The gun enthusiasts at Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville, South Carolina, decided to combine their love of all hole-making tools by modding this Glock Model 21 to look like a DeWalt cordless drill.
But sadly, even though there’s a bit protruding from the front, the drill doesn’t actually work. Although, that of course doesn’t stop this creation from easily making holes wherever you need one.
We have a natural sense of safety and security in our homes. We go out into a chaotic, hostile and sometimes violent world looking forward to our return to sanctuary in our personalized space. Home invasion is probably one of the most deeply traumatic crimes. The thought of someone tearing through our belongings, keepsakes and valued items like they were trash is terrifying.
The home invasion can be placed in two basic categories: burglary and robbery. The Burglary is a home invasion where no victim is a witness to the crime. In other words, you are not home or you do not realize that you are being burglarized, until after the crime is over. The home invasion robbery is the more scary of the two, because you are directly involved in the crime as an assault victim, not just your property. The latter is a stories of horror movie game, and usually the first thing we think about when we broach the topic. The following rules should help prevent either of the two. Keep in mind these rules are in no particular order of importance.
Did I miss any? What are some of your rules?
As a police officer and while researching crimes, it is amazing how many times the bad guys just walk through an unlocked door or window. There are criminals out there that do not case a house before attacking; they just go from door-to-door checking to see if they can get in. They may be the desperate type just looking for a quick buck, but it is probably the most common by statistic. If he is caught checking doors, the bad guy can just pretend he is trying to talk with someone on the inside. All kinds of excuses can be pre-planned. I don’t know about you, but if I were to be a victim of this type of crime, I would hope that my home would have caused a little more difficulty than just simple checking the door.
Another common tale is the bad guy walking up to the door and being able to smash it in. Most bad guys want to get in and out. We had a term for this crime, the ole’ “smash and grab.” The bad guy would kick in the door, go straight to the bedrooms, pull the drawers out and dump all the contents on the bed. They could get through a room in less than 30 seconds. They could hit the entire house in under five minutes. They want the entire process to be as short as possible, so spending an extended amount of time trying to pry, kick or smash a door in is not in their best interest. Not to mention too much banging, thrashing and smashing outside exposes them to detection. Talk with a good locksmith and they will gladly point you to the good dead bolt locks, door frames and strong doors.
A great saying goes something like this: “Those that want their deeds hidden will flee from the light.” When it is dark outside, we naturally look toward lighted areas. If your home is well lit on the outside, especially at the home’s entrance points, the bad guys will want to spend the least amount of time there. They will definitely pick the dark house down the street to invade, as the chance that anyone will see them will be much less. You can get tricky with the motion-detector lights, since we are naturally going to look at light that was once darkness, and the bad guys know this. It also gives the impression that someone turned it on to see what is going on. Now, a smart criminal will case the house and know there are motion lights, so that may be lost, but he still will not want to be in the light. Look into some good floodlights.
The bad guys do not know what treasures you have in your castle if you keep the windows closed. The bad guys covet what you have. If they have no clue, they will probably go covet someone else. The closed windows also create a sense of the unknown when it comes to the layout of the house and whether there are people home or not. The bad guy has to think there is a possibility of running into a homeowner or a vicious animal on the inside if he is clueless as to what awaits him behind the curtain.
Bad guys generally do not like our four-legged friends, especially the ones that may inflict some damage. The little ones can act as good mobile alarm systems, but the bigger ones tend to be a bigger deterrent. The bad guys do not want to be in a situation where this creature can be lying in wait ninja-style during shopping spree through your house. It doesn’t have to be a professionally trained guard dog, just one that you think they would respect.
If you cannot afford an alarm system, then pick up those fake door stickers and signs that make it seem like you have one. They are a very cheap way to add another psychological deterrent to the home invader. Alarms are good for providing a warning system, especially if you are asleep. Most emit a piercing sound that will definitely signal something is wrong. The bad guys know this and generally choose those homes that are easier prey. I have only seen one case where a “smash and grabber” kicked a door in and continued the crime despite the blasting alarm. In this case, the criminal stole the enormous change jar that was visible from the porch — violating Rule No. 4. The alarm system has the added benefit of notifying the police to come and investigate the crime.
Bad guys like to case a house prior to actually committing the crime. They will come by as salesmen, surveyors or maybe just look around. They are looking for a good reason to invade your home and that takes a little bit of reconnaissance. While gathering the information they need, they are vulnerable to detection. Awareness is the best prevention for almost all criminal activity. As far as reporting, a simple phone call to the non-emergency number of your local police department may lead to increase patrol in your area. If while casing a neighborhood the bad guys notice more police activity, they may think they are found out and move to another target. It should also be noted to challenge all those that approach your home uninvited. Bad guys pose as average people or even good guys to get you to let your guard down. Make sure you confirm their purpose before opening yourself or your home up.
