A couple of items from Defensive Gun Use (DGU) statistics. Around 80% of DGUs occur at home, and 80% of the time, the firearm is not discharged. Rifles and shotguns make up about a third of the arms used, and handguns make up about two-thirds. However, looking at police shootings with handguns, we see that […]
Tag: self-defense
Statistics & the $5,000 Test
If you are skeptical of statistics, congratulations! You should be. However, that doesn’t mean that statistics are inadequate or worthless. You should subject any statistics to meaningful investigation. One of the many sad things about COVID was how much science was compromised. Studies were written supporting masks, yet the recent Cochrane review showed insufficient evidence […]
Violent Crime Statistics
Before we get started, we need to cover some common misunderstandings over terminology. The word “assault” for instance is often used in everyday language to mean a violent attack, such as the title of the movie “Assault on Precinct 13.” The word “violent” has similar connotations, such as a news program saying “a violent incident […]
Best Magazine Article I’ve Ever Read
The magazine is RECOIL presents CONCEALMENT from CMGWEST recoilweb.com | Issue 31. The article is “Safe in the City” by Dave Merrill. I don’t know Dave, but the advice he gives is absolutely sound! Read it and absorb it! There is another good article by Jared Wihongi called “Close-Quarters Firearms Integration Tactics.” For law enforcement, […]
Police Marksmanship: Violence Skill vs. Firearm Skill
In a previous post, I discussed the difference between firearm and violence skill. I want to expand on this topic here. The driver is the article “Hitting (or missing) the mark: An examination of police shooting accuracy in officer-involved shooting incidents,” for which the citation is at the bottom. This document costs money to download, […]
William English: 2021 National Firearm Survey, Updated Analysis
One of my biggest regrets in my book was stumbling across English’s research way too late. I was only able to mention it briefly. In fact it is worse than that, because I hadn’t heard of it, I had assumed that some of the Defensive Gun Use (DGU) statistics I referenced came from Kleck’s research […]
Capacity and Reloading Speed versus Simplicity
My book and blog posts are for ordinary civilians who may not have any firearm experience or self-defense experience. As such, I prioritize things like safety over speed (see a previous post). In this post, I will prioritize simplicity over things like capacity and reloading speed. As such, I will recommend certain types of revolvers […]
Talking to Law Enforcement
[note: this post contains some foul language that is relevant for describing a criminal escalation] The public and its relations with law enforcement (LE) have strained over the last several years. This characterization is mild, as law enforcement officers (LEOs) have been deliberately targeted and killed. A lot of the difficulties with the public stem […]
Comfort and Light Recoil
A helpful way to improve your self-defense preparation is to focus on your likely threat. In my book, I tried hard to eliminate misperceptions and rely on vetted statistics so that the attributes of the threat would be identifiable. Knowing these attributes allows us to prepare appropriately. For the self-defense industry, the threat a civilian […]
Small, Medium, and Large Caliber Handguns
A study titled “The Association of Firearm Caliber With Likelihood of Death From Gunshot Injury in Criminal Assaults” was released in mid-2018. I’ll cite the article at the end and link to it. Unfortunately, the study is often presented as a rebuttal to the slogan “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This rebuttal is […]