by Williams Norman Grigg

“Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.”

~ Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath

In Virginia, police officers raid a baptismal party for two small boys. Without cause or provocation they assault the grandfather who owns the home, tasering him three times while children and other guests look on in horror.

When the pregnant daughter-in-law of the victim intervenes, she, too, is forced to perform the “electron dance.” The grandfather is charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication, despite the fact that Virginia state statutes specify that such offenses cannot be committed on one’s own property.

The woman who came to the aid of the first victim was charged with “assaulting an officer,” since her brave effort to protect the grandfather from a criminal assault involved placing her unhallowed hands on the sanctified personage of a “law enforcement officer.” Such presumption simply cannot be tolerated.

A few weeks earlier in Webster, Texas, a pastor is tasered after a member of his congregation was pulled over by police in the church parking lot. Once “backup” arrives – the boldness of police, like that of feral wolves and droopy-drawered gang-bangers, is a function of operating in packs – the officers charge the church sanctuary, assaulting Pastor Jose Moran and pepper-spraying the worshipers who objected to the treatment of their pastor. Once again, the victim, rather than the assailants, finds himself charged with assault.

In Alabama, police pepper-spray and then taser a deaf, mentally handicapped adult man who couldn’t hear their orders to leave the bathroom of a discount store.

Once the confusion was cleared up, they arrested him anyway on various charges, including – no extra points for guessing correctly – “assaulting” the officers who attacked him. The police department issues a statement claiming that the attack with chemical and electro-shock weapons was justified because the confused man-child (a term I use with sympathy, not in derision) was “armed” with an umbrella.

In Boise, Idaho, police swarm, gang-tackle, and handcuff a man involved in a domestic dispute.

When he complains about impending suffocation – a very acute threat, since many victims of lethal police violence die from positional asphyxiation – he is subjected to a Taser strike in his rectum by a still-unidentified officer who threatens to strike the victim’s genitals next. Subsequently one of the assailant’s superiors attempts to destroy the evidence by erasing an audio taped record of the event.

In Wisconsin Dells, two callow patrolmen – Officer Beavis and Officer Butt-Head – stumble upon a couple of off-duty National Guardsmen and decide to have some fun. The police accuse the victims of urinating in public and then demand that they lick from the ground a substance they are told is human urine. When a third police officer materializes, the victims speak of filing a complaint.

This prompts the threat of a bogus burglary charge and the promise that “nobody will believe you” if they actually file a protest. As it happens, the complaint is believed – most likely because it was made by two Iraq war veterans, rather than common citizens.

These are mere snapshots of the commonplace sadism that increasingly typifies contemporary American law enforcement. But this really isn’t so surprising for a country in which a bare majority, according to a recent global survey, opposes state torture.

That survey found that Americans are much likelier to support government-inflicted torture than citizens of Communist China, and marginally more indulgent of the practice than the residents of Muslim Indonesia and Muslim/socialist Egypt. Support for torture is also more widespread among Americans than among Iranians.

One might think that support for torture would be restrained by the influence of America’s church-going population. One would think that those Americans who worship the Man of Sorrows who was tortured to death by the occupation forces of a pagan imperial state would be among the most insistent opponents of the vile and indefensible practice.

One would be entirely wrong, since exactly the opposite is true: A survey taken earlier this year documented that a majority (54 percent) of people who attend church at least once a week supports torture.

Perhaps the most arresting discovery was that more than sixty percent of white, evangelical Protestants condone the practice. Torture advocates of this theological persuasion profess a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. That relationship must be, at best, a distant and superficial one.

As the United States sinks into what will be a long and dreadful depression, and partisan politics takes on the character of a literal bloodsport, speculation is rampant about a possible civil war (which would not be the same thing as peaceful secession, which may prove to be the only sensible way to address our economic and political afflictions). If such a conflict were to come, it might actually start within the church-going segment of the population, pitting nominally Christian statists against those who believe in what the Epistle of James called the “perfect law of liberty.”

