InSights Training Center Blog

I occasionally get some exposure to other combatives and martial arts systems, and get to work with some very skilled practitioners of these different arts. One thing I frequently run into are “techniques that are too dangerous to do – even in training.” I have a very hard time with this.

It is my core belief that practicing things as close as you can get to full-speed, full-power, against resisting opponents is a key element of self defense training. While the InSights combatives system has a few techniques that fall into the “too dangerous to practice” category, one key difference I see is that none of them are the primary part of an escape or defense. Eye gouges and the like are not first thing we are going do, and the rest of the technique doesn’t hinge on the successful execution of it.

Clearly we can’t begin training at ‘combat speed’ because we still need to learn the mechanics of the particular technique, but eventually we need to progress to training under stress, against resisting opponents that change their pattern of attack, and with real speed and power. This is why we spend so much time fighting against opponents that are wearing Fist Suits in our unarmed classes.

While InSights runs training all over the US, most of our training classes for private citizens are done in the Seattle, Washington area. Getting a Concealed Pistol License in Washington is really quick and easy, but it is only valid in 19 other states (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.)

You can get 13 additional states by obtaining a non-resident Utah Concealed pistol license. (Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming.) However, the application process is a little more complicated – especially if you don’t live in Utah.

First you must meet the eligibility requirements:

• You do need to be at least 21 years old.
• You cannot have a felony conviction on your record.
• You can not have been convicted of any crime of violence.
• You must not have been convicted of any offense involving the use of alcohol or unlawful use of narcotics or controlled substances.
• No convictions involving any domestic violence.
• Also you can never been adjudicated in U.S. courts as mentally incompetent, unless that was reversed or withdrawn.
• You can not have been convicted of any offense that involves moral turpitude.

Then you need to provide or obtain the following:

• A copy of a valid driver’s license.
• A passport quality photograph of you for the new permit.
• A completed fingerprint card prepared by a trained fingerprint technician.
• A weapons familiarity class taught by a Utah Certified Firearms Instructor

InSights Training Center offers a 4-hour all-inclusive class that fulfills the Utah training requirement mandated by the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (B.C.I.) and gets your application ready to submit to Utah for your Concealed Firearm Permit. All you have to do afterwards is drop it application packet in the mail.

Update: Florida and Colorado have reciprocity with Utah at the time of this writing, but do not honor non-resident permits.

I am seeing a lot of discussion and comments about handgun calibers (I don’t think you can talk about guns on the internet without debating caliber) at Marko’s and SayUncle.

As I previously quoted John Holschen:

No common defensive handgun cartridge will quickly and reliably stop a human being who is committed to causing serious bodily harm, unless the bullet from that cartridge is applied to the correct anatomy.

Handgun bullets move too slowly to do anything other than create wound channels the diameter of the (expanded) projectile. Adding another hundred feet per second of velocity or another 3mm of diameter doesn’t really make enough difference to matter. Until you get your handgun rounds moving at more than 2500-3000 fps they aren’t going to do anything different than destroy the tissue that they touch.

Consider that bullet travels through many different types of medium in a human body: bones, fluids, air space, elastic and inelastic tissues. The order in which the bullet encounters these different mediums is going to have a lot of influence on what the bullet does. While we can create some impressive looking numbers by doing some math with the velocity, diameter, and mass of the projectile we have completely ignored the variables of what it is we are shooting at. People are not made of uniform ballistic gelatin, and are highly resistant to damage in the short term.

The shooting press and ammunition manufacturers talk a lot about gelatin studies and how they relate to defensive shooting. Greg Hamilton weighs in on the topic:

The main problem with the gelatin studies is that gelatin only is calibrated for pig muscle for depth of penetration. Not anything else. We can assume human muscle and pig muscle are similar enough that the is basically the same. After that all bets are off. The biggest problem is we shoot people in the chests, chests are mostly NOT muscle tissue. The measurements where the FBI came up with the magic 12-14″ are of the chest to transverse the goodies.

Even though the street data is horribly collected, it is still data, and the best performers as “stoppers” on the street have been rounds that penetrate 8-10″ of ballistic gelatin. The FBI set 12-14 as a magic number and then went on to find rounds that go 12-14″ of muscle not 12-14″ of chest, which is the target they are concerned with getting through.

The 5.56 round with best real world results in the USA is a 55 HP, but in gelatin tests it only goes 10″ at most, yet it produces more “1 shot stops” than anything out there. Because it doesn’t penetrate far enough in gelatin people are discarding it but it has the highest DRT rate.

I wouldn’t shoot people with more than a 55 HP unless I was also trying to solve some other problem like distance at the same time.

Some of the most heated debates we have in classes is in regard our doctrine about not getting involved on the behalf of unknown third parties. I figured I would expand upon this a little bit, and better explain our position on this.

First of all InSights, teaches people to defend themselves and the people they care about not just from physical confrontations, but also from the legal penalties involved with the of force. Not getting involved in someone else’s dispute protects the individual from all of the risk of physical injury, criminal charges, and civil damages. Beyond calling the police, this is our default position. Staying out of other people’s problems will not protect the individual from feelings of guilt because they felt that they could have done something to help, or improve the general safety and welfare of larger society.

Frequently there are a lot of unknowns in any third party situation. Can we be sure of who is the aggressor and who is the victim? Can we be sure that the “innocents” are in fact innocent? We are contemplating putting an awful lot at risk (our lives, our freedom, our financial resources and those of our families) for a situation that if we had more information we might not feel compelled to get involved in. If I am sitting in prison for a mistake that I made (with the best of intentions) on be half of a stranger then who is going to protect and take care of the people I care about?

While the default is to call the police and otherwise stay out of it, it is up to the individual to make their choices and decide how much risk they are willing to assume on the behalf of a person unknown to them. Having a wider range of capabilities (in terms of tactics, skill, and equipment) allows one to mitigate some of this risk. I would say that it would I need a pretty clear picture of events before I would consider using deadly force on behalf of someone unknown to me.