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How often is a knife used in injurious violent crime targeting civilians? As showcased in magazines and training classes, masked men, public places, and knives are common. However, as we know from my book, except for robbery, we see strangers and public places as not typical for injurious violent crime. Regarding injurious robbery, strangers, public places, and “no weapon” are more common than robbers with knives. In short, if you are injured by a knife in a violent crime, the offender may well be someone you know, and it likely took place at your home or on the property of your home (e.g., domestic violence situation).

Robbery is the most common violent crime where an ordinary civilian will likely run into a violent criminal. Intimidation and surprise attacks seem to be the most common attack vectors. Public places, such as walking from your vehicle to your destination (and back) or to and from your hotel room, are pretty popular for robbery. My book goes through several ways you can avoid these attack vectors. However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you are up against a stranger who is a knife-armed violent criminal. Let us further assume that this person will attack you using a knife.

Let’s look at the knife a bit closer as a weapon. To use it effectively, you need to see, and you need to be able to move, and you need some speed, but not necessarily strength, unless you are blocking strikes. For our example, we will assume that seeing, movement, and speed is critical for our attacker. The knife is a close-range weapon. It is easily concealed in the hand for rapid deployment. There is also something primitive about the knife. Many people have an ingrained fear of knives, like people have an innate fear of snakes. This fear leads to a mental obstacle that needs to be overcome: Just because someone with a knife gets to you doesn’t mean you are dead. It would be best to get that notion out of your head, or you’ll lose the fight.

The saying “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight” has held true for a long time. It still does in many situations. However, when the Tueller Drill became more known, a concealed carrier had to deal with an uncomfortable truth: a guy with a knife could get to you before you could draw and shoot. This mindset borders on “weapon overreliance,” as people are often stationary when they perform the drill. Lateral movement and putting obstacles (like vehicles) in between you and your attacker can usually be done while drawing your weapon.

Now we can ask the million-dollar question: What is the best weapon against a fast, skilled knife-wielding attacker?  A firearm makes the most sense, but we can see where we can be at a disadvantage due to the Tueller Drill. To balance this out, some people choose to use a knife in conjunction with a firearm. The thought process is that you can deploy your knife faster than your pistol, which in all honesty, I feel is a questionable assumption. However, aren’t you still going up against a fast, skilled knife-wielding attacker, only now at close range?

In my view, the proper supplementary weapon to a firearm to defend against a knife attack is gel pepper spray. A small container can be carried in your offhand and concealed with your hand. This carrying style means the gel can be deployed just as fast as someone concealing a knife in their hand. The gel form eliminates blowback and has a longer effective distance, like fifteen feet or so. Pepper gel will cause severe seeing and breathing problems for a knife-wielding attacker. These problems can help us get away or give us time to get our firearm ready if the attack continues.

Anytime you are going to and from your vehicle or hotel room, you can easily carry a small can of gel pepper spray in your hand without being noticed, especially if you wear gloves that match the can. You can slip it in your pocket when you arrive at your destination. In short, it is inconspicuous, but extremely fast to deploy if necessary.

Pepper gel does have disadvantages – you need to watch the expiration date, and you need to watch the temperature range where it is stored. For example, if you live in Phoenix, the inside car temperature could reach a range where the canister explodes. Also, pepper gel may not deploy properly if you live in very cold temperatures. Like anything else in self-defense, any deployed solution has benefits and harms. Unfortunately, most people dismiss less-than-lethal weapons without properly evaluating them.

I gave a few reasons why I do not open carry in my book. However, I wanted to expand on some more reasons you may want to consider before you open carry.

When I see people open carrying in public, it is almost always at the grocery store, and once in a while, I’ll see it at a restaurant. Fundamentally though, the problem with public locations is that strangers are often far too close to you. Much ink has been spilled on the Tueller Drill and how quickly someone without a firearm can close distance on someone with a firearm. Let’s assume that based on your skill set, a distance of 30 feet represents the minimal amount of space you feel you can defend yourself with a firearm from a charging opponent. Quick Question: Are you open carrying in places where a stranger is within 30 feet of you? If so, you may want to concealed carry rather than open carry.

Why? It is important to remember that a firearm is a valuable resource for people who want to do harm. Sometimes, these people are criminals or mentally ill and have been prevented from purchasing a firearm via background checks. Please don’t assume they magically know people with black market connections where they can get whatever firearm they wish. They may decide to get it from you. If these people are frequently inside your rule-of-thumb 30 feet, open carrying may be more like an invitation than a counter-threat.

