Have I mentioned people in South Florida is a bit wee suspicions? It is somewhat common that criminals try to impersonate LEOs to get to their victims. By now this is old news for everybody but some criminals. Three guys impersonating the FBI found out the hard way:

Once the three men make it to the front door, two of them try to pry open the door with a crowbar while the third acts as a look-out. When they are unable to get thru the front door, they tried a window, but this trio had no idea the homeowner was inside and waiting for them with a pistol.

The homeowner opened fire and the three suspects took off. The two men barely make it back to their newer model, mid-size, silver sport utility vehicle Mercedes Benz before the third takes off

Puppies, kitties and criminals running with brown deposits in their shorts make me smile.

And now back to my self imposed rest.

Headline: 7 Shot, 4 Dead As Gunman Blasts Hialeah Restaurant. A Nutjob goes to a restaurant, has an argument in the parking lot with his girlfriend, shoots her, she dies and then the shooter goes inside the restaurant where he proceeds to shoot six more people. It appears that nobody but the shooter was armed.

The equation keeps coming to the same result: When somebody decides to ignore the law and create havoc with a firearm, it does not matter how many wishful thoughts you may have, how positive your attitude can be or how well you follow those tips for unarmed “self defense”: somebody is bound to get killed.

I will grant you that an armed patron may not have saved the girlfriend or prevented somebody from not getting shot, but being absolutely unarmed did guarantee the shooter a pool of targets for his deranged actions and he took advantage of it.

I want to have the chance to contradict a crazy gunman’s actions. I want to have a chance to make it out alive and that is why I carry.

Browsing through Youtube, I landed on a batch of clips titled “Why Girls (or women) shouldn’t shoot (Desert Eagle, AK 47, 12 gauge shotguns, your-pick-here.) It really pisses me off twofold: first, what kind of low life sets up an inexperienced woman with a firearm, tapes her failure and posts its in the internet for the world to laugh at her? And second, Moron Boyfriend (probably a 3per) just transformed this woman into a full fledged victim because she will probably never touch another firearm again even if her life depends on it!

Ladies, if you are dating an idiot like that, dump his ass. If you are married to one, divorce him, take all his worldly posessions and move next door to a cute firearms instructor. There is no reason to be afraid of guns other than not being trained and not knowing how to handle one. There are a lot of firearms instructors that will teach you the basics and the more advanced stuff so you can defend yourself.  And there is a program called First Shots where you can go get your first experience with firearms for free.

Even though the net is plagued with the above mentioned videos, you can easily find the good ones like this young lady shooting for the first time and getting good at it or a Liberal shooting for the first time or a 12 year old girl shooting a full size .45 or young Heather shooting full size .357 Magnum and sharing her thoughts and even a woman shooting a supressed (gasp!) fully automatic MP-5. All of them have also another thing in common: They are smiling which means they are having fun! What are the odds?

And the love of my life shooting her Rossi snub nose in .357 Magnum. She is so good at it I am a well behaved hubby!

Go get some training, get empowered and have some fun!

Three Bad Guys apparently got to dance with a modern Wyatt Earp and lost. According to Miami’s Channel 7, the miscreants entered Okay Auto Tire Service along Northwest 46th Street and Second Avenue in Miami, forced people to the ground with guns and owner Omar Rangel drew his gun, shot and wounded two of the three assailants.

But what I like the best is the comment of Miami PD Officer Jeff Giordano:

“He displayed tombstone courage this afternoon and fired upon the offenders,”

And that shows a departure from the old Police Mentality of “We are happy with the outcome, but people  should let police take care of things.” Times have changed quite a bit down here in South Florida. Police (rank and file) understands that Gun Owners are law abiding citizens with tons of patience and restrain when carrying a concealed weapon.  And they are also painfully aware that they can’t protect everybody no matter how much they wish it.So, To Miami Police: thank you for breaking the mold.

Gun ownership works. Taking responsibility for one’s protection works. Crime did not pay for those three idiots. And to Mr. Rangel, Que  Dios lo Bendiga. (May God Bless.) you kept yourself, your workers and clients safe today.