Bad guys can determine you are a ripe target by all means. Your trash, for example, can tell them every new purchase you have made. I am not necessarily talking about identity theft, but if you just bought a new television, XBox or Blu-Ray player. The boxes we leave at the road’s edge shout to the world our new expensive toys. We also need to be careful when letting delivery guys into our homes, even if it is just right inside the doorway. There has been more than one occasion where a pizza delivery guy cased a home while on the job.
Neighborhood watch was a household term in the ‘80s. Now, I am not saying form citizen patrol groups — they have worked for high crime areas — but simply be a friend to your neighbors. If they care about you and your property, they can be a great asset in detecting bad guys coming. Volunteer to keep a look out of their property, and the law of reciprocity will push them to look out for yours. It is also a good idea to know your neighbors and who they are as people. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, a person close to the victim ended up being their home invader.
Be mindful of your vulnerabilities. If you can see weak spots, then a career bad guy definitely will. Ask yourself how you would invade the home and then take steps to fix the problem. If you are imaginative enough, you can prevent the most skilled of criminals from getting the job done. If you are having trouble thinking that way, solicit help from a friend or do a little research on home invasions. These are not all stupid people; to think so underestimates them and puts your family at risk. Remember, this rule is about preparation, not paranoia, so have fun with it.
These rules are not the be-all, end-all of prevention, but they will definitely go a long way toward stopping one of the most demeaning of crimes. If you take the time to put some or all of these steps in place, the criminal will be forced to choose someone who violates these rules. Stay safe!
This collection of Firearm apparel from Everyday No Days Off shows that you can be be a gun enthusiast and still wear a cool T-Shirt. In the USA we are free to take responsibility for our own lives. Simply carrying on and ignoring a threat against life and/or liberty isn’t in the play book of the average American. Carrying one, (a gun in this case) is not only an option, but a damn good one. All of these items are $25 dollars with free shipping and can be ordered at endoapparel.com
Preliminary crime statistics for 2011 released today by the FBI show a 4 percent decrease in violent crime–a continuation of a long-term downward trend nationwide. The report highlights that all four violent crime categories–murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault–declined in the country’s four major geographical regions and in all city population groups. The report also noted that violent crime decreased both in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. The continuing decrease in violent crime comes at a time when firearms ownership has increased across America, a fact that utterly contradicts the mantra of anti-gun groups that that more guns equals more crime. “Every firearms owner should be armed with this information,” said NSSF President and CEO Steve Sanetti
According to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report released today, the nation experienced a 4.0 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 0.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes in 2011 when compared with data from 2010. The report is based on information the FBI gathered from 14,009 law enforcement agencies that submitted six to 12 comparable months of data for both 2010 and 2011.
Violent Crime
Property Crime
Arson
There’s a lot of crossfire about guns these days. The Obama administration is under siege over Fast and Furious, a federal sting operation that allowed firearms to go to Mexican drug traffickers and was linked to the slaying of a Border Patrol agent.
1 Around Christmas 1928, Ernest Hemingway came home to Oak Park to attend his father’s funeral and asked his mother if he could have the .32 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that his father had used to kill himself. A few months later, Hemingway’s mother shipped him the handgun, along with a chocolate cake.
2 Nearly half of Americans say a gun is kept in their household. This figure — 47 percent in a Gallup survey last October — was a six-point jump from a year earlier and the highest since 1993. Demographic groups that topped 50 percent included men, Republicans, Southerners,and Midwesterners.
3 In the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone’s henchmen wielded Tommy guns, but the weapon’s use by 1920s gangsters likely wasn’t as extensive as popular culture and movies would lead us to believe. The gun was quite difficult to use and was dangerous to the shooter if he or she wasn’t properly trained. A hooligan with a heavy trigger finger could empty one of those famous 100-round drums in just four seconds.
4 Clement Vallandigham, a former Ohio congressman, served as an attorney in 1871 defending a suspect accused of a barroom murder. Vallandigham theorized that the victim had in fact shot himself by accident while trying to pull a handgun out of his pants pocket. Conferring with colleagues in a hotel room, Vallandigham acted out his theory. He believed he was using an unloaded gun in his demonstration; he was wrong. But he was right about a gun going off accidentally; it did, and it killed him.
