Lessons from a Modern Day Gunfighter

Hopefully, most of us will never be in a gunfight. But the fact is, there are thousands of home invasions and other crimes committed every day. This means there are many Americans who are, unfortunately, likely to experience a gunfight in their lifetime. But the chances of someone experiencing four gunfights (who isn’t in law enforcement or the military) are extremely slim.

One such person is California man Lance Thomas. Lance used to own a high-end watch store in Los Angeles. Back in the 1980s, many shopkeepers on his street were getting robbed and murdered so he decided to get a gun. He purchased a .38 snub-nosed revolver.

Just a few weeks after he purchased his first gun, two men walked into his store and attempted to rob him by pointing a 9mm at his face. As Lance was pretending to gather up watches to give to them he grabbed his .38 and shot the gunman in the face while the other robber fled. Lance was unharmed and grateful to have had a gun.

After this first encounter he decided he needed more firearms training. He began going to the shooting range regularly. He also started getting in shape and joined a gym. He bought several more guns and he put them every three feet along the counter of his store that way he was always close to a firearm. He also practiced different scenarios on how someone would attempt to rob him in the store.

Just a few months later, two more men entered the watch store armed with guns. Another gunfight ensued and Lance ended up killing both criminals. Lance was shot four times himself, but most of the shots were in the shoulder and he quickly recovered.

About two years later, Lance experienced his third gunfight. He was again in his watch store when a single robber approached him with a Glock 9mm. Lance quickly drew his gun and killed the robber. Lance was shot in the neck, but on the side so the bullet passed through cleanly and he had no serious injuries. (He even says he went back to work the next day.)

The fourth and final gunfight involved two gang members who were looking for an easy score. They actually walked into the store with their guns out and as soon as Lance saw this he drew his gun and started firing. During the gunfight both gang members were killed and Lance was untouched.

After this fourth incident Lance decided it was time to close his shop and these days he only does business by private appointment. So what are the lessons we can learn from Lance (besides not to own a watch store in LA)?

1. Practice regularly. In interviews, Lance mentioned how he went to the range often and how he practiced drawing his gun often too. No doubt, his ability to quickly draw his firearm saved his life more than once.

2. Get in Shape. I’m not the biggest fan of working out but I know it’s good for me, which is why I run several miles everyday. If you’re not in shape you may not be able to move quickly enough to defend yourself.

3. Have multiple firearms. I have firearms stored throughout my house. Remember, if you’re watching a movie in your basement and your only gun is in your bedroom that’s a long way to go when someone is kicking in your front door.

4. Prepare. Besides practicing at the range and drawing his gun, he also practiced different scenarios and prepared ahead of time for the multiple ways he could be attacked. That’s why it’s important to prepare for what you will do if you have a home invasion and even what you will do once the gunfight is over.

The bottom line is, Lance Thomas is a very courageous man who refused to be a victim, and he’s a good example of how practice and preparation can pay off in the most important way of all.

How to Deal With a Stalker

Over the years, I’ve trained many people (mostly women) who had to deal with stalkers. It’s been ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, co-workers, and even former patients of doctors.

Thankfully, I’ve never had to deal with a “real” stalker myself, just women who called too much and left me way too many voicemails… but nothing where I felt like I was on the set of Fatal Attraction.   

The thing is, it’s truly scary how many men (again it’s mostly men) latch on to women and make their lives miserable and even kill them. So even though it’s going to be many years before my daughter starts dating, here’s a quick guide for how to handle a stalker that you may want to use yourself or pass on to a loved one.

First, when it comes to stalkers, women typically do the exact opposite of what they should be doing. If a woman goes out with a guy on a date and she isn’t interested in him she should make that 100% clear. I realize that we all want to be nice, but it’s very important to let that person know that you don’t wish to see them again and there’s no chance in you-know-where you’ll go on another date with them. In other words, don’t give them any hope.

Also, if that person starts calling, it is critical to ignore their calls and not respond to them. You see, most people will answer the calls and yell at the guy and tell them to stop calling… or they’ll email with them back and forth… or they’ll threaten them saying they’re going to get their brother or father to “pay them a visit.”

