On Police Shooting Dogs.

Caleb posted about police shooting dogs. I responded there, but decided to bring it here as a post, as well.


This is an emotional topic.
I'm going to speak here as a cop, but also as an academic who has put 20 years into Criminal Justice studies. I ask that people not take this personally, and please don't take my words as those of all police.
_____________


1. Animals are property.
This one statement is going to get a lot of people riled up that I say it, but it's a fact. They are owned.  If someone takes your dog without your permission, and that person is caught, then they are charged with Theft, not Kidnapping.  Animals including dogs are bought and sold at a brisk rate.  
People know this to be a fact, but they cannot embrace it, when their dog is a family member to them. This is about emotion. Emotion, we know, is neither right nor wrong-- it simply is. But it can play merry hell with an equation built only on facts.


2. Emotions seem to trump logic.
If a cop serves a felony warrant, and uses a sledge hammer to break open a beautiful oaken door, people say, "Well, that's a shame about the door, but if the warrant was in order and the homeowner wasn't opening up, then it was time to open it however." If that same cop is met by a scared and aggressive dog that is doing what arguably is its job (protecting the household), but which is also endangering the cop with bloodshed, and the officer uses his weapon to stop what is the threat of what is, after all, property, from hurting him, the same logic often isn't used. It is short circuited by emotion.


3. Officers should not have to be bitten first.
I have been bitten on the job. I've gone to the ER and been treated and then bought new $70 uniform pants out of my own pocket, and never gotten recompensed for it. I've had dogs nip at me, and come charging into my taser and baton. I will die with clear scars left on my body that I have obtained from dogs attacking me while on the job. On a couple of occasions, I'll be honest with you: I should have shot the dog.

I have heard it said by people upset about a shooting that the dog hadn't bitten the officer yet. Given a large enough dog, a grown man can be permanently injured by a dog attack. Often it is shocking how small a dog can render lifelong injuries to a man. Without getting into breeds, we all know the breeds of dogs that are used the most for dog fighting, which are nowhere near the largest breeds. Sometimes a 40 lb dog is enough to permanently harm a man. Consider also the biological weapons in the dog's bite. Dogs left to roam and attack are often the same kind of dogs not getting their shots.


4. Officers should be trained better about dogs.
Jeff Cooper once said that a properly-trained police officer ought to be able to deal with a single dog attacking him. For the most part, I don't disagree, and that's frankly the main reason that I've never shot a dog that was attacking me while on the job. I have tazed them, and I have used my expandable baton, and I have used my steel-toed boots on them. A lot of the reason that I have not shot dogs when I would have been approved to do so by policy is because of #2, above: Emotions Trump Logic. I had a lieutenant get on to me about tazing my second dog attacking me in 2 months (both were pit bulls, and I promise you, both were in the immediate act of trying to get a mouthful of me. This wasn't a dog trotting up to check me out. One was airborne at me when the barbs hit.), because Taser cartridges are more expensive than pistol cartridges. He may have been speaking tongue in cheek, but I pointed out that I was able to resolve the problem without having our department featured in the news for "Another Cop Shoots Another Dog," and that's a win.  (Also, I was in a vey residential area, and I don't like skipping pistol bullets around if I can help it.)


I will say, though, that modern expandable batons were mostly built more as pain compliance devices than as bone-breaking weapons, and they are surprisingly ineffective at rendering incapacitating injuries. To this end, the old second-growth hickory batons were FAR superior. The main feature of an expandable baton is that it is always on the belt of an officer. Strangely, most cops seem to forget about it. That's a two-pound chunk that they carry on their belt every workday for years, but they literally forget to use it. This is frankly a training issue.


5. There are times to shoot the dog.
When there is more than one dog coming after the officer, all bets are off. It is my professional opinion that packed-up dogs attacking a person need to be met with deadly force, unless we're talking about Chihuahuas or Pekinese or teacup varieties of canines. (In which case, proper footwork is key.) 
During documented high-risk incidents, when the dog comes after an officer engaging in something that needs his undivided attention, shooting a dog may be the best option, keeping in mind #1. If the officer is swinging away with his baton to defend himself against a dog, he is not focusing on the other threats around him, be they a felon to arrest, or traffic. This last paragraph is not going to make me popular, because of #2.


6. We could bear rethinking the dog issue.
Because the dogs are such a hot topic, and so ubiquitous, we might re-think ways of dealing with them? How? I don't really know. Shin and forearm guards for warrant service where dogs are known to be come to mind, but I really question how effective they would be. I will tell you that tasers are of questionable use if you don't have a means of securing the animal while it's down. Catch poles might be a good piece of kit to bring. Dart guns are basically non-starters, because the amount of sedative that will put a dog down immediately is generally the amount of sedative that will kill the dog. Also, these things are time and resource-consuming. When you are going in to extract a felon, things need to move along rickety-tick.


For officers making a routine call upon a house for an administrative or non-emergency purpose, teaching them to survey the area before walking into the yard is worth doing. If a dog moves up aggressively, back off an call animal control.
We need to keep in mind Robert Peel's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th principles.


7. A lot of this problem could be fixed by talking to the dog owners.
I've already said that we need to do away with no-knock warrants except in hostage situations.
Knock on the door. Call them.  Tell them that you need them to put their dog up. Sometimes that's what it takes. It kills the element of surprise, but not the dog. This isn't always possible, but it's possible sometimes:
"Hello?"
"Hey, Mr. Smith? Bob Smith of 123 Any Street?"
"Yeah? Who's this?"
"This is the police. We're out front. And out back. We have a warrant for your arrest/ to search the house. We are in uniform, and in marked patrol units. We need you to put the dog away and come on out. If we have to come in, and the dog attacks us, we'll be forced to shoot the dog, and none of us ever wants that. Please comply immediately."
"Okay, I'll put the dog in the kennel/bathroom/closet. Don't shoot. I'm coming out."
This happens. Not all the time. Sometimes it's not feasible. But it does happen. Maybe it could happen a little more.


I know of one incident in which someone whom I know personally was actually held hostage by a family member of hers, who had put their pit bulls in different bedrooms around the house to prevent SWAT from entering. He was drunk, and actually fired random shots during the stand-off. He finally permitted his hostage to leave. After the hostage-taker finally gave himself up, the former hostage convinced the officers --who were going in to clear the house-- to permit her to secure the dogs. The dogs were upset and would have attacked the strangers when they entered the bedrooms unaccompanied by her. My congratulations to the flexibility and professionalism of the North Richland Hills Police Department for handling that situation the way that they did.


