Fight Em 'Til They DIE!

Last season, we did an episode of SHOOTING GALLERY on a a pretty innovative self-defense program in Portland called Fist Feet Knife Gun (FFKG). Instructor Rich Daniel has a training drill he does with Soft Air guns called his "15 Second Drill." The basic idea is that you shoot an attacker, then defend yourself for 15 seconds (or 30 seconds, etc.) until the attacker finally stops and/or croaks.

The point of this drill is that gun people tend to think of their weapons as just short of nuclear — you shoot somebody, and BLAM-O, just like in a Hollywood movie the bad guy is reduced to a small steaming pile of ash. What generally happens in the Real World, however, is that you shoot someone and that someone, having failed to read the Guns & Ammo article on the "amazing one-shot-stop capability of Acme Manstopper Hollowpoints," fails to fall down or even slow down. Instead, he continues to attack, possibly even overcoming you and your gat. Daniel's point — keep fighting until the fight is over.

Here's a real world example from Jerry Miculek-Crawfish-Land:

A Clinton, LA, woman fired her pistol at a man who lunged at her in the darkness of her home Wednesday morning, then survived a severe beating as the intruder tried to wrestle the gun from her hands.

"I didn't know if I hit him or not," Georgia Belle Sullivan recalled later Wednesday. "He grabbed me, and we went to the floor and we struggled for a while. He was trying to get the gun away, because he kept saying, 'I want your money, and I want your gun.' "

The man, Arthur Sanford, 44, died from a single gunshot wound to the chest, East Feliciana Parish Sheriff Talmadge Bunch said.

"After she shot him, he fought her until he died," Bunch said.

Police say she fired a .38 special from a short-barreled .357 revolver (you can tell you're in the South because the reporters actually knew about guns!), and the gun was discharged several other times during the struggle. Police also speculate that the bad guy wasn't able to get the gun away from Ms. Georgia Belle because the short barrel offered no leverage. You might want to mention this point the next time a gunstore commando gives you the "longer barrels are always better, especially in a bedside gun" lecture.