But like I just mentioned, this is the absolute wrong way to handle the situation. Each time you answer the phone or engage the stalker it gives them a little hope. If they leave 10 voicemails and you call them back after the 10^th voicemail then they’ve won and they know what it takes to get you to pay attention to them.

For a lot of people, it is very difficult to ignore someone, but that’s what you have to do. You can’t let them bait you into interacting with them. Once you’ve told them you’re not interested in them you need to stop contact, cold turkey.

Now, if it’s an ex-boyfriend, or friend, or someone you’re not extremely close to then they’ll eventually get the hint and they’ll go on to bother someone else. However, the real danger is when the stalker is an ex-spouse. Ex-spouses often murder the spouse they’re stalking, whereas, an ex-boyfriend or someone else not as emotionally involved rarely kills the person they’re stalking.

So if it’s an ex-husband, you also need to cut-off communication and you need to go into hiding, always carry a gun with you (which you should always carry anyway), and be alert at all times.

Hopefully, you never find yourself in the position of an ex-spouse stalking you, but either way, remember not to let the person play games and never return their calls or emails. Again, I realize that’s tough to do, but you only make things worse when you give them your attention.    

A Letter From “Ms. Smith”

Recently, I received a letter in the mail from a woman, whom I’ll refer to as “Ms. Smith” to protect her identity. Ms. Smith took my concealed carry course and wanted to get a gun for home protection because her husband traveled frequently.

Ms. Smith ended up getting a gun, however, her husband was adamantly against it. He told her she needed to get rid of the gun, demanded that they go to marital counseling, and he even started telling their friends and family that she was a mentally unstable “prepper” because she got a gun.

After months of arguing, Ms. Smith finally conceded to her husband and she got rid of her gun. However, she said that things only got worse in their relationship. Her husband became very suspicious of her and was monitoring her computer history, cell phone, and searching her car and purse.

Like many people, Ms. Smith couldn’t understand why her husband was doing all of this and why he wasn’t supportive in her desire to have a firearm to protect herself and her family.

But then one day it all made sense…

Ms. Smith discovered that her husband had been cheating on her for years. As she wrote to me in her letter, “His fear of the gun was driven by the fear of getting caught with his mistress.”

Eventually, Ms. Smith and her husband got divorced. But not before he tried to win custody of their daughter (so he didn’t have to pay child support) claiming that Ms. Smith was unstable and paranoid.

Today, Ms. Smith is still recovering from that ordeal but she’s found peace and sounded very positive in the letter and has found comfort in her faith. But I wanted to share this with you because there are many reasons one spouse may not want another spouse to have a gun…

Some of them make a lot of sense, such as a childhood incident, or parents who “brainwashed” them to the “evils” of firearms. But then there are cases like Ms. Smith’s when a normal and loving spouse wouldn’t start berating you to your friends and family and wouldn’t start searching your car and purse like you were hiding something just because you purchased a gun for home defense.

Obviously, I hope nobody’s spouse is cheating on them… but don’t ignore the red flags, and if your spouse doesn’t want you to get a gun get to the bottom of the real reason they don’t want you to be able to protect yourself.

Why many agencies are switching to the 9mm

I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day and that you were able to relax and spend time with the family. I wish I could say that I spent my Labor Day at the shooting range, but right now I’m in Baltimore, MD on business.

That means when I go running in the morning I’m not carrying concealed and instead have to run with only my tactical pen. It will be nice to go home soon to a state that cares about self-preservation and not a state that wants to keep people unarmed (which is always a sign of a dangerous government.)

Since I didn’t go shooting yesterday I spent a lot of time reading and researching. And one topic that keeps popping up lately is how several law enforcement agencies are now switching back to the 9mm. The fact is, law enforcement in Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Colorado are just a few of the places switching.

Why is law enforcement switching from the .40 and .45 back to the 9mm?

