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T H E U LT I M A T E R E S O U R C E F O R T H E A R M E D C I T I Z E N 

DISABLED 

AND ARMED 

ADAPTING AND OVERCOMING 

CONCEALED 

CARRY 

SAVES LIVES 

POST 

SHOOTING 

TRAUMA 

TWo VIEWS 

volume 5 JULY 2008 

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TO UPHOLD. 

TO PROTECT. 

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TO DEFEND. 

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CONTENTS 

14 POCKET PROTECTOR 

The Ruger LCP 

BY DUANE DAIKER 

22 HIGH NOON HOLSTER’S 

Bare Asset IWB Holster 

BY STEVE HENIGSON 

24 BOOK REVIEW 

How To Win A Gunfight By Tony Walker 

BY REV. DAVID BEESON 

26 CONCEALED CARRY SAVES LIVES 

Part II: Research And History 

BY ROBERT G. HEINRITZ, JR., J.D. 

32 DISABILITY, SELF-DEFENSE 

AND CONCEALED CARRY 

You Don’t Have To Be An Easy Target 

BY CAROLYN BOYLES 

36 POINT: Unraveling 

post shooting trauma 

It’s Real, And Must Be Addressed To Heal 

BY ART MIZE 

40 COUNTERPOINT: 

POST SHOOTING TRAUMA 

It’s The Shrinks’ Way To Keep Us Victims 

BY TONY WALKER 

JULY 2008 

COLUMNS 

08 

STREET 

TACTICS 

Take Effective Cover 

BY GABE SUAREZ 

12 

SIG SAUER 

ACADEMY 

Is “Match Grade” 

Really Necessary For 

A Combat Handgun? 

BY GEORGE HARRIS 

18 

PROFILE 

Joshua Benson 

42 

FORCE- 

ON-FORCE 

NOTEBOOK 

One Armed Draw 

BY JACK RUMBAUGH 

46 

IT’S JUST 

THE LAW 

Jury Duty: 

The Other Militia 

BY K.L. JAMISON 

49 

JPFO LIBERTY 

CREW 

Take Your Money Back 

BY L. NEIL SMITH 

50 

ARMED 

SENIOR 

CITIZEN 

Skills Maintenance Drills 

BY BRUCE N. EIMER, 

Ph.D. 

DEPARTMENTS 

06 

LETTERS TO 

THE EDITOR 

07 

TRUE STORIES 

54 

HOT BRASS

CONCEALED CARRY 

MAGAZINE 

Volume 5 - July 2008 

Publisher & Editor 

Timothy J. Schmidt 

Managing Editor 

Kathy Jackson 

Art Director 

Betty Shonts 

Circulation Manager 

Laura Otto 

Copy Editor 

John Higgs 

Column Editors 

Duane A. Daiker 

Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D 

George Harris 

K.L. Jamison 

Jack Rumbaugh 

L. Neil Smith - JPFO Liberty Crew 

Gabriel Suarez 

Mark A. Walters 

Contributing Writers 

Rev. David Beeson 

Carolyn Boyles 

Robert Heinritz, Jr., J.D. 

Steve Henigson 

Art Mize 

Tony Walker 

Advertising Sales 

Bob Cole 

360-665-0542 

E-mail: bobcole@centurytel.net 

Signed articles in Concealed Carry Magazine 

reflect the views of the author, and are not necessarily 

the views of the editors at Delta Media, LLC. The claims 

and opinions in the paid advertisements published 

in this magazine are not necessarily the claims and 

opinions of Delta Media, LLC. Delta Media, LLC takes 

no responsibility for these views, claims or opinions. 

Concealed Carry Magazine and the U.S. Concealed 

Carry Association are registered trademarks of Delta 

Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2004- 

2008 by Delta Media, LLC. Reproduction, copying, 

or distribution of Concealed Carry Magazine is 

prohibited without written permission. 

Published for U.S. Concealed Carry by: 

4466 County Road P - Suite 204 

Jackson, WI 53037 

(877) 677-1919 • Customer Service 

(262) 677-8877 • U.S. Concealed Carry 

Concealed Carry Magazine - July 2008 Issue ; July 7, 

2008 (USPS: 022-302, ISSN: 1550-7866) is published 

8 times per year for $39.00 per year by Delta Media, 

LLC, 4466 County Road P - STE 204, Jackson, WI 

53037-9272. Periodicals postage paid at Jackson, 

WI and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send 

address changes to: Concealed Carry Magazine, 4466 

County Road P - STE 204, Jackson, WI 53037-9272. 

tIM’S THOUGHTS 

BASEBALL, MEMBERSHIP PRICES 

& “THE ECONOMY” 

My oldest son’s baseball season is well underway. Tim Jr. is ten years old and 

this is the first season where the kids actually pitch! When I heard this, I 

was afraid that every other batter was going to get hit. But as it turns out, 

these kids are actually pretty good pitchers! Tim’s 

team wins a little more than half the time they 

play and they are all very competitive. It is really 

fun to see my son grow up. 

I’ve decided to permanently lower USCCA 

membership/subscription prices. The normal 

annual price for a USCCA membership used to 

be $69. Well, now it is only $47. If you ask me, a 

USCCA membership is simply money well spent. 

Please tell all your friends and relatives about the 

USCCA! 

I am so tired of hearing about how bad the 

economy is. Heck, sometimes I think the mainstream 

media WANTS the economy to be bad! 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an ostrich with 

my head in the sand. I realize that gas is really 

expensive and the real estate market is rough. 

But I think a LOT of the reason the economy is 

bad is because people THINK it is bad. Nothing 

is ever going to be perfect, so you’re better off 

just making the best with the current situation 

than worrying and complaining about how bad 

everything is! 

Here is a picture of me and my 

son Tim Jr. He is ten years old and 

plays second base for the West 

Bend Little League Cleveland 

Indians. I don’t really know that 

much about the game of baseball, 

but I still ended up being one of 

the coaches! 

Finally, talking about having nothing to complain about, just wait until you 

read this month’s CCM profile. As far as I’m concerned, Josh Benson is a man 

among men. I was truly inspired by his never-give-up attitude! 

God Bless and stay safe, 

JULY 2008 COVER 

PHOTOGRAPHER: Oleg Volk 

MODEL: Joshua Benson poses with a Sig 226. 

He ordinarily carries a 9mm Browning Hi Power 

in a crossdraw FIST driving holster; sharp-eyed 

readers may spot the butt of that pistol peeking 

out from under his shirt in the cover photo. Josh 

experienced vaccine-induced poliomyelitis as an 

infant, which left him with limited mobility. His 

disability has not stopped him, however; he’s 

taken dozens of firearms courses from noted 

trainers and has become a handgun instructor 

himself. He notes, “Being in the chair I wanted to 

have all the advantages I could if something happened. “ Read more about Josh in 

the Profile on page 18. 

USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n JULY 2008

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

Dear Editor: 

The “Cost-Effective Practice” article 

[by Duane Daiker], like the rest of Vol 5 

May/June 2008 CCM, is most excellent! 

However, I would like to add to the options 

enumerated therein. Specifically, 

I have found great value in using gas 

blowback AirSoft-type pistols as an aid 

in teaching pistol shooting fundamentals 

in my Concealed Handgun Permit 

classes, and for practice. 

Although it is not a substitute for 

some real live-fire experience, I perceive 

some advantages, especially for 

new shooters, to include: 

I have found great value 

in using gas blowback 

AirSoft-type pistols as 

an aid in teaching pistol 

shooting fundamentals 

in my Concealed Handgun 

Permit classes, and for 

practice. 

• Safety. With minimal precautions 

(eye protection), if a new or too-casual 

shooter fails to follow some gun safety 

rule, no one is really endangered. For 

presentation-fire-reholster exercises, 

an accidental discharge will hurt nothing 

more than pride! 

• Convenience. There is no need to 

travel to a range to practice or to evaluate 

new shooters’ sight picture, sight alignment, 

hold control, trigger squeeze, and 

follow through. Target backstops can be 

as simple as a large cardboard box with 

a piece of scrap carpeting hung inside. 

• Low noise/recoil. The sound of these 

toy guns is about the same as shooting 

.22 subsonic ammo in a suppressed pistol. 

Hearing protection is not necessary, 

and a new shooter is unlikely to develop 

a flinch. Also, the neighbors are unlikely 

to even hear it, much less complain. 

• Legality. All AirSoft-type guns sold 

legally in the US have a governmentmandated 

orange tip on the barrel, and 

are classified as toys. Hence they are (as 

far as I know) legal to own and use, at 

least in your own home, and on your 

own property, in every state. 

• Economy. Green gas is cheap, propane 

is cheaper, 6mm BBs are practically 

free, and the backstops I describe 

above capture the pellets, which fall to 

the bottom of the box and can be reused 

if you REALLY want to be frugal. 

• Utility. Aside from safety, convenience 

and economy, these pistols are 

a fun way to work out a flinch, build 

strength and endurance (they weight 

almost as much as the real thing), and 

otherwise improve your skill levels in 

the comfort of your own back yard, 

basement, or spare room. 

In my most recent classes, students 

have had excellent results shooting a 

Glock 23 replica from Taiwan (about 

$100), that uses green gas or propane 

to shoot standard 6mm plastic BBs and 

auto-cycle the slide. Transition to live 

fire at the range was easier, because the 

students were already comfortable with 

the basics, and knew they could hit a 

target. 

Keep up the great work! 

Dave Knight 

Certified Firearms Instructor 

Radford, VA 

Due to volume received, not all 

letters can be answered. Letters may 

be edited for space and clarity. 

Send your letters to: 

Concealed Carry Magazine 

Attn: Editor 

4466 Hwy P - Suite 204 

Jackson, WI 53037 

Or email: 

editor@usconcealedcarry.com 

I just want to say that “Point Shooting 

Versus Aimed Fire,” by Gabriel 

Suarez [page 46, CCM April 2008] is 

an excellent article. He hits the target 

dead center on that one. 

Bob Orlando 

Excellent article on Bill Akins by Mark 

Walters [“Mr. Bill Akins and the Akins 

Accelerator,” Ordinary Guy column, 

May/June ‘08]. He left out one thing: 

how can we send a check to Akins to 

help him fight? 

Clay Stuckey 

Contact for Akins’ defense fund is: 

John Monroe Trust Account 

9640 Coleman Rd. 

Roswell, Georgia, 30075 

Make checks payable to John Monroe 

Trust Account. Please make note on the 

check or cover letter that donation is for 

William Akins vs United States. 

Editor 

Corrections: 

The news article titled, “Muggers need 

to get real jobs in this town!” on page 

12 in the April 2008 issue of CCM incorrectly 

identified the location of the incident, 

which actually took place in Charlotte, 

North Carolina. Thanks to reader 

Phillip C., who brought the error to our 

attention. 

K.L. Jamison’s article, “Warriors of the 

Working Day” cited John Fortescue as 

the source of the title quote. While Fortescue 

may have been the first person 

to apply that phrase to the American 

militia, Will Shakespeare used it first, in 

Henry V. Thanks to the multiple readers 

who spotted this one. 

 


TRUE STORIES 

CARRY A GUN... IT WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE. 

HIS PIPE SHOT BULLETS 

A 30-year-old man decided a central 

Mesa store would be an easy target for 

a robbery. He demanded money and 

struck the clerk with a pipe. 

The 55-year-old clerk responded by 

defending himself with his fists and a 

Taser. The Taser did not stop the attacker, 

so the clerk pulled out his gun and 

shot him. 

The clerk’s attacker was last reported 

as being in critical condition, and will 

likely face charges when he recovers. 

Police spokesman Chis Arvayo stated 

the clerk will most likely not face any 

charges, as “He’s got the right to defend 

himself.” 

The clerk did not require extensive 

medical treatment for his injuries. 

East Valley Tribune • Mesa, AZ 

THE TASER DID 

NOT STOP 

THE ATTACKER, 

SO THE CLERK 

PULLED OUT 

HIS GUN... 

PAWN SHOP ROBBERY 

A robber stormed into David Gardner’s 

pawn shop, smashed display cases 

and stole goods. Gardner grabbed his 

gun and opened fire, hitting the thief as 

he ran out the door. 

Investigators followed a trail of blood 

to a nearby neighborhood. They found 

20-year-old Willie Clarkson after his 

girlfriend called 911 when she found 

him hiding in her apartment. He was 

bleeding from at least two gunshot 

wounds. 

Gardner states he’s never had an incident 

like this before, and was badly 

shaken from the experience. Hopefully 

Clarkson will be so badly shaken from 

the incident he won’t try to rob another 

place again... after he gets out of jail. 

MyFOX • Tampa Bay, FL 

THERE WILL BE NO SEQUEL 

At 6:30 in the morning at the CNK 

Beverage Pit in Seffner, Kenneth Charles 

Heidkamp, 19, made a fatal decision. 

He hit the clerk with a can of frenchcut 

green beans in order to subdue him and 

rob the place. 

The clerk hit back by grabbing his gun 

and opening fire, killing Heidkamp. 

abcactionnews.com• Tampa Bay, FL 

TACKDRIVER 

Juan Ibarra, a roofer, was hitching 

a trailer to his pickup when a robber 

came up behind him and shoved a pistol 

to his back. He was ordered to go to 

the cab of his truck and hand over his 

wallet and cellphone. Ibarra complied, 

and the robber began to walk off, but 

stopped to pick up some of the stolen 

money that had fallen to the ground. 

That’s when Ibarra drew his licensed 

handgun and shot at the robber at least 

three times, shooting him in the chest 

and killing him. 

“If it’s a robber who got popped, that’s 

his problem,” said John Andre, who lives 

near the incident. 

Houston Chronicle • Houston, TX 

HE SAID StOP 

Kenneth Ross Jr. of Greet, South Carolina 

confronted his estranged wife and 

a male friend outside her home in Spartanburg. 

He attempted to run over her 

with his truck, but hit her car instead. 

Ross then began to approach his estranged 

wife when the male friend ordered 

him to stop. Ross refused to stop, 

so he drew his gun and fired, killing 

Ross. Police state the man was acting in 

self-defense and will not be charged. 

Aiken Standard • Aiken, SC 

SHOULD’VE HAILED A CAB 

Surveillance video from a Memphis 

gas station shows what happened to a 

would-be carjacker. 

The suspect approached the victim’s 

vehicle and demanded his keys. When 

he walked around the car, the victim 

drew a gun and started shooting. 

It is not known if the suspect was 

wounded, because the man ran off and 

has not yet been found. 

The victim was legally armed. 

newschannel5.com • Nashville, TN 

tHESE StORES 

DELIVER....ON tARGEt 

There has been a rash of armed robberies 

lately in the East Bay area of California. 

Ed’s Liquors in Oakland was targeted 

for a robbery by a man who entered 

and shot the store owner in the leg. The 

owner fired back, hitting the robber at 

least three times. The man’s condition is 

unknown. 

Two days earlier, a similar incident 

happened at the Wah Fey 8th Avenue 

Corner Market in Oakland. Two men 

tried to rob the store, but the store clerk 

shot and wounded one of the robbers. 

Last year in the same area, a pizzaria 

owner shot and killed a robber who 

was armed with an “assault rifle.” Only 

a month after that, a liquor store clerk 

shot and killed a 17-year-old robber 

who shot at him. 

There have been at least eight takeover 

robberies at restaurants in the area 

over the past month. 

San Francisco Chronicle • CA 

How would you have handled situations like these? Discuss scenarios and more online in the 

usconcealedcarry.com forums. Familiarize yourself with your local and state laws regarding self-defense. 

JULY 2008 n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM

STREET TACTICS 

Stay back about six 

feet from the cover to 

prevent ricochets from 

hitting you. 

[ B Y G A B E S U A R E Z ] 

Concealed carry trainees 

are often admonished by 

their instructors to use 

cover in a gunfight. 

Use of cover is a good idea that has 

saved many good guys, but its 

tactical use must be understood 

and put in the correct context in order 

to be effective. 

The difference lies in the issue of who 

has initiative in the fight. In other words, 

who is being proactive and who is being 

reactive. Here are a couple of examples: 

An armed good guy sees a criminal 

with a knife attacking a woman and realizes 

that although he is not involved in 

the fight directly, he must get involved 

to save the woman’s life. So, he purposely 

and proactively draws his pistol and 

shoots the bad guy. There was no need 

for cover, but there was a need to take 

the initiative. 

A similar situation may be where the 

armed good guy happens to be at the 

scene of a robbery at a business. Seeing 

the bad guys draw their guns and approach 

the cashier, he may elect to take 

a covered position behind a stone pillar. 

At this point he may engage or not, 

depending on what he sees, but he had 

the ability to take a safer position than 

simply standing out in the open like the 

proverbial deer in the head lights. 

Both of these events developed such 

that the good guy had ample time to 

realize something was happening and 

make a decision to act. In the first one, 

cover would have been unnecessary, 

while in the second event, it may have 

been essential. 

There is also the second type of 

event—the pure surprise attack. As unpopular 

as it is in the gun culture to admit 

that these occur, not everyone can 

be alert in condition yellow all of the 

time. In these reactive events, the bad 

guy has the initiative, and to survive, the 

good guy must be able to react. In these 

cases, counter-attacking the assailant is 

probably a far better option than trying 

to look for cover. 

