Category Archives: firearm instructor

The Dangers of Bad Advice

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I was reading a Facebook discussion about an article that advised against warning shots, a position I agree with, when an individual whose profile suggests that he’s a real estate and litigation attorney asked “Who ever said you had to aim to kill? Why isn’t kneecapping adequate?”

This goes against EVERY recommendation from training courses or criminal defense lawyers I’ve ever encountered, including several books that are somewhat standard in the self-defense training industry (Massad Ayoob’s “In the Gravest Extreme” and more recently, Andrew Branca’s “The Law Of Self Defense”).

Here is the exchange, after the initial question above:

James Cochrane If you admit to deliberately aiming for the knees, you are admitting that you weren’t facing an imminent threat of death or serious injury, which means you weren’t legally justified in using lethal force to begin with. Shooting them in the leg/arm is Hollywood, not real life.

RealEstateLawyer James Cochrane nonsense, not shooting to kill shows you did not want or intend to kill in response to threat of deadly force. Nobody said you had to meet deadly force with deadly force. I’m those situations deadly force is permissible but not mandatory.

James Cochrane RealEstateLawyer First off, you’re not shooting to kill, you’re shooting to STOP. Which is most effective by shooting center of mass. Legs and arms are mobile targets, which are extremely difficult to hit, especially under stress, and may not stop the assailant’s attack.
So if you aren’t shooting to stop, the argument can easily be made that you had no legal basis to shoot to begin with.
Have you had formal training? I’m not aware of ANY formal training program that teaches anything OTHER than shooting to stop.

James Cochrane Oh, and shooting AT ALL is deadly force, even shooting in the leg counts as deadly force.

James Cochrane RealEstateLawyer Are you a lawyer or certified instructor? Because at this point you are giving extremely BAD advice which could result in someone facing murder charges.

RealEstateLawyer Other User use bird shot and shoot for the crotch. You’ll likely be get both legs and the lower abdomen but even if he dies you can beat a charge of first degree murder

RealEstateLawyer James Cochrane obviously, but not with intent to cause death

RealEstateLawyer James Cochrane go back and read what I’m saying. If you shoot low and only cripple then there will be no murder and no murder charge.

James Cochrane Let’s see, a crotch shot with bird shot, which likely means opening the femoral artery, how is that NOT a shot likely to cause death or serious bodily injury?

I hope you have good legal malpractice insurance, you’ll need it.

RealEstateLawyer James Cochrane so no matter where I aim I’m guilty of murder? Nonsense. My point is that you are privileged to meet a threat of deadly force by using deadly force, but you are not required to shoot to kill. You can shot to wound or cripple at your option.

James Cochrane I highly suggest you talk to someone who specializes in criminal defense law, not real estate, as what you are saying is completely contrary to what every criminal defense lawyer and self-defense specialist I’ve trained under has said and/or published.

Other User How about I use bird shot and aim for the chest? If I’m shooting indoors at ranges of less than 10 yards, I think that’ll do just fine.

Other User I don’t care whether I’m “required” to shoot to kill. I’m not shooting someone for shits and giggles. If it’s serious enough that I’m pulling the trigger, someone is going to die.

RealEstateLawyer Other User yoi are saying that you would never shoot except to kill someone? Big talk- you ever kill anyone?

Other User Two RealEstateLawyer – are you an attorney? Do you have any law enforcement experience? Experience teaching self defense?
Do you have any firearm experience at all?

James Cochrane Other User Two Per his profile, he IS an attorney, but all of his listed coursework and experience is in real estate and commercial litigation, not criminal defense law.

James Cochrane Which is why I suggest he may need to check his malpractice insurance.

James Cochrane Of course, I would hope that ANY attorney would understand the difference between murder and a self-defense shooting, but that isn’t evident in the above conversation, either.

Other User RealEstateLawyer, I have not killed anyone, and yes, I am saying I would NOT shoot someone except if I intended to kill them. If it’s not serious enough for it to be a life or death situation, I’m not going to shoot another person. “Shooting to wound” is just stupid.

