<![CDATA[Self Defense]]>

USCCA on how muggers pick their targets

January 22, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

The best tool anyone can have is knowledge. While firearms can be vital, knowing enough to avoid needing them is generally better. After all, no one gets prosecuted for avoiding the need for a self-defense shooting. While I won’t cry over a dead mugger, I’d still hate it for anyone who gets prosecuted because the DA things they could have slithered through the three-inch opening in a locked gate behind them.

Over at USCCA, they seem to think the same way.

Earlier this week, they kicked off a series looking at what muggers look for when selecting a target.

The survey itself was a simple, one-page affair, with questions on the front and instructions and a space for inmates to write down their contact information on the back.
Question No. 1 asked, “Which of the following behaviors or attributes would make you more likely to target a victim?” and then lists 23 specific behaviors — ranging from “wearing earbud headphones” to “walking with a cane.”
The four behaviors or attributes marked by more than 50% of respondents seem to indicate an appealing target and the right opportunity:
The person is alone.
The person is wearing an expensive watch.
The person is walking on a dark street.
The person is flashing cash.
Three behaviors or attributes that signal being unaware were selected by 30-50% of respondents:
The person has his or her attention on a phone screen.
The person appears to be a tourist not from here.
The person appears to be drunk.
Fully 37% of respondents selected “the person is a man.” This tracked with several write-in answers, including:
The person is involved in illegal activity.
The person had disrespected me.
The person had taken something of value from me or a loved one.
The behaviors least selected by respondents (11% of the time or less) included:
The person is elderly.
The person is a child.
The person has a child with them.
The person is walking very quickly.
The person makes eye contact with me.
The person has a cane.
Some of the more popular write-in answers included:
The person is a known drug dealer.
The person is known for having money.
The person is using an ATM machine.
The person looks scared and/or noncombative.
The takeaway tracks with the famous advice of trainer John Farnham: “Don’t do stupid things in stupid places with stupid people.”

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and while this isn’t exactly a conclusive scientific study, it does provide some useful information we should be aware of if we don’t wish to be robbed.

It’s interesting that things like “being elderly” or “having a cane” are rated fairly low, but there are reasons why that might be the case. After all, retired people are on a fixed income. That means they probably don’t have much in the way of money, which may make them less than ideal targets.

And I agree with the author, Farnham’s advice is solid and it now appears to be supported by more evidence.

However, criminal behavior is far from the only criteria.

Being a tourist or staring at your phone are also big indicators. People glued to their phones aren’t aware of their surroundings, making them easier marks, while tourists are more likely to have a large amount of cash. Muggers love that kind of thing.

So, don’t stare at your phone is a good cue to keep in mind.

Further, don’t single “tourist.” Dress like you would at home or, barring that, try to match the locals as best you can.

But there’s more you can do.

Question No. 10 asked, “What is the one thing that makes someone most attractive for a mugging?,” with a blank space left for a write-in answer. Some of the more popular responses that weren’t covered in the write-in section for Question No. 1 included:
The person is a “s***-talker” or has a bad attitude.
The person has luggage and is waiting for a taxi.
The person is cashing in chips at a casino.
The person is White/Caucasian.
By far the most popular responses, as in Question No. 1, were “wearing expensive clothing,” “flashing cash or other valuables” and “being alone.”

The attitude thing is a little surprising to me, though none of the rest is.

Wearing expensive clothing or flashing valuables has long been known to be a signal for muggers that screams “rob me!”

You should go and read the whole thing. It’s interesting, to say the least.

Activist says college students too stressed for 2A rights

January 17, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

The state of Missouri adopted Constitutional Carry five years ago, and has followed up with several other pieces of solid pro-Second Amendment legislation in the years since. There’s still one hugely important measure that hasn’t been turned into law yet, however; campus carry. Currently it’s a criminal offense for a licensed concealed carry holder (or any other legal gun owner) to carry on the campus of a college or university, though Rep. Chuck Basye has introduced a campus carry bill that would restrict campuses from “generally prohibiting the carrying, chambering, or active operation or storage of a concealed firearm on the campus of the institution.”