8. Finally, I will say that Generalizations Fail.
When we say "There is NEVER a reason to" do thus and so, we are almost always stating an error of fact.  When we say, "An officer should ALWAYS respond to X with Y" we will pretty much always be forgetting about an exception. But guidelines would be a good thing.


It would be really nice if people-- thoughtful people-- didn't have a basis to state that it looks like some cops basically just look like they wanted an excuse to fire their firearm. On the vast, vast majority of the time, it's not true. Let's be sure and make that point by finding ways to limit when we have to do so.

She's good. You should go read.

Normally, when I send folks to a URL, I mean for you to read their online stuff.*
For the past couple of days, I've been formulating in my head a book report on Kathy Jackson's book The Cornered Cat: A Woman's Guide To Concealed Carry, which I've been reading.

Kathy Jackson and I both posted a lot on TheFiringLine.com, and were co-moderators at TheHighRoad.org. She is a superb writer. She's also been training men and women to shoot in the Northwest for years. She has a lot of experience, and has thought about the issue in some new ways that I hadn't seen before.

While I was talking to Kathy at the NRA Convention in St Louis this April, Rob Pincus told me that Kathy's book is something anyone interested in concealed carry should read. I noted that, because Rob is not a girly man, and he was endorsing a pink book with a kitty cat on it.

After returning from St. Louis, the book lived in my suitcase for a few months, and when I was getting ready to head to Blogorado last week, the book came out. I've been reading it, and am half done. It's great. Seriously. Kathy points out some superb points about mindset, early on, which I will use for myself, and will pass on to others. I believe that it is Chapter Three which is called "Dying Of Embarrassment", and points out how people often permit their lives to be endangered out of fear that they will break a social more.

The book is written to be appealing to women. But that doesn't mean that it's not valuable to men. This is not a Secret antiperspirant advertisement-- it's a strong endorsement by a man who carries guns and advocates responsible self-defense. Guys, if you have to tell yourself it's for the woman in your life, then buy it, read it, and give it to her. But don't miss the chance to read it before you pass it on.

People that know me know that I don't give false compliments, ever. I wouldn't have written this if I didn't mean it.


___________________________
*But on that note: good news! Kathy Jackson has a blog, and is blogging on it lately.

Mishmash.

--Without going into details, that free iPhone tracker app works. Stick it on your kid's phone, with the settings so that only the account holder can see where it is. Also works for your own phone, if you trust the phone company with that info. Lots do, lots don't.

--My new FD bunker gear came in again, with the proper color striping on it. (It had designated me a captain, before.) It's so clean. It has no odor. No smoke or sweat or mud. It has never been anyone else's before. It has a drag strap on the back. It has my name on the back in 4 inch tall reflective letters. Between that and my professional tag over my locker, I really feel like I am a member of the team. One of the firefighters laughed and said, "Hey, you finally are somebody!" I actually kind of got that feeling, too.

--I worked a house fire recently. The ambient temperature in the shade was 101 degrees when we arrived. We fought mostly to save a portion of the house, which we did. But we lost a lot of it. Wearing an insulated suit with a cowl over your neck really makes you hot before putting on that SCBA and going into a smoke-filled hot burning building. This in turn makes you suck harder on that air. No one much talks about the cooling effect of the gas expansion from that sweet compressed air. The simple desire to get cooler can make you take bigger gasps so that a tank that should give about 30 minutes lasts about 10 minutes. Or less.

--Note to the President: With the recent murder of our US ambassador to Libya, I wonder where our recently-decommissioned FB-111s* went. Are they mothballed? Did we sell them to other countries? What would it take to re-commission them? Oh, I know that there are other planes serving their old role just fine, or better (see: B1B Lancer). But I think that the psychological impact of a Tripoli sky full of Aardvarks again would be worth something. 

With an average speed of 600kmph, it should take a hair less than 9 hours to get a flight of Lancers there. Mr. President, if you want me to believe that you're a tough guy, get off the whole "I gave the order to the guy who gave the order to the guy who told the guys to kill Bin Laden." Instead, put on your game face, pick up the phone, and convince Spanish PM Rajoy that he'll hardly notice a squadron of jets flying 5 miles over the neck of the Iberian Peninsula.

I know that you like to have crib notes, so here's your flight plan, which I made just for you:

Click To Embiggen.

--My suggestion? Drop a few hundred GPS-guided inert practice bombs on our own embassy in Tripoli. It's our soil, after all. The kinetic kill to those who hoisted the black flag over our soil will be just as real, and the message sent just as strong: "We could have made this hit using a conventional bomb, or a fuel-air bomb, or even nucs. And we did it with obsolete planes. Don't piss us off." No collateral damage. Just stack one nose cone into the fins of the previous practice bomb.

--I'm taking PADM 5010 at university this semester. "Wow, graduate Public Administration courses are so exhilarating!" said no one, ever. I'm waiting for my books to arrive. If I hadn't bought them used on Amazon, I'd have been out $250 to $400. As it is, I'm out about $100 for books for one three hour course.

--I took an off-duty job last week guarding a bridge over an interstate highway. It didn't go anywhere. I went up onto it and took a camera phone picture of the traffic going by underneath.

--When I stepped barefoot outside to get the mail this morning, I found some public works guys picking up branches and throwing in the back of a truck, so I helped them. When my shirt rode up while pitching brush, one of them laughed that I had a pistol holstered. Yeah, if I've got on pants, I do. The family of the late former sheriff and police chief Herbert Proffitt undoubtedly wishes that he had done so, to.  Proffitt was 82 and recently retired for the second time, when while checking his mail he was gunned down by a former customer of his, harboring a 40 year grudge.  It is your duty to make it hard for them to kill you, and/or your tribe. Do your duty.  Otherwise, someone else is going to have to clean that mess up, and that involves apprehending the right desperate armed murderer without getting hurt. What's the first step in dealing with a snake bite? Kill the snake.

--I'm about to try to step up for a local citizen that's without much resources. We'll see if I don't screw this up.