In dealing with the prospect of an internecine conflict among believers, it’s instructive to recall theevents described in the 12th chapter of the Old Testament Book of Judges, in which the Gileadites and Ephramites were at war.

After the Gileadites routed their opponents in one battle, they devised a clever method of winnowing out concealed Ephramites from their midst. As it turns out, the Ephraimites for some reason couldn’t pronounce the word “shibboleth” correctly, rendering that term “sibbolet.” Accordingly, each man who approached a critical checkpoint was required to say “shibboleth,” with instant death being the penalty for tens of thousands who uttered malapropisms.

While I have no desire to put anyone to the sword, I suggest that liberty-minded Americans, whether or not they subscribe to the Christian faith, can learn much about themselves and those around them through what we could call the “Tom Joad Test.”

I’m not a fan of Steinbeck’s incurably wrong-headed economic views or his idiosyncratic collectivist politics in general, although I must admit a sneaking respect for anybody who attracts the hostile interest of the FBI solely on the strength of his published writings.

His creation Tom Joad isn’t among my favorite fictional characters. But there is substantial merit in Joad’s pledge to sympathize with those who are victims of Power.

Early in The Grapes of Wrath, Joad – recently paroled after serving four years in prison for killing a man who stabbed him in a fight – becomes re-acquainted with Jim Casy, a fallen Oklahoma Pentecostal preacher who has embraced a populist version of Emerson’s “oversoul” concept: “Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.”

Thus was planted the seed that would sprout into Joad’s famous soliloquy, which included the pledge that “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.”

So here, stated briefly, is the question that serves as the shibboleth/sibbolet dividing line in the “Tom Joad Test”:

When you see a cop – or, more likely, several of them – beating up on a prone individual, do you instinctively sympathize with the assailant(s) or the victim?

If it’s the former, you’re an authoritarian, irrespective of your partisan attachments or professed political philosophy.

If it’s the latter, you’re an instinctive libertarian, whether or not you are consistently guided by that impulse in your political decisions.

It may later be demonstrated that the figure on the receiving end of the beating had committed some horrible crime. However, such a disclosure wouldn’t invalidate the results of the Tom Joad Test, because that test reveals a subject’s default assumptions about the relationship between the individual and the state.

Do you assume that the state is entitled to the benefit of the doubt whenever its agents inflict violence on somebody, or do you believe that the individual – any individual – is innocent of wrongdoing until his guilt has been proven?

This could be considered a reverse application of Lenin’s famous political formula, kto kogo? – broadly translated as “Who does what to whom?” Lenin and his followers sought and acquired the power to be the “Who” in that formula, which meant that millions of those consigned to the “whom” category were imprisoned and slaughtered.

Ironically, many law-and-order conservatives come uncomfortably close to Lenin’s view of the state when they reflexively take the side of agents of state coercion – the “who” in the typical encounter between police officer and citizen. The American view of rights, however, is overwhelmingly weighted on behalf of the latter, even when the “who” is a winsome and well-dressed policeman, and the “whom” is a scruffy and unappealing individual.

One of the easiest and least intrusive ways to conduct the Tom Joad Test is to observe an individual’s reaction to the typical installment of the TV series COPS, which – in any of its iterations – is a kind of authoritarian pornography for the badge-licker population.

Several months ago, I took my family to a large and very nice Chinese buffet in Boise. Since the Grigg family is almost at brigade strength, we were ushered into the conference room, where we could have a long table all to ourselves. Unfortunately, the room was equipped with a television set, most likely because some secret Reversal of Freedom law dictates the presence of an infernal device of that kind in every room of a certain size. Even worse, a COPS marathon was underway.

