Uechi-Ryu.com

All I can say is awareness! First off I don't frequent Days Inn or any motels with open room access to the parking lots off busy highways when I travel. My count may be off by a few seconds but it looks like it took the lady 15 sec to try and open the hotel room door! It appears she could not get it open and her husband was assisting her when the attack came. Both were unaware of their surroundings and only focused on getting the door open. To bad but maybe a quicker approach and a watchful eye would have prevented this.

This is Why
I keep a J frame in my pocket. When I am someplace like a motel hallway, stop and rob, or a public rest room, I can keep my hand in my pocket and make any draw a lot quicker and easier.
It never fails to astonish me how clueless most people are of what is going on around them. A weapon would not help a lot of them as they would be down and the thugs gone before they would know what was happening.

We often analyze scenarios from a legal perspective, in order to determine when it is appropriate to shoot. By thinking through the issues in advance, we eliminate or decrease any hesitation that would occur during the incident if we were considering those possibilities for the first time. While we usually use a 'legal' framework, it is still really a 'moral' question. A lot of the emotion that you must overcome is related to the rightfulness of your decision to shoot. To that extent, emotion can be minimized by doing your thinking in advance. This addresses at least one issue: fear of consequences (whether by God or the courts). Other issues (e.g. fear for the safety of your family) are more difficult.

I recall one event back in the 1990s. there was this three man crew of Bounty hunter Bloods...a gang based in 'The Jungle" in Los Angeles. They specialized in very violent home invasions.

Anyway...this crew drives up to an affluent area of town and invades a home. Not a hard thing to do since the stupid liberals kept their front door unlocked, hated guns and actually invited the nice gentlemen from the inner city inside.

Once inside they raped the woman in front of her husband and kids, pistol whipped everyone and stuck a pistol in a little girl's mouth to coerce the parents to give up the cash.

To make a long story short, we caught up with them on Eastbound I-10 and engaged in a pursuit. This was totally against policy since my partner and I were in plain clothes in an unmarked car (albeit code three capable). Those of you, who have lived in LA, imagine a Friday Night at about 1900 HRS driving into the downtown area.

Speeds topped 100 MPH. Eventually another unit caught up to us and took over the pursuit, but we were not about to back off so we stayed. Eventually the bad guys exited the freeway in some parts of town that even the police did not go to. And as we careened over people's lawns, through alleys and split traffic, we lost both our rear view mirrors and most of the paint on both sides of the car, a very nice undercover Mustang as I recall.

As they are wont to do, the bad guys crashed their car in some backlot and began firing at us as they ran away and we closed in. They were armed with Glock 21s.

I recall opening the passenger door as my partner put the car into a sideways skid to avoid hitting the barriers. I was out of the car before it stopped moving, my sawed off 870 in hand. I remember running toward three figures I could make out because of their white t-shirts and their muzzle flashes. As I brought up my 870 and began firing...

I think it was 1983, stolen Jaguar. He had so much more car than I did, but I got lucky and figured out his plan and headed him off. The chase termiated in a parking lot of a 7-11. The driver swung the car around and said to his companion "this is fun!" He then tried to run over my buddy Tim who had emptied his pistol and was standing there in the street clicking on spent chambers.

I put my car between Tim and the the Jaguar and I started shooting at about 10 yards. I kept shooting through impact and we ended up spinning with my driver's door against his. I remember being distinctly pissed off that he was trying to kill Tim. But it was controlled and I shot the driver 6 times. His passenger reached under the seat and I shot him through his right pectoral right where I put the front sight. He got real still and sat there till the dust cleared with his buddy's brains all over him.

Do not assume that you cannot be self controlled in a shooting. You can. I sat and watched the passenger while i dropped the magazine and replaced it with a fresh one. Only later did I feel the shakes.

I would have probably felt just like Gabe under the circumstances he described...eager to join the fight.

Philip Caputo wrote in A Rumor of War that accepting your death is one of the most liberating experiences you can have. We do not glory in death like a heathen of old but realize the Lord is with us.

Some people are thankful they survive and then others curse the fact they were the ones who did survive. I know from first hand experience. You don't get to tell yourself to be strong or anything else after the fight. There is too much going on inside you and too much going on around you.

Generally after a fight I felt huge amounts of guilt because of the things I didn't do and I felt ill enough to vomit. I was also so nervous and exhausted that sometimes I wish I would have just got hit myself.

Things start to get really personal in those situations and especially when you lose friends. Just being there will eventually break even the toughest dudes you can think of. That is just the nature of combat.

When someone breaks it is permanent and for life. That is truly finding out just how unfair life is the hard way. Your life will never be the same after that.