PREPARED & ARMED TEAM SHOOTING TACTICS FOR HOME DEFENSE JOSEPH TERRY Living Ready BOOKS IOLA, WISCONSIN www.LivingReadyOnline.com CONTENTS Preface Introduction PART 1: ASSEMBLING YOUR FIRE TEAM CHAPTER 1: The Function and Form of a Civilian Fire Team CHAPTER 2: Selecting Members for a Fire Team and Survival Group CHAPTER 3: Basic Gun-Handling Skills CHAPTER 4: Advanced Firearms Skills PART 2: EQUIPPING YOUR FIRE TEAM CHAPTER 5: Selecting Unit Standard Equipment for Your Fire Team CHAPTER 6: Training With Airsoft Guns CHAPTER 7: The Fire Team Combat Load CHAPTER 8: Selecting and Hardening a Fortified Residence PART 3: TRAINING YOUR FIRE TEAM CHAPTER 9: Three Tactical Roles CHAPTER 10: Eight Areas of Tactical Proficiency CHAPTER 11: Tactical Communication Skills CHAPTER 12: Tactical Principles of Static Defense CHAPTER 13: Basic Patrol Tactics CHAPTER 14: Tactical Assault Techniques CHAPTER 15: Advanced Tactical Techniques for a Gunfight CHAPTER 16: Heroic Medical Response Under Primitive Conditions CHAPTER 17: Advanced Outdoor Skills for a Displacement Scenario PART 4: OPERATING AS A FIRE TEAM CHAPTER 18: The Mad Minute: Dealing with Armed Mobs CHAPTER 19: Responding to Neighbors in Need CHAPTER 20: Dealing With Law Enforcement and the National Guard Parting Shots APPENDIX List A: Sample Three Shooter Fire Team Armaments List List B: Sample Three Shooter Fire Team Armaments List, Modest Cost List C: Contents of the Combat Ruck List D: Contents of the Medical “Jump Bag” Bibliography Glossary Dedication This book is fondly and respectfully dedicated to my father, George. TSgt, 32nd ID, WWII. CIB, Bronze Stars (5). Battles of: Buna-Gona, Sananada, Dobadura, Hollandia, and the invasion of Leyte. He refused a battlefield commission (skipping grade) direct to 1st Lt. because he would have to transfer out and leave his buddies in the outfit. The boys in the “Red Arrow” Division left their youth and blood fighting the Japanese in the rotting jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines defending our republic from invasion. Now, it’s up to us to protect it from chaos. The sacrifice of the greatest generation deserves no less. “Any man who is a man may not, in honor, submit to threats of violence. But many men who are not cowards are simply unprepared for the fact of human savagery. They have not thought about it (as incredible as this may appear to anyone who listens to the news) and they just do not know what to do. When they look into the face of depravity or violence they are astonished and confused.” —COL. JEFF COOPER “Somebody who thinks there is good in all men ... has not met all men.” —LAW ENFORCEMENT PROVERB PREFACE: DISASTERS AND THE HUMAN CONDITION During the more than twenty-seven years I’ve been involved with law enforcement, I have seen disasters bring out the best and worst in the human condition. Some people rise to the occasion and demonstrate remarkable heroism, self-sacrifice, and focused determination to survive. Others will rob, rape, and steal simply because, if unfettered by traditional law enforcement, they can. Here is a dose of reality known to every street cop—cities and counties hire the absolute minimum number of officers and deputies necessary to handle the average pace of criminal activity. If some disruption, natural or man-caused, dramatically increases the number of felonies taking place, local law enforcement can be quickly overwhelmed. If neighboring departments are hit with the same disaster, mutual aid protocols collapse. The corrections system (prisons and jails) will also be overwhelmed and stop functioning. Expect mass escape of prisoners who will operate in well-organized looter gangs. In the absence of traditional law enforcement services, responsible citizens must step into the breech to protect their neighborhoods from the looting that has now become commonplace in the wake of such disasters. This book is a sample protocol on how citizens can fill that breech ethically and effectively. It has long been fashionable for the cultural elites to look down on the preparedness community as a bunch of knuckle draggers or collapse-fantasy addicts. This book is hardly evidence of a perverse hope that a disaster will occur. Like a fire extinguisher or a first aid kit, it is simply a prudent investment in case one does. The greatest emergency preparedness tool is a nimble brain, but the brain needs to be constantly fed with new ideas to function properly. It’s not even important that you agree with all the ideas presented in this book; simply process them and find points that fit your application. Your opinions may be quite different from mine on this topic, and that’s fine. This book just gives you a chance to think about what you might be up against if you get a busy signal when you dial 911. BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE, WELL-BALANCED FIRE TEAM Although I strongly recommend you build a comprehensive personal library on all topics related to family disaster preparedness, I have excerpted what I believe to be the most relevant points from my own collection just in case you don’t. I have drawn from more than forty published reference works cited in the bibliography, and they represent a wealth of knowledge to supplement my