A hard lesson from John Farnam

Doug M.

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I'd heard of this event and thought there were serious flaws in her thinking. This seems to be another example of what I have called the "fundamentally decent person" problem. What I think of as are minimum good sense is apparently not common enough. I'm just as curious as the next person, but have overcome the temptation to hang out and watch such things. You may KNOW that you are a good guy and not a threat to cops, but they probably have no idea who you are. To compound this, additional uninvolved parties may reduce the options that cops have in a quickly evolving situation. Best choice: don't be there. If by chance you are, leave the area as rapidly as you can.

"On Tuesday of last week, LAPD officers were involved in a high-speed vehicular chase of at least two suspects who had been involved in a hit-and-run accident. The chase ended in a high-rent residential section of Los Angeles when the suspect vehicle stopped as suspects exited and fled the scene on foot. Multiple LAPD units responded. One suspect was ultimately captured by police. The other(s) remain at large. However, the plot thickened when, in the middle of all this, a female resident of a home in the affected area came out of her house with a pistol in her hand and was immediately confronted by uniformed LAPD officers. She was not involved in the original incident, nor the ongoing chase/search. Of course, responding officers had no idea whom she was, nor what she was doing there. It should come as no surprise that officers immediately commanded her to drop her gun, repeated multiple times. Police reports indicate that she did not drop her gun but instead turned toward them and pointed her pistol in their direction. Police officers quickly responded with gunfire to what they perceived as a deadly threat. As a result, the woman received a non-life threatening injury(s), at least one bullet-wound to her shoulder. She is recovering at a local hospital. No officers were injured, nor were any of the original suspects. The incident subsequently gained above-average profile when it was revealed that the injured woman is a popular author, and her husband (who had no involvement in the incident) is lead-singer in a rock band! Investigation is on-going, of course, but here are some important lessons from which we can all benefit:
Many home-owners, who are also gun-owners, and who own gun(s) ostensibly for protection of their home and person fail to understand the perceived threat they represent when they’re outside their home while holding a gun in their hand. Police officers (or anyone for that matter), who don’t know and instantly recognize you, probably have no idea whom you are, nor what your intentions are. All they know is that you can start shooting at them in less than a second, not nearly enough time for them to react and protect themselves in any meaningful way. And, it really doesn’t matter in what direction the weapon is originally pointed. Any person holding a pistol (pointed in any direction) can easily produce deadly gunfire, in your direction, in well under a second!
In reality, real-estate boundaries don’t mean much during critical incidents. Prosecutors will predictably take a dim view of a visibly armed homeowner (particularly one with a gun in his hand) who exits the relative safety of his home in order to “confront” suspicious people, even someone within the building’s “curtilage.”
My advice is to refrain from stepping-into potentially injurious incidents in which you were not otherwise involved, particularly when you go armed.
“Voluntarily injecting oneself into a developing crisis” is not associated with continued good health, as we see! ...
https://defense-training.com/threat/"
 
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I had an interaction with police with a gun in my hand. The dealership where I worked was the victim of a number of break INS to cars in the back lot of the dealership. I offered to stay after closing and watch the back lot through a window and the manager loaned me his Colt Python. The thieves showed up a few minutes after closing and I called the cops told them where they were and no lights or sirens to give them any warning and they caught them red handed. I opened the overhead door and walked outside. When the cop saw I had a gun he told me to drop it. I stood there with it dangling from one finger and told him. I am the one who called this in and this is a valuable firearm that I really do not want to drop on gravel. I will stand here and not move while you disarm me, if that is OK.
 
... a female resident of a home in the affected area came out of her house with a pistol in her hand and was immediately confronted by uniformed LAPD officers. ... officers immediately commanded her to drop her gun, repeated multiple times. Police reports indicate that she did not drop her gun but instead turned toward them and pointed her pistol in their direction...

That is world class stupidity, right there. The woman is really, really lucky to be alive.
 
Who is John Farnam? He's not mentioned in the narrative.


Google is a wonderful thing..................

