Attempted to download a file from "https://github.com/eventespresso/languages-ee4/raw/refs/heads/master/event_espresso-en.po" but encountered a "404 File Not Found" error.
Much ink and video has been devoted to the mass shooting and the young man that stopped it on July 17th, 2022 in Greenwood, Indiana. Eli Dicken, a 21 year old man who was carrying a concealed handgun that day was mentally and physically ready to stop an evil, murderous threat, and that is exactly what he did.
While the gun community and many others rightfully hailed his actions, details on exactly what happened were not very well known or understood. What we were initially told was that Eli fired a total of 10 rounds, with 8 hits, at a distance of 40 yards, in about 15 seconds. As is par for the course, overzealous gun owners took this as the whole story and began to analyze the shooting according to these sparse details.
However if you really understood the nature of gun fights, the human body, and other factors in self defense and you look at these details, it should be obvious that these details really couldn’t have been the whole story. Many have been patiently waiting for more details to emerge so that we can better understand what happened and hopefully take the right lessons away from this event.
On December 21st, the Greenwood police and the FBI held a press conference to give their findings in the case and announce that Dicken would not be charged. Dicken’s attorney spoke out about what happened in an interview the same day with WTHR in late December and gave his account of what he saw in the still unreleased surveillance footage from the mall security cameras. What we have now learned is different from the impression most people took from the original details.
Eli was eating dinner in the food court with his girlfriend. At 5:57 pm, the shooter began firing at shoppers on the other side of the food court after emerging from a hallway. He eventually fired a total of 24 rounds from his AR-15, killing 3 people. Eli reacted by pushing his girlfriend to the floor and took up a position of cover behind a pillar. Eli fired his first 2 shots just a few seconds after the gunman started shooting. His first shots were fired from a stabilized position (atop a trash can) and from approximately 40 yards away from the bad guy. Dicken was forced to stop shooting as bystanders ran in front of his muzzle (at 40 yards in a public space, this was a near certainty). He then had an opportunity to fire 2 more shots from that position and distance. Out of those first 4 shots, he scored 2 hits.
By this time, the bad guy had begun to retreat back into the hallway that he came from. Dicken then moved to close the distance and get into a position to re engage with the now moving threat. At a distance of approximately 20 yards he fired 4 more shots, gaining 4 more hits. Finally Eli closed the distance to about 20 to 25 feet for the last two shots fired as the bad guy stumbled to the ground. At this point the threat was over. The approximate amount of time from when the bad guy started his attack to when the shooting stopped was 15 seconds.
Almost immediately after the shooting stopped and as Eli was assessing the bad guy, a mall security guard made it to the hallway where Eli and the bad guy were. Eli begins to reholster right about the same time the first police officer arrived. In the middle of a mass shooting, having a gun in your hand is a very high risk as law enforcement arrives. It sounds like Eli reholstered as soon as he was sure that the threat was over, but an officer was already arriving. Fortunately the officer quickly assessed that Eli was a good guy and began to control the scene without further endangering Eli.
Let’s look at some of the lessons we can take from this event. Situational awareness during a self defense encounter is critical, and also difficult. Eli apparently did a stellar job of managing his shooting in a crowded, dynamic environment. There was risk in his decision to engage the threat but he managed the risk well and we can clearly see that the benefits of his decision outweighed the risk. This shooting further demonstrates that in a dynamic critical incident, using the “4 universal firearm safety rules” as our approach to safety is absurd. Dicken was actively engaging with the threat and unpredictable bystanders were panicked and running in front of his sight picture. Is it reasonable to expect Eli to “Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction” as he is involved in an active gunfight in a crowded area with a bad guy so far away? This is why we teach that our approach to safety must always be to understand and manage risk and benefit, and that our skills must be ready to meet that risk and control it as much as possible.
We also learned that Eli moved toward the threat. Normally this is not possible, nor is it legally or tactically advisable. But absolutes should be avoided in the world of self defense and this is an example of where closing the distance on a threat proved to be the right move. Without knowing how motivated the bad guy was, Eli picked the right tactic of pressing the fight to the threat and definitively ending it. This tactic again carries it’s own physical and legal risk, but the benefit was to put a definitive end to the active killing in this dynamic critical incident.
Dicken fired from a variety of distances at varying speed. His precision under stress was commendable. But unlike the original story, he did not fire all 10 rounds from 40 yards. His last 4 rounds were fired at approximately 7 yards. We should be focusing our training on balancing the speed and precision of our shooting. Our speed will be determined by the situation, the distance to the target and the size of the target. This will always be a dynamic equation and cannot be applied with a training standard. We also got confirmation that two of the four shots taken at the greatest distance missed the target. In hindsight we can say that no one was hurt by those missed rounds. But 50% accuracy when you are firing in a public space is not an ideal to aspire to. We train to pull the trigger when we believe we will get the hit we want. We don’t attach an arbitrary number to our training and call it “good enough”.
