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Hobbit Hole IX: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1130003/posts |
Posted on 04/06/2004 6:53:09 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
New verse:
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Upon the hearth the fire is red, |
Still round the corner there may wait |
Home is behind, the world ahead, |
The attacker already has the advantage of choosing the time, place, and method of attack, as well as picking out the victim. As a defender, you start out in a very deep hole. You need something not only to equal the odds, but slant them significantly in your behavior.
When your opening defense succeeds, you and your attacker both have to choose to flee, or have at it again. It's this follow-on that I feel people need to give more thought to.
Nice shooting :) Works great at 25 yards. My comment was referring more to exchanges at more like 25 inches which is of course a different situation. Within that range, I can punch about 6-7 times in 1 second. The retired SF guy who taught me can punch about 8-9 times in that interval. I know a guy from the FBI who makes that look slow. And then there was Jelly Bryce--speaking of fast:
JELLY BRYCE: THE FBI'S LEGENDARY SHARPSHOOTER
On November 12, 1945, Life Magazine ran an unusual story. It was a photographic study of an FBI agent named Jelly Bryce drawing and firing his .357 Magnum in two-fifths of a second, faster than the human eye can follow. In the pictures Bryce dropped a silver dollar from shoulder height with his right hand then drew with the same hand and shot the coin before it reached his waist. What the article did not say was that Bryce could not only draw fast in front of a camera, but also in front of people who were trying to kill him. In fact, at that time, Bryce had already killed over 10 men in face-to-face shootouts as a city policeman and FBI Agent. In his era Bryce was undoubtedly the FBI's deadliest gun and may have been the best they ever had.
[SNIP]
By the time of his retirement in 1958 Bryce had become so legendary among lawmen of the Southwest that a lot of apocryphal stories about him floated around, a surprising number of which turn out to be true. . .When Leah Rhymer met Bryce he was ten years old and owned a little .22 rifle he used for hunting rabbits and shooting tin cans. "And," she says, "he never missed." Never? "No. Never. He was a perfect shot."
[SNIP]
Oklahoma City detectives learned that there were three known gangsters holed up at the Wren Hotel at 408 1/2 West Main in Oklahoma City. One was known to be Harvey Pugh, former companion of murderer and cop killer Clyde Barrow. Pugh himself was wanted for the murder of a police officer in McPherson, Kansas. Bryce and two other detectives were dispatched to arrest Pugh and question the other two men.
They arrived at the hotel at around 8 a.m. At the front desk was an elderly woman, Nora Bingaman, whose daughter owned the hotel. The officers asked to see the owner, Mrs Merle Bolen, 28 years old. Mrs. Bingaman agreed to take them to her daughter's room.
They followed the old lady up the dark stairs and down a dingy hallway to her daughter's room. The old lady knocked perfunctorily and opened the door. But before the detectives could enter the old lady looked startled and tried to step back and pull the door closed again.
Bryce jammed his foot in the door. "I told you we're police officers," he growled and shoved the door open. He stepped into the room.
Inside the room, lounged on the bed in skimpy pajamas, lay Mrs. Merle Bolen, the owner of the hotel, and J. Ray O'Donnell. O'Donnell was one of the gangsters the detectives had come to question. He was holding two automatic pistols. Bryce's .38 was still holstered on his hip under his coat. Without saying a word O'Donnell raised the pistols at Bryce to fire point blank. A single motion blurred with speed, Bryce drew and killed him before he could pull the trigger. Bryce's first shot entered O'Donnell's chin followed by four that struck him in the head area, the fifth going into the mattress of the bed. Screaming, the woman leaped to safety near a wash stand in the corner.
Bryce later said, "When I looked into the room there he was, up on his elbows with a gun in both hands, aimed right at me. He was lying on the near side, and the woman was on the other side of him. I jumped to one side, out of the line of fire, grabbed my gun and tore him up."
[SNIP]
So just how fast was Jelly Bryce, anyway? As stated earlier, in 1945 Life Magazine clocked his draw and fire at two-fifths of a second. O'Donnell probably never knew what hit him.
[SNIP]
During the 40's and 50's Bryce again received national attention, this time for the firearms demonstrations he conducted for various groups. He was able to do tricks with firearms that few could duplicate.