This would bring Missouri in line with the neighboring state of Kansas, where campus carry has been in effect since 2017. There’ve been no issues with the Kansas law in the five years that it’s been in place, but anti-gun activists are still launching a furious attempt to derail the Missouri legislation by warning that campus carry will lead to a dramatic increase in student suicides.

As a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, I am well aware of the unique stressors of being on a college campus. I recently completed my adult psychiatry residency training and am currently a first-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellow. I have seen firsthand the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students’ mental health. I have also published research on the impacts of Missouri’s firearm laws on youth and young adult suicide, and I worry that introducing firearms on college campuses in the state would worsen the risk of completed suicide in this population. Firearm suicide rates in college-age Missourians are already at an all-time high. Missouri experienced a 71% increase in suicides in 10- to 24-year-olds from 2007 to 2018. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also shows rates of firearm suicides in 18- to 22-year-old Missourians have tripled recently, going from 5.6 in 2013 to 15.9 per 100,000 of these young people in 2020.
For many who attempt suicide, the time between making a plan and attempting is less than 10 minutes. Once the crisis has passed, most people who survive one attempt do not die by suicide later. Access to lethal means during moments of crisis can greatly increase the risk of suicide completion, and firearms are the most lethal means available. Transition to college and college itself is stressful. Students must balance school, work and sometimes children. Many are under enormous financial pressures. Some struggle to manage social pressures and experience homesickness. Some experiment with alcohol or other substances that can affect their mental health and increase risk for self-harm. It’s not surprising that many first episodes of thoughts about suicide emerge during this period.

Suicide is a real issue, but it’s not a gun control issue, and treating it as such only takes us further away from more productive strategies that focus on the actual problem of mental health. And indeed, as author Apurva Bhatt acknowledges, suicide rates have been increasing among college-age students in Missouri without a campus carry law in place, which suggests that the problem isn’t going to be adequately addressed by simply declaring that adults shouldn’t have access to their Second Amendment rights on college or university campuses.

A much better approach would be to recognize that the Second Amendment rights of adult students and staff don’t disappear once you set foot on a university, scale up the mental health resources available on campus for students who need it, and encourage gun owners who may need to temporarily store their firearms out of their home because of a mental health crisis to voluntarily do so, without any law or legal mandate in effect.

If Bhatt is serious about saving lives, there’s no reason for her to call for keeping the status quo in place when suicide rates are already climbing. Instead of focusing on the tool, we need to be paying better attention to those in crisis and ensuring they get the help and support they need. Not only can we can do that without infringing on the Second Amendment rights of all, but a “solution” based on gun control isn’t going to solve anything at all.

Armed citizen has a message for the carjacker he shot in self-defense

January 12, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

For at least the second time in recent days, an attempted carjacking in Philadelphia was thwarted because the crook’s intended target was legally armed in self-defense. Last week it was a Lyft driver who shot two would-be carjackers, and on Tuesday a concealed carry holder was forced to act in self-defense in Philly’s Fairmount neighborhood.

In an exclusive interview with Action News, the driver described how he made the split-second decision when the 18-year-old male suspect pointed a gun at him.
“I saw the gun and I thought he was going to shoot me and take the car, so I retaliated as fast as I could. And just to see another day, I had to shoot the guy,” the victim said.
“I was shaken up at first and the police calmed me down a lot and they made me feel real comfortable.”
Police said the car owner fired at least five shots in total around midnight Tuesday at the intersection of North 17th and Folsom streets. They said he does have a valid permit to carry a weapon.

While the clearance rates for carjackings in Philadelphia are well below 50%, police in this case caught a break when the suspect sought treatment for his injuries and admitted to being present when the carjacking took place. The suspect is in custody (though we’ll have to see what progressive D.A. Larry Krasner does with the case), and the armed citizen has a message for him and others:

“Stay in school. Don’t play with guns. Don’t rob people. Work for what you want,” the victim said.

Based on a separate defensive gun use that happened on Tuesday, we could also add “don’t go assaulting random people on their porch” to the list of invaluable lifehacks.