We also learned a few details about the legal aftermath. From the Criminal Defense attorney’s perspective, the police acted professionally and even with compassion. In a self defense shooting, we would all hope that this is the case but most of the time it is not. Fortunately for Dicken, he was treated very well. We also learned that even though Dicken’s shooting was on video, he saved countless lives, he hurt no one else and he acted with extreme skill in a high stress environment, his legal aftermath still took 5 months. 5 months before he could say, “It’s over.” 5 months to get his gun back and 5 months to retain expensive legal counsel. This is why Guns For Everyone recommends that you have a legal plan already in place, and we recommend Firearms Legal Protection for that plan because it’s the best plan on the market and it’s the most affordable.
Dicken’s attorney also alluded to the mental and emotional toll that this has taken on Eli. He is being thanked and congratulated constantly but it’s a reminder each time that he was forced to kill someone, as well as accept that three innocent people lost their lives before he was able to act. That is a heavy toll for any normal person to carry.
The next time you hear a story about self defense, take note that the details matter and the less details we have the less we can be sure of what actually happened, no matter what the youtube experts say. Eli Dicken is a hero, and it would be wrong of me to sit in any kind of judgement of his actions if I wasn’t in his shoes. But we can always take lessons from real life examples and we should not be shy about that.
The final lesson is to carry your tools and train your body. Nobody asked the shoppers that day if they were ready. You are either ready, or you are not. But you do not get to pick the time and the place. Eli was ready, and dozens of lives are owed to his decision to be ready.
This week we are going to look at a video from an armed robbery that took place in Oklahoma City last year. This video starts like so many others, a normal person in the middle of a normal routine. In this case, our victim is at the car wash in the middle of the day.
Notice that our victim here doesn’t have much of an opportunity to respond once he recognizes the threat. The bad guy is able to close the distance to a point where our good guy has really no other option but to comply with the demands. The robber orders him to the ground, face down. Not only is this a difficult position to draw the gun from, but he’s submitting to our armed threat. He is now at his mercy with no viable option for defending himself, only hope.
In the initial moments of the video, our good guy is at his best position to respond with force, IF he has the ability to draw, move, then shoot. The greater the distance between you and the threat, generally speaking the greater advantage the good guy will have. With regular practice on the draw, movement, presentation and firing of the gun, the more likely our good guy would be to deliver an effective hit on target before the bad guy can effectively respond. Once again, we see why efficiency is a key factor in our tools, skills and tactics.
There is no guarantee that the bad guy wouldn’t take a lucky shot that could be life threatening to a defender. As the bad guy closes the distance, the less skill or even luck he needs to deliver an effective shot with his gun. The window of opportunity closes quickly even though our bad guy doesn’t appear to be rushing anything. Acting violently when faced with an active threat will always be risky. The alternative here is to lay face down and hope that this violent criminal won’t fire a round into the back of your head. There are life changing decisions to be made and many times they must be made in fractions of a second. This is why we spend time learning about the “Warrior Expert Theory” in our Tactics focused Free Concealed Carry Classes. This is why we train the brain to recognize the attack as quickly as possible and tie that recognition into the skill to deliver effective actions in our Defensive Shooting classes.
Last week we saw an armed robbery that showed how important it is to have the skills to go with the tool. This week we will be reading about a brave 16 year old boy used a gun to stop a home invasion.
Brayden Jarrett, a 16 year old from Ohio, was home alone when he saw a suspicious vehicle parked in his driveway. He cautiously armed himself with a 9mm handgun that belonged to his mother. As the stranger approached the door, he stood with the unloaded gun. When the intruder starting trying to open the door, Brayden loaded the gun. As the intruder was able to see inside the house, he was confronted with an armed opponent. He swore and quickly ran away.
Brayden and his mom recount the event in the news story linked HERE.
Brayden knew where to find the gun, how to load it, and was prepared to use it. This is not something we can expect from every 16 year old. Kids and teenagers are known to be less than trustworthy and it takes time to build up trust with any child that they can handle responsibility. However, in most states across the country, we start training our teens to drive at 15 years old. We do so under intense supervision and by default we emphasize a lot of practice before we let them drive on their own. As a parent, you are the first and most important person who will assess when your child is ready for the responsibility of driving a car. But it is also normal for most teens to start learning how to handle a car at these ages.
