Some SWAT teams have a big public relations problem. Either they are the heroic rescuers, rushing to a job that is too dangerous for the “regular police,” or they are the overzealous and trigger-happy cowboys just itching to violate civil rights. Very rarely do the media report on a SWAT team for anything other than its purely good actions or its purely evil actions. And because of such coverage, public opinion follows the same train of thought. Click here to read more »
Caleb had some observations about point shooting. Since we have already done the caliber debate, I guess it is time for aimed fire vs. point shooting.
Point shooting is awesome if you can index the muzzle of the gun almost against the target, but performance with this technique tends to degrade as you increase the distance, or reduce the size of the target. Click here to read more »
Some of the current debate about the effectiveness of the M4 is swirling around the “stopping power” of the cartridge and the reliability of the weapon system. Digging through my archives, I found some comments from John Holschen regarding the effectiveness of the cartridge:
The stopping power “problem” is based on the misconception that there exists a hand-held firearm which can instantly terminate hostile behavior (reliably and repeatedly). Click here to read more »
After reading some of the discussion about having some kind of CCW Identifier (badge, sash, or drop down panel) I have to conclude that this an answer looking for a question.
The theory is that if there was some kind of incident, an armed citizen would display this credential and be less likely to be shot by responding police officers. The bad guys can’t get these? Who says the police are going trust people wearing them? If you are at ground zero of an incident and holding a gun you just have to hope that the police are observing your actions rather than simply seeing you as a “threat target.”
If you are standing there with a gun you are forcing the police to deal with you immediately and I would rather have the police deal with me after they have a handle on the situation. Once the police arrive on scene I want to be holstered and I want to have moved to a location where the police can deal with me on their terms (meeting the police in the parking lot would probably be best), hands up and identification out.
Self defense isn’t about punishing criminals, our system is not set up that way. It’s nice if burglars get arrested, tried, and punished but that has very little to do with self defense. The goal of the defender is to protect themselves and their families from harm. That could have been accomplished by ordering the intruder to get out of the house (at gun point) and letting him do so. Click here to read more »