As I grazed on sautéed bok choy and exquisitely seasoned bean sprouts (delicious vegetarian items being a specialty of this particular restaurant), my appetite began to depart as the screen conveyed an endless repetition of the familiar storyline: Police spy pathetic, socially marginalized individual; police harass said pathetic individual, who had done nothing to harm anyone else; police find some excuse to arrest said individual, often throwing him to the ground and humiliating him in the process.

Despite the delicious fare in front of me, my mood turned sour and ominous mutterings began emanating from me like premonitory tremors anticipating an eruption. Similar outrage radiated from the faces of other nearby patrons.

Near the beginning of the third consecutive installment of COPS, we were treated to the unedifying sight of a police officer approaching a woman on a sidewalk and demanding that she show identification. She had done nothing to provoke the interest of the officer, and wasn’t inclined to comply with that unwarranted demand.

The officer replied in predictable fashion, beginning the familiar procedure of jacking her arm behind her to slap the cuffs on her wrists. To her considerable credit, the woman shrugged off that assault and put up a more than respectable fight, despite being roughly 50–75 lbs. smaller than her assailant.

Eventually, the cop – who had created this altercation ex nihilo – ended it by grabbing the small-boned woman in a headlock and slamming her face-first into the sidewalk.

That sight wrenched gasps from several people sitting at other tables. My reaction was characteristically measured and sedate.

“You malignant BASTARD!” I exclaimed in a voice that was probably heard in Winnemucca.

Shooting a quick glance around, I noticed several food-laden forks suspended in mid-transit from well-stocked plate to gaping mouth, and numerous sets of eyes distended in shocked disbelief. I suggested to my wife, the lovely and brilliant Korrin, that we should leave. She didn’t resist the suggestion.

The success of COPS and its imitators, like the survey results dealing with torture, illustrates that there is a wide, deep, and resilient strain of punitive populism in American culture. I suspect that there is a smaller, but growing, sub-population of people who instinctively take the side of the person on the receiving end of the nightstick.

In light of the fact that nightsticks and various other implements of coercion will play an increasingly prominent role as the economic implosion accelerates, we’d better find each other, and radically increase our ranks – and do this as quickly as humanly possible.

William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

Infowars.com

The Associated Press is reporting that Daniel Martin, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper caught on video throttling paramedic Maurice White Jr., was put on unpaid suspension for five days. Martin must also undergo an anger assessment.

Maurice White’s attorney said the paramedic was disappointed by the suspension.

A video released by the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety clearly shows Martin assaulting White on the side of the road in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. A cell phone video of the assault posted on YouTube received well over a million views and was the second most-watched video on May 30. A Fox station in Tulsa filed a Freedom of Information request for the dash cam but the OHP stonewalled the request. Late on June 12, the department finally released the video. It was posted on YouTube on June 13.

Police initially said the EMT vehicle failed to yield and this was the reason Martin confronted White, assaulted him and threatened to arrest him. But the police video reveals that the EMT was unable to immediately yield due to a car pulling over in the breakdown lane on the side of the road.

On June 12, White said he doesn’t want to see anyone else in the position he was in. “Whatever we have to make sure that that never occurs again and that some definitive light is shed on the problems with the OHP, we will go forward and do it whatever that takes,” he told NewsOn6 in Oklahoma.

Additional resources:

Insane Thug Cops Attack Emergency Paramedic
Incident Reports Add Evidence to Video Showing OK Cops Attacking Paramedic
Dash Cam Video Reveals Police Tried to Cover Up Misconduct in OK EMT Incident
EMT Wants Accountability From Oklahoma Highway Patrol
Trooper Claims Dashboard Cam Upholds His Actions

From Freedom Shenanigans & High Jinks

A man who was forcibly injected with sedative drugs by police so a doctor could search for other drugs in his rectum will receive a handsome settlement from Albany County, New York and Albany Medical Center, a local publication reported Saturday.

“The settlement stems from a federal lawsuit filed two years ago by Tunde Clement, an ex-convict arrested by sheriff’s investigators on March 13, 2006, at the Albany bus terminal,” reported The Times Union.

Following Clement’s forced drugging, a doctor put a camera in his rectum, discovering no drugs. “[The] final indignity came when the hospital sent Clement a bill for $6,792,”noted the Associated Press.

“Clement’s suit claimed his civil rights were violated,” The Times-Union continued. “He filed the federal complaint against Albany Med and several doctors and nurses, and also sued Albany County and Sheriff James Campbell, Inspector John Burke, who heads the narcotics squad that arrested Clement, and eight investigators assigned to Burke’s unit.”

‘Cavity epidemic in Albany’?

Clement is not the first to accuse the Albany police of an unwarranted cavity search. New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield, on his blog Simple Justice, exclaimed that a “cavity epidemic” is underway in Albany.

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley explained the seeming rash of invasive searches on his blog:

Women have accused the police of conducting cavity searches with little or no suspicion of crime acts. Crystal Royal, 22, has sued, alleging that she was strip-searched in January by the Albany Police Department and then forced to undergo a pelvic cavity search at Albany Medical Center Hospital. Nothing was found.

This filing follows another complaint by Lisa Shutterwho charged that she was given a cavity search on a public street during a traffic stop in December.

Royal said that was stopped by police on the interstate even though she had valid license and properly registered car. She also alleges that police took her cellphone and inspected her call list. She was then given a strip search and cavity search at the station — nothing was found. She was later charged with a felony drug conspiracy count.

The Times-Union noted: “People under arrest normally cannot be forcibly sedated without a court order unless they are in imminent danger, such as when a bag of drugs bursts inside them and they have a seizure or fall unconscious. The hospital’s records indicate Clement was behaving normally and showed no signs of any medical emergency.”

“There are a bunch of people running around Albany in uniform, with guns and shields, committing crimes against people and collecting public paychecks for their efforts,” wrote Greenfield. “Who stops them? How would you like to be Lisa Shutter explaining why the cops performed a cavity search of you on the street. How would you like to be the doctor drugging Tunde Clement and performing an anoscopy because the cops told you to do it. This is mere inches away from Abner Louima.”

by Massad Ayoob, Backwoods Home

“I want you to do an article on how to shoot a handgun accurately,” Dave Duffy told me. “Make it 2,500 or 3,000 words.”

Long ago, I would have answered, “Sure, and while I’m at it, how about a history of the world in, oh, 10,000 words or so?”

Nancy Crenshaw uses strong stance and technique to make up for lack of size as she turns in an excellent one-handed high speed performance with SIG 9mm.

Today, with more than 45 years of handgunning behind me (yeah, I’m old, but I started early, too) I realize that you actually can cover this topic in a fairly short article. The reason is found in the classic statement of Ray Chapman, the first world champion of the combat pistol. “Shooting well is simple,” Ray said, “it just isn’t easy.”

I’ll buy that. It’s true that the handgun is the most difficult of firearms to shoot well. There’s less to hang on to. There’s a shorter radius between the front and rear sight than with a rifle, meaning a greater unnoticed human error factor in aiming. You don’t have that third locking point on the shoulder that you have with a long gun’s butt stock.

And few handguns have the inherent mechanical accuracy of a good rifle.

That said, though, you can get the most of your handgun’s intrinsic accuracy by simply performing marksmanship basics correctly. If the gun is aimed at the target, and the trigger is pressed and the shot released without moving the gun, then the bullet will strike the mark. That simple. We need a few building blocks to construct this perfect shot, however. Let’s build the structure brick by brick.

This student demonstrates a strong Weaver stance at an LFI class. Feet are in proper pyramidal base, upper body is forward, and he is firmly grasping his .40 caliber Walther P99.

I teach my students a five-point “pre-flight check list” to go through before they fire the shot. As with any structure, you start from the bottom up. Those points are: 1) Strong stance. 2) High hand grasp. 3) Hard grip. 4) Front sight. 5) Smooth rearward roll of the trigger.

The “power stance”

I’ve found that stance is the one thing I’m likely to have to correct first, even when teaching the experienced shooter. The edgeways stance of the duelist is necessary for skateboarding or surfing, but counter-productive to good shooting. If one heel is behind the other, the body does not have good lateral balance and will tend to sway sideways. (The miss will most commonly go toward the strong hand side.) If the feet are squared off parallel, in the old “police academy position” so often seen on TV, the body does not have good front to back balance, and the shots will tend to miss either high or low, most commonly the latter.

You want to be in a fighter’s stance, a boxer’s stance, what a karate practitioner would call a “front stance.” The lower body needs a pyramidal base, a triangle with depth. If you are right handed and firing with your strong hand only, the pelvis wants to be at about a 45 degree angle vis-à-vis the target, with your left leg to the rear. If you are shooting two-handed and are right hand dominant, the hips still want that 45-degree angle but the left leg should now be forward and the right leg back. Now you’re balanced forward and balanced back, balanced left and balanced right. It’ll be easier to hold the gun on target.

In rapid fire, the shoulders want to be forward. This will get body weight in behind the gun and help control recoil. For very precise slow fire, some shooters like to cantilever the shoulders to the rear. This may make the gun seem to hang steadier with less effort, but it will cause the gun to jump up sharply upon recoil. This not only slows down your rate of sustained fire, but subconsciously, the more the muzzle jumped at the last shot, the more likely you are to jerk the trigger on the next one. Personally, I use the power stance with the shoulders at least slightly forward even in slow fire. Master shooters have a phrase that helps them remember this principle more easily: “Nose over toes.”

High hand grip, thumb curled down for strength, index finger at distal joint on trigger for maximum leverage. This is the grasp author used to win IDPA NH State Championship in 2003 with this stock service revolver, S&W’s .45 caliber Model 625.

High hand grasp

With a double action revolver, you want the web of your hand all the way up to the rear edge of the backstrap, as shown in the accompanying photos. With a single action frontier-style revolver with the plow-handle shape grip, you still want a high hand grasp. On a semiautomatic pistol, you want the web of the hand so high that a ripple of flesh is seen to bunch up behind the backstrap of the grip at the top edge, where the grip safety would be on a 1911 style pistol.

The higher the hand, the lower the bore axis. This means much better control of muzzle jump and less movement of the pistol upon recoil. Since most handguns, particularly semiautomatics, are designed to be shot this way, it means that you will find it easier to press the trigger straight back as you make each shot. If your hand is too low on the “handle,” a straight rearward pressure on the trigger will tend to pull the muzzle down, placing the shot low.

With a proper high hand grip on an auto pistol such as this Wilson Custom CQB .45, you’ll see this “ripple of flesh” behind the grip tang.

A semi-auto is designed to operate as the slide moves against the abutment of a firmly held frame. A low grasp allows the muzzle to whipsaw upward from recoil as the mechanism is automatically cycling, diverting momentum from the slide through the frame. Now the slide can run out of momentum before it has completed its work. This is why holding a pistol too low can cause it to jam.

All these problems are cured with the high hand grasp.

Hard grip

In the debate about shooting techniques in the saloon after all the guns have been locked away, this issue will take up about three rounds of drinks. In the old days, the “quail grip” was taught. “Imagine yourself holding a live quail. Hold it just firmly enough that it can’t fly away, but not firmly enough to hurt it.”

We aren’t talking about birdies. We’re talking about guns. Specifically, we are talking about powerful defensive handguns and hard-kicking Magnums and large calibers used for outdoor sports such as hunting. The harder we hold them, the less they kick and jump. The less they kick and jump, the more efficiently we can shoot them.

Traditional grasp of the .45 autoloader. Thumb rests on manual safety, pad of index finger is in contact with trigger. Author prefers this grasp: thumb curled down for more gripping strength, trigger finger inserted to distal joint for more leverage.

This writer strongly recommends the “crush grip.” How hard do you hold the handgun? As hard as you can. It was once advised to intensify your grip until tremors set in, and then back off until they stopped. In the real world, under stress, there’s going to be some tremor anyway. Get used to it now. Hold the gun as tightly as you can and let it tremor.

The key is this: keep the sights straight in line. If the sights are in line, and the hand is quivering, the sights will quiver in the center of the target. When the shot breaks, the bullet will strike the center of the target. Once it has been center-punched, the target will neither know nor care that the launcher was quivering before the projectile took flight.

Any marksmanship expert will tell you that consistency of grasp is a key to consistent accuracy. As stress levels change during shooting, which is really a multi-tasking exercise that gives you a lot to think about, the consistency of grasp can change too. If you think about it, there are only two ways to grasp the pistol with uniformity.

One is to hold it with virtually no pressure at all. This will give you poor control of recoil.

The other is to hold it as hard as you can, for each shot and every shot.

The hard hold has some other benefits. If you have accustomed yourself to always hold a pistol with maximum grip strength, you are much less likely to ever have it knocked or snatched from your hand. Moreover, you now have the ultimate cure for a handgunner’s malady known as “milking.”

“Milking,” taken from the hand’s movement when milking a cow’s udder, occurs when the index finger closes on the trigger and the other fingers sympathetically close with it, changing the grasp and pulling the sights off target. Most commonly, this will pull the shot low and to the side of what you were aiming at. It is a function called “interlimb response.” When one finger closes, the other fingers want to close with it.

One reason author recommends a very firm grasp. Imagine yourself holding a pistol, and grasp it thus with fingers relaxed… … and notice that when you “press the trigger,” the other fingers close reflexively. This is called “milking,” and is conducive to bad shots. The cure… … is to grasp firmly with everything but the trigger finger. Now, when trigger finger is flexed… … the other fingers can’t sympathetically close, because they’re already closed as tight as they can get.

Do this simple exercise. Relax your hand, and pretend to be holding a handgun. Now, move the index finger as if rapidly firing a handgun with a heavy trigger pull. You will see the other fingers reflexively contracting along with it. You have just seen and experienced milking in action.

Now do the same, but this time with all but the index finger closed as tightly as you can hold them. As you run the index finger, you’ll feel the tendons trying to tighten the grasp of the other fingers, but you’ll see that they actually can’t. That’s because the tight grip has already hyperflexed the fingers, and they can’t tighten any more. The milking action has now been eliminated.

Thumb position is negotiable. Generations of shooters with the GI 1911 .45 learned to shoot with the thumb high, resting on the manual safety. Many competitive target shooters prefer to point the thumb straight at the target. This straight thumb position seems to align the skeleto-muscular structure of the hand in a way that allows the index finger its straightest rearward movement. With powerful guns, curling the thumb down to add grasping strength and enhance control is a valid technique. A lot of it depends on how the gun fits your hand. The controls may also be a factor. With a conventional double action auto that has a safety catch mounted on the slide (Beretta, S&W, and Ruger to name just a few), I like my thumb to be where it can not only push the lever into the “fire” position, but verify that the lever is in fact in the position it should be in.

Trigger finger contact? The old time marksmen liked the very tip of the finger, on the theory that it offered more sensitivity. With a handgun that has a very light trigger pull, there may be some validity to that. Still others use the pad of the finger, which is basically the point at which you find the whorl of the fingerprint.

Personally, I’ve learned that contacting the trigger at the crease of the distal joint, the spot old time revolver masters called “the power crease,” gives me much more leverage and therefore more control. This is particularly true on guns whose trigger pulls may be long and/or heavy: the double action handgun, the Glock, etc. A lot of this will depend on hand size and shape in relation to gun size and shape. There are many variables in the interface between human and machine.