The reason this becomes important in the context of guns is that it has been shown to be true across our history that teenagers have been willing and able to use a firearm to protect themselves, especially within the home where the lines of self defense are much more clearly defined. But in many states, including Colorado, gun owners prohibited by law from giving access to a firearm to an unsupervised minor. Guns must be locked up and parents are criminally liable if a teenager has access to a gun.
This is a perfect example of a blanket solution that doesn’t work in most cases to preserve life and safety. Should a 5 year old have access to a gun, in almost every case, the answer would be no. But the law cannot make distinctions that parents can. And the broad approach of the law is to simply outlaw it outright in the name of safety. Parents who care about their children’s ability to respond to a threat have a difficult decision to make, break the law or leave their children defenseless. That is not an easy decision.
In our Free Concealed Carry Classes, we constantly stress that everyone is responsible for their own decisions. We educate our students as best as we can about what the laws say, and what the legal and physical risks are and then we encourage people to carefully consider these risks.
Fortunately for Brayden and his mom, there are no laws in Ohio that outlaw Brayden’s access to that gun, and he was able to use to it save himself and his home from this intruder. Stories like this are encouraging to read but we can also use them to help motivate us to be more involved in what happens in our local, state and federal legislatures and courts. The easiest way to do this in Colorado is to become donors or members of proven gun rights organizations like Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America.
Colorado is once again in the cross hairs of the anti-gun lobby and we are facing an assault weapons ban. This time the proposed law changes represent some very dangerous outcomes for our gun rights, far more than we’ve faced in the past. Colorado is ground zero for this fight in 2023.
I want to spend a few moments to give a short history of gun laws in Colorado. Guns For Everyone started in 2010 with the idea that we would build community around real action to expand gun rights in this state. There was talk about how we might get Constitutional Carry on the ballot when almost no other states had it. We were young and perhaps a little idealistic and we made really no progress at all towards our lofty goals.
In 2012 there were two major mass shootings that ended up helping to send Colorado in the other direction. After the Aurora movie theater shooting, Colorado started flirting with changing the laws around ‘Assault weapons’. As a largely Purple state, it was hard for anyone to believe anything would change. But in December 2012, the Newtown Shooting captured the attention of the country as well as Legislators in Colorado. This was the start of the momentum they needed to pass a mandatory background check law and a ‘magazine ban’. The fight over these two laws was intense. Eventually these laws passed but not without a price for lawmakers as two state legislators were successfully recalled thanks to some amazing work by local activists. No more gun control was passed at the state level after that.
Fast forward to 2018 as more mass shootings mounted, including in Colorado, Boulder County decided to gamble by passing their own assault weapons ban that they knew would be challenged in court. As predicted, in 2021 the Colorado Supreme Court struck down the law. A week later a King Soopers in Boulder was the site of yet another mass shooting. Legislators quickly put legislation up to change the state’s Preemption law, attacking concealed carry with an insidious shift of the law from serving the citizens to serving the local governments. This time there were no consequences for lawmakers.
The difference between 2012 and 2021 is that most gun owners in this state knew about the legislation in 2012. In 2021, almost no gun owners were even aware of Preemption or that it was under attack. The difference wasn’t the legislators, it was the citizens. If we take the same approach in 2023, we are guaranteed to lose this fight too.
How do we fight back? My first recommendation is to go support Rocky Mountain Gun Owners with a donation. Like Right Now. The next step is to seek out opportunities to show up at city council meetings, legislative sessions, write your congressman, write letters to the editor, speak to your friends and keep supporting the organizations that are putting in the fight. But do not sit back and post angry rants on social media that do nothing to make a difference. We need every single gun owner to take responsibility for this state. If we sit back and whine about how all the Californians ruined this state, we are guaranteeing that we will lose this fight. Get up, get involved, get ready for the fight. We can win.
In the nearly 20 years I have owned guns, I have had a range of different gear and firearms. The first gun I bought was a 9mm Hi Point Carbine and I paid $100 for it. It was not exactly ideal for self defense but not knowing much about guns and not having a lot of money, it made a lot of sense at the time.
As the years have rushed by I have gone through just about any phase you can think of when it comes to buying and trying the tools of self defense. I have carried a number of different handgun brands, actions, calibers and sizes. I have tried just about any holster you can imagine including, yes, even a shoulder holster.
Most of the money I have spent over the years has ended up “wasted”. I have a graveyard of discarded holsters. Most of the handguns I own now I would not carry. Then there are the wasted belts, the magazine carriers, the training tools, odd magazines for guns I don’t even own anymore, and even a few abandoned calibers.
