You've got to be carefully taught

“Experience,” baseball philosopher Vernon Law famously said, “is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” Oxford don philosopher C.S. Lewis put it like this: “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

The ballplayer, who was merely characterizing experience, turns out always to be right. The don, predicting its effect, sadly, isn’t. It turns out that the modern human capacity for ignoring hard-taught lessons is profound. You will be able to watch this play out in the next few days as the world assesses the lessons from the mosque shootings in New Zealand. Predictably, most folks will “learn” the exact lesson that best suits what they already believe. Those convinced that evil arises from the barrel of gun will “learn” that lesson again, ignore all others, and fight to force it on all and sundry. Those inclined to attribute mystical, evil, trans-global powers to politicians they despise will “learn” that the political leaders they despise have mystical,evil, trans-global powers, ignoring all other possible motives and means.*

Those of us who take the world as it comes, who try to be clear-eyed about the lesson the harsh schoolmistress teaches, must do better. We have learned here before. In the most terrible way imaginable, we have been brought to class by a unique teacher.

For what has to have been the first time, the shooter in the first mosque wore a camera. Despite the best efforts of benighted officials seeking to repress this vital tool, I’ve seen it. I watched its nearly 17 horrific minutes four times before the link was sent where governments often send hard truths. Because while it is horrible,** it is true. It is the truest thing you will ever see. And it has lessons to teach.

Observe: The shooter was able to approach from down the block and enter the building unchallenged while in full tactical gear and carrying two long guns.

Lesson: Live in Condition Yellow

Observe: He passed several members of the mosque, who did not even call out.

Lesson: SEE something so you can say something.

Observe: He entered through an open gate and an open exterior door. (The side exterior doors to the Mosque were also open.) The shooter then walked up and down the same hallway repeatedly, but never even tried the several doors on either side of the hallway where other worshipers were hiding.

Lesson: Get a door between you and the shooter. Lock the door if you can.

Observe: The shooter was on scene for six minutes, returning once to his car down the block to retrieve another weapon and more ammunition, then re-entering the mosque. There was no police response while the shooter was on scene. After a second entry to the Mosque, the shooter went back to his car and drove calmly away.

Lesson: You have to solve the problem without the police. You are your own first responder, and likely the only one who can be there on time.

Observe: No one made any attempt to intervene with him, to attack him, to get inside his OODA Loop. (One worshiper ran into him as the worshiper tried to flee, but made no effort to disarm the shooter.) This despite the fact there were multiple opportunities to engage the shooter during many clumsy reloads and many malfunctions he had with his weapons. He frequently turned his back on his victims. He walked blindly through openings.

Lesson: Mass shooters will provide opportunities for violence of action. Take advantage of them. You're probably going to die, so take your best shot.

Observe: Most victims died cowering in corners. The shooter shot everyone he could see – many times. Needless to say, no one was able to exchange fire with the shooter, because New Zealand largely disarms its citizens.

Lesson: You - and you only - are responsible for your own safety.

Lesson: You have to stop the shooter, because the shooter won’t stop until he’s done.

Observe: The shooter was, in fact, very poorly trained if trained at all. He charged into rooms, he had lousy target awareness, he turned his back on people who should have been threats to his safety, he could not clear a failure-to-feed, fumbled reloads, and more. An armed worshiper with even minimal training and the right mindset would have been more than a match for him.

Lesson: Have a gun. Carry the gun. Get trained with the gun. Be prepared – morally, spiritually, physically – to employ the gun to save your life and others’ lives.

Observe: We know the point above is correct because this shooter’s accomplice DID encounter armed resistance at the second mosque. A worshiper (likely “illegally” armed given New Zealand’s laws) fired at the shooter there and that shooter instantly abandoned his attack.

Lesson: Armed resistance stops mass shooters.

* I was able to come back twelve hours after this post originally went up and add links demonstrating exactly my point. That Chelsea Clinton and Donald Trump were both credited with such powers makes the point an even finer one.

** And it is utterly horrific. Human bodies piled like snow drifts in the corners. The impact of shotgun rounds striking skulls. The shooter’s cavalier, flippant commentary as scores die crying out for mercy. You should watch it. Because it’s true. But I won’t think less of you if you can’t. The lessons are still the lessons, but they do burn in a bit more deeply with the viewing.

Wherein the Suburban Sheepdog engages in wild speculation . . . *

One thing we simply don’t do here at the Suburban Sheepdog is engage in wild speculation. Well. . . . It's not completely prohibited, I suppose, but it is certainly discouraged. Yes . . .  discouraged. Frowned upon, one might say. Not the done thing. So maybe let's call this "Theater of the Mind" instead. 

