Educational
Getting the Heck out of Dodge: Dealing With and Surviving a Riot.
Ask any expert: society is fragile. It doesn’t take much for it to collapse and when it does, it’s not pretty. Law and order go out the window while bricks and trashcans go through windows. Civility is replaced by rage. Humanity is replaced by something else…something feral. There is no reasoning at this point, there is only survival. When the riots broke out up in Ferguson, I started to wonder what I would do if it happened here. How would I handle it? Where would I go? I’ve been researching for the last few days and I’ve noticed some major trends in advice.
First off, the best bit of advice is to avoid being near a riot before it even starts. Don’t let anyone tell you that a riot just pops up out of nowhere. You’ll never be walking to your car after shopping at the mall when a riot just jumps out of the bushes and says “booga booga I’m a riot!” There are always signs leading up to one even though it may only be a couple hours worth of leadup as opposed to days like in Ferguson. It may be a protest going on and on or a crowd at a sports game getting a bit unruly. If you keep your head on a swivel, like you always should, the signs are there loooong before one actually happens. It’s like building clouds on a summer day. You look at the sky and it goes from blue to cloudy to anvil clouds to darkened skies and eventually the storm is unleashed. Sometimes, even though it gets dark and nasty looking, the rain that follows isn’t as bad as it looked. Sometimes the clouds will disappear before any rain falls. Other times it’s a borderline hurricane with lightning, hail and tornadoes. Learn to watch for those metaphorical clouds. It doesn’t always guarantee a riot but I wouldn’t go swimming if the sky looks that dark that’s for sure.
So let’s say that, for whatever reason, you find yourself with a riot on your hands. There’s a couple different situations you could find yourself in and, though they’re handled essentially the same way, there’s a few slight differences in how they should be handled.
The ideal situation is one where you live safely outside of town and the riot is just between you and your home. In that case, take the long way home. Don’t try to even shortcut near the riot or just give it a slightly wide berth. Circle as far away from it as feasibly possible. Even if it takes 2 or 3 hours to get home, it’s worth the extra miles on your car.
Second worst situation is if you live safely outside of town but you’re in the middle of the riot when it breaks out. This is where things get a bit dicey. Your goal is, first and foremost, survive and stay safe. Secondly, you should try to get out of the middle of things. This can be a lot more difficult than it would seem. In most cases, the police will try to set up a perimeter to contain the violence. Even if you have nothing to do with the riot, you’re probably not going to get through. The police aren’t going to listen to your pleas any more than the rioters will. You’re either going to have to find another way out or weather the storm however you can. The bright side is that the police will be focused on where the heaviest rioting is. Head in the opposite direction and you may find a way out. You may be going quite a long way on foot so I hope you’re wearing comfortable shoes.
The worst situation is if your home is right in the middle of the riots. Here, you don’t have a sanctuary to go to and you’re probably not going to have any way out either. You’re likely going to need to hole up and fortify. The biggest reason this is the worst is because you’re most likely to be completely separated from your family for a long time in this situation, at least more so than in the other scenarios. Your kid may be at school, your husband or wife may be at work. They will be stuck there because there is no safe place waiting for them at home. The school certainly isn’t going to drop your kid off in the middle of the craziness. Make arrangements for a friend or family member who doesn’t live in the middle of things to pick up your kid(s) and take them somewhere safe. If the spouse is at work, make sure they stay there or again, someplace safe. It’s going to eat at you not to have everyone there where you know what’s going on but if they’re someplace safe they need to stay there. That’s more important than being together in this case.
Now, there are some consistent bit of advice across the board that you should follow. The biggest rule of them all is:
Stay Calm – It’s very easy to get freaked out because, frankly, everyone around you is freaking out. No one is going to listen to reason so don’t bother. Just keep your head about you and keep thinking and analyzing your situation and surroundings. If you’re with your family, keep them close and keep them calm as well. Don’t get separated. Lock arms or carry them if you have to.
Don’t Draw Attention to Yourself – Calmly (but briskly) walk to a safe place. Try to blend in as best as you can. No one is looking at you. Look for a less crowded area and make a beeline for it. Rioters tend to group together so get on the edge of that group and get away.
