6 Self-Defense Tools To Save Your Life

Since I travel around the country doing training, I often find myself having to rely on different tools for my own safety.

For instance, today, I’m in New York City appearing on the Rachael Ray show. New York City has extremely strict gun laws (among other things) and NYC’s slogan might as well be: “we want our residents to be able to protect themselves as little as possible.”

So whether you live in NYC or in Texas, let me share with you the different tools you can use to keep yourself safe.

1. Firearm – Of course, I had to start with my favorite way to keep myself safe, which is a handgun. These days there are three guns that I switch between for concealed carry most often. First, my Ruger LCP, which fits nicely in my front pocket inside a small kydex holster. Right now, my LCP is loaded with Hornady Critical Defense ammunition. The next gun is my Glock 19. I carry it at the four o’clock position in an inside the waistband holster. I have several holsters for this gun and use the Clipper-DL, a CrossBreed holster, and a Kydex holster that a friend made for me. The last gun I carry is a full size Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm. Both my Glock and the Smith & Wesson are loaded with 124-grain Speer Gold Dot ammo. Unless it’s illegal to do so, one of these three guns is on me at all times.

2. Air Horn - I know a lot of folks have guns for home defense purposes only and don’t carry concealed. If this is the case for you, let me recommend an air horn. You can purchase an air horn at any boating supply store and the noise will scare the living daylights out of almost anyone. Let’s say you had an air horn in your purse and were being followed through the Walmart parking lot. You could quickly pull the air horn from your purse and use it to scare someone away. (If you haven’t tested an air horn lately make sure your ears are covered when you do… trust me on this one. Also, an air horn is great for college students and teenagers.)

3. Tactical Pen – The tactical pen is one of my favorite self-defense tools and what I’m using now since I’m in New York City. The tactical pens goes everywhere with me whether I’m on a plane, in a courthouse or in a city or state that has strict gun laws.

4. Knife – You never want to be in a knife fight, but if a knife were the only tool you had you would obviously use it. I keep my knife clipped to my pants pocket and the knife I typically carry is a Benchmade. However, the particular model I own is illegal in New York so it’s at home sitting on my desk right now.

5. Crow Bar – In the back of my vehicle is a crow bar. The beauty of the crow bar is that it has multiple uses, one being self-defense. It’s certainly not my number one choice for personal protection but it’s definitely better than nothing. If you don’t already have a crow bar in your vehicle pick one up this week from Walmart or Home Depot.

6. Monkey Fist Keychain – The Monkey Fist is a parcacord keychain wrapped around a ball bearing. It may not sound like much but getting struck by one definitely hurts. You can also use the paracord for escape & evasion purposes and another bonus is that you’ll probably never lose your keys since the Monkey Fist makes them easy to keep track of.

Updated Road Trip Checklist

Today, I head to Las Vegas to teach a survival course. Las Vegas is only 2.5 hours away so I’m driving instead of flying. Before I make any road trip, whether it’s a short one like this, or a seven-hour drive to Los Angeles, I always go through a quick checklist to make sure I’m prepared and have the gear I need.

Since the gear I use is always changing and I’m always searching for new gear, I want to share with you the current checklist of the items I have in my vehicle.

Before I get to that list, let me share with you one of the most important things I do before going on any road trip. It’s not the sexiest and most exciting thing in the world, but I make sure and check my tire pressure. Most people don’t realize that underinflated tires cause the majority of car crashes.

The reason for this is because a lot of folks have no idea what the correct tire pressure is for their car. You see, if you open your driver’s side door and look on the inside panel you’ll see a listing for your tire pressure. It might be something like 32 PSI (pounds per square inch.)

However, if you look on the tire itself it might say something like 44 PSI.

So if one says 32 and the other says 44, how much air should you put in your tires? Well, I have many friends who are experts when it comes to tire pressure and vehicle safety. And their recommendation is to put 10% less air in than what it says on the tire. In other words, if your tire says 44 PSI, you would put 40 PSI in your tire, which is exactly what I do.

So before you head off on your next road trip or even to work, check your tire pressure. You’ll save money on gas by properly inflating the tires, plus it may save your life if you ever have to make evasive maneuvers in your car.

Once I check my tire pressure and put gas in the vehicle, I quickly make sure I have the items below in the back of my vehicle. Since I live in Southern Utah and go through some pretty remote places, I want to ensure I’m prepared if my car ever breaks down.

-Two 72-hour kits that contain three days of food and water (Why two kits? Because they don’t take up much space and because as I just mentioned, I often travel in the middle of nowhere.)

-One quart of motor oil (Always have extra oil in your car, it’s a small investment that’s well worth it.)

-Full toolbox (I’ve got screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, and a variety of tools if I have to do repairs.)

