Less than lethal

The subject of planning for emergencies and security always seem to come up together. With these two always comes the topic of firearms. The one subject which never seems to really come when people start talking about emergency planning, is anything to do with options you can give yourself which do not include firearms. We have discussed the use of force during situations and one very important aspect of the use of force continuum is having options. 

  

When you hear a bump in the night we all think this is what we are going to find. But what if you find something different lurking outside? 

Are you going to shoot them because this is the only option you have prepared for and given yourself to work with? Are you going to pistol whip the kids to make them leave? If you have answered with some form of "You bet I would!" picture this being your loved ones. Your loved ones looking for shelter, food and you are not there to help them. Would you want them to be shot? If your still saying yes just go away now................... 

For the rest of use we can give ourselves options to use, especially if you are not trained with firearms and can never own one due to your personal beliefs. Now these options are not better or worst than firearms. Each is a tool and can be used for different tasks. As with any tool if you do not know how to use the tool it might as well be a door stop. We should also think of these tools as option makers which should be used in conjunction with our personal abilities and skill level. 

  

Three of the main options you see being sold to people are Tazers, stun guns and batons. Each of these have advantages and disadvantages. A big issue is people will ask their friend what they should get, then they go buy one, put it somewhere and forget it. Tazers have batteries and batteries die, batons take a bit of skill to use above the level of a caveman smashing something and if your attempting to use a baton for less than lethal you need some training. 

Before we go any further it is absolutely important, as in do not buy anything we are talking about, NO, do not do it until you have checked your local laws!! In some locations, like sunny Southern California, simply having one of these tools is a crime! You do not want to make it through a really bad situation to only find yourself in jail facing more bad situations because you did not check the laws. No ignorance of the law is not a defense and stores will sell things which are illegal to own!! DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!! 

Remember these tools are less than lethal but can cause permanent damage and could also kill someone. Sure you bought the baton to defend yourself without killing someone but the one time you used it the bad guy ducked and you smashed his head in......... 

The biggest tool I heard people are told to buy is Pepper Spray. Without getting into all the details, yes I could bore you with the details, not all spray or delivery options are the same. Do a little research before you go buy a keychain spray of this stuff and think you are safe. Hint; the key chain stuff in a size you will carry probably ain't enough to stop someone....

 

These photos of people standing within arm reach of the bad guy and deploying their tools to end the situation are very misleading. Having been sprayed and partaken in training with others being sprayed I can tell you in each of these pictures it would be nothing for the bad guy to reach out and grab the women. Once he has his hands on her he does not need to see and is probably even more motivated to hurt her because he is in pain. 

 

 These photos using other tools also give a false sense of confidence on how these tools work. 

This distance you see with the spray is what is used during training to ensure the trainee is inundated the first time and does not have to go through the process more than once. A hand held up between the two at this distance will do a lot for the bad guy and give him time he can close the distance with. 

At this distance you can not expect to spray the bad guy and the situation ends. This is where you have to utilize the tool as part of your overall response to the situation. You could deflect the reaching hand, deploy the spray and make some distance. This is a good idea of how to properly utilize pepper spray. Use the spray from the greatest distance you can. The spray takes time to work, might only be a second or two but in a confrontation tenths of a second make the difference

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If we had the video of the situation in this picture odds are we would see the bad guy, with the club. Continue forward as he followed through with the swing. For their positions it would appear the guy in the helmet will be struck by the club if he just stands there. The club guy might even take two or three swings before the spray effects him to the point he can no longer fight. In a small percentage of the population there are people who are not affected at all by pepper spray. Again, these are tools and should be part of an overall strategy for surviving the situation. If you look at the guy in the helmet he appears to be law enforcement of some type. 

Let's say he is for this post. They guy swinging the club is sprayed and as the cop changes position to gain space and time the club man keeps coming. At this point the cop would be thinking of changing tactics and would move further up the scale for using force. The shotgun, if loaded properly, could be his next step to stop the situation. Ok gun folks pay attention to this next part..........

There are less than lethal rounds made for shotguns! Again these are designed to be less than lethal but the person deploying the tool needs to understand how to deploy it. For all of the kinetic energy rounds or even the baton targeting is the key to helping ensure nothing becomes lethal. 