Stay Out of It – Smashing cars and stealing flat screen TV’s make look like fun but don’t give it a try. If you want to stay safe, don’t join in. Even if you sympathize with the rioters, your primary concern should be yourself and your family.
Being Selfish is Being Smart – This one hurts to say but now is not the time to be a hero. If you see someone getting assaulted or what have you, ignore it. I know it would gnaw at my conscience for a long time afterwards if I did that but my family is more important and I can’t protect them if I’m injured or dead. My family is my biggest concern and, even if it means leaving a stranger in trouble, I will do what I have to in order to get to them and protect them. Stepping in to help someone will draw far too much attention to yourself. I feel rotten for even typing this, mind you, but we have to do what we have to do.
Watch Your Feet – Keeping upright and walking is of utmost importance. If you trip and fall amidst the crowd, you will get trampled. If you do fall, go fetal and protect your head with your arms and hope for the best. The ideal situation, believe it or not, is if a bunch of people trip and fall on you. This will cause the crowd to instinctively avoid the pile of people and it could result in some breathing room for you to get back on your feet and moving again.
Backstreet’s Back, Alright – If they’re rioting in the streets, which they always are, they stick to main roads. Places where you’d normally get stuck in traffic is where they’ll be rioting. Now’s the time to see the less visited places of your town/city. The alleyways and back roads will be significantly less crowded so head to those. Knowing the layout of the city, it goes without saying, it vitally important. How well do you know your city? Probably not as well as you should. Why not explore it more this weekend to get a handle on its layout beyond the main roads you always take?
Have Gun Will Travel Should Stay Hidden – If you’re one of the millions of CCW holders in the country, you’ve got a good advantage in most cases. A riot, believe it or not, is not a good place to have your gun out. Remember: you’re not dealing with rational people at this point. In most cases, a criminal will flee at the sight of a firearm. In riots, if there’s enough people around, they’ll charge right for you. Trust me, you don’t have enough bullets. The ideal situation is to get away from the crowd as quickly as possible. Once you’re safely away from the main riots, you may still encounter people taking advantage of the lawlessness. Then and only then should you consider drawing if there is no other choice. A group of 3 or 4 people are more likely to flee than a group of 30 or 40 rioters.
Have a Rally Point – If you’re all separated before the riot starts or, worst case scenario you’re separated in the middle of it, have a point to meet at. It could be your home which might be safely outside the violence, a relative’s house or even a landmark or park that you know is in a safe area. It’s best to have a main one and a couple of alternatives. Make sure you all know how to get to them before everything goes to crap because the middle of a riot is not the best time to be looking at a map.
In riots, much like in life, the cool and rational minds prevail. Stay alert and stay alive. Those with a plan have a natural advantage. Have a plan and stick to it.
Image Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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Top 3 Things to Know When Buying Your First Gun
Have you ever said to yourself “if I knew then what I know now…”? I find myself saying it quite often as of late. Considering this is a gun blog, I’m thinking you can guess where I’m going with this. If you’ve read the “About Us” section, you’ll remember that I was originally all self taught. I had to learn through trial and error and it was a long time before I could get formal training. I’ve made some mistakes over the years when it comes to buying guns and guns in general. Nothing dangerous, mind you. Just some assumptions I made that turned out to be so, so wrong.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on those mistakes so that you don’t risk wasting money like I did.
1) You’re not just paying for the gun.
You’ve been saving up for a gun and you were able to bargain it down from $550 to $495? Great! Now you’ll need to pay sales tax, of course. Then there’s the inevitable background check fee that some stores include in the price but most tack on an extra $10-$20 per transaction. Oh, and don’t forget ammo because you want to shoot it, right? Is this your first gun? You’ll need a cleaning kit too! Eventually, you’ll need a case for it if you’re planning on going to the range. When saving up for your first gun, make sure you hold on to an extra $100 over your estimated price to cover the inevitable extras that, for the most part, you’re not going to easily avoid.
2) Stick with the tried and true.