As an example, assume you were in the parking lot of a grocery store, open carrying, and on your way inside. I stopped you and told you that everyone in the store wanted a gun and was prevented from purchasing one due to background checks. Would you still go into the store?

Several years ago, when I began researching violent crime, I was interested in figuring out the circumstances. I figured that if I could understand if there were common violent crime circumstances, I could develop self-defense strategies to mitigate them appropriately. After all, there is no point in preparing for a trip to the Amazon jungle when you actually go to Antarctica.

As this research winded down, I understood that civilian violent crime threats and threats to police officers were different. The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) compiles statistics about Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted (LEOKA). I discuss them in my book. Their lethal threats are armed strangers who were likely arrested for a violent crime prior and are on active justice status, like parole or bail.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume civilian threats are the same. What would our statistics be like if they were? Let’s assume the violent crime rate against police officers is the same as it is against civilians.

1. First, since there are millions more concealed carriers than police officers, the number of people justifiably killed by private citizens would be far higher than by police officers.
2. Defensive Gun Use (DGU) statistics where the firearm was discharged is the same for civilians as for police officers.
3. DGU statistics where the firearm was not discharged are the same for civilians as for police officers.
4. Injurious aggravated assault would primarily involve firearms, strangers, and public places.
5. Murder would primarily be firearms, strangers, and public places.

As my book goes into detail, the first four are false. Murder, which represented 1.3 percent of all violent crimes in the period studied, shows that around 40 percent of the time, the victim knows the offender. For the other 60 percent, the relationship between the victim and offender is unknown. While the UCR tracks criminal records for LEOKA, it does not track them for the victim or offender in aggravated assault, robbery, rape, or murder. In addition, the UCR does not keep track of victim injury. In short, we do not know how much injurious violent crime is criminals targeting other criminals.

What is clear from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and DGU statistics for civilians, the home and the property of the home are the primary locations of violent crime (around 80 percent). About 80 percent of the time, the firearm is not discharged. Injurious aggravated assault and rape primarily involve people the victim knows, and the location is somewhere the victim feels comfortable. Robbery is the only violent crime that shows a high amount of strangers and public places for both injurious and non-injurious types. However, the most common weapon for both is no weapon at all.

Often, police officers and former polices officers will utilize their experience to indicate that civilians face the same threats as they do. I certainly believe police officers face the threats they face. Unfortunately, I cannot find any data showing civilians face the same threats. In all honesty, this is a call for celebration. Why?

Well, in general, police officers are better trained and have more experience than civilians who carry a concealed firearm (CCF). Even though they have better training and experience, they are not very accurate shooters overall (as I detailed in another post). I would expect civilians to do much worse. Furthermore, civilians who CCF do not have the legal protections of police officers, which can easily lead to criminal charges even if the civilian tried to do the right thing.

Using our best statistics, civilians should improve the security of their homes and the property around the home and weed out risky people from their lives. However, suppose you believe civilians and police officers have the same threats. In that case, you’ll be adopting a CCF strategy and likely forgo improving the security of your home and the property of the home. One path is a superior self-defense strategy.

Please note that violent crimes against civilians are still dangerous and can be deadly. I’m certainly not saying they are trivial. What I am saying is that the circumstances are different, and civilians must plan their self-defense strategies differently than police officers.

I think it is wonderful that women can access the best combat training in America. Often, women are welcome in classes covering physical defense, edged weapons, and concealed carry training. In addition, women-only classes are also available to help those who may be uncomfortable in mixed crowds. Successful completion of these classes can result in increased confidence, awareness, and security for many women.

Why would I have a problem with that? Well, I don’t. What I have a problem with that there is a big missing piece: women do not get trained in the most common scenarios. Here is my paraphrased summary of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for rape from 1993 to 2019:

• Most rape is committed against female victims (over 93% at the lower bound confidence interval). Homes are the primary location, while public areas are almost non-existent. Married women have the most protection against rape, while “Never Married” is the majority case. Rape victims typically do not call the police, and statistics like the Uniform Crime Reports will not count these rapes. In addition, almost two-thirds of the time, rape victims do not seek treatment for their injuries, in stark contrast to injurious aggravated assault and injurious robbery. Offenders who are strangers to the victim
  are rare. Overwhelmingly, the offender is someone the victim knows. Weapons are rarely used.

