A Self Defense Story

[Lars]

I'll preface by saying I doubt this is a true story. If it is, the person in the story is NOT the one who wrote it. That said, the Lessons Learned section at the bottom is priceless.

From defense instructor/writer John Farnam:

27 July 08

Success story, from a female student:

"Last week, I had just returned home from shopping. My house is set back from the street and up forty stairs. Shrubs on both sides of the stairway obscure the view and severely restrict any exit except down the stairs. When I arrived home, I parked my car in the driveway, carried a load of groceries up to the house, then returned to the car to bring up the last load.

As I got my arms full again, I heard a man's voice saying, 'Hey lady! I have something to sell you.' I turned to see a strange man, scrubby, dirty, and poorly dressed, advancing on me from the street. I replied, 'I'm not interested,' and started walking quickly toward the stairs.

The man followed. I turned toward him and said sternly, 'I'm not interested. Get off my property!' He replied, 'Let me come in and show you what I have for sale.' He continued to advance on me. I abruptly dropped my packages, got my hand on my snubby revolver, and ran up the stairs to my front door, entered my house, and locked the door behind me.

Once inside, I called 911 and reported an 'assault-in-progress.' I took a breath, thinking the man had probably left.

No such luck!

The man appeared at my doorway and started pounding and kicking the locked door, yelling, "Let me in! Let me in!" Still on the line, the 911 operator, hearing the pounding, said, 'What is that?' I replied, 'Operator, send the police now! A violent felon is breaking into my house!'

Having only marginal faith in the stoutness of my front door, I retreated up the stairs to a landing. I used a support post for cover as I pointed my revolver at the door. I calculated I would be shooting down (safe backstop), plus the attacker would not see me right away. Fortunately, I had thought about, and rehearsed, all this before, so there was no hesitation on my part.

I shouted, 'Go away! I've called the police, and they are on the way. I have a gun, and I will shoot!

The pounding abruptly stopped, and I could hear him running back down the stairs. From an upstairs window, I saw a faded van drive up, pick the man up, and drive away. Never saw him again!

Police were there minutes afterward. They indicated that what I had experienced fit the MO of a gang of grubs that had spread out over the neighborhood lately.

The moral of this story for me is the confirmation of the value of my professional defensive handgun training and my ongoing practice with my Training Group. My pistol was loaded, as always, with high-performance ammunition, and I entertained no uncertainty with regard to my ability to stop this felon with gunfire, and I was fully prepared to do so, without hesitation.

Happily, it was not necessary, this time!"

Lessons:

(1) Be alert! Pay attention. Keep your head up. Have a well-tuned ability to detect trouble in the making. The more time you have to prepare yourself and refine your Plan accordingly, the better the outcome.

(2) Face facts! Don't con yourself. Don't delude yourself into thinking you're not really seeing what is in front of you.

(3) Have a Plan! Know your Plan. Rehearse your Plan. But, don't fall in love with your Plan! Those without a plan will predictably dither and die!

(4) Stern, clear, uncluttered verbal challenges will often prevent the necessity of using deadly force. Verbal challenges need to be short, to the point, one-way, and unequivocal. Don't bluff, and don't engage in a conversation!

(5) Be armed! Like wearing seatbelts when in a car, you can't know when they will be necessary, so you wear them all the time!

(6) Stay in motion! Get your feet out of cement. A moving target is a difficult target.

(7) There is no substitute for competent firearms training and continuous practice. When you've never taken lessons, it is unlikely you'll be able to suddenly sit down in front of a piano and make music, no matter how nice a piano it is!

(8) Be prepared to go it alone. Don't wait to be rescued! Even a relatively fast response police is still far too slow to make any difference in the outcome of most life-threatening situations. When you are not prepared to handle it yourself, right now, without assistance from anyone, you probably won't live through it.

(9) Do whatever is necessary, at the critical moment, without hesitation. Don't worry about being perfect, and don't look back!

(10) Lose your fear of dying! There are no guarantees in this life, and, in the end, we're all dead anyway. Who look for "fairness" in the way the world is ordered, do so in vain!