--My brother and I talked a bit today about religion. I was surprised at how close we were were on the subject, which we hadn't talked about in some years. But it was one of those conversations where neither one of us would have gotten upset if we had discovered that we were at opposite ends of the spectrum, either. I am happy that he and I are at this easy-going place in our relationship.

--With a high of 75 this weekend, we may have finally made it through the long hot death march of summer. But I don't trust it not to give me triple digit temperatures again, until I'm well into the second half of my second month ending with -er.

_____________________________
* Ask your National Security Advisor to get you Condi Rice's number, and ask her what these are. Don't rely on your party's defense guys to get this one right!

New gun.

I hate to see a serviceable gun maligned. I have pressed less-than-optimum guns into strange duties for years. There was time when I popped a 200 lb wild hog behind the ear with a .22 Hornet. Or the time that I carried 6" Officer Model Match .38 Special deer hunting. (Admittedly with some souped-up handloads.) I've been running around with a P3AT in my pocket, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, and considered myself armed.

So when I went up to Omaha a couple of months ago to go hunting with Vine, I was saddened to see the way he put down his Taurus M445 revolver. I had, at the time, a 5-shot airweight S&W M37 on my hip in an outside-the-waistband holster, and thought "Hey, that's not really THAT much more bulky than what I've got here."

Looking at the 2" 5-shot .44 Special Taurus without anything for perspective, you could believe that you're looking at J-frame Smith. But it's quite a bit bigger. In fact, it's precisely the same size as a K-frame.

(S&W M10 2" on top, Taurus M445 2" on bottom)

Vine ended up selling the gun to me. (My first new gun since I started graduate school.) I picked it up at my FFL last week, and the first rounds that I fired out of it were at my department firearms qualification. Yes, I'll carry this gun as an off-duty piece.

The trigger is currently too heavy. That needs addressing. I was concerned about getting holsters for it, but since it fits perfectly into a K-frame holster, that's not going to be a problem. I will probably carry Buffalo Bore Heavy .44 Special ammo in it. I need some .44 Speed Strips, but Vine graciously sent me a speedloader and a black nylon velcro and snap holster for it. I'm going to partially-bob the hammer, leaving just a nub for a retention strap (or my thumb) to get hold of.

While I have a M10 2" (on semi-permanent loan from Dad), there seems to be a serious difference between six shots of .38 Special and five shots of a healthy .44 Special. Don't believe me? Note the following pictures:

(Five shot .44 Taurus cylinder, left, 6 shot M10 .38 cylinder, right)

(Muzzle of .44 on left, Muzzle of .38 on right.)

(.44 Spl 246g HCSWC handload, left, .38 Spl SWCHP, right.)

[Click all pics to embiggen.]

Weight is about the same. We'll see how this goes.

Liar.*

*The subject of this post has since decided to begin educating himself, and seems to have reversed his general position. Good for you, Dr. Holder! The will to educate one's self about subjects that one finds distasteful shows the soul of a true academic.
__________________________
It is to be presumed that a college president would be educated on that which he speaks, yes?

So, when Kilgore College President Bill Holda states a specific falsehood, openly and directly about an occasion in recent history, we may assume that he is lying.

In this interview (the money quote starts at 01:15), Holda refers to the famous massacre in Luby's in 1991:

"...in the Luby's restaurant and others, where you had multiple shooters, innocent people were killed by other people who had concealed licensed handguns because they weren't sure who was the shooter and who was the defender."

Okay, wait a second: The October 16, 1991 Luby's shooting in Killeen, TX was pivotal in Texas handgun carrying rights history, for the very fact that there was, at that time, no such thing as a legal way for a citizen to carry a handgun for self-defense, if that citizen wasn't one of the Only Ones. In 1995, the State Of Texas responded to that very event by creating the concealed handgun license (CHL). There was ONE shooter, named George Jo Hennard, who cornered a bunch of legally-disarmed people in a crowded restaurant, and murdered them one by one.

This incident motivated Texans like nothing else ever had before, to change over 100 years of law, to permit them to pack a handgun.

I am astonished that Holda does not remember this event, which happened in his state, like it was yesterday. I certainly do. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about it (at work, doing some production art). I remember my rage at the fact that one person could take so many people down without resistance.

Imagine if, yesterday, you had heard an educator tell about how he remembered the I.E.D's going off and killing Kennedy in Dealey Plaza, right before the Migs dropped their redundant-yet deadly load of explosives on the horrified watching crowd. I mean, sure, there's some dispute by some about the method of Kennedy's death, but we can agree that he was shot in the head, and was the only man to die in the plaza that day, 47 years ago.

You would think, "there is NO WAY that a thinking human who was alive at the time could forget these details. He is lying, to push an agenda. Or he's crazy. Either way, he is not trustworthy."

I cannot believe that he was not challenged on this issue by the talking heads.
____
H/T to Tam.

A small matter of necessity.

What to do when your work is arguably as dangerous as the cops', but your job disallows you to legally carry a weapon?

In some cases, you may decide that you'll just have to risk your life, unarmed. That's your decision, but you made it.

Others, though, will decide that it's better to just quietly carry a weapon, try to avoid conflict, and deal with the consequences if they should have to use it.

Farm Girl, the small-handed woman who doesn't much like small pocket pistols, has decided that it's better to beg forgiveness than ask for permission, and is breaking a minor company policy to ensure her own safety.

She's not breaking any laws. She's not looking for trouble. She's just not willing to risk her own life, over a silly rule made by a company that she's not willing to die for.

Farm Girl is not compromising the quality of her work. She's not allowing this to affect anything else about her. She'll be just as friendly to her customers and co-workers. She'll get just as much done. It's just that she chooses to arm herself, with the smallest gun she can find, which no one will ever see, unless Things Happen.

I can get behind that.

There are other jobs, should Things Happen.

Good job, Farm Girl.

Remember, folks:

"Time Out!" only works for kids' games.

Just Call The Cops.

I recently got notification from the District Attorney's office that I didn't need to come in to testify on a Stalking case that I filed last year.

The victim had called 911 and met me at the police department. I arrived to find a distraught woman, who wanted to go inside the locked P.D. very quickly. I interviewed her, and learned that her baby's daddy, Jimmy Joe Bob, had called and threatened to kill her, and her family. He was very specific about how he was going to do it, and what tool he was going to use, and what members of her family he was going to kill. He made special mention of her new boyfriend. She knew that he would do it, she said, because she had been with him for a long time, and he was a very violent man. I checked his criminal history, and found that there was evidence to support this. While we talked, her phone blew up with voicemail messages. He left message after message, saying that he was en route from his distant town, coming to kill her and her family and her boyfriend. You could hear car noises in the background. He laughed with others, and sang little sing-song rhymes about how he was going to do this thing.