An example may be an armed good 

guy who is walking into a business. The 

next thing he sees is a bad guy pointing 

or firing a pistol at him from across the 

room. There is no time to do anything 

but move off the line of fire, draw, and 

shoot back. To think of cover at this 

point might cause a delayed response 

with terminal results for the good guy. 

Please don’t think I am eschewing 

 


Shooting from around 

cover rather than over it 

exposes much less of you. 

Be certain that what you 

are using as cover will 

in fact protect you. This 

plastic container is filled 

with sacks of concrete. 

the use of cover because I am not. I am 

simply pointing out that it must be used 

appropriately and its use kept in proper 

context. 

To use cover in a fight, one needs 

three things: The time to get to cover, 

the proximity and availability of cover, 

and (perhaps) the expectation that a 

fight is about to happen. Let’s examine 

these in detail: 

Time 

In the reactive event we described 

above, the good guy had no time at all to 

get to any sort of cover. Generally speaking, 

if the bad guy is closer to you than 

any point of cover, you must think of 

dealing with the bad guy first. If I have a 

man drawing a pistol to shoot me from 

ten feet away, and my nearest point of 

cover is 25 yards away, I can almost guarantee 

you that I will not make it in time. 

That is why we need to develop close 

range gunfighting tactics that involve 

getting off the line of fire, drawing and 

shooting on the move, alternative sighting 

methods, and so on. Cover is great, 

but it will take you time to get there. The 

relationship between time and distance 

is one that every student of close range 

gunfights must understand. 

Proximity and availability of cover 

Obviously, cover has to be nearby 

otherwise searching for it is a waste of 

time. If you can’t get to it because it is 

too far away don’t bother running to it. 

Attack instead. 

It is important to understand just 

what constitutes cover. If your adversary 

is armed with a knife, keeping a 

table between you and him may be sufficient. 

If he is armed with a .308 battle 

rifle, even a car may be a bad choice. You 

would be surprised how many things 

suggested as cover by tactical writers 

are easily penetrated by even the most 

common ammunition. 

A rule of thumb to follow is that the 

harder and heavier the item of cover, 

the better at stopping bullets it will be. 

Concrete is better than cinder block, 

and cinder block is better than a mail 

box. Many things may simply be good 

concealment, which is not bad, but will 

only hide you from the bullets, not protect 

you. 

Expecting the fight 

The final point is your expectation 

that a fight is going to happen. If you 

see the fight brewing, you can get behind 

cover quickly and use it effectively. 

If you fall into an urban ambush, we get 

back into the issue of time available. 

In a military context, reactively moving 

to cover as an immediate action to 

ambush is a viable tactic. As soon as a 

team receives fire, they will move off the 

line of fire, go to ground or cover, then 

go into whatever their plan for immediate 

reaction to an ambush would be. If 

you are being shot at and do not know 

the source of the gunfire immediately, 

you want to move rapidly to somewhere 

other than where you are. That rapid 

move off the line of fire may hopefully 

be to cover, but it may simply be off 

to the side and down, if that is all you 

have. 

Using cover effectively 

Assuming you had the time, reach 

and forethought to get behind cover, 

you need the skills to work the cover. 

Once there, you need to know how to 

shoot back, as well as how to maintain 

your position and to know when to 

abandon it. 

In general, it is better to shoot around 

cover than over it. Think about it. How 

much of your head has to protrude 

above the cover just so you can see? 

JULY 2008 n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM

Compare that to looking and shooting 

from around cover—much better, is it 

not? Also, consider that much of gun 

training in the USA today is lop-sided. 

By this I mean that they only train one 

side of the body, the left or the right, 

whichever is dominant. Training the 

lesser side is rarely examined beyond 

the cursory discussion of the dominant 

hand being injured. At my school we 

seek to be as ambidextrous as possible 

and don’t consider strong side-weak 

side issues. Rather, we have a right side 

and a left side. 

Since we are shooting around cover, 

we are looking at right side and left side. 

How will you handle a piece of cover 

that only offers utility from the one side, 

especially if it is your traditionally “weak 

side.” The simplest and best answer is to 

put the gun in the other hand. Thus, the 

importance of completely training both 

the right and left sides. 

Consider also how you will handle 

the cover issue if you have non-combatants 

with you. These are the folks 

you are often protecting such as family 

members, friends and others. Will you 

How will you handle 

a piece of cover that 

only offers utility 

from the one side, 

especially if it is 

your traditionally 

“weak side?” 

jump behind cover and leave them in 

the open? Only a coward would do that. 

Give some thought as to how you will 

get them behind cover as well. In the old 

days we often joked that the best cover 

was a swarm of bullets heading toward 

the adversary. In these cases, as extreme 

and radical as it may sound, a short, 

intense burst of suppressive fire from 

your Glock or XD pistol may in fact buy 

you the time to get to safety. It may not 

be pretty or approved by certain ranges 

but it has proven effective. 

Don’t discount the use of cover, but 

certainly don’t over-emphasize it either. 

Taken in context, it can be a life saver. 

n 

Gabe Suarez is the CEO of Suarez 

International, USA. 

www.suarezinternational.com 

www.warriortalk.com 

www.onesourcetactical.com 

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SIG SAUER ® ACADEMY 

IS “MATCH GRADE” REALLY 

NECESSARY FOR A 

COMBAT HANDGUN? 

[ B Y G E O R G E H A R R I S ] 

In reference to firearms, 

the term match grade has 

a certain mystique as being 

better or having an advantage 

over the standard model of a 

particular product. 

For our purposes here we are going 

to limit our ideas and comments 

to handguns even though long 

guns can also be classified as match 

grade. 

In most cases a match grade handgun 

started life as a standard model with 

service grade parts and a performance 

standard that is generally somewhat 

less than that of the match grade product. 

Converting a service grade gun to 

one of match quality encompasses a 

broad spectrum of ideas and processes. 

The objective of match quality is most 

often thought of as modifying the gun 

to make it more accurate intrinsically 

and practically. This can be done by 

tightening the tolerances of the moving 

parts, replacing the barrel with one of 

higher quality, installing high visibility 

sights, applying a custom finish, adding 

competition grips, and refining the trigger 

pull, among other things. 

From a concealed carry perspective, 

some of the attributes of a match 

grade handgun are valuable and others 

are detrimental. At the top of the list of 

desirables for a fighting handgun is reliability. 

It won’t matter how accurate the 

gun is if we can’t get a bullet out of the 

barrel when we need to. We have had 

students bring guns to our Concealed 

Carry classes at the Sig Sauer Academy 

that were so tightly fit that they would 

only shoot ball ammo, and required a 

regular reapplication of lubricant during 

the day’s live fire drills just to keep 

them running. The intrinsic (mechanical) 

accuracy is usually outstanding in 

these pistols and is virtually always superior 

to the shooter’s ability to use it. 

The fact that it is unreliable determines 

that it is not a candidate for concealed 

carry or self defense. 

When it comes to reliability, those 

who replace their factory barrels with 

custom barrels that have match chambers 

are really walking a fine line. A 

match chamber is usually toleranced 

at a minimum dimension to achieve 

the highest possible level of accuracy. 

This allows no error for the cartridge 

that is on the large size of the ammunition 

specification to tolerate any firing 

residue left by previously fired rounds 

or any minor amount of dirt picked up 

from the magazine or carry medium. 

The mouth of the chamber at the transition 

point from the feed ramp, and the 

feed ramp itself, are critical areas in getting 

a single round from the magazine 

into the chamber. From a practical perspective, 

in order to insure reliability we 

must allow for the mechanical variables 

as well as the unknowns that seem to 

crop up unannounced. 

To be considered acceptable for self 

defense purposes, the gun should shoot 

any factory ammunition of the correct 

caliber with total reliability. 

The term match trigger has many 

definitions. Usually it alludes to the 

properties perceived as necessary for 

the shooter to deliver accurate fire on 

a specific target. These properties include 

trigger weight, smoothness, stroke 

length, and reset distance; all of which 

have diminishing value as the stress 

level increases. In fact, the higher values 

of trigger stroke length and weight, 

in moderation, serve to decrease unintentional 

discharges while having little 

effect on hit probability in street con- 

About the Author: 

George Harris has spent over 30 years 

in the field of adult education with 

more than 17 years 

at the SIG SAUER ® 

12 

Academy. He has 

focused his efforts 

in the arenas of 

small arms, small 

arms training and 

combat skill development. 

George 

has evolved from an infantry soldier, 

small arms repair technician, and 

drill instructor to become the coach 

and firing member of the internationally 

recognized United States Army 

Reserve Combat Marksmanship Team. 

As a competitive shooter, George 

has the coveted distinction of being 

Distinguished with both the service 

pistol and the service rifle. As director 

of the SIG SAUER ® Academy, George is 

committed to the safe and successful 

use of firearms by armed professionals 

and responsible citizens alike through 

using the SIG Principle of Training: 

Simple Is Good! 

Sponsored By: 

sigsauer.com 603-679-2003 


frontations. Double Action Only pistols 

and Double Action revolvers in the law 

enforcement community have supported 

this on an ongoing basis. 

Mechanically, match triggers are finicky 

in that they require regular cleaning, 

lubrication and adjustment to maintain 

their peak level of performance. They 

may be more prone to breakage as well, 

due to the more complicated design 

features as compared to the standard 

trigger configurations. 

Match grade or target sights are popular 

in that they provide that perfect sight 

picture for the shooter to precisely place 

shots on the target. Unfortunately, these 

sights are not as durable or practical as 

fixed or drift-adjustable combat sights. 

The sharp corners on the Patridge front 

sights and the flat blade rear sights 

will naturally snag on anything available, 

and their high mounting position 

makes the gun somewhat unwieldy and 

inconvenient. A better choice is a variable 

height, drift-adjustable system that 

is durable and allows the shooter to zero 

to the desired sight picture with the ammunition 

of choice. 

Standard grips on most pistols are 

satisfactory as they come out of the 

box. Although target grips may enhance 

the ability of the shooter to hit a target, 

they usually are larger than standard 

and are more difficult to conceal. If the 

standard grips are not acceptable, find 

the most compact grip that positions 

the gun in the hand so that the muzzle 

points naturally toward the target. It is 

as if you were pointing your index finger 

at the bullet impact point on the target. 

Ensure that the grip has a non-slip surface 

in all weather conditions but still 

allows the gun to be easily concealed 

without clothing or holster interference. 

When all things are considered, 

match grade may not be as important 

as it seems. Think about the accuracy 

needed versus the reliability necessary 

to fulfill the requirements for a concealed 

carry handgun. Consider the 

location, situation and conditions that 

are likely to require the use of the gun, 

and the answers will be forthcoming 

as to whether you need a match grade 

gun for concealed carry, or whether service 

grade will do. Simple Is Good! n 

The Sig Sauer Academy offers training 

from entry to advanced level, on and off 

site, for the responsible citizen and the 

armed professional. Training DVDs are 

available from the Sig Pro Shop, on line 

at www.sigsaueracademy.com or at your 

local dealer. 

It won’t matter 

how accurate 

the gun is if 

we can’t get a 

bullet out of the 

barrel when we 

need to. 

10 Concealed Carry Magazine www.usconcealedcarry.com 

Volume 4 - October 2007 

JULY 2008 n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM 

13

Pocket 

Protector: 

The perfect pocket pistol 

would be small, light, thin, 

chambered in an effective 

caliber for self-defense, 

completely reliable, and 

inexpensive. After spending 

some time with Ruger’s 

new and much talked about 

Light Compact Pistol (LCP), 

I think it comes very close. 

All carry guns are a compromise 

of sorts, and that is especially 

true for pocket pistols. But the 

Ruger LCP seems to make all the right 

compromises to be small enough and 

powerful enough, while remaining very 

affordable. 

Gun Details 

A true pocket pistol, the LCP is one 

of the smallest guns available in what 

A tiny gun with a 

slim profile means 

less printing when 

concealed. 

The Ruger 

many consider to be the smallest viable this type. The LCP also has a traditional 

round for self defense: the .380 Auto. As magazine release located on the left 

you can see from the specs, this gun is side of the frame just behind the trigger 

small, light and flat, while still packing guard. 

seven total rounds. This gun will almost One somewhat unique feature of the 

disappear in a pocket, and will print Ruger is a slide hold-open lever. This is 

much less than a wider J-frame revolver not a standard slide lock, and the gun 

or a heavier steel pocket auto. The polymer 

frame is molded to a hardened steel zine. However, when held to the rear, 

does not lock open on an empty maga- 

slide, resulting in an unloaded weight of the slide can be locked open by pushing 

less than 9.5 ounces. Add seven rounds up the lever. This can be useful in handling 

an unloaded weapon, or in clear- 

and a pocket holster, and it is still less 

than one pound! That is a lot of firepower 

for such a light carry package. 

Fit and finish on the LCP appears 

ing difficult jams. 

The LCP’s manual of arms is quite to be very good for a gun in this price 

simple. The gun is a double action of range. The polymer frame, which Ruger 

sorts, but the recessed hammer is partially 

tensioned by operation of the Filled Nylon,” has a nicely finished look 

describes as “High Performance Glass 

slide, so there is no repeat strike capability. 

The result, however, is a relatively checkering. The style of the grip gives 

with the Ruger logo and appropriate 

light eight pound trigger pull that is the LCP a family resemblance to Ruger’s 

easily managed. There is no external or other new polymer framed pistols. The 

manual safety, but the long trigger pull hardened steel slide is finished in a 

provides adequate safety for a gun of matte blue. 

14 


K&D holsters offers 

a Pocket Defender 

Convertible 2-in-1 

holster for the new LCP. 

The LCP has extremely 

simple, low-profile sights 

for basic sight alignment. 

The LCP is 

small enough to 

tuck into most 

people’s pockets. 

LCP[ B Y D U A N E A . D A I K E R ] 

Ruger LCP 

Specifications 

Caliber 

Barrel Length 

Overall Length 

Overall Height 

Overall Width 

Overall Weight 

Trigger Pull Weight 

Capacity 

.380 Auto 

2.75 inches 

5.16 inches 

3.60 inches 

.820 inches 

9.4 oz. 

8 lbs. 

Suggested Retail Price $330 

6 + 1 rounds 

Unlike some pocket pistols, the Ruger 

does have small, but useable vestigial 

sights. In essence, you line up a small 

bump that serves as the front sight with 

a small groove that serves as the rear 

sight. You don’t get a true sight picture 

in the traditional sense, but it is enough 

to get a proper alignment of the gun, 

and it’s better than just looking down 

the top of a smooth slide. The benefit, of 

course, is that the sights are extremely 

low profile and snag proof, which is important 

for a pocket gun. 

Every LCP comes packaged with a 

single magazine, an external locking 

device, and a soft case. The suggested 

retail is $330, which should translate 

into street prices below $300 once the 

initial demand has been met. 

Carrying the LCP 

This Ruger is clearly designed for 

pocket carry. While some might find 

a home in a purse or on an ankle, the 

JULY 2008 n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE 

15

majority of owners will likely carry this 

gun in a pocket. Pocket carry, however, 

should never be undertaken without a 

pocket holster to stabilize the gun, minimize 

printing, and protect the trigger 

from a negligent discharge. 

My friend Kevin Manley at K&D 

Holsters provided me with one of his 

Pocket Defender Convertible 2-in-1 

holsters for this review. The 2-in-1 is 

one of Kevin’s standard pocket holsters 

with a removable anti-print panel that 

helps further disguise the shape of the 

gun. I find that some pockets need an 

anti-print panel for most effective concealment, 

and some do not. The K&D 

Holsters 2-in-1 gives you that kind of 

flexibility. A standard 2-in-1 will cost 

you about $50. The holster shown here 

has been dressed up with exotic ostrich 

skin at some extra cost. Kevin’s work is 

top notch, and he takes customer satisfaction 

very seriously. You can view K&D 

Holsters’ entire line at www.kdholsters. 

com or call (813) 601-0504. 

Shooting the LCP 

Pocket guns can be a handful to 

shoot. I find the LCP, however, to be 

better than most. The grip is just big 

enough to wrap two fingers around. In 

this lightweight package the perceived 

recoil of even the modest .380 Auto 

round is stout. While some recoil-sensitive 

people may find this gun objectionable, 

I think that most shooters will not 

be bothered. Recoil is manageable, and 

there are no sharp edges to draw blood. 

I fired over 100 rounds in a day with no 

significant discomfort. To me, the LCP 

is much more fun to shoot than a lightweight 

snubby revolver with hot loads. 

Functionality was exceptional, with 

absolutely no failures exhibited in well 

over 100 rounds fired. The gun happily 

digested all my test ammo—the 

Hornady .380 Auto 90 grain HP/XTP 

jacketed hollowpoint. An average group 

at seven yards measured two inches. 

That kind of performance is certainly 

“combat accurate,” and represents excellent 

performance for a gun with 

minimal sights. Average muzzle velocity 

with the Hornady rounds was 800 feet 

per second–not bad for a .380 Auto with 

a 2.75” barrel! Hornady’s excellent line 

of ammunition can be viewed at www. 

hornady.com, or you can call (800) 338- 

3220. 

In short, the LCP shoots and performs 

very well for its diminutive size. 

It exceeded my expectations for such 

a small piece. The limiting factor on 

shooting this gun is the sights, which 

are designed to be minimal. As long 

as you can do your part, I believe the 

Ruger will perform well in any realistic 

self-defense situation. 