5 The Minie ball, developed by French officer Claude-Etienne Minie about a decade before the American Civil War, greatly increased the effective range of rifles. But some veterans failed to understand how warfare had changed. Just before Union Gen. John Sedgwick was fatally shot by a faraway sniper near the Spotsylvania Courthouse, he uttered his last words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”
6 John F. Kennedy was a member of the National Rifle Association.
7 It should be no surprise that the biggest gun ever built was created for the Nazi war machine. Krupp A.G.’s Gustav was truly a monster, weighing in at 1,344 tons, including its railway carriage. At four stories tall and 140 feet long, it required a 500-man crew. It could throw a 5-ton explosive shell 29 miles or an 8-ton concrete-piercing shell 23 miles. It was built to demolish France’s famed Maginot line, but the German blitzkrieg rendered the Gustav irrelevant for that task. It was eventually used against the Soviets to wicked effect before it was captured by the Americans and cut up for scrap.
8 John Moses Browning designed a staggering number of famous guns, including the lever-action Winchester repeating rifle, the Browning automatic rifle (BAR) and the Model 1911 .45 automatic pistol. The son of a gunsmith, Browning was 14 when he built his first firearm, a rifle he gave to his brother.
9 Earlier this month, two Australian swimmers were barred by that country’s Olympic officials from using social media during the London Games after the pair posted photos of themselves posing with pistols and rifles at a gun shop. Not only that, but Nick D’Arcy and Kenrick Monk will be forced to leave the Games early after they finish their events. It’s unclear if athletes competing in the 15 medal events involving shooting would face the same punishment.
10 Some gun inventors, such as Richard Gatling and Mikhail Kalashnikov, have expressed regrets about their legacies. Gatling felt that his machine gun took attention away from his work on more peaceful innovations, such as seed drills and steam-driven plows. Kalashnikov, the AK-47 creator who is 92, is proud that his invention helped Russia defend itself but said “when I see (Osama) bin Laden on television with his Kalashnikov, I’m disgusted.” And he admitted: “I wish I had invented a lawn mower.”
By Sheriff Jim Wilson (RSS)
Just about the time it appears they have been proven false and dismissed, the same stuff pops up again. Part of this is probably due to the fact there are always new people who finally realize they need to do something about their personal safety and begin seeking answers. Unfortunately, it is also due to the tendency of some people to pass on advice they have heard, but never took the time to find out if it is really true. Since it sounds cool, it must be right.
This is one of the many reasons why defensive shooters need to receive professional training. With a good, professional instructor, it is remarkable how many of these myths quickly fall by the wayside and are replaced by cold, hard facts. Let’s look at three of the old self-defense myths that just won’t die and discuss the truths they conceal.
1. Hit him anywhere with a .45 and it will knock him down.
This myth probably started with the advent of the .45 Colt, back in the 1870s, but it has been repeated most often when people refer to the .45 ACP. Nowadays, you will hear it touted regarding the .44 Mag., the .41 Mag., the .40 S&W or whatever new pistol cartridge that has just been introduced.
The truth was only discovered way back in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published his third law of motion. Newton simply stated that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if a bullet shot from a handgun was so powerful that it could actually knock a person down, it would also knock the shooter down.
There are a lot of reasons why a person who is shot may appear to fall down, or even be knocked down. But, the truth is the force of the bullet striking him is not knocking him off his feet. That only happens in the movies and TV.
In reality, a person who is shot with even a relatively powerful handgun may show very little indication of being hit. There will also be very little sign of blood, especially at first. Therefore, the defensive shooter should not rely on these as cues that the fight is over. The important thing is to recover from recoil, regain your sight picture and quickly re-evaluate the threat. If the criminal is still armed—whether or not he is on his feet—and if he appears to still be a threat, additional shots may be necessary. Just don’t expect the bad guy to go flying off his feet, because it probably won’t happen.
2. There’s no need to aim a shotgun, just point it in the general direction of the bad guy and fire.
The shotgun is an awesome firearm that is altogether too often overlooked by today’s defensive shooters. However, it is not a magic wand. People who claim you don’t have to aim a shotgun have simply never done patterning tests with their favorite defensive smoothbore.
When shot exits a shotgun barrel, it does so in almost one solid mass. That mass is smaller than a man’s fist. It is only as the shot travels downrange that it begins to spread apart, and it spreads much more gradually than a lot of people expect.
Whether you are using buckshot or birdshot, from 0 to 10 yards you should consider it to be one projectile. Actually, by about 7 yards the shot has begun to spread noticeably, but not as much as you might think. From 10 yards to about 25 yards, the average shotgun will deliver a pattern that will still stay on the chest area of a silhouette target. But, by 25 yards some of the pellets may stray off target. When dealing with a criminal at 25 yards and beyond, it’s time to think about transitioning to a slug.