Well, as one article I read stated about a police department in Sioux Falls, SD, “they’re trading in their .40 caliber handguns for 9mm pistols, citing lighter recoil and greater capacity…”

Yes, the 9mm has lighter recoil and yes you can carry more rounds in your magazine, but the main reason to switch is that due to advancements in bullet technology the stopping power of a 9mm is now about the same as a .40.

In other words, you’re really not losing anything by switching to the 9mm. I realize many people find that hard to believe and even if you showed them the tests that have proven the 9mm and .40 to be almost identical they still wouldn’t believe you.

But, as always, it comes down to shot placement.

If you shoot someone in the hand with a 9mm or .40 I imagine it’s not going to feel good, but it’s not going to kill them either. However, if you shoot them in the heart with a .40 or 9mm there’s little chance they’re going to survive.

Of course, another benefit of the 9mm is that it’s cheaper than the .40 or the .45. With budget cuts affecting law enforcement around the country it’s no surprise they’re looking to switch to cheaper ammo when it will do just as good of a job as the ammo they’re carrying now.

I’ve been carrying 9mm for years and have had plenty of “macho” folks comment to me that I carry a “weaker” round. However, my so-called “weaker” round is a 124-grain Speer Gold Dot, which I’m confident will stop any threat I may encounter. So if you’ve been thinking of switching to a 9mm, don’t let others talk you out of it and realize that many law enforcement agencies are now “seeing the light” and coming back to the 9mm too.

In fact, the only reason that the police switched from 9mm to .40 in the first place was because of the Assault Weapons ban of 1994. The 1994 law banned the production of high capacity magazines, however, you could still sell “pre-ban” magazines. So the gun manufacturers went to police departments and offered big incentives to upgrade to the .40 so they could get the departments to turn in the high capacity 9mm magazines that they could resell for a huge profit.

In other words, it wasn’t because the .40 was a miraculous new round, it’s because gun manufacturers wanted to make money and so they made the police departments an offer they couldn’t resist.

Is it safe to store guns and ammo in a hot car?

Recently, we had a heat wave in Southern Utah and there were a string of 100-degree days. Thankfully, I’m a little bit north of Las Vegas so it didn’t get to 110, but it was still extremely hot. When it gets this hot over the summer I often get several questions about storing a gun and ammunition in a car, and if it’s safe to do.

Let’s start with storing ammunition first. If you’re using quality factory ammunition then you can store it in your car all summer long and it won’t be a problem. A lot of people believe that if it gets too hot in the car the ammunition will explode and you’ll have the Fourth of July inside your vehicle.

But the fact is, it has to be over 400 degrees inside your car in order for the ammunition to “explode.” And if it gets that hot in your car you’re probably not on Earth, but in a place governed by a fellow with horns and a pitchfork.

The big problem when it comes to storing ammunition in the car is humidity.

If you live on the east coast then you know how tough the humidity is. Walking from your house to your car in the morning can leave you drenched in sweat. But as I mentioned a minute ago, if you’re using quality factory ammunition (which is sealed) you still won’t have a problem.

The problem is when people reload their own ammo and they buy inexpensive primers that aren’t sealed. This allows moisture to get in and cause the round not to function.

As far as storing a gun in your vehicle, it’s pretty much the same as storing your ammunition. You can store your gun in your vehicle in high temperatures without a problem. However, if you’re storing your gun in your vehicle long-term I would definitely lock it up. When I was a police offer I knew several people who left their guns in their vehicles and thieves broke in and stole the guns.

Like ammunition, the major problem with storing your gun in your car is humidity.

If you have a 1911, you might find a gun with a lot of rust on it after a summer of sitting in your vehicle. However, if you’re absolutely dead-set on storing your gun and ammunition in your car in the heat a simple solution is to put them in a small cooler.

I know a few folks who put them in a cooler and they tell me this solves the problem and they’ve never had an issue with humidity or a rusted gun. Personally though, the only time I leave my gun in the car in the heat is when I’m running an errand to the post office or I have to go to the courthouse or some other place where I can’t bring a gun. Otherwise, I prefer not to leave my gun in my car for extended periods of time (mostly because I don’t want to take the chance of someone stealing it) but obviously, you can do what suits your comfort level.  