 

[shooter521]

(10) Lose your fear of dying! There are no guarantees in this life, and, in the end, we're all dead anyway. Who look for "fairness" in the way the world is ordered, do so in vain!

I understand what the author is trying to say, but I would've phrased it differently. "Losing your fear of dying" to me sounds almost reckless. Most of my handgun training has been through a school whose approach to proper combat mindset was summed up thusly:

IMO, that's much more representative of where you want to be, mentally, when the sh*t goes down. Doc Gunn phrased it as "you don't get to die today" ... same idea. Bottom line is, FIGHT. You might get shot, you might get cut, but you're going to keep fighting. DON'T EVER GIVE UP. Am I afraid of dying? Abso-f*cking-lutely. I want to make it home to see my wife and son, so I'm going to do my damndest NOT to die.

 

[indyjoe]

I agree with your thinking. I really doubt, unless the woman was off duty LEO, that anyone would use "A violent felon is breaking into my house!". I also applaud he for thinking of backstop in that situation. The only situations where I have been close to having to shoot someone, my thoughts were not on backstop as much as criminal stop.

But the lessons learned are good.

 

[Tinman]

Actually, John Farnam teaches that specific verbiage in his courses. I don't know that she said that, but if she took good notes and rehearsed enough, she may have repeated his verbiage word for word.

Incidentally, if you haven’t trained with John or Vicki Farnam (Defense Training International) they are great instructors.

I like his lessons learned, particularly number 4. So few people actually practice true realistic verbiage. The old range standard “stop drop the gun” doesn’t count here. Here’s some notes from a fellow instructor Southnarc:

To maintain range I have to use some kind of verbiage. I have to tell him some thing that makes him stop coming closer.

Now the debate here is do you ask someone what they want or what their business is or do you tell them to stop and hold their ground? I think a good middle ground for the initial verbalization with an unknown contact is to ask politely but firmly for someone to stop. A phrase such as “Hey buddy would you hold there for a minute?” allows someone to comply with your request, which isn’t rendered rudely. If they stop advancing, then you can ask them what they want. It’s a small thing, but if your initial verbalization is “Can I help you?” then that does nothing to maintain range and actually encourages someone to come closer.

Now let’s discuss verbalization a bit. If you have asked him to stop and he doesn’t what then? If you have range, which we understand is directly proportional to our awareness, we can ramp up our verbiage from a request to a command. What I also recommend is that you change the specific language and increase the volume. So if we start at “Hey buddy would you hold there?” we’ll kick it up next to “I said BACK-UP!” What if he still doesn’t stop or say he begins to verbalize somewhat but still keeps advancing? Once again, we can kick up our verbiage a bit possibly even by adding some profanity. Now there are some trainers that will tell you to never, ever use profanity. What I’ve seen over my career in law enforcement is that profanity is part of criminal vernacular and bad guys understand it. If you do elect to use profanity, use it to accentuate the message and don’t directly insult someone with it. There’s a big difference between “Back the f#@* up” and “Back up motherf%^&er”. So if we have range and time we can escalate within our verbal options from:
A polite request to stop advancing.
A louder command to stop advancing, using different specific language.
Shout the same command at the top of your lungs and accentuate that with carefully selected common criminal vernacular, i.e. profanity.

Sorry for the , but since someone mentioned the verbiage I thought it relevant.

Tinman….

 

[Bigum1969]

I understand what the author is trying to say, but I would've phrased it differently. "Losing your fear of dying" to me sounds almost reckless. Most of my handgun training has been through a school whose approach to proper combat mindset was summed up thusly:

IMO, that's much more representative of where you want to be, mentally, when the sh*t goes down. Doc Gunn phrased it as "you don't get to die today" ... same idea. Bottom line is, FIGHT. You might get shot, you might get cut, but you're going to keep fighting. DON'T EVER GIVE UP. Am I afraid of dying? Abso-f*cking-lutely. I want to make it home to see my wife and son, so I'm going to do my damndest NOT to die.

Love the shirt

 

[Scout]

Love the shirt

At first I thought it said "I am not going to die here!"