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The White Report
STREET FIGHTER - PART NINE
It is of critical importance as Street Fighters that we Court Proof ourselves. We need to take preemptive action by controlling what we can prior to a defensive shooting so that prosecutors and the news media cannot use our personal portraitures against us.
On your social media settings never post any combative or weapon related photos. Any racial or bigoted comments you may have made will come back to bite you big time. These postings can be entered into evidence. If you are on the witness stand testifying, you may actually have to read your own words into the record. All of our social media posts are discoverable.
Never install any customized gun parts on your weapons with offensive verbiage on them. Take the Punisher grips off your pistol or the back plate of your Glock. A Mesa, Arizona police officer is currently facing second-degree murder charges for killing an unarmed man who was on his hands and knees in a Mesa motel room. The police officer had an engraving inside the dust cover of his M4 carbine with the inscription "you're fucked." The inscription was only visible when the dust cover was open which automatically occurs when the M4 carbine is fired and a spent cartridge is ejected.
A failure to strictly adhere to agency policy will abruptly propel you to front and center on the twenty-four hour news cycle. With the proliferation of cell phone cameras there is a high probability your actions during a shooting will be recorded. A quack charlatan masquerading as an unbiased news commentator will twist and distort actual events to fit his perverted agenda.
Be wary of those instructors who advocate from their fiery keyboard their pet theory "shoot them to the ground" or 'P' for plenty. Remember you are legally responsible for each individual round you fire, not just for the overall number. The prosecutorial team will go through a frame-by-frame analysis accounting into precise nanoseconds each time you pulled the trigger. We must live by the truism we are legally accountable for every round leaving our muzzle. Every bullet we fire needs to be based on a conscious, rational decision. You can shoot your next bullet only after you have made the decision that it is necessary to do so. When the threat stops the Street Fighter stops shooting. Therefore, Street Fighters must be leery of those spurious instructors who enjoin a philosophy that will place you and your family's future in jeopardy.
During a gun retention struggle Street Fighters must take into consideration use of force legal issues. When a predator attempts to jerk your pistol from your holster his intent is to kill or maim you. As you try to establish physical control you are permitted to use deadly physical force only if you reasonably believed you are unable to retain control of your pistol. Justification depends on your size, your strength, your level of training or injuries you may have sustained during the violent encounter.
There is much controversy as to whether you, as the defender, must render aid to the attacker you shot. The courts have ruled that when a person justifiably uses force to fend off an aggressor, that person has no duty to assist the aggressor in any manner that may conceivably create the risk of bodily injury or death to him or other persons.
This absence of duty necessarily includes any conduct that would require the person to remain in, or return to, the zone of risk created by the original aggressor. The law does not require a person, who is justified in his use of force, to subsequently check the pulse of his attacker or immediately dial 9-1-1 before retreating to safety.
It is imperative that Street Fighters know the effect windshield glass and the side and rear window glass have on your bullets. We know that under extreme stress we depend on training we have been programed to do on the range. If we have not received training on the proper techniques for shooting through automobile glass, then our training has been deficient and we have nothing to fall back on. For us to understand the mechanics of shooting through windshield glass we must first acknowledge windshield glass is dissimilar from other glass including glass in the side and rear windows.
Side and rear window glass is made of curved tempered glass, which has been heated and rapidly cooled. Because of the tempering process tempered glass is up to ten times stronger than regular glass of the same thickness. Bullets fired through tempered glass will stay true to target and are prone to completely fragment the glass. However, if the car's side and rear windows have had vinyl tint applied they may shatter but still hold their form in the frame.
Windshield glass is different because it is made of laminated glass. Placing polyvinyl between two pieces of glass makes laminated glass. The glass is then put in a special oven; pressure and heat are applied to bind the glass and plastic together into one unit. The make-up of the glass together with the rake (slope) of the windshield brings about a drag effect on the bullet. The more the slope to the windshield, the greater the drag will be. A bullet fired from outside the vehicle into the windshield will encounter more drag on the lower part of the bullet as it rips through the windshield into the interior of the car. Thus the downward deflection will cause the bullet to strike the intended target a few inches low. Therefore, your point of aim must be higher.
The converse is true if you are seated inside the car and are shooting at an assailant outside. In this situation the drag is exerted on the upper circumference of the bullet causing the bullet to be deviated upward. By placing the muzzle of your rifle against the windshield you will cut down on the deflection and this will mitigate glass blowback from the windshield. Be aware, if you are shooting a pistol, do not jam your muzzle too hard into the windshield since you may take your pistol out of battery. After firing several rounds through the windshield you may be able to shove your weapon through the hole. If you are firing at an oblique angle of 25 degrees or less into the windshield, referred to as the deflection zone, bullets may bounce off and skim across the surface of the windshield.
There is no way to accurately predict what your bullet will do as it punches through glass. Continue shooting accurately until you stop the threat. To get hits on your adversary you will have to dig a hole through the glass with your bullets. Typical handgun and rifle rounds will not accurately penetrate two layers of front/back vehicle glass if fired down the longitudinal axis of a car. The bullets may penetrate but not with a modicum of accuracy. Remember, hiding behind a 3" by 9" wide A, B, or C car pillar for any length of time will not keep you alive for long. In a gunfight bullets donb t come at you in ones or twos but by the magazine.
