I wrote about the study on Tuesday, the JAMA Network one. The one with the HEAT Maps showing where the fatalities were coming from. Lori Lightfoot, mayoring the mostly peaceful city of Chicago, graces this article as her city typifies some of the problems.

CNN Health also read this study, but they seem to have jumped far more alarmist than I did despite reading the same figures in the same 32 year time frame. They do an excellent job of not quite lying while describing the data, as you’ll see. They do this by constantly changing the data ranges they are comparing to always present the most dramatic contrast.

CNN my friends, the contrast is shocking enough in its raw format that we don’t need to compound the problem.

CNN — Firearm deaths surged in the US during the Covid-19 pandemic, killing a record number of people in 2021. But as America’s gun epidemic gets worse, its burden is not equal.

I pointed this out in my write-up as well, homicides and suicides are claiming vastly different lives. It is almost as if they were, at least, two separate problems.

A new study published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open analyzed firearm deaths over the past three decades – a total of more than 1 million lives lost since 1990. The researchers found that firearm mortality rates increased for most demographic groups in recent years – especially during the pandemic – and vast disparities persisted.

I wonder what they would say about firearm mortality in Europe during the 1930′ and 40’s, or 1910’s for that matter. Yes, the pandemic and the governments responses to is combined with trends in general societal civility and those government responses presented us with a bad hand.

While recent data shows some familiar patterns, the sheer scale of the issue brings the United States to a “new moment in the history of firearm fatalities,” said Dr. Eric Fleegler, a pediatric emergency physician and researcher with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study.

Every moment is a new moment in the history of firearms fatalities. Given the analytical tone of the remainder of the study this appears to be CNN’s pick in most inflammatory quotes.

“At this moment in time, we have seen a dramatic increase that is really unparalleled,” he said. “During the time of the Covid pandemic, going from 2019 up to 2021, we’ve seen over a 25% increase in fatalities in two years alone. That has never happened.”

We have also never shut down the country the way we did and pushed people beyond the economic brink in the service industries while paying them pennies on the dollars they would have been earning. We demonized, we demanded compliance, we were lied to by omission and exaggeration and during all this stress we had violent riots in cities around the nation. There were many things that had never happened before, they culminated in a very bad period.

Violence became a more potent and valued currency as the government pulled the rug out from under the citizenry, ignored and demonized large chunks of them as politically inconvenient to shore up their short term power base, and then failed over and over again to reestablish the trust we should place in our society and its leadership. This is many problems and the longer politicians keep crafting short term win policies that erode the trust of everyone outside their fanatical political base we will keep sliding further into a very predictable period of tribalism and denial.

Overall, men are significantly more at risk. Nearly 86% of all firearm deaths since 1990 have been among men, according to the study, which used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers found that firearm homicides were highest among Black men, and firearm suicide rates were highest among senior White men.

Water still wet, yes men make up that vast majority of violent offenders and victims. They also make up the majority of suicides. As progressive a world as we pretend to live in and the soft offices jobs allow for, men still do the vast majority of hard labor and are vilified for weakness in their mental health.

Rates of firearm homicide for both men and women nearly doubled between 2014 and 2021, but men were still more than five times more likely to die than women. Rates of firearm suicide were also seven times higher among men than women in 2021, despite increasing suicide rates among women over time.

Here is where we start to see CNN jump around in their comparison groups or leaving out numbers where a number would provide stronger context. For example, ‘despite increasing suicide rates among women over time‘ would be much easier to understand if we knew what ‘over time’ and ‘increasing rates’ numbers were. A 0.5% increase between 2019 and 2021 is just as covered by the statement as a 14% increase from 1990 to present.

The racial disparities are even starker. The homicide rate among young Black men – 142 homicide deaths for every 100,000 Black men ages 20 to 24 – was nearly 10 times higher than the overall firearm death rate in the US in 2021.

But how was it compared to other firearm homicide rates or total death rates 20-24? Yes that is a shocking contrast but it is also worth noting that age range is among the most violent for males period, not just Black men, 15-29 are roughly the violent years and those who make it past are increasingly likely to mellow if they were previously violent participants.

Homicide rates among Black and Hispanic men were highest in the 20 to 24 age group. But for White men, the rate was highest in the 30 to 34 age group. When comparing these groups, the homicide rate was nearly four times higher among young Hispanic men compared with White men, and the homicide rate among young Black men was a staggering 22 times higher than among White men.

Poverty, illiteracy, broken homes, and crime as a means to provide are also highest among Black and Hispanic men in that age range while White men in the 30-34 age range will arguably have changed motive spheres. White men, and their staggeringly high suicide rate of 13 times greater than Black or Hispanic men should also bear scrutiny.