Other User James Cochrane, I think the main thing we have all learned from this thread is that we should NEVER EVER go to RealEstateLawyer for any legal advice. 😄😄😄
Other User Two Other User – I disagree, to an extent. We don’t shoot to wound. We don’t shoot to kill. We shoot to stop the threat.
“I was in fear for my life, and I believed I had no reasonable choice than to use defend myself with my firearm. I will give a detailed statement after I have consulted with my attorney. I am invoking my 5th Amendment rights after I have had such an opportunity.”

Other User Other User Two, technically correct, but we aim for center body mass (not kneecaps) when shooting to stop the threat, and we keep shooting until the threat is neutralized. Practically speaking, that’s basically what would be called “shoot to kill.”

After posting this on my own wall, I got the following responses

James Cochrane From an internationally known competitive shooter I know:

Have first hand knowledge of a competitive pistol shooter (Pistol Distinguished/Master) who shot a would-be carjacker in the elbow after snap shooting him through the driver’s side door as the carjacker’s gun was in his face. After the first shot, bad guy staggers back and falls on his back on the driveway dropping the pistol a few feet away. Good guy gets out of the car and gives him a command to freeze, etc. Bad guy reaches for the dropped pistol-good guy deliberately aims for the forearm/elbow and hits the elbow of the reaching arm-nearly severing the arm (.45 ACP/230 gr. Hydra Shocks). Later sued for intent to maim and loses big $$$

Another Instructor “Are you a lawyer or certified instructor? Because at this point you are giving extremely BAD advice which could result in someone facing murder charges”
I’m a certified concealed carry instructor. This is extremely *GOOD* Advice. Masaad Ayoob, Andrew Branca, etc… will all tell you the same thing – you do not shoot to ‘wound’ or ‘disarm’ – because, as you stated initially James, not shooting for center of mass is indicative of you not truly fearing for your health and continued wellbeing.
Rarely is someone such a good stressful shooter that they can hit with pinpoint accuracy – and trust me, at north of 7 yards, it *IS* pinpoint accuracy, under stressed circumstances. If they *ARE* that good of a shooter? The courts don’t care.
I’ll go one step further and add, you never EVER fire a warning shot, either, for the same reason.
Contact the Bar where this guy’s located. What he’s doing is extreme malfeasance if he promotes that to any client, and one could maek the argument that even by stating it publicly, he’s advocating it. I’m not aware of a single state that offers any legal protection for sharpshooters shooting defensively.

A Lawyer I Know Having spent 35 years as a criminal defense attorney and currently a senior trial prosecuting attorney, I can say that Real Estate Lawyer is an idiot and James Cochrane is correct.

The first consideration of training

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I’d been mulling over my next article for the past week or so, it was going to be an introduction to terminology generally used on shooting ranges, as, like any specialized field, shooting has it’s own jargon that can be confusing to newcomers.  However, a discussion thread on FaceBook convinced me there’s a more important subject…

SAFETY.

Safety has to be the first priority in a training class.  The NRA doesn’t allow any live ammunition in training classes, I’ve only heard of ONE exception being made at NRA Headquarters, and that involved someone with a government protective detail, they got to keep their ammunition.  Even with that restriction, instructors are still expected to follow the rules of safe gun handling religiously, even to exaggerate them to make sure students are kept aware of how important they are and that the instructors themselves follow the rules.  Even with completely inert training guns made out of rubber, the rules are followed.  They’re rules, not guidelines, rules written in blood.  Those rules are why, despite a continued growth in the number of firearms owned in the United States, accidental gunshot deaths have been declining in absolute numbers, not just in incidents per 100,000 people.

The incident in question involved a family who went to a training course put on by someone who they had known for years and trusted, even considered a friend.  The instructor is a combat veteran with an exemplary record for personal heroism.

But the instructor kept sweeping at least portions of the class with firearms, and when called on it, ignored the concerns of the students who raised objections.  It’s irrelevant that the firearms in question had been unloaded and had the slides locked back.  The FIRST RULE of firearm’s safety is treat every firearm as if it is loaded.  The SECOND RULE is never point a firearm at anything you aren’t prepared to destroy.  The family in question was experienced shooters, one member was himself a certified instructor and has attended numerous courses from nationally-known instructors.  They finally decided, after multiple incidents of having firearms pointed at them, to leave.  One family member had flown in from across the country, the class was supposed to be a family bonding event.  But they left.