John S. Farnam, president of Defensive Training International, is one of the top handgun instructors in the world. He has personally trained thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel, as well as non-police, in the serious use of firearms. In addition, he has authored four books on the subject — “The Farnam Method of Defensive Handgunning,” “The Farnam Method of Defensive Shotgun and Rifle Shooting,” “The Street Smart Gun Book,” and “Guns & Warriors – DTI Quips Volume 1.
 
I'm guessing that the OP posted the contents from one of John Farnam's training emails. I was a subscriber before I retired. Farnam's training programs are deeply rooted in common sense and reality, and the idea of preventing/avoiding a confrontation are given equal emphasis to prevailing in one. If you ever have an opportunity to attend one of his courses, I'd recommend it.

If you're an instructor, his wife Vicky Farnam authored a pretty good book on teaching female shooters.
 
I had an interaction with police with a gun in my hand. The dealership where I worked was the victim of a number of break INS to cars in the back lot of the dealership. I offered to stay after closing and watch the back lot through a window and the manager loaned me his Colt Python. The thieves showed up a few minutes after closing and I called the cops told them where they were and no lights or sirens to give them any warning and they caught them red handed. I opened the overhead door and walked outside. When the cop saw I had a gun he told me to drop it. I stood there with it dangling from one finger and told him. I am the one who called this in and this is a valuable firearm that I really do not want to drop on gravel. I will stand here and not move while you disarm me, if that is OK.

Stupid move in my opinion. No gun finish is worth a human life. I’m glad it went in your favor, but not all cops would have reacted that way.
 
Good guys doing stupid things can make a situation go south in a heartbeat. I had an alarm system that was prone to false alarms. One time, I was alerted to an intrusion. I told the alarm company not to call the police, I was going home to check. Well, they called the police anyway.

I went home, everything was fine and as I was exiting the front door, I encountered an officer in the driveway. This is where stupid actions can get you kiiled. I had the sense to show my hands and say "I'm the homeowner. What do you want me to do?"

It all ended well. I followed his directions, showed my ID and then apologized for the false alarm. Had I been waving my pistol around, I might not be typing this. And who could blame him?

The cranky alarm system has since been replaced. Home owner is still cranky however . . . .
 
I used to teach concealed handgun classes in Texas. Sadly, despite my very specific instructions with respect to traffic stops, home defense, and the use of lethal force, I think I failed to ever mention the very obvious item of DO NOT STEP OUTSIDE ARMED IF YOU HAVE NO REASON TO DO SO. However, I do recall teaching the stupidity of the s-called "Joe Horn incident" in Houston so maybe the point was made.

Joe Horn shooting controversy - Wikipedia

(c) Wikipedia
 
I’ve noticed (in the past) that a lot of citizens get tunnel vision during critical incidents.

I think cops are prone to it too UNTIL they gain experience. The general public never really gets the experience.
 
I think cops are prone to it too UNTIL they gain experience. The general public never really gets the experience.

Very good point. Yes, experience, and a lot of it, is invaluable in life-threatening situations. You can't teach experience or learn it from YouDupe.
 
If you are a fundamentally decent person, then please use a holster. As a fundamentally decent person, she does not even realize that she appears as a threat in this situation.

This is happening quite a bit especially in road rage incidents.
For one example, a rager got out of his car carrying his gun, not trying to be a threat but "just in case" he needed it if the confrontation went badly. He never used a holster; he usually kept the gun on the floorboard of his car and thought it would be fine to bear it with him and even switch it back and forth between hands as he was confronting the driver who cut him off. He switched it to his left hand, down below visibility, so he could pound his right index finger on the window! He was shot through that driver's side window and died on the street.

There are incidents involving people who go through their homes at night investigating a disturbance. When you come facing the cops who were creating that disturbance, you can legally be sent straight to St. Peter and the angels, as tragically happened to Robert Dotson of Farmington, NM on April 23, 2023. All the news reports at the time repeated the fact ad nauseum, that the cops had come to the wrong address. As a fundamentally decent person, you never even realize you have pointed a gun at the cops until way too late.

Thanks for the reminder.
Kind Regards!
BrianD
 
It really is a shame that common sense is too often not common practice.
 
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