Heidi’s Story 4
I had a friend who was involved in a shooting. It was defensive on his part – dude who was an ex of his girlfriend showed up at their house party and tried to start shit with a knife. My friend pulled his .380 and popped the dude twice.
Cops came, a lot of Heidi’s arc here is based on what my friend went through. He wasn’t even arrested – all the witnesses correlated his story of woe. A drunk dickbag invaded his house, got threatening with a knife, and got shot. Self defense, and it never even made it to a full-blown Texas courtroom. (Yes, the perp lived.)
But god, the next week, when we all got together, all the gun nerds wanted to know how well the pistol worked in real life. My bud was hit with questions about what ammo he used, how many shots he fired, what the damage to his target was. A barrage of rude questions.
I guided the convo away from that, and kept him plied with beer and bourbon. The questions stopped not long after I started feeding him shots with Shiner chasers.
Because, as I picked up from him, having to shoot someone, regardless of situation, is a pretty traumatic event. I’ve never experienced said event, and I hope to never know what that’s like.
My boss and I got into an argument about this last year. Like most of us, I practice constantly to perfect the skills I fervently hope I never have to use. “Not me,” says da boss. “I can’t WAIT for some stupid motherfucker to try to break into my house so I can blow his ass away.”
Yep. My boss is a sociopath. Being willing to kill in self-defense is a completely different critter from actively looking for an opportunity.
Turns out the smart ones manage to turn that into a skill-set.
Was a guy once who REALLY wanted to kill people, but knew he wasn’t smart enough not to get caught, so he got a job as one of the state’s executioners. I hear he got a patent on an improvement to the capital punishment system, not sure if it was a better lethal injection, or electric chair, because I can’t recall how old the story was.
Heh, reminds me of a pyromaniac in my mom’s old home town.
Went to jail for arson on an abandoned building, hard time in a max security. He got lucky twice, first when the bikers thought he got a raw deal, figured he was harmless and wouldn’t survive prison. They actually staged a couple of fights to give him a rep. Second, when his parole officer got him a job clearing brush off of rail tracks/right of ways. Tool of choice? Fire. Gave him his dream job, and kept him out of trouble for the rest of his life, so far as I know.
Eh, big talkers. In my experience, those are the ones that when action actually pops off you find them hiding behind someone else.
Practice creates muscle memory. Practice drawing your firearm from wherever you have it stashed and getting it into firing position. Lots of folks spend plenty of time at the range getting that perfect group but never work on drawing, moving or reloading.
Best of luck, and may your life be pleasantly dull.
High agreement on the ‘muscle memory’. 25 years ago I was doing American Civil War with the 4th Virginia. That fall, having reconciled with my father, I went hunting with him for the first time since I was in high school. Not caring for modern weapons, I used my Model 1846 Mississippi Rifle. Slightly overcompensated for the first shot, missed a hair above the shoulder, reloading on the run, turn the corner on the trail and the deer has stopped to see what the noise is behind him. Click, click, click, prime, weapon up, back, shoulder, fire – straight out of the Heavy Infantry Manual (which we used back then).
My sergeant got a couple of deer stakes that winter. Figured I owed him for the training.
@Syke, I think we know each other IRL — did you sell me one of John Buck’s matchlocks, about 18 years ago?
Yeah, it’s me. Your Facebook mention of the strip turned me on to it. Gotta add a picture to my login.
See you at Henricus next weekend?
Syke of Syke’s Sutlery? This is your friend up in New Hope/Arcadia. 😀 Came here from Two Lumps. Good to see you!
Loving the comic, J and Mel! As a “non-gun person” I’m really learning a LOT. 🙂
Yep. Matter of fact, I just made a new scouring stick. Doing a speed drill @ Pennsic and flipped the rammer around so fast that it snapped. Which, come to think of it, is how the first rammer broke.
“Plesantly dull” is a thing of beauty.
Forgive the caps, but it has to be shouted: DAMN SKIPPY.
I’ll take boring and predictability over chaos and excitement/drama/terror any day, hands down. It’s less stress overall.
Sounds like my husband. I do it sometimes because I learned to in the Army (spent like a week with our faces in the dirt, practicing trigger squeeze with a coin balanced on the barrel, plus of course the rest of BRM), but he never does. I should try to overcome my laziness more often…
Another agreement on ‘muscle memory.’