Eventually, after I had her statement, I answered one of the calls, and I talked to Jimmy Joe Bob. I explained who I was, and asked him why he had said these things. He laughed, and said he was just joking, but went on to malign her boyfriend and parents. As we talked, I could hear his vehicle slow, stop, accelerate, and continue like it had been going. I asked him where he was going, and he told me that he was going back home. He'd decided to cut his 300 mile trip short, just 40 miles from his destination: her house. She went home, alerted the family, and they set in vigil. I did some close patrols on their house. Of course, he never showed up that night.

I gathered the evidence, and put together a case and a warrant for Stalking (a State Jail felony). He was picked up, and made bond. The D.A. dropped the charge down to Terroristic Threat (Class A misdemeanor), but still continued on with the case. At the last minute, he plead for 9 months and fines. Not too bad, considering a Class A is only good for up to a year in jail, and no one ever gets that much.

This case was an unusually strong one, because Jimmy Joe Bob got talkative when he was drunk and tweaking, and he told me a lot that hurt his defense. He also left those damning voicemail messages. I don't always get such good evidence to work with.

_ _ _ _
I thought about that case, as I read my friend Don Gwinn's response to the New York Times editorial: "The Hard Work of Gun Control."

Apparently, it's ludicrous, in the mind of a N.Y.T. editor, to conceive of a situation when an armed family member would be a more effective response to a real threat than calling a police officer to your location, away from the thousand-odd other persons that he's charged with protecting.

There are 13,400 sworn police officers in Chicago. Sounds like a LOT, doesn't it? But then consider that the population of Chicago proper is 2.8 million people (greater Chicago metropolitan area is 9.7M.). Then, too, realize that only about a quarter of those officers are on duty at any given time, and you end up with a ratio of one officer for every 836 people. Then consider that a lot of those sworn officers are detectives and supervisors who don't patrol. But if we ignore that, and pretend that the chief and the captains and the deputy chiefs and the superintendents all get out and patrol, you get about a 1 : 836 ratio of cops to citizens.

Here's the fact, coming from a patrol officer who's given this some study to get a graduate degree in criminal justice: Police VERY RARELY interrupt crimes in progress. Police are out patrolling mostly so that they can see things developing, and so that they can be in the neighborhood to respond when something does happen. That is, we are reactive. Laughing it off and telling Mom to just call the cops on a situation that may very well never happen, but which is likely enough to make her scared about it, is the kind of insensitivity that makes me wonder if the author of such a comment ever had a mother. As the officer who must make the decision between trying to justify his camping out at this ONE house for more than a few minutes longer, or patrolling for the other 835 people on my beat*, I can tell you that it would seem like the best idea is to make sure that someone in the house could take care of Mama.
__________
*FWIW, Chicago has one of the best ratios of cops. I'm at 1:4000 here.

Where only the criminals go armed.

Falcon Lake is an international lake, straddling the Texas-Mexico border. The fishing there, I've always heard, is spectacular. Due to the agreement, a fisherman can fish from one shore to another, but down the center of the lake is the international border. One shore it Texas, and the other is Mexico.

Lately, some Mexican gang members have been boarding anglers' boats by force, robbing the fisherman at gunpoint. They at first claim to be federales, but they get spotted for the gang members they are, pretty quickly. They are criminal predators.

So, here's the interesting part-- the attacks are ALL taking part on the Mexico part of the lake. Not in Texas.

Why?

Because the pirates know that it's against the law to carry guns or ammunition into Mexico. It's almost universally illegal for Mexicans to carry weapons of their own in Mexico, as well. Thus, if the gangsters attack people on the Mexican side, they will receive no armed resistance. The Mexican law protects the robbers.

Of course, it's against the law for the gangsters to have guns, too. But seeing as how they're engaged in organized crime, conspiracy, and armed robbery, just to name a few, they're not really worried about breaking a little weapon law. You know who worries about that? Law abiders. A.K.A.: their prey.

We would do well to point to this superb example of the unintended consequence of gun control, the next time someone suggests that it would be safer if you would just pass another gun law to protect the populace.

Prepared for every exigency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZqx30OvVs

Another example of the difference between them and us.

The Japanese have LONG since had the market cornered on weirdness. We know that.

But think of how very wrong this little stunt could go, here. Or this one.

This is a sad commentary on the state of the land that was formerly the birthplace of Bushido.

The next time someone attempts to point out our nation's faults by comparing our assault rates with those of that now-defanged lapdog, consider if you really want to have your country neutered, to compare with other, already-sissified countries.

Get this through your head, people:

The ability to do harm does not translate into the intention to do harm.

This seems to be the biggest mental disconnect that is missing in the minds of the network newsies when they see armed citizens protesting OUTSIDE OF (when did standing 100 yards off the property of a civic center translate to being "at a town hall meeting?" Hell, the next time my chief orders me to attend a city council meeting, does this mean that I can sit across the street and check my email on my laptop, and claim attendance?) town hall meetings.

"Who in their right mind would attend a town hall meeting with a gun?!?"

"This appears to have the potential to turn violent."

Etc.

First, they're not IN THE MEETING. They're making a legal, peaceful protest outside. They are abiding by the laws of the land, and local ordinances. They are also, sadly, invoking their First Amendment, as well as their Second Amendment. I say sadly, because it really shouldn't be considered a radical statement to invoke an amendment under the U.S. Constitution. But since it is, I would submit that protesters with guns get a double dose of Bill Of Rights protection to their peaceful activities.

In the meeting, I'm moderately okay with heaters being left outside, so long as there is good security. There are factions out there who seem to view a town hall meeting or a city counsel meeting or what-have-you as an opportunity to show their inner soccer hooligan. If you can assure that we're all safe in there, then, yeah, I'll accept a few minutes (or droning hours-- have you ever been to one of those things?) of being disarmed.

But outside, on the street? Hundreds if not thousands of feet from the actual meeting but along the approach? Prithee, what would be a more appropriate venue to voice a public protest?