Is women’s self-defense training a good match for these statistics? I would say no. I see the training that women undergo to be primarily focused on a masked armed male acting in a public place. In sharp contrast, my recent review reports that strangers are about 15% of the victim-offender relationship in rapes. Where is the training on the other 85%?

In short – my problem with women’s self-defense training is that it focuses on the minority case and abandons the majority case. It gets even worse with injurious aggravated assault, which resembles domestic violence. Essentially, the most common injurious violent crime, aggravated assault, and the least reported injurious violent crime, rape, are tops for violent crimes against women. Yet, strangers are almost non-existent in these crimes. To put it bluntly, women are actually safer in public areas than they are at home!

These statistics are why I wrote my book. We need better self-defense strategies for women. I hope my book can inspire more research on helping women defend themselves.

If you are interested in my book, you can buy it from all the online retailers. Links are here. In addition, I have my own store for electronic copies – in PDF format and epub format. Also, there is additional NCVS research I did that you can purchase as well. Enjoy!

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 accuracy is relatively poor. I see no reason to think that civilians would be better than the police, assuming their situations are similar (I feel that civilian encounters are much different than police encounters when the firearm is discharged, so this may not apply).

Given that most people’s home security leaves a lot to be desired, I devote a lot of pages in my book toward improving it, both inside and out. As part of that plan, I recommend a defensive room strategy. The gist of a home security setup like this is that criminals who don’t want to hurt you either don’t show up at your house or run away very quickly when they do show up. As a result, property crime encounters that would have turned violent are avoided. That said, any criminal who remains doesn’t fear getting caught, and that puts them in a different category. Dealing with such a criminal requires a lethal weapon, and the best weapon using a defensive room strategy is a shotgun. Unfortunately, many people that use home defense shotguns do not employ a defensive room strategy. In fact, what they do deploy is quite problematic. Here is what I’ve seen:

• The shotgun is fully decked out and heavy. Imagine walking through your house and finding an intruder in a big room of your home. You tell them to get on the floor. The police are 20 minutes away. Can you hold a heavy shotgun at an intruder for 20 minutes straight?
• The shells utilized are often full-power 12 gauge slugs or buckshot. These rounds will down a grizzly at short range. However, they will also blow through your interior walls like a hot knife through butter. Furthermore, in today’s cookie-cutter home construction, they will blow through your exterior walls as well and likely penetrate a close neighbor’s home.
• Shotguns are often long and challenging to maneuver in hallways and closed-in areas.
• The range is often close in home defense situations. This improves the weapon’s lethality, but don’t expect a lot of spread in your pattern at 10 feet or less.

Many of these problems can be avoided by employing a defensive room strategy. We still need to select ammunition properly. However, there are some other considerations too.

• In a defensive room, you’ll have a defensive position. In this position, your shotgun should be supported by something other than you, such as your mattress. In this case, you need to be aware if you have a pump shotgun, your bed blankets might jam the mechanism. You’ll want to ensure this cannot happen.
• You should store your shotgun securely in your defense room. How you store your shotgun is essential. I would not recommend storing with a round in the chamber (see my post on fast access safes for details). If you have a pump shotgun, you must dry fire on an empty chamber to ensure the action will cycle. Also, you will want to store the shotgun in a way that reduces any damage if you have a negligent discharge removing it from secure storage (again, see my post on fast access safes). Lastly, I would recommend something like a Hornady fast-access safe, where you can line the inside with something that can help stop bullets. I have a level IIIa vest in mine. This helps to provide protection as well to your defensive position.
• One of the reasons I like pump shotguns is they have considerable flexibility with rounds. A 12 gauge will often function with shorties (1 3/4″), 2 3/4″, and 3″ (please verify before purchasing). NOTE: Extensive testing is required, and I would follow-up with the manufacturer’s technical support to ensure compatibility.
• If your defensive room is set up correctly, your room will be dark, and the rest of your house will be lit. Muzzle flash is a consideration as it may temporarily blind you. Be sure to consider this in your ammunition selection.

I don’t know of a more effective close-to-short-range weapon than a shotgun. I highly recommend that you evaluate one for your defense room.

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 to justify that conclusion. Additionally, Alex Berenson pointed out time and time again that data in the study’s appendices often contradicted the abstract or summary of a study. In short, it appeared that a conclusion was pre-selected, and data was gathered that supported this conclusion, probably in the hopes that no one checked too closely—quite the opposite of how science is supposed to work.