My father would hang a piece of paper on the refrigerator, and hand me his Combat Commander – Made me check it clear ( I was young enough that I could barely work the slide), then dropped a pencil down the barrel, eraser-first. For the next hour, my drill was to line up the sights on a dot he’d put on the paper, and dry-fire from a distance of about 1 inch. Repeatedly.*
The object was to cause the dots that the pencil made bouncing off of the paper (about 3/4 of an inch below the target dot) into the smallest cluster I could possibly make. Taught me good sight picture, good trigger control, and strengthened my arms considerably. Also de-mystified the weapon rather a lot; I was never tempted to ‘play’ with it, ever. That would be too much like work!
Ran that drill daily for maybe four months, until he was satisfied that I could handle the weapon, and was disinclined to take it lightly. Only then did he take me to the range.
Oddly enough, I’ve always taken weapons *very* seriously. Can’t imagine why…
*Yes, I know. Rough on the weapon. He’s a pretty fair armorer – Not a problem.
You know, schools used to have their own intramural rifle teams. I can’t help but wonder how the world today would be different if the rifle wasn’t this huge mystic weapon of doom that some on TV make it sound, but was instead what the rifle-team nerds used to practice their rifle-nerdery.
Yup. My thoughts exactly.
That’s the kind of person who makes non-gun-owners think that gun owners are all crazy, homicidal maniacs with itchy trigger fingers.
Cleaning my first duck sucke. I imagine dealing with human chunks in your carpet is far more traumatic.
Having said that, knowing me, and what makes me feel bad, and what doesn’t, I don’t think I’d feel the least bit shitty about the harm pain or death I brought to someone, in such a situation, just really react poorly to the resulting mess.
The ideal of a “legal kill” does pose a certain thrill, considering how much satisfaction I’ve experienced from inflicting actual medical harm (by which I mean x-ray/cat scan followup) (in situations where prosecution would be very unlikely to proceed/succeed) in fights and one particularily memorable “citizen’s arrest” in a liqour store.
I wonder whatever happened to that booze-thief. He made me late for a hot date with my now-wife, waiting for the cops to show. Actually, I wonder what happened to his 2 preschool/elementary school aged kids in the getaway minivan in the parking lot. He was pretty upset that they saw him get busted. Fucker kept actively trying to escape for the whole two hours, had to restrain him the whole time.
There are services that clean up for you. Having had my sister go down and not be found for several days… Trust me. You want the professionals.
Amen, James.
This answers two questions that have been bugging the shit out of me: one, where did Heidi get a gun since her roomy nicked hers when she bailed; and two, why did her roomy bail so sudden and witness protectiony? The second one is obviously to get away from the BF, and more than likely she took Heidi’s gun for her own protection. Still kinda fucked up that she took shit that wasn’t hers, panic situation or no.
just for your reading library…On Killing: the Psychological Cost of learning to Kill in War and Society. By Lt Col. Dave Grossman……Since I have in ecopy, the hard copy is going to public library.
If’n I’m right, with a Beretta 92, it doesn’t matter if she loaded it with ball, HP, Black Talon: 15 (or 17) rounds of *anything* is gonna induce severe lead poisoning quick! Even if it is Euro-pellet!
The problem with ball is not effectiveness it’s penetration. HP or frangible ammo is somewhat less likely to pass through the BG, six walls and your neighbour’s toddler.
Anyone who uses a rifle for home defense, who isn’t in a rural situation where the nearest human occupied building is several hundred meters away is just plain irresponsible. If, like me, you live in an area where handguns aren’t really a choice, shotgun loaded with buckshot tends to only penetrate 4 or 5 walls, much less risk of accidentally taking out your own family/neighbours with overpenetrating projectiles.
But yeah, 10+ hits of just about anything will tend to ruin most living things. Which is why some people think the KelTec PMR-30 or FN Five seveN is a valid choice for a defensive handgun, with high-cap mags. Although there is that rookie cop who got in that shootout where he and the suspect shot each other over 20 times EACH. Cop lived.
As someone who has a Mosin, and mostly surplus ammo, I know damn well its not for home defense….I don’t feel like shooting through every wall between me and the next 2-3 streets. (firing straight out my front door would go through about 4 cheap apts, and then straight down a road to one of the main roads here).
Thus, I got me a .38 Special revolver. If I need more than 6 shots, I’m fucked, but honestly,I dont think I’ll need more. Never had anyone try breaking in, but I have it just in case.
Hm. My mother frequents these boards, and can tell you what her real-life experience was with .38 HP when she suffered a violent home invasion.
