New video of the London knife attack shows the inside of a restaurant as the machete-wielding terrorists tried to enter. Check out the guy in the white jacket peering through the window at the killers outside. WTF?

Always remember that a defensive gun use is a counter-attack. If you’re not running for your life — a sensible option — or barricading yourself, be prepared to attack your assailant(s).

A gun is a wonderful tool for an effective counterattack. So make sure you have easy efficient access to your firearm at all times. As I’ve said before, your ability to bring your gun to bear on attackers is more important than the type of gun, caliber or accuracy.

Rapid, efficient presentation isn’t a thing. It’s the thing. And don’t forget: one-handed presentation is a highly likely scenario, especially if you have kids. So practice that, too.

That’s a big part of the “speed” part of “speed, surprise and violence of action.” The surprise part is well worth remembering. As I tell my unarmed child before dropping her off at school, run or ambush.

Violence of action is self-explanatory. When you attack, go all in. Hold nothing back. Use whatever you can — as some of the patrons of another restaurant did — to disable the bad guy(s).

Above all, don’t be that guy. The one who stands there like a lemon (British expression) when sh*t gets real. Get off the X.

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40 COMMENTS

  1. The main problem with most handgun defensive classes is that, either by range rules or instructor liability issues, the students are mostly standing while performing the drills. In a real life scenario, like this one, you better be moving, whether you are shooting or not.
    Motion is life.

  2. The killers were just strolling along. One armed citizen could have saved the london cops 50 rounds.

    • In the land of frightened disarmed sheep, the skinny bastard with a machete is king.

  3. Well, it was a panel that could open up, maybe he was making sure they didn’t force it open.

  4. I feel certain that more people have died from failing to realize they were in an emergency and react accordingly than any other factor.

    I’ve seen people exiting a building filling with black smoke, in which the fire alarms were blaring and lights flashing, bypassing an emergency exit in a solid line, scores of them passing the well marked and rather obvious exit (the door was glass and the outside was plainly visible through it). When I stopped the line and asked the first person why he wasn’t exiting through the marked exit, he indicatedi a sign on the door declaring it was for emergency use only, and that an alarm would sound if the door were opened. Keep in mind we are choking on black, acrid, toxic smoke, thickening by the moment, shouting to be heard over the wailing of the fire alarms, and I was carrying a fire extinguisher at the time. This is what people do: carry on as if nothing is amiss, avoiding trouble or attention, and not possessing the basic wherewithal to more hastily extricate themselves from a life-threatening emergency. If they won’t open a door, they won’t break a window, and anyone who can’t make the shift from ‘impolite and potentially criminal’ to ‘completely justified, necessary and altogether correct’ over a window is going to have a hard time making the shift to inflicting incapacitating violence on another person.

    I’m a gunners gunner, but I suspect most people would be better served by an assertiveness clinic than by tactical firearms training.

    • All too true. ALL people have to open that fire door in their own head before training will have any substantial meaning. ALL of those people you described, from childhood, have had training from parents and school to open that door. None of it meant anything at the moment of truth because they never opened it in their head. I like drawing the comparison between flight 93 and the other three flights on 9/11. Same people. Same predicament. Some sat in their seats and died rather than open that fire door. The people on flight 93 opened that fire door and they saved hundreds of lives on the ground. Almost managed to save their own lives too.

      • The people of Flight 93 were already living in the post-9/11 world. The people on the other flights weren’t.

        In the pre-9/11 world, in a hijacking, you were a hostage and a bargaining chip. In a post-9/11 hijacking, you’re additional mass for the projectile.

        Fundamentally, it’s about recognizing the reality you live in. 9/11 succeeded to the extent that it did because the paradigm shift caught people off guard. It stopped working by the end of the day. If people got very proactive about self-defense, these knife attacks wouldn’t work either. It would be time for the next thing.

        • Sadly, everyone on Flight 93 died because the pilots were as clueless as the morons in this video. Their failure to react when given a clear warning killed everybody.

    • ” This is what people do: carry on as if nothing is amiss, avoiding trouble or attention, and not possessing the basic wherewithal to more hastily extricate themselves from a life-threatening emergency.”

      It’s a ‘herd mentality’ that takes over when people have a hard time believing what they are seeing.

      There is an *excellent* book on the phenomenon, ‘The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why’ By Amanda Ripley:

      https://www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Survives-When-Disaster-Strikes/dp/0307352900

      It covers a number of those type of incidents…

    • “We’re a generation of men raised by women.”
      Yep. My CPR instructor taught us the if you tell someone in an assertive voice to do something, they’re probably going to do it. “You! Go call 911 now! And you! Block that door open for the ambulance crew!”
      I use it in real life. Sometimes people think I’m an asshole for ordering them around, but it works.

    • Another example stemming from that same mindset is when people are all clustered at a red light and an ambulance comes up behind them, lights flashing and sirens blaring, but nobody moves.