We see something similar in the pro-gun and anti-gun debates. Often these people have already determined the conclusion and go off and find data to support the conclusion. Look at the Defensive Gun Use (DGU) study controversy I’ve discussed previously. Many people are convinced that Kleck’s work was refuted. It was not. English’s recent work has done much to validate it, although dropping DGUs from 2 to 2.5 million times a year to 1.6 million a year, which is still a large number. Kleck believed that the CDC’s own research supported over 1 million DGUs per year. These numbers are significant compared to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR).

The pro-gun folks can be guilty as well. As I explain in my post on DGUs, the DGU statistics should drive a far different civilian self-defense curriculum. Furthermore, the DGU statistics complement the NCVS statistics that show that the offender rarely uses firearms for 98.7% of violent crimes when the victim is injured. This complement may be because DGUs prevent injurious violent crime. After all, offenders aren’t armed with firearms often. You don’t bring a stick to a gunfight.

However, some pro-gunners do not trust any statistics, preferring to use their own experience as a guide. However, if you are a law enforcement officer, your experience may differ from what a civilian will experience. For example, law enforcement officers have a duty to protect the public and won’t likely be criminally charged in situations where they make a mistake, where a civilian who carries a concealed firearm would be charged. To use a different example, I’m sure there are ER doctors in Arizona’s Maricopa County (around 4 million people) that will not buy a swimming pool due to the number of drownings they see. The ER doctor is a funnel to these incidents and can unduly influence the probability calculator in an ER doctor’s mind. In short, your experience may betray you when you try to advise others.

Ultimately, we should be asking: “What does an ordinary civilian need to do to protect themselves from violent crime and not get charged with a crime when employing that protection?” In doing so, we should utilize our best statistics.

In this spirit, I would offer a $5,000 test. Assuming you have an ordinary civilian family and they had $5,000 to protect their family, what advice would you give them to spend it on? I know my answer, which is conveyed in my book as a whole. What is your answer?

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 occurred,” where the viewer would expect an injured or murdered victim after that introduction. Furthermore, in everyday conversation, if I were to say I was a violent crime victim, you would probably assume I had been injured in that incident. Or if I said, I was a violent crime victim of aggravated assault, you would likely assume I had been severely injured.

Violent crime terminology is different. The word “assault” can mean the use of force to get what you want from a victim OR putting the victim in fear in order to get what you want. For example, imagine a road rage incident when the driver of a vehicle flashes a firearm, and the other driver is put in fear of their life. The firearm brandishing driver speeds away and nothing further happens. This act would be statistically categorized as an aggravated assault. A similar situation is true for robbery. As an example, a robber uses a firearm to place a victim in fear of their life. The robber then tells the victim to turn over their valuables or be killed. The victim does as the robber asks and the robber flees the scene with the victim’s money. These two examples, both being violent crimes, reflect respectively non-injurious aggravated assault and non-injurious robbery. The injurious forms exist as well of course, where a victim has a major injury because of an aggravated assault or a robbery.

With that out of the way, let’s briefly go through some violent crime statistics. The years examined are 2015 up to and including 2019 (pre-pandemic), which are relatively stable and recent. Here are the statistics this blog will reference:

• The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
• The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
• The National Firearm Survey (NFS)
• Civilian Shootings

NCVS

The NCVS is a survey of crime victims. It is done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics for a few decades. The sample size of crime victims is large enough to be representative of the US population. This type of data is different than the UCR, which details crimes reported to law enforcement. If a crime is not reported, the UCR doesn’t know it exists. In contrast, the methodology of the NCVS allows information to be gathered on both reported and non-reported crimes.

Of the four violent crimes, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder, the NCVS looks at the first three only. We know from the UCR that murder is about 1.3% of all reported violent crime (2015 – 2019). In the US, murders are reported and investigated thoroughly. Therefore, the NCVS accounts for 98.7% of violent crime in this period. Aggravated assault accounts for about 57% while robbery is about 32%. Rape is the remaining 11% or so.

