Massad Ayoob
The Ayoob Files: The Book
1995, Police Bookshelf, New Hampshire. ISBN: 0936279168
Those familiar with the regular American Handgunner feature "The Ayoob Files" will know what this book is about--documentation of fourteen incidents that culminated in shootouts, some between the police and criminals, some between armed citizens and criminals. In all cases, Ayoob painstakingly goes over the tactics involved, the subjective testimonies of the survivors, and the legal issues that arose after the shootings. This is not a study of crime or murder, since in all cases, there was a justifiable need for force (although in some instances, the bad guy ends up winning). Rather, it's a book about the incredible psychological chaos of real-life shootouts, written for the police officer or gunowner who wants to learn from the experiences of others.
It's not a book for the squeamish. Ayoob goes into graphic detail evaluating the effect of various armaments used in his examples. The cover photo is a grisly shot of a shooting scene. But the cases themselves, and the lessons Ayoob culls from them, are excellent information for anyone interested in firearm pragmatics. In some cases, Ayoob's findings run contrary to conventional training methods. Among the points he makes are:
- Don't expect to be able to count your rounds. People in his cases almost invariably had no idea how many rounds they had fired, or had been fired at them.
- Don't expect instant incapicitation, no matter what you're shooting. Ayoob documents cases where felons took all kinds of fire while still attacking.
- Shoot using your sights. In several of Ayoob's cases people came close to emptying their guns to no effect, and then realized what they were doing and took a careful, successful shot.
- Do expect your mind to blank out on you. Many people report at least one of the following: feelings of unreality, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, confusion, odd or extraneous thoughts, or fixations.
- Don't give an immediate statement. You will certainly want to, but in the confusion of the moment you may well say something to discredit your case. Ayoob documents instances where people lied inadvertantly, or stated positively things that were later shown to be untrue. The moments after a shooting are an extremely stressful time. Make your statement to your attorney.
- You will do what you have been trained to do--not so much in making the decision to fire, but in how you proceed from there. If you've been trained to unload and show clear after firing a string on the range, that's what you'll do. Same goes for finding cover--if you haven't trained to do it, you won't.
Ayoob thinks like a lawyer--he is partisan and interested in
vindication. He's the guy you would want on your side if you were
involved in a shootout, but on the other hand, he spends little time
talking about less violent solutions to the confrontations his
officers were presented with. In only one case does he suggest that
the firefight might have been avoided--in the Newhall
Incident, where the surviving felons said they might have
surrendered had the officers immediately demonstrated overwhelming
firepower. It's not a book about conflict resolution; it's a book
about gunfighting and institutional LE policy. Understanding what
happened in prior shooting incidents is the bedrock for building
training structures for today.
Gavin de Becker Gavin de Becker is one of the nation's top names in the field of
personal and corporate security, and The Gift of Fear is
informed by thousands of experiences in assessing threats and managing
client protection. The book concentrates largely on threat
assessment--de Becker's specialty--reading behavioral cues to gauge
how likely someone will be to initiate violence. It deals to a lesser
extent with how to handle people that your assessment tells you are
going to be a problem. De Becker systematically goes through cases
where violence apparently came "out of the blue" and demonstrates that
in each situation, there were plenty of danger signals, and that the
victim's intuition had already registered these signals and
communicated them as feelings of uneasiness. People invariably
knew that something was out of place, but ignored the feelings.
The book goes on to inform the reader's intuition with an analytical
breakdown of danger signals in different environments: from strangers,
stalkers, angry employees, controlling spouses, obsessive fans, and
people who deliver death threats. The bottom line for de Becker is
listen to your gut-level intuition; people usually have a
pretty acute sense of when they are truly at risk.
The book's biggest shortcoming is that it deals only with the
above situations--where the potential aggressor is known to the
victim, or some kind of seduction is present before violence is
initiated. On page 61 de Becker writes:
The book is also remarkably short on suggestions about what to do
once you know someone means you harm. In only three scenarios does de
Becker have a set of proactive recommendations: firing an angry
employee, leaving an abusive spouse, and cutting off communications
with persistent or obsessive callers. His recommendations in these
cases are excellent, but in the rest of his examples (stalkings,
children known to be at sexual risk, violent assaults by strangers,
burglars in the house, credible death threats, persistent violations
of restraining orders, recreational assaults by teenagers) he has
little to say beyond identifying risk factors. As my wife pointed
out, his primary, recurring scenario (that of Kelly, who, knowing that
she was going to be killed if she followed a rapist's instructions,
instead silently followed him down a hallway and let herself out the
door) is a fantasy of non-violent conflict resolution. All she had to
do to break contact was to get up and leave. Far more common is the
situation where the threat is known, but options are uncertain. De
Becker investigates the situations where neighbors say "We had no
idea; we would have never suspected," but pays less attention to the
situations where the neighbors were expecting it all along, had known
for years that there was going to be trouble, and who it was going to
come from.