      Everyone is too afraid to break the rule of the red light and pull out into the intersection safely to clear a path for the ambulance. Geez, people, grow a pair and do what’s right.

      • Been there, seen that. EMT’s having to jump the curb and drive down the sidewalk because nobody cleared the road for them ahead.

        The worst part was that I was inside being taken to the Emergency Room!

    • “I feel certain that more people have died from failing to realize they were in an emergency and react accordingly than any other factor.”

      Good point. What you see in the videos is the phenomenon of “collective behavior” i.e., people randomly responding to non-routine events. Typically, people define their situations in often wildly different ways and it’s in these moments of confusion that attackers have the best advantage—they know exactly what they are doing and what they want while you don’t. But, while behavior may be all over the place, some people are able to properly define what’s happening, seize the moment, and take effective action. In the video, it was the manager who was holding the door shut and saving the lives of his customers (and it sure would have been nice if he’d had a little help).

      In a diverse population there are people who’ll panic and those who won’t. Encouraging private gun ownership and then, as a first requirement, encouraging marksmanship insures that in the face of a terrorist or spree-killer attack there may just be those “good guys with guns” who can not only fight back but who can hit what they’re shooting at. When the ISIS terrorists came to attack Pam Gellar in Arlington, they’d no sooner than gotten out of their car when they were engaged and stopped by an Arlington traffic cop who just happened to be a damned good shot. It’s people like that we need when The Really Bad Thing Happens.

    • People will typically blindly follow authority. If they don’t have permission to do something they normally aren’t allowed to do, they won’t do it until someone else does it or specifically gives them permission.

    • A correction needs to be made to that video…. it took the cops 8 minutes AND 6 seconds to stop the bad guys. That cop with the rifle still had to back pedal quite a bit to avoid the charging maniac. I wonder how many RIFLE rounds he put in that guy before he went down.

  6. European’s are not taking this stuff seriously yet. The fact that 80% of London cops are not carrying guns, they just don’t get it. More people are going to die, maybe many more, until they wake up.

    • People like me and the rest of the ciivlized world are awake.

      Armed citizens would’ve never stopped this attack factually and statistically never will. (Go ahead, I still won’t and never read your corporate owned stats and links that have no factual or scientific basis in reality.)

      This will never change the mind of many a free UK citizen that does not want brainwashed gun-worshiping terrorist nuts that can’t think for themselves by arming their favorite customers.

      These incidents are still RARE compared to what happened here EVERYDAY. I guess you people refuse to eat crow after what some gun-worshipping nutbar did in florida. Which is far much worse than what happened in the UK.

      It’s easier to fight back against a radical nutbar armed with a knife, baseball bat, section of pipe or a rock than a radical nutbar with a gun.

      Neo nazis like robert should stopping using a free country as like the UK and the rest of the EU as an example as to how “laws don’t work” and instead look in his own war-torn 3rd world backyard.

      there are more and more accidental shooting incidents and homicides involving guns than the mythical “DGU”.

        • quote——————-The joker was covered head to foot in body armor? Wow, you need to kick whatever you’re doing. It’s causing you to hallucinate.—————————–

          Your making a laughing stock out of yourself. One of the main points on all the news casts was the fact that he was wearing body armor and the amount of it he had on. Even foreign news channels were speaking about it in addition to all the U.S. News Channels. I would not expect a conservative to watch any foreign news channels (they might become educated) but come on every U.S. news channel discussed it too.

      • Congratulations Dday!! You win the “Trolled by the resistance” trophy today!!! Who will be our lucky winner tomorrow? Stay tuned to this channel and find out!

      • I know you’re just a troll & all, but there’s more than a handful of incidents over the last several years where armed civilian response ended a mass or would-be mass shooting (logically, since they are ended & not allowed to run to the killers’ conclusion, they less often rise to the definition of “mass” shooting). Hell, there was one like last week IIRC. Considering the total number of these types of attacks is only in the dozens each year in the US, that meager handful of positive outcomes is hardly insignificant. And there’s a whole bunch more where small-scale attackers are done in by armed victims taking prudent action to defend themselves.

        But in fairness to the opposition’s solutions, I’d love to see stats on how many lives “play dead” or “crap yourself” saves in similar circumstances.

      • “People like me and the rest of the ciivlized world are awake.”
        You actually sound like you could use some sleep. Or more booze. More booze, and less of whatever else you’re on, repeat until sleep (please).

        “Armed citizens would’ve never stopped this attack factually and statistically never will. (Go ahead, I still won’t and never read your corporate owned stats and links that have no factual or scientific basis in reality.)”
        Glad you got your stubborn refusal to correct your ignorance (otherwise known as pig-headedness or stupidity) out in the open so we don’t have to bother. Mucho thanks.