• Be more afraid of the guy with a Lexus and a case of beer in the back seat.
• Be more afraid of the kid filling up the gallon gas can for his lawn mower, with a lighter in his pocket.
• Be more afraid of the soccer mom making brownies for the little league team with a bunch of rat poison under the sink.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I remember having a conversation with my liberal buddy in Boy Scouts, at age 14, one evening on a campout. He was shaken when I made my point thusly: "If you're so afraid of the ability to do harm, then why weren't you afraid that I might slit your throat with my pocketknife or my scatchet while you shared our tent last night?"

"You're scaring me, Matt!"

"Why?!? Because it just occurred to you that I have the ability to do you harm? Nothing has changed about me from five minutes ago, when I was your apparently harmless buddy. You've just realized that I possess the simple capability to hurt you. Now, in fact, I have no intention of ever harming you, and you don't ever have to worry about that from me, even if we stop being friends. But it's going to be a long, scary life for you if you can't get through your head that just because people can, doesn't mean people will. And for the most part, everyone can."

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Recently, I disarmed a weird guy who was trespassing on the property of a single lady at night. I issued the guy a Criminal Trespass Notice, and kept his technically-illegal knife to go into my P.D.'s evidence locker. While giving the homeowner her copy of the Criminal Trespass Warning notice that I had served to the guy who had been on her property (he was a neighbor), I casually mentioned the knife.

She lost her mind. I mean, LOST HER MIND.

Look, this fellow wasn't right. I'll admit that. He was acting strangely. I don't make it a habit of disarming people over minor technicalities in the law, but this fellow pinged me as being a tad off plumb. But she had been in her open house, and he was outside, and he hadn't been waving the knife around-- it was just clipped to his waistband. You would have thought that she had just survived a hail of gunfire. I explained that I wouldn't interpret his possession of the knife as direct threat to her, but that I think she ought to have a plan in place, both for dealing with him specifically, and her personal protection, generally.

"So you think I should get a gun, then?"

"Lady, I said no such thing. But if you do, I strongly suggest that you get trained in the proper use and safety of it, by highly-qualified instructors. All I said is that you need to have a plan," I said.

"I never thought that I needed one," she told me.

While I appreciate her honesty in admitting this, I think that this is a kind of reality check that she has been lacking, in her assessment of the world: All weapons presented a threat, and she had no plan of action for her personal safety.

Oh, no. HELL no.

I don't know what these jokers in Tucson wanted from their intended victim, but I know that they were willing to commit aggravated robbery to get it, and have little doubt that they would have stopped at murder. Fortunately for the resident that they were attacking, they were not equipped with a plan to accompany their carbine. Had they been, the homeowner likely couldn't have driven them off with merely a handgun. (Video of the robbery attempt here.)

Even while he had them on the run, the homeowner had trouble scoring decisive hits, only wounding one bad guy that we know of, and creating new business for windshield repairmen. It's hard to do good, fast, effective work with a pistol against multiple attackers under stress. But when out and about, a pistol is at most all you're likely to have on you.

In your own castle, though, you should be able to have access to something a bit more substantial.

Apparently much hay was made about the fact that a house across the street was hit by errant bullets. May I suggest a reliable old semi-automatic shotgun? Your local pawn shop and Gun Broker.com have a multitude of them for under $250, if you're not picky about the way it looks. Make sure that it's reliable, hack off the barrel to just over 18" (measure twice!!), and stick some high-visibility sights and a side-saddle on it. Don't be married to 12 gauge-- the semi-auto 20 gauge is the best-kept secret in home defense.

Practice your order of arms with it, and learn for good and all that you can't depend on the pattern spread to make hits; you need to center your targets. Once you can do that well, practice changing targets faster. Then faster. Then FASTER. The good news about a shotgun is that, if you center-punch your non-armored target at tennis court distances with even #6 bird shot field loads, that target has been effectively addressed. You may move on to the next target. If your adversary is wearing body armor, might I suggest holding on their face?

This is pragmatic, and admittedly bloody talk, I know. But we, here in the United States, must not accept home invasion. It is abhorrent. If a citizen is safe nowhere else in the world, he should feel safe in his own home. If your state does not allow you do effectively deal with the problem, ask yourself these two questions: (1) Are you actively campaigning to change this fact? (2) If you're not so active, then why, exactly, do you still live there?

Update/FWIW

The Speed Strip really is a pleasant surprise. I've been carrying it daily, and virtually forget that I've more than doubled my ammo for the M37 Chief's Special Airweight in the opposite pocket.

I shall be ordering more.

See? I can admit when I had a hole in my experiences.

Off-duty reloads.

If I have pants on, I've got a gun on. There are very, VERY few exceptions, and they are notable enough to prove the rule. It's not that I'm paranoid; it's just that there is little point to carrying a gun unless I do it all of the time, as one can't predict infrequent (and yet altogether too frequent) tragedy. Over the years, I've made some bad people unhappy with me, and I plan to keep doing so. Should bad people commit horrible acts against me or others in my presence, I'm going to intervene. I understand the concept of "holding back and being a good witness;" I simply believe that there are times when that's not a possibility. So I carry a gun. Always.

But because I'm a realist about myself, in the warmer months (about 3/4 of the year) I carry the smallest, lightest guns available in the minimum calibers that I would consider defending myself or others with. Usually these are a 7 shot P3AT .380 acp or a 5 shot M37 .38 special, either one of which is on the happy side of one pound, loaded. I tend to just drop them in my pocket, in a ratty old pocket holster to keep them oriented correctly and keep crud out of their actions and trigger guards. (Note to self: obtain new pocket holsters!)

But for some reason, for years I've failed to carry a reload.

Dumb, right? Handguns are inherently poor manstoppers by their very nature. If they were particularly good, soldiers would carry only pistols, or pistol-caliber rifles. Then we take and reduce the caliber, barrel length, sight radius, and grip area to make a given pistol less effective and harder to control, and you end up with something that requires a LOT of practice to excel beyond "belly gun" status. It would make more sense to hedge my bets, and carry as many rounds as possible for such an inadequate weapon.