They were right to do so.  The instructor in question doesn’t list any formal certifications for himself or his instructors on his site, and doesn’t list any NRA classes as being taught at his school, and the name of his school certainly suggests he would not be teaching NRA courses because the NRA is very particular about using the word “weapon” in their courses, but if he IS an NRA certified instructor, he could likely lose that certification over the experiences of people in that class, even though it wasn’t an NRA class.  The NRA takes safety that seriously, and particularly the reputation of their training department.

It’s the responsibility of everybody on a firing line to practice the safety rules, particularly the instructors, and to raise an issue if violations are noted.  Nobody should “blow off” safety concerns, they should always be addressed.  Most accidental gunshot wounds and deaths are because someone disregarded the safety rules, a common refrain is “I didn’t know it was loaded!”.  There’s a rather infamous video of a DEA agent in Miami exclaiming to a classroom full of parents and students that “I’m the only one in this room that I know of  professional enough to carry this Glock .40”, immediately before shooting himself in the leg.  I’ve helped clean up after someone knowingly violated the rules, because he thought his gun was empty, that was a very unpleasant experience, his first words, as told to me by a friend who was nearby, were that he knew he screwed up, that he knew better.  That guy gets out of jail this year.

Safety is the first and most important consideration in training.  An instructor who can’t agree with and follow that is not an instructor I want to train or be on the same firing line with.  I can teach someone who is ignorant about firearm safety how to be safe.  I can’t teach someone who is too arrogant to follow the rules to be safe.

The abuse of ITAR and it’s First and Second Amendment ramifications

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Recently, a guy in Texas spent his time designing and testing a simple pistol that could be manufactured by anyone using a 3D printer, and posted the design on the Internet.  Within days, the US Department of State contacted him to pull the files down, on the grounds that they violated international arms controls laws regarding exporting munitions.

The US Government has tried this before, in the early ’90’s, with Phil Zimmerman and the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) public key encryption software he wrote using the RSA algorithms, in response to reports that Congress was considering legislation to require that any encryption software sold in the US have a backdoor that the government could access.  Phil Zimmerman included notes with the software that there were potential legal issues with exporting the software from the United States because strong encryption software was classified as a “munition” and governed under the Munitions Control Act of 1954, commonly known as ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations, but it was posted on the Internet and exported outside the US by unknown persons.  The US Government investigated him for several years over whether he violated ITAR because the software was published online.  An interesting note is that the PGP software could be exported in PRINTED form, including in a form allowing for easy scanning and optical character recognition (OCR), but not in usable software form, so the printed source code, and even t-shirts implementing PGP in Perl could legally be exported.

An interesting twist, and one that impacts me and my friends, is that the National Rifle Assocation (NRA) has recently sent out an email to at least some NRA trainers stating that the US government was giving them unclear guidance as to whether providing firearm’s safety training to foreigners was in violation of ITAR, and as a result, they were not accepting foreign students to NRA Instructor or Chief Range Safety Officer training courses, and advised other trainers to consult with a lawyer familiar with ITAR if they intended to teach classes with foreign students.

To my mind, these restrictions represent clear violations of the First and Second Amendments.  It’s legal for a foreigner legally present in the US to fire a firearm, and even in some cases to purchase one, but it’s illegal to teach him how to do so?

Of course, with the defeat of attempts to capitalize on the deaths of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama made it clear that he would take action using the regulatory powers available to him, I find it very disconcerting that only a few months later we encounter these restrictions, at the same time as the IRS admits that it was imposing additional burdens on conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status, and while the evidence is unfolding about how the Obama Administration flat-out lied to the American people and Congress about the events in Benghazi, Libya, that included the deaths of our ambassador and three other Americans, blaming them on a poorly-done video insulting Islam that nobody had heard of, and deleting references to terrorists and Al Queda. Only a few days ago, President Obama, in a college commencement speech, was claiming that anyone who tells you there is reason to fear government tyranny is lying.  I think the accumulated evidence is clear on who is lying, and a government that lies to it’s people and actively tries to subvert their rights meets the definition of tyranny.