analyzing police shootouts. Greg Morrison, Ph.D, currently a college professor and formerly senior instructor at Jeff Cooper’s famous school, Gunsite. DEA instructor Chuck Soltys, who on the first day of the conference had won the coveted ILEETA Cup in a high-speed shooting match. Vince O’Neill, of the Oklahoma state law enforcement academy. Dr. James Williams, police surgeon and leading authority on “tactical anatomy” and treatment of gunshot injury.

One of the topics that inevitably cropped up was response to mass murders in schools and other public places. Among us was Ron Borsch, instructor at the Southeast Area Law Enforcement Academy in Ohio, who has been an advocate of “sole response” entry into such situations by the first responding officer. Though controversial in law enforcement, his theory was validated recently by the courageous 25-year-old cop who entered a mass murder scene only a few weeks ago at an old folks home, and stopped the killing with a single bullet from his Glock .40 service pistol coolly and expertly delivered to the gunman’s chest.

Borsch’s impromptu discussion revealed the fact that some 25% of mass murder shooting sprees he has researched were ended by armed private citizens. This led in turn to a discussion of the Israeli Model, in place since the Maalot massacre of schoolchildren decades ago, in which teachers and other school personnel were trained and discreetly armed with handguns, which has proven famously successful ever since in Israel. Across the ten-member panel AND the dozens of police instructors attending the discussion, not a single voice was raised against that concept, and many spoke enthusiastically in favor of it.

Don’t listen to the politically motivated figureheads. Talk to the REAL cops. They’re the ones who best understand the dynamics of violence, and of protection of the innocent from evil.

As always, this week at ILEETA has recharged my batteries, reminding me of the pride I take in the badge I’ve worn for 35 years…and reminding me, also, that these law enforcement veterans overwhelmingly respect the responsibly armed American citizen.

Ed Nowicki, the supercop who founded ILEETA

Ron Borsch, the retired SWAT cop whose research showed 25% of mass murders were ended by armed citizens.

Honor guard at opening ceremony.

Mas, left, congratulates DEA agent Chuck Soltys, winner of the ILEETA Cup. Because DEA agents may be assigned undercover at any time, Chuck’s facial features are obscured here.

The NRA law enforcement booth at ILEETA vendor expo.

ILEETA commemorative knife. Law enforcement is an armed subculture.

Share or Bookmark

A decade ago today, I was on the West Coast, teaching at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, when word reached us of the horror that was happening at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The incident left not just a deep scar on the collective American psyche, but a festering wound that has never quite healed. It’s a wound that became infected, and the infection still flares up again occasionally, with fatal results.

The initial wound was caused by two young monsters named Harris and Klebold. The recurring infections were other hate-filled losers who followed in their footsteps. I was at the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association conference outside Chicago when the twisted Cho murdered 32 helpless victims at Virginia Tech two years ago this week. Cho and other punks who did the same elsewhere in the US and in Europe cited Klebold and Harris’ rampage as their role model in the sick rants they left behind.

I was on the ground in Littleton only a few days after Columbine, to study the police response. I learned a lot of things about what happened, some of which have never been made public.

Some lessons have been learned. Armed with a 9mm carbine among other weapons they illegally possessed, the teen butchers were able to stand off the first responding police – the school resource officer and a motorcycle cop, both armed only with handguns – from a distance of some 70 yards. The third responding officer, however, was armed with an AR15 rifle, and when he started beating them at their own game, the young cowards retreated. The cops who had risked their lives pitting pistols against a long gun had tied the killers up long enough to allow countless potential victims to escape, yet would be excoriated as cowards by the clueless. Lesson: cops need patrol rifles. They’ve been widely adopted throughout American police service in the years since.

While it’s true that formal SWAT entry was made late – it takes a while for the troops to arrive and assemble – the fact is that an ad hoc team of SWAT cops from different departments had entered the building within minutes. They were hampered by many things: deafening fire alarms were blaring, they had incompatible radio frequencies, and the sprinkler system was going like an indoor monsoon. All this interrupted their communications. Incorrect reports from terrified students that the killers were exchanging clothing with victims to hide their identities, and were booby-trapping hallways full of dropped backpacks and turning them into IEDs, naturally slowed the team’s progress.

Today’s protocol is “active shooter response” by the first few arriving officers. My friend and colleague Ron Borsch created a storm of controversy in the police training field when he recommended sending the first officer in alone under some circumstances to hunt down the gunmen, but his tactic worked great a few weeks ago at the old folks home in the Carolinas. A single 25-year-old cop made his way into the building and, though he was shot in the leg himself, this young hero cop felled the gunman with a single pistol bullet to the chest and stopped the killing. Lessons have been learned here, too.

A few days after Columbine, I was on a national morning news show recommending an armed teachers’ program like the one that had and has worked so well in Israel since the Maalot school massacre so long before. (And in the Philippines, and in Peru, for that matter.) That recommendation has, for the most part, fallen on deaf ears. A shame. You’ll notice that no megalomaniacal murderer has ever been stupid enough to open fire in an armed environment such as Firearms Academy of Seattle or an ILEETA conference. Predators seek prey, and steer clear of sheepdogs. Unfortunately, by their nature, the sheep can’t distinguish between wolves and sheepdogs and seem to fear any creature with canine teeth, even those that are there to protect them.

