Kagwerk’s Garrett (Founder) and Mike go over “How to win a gunfight” and some of the thought processes involved in being set up to win a gunfight. Should you be so negatively fortunate to find one on accident or positively fortunate to find the one you were looking for because bad guys need dirt naps and that’s your job, either way.
Q: Is a DGU a ‘Gunfight’? A: Maybe
Contrary to “Common Wisdom” many defensive firearm uses are not gunfights, they are shootings, and many more aren’t even that.
Keith, what is the difference? Inquiring minds wish to know.
In a ‘defensive shooting’, rounds go one way. You to the threat before the threat could get to you.
In a ‘defensive gun use’ with no rounds fired, the use of lethal force (and yes, it was legally speaking a use of lethal force) worked at the ‘implied’ level. The ‘implied’ level is the transferred knowledge from you, the defender, to the assailant that you can kill or seriously injure them if they continue their attack. The ‘implied’ and not ‘implemented’ (shots fired) level are the majority of DGUs, survival instincts being strong in the human mind.
Emergency preparedness isn’t about the most likely scenarios though, it is about the so titled “worst case” scenarios
The EMT doesn’t practice cleaning scrapes and putting on adhesive bandages over small cuts for car crashes, they practice for head injuries, spinal injuries, broken bones, and severed appendages. They need to be able to react to the more unlikely but vastly higher risk of death scenarios.
Gunfighting, especially as a civilian, is the same mental and logistical preparation. We train for the gunfight, rounds going both directions (and yes you might get hurt or killed), because that training covers both the defensive shooting and the non-firing defensive gun use. Those are ‘better case’ scenarios of a gunfight. Best case obviously being one doesn’t occur at all and you go about your Friday.
Garrett and Mike cover:
- Stress Inoculation
- Being used to working in a high stakes or dangerous environment enough that you can still think and problem solve
- Resilience
- Realizing that being injured or that new problems becoming entangled in your current problem does not relieve you of the need to solve them
- Deciding ahead of time, consciously, that you will continue to work through them is a key point
- “Never in a fair fight”
- Whether it is you at advantage or you behind the power curve you need to be able to react to both.
- Know as much as you can as early as you can: Situational Awareness
- Ability, Opportunity, Jeopardy
- The three Universal Statues of Shoot/No Shoot
- Ability: Can this person or group harm (kill, maim/great bodily injury, rape/sexual assault) me?
- Opportunity: Is the person or group in a position to immediately harm me?
- Jeopardy: Do I believe, and can I reasonably articulate why I believe to impartial observers, that this person or group was in the act of harming me?
- Defending Others: Can I articulate my actions on another’s behalf with enough knowledge of the situation to reasonably prove Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy from the person’s perspective I acted on behalf of
- Domestic Self Defense Law, Use of Force Law, and Foreign Theater/Mission Rules of Engagement and Rules of War
- Training
- Cardio
- Be proficient with your emergency equipment
- Medical Gear
- Handgun
- Rifle
- Be honest enough in your assessments to know where you need work and brave enough to go work on them, it could literally save lives
- Asset or Liability
- Which are you?
Happy Friday, All. We made it.
