Category: Carrying / Self-Defense

Most training courses these days spend a lot of time on basic gun safety, and on the legal instances where one can and cannot use deadly force. These are important things. I’ve never been through Texas’s course, but there’s not much discussion over how to carry a gun, and what kinds of guns are appropriate for carry. This also seems important.

It seems when we hear of stories like this, they are quite often derringers that don’t have the appropriate safety features to be suitable for concealed carry. They also seem to be often carried without a holster, in purses or pockets. People who legally carry guns need more information about how to safely carry; in a holster, with a gun that has appropriate safety features.

Every single incident like this becomes a tool for the other side to use to argue against citizen carry.

Truth About Guns has a report on a new type of self-defense ammunition. I’m not convinced it’s going to work out all that well in the field, just because the logic of it doesn’t work for me. I’ve heard what generally stops a gunfight is being able to land hits that shatter bone and penetrate vital organs and tissues. This is hard enough for pistol rounds to do reliably when they are a single, large mass.

Think about an extreme example of this being bird shot. You’d be far better off shooting someone with a slug than with bird shot. You’re probably better off with the bullet staying in tact too. You don’t want to shoot through the target, but there are probably better ways to solve that problem than breaking up the projectile.

Very good comment, rare for HuffPo, I think, over at Prof. Adam Winkler’s post talking about Dr. King’s guns:

Pacifism and non-violent activism have little in common, which perhaps explains the author’s confusions. Pacifism is a personal ethic adopted for a variety of reasons but generally not particularly well respected since it places a higher value on personal moral vanity than it does on making the hard choices in critical moments; no one appreciates the pacifist who stands by while you are attacked just because they don’t feel like doing anything that might sully their principles regardless of the consequences to others. Non-violence on the other hand is a conscious choice to refrain from violence even though it is a completely viable option; it is part of a deliberate commitment to risk oneself for the sake of accomplishing something for oneself and others, not merely a personal desire to be something for personal reasons. The key point is that non-violence is conscious restraint in the course of an active project whereas pacifism is just self indulgence and indifference to what’s happening around you. Non-violent activists make the decision from a position of strength and judgment while pacifists are just blindly adhering to an ideal which conveniently disguises their moral and physical weakness and indifference. There’s no problem with a practitioner of non-violence being *capable* of violence or even willing, should the situation force his or her hand, to forgo one principle in favor of doing something to ameliorate a bad situation even if it’s not the purest most special ideal response.

That’s an interesting way of looking at the distinction. The Civil Rights Movement was correct to be committed to nonviolence, but it was not a pacifist movement.

From Slate:

But before we embrace Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!’ ”

But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out…

The Arizona Daily Star, based on its interview with Zamudio, adds two details to the story. First, upon seeing the man with the gun, Zamudio “grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall” before realizing he wasn’t the shooter. And second, one reason why Zamudio didn’t pull out his own weapon was that “he didn’t want to be confused as a second gunman.”

This is a much more dangerous picture than has generally been reported. Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to fire when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his weapon

In my opinion, Zamudio exercised better judgement than many police officers would have. He should be commended for that. Not turned into a poster child for gun control by people who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Any guy willing to run towards the sound of gunfire, and exercises good judgement, is OK in my book. Radley Balko is also indignant.

Looks like there was someone there:

After all, when he realized there was an incident occurring at the Tucson Safeway supermarket Saturday where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a constituent event, Mr. Zamudio thought he could help, since he was legally carrying a 9 mm semiautomatic.

“If I’d gone down there sooner, maybe I could have shot him myself,” Mr. Zamudio, age 24, said in a phone interview Sunday night.

Mr. Zamudio, who works at a Tucson art gallery, was at a nearby Walgreen’s buying cigarettes when he heard the shots and immediately turned and ran toward the commotion. “In that moment, I didn’t think about it. I just reacted.”

He saw the blank face of the suspected shooter—”almost a smirk.”