Conclusions 

I am happy to see Ruger making a 

serious run at the civilian concealed 

carry market. Ruger’s reputation of 

building quality frames is well-known, 

and the company stands behind its 

products. Ruger has gotten some criticism 

of the LCP being a close copy of 

another manufacturer’s design. Clearly 

this is not an uncommon phenomenon 

in the firearms market. Ultimately the 

successes of any model will depend 

upon its functionality over time and 

the manufacturer’s support of the product. 

Given Ruger’s track record, there is 

every reason to believe the LCP will be 

well-received, and that Ruger will sell a 

bunch of them. 

The LCP is an excellent new offering 

from Sturm, Ruger and Company that is 

specifically designed for concealed carry. 

This pocket pistol should serve you 

well as a backup gun or a primary carry 

gun for deep concealment. As for me, 

when I finished shooting the LCP for 

this review, I cleaned it, loaded it, and 

put in my pocket. You can view the LCP 

at www.ruger.com or call (928) 778-6555 

for additional information. n 

[ Duane A. Daiker is a Contributing 

Editor for CCM, but is otherwise a regular 

guy—not much different from you. 

Duane has been a lifelong shooter and 

goes about his life an armed, responsible, 

and somewhat opinionated citizen. 

Duane can be reached at Daiker@ 

RealWorldCarryGear.com. His other 

feature articles and Real World Carry 

Gear Columns can be viewed at: www. 

RealWorldCarryGear.com. ] 

Shooting Results 

Load 

Hornady .380 Auto 

HP/XTP 

Average 

Velocity 

Extreme 

Spread 

Average 

800 83 2.0 

Velocity measured in fps 10 feet from the muzzle 

for 10 consecutive shots with a Shooting Chrony 

chronograph. Temperature: 75° F. Accuracy 

measured in inches for two, five-shot groups fired 

offhand at 7 yards. 

The Ruger LCP performed 

very well, and there were no 

failures in over 100 rounds. 

16 


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CCM PROFILE 

Josh Benson shoots with his left 

hand only, steadied somewhat by 

the atrophied lifting muscles in 

his right arm. 

PHOTO BY OLEG VOLK • A-HUMAN-RIGHT.COM 

Joshu 

The most remarkable thing about Joshua Benson is the words he doesn’t say. 

In a world full of whiny emo-boys and 

latte-sipping cowards, a man who 

never utters the words “I can’t” and 

who never asks for a drop of sympathy 

is a refreshing change. 

I met Josh for the first time last spring 

at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, 

during the last course Jim Cirillo ever 

taught. Cirillo’s class was a two-day 

adventure into close quarters shooting 

techniques, including alternative sighting 

methods and shooting from downed 

positions. Josh wheeled himself in on 

the first day of class, taking the far righthand 

end of the line so that his crossdraw 

holster and unusual one-handed 

reload would not cause his muzzle to 

cross any of the other students. This 

class was designed for intermediate to 

accomplished shooters, not at all for beginners, 

and I confess that I wondered if 

the young man in the chair was going to 

be able to keep up—a worry that seems 

downright laughable in retrospect. 

Josh, it turned out, was no beginner: 

he is a certified handgun instructor 

through Tom Givens’ Rangemaster 

firearms training school in Memphis, 

TN. Now 25 years old, he’s taken dozens 

of professional training classes in the 

three years he’s been shooting defensive 

handguns. And he takes his personal 

defense very seriously, carrying a concealed 

firearm every day. 

The physical challenges that Josh 

faces are a bit out of the ordinary. An 

encounter with vaccine-induced poliomyelitis 

as an infant left him with 

no function in either leg, roughly five 

percent function in his right arm (very 

little in his right hand), and only about 

eighty percent function in his left arm 

and hand. While most shooters struggle 

to get shots on paper using both hands 

in a stable stance, Josh nails the target 

while holding the gun with his left hand 

only, steadied somewhat by the lifting 

muscles in his right arm. 

“This kid just impresses the hell out 

of me,” says Massad Ayoob, who taught 

from left to right: Tom Givens, Josh 

Benson, John Farnam, John Hearne. 

Josh’s LFI-1 and LFI-2 classes in 2007. 

“At LFI, we’ve had students in a chair 

before. We’ve had one-armed students 

before. But Josh is the first one-armed 

guy in a chair we’ve ever had. He taught 

us all some things.” Like many firearms 

classes, LFI-2 is physically demanding in 

a lot of ways. Josh, working one-handed 

from his wheelchair, kept up with this 

demanding class just fine. He successfully 

completed the LFI Qualification 

shoot at double speed, which included 

getting all his reloads well under time. 

“I can reload an auto-pistol in about 

four to six seconds,” Josh explains. “I 

recently have shaved off about two seconds 

by going straight to a backup gun, 

the New York reload.” 

Although Josh sometimes carries a 

snub-nosed revolver as a backup, his 

regular carry is a semi-auto. He considered, 

but ultimately rejected, making 

his primary carry gun a revolver—the 

gun type perhaps most commonly recommended 

for people with physical 

18 


Assissted by Jim Cirillo 

Jr. during a Close 

Quarter Survival 

Course, Josh works 

on shooting from a 

downed position. 

Josh practices leveragebased 

handgun retention 

techniques with Massad 

Ayoob during an LFI-2 

class at the Firearms 

Academy of Seattle. 

a 

Benson 

challenges—for two reasons. First, he 

believed that he wanted more ammunition 

available to him than a revolver 

generally carries. The second reason 

was minor, but still worth considering: 

Less felt recoil. Josh explains, “The action 

of the slide absorbs some of the recoil. 

Since I have only one arm to hold 

the gun, less felt recoil means faster follow-up 

for me.” 

Was there a specific incident that 

caused you to carry a gun? 

No. I grew up with my dad carrying, 

so when I turned 21 it was one of 

those natural things. Plus, I moved to 

Memphis, and they kind of have a high 

crime rate down there. And being in the 

chair I wanted to have all the advantages 

I could if something happened. It was 

all just very natural. 

What training methods do you employ? 

Friday nights at Rangemaster we have 

shooting league, a competition basically 

similar to IDPA, that helps keep my manipulations 

and gunhandling skills up. 

For regular practice, I like just going 

to the range and dedicating 50 rounds 

to going through various qualifications. 

Tom Givens has a list of different qualifications, 

different tests from various 

places like the FBI Qualifications and 

others. I just take 50 rounds and run 

myself through one of those qualifiers 

so I’m doing something structured and 

not just putting holes in paper. I like using 

the qualifications because it’s a specific 

bar that tells you this is how well 

you’re doing. It gives you a structure 

to shoot and something to evaluate it 

with to see where you’re at. Plus I take a 

class probably every couple of months 

so that also helps. I take classes just as 

often as I can. 

Have you had any difficulties with 

safety in any of the classes you have 

taken, or with shooting while there 

are a lot of other people on the line? 

Not really. I’ve just gotta be aware of 

my muzzle during my one handed reloads 

and watch the angles from my 

crossdraw holster. I always take the far 

right hand side of the line so I don’t 

sweep anyone. It’s more positioning 

than anything, and making sure the instructors 

are aware of what I need, and 

also my fellow classmates. 

You’ve taken a lot of different classes. 

Which specific classes have been the 

most helpful to you personally? 

The most helpful class was LFI-1, easily. 

Judicious Use of Deadly Force, the 

classroom part of the class, covers what 

happens after a shooting, the aftermath 

and the legal concerns. That’s a subject 

a lot of people don’t like to talk about, 

but it’s probably the one thing that will 

save you after an incident. If you manage 

to survive the incident there’s a 

whole other world that a lot of people 

aren’t aware of. 


19

Josh fires an AR 

during the final 

qualification shoot in 

Ayoob’s LFI-2 class at 

the Firearms Academy 

of Seattle. 

Other than that, I cannot name just 

one class—because I’ve taken so many 

from them—but working with Tom 

Givens and John Farnam, definitely. It’s 

not so much the course, it’s the instructor, 

and Tom Givens and John Farnam 

have both been very very helpful. 

Your primary carry gun is a semi-auto. 

Did you have a hard time learning how 

to rack the slide? 

Not really. I’m pretty quick at adapting 

some things. When I was younger 

my dad just ran it for me but obviously 

that wasn’t going to work for defensive 

handgun. My one-handed reload, my 

shooting ability and how I carry came 

from different instructors pretty early 

on. 

My shooting ability just came from 

working with Tom Givens. He’s really 

been very helpful. The cross-draw 

carry came out of a Gabe Suarez class. 

And then when I took the course with 

John Farnam, he taught me how to do 

a one-handed reload, so my reload 

technique came from John Farnam. I 

started shooting in August when I was 

21 (in 2004). I took my first class from 

Rangemaster in August, and took the 

Gabe Suarez class also in August, right 

after my first class. In September that 

year I took the class with John Farnam. 

So it all went really quick. I just kept 

taking classes, figured out what kind of 

holster I needed, and then was able to 

work out the one handed reloads. It all 

happened in a matter of just a couple 

months, bringing everything together. 

What weapons do you carry, and 

what ammunition? 

I carry a Browning Hi Power that’s 

been worked on by Jim Garthwaite, and 

also a Springfield XD, both in 9mm. I 

had a beavertail added to the Hi Power 

and a Teflon finish and all the parts fitted. 

It’s got Heinie sights with a gold 

bead front sight. You can pick the front 

sight up in any light conditions, or if 

it’s too dark to see the gold bead it’s too 

dark to see what you’re shooting at. My 

Browning Hi Power carries 15+1 and the 

Springfield XD-9 carries 17+1. I use 127- 

grain Winchester Rangers in those. 

What concealment holsters do you 

use? 

Right now I use a crossdraw holster, 

the FIST Driving Holster. The holster 

has a snap where you can move it 

around on your belt from driving to on 

20 


your hip and back again. I just run with 

it in the driving position and it works 

great. It holds the mouth of the holster 

up a bit higher than the holster I was using 

before too. 

Do you have a big box o’ holsters? 

I really don’t. By taking the classes 

very early on I kind of avoided that. 

My first carry holster was actually 

made by Dale Fricke. My first two holsters 

were custom made by him, just 

for me. After that, I ended up looking 

around a little bit and I found that FIST 

driving holster. The other holsters were 

good, but I looked around because if I 

never try new things I’ll never know if 

there might be something better out 

there. The FIST was leather and I prefer 

leather over Kydex, it’s just more comfortable. 

I found it smoother to draw 

from, and it’s less clicky. Also sometimes 

I felt like my Kydex one was going to 

break on me. Since I’m sitting down and 

bending around a lot, moving around 

to a lot of different angles in the chair, I 

just felt like it was on the brink of snapping 

sometimes. Major paranoia there. 

So I just like the leather holster better. 

What specific adaptations have you 

needed to make in order to shoot well? 

I do a one-handed reload off my 

wheelchair. It’s just your basic onehanded 

reload like they teach in a lot of 

classes. You know, where you just stick 

the empty gun back in the holster, pop 

the old mag out, put the new mag in, 

and then draw the gun again and rack 

the slide. Instead of running the slide 

off a belt or a holster, I found a spot on 

the wheelchair I could press the slide, 

and just run the slide against that. It 

works pretty well. 

and someone else might have a good 

solution for something else. So get a 

lot of different perspectives. Everybody 

problem solves just a little bit different. 

With the different perspectives I was 

able to problem solve most of the things 

that I ran into. 

Do you have any recommendations for 

all of our readers? 

Yes. If you have the time and money 

to do it, get as much training as possible. 

I know not everyone has the money 

or the time, but if you can you really 

should. A lot of people don’t want to give 

up the time but they need to give up at 

least some time for training. Shooting is 

a skill that diminishes if you don’t do it 

for a while. Even just going to the range 

at least once a month will at least keep 

your skill where it’s at. n 

[ Each issue of CCM contains an article 

that profiles an everyday individual 

who carries a concealed weapon. This 

article is an inspiration to our readers by 

helping them to realize that they are not 

alone in their lifestyle decision to always 

be armed. ] 

What do you recommend to other physically 

challenged people who are concerned 

about self-defense? What advice 

do you have for other people who have 

physical difficulties and want to figure 

out how to safely run the gun? 

I would say take as many classes as 

you can and learn from as many different 

instructors as possible. You want to 

get as many different inputs as possible 

because what one may come up with 

might work really well for one thing, 


21

Bare As 

Comfortable to wear and 

at a convenient height, the 

Bare Asset stays in place. 

[ B Y S T E V E H E N I G S O N ] 

High 

Noon 

Holsters’ 

My wife, Jean, finds wearing a belt or a tight waistband 

extremely uncomfortable. 

We found that High Noon 

Holsters’ Bare Asset Inside the 

Waistband (IWB) rig provides a 

useful solution to her problem. It clips 

firmly to the top of her beltless Polartec 

pants, retains her J-frame Smith & 

Wesson snubby securely, and allows a 

quick, smooth, and unimpeded drawstroke. 

There’s a bonus: it’s available 

to properly fit almost any gun off-theshelf, 

as fast as the Post Office can deliver 

it. 

High Noon Holsters makes the Bare 

Asset from what appears to be oil-impregnated, 

chrome-tanned leather, 

vat-dyed black and about 1 ⁄16” thick. 

The pouch’s mouth is reinforced with a 

second layer of the same leather, which 

also extends down one side of the rig 

to anchor the belt clip. Just aft of the J- 

frame’s trigger guard there is a tensioning 

device, consisting of a rubber grommet 

that is compressed by a Chicago 

screw and a finish washer. 

This holster isn’t wet-formed to fit the 

gun because chrome-tanned leather 

doesn’t work that way. The Bare Asset is 

a semi-soft holster that, over time, will 

shape itself only minimally to the pistol 

it carries. Since its pouch isn’t form-fitted, 

Jean has to push her pistol into it 

with some force to seat it properly. Once 

in, though, the gun stays put very securely. 

This calls into question the need 

for a tensioning device. It seems superfluous 

to us, so we’ve disabled it. 

The black, spring-steel belt clip is perfect 

for providing a secure grip on Jean’s 

waistband. It slips effortlessly into place 

over the thick fabric, and it stays firmly 

anchored during every drawstroke, yet 

this rig is very easy to remove. When I 

tried it out, I found that it also easily 

slides on and off belts up to 1 3 ⁄4” wide 

without making me undo any clothing 

at all. Although this holster has a 12-degree 

FBI cant built in, the clip is close 

enough to the pistol’s center of gravity 

to allow Jean to set it at whatever angle 

she chooses, confident that it will stay 

there. 

The width of the J-frame’s cylinder 

spaces the revolver’s butt just far 

enough from Jean’s body that she can 

attain a firing grip easily, even though 

the pistol is tucked neatly into her waist. 

Jean wears her J-frame snubby directly 

22 


High Noon Holsters’ 

Bare Asset rig. 

High Noon 

Holsters’ extremely 

effective clip. 

set IWB Holster 

behind her right hip joint and the grip 

is hidden by the vest or jacket that she 

always wears. The Bare Asset places the 

handle at a very convenient height and 

provides lots space for her fingers, so 

both her firing grip and her drawstroke 

are quick, smooth, and certain. 

Some people believe that in a self-defense 

situation, once a threat has fled 

or been eliminated, it is unnecessary to 

be able to smoothly reholster the pistol 

without looking at the holster. We disagree. 

We believe that there are many 

self-defense scenarios in which continuing 

to scan the area for other threats 

while reholstering the pistol could be a 

priority. 

Because the waistband of Jean’s pants 

is made of soft fabric and is never tightly 

cinched, reholstering is a continuing 

problem. We don’t want her to endanger 

her left hand by pointing her pistol at it 

during a reholstering maneuver, yet any 

rig she uses must be supported by that 

hand while she returns her gun to its 

pouch. The well-designed spring clip 

of the Bare Asset provides Jean a convenient, 

comfortable, and reasonably safe 

place to grip the holster while replacing 

her pistol and firmly shoving it home. 

The relatively soft leather of the Bare 

Asset complicates the reholstering issue 

a little. Even though a second layer of 

leather reinforces the holster’s mouth, it 

still collapses somewhat when the pistol 

is drawn. To put her gun back in, Jean 

has to wiggle the cylinder and frame 

into the pouch. Reholstering would be 

easier if High Noon Holsters had added 

a thin strip of metal stiffening inside the 

reinforcement layer to keep the pouch 

wide open. We suggest that they should 

do this, even if it raises the price a little. 

Jean finds the Bare Asset very comfortable 

to wear all day long. The extra 

width built into its design spreads the 

outfit’s weight out a little. One benefit 

of the somewhat soft leather is that 

it blunts a gun’s edges and corners, 

and keeps them from digging in. Her 

little J-frame revolver stays securely in 

place, no matter what she does, and she 

doesn’t need to think about it or check 

up on it as the day wears on. The pouch 

keeps the pistol’s butt out of her way, 

yet always readily accessible. Its excellent 

retention doesn’t clutch her gun 

too tightly, so her presentation is always 

smooth. She says that High Noon 

Holsters did a very good job when they 

created this rig. 

The Bare Asset holster is a stock item, 

so you don’t have to wait months for it 

to be custom made. High Noon Holsters 

has them ready to go in what seems to 

be about 100 different sizes, each made 

up to exactly fit one specific carry pistol. 

