Firearms safety ;-) <long> was RE: [geeks] Daytime TV

Sat Sep 1 23:14:08 CDT 2001

Here's an important lesson, never get within arms reach of a man who you are
threatening with a gun.

I've had to take firearms away from people twice, both rather unpleasant
sets of circumstances.

The first was when I was riding my quad in a local woodland area with a
sand/gravel pit. We had stopped for a rest and all of a sudden heard a LOT
of what sounded like 22 shots from fairly near by. So anyway we put on our
helmets and are getting ready to go investigate and THWAP, I get hit in the
extreme upper left thigh (read: My ARSE!) by what at the time felt like a
wasp sting, but turns out was a subsonic 22 round (no penetration, just a
surface pop with a nasty bruise and a little subsurface hemoraging. Thank
god for heavy duty riding pants). Needless to say I was more than a little
bit pissed. So we started shouting to announce ourselves, and circled around
the place we thought they were firing from to come from their rear.

It was these two drunken morons playing with their AMT lightning's (a
relatively cheap .22 that looks a lot like a Ruger 10/22 and a bit like a
Mini 14 like they used on the A-Team. When they still made folding stock
versions they were very popular with morons and gang kids). They had just
gotten a pair of those multi trigger things you see advertised in the back
of survivalist magazines and had emptied a few 30 round banana magazines in
our general direction before we got to them. As we approached they were
complaining because they thought the subsonic rounds would sound like a shot
from a silenced weapon.

By this time I was well passed pissed and into that stage of anger that only
comes when you are fully prepared to remove the burden of life from some
truly deserving soul.

I removed my helmet and gloves, and walked up to one of the individuals in
question, and very quietly but firmly asked him to give me the weapon. Being
a drunken idiot he didn't notice the danger inherent in the situation, and
actually started the motion to point the rifle at me. Before his hand moved
more than an inch I palm heel struck his nose, axe knucked his trach and
twisted the rifle out of his hand, breaking his wrist and index finger in
the process. His idiot friend started moving toward me but thought better of
it, dropped his rifle and his beer, and ran off.

We didn't even bother with the police. I was fine though I had a bit of
trouble riding the bike back after the excitement wore off, and to be honest
I didn't really care if moron #1 was or not (he was, but I did break his
nose).

Of course I violated some pretty basic survival rules in even getting near
them, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time.

The first rule: never enter an armed confrontation angry or emotionally
distressed

I was very angry, and it made me behave stupidly.

The second rule: never bring a fist to a gunfight i.e. never enter an armed
confrontation without parity of arms

The late great Bill Jordan said it in his great book "no second place
winner", 'His mistake was simple. He brought a pistol to a rifle fight'.
Jeff Cooper later rephrased it as  'never bring a pistol to a rifle fight'.
Even more relevant to this situation is a quote from Det. Jim Cirillo, the
person who has survived the most police gunfights of anyone in the 20th
century 'the first rule of gunfighting is, have a gun'. I had a gun, several
actually, but not with me, and I was EXTREMELY STUPID to approach an armed
man without myself being armed.

The third rule: The three I's. Never under any circumstances approach an
armed adversary who is irrational, incapacitated (mentally), or intoxicated.

Had I followed those three rules I would certainly have been in far less
danger, but I was VERY ANGRY, and disregarded the first rule, putting me
into a situation where I inevitably violated rules two and three.

Oh, and my friend and I liked our new rifles just fine.

The second time I had to take a firearm away from someone was a bit more
unpleasant.

A female friend of mine had been raped by her ex-boyfriend. I am generally a
peaceful person but rape is one of the very few things that makes me angry,
and I took exception to this little boy in a mans body's continued
existence, rather vocally and in a public place. He of course found out
about my comments and decided to do something about them.

He got himself quite drunk one night and came to my apartment. When I opened
the door he shoved a pistol into my chest. At the time I was living in
Prescott, Arizona where Ruger has a manufacturing facility (though not I
believe for pistols. Those are all made in Hartford I think) and this pistol
happened to be Ruger P90, a weapon I am very familiar with. There were two
things working in my favor in this situation.

1. The P90 is a single/double action pistol with a heavy DA pull of between
12 and 14 pounds. The hammer was down.
2. The P90, like most auto pistols using a tilting link lockup system, will
generally misfire if the slide is moved back even 1/8th of an inch from
lock. This badboy pushed the pistol into my chest very hard and the slide
was definitely pushed back more than that.

I grabbed his wrist and stuck the underside of his elbow, breaking it rather
nastily and causing him to drop the weapon. Then I broke his nose, knocked
him to the ground and elbow dropped onto his sternum cracking it, and
several of his ribs.

Once again I felt no need to involve the police. A few friends and I
brought him out into the high desert around Prescott Valley and found a nice
stone wall with some broken bottle tops embedded into it... lets just say he
wont ever be raping anyone else. I'm guessing he had a hard time getting
home without his clothes or shoes, but I don't rightly know.

In Arizona they definitely have ideas about how to deal with rapists, so
there never was any fallout about it.

Chris Byrne

-----Original Message-----
From: geeks-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:geeks-admin at sunhelp.org]On Behalf
Of Kris Kirby
Sent: 02 September 2001 03:48
To: geeks at sunhelp.org
Subject: [geeks] Daytime TV

So I accidentally caught a episode of "Ricki" (*wharf!*) in which some
parents from two popular races were moaning and complainting that thier
kids didn't know right from wrong. *Shock* was when these kids were
playing with guns and put them down as they heard noise outside the door.
The second time they sat back down, one of them got back up and wiped his
fingerprints off the gun. The kid was 10. Parents blamed TV.

Q: So why when overpriviledged white kids go off the rail do they get
assault weapons and open up on the place?

A: Because, if their parents had tought them proper respect for firearms,
they'd presumably have better marksmanship and not need the extra lead to
compensate.

Glad I went to a hick high school. Never had a problem with guns; probably
a good thing. A few of the folks I know of would run for the parking lot
and come back with a toolbox full of scatterguns. (He liked to go hunting
afterschool.) That's if someone were *stupid* enough to point a gun at
them and they couldn't take it from them by sheer force or razor-sharp
pocket-knife.

-----
Kris Kirby, KE4AHR          | TGIFreeBSD... 'Nuff said.
<kris at nospam.catonic.net>   |
-------------------------------------------------------
"Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

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