Joseph Terry - Prepared and Armed: Team Shooting Tactics for Home Defense

Living Ready BOOKS

IOLA, WISCONSIN

www.LivingReadyOnline.com

This book is fondly and respectfully dedicated to my father, George. TSgt, 32nd ID, WWII. CIB, Bronze Stars (5). Battles of: Buna-Gona, Sananada, Dobadura, Hollandia, and the invasion of Leyte. He refused a battlefield commission (skipping grade) direct to 1st Lt. because he would have to transfer out and leave his buddies in the outfit. The boys in the Red Arrow Division left their youth and blood fighting the Japanese in the rotting jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines defending our republic from invasion. Now, its up to us to protect it from chaos. The sacrifice of the greatest generation deserves no less.

Any man who is a man may not, in honor, submit to threats of violence. But many men who are not cowards are simply unprepared for the fact of human savagery. They have not thought about it (as incredible as this may appear to anyone who listens to the news) and they just do not know what to do. When they look into the face of depravity or violence they are astonished and confused.

COL. JEFF COOPER

Somebody who thinks there is good in all men ... has not met all men.

LAW ENFORCEMENT PROVERB

During the more than twenty-seven years Ive been involved with law enforcement, I have seen disasters bring out the best and worst in the human condition. Some people rise to the occasion and demonstrate remarkable heroism, self-sacrifice, and focused determination to survive. Others will rob, rape, and steal simply because, if unfettered by traditional law enforcement, they can.

Here is a dose of reality known to every street copcities and counties hire the absolute minimum number of officers and deputies necessary to handle the average pace of criminal activity. If some disruption, natural or man-caused, dramatically increases the number of felonies taking place, local law enforcement can be quickly overwhelmed. If neighboring departments are hit with the same disaster, mutual aid protocols collapse. The corrections system (prisons and jails) will also be overwhelmed and stop functioning. Expect mass escape of prisoners who will operate in well-organized looter gangs.

In the absence of traditional law enforcement services, responsible citizens must step into the breech to protect their neighborhoods from the looting that has now become commonplace in the wake of such disasters. This book is a sample protocol on how citizens can fill that breech ethically and effectively.

It has long been fashionable for the cultural elites to look down on the preparedness community as a bunch of knuckle draggers or collapse-fantasy addicts. This book is hardly evidence of a perverse hope that a disaster will occur. Like a fire extinguisher or a first aid kit, it is simply a prudent investment in case one does. The greatest emergency preparedness tool is a nimble brain, but the brain needs to be constantly fed with new ideas to function properly. Its not even important that you agree with all the ideas presented in this book; simply process them and find points that fit your application.

Your opinions may be quite different from mine on this topic, and thats fine. This book just gives you a chance to think about what you might be up against if you get a busy signal when you dial 911.

Although I strongly recommend you build a comprehensive personal library on all topics related to family disaster preparedness, I have excerpted what I believe to be the most relevant points from my own collection just in case you dont. I have drawn from more than forty published reference works cited in the bibliography, and they represent a wealth of knowledge to supplement my own particular experience. Each reference cited is worth a closer look, and in this age of internet shopping, they are only a click away.

Incidentally, you can have a comprehensive preparedness library in your pocket with an e-reader device, sustained by a crank radio with a charger adapter. Knowledge is power and e-readers can store a wealth of practical information in a small package.

While the thrust of this book is the advanced tactical use of defensive firearms, much of the content is secondary survival-related material, but is still important to know. It is sobering to remember that in the American Civil War, more casualties were caused by disease, post-operative infection, and poor sanitation than gunfire. In a prolonged social collapse or regional natural disaster, much of the American landscape could be thrust into such primitive conditions as the 1860s with a lack of clean water, proper sanitation and healthy food. Deprivation causes panic, and panic is the mood-state that drives the mob.

In an absence of traditional law enforcement services, local groups of responsible citizens can be forged into an effective defensive force (what I will refer to in this book as a fire team) to deter mob aggression. Although the well-coordinated use of firearms is the foundation, it is only one facet of a complex survival task. (Guns are only tools after all.) One member of the fire team needs to be trained in health and wound management, one in communications, codes and navigation, and one in primitive living and outdoor survival skills. All of these areas are covered in this book in some detail because in coping with disaster, the devil will still be lurking in the details. It doesnt matter if you learn how to gunfight as a group if your members are flat on their backs with dysentery or dehydration.

And although understanding equipment is important, dont rush to the store just yet. (People often try to fix a problem by buying something.) Far better to think in the greatest detail possible about the unique challenges you, your family and your neighbors might face and then purchase your equipment.

The objective of this book is to help you project yourself into the harsh contingencies of self-reliance in considerable detail, with the hope that you will never need to actually confront them. The power comes from knowing that if you must, you could. No sane person looks forward to a gunfight, and we should all do everything feasible to avoid it. But if that horrible last resort is thrust upon us, we have only two choices; fight back or die. Prevailing in an armed encounter requires the mental willingness to confront the possibility and the discipline to prepare for it. If you are ready, read on.

Some of my colleagues in law enforcement may shudder at the thought of sharing team gunfighting techniques with civilians. Thats unfortunate because well-prepared citizens can be law enforcements best friends and strongest allies. In the Old West, when the bank was robbed or the stage was held up and the town sheriff put out the posse call, regular folks dropped their hay forks and shop towels and grabbed their guns and rode with him. In the frontier days, keeping the peace wasnt a duty for them, it was a duty for us. On September 7, 1876, the notorious James/Younger gang of bank robbers was blown out of their saddles in Northfield, Minnesota, by angry townspeople who had their rifles handy. Lesson learned? Dont try to rip people off on the opening week of deer season!