For folks with even the slightest knowledge of how guys “in the boats” operate (and I claim only the slightest knowledge), the story has had the smell of a Qatari-fishmonger’s day-old wares right from the start. It goes like this:

Two modern Riverine Command Boats (carrying loads of sophisticated navigation equipment, communications gear, highly maintained engines, experienced sailors and – not for nothing – tow ropes), supposedly traveling within sight of the eastern shore of Arabian Peninsula while transiting down the western edge of the Persian Gulf got leagues** off course and both run aground/suffer simultaneous multiple engine failures/both run out of fuel (this bit of the tale changes with each telling), and thus wind up in notoriously unfriendly Iranian waters, where they are seized.***

I know, right . . . ?

But to understand a story, to test its smell, you have to know the context in which is told. So how about this for that . . ..

The US and Iran, perhaps as an adjunct to Let’s Make a Deal, perhaps as a prerequisite to it, perhaps as a result, agree that there will be a prisoner exchange. We will get back five folks, including a journalist, a student and a pastor. Iran gets back seven prisoners, most of whom were being held for illegally exporting military or nuclear program materiel, and we agree to take another Iranian 14 fugitives off of Interpol’s wanted list. From the US administration’s perspective, the exchange is cheap at twice the price, because our people come home.

But for Iran, not so much. The trouble for Iran is that, like any despotry, the most important propaganda isn’t the kind they broadcast to the rest of an unbelieving world. Instead, the propaganda that matters most is the kind that is disseminated to its own citizens. They must continually be reminded of – on the one hand – the threat posed by whomever is playing foil to the regime (for Iran, of course, that’s been US, in the role of “The Great Satan,” a performance running since at least the overthrow of Mossadegh and extended indefinitely) and – on the other hand – the power of the Supreme Leader (or El Jefe Maximo or The Grand Poobah or whatever he’s locally dubbed) to resist that existential outside threat. Only thus can the President for Life or the Revolutionary Counsel or the Mighty Morphin’ Magic Mullah justify all the torture, repression and bread lines, and keep his own people at least marginally at bay.

So, knowing they are about to release some US “spies” and “operatives,” and not quite satisfied with a better than 4-to-1 exchange rate, one can imagine Iran demanding that a callow U.S. administration put a little sweetener into the pot. Our benighted leadership is all too eager to ante up. But  . . . what’s left? We’re already giving back all the money we seized and lifting the sanctions we imposed, all on unverifiable promises that Iran will behave itself in years to come, you know, nuclear bomb-wise. We already have demonstrated that a few unauthorized missile launches here and there aren’t going to be enough to queer the deal. Naked before a fully-clothed Iran, what’s left for the pot in this one-sided strip poker game? What to do? What to do?

And then I imagine**** someone speaking up from the back row of some conference room  – maybe an eager-beaver back-wall staffer who’s prized for thinking outside the box: “Say . . .  How about some American sailors on their knees? Now hear me out. . . .  There’s – I dunno – a ‘navigation failure.’ They – whadaya call it? – ‘stray into Iranian waters’? And you Iranians . . .ya know . . . seize the boats. Nobody gets hurt. You  guys take some photos and steal some telephone SIM cards. Maybe you shoot a little video that you can broadcast over encouraging chyrons describing the ‘cowardice’and ‘submission of the United States.’ Time it just right to coordinate with the prisoner exchange. . .  Then you give the sailors back and we get to say we ‘recovered’ them, which is easy 'cause we gave em over in the first place.  . . ."

"Ohhh! Ohhh!" pipes up a staffer on the political team, eager to think outside a box of her own. "Get this  . . . this is good: POTUS doesn't say a word about the seizure during the State of the Union. Team R howls. Then they look foolish when we announce it like the next day. Sort of like Operation Neptune Spear and the Correspondents' Dinner. The President is going to look so  -- what's the word? -- Presidential."

"Three or four news cycles at the most" says the first staffer, glaring at the young woman who has stolen some of his thunder, vowing his revenge. "Everybody gets well. We emphasize the prisoner exchange; you focus on the 'incursion.' Whadaya say?"

But that’s all wild speculation. . . .

. . .  And we don’t do that here.

* . . . and uses a lot of ellipses.

** “League” is just a salty way of saying 3 nautical miles. Nautical mile is just a salty way of saying 1.15 miles. To get the picture, try this exercise. Go to Google Maps and search up “Farsi Island.” (Keep zooming in; you will see it eventually.) Now draw a line from Kuwait to Bahrain. There you go. Actual distances involved are about 42 miles between Farsi Island and the nearest point on the Saudi coast. Yes, the Iranians claim waters around Farsi Island as their own. Even so . . .

*** I have no cavil with the “seized” part from that point. These boats are not designed to engage in combat on the open seas with bigger craft, nor was the mission here to do so, nor would the Rules of Engagement have allowed such a fight.