Every one of them sells for $24.95, plus 

$8.00 shipping. n 

Contact: 

High Noon Holsters 

P.O. Box 1923 

Tarpon Springs, FL 34688 

Phone or Fax: (727) 939–2701 

www.highnoonholsters.com 

Questions@HighNoonHolsters.com 

[ Steve Henigson is a retired leathersmith and 

long-time pistol shooter, a student of the late 

Michael Harries. From the mid-1970s, he 

competed in IPSC with modest success. When 

IPSC shooting became unrealistic, his club seceded 

to form a truly practical, experimental 

shooting discipline, the Southern California 

Tactical Combat program (SCTC). He edited 

and published COMBAT!, the SCTC monthly 

journal, until 2004 ] 


23

Whatever you do, keep your co 

your temper… If you lose your 

will also be close to losing con 

BOOK REVIEW: 

How to Win 

A Gunfight 

by Tony Walker 

[ B Y R E V . D A V I D B E E S O N ] 

idea is to keep control of the s 

Short and Sweet: 

The first thing I noticed 

about Tony Walker’s book 

How to Win A Gunfight is 

its length. 

At slightly fewer than 100 pages, it 

is much shorter than most gun 

books. What a relief! While no gun 

book can cover the entire subject, that 

doesn’t keep a lot of authors from trying. 

Some people want to learn more about 

gunfighting, but they don’t want to read 

a book 250-350 pages long. Enter: How 

to Win A Gunfight. 

Walker opens the book with a great 

statement about awareness: “Although 

many crime victims have claimed that 

their attacker ‘appeared out of nowhere,’ 

this is simply not the case….What really 

happened was that the victim was 

totally unaware of what was going on 

around him.” (p. 5). 

Chapter Two covers the psychological 

and physiological changes that occur in 

an armed confrontation. He mentions 

adrenaline increase, fine motor skills 

degradation, and the Tachy-Psyche 

Effect. Walker goes on to discuss “psychological 

domination,” commonly 

known as command voice. He recommends 

shouting “No!” to your adversary. 

This does two things. First, it alerts 

others to your predicament. Second, it 

lets the assailant know you are not going 

to be a victim. Chapter Three focuses on 

stress management. 

The Half Second 

Advantage 

Chapter Four addresses reaction 

times and how to decrease them. In the 

following section, Walker lists several 

ways to gain “the half second advantage.” 

One is particularly ingenious. He 

lays out the scenario: someone walks 

up to you and demands your wallet. 

As you comply and begin reaching for 

it, you clearly say, “Listen, I want to tell 

you something.” This puts the attacker 

into “receive mode” as he waits to hear 

what you have to say. This split-second 

delay will allow you to do whatever you 

feel necessary: go for your gun (instead 

of your wallet), turn to run, etc. Another 

neat suggestion involves a little foreign 

language. If someone approaches you 

and asks for money, respond in another 

language and tell them you don’t understand. 

While that person is processing 

what you just said, you can again take 

whatever action you deem necessary. 

In Chapter Six, Walker discusses verbal 

altercations and makes a good point 

about temper. “Whatever you do, keep 

your cool. Don’t lose your temper… If 

you lose your temper, you will also be 

close to losing control, and the idea 

is to keep control of the situation.” (p. 

31). This is an excellent point, but few 

mention it. A lot of writers focus on 

mindset, but don’t entertain the idea 

that you might go too far, get ticked 

off, and make the situation worse. You 

must be levelheaded when you carry a 

firearm! Walker also mentions Ayoob’s 

“cash stash.” If you need to deescalate a 

situation, give the other guy a few bucks 

and invite him to have a burger on you. 

Will you lose a few dollars? Yes. Will you 

avoid a potentially dangerous situation? 

Possibly. It’s worth a few dollars to try. 

Walker suggests that you learn how to 

count your shots to avoid running your 

gun dry. He is the first firearms instructor 

I have heard of who suggests this. I 

believe the consensus is that it would 

be too difficult under the stress of a 

gunfight. Extreme stress distorts our 

perception of time, gives us tunnel vi- 

24 


ol. Don’t lose 

temper, 

“Although many 

you 

crime victims have 

claimed that their 

trol, and the 

attacker ‘appeared 

out of nowhere,’ this 

is simply not the 

ituation.” 

case….What really 

happened was that 

the victim was 

totally unaware of 

what was going on 

around him.” 

sion, and reduces our fine motor 

skills. How then, with all of these 

things working against us, can 

we manage to count how many 

shots we have fired? 

Guns and Ammo 

Chapter Nine covers weak 

hand shooting. Its descriptions 

and photographs are 

clear. The next segment addresses what 

occurs after the shooting. Walker does 

well to mention that some officers will 

make accusatory statements to try and 

get you to defend yourself and make a 

statement. In Chapter Eleven, the author 

covers choosing a handgun. He 

makes a good recommendation against 

derringers: “You should avoid derringer-type 

pistols in all their forms. 

These two-shot pistols have one single 

advantage, concealability, which is far 

outweighed by their disadvantages.” (p. 

68). Walker finishes this chapter commenting 

on laser sights. He correctly 

states that using a laser may not cause 

your attacker to freeze in fear. 

Chapter Twelve covers ammunition 

from .22 caliber to .45 Colt. Walker 

makes two good points here: first, 

women don’t need 

underpowered, low caliber 

guns. They can handle what we men 

can handle. Second, one should never 

use handloads for self-defense. There 

are too many good self-defense rounds 

out there for someone to homebrew his 

own. The only thing I didn’t care for in 

this chapter is the percentage effectiveness 

rating. I have never been a fan of 

stating a cartridge is “65% - 85%” effective. 

There are too many factors involved 

to label a cartridge with a rating. 

Chapter Thirteen covers shooting 

exercises, while Fourteen features holsters. 

He makes a great suggestion for 

fanny packs: “One way to disguise the 

fanny pack is to have a pair of Walkman, 

MP3, or iPod earphones hanging out of 

the front zipper pocket – perfect urban 

camouflage!” (p. 92) 

How to Win A Gunfight is a good 

book. Its brevity lends it to be popular 

among those who don’t like to or don’t 

have time to read. However, don’t let 

the page count fool you. This book has 

enough information in it to make it well 

worth the purchase. n 

How to Win A Gunfight © 2007 

by Tony Walker. 

Infinity Publishing: 

West Conshohocken, PA 


25


SAVES LIVES 

Part Two: Research and History 

[ B Y R O B E R T G . H E I N R I T Z , J R . , J . D . ] 

“There may be a lively debate about whether the Constitution confers on individuals the right to bear arms, but that 

debate is not going on in American courts, its law schools, or its scholarly legal journals. Indeed, even the National Rifle 

Association could not recommend for this broadcast a single constitutional law professor who would defend the Second 

Amendment as conferring on individuals the right to bear arms.”— Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio 

As indicated in Part One last 

month, I will be eternally grateful 

for Nina Totenberg’s deliberate 

misrepresentation and lie. She knows 

better, but chose to perpetuate the deliberate 

fraud of those who believe they 

must take away your civil rights in order 

to rule you. Nothing could be more un- 

American. 

The article below summarizes some 

of the medical research, medical misrepresentations, 

legitimate self-defense 

data, and Constitutional cases. The 

Founders strongly defended the Second 

Amendment, not as conferring, but as 

confirming an individual’s God-given 

right of self defense. Americans must 

be worthy of this heritage. 

This summary, like our Constitution, 

is both topical and timeless. I urge 

all readers to follow up by reading the 

magnificent research published in the 

last ten years. Credible data is even 

more supportive of our God-given right 

of self defense. One of our Founders 

said it best: “No free man shall ever be 

debarred the use of arms.” 1 

Center for Disease 

Control: propaganda for 

the politically correct? 

What if you learned that a tax-funded 

agency of the government was funding 

research only if the research attempted 

to “prove” that, say, blacks are racially 

inferior or that the Holocaust didn’t 

happen or that the Earth is the center of 

the universe? Scientists have attempted 

to prove all of these in the past, but 

“Laws that forbid the carrying 

of arms...disarm only those 

who are neither inclined nor 

determined to commit crimes... 

Such laws make things worse 

for the assaulted and better for 

the assailants; they serve rather 

to encourage than to prevent 

homicides, for an unarmed man 

may be attacked with greater 

confidence than an armed man.” 

—Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th Century 

criminologist, Cesare Beccaria, in On 

Crimes and Punishment (1764) 

would you consider that a wise or ethical 

use of tax dollars? 

Aside from outright incompetence, 

one of the worst criticisms that can be 

made of scientific research is that it is 

“results oriented.” What this generally 

means in its crudest form is the researcher 

begins with the conclusion he 

or she wishes to prove, selects only data 

that appears to support the predetermined 

conclusion, ignores or dismisses 

all evidence of other conclusions, attacks 

the sources of contrary evidence, 

and argues the research proves the 

intended conclusion irrespective of 

whether actual causation has been 

shown. Another “results oriented” 

method is to fund only that research 

which seeks to prove the results desired 

by the funding agency, while refusing to 

fund research that might show otherwise. 

That is precisely what the Centers 

for Disease Control (CDC) has been 

doing in its pseudo-scientific position 

that guns cause violence. Several studies 

funded by the CDC attempt to use 

risk-factor analysis to prove causation. 

This type of study argues that the gun 

(a “risk factor”) was present and therefore 

its presence must have caused the 

crime. Such studies studiously ignore 

all other risk factors statistically related 

to violent behavior, such as past criminal, 

gang-related or violent history, drug 

abuse, broken family, or mental illness. 

The CDC’s logic is equivalent to finding 

that on extremely hot days in St. Louis 

nearly everyone has their air conditioners 

running, therefore, air conditioners 

cause heat waves. 

What objective medical 

research shows 

Medical, scientific, and legal journals 

now contain many scientifically 

valid studies—none of which appear to 

be funded by the CDC—showing that 

firearms in the hands of law-abiding 

citizens actually save lives, deter violence, 

and reduce medical costs. Many 

of the studies were conducted by selfprofessed 

liberals who, before their 

research, believed guns should be outlawed. 

Still others expose the inherent 

biases and false statistics of the antigun 

medical organizations. 2 

In separate articles published in 

the March 1994 issue of Journal of the 

Medical Association of Georgia, Dr. 

Edgar A. Suter, and Dr. Miguel Faria, Jr., a 

medical professor at Mercer University, 

indicated that objective research proves 

26 


that guns, rather than causing deaths, 

actually reduce both crime and medical 

costs. The articles quantify in lives 

and dollars the role guns play when 

used properly to thwart crimes, and 

indicated that “as many as 75 lives are 

protected by a gun for every life lost to 

a gun, as many as 5 lives are protected 

per minute.” 3 

Further, “Defense with a gun results 

in fewer injuries to the defender (17%) 

“Arms discourage and keep the 

invader and plunderer in awe, 

and preserve order in the world 

as well as property. Horrid 

mischief would ensue were the 

law-abiding deprived of the use 

of them.” 

—Thomas Paine, 

Thoughts On Defensive War, (1775) 

than [any other method including] evasion 

(34.9%), physical force (50.8%), 

and not resisting at all (24.7%).” 4 

Their research clearly demonstrated 

that jurisdictions which have enacted 

stronger restrictions on the right of lawabiding 

citizens to keep and bear arms 

generally experience higher violence 

(by guns and other means), and therefore 

experience higher medical costs. 

For example, after Washington, D.C. enacted 

some of the most restrictive gun 

laws in the nation, its homicide statistics 

skyrocketed from 26.9 (per 100,000 

people) to 80.6—eight times the national 

average. 5 

Legitimate defensive 

uses of firearms 

undercounted 

Anti-gun groups use the numbers in 

misleading ways, and many successful 

defensive uses of guns are undercounted 

in official statistics. Anti-gun organizations 

consider a defensive gun use 

successful only if the criminal is shot 

dead, rather than merely frightened 

away. They pretend that the only criminals 

who attack women are complete 

strangers. If a woman shoots an exboyfriend 

who is stalking her and has 

made it clear he intends to kill her, it is 

misclassified as a “domestic homicide” 

that took place during “an argument,” 

rather than lawful self-defense against 

a violent predator. They undercount 

justifiable homicide, because they look 

only at the initial arrest records, rather 

then final case dispositions. Their studies 

deliberately ignore the distinction 

between households that are high risk 

for gun misuse (households containing 

violent criminals, alcoholics, and drug 

abusers) and all other households, for 

which the risks of gun misuse are quite 

low. And their studies deliberately ignore 

the vast majority of cases where 

crimes are stopped or criminals run off 

with no shots being fired and no one 

being injured. 6 

According to a 1990 Harvard Medical 

Practice study and analysis by “Doctors 

For Integrity In Research & Public 

Policy,” 7 Americans are still five times 

more likely to die from medical misadventures 

than from a gun. This is true 

even if we combine all three types of 

deaths by firearms: 

• Suicide (the largest proportion, and 

by all studies statistically unrelated 

to the means used) 

• Homicide (including justifiable police 

and civilian self-defense shootings) 

• Accidents (the smallest, and for the 

“Firearms stand next in 

importance to the Constitution 

itself. They are the American 

people’s liberty teeth and 

keystone under independence.” 

—George Washington 

last century a continually declining 

rate despite ever increasing numbers 

of guns) 

The life-saving benefits of an armed 

citizenry are consistent with the values 

that led to our Constitution. Our founders 

considered the right to protect one’s 

life was a natural, God-given right, and 

the most fundamental of all civil rights. 

HISTORY AND THE 

CONSTITUTION 

“Civil Rights” include, at a minimum, 

the right to protect one’s life 

Will Rogers once said, “We’re all ignorant, 

only on different subjects.” For 

anyone indoctrinated by the illusions 

of television and pop media, research 

Militia? 

“A militia when properly 

formed are in fact the people 

themselves...and include all 

men capable of bearing arms. 

To preserve liberty it is essential 

that the whole body of people 

always possess arms...” 

—Richard Henry Lee, Additional letters 

from The Federal Farmer 53 (1788) 

“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It 

is the whole people...To disarm 

the people is the best and most 

effectual way to enslave them.” 

—George Mason, during Virginia’s 

ratification convention, (1788) 

“Congress has no power to 

disarm the militia. Their 

swords, and every other terrible 

implement of the soldier, are the 

birth-right of an American...The 

unlimited power of the sword 

is not in the hands of either the 

federal or state governments, 

but, where I trust in God it will 

ever remain, in the hands of the 

people.” 

—Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 

February 20, 1788 

“In Switzerland, where the 

citizens are most armed, they 

are most free.” 

— Nicollo Machiavelli 


27

Walther_PPS_GunWOrld 5/27/08 1:27 PM Page 1 

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profile. Available in both 9mm and .40 S&W, the 

PPS packs in more power. 

of the history and issues pertaining 

to the Second Amendment to the US 

Constitution can be an eye opener. 

The scholarly debate was resolved 

years ago. Scholars now generally agree 

that the Second Amendment’s guarantee 

of the right to keep and bear arms 

referred to individual’s private arms, 

used for the purpose of protecting 

themselves, their families, their communities, 

their state, and their country—and 

as a last resort to protect 

themselves from the tyranny of their 

own government. Our Founders considered 

private arms both an individual 

right and a moral obligation of citizenship. 

Since 1980 there have been over 

60 published law-journal articles, and 

all but four of them find the individualrights 

view compelling. Of the four articles 

which take the states’-rights view, 

two were written by lawyers on the payroll 

of Handgun Control, Inc. or its sister 

organizations, one by a non-lawyer 

lobbyist of HCI, and one by an anti-gun 

politician. 8 

The plain meaning of the words of 

the Second Amendment are even more 

clear when one consults the hundreds 

of references to them by the Founders. 

Here are a few examples: 

“Arms in the hands of individual citizens 

may be used at individual discretion...in 

private self-defense.” — John 

Adams, A Defense Of The Constitution 

(1787-88). 

“The Constitution shall never be 

construed to prevent the people of the 

United States who are peaceable citizens 

from keeping their own arms.” — 

Samuel Adams (1788). 

“As civil rulers, not having their duty 

to the people before them, may attempt 

to tyrannize, and as the military forces 

which must be occasionally raised to 

defend our country, might pervert their 

power to the injury of their fellow citizens, 

the people are confirmed by the 

article [2nd Amendment] in their right 

to keep and bear their private arms.” 

— Trench Coxe, “Remarks on the First 

Part of the Amendments to the Federal 

Constitution,” Philadelphia Federal 

Gazette, June 18, 1789, p. 2, col. 1. 

In response to a proposal for gun registration: 

“Absolutely not! If the people 

are armed and the federalists do not 

know where the arms are, there can 

never be an oppressive government.” 

— George Washington. 

Under the laws of 18th century 

England, most of the thirteen colonies, 

and the United States for the first century 

of its existence, able bodied males 

age 16 to 60 were not only permitted, 

but required to possess military type 

arms (“assault weapons”). The same 

Congress that wrote the Bill of Rights 

enacted the Militia Act of 1790 that so 

stated. Current federal law also states: 

“The militia of the United States consist 

of all able-bodied males at least 17 years 

of age…The classes of the militia are (1) 

the organized militia, which consists of 

the National Guard…and (2) the unorganized 

militia, which consist of members 

of the militia who are not members 

of the National Guard…” 9 

The National Guard, which didn’t exist 

for the first century of this country’s 

existence, was specifically raised under 

Congress’s Constitutional power 

to “raise and support armies,” and not 

under its power to “provide for organizing, 

arming and disciplining the militia.” 