Chickasha, Oklahoma is a great little town, though it’s been a few years since I’ve had the pleasure of spending time there. It’s generally a sleepy college town, but in the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday morning one quiet street turned chaotic when a man drove through the entrance of a fast food joint.

Jeremy Kirkley was up early Tuesday morning and getting some coffee before work. However, what is usually a normal routine, turned into the start of an unusual situation.
“I had seen a car over at KFC and seemed to be backing up to the front door,” said Kirkley, a neighbor. “It was getting awfully close so I just keep looking and it ended up shattering the glass.”
According to the OSBI, a man drove his car through the front door of a KFC, before eventually driving across the street through people’s yards near S. 5th and Missouri.

The man then got out of his vehicle and began pounding on doors, banging on windows, and trying to gain entry into several homes. At one point he apparently even backed up his car into a couple’s home, which brought the pair outside to investigate.

“At that time, the suspect then comes onto the homeowner’s porch, kind of tosses his wife aside, assaulting her and then goes into the home,” Arbeitman said.
The homeowner then grabbed a gun and shot the suspect and killed him, agents said. Kirkley said nothing like this has ever happened on this street before.
“Being this close to it, seeing it before it happened, that’s a first,” said Kirkley.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations is the lead agency looking into the shooting, and so far this appears to be a clear cut case of defense of another on the part of the homeowner.

Police at this point have no idea what prompted the suspect to plow through the front door of the KFC before turning his attention to the homes across the street, and toxicology reports from the autopsy could take several weeks before they’re publicly disclosed.

The Philly carjacking and the Chickasha assault are very different crimes, but they do have one thing in common; armed citizens who were able to protect their life or the life of a loved one. You never know when you could be the target of a violent criminal, whether stopped at a red light or even asleep in your warm bed. But if you’re comfortable and competent with your firearm, you know you’ve at least got a better chance to defend yourself and live to see another day if you’re ever confronted with a threat to your life.

Lightfoot tells Chicago cops to increase arrests or get demoted

January 7, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot knows she’s in trouble politically. Chicago’s not going to elect a Republican to run the city next year, but with former education secretary and Chicago school superintendent Arne Duncan hinting at a run against Lightfoot next year, the mayor desperately needs to show some display of leadership ability if she wants to remain politically viable next year.

Lightfoot got a golden opportunity this week when the city’s teachers union voted not to return to in-person learning, giving the mayor an opportunity to bash the union and side with parents. But education isn’t the only concern of Chicago voters these days. Crime is soaring, and while Lightfoot has blamed everyone from Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx to Indiana gun stores (while rarely blaming the perpetrators themselves) for the increase in the past, this week she was talking tough to Chicago cops.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot reportedly warned Chicago police leaders that they will be demoted or lose their lose jobs if they fail to increase arrest numbers.
During the closed-door meeting, Lightfoot and Chicago Police Supt. David Brown didn’t outline how they intend to tackle the surging violent crime in the city or the department-wide staffing issues amid COVID-19 mandates, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
One source said the “threatening” message essentially meant “make do with what you have to get more arrests” and “clear more murders or you will be demoted.”
The move could lead to an increase of petty arrests, with one source noting that “Black and Brown communities are going to get hit the hardest.”

Chicago’s homicide clearance rate is below 50%, and the clearance rate for non-fatal shootings has been closer to 5% over the past couple of years, which is abysmally low. Lightfoot and Brown are promising to add 100 more homicide detectives to the ranks of the Chicago PD, but even if they can find 100 seasoned veterans willing to sign on to a department viewed as the enemy by many city officials, it’s going to take more than just manpower to significantly improve the number of cases that are cleared. Witness protection services need better funding, for one thing, but if you really want eyewitnesses to come forward they also need to have confidence that the criminal justice system will deliver real consequences and not swiftly return violent offenders to the streets. That’s not the responsibility of the Chicago PD, but of the Cook County prosecutor and the judges in the county courtrooms.

