Hi,
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NOT IN NY STATE!!
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Try doing that self defense crap will land you in jail 95% of the time!
Maybe if you wait to get wounded, then attack---MAYBE!
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You better damn well be able to prove lethal force was necessary!
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Example: that Getz guy a few years back.
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Kurt
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=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

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OT- The Deadliest Men

Group: rec.crafts.metalworking Date: Fri, Mar 12, 2004, 10:22am (EST+5)
From: (Gunner)
Situation: A law-abiding armed citizen faces multiple armed robberies
and murder attempts.
Lesson: Only the power of lawful force can answer the power of lawless
criminal force.
A few years ago, the TV program Turning Point focused on private
citizens who had used guns in self-defense. In refreshing contrast to
much of the mainstream electronic media, the show for the most part gave
a fair and balanced portrayal of ordinary people who had been forced to
resort to defensive firearms in extraordinary circumstances. I wrote
about it in this space at the time. Among the Turning Point shootings we
discussed were the series of armed robberies and attempted murders
defeated by Lance Thomas, the owner of a watch shop in Los Angeles.
In 2001, Paladin Press published one of the best "reads" of the year for
people who follow the gun culture and understand the principles of
self-protection. The author is Paul Kirchner, who has collaborated with
Col. Jeff Cooper on previous books, and the title is The Deadliest Men:
The World's Deadliest Combatants Through the Ages. It covers figures as
disparate as the French swordswoman known as La Maupin, such great
American war heroes as Alvin York and Audie Murphy; gunfighters like
Wild Bill Hickok and Bat Masterson, and a man named Lance Thomas.
Over a period of less than 3 years, Thomas was involved in four gun
battles against a total of 11 known suspects. He shot six of them,
killing five. The watch dealer himself was wounded on two of these
occasions, taking a total of five rounds. There are many lessons that
the rest of us can learn: Lessons of long-term strategy and short-term
tactics; of gun selection and ammunition effectiveness; and, above all,
of courage under fire in the moment, and of determination over the long
haul.
August 10, 1989.
Like so many storekeepers, Thomas feels his watch shop would be a safer
place if he had a gun with which to fend off armed robbers. He has
acquired a Model 36, a five-shot Smith & Wesson .38 Chief Special. He
keeps the snubnose revolver where he can reach it easily. On this day,
he'll be glad he did.Two men enter. One appears to have some sort of
weapon, and the other pulls what Thomas recognizes as a 9mm
semiautomatic pistol. Thomas knows he can just give the man his money
and goods, but he also knows that to do so is to trust his life to the
whim of a violent man unlawfully wielding a deadly weapon. Instead,
Thomas chooses to fight.His hand flashes to the Chief Special, and he
comes up shooting. The little revolver barks three times. Two of his
bullets miss, but one smashes into the gunman's face, putting him out of
the fight. The merchant swings toward the accomplice, but cannot see a
weapon at the moment, and so, does not fire. Instead, he orders the
suspect to leave. The now-compliant accomplice does so, dragging his
wounded comrade with him. The robber will survive. Lance Thomas is
unhurt. His decision to be an armed citizen, to fight back, has been
validated. The wounded robber will be charged, and the armed citizen has
the sympathy of the authorities. Thomas has won in every respect.
In assessing the aftermath, the Rolex specialist analyzes what he has
learned with the same precision he applies to the repair and adjustment
of fine watches. It is not lost on him that he has expended 60 percent
of his ammunition to neutralize 50 percent of his antagonists. It occurs
to him that a single five-shot revolver might not be enough if there's a
next time, and that there won't be much opportunity to reload.And what
if he had been caught out of reach of his Smith? Thomas expands his
defensive strategy. The .38 is joined by a trio of .357 Magnum
revolvers: a Colt Python, a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum, and a
Ruger Security-Six. He arrays them a few feet apart within the small
perimeter of his workspace so there will always be one within reach no
matter where he's standing.If he runs dry, he won't even think about
reloading: he'll simply drop the empty gun and grab another fully loaded
one.
Professional Hit
November 27, 1989.