-Tow Rope (In case someone has to tow you to a gas station or you need the rope to tie down cargo. This rope goes inside my toolbox.)

-Guns (For this particular trip to Las Vegas I will have my Ruger LCP and my Glock 19.)

-Collapsible shovel (You can buy one of these folding shovels at any Army surplus store.)

-Ammunition (I have 100 rounds for every caliber of gun in the vehicle. So I’ll have 100 rounds of 9mm and 100 rounds of .380.)

-Knives (In the toolbox I have a Gerber LMF II. In my 72-hour kits I put a Swedish survival knife.)

-Flashlights (I have four flashlights in my car. Each of the 72-hour kits contains one of the LED flashlights that doesn’t require batteries. You simply squeeze it to generate light. I also have a light in my glove compartment and another in my door compartment.)

-Crow bar (These only cost about $15 from Walmart and have a variety of uses, from self-defense to opening doors to knocking debris out of the way.)

-Bolt cutters (For extreme emergency situations.)

-Toilet paper (Can be used for making fires and for that other important reason.)

-Dryer lint (Excellent for starting fires, just save the lint from your dryer for a few weeks and you’ll have a Ziploc bag full.)

-Zip ties (They can be used for making shelter by tying sticks together and securing other items.)

-Paracord (I often have a 1,000 foot spool in my trunk, but at the very least have 20 feet.)

-Map (A paper map in case GPS fails me, which happens far too often.)

-First aid kit (Both of the 72-hour kits have a small first aid kit but I add another kit to my car. Right now, I’m carrying the Voodoo Tactical Trauma Kit.)

I realize some people may think the above list of items I have in my vehicle is overkill. That’s why I recommend you pick and choose from the above list and put together a vehicle survival kit that works for you.

Even if you live in the city, snowstorms and earthquakes can happen at anytime and you never know what item in the vehicle will be crucial to your survival.

My armed and dangerous wife?

I realize not everybody loves guns as much as I do, but you’ve got to have a way to defend yourself against a home invasion. Some people choose baseball bats, others choose knives, and my wife and I choose guns.

Of course, the gun is a tool of last resort, which is why we also have an alarm system that will hopefully deter criminals in the first place, and keep me from ever having to use my firearm to protect my family.

An important thing to remember with that alarm system is to actually use it (you may laugh, but I come across so many home invasion stories where people forgot to turn their alarms on) and remember to even use it when you’re at home by placing the alarm in “home mode.”

“Home mode” typically means the motion sensors are turned off so you can walk freely around the house, but all of the entry sensors are still active so if someone tries to enter the home through a door or window the alarm will go off.

In fact, a friend of mine named Dennis who lives in Texas had a home invasion while he was at home watching a movie. He forgot to put the alarm in “home mode” and he ended up getting in a shootout with the intruders because he realized way too late that somebody was in his home. Thankfully, neither he nor his wife was injured and the intruders were eventually caught.

The bottom line is, get an alarm and use it, and then have a plan for what you’re going to do when that alarm goes off.

For example, the other day I thought I was going to be gone from the house for a long time because of several meetings I had. I ended up getting home early and when I walked into my house the alarm immediately sounded because my wife had set it in home mode.

It took me only a few seconds to shut off the alarm, but by the time I did, my wife was already at the top of the stairs with her Glock 19 ready to stop an intruder. (I jokingly asked her if this is how she planned to get rid of me by making it look like an accident. Like most of my jokes, she was not amused.)

My point is, my wife and I have a very simple plan of getting our guns from our rapid access safes and going to the top of the stairs. We’ll make sure the intruder knows we have a gun and that we want him to leave our house. But if the intruder is so strung out on drugs or alcohol and ends up running up our stairs to attack us, we will obviously defend ourselves.

I’m happy to know that because my wife and I have a plan she didn’t have to freak out and wonder what she should do the other day when I set the alarm off. She knew exactly what to do and was in place in just a few seconds.

Even if you’ve got your home defense plan down cold, does your spouse also know exactly what to do? Maybe over dinner tonight you could have a short discussion of what everyone should do if your alarm ever goes off.

Why you should get 5,000 rounds of this ammo

I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about ammunition, even though the ammo shortage has been going on for months. More specifically, these questions have been about how much to store, what kind to store, and where to store it.

I realize that ammo is still hard to find in most parts of the country and that 10 minutes after it’s delivered to Walmart it’s already disappeared from the shelves. That’s why, if there was only one type of ammo I could get and one type of ammo that I believe everyone should be focused on, it’s .22.

First, you and I know that .22 is less expensive than 9mm, .40, .45, and other types of ammo, so we can afford to train more with it and enhance our skills. But price isn’t the only reason to stock up on .22.