By the time Mr. Zamudio was in close range, others had wrestled the suspect to the ground. Mr. Zamudio helped hold him down.

Didn’t quite get there in time. No doubt our opponents would say this was a dangerous individual trying to be a hero, and only would have racked up more bodies in his incompetence, but if one wants to be a hero by shooting someone who is actively murdering a crowd of people, including children, go right ahead.

The media seems resigned to the fact that this is going to pass. It points out some history of Florida’s law I was not familiar with:

Florida was, at the time, struggling to counteract tourist-scaring national media coverage of crime in the state, earning a Gunshine State tag in TV shorthand. In the week after the effective date of the conceal-carry law and the supposed end of prohibitions against open-carry, a number of activists walked around with holstered pistols. Lawmakers felt the need to act quickly, and did so. Gov. Bob Martinez signed the open-carry prohibition as soon as he got it.

I remember the media hysteria when Florida passed this law, and I was 13 when it happened, just to give you an idea of how nuts it was. In other words, in the midst of everyone panicking about the idea of people legally carrying guns, the politicians panicked that a tourist might see a gun. I seem to recall during that time German tourists, in several high profile cases, got to spend the last few minutes of their lives looking down the barrels of guns by criminals who were carrying them despite the prohibition on the practice. I also had heard at the time that car jacking in Miami was becoming so commonplace that there were certain places you’d probably rather risk the ticket and run the lights than stop.

Well, an amazing thing happened after Florida became one of the first states to make the leap: nothing really changed, except for tourists not getting shot and car jacking going down. Open carry is probably always going to be uncommon, no matter what the law is, if that’s what they are really concerned with. But it should be among the available choices.

This article talks about how Oklahoma won’t be affected by the new Amtrak rule on guns, because there’s no Amtrak service that checks luggage that services the state. But the line only goes to Texas. Since Texas and Oklahoma have reciprocity, what’s to stop someone from carrying on Amtrak? In other words, is the ban just Amtrak policy, or is it federal law that you can’t carry on Amtrak? Not something I’ve ever had cause to look up because I a) don’t travel on Amtrak, and b) any Amtrak lines I would consider taking go through Maryland or New Jersey and New York.

Apparently this includes the revelation that shooting from a holster is more difficult than carefully aiming your shots. This is also an argument for not allowing police to carry guns. But I forgot police have magical gun powers to anti-gunners that the rest of us can’t possibly have.

I was puzzled by Miguel’s question here, since cold weather usually makes carry easier for this Yankee:

OK, so how the heck do you carry up North? Grant you we don’t have the clothes so we work on the 17 layers of Hawaiian shirts and Guayaberas to achieve insulation, WalMart has been smart enough to import long johns from other stores and it is a problem to be wearing 6 pairs of socks with flip flops or sandals. This bulkiness leaves very little room for the regular carry gear I use.

Oh hell, I’ll freeze.  I’ll practice dry firing with stuffed oven mittens a bit later.

For you southern folks who may not experience extreme cold very often, the trick is to get a good, versatile winter coat. A winter coat hides the gun on your hip much more effectively than a light jacket or a shirt. Coats also tend to have more pockets for things like flashlights, OC, blades and spare magazines. Accessibility is achieved by wearing a thick enough outer shirt that you can leave the coat open. If you zip the coat up, obviously accessibility becomes a problem. If it does get so cold that you have to bundle up, a pocket gun with a decent pocket holster in the outside pocket of a coat jacket works well. Some people even like a snubby in a jacket pocket because you can fire it straight through the pocket, though I don’t know how you’d practice that, so I’ve never considered doing it.

If you carry a Glock like I do, with the right kind of gloves, you can shoot just fine and still keep your hands warm. You won’t have as much feel for your grip or the trigger, so it takes some practice. It can be done though. I don’t look forward to winter, but I do look forward to having more flexibility in terms of carry that a winter coat brings you.