**** And of course, I only can imagine, since I wasn’t in the room where it happened.

 

Rules of Engagement

Col. John Dean “Jeff” Cooper was a genius. Even if you are a shooter, if you’re not the sort of shooter who dedicates himself to shooting as a martial art, you may never have heard of Col. Cooper. That’s a shame, and you ought to do something about that. But greater by far than the offense of a shooting neophyte who hasn't heard of Cooper, is the sin of the lifetime shootist or gunfighter who thinks Cooper’s genius was confined to shooting alone.

Lots of people have made a difference in how we shoot today, and, more importantly, on how we employ firearms as weapons. Jordan, Applegate, Fairbairn, Weaver and many others played their parts, Cooper’s Modern Technique owes something to all of them. But the aspect of Cooper’s genius that is often missed – that a lawyer especially appreciates – was his ability to distill the English language to concentrations of highest potency. With the possible exception of those twice delivered downhill by Moses, you would be hard pressed to find any set of laws, drafted by any legislature in the whole history of lawmaking, that accomplishes its goal as completely, in as few words, and with less susceptibility to misapplication or mischief than Cooper’s Four Rules:

1. All guns are always loaded.

2. Never let the muzzle cover anything which you are not willing to destroy.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.

4. Always be sure of your target.

There it is, in 37 words, the perfect gun safety system. Barring spontaneous combustion, you cannot inadvertently hurt yourself, or anyone else, with your firearm unless you violate more than one of these rules at the same time. If you have foolishly put your finger on the trigger without a target in sight – and even if you pull that trigger – if you haven’t also simultaneously violated Rule 2, the only consequence will be embarrassment. If, in violation Rule 1, you have treated the weapon as empty when in fact it is loaded, unless you violate both Rules 2 and 3, no harm will ensue.

Through the years, quibblers have quibbled about the Four Rules* and come-lately gun gurus often try to make a name by “improving” them. But the genius of the Four Rules, as anyone who has ever tried to draft a law or craft a contract can tell you, is their extreme economy and their seamless interconnection.

These rules work everywhere and always. Employ these rules and no one and nothing you don’t mean to shoot will get shot. They are equally as effective at the county shooting range with your 10-year-old when he first learns to shoot a pistol** as they are when you’re stacked up with rest of your team of Tier One bad asses, ready to kick in some HVT’s door. Which is not the same thing as saying that every rule has equal application in every situation. For example, lawmen routinely draw down on suspects, allowing their muzzles to cover people they aren't at least immediately willing to destroy.*** But at such moments, even as they knowingly violate Rule 2, they had best be scrupulous in their fidelity to Rule 3.

The consequences of violating the Four Rules can be extreme. And while it’s bad enough when the one who violates the Rule suffers the consequence, I’d suggest that it is the violation of Rule 4 that has the greatest potential for tragedy. That “home invader” hammering at your door at 3 a.m. just might be a drunken cousin looking for place to sleep. You may have every reason to kill that bad guy. But being “sure of your target” means knowing in that instant and yet to a certainty where each and every bullet is going to come to rest – a fact that exists within the dynamic framework of your ability to hit the target, the ballistic realities of your target and the round you’re firing, what’s next to and behind the target, and what might pass between you and the target in the time it takes you to break the shot.

We have seen more or less wholesale violation of Rule 4 in the past few days by lawmen on the west coast. Although, admittedly, it will be a long time before all the facts are known, it seems likely they  let an understandable but unaccustomed atmosphere of fear degrade their adherence to the rule. This kind of result is not unheard of, even without the looming threat of a manifesto spewing cop killer on the loose. The police are merely men (and women, of course) and men are massively fallible creatures. But that truth will prove little comfort to the cops who took those shots and now may face career discipline, civil liability, vilification and dark nights of the soul. Less comfort, still, to the wounded and the families of the dead.

No one can doubt my allegiance to, admiration of and love for the beleaguered, endangered cop on the beat, individually and as a species. But the lesson is there for the taking this week and heaven help us – especially those of us who vindicate our responsibility for self protection by exercising our right to go armed – if we do not stop to learn it afresh.

* Rule 1 comes under fire from time to time, since it appears to be a fiction. Not every gun really is always loaded, the cavil goes. But the sense of Cooper’s rule is evident to anyone who has ever been handed an unloaded firearm by a friend, or removed one from its case, only to find out that it wasn't. Treating empty firearms like loaded ones cannot get you hurt; the same cannot be said for the inverse.

**  . . . after, of course, learning, memorizing and understanding the Four Rules.

*** This is bad practice for the non-lawman armed citizen. Your weapon ought not depart the holster unless you plan imminently to shoot someone. But that’s another post.