Why? Because an army can be sent 

abroad (as it has several times), while 

the militia can be used only to protect 

the home ground against invaders. 

(House Report No. 141, 73rd Congress, 

1st Sess. (1933), pp.2-5.) Furthermore, 

the Second Amendment could not refer 

to the arms of the National Guard, since 

the Guard’s weapons are owned by the 

federal government. 10 

The US Supreme Court has in all cases 

dealing with the Second Amendment 

affirmed the rights of individuals to 

keep and bear their private arms. For 

example, in US v. Cruickshank, Presser v. 

Illinois, and other post-Civil War cases, 

the Supreme Court clearly recognized 

that the Second Amendment protected 

individual rights to keep and bear arms, 

but rejected the defendant’s cases on 

the now discredited grounds that the 

Fourteenth Amendment didn’t extend 

the protection of the Bill of Rights to actions 

by the states. 11 

The following are examples of cases 

in which the Court explicitly recognized 

that the Second Amendment clearly 

guarantees individuals the right to their 

private arms: 

28 


Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 US (19 How.) 

393, 417 (1875). The court held that if 

freed blacks were citizens they would 

have the rights of all citizens, including 

the right “to carry arms wherever they 

went.” 

US v. Cruickshank, 92 US 542 (1876). 

William J. Cruickshank and two other 

defendants were convicted under the 

Enforcement Act of May 31, 1870 for 

conspiracy to deprive (black) citizens of 

their right under the First Amendment 

“to peaceably assemble” and their right 

under the Second Amendment “to keep 

and bear arms.” After being forcibly 

disarmed, the black citizens were murdered. 

The court conceded that both 

rights existed as privileges and immunities 

of citizenship, but that the Bill 

of Rights “means no more than (those 

rights) shall not be infringed by (US) 

Congress.” Even Cruickshank’s attorney 

conceded, “The right of self-defense is a 

natural right; and the right to keep and 

bear arms for that purpose cannot be 

questioned.” 

Presser v. Illinois, 116 US 252 (1886) 

was nothing more than an affirmation 

that a private army could be required 

to obtain a permit before parading on 

a public street while armed. The Court 

also held, “It is undoubtedly true that all 

citizens capable of bearing arms constitute 

the reserved military force or reserve 

militia of the United States as well 

as of the states, and in view of this prerogative 

of the general government… 

the States cannot…prohibit the people 

from keeping and bearing arms.” 

US v. Miller, 307 US 174 (1939). This 

is the only twentieth-century Supreme 

Court case on the Second Amendment. 

It deals not with individual’s right to 

private arms, which the Court affirmed, 

but what type of arms are protected. 

Jack Miller was charged with transporting 

a sawed-off shotgun in interstate 

commerce without paying the appropriate 

tax on such weapon under the 

National Firearms Act. The trial court 

dismissed the charges because the Act 

violated the Second Amendment to the 

US Constitution. Jack Miller departed. 

“Guard with jealous attention 

the public liberty. Suspect every 

one who approaches that jewel. 

Unfortunately, nothing will 

preserve it but downright force. 

Whenever you give up that force, 

you are ruined.” 

— Patrick Henry, during Virginia’s 

ratification convention, (1788) 

The federal attorney appealed directly 

to the Supreme Court. No one presented 

any evidence or arguments on behalf of 

Miller. The Court did not inquire whether 

Miller was a member of some organized 

Militia, but held in the absence of 

evidence it was unable to take judicial 

notice that the weapon was appropriate 

for the military and, thus, subject 

to Second Amendment protection. 

The Court specifically affirmed that all 

constitutional sources, “show plainly 

enough that the militia comprises all 

males physically capable of acting in 

concert for the common defense. These 

men were expected to appear bearing 

arms supplied by themselves and of the 

kind in common use (by the military) at 

the time.” 

Our Constitution is the first in the 

world to guarantee in writing that no 

person shall be deprived of life, liberty, 

or property without due process of law. 

Our Founders considered that the right 

to protect one’s life was a natural, Godgiven 

right. “The right of self-defense 

is a natural right; and the right to keep 

and bear arms for that purpose cannot 

be questioned.” 12 Perhaps this is the priority 

our citizens and our government 

should work harder to protect. 

A final footnote 

There is a temptation to think that 

because we now have more advanced 

technology we must now be smarter 

or that our social conditions are 

somehow different. As one studies our 

Constitution, its history, and values, it 

becomes clear that there is no new wisdom. 

The Founders were dealing with 

many of the same social issues we face 

to this day, and their thoughts on what 

made sense then are often equally valid 

today. The wisdom from their time has 

been born out by the modern scientific 

data of our time. n 

[ Bob Heinritz, an honors graduate in 

management and law, is a member of the 

Bar in Arizona, Illinois, and Missouri. A 

former trial lawyer, he is now a business 

attorney and management consultant 

who specializes in strategic planning, 

productivity, business turnarounds, and 

preventive law. ] 

1. Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution (1776), Jefferson Papers 

344, J. Boyd, ed. 1950 

2. See, for example: [1] Don B. Kates, Henry E. Schaffer, PhD, John K. Lattimer, 

MD, George B. Murray, MD, and Edwin W. Cassem, MD, “Guns and Public 

Health: Epidemic of Violence, or Pandemic of Propaganda?” 62 Tennessee 

Law Review 513, Spring 1995; [2] March 1994 and [3] May 1994 Journal of 

the Medical Association of Georgia, Medical Association of Georgia, 938 

Peachtree St, Atlanta GA 30309, (800) 282-0224; [4] Doctors For Integrity In 

Research & Public Policy, Edgar A. Suter, MD, Chair, 5201 Norris Canyon Rd, 

Ste 140 San Ramon CA 94583; [5] Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, 

Claremont Institute, 250 W. 1st St, Ste 330, Claremont CA 91711, (909) 621- 

6825 

3. Ibid at 136 



6. Mary Zeiss Stange, “Arms and the Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal,” Guns: 

Who Should Have Them, David B. Kopel, Ed., Prometheus Books 1995 at 15 

7. Edgar A. Suter, MD, 5201 Norris Canyon Rd, Ste 140 San Ramon CA 94583; 

“Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership,” the Claremont Institute, 250 W. 

1st St, Ste 330 Claremont CA 91711, (909) 621-6825; Medical Association of 

Georgia, 938 Peachtree St, Atlanta GA 30309, (800) 282-0224 

8. This article was originally written in 1996; HCI has since become the Brady 

Center to Prevent Gun Violence 

9. 10 USC. 311(a) 

10. 32 USC. §105[a] [1]. 

11. See That Every Man Be Armed, The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, Stephen 

P. Halbrook, the Independent Institute 1984; pp. 146-152, in which 

Representative John A. Bingham, draftsman of the 14th Amendment, and 

Senator Thomas M. Norwood explicitly stated on the record in Congress 

that the specific purpose of the 14th Amendment was to apply the protection 

of the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights to actions against 

citizens by states. 

12. US v. Cruickshank 

30 


and Conc 

Disabled, 

but not an 

easy target. 

Boyles keeps her 

skills sharp at 

the range. 

Disability, 

Self-D 

As Dr. Bruce Eimer pointed 

out in his article, “Coping 

with Physical Disability 

in Concealed Carry and 

Defensive Handgun Training” 

(CCM February/March 2007), 

the elderly and people with 

physical disabilities tend to be 

victimized by criminals much 

more frequently than other 

groups of people. 1 

Not only are the disabled more 

likely to be the victims of criminal 

attacks, they are also more 

likely to be the victims of domestic violence 

and abuse. This includes sexual 

abuse by hired caretakers and family 

and friends serving as caretakers. 2 

In a horrifying example of abuse toward 

a person with a disability, The 

Guardian newspaper of Manchester, 

England reported in October 2007 that 

a drunken former soldier urinated on 

a disabled neighbor who lay dying on 

the street after a fall. Encouraged by his 

friends, the soldier first kicked the woman, 

who had collapsed and hit her head 

upon falling, in an attempt to get her 

to awaken. When that action failed to 

arouse her, he threw a bowl of water on 

her. Next, he covered her with shaving 

cream. After none of his actions roused 

the unconscious woman, the soldier 

urinated on her. His his friends used a 

mobile phone to record the entire scene 

which later appeared on YouTube. 3 

According to Randy LaHaie, owner 

of Protective Strategies, a company 

that provides personal safety training 

and consulting services, “Success in 

self-defense is not winning a fight, but 

avoiding it.” He says, “The ultimate 

success in self-defense is when nothing 

happens.” LaHaie has a philosophy 

about self-defense: “If you can’t 

prevent it [violent crime], avoid it. If 

you can’t avoid it, defuse it. If you can’t 

defuse it, escape. If you can’t escape, 

you may have to fight your way out 

of the situation. If you have to fight, 

32 


When choosing a 

handgun, you must 

find one you can 

physically operate. 

efense, 

ealed Carry 

[ B Y C A R O L Y N B O Y L E S ] 

it will be as a last resort, not a first.” 

You need to be able to read people 

and situations, says LaHaie. You need to 

know what to pay attention to, understand 

how to pay attention to safetyrelated 

details, and be able to match 

the degree of your awareness to your 

circumstances. He continues by saying 

you must accept full responsibility for 

your safety. You must identify situations 

in your own life that require a higher 

level of vigilance, build and refine your 

self-defense maps by continuous learning 

and analyze the news to familiarize 

yourself with criminal patterns and factors. 

You need to practice your observation 

skills and establish self-defense 

habits. 4 

So how does all this come into play for 

a disabled person? One of the best ways 

to avoid becoming the victim of a crime 

is to be aware of your surroundings at 

any given time, even in your own home. 

Situational awareness is even more important 

for a disabled person because 

they may not be able to flee. Many of 

the factors to be considered in protecting 

yourself from personal harm or from 

harm to property are different for the 

disabled. As Dr. Eimer has bought up 

many times, having a disability brings 

with it problems a non-disabled person 

does not have. This affects a person’s 

ability to accept full responsibility for 

his or her own safety. A disabled person 

is more distracted than a non-disabled 

person. This may be as a result of pain, 

spasms, medication, financial worries, 

or other reasons, depending on the disability. 

A disabled person may not be 

able to assess a situation and avoid it 

in the same way a non-disabled person 

can. 

Now to my own situation. I have a 

spinal cord injury in my neck. I am an 

incomplete quadriplegic. This means 

the injury affects my entire body. While 

I do have some feeling and some mobility 

below the level of the injury, I have 

very limited range of motion in my 

neck. I get around using either forearm 

crutches or a walker. I want to discuss 

my decision to obtain a concealed carry 

permit and some of the factors a disabled 

person needs to consider in selecting 

a firearm. 

I live in Arkansas, which is a shall-issue 

state rather than a may-issue state. 

A shall-issue state is one where the issuing 

authority processing the application 

is required to approve it unless 

the applicant is disqualified based on 

the law. 5 If I lived in a may-issue state, 

I would be worried about being denied 

a concealed carry permit because 

I am disabled, especially if the issuing 

authority had decided it did not want 

disabled individuals to have concealed 

carry permits. 

Given my disability, I realized I had 

few alternatives to self-defense. I did not 

want to become a victim. I knew I was at 

higher risk to be victimized. I knew that 

crimes in my area were increasing, as a 

result of meth use and production. I also 

knew there was insufficient jail space to 

house all the criminals and that as a result 

jail was becoming a revolving door 


33

for many criminals. So I decided to go 

through the training and the range time 

and get my concealed carry permit. 

Let’s assume I have my concealed 

carry permit and a firearm I am capable 

of using. What kind of duty to retreat 

does a person have in relation to the use 

of deadly force? This will vary by state. 

Some states have no duty to retreat. You 

may need to check with an attorney in 

your own state to discover the applicable 

law. A person’s ability to retreat will 

be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, 

depending on the person’s physical and 

mental capabilities. As is more common 

in the southern states, in Arkansas 

I have a duty to retreat under the law 

unless I am in my own home. However, 

my own ability to retreat is very limited 

because of my physical disability and so 

my duty to retreat would be evaluated 

based on that disability. 

What choices of weapons are available 

to me as a disabled person? 

Typically, a chemical spray (containing 

tear gas, a combination of tear gas and 

pepper spray, or pepper spray alone), a 

Taser (with a clean background check), 

a stun gun, or a firearm. The legality of 

each of the items listed varies by state 

and locality. Massad Ayoob, an expert in 

the use of firearms for law enforcement 

and self-defense, sums up the choices 

this way: “Guns are the only weapons 

that put a physically small or weak person 

at parity with a powerful, very possibly 

armed, criminal.” 6 That leaves a 

firearm as the most practical choice for 

a person with a disability. As with any of 

the above self-defense choices, hopefully, 

a person (especially a disabled 

person) can discharge the weapon accurately 

and effectively to avoid either 

being disarmed or attacked by the assailant. 

Fortunately, I have never had to 

find out. 

A disabled person will have more 

problems choosing a firearm than a 

Just who exactly is this sign protecting? 

non-disabled person. For example, in 

my situation, it would be impossible for 

me to use a shotgun to defend myself 

inside my own home. I have four fused 

discs in my neck. I would not be able to 

tolerate the recoil from a shotgun, so I 

must use a handgun instead. The questions 

I had to ask myself in selecting a 

handgun were: 

1) Do I have sufficient grip strength to 

be able to hold the gun? 

2) Can I hold the weight of the gun? 

3) Do I have sufficient finger strength to 

pull the trigger? 

4) Can I remember to disengage the 

safety when I need to? 

5) Can I physically disengage the 

safety? 

6) Do I have sufficient hand strength 

and control to load a magazine, put it 

into the gun, and remove it from the 

gun? 

7) Do I have sufficient hand strength 

and control to pull the slide back? 

8) Can I physically engage the safety? 

The answers to the above questions 

lead directly to the choice between an 

automatic pistol or a revolver. When I 

first purchased a handgun, I bought an 

autoloader. I was able to perform the 

critical tasks listed above. As time has 

passed, my ability to control my arms, 

hands, and fingers has decreased. I am 

reaching the point where an automatic 

is no longer a practical choice for me. 

Before too much longer, I will need to 

test and purchase a revolver. 

I cannot emphasize enough if you 

have a disability that affects the control 

and strength of your arms, forearms, 

wrists, hands, and fingers, make sure 

you go to a gunshop which will actually 

allow you to try the pistol before you 

buy it. On paper, any pistol will look like 

it will work, but don’t risk several hundred 

dollars on it. If you are disabled, 

you need to practice shooting with 

your pistol more than a non-disabled 

person would. It may be more difficult 

for you to learn the proper procedures 

for loading and unloading your pistol 

because of the pain, medication, or 

other distractions you have. I am guilty 

as charged on this. I don’t practice as 

much as I should. 

If you live in a state where concealed 

carry is allowed, one question you need 

to ask yourself is, “Where am I going to 

conceal the pistol?” If you use a wheelchair, 

a fanny pack designed for that 

purpose may be your best bet. 7 If you 

use crutches or a walker, then where to 

conceal the pistol and be able to access 

1. Bruce N. Eimer. “Coping with Physical Disability in Concealed Carry and 

Defensive Handgun Training” Concealed Carry Magazine 4 (February/ 

March 2007): 38-42. 

2. Gregor Wolbring. “Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities” 

International Centre for Bioethics, Culture, and Disability (1994): 1-5 www. 

bioethicsandsiability.org/violence.html (Accessed November 9, 2007). 

3. Martin Wainwright. “Jail for ex-soldier who urinated on dying disabled 

woman” The Guardian (October 27, 2007): 1-3 www.guardian.co.uk/crime/ 

article/0,,2200320,00.html (Accessed November 9, 2007). 

4. Randy LaHaie. “The Nuts & Bolts of Awareness: Learning To Detect Trouble” 

Self-Defense Articles (2002): 1-8 www.protectivestrategies.com/awareness. 

html (Accessed November 9, 2007). 

5. “Concealed Carry” Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association (February 25, 

2007): 1 www.pafoa.org/concealed-carry/ (Accessed November 12, 2007). 

6. Massad F. Ayoob. In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal 

Protection. (Concord, New Hampshire: Police Bookshelf, 1980): 38. 

7. Bruce N. Eimer. “Bear Arms In A Wheelchair” Concealed Carry Magazine 2 no. 

8 (November/December 2005): 28. 

8. Bruce N. Eimer. “Bear Arms In A Wheelchair” Concealed Carry Magazine 2 no. 

8 (November/December 2005): 28-9. 

9. Carolyn Boyles. A Complete Plain-English Guide to Living with a Spinal Cord 

Injury: Valuable Information From A Survivor (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, 

2007): 305. 

34 


it becomes a problem. A woman may 

be able to conceal the pistol in a purse 

specially designed for concealed carry. 

Otherwise, the options are the same as 

they would be for a person in a wheelchair: 

a concealed carry fanny pack, a 

belt holster positioned either on the hip 

or behind-the-back, or an ankle holster. 8 

A behind-the-back holster may not be a 

good idea because of the possibility of 

pressure sores if you have a spinal cord 

injury. 