My rationalization has been that very few gunfights have ever involved reloads. But this means little; few people carry reloads. I know this myself from my own observations and experience. Hell, when, as a young college student, I woke up one night to chase some burglars out of my house and down the street with a 6" Colt revolver, I didn't have a reload with me. (Or pants. But that's another story, for another time.) When bad guys go on rampages in schools, malls, and churches, a spare round or two might be the most worthy pocket plunder I ever carry.

For some odd reason, I found it easier to to begin carrying a reload for my .38 Special. Silly, when you consider that 5 rounds of Buffalo Bore 158g LSWCHP are bound to be about 5 gazillian times better than 7 rounds of .380 acp, with the first round being JHP and the rest being anybody's FNJ. I started with small snapped dump pouches. These are very handy, holding 6 rounds of .38 Spl ammo in a tight little packet that can be dropped in an opposite pocket, or worn on the belt in an unobtrusive, completely covered black pouch. But it's a little slow. Faster, but bulkier, is the 5-shot speedloader. Open the cylinder, dump the empties, insert the bullet tips of the fresh load into the chambers, twist the knurled knob to drop them into the cylinder, and close the cylinder again, with a loaded gun in your hand.

But only last night did I finally think, as I started out the door to go to my Statistics class, how short-sighted it was to rely soley on the 7 anemic rounds for that sad little .380 in my pocket, without a spare load. I never had the availability of a reload for it until friend Peter gave me a spare magazine. But when I got it out of my sock drawer (Well? What's in your sock drawer?), I didn't have any ammo in it. I rummaged through the drawer. .357 Sig rounds. .38 Special reloads. .45 acp SWC reloads. A 12 gauge slug. Some collar brass. Oh, and some socks. No .380. I stepped to my front closet. .35 Whelen. 5.56mm. 7.62X39. .38 S&W in both lead reloads and Ishapore .380-2Z FMJ variations. .45acp Gold Dot. .22 LR, short, CB Cap, and Long. .22 Hornet. .243. 9mm. .32 acp. (Really?!?). .30-06. 12 gauge. 20 gauge. A round on the floor that looked like an old .303 round. No .380.

I got in my car, thinking I'm bound to have some in my trunk. I checked in my glove box and found a baggie of 158g Federal Nyclad .38 Special loads that Dad gave me. I felt under the seat and found a quarter box of .38 Special 158g LRN reloads. I found some more collar brass. (Hey! So there it is!) Parking at the university, I checked the trunk, and found Federal bulk pack .22 LR, 12 gauge slugs, 12 gauge buck shot, a Crossman 760 and .177 pellets for same, 2 pair of hearing protection, a box of .357 Sig reloads, a half box of .357 Sig Gold Dot, a few rounds of .45 acp, and a Sierra bullet box with a single round of .35 Whelen rattling around in it.

I walked to class, thinking, "I'm a piker. I couldn't find a single round of .380 acp in my car, my sock drawer, or my front closet."

Today, I found 50 rounds of .380 acp FMJ in my patrol bag in my trunk. The rest, I know, is in storage.

Animal violence.

"This is an emergency call," the voice on the other end of the line was saying to me, as I stood over a desk at the P.D. The caller should be dialing 911, I thought, as I quickly grabbed a Post-It pad and clicked out my pen.

Pointless to say so at this point, so I said, "Go ahead. Where is it?"

He reeled off a 7 digit address of a road that indeed ran into our town, but the vast majority of which was outside of our little town. It would be a county call, but this wasn't time to point that out. "What's going on?" I asked, after I reconfirmed the numbers.

"My wife called to report that a pit bull and two labs are actively attacking the livestock and her. We have animals down."

"Is she injured?" I asked, motioning to my coworker that it was time to go.

"I don't know. I'm not there, but I'm leaving for there, right now, coming from Big City," he responded.

"I'll be en route, and will notify the County, I told him, hanging up. I told my colleague, "Dog attack, west of town," as I ran to my car. My co-worker ran to his, and I notified the County of our destination and why, so that they could get their own deputies on the way. We charged down the road with lights and sirens.

Upon arrival, I found a woman who was fully into hysterics, at the gate. She was gasping, sweating, and had some blood on her. I kept the medics en route. She said, "They were at the barn!" I sped past her, toward the barn..

As I pulled to a stop, I unlocked the shotgun from the rack, and jogged into the paddock around the small barn. A large ewe was down, bleeding heavily from the neck and hind end. She did not look good. In the barn, two sheep were on the ground bleeding and bleating. I went around the outside of the paddock, and found excited dog prints, where the dogs had gotten into the enclosure. They had taken advantage of poor fence-building technique, and pushed in the wire panel which had been holding the sheep in, but held nothing out.

The lady arrived, sobbing. The dogs had been after her sheep. They had hazed the sheep into the barn, and then locked onto the older sheep's necks, while other dogs chewed at their anuses.

Nasty. Effective.

We got a couple of the sheep up on their feet, to assess them and help them breathe. Blood on the oily wool transferred to our hands. One knelt back down. We went back outside to the worst-hit sheep, and it was clear that she was shuffling off her life. The dogs were gone. I slung the 870, muzzle down on my weak side shoulder.

"I saw them messing with my sheep, and I went down with my sheep dog to the barn, and my sheep dog started to fight with the pit bull. I pulled my dog back, and that's when the pit came after me," she said. "I kicked it back, and it didn't get me. I think Old Lady's dying, and suffering. I think one of you should put her down." The deputies were beginning to arrive, including the Animal Control deputy. I was out of my city, and that call would be made by the deputies. "I didn't know what to do. We have a .410, but I don't know how to use it," she confessed.

I rather hoped that she would learn, in the future.

"You weren't bitten?" I asked, marveling. She'd waded into a small pack of dogs, fought, and come out unhurt? "Are you sure? You've got blood on you."

"Oh, that's just the sheep blood," she said. She was still shaking.

"Do you know the dogs?" I asked.

"Oh, I've seen them before," she responded. "While running, I see them out in front of the house with the old car up on blocks in front, just east of our place. This isn't the first time that they've harassed me or my livestock." Her voice began to get some steel in it. "When you find their owners, you have them come right here, and you have them dig a grave for Old Lady! You bring them right here!" she had begun to yell just a bit. At that moment, the old ewe she called Old Lady kicked her last, and died from her several wounds, in dust under the shed overhang. The woman gave an angry sob.

"You're angry now," I said.