        “This will never change the mind of many a free UK citizen that does not want brainwashed gun-worshiping terrorist nuts that can’t think for themselves by arming their favorite customers.”
        1) Free UK citizens have fewer freedoms than we do. Please, name one if you would (‘being safe’ is not a freedom)
        2) Is it the guns doing the brainwashing, or the cult of political Islam amid the community of 1st & 2nd generation migrants from the mid-east?
        3) Are you suggesting that the UK won’t have terrorists (gun nuts or otherwise) if they aren’t sold guns? Brits have crazy laws already. I admit your grammar structure makes it hard to tell what you’re blaming (but blaming you clearly are)

        “These incidents are still RARE compared to what happened here EVERYDAY. I guess you people refuse to eat crow after what some gun-worshipping nutbar did in florida. Which is far much worse than what happened in the UK.”
        Why should gun-carriers eat crow? If anything, the disarmists who were helpless to do anything but watch others be killed should be making some amends. Everyday crime is stopped by victim response even more frequently than terror attacks that are generally structured to defend against such response for a period of time. It’s actually so frequent, it is rarely reported unless the attacker actually dies in trying.

        “It’s easier to fight back against a radical nutbar armed with a knife, baseball bat, section of pipe or a rock than a radical nutbar with a gun.”
        Not if you have a gun, in which case your response is a) faster b) far more powerful c) requires far less skill & athleticism. Please do go on about your street fighting experience involving knifes, bats, pipes, or even rocks, assuming you aren’t completely talking our of your ass.

        “Neo nazis like robert should stopping using a free country as like the UK and the rest of the EU as an example as to how “laws don’t work” and instead look in his own war-torn 3rd world backyard.”
        That ‘neo nazi’ wants all peoples armed, even fools like you, provided you aren’t so mentally unstable as to harm those around you in passing. Our most war-torn backyards resemble your densely-urban, minority-rich, poverty-stricken slums, right down to the plethora of strong gun laws promised to resolve these crime problems. The only difference is we don’t (yet) have as large a coordinated Islamic insurgence on top of the poverty-driven crime to make the issue even worse for those outside the ghettos.

        “there are more and more accidental shooting incidents and homicides involving guns than the mythical “DGU”.”
        If you count suicide as ‘accidental’ then maybe. Otherwise, the most conservative estimates of DGU’s are several orders of magnitude higher than documented accidental shootings. But it’d be stupid to treat intentional self-harm as an accident, right? You aren’t stupid, are you?

        If you’re a pro-gun troll seeking to help us ‘sharpen our claws’ as an excuse for entertaining yourself, knock it up a setting or two on the difficulty

        if you’re an anti-gun troll seeking evidence of evil in the readership here, go look in a damn mirror. Your pathetic fear and self-loathing, and that of millions exactly like you, have killed countless millions over the last century across the world. The regrettable and largely unavoidable 30,000/year homicides & suicides don’t even come close to the number of innocents put in the ground by the good intentions of weak-minded fools like yourself.

        • Actually, you could go to Stalin or Mao. Either one of them have killed A LOT more people than Hitler.

        • Don’t forget the Japanese; They had a head start on mass murder long before those other upstarts. Starting circa 1900 and ending in 1945, the Japanese were busily killing people in Korea, on Formosa, in Indochina, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, throughout of the Pacific, Manchuria, and especially China, where they truly showed what they could do. Everybody forgets to fully credit the Japanese, but always remember Stalin, Mao, and that upstart Hitler. The Japanese even used biological and chemical warfare against civilians, but nobody gives them the chops that they deserve in the field.
          Yet, nobody ever mentions Hirohito in the pantheon of overachievers. why is that?

        • “Don’t forget the Japanese; They had a head start on mass murder long before those other upstarts.”

          Iris Chang’s ‘The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II’ covers that era in rather ghastly detail:

          “In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered-a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”

          https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367

          The Japanese did stuff ISIS would be proud of, like having beheading contests:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword

          And who could forget Japan’s ‘medical experiments’ on the Chinese with their ‘Unit 731’?

          Really nasty stuff, like vivisection, ‘frostbite testing’, deliberate infection to see how long they would live, etc.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

          There is a very real hatred by the Chinese of Japan, and I don’t blame them…

      • I know you’re a troll and/or a paid shill, but I love how you and your civilian disarmament cabal had to move the goalpost and change your narrative because of how badly reality proved it to be utter bullshit.

        Before you used to say “THIS NEVER HAPPENS IN OTHER ‘CIVILIZED’ COUNTRIES.”

        And now, with reality having proven that to be patently false, you say “OK WELL IT DOES HAPPEN IN OTHER COUNTRIES, BUT NOT AS MUCH SO I’M STILL RIGHT.”

        Sad!

      • @The_Gutless — People like you and the rest of the pussified world are still in a coma.

        Armed citizