Concealed Carry Weapon Permit in Orange County, Part II

This article is Part II of a III part series on the concealed carry weapon process. In this article we will be discussing 1) Selecting an instructor, 2) Selecting a firearm, 3) Clothing.

So you have decided you want to be able to legally carry a concealed firearm; this comes with a lot of responsibility and is not to be taken lightly. Be sure you take the required training seriously and invest some time in selecting an instructor.

I am going to give you some things to consider when making the decision to select an instructor. Make sure you are getting your money’s worth from an instructor who has real, verifiable experience related to carrying a firearm for his or her profession. In my opinion, your instructor should have military and or law enforcement experience. There is a big difference between an instructor who has had to carry a firearm for work in real world conditions and one who has not.

There is no substitute for experience — period. Law Enforcement personnel carry guns on their person when they are working and most carry firearms concealed when they are off duty. As a community they have the most real world ccw experience of any type of people you might come across. They are up to date on the newest types of firearms, training, ammo and equipment. You should want to take advantage of their experience to help you weed through what works and what doesn’t work.

An instructor who is prior law enforcement can also tell you what you could expect if you had to use your firearm to defend yourself. He or she may be able to give you some advice on how the process works and some of the do’s and don’ts.


Pick up the phone and ask to speak to the instructor who is teaching the course. Inquire as to his or her background. Ask the instructor if they have a ccw themselves. If the instructor does not have a ccw for the state he or she is teaching inquire as to why. How can an instructor teach a course on ccw if they themselves do not have one? If the instructor has a ccw ask him or her how long they have had it. Ask the instructor if he or she was prior military or law enforcement? Remember there is no substitute for experience.

Once you have selected your instructor complete the required training course and submit a copy of your certificate of completion to the sheriff’s department either through fax or email.

Selecting a firearm:

You may already have this part figured out. If not discuss it with your instructor so they can help guide you on your purchase or selection. I suggest if you are unsure that you go to a local gun range and try out a few different guns to see what works best for you. Keep in mind a couple of important factors: a.) in Orange County you can have a maximum of three firearms on your permit, b.) the firearms must be registered to you, c.) the sheriff’s department will check to see if the guns you list on your application are registered to you, if they are not you will not be able to add them to your permit, and d.) the firearm must not be altered from its original factory design — meaning you cannot change the internals of the firearm. For example, you cannot change or alter the trigger in any fashion such as installing an aftermarket trigger kit or having a gunsmith alter the factory components so that the trigger is lighter or smoother. You can change the cosmetics if you want such as the color, the sights, and/or the grips.

Clothing:

 

You will have to decide how you are going to carry. Most people have no idea how this can affect their daily life until they try and leave the house carrying a concealed gun on their person. For example, if you are carrying a gun inside the waistband you may have to buy a pair of pants that is one size larger to make room for the gun. You will probably need to buy a sturdy belt that can support the weight of a gun.

You may need to start wearing a light jacket or a button up shirt to help conceal the gun you are carrying. More than likely you will need to make some changes to your wardrobe. The last thing you want to happen to you is for you to accidently expose your gun while you are out in public. (I will be doing another article that will cover Unwarranted Detection.) Law enforcement officers know this inside and out as a result of experience. If you have an instructor who is prior law enforcement, be sure to ask for their advice on this subject.

In closing, remember to always store your firearm in a safe and lawful manner and always adhere to the terms and conditions of your permit. If you want to reach me directly feel free to contact me via email.

Author : Jason Granados

shootsafe@outlook.com

First Posted on Aegis Academy

A Semester Abroad: Arrogance, Apathy, and Ignorance, Part 2

Traveling abroad is an opportunity for endless enrichment experiences. Traveling to unfamiliar territory also inevitably invites the opportunity for security threats. In the last article of this series, “Arrogance, Apathy, and Ignorance: What a Student Traveling Abroad Ought to Know“, I provided an introduction to my own travel experiences in Moscow, Russia as a student in a direct exchange program. I briefly shared about how my arrogant attitude towards my own status as an American citizen not only revealed my naivety about foreign cultures, but may have also resulted in the piano bar attack I described.

In “A Semester Abroad: Arrogance, Apathy, and Ignorance, Part 2″ I would like to elaborate on the piano bar attack using a lens more analytical than theoretical. In doing so I will outline some of the mistakes that I made — be they false assumptions, improper preparation, or just plain old stupidity — which ultimately resulted in potential threats becoming a scary reality. With recent reports showing that each year near 300,000 American students study abroad, roughly 65% of these students are females, more discussion needs to be had on issues of travel security; because ultimately if you find yourself facing an attack situation then you have already made mistakes that led you to this point. Knowing how to prevent safety and security issues when traveling abroad is the best self-defense mechanism you could ever teach yourself.

Lesson One: ‘Prepare for the Worst’ is Not for the Weak!

Traveling to Moscow, Russia I would have never predicted that I would be the victim of a violent attack, let alone the victim of two violent attacks. Growing up in America where statistically two-thirds of Americans will never be the victim of a violent attack, I had grown comfortable with the assumption that my safety was practically guaranteed. My first presumptuous mistake was made long before my plane ever touched down in Moscow — I decided to dismiss the warnings of my friends and family as propaganda-motivated paranoia. I was not even remotely invested in any form of risk analysis — a process which considers any catastrophic events that could occur — but, I should have been. For students who are planning to travel or study abroad for any amount of time, particularly in an Eastern European nation, there are certain warnings which deserve your attention. You should give your attention to these warnings not only to alert your awareness to the possibility of such events, but in order to break down any false or arrogant assumptions you may have about the potential for such security issues. Here is a brief list of the warnings given to me by parents, friends, university officials, and experienced travelers of Russia which I, for the most part, dismissed:

• Do not be out on the streets of Moscow after dark.
• Do not go anywhere alone — day or night.
• Avoid hailing taxis from the street. Instead, call a registered taxi company.
• Do not drink (for too long) with a Russian. They can tolerate more alcohol than you. (Not a stereotype…a reality.)
• Pick-pockets are slick. Take extra precautions to avoid being the victim of theft.
• Do not carry too much cash on you. And never pull out your I-Phone (or smart phone) in an unfamiliar environment.

I failed to acknowledge, at one point or another throughout my stay in Moscow, nearly all of the above listed warnings. The series of events that led up to me being the victim of an attack at the piano bar, however, were the direct result of me assuming I need not pay attention to four of the above warnings. Talk about arrogant! Being prepared, cautious, and alert is not a sign of weakness. To the contrary, it demonstrates wisdom and a respect for the realities of the world that we live in.

Lesson Two: ‘Playing it By Ear’ Does Not Result in a Good Night Out

I could say that the best way to avoid being the victim of any sort of piano bar attack would be to avoid leaving your Moscow dorm room, unless traveling to class, the grocery store, or your nearest Visa office. The reality is, however, that most twenty-somethings traveling to Moscow, or any country for that matter, will choose to experience the culture in one way or another in daytime and at night. Entirely avoiding a threat may be improbable, but threat avoidance to some degree is certainly still possible with proper planning and situational awareness.

I certainly did not plan ahead to any degree on the night of the piano bar attack. A fellow American student knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to join him as we “went exploring”. Without a second thought, I grabbed my purse, all of my cash, and set out for a busier part of the city. Mistake: not giving it a ‘thought’ is typically not a good idea when traveling in unfamiliar, unforgiving environments.

We popped into a restaurant and ordered some traditional Russian dishes. After a while, we overheard two men sitting next to us speaking with British accents. We decided to be friendly and assumed these men were friendly Westerners. Before long we were sharing stories over drinks and eating up every word that these ‘friendly Westerners’ were telling us. Not once did we think to ‘red flag’ these men, despite the discrepancies in their conversation: misplaced accents with un-matching stories of origin, unusual advice which was contrary to all the warnings we had received elsewhere, and vague information about their own professional endeavors in Moscow. We simply went along with the coincidence of the night — we had found two friendly tour guides and it was time to play the rest of the night by ear. Mistake: assuming friendly strangers, no matter how much you may have in common with them, genuinely want to show you a good time.

Lesson Three: If It Seems Dangerous, it Probably Is

Threat avoidance is a period within the progression of any given attack cycle that only lasts so long. Eventually, a threat shifts from being potential to imminent. At such a point, there is no more avoiding a threat, only mitigating such threats.

As the first restaurant closed, we hopped in a street taxi (See above warnings) with our new British comrades and headed for Chinatown — a notoriously criminal part of Moscow. It would have behooved my friend and I if we had chosen to call it a night before heading to Chinatown, but again we assumed there was no need to worry. We arrived on a busy street and one of our British friends led us to his “favorite little pub” – a piano bar located undergrounds. The night carried on; I was consumed in conversation with our British friends, while my American friend struck up conversations with Russian patrons who, quite frankly, had had way too much to drink. All five of us (two Americans, two British, and a Russian) moved, on the request of the Brits to a small table secluded in the back corner of the restaurant — on the side without the piano. (Just a note: my hope is that at this point in the story you, my reader, are picking up on the numerous naïve, dangerous, and careless decisions that we made that night.) An older Russian gentleman had been pestering me all night, but my new-found British friend assured me that he was a regular here, and to pay him no mind.

Then, all of a sudden, one of the British men proclaimed he had received a text stating his mother had had a heart attack and that they must leave immediately. We offered our shocked condolences and encouraged him to be on his way. We, being filled with joviality at the nights festivities, decided to stay to talk to more Russians. Mistake: do not stay late, in a dark corner of an underground bar, with no one but locals around. Two are easily outnumbered.

We had stayed maybe twenty minutes after our British friends left when my friend excused himself to the bathroom. I told him we ought to leave when he returned. I was all alone in the corner when the older Russian man that had been a slight annoyance all night suddenly turned aggressive. And thus, the potential threats that had been there since the before we had ever left our dormitory were realized in actuality. I had not avoided them, I had not mitigated them, and now I was left to defend myself against these actual threats.

The man pushed me into the corner of the table, while I yelled for help to anyone in the bar, while another Russian (the one that we had befriended throughout the night) stole my money and phone. Not a single bar patron looked our way — they were locals and knew better. My friend came out of the restroom only to be greeted by another Russian man in cohorts with this criminal scheme wielding a knife. He warned my friend not to interfere and that we would be able to leave soon. Sure enough, just as I thought that the physical violence was going to escalate to a point of serious injury, the older man stepped off of me and they fled the piano bar.

I tell this story not to dramatize the stupidity of the decisions I made that night, nor to fulfill any stereotypes about criminal activity on the streets of Moscow. I am telling this to encourage readers, especially those who may find themselves studying or traveling abroad in the near future, to take the time to think about your daily or nightly excursions. Listen to the warnings of those that care about you. Have a plan and stick to it. And most of all, do not walk into a trap — if it seems dangerous (underground bar in a criminal part of town) it most likely is.
Stay tuned for the next part in this article series, “ Arrogance, Apathy, and Ignorance: What a Student Traveling Abroad Ought to Know“, where I will introduce a different attack experience I encountered towards the end of my stay in Moscow. Along with this introduction, I will conceptualize apathy in terms of personal safety and security.

Stay Safe!

Author - Anna Johnson

Originally posted at Aegis Academy

The Development of Shooting Specific Physical Skills

Train Smarter, Not Harder…

 

While physical skill development is discussed at length in training manuals for sports such as martial arts, cycling, powerlifting, and running, very little is written on how to apply periodization techniques to shooting. The application of modern training techniques in developing physical skills has massively changed the way professional athletes train. Over the years performance has massively increased across the board. Unfortunately, those concepts have in large part eluded the vast majority of shooting enthusiasts and professional instructors. Too often the development of shooting specific physical skills is accomplished by instructors doggedly adhering to the “What I learned first, must be the best” theory. Fortunately, there is a better (or more efficient) way of developing the shooting specific skills you are looking for. The most widely known example of the principles of periodization is the workout routine known as Crossfit.

Physical skill development in any sport occurs faster and more effectively using the periodization techniques that have dominated competitive sports training for the past half century. We see college athletes routinely make weight, speed, power, and time achievements that were unthinkable at even the most elite competitive levels 50 years ago. Taking the time to break those skills down into an effective program is not insurmountable, but it takes time, patience and a fair amount of trial and error . We have chosen to focus on four principles of periodization relevant to shooting specific skills. These phases are adaptation, conditioning, transition, and refinement.

The adaptation phase is characterized by the establishment or reprogramming of existing neuromuscular pathways. This is simply teaching your muscles and tendons to stabilize the muzzle while you perform all the other necessary actions to hit your target. The key to adaptation is to remember that practice does not make perfect; practice makes permanent. During the adaptation phase, we are not concerned with speed, we are exclusively focused on getting the movements absolutely correct. This is all about establishing an efficient neuromuscular pathway. Most people can build enough of a base in about 90 days to begin effective training if they focus on it – but this is the permanent base from which your skills will develop. Mistakes made in the adaptation phase will prove costly in time and effort.

The conditioning phase is designed to improve on the efficient neuromuscular programming we have developed in the adaptation phase. We accomplish this by varying the conditions under which we activate the pathway and we increase the intensity. For example, conducting trigger-reset drills while seated and not looking at the front site removes much of the expected stimulus associated with a trigger press, but ingrains the reset all the same. We can vary the intensity by conducting the drill for a longer period of time, over a shorter cycle or by adding more repetitions. The reality is that overload is also an effective means of adding variation, but power is a very small part of the development of shooting specific skills so we don’t use that principle much.

The transition period is a programmed rest phase which allows both the body and mind to take a break. It also allows your normal coordinated movement to start incorporating the improvements in the shooting specific neuromuscular pathways. Basically, as your grip strength improves, it will take a bit of time to adjust to the correct amount of pressure needed to open a jar of pickles. Incorporating these gains into your everyday life helps improve the pathway and makes it more efficient, as well as giving you finer motor control over the neuromuscular systems involved. This makes it easier to incorporate these improvements into other shooting relevant skills during the refinement phase.

The refinement phase consists of incorporating the improvements in the programed pathway into the other skill sets required to shoot effectively. This means we are focusing on a new skill set (or functional area), which typically still requires the effective use of the previously programmed pathways and serves as a maintenance program. This is the key to long-term improvement — consciously improving one specific area at a time, and over time incorporating each segmented improvement to the whole of the activity. As should be evident from the above description, this does not happen in a four hour class. Like anything else you want to master, shooting takes time an effort to get good at.

The physiological underpinnings of periodization provide the general framework for improving physical skill development. The next step is in breaking down the critical functional elements required to accomplish the skill effectively. This puzzle can be solved in many different ways, but once you understand the key elements and know what the end goal looks like, your much further along the path then when you first dumped the pieces on the table. These specific skill development requirements are called functional areas. Since we are focused on self-defense and the ability to respond effectively over the long term, not peaking for a specific known event, this provides some challenges in programming. We break shooting in to five functional areas; trigger control, focal plane shift, gross motor skills, manipulation and incapacitation. The adaptation phase is typically started during professional instruction and mastered via specific follow on drills designed to reinforce the lessons learned. They are focused on for a period of time each training season (For our purposes a calendar year) and refined during the conditioning phase of improving the other functional areas.

For our program, the length of time dedicated to each functional area was determined by its relative value to your overall shooting ability. This is combined with the likelihood of having to execute the skills in a defensive scenario. For example a picture perfect one-handed type three-malfunction clearance is somewhat of an unlikely requirement and a relatively useless skill if you do not have effective trigger control mastered. Ultimately we dedicate more time and effort to the trigger control functional area then we do to the incapacitation functional area.

Nearly every decent instructor on the planet has a series of drills and secret sauce they use to get people on target and make them faster. It’s the reason I go shoot at other institutions and take other peoples’ courses every year. The question I have seen few instructors, even the great ones, able to answer is what aspect of shooting specific physical skills that specific drill is designed to improve. It might be the perfect solution to a problem you are experiencing. Without the ability to incorporate that skill into a program of skill development, it is simply an unending litany of error and solution identification until every possible error has been eliminated. Unfortunately that is a costly and inefficient means of skill development.

Learning to drive by having an instructor point out potholes in the road is a great analogy for that type of training. If you were only told where the potholes were, you would eventually learn to vary the speed, direction, and location of the vehicle to avoid them. Conversely, If you were programatically taught how to turn the wheel, use the gas pedal and position the car correctly in the lane, you would learn to avoid potholes much more quickly. The key thing to evaluate is the goals of the program by looking at how the concepts presented relate to the drills being shot, what specific portion of a complete program does this drill work on, and what is the final goal of following the program. If that is not laid out, to some extent, you are quite likely wasting your time and effort…

Programming and periodization is what people really mean when they say “train smarter, not harder”. As with any program, compliance is always the shortfall. Train smarter does not mean sit around and think about training (although visualization can be useful, that is a different concept). It means pick up the gun and do the work to master the skill. All of our courses come with a 30 day series of specifically programmed dry practice and live fire drills to ensure you are mastering the skills the paid to learn. For those who have completed the series of courses, we’ve tried to make it easy and broken it down into daily 5 – 10 minute user friendly dry practice drills with weekly live fires and situational awareness drills to keep you sharp. Check out the Drill of the Day for our programmatic approach to long term shooting specific skill maintenance. It’s free, it’s easy and it works – provided you understand how to practice correctly… If you don’t know what you’re doing, its counter- productive at best, and dangerous at worst. Get some professional instruction from someone who can explain the training progression, and how these drills and others fit into the program. Professional instruction (in any skill based activity) is the best money you’ll ever spend!

Author - Patrick Henry (President at Aegis Academy)

Patrick Henry received his operational training and experience from the U. S. Government, 22 years of which were spent in the Marine Corps where he served in the Reconnaissance, Infantry and Intelligence fields. During his active service, he spent more then five years deployed overseas in combat, operational and training assignments. After the military, Pat worked as a contractor and as the Director of Operations at a private paramilitary firm specializing in training military special operations forces and providing protective services to select private clients. His education consists of an MBA from the University of Southern California (USC), and a BS from San Diego State University with an emphasis in Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology and a minor in Psychology. He holds an extensive list of security and training related certifications from a variety of government and nationally recognized entities. He currently sits on the advisory committee at USC’s Master of Veterans Business Program, and is an active member of Infraguard and the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS). He has been a guest speaker at ASIS, the San Diego Industrial Security Awareness Council and other private organizations on physical security, travel security, and competitive intelligence collection counter-measures.

Source : http://aegisacademy.com/community/shooting-specific-physical-skills/

Personal Security – Prediction, Prevention and Response

Prediction, prevention, and response are the general terms for the three options each of has when dealing with potential risks. We can predict that if we drive a vehicle at high speeds with a flat tire, we are more likely to be involved in a accident. That typically leads us to avoid the risk by taking some sort of action. We can prevent it from occurring by checking tire pressure periodically, or visually inspecting the vehicle prior to operation. We could respond by decreasing vehicle speeds when the car starts to become unstable. Clearly, response is the inferior option here. When it comes to safety these concepts are easy to grasp, but when it comes to personal security, they are largely ignored.

The term ‘personal security’ brings up a variety of thoughts, ideas, and definitions that vary widely from person to person. Some view it as a locked door, a security camera, a policeman or security guard, or an alarm. Having participated in, managed, and taught security practices for most of my adult life, I am continually confronted by two common misconceptions about security. These misconceptions hold true for military personnel, law enforcement and private citizens alike, and they likely stem from our tendency to generally define security in the terms previously mentioned.

The most common approach to personal safety and security is to simply ignore the potential that violence will impact you. We see this attitude in the bulk of people with whom we interact and it spans the spectrum of experience and backgrounds. This slice of society chooses to ignore the fact that criminals and miscreants might choose to target them. While they will readily acknowledge the existence of crime, they simply cannot conceive that it will impact them.

There are a number of factors in our society that reinforce this belief. The first is that, statistically, two-thirds of our society will not be the victim of a violent crime in their lifetime. If each day I look back on my lifetime and I have never been the victim of violence, then I have quite likely conditioned myself to believe that I will not be a victim today, or on any day in the future. This self-reinforcing delusion, is a powerful motivator to ignore potential risks and focus on “more pressing issues”.

The second is that the education system in America is convinced that if you insulate children from failure, risk, or negativity, we will produce happier, healthier citizens. We see this in the ‘no grades, everyone gets a trophy, everyone is special’ mentality. Worse, we see it in zero tolerance policies towards altercations or the suspension of students for pointing “Finger guns” or “pop tart guns” at fellow students. These police and actions remove the learning experience surrounding violence or simulated violence. Certainly, if I was the victim of a finger gun day after day, I could ignore it, enlist classmates or teachers to assist me, or change my behavior so that my finger gun pointer would choose to point it at someone else… Unless of course, I had no option save dependence on the system to protect me. It places the responsibility on the education system to protect them, leaving the child helpless in the equation.

While I understand the theory, unfortunately what these attitudes and policies actually produce is a society of victims. From an economic perspective, that upward pressure on the supply curve (supply of victims) places downward pressure on the price of crime, creating more incentive for criminals activity. The more victims in a given population, the more criminals that will be produced to accommodate them. Creating a system of dependence is exactly how third world politics is played, and it is sad to see the American political system following suit.

Another counter-productive societal norm is that there is a persistent belief that someone else is responsible for an individual’s personal security. The reality is that no one can effectively take responsibility for someone else’s security. People who live in an environment where they are told they are helpless, or that it is unnecessary to take a personal interest in their own security, are unlikely to do so on their own. This leads to the next most common misconception; that personal security is the responsibility of someone else.

Be it police, military, or firemen, any safety or protective services professional will tell you that it is impossible for another person or group of people to guarantee the safety and security of any single person.Read more >>

Author - Patrick Henry (President at Aegis Academy)

Patrick Henry received his operational training and experience from the U. S. Government, 22 years of which were spent in the Marine Corps where he served in the Reconnaissance, Infantry and Intelligence fields. During his active service, he spent more then five years deployed overseas in combat, operational and training assignments. After the military, Pat worked as a contractor and as the Director of Operations at a private paramilitary firm specializing in training military special operations forces and providing protective services to select private clients. His education consists of an MBA from the University of Southern California (USC), and a BS from San Diego State University with an emphasis in Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology and a minor in Psychology. He holds an extensive list of security and training related certifications from a variety of government and nationally recognized entities. He currently sits on the advisory committee at USC’s Master of Veterans Business Program, and is an active member of Infraguard and the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS). He has been a guest speaker at ASIS, the San Diego Industrial Security Awareness Council and other private organizations on physical security, travel security, and competitive intelligence collection counter-measures.