Holcomb, Kansas, late 1950s. Two vicious punks named Perry Smith and Richard Hickock invaded the farmhouse of the Clutter family. Minutes later, Herb Clutter and his wife, and their son and daughter, lay dead. In April of 1965, both of the murderers would die at the end of righteously-tightened nooses…but it would not bring back the four innocent lives they had extinguished. The killers, motivated by the erroneous belief that the prosperous farmer had a safe full of cash, left the murder scene with approximately forty dollars.

This mass home invasion murder in a rural home was the focus of Truman Capote’s classic book “In Cold Blood.” I read it as a high school kid when it came out in 1965 or ’66, and reread it over the past few weeks. I was reminded of the same stark lessons I’d seen when I first read it.

The Clutter home was not an unarmed household…but the guns weren’t where any of the victims could reach them in time. Capote wrote that the police “found some shotguns in a closet.” They didn’t do much good there when the murderers, armed with a hunting knife and a Savage 12 gauge shotgun one of the parolees had taken without permission from his parents’ home, caught Herb Clutter alone and unarmed and forced him to lead them to the bedrooms where, one by one, they bound and then murdered his wife and his son and his daughter, and Clutter himself.

A gun you can’t reach in an emergency is useless. When I read that book as a high school kid, it struck me that since I had long possessed guns in my bedroom including a loaded Colt .45 automatic, I would have had a lot more options than Clutter’s son did when the homicidal intruders entered his bedroom…and, knowing my dad, in Herb Clutter’s situation my old man’s regularly-carried Colt Cobra .38 revolver would have probably gone into action long before things got even that far.

In a lifetime among cops since, I’ve noted that investigators who piece together the aftermaths of home invasion murders tend to keep their guns on all the time after that, even when off duty in their own house, and keep them by the bed when they go to sleep.

They have learned from the helplessly-murdered dead.

The rest of us can learn from them in turn.

If an intruder’s footsteps sound outside your bedroom right now, how soon will your hand be able to reach something with which you can defend yourself and your loved ones?

Share or Bookmark

We recently kicked around the ammo shortage situation.  Here’s a look from a fresh business-oriented eye at current and short-term future availability of guns and ammo:

http://www.emissourian.com/more_news/business_news/article_b891b686-95eb-11e1-8f32-0019bb2963f4.html

Most of us shooter folk have enough guns to last us for a while – they are, after all, the ultimate in durable goods – but ammunition is a different commodity altogether.

Dunno about y’all, but I just got in a small pallet of 9mm ammo for competition and training purposes.  “Buy it cheap and stack it deep” is the mantra, but the trick these days is the “buy it cheap” part…

Share or Bookmark

We’ve all heard that amusingly hypocritical line, “Lay in a big supply before the hoarders get it all!”  Indeed, we shooters all lived through that in 2008 and for a good time after.  People who feared the Obama administration would make good on the new President’s previously declared wishes to ban assault rifles bought up every AR15 and AK47 clone in sight, and ammo was so scarce people were waiting in line to buy the six measly boxes that WalMart allowed per customer.  Some of those folks in line were gun dealers, who took the six boxes back to their own shops to sell for inflated prices.

Whether you call yourself a survivalist, a prepper, or simply self-reliant, it makes sense to “buy it cheap and stack it deep” when it’s something you need, like food or medicine.  At least in terms of ammo, it’s too late to “buy it cheap,” but since I need a continuing supply of ammunition for training and match shooting, I’m stacking it deep right now myself.  The rumor mill whispers of coming shortages, due partly to the strongly-grounded perception that the Obama administration’s anti-gun leanings will come out of the closet once he’s re-elected. There are also certain other market factors.  Foreign countries fearful of the second term President pulling US troops out of their countries are rumored to be ordering small arms ammo in large quantities from US manufacturers, who have a finite production capacity.

Much has been made of Homeland Security’s recent contract with ATK for 450 million rounds of Federal HST 180 grain hollow point ammo, caliber .40 Smith & Wesson.  I don’t see that as a harbinger of martial law and civil war as some do. Being in law enforcement myself, I’ve seen the severe shortages that have plagued even police agencies in the last several years.  The contract is for up to all those millions of cartridges, and may mean nothing more malignant than that a huge government agency wants a contractual guarantee that they’ll be able to get enough to train and qualify their people, even if their actual deliveries never come close to the top level to which that contract holds the manufacturer.