It’s also a lot lighter and easier to carry. If you had to head out somewhere on foot or even quickly haul ammo to a vehicle, it’s a lot easier to carry 1,000 rounds of .22 than 1,000 rounds of .45.

What’s more, .22 has less recoil and is easier to shoot and train on. If things got really bad in your town and you had to arm family members who weren’t extremely well trained they could handle a good .22 rifle or .22 handgun better than an AR-15 or Glock 30.

In fact, when my daughter is old enough to learn how to shoot I plan to teach her using my Ruger 10/22  and also my Ruger Mark III. (In my opinion, two of the best .22s on the market.)

But what about the ability to stop an attacker with a .22?

Well, I think most people can agree that while it’s not the perfect self-defense round, it can still do the job. For my own self-defense round I use 9mm Speer Gold Dot. But if things got so bad that I’d gone through all of my 9mm rounds and I had to use .22 for safety and survival I would have no problem at all. The truth is, it would just take more rounds to stop the attacker than it would with 9mm, .40, or .45, but it would still get the job done.

And as I’ve mentioned in the past, for all of the people that claim the .22 is so weak that they’d never use it in a million years for self-defense, I’ve never had a single one of these people ever volunteer to be shot with one.

So how much .22. ammo should you stock up on?

Since it’s cheaper and easier to carry I’d get at least 5,000 rounds as soon as you’re able to. .22 comes in “bricks” of 525 so it only takes 10 bricks to get that amount of ammo. If you can afford more I would certainly do it, but 5,000 rounds of ammo is a decent amount to have for safety and survival purposes.

One thing I will mention is that I wouldn’t store all of your ammo in one place. You can split it up in different areas of the house, perhaps having a few thousand rounds in the basement and the rest in the attic. Even better would be to split up your ammo and keep some at your home and the rest at an office, storage unit or other cache location.

Wherever you end up keeping it, the most important thing to remember is to store the ammo in a cool, dry place. In other words, your home should be fine, but if you get a storage unit it will need to be a climate controlled unit as you don’t want the ammo sitting in the summer heat when it’s 110 degrees.

If you decide to bury ammo in the ground make sure and put it inside a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber. Also, don’t forget to seal the Mylar bag closed (I do this with a hot iron.)

Of course, one last thing I should mention is the bartering ability of having .22. I pray that things never get so bad in this country that we’re forced to barter with .22, but if the situation ever occurs .22 could be a lot more valuable than the paper money in our wallets.

The bottom line is, get some more .22 when you can find it (I like Remington’s Golden Bullet Value Pack) and get out there and do more training, both by yourself and with your family members.

A Home Invasion Drill

One of the many gun magazines I subscribe to is Combat Handguns. Each month they have a section titled “It Happened to Me” where a person tells the story of how having a firearm saved their life.

This month’s story is about a woman who was home alone at night with her children because her husband worked a late shift. She heard a noise coming from downstairs and she grabbed her Glock and went to the top of the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was a man with a knife who proceeded to charge up the stairs toward her. She fired six rounds at the intruder and ended up killing him. She later found out the man had a prior criminal history of burglary and rape.

Needless to say, this proves once again why it’s so important to have a firearm for self-defense. Just imagine what horrible things could have happened to this woman and her children if she hadn’t been prepared for a home invasion.

But it’s also a good reminder that we should practice a simple home invasion drill so that we know we are able to accurately fire towards the bottom of the stairs. What I mean is, for my own home defense plan I am going to go to the top of the stairs with my Glock 19 that has a Viridian C5L laser/light combination on it.

Obviously, if an intruder charges up my stairs threatening to kill me I need to be able to fire down the stairs and stop them. In my house, this is rather simple to do because I have a straight staircase. But I still dry fire down the stairs to practice doing this. (I only do this dry fire practice when nobody else is in the home.) I also practice using one of the walls at the top of the stairs as concealment and leaning out and firing down the stairs, ensuring I expose as little of my body as possible.

To make dry firing down the stairs a little more exciting, I also use the LaserLyte Plinking Cans. This is a new product from LaserLyte and it comes with three cans that are about half the size of a soda can. When you fire the laser training gun at the cans (and hit the target on the can) the cans tip over.

What I do with these cans is to set them on a chair at the bottom of my stairs. I then practice leaning out from the top of the stairs and seeing how quickly I can tip over each can.

Like I mentioned a minute ago, this makes dry fire more interesting and I get immediate feedback on whether I’ve hit the target or not.

If you haven’t practiced dry firing from the top of your stairs to the bottom or practiced the same thing while using cover I encourage you to do it this week.

Obviously, you don’t want the first time you’ve ever tried this to be when some maniac is charging you with a knife. Also, don’t forget to try this both during the day and at night while using your flashlight, whether it’s a hand held light or a weapon mounted light.