The locations where a person can legally 

carry a concealed weapon vary 

state by state. State and federal office 

buildings typically ban carrying weapons 

on their property. Private businesses 

may also prohibit carrying concealed 

weapons. Disabled individuals who wish 

to carry concealed have a problem when 

hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices ban 

carrying concealed weapons. Disabled 

individuals spend more time than nondisabled 

people getting medical treatment. 

At any medical facility with a large 

parking lot, depending upon the level of 

security, a person may be at risk to be the 

victim of a crime. I am not advocating 

violating a medical facility’s rules about 

carrying a weapon. I do recommend that 

each person evaluate the safety risk of 

the situation and decide whether to carry 

a concealed weapon accordingly. 

As I stated in my book, “Spinal cord 

injury and being the victim of a crime 

have one thing in common. In both situations, 

most people think it will never 

happen to them. We’ve already been 

wrong once. Let’s not be wrong again.” 9 

In my opinion, it is better to be a live 

defendant than a dead victim. n 

The author would like to thank Doug 

Wood of the Criminal Investigation 

Division of the Arkansas Insurance 

Department for his help in researching 

this article. 

[ Carolyn Boyles is a freelance writer. 

She discusses self-defense in her book, A 

Complete Plain-English Guide to Living 

with a Spinal Cord Injury: Valuable 

Information From A Survivor. Boyles 

can be reached at cboyles@aol.com. Her 

websites are www.carolynboyles.com and 

www.livingwithspinalcordinjury.com. ] 



DISCUSSION FORUMS AND MORE 

usconcealedcarry.com 

35

POINT-COUNTERPOINT 


Unravel 

Post S 

[ B Y A R T M I Z E ] 

The whole idea of some sort 

of psychological hangover 

resulting from close 

encounters of the firearms 

kind is not new. 

The stories of the effects of war on 

combat veterans in American history 

go back at least to the Civil 

War. In World War I, the term shell shock 

was used to describe the symptoms of 

those severely affected by combat, even 

though they might have been nowhere 

near a bursting shell, as the name implies. 

Severely impacted vets from World 

War II were diagnosed as having combat 

fatigue by compassionate folks who 

were in charge of organizing treatment 

for warriors who carried debilitating 

mental wounds home from the conflict. 

There were significant limitations in the 

shrink community’s understanding of 

how strong, otherwise healthy young 

warriors were being mentally wounded 

in the wars they fought, and even less 

understanding about how they might 

be healed. That courage and valor were 

no shield against the effects of a long 

and bloody conflict are evidenced by 

the fact that our most decorated soldier, 

Audie Murphy, suffered from debilitating 

depression, insomnia and addiction 

to sleeping pills, problems which 

36 

CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n JULY 2008

ing 

hooting Trauma 

resulted from his combat experiences. 

Finally, after the Viet Nam War, significant 

gains were made in the understanding 

of the mechanisms and 

clusters of symptoms of the condition 

we now refer to as Post Traumatic 

Stress Disorder (PTSD). [Technically, it 

is called Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) if 

the symptoms are of less than 30 days 

duration.] The PTSD diagnosis provided 

a great deal of relief to men and 

women who were struggling to make 

sense of the internal turmoil they experienced. 

They could understand that 

they were normal people with normal 

reactions to the abnormal conditions of 

war. Since that time, treatment methods 

for PTSD have progressed to the 

point where there is a good chance the 

mental wounds of war can be healed in 

those who seek treatment. 

What does all this have to do with Post 

Shooting Trauma (PST) or Post Violent 

Event Trauma (PVET)? It seems to me 

that PST/PVET is not a separate condition 

from PTSD, but rather a handy way 

of discussing the psychological effects 

of lethal force encounters without having 

to mess with the problems of a formal 

diagnosis of PTSD. PST is a concept 

specific to shooting incidents, whereas 

PTSD covers a wide variety of traumatic 

events from shootings to rape to traffic 

accidents to natural disasters and 

more. 

At any rate, the great advantage to 

identifying and naming what is happening 

after a shooting is that the naming 

allows a person to get a mental grip 

on what’s happening. It provides the 

defender with a frame of reference for 

their unique internal experiences. The 

understanding can then be the starting 

point for the person dealing with an otherwise 

confusing bunch of distressing 

symptoms. Today, the information out 

there has helped to normalize the idea 

of folks having a psychological struggle 

after a life and death struggle, an advantage 

for any of us who may deal with the 

aftermath of a shooting incident. 

It needs to be emphasized that not all 

people will experience any particular 

symptoms of a post shooting trauma. 

The idea of PST and PVET may have 

originated in the psychological community, 

but the most significant communicator 

of the concept is Massad 

Ayoob, a well known and highly respected 

member of the shooting community. 

Ayoob was focused on the sad 

fact that the moral climate in America 

could often turn a lawful and necessary 

use of deadly force in the protection of 

innocent life into a community shaming 

and shunning event for the lawful 

defender. He publicized a number of 

symptoms of PST and PVET, including 

sleep disturbances, a period of depression 

or malaise, eating disturbances, 

increased use of alcohol, social isolation, 

sexual dysfunction or promiscuity, 

pharmacological cascade (use of drugs 

and alcohol together which increases 

their impact), increased aggression, and 

flashbacks. 

Perhaps the key feature of PST is the 

Mark of Cain, the “killer of my brother” 

tag laid on the defender. The mark can 

be shaming, as in, “What kind of person 

would do such a horrible thing?” 

Or the mark can be congratulating the 

defender in a way that doesn’t match 

their feelings about the event, as in, 

“Now that you have shot your man (the 

slimy creep, scumbag, goblin...), you’re 

awesome!” 

While most lawful defenders need to 

decide what the event means to them 

personally, insensitive comments either 

for or against the act tend to increase 

the feeling of isolation. Either way, 

The problem can come 

when we get stuck in 

negative emotional 

judgments about what 

we have done, in spite 

of all the evidence 

and opinion to the 

contrary. 


37

the defender can feel misunderstood. 

I have not seen this more clearly demonstrated 

than in the homecoming of 

American servicemen and women from 

the Viet Nam War. Rarely were these vets 

asked about the meaning of combat and 

killing to them. Instead, many civilians 

simply ran their agenda on the vulnerable 

young military returnees, which vets 

continue to tell me was the hardest part 

of their adjustment. If a soldier was trying 

to come to grips with his taking human 

life, it was often no more helpful to 

cheer his killing of the “godless gooks,” 

than it was to call him a “baby killer.” 

Either of these extreme responses offers 

the Mark of Cain to the warrior, and his 

most likely internal response is to feel 

that he no longer fits in the country he 

recently defended. 

Sometimes the Mark of Cain is selfassigned 

as the person comes to understand 

his responsibility in a lethal encounter. 

In real life, things are rarely as 

neat as tactical scenarios where an IPSC 

target with a gun on it pops up and says, 

“I’m going to kill you.” It is natural and 

even healthy (to a point) to question 

what was done. This is a way we learn 

and integrate our personal experiences 

into a meaningful story of who we are 

and how we’ve been in the world. The 

problem can come when we get stuck 

in negative emotional judgments about 

what we have done, in spite of all the 

evidence and opinion to the contrary. 

Whether or not a person encounters 

PST or PTSD in the aftermath of their 

experience, it is important to recognize 

that the defender’s brain has gone on a 

strange ride and may take some time 

coming back to its usual mode of operating. 

This is too short an article to elaborate 

on the changes that take place 

and distortions of perception. The important 

point here is to understand that 

the person may have stored information 

about the event in a fragmented and 

highly-charged way in the emotional 

centers of the brain. This becomes possible 

as the brain switches to the fight 

or flight system to process what is happening. 

Under some circumstances, 

the brain can become overwhelmed 

and stay in that state for an indefinite 

period. When this occurs, the memory 

of the event cannot be accessed without 

bringing up the disturbing emotion 

that was stored with it. The result is 

that the person knows one truth about 

the event logically, but the logical mind 

gets overwhelmed by the emotionallycharged 

memory. That accounts for 

folks with PTSD and PST reliving the 

event through flashbacks, nightmares 

and all-too-realistic recall of the events. 

The same person is likely to avoid any 

person, place or thing that would serve 

as a reminder of the event. They live in a 

state of unending hypervigilance, which 

is not a fun place to be and they would 

do anything to get out. But stuffing the 

memory of the event is not successful 

Some of the folks that 

I have seen have the 

worst time with PVET 

were people that 

acquaintances would 

describe as strongminded. 

They are often 

the last to come to 

counseling due to their 

expectations that they 

should pull themselves 

up by their own 

bootstraps. 

and when they try to bring the event 

up in their mind, emotion overwhelms 

logic. 

The human brain is designed to process 

traumatic events and will do so 

over the days and weeks following the 

incident if it can. But if the wrong combination 

is present and the brain stays 

overwhelmed by the traumatic memories, 

what might have been an unpleasant 

short-term case of PST/PVET can 

harden into the longer-term PTSD. 

It is easy to get frustrated with a person 

who is undergoing this experience, 

especially if we don’t understand that 

their efforts to look at things rationally 

are getting overwhelmed by the emotional 

memories. Some of the folks that 

I have seen have the worst time with 

PVET were people that acquaintances 

would describe as strong-minded. They 

are often the last to come to counseling 

due to their expectations that they 

should pull themselves up by their own 

bootstraps. When they haven’t been 

able to control the emotional flooding 

that occurs, they believe themselves to 

be failures and they tend to become depressed. 

The advice of well-intentioned 

friends to suck it up and move on further 

deepens their sense of failure and 

depression, because they can’t get on 

with it. 

The point of all this is to encourage 

persons in the shooting community to 

understand that adequate, confident, 

competent, intelligent folks can and do 

fall prey to PST/PVET or PTSD. Again, 

not everyone who goes through a bad 

experience will go through these symptoms. 

But some will. 

Once a defender can accept that they 

have PST/PVET or PTSD, they can then 

take charge of the healing processes 

involved. Police officers have the resources 

of fellow officers who have gone 

through similar events, peer counselors, 

and privileged communications with 

a police chaplain. Armed citizens can 

form their own ad hoc support group 

from understanding friends. A great 

new resource for understanding with 

some clout is the Armed Citizens Legal 

Defense Network (www.armedcitizensnetwork.org). 

For those whose symptoms are persistent 

and troubling, therapy through the 

use of Eye Movement Desensitization 

and Reprocessing (EMDR) has been a 

helpful process in the resolution of trauma 

for law enforcement, civilians and 

military personnel. Information about 

the therapy and practitioners can be 

found through the EMDR International 

Association website (www.EMDRIA. 

ORG). n 

[ Art Mize is a Licensed Mental Health 

Counselor in private practice in 

Olympia, Washington. He also serves as 

a volunteer police chaplain and a defensive 

handgun instructor. ] 

More Resources 

“Post-Violent Event Trauma” (video) 

Massad Ayoob 

Deadly Force Encounters by Alexis 

Artwohl and Loren Christensen 

Into the Kill Zone by David Klinger 

CopShock by Allen R. Kates 

38 


1-888-732-5011 

crossbreedholsters.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CROSSBREED 

HOLSTERS

POINT-COUNTERPOINT 

Post 

If, in your own 

mind you’re 

certain that you 

had no alternative 

but to pull the 

trigger in order 

to save a life, why 

should you feel 

any guilt? 

Shooting 

Trauma 


It’s not very often that I 

find myself in agreement 

with Tom Cruise, but the 

vertically-challenged 

Hollywood star had me 

standing and cheering at 

his recent outburst against 

psychiatrists, psychologists, 

and other “psychowhatsits.” 

Let me tell you why. 

In Arizona, where I teach the gentle 

art of self-defense handgunning, 

I also teach a Concealed Weapons 

class, the syllabus of which is strictly 

laid down by the Arizona Department of 

Public Safety. In this class, the student 

is required to learn about the effects of 

Post Shooting Trauma (PST). No doubt 

this was added at the request of a statesubsidized 

psychiatrist! 

Naturally, I teach the full syllabus, but 

when it comes to the PST segment, I 

have to admit that I give this part of the 

class my own spin. Here’s what I tell my 

students: 

“So here you are. Your worst nightmare 

has happened and right there in 

front of you is a dead body. The guy had 

[ B Y T O N Y W A L K E R ] 

just broken into your home with the intent 

to rob you, rape you, or kill you. You 

were legally armed and you fired your 

gun to defend yourself, your spouse, or 

your children. What’s the first emotion 

you will feel when you see the bad guy 

laid flat on your living room floor?” 

Surprisingly enough, the answer to 

that question is elation! You’ve won! 

You’ve slain the dragon, you’ve killed 

the monster, you’ve triumphed over 

evil, you have faced your biggest challenge 

ever, and you have survived. 

Of course, a few seconds later, the 

reasoning part of your brain comes into 

play, and you think; “Oh, no, what have I 

done?” Stick with the first emotion. After 

all, you’ve done nothing wrong. The guy 

wasn’t invited into your home, he made 

that decision, not you. You were simply 

minding your own business in your own 

home. It wasn’t your fault. All you were 

doing was exercising your right to defend 

yourself and your family. 

In addition, after undergoing a traumatic 

event like having to defend your- 

40 


self, you must recognize that the human 

body can react in a number of ways. A 

common symptom is nausea, especially 

if blood has been spilled. Anyone who 

has ever worked in a slaughterhouse 

or dressed out his deer as a hunter will 

know that it’s not a pleasant smell. 

Another reaction, and this may sound 

strange, is extreme tiredness. This is 

called adrenaline dump, and is the 

body’s reaction to the huge amounts 

of adrenaline that have been poured 

into your bloodstream. You may yawn 

uncontrollably, and you could feel very 

sleepy. All this is natural, and a quick fix 

of caffeine in the form of coffee will often 

bring you back to normal. 

In this modern, touchy-feely world, 

we’re supposed to feel guilty when we 

take a human life. After all, doesn’t the 

Ten Commandments say, “Thou Shalt 

Not Kill”? Actually, no. The original 

wording was “Thou Shalt Not Commit 

Murder,” but later translations have 

changed all this. 

You are supposed to suffer from Post 

Shooting Trauma. Why? Says who? If, in 

your own mind you’re certain that you 

had no alternative but to pull the trigger 

in order to save a life, why should you 

feel any guilt? Sadness maybe, at the 

waste of a human life and perhaps sympathy 

if he left any relatives who mourn 

him. 

Guilt? No way! You did nothing wrong! 

The only thing you did was to make a 

decision to defend yourself and your 

family, and that’s nothing to feel guilty 

about. 

Post Shooting Trauma (PST) is an invention, 

dreamed up by psychiatrists in 

an attempt to make us come to terms 

with our “inner demons.” Let’s face it, 

if psychiatry really worked, Hollywood 

movie stars wouldn’t have to spend 

years (and lots of money) stretched out 

on a couch. 

The psychiatrists tell us that the 

symptoms of PST include (and could 

they be trying to plant a subconscious 

seed here?): 

• Constant worry about the incident. 

• Nightmares and bad dreams. 

• Withdrawal from loved ones and society. 

• Social or sexual dysfunction. 

Let's look at all of these symptoms: 

Constant worry and preoccupation 

with the incident. Well, that’s natural 

enough. You’ve just shot someone, possibly 

fatally. This is guaranteed to keep 

anyone from sleeping. Did you ever 

have a near-miss on the freeway late at 

night? Your mind keeps running it over 

and over as you try and get some sleep. 

Nightmares and bad dreams. Once 

again, if you do manage to finally get off 

to sleep, that’s a perfectly normal reaction. 

Withdrawal from loved ones and society. 

Let’s face it, you probably won’t be 

in the mood for conversation. You will 

just want to be left alone for a while to 

get over it. We’re told that your friends 

and neighbors will be pointing fingers 

at you and talking about you. So what! 

This is a perfectly natural reaction. They 

won’t think any less of you, in fact they’ll 

probably be secretly envious. After all, 

you’ve faced evil, and you have won. 

Social or sexual dysfunction. Maybe, 

but only for a short while. You certainly 

won’t want to be going out to a ball 

game with your friends, or to a party, 

and it’s possible that your sex drive will 

temporarily be put in neutral. 

Well, I’m sorry, but none of these 

symptoms sound too bad to me. In fact, 

they sound more like the symptoms of 

a bad dose of flu! So long as you can 

convince yourself that what happened 

wasn’t your fault, and that the bad guy 

left you no alternative but to shoot him, 

the symptoms of PST, if they appear at 

all, will disappear in a week or so. 

Think about this: in the military, a 

soldier in the front line is told to shoot 

his country’s enemies. If he does this 

enough times, he is awarded a medal. 

In WWII, before the pseudo-science of 

psychiatry took over the country, America’s 

heroes like Audie Murphy, Joe Foss, 

and Clarence “Commando” Kelly won 

the Medal of Honor for killing our country’s 

enemies. They, and thousands of 

other unsung heroes, came home from 

overseas and simply got on with their 

lives. They didn’t need counseling; they 

would have scoffed at the thought. 

Remember one other thing: there is 

now a huge industry comprised of psychiatrists, 

psychologists, stress counselors, 

and grief counselors. In a crowded 

profession, they all want to earn a good 

living, and the best way to do this is to 

keep their patient lists full by inventing 

new mental conditions for them to 

treat. One of these conditions is called 

PST. 

This country seems to be rapidly 

turning into a nation of victims always 

looking for an instant fix or for someone 

to blame for society’s ills. Whatever 

happened to good old rugged individualism? 

