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Don't Say "I've Got a Gun!" - Massad Ayoob examines the Philando Castile case - Critical Mas Ep 25

COMMANDMENT I: If You Choose To Carry, Always Carry As Much As Possible Hollywood actors get to see the script beforehand, and nothing is fired at them but blanks. You don’t have either luxury. Criminals attack people in times and places where they don’t think the victims will be prepared for them. It’s what they do. The only way to be prepared to ward off such predators is to always be prepared: i.e., to be routinely armed and constantly ready to respond to deadly threats against you and those who count on you for protection. It’s not about convenience; it’s...

More than 10 years ago, my friend Mark Seiden called me in on a murder case in Miami that Janet Reno, then State’s Attorney for the county in question, had ordered prosecuted. A woman named Mary Hopkin had killed her common law husband, a man named James Yarolem.[snip] The cops arrived. When Jim came back Metro-Dade officers were there. They arrested him. When they dragged him away, the cops testified later, he was screaming “Mary, you f—in’ bitch, I’ll kill you for this!”

It’s happened to most of us – some more than others. You’re driving down the highway or a backroad or maybe you roll through a stop sign one too many times, and here they come. The flashing lights, the piercing sound of the siren. It’s nerve-racking, to say the least. With so much tension surrounding recent officer-involved shootings, I feel a duty to open the discussion on what to do when legal gun owners either open or concealed carrying are pulled over by police. No matter what state you find yourself in, national firearms expert and trainer Massad Ayoob explains...

There was much for us all to learn from this case. For anyone who came in late, let me refer you here http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob143.html for a summary.  It ends with one such lesson. Let’s pick up from there. In this society, the person who moves toward danger in any respect is seen as “having gone looking for trouble,” and widely blamed accordingly if it does not end well. I’ve explained earlier why I don’t think anything Zimmerman did within the totality of the circumstances was the proximate cause of the death, but there’s a reason for the saying “It’s not about...

Many advise people involved in shootings to say nothing to the police. I’m not among them. I’ve seen too many cases where declining to speak is heard as “I ain’t sayin’ nuttin’ ‘til my mouthpiece gets here,” and only the bad guy’s side of the story gets told or assumed. I do recommend that people caught up in these things tell the responding officers the nature of the attack on them which forced them to fire, and indicate that they’ll sign a complaint on the perpetrator. I also recommend pointing out evidence and witnesses, because both tend to disappear otherwise....

The firearms and ballistics evidence in this case was very important, one reason why the Kel-Tec PF9 9mm death weapon was first and foremost in the minds of journalists reporting on Eric Holder’s recent decision to have all evidence in this case held pending Federal investigation (again). One of the area newspapers reported in March that the death weapon was found with a spent casing still in the chamber. This would have been consistent with someone’s hand grabbing the gun and retarding the slide mechanism at the moment of the shot, and I surmised as much in the one blog...

Welcome to the new commentators here, many of whom seem to feel that Zimmerman started the encounter, a concept that concerns many of our regulars as well. Whenever there’s a fight, no matter the degree of consequences, the first question is always “who started it?” Zimmerman took the first action, calling police when he observed Martin. He said that he was concerned because the man in the hoodie appeared to be wandering slowly and aimlessly in heavy rain. This is more consistent with what might be called “casing the joint” than with someone in a hurry to get somewhere dry....

It seems that the verdict of a sworn jury in our criminal justice system means little to the haters, who are still screaming that George Zimmerman killed “an unarmed seventeen-year-old.” Given that seventeen is old enough to enlist in the Marine Corps and to be tried as an adult – the Gainesville Sun recently headlined that a “sixteen-year-old man” was to be charged with murder in the selfsame Florida criminal justice system – the age issue doesn’t hold a lot of water when seen through a clear glass. “Unarmed?” Actually, NO. The history of adjudicating deadly force actions shows that...

The current 'Gun control' push A cop's eye view By Massad Ayoob Issue #142 • July/August, 2013 First, a word of explanation. The reason "gun control" is in quotes in the title and in this sentence is because, for a very long time, the prohibitionists have made it more about control of the general public than about controlling criminal misuse of lethal weapons. Of late, the prohibitionists have played their word-spin again, changing the name of their product to "firearms safety" and "firearms responsibility." Um ... sorry. You'll have to look long and hard to find, among the ranks of...