During our years on the range, we have all fired alongside agents/officers who fail to acknowledge how incompetent they are. We ask ourselves, why is this? Ego for one, no one wants to think of they are not teachable, so to compensate for their shortcomings they tend to exaggerate their self-assessments of their paltry skills. They are content with one or two acceptable shooting scores to embrace the mistaken belief they are good shooters. They rest on their laurels and stop pushing themselves.
In order to break out of this mediocrity, Street Fighters must insist these incompetent shooters accurately assess what they do not know, leaving no room for self-delusion. Either perform up to standards or receive a "No Go." We must urge incompetent shooters not to quit. If they try harder, they will be better marksman today than they were yesterday and they will be better marksman tomorrow than they are today.
Always remember you are not the only guy out there striving to get better and become more lethal. If your agency/department sets minimum performance standards, Street Fighters must raise their own bar of personal performance. Never settle on agency standards. One big city police department only requires their officers to fire fifty rounds of ammunition twice a year, a staggering pitiful 100 rounds yearly. Their qualification course is not timed and their target is unrealistically large. Recently their accuracy tally was well below fifteen percent having fired 1300 shots hitting 60 suspects and more than a dozen innocent civilians.
We must incorporate both accuracy and timed standards; the average agent/officer thinks he is better than he actually is. Oftentimes being in total denial as to the paucity of their skill sets creates a false sense of confidence. Being confident as to your current fighting abilities will not translate to prevailing in a blitz attack. Combining training and practice leads to skill. Skill is what builds sureness and sureness under fire builds calmness and calmness prevents panic.
Being a Street Fighter is not solely about being brave, it is about being so powerfully potent that bravery is no longer an issue. The Street Fighter is not supposed to die for a noble cause; the Street Fighter's goal is to prevail by unleashing fearsome resources, by remaining tenacious, indefatigable and vigilant.
Nicholas Deem, who is the firearms instructor for the Lake Station, IN Police Department, teaches his officers how to think, not what to think and closely monitors and critiques their performance during individual exercises. He explains to his officers that in a gunfight, Street Fighters must make life and death decisions in a blink of an eye. During training they will have the time to think about, readjust and have multiple do overs, but in a gunfight you have a mere fraction of a second to decide your best course of action.
One of the Lake Station PD drills calls for nine shots fired at two yards. Shooter draws from holster, fires one shot center mass into target one, one shot into target two and two shots into target three. Shooter then reverses direction and fires one shot into target two and then target one. Shooter then transitions to firing one round into the head of each target.
NO GO: time exceeding 5.30 seconds or a miss.
There are many shooting drills for Street Fighters to pit themselves against to determine if they can combine speed with accuracy in gunfight.
Drill: five shots, five yards, five seconds, five inch circle, five times in a row, from a concealed holster.
A two second draw, splits of .45 second per shot and you will be okay. Do not shoot faster than you can hit resulting in shots outside the 5" circle. See your sights for each shot, watch the front sight move, aim, and work your trigger.
This is not a tactical drill, it is not a multiple target drill, nor is it a reloading drill. It is however a Street Fighter's drill. Can you draw from concealment, put bullets through a psychopath's heart in a short time frame and can you accomplish those hits repeatedly, time after time? It is not enough to do this drill successfully one time. You must be able to do it on demand, time after time.
Fail to keep within the time limits or one miss---NO GO.
To be both accurate and fast the Street Fighter must be able to index his sights onto the threat-sight picture; must hold his pistol with minimum wobble and must operate the trigger without disturbing his steadiness. Keep in mind it is not just enough to only see your sights; you must index them on the threat, hold them there and work the trigger.
In her book, Jesus Always, author Sarah Young quoted from scripture: "Do not dread walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Since I never sleep, I am able to watch over you constantly. Whenever you start to feel afraid, remember that I am with you. While you are walking through the valley of adversity, keep these words of comfort flowing through your mind: I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
During my four years at The Citadel I embraced the values of the warrior spirit and acquired the skills to survive as a Street Fighter. My personal commitment to patriotism, honesty, loyalty and faith in God define who I am as a leader of warriors. I was taught that faith is absolutely essential for a Street Fighter. It has been said that faith is not the absence of fear or doubt, but the verve that gets you safely through the long, dark moments of the searing reality of kill or be killed.
The knowledge that we are created for a purpose is the soil in which the seed of faith can develop and mature. Faith is what will empower us to press on when our senses are shrieking at us to stop. Let faith be your anchor as you bravely turn into the sound of the guns. It is said that a Street Fighter who has faced death has a higher consciousness of life. In combat, a Street Fighter moves straight toward his objective with a viewpoint that transcends confidence, exploiting his attacker's weakness. When a Street Fighter has faced approaching death and has a moment to reflect on it, the Street Fighter leaves that experience with a special consciousness of personal faith. Our faith leaves absolutely no room for utopian illusions or self-deception.
Louis L'Amour wrote "a man, like a ship at sea, might change course many times in getting to an eventual destination, but he must always be going somewhere, not simply drifting."
http://loyceedeen.webstarts.com/uploads/GoingHome.mp4
As Hector in Homer's Iliad proclaimed: "Let me not die ingloriously and without struggle, but let me first do some great things that shall be told among men through eternity."
You cannot drive through life looking in the rear view mirror. While the view may be perfect, the result will inevitably be disastrous. No matter how frightening, murky or uncertain, we have to make our decisions and live in the future. Do not wait until it's too late to recognize your treasures.
Semper Fi
Frank White
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