"Y-yeah. Yeah I am," she responded, balling her fists up, tight. "Who the hell leaves their damned dogs out to pack up and attack sheep that never did anyone any harm, just for the fun of killing? Who raises dogs that would do that? Why did they do that? Those weren't strays. They weren't hungry. They were just... in a blood lust! They came after me!"

"Dogs are kind of like people in that respect," I reflected. "They'll do something in a pack or a mob that they never would do by themselves. But the good part is, you're angry. You're mad. That's a much more useful emotion than terror. Hold on to that. Use that."

"I guess I was pretty terrified before," she said, casting her face down and looking dejected as she reflected on herself, ruefully.

"Maybe. But when you had to, you fought back," I reminded her. She was a medium-sized woman in her late thirties, wearing shorts and running shoes, and had fought off a pack of blood lust-filled curs with her feet. This was worth mentioning.

Her head snapped up, and her fists clinched a little bit. "That's what I do," she said. "I fight."

"Good," I said. "Don't forget that. The deputies are calling a vet for you. Call us if you need us."

We headed back to our city.

I can't really argue with that.

My mother is returning to her childhood home in Alamogordo, NM to see a dear old friend interred. When she told me this, I said I'd help her find the cheapest tickets and rental car. She protested that it was way too much trouble, and too expensive. What with gas prices going up the way they have been, I suspected that it would be a wash between the cost of driving and flying there economy class. It turned out that it would cost a bit more to fly and get a rental. Still I persisted in suggesting that she follow my plan, which entailed flying to El Paso, and taking the rental car the 85 miles to Alamogordo.

"No!" She said. "Thanks for checking on the cost of things, but it's all just too much trouble, what with checking my pistol in and out at the airport and everything. If you think this little old lady's traveling unarmed, you've got another thing comig. And if it's all the same to you, I happen to prefer to drive through the mountains around Cloudcroft in September."

Well. Of course.

I stand corrected, and a bit abashed. Heh.

From last night's shift...

Traffic stop:
Thought, but not actually said out loud:
Ma'am, flirting with me isn't actually effective at getting out of a citation.
The only reason I was glancing down your camisole was, uh, to check for, uh, weapons. And I'm not generally one to write for a headlight out, anyhow. And when I ask if I've pulled you over before, it's because I really don't remember, and you do actually look faintly familiar-- not as a "Hey baby, you violate here often?" Come-on line. So get over yourself. And put a jacket on, for criminey's sake. It's chilly out.

- - -
Radio traffic jaw dropper:
Another agency is dispatched to a call in which the caller reports that someone has tampered with his alarm system, and now hears someone walking around inside the house, with a light that he sees moving about. No one has access to the house. The caller runs upstairs with his family. "No weapons of any kind in the house." ends the broadcast. In Texas.

So. How's that working out for you, dude?

- - -
Traffic stop:
Ma'am, I notice that you didn't present your Concealed Handgun License, as is required when you are stopped while armed. Oh, you're not packing tonight? Well why not? You went to all the trouble of a background check, hours and hours of classroom instruction, and qualifying with your pistol. Oh, you haven't shot it in a while, and want more proficiency? Well let me ask you: Do you think that you can simply carry it safely? You do? Well why not do that, and make the consideration, when the bad guy is at Bad Breath Distance, whether you might be able to make effective use of your gat which you haven't shot a lot of, lately? We like to see our good citizens able to defend themselves. Uh huh. Well thank you for your courtesy, ma'am, and please slow down.

- - -
Traffic stop:
That's quite a meat smoker you've got back there, sir. I don't think I've ever seen one bigger. I especially like the fold down step that chains up, and the smokestack that looks like it was cannibalized from HMS Queen Mary. Uh, mind the power lines up the way. 48 hams in there, you say? Man. That's a lot of pig. Haw. You're right, that's a good one. Nope, I've never eaten a smoked donut, but I'm sure they make 'em. Listen, it'd be real good if you could get some lights and reflectors and registration and safety chains on this trailer. Well, yes sir, I realize that it's technically a smoker, but the State Of Texas says that if your smoker rolls on wheels behind your pickup and is pulled by your ball hitch, it's also a trailer. Well, actually, they'd call this a "semi-trailer," because the axles...
...you know what? Never mind. Where are you heading with this thing?
Okay. Why don't I just escort you down there, to keep you from getting rear-ended? Right on.
Wagons ho.
Or smokers. Or semi-trailers. Whatever.

Big time .38 Special loads.

Buffalo Bore has made a name for itself in providing high-end, very powerful, semi-custom production ammunition. I first became aware of it when people like friend Rich Lucibella was using it and Garrett .45-70 ammunition to shoot cape buffalo in Africa. [An interesting proposition-- using a 130 year old cartridge in a short carbine to knock down a 1.5 ton, highly aggressive (and not at all endangered, BTW) bull from under 100 yards, with iron sights.] Both Garrett and Buffalo Bore also make high-end .44 Magnum ammunition, as well.

But unfortunately, I'm not stalking through Africa for a big bull, and I'm not fly fishing in Alaska, amongst the big brown bears. When I need heavy .44 magnum ammo, I go to my dad's and handload some (or more likely pilfer some from the stash that he made with his own hands). And I don't even own a .45-70; I gave the only one I ever bought to my father for a birthday present a few years back.

My gun-toting is usually much, much more pedestrian. I tend to pick up a little pocket pistol on the way out the door, and drop it, strangely enough, in my pocket. No, it's usually not a brace of .45s on my hip[s]. I sometimes don't even carry a reload. But, I've got a gun, and more than once, that's given me peace of mind when I was out of uniform and going about my rather humdrum life. While that pocket pistol may well be a P3AT with its 7 rounds of raging .380 fury (rolleyes), it's as likely to be a little J-frame 2" Smith and Wesson revolver.

These little guys are hard to shoot well.
They're heavier and bulkier than a P3AT.
They have difficult sights.
They have decreased capacity. (5 rounds)
They look very unimpressive when drawn.

They are only .38 Special caliber, out of a not-quite-2" barrel.

Still, a .38 Special is a better stopping cartridge than a .380 acp, even with a shorter barrel reducing the velocity on the .38 (but then, have you looked at the length of a P3AT barrel, lately?). It's not just that you can start a much heavier bullet (typically 125g or 158g) at about the same velocity (~750 to 800fps out of short barrels). It's the type of bullet that you can launch.