This time, it's the kind of professional hit that the NYPD Stakeout
Squad warned you about-- a five-man team of thugs who know what they're
doing. There's seeded backup, a perpetrator ambling around on the
sidewalk outside, pretending to be a passerby. The outrider is in the
driver's seat of the getaway car, at once a wheelman and a potential
killer who can murderously interdict responding officers, or go inside
with heavy weapons to rescue accomplices who are captured inside the
premises. The remaining three perpetrators comprise the raid team.It
opens hot, fast and ugly. One of the perpetrators opens up on Lance
Thomas without warning, firing a semiautomatic pistol, hitting him four
times with eight rounds fired. Three of the .25 ACP bullets bite into
Thomas' right shoulder, a fourth into his neck. The watchmaker grabs the
nearest revolver, the Ruger .357, missing with the first shot but
scoring with the next five.The gunman falls to the floor and so does the
Security-Six: it has clicked empty. Thomas drops it, lunging for the
next nearest weapon, the snubnose .38 that had saved him last time.Now
he engages the second suspect, who is shooting at him. Thomas shoots
back. That gun, too, runs dry. He hasn't hit his antagonist, but he
hasn't been hit either, and the second robber is in no mood to continue
the gunfight.The third inside suspect opens fire at Thomas. Wounded, but
furious and still in the fight, the storekeeper grabs his third gun of
the shootout, another .357. As Paul Kirchner relates it, he "empties it
into" the third gunman. That offender goes down.The little watch shop is
filled with the stench of smokeless powder and the reek of blood. The
second offender wants no more of being shot at, and has abjured from the
conflict.Outside, the two additional robbers realize that three of their
colleagues have gone inside for an easy score, there has been a long
volley of explosive gunfire, and only one has come back out alive.
Whatever is in there, they don't want any part of it. The three
surviving robbers flee.
Inside, only one of the combatants is standing. Bleeding but defiant,
the wounded Lance Thomas looks down at the two men he has killed. In the
course of the fight, he has fired 19 shots. Charmed Life. Some people
are beginning to think that Thomas bears a charmed life. Since an enemy
sent into ignominious retreat can certainly be said to have been
vanquished, the score now stands at Lance Thomas 7, Armed Robbers
0.However, it occurs to the storekeeper that his survival armory might
need another firepower upgrade. This time, he decides to try
semiautomatic pistols. He buys four, all SIGs, that operate the same
way. One is the compact nine-shot P-225 9mm. The other three are
assorted versions of the P-220 8-shot .45 auto.As the Turning Point
cameras pan across his gun collection, we see the American-style of SIG
with push-button magazine release as well as the European-style with the
butt heel mag release. There is a Browning BDA, which is a European
P-220 by a different name.Magazine release styles don't matter. Lance
Thomas still doesn't plan to reload. If one gun runs dry, he'll reach
for another. He now has up to eight handguns readily available. Fully
loaded, they hold 56 rounds between them.With his plan, they all
function essentially the same: grab gun, index weapon on target, pull
trigger until it stops shooting, grab additional guns, repeat as
necessary. Thomas commits himself to constant practice in accessing one
or another of his defense guns from any conceivable position.
Two Year Break
December 4, 1991.
It has been more than two years since the last incident. Some others
would be complacent by now. Not Lance Thomas, who has learned that
vigilance equals survival, and from the beginning has realized he is
responsible for the safety of his customers.On this date a male
perpetrator strides in, accompanied by a female accomplice who shows no
weapon. The man pulls a loaded Glock pistol. He points the gun at Thomas
and orders him to be motionless.No way. Thomas goes for his gun.The
perpetrator fires first, pumping a 9mm bullet through Thomas' neck,
drilling a wound channel that is just a fraction of an inch from being
fatal. But now, Thomas has reached his rarest pistol, the little P225,
and he is firing back.The watch shop proprietor has been forced into an
awkward hold on the gun, and he can only fire three rounds-- all
straight into the chest of his opponent-- before his imperfect grasp
causes the usually reliable SIG 9mm to jam. Without missing a beat, he
drops it and grabs one of its big brothers, which he fires into the
opponent five more times until the armed robber falls and stops trying
to commit murder.Frozen in terror, the female accomplice offers no
violence. It's over.Wounded, Lance Thomas will recover. Not so the
criminal who shot him, who will die of the eight rounds-- all hits,
eight for eight-- that the armed citizen has inflicted with his two
SIG-Sauer pistols.
Ever Vigilant
February 20,1992.