If you own or are a member of a shooting club in any specialty, the safety of its members is paramount. I don’t have to tell you this since we in the culture had made it a mantra and, let’s face it, we do a great job beating the Four Rules into people’s mind. Our Clubs insurance carrier will gladly renew our policy because our great track record but will refuse to insure “less dangerous” sports such as Paintball because their participants keep getting injured. However, a while back I was spectacularly reminded of Einstein’s quote: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

In the last year or so, we received an influx of new shooters to our club interested in shooting IDPA. Lots of them were almost literally people that just bought a gun for the first time and got tired real quick of a static range shooting one round per second with no movement.  Thanks to two great members who came up and implemented a new New Shooter Program where ANYBODY shooting with us for the first time must go through a safety briefing and a gun proficiency test before being allowed to shoot a match (And I don’t care if you returned from overseas and were team leader of Gamma 58 Anti Terrorist Squad). Some of the stuff you are checked on covers drawing and holstering the weapon safely, parts of the gun, shooting itself, reloads, etc. Shooters have been turned away because they were considered too green and were recommended to take a basic pistol class before coming back, some had good basic skills were too Rambo and too “I know my shit. I am the New Ninja” and told thanks but no thanks. Those who demonstrated safety and willingness but were still green, were allowed to shoot under the official care of a Safety Officer but really the whole squad usually mentors the shooter. Some find out that that IDPA is not for them and God Bless them. We encourage them to seek other disciplines and let them know our door is open for them at any time but to keep shooting! Most get hooked and have a blast after their first match and want to do it all over again the next day… which we would like to do, but gun ranges in South Florida are premium contested real space. At the end, we have new safe shooters… or so we thought.

A New Shooter who went through the Safety chat & evaluation and actually shot one stage decided to go to the Safety Area and practice his reloads. Now our Safety Area like any Safety Area anywhere else doe not allow ammunition to be handled. And to reinforce the rule, we have a huge sign that gives you the damn rules on what to do and what not to do plus the Four Rules of Gun Safety.  So next thing we hear is a BANG from the Safety Area and a very surprised New Shooter. An Safety Officer and myself were standing nearby (but unfortunately not paying enough attention before the incident), rushed towards the guy and told him to put the weapon down on the table. The guy turns towards us, still dazed and we get a nice sweep of what afterward turned out to be a gun with a round in the pipe. Yeah… bowel loosening time. Gun was secured and shooter was then sent to talk with the two Safety Officers who gave him the initial briefing & evaluation. After the chat was over, the shooter was DQed for the rest of his natural life and asked not to return. I don’t know if he felt he “knew” how to handle guns and thought himself above our silly regulations or was just a plain combination of overconfidence with absent mindedness sprinkled with stupidity. The end result was a Negligent Discharge and that cannot be tolerated.

I know that there are two kinds of shooters: Those who had an ND and those who will. I know some will say that we were a bit harsh on the guy and we should give him another chance. If it was a one on one situation in the middle of the sticks with a guy who was new to guns, maybe. But we had some 60+ shooters that day mingling around plus some wives & kids. As a Club, we have to be responsible all those lives and stupidity cannot be forgiven. I rather have somebody with a bruised ego than a gunshot wound.

So, to summarize a very long winded post, when it comes to Gun Safety there is no such thing as shortcuts, carelessness or in our case thinking people will follow Gun Safety rules all the time and that we should trust and relax. We learned a lesson on the cheap.

I tried to write it nice so I don’t come out like a jerk, but I just couldn’t find the words so here it goes: I think there is a lot of bullcrap about the application of oriental philosophy in our western lives. It seems that if something was written by some guy with a sing-songy name a couple or three centuries ago, it must have a great relevance and we must bow to the knowledge imparted there because well, it is one of them oriental wise men, you know?

I was told by doctor that acupuncture was going to make me quit smoking. I suffered through the needles and came out wanting a big cigar and a fifth of JD which is weird because I don’t like cigars and don’t drink. Herbal Medicine? Got me a nice case of gastritis that is still with me 20 years later. Have you actually tried real chinese food? Most of it is boiled and bland or just plain gagging. That is why soy sauce is available: it is the oriental equivalent of ketchup or Tabasco, you gotta hide the original flavor.

But the Lord knows that my Mom must have dropped me on my head a couple of times because I heeded the advice of some and decided to read on some Far East classical authors on warfare and how it may apply to Personal Defense. I know I might upset some much more knowledgeable and famous folks than myself but I am sorry to say the knowledge them suckers in kimonos “share” do not apply to Civilian Self Defense. I dusted  my copy of The Art of War and added it to my newly acquired copy of The Book of Five Rings to see what knowledge I might absorb.