Sure that folding pocket .22LR derringer like 5-shot revolver is cool and cheap. It’s also not a good carry choice. Derringer? Same thing. If you’re looking for a first gun or a 2nd gun to use for your daily carry pistol, take a look at what local police carry: Glock, M&P, SIG, etc. You’ll notice that Derringers aren’t on most police department’s approved list. I’m sure there’s one or two out there but majority rules on this one. Think about it this way: the less fumbling the better. Let’s compare… Folding pocket .22LR: draw, open gun, aim, pull back hammer, fire. Glock: draw, aim, fire. The fewer steps the better, even when you get more experience under your belt.
3) Hollywood is not a good guide.
I’ll admit a deep, dark secret of mine: I started teaching myself with the Hollywood cup. You know that grip where one hand holds the gun and the other is underneath, supporting the main hand? Yeah. That one. It’s a terrible way to shoot and it’s going to not only affect accuracy but it gives ZERO assistance with recoil. Why did I do this? Because nearly everyone in movies and TV held their gun like that. There wasn’t a GunNoob.com to tell me better at the time. Every gun site had the “if you don’t know it I’m sure as heck not going to tell you (at least not for free)” mentality. I eventually learned better but still, I’m embarrassed for myself just typing that out. It does feel good to finally get that out into the open, though. It’s like a great weight has been lifted.
But I digress. Hollywood and TV are the absolute worst representatives of firearm reality. Though it’s been said many times, a .45 ACP or .44 Magnum isn’t going to blow someone through a wall and a shotgun isn’t going to magically vaporize someone. Don’t look to Hollywood for self defense advice, home clearing technique or survival methods either. It’s there for one thing and one thing only: entertainment.
I hope those help steer some of you in the right direction. What about you, dear reader? What pieces of advice do you wish someone told you back when you started? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page.
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Shooting with Arthritis
We all get older. I hate to start an article out by bringing up a stark reminder of our mortality but, as the saying goes, the only definites in life are death and taxes. As we get older, things start to break down. Maybe our vision or hearing might fade. Sometimes the coordination or reaction time might not be what it used to be. There’s a good chance, however, that you’re going to wind up as one of the millions of people suffering from arthritis. Wow…that has been a very depressing opening. Quick! We need a palate cleanser!
How do you get a sweet 80-year-old lady to say the F word?
Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell “BINGO”!
And we’re back. Arthritis is a pretty nasty degenerative disorder that affects the joints in your skeleton. The term “arthritis” itself is more of a blanket term to group a large number of ailments and exactly how each one affects a person is different. While it can affect any joints in the body, for this article we’re going to be talking about the hands. Continue reading
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Hollow Points vs. Full Metal Jacket Ammo
There’s kind of an unwritten rule of firearm ammunition: use hollow points for your carry/home defense guns and use full metal jacket (FMJ) for practice. This is mainly due to the fact that FMJ rounds are significantly cheaper than your average hollow point. It’s also due to the fact that, from a “put the attacker down” point of view, FMJ rounds aren’t exactly ideal.
That’s not to say that FMJ rounds are useless for defense. Far from it, in fact. Our military uses only FMJ rounds. This is due to an international treaty that was signed many (MANY) years ago that forbids the use of expanding rounds. That same treaty also bans the dropping of grenades from hot air balloons, mind you, so some of the stuff might be outdated in the grand scheme of things but that’s a conversation for our Facebook page at some point.
But I digress, the FMJ is still a bullet and will still punch a hole in your average bad guy. Stories of people “shrugging off” FMJ rounds because they “just passed right through” are rare and often exaggerated. So why do we use hollow points then?