It’s almost like this is more than one problem.

We’ll skip now and just pick out a few choice bits.

Urban areas had a higher burden of firearm mortality than rural areas, too.

You don’t say.

There are two key factors driving community gun violence, says Jonathan Jay, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health: disadvantage at the neighborhood level and exposure to gun violence at the individual level.

“Gun violence is most likely in spaces that show signs of physical disinvestment. Sometimes that looks like unkempt, vacant lots or abandoned houses that are boarded up, maybe a high density of liquor stores and a low density of healthy food options,” he said.

I think what you are saying is that the most impoverished and already troubled areas, those that had the least margin of available resource to draw upon when the service economy got nuked by the Federal government, were also the most immediately impacted and the elements of it that were already likely to use violence as an alternative currency to currency did so. But yeah, lack of Wholefoods locations is another way to say that I suppose. These events have also occurred under the auspices of the ACAB, ‘Space to Riot’, ‘Mostly Peaceful Protests’, CHAZ, etc. where the legitimacy of state authority and justice is viewed as both weak and corrupt for various reasons by various factions and with variable levels of legitimacy to the statement.

Chicago is about to three in a row the number of years it has exceeded 700 homicides in the city. But don’t worry, a ban on semi-automatics will solve everything they promise.

In short CNN blames everything on the mere existence of firearms and cannot be bothered to puzzle out or ascribe deeper motivations to the separate problems. Also anyone who was made to feel unsafe by the combination of riots, police not responding during the lockdowns, and surge in violent crime and then went to purchase a firearm to defend themselves… they won’t say you’re actually part of the problem but they would like to heavily imply that.

There’s more beating around the bush about how the lockdowns and destruction of portions of the service economy that at risk groups relied on for income and stability absolutely triggered the increase. Turns out that if you greatly increase the stress on people who already use violence as a way to solve issues that they use that tool more and not less, even if you told them going outside was bad… unless mostly peacefully you’re protesting.

But the analysis helps identify high-risk groups that can benefit most from targeted interventions.

Hmm, right at the end we get this single line that seems to imply that this is, shockingly, more than one problem.

But because its CNN we close out with a doctor saying that kids who are injured by gunfire make him sad.

Dr. Christopher Rees, an emergency department physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, researcher at Emory University School of Medicine and co-author of the study, moved from Boston to Atlanta a little over a year ago. He said he’s cared for “far more” children who have been injured from firearms in Atlanta than he did in Boston – living out the trends he found in his research.

“Every single time I just think, ‘One, this is awful. Two, this is someone’s kid.’ And I immediately think about my two children at home. And then three, I think, ‘This didn’t have to happen, especially to a child,’ ” he said. “It is very personal each time.”

Thank you, Doc. Literally nobody but the most vile human beings on earth are excited when kids get hurt. I’m glad we could reiterate that point and only got a single sentence on ‘targeted interventions’, which again is code for ‘this is more than one problem.’

“Your micro isn’t everybody’s macro”

This is a favorite expression of friend and mentor Cecil Burch of Immediate Action Combatives.

Without putting words in his mouth, my understanding is that this comment is born out of people’s tendency to view things through the lens of their own experience and use that to determine viability and validity, whether that be a technique, piece of equipment, or lifestyle choice.

This is going to be a short series on my observations of that saying’s applicability in various segments of the gun world.

I will preface this by saying that these articles are not intended as any sort of hit piece or critique of any specific individual, merely my observations having spent time in various segments of the defensive space, as well as seeing how some ideas are received by folks outside of the self defense community. 

My hope is to help bridge some perceived communications gaps that result in people talking past one another, to facilitate the transfer of the best possible information in the easiest possible manner.

With that out of the way, let’s begin with the first installment.

INSTRUCTOR’S MICRO ISN’T EVERYBODY’S MACRO:

We all easily spend at least ⅓ of our lives at work. This number is dramatically higher for the self-employed, which most firearms instructors are. As such, it’s expected that an endeavor that consumes such a large portion of one’s life will color one’s outlook on what is “normal”, “acceptable”, and “expected”. 

This is true of performance standards, equipment selection, and behaviors.

While normally well intentioned, when a good chunk of someone’s life revolves around firearms, the shooting sports, and martial arts, expectations equilibrate to that environment.

I mean, let’s be honest, in our circles if we go out to eat the odds are that the majority of the folks at the table will have at least one firearm on them. It’s like wearing a jersey to a fantasy draft; it’s so commonplace as to be almost expected.

The challenge lies with the fact that such a degree of familiarity and expectation will also inevitably color someone’s messaging. 