3 sling choices for your rifle

In my opinion, there are a few must haves for every rifle you own. First, you’ve got to have sights whether you’re using iron sights or an optic. Second, you’ve got to have a lighting system, and finally, you need to have a sling.

The truth is, I’ve never had someone show up to one of my defensive rifle courses without a sling (although I’m sure it’s happened elsewhere) but I have had people show up with “improper” slings that were not very comfortable and made for a long day of training.

Obviously, you don’t want to end up in this position or have a “cheap” sling that falls apart during your training, so let me share with you a few slings that I have on my own rifles and that you may want to consider too.

One of my favorite slings is the Viking Tactics Sling. The reason I like this sling is because it’s instantly adjustable. In other words, when you’re shooting from various positions you just press down on a metal clip and you can instantly shorten or lengthen the sling as needed.

I’ve had my Viking Tactics Sling for years and have never had a problem with it. The company also makes a padded version of the sling for increased comfort, and if you carry a rifle often this is the one you’d want to get. The Viking Tactics Sling sells for around $43, which isn’t a bad price at all.

Another of my favorite slings is the Wilderness Giles Tactical Sling.

I just put this sling on a new Ruger 10/22 I purchased. What’s nice about this sling is that you don’t have to drill any holes in the buttstock of your rifle. It just slides over the buttstock and you can put in on your rifle in a matter of minutes.

This sling is also extremely durable so you should only have to buy one of these in your lifetime. The Giles Tactical Sling is slightly more expensive than the Viking Tactics and sells for around $50. But still, that’s a small investment for a quality sling that you should never need to replace.

Other slings you may want to check out are the ones made by Magpul Industries. Magpul makes all types of solid products for rifles and their slings are no different. They’re easy to adjust and quick to detach. Magpul just introduced a new sling this year called the MS1 Sling System, which makes it even easier to modify your sling and get it exactly how you want it.

Of course, there are many other sling makers on the market, but you can’t go wrong by going with any of the three slings I mentioned above. All of them are $50 or less and well worth the investment for all of the rifles you own.

Nonsense from a Utah PD

Over the weekend, I gave a private shooting lesson to a young man who’s looking to become a police officer. This kid is having trouble with the shooting portion of the academy and came to me because he’s not sure he’s going to be able to qualify.

The truth is, most police department qualifications are a joke. They don’t raise the bar very high because they want to be able to get as many officers through as possible (I can say this because I witnessed it myself when I was a police officer). However, when you move up to the Federal level, such as FBI, Secret Service, etc., the qualifications do become more challenging.

So, when I heard this kid was having trouble qualifying at first I thought he might just be a terrible shooter. But before I started training him I asked him how he had been taught to shoot, the grip he was using, and how he drew the gun from the holster, etc.

Well… it didn’t take me long to quickly realize the (Utah) academy this kid was attending has instructors who are giving him horrible advice and these instructors have obviously not been keeping up with modern firearms training.

First, the instructors are telling this kid that he should barely be holding the gun with his gun hand, and that the support hand should be providing all the pressure on the gun. They literally told him that they should be able to walk up to him on the firing line and be able to slap the gun out of his hand because he should be holding it with such little force.

Now, it doesn’t take a genius to see the lack of wisdom in this advice. If you draw your gun and somebody were to attempt to take it away from you, is it really a good idea to hold the gun so daintily that they could quickly strip it from your hand?

Unfortunately, it gets even worse…

These instructors are teaching the old “cup and saucer” shooting grip. If you’re not familiar with this “google” it and you’ll see why it’s a bad grip that hasn’t been taught in decades by reputable agencies.

The grip that I recommend and that the top shooters in the world use is the Thumbs Forward shooting grip. This allows you to put a lot of flesh on the gun and when new shooters try this grip it almost always improves their accuracy.

Of course, I showed the kid the Thumbs Forward grip and I told him be needed to grip the gun harder and I better never be able to slap the gun out of his hand. But guess what? The instructors at this academy will not allow him to use the grip I showed him. They have told him he has to do it the way they teach shooting and nothing else.

And that’s the real reason I wrote today’s article because that’s what really annoys me.

Like I just mentioned, I use the Thumbs Forward grip and so do the majority of good shooters. But the fact is, the most important thing in the world is if you can hit your target. So if you come to me and want to try another grip and with this other grip you shoot better, then by all means, as long as you’re still obeying the 4 safety rules then use that other grip.

It’s a shame to see law enforcement agencies who are 1) teaching terrible firearms training and 2) who are not open minded and not allowing their officers to grip the gun a different way if it’s what works for them.

Whether you’re in law enforcement or not, I always recommend keeping an open mind because you never know when you’re going to discover a new shooting method that works better for you. But, when you find something that doesn’t, no instructor (police or civilian) should force you to shoot their way and their way only.