It took me a long time to figure out that there really are only a couple useful factors when deciding if I should consider spending more money in the name of self defense. Those factors are “efficiency” and “consistency”. In the context of self defense, efficiency and consistency are critical principles that help us be as prepared as possible to engage in a life and death fight with an attacker. Efficiency means hopefully being the first to deliver an effective blow in the fight. Consistency is the principle that helps us to learn and be able to rely on our tools and skills in a dynamic critical incident. Any new tool in my plan needs to first be able to be efficient and consistent with what I know about using a firearm in self defense.
Developing a sense of what is actually likely to be efficient takes time and experience. That experience should be training and it should be training in context. A fancy gadget that looks cool on instagram may not actually stand up to the rigors of a defensive handgun class or a combatives course. In this sense, money spent on good training may actually help save you from buying a bunch of things that will never get used in the real world.
Nothing fancy, just shit that works
Understanding consistency also comes from experience. I started with a basic holster in the 3 o clock position on my hip. After trying a lot of different carry positions over the years I have learned that the optimal position for myself is still the same place that I started. I can trust that this position works across the most number of circumstances for me.
So when it comes time to consider updating any gear I have something useful to base my decisions on. I have learned how to evaluate the usefulness of an item usually just by looking at it. This is starting to save me some real money now, as the number of pieces of gear I discard is slowing down.
There is a real urge to buy our way into a good self defense plan. The truth is that the useful number of tools is actually not that many, it’s far more important that you spend time and money developing an understanding of the fight and the skills to win that fight.
Nearly 20 years after I bought my first gun, my best recommendation for almost any person who is carrying a gun for self defense is a good quality 9mm striker fired handgun, a quality inside the waistband holster with a somewhat rigid belt, a handheld flashlight and, depending on your attire and habits, perhaps 1 extra magazine.
Over time one might decide that one handgun model is easier to shoot than another, or that a specific holster design might be easier to conceal than another, and perhaps some quality pepper spray. Beyond these basics there is little else I’d recommend for 99% of people who carry a concealed handgun. Spend your extra money on training.
Buying a gun for self defense is a big step in a self defense plan. It is a very powerful and effective tool and when used properly, it has the potential to allow people who are smaller, weaker or outnumbered to prevail in a dangerous attack. But the tool by itself is not usually enough to give you the best chance to win the fight.
The video below shows an attack that happened a couple weeks ago in Denver. The young man who was attacked was ambushed by multiple attackers who were able to quickly beat him into submission. Once he was on the ground, he was essentially defenseless.
Let’s say that this man was armed with a handgun. By the time the fight actually started, he had already been hit once in the head hard enough to knock him to the ground. The time it would take him to react to this new reality doesn’t give him the opportunity to get to his gun and deploy it. I would argue that if you ran this same scenario 100 times, you would be lucky to have one instance where the guy was able to get his gun out and use it.
Situational awareness is a key factor in self defense but many people throw that term around without really bothering to learn what it means or how to use it to help you. Situational awareness starts with the mindset that while 99.9% of the time, the world is a safe and predictable place, you must leave space in your mind that very bad things can happen and they can happen anywhere. If you are in a situation where something feels off, you must be able to allow yourself to ACT accordingly, even if it means doing something that seems unusual.
If we watch this video a little more closely, we can see that these 4 attackers were riding the train with the victim. There’s no way to know for sure what took place on the train but it certainly appears that the victim was caught off guard by the approach of the 4 attackers. The victim allowed himself to be coaxed off the train when it should have been obvious that something was wrong. The attackers appear to have singled him out for the attack, which we can see by the fact that they let the first passenger off the train to walk right through them. Very often there are a lot of clues leading up to an ambush like this and in this case it is likely that there were cues taking place on the train before it arrived at the station. It appears that the victim was somewhat oblivious the moment he approached the exit.
He may have been attacked either way whether he retreated further into the train or not. But if he had paused and taken a different action rather than walking straight into the ambush, he would have bought himself some time. It may not have been much time, but time is like GOLD in a defensive encounter. Time provides options and the more options you have the higher chances you have of taking effective action to win the fight.
To further increase your options and chances of winning the fight, training will help you develop usable skills and tools. There is no doubt that when you are facing 4 attackers intent on turning you into a bloody pulp you are at a severe disadvantage and your chances of winning are in serious jeopardy. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot win. A gun is a very effective tool at evening the odds in the fight, but without the time to use it, it won’t be much help. Paying attention to your surroundings, and more specifically, the PEOPLE in your surroundings, is a skill and its a skill that helps buy the time you need to defend yourself. I encourage you to invest your time into learning this skill and developing it into something you are good at.