 

These are some of the types of less than lethal rounds available for shotguns. In essence most of them are bean bags thrown really hard from the shotgun. Some rounds are a softish plastic which bounces a lot. All of them are designed to cause pain. Pain makes people stop doing what they are doing because nobody likes pain!!!!! The next time you see a protest on TV or a situation where police utilize these remember they are made to hurt but not kill anyone. 

 

Sure these look bad, I can tell you from experience they hurt and take a few weeks to heal up, but none of these people are dead. We will skip discussing why these people were targeted......... For those of us out there who focus our security planning on firearms, here are some new ways to utilize your shotgun (you have one right) and a reason to buy more ammo. These do not fly like regular rounds and take some practice to learn to deploy correctly. 

This is getting a bit long so I will wrap it up here. In the future there will be more postings on less than lethals and I will attempt to give more details on selection and deployment. For now, if I found the women and children in the second picture in my area and I needed them to leave..... I would step up wind of them, move ten to fifteen yards away and utilize the pepper spray more like a mist to inundate them as little as needed. After a few minutes and once the kids started feeling the irritation they would leave! At least I hope they would!!  

 

As Always,

Stay Safe!!

Use of force, in a crisis

If we are being realistic in our planning we cannot shy away from the unpleasant idea we might have to use force during a situation. This can be as simple as threatening to use force all the way to really having to hurt someone. Although most of us do not want to spend time thinking about what kind of other people live out there the reality is we need to think about how far we are willing to go and to give ourselves mental boundaries now so we do not have to try and decide later under pressure.

A good rule of thumb to follow in these situations is;

"ONLY USE THE AMOUNT OF FORCE NECCASARY TO GAIN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION."

This means once the threat is neutralized you stop using force. Why would you want to continue beyond this point? There really is no reason to hurt or harm someone when they are not a threat to you or your loved ones. If you do then you blur the line between the GOOD GUY (you) and the Bad Guy (them). Why would you stoop to the level of a bad guy? Think long term on the actions you take. Could you live with yourself if you beat someone who was not a threat to you? Could you live with yourself if you needlessly took a life? Hopefully, the answer is "no".

"What would you fight for?"

This is a very important question to ask yourself and be honest with yourself when you answer. You do not have to tell the answer to anyone beside yourself so be brutality honest with yourself. Would you fight for your own life? Sounds like an easy question but really how far are you willing to go? Would you punch someone in the face? Would you kick someone in the groin? Would you pound someone’s head into the cement beneath your feet? Would you drive a piece of metal into their body? Would you shoot them in the head at point blank range? This is not a question directed at how macho you are or meant as statement of bravado.

Would you fight for your family? Would you fight to defend your children? Would you fight to protect your parents? Would you fight to protect your extended family, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.? How far would you be willing to go to defend your family? Could you hit someone in the back of the head with a shovel if they were hurting that one family member you cannot stand? What if they were harming one of that family member’s children? Where do you draw the line with your family?

Your neighbors, would you fight to defend one of your neighbors? Would you assist them if they were attacked during a crisis? How far would you be willing to go to defend your neighbors? Would you run over someone attacking your neighbor with your car? Could you watch your neighbors being attacked and do nothing? Under what circumstances would you do nothing? When would you go to their aid?

The question just goes further out from there. Would you fight for your church group? Would you fight for the waitress at your favorite restaurant? Would you fight to defend your child's school? Would you fight to defend your city?
What would you fight for?

You can feel it when you hit someone, you can hear them when they scream out in pain and it is something you will remember. The use of force is not simply just something you do then go have a ham sandwich. Using force has lasting repercussions for everyone involved; be it physical, emotional or legal, everyone is affected.

Most of us are prewired to not hurt another person. Most of us are brought up to not harm others. Most of us have no desire to hurt or even slightly harm another person. Some people out there want to hurt others. They have no problem hurting you and some of them feel absolutely nothing when they do hurt another person. Then during a crisis people might do things they would not normally do. They might feel pressed into committing acts of violence they would never commit on an average day.