The pioneers who trekked west 

didn’t have the supposed advantages of 

a host of pill-pushers, stress and grief 

counselors, and psychiatrists to help 

them cross the plains and mountains. 

All they had working for them was courage, 

common sense and the determination 

to get themselves and their families 

safely to their destination. 

We are not saying that you should be 

proud of the fact that you’ve been forced 

to shoot someone. What you did at that 

particular moment in time was the only 

option you had. You made the choice 

between acting like a free American, 

risking possible death or serious injury 

to you or your family if you resisted, or 

acting like a sheep and surrendering 

and living in shame for the rest of your 

life. n 

[ Tony Walker is the author of the critically-acclaimed 

book How to Win a 

Gunfight, and he also wrote Snides, 

the action thriller that introduced ex- 

SAS trooper John Pilgrim and his swiftshooting 

wife Sally. The new John and 

Sally Pilgrim novel, Pilgrim’s Banner, 

will be published soon. Find more information 

on Tony Walker’s website, www. 

johnpilgrimbooks.com. ] 


41

FORCE-ON-FORCE NOTEBOOK 

42 

MOVE! Get off 

the X and make 

yourself a harder 

target. 

Flag the thumb 

to hook the 

bottom of your 

garment while 

reholstering. 

When drawing, use your thumb to 

push your shirt aside. 

ONE-ARMED 

[ B Y J A C K R U M B A U G H ] 

Welcome to another Force-on 

This month’s edition examines the 

scenario where, for one reason or 

another, one limb is immobilized. 

We will examine what happens when either 

the strong or support side arm is not 

in the fight. We will take a hard look at 

techniques that allow you to carry and deploy 

a pistol from concealment when one 

arm or hand is out of action. 

The ability to use your firearms with either 

hand is a valuable skillset to develop. 

As we have seen in numerous force on 

force scenarios, there are a lot of shots to 

the hands and arms. There are two main 

reasons why this happens. First, your 

hands and arms are located in front of 

where your adversary would initially try 

to place his shots, your center of mass. 

Second, there is an element of target fixation 

on the gun. Like anyone else, your 

adversary will focus on the threat, and will 

tend to shoot what he is focused on. This 

results in injuries to your hands or arms. 

The ability to smoothly transition from 

one hand to the other will keep you in the 

fight longer. 


With an arm 

immobilized, you’ll 

sacrifice some balance 

and quickness. 

The thumb will hold the garment in place 

while you establish a firm firing grip. 

DRAW 

-Force Notebook. 

But what do we do if we have only one 

arm to begin the fight with? What do we 

do if we have had surgery for something 

like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, sprained 

our wrist playing a pickup game of 

basketball, or are in a cast for a broken 

bone? Do we just leave the pistol 

at home and hope we are safe until we 

heal? No way! All we have to do is modify 

our techniques to accommodate our 

injuries. 

Rather than work with the terms right 

and left, I’m going to use strong and 

support to describe our dominant and 

non-dominant hands. We should train 

ourselves to be ambidextrous, but for 

the sake of clarity, I’ll use strong and 

support as a way to differentiate between 

the sides of the body. 

Let’s look at immobilization of the 

support side arm. There goes that twohanded 

presentation from the holster 

that you worked so long and hard to 

perfect. I bet you wish you had taken 

the time to work on your one-handed 

skills a bit more. What do you have to do 

to make this work? Not all that much, 

really. If you look at strong side carry—whether 

you favor hip or appendix 

carry—your biggest concern is clearing 

your garment. With an open front cover 

garment, not much changes. You’ll 

still clear the garment with your strong 

hand as you acquire your firing grip. 

Holstering will be slightly different in 

that you won’t have your support hand 

to keep it out of your way, so make sure 

your garment does not snag or interfere 

with your pistol as it enters your holster. 

If you feel any resistance, carefully start 

over. 

With a closed front garment like a 

sweatshirt, you’ll need to modify things 

to make it work. You’ll need to use your 

thumb to push up the garment away 

from the grip of your pistol. Once you 

clear the garment, establish your grip 

with your thumb flagged to hold the garment 

out of your way. Holstering will require 

you to flag the thumb in the same 

manner to hook the bottom of your garment. 

Again, be aware of any resistance 

you feel during the holstering process. 

Appendix carry tends to be easier to 

holster one handed, and you may also 

want to investigate cross draw. 

With an injured strong side, you can 

carry on the hip or in the appendix position 

if you have the proper holsters. If 

you are like me, you haven’t invested in 

a large number of holsters for support 

side use. You may only have one or two 

options available to you. Personally, I’d 

opt for the appendix or cross draw positions. 

Your preferences are completely 

up to you. You would present the pistol 

and holster in the same manner as 

with your strong side, keeping in mind 

that unless you train with both sides, 

your dexterity will likely be diminished. 

If just the hand is injured, you may be 

able to use it to some degree to help 

clear the garment during the presentation 

or holstering. 

We always combine movement with 

our presentations, getting off the X. We 

have examined what the body does in 

the force on force arena during maxi- 


43

above and right: It is easier to draw 

from an appendix position. 

mum chaos. We have noticed that the 

body naturally “figures things out” as 

you move. The old school method of 

keeping the support side hand and arm 

tight against the body, actually hinders 

dynamic movement. The support arm 

will act as a rudder of sorts enhancing 

your balance. If you need to turn your 

body, “flinging” the arm out will give you 

more momentum, allowing you to turn 

faster. Think of how a student of fencing 

uses his support arm to enhance his 

movement. The principles apply here 

as well. With an arm immobilized, you’ll 

sacrifice some balance and quickness. 

If it is in a sling, tight against the body, 

you lose your rudder. 

Now that we have an understanding 

of some the dynamics that will be involved 

in fighting with a hand or arm 

that is injured, it’s time to gas up the 

Airsoft pistol and run a few drills. We’ll 

be simulating injuries to the strong and 

support side hands and immobilizing 

the arms as well. What we want to do is 

realize how our bodies work when we 

take something out of the equation. 

The first scenario is an injured support 

hand. In order to concentrate on 

showing the techniques (instead of 

dealing with the problem of a live opponent) 

I used a static target instead 

of a real adversary. You can utilize the 

support hand to help control your over 

garment as you acquire your firing grip. 

As you present and move, your arm is 

still available to act as a counter-balance. 

The only technique not available 

to you is your twohanded grip. One 

thing you will want to keep in mind is 

that some angles of movement will be 

easier to utilize than others. For a right 

handed shooter, moving to the left will 

feel more natural. Moving to the right 

requires a transition to the support 

hand at some point fairly early on, but 

an injured hand or arm eliminates this 

possibility. If we completely immobilize 

the support arm, we find that our 

movement is affected to a degree. If 

your footing is a little bit unsteady, you 

won’t have the other arm to act as your 

counter-balance. As you explode off the 

X, you’ll clear the garment, acquire your 

firing grip, and present the pistol to the 

target. 

In the second scenario, we trade sides 

to an injured strong side; the dynamics 

change. You will be using your less 

dexterous hand to present and shoot 

your pistol. This is where prior training 

will come in very handy. The more you 

practice with both sides of your body, 

the easier these techniques will be. As in 

the prior scenario, as you acquire your 

pistol and present to the target the injured 

hand can assist with clearing the 

garment. This movement will be more 

familiar to your more dextrous, more 

practiced strong side. Again, you sacrifice 

the possibility of the transition to 

the other hand. You will also experience 

the same issues with your movement as 

before. 

Bilateralism is something that we emphasize 

in all our advanced courses. You 

should be able to shoot from either hand 

with a pistol and from either shoulder 

with a long gun. Along with the possibility 

of an injury prior to or during a gun 

fight, you may need to shoot from cover 

or concealment that forces you to use 

your support side. Train both sides of 

your body. Someday, your life may depend 

on it. n 

44 


IT’S JUST THE LAW 

JURY DUTY: 

THE OTHER MILITIA 

[ B Y K . L . J A M I S O N ] 

A retired sergeant major 

wanted out of jury duty, but 

appeared as ordered and was 

fascinated, although he could 

never get those people to 

march in a straight line. 

The sergeant major was selected 

at random from a cross section 

of the local community. At one 

time, statutes excused vast sections of 

society from jury duty. The Missouri 

Constitution still contains a clause 

allowing women to opt out of jury 

duty. 1 One convict complained that this 

denied him the right to a jury drawn 

from a cross section of the community. 

Shirts bearing slogans will prompt 

questions during jury selection. 

The United States Supreme Court 

agreed. 2 The triumphant defendant 

was promptly re-convicted by a jury of 

the entire community. In 1935 a white 

defendant’s lawyer objected to the jury 

panel because it did not contain any 

minorities. 3 The objection was overruled 

as a silly obstruction of justice; now it is 

the law. 

This cross section is drawn primarily 

from driver’s licenses, voting lists, and 

property records. 4 Failure to report 

is punishable under statute or as 

contempt of court. The offender is still 

called for jury duty. 

Jury commissioners have some 

latitude to delay jury service in case of 

hardship. During the 1993 flood the Ray 

County, Missouri jury commissioner 

announced that Orrick residents were 

excused because their town was being 

evacuated. Several people got up and 

left; floodwaters were rising around 

their homes but they had reported for 

jury duty. This provides a standard of 

hardship. However, in order for a judge 

to excuse persons in cases of hardship, 

they must first report for jury duty. 

A Missouri juror went home for 

lunch and found a new jury summons 

in her mailbox. The judge relieved 

her of the summons and passed it on 

to a less experienced member of the 

community. 

Evading jury duty leaves justice to 

persons who may be less qualified. On 

occasion, a juror is discovered who does 

not speak English. 5 A borderline retarded 

man was a juror in a case involving 

an accident between a sheriff’s patrol 

vehicle and a police squad car. He could 

remember nothing about the facts, the 

issues, or who won. 6 A stabbing case fell 

to jurors who knew nothing of knives, 

and few had ever been in a fistfight 

much less a life or death struggle. 7 When 

the supply of jurors fails, courts have 

ordered sheriffs into the streets to drag 

in replacements. Missouri law wisely 

allows litigants to refuse the product of 

such press gangs. 

Potential jurors are first assembled 

in a hall with eccentric heating and 

cooling, where they are oriented to the 

process, and then they wait until they 

are called. A cushion and sweater are 

often welcome; books and knitting pass 

the time. Crisp dollar bills prove useful 

for the vending machines. 

Generally, a jury panel consists of 

forty persons or more. The venire [the 

panel of prospective jurors] will be 

taken to a courtroom to have a jury 

selected from its number. This process 

is called voir dire—old Norman French 

meaning to “speak the truth.” The jury 

panel will be questioned, usually by 

attorneys but sometimes by the judge. 

These questions determine if anyone 

has preconceived attitudes about the 

facts or issues in the case. For example, 

to ask a person who has suffered from a 

fire to dispassionately consider an arson 

case is more than can be expected of 

human character. Some questions will 

be personal. It is perfectly acceptable 

to answer these questions at the bench 

before the judge. If questions are not 

answered honestly it might force a 

retrial and a new jury. In that event, 

there will be at least twelve people who 

truly dislike the dishonest party. If the 

prosecution loses a conviction due to 

juror misconduct it is possible that 

they will be looking for revenge. Perjury 

charges are possible. 

One character thought that he had 

a clever way to evade honest answers. 

When the panel was sworn to tell the 

truth, he answered, “no,” his negative 

obscured in a chorus of “yes.” He then 

felt justified in lying. 8 His scheme 

violated the covenant of good faith. 

Fortunately he was more interested in 

parading his legal opinions, and was 

not selected. 

People who use jury selection to make 

speeches are never selected. Lawyers 

do not pick who they want for the 

jury; they pick who they do not want. 

Persons with strong feelings regarding 

a party, the subject, or the system of 

justice will be excluded. Exclusions may 

be for “cause” in which the judge rules 

that a juror cannot be fair or the juror 

has prior knowledge of the parties or 

the case. Each party will have a certain 

number of “strikes” which are used to 

exclude jurors for almost any reason. 

46 


Whoever remains from the panel is a 

member of the jury (plus alternates in 

case of casualties among the jurors). 

This remnant is composed of persons 

who are the least objectionable and least 

knowledgeable about the event that is 

the subject of the case. It is believed that 

they are the best possible jury for the 

particular case. F. Lee Bailey was pleased 

to find a chemist on the jury panel for 

a poisoning case because he could 

understand the complicated evidence. 

However, the law does not allow such an 

expert jury, and the prosecution swiftly 

excluded the chemist. 

The judge will caution the jurors not to 

speak to the lawyers, parties or witnesses. 9 

This is to avoid the appearance of 

improper communication, which leads 

to suspicion and mistrial, and twelve 

other people being very angry. 

Some jurisdictions allow jurors to 

take notes, but rarely are they allowed 

to ask questions. Where questions 

are grudgingly allowed, the judge and 

lawyers must vet them before they are 

permitted to be asked. 

On occasion, a judge takes the speedy 

trial rule to extremes and disposes of the 

scheduled breaks. In one such instance 

a juror raised his hand and asked for a 

break, which was immediately given. 

This juror was the hero of the courtroom. 

Songs were composed in his honor, 

epic poems written, and children were 

conceived specifically so they could be 

named after him. 10 

Juries are rarely sequestered. It is 

expensive and a burden to all. Bailiffs 

are solicitous of their jurors and can 

often ease the inconvenience of the 

experience. 

Some jurors have preconceived ideas 

of what the law says. They are often 

wrong. One juror proclaimed that a 

case was not self defense because the 

defendant fired on advancing armed 

thugs. She claimed that he could not do 

so unless they fired first. Giving thugs 

one free shot is not the law. The juror’s 

confidence led the jury to convict. In 

another such case, a juror proclaimed 

the defendant’s tactics to be “stupid” and 

therefore illegal. 11 But jury instructions 

are provided to define what is or is not 

legal, and these definitions override 

what is in the dictionary or the Bible. 

Jurors may take all evidence into the 

jury room. Some jurisdictions allow 

testimony to be read back to the jury. 

This may not be practical. In one case, 

a juror composed a list of testimony to 

be read back which promised to turn 

a ten-day trial into a career. 12 Others 

convinced her to rely on memory. 

The most important things the jury 

takes into deliberations are experience 

and common sense. In one case the 

victim testified that she had been raped 

while standing. One juror declared 

that it was impossible to have sex 

standing up. The remainder of the jury 

enlightened him. 13 

After hearing strong evidence of selfdefense 

one juror told his fellows not to 

bother him until they were ready to vote 

not guilty. This is a problem because 

jurors are required to participate in 

deliberations. An uncommunicative 

juror could be removed from the jury, 

forcing a mistrial. 14 

Jurors are forbidden from undertaking 

independent investigation. In a 

British murder trial four jurors held 

a séance to contact the victims, who 

named the defendant as their killer. 

The conviction was overturned on 

the grounds, among others, that the 

ghosts had not been cross-examined. 15 

Jurors are told that they must follow 

the jury instructions. They are supposed 

to follow the jury instructions, but juries 

have a practical power to nullify the law. 

A Wisconsin jury, declaring that their 

time had been wasted, nullified a firearm 

possession case on the grounds that 

the law could not have been intended 

to apply to the inoffensive retarded 

defendant. 16 Nullification is wrongly 

presented as a guaranteed acquittal 

for defendants claiming self defense. 

Defendants have been convicted after 

acting in self defense, but the danger is 

that once juries are told they can ignore 

the law, they may ignore the self defense 

law as well. 

Only in the United States does the 

accused have a constitutional right 

to a trial by jury. Our founders, many 

of them lawyers, believed that justice 

was too important to be left to lawyers. 

Lawyers are taught to find law in books 

and computers, but not justice. The 

founders of this nation believed that 

justice is found in the common sense 

of twelve unbiased people chosen at 

random. 

Militias come in all sorts. n 

[ Kevin L. Jamison is an attorney in the 

Kansas City Missouri area concentrating 

in the area of weapons and self-defense. 

Please send questions to Kevin L. Jamison 

2614 NE 56 th Ter Gladstone Missouri 

64119-2311 KLJamisonLaw@earthlink. 

net. Individual answers are not usually 

possible but may be addressed in future 

columns. ] 

This information is for legal information 

purposes and does not constitute legal 

advice. For specific questions you 

should consult a qualified attorney. 

1. Article I Section 22(b). 

2. Duren v. Missouri, 99 S.Ct. 664 (1979). 

3. Unger, Union Station Massacre, Andrews McMeel Publishing Kansas City MO 

1997 at 202. 

4. Refusing to register to vote does not get one out of jury duty. It may get 

people elected who pass laws concerning jury duty. 

5. Liddy, Will, St. Martin’s Press 1981 at 385. 

6. I knew him. 

7. Burnett, A Trial by Jury, Alfred A Knof pub. NY 2001 at 112. This book should 

be read by all lawyers doing criminal trials (not right now—it will keep until 

they finish the magazine). 

8. Email in author’s possession. 

9. Despite this instruction I frequently have jurors speak to my client or me 

during the trial, which requires me to report the contact to the judge. 

10. Not just then, but later on. 

11. “Enter the Jury Room” CBS Reports Transcript: Burrells Box 7 Livingston NJ 

07039. Video 1-800-934-NEWS. Videos of jury deliberations are rare and 

not done without jury approval. 

