Or something.
Well, it looks like Jacob Roberts took Grinchiness to a whole new level, shooting up the Clackamas Town Center, PRO, on 11 Dec 12 with a stolen AR.
Sorting through the many stories told about the incident, I wonder still what the truth is about his garb that day as he entered the mall. I've heard he was wearing load bearing gear or load bearing equipment ~ we called it LBE when I was in the Army ~ and that was misinterpreted by a local radio talk-show host as being a weight vest like one would wear for increasing the intensity of one's workout...
A weight vest.
Looks a lot like soft body armor ~ what most people call a bullet-proof vest. If Jake was wearing real SBA then clearly anyone trying to take him down would need to remember to either shoot for Jake's head or for his groin, as depicted very nicely here at the bottom of the post. If he was wearing LBE, then the next thing I want to know is if he was wearing something to conceal it. If he was wearing it in the open, then why didn't someone recognize that as suspiciously odd? If I saw someone wearing a vest like the one above, I'd conclude it was not SBA. SBA vests are made from one solid chunk of bullet-resistant fabric. The only seams are around the edges and those seams are concealed inside the vest carriers. Stitches like those depicted in the photo above will weaken the fabric at those seams. NG. Not Good.
Real Soft Body Armor.
I'm guessing the guy wearing it is a real model.
The point here is to not be fooled by what you think you're seeing. Know what real tactical gear looks like, as depicted in the pictures posted here.
So, I imagine you've heard of Nick Meli, the Clackamas mall hero. I don't intend to demean the brave young man for what he did do that day but I need to make a few points for future reference. I think it was great that Nick was armed and spotted his target and was indexed and ready to shoot. Wonderful. Really. But Cooper's "Laws" are not laws, per se; they're just good ideas that should be followed strictly when at the shooting range and you're impressing the hell out of the little woman by punching paper targets and taking your sweet time doing it. But those rules should be thrown out the window when obeying them will actually cost innocent lives. And that is a calculus you need to make now, not when you've got Jake at the end of your front sight and a hapless, dopey shopper just beyond.
Am I telling you to be unsafe and violate some sacred gunslinger protocol? Nope. I am saying that things are different now than when Jeff Cooper came up with his safety suggestions. With the level of savagery being continually perpetrated around the world in the name of Islam and the probability suggested here and here that Chicago Jesus and his posse have further enabled jihadis with simple strokes of his pen, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that terrorist bad-guys will disappear into the white-hot light of Obama's self-righteous aura. So since the world, including the USA, will remain a deadly place with more than enough Jakes and Abdullahs, then, if future Nicks or Nicoles don't have the "perfect" shot, they need to change the angle to the target by moving to their left a/o right, up a/o down, a/o close the distance to that target, moving toward Jake or Abdullah or Cindy or Layla while maintaining a good sight picture and then shoot as soon as fire from that angle won't hit people in the background.
Or, hey; just yell Get Down! and then start shooting bad-guys. Center of mass needs to be your point of aim, as always, and you need to use your sights, not do any point shooting. If you don't know what point shooting is, you don't need to in this scenario because I just suggested you not do it... why would you need to know what it is if I told you not to do it? Just sayin'. Jeff Cooper's ghost need not keep anyone frozen in place when they have a perfectly good pistol and multiple rounds. There is no such thing as the perfect shot. Nick did not know what Jake was going to do once he let the Jake go. Rather than putting one round into his own noggin, Jake could have continued shooting since no one had done anything to stop him. Pointing a loaded weapon at someone and then not shooting him does not qualify as "stopping" him. It would be foolish to think that any other similar or identical incident will end the same way, with the bad-guy putting his own lights... out.
Make your best shot, and then take it.
At 1:30 in this clip, see Charles Travis Postelwaite acquire his target, recognize innocents in the line of fire, shift to his left and then drop the hammer on one bad-guy. It's that simple. Rehearse it in your head; practice it in your dry-fire sessions or with your paintball marker, like this one, or your Airsoft weapon, like this one. I suggest you do most of your training with pistols because that's what you will most likely be carrying if you come across this sort of untidiness at the mall down the street from you.