Understanding your personal limits on what you are willing to do is very important. Before you can even discuss using force you have to come to grips with what you would be willing to do. We can discuss the legal issues or how to apply force and that is all good BUT none of it matters if you do not realistically understand what using force in the real world means!

When faced with a situation you have to solve with force you should always try to use the less amount of force to gain control of the situation. This might mean just yelling for someone to stop. Maybe you just step between two people and make it obvious the situation could lead to violence if one or the other does not stop what they are doing. Maybe you threaten to call the police and the threat of what might happen is enough to stop the situation? We should always attempt to stop a situation by not even having to touch the other person! This ensures everyone goes home in one piece and without long term repercussions.

If a situation gets to the point where you have to physically touch another person be cautious of how you touch them, where you touch them and how hard you touch them. Maybe all you need to do is touch someone to gentle guide them away from the situation. You would not want to walk up to someone, punch them in the face and break their nose if you could simply guide them away by placing an open hand on their shoulder!

At the same time if you are in a situation where the other person is throwing punches at you or someone else, going up to them and gently placing a hand on their shoulder is probably not the right answer to the situation. Odds are they are just going to punch you in the head. You have to at the very less met the level of force the other person is using with equal force. At times it could be better to answer the force you are fighting with force a step up. A person pulls a knife, you pull out a broadsword! Ok a gun might be a better idea, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention!!!

Say you are confronted by a person who wants your emergency supplies. You tell them 'No' and attempt to close your front door. They stop the door from closing with their arm. You tell them to remove their hand and get off your property. They shove the door toward you, you of course shove back. They manage to shove the door open and now brandish a knife to threaten you. You yell for them to stay out and order your loved ones to retreat to the furthest room from the front door. This person enters your home threatening you with the knife and tells you they are going to hurt you if you do not surrender what meager supplies you have to keep your family alive. You draw your firearm out from under your shirt and order the person to leave your home. They lunge toward you, you step back and fire, hitting the person in the chest. They look at the wound, look at you, turn and run out of your home. From inside of your home you can see them run away from your home and fall on to the street outside.

You can see they are obviously hurt. You can clearly see their knife is lying just outside your door. You watch as a neighbor runs up to the injured person, lift them to their lap and begin to cry. You can see the person you shoot is limp in the neighbor’s arms. Putting your firearm away, you walk up to the two of them and visually check the assailant and neighbor to determine if they are a threat to you or your loved ones any more. The attacker is obviously not a threat to you as they are gasping for breath. The neighbor is a complete emotional wreak seeing their loved one shot. You might even at this point offer to render medical attention to the assailant? Why not, they are not a threat to you anymore? Remember think long term here.

Sure some of you out there might be saying you would never react to a situation in this manner. You would have started punching the other person as soon as they showed up at your door!!! Once they tried to force their way in you would have drawn your weapon and shot them dead in the doorway! Once you pulled the trigger you would have kept going until the magazine ran dry!

I call bullshit right now if those were your thoughts or answer to the situation! Most of us have never seen what happens to the human body when metal starts to pass through it. Most have never heard a weapon fired in a confined space. Most have never heard the sounds of someone dying. And if you think you are one of those macho, super tactical, spit fire and drink gasoline type of tough guys let me ask you; why did you empty your magazine into one guy? What if bad guy number 2, 3 and 4 were just outside the door? So again check that entire macho BS at the door and honestly think about this subject for a minute or two………………

Why would I help the person I just shot? Because you are a better person and sometimes people make mistakes! What if their family was starving and coming to your house was the act of a desperate person? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to feed your family? Do you have to help them? No, this was just an example of how the use of force scale is a sliding scale. At one end you are taking lives, at the other you are saving lives.

Can we post a listing of all the responses and ways to use force in an emergency situation? No there to many variables in any situation, the idea here is to get you thinking about things now, while life is safe and you have a clear head. Set your boundaries now and work through the ‘what if’s’ now while you are not under any pressure. Take the time to learn the law, ignorance of the law is not a defense in court and the laws are different in different areas. Again a good rule of thumb;

Use only that force necessary to gain control of the situation.

As Always,

Stay Safe