own particular experience. Each reference cited is worth a closer look, and in this age of internet shopping, they are only a click away. Incidentally, you can have a comprehensive preparedness library in your pocket with an e-reader device, sustained by a crank radio with a charger adapter. Knowledge is power and e-readers can store a wealth of practical information in a small package. While the thrust of this book is the advanced tactical use of defensive firearms, much of the content is secondary survival-related material, but is still important to know. It is sobering to remember that in the American Civil War, more casualties were caused by disease, post-operative infection, and poor sanitation than gunfire. In a prolonged social collapse or regional natural disaster, much of the American landscape could be thrust into such primitive conditions as the 1860s with a lack of clean water, proper sanitation and healthy food. Deprivation causes panic, and panic is the mood-state that drives the mob. In an absence of traditional law enforcement services, local groups of responsible citizens can be forged into an effective defensive force (what I will refer to in this book as a “fire team”) to deter mob aggression. Although the well-coordinated use of firearms is the foundation, it is only one facet of a complex survival task. (Guns are only tools after all.) One member of the fire team needs to be trained in health and wound management, one in communications, codes and navigation, and one in primitive living and outdoor survival skills. All of these areas are covered in this book in some detail because in coping with disaster, the devil will still be lurking in the details. It doesn’t matter if you learn how to gunfight as a group if your members are flat on their backs with dysentery or dehydration. And although understanding equipment is important, don’t rush to the store just yet. (People often try to fix a problem by buying something.) Far better to think in the greatest detail possible about the unique challenges you, your family and your neighbors might face and then purchase your equipment. The objective of this book is to help you project yourself into the harsh contingencies of self-reliance in considerable detail, with the hope that you will never need to actually confront them. The power comes from knowing that if you must, you could. No sane person looks forward to a gunfight, and we should all do everything feasible to avoid it. But if that horrible last resort is thrust upon us, we have only two choices; fight back or die. Prevailing in an armed encounter requires the mental willingness to confront the possibility and the discipline to prepare for it. If you are ready, read on. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS Some of my colleagues in law enforcement may shudder at the thought of sharing team gunfighting techniques with civilians. That’s unfortunate because well-prepared citizens can be law enforcement’s best friends and strongest allies. In the Old West, when the bank was robbed or the stage was held up and the town sheriff put out the posse call, regular folks dropped their hay forks and shop towels and grabbed their guns and rode with him. In the frontier days, keeping the peace wasn’t a duty for “them,” it was a duty for “us.” On September 7, 1876, the notorious James/Younger gang of bank robbers was blown out of their saddles in Northfield, Minnesota, by angry townspeople who had their rifles handy. Lesson learned? Don’t try to rip people off on the opening week of deer season! And looking to civilians to help law enforcement is not just something from the history books. I shared some tactical training with an Alaska State Trooper who described flying his bush plane solo into small villages to deal with … whatever. “How far away is your cover?” I asked. “When I land,” he said with a modest smile, “I’m always met by two or three locals who I know from past experience will back me up just fine.” The topics covered in this book are more complex, of course. Nobody wants tactical tips to end up in the wrong hands, but after much reflection I think they probably won’t. I’ve helped process hundreds of prisoners into custody, and never, not once, included a book on their property inventory sheet or found one when we impounded their cars or tossed their apartments. Gangbangers and self- absorbed young sociopaths may be cunning, but they appear as a class, almost entirely illiterate. None of this information requires a security clearance. These techniques are all described in the public domain and well demonstrated in the recent crop of special ops movies, some of which are quite good. And if a bad boy does happen to get his hands on this book, it would probably be a good idea for him to keep this in mind: If you think your crew can take on SWAT because of this information, think again. The “young guns” in black suits will clean your clock. I’ve watched them stand on the line and ping metal plates with their pistols from fifty yards just for kicks. From across the room, they can put three suppressed rounds into a target the size of a softball with a sound like a quiet fart in less than a second. From three-hundred yards out, they can put a sniper round through a