Yes, she stopped them. But it took a lot more than one shot to do so. My home defense teddy bear in my bedframe is a Taurus .357 mag, loaded with .357 HP., because my mother’s experience with .38 in a real situation was… well, not perfect. Both of her attackers lived to stand trial. I do not plan for anyone who invades my house to experience the same.
“But it took a lot more than one shot to do so.”
^No, it didn’t, actually.
I just kept going, was all. Apparently. (see below)
First shot got rid of the first guy–though I didn’t realize it at the time–and two shots had the other one screaming on the floor.
But at the Police station, they said the gun was almost empty.
I still don’t remember doing that, and that pistol was full when the whole thing started.
The human mind is strange under extreme stress?
That .38 was just fine, and took care of the situation very well.
Of course, the type of bullets probably had something to do with that. Hollow-points.
The one bullet did extreme damage to the first guy.
To the second one too, I guess; he damn near died, and was in fact on the “critical” list in the hosp. for over a week.
Aannnd, I’m not going to talk about my experience here any more until after we get to the end of this FTF story. In case anybody wonders or asks.
It is getting very interesting!
Well, .38 and .357 use the same bullet, obv. The .357 just has another grain of whoopass pushing it. Funny how much difference 1/7000 of a pound can make.
You know, this is one of the reasons I really like my judge. I have only now found a buckshot round that properly *fits* it, but fourty-five long is a hell of a round. It’s a little pricy to practice with, but that just gives me excuse to give my local reloader business.
Amen to the frangibles. Ball/FMJ can often pass through the target and/or walls, into what or whoever may be beyond.
Frangibles tend to break up on impact, losing kinetic energy rapidly (into whatever was hit) and not endangering what’s in the background
My introduction to frangibles was with Glaser “Safety Slugs”. They’ve made quite a few improvements since then. Still, a load of shot in a fragile plastic shell (which just barely survives leaving the barrel) makes a nasty mess of the target.
As someone who’s had to draw down on a couple idiots… Training is damned nice to have had. Having the firing protocols already running through one’s mind, priceless.
Not having to shoot the stupid mothers… even better.
Do it again? Voluntarily? Are you F’ing NUTS?!?
Question, I’ve heard of the Glasers, but what about .22LR? My Ruger 10/22 is my very first firearm purchase and it was kind of an impulse, so obviously not the best for home defense, but I like to think the small ammo makes it safer in a residential area at least. I still need to finish applying for a handgun license and wait for NY to process it, so the Ruger is my only option for the moment.
Glasers are produced by Corbon (corbon.com) and they have a decent selection of calibers, however .22LR isn’t one of them.
.22LR hollowpoints to a good job of shredding small portions of anatomy, but there’s the speed/range of the round to consider. Thin walls aren’t going to stop that round unless you hit a solid stud. (reduced speed/impact, yes, but not stopped)
It’s not as bad as most rifles for the neighborhood, and it’s better than nothing at all, but I’d hustle on something more handy. A long barrel is great for long-range, but kinda unwieldy for close-quarters, which is what home defense is all about.
Do NOT sell .22lr short (heh!). It’s a pretty lethal round – it’s just not a fight stopper. Unless you have a lot of bullets available in your weapon of choice.
Israeli assassins used them – In part choosing the round because it was the round of choice for their in-flight covert security police. .22 is reasonably cheap to fire, and doesn’t fatigue you as much as heavier calibers. Which means you can afford to practice a LOT. Remember that ‘muscle memory’ bit from up-thread? Lots of practice with a light, controllable weapon means mucho lead on-target, even under stress.
I’d personally go for a larger, heavier round as my primary, but if all you’ve got is a .22, well, it’s nothing to sneer at. Just practice more.
I’ve made this hypothetical argument before with friends.
Yeah, .22 is not a one-shot stop. But if I suffer a home invasion and my regular go-to guns are not available, my Ruger 10/22 has a 25 round mag, and spits lead as fast as I can pull the trigger. No recoil to correct.
I don’t care how big and bad a motherfucker is, if I spit 25 rounds of .22 LR HP into their face and chest, at some point they’re going to sit down and try to figure out where their life plans went wrong.
*LIKE*
🙂
One of my friends is an EMT and has had to respond to calls where people have been shot with .22LR rounds. The rounds enter the chest but don’t have enough force to exit the ribcage unless they go between ribs, and they’ll bounce around and tear up those precious internal organs.
A close friend of ours was a mortician in Dallas for years.