Police can’t prosecute, but they can make arrests, and if Lightfoot is looking for an easy way to show she’s getting “tough on crime” then it makes sense (at least from a public relations perspective) to tout a growing number of offenders hauled off in handcuffs. But simply making more arrests won’t automatically lead to less crime. Arresting individuals for simply possessing a firearm without a FOID card or concealed carry license, for example, isn’t going to have the same impact as solving a homicide or a carjacking.

And not to beat a dead horse, but arrests don’t mean squat if they don’t lead to prosecutions, and Kim Foxx has been a disaster for Chicago in that regard. As the suburban Daily Herald newspaper opined in late December:

The Smollett embarrassment is only the highest profile example of cavalier judgment that has cost Foxx her credibility and worse, may be costing her constituents their safety.
Just a week ago, her office agreed to a plea deal that allowed the murderer of 15-year-old Elias Valdez of Glenview to escape even a single day in jail.
Last month, the state’s attorney’s office finally charged a suspect in the September stabbing death in Schaumburg of 18-year-old Manuel Porties Jr. of Elgin. That murder charge was filed only after Porties’ family and the Schaumburg police strongly protested the office’s initial decision against bringing a case.
“It’s a shame we had to fight for justice,” the victim’s father, Manuel Portes Sr. said. “It’s a shame it had to take 1½ months.”

I’m not convinced that Lightfoot’s tough talk is going to lead to less crime, though it probably will result in more arrests for low-level offenses. Chicago’s failures are myriad and multi-faceted, and the simple truth is that there is no quick and easy fix for decades of bad decisions and disastrous policies. But while city leaders flail about and point fingers at each other, my advice to Chicagoans is to run the gauntlet of gun control laws in the state and start exercising your Second Amendment right to armed self-defense, because your elected officials aren’t going to keep you safe, no matter what they pledge from behind a podium.

MI lawmakers debate mandatory storage bill

January 6, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

So-called safe storage–more properly called mandatory storage, really–is a law that requires people to lock guns up. Sometimes it’s only if there are kids in the house, others require it at all times. Either way, these laws tell people what they can and can’t do within their own homes.

Michigan didn’t seem like the most likely place for such a law to be debated, but after the shooting in Oxford, it’s become a thing.

Now, lawmakers are debating whether it’s the right move or not.

As the parents of the Oxford High School shooting suspect face felony charges for criminal negligence, the debate continues over enacting laws forcing gun owners to properly secure weapons.
Two Republican lawmakers representing Lenawee County say they are open to ideas about how to prevent future gun violence, but they are not sure that a bill in the Michigan House related to children accessing unsecured firearms is the right direction.
“I don’t believe that a new gun storage law would have prevented what happened that day,” said state Sen. Dale Zorn, R-Ida. “It was already illegal for the shooter to possess a handgun and illegal for him to bring it to school.”
Under proposed House Bill No. 5066, if a child accesses an unsecured firearm, the gun’s owner could face a misdemeanor charge. If the child injures or kills himself or others with an unsecured gun, the owner of the firearm would face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison.

The problem is that the parents are saying the gun was locked up.

Now, they could be covering their own butts–after all, charges have been filed against them–but it does introduce some issues regarding enforceability. If there is a method for securing a firearm such as a safe or gun lock, it becomes difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the parent didn’t take all reasonable precautions to keep a firearm out of their child’s hands.

Yet another reason why mandatory storage laws are a bad idea.

This says nothing about the numerous kids who have used a firearm to save their own life.

You see, parents generally know their kids fairly well. They know who can be trusted with a gun and who can’t and why. So some parents make sure the kid knows where a gun is in case they need it, and some have.

These kinds of laws would prevent these young people from being able to defend their own life.

Then there’s the fact that they simply don’t work. States with these laws still seem to have mass shootings, much like how states with red flag laws have them. The key to stopping mass shootings isn’t going to be found in restricting the rights of ordinary people.

While lawmakers desperately want to do something to address the issue of these shootings in our schools, no one should rush into accepting the first proposal. Bills created in a rush to address some kind of perceived threat rarely end up as good law.

That includes any mandatory storage bill.