There had been ample warnings that the two crazy young “trenchcoat Mafioso” were about to explode, but they were ignored by parents and schoolmates, by school authorities and others. Schools around the nation quietly instituted programs urging students to confidentially report such aberrant behavior warning signs, and this has nipped countless mass murder plots in the bud. This life-saving lesson got little publicity, but has saved untold lives.

The most important lesson was lost on the media. For weeks, even months after the shooting, the dead punks were all over the news, their faces on the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. It happened again two years ago after Virginia Tech. To this day, the media sends the message to every thwarted loser that all they have to do to become famous is get their hands on a gun and murder a few helpless schoolmates. But instead of looking its own culpability in the face, Big Media insists on demonizing law-abiding private citizens who own guns, instead.

Why are the most important lessons the ones that are the hardest to learn?

Share or Bookmark

While teaching in Arizona last week, I heard from friends at Gunsite Training Center that Jack Weaver had passed. The retired lawman was eighty.

Back in the 1950s when Jack Weaver was a young deputy at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, he attended the gunfight simulation matches developed in California by the legendary Jeff Cooper. The paradigm then was quick draw, one-handed shooting, but one also had to hit the target to win. Weaver experimented and discovered that he could hit fastest by drawing swiftly, taking a two-hand hold on the gun, and bringing it to eye level to rapidly aim. It proved to be the winning strategy. John Plahn analyzed the biomechanics of the isometric stance Weaver had worked out for himself, and Cooper adopted and promulgated it, naming it after Weaver. You can read the details here and here, in the excellent work of a fellow writer at American Handgunner magazine, Jeremy Clough.

The rest, as they say, was history. The paradigm changed completely: for police, for military, for armed citizens. We’ll never know how many good people survived criminal violence because they used the steadier, more accurate and controlled Weaver stance, or other two-handed stances for which the Weaver technique paved the way. I’ve heard that Jeremy’s article had made Weaver so popular that the old gentleman felt he was being treated like a rock star for the last year of his life. He well deserved it.

It is my loss that, though I knew Cooper, I never got to meet Jack Weaver. He changed a long-established paradigm. Weaver’s work undoubtedly saved untold lives.

The man Made A Difference.

These Lethal Force Institute students fire from what LFI calls the Classic Weaver stance in their final qualification at Phoenix Rod & Gun Club.

Share or Bookmark

It’s been an interesting weekend for electronic journalism related to firearms ownership. On Friday night, ABC’s “20/20” devoted its entire hour to one of the worst hatchet jobs ever perpetrated on the viewing public, titled “If I Only Had a Gun.”  On Sunday evening, “60 Minutes” from CBS somewhat restored my faith in TV reporters.

Leslie Stahl did the “60 Minutes” segment on the gun-and-ammo buying frenzy, and if you’ll forgive a cliché, I found her treatment to indeed be “fair and balanced.”  She threw hard questions at spokespersons from both sides, and she gave plenty of face time to Phil Van Cleave of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, who did a simply outstanding job of explaining such things as why buying an AR15 or something right now isn’t paranoid, because the current President has made it clear that he does indeed want to restore the “assault weapon ban” and make it permanent. CBS even showed and highlighted that segment on Obama’s own website.  Van Cleave’s logic and common sense were a breath of fresh air strong enough to blow away the usual BS.

Not so the Friday night broadcast from ABC orchestrated by Diane Sawyer. To make the point that an armed citizen would stand no chance against a single psycho gunman, the show engineered a totally “set ‘em up to fail” scenario in which some college kids were outfitted with Simunitions™ Glocks, which fired paintballs. After limited familiarization, which apparently did not include drawing the guns from concealment, the kids were outfitted with safety-strap and SERPA security holsters that they obviously hadn’t adequately learned how to draw from. These were then concealed under long white T-shirts that went down below their backsides, and clung tightly to the holstered pistols.  When a trained firearms instructor playing the role of the psycho entered the classroom and started shooting, the kids in the good guy role might as well have been wearing strait jackets.  The “gunman” also seemed to know before hand who would have the concealed weapons, because he zoomed right in on them.  They didn’t have a chance.

(Nonetheless, one bad guy role-player, an honest cop, was hit by a female student’s paintball bullet and went down. She had obviously stopped the killing.  However, in the subsequent interview and reconstruction, Ms. Sawyer managed to spin this into the armed rescuer being killed and the bad guy only wounded.)

At the end, Diane Sawyer earned the “disingenuous at best” award when she told the audience that she had looked for data showing where armed citizens had stopped mass murders, but couldn’t find any that wasn’t contradictory.

She apparently didn’t look that hard. It wasn’t that long ago that an off-duty cop with a Kimber .45 (who might just as easily been an armed citizen with a concealed carry permit) engaged the gunman in Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square Mall and stopped the murders by pinning him down until the SWAT team could get there to finish him off.  And how about Jeanne Assam, the courageous parishioner who drew her concealed and licensed Beretta 9mm and cut short a mass murder in a Colorado church by shooting the killer down like the dog he was?  Or Joel Myrick, the brave vice principal in the Pearl, Mississippi school shooting who retrieved his Colt .45 from his car and took spree killer Luke Woodham at gunpoint, ending the terror and the death toll right there?

Kudos to Leslie Stahl, “60 Minutes,” and CBS for having the integrity to show both sides of a complicated issue.  By contrast, ABC’s latest “20/20” outing with Diane Sawyer should be used in journalism school to show the students how degrading it is to their profession to disguise blatantly deceptive propaganda as an impartial news program.

Share or Bookmark