It has been just over two and a half months since the last shootout.
Lance Thomas has remained vigilant. Now, his wariness pays off.
Two armed perpetrators enter the store. As soon as Thomas sees the
automatic pistol in one of their hands, he reflexes to his nearest
pistol, one of the P-220s. This perpetrator goes down fast, hit with
what author Kirchner describes as most of a "gunload" of .45 ACP
ammunition. Grabbing another P-220, Thomas engages the second armed
robbery suspect and shoots him four times. The suspect falls. The danger
is over. Both armed robbers are dead at the shopowner's hands. In four
gun battles, Lance Thomas has fired 40-plus shots. He has killed five
men, and wounded another. He has defeated a total of 11 perpetrators,
either shot down or driven off in abject flight. He has been wounded
five times.
Word On The Street
By now the word was out on the street. Some of those who had died by the
blazing Thomas guns had been members of the organized street gangs that
infest Los Angeles like an advanced, spreading cancer. They had declared
war. They were going to rake Lance Thomas' watch shop with drive-by
shootings and massacre his customers for revenge. The armed citizen had
to make a difficult decision. Thomas had stood up to the armed criminals
for some 29 months. He was ready to continue to risk his own life,
however, he felt he had no right to risk the lives of customers and
bystanders in the face of this latest threat. Reluctantly, sadly, he
switched to business by mail order and Internet. The watch shop was
closed. The big Rolex sign that some believed had attracted the robbers
like flies came down. Lance Thomas moved. The epoch of a modern urban
gunfighter had ended.
Ayoob's Analysis
There were those who said that Lance Thomas was a vigilante, something
out of the Death Wish movies. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Thomas never went looking for men to harm. The harm came to him, and he
warded it off. None of the predators he shot had been hunted down and
self-righteously executed. Each and every one of them had died from a
sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process. This is why
each and every one of the deaths Thomas inflicted was ruled a
justifiable homicide. "It is not unusual for critics of the American
scene to deplore what they hold to be an uncivilized toleration of
personal violence in our society," Jeff Cooper once wrote. "Violent
crime is not so much the issue, but rather the use of violence by
socially acceptable persons in self-defense, in the righting of wrongs,
and in meeting challenging situations. Such critics feel that Americans
are too ready to ignore the police and handle their emergencies
personally; and that, further, this barbarous attitude is encouraged,
rather than inhibited, by our tradition."
Some thought Lance Thomas a dangerous man. I spoke at length with one of
the producers of the Turning Point episode that featured the fighting
watchmaker. He was appalled that Thomas had said that one reason he had
survived these nearly unsurvivable experiences was that he had been
"ready to die." I explained that the producer had misunderstood the
point. "Ready to die" didn't mean wanting to die in the
suicidal-cum-homcidal sense; it meant prepared to die if necessary.
There are some things worth dying for. Freedom, including the right to
make your living doing your chosen work. Protection of others from
violence. There were times when innocent friends and customers were in
the store when the attackers came in with guns in their hands and their
fingers on the triggers. There were doubtless gang-bangers in Los
Angeles who thought they had won, having driven off the man they feared.
If so, they were deluding themselves. Lance Thomas had stood against 11
of them and won, 11 to nothing. Each time he had been against multiple
intruders, never less than two-to-one odds and as high as five-to-one.
He came back each time, resolute and defiant.He left only when, the
threats to himself extended and went past him, reaching out to innocent
customers and bystanders whom he could not protect out on the sidewalk
if the promised drive-by shootings had come to pass. The same man who
risked his life to stand up for his rights and to protect others, chose
to give up the shop he had created, the shop he loved, for the sake of
the safety of strangers.Lance Thomas was a better and more moral man
than any of the street gang cowards who hated him, a better and more
moral man than any of the commentators who criticized him from the
safety of their office desks.Tactical LessonsSome observers in the gun
world thought Thomas would have been better served to carry his hardware
on his person instead of stashing the guns in strategic locations in the
shop The theory is that when the gun is on your person. it is always
where you can reach it, and also simultaneously secured from
unauthorized personnel.The criticism has some validity; In his third
gunfight, if Thomas could have quick-drawn from his hip instead of
having to stretch and reach for his SIG, he might not have taken that
first gunshot to the neck, which came so close to killing him.We each
bring our own preferences and habits to these topics. This writer
prefers to keep the gun on his person, and has done so since growing up
in a jewelry store much like the one in this case. Yet Lance Thomas'
story hits close to home, because my father used he same strategy of
keeping his handguns seeded at various places in the store plus a
shotgun in the back room.There are times-- when seated behind a watch
repair bench, for example-- when it might be faster and easier to reach
for a holster nailed to the side of the bench than to draw from one's
belt.For the most part, the strategy worked for Thomas. It worked better
the more guns he had. Toward the end, according to the Turning Point
people, he had a gun about every three feet. His workplace was fairly
compact. The larger the workspace, the more room there is for the good
guy to move, the more sense it makes for the gun to be on the
shopkeeper's person instead of in a fixed location.Practice is critical.