Front sight

The conventional sight picture with conventional handgun sights is the one you see in the marksmanship manuals. The front sight is centered in the notch of the rear sight. The top of the front sight is level with the top of the rear sight, and there is an equal amount of light on either side.

Human vision being what it is, you can’t focus on the sights and the target at the same time. Actually, you can’t focus on both the front and the rear sight at the same time, either. Once the target has been identified as something you need to shoot, you no longer need your primary visual focus on it. Primary focus now goes to the aiming indicator, the front sight. Think of it as a fighter pilot would: “enemy craft sighted, lock missiles on target.” The way we lock the handgun’s missiles onto the target is by focusing on its front sight.

With a slide mounted safety as on S&W Model 457 compact .45, shown, author prefers this grasp, with thumb at upward angle to guarantee release of safety catch.

Failing to properly focus on the front sight is a widespread problem among shooters. Every good shooter with iron sights (as opposed to red-dot optics or telescopic sights) whom you know can probably remember when he or she experienced “the epiphany of the front sight.” The realization, “So that’s what the coach meant when she said to watch the front sight!”

Watch the front sight hard. Apply your primary visual focus there. Look at it until you can see every little scratch in the machining on its surface. If it has a dot on it, focus on it until the dot looks like a soccer ball. Then you, too, will experience the epiphany of the front sight, and will see your shot groups tighten as if by magic.

Smoothly roll the trigger

Remember the prime directive: once the gun is aimed at the target, the trigger must be pulled in a way that does not pull the muzzle off target before the shot is fired. This means that the trigger must come straight back.

You want a smooth, even, uninterrupted pull. You can say to yourself, “press the trigger.” You can say to yourself, “sque-e-eze the trigger.” I say to myself, “roll the trigger,” because that connotes the smooth, consistent, uniform pressure I’m trying to apply. You don’t want the shot to truly surprise you, of course, because that would be an unintentional discharge. Rather, you want the exact instant of the shot to surprise you, so you don’t anticipate it and convulsively jerk the shot off target.

Experts agree that the best way to get the trigger pull down, once you know what it’s supposed to be, is to practice it. Dry-fire, or “clicking” the empty gun, is the best practice. The position of the sights when the gun goes “click” will tell you whether the shot would have been on target or not. The more thousands of these repetitions you perform, the more the proper trigger pull will be hard-wired into your mind and body to the point where you can do it perfectly in an emergency without consciously thinking about the details.

Accuracy tends to degrade with speed. Author fired the chest shots in hyperspeed mode, the eight shots in one hole in the neck at a more deliberate pace. Pistol is SIG P220 .45.

The best way to learn it is with what I dubbed the “exemplar drill.” Find an accomplished pistol shooter to assist you. Take a strong stance and firm grasp, and hold the gun on target. Let your index finger barely touch the trigger, and let that finger go limp. Ask the seasoned shooter to place his gun hand over yours, and his trigger finger over yours, and let his finger press yours straight back against the trigger. After several repetitions, you’ll be feeling what he feels when he makes the perfect shot. This is the easiest way to learn what a good trigger pull feels like.

Now progress to the two of you pulling the trigger together at the same pace. After some of that, you’re ready for the third stage. Now it’s your finger pulling the trigger, his lightly touching yours to monitor its progress. Once you’ve got that down, let the coach sit back and watch as you “fly solo,” making corrections as necessary.

Some suggestions

Observe all rules of safe shooting and safe gun handling, of course. Start with paper or cardboard targets in close, at three to seven yards. If your shot is off the mark by three inches at 25 yards, it might have been just the natural limits of the gun’s accuracy. It might have been the ammo. It might even have been the wind. But if you’re off by three inches at four yards, you’ll know exactly what it is. The closer you are, the easier it is to correct whatever caused the bad hit on the target. Once you’re hitting in tight groups at close range, move back incrementally. As the distance increases, so does the challenge.

