Prepared and Armed : Team Shooting Tactics for Home Defense

258 Pages·2014·2.51 MB·English

by  Joseph Terry

PREPARED & ARMED
TEAM SHOOTING TACTICS FOR HOME
DEFENSE
JOSEPH TERRY
Living Ready BOOKS
IOLA, WISCONSIN
www.LivingReadyOnline.com
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
PART 1: ASSEMBLING YOUR FIRE TEAM
CHAPTER 1: The Function and Form of a Civilian Fire Team
CHAPTER 2: Selecting Members for a Fire Team and Survival
Group
CHAPTER 3: Basic Gun-Handling Skills
CHAPTER 4: Advanced Firearms Skills
PART 2: EQUIPPING YOUR FIRE TEAM
CHAPTER 5: Selecting Unit Standard Equipment for Your Fire Team
CHAPTER 6: Training With Airsoft Guns
CHAPTER 7: The Fire Team Combat Load
CHAPTER 8: Selecting and Hardening a Fortified Residence
PART 3: TRAINING YOUR FIRE TEAM
CHAPTER 9: Three Tactical Roles
CHAPTER 10: Eight Areas of Tactical Proficiency
CHAPTER 11: Tactical Communication Skills
CHAPTER 12: Tactical Principles of Static Defense
CHAPTER 13: Basic Patrol Tactics
CHAPTER 14: Tactical Assault Techniques
CHAPTER 15: Advanced Tactical Techniques for a Gunfight
CHAPTER 16: Heroic Medical Response Under Primitive Conditions
CHAPTER 17: Advanced Outdoor Skills for a Displacement Scenario
PART 4: OPERATING AS A FIRE TEAM
CHAPTER 18: The Mad Minute: Dealing with Armed Mobs
CHAPTER 19: Responding to Neighbors in Need
CHAPTER 20: Dealing With Law Enforcement and the National
Guard
Parting Shots
APPENDIX
List A: Sample Three Shooter Fire Team Armaments List
List B: Sample Three Shooter Fire Team Armaments List, Modest
Cost
List C: Contents of the Combat Ruck
List D: Contents of the Medical “Jump Bag”
Bibliography
Glossary
Dedication
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, it’s 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
PREFACE:
DISASTERS AND THE HUMAN
CONDITION
During the more than twenty-seven years I’ve 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 cop—cities 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. It’s
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 that’s 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.
BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE, WELL-BALANCED FIRE TEAM
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 don’t. 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 doesn’t
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, don’t 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.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Some of my colleagues in law enforcement may shudder at the thought of
sharing team gunfighting techniques with civilians. That’s unfortunate because
well-prepared citizens can be law enforcement’s 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 wasn’t 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? Don’t try to rip people off on the opening
week of deer season!
And looking to civilians to help law enforcement is not just something from
the history books. I shared some tactical training with an Alaska State Trooper
who described flying his bush plane solo into small villages to deal with …
whatever. “How far away is your cover?” I asked. “When I land,” he said with a
modest smile, “I’m always met by two or three locals who I know from past
experience will back me up just fine.”
The topics covered in this book are more complex, of course. Nobody wants
tactical tips to end up in the wrong hands, but after much reflection I think they
probably won’t. I’ve helped process hundreds of prisoners into custody, and
never, not once, included a book on their property inventory sheet or found one
when we impounded their cars or tossed their apartments. Gangbangers and self-
absorbed young sociopaths may be cunning, but they appear as a class, almost
entirely illiterate.
None of this information requires a security clearance. These techniques are
all described in the public domain and well demonstrated in the recent crop of
special ops movies, some of which are quite good. And if a bad boy does happen
to get his hands on this book, it would probably be a good idea for him to keep
this in mind: If you think your crew can take on SWAT because of this
information, think again. The “young guns” in black suits will clean your clock.
I’ve watched them stand on the line and ping metal plates with their pistols from
fifty yards just for kicks. From across the room, they can put three suppressed
rounds into a target the size of a softball with a sound like a quiet fart in less than
a second. From three-hundred yards out, they can put a sniper round through a