Turning Point filmed Thomas at a shooting range, firing rapidly from a
Weaver stance. Kirchner notes that he constantly practiced quick-draw of
his guns from their resting places. There can be no doubt that both of
these practices helped Lance Thomas survive his gunfights.
Firepower was a factor in all but the first, three-shot incident. The
next three averaged more than a dozen shots by Thomas per incident. Add
in the first shooting, and it still comes out to at least 10 shots per
gunfight fired by the defender, 19 shots in one incident. Once the scope
of the predictable threat became evident to him, Thomas was wise indeed
to upgrade his firepower from the five-shot, snubnose revolver he
started with. Some critics-- usually ensconced safely in armchairs--
opine that five shots should be enough for five perpetrators. Well,
well. One of Thomas antagonists apparently thought that four shots would
be enough for one Rolex dealer: he shot Thomas four times. Thomas sucked
up the four gunshot wounds and then proceeded to kill the man who shot
him. Others might suggest, "He just didn't use the right ammo." Really?
Unimpressed with the effects of conventional .38 Special ammo in his
first shooting, he went to the Glaser Safety Slug, and was underwhelmed
with its performance the next time, out in the real world. He shot men
multiple times with 9mm and 45 automatics and with .357 Magnum revolvers
and had to shoot them again and again.
Sometimes, against dangerous men in the heat of battle, nothing less
than multiple serious gunshot wounds will short-out the attack. If we
learn nothing else from Lance Thomas' four gunfights, we cannot miss
learning this. Will. The predators had strong motivations-- greed,
perhaps anger, certainly lust for power over others. When fought back
against by surprise, some exhibited great will to live, as evidenced by
the fact that it took so many of the good guy's bullets to put them
down. But one reason Lance Thomas prevailed against them was that his
will to survive, to prevail, to stand up for the right thing was greater
than their will to harm him. Outnumbered, drawing against drawn guns,
sometimes wounded seriously at the opening of the encounters, Thomas
never lost his indomitable will to survive, to fight, to prevail. This,
in the last analysis, may be the most important lesson each of us can
draw from his experiences. Again, a quote from Col. Cooper. "It is very
difficult for a normal man to realize that he is suddenly in danger of
death. The time it takes him to realize this and act upon it may be too
long to save his life. Thus the prime quality of the gunfighter-- more
important than either marksmanship or manual speed-- is the instant
readiness to react to a threat." Amen. The subject of this article had
this trait. It obviously kept him alive.
Final Thoughts
This is one of the very few "Ayoob Files" installments I have written
without debriefing the survivor. I tried more than once to reach Thomas,
and was unable to make contact. Given the many death threats and the
unwelcome press attention, Thomas guards his privacy. It wasn't that he
was hiding in terror from his antagonists. It was more that he took no
pleasure in being lionized for his acts, and simply wanted to live his
own life, quietly and peacefully.
It was all he had ever wanted when the men he had to kill in self-
defense forced their way into his life. In the end, I had to respect his
obvious wishes, and I abandoned the search. Thus, the information above
comes primarily from Turning Point and the excellent Kirchner
book.Kirchner's The Deadliest Men celebrates strong individuals who used
deadly force righteously. You'll not find Jack the Ripper, Henry Lee
Lucas, or the Boston Strangler in those pages, deadly as they were. The
Deadliest Men is a collection of heroes and heroines.
Lance Thomas well deserves his place in the book.
The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of
"loyalty" and "duty." Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute
-- get out of there fast! You may possibly
=A0=A0save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is
doomed. " Lazarus Long