The world champion was right when he said it was simple, it just wasn’t easy. The “not easy” part is taken care of in repetition. Fortunately, repetition means shooting, and shooting is fun.

Good luck. Stay safe. And enjoy.

By Andria Simmons,The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Waffle House employee is suing the Gwinnett County Police Department over what he says was an unprovoked encounter with an officer who stunned him with a Taser.

The department’s internal investigation records reveal that the officer used the weapon like a toy with tacit approval from two superior officers.

Daniel Wilson, the 22-year-old waiter, spoke publicly about the encounter Wednesday at his attorney’s office in Snellville. The incident has already resulted in the arrest of Cpl. Gary Miles, 33, and the resignations of Sgt. Christopher Parry and Sgt. Joey Parkerson. None of the officers could be reached for comment this week because their phone numbers are unlisted.

Wilson said all three officers were regular customers at the Waffle House at 2725 Grayson Highway in Loganville.

He said the restaurant provided police with free food.

Wilson said the officers often pointed the red laser from their Taser at him playfully. They would do so when Wilson picked a song they didn’t like on the jukebox or when telling him not to mess up their order, Wilson said.

“It was uncomfortable, but they are my customers and they tip pretty well,” Wilson said. “I just thought they were being foolish.”

Then on Feb. 16, Wilson was chatting with Parry and Parkerson when Miles sidled up behind him. Without saying a word, Miles zapped him with the Taser, Wilson said.

“I remember feeling the pulse go through my body,” Wilson said. “It hurt.”

Taser stun guns deliver a 50,000-volt electrical current capable of incapacitating a person. The weapon can fire barbed probes a distance of up to 35 feet, or it can be used in “drive stun mode” when pressed directly against a suspect. Gwinnett police checked the data recording from Miles’ Taser and found it was fired for one second at 2:48 a.m. on Feb. 16.

Miles told investigators that he only “spark tested” the Taser near the employee’s back “just to scare him a little bit,” according to the internal investigation file.

Parry, 41, and Parkerson, 39, witnessed the employee being shocked but did not report it. They laughed along with Miles, Wilson said. The sergeants later told investigators they didn’t realize the Taser made contact with Wilson’s body.

Wilson said he remembers telling Miles in the presence of the other officers, “Hey, you actually tased me.”

Wilson again sought an apology from Miles a few days later for accidentally stunning him. He said Miles replied, “Who says I did it by accident?”

Miles was arrested June 18 on charges of misdemeanor battery and violating his oath as an officer. Parry and Parkerson resigned in lieu of termination June 19. Police are also investigating allegations that a fourth officer pointed a Taser at Wilson’s groin during an earlier incident.

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said he has not ruled out the possibility of charging the two sergeants.

“If the evidence shows there was an unprovoked use of the Taser, and if the evidence shows the sergeants had some criminal responsibility in the case, then they can expect to be prosecuted vigorously,” Porter said.

Michael Puglise, who is representing Wilson in the lawsuit in Gwinnett County State Court, is seeking unspecified punitive damages. He also wants a judge to bar Gwinnett police from carrying Tasers until their policy and training is evaluated.

“What is so concerning to me is the fact that you have a corporal — a ranking officer — zapping a kid with a stun gun and you have two sergeants sitting there watching for their own amusement,” Puglise said. “From their expressions and their actions, it is obvious that this is accepted.”

Gwinnett’s Police Department has had stun guns longer than any other force from the Atlanta area’s largest counties. Currently, 222 of Gwinnett’s 715 sworn officers are certified to carry Tasers, said Cpl. Illana Spellman, a department spokeswoman.

Spellman said using a Taser on innocent civilians is not acceptable. It is also against department policy for officers to accept free food from restaurants.

“It is clearly stated in training that the Taser will only be used to defend the officer or someone else,” Spellman said. “[These officers] were completely wrong.”

Police departments across the state have adopted widely different policies about the use of stun guns. Recently, the director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police said the state needs to offer standardized training.