One of his more unusual was performed with a .22 rifle. He would have someone throw a Mexican peso in the air and he would hit it with the gun, but first he would announce that he would put the bullet "close to the edge" so that it would make a good watch fob. And he would. In fact, witnesses say that Bryce never missed a coin thrown in the air. Sometimes he would shoot one with a 30.06 for fun. Of course, the coin would just disappear. He always laughed about how they would shoot coins in cowboy movies with Winchester rifles. He would also drop a pill box off the back of his hand and shoot it before it got to his waist. He did a whole series of tricks involving clay pigeons. He would shoot them with his .357. Then he would shoot them holding the pistol upside down. He would take a pump shotgun, have somebody hold three clay pigeons, and put two more on the stock of his gun. Then they would throw all five up and he would bust them all firing from the hip, pumping between shots, and getting the last one about a foot off the ground.
[SNIP]
So, just how good were Bryce's eyes? An optometrist asked about it said, "It's impossible to measure beyond 20/10. It would be more than just the eyes, though; it would be the eye-hand coordination which would have to be almost unbelievable."
It has been known as historical fact that some human beings are gifted with eyesight that seems almost supernatural to the average man. Ted Williams, it was said, could read the label off a phonograph record spun through the air. General Chuck Yeager could see fighter planes coming 50 miles away. Bryce one day confessed to FBI agent Bob Oswalt that he could see the bullet leave the gun and his eyes could follow its trajectory to the target. That, he said, was why he could do the things he did. Before dismissing it out of hand, it must be remembered that Bryce could hit a Mexican peso thrown through the air with a .22 and he never, ever missed. Not only that but ten years after his retirement his niece says that he had long since quit shooting for fun but that, when called upon, he would demonstrate exactly the same level of skill as the day he retired. Like an aging Samurai in cowboy hat, he had transcended the need for practice of any kind.
[SNIP]
Only when a dangerous arrest was to be made did he really go to work. He always personally made every dangerous arrest in his jurisdiction. He never knowingly asked anyone to make an arrest he thought to be risky. He was a highly trained specialist: the man who went to the door. It was during this period that Bryce was probably involved in the bulk of shootings that produced his awesome reputation.
Typically, one of America's most wanted might be spotted and trailed back to a cheap motel somewhere. He would be held under surveillance then and Bryce would be notified. Bryce would arrive and go to the man's door. If he resisted arrest, he would probably be killed.
If there was a stand-off hostage situation with a dangerous killer who was holed up under cover somewhere, Bryce would be summoned. He would be the "special negotiator" who would go inside to "negotiate" the man's surrender. If Bryce determined the man would not surrender, he would be killed.
In fact, some old lawmen came to irrationally believe in what they called the "Bryce-effect". It was relegated to the same class of phenomenon as rats leaving a ship before the ice berg is struck. It was based on the observation that in stand-off situations the mere arrival of Bryce on the scene would often suddenly and inexplicably precipitate the surrender of hardened criminals that no one thought would give up. The criminal would have no way of knowing who Bryce was or that he had even arrived. Yet, it was as if Bryce carried death in his aura, radiated such profound danger, that at some level of mind the criminal knew that death had arrived.
Does anyone actually know how many men he killed?
"I can tell you what he told me," ex-Oklahoma City chief of police Bob Wilder says. "Nineteen." Then he amends, "Well, he told me he was involved in 19 shootings." The implication being that Bryce never wounded anybody.
"Aren't you interested in bringing them back alive?" someone once quipped. "I'm more interested in bringing me back alive," he said.
Went pretty well... expecting a call for a second interview in a few days.
On this part, something I'd also add is that a big part of self-defense is environmental awareness--knowing how criminals think, where and when they're likely to try to attack you, and thus where to avoid/where to be on heightened alert. One drill I teach is when you're out walking in a potentially-dangerous area to regularly scan what's in front of you and to the sides and periodically look over your shoulder to see what's behind you. Attackers look for someone who's not paying attention.
And a bunny I caught with a zoom
This is an apple tree, I think... out in the woods we couldn't get to before we cleared. There is a whole stand of trees that look like old fruit trees.
Still there? Just got home.
Thank you very much! And the troops will thank you! You know that. :-)
That's what I try to impress on women, who feel that that can of 2% OC spray (anything stronger than that is a felony in Michigan), or an aerobics class, makes them invulnerable. Nobody has told them that a 20th-percentile male weakling can easily hurt even a 90th-percentile female. And that's before taking into account chemical enhancements like PCP.
That's why that first successful resistance buys you just a few seconds to decide whether you can successfully flee. If you decide to stick around, and the guy doesn't surrender, be prepared to kill him with whatever you have at hand, because it may come to that.
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