While a full metal jacket round will still drop a bad guy, a hollow point will do it just a little bit better. That’s not to say there aren’t all kinds of misconceptions about hollow points as well. What I want to do today is talk about both rounds and touch on the misconceptions of both. Continue reading
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Free For All Friday, 5-23-2014: shotgun tubes, R.I.P. ammo and Monty Python…
First off, it’s Memorial Day weekend. I know I have a bunch of international readers so I’ll explain: Memorial Day is a day we set aside here to honor those who have died while serving in our armed forces. It saddens me that so many people look at it only as a day off to grill meat or go to the beach and forget what it’s really about. As far as I’m concerned, one day isn’t nearly enough to even remotely honor our fallen. They should be remembered and thanked every single day. It takes a certain kind of person to wake up and say “I’m going to dedicate my life, and possibly give my life to protect a whole bunch of people who will never know my name.” That kind of mentality, that kind of thinking is the greatest kind of thinking and they are far greater people than I. We at Gun Noob thank all of you for your service to protecting the freedoms we hold dear. Continue reading
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A Great Tool for Researching the Market Price for Guns…
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to see what a gun is selling for at any give point so you can have a good idea what you’ll be paying out the door instead of having to take a guess at the price vs. MSRP? They do it with cars, after all. You can go to sites like edmunds.com and look up what people are paying for the cars at the time of sale. That gives you some great bargaining power going in to a dealership. It’s a shame you don’t have the same thing for guns so that you know what that Glock or 1911 is typically sold for.
Good news! There actually is something like that! There’s a couple of catches, however, but we’ll get to that in a moment… Continue reading
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The Importance of Spotting Scopes
Grab a rifle, slap a scope on it, get a box or 12 of ammo and then head to the range, right? Well, yeah, in the grand scheme of things. So you get to the range and set up on the 100 yard lane. Then you wait for the line to go cold. Then you hike way out there, set up your target then walk way back. You shoot a few rounds….and you have no idea if they hit paper or not. You try to look through your gun’s scope but it’s a tiny view and you can see some holes but you’re not sure. So you wait for the line to go cold and you walk way out again. Turns out you were hitting just near the bottom of the paper and that hole you thought was a bullseye was actually a fly that had landed. So you walk all the way back, make a couple of adjustments to your scope then try again. You think you’re closer but you have to wait until the next cold range. After about an hour of shooting, you’ve just gotten sighted in and you’ve fired about 12 rounds. Thank goodness you’re not on the 1000 yard line!
Or you could get a spotting scope… Continue reading
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The Safety Dance – Buying a Safe
Let’s be honest, you can’t always carry all your guns with you. Heck, I can barely fit my whole collection in the Noobmobile at this point (don’t ever let someone tell you a Mustang isn’t a practical car). Considering that my guns lack the ability to protect themselves, I want them to be safe when I’m not around. If only there were some way to keep them safe. I’m thinking a kind of box with a combination lock on it that is also fire resistant…but what would we call this safety device?
Since I’ve started Free For All Fridays, I’ve noticed certain themes popping up. One of the more common themes as of late has been questions about gun safes. I can’t blame anyone for wanting one. The great thing is, they don’t just keep your firearms locked away as you can store jewelry, documents and other very important items in them as well. In my opinion, gun owners or not, every house should have at least a small safe in it. Continue reading
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New Guide: Minute of Angle?
Continuing with our Year of the Rifle initiative, the following guide has been added to our Rifle Guides Section. Head on over there to read it or check it out below!
Spend any amount of time looking at rifles and scopes and you’re going to see a strange acronym pop up: “MOA”. Those three letters stand for Minute of Angle. Strangely enough, that tells us absolutely nothing about what that actually means. Continue reading
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Fashion Tips for the Range
Last week, we talked about indoor and outdoor shooting ranges. I want to stay on the subject of shooting ranges a bit longer. I say this because a friend of mine emailed me a picture he took of a group of people at a range. As soon as I saw the picture, I didn’t even have to read the story that followed. I could pretty much guess and, as it turns out, I was right.
I can’t post the picture because I don’t have permissions of the people in it but let me try to describe the scene for you: It was a group of people. There were 3 women and one guy. All parties involved were dressed to impress. I’m not talking business casual, I’m talking borderline club wear. There was cleavage and skin showing all over the place. They guy had on casual shoes with no socks, the ladies were wearing heels and had some really low cut dresses. Actually, I wouldn’t exactly call them dresses. They were more like gownless evening straps. The picture at the top was the closest I could find. Just image a giant douchebag standing behind them with orange skin and making a duckface and the picture would be perfect. Continue reading
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