No State Charges For Man Who Killed Cop's Assailant: A Louisiana man who
fatally shot a local businessman who had overwhelmed a police officer,
in February, will face no state criminal charges in the shooting. The US
DOJ is investigating whether federal civil-rights charges should be
filed and it's not yet clear if the dead man's family will sue.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/4997351.html?index=1&c=y
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"Chain Fire" By Any Other Name...: In the aftermath of the NYPD shooting
of Sean Bell and his companions, Valhalla Training Center is
incorporating "sympathetic reaction training" into all of its
law-enforcement courses. (This sort of training is appropriate any time
that more than one defender may be involved in an incident. It's got to
be at least a decade since NRA-LEAD has been dealing with this issue.)
http://www.imakenews.com/valhalla/e_article000719920.cfm?x=b8GhCPC,b3mc6Ctb
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Not Clear On The Concept: A marijuana-smoking teenager in Louisiana died
of a gunshot wound to the head after he apparently held a revolver to
his head and worked the trigger several times, in a game of Russian
roulette.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-29/1166712849196590.xml&storylist=louisiana
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Meanwhile, In Missouri...: "Y'all want to play Russian roulette?"
Relatives of Terron Ball, 15, said those were his last words before he
spun the cylinder of a .22-caliber revolver, put the pistol to his head
and pulled the trigger about midnight Wednesday. He died two hours later
at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/A8456AB8AC94A01D8625724C00701980?OpenDocument
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"Padre Pistolas" Draws Criticism From Church Hierarchy: Meet Alfredo
Gallegos Lara, the parish priest of tiny Chucandiro, in the central
state of Michoacan, 200 miles west of Mexico City. Dubbed "Padre
Pistolas" (Father Guns), the towering, singing priest will deliver toys
to the neediest children this holiday season and bring smiles in a
region torn apart by heavy migration to the U.S. and a violent turf war
between drug traffickers.
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/161762
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From John Farnam:
18 Dec 06
At our Urban Rifle Courses we always have several local patrol officers
who bring department rifles, mostly stock AR-15s, from DPMS, RRA, DSA,
and others. They usually work just fine. Other students bring
out-of-the-box, stock XCRs, CX4s, Krebs/Kalashnikovs, et al. Again,
they usually all work just fine.
It is only when we have a student who is seriously involved in one of
several, organized competitions that we run into trouble. Most current
rifle competition conventions invariably put a premium on meaningless
degrees of accuracy, to the exclusion individual tactics, reliability,
and suitability to any conceivable, practical purpose. Who are
seriously involved in these competitions will unfailingly bring a rifle
that is tight, bulky, heavy, and loaded up will all manner of glittering
gadgets, and also bring a smug determination that he will "show us all a
thing or two." His demise is assured, and it usually doesn't take long!
Legitimate, defensive firearms must be highly reliable under a broad
spectrum of circumstances and, simultaneously, functionally accurate.
Be that as it may, if you are determined to have a weapon that is
exceptionally accurate, you may get it, but reliability will be
critically compromised. Your rifle will still be reasonably functional,
as long as you maintain it at a high level. However, severe
environments and lack of maintenance will predictably conspire to bring
it to its knees.
Ultimately, if you are determined to have a weapon that is extravagantly
accurate, reliability will be fatally compromised, and you will be thus
saddled with a tight, unreliable, temperamental, ammunition-sensitive
prima-donna. It will never be reliable, no matter how well you maintain
it.
With few exceptions, everything you add to your rifle for the sake of
increased accuracy is just something else that will eventually peel,
chip, delaminate, come unglued, come loose, disconnect, stop working,
break into pieces, fall off, etc. Pray you're not fighting for your life
when any of that happens!
No single rifle will adequately fulfill both missions. If you want a
serious, defensive rifle, it will be reliable, but its accuracy will
never be better than mediocre. If you want a single-purpose,
competition rifle, its accuracy may be unsurpassed, but its reliability
will always be untrustworthy. You can't have it both ways.
Which way do you go, Mister? Far be it from me to tell others what to
do, but, as for myself, every rifle, indeed every weapon, I own is a
legitimate, fighting implement. As a matter of personal policy, I will
neither own nor keep a "play gun."
/John
(Worse yet, sometimes the "play" is restricted to the Walter Mitty mind
of the owner. It's one thing to own firearms for sport or collection;
the danger lies in confusing those with the few on which you can and
should rely for self-defense.)
22 Dec 06
In a popular Johannesburg pub yesterday, an armed gang was in the
process of robbing patrons of wallets and cell phones. Among the
patrons were an off-duty police officer and his girlfriend, also a
police officer. When, at gunpoint, thugs demanded the woman's wallet,
she reached back and instead came up with a pistol and started firing
immediately. Her partner also drew and fired at the same time.