I think the fundamental conclusion of the book is correct: people
usually do have an accurate and powerful sense of their own
risk. If you go for a ride with the LAPD, they know who the
drug dealers and gangbangers and chronic offenders are, and often have
a good idea of who their victims will be. What to do about it--now,
there's a more difficult issue. Threat assessment needs to lead to
threat management.
That said, I think this book is looking in the right direction:
victim empowerment. It's not a book for law enforcement or security
professionals--it's a book written for the individual at risk. It
emphasizes that you are the person who makes the difference in
your own security--especially in situations where the probable
aggressor is someone you know. It encourages people not to
participate in their own victimization, and repeatedly shows that in
critical moments in the commission of crimes, you are the only person
who can make the difference. His information on threat assessment is
excellent, written with the honest intention of giving the reader
enough intelligence to recognize risk when they see it and to take
proactive steps toward their own security. I highly recommend this
book to anyone with an interest.
Other recommended reading: John Douglas, Mindhunter, and
Robert Ressler Whoever Fights Monsters, on FBI's profiling of
serial criminals; Paxton Quigley Not an Easy Target: A Women's
Guide to Self-Protection on victim selection and pragmatic threat
avoidance; Linden Gross, To Have or to Harm: True Stories of
Stalkers and their Victims.
Other reviews: Amazon.com.
Read the author's response to this review.
Mike Dalton and Mickey Fowler All kinds of people have written introductory books on weapon
skills for self-defense, but Handguns and Self-Defense is my
pick of the litter. It trains people to handle situations, not just
the weapon. Dalton and Fowler's approach is firmly grounded in the
idea that the shooter is not first learning weapon skills and then
moving to the "advanced" topics of personal defense, but learning
defensive skills from the first time the shooter handles the gun.
Large portions of the book are given over to legal and ethical issues
of self-defense, and home defense tactics. Their chapter on tactics
is the best I have seen written for beginning shooters--not presented
as something "difficult" or "advanced," but natural and necessary to
the proper use of the gun.
That said, the book is dated. I would not feel comfortable
giving this book to a novice shooter as a stand-alone handbook on
technique. Barricades are taught in a close, "braced" position, so is
kneeling (braced), the weak-thumb-over-wrist grip (as a revolver
alternative), arms locked when using the isosceles stance, a
"swinging" draw, etc. It's mostly what you'd expect from the modern
technique, just more open-minded than Cooper or Taylor. The discussion
of handgun safes is dated, as is the discussion of lighting and home
security. But these things do little to detract from the primary
focus of the book: examination of the handgun as a tool for
self-defense. The recommendations for defense and tactics are still
unimpeachable: pragmatic, down-to-earth, and very much concerned with
the business of personal safety.
While there is a section on concealed carry (and the chapter on
tactics would be useful to CCW holders), the primary scenario is home
defense from an intruder. Readers are walked through several possible
responses to noises in the night, and alternatives are analyzed, not
dogmatically argued. Both shooting and non-shooting situations are
discussed, along with 911 contact and post-shooting topics. The
photos are excellent--shot in a home rather than on the range, each
emplifying some aspect of a good response to a threat. It may not
succeed as comprehensively as it once did, but as a supplement to
training in current methods, it's worth its modest cost many times
over.
See also my own essay on noises in the night.
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The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence
1997, Little Brown & Company. ISBN: 0316235024
"I haven't focused here on the criminal who simply walks
up, displays a weapon, and demands money. That is because he is
distinctly more obvious that those who use the strategies I've
described"
And with that farewell he abandons fifty percent of the violent crimes
in America to concentrate on the ones where threat assessment might
make a more substantial difference in the outcome. This can
unfortunately leave the reader with the impression that all crime is
avoidable, when in fact, the cases that don't fit his profiles
(interpersonal contact with victim precedes violence) simply haven't
been discussed. Also conspicuously absent are:
Handguns and Self-Defense: Life Without Fear
1983, 1996. ISI Publications. ISBN: 0961095407
Available from
International Shootists Institute
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