A few years ago, I was carrying a small 9mm around with me. A handful of 124g 9mm seemed like just the ticket for off-duty use, until I discovered the sheer comfort of carrying a 2" J frame airweight with short boot stocks and a bobbed hammer. But I was bothered by what I was giving up-- my old agency demanded that I carry Gold Dot HP ammo, and all I could find in .38 Special at the time was 125g, in either +P or standard pressure ammo. Well, my little 9mm shot 124g Gold Dot HPs at about 1050 to 1100 fps, while my little J frame shot 125g Gold Dot HPs at about 800fps, if I used the +Ps. And the J frame held less than half of the 9mm's capacity.

I was delighted when Gold Dot came out with their 135g load, specifically designed for short-barreled revolvers. Using faster-burning powders, it achieved its maximum velocity in barrels under 4 inches. And, hey! 10 more grains of bullet weight!

But I have always felt that light and fast is utterly the WRONG road to take, with the .38 special. Instead, take advantage of the revolver's advantages. The revolver does not need to feed well, and a sleek ogive such as that found on the Gold Dot bullets is just not needed. Want to see the .38 Special perform out of its own league? Stick a semi-wadcutter (SWC) into it. Semi-wadcutters are bullets with sharp shoulders on them, which carve out full-diameter holes in targets that they are fired at, allowing the shooter to clearly see his grouping. They also are highly effective at carving permanent wound cavities in tissue. Want more? Well, make it a hollowpoint semi-wadcutter (HPSWC). Heck, make it of soft lead to guarantee expansion, and you've got a Lead HollowPoint Semi-Wadcutter (LHPSWC), or HP LSWC.

For the longest time, this load was made by Winchester, Remington, and Federal. It was called variously the "FBI load" and the "Chicago load," or just the "man stopper load" by many. It was loaded to +P (or above SAAMI specifications for standard .38 Special 158g loads) pressures. It is still carried by many, such as my father, and my friend Stephen Camp.

Photo by Stephen A Camp, Highpowers And Handguns.

See how it expands in wet newsprint? Well, a few years back, I shot a couple of javelinas with my 6" Officer's Model Special heavy barrel. Both of the little beasties, upon field dressing, were found to have lead nickels stretching the inside of their off-side hides, both of which looked almost exactly like the one you see above in Steve's picture. (They made mediocre green chile stew. I'm about done with Javelina as a delicacy.)

But that was a 6" revolver. I found, through testing, that it only gave about 890 fps with those +P loads. In a loose old 2" revolver, I was lucky to get anywhere close to 800 fps. Would they expand? Well, probably.

Last year, I performed some blood spatter experiments, in which I found myself shooting heavy sponges saturated with fake blood. I was surprised that a .40 Hydroshock not only fully expanded, but apparently remained stable. I was more surprised that a Federal Nyclad 158g SWCHP (basically the same thing as the FBI load, but with a blue nylon coating to protect the bore from leading) did NOT expand at all, and tumbled within 4 feet. Then I found that it tumbled within two feet.

Hm. More velocity. Softer bullet. Bigger hollowpoint. I began to be concerned about getting these things out of my little 2" revolver.

But I continued to carry either the Federal Nyclad load or the Remington +P load.

Two weeks ago, friend Peter came to visit north Texas, and my Dad, Holly, and LawDog all visited with him. Unfortunately, I had to work, and couldn't come visit. Peter came bearing gifts, too. He brought me some excellent Brenneke KO slugs, and a box of Buffalo Bore Heavy .38 Special +P loads.

These fall within my idea of what a .38 Special load should be, for short barreled revolvers. A heavy 158g bullet, with a sharp SWC shoulder on it, made of very soft lead (you can cut it with your fingernail), with a giant meplat that holds the biggest hollowpoint that I've ever seen in a .38 bullet. Look at the size of that hollowpoint, next to the Remington (left) and Federal SWCHPs that I pulled out of my revolvers and speedloaders:
See that little flat on the side of the Buffalo Bore load on the right? That's because I've been carrying it in my mom's M36 2" that I've been carrying the last couple of weeks. (A real man isn't ashamed to admit he carries his mama's guns.) It's soft, make no mistake.

Here's another look:

It looks like a wine glass next to a jigger. Heavens.

Check out the velocity that Buffalo Bore claims on the box:

One thousand feet per second, with a 158g LSWC. The guy at their website actually says that he achieved considerably higher velocities (1040 fps!) out of his 2" S&W revolver (M642).

Wow.

It's expensive stuff. Over a dollar a round for a box of 20. It's packed in an interesting manner, with each round completely enclosed.

I'm thinking that I'm going to enclose mine with the 30 year old 5 shot cylinders of my (and my mama's) J-frame Smith & Wesson revolvers.

One does what one must.

"Whew, it's muggy," says the kindly older woman behind the counter as I walk up with my to-go cup of coffee.

"I noticed that, too," I say, plunking down my cup on the counter as I reach for my wallet and she shakes her head and walks away from the register. "The thermostat by the coffeemaker reads '76.' Why not turn it down?"

She grabs a broom and comes around the counter, sweeping the floor. "Those girls at night may feel free to change the thermostat, but I'm not going to break the rules. I'll ask the manager for permission to turn it down when she comes in. If those girls at night were working like they ought to, they'd stay warm enough," she sniffs with disdain.

"Why don't you just take your jacket off?" I ask, gesturing to the warmup jacket that she wears unzipped over her uniform shirt. I point to the coffee again with my brows raised, and she dismissively waves me away from the register.

"I, uh, keep my stuff in the pockets," she says, looking carefully away. "I think I'll sweep outside, where it's cooler." The store is empty.

Huh.

Interesting.

I watch her carefully. Blue jeans. Untucked uniform shirt. Light warmup jacket. Wristwatch on left wrist, so I begin to watch her right hip as she moves around while sweeping. I don't see anything. Well, with all that loose clothing, I wouldn't. And maybe she wears it appendix carry. Or cross-draw.

She busies herself sweeping the walk near the front door. I know she can feel me watching her, and I know that it makes her nervous. This is a lady who follows the rules scrupulously. I am pretty sure that this convenience store chain wouldn't allow concealed carry by their employees.

I open my mouth to ask, and then close it.

It's impolite to ask a lady about her underwear. I was just curious, anyway.

I smile and wish her a good morning.