According to her, 90% of the dead bodies she processed, where the cause of death was firearms? Either 12 ga or .22 LR wounds. 12 ga because it blows huge holes in the body, and .22 because of exactly what you mention.
I have heard of a new frangible round on the market. So called “Extreme Shock” ammo. It is sold in all the most common calibers.
Some of the ballistic footage and photos are astounding. Apparently it is tungsten powder in a polymer matrix called “Nytrillium” that will make an unholy mess of a torso but not penetrate an aircraft skin. I plan to grab a box at the next Crossroads show.
I don’t buy the ‘won’t penetrate aircraft skin’ bit for a second. Might not penetrate the interior insulation and encapsulating materials, but you hit aircraft skin with anything that’s going to stop a human, and you *will* have a hole.
Likewise, anything that might break up on light aluminum sheet is highly likely to *also* break up in heavy clothing. Won’t be real fun to get hit by it, but it’s not doing the job if it’s merely ruining their wardrobe. Frangible is fine, but I want at least *some* penetration.
Aircraft skin is just sheet aluminum. Anything heavier and they won’t get off the ground. It doesn’t stop a damn thing, because it’s not supposed to.
“[…] and I hope to never know what that’s like.”
This. So very, very much this.
The first time I drew my sword in an actual confrontation, I was feeling freaked out for the next two weeks over having committed to being willing to kill the guy, even though was things worked out I never had to even swing. Pointing a weapon at somebody has gotten easier since then (though still a really big deal for me), but jeez, I hope I never get to find out what it’s like to pull the trigger with a person in my sights or cut somebody’s skull open. Do Not Want.
I’ve realized that I’m willing to harm somebody in self defense, but I hope I never have to.
Heh.
For my gun-shy friends who want home defense, I tell them the tale of the time I had to throw a violent, angry drunk out of my house, and the weapon I used.
Long Beach, Cali, 1994. I was 19 at the time, and stupidly invited way too many strangers to the party. One of those was a neo-nazi banger who’d done prison time, and he tossed back a few shots before making people WAY more uncomfortable with his presence than he had before the booze. One of my bros was a black guy, and the neo got shitty with him hard. Punched him in the mouth, then did the tearing-off shirt “WHO WANTS SOME” bullshit at the crowd.
I grabbed my machete and ordered him to leave right fucking now.
I had no guns immediately available – the only .22 I owned was in the closet, but I always kept the machete near my bedroom door.
He was stacked as hell. Prison Workout body. He had at least two inches and 40 lbs of muscle on me. If I’d been unarmed, he could have torn me to pieces.
But he took one look at me holding the machete, and bailed (with a lot of grumbling about “pussies” and “fuck this lame shit”).
I still theorize that a gun is NOT a visual deterrent, to some folks. Not many people have been shot. If someone is enraged, and looking to get violent, pointing a gun at them does nothing. You WILL have to pull the trigger to stop them. Just seeing a gun is not enough. This has also happened in my life. Very uncomfortable situation when you point a gun at someone, you haven’t committed to shooting them, and they’re thumping their chest and yelling “BRING IT ON”.
My theory is that they’ve never been shot, so they don’t give a fuck. Hubris in the face of adversity – I can grok that.
A machete, however, is a giant fucking knife. And everyone has cut themselves. They don’t want that. I still figure that homeboy saw that bigass blade in my hand and went “fuck this, I don’t want to get fucking cut up.” Hence his speedy withdrawal.
TL;DR: People who are gun shy should buy a machete, because that shit is going to make an attacker in your home think twice.
That’s the theory behind the arcing electrodes on stun guns… People see that miniature blue lightning, and decide that maybe their plans have changed.
Friend of a friend defended herself with a cattle prod – Screwed the invader up *badly* with it. Paramedics were necessary before he could be cuffed-n-stuffed. Might be a viable alternative to a big-ass knife.
Under the same theory, the uglier a weapon is, the less people want it used on them. Bring back blunderbusses..?
A machete, huh?
I like that.
Good points there.
Welcome to why my preferred weapon on my motorcycle is an antique 18th century cavalry sword that had been broken at some point in its life and cut down into a hunting sword. As I’ve fenced, both collegiate and historical, I’m more comfortable with a blade than a firearm. And there’s something about that 20″ of sharpened steel pointing at a drunken miscreant that registers in a way that an unfired firearm doesn’t. Had to pull it once on a biker with a bowie knife. He could tell immediately that I knew how to handle it. He backed down real fast.
Reach matters.