Know what tactical gear looks like and understand that the only people who usually wear it are soldiers and SWAT operators. I see anyone else in that oufit I'm going to stay on his left flank ~ a bit to the rear, about the seven or eight o'clock position ~ and see what he or she does. Why there? Because he or she is probably right-handed and probably going to pull a pistol, which means he or she has to do a complete 180 to see and acquire me as a target. I see a weapon come out; it's my turn to acquire targets. If the bad-guy weapon starts to rise into a firing position, I shoot first. Without warning. I have no legal or moral duty to tell him to drop it and assume any position. That's the way it's going down if I'm there. You make up your mind yet?
I'm beggin' ya, be an adult.
Item last on this subject: each time I see news coverage on shootings like this, the images shown most are that of crying, screaming babies. You know; fully-grown men and women old enough to have driven to the spot where the shooting took place with no fear whatsoever of being grounded for life or even a week but so infantile they can't stop shaking because they're so scared of whatever comes after life that they're kickin' and screamin' to stay on this side of the Jordan before they even get their feet wet. It makes me icky sick to see men terrified into inaction. Man the fuck up. Those guys with the news cameras and satellite feeds need to pump into the various media hours of unedited video and photos depicting the men and women who show and speak the attitude, I ever see something like that, I', gunnin' that fucker down! Pronto! Guess what. That would discourage some shooters, I promise you.
On to Sandy Hook Elementary School. I was going to comment on the use of the terms high-power rifle and high-velocity bullets, which the press employs in order to stir more hysteria but decided that, to a bunch of kids barely old enough to tie their shoes, a spitwad is high-power and high-velocity. I have a grandson the age of most of the victims.
Who? Me?
Some say the .223 is just a hot .22 round best used for wood-chucks. I think people should be able to buy whatever the law permits today; no need for assault weapons ~ another creation of the media ~ to be banned. Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people and there's nothing wrong with killing people as long as the right people get killed.
I want you to watch the video linked to here. Can't post it because it was taken down at YouTube. What I want you to learn from watching it, if you don't know already, is that there are children in this world, down the street from you, who are being trained by their adoring parents to be vicious savages. And you should not pity them. Are all those deadly little darlings sitting quietly on their haunches over in the hot desert sand? Maybe. Not. They may be just down the street from you, going to the same peaceful, safe school to which your kids or grandkids go. Okay, probably not.
But maybe. And, if they are, you don't know it and won't know it until they let dad and his jihadi brothers into the school by the side door. You scoff: Why, Undaunted, that's nonsense. That could never happen. Schools have security systems. In fact, Sandy Hook had just improved theirs.
The new security system at Sandy Hook is actually detailed here. The FAQ section of the Sandy Hook website features this question and answer:
Please explain the security system at SHA. Click here to view the security letter sent to Sandy Hook families this year." The letter said:
Dear Members of our Sandy Hook Family,
Our district will be implementing a security system in all elementary schools as part of our ongoing efforts to ensure student safety. As usual, exterior doors will be locked during the day. Every visitor will be required to ring the doorbell at the front entrance and the office staff will use a visual monitoring system to allow entry. Visitors will still be required to report directly to the office and sign in. If our office staff does not recognize you, you will be required to show identification with a picture id. Please understand that with nearly 700 students and over 1,000 parents representing 500 SHS families, most parents will be asked to show identification.
Doors will be locked at approximately 9:30 a.m. Any student arriving after that time must be walked into the building and signed in at the office. Before that time our regular drop-off procedures will be in place. I encourage all parents to have their children come to school and return home on the bus and to remain in school for the entire school day. The beginning and ending of our school day are also important instructional times and therefore we want all our students to reap the benefits of full participation in our program.
We need your help and cooperation for our system to work effectively. Our office staff is handling multiple tasks. Though they will work diligently to help you into the building as quickly as possible, there may be a short delay until someone can view you on the handset and allow you to come in electronically. There are times during the day when office personnel are on the telephone, addressing student concerns, or in the copy room; there are other times when only one person is in the front office. Please help our staff by identifying yourself and provide your child's name.
Keep in mind we will be following our district guidelines which may need revision once we test the system.
Please know your involvement continues to be critical to our school's effectiveness and your child's success. We continue to encourage and value your presence in our classrooms and are counting on your cooperation with the implementation of this safety initiative.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Hochsprung
Guests leaving the funeral of Mrs. Hochsprung... a sad event which did not have to happen.