12. Burnett, A Trial by Jury, op cit at 105. 

13. And perhaps opened a new world for him. 

14. “Judge outs ‘failing’ juror from Reginald Denny case” Kansas City Star 12 

October, 1993 at A-3 com 4. 

15. Weird News, Kansas City Star August 17, 1994 at F-1 clm 6. R. v Young, 

[1995] QB 324. 

16. Video, Inside the Jury Room, Frontline April 8, 1986. 


47

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Here are some video screen shots and sample workbook pages from Concealed Carry 

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JPFO LIBERTY CREW 

TAKE YOUR MONEY BACK 

[ B Y L . N E I L S M I T H ] 

For decades, many publications like this one have 

catalogued the dirty, dishonest, and brutal tactics of an 

illegal agency (the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 

Firearms, and Explosives) charged with the enforcement 

of an entire body of unconstitutional law. 

Tell me where the Second 

Amendment mentions a government-approved 

privilege of 

certain government-approved individuals 

to keep and bear governmentapproved 

arms in a government-approved 

manner, exclusively at government-approved 

times and then only in 

government-approved places? 

For the same amount of time, despite 

endless scandals, massacres, investigations, 

exposés, and Congressional 

hearings of all kinds, the BATFE has 

continued to grow in power and appropriations 

until the very highest laws of 

the land (the first ten amendments to 

the Constitution, commonly known as 

the Bill of Rights) that were supposed 

to protect all of us from people like 

them have come to mean practically 

nothing. Our unconditional and absolute 

right to own and carry the means 

to protect ourselves from them is being 

eliminated altogether. 

Over the years we’ve tried everything: 

petitions, rallies, demonstrations, 

boycotts, running candidates 

and voting on initiatives. But nothing 

seems to work. With the aid and comfort 

of a conniving gaggle of socialist 

politicians, the criminal BATFE continues 

to grow while our rights—and 

our remaining alternatives—continue 

to diminish. Recently, my own teenage 

daughter, who had only heard about 

the BATF, wanted to know what the “E” 

stands for. “Everything?” she guessed. 

Still, there is one bright spot remaining 

on the horizon that may herald a 

sunrise of freedom, rather than the 

last sunset of liberty. A very wise man 

once said, “The answer to the question, 

‘Why don’t they...?’ usually comes 

down to money.” Not only does it take 

money to make money, it takes money 

to deprive 300 million people of their 

freedom. 

Or, as somebody else once observed, 

taxation is the fuel of war. Certainly 

taxation is the fuel of the BATFE’s 

evil war against Americans and their 

With the aid and 

comfort of a conniving 

gaggle of socialist 

politicians, the 

criminal BATFE 

continues to grow 

while our rights— 

and our remaining 

alternatives—continue 

to diminish. 

Constitutional rights. Taxation is the 

fuel of oppression. Cut off that fuel, and 

a greatly reduced number of BATFE 

agents will have to go back to counting 

revenue stamps on bottles of liquor 

and packs of cigarettes. Stop taxing alcohol 

and tobacco, they will be out of 

business altogether, and America will 

be a better, cleaner place. Don’t forget 

to outlaw civil asset forfeiture, as well, 

because if the BATFE can’t steal it one 

way, they’ll surely steal it another. 

How do we get started? With an idea 

called “Take Your Money Back,” a movement 

to abolish the federal income tax 

and make sure that the money BATFE 

would spend to take away your rights 

stays safely in your pocket instead. 

That’s right, we’re saying tax abolition 

is a public safety issue. Government 

will be forced to reduce its “services” 

to a minimum, while We the People 

suddenly save about 40 percent whenever 

we buy a new car, a home for our 

family, that special shotgun or elk rifle. 

That 40 percent isn’t pie in the sky, it’s 

our peace dividend—the reward we receive 

for ending the government’s war 

on individual liberty. 

At www.TakeYourMoneyBack.com 

you will learn about the easy steps that 

you can follow to make genuine freedom 

and prosperity possible in our 

lifetime. Do it now. Do it for your children 

and your grandchildren. 

Do it for yourself. 

Take your money back. n 

[ Four-time Prometheus Award-winner 

L. Neil Smith has been writing about 

guns and gun ownership for more than 

30 years. He is the author of 27 books, 

the most widely-published and prolific 

libertarian novelist in the world, and 

is considered an expert on the ethics 

of self-defense. Reach him at mail to: 

lneil@netzero.com[ 


49

ARMED SENIOR CITIZEN 

Skills Maintenance 

Given the fact that I am 

physically challenged 

with neck and back pain, 

arthritis, and spinal 

inflexibility stemming 

from some injuries, I am 

often asked how I keep my 

shooting skills intact—that 

is, how I regularly train. In 

this article, I shall address 

this question. 

50 

[ B Y B R U C E N . E I M E R , P H . D . ] 

I 

will discuss several skill maintenance 

exercises that I have learned over 

the years for both live and dry fire 

practice. Keeping in mind the old 

adage, “use it or lose it,” I incorporate 

shooting skill drills into my lifestyle. 

They encompass daily visual-motor 

coordination drills without a handgun, 

dry fire practice drills with my carry and 

home defense handguns, and live fire 

drills at the range. 

Visual-Motor 

Coordination Exercises 

First off, I frequently practice the 

following two visual-motor coordination 

exercises without a gun. In Visual-Motor 

Exercise One, you pick a spot to aim at, 

you visually focus on that spot, and then 

you point [your finger] at it. That’s the 

exercise. It’s one smooth flow. In Visual- 

Motor Exercise Two, you pick a spot to 

aim at, and you keep your visual focus 

on that spot as you simply imagine 

drawing your handgun and acquiring a 

sight picture on that spot. Both of these 

exercises build muscle memory. 

Dry Practice Drills 

The next step is to work at home with 

a triple-checked checked unloaded 

handgun. Make sure you have a safe 

backstop and that there is no live 

ammunition in the room. In Dry Practice 

Exercise One, you pick a target or point 

at which to aim, visually focus on it, and 

then bring your unloaded handgun up, 

with your finger off the trigger in the 

register position along your handgun’s 

frame. You focus on your front sight 


Tracking target. 

Ten rounds are shot at 

each of the following 

distances: five, seven, ten, 

fifteen and twenty yards. 

Drills 

and acquire a sight picture (your front 

sight is centered in the rear sight notch) 

and superimpose your sights over your 

target. You repeat this drill ten times. 

Please understand the sequence as it is 

the key to hitting what you are aiming at 

when you are firing live. Also, see Tom 

Perroni’s online article: Being Able to 

Hit What You Aim at with a Handgun 

at www.USConcealedCarry.com for an 

excellent exposition of the fundamentals 

of accurate handgun shooting. 

In Dry Practice Exercise Two, you 

practice an additional ten repetitions, 

but now you bring your finger onto the 

trigger and slightly press the trigger 

rearward without taking the shot; take 

up the trigger slack but do not press 

the trigger all the way back to the point 

where the shot breaks. 

Dry practice 

from behind 

cover. 

JULY 2008 n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE 

51

Support hand practice with 

laser sights. Aim point is 

high center of mass. 

Trigger 

finger in 

the register 

position. 

Make sure you have a safe 

backstop and that there is no live 

ammunition in the room. 

In Dry Practice Exercise Three, you 

practice ten repetitions of acquiring 

your sight picture and fully working 

the trigger. If your handgun is a double 

action revolver or a double action only 

(DAO), trigger cocking, semi-automatic 

pistol with a hammer—such as the DAO 

Sig Sauer, Heckler & Koch, and Smith 

& Wesson pistols, you can simply and 

easily dry practice double taps. A double 

tap refers to firing two shots in rapid 

succession. On the other hand, if your 

semi-automatic pistol is like a Glock 

or Springfield Armory XD series pistol, 

you must manually cycle the slide to 

simulate the gun’s slide cocking action 

in order to dry practice double taps and 

trigger reset drills. 

Keep in mind that you can set up your 

favorite range targets at home against 

a safe backstop and conduct these 

dry practice drills. I like to follow Jack 

Weaver’s advice quoting from the May/ 

June 2008 issue of American Handgunner 

(page 109): “Your [dominant] eye, the 

back sight, front sight and the target 

don’t have to be perfectly lined up,” he 

says, bending his head down slightly 

and bringing the gun up to eye level, 

“but you can see the sights, and as you 

squeeze the trigger, you correct them 

as best you can. Pretty soon, you get to 

the point where you come pretty close 

every time.” (www.weaverstance.com) 

Practice, practice, and practice. 

Safe Room 

Dry Practice 

Another exercise that you can do at 

home is to simulate working within 

your safe room. I am talking about 

visualizing home invaders breaking 

into your safe room. First, unload your 

home defense handgun. Triple check 

it and sequester all live ammunition. 

The sequence entails verbalizing 

appropriate commands from behind 

cover: “STOP! DROP YOUR WEAPON! 

I’M ARMED. GO AWAY! LEAVE THIS 

HOUSE NOW!” Acquire a sight picture 

on your imaginary home invader and 

dry fire if necessary. You should practice 

this drill with your trigger finger in 

register, taking up the trigger slack, 

and both with, and without dry firing. 

Remember, you hope that you do not 

have to fire, but you must be prepared to 

do so if the threat does not back down. 

Perceptual Awareness 

Learn to really notice and study 

your targets. Practice tracking multiple 

targets. This involves scanning and 

verifying each target in an array. As you 

verify each target, you establish an aim 

point and acquire your sight picture. 

This type of practice builds your visualperceptual 

and observational awareness 

skills. It also transfers to live fire drills. 

Live Fire Drills 

I try to get to the range for skills 

maintenance practice at least twice 

a month. When I go, I try to make the 

most of my time and ammunition. With 

my carry handgun or home defense 

handgun, I have found the following live 

fire drill to be an excellent way to keep 

my skills intact. The drill incorporates 

multiple skills: stance, grip, draw from 

concealment, trigger control, sight 

alignment and sight picture, varying 

distances, follow-up shots, speed, and 

accuracy. It is not a beginner’s drill. It 

is not a skills acquisition exercise. It is a 

skills maintenance drill. It requires just 

50 rounds—one box of ammunition. 

It does not require a shot timer. To 

52 


paraphrase Clint Smith, when have you 

ever found a shot timer in a gunfight? 

The Drill 

The target is a humanoid silhouette 

target, either a Q, a B-27 or equivalent. 

I like to paste a five-inch diameter 

orange circle at high center of mass 

(HiCOM). All shots are taken from my 

concealment holster. 

Ten rounds are shot at each of the 

following distances: five, seven, ten, 

fifteen and twenty yards. That makes for 

a total of fifty rounds. At each distance 

I clear my covering garment, draw and 

fire a double tap at the HiCOM orange 

circle. That’s five draw and fire double 

taps (10 rounds) at each distance. That’s 

the drill. 

Secondary 

Live Fire Drills 

Tracking Drill. 

Here’s a second tracking drill that 

I find useful if you have the time and 

ammunition. Tracking means that you 

visually scan and shoot multiple targets. 

The set-up consists of four five-inch 

orange circles in a square numbered 

one through four. The drill requires a 

total of 56 rounds. Seven rounds make 

a complete cycle. You acquire Target 

One and fire. Then, you move your eyes 

to Target Two, your muzzle follows, you 

verify your target, you acquire your 

sight picture and then fire. Then, you 

move to Target Three and fire, and then 

on to Target Four. 

Then, you track backwards counterclockwise 

to Target Three, and from 

Three to Two and then back to One. 

That makes a total of seven rounds. 

Two complete cycles are shot at each 

distance. That’s fourteen rounds. The 

distances for this drill are five, seven, 

ten and fifteen yards. That makes for a 

total of 56 rounds. If you started with 

three boxes of ammunition, you are 

now left with 44 rounds with which to 

practice your rhythm and become one 

with your gun. That’s the third drill. 

Rhythm Drill. 

The Rhythm Drill entails loading your 

handgun to capacity and discharging 

your loaded gun as quickly as you can, 

maintaining a rhythm, and keeping all 

of your shots in a respectable grouping 

on your target. I like to perform this 

drill at distances of three, five and seven 

yards. Thus, with 44 rounds, I can shoot 

the Rhythm Drill nine times with my 

five-shot J-frame revolver. I can shoot 

the drill three times with my 13 + 1 

capacity .40 caliber Glock 23 and three 

times with my 17 + 1 capacity 9mm 

Glock 17. You get the idea. The Rhythm 

Drill also entails doing emergency 

reloads—nine [speedloads] with my 

J-frame using either a Bianchi Speed 

Strip or HKS Speed Loader, and three 

with my Glocks. 

So, there you have it. We’ve spent 150 

rounds—three boxes of ammunition– 

and we’ve gotten a great shooting 

workout. However, if you can only do 

one drill, do the first one with one 50 

round box of ammunition. The other 

drills are very valuable, but optional 

if you have limited time, energy, or 

ammunition. n 

With the introduction of the K9 pistol in 

1995, Kahr Arms created the ultra compact 

major caliber pistol market. Since 

then many have tried but none has succeeded in delivering 

a pistol as compact and reliable as the Kahr pistols. 

With the introduction of the PM45, Kahr continues this 

tradition of delivering unrivaled Concealed Carry 

Weapons. 

The Kahr PM45 has the combination of features which 

make it the best Concealed Carry .45 ACP caliber pistol in 

the market. It has the ideal combination of stopping power 

and shooting comfort, and is smaller, slimmer and lighter 

than competitive brands. Its smooth double action trigger 

reduces flinch, improving shot placement, and is safer. 

Made with Pride 

in the U.S.A. 

PM4543 

In stressful situations, 

fine motor 

control is impaired 

contributing to the 

possibility of accidental 

discharges with traditional 

single action triggers 

found on many autos 

and revolvers. The PM45's natural point of aim and low felt 

recoil make it an ideal gun to shoot and carry. 

Go to your nearest retailer and ask for the PM45. 

Check out 

Kahr's smallest 

and lightest 

.45 ACP! 

® KAHR ARMS: P. O. Box 220, Blauvelt, NY 10913 

Sales Support & Service: 508-795-3919 

Websites: www.kahr.com / www.kahrshop.com 


53

HOT BRASS 

The Hyskore 

Rotary Pistol Rack 

Not enough room to cram all those guns in your safe? Try 

the HySkore® Rotary Pistol rack. It holds up to 9 pistols and 

rotates a full 360°, perfect for storage. The rack measures 

12” diameter and 8” height, and features a woodgrain finish 

and protective foam padding at all contact points. The rack 

measures 12” diameter and 8” height. Other models of gun 

safe racks available. Visit www.hyskore.com for ordering 

information. 

Beretta USA 

Px4 Storm 

Sub-Compact 

The Px4 Storm Sub-Compact pistol is available in 

9mm and .40 S&W. It features a stainless steel barrel, 

interchangeable backstraps (included), Picatinny rail, 

ambidextrous manual safety, and a reversible magazine 

release button that can be replaced for optional 

smaller or larger size buttons. It has a locked breech. 

The small size is ideal for maximum concealment. 

SnapGrip magazine extenders are available. 

cALIBER 9mm or .40 

OVERALL LENGTH 6.2” 

BARREL LENGTH 3 

CAPACITY 13 (9mm), 10 (.40) 

SIGHTS 

FRAME 

Superluminova 

plastic 

MSRP $600 (9mm) , $575 (.40) 

SPYDErCO 

SPYDERENCH T01 

The T01 SpydeRench includes a one-hand open/close 

locking knife blade. The T01 is made of corrosion resistant 

stainless steel and features an adjustable crescent 

wrench. On the opposite end is a 2-setting slip joint plier. 

A set of four screwdriver bits (#2 and #3 Phillips, #1 and 

#2 flat-head) fits inside. The SpydeRench accepts standard 

1/4” sized bits, including Allen and Torx®. It also 

has a diamond-coated file, a small Phillips head on one 

side and a hole starter on the other. A pivot pin allows the 

tool to rotate into a lockable extended position to easily 

grip the screwdriver and crescent wrench functions. The 

pivot can be released, allowing the screwdriver and knife 

to completely separate from the SpydeRench to be used 

independently. 

54 


Item No. Product Description Size Qty. Price Ea. Sub-Total

The best gunfight is 

one you are not in... 

You might call Para’s NEW Personal Defense 

Assistant (PDA) your “Rescue” gun 

• The 1911 has been a lifesaver. Only Para technology gives you its Carry Safe 

trigger system in a 1911 that is truly the WORLD’S SMALLEST. 

• Unlike single-action 1911s, it cannot become “cocked and unlocked” in 

your pocket. 

• You carry the PDA with the hammer down yet with one smooth stroke of the 

trigger it is ready for action. 

• Its light double-action (LDA) trigger gives you the same sweet, smooth trigger 

pull every shot. It is anti-jerk, making you a better shot even under stress. 

• 

Size matters: too small and you are carrying an ineffective mouse gun. Too 

large and you don’t have it when you need it. The PDA is the right stuff. 

• Flatter than a snub-nose revolver, the PDA holds 

9 rounds in 9mm and in .45 ACP you get Major 

Caliber firepower in a 24 ounce pistol. 

• Down dark 

alleys you 

will see 

your sights 

because every 

PDA comes 

with tritium 

night sights. 

Put a Para PDA in 

your hand today. 

www.para-usa.com/rescue 

North American Call Center: (954) 202-4440 

1919 N.E. 45th St., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33308-5136

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