Hell, I keep a machete in its sheath between my bed and nightstand, along with the 1911 handily available *on* the nightstand. If the sight of my blubberous, bald, screaming-in-berserker-rage self wearing nothing but boxer briefs and wielding two feet of steel doesn’t scare him off, well, that’s when JMB’s little masterpiece comes in.
The discussion on rifles for home defense reminds me of one LT wanting to issue me a rifle for use in the engine room of the ship. “With all due respect, sir. One miss with a rifle will crack the pipes and kill anyone in the engine room. I need the Remington 870 with buckshot that will just tear up the insulation on a miss.”
One misconception I ran across was that hard ball ammo was illegal for civilian use. I still don’t know where that idea got into the mind of some anti gun advocates in my area. As far as can remember, the only legal issue I’ve run across on the subject is that frangible and tumbling rounds (i.e. other than hard ball ammo) is forbidden by the Geneva convention.
I remember my first introduction to Glaser Safety Slugs back in the late 1970s. There was a huge uproar about “assassin bullets” that didn’t leave traceable ballistics. I seem to remember the original design came from a security guard that worried about a miss going through the flimsy wall board in a mall and wounding people in adjacent stores.
A friend on the police force gave me some rounds of KTW penetrators and
Glaser Exploders to play with back then. The KTW with hardened stainless jacket and teflon coating would embed two inches in an engine block in 9mm parabellum caliber fired at 10 yards and punch a hole through a 4×4 pine post like a paper punch on notebook paper. The Glaser Exploders would take a fist size chunch out of the front of a pine post but penetrate fragments no more than a half inch more.
Just an old fart remembering an OLD take on the exotic ammo.
Ex-squid here.
Give me a shotgun for internal combat any day – any part of the ship. You can do nasty things bouncing shot off of heavy structures, and are less likely to break something important.
Failing that, give me a PKP fire extinguisher. One face full of that powder, and they’re going *down.* Doesn’t matter if they’re wearing breathing filters, either – the powder will pack up filters just as fast as it’ll wreck lungs. Nothing short of a fully self-contained breathing apparatus will protect you. And even then, you’re going to be blinded by the stuff. Sure, it’s a stone bitch to clean up afterwards, but priorities, yanno?
Last choice is a handgun. Rifles are strictly for firing *away* from the ship.
(My duty-section armed response billet was counter-sniper (external threat) or fire-team leader (internal threat))
I don’t know if you would be interested in this or not, maybe for next year, but I just found out Tucson has a comic convention and it’s $100-$250 for a table, depending on size and availability of power. They are actually still looking for exhibitors for this year and it’s in the beginning of November.
…
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“Frangible” is a word??
Heh.. it sounds like something out of “Jabberwocky”.
Beware the frangible Bandersnatch! Yep, that scans.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
No, actually, “frangible” has been around for decades. Yes, it sounds silly.
I am just stopped cold by the Twink Underwear ads on both Two Lumps (great comics today BTW) and Failure to Fire. How is it Project Wonderful refuses to do affiliate programs with adult companies again!?
Killing some one can leave you scared for life, I know this all too well. The idea of ever having to kill again in defense of myself or others scares the hell out of me, but I keep a 1911 near at hand just in case. I also keep a big ass buck knife near by in the hope scaring them before shooting them is necessary, but if the sight of a pissed off vet with a 1911 and a buck knife don’t scare off them then it’s time for 2 to the chest a 1 to the head.
totally agree, both with muscle memory and being there for friends.
late congrats on year one. did i miss a link to the book today? can’t find it.
tried store, ok… t-shirt there. you coming by houston anytime soon?
feel free to let me know.
Go to the front page – there’s a post with links to the books.
@MaskMan — I’ve made that point myself before — that if you teach kids to properly handle guns, and never deny them the privilege (under supervision, and following the rules), then they won’t get all curious about them and mess around. I pointed out to one guy how he was interested in the forbidden items like fly-tying supplies and The Joy of Sex and not the obviously much more dangerous kitchen knives.
I figure that Mick was right way back when, when he suggested a 20ga pump with a 19″ barrel and an extended mag. Two rounds of birdshot (at typical home defense ranges, it will not spread), followed by 2 rounds of #4 buck, followed by deer slugs.
I agree that I very much would prefer not to shoot anyone, even though I have made up my mind that if I find myself in a situation where I think it is required for the safety of me and mine, I will do it. I don’t want anyone to die, and I hope the sound of the sound of the action being worked is enough to frighten them away.