Instead of taking anyone’s word for it—mine included—the defensive shotgunner should run pattern tests using his shotgun from extremely close range out to 25 and 30 yards. He will also find his shotgun performs better with one brand of ammunition than others. There are a lot of reasons for this preference for particular loads, but the defensive shotgunner should know this occurs and make his selection accordingly. The smart defensive shooter will run tests until he knows which load his gun prefers and exactly what his shot pattern is doing at the ranges his shotgun could be called upon to perform.
3. If you have to shoot a bad guy in your front yard, drag him into the house before calling the cops.
As ridiculous as this may sound, it is one of the myths that just won’t go away. A student brought it up the other day in a defensive pistol class. There are couple of good reasons why this is a terrible idea.
To begin with, most states determine the justification for using deadly force as being a reasonable response to prevent immediate death or serious bodily injury. Therefore, if a person is justified in defending himself inside his home, he is also justified in defending himself in his yard, because he is under an immediate attack in which he could be killed or seriously injured.
The second, equally important, reason is the crime scene will quickly make a liar out of you. Any investigator worth his salt will know within 5 minutes that you moved the body. And, if you’re lying about that, you are probably lying about everything else. It is the quickest possible way to go directly to jail. Protecting yourself in a completely justifiable shooting can get expensive. So can lying to the police about a shooting.
Part and parcel to obtaining a defensive firearm should be obtaining advice from a criminal defense attorney. He can tell you what your state laws are, how they are interpreted in court and the limitations regarding use of deadly force and how they apply to a legally armed citizen. Getting that sort of advice from the guys down at the bar or from an Internet commando is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
H&H is privileged to present to you coverage from this year’s Liberty Safe Dealers Forum, where Liberty’s products are tortured to the extreme. The following photos and videos show just how tough Liberty Safes are in comparison to the competition. In the first video, a Liberty safe is assaulted by a competitor’s safe dropped from 200 feet above. Then, watch as one of Liberty’s 100% Made-in-the-USA safes plummets the same distance to meet another of the competitor’s safes below. The aftermath of each scenario is an extremely tangible demonstration of the remarkable quality and durability of Liberty Safes.
The proof is in the pummeling!
Establishing Dominance: Figuring out which is your dominant eye
You are carrying your concealed pistol with the knowledge that one day, under extreme stress, you may be forced to use it. These are perishable skills, reviewing them from time to time will keep you sharp. When the day comes that you must remove that pistol from its holster, your goal is to put rounds accurately on target. Doing so starts with a sound basis in shooting fundamentals and the first step is understanding how your body works so you can aim properly. You need to know which eye will effectively control your pistol. This tip and the next few that will appear in this space are brought to you directly from Tactical Pistol Shooting, 2nd Edition, by Erik Lawrence. The first tip is simple, but it is the foundation for accurate shooting. Understanding your dominant eye makes accurate shooting possible.
Fig. 5.1A Extend your arms with palms away from you and cross your hands to make a hole.
Your dominant eye is the eye you use primarily to see details with the assistance of the less-dominant eye. The shooter should always aim with his or her dominant eye yet keep the non-dominant eye open to improve peripheral vision and maintain depth perception. In normal binocular vision there is an effect of parallax, and therefore the dominant eye is the one that is primarily relied on for precise positional information. If the shooter is right-handed and cross-eye dominant, the shooter simply orients the pistol under the left (dominant) during the draw.
To find out which eye is dominant, take this simple foolproof test. Extend both arms in front of your body. Refer to Figure 5.1A.
Place the hands together, forming a small opening between them. Refer to Figure 5.1B. With both eyes open, look at a distant object through the opening that was formed. Keeping focused on the distant object, bring your hands back to your face. Bring them back until they touch your face. Refer to Figure 5.1C. The eye that the opening is over is your dominant eye. If you have doubt, repeat the steps to be sure of your dominant eye.
Fig. 5.1B Look through the hole with both eyes open and slowly move your hands back toward your face.
Fig 5.1C Your hands will automatically come back to your dominant eye.
Original post by Kevin D. Michalowski, to view the original post click here
All right, so you fancy yourself a pretty hot shot, do ya? You’ve hit targets from hundreds of yards out — OK, nice shootin’ there, Tex. You’ve had about, what, 20, 30, maybe 40 years of shooting experience under your belt? Pat yourself on the back.
After seeing this video, though, you might be spending a little more time at the range.
His name’s Dylan Holsey. At 13 years old, he’s one of the youngest shooters on the Cowboy Action Shooting scene — and he’s also one of the fastest. So fast, in fact, that the folks from “American Guns” decided to put the young gun’s skills to the test. Fitting one of their gunsmiths with a full-auto MAC-10, Dylan steps up to challenge the older shooter with his trusty lever-action. Check out the jaw-dropping video.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/s5PLnlRVqKQ[/youtube]
Call Us Now