Unlike the UCR, the NCVS keeps track of whether the victim was injured or not. This statistic is extremely important to understand violent crime and its circumstances. Here are a few NCVS statistics from 2015-2019:

• Aggravated assault and robbery account for 89% of violent crime in this period. 67% of the time, the victim is not injured.
• For robbery, regardless of whether the victim is injured, the most common weapon is no weapon at all.
• For rape, the victim usually knows their rapist, the rapist does not use a weapon, and the rape occurs at a place the victim feels comfortable. Women typically do not report rapes to the police and do not seek medical treatment, which vastly under counts the number of rapes.
• For the common violent crimes of aggravated assault, robbery, and rape, firearm use is very uncommon when the victim is injured.
• Firearm use is much more common when the victim is not injured (i.e., the firearm is used to intimidate or threaten the victim).
• For aggravated assault and rape, when a victim is injured, the victim usually knows the offender and it is more likely to happen at a home than non-injurious crime.
• Women are injured more often than men in violent crime due to domestic violence and rape (both reported and unreported).

NFS

The paper I will be referencing here is William English’s National Firearm Survey regarding Defensive Gun Use (DGUs). A DGU is where a firearm was used to avoid a criminal victimization by placing the offender in fear of being injured, and often having them flee in response. The NFS methodology is similar in concept to the NCVS methodology. However, the NFS samples firearm owners and goes through a process of determining DGUs. For a variety of reasons (covered in my book), the majority of DGUs are not reported to the police, hence why a survey is done.

Let’s check the NFS survey results.

• An estimated 1.67 million DGUs occur each year.
• 79.1% of DGUs occur at home or on the property of the home.
• 9.1% of DGUs occur in public.

How often do people CCF?

• 9.1% CCF always
• 6.9% CCF often
• 19% CCF sometimes
• 21.2% CCF only in dangerous circumstances

How was the firearm used to stop the victimization?

• 18.1% of the time, the gun was discharged.
• 50.9% showed the gun without discharging it..
• 31% simply told them about the gun (neither showing it nor discharging it).

Civilian Shootings

The only study I’ve seen that analyzed civilian DGUs when the firearm was discharged was done by Claude Werner and posted to The Thinking Gunfighter blog. Here is an excerpt:

• If the defender fires any shots, most likely it will be two rounds.
• The average distance between the victim and offender is a bit over arm’s length.
• Defenders frequently communicate with their attackers before shooting.
• The firearm was carried on the body of the defender in only 20% of incidents. In 80% of cases, the firearm was obtained from a place of storage, frequently in another room.
• The majority of incidents took place in the home (52%).
• Next most common locale (32%) was in a business. Incidents took place in public places in 9% of reports and 7% occurred in or around vehicles. The most common initial crimes were armed robbery (32%).

Putting These Statistics to Work

The statistics covered here is all fine and good, but what are the take-aways? I would suggest improving your self-defense tactics based on the most common circumstances. Our perception of civilian violent crime is often drives our preparation, which is fine assuming our perception matches reality. I’m going to argue that our perception does not match reality.

The media often drives this perception. The leading story on the 5pm news program is usually about a violent incident, typically an injury or a murder. As they say, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Your favorite news website often has headlines describing some horrific violent crime. Of course, these crimes happen but they are not the norm. It is just the news is pulling from a nation of 330 million people and selecting what it thinks will keep viewers engaged. In my book, I call this the “Engagement Bias.” The important point is that what keeps you watching, listening, or reading, isn’t necessarily probable.

Then, if we become concerned over the news, we can take a self-defense class to help us improve our defensive skills. These classes are usually run by former law enforcement officers, often with considerable experience dealing with violent criminals. At first blush, this may seem to be exactly what we want. However, we should look at some more statistics.

The UCR keeps track of law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (LEOKA). Turns out, most of the people that kill law enforcement officers have been previously arrested for a violent crime and/or are on active justice status, such as bail or parole. Firearms are the primary weapon used to kill law enforcement officers. In short, a law enforcement officer’s most dire threat is a stranger who is an armed violent criminal. Civilian self-defense training is often based on law enforcement training. Consequently, civilians are trained to deal with the primary threat of law enforcement officers. As we have seen, civilian violent crime circumstances are not usually the same as those of law enforcement, so there is a mismatch. None of this should be construed as criticism of law enforcement. I’m simply pointing out that civilian threats are usually different than law enforcement threats.

What about concealed carry and tactical periodicals? Don’t they have plenty of stories of justified homicides? Yes, that is true. However, the number of justified homicides by private citizens doesn’t reach 500 a year (UCR). We have millions of concealed carriers and a US population since 2015 that is well over 300 million (around 330 million as I type this blog). In comparison, civilian defensive gun uses are estimated to be 1.67 million per year. You could triple the number of justified homicides by private citizens and still not be in the same zip code as DGUs. As we have seen, many DGUs happen at home, the firearm is not discharged, and the police are not called.