Long Term Gun Storage

I’ve got guns stored throughout my house. These are my “home defense” guns so they’re fully loaded with a round in the chamber. However, because I have a one-year-old that is like Godzilla and walks around my house taking things off shelves and destroying them, all of my home defense guns are locked in a rapid opening safe. (I use the Gun Vault and Stack-On brands.)

But I also have guns that I don’t use for home defense purposes, such as some handguns, rifles, and shotguns, and just because I don’t have them loaded with a round in the chamber, doesn’t mean they’re not locked up. The fact is, even if I didn’t have a mini-Godzilla running around my house I still believe in having every gun you own locked up in one way or another.

The simplest route to take for your “non-home defense” guns would be to put a trigger lock on them.

Master Lock and Remington are a few of the companies that make trigger locks and once the locks are on you could throw the guns in a box in your closest. (This isn’t a method I prefer, but to each their own.)

Another route to take for guns that you don’t use very often is to lock them in the plastic gun case they came in. Throw a padlock on the case and you’re all set.

A more secure option is one of the larger gun safes by Liberty, Cannon, or Browning.

If you were ever to have a break-in and you weren’t home, the thieves could easily run off with your guns with just the trigger lock or in the plastic gun case. (This happened to a friend of mine.) However, if you’re using one of the large safes and it’s bolted to the ground it would take them a heck of a long time to make off with it.

Depending on how long you’re going to store your guns in these large safes I would thoroughly clean them before I put them away and make sure to wipe off your fingerprints using a silicone gun cloth before you put them away. You may want to go as far as adding some desiccant inside the safe too.

If you’re going to put your guns in these safes and not touch them for more than a year you may also want to get a gun storage bag such as the ZCORR storage bags. And if you’re burying your guns in a PVC pipe in your back yard for the end of the world then I would definitely get a gun storage bag and throw in some desiccant.

One final note: For my own guns that I don’t use for home defense and that I store longer term, I store these unloaded - both the gun and the magazines. Guns like my Ruger Mark III are not part of my home defense plan, plus the safe takes a long time to open, so I choose to keep them unloaded. But however you choose to keep your guns stored is up to you. 

Camping With a Firearm

My wife’s family reunion was this past weekend. We went camping and fishing at Panguitch Lake in Southern Utah, which is a beautiful and remote lake that doesn’t even get cell phone service.

Everybody had a good time and was still speaking to each other at the end, so I guess you could say the reunion was a success even though we didn’t catch any fish that were big enough to keep and eat.

At the reunion, and whenever I go camping or spend time in the outdoors, I’m always carrying my gun with me. Recently, someone asked me what I did with my gun during the reunion since there were a ton of kids running around and I obviously didn’t want any of them to have access to it.

Well, during the day I always carried my gun on me as I typically do, even while fishing and other activities. But at night, I didn’t sleep with my gun on my hip and clearly, I wasn’t about to take my gun off and just put it in a corner of my tent. My daughter was in the tent with my wife and I, plus, I can’t trust the cousins not to go into my tent either.

So at night I simply took my gun off and stored it in a rapid opening safe.

The safe that I brought with me is the Gun Vault MV-500 STD Microvault safe. This is a smaller safe that stores my full size Smith & Wesson M&P and also my Ruger LCP. It uses a four-digit code that allows me to open the safe in about two seconds.  

I slept with the safe next to me along with a flashlight (plus a Rayovac camping lantern) that way I could easily access my gun in the event of an emergency. Thankfully, the only problems we had at night were barking dogs and my 2-year-old niece who decided to scream bloody murder half the night and wake everyone up about 5 times.

The bottom line is, these days there are dozens of rapid opening safes out there, and whether you’re camping or just hanging out at home I think every responsible gun owner ought to keep their gun locked up when it’s not on their hip or in their pocket… but it’s also very important to be able to access it quickly, which is why I took the rapid opening safe with me this weekend and why I also have each gun that’s stored throughout my house in a rapid opening safe.