I don't want to dishonor the memory of what this woman did do to try to prevent the slaughter at her school but that's way too much information to make available to everyone in the freakin' universe. An axiom of warfare is that you don't reveal your countermeasures to anyone who doesn't have a need to know. You want to enter a school where Undaunted is principal? Here's what you need to know: Ring the bell and someone with a concealed weapon will come to the door and be sure you're not toting weapons and then, if I like you, you may come in. There is no switch we hit to open the door so you can come in just because we see your blurry image on our CCTV monitors. And at least three of us are carrying concealed pistols with hi-cap mags. So, remember your manners, buster.
Mrs. Hochsprung may have been brave in a way, but how about being tactically smart? Did she know about The Perfect Day scenario, about which I wrote so sagaciously... here? Were there any plans in place for response to that situation? Probably not. Kids and teachers heard screaming and shooting over the intercom and yet teachers still locked kids in rooms and herded them in a corner, a target rich environment if ever there was one. School staff could have and should have had the kids run away from where they believed the scrum to be taking place, not waited for the shooter to finish one batch and move down the hall acquiring more targets.
The story of what some teachers did and did not do is here. Evidently, Adam Lanza broke a glass pane and just went on in. Mrs. Hochsprung tried to stop an armed man by lunging at him. Isn't there a joke about bringing a lunge to a gunfight? And the punch-line is what, again? One of the slain teachers is being called a hero because she "reportedly hid some students in a bathroom or closet, ensuring they were safe..." Safe? Shoving kids into an itsy bitsy room so Lanza doesn't have to move his gun around so much as he shoots them all? Wow. Great. Excuse the sarcasm, but that's not heroism. Kids who were slain because some teacher turned them into fish in a barrel might be alive today if not for the galactically stupid worship of the fucking moron who came up with lockdowns.
Reports indicate that "police and teachers rushed students from the building as police swarmed the area shortly after the first calls came in, around 9:40 a.m. ET. Officials moved students to a nearby firehouse, where parents frantically sought information about their children." Understand this, once and for all, please: in this type of situation, on-scene and soon-arriving police officers are not "school resource officers". They are warriors whose mission is to destroy the threat presented there and then. Police are not there to escort anyone out of the building to safety. And, if you are an SRO and not a warrior but rather a shuckin' and jiving' knucklehead trying to be buddies with all the students, then you need to do the honorable thing now and find another line of work. How 'bout taking admission tickets at a local amusement park?
"Other officers, some in tactical gear, stood around the school with guns drawn, CNN affiliate WFSB reported." WTF? Standing around? If they had their guns drawn, that's because there was still an unknown situation. If the Mayor of Newtown or HockeyTown calls the on-scene commander to see what's going on, the sitrep needs to sound like this:
- Yer honor, we got all the bad-guys in custody or killed them. Can you get a few cases of PBR and some Doritos down here in the next ten minutes?
- Or, There might still be a bad-guy out there so all my knights are hunting until we capture or kill him. Will call you when we are successful. Gotta go.
Were they awaiting action orders? The standing order should be: Find bad-guys. Try to arrest them. If they resist or appear to be ready, willing a/o able to hurt any kid(s), shoot the him or her immediately. No negotiation, no discussion, no empathy. Pump rounds into that dirtbag until they stop twitchin'.
Okay, so what do we do about gun violence? John Fund has an excellent piece here that details the truth about mass shootings, and I'd include any mall shooting in that category. I think Sheriff Joe has just the right idea, story here. And, hey, I am diggin' this.
To wrap this up, I heard some "respected" radio host talking about Newtown and, concerning his reaction in the face of such danger, he actually said: I don't know what I'd do, nobody knows what they'd do..." Guess what. I know what I would do. He should know. He, and you for that matter, should study the issue from all angles and decide what you're going to do and then prepare and train for it. Don't be a nobody who doesn't know what to do. Or doesn't care.
Okay, I'm done. Now read this and carry on with what you were doing... unless you were doing nothing.
This is a great site; I followed a link from Jihadwatch. I'm sure your aware of it. Down under, where I am, we were disarmed a few years ago. For God's sake, don't let it happen there.
Best wishes,
Ozzy Fightback
Posted by: Phuck islam | 13 January 2013 at 03:56 AM