Fundamentally, improving your self-defense tactics is about improving your knowledge of probable circumstances. Once you know the probable circumstances, your training needs can be formalized. Today, it feels like most self-defense training is about spending 100 percent of your time training for circumstances that happen 10 percent of the time and not spending any training time on the other 90 percent of circumstances. Let’s look at the skills we should develop based on these statistics.

• Non-Injurious Aggravated Assault. The most common violent crime and around two-thirds of the time, the victim is not injured. If we were up against a hardened violent criminal, we would expect to be injured. Who are we usually up against in these types of crimes? Usually another civilian who has lost their cool and brandishes a weapon. Being able to keep our cool and keep a situation from becoming a violent crime is a great asset to any training. De-escalation training should be a top priority for anyone concerned about self-defense. If you have a tendency to lose your cool, anger management classes, or the equivalent, may be in order as well.
• Injurious Aggravated Assault. Are civilians dealing with hardened violent criminals in this situation? Possibly. However, looking at the statistics, injurious aggravated assault looks more like domestic violence. An important point is that the marital status of “Never Married” is by far the most popular marital status for violent crime. In short, don’t believe that domestic violence only takes place between married couples or divorced couples. Once it occurs, domestic violence is a hard problem to solve. The best solution is for women to trust their instincts about men they may be interested in and recognize that any hints of violence should be deal breakers in a potential relationship.
• Robbery – All Forms. Robbery is the crime where a civilian is most likely to run into a violent criminal. Luckily, the places robberies occur are common, such as parking lots, alleyways, and streets. These are usually areas you traverse going to and from your car. For example, going to see a ball game (or concert, or any place that doesn’t allow weapons). You’ll park in a parking lot or garage and then walk to the event. Getting rides from friends, family, or rideshares is a much better choice as avoiding the circumstances of robbery is the best defense against it.
• Rape. Contrary to popular perceptions, rape doesn’t often involve strangers and public places. It most often occurs at a home and the offender is someone a women knows. While rape can be about a man physically overpowering a women, in modern times it seems more about consent. Recognize that consent can be made ambiguous by voluntary intoxication or involuntary intoxication (i.e., date rape drug). Rape resembles a betrayal by someone you know in a safe location more than it resembles an attack from a stranger in public. Simply knowing this difference allows women to take better precautions against it.

I hope you find these observations interesting. In my book, I show how to implement these changes. If you are interested, you can buy it from all the online retailers. Links are here. In addition, I have my own store for electronic copies – with an inexpensive PDF format being the most popular. Enjoy!

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, this article is fantastic. For civilians, it is also good, but with caveats. Let’s discuss why.

As I try to point out in my book, law enforcement threats are different from the ones faced by civilians. Looking at officer’s killed or assaulted statistics, the offender was often previously arrested for a violent crime and, almost 75 percent of the time, is on an active justice status – such as parole, probation, or bail. This high rate is likely indicative of the mindset of the offender. As a result, there are a few options for the offender.

1. Hope the officer doesn’t find firearms or drugs during the stop. Otherwise, back to prison.
2. Run. Which means the officer will be on the radio and you’ll likely get caught and go back to prison.
3. Fight. If the officer’s hurt, they can’t give chase and their radio communication may be compromised. You may get lucky and not go back to prison

Another point is that law enforcement officers have a duty to protect the public, so they often go to areas or situations that an ordinary civilian wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.

When we look at violent crime statistics, we see strangers, public places, and no weapons being the most common for injurious robbery. These circumstances seem to imply multiple offenders and/or the victim being jumped. For aggravated assault, “Other Weapons” besides a firearm and knife are quite popular, along with a small portion of “No Weapon” when the victim was severely injured. In short, violent crime statistics show a different type of threat for civilians than what law enforcement officers face.

As I discuss in my book, avoidance of robbery circumstances are key as those are the cases where a civilian is likely up against a violent criminal. When that is not enough, I do discuss physical defense prior to weapon defense. Jared does the same. As I stress in my book, close-quarters combat training is more essential than advanced firearm training and it is a training that many people do not go through. You can learn these techniques regardless of whether you are unarmed or armed with a baton, pepper spray, or taser. Unfortunately, most of the training in close-quarters combat requires firearm classes. For civilians, I would like to see that change so that other protection weapons are covered too (unfortunately, these weapons are not covered). In addition, I would like to see “Other Weapons” the offender may be using, such as a beer bottle, covered too.