The Book of Five Rings is about swordfighting, samurai/ronin style. Legend has it that Miyamoto Musashi was a serious hombre with the sword who never lost a match against its adversaries or even got a cut anywhere on the pajama. The book was originally a scroll that Musashi wrote attempting to explain his approach to sword fighting so most of it will not apply to gun skills. One good thing about his literary approach is that he is not “educated” so he dispenses with most of the flowery language common to Japanese and most oriental writers. In the same book I got, the editors also latch on a copy of The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyu Munenori who is “educated and you feel you need a weed eater and the Sierra Club Guide to Japanese Arbor and Flowers to read through it. Munenori’s teachings also apply to sword fighting but more as a combat & battlefield tactics than a civilian self defense issue.

Some of you are now steaming out of your ears thinking “How dare he mock such great and noble warriors? I will throw down the gauntlet right here and now! Katanas at 10 paces sir!” Well, take it easy and pick up your metal glove, I believe in long range acquisition with a modern firearm if possible. Yes, i will cheat, screw the rest. Why am I so “disrespectful” about Samurai (and also about knights while we are at it)? Because they were a bunch of elitists jackasses for the most part, wielding absolute power with their steel and their techniques. The little people were not humans and just basically target practice or ready-to-abuse subjects for these people. I am from the “Great Equalizer” School of Thought which sees a weapon (firearms) as the reset button of a society. Not every Joe had the money, position or budget to avail himself of a good sword, accouterments and training time to master swordsmanship.  Yet a simple tube propelling a lead ball shot by a peasant can manage to bring down and abusive cast of assholes. I don’t know why but that easiness to inflict deadly force to a mini dictator brings a warm fuzzy to my heart. We have romanticized so much samurais and knights that we ignore or conveniently forget that they were nothing more than petty Stalins who had the power of absolute life and death over their subjects and no sense of justice but their own desires. Somehow learning anything out of them makes me think that it is like learning medicine from the notes of Dr. Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Still, I sat down with a pen and a highlighter to collect the alleged pearls of wisdom and did mark some interesting passages, but there was this nagging feeling on the back of my head that kept saying: “You read this before in a much simple and understanding format….You read this before in a much simple and understanding format….you moron. Think!” Then, around 3 am my degrading brain finally kicked open the file drawer and pulled out the card with the recorded info. There is a modern Book of Five Rings written by a modern warrior who applied his knowledge to teach the common folk how to defend themselves. Not an elitist (except when it came to one’s pursue of excellence with a firearm) and with a no BS view of the world without any chrysanthemums or Cherry Blossoms to adorn his writings: The Late Colonel Jeff Cooper and his excellent booklet Principles of Personal Defense. Forget Musashi, Munenori, Sun Tzu, P. F. Chang’s and Lt. Sulu, just get this book and digest its 56 pages. It will do more for your training and mindset foundation that 10 years in a Shaolin Monastery trying to snatch a pebble out of some white bearded guy’s hand. Its simplicity will astound you and its frankness may freak you out some. But it is God’s honest truth when it comes to Self Defense.

As for the Book of Five Rings, it goes next to the Art Of War to the uppermost shelf with the rest of the book I might want to check some day in the next decade if I need to recall a passage. I think I might be ordering some more Cooper books to absorb more of this modern Master & Teacher.

And if you are still insulted by my lack of respect for the Ancient Oriental Know-It-Alls, it is a feeling, you’ll get over it eventually… or not. I really do not care.

So yesterday I am hanging outside the office waiting to be time to get home when a local PD vehicle arrives and a young officer gets out. He is requesting directions inside our facility because he’s been assigned to an event related to the “Big Game” (It seems that you cannot address the Super Bowl unless you have permission by the NFL.) The morning supervisor comes out, hears the request and proceeds to give a set of directions that will either take the officer to his post with the help of a GPS and a Sherpa or more likely send him to commute with the gators in the Everglades. While I am looking at the exchange, I notice that the officer’s sidearm hangs kind of low and loose on his leg. I thought “Damn, what kind of thigh holster is he wearing. It doesn’t look too stable.” So I approach discretely and my jaw takes a free fall to the asphalt. The officer has his Glock in a basic Fobus paddle holster that is hanging from his pants pocket.

I wanted to say something, (Like yell at the top of my lungs WEAPON RETENTION MUCH YOU MORON?) but being that my mood was somewhat grouchy, I knew that I would say something the Officer may take the wrong way and I did not want to go take a nap at the local jail. He left, I left 5 minutes later and I haven’t heard anything on the news about an Officer losing his weapon…..yet.