The gang of thugs was taken completely by surprise! Three were fatally
wounded immediately and went DRT at the scene. The rest fled. Some of
them may have been wounded also. Both police officers and the rest of
the pub patrons and staff were okay. The officers were openly cheered
by the rest of the people there.
Not surprisingly, in the aftermath a senior police official, instead of
congratulating his two courageous officers, publicly chided them for
"taking the law into their own hands." "... we don't want people to act
like vigilantes."
Just like their counterparts in Atlanta, GA South African public
officials predictably gush with sympathy for their dimpled-darling,
violent criminals and apparently have not a bit left over for honest,
tax-paying citizens who are constantly victimized. For one, I don't
know how one can successfully defend himself from violent criminals
without "taking the law into his own hands." That is a just leftist
drivel, used as a means of generating yet more victims. Indeed, it is
"victims," not citizens, who keep these sleazy leftists in their cushy jobs.
Again, an explosive counterattack is the last thing VCAs expect, and the
one thing with which they are least prepared to deal! Had the woman not
reacted as she did, she probably would have been raped and mutilated.
She dared, and she won. Good show!
/John
(For new list members, "DRT" is Farnamese for "dead right there" and
"VCA" for "violent criminal actor.")
23 Dec 06
ND in WA
Yesterday, a man in Spokane, WA experienced an ND with his pistol (SIG
229/357SIG) while in a restroom at a local Costco. The single bullet
(brand unknown) hit a wall and disintegrated. Police responded, of
course, but no one was hurt.
The media reported, "... the man had been carrying his brand-new
SIG-Sauer 357 semi-automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. While pulling
up his pants, the man's shirt somehow pulled the gun out of the
holster. Although the gun is designed to not fire unless the hammer is
cocked, the pistol fired anyway when it hit the floor."
As always, the media can't get the facts straight, and, when the subject
is guns, apparently doesn't want to! The pistol may have inadvertently
fallen out of the holster and hit the floor as reported, but, as we all
know, SIG pistols are completely drop-safe. So, we know it didn't
discharge as a result of striking the floor. The discharge was caused
by Goofy putting pressure on the trigger, as that is the only way the
pistol can discharge! But, as always, the media reports its own
ambrosial beliefs and not the facts. The foregoing is a typical example.
/John
(My e-mail to John: " Maybe but sometimes we learn something new. The
cop whose Glock 17 discharged when it hit the locker-room floor,
prompting Glock to announce a "voluntary product upgrade" and the one
who died when he dropped a SIG 220 that he had decocked via the trigger,
instead of the decocking lever, probably thought that their guns were
drop-safe.")
23 Dec 06
SIG pistols and drop safety:
After my last Quip about a recent ND in Spokane, WA, I received several
notes reminding me that some SIG pistols are not completely drop-safe.
So, to clarify:
The (1) old-model SIG220 (45ACP), out of production for over ten years
now, and the (2) SIG230 (380Auto), also out of production and long-since
replaced by the SIG232, are the two models of interest in this matter.
When these two pistols are decocked incorrectly, that is "manually," via
lowering the hammer slowly while holding the trigger back, the resultant
gun will not be drop-safe. When the gun subsequently falls and lands on
its hammer spur, it may fire. Conversely, when these two pistols are
decocked correctly, via the decocking lever, the guns are rendered
drop-safe, and no kind of external impact will cause them to fire. So,
the whole issue is a moot point when either of these pistols are used
correctly. However, when SIG was made aware of the fact that some
owners were decocking incorrectly, contrary to printed instructions and
advice of every credible instructor in the business, they redesigned the
decocking system so that now, no matter how the pistol is decocked (even
incorrectly), the resultant gun will always be drop-safe.
That change was over ten years ago, and every subsequent SIG220
manufactured has been on the new system. In addition, every 245, 239,
229, 232, and 226 ever made at any time has been on the new system.
And, of ourse, the whole issue is a moot point with SIG's DAK system,
as it automatically decocks itself.
So, those who still own an old-system SIG 220 (they have a sharp hammer
spur, while new-system 220s have a rounded hammer spur) can continue to
use and carry it with confidence. So long as it is decocked correctly
(via the decocking lever) it will be as drop-safe as any pistol ever was.
Incorrect (manual) dococking is the product of ignorance, and as the
accident-engendering practice it is, we instructors eliminate whenever
it rears its ugly head! Indeed, this mistaken practice is what has
caused manufacturers to now offer self-decocking (DAO) pistols (where
decocking lever and hammer spur have both been eliminated) and why these
self-decockers (H&K LEM, Beretta Constant Action, SIG DAK, S&W M&P,
Glock) are so popular among police.
/John
(And I always thought that a consistent, manageable trigger stroke that
requires some degree of conscious effort was the rationale for the
newer, short-stroke DAO trigger systems.)
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