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — A small helicopter that crashed Saturday in far western St. Lucie County was carrying an internationally known firearms expert who was hunting wild hogs from the air using a handgun. Live Oak resident Massad Ayoob, 64, his hunting companion Jonathan Strayer, 46, and pilot William Harward, 55, were above the tree tops, at about 100 feet, when the Hiller helicopter lost power and plunged to the ground around 9:15 a.m. Saturday, Ayoob said Monday. “A few minutes into the flight, as we were zoning in on an oinker that had run under the canopy of some...

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had a conversation with someone in the last few days who asked, “Why do ordinary law-abiding people need those semiautomatic firearms with magazines that can hold more than ten cartridges?” There are lots of sound answers. For one thing, defensive firearms are meant to be “equalizers,” force multipliers that can allow one good person to defend against multiple evil people. To allow one good person to defend against a single evil person so much stronger and/or bigger and/or more violent than he or she, that the attacker’s potentially lethal assault can be stopped. History...

I try to stay out of politics. Ain’t my job. Here at Backwoods Home, I’m the resident gun guy, and because I’m the only staffer who also works in the criminal justice system, I sometimes go there too. A hugely important Presidential election looms upon us. The next four years will see new appointments to the United States Supreme Court, with obviously great implications for those of us who believe in the Constitution and have sworn an oath to uphold it. As has been discussed here before, the one-issue voter isn’t necessarily wearing blinders. Rather, he or she recognizes that...

The death almost a month ago of 17-year old Trayvon Martin at the hands of appointed neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman has become a cause célèbre that has even drawn the notice of our President, who notes that if he had a son he would probably look like Trayvon. I’m seeing some defending Zimmerman, and most demanding his head on a platter, and a whole lot of people who don’t understand how the justice system is geared to approach these things. As I’ve said earlier in this blog, in answer to reader query, we don’t know enough about what happened...

The current edition of Harper’s magazine carries a cover story on concealed carry, illustrated with an Andy Warhol portrait of a High Standard Sentinel .22 revolver…ironically, more of a Backwoods Home utility handgun than a concealed carry piece, but what the heck. It is a very articulate story from a man who carried a Colt Detective Special .38 for some time, and understood the power and responsibility he carried with it. In the end, he decided not to carry every day. Some in the gun world see that as a cop-out. I noticed that the author reserved the option to...

If you’ve read my column in Backwoods Home Magazine for any length of time, you’ve noticed how frequently I’ve made the point that it’s close to hopeless for a smaller person to try to shoot well with a gun too big or too long in the stock for them, and easier for a larger person to adapt to a gun that’s too small. Well, this past weekend, I was reminded that there actually is such a thing as a gun too small for the largest shooters. I was at a Glock match in Orlando (www.gssfonline.com) with the usual suspects and...

BLAST FROM THE PAST My Christmas gift to myself was a carbine I’d always wanted: a lever action Winchester complete with saddle ring. It was the iconic gun of the Western movies. If it was good enough for John Wayne, it was good enough for me. As a child of the East, not the West, I wasn’t much of a horseman. The closest I ever came to having one of my own was when I owned a Ford Bronco. It took a good part of my life to figure out exactly how that damn saddle ring interfaced with the saddle:...

A few entries ago, you were promised that as soon as we got our hands on the latest new Ruger rifle, you’d hear back. Well, we muckled onto three or so of ‘em this past week, so here we go. As noted here earlier, the rifle is designated SR556, for Sturm, Ruger 5.56 millimeter. It takes standard AR15/M16 magazines, and comes with three of them, produced by Magpul, one of the best makers. It’s the most “vendor-outsourced” firearm this company has ever assembled – really, pretty much everything but the barrel and barrel extension come from outside the factory –...

Everything's getting more expensive. Food. Gasoline. Guns and ammunition. Not everyone who appreciates the rural lifestyle was "born with a gun in their hand" the way some of us feel as if we've been. Many are urban-dwellers who've figured out for themselves that living closer to nature is a better way, and nothing from their previous metropolitan lifestyle has prepared them for their sudden realization that firearms are important, routinely-used tools for those who live "in the country." Reading is good, but training is better. My advice to the people new to guns would be to take a firearms safety...

Reid won't be returning lobbyist contributions Spokeswoman says senator sees no reason to return funds By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid will not return campaign contributions he received during the past five years from lobbyists and clients associated with Jack Abramoff, a Reid spokeswoman said Friday. Federal officials are investigating whether Abramoff, a lobbyist, bilked millions of dollars from Indian gaming tribes. Reid, D-Nev., and other Democrats have been sharply critical of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who has close ties to Abramoff. About two-thirds of Abramoff-related campaign funds were given to...