Wow. A couple stories recently, both from the same general geographic area (that is NOT Massachusetts), that have me shaking my head.
Tam's got a (possibly apocryphal) story about an OC'r being "taught a lesson" by an imbecile.
Caveats out of the way first: Tam's story is related third-hand, and there are elements that are of the "convenient truth" variety. Could the story be true? Absolutely. Could it be embellished? Absolutely. The link goes to another thread, but the jist of the story is that Dude 1 is in a gun store, doing gun store things (if he's anything like me, he was trying to keep the contents of his wallet inside his wallet rather than handing over pictures of dead presidents to the nice gunstore people). He's also open carrying. Dude 2 sees him OC'ing, apparently decides to "teach him a lesson", and goes over, takes Dude 1's gun out of Dude 1's holster, clears it, and puts it down on the counter.
Again, caveats apply - we're assuming everything went down more or less as relayed here. Discussion on the event varies widely, with some pointing out the need for retention training, others focusing on the myriad ways this could have gone epically bad, and others still commenting on Dude 1's lack of awareness. Look, Dude 2 made a total dick move, end of list. If Dude 1 is anything like me, he's been to that gun store a few times. He knows the people there. He's allowed to relax his guard a little, because he's among folks he knows can back him up.
Dude 2 needs to keep his damn hands to himself before someone hurts him.
Mr. B had a run-in with one of Indiana's "finest" who had best edumacate himself about the law on OC in IN toot sweet.
About the only thing I can add to Mr. B's excellent AAR of the event is Bravo, sir. He handled the situation - and himself - perfectly given what happened. As for reporting the officer, my advice would be to call it in. His supervisor should have a talk with him about the legality of open carry, but more importantly about how to approach suspicious people - had Mr. B been a goblin, that'd be a dead cop right now. He obviously thought that his "Only One" status granted him superpowers - glad to see that Mr. B set him straight on that point...
Bottom line: Stay safe out there, folks - there's a lot of stupid floating around.
That is all.
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15 comments:
Anybody want to give odds that Mr. B's dance partner has not already been to the magistrate and secured a warrant for terroristic attempted murder of mass destruction against an Only One?
And some folks wonder why I'm a curmudgeon.
stay safe.
I respectfully disagree with your conclusions about the gun store take-away situation. If it went down as you paraphrased then while guy #2 was an asshole for doing what he did, that should open everyone's eyes who carries (openly or concealed) that there are bad guys, as well as peckerwoods, out there who will try to take your firearm away from you should they realize you have one.
There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, pistol retention is your responsibility if you choose to carry. You should never be that relaxed that something like that can happen without you making an extreme effort to retain the pistol and then, if it was taken away, to take it back from the other guy or make it inoperable while he is holding it (and/or shooting him with your back-up).
Pistol retention is something in which those of us, who you call "the only ones", have been trained (well those of us in agencies with decent firearms programs). I think anyone, not just LEOS, who carries has the responsibility to learn, practice and think pistol retention whenever carrying. There is no such thing as a group of "only ones", except in people's imaginations, when it comes to the responsibilities that go with firearms.
I, for one, am a stickler for it. While knowing how to do it, and practicing it, do not assure you will always be able to successfully defend against a take-away attempt, those things go a long way to keeping your pistol secure (as does a retention level holster above friction only). Retention techniques and a holster with a simple retention device saved my life on at least two and possibly three occasions. I mean that most literally - twice on the job and once while among friends when one of them tried to see if he could get it away from me simply because he was a peckerwood. Although he was a muscle boy and me a skinny wimp (at the time), I retained it and he never tried again. Believe me that 'friendly' take-away attempt came out of the blue while I was in a pretty relaxed state.
Think of it all this way - just because the other guy is wrong in trying something like a take-away, as was the guy in the store, it does not mean you are any less responsible for retention or that you should not make every attempt to retain your pistol. You can fault guy #2 all you want, yes he was wrong, but you can howl that at the moon for a month of full moons, the thing is he did succeed in taking it away from guy # 1 and seemingly, in part, due to guy #1 not practicing good pistol retention techniques. Regardless of the other guy, if you carry, it is your responsibility to retain your pistol or to try to take it back or make it inoperable once the other guy has it.
I recently wrote a blog post about holster retention levels but these latest incidents may have me write up retention techniques.
I must say, it was certainly nice to see how Mr. B essentially took defensive actions to successfully retain his pistol.
All the best,
Glenn B
The difference in the two stories is one guy was prepared to retain his weapon and one was not.
Get some retention/disarm training if your going to cary a firearm.
My 15 minutes of fame was when Shooting Gallery filmed a William April class . I would recomend his class to anyone.
Gerry
I honestly don't know how to feel about this.
I agree that some level of retention/awareness/training is needed.
I also think that randomly grabbing at someone's gun is great way to get shot/stabbed/the holy shit beaten out of you.
Just because the lesson is worth learning does NOT give someone the right to touch someone else's shit.
What if the holder *HAD* retention training?
Dude #2 could VERY easily have wound up DRT - and then what?
He's dead because he's a fucking asshole, Dude #1 is defending himself from murder charges, the gun store is closed indefinitely because it's a murder scene, and the antis have been handed a fundraising scenario gift wrapped.
All to teach someone a lesson?
No, I'm sorry, there are MUCH better ways to handle things.
Now...
With all that said...
I agree with you that - even in a "friendly" place - Dude #1 should have been paying better attention. EVEN with that level of awareness, he should have done SOMETHING the instant he felt someone grab for his gun.
There are bad people out there. We need every advantage we can get.