If you’re a reloader, stock up on components, particularly primers.  Keep both components and loaded ammo in a cool, dry place.  If nothing else, if inflation runs rampant and turns hundred dollar bills into toilet paper, ammo is always worthwhile for barter…

What’s you folks’ take on the situation?

Share or Bookmark

A recent white paper from Cato Institute has some good info for those who keep guns at home, or legally carry them in public, for personal protection.  Link for the document: “Tough Targets”

They’ve done their homework.

The co-authors bring good credentials to the issue.  Clayton Cramer has long been a highly respected researcher in this field, and David Burnett serves Students for Concealed Carry as PR director.
Learn how a national news magazine’s supposedly impartial roundup of “facts” in the gun control  wound up understating the frequency of justifiable homicides in defense of self or others by more than half.

Read account after documented account of law-abiding men and women and even responsible kids who, in life-threatening emergencies, picked up loaded guns and used them successfully to save the lives of themselves, of loved ones, and even of total strangers who had come under violent criminal or animal attack.

Have a read.

Get back and let us know what you think about it here at Backwoods Home Blog.

True accounts of your own experiences in this vein, or documentable experiences of others you know, are invited as well.

Oh, and don’t forget a Valentine’s Day visit to Starbucks to support that company’s refusal to ban lawfully armed citizen customers.  A $2 bill in the baristas’ tip jar signifies “Second Amendment support.”

Share or Bookmark

Two recent high profile shootings show us that sometimes, in the aftermath, things go as they should, though in only one of those actual shootings did we have what anyone could call a happy ending.

Both occurred over the holidays.  In Washington state, an Iraq war vet diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome that would normally engender our sympathy, snapped and shot four people. He fled to the boondocks, where he encountered a park ranger, a 32 year old mother of two.  He shot her to death.  The cop-killer was later found dead; it is unclear at this time whether he swallowed poison or froze to death out in the elements, or drowned. (According to one report, he was found face down in a creek. I haven’t seen the autopsy or toxicology screen yet.)

My brother at Second Amendment Foundation, Dave Workman, reports that gun owners have taken the lead in establishing an account for donations to the family of the murdered mom. You’ll find the details here: http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/stepping-forward-for-a-fallen-ranger-a-gun-rights-forum.

In Oklahoma, a man had been stalking an 18-year old mother of a baby boy. Her husband had died of cancer on Christmas day, and some of the German Shepherds she and he raised had mysteriously died – perhaps poisoned by the stalker, some theorize now. As if she had not suffered enough, the stalker and a hulking friend showed up at her door New Year’s Eve and tried to kick their way in.  The young woman armed herself, pushed a sofa against the door, put a bottle in her infant son’s mouth and called 9-1-1. The calm dispatcher advised her to do what she had to do if he made it through the door before the cops arrived.

He did, and she did. She fired a single shotgun blast as the intruder burst through the door with a foot-long hunting knife, plopping him dead on the barricading sofa. His accomplice fled, but was soon in custody. I’m told the local prosecutor has already ruled it a justifiable homicide…and the first to establish a support fund for the young mother was the local PD, the Blanchard, Oklahoma Police Department. Info is here: http://blog.newsok.com/breakingnews/2012/01/04/fund-set-up-for-blanchard-woman-who-shot-killed-intruder/.  Thanks to the retired NYPD officer and gunfight survivor who frequents this blog and sends it along.

Learning points?

n  In each case, the death weapon was a 12-gauge shotgun. Some in the anti-gun camp have already blamed the law that allows ordinary, law-abiding citizens to be armed in parks like the one where the ranger was killed, for the depredations of a madman who had already violated every law from the Sixth Commandment on down before he reached the park. I try not to use words like “idiocy” when speaking of the other side, but in this case it fits. The firearm is a tool, which carries out the will of the owner. Evil in the first case, good in the second. Yes, it IS that simple.

n  The law-abiding armed citizen and the police are natural allies. We see that clearly here, when a gun owners’ civil rights group is the first to step up with a fund for the family of the murdered park ranger…and when the local police are the first to step up to help an embattled young mom who had to kill in self-defense.

I’ll be sending out two donations tomorrow.  I hope all who can, will join me.  A lawyer friend of mine, whose specialty is appeals for citizens wrongly convicted after self-defense shootings, suggests that flowers for the Oklahoma dispatcher and prosecutor might also be in order…

Share or Bookmark