The idea of being armed at all times is so obvious to most of us, and the prospect of intentionally going anywhere without a firearm can be so unfathomable that it can be expressed in ways that come across as derogatory towards those that don’t share the viewpoint.

Now I’m fortunate enough that the instructors with whom I associate have never intentionally derided anyone that has chosen to forego a firearm for whatever reason, however I have also spoken with people new to concealed carry that have expressed a perceived pressure to always carry their firearm with them.

I myself was one of those people. The peer-pressured expectation of “better to have it and not need it” led to me choosing to carry against company policy and subsequently losing a very lucrative career because of my choice.

Recently I was having a conversation with my wife and she commented how early in our relationship I let my firearm dictate where I would and wouldn’t go, and what I would and wouldn’t do. She hated it. Her exact words.

The obvious expectations also impact how people talk about performance standards. Pick your preferred pin/patch/coin standard. Many of them are tiered. Even the bottom-most level of those are still professional level standards. Anyone that has achieved something at that level absolutely deserves the accolades, however it’s important not to mock or diminish those who don’t, since many concealed carriers and first time gun owners are performing at a JV or Varsity level.

If professional level performance is treated as a cover charge for capability, it’s very easy for the subtext of that attitude to be “if you’re not performing at that level, then you’re not good enough to win your defensive encounter”, which I view as very problematic.

The training world is by its very nature occupied primarily with high drive, high performing individuals who don’t like being beaten, so they see someone outperforming them as motivation to improve. That, however, is not true for everyone. There are some people out there who will see a chasm of disparity between their current on demand performance and the high level shooting of someone claiming “you’re never good enough”, and that can be so daunting as to make the feat seem insurmountable.

Performance standards are a double edged blade. They give a relatively measurable objective benchmark, but they also provide a lot of fodder for othering and judgment.

The sub-second draw is a popular focus lately, and some people talk about it as if it must be met in order for someone to be taken seriously as a defensive shooter. 

Ultimately I think that Pat McNamara’s perspective is most useful: The goal is that tomorrow’s version of you can kick yesterday’s version of you’s ass.

I really don’t care what someone’s draw to first effective hit time is. I don’t care if they’re faster than me or not. If they’re faster and more accurate than they were a day or a week or a month ago, that’s the important part. And it’s up to them to determine what level of performance they want to maintain.

John Daub has done a lot of great work on trying to quantify minimum performance standards.

Remember, just because it’s the minimum standard, doesn’t mean that it’s low. Delta, SEALs, and the FBIs HRT all have minimum standards.

Everyone needs to figure out what minimums are acceptable for their context and what is realistically maintainable, and we need to ensure that we’re not denigrating people who don’t make the pursuit of peak performance their life’s work.

_{Image above: Bill Wilson shooting one of his pistols. image credit: Wilson Combat}

The Bill Drill: Six rounds into an IPSC A-Zone (6 inches by 11 inches on a metric target) or IDPA “Down 0” zone (eight inch diameter) starting from the holster at seven yards. It is a straightforward and simple drill and probably one of the most popular shooting exercises out there.

Rob Leatham, one of the most decorated pistol shooters in history, dubbed this exercise the Bill Drill after Bill Wilson of Wilson Combat who was an early pioneer of pistol action shooting sports at their dawn during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

WHY THE BILL DRILL MATTERS

The time it takes a person to shoot a clean Bill Drill can say a lot about their pistol shooting skills. Once again, the Bill Drill itself is an extremely simple and straightforward affair. After all, shooting a six inch by eleven inch A-zone target at 7 yards is not particularly hard. However, in order to clear this exercise at a high level, every aspect of shooting a handgun must be done decisively and with no wasted movement. It starts before the timer even goes off. How you stand. How your hand moves to your gun to draw; how the support hand joins the firing hand. How you squeeze down on your pistol and the moment you decide to break the first after deciding that your immediate sight picture is acceptable. How you use your arms and entire upper body to ensure that the slide tracks flat. And how you shoot to what your sight(s) tell(s) you until the gun locks back on the last round.

BILL DRILL TIME STANDARDS

While different instructors or organizations may have their own time standards with regards to the Bill Drill, a reasonable Bill Drill par time for most shooters is 3.5 seconds (and maybe four seconds for those who are new to working from a holster). Clearing the Bill Drill at two seconds or less is evidence of strong pistol shooting abilities, especially if done from concealment and not from a competition holster or equipment. According to Brian Enos, two seconds was also Bill Wilson’s original par time back in the day.

Arguably, the draw is the most critical part to getting a very competitive time. For example, a fast shooter who has a draw-to-first-shot-time of 1 second now has to shoot the remaining five shots with splits of at least 0.2 seconds or less to make that 2 second par time.