+1 what skidmark said. Or, if the twit realizes in a day or so that he pulled something during that altercation and needs to go to the doctor, what are the odds that Mr. B suddenly finds himself facing "assault on an LEO" charges - usually a felony - just so that the idiot can put the doctor's visit on worker's comp?
Mr. B's word vs. a cop's word? The first one on the record has the advantage. If I were him, I would try to see if I could get a copy of any security camera footage that might have caught the incident, too, just to CMA.
He actually utilized physical force against a cop. It doesn't matter if the cop was clearly in the wrong or not, without evidence in his favour, that cop now has the power to completely fsck up Mr. B's life forever. Reasonable precautions are imperative.
Jay,
Mr. B didn't kill anyone and retained his weapon.
Gerry
Yes, yes he did. And that cop's lucky that Mr. B wasn't carrying a BUG.
People can and have been shot - by cops and non-LEO alike - because they were reaching for the toter's weapon.
If someone's grabbing for the pistol on my belt, I'm assuming that they have nefarious intent. If they take my gun away from me, then they have a gun and I don't (well, theoretically...). My attempts to stop them from taking my gun could be, quite literally, a fight for my life.
Again, as I've mentioned in my Dead Goblin posts, we do not have "Intent-o-meters". We have no idea of knowing if the person reaching for our gun is a David DoGooder out to edumacate us about the eeeevils of open carry/weapon retention/superiority of Pastafarianiasm, a cop looking for the element of surprise on a "man with a gun" call, or a violent criminal hoping to take our gun away from us and use it against us.
It boggles my mind that this is such an issue.
(Okay, I'm expanding a bit here. I know sometimes I'll use a post or a comment as a springboard. This is one of those moments...)
Is that shirttail really, in the grand scheme of things, that big of a deal? Are Hawaiian shirts a panacea?
Is the simple act of covering up one's firearm going to placate all the Fearful Freddies out there?
Which is pretty funny, considering that criminals don't open carry...
Gerry,
"Mr. B didn't kill anyone and retained his weapon."
The guy is lucky that his retention technique didn't involve trapping the offending hand and slashing across the forearm with a weak-side carried fixed-blade knife.
Tam and Jay,
I'm not defending stupidity. Tam on your blog I did state I like the filleting some off your pistol with a sharp knife.
My point which I must have stated poorly, is that strapping on a pistol certainly doesn't mean folks won't try and steal it from you. In fact there appears a small percentage of folks who just want to see if they can get it away from you for shits and giggles.
As a large perecentage of LEO's are shot with their own weapons I'm not buying the retention holster makes all that much difference. I have had instructors that took blue guns out of Level 2 holsters just as fast as my IWB.
I wish people would just consider what they can do to defend themselves from a weapon snatch regardless if is drunk Uncle Bob or Sum Dude with felony on his mind.
Deputy Dog got off light. No broken or bleeding body parts.
Gerry
Actually, the gun store is where you need to have your guard up the most. Yes, the people who own it may be friendly's, but the next time you are in one look around. Do you know everyone there? Look to see how many of the 4-rules are being violated.
Case-in-point: The store I frequent has a few "floor model" displays. These are usually older rifles and shotguns. I see people pick these up and handle them without clearing the breech. Who's to say a AH did not pick one up and slip a shot shell into it just for fun. You want to risk your life because this a friendly place?
He "bumped into me".
That is the Official Story. It must be true, 'cause he said it. I see it differently though.
And, for those who didn't catch it, he wasn't in uniform.
Had I not been able to put him under control with the wrist lock, I had other options BESIDES the firearm. I am glad that none of them had to come into play.
He, actually, handled his fuck-up well, with no resistance (he actually relaxed a bit in the wrist lock) and announcing himself as a police officer immediately after things got fun.
I see it as a lesson for me. Nothing more.
Mr. B:
Well done, sir -- although I agree with the other posters here that things could have gotten ugly for you, had your Police School Valedictorian decided to make trouble for you.
You're lucky he didn't, and he's lucky that he got an attack of brains to the head and decided to Make It Didn't Happen. And it's very much to your credit that, in spite of how well you handled the incident, you're treating it as a learning experience for YOU.
In re the first incident: I'm trying to imagine the state of mind of the gun-grabber/wannabe-Jedi-master. (1) He sees a kid carrying openly. (3) He reaches for the kid's gun, in an attempt to teach the kid a lesson. What was he thinking in between the two? Is he an opponent of open-carry in general (in spite of the fact that this was, apparently, a place where OC is legal)? Was the kid doing something to indicate that his gun could easily be taken, and if so, what?
I cannot conceive of a step (2) in this scenario that makes any kind of sense. The gun-grabber can move fast, to be sure... but he's still very lucky to be alive.
Jay,
If the guy in the shop, guy #1 had retention training, maybe he would have beaten guy #2, or shot him, or whatever, and that may well have been a very good thing. There was no excuse for that guy, #2, being such a peckerwood. I was not making excuses for him, never would for a guy like that unless he had a brain tumor or something like that making him act irationally. Otherwise, as you say, stupid should hurt, at least real stupid like that. My whole point is that we need to protect ourselves against assholes like him and against real bad guys we may encounter who try to take our guns. Think of it like this, what is the point of carrying if you are going to let a bad guy take it away and shoot you with it all because you did not want to learn how to retain it. I am not faulting guy # 1 because guy number 2 was an asshole and did something really stupid but what would have been the result if an escaped and desperate convict had done it. I would only fault number 1 for not being prepared, carrying a pistol is only about a quarter of it. There is a lot more that goes with it.
All the best,
GB
Glenn,
I suspect that you and I are *very* closely aligned on this issue, just a half-a-hair off meeting dead center in the middle...
" just a half-a-hair off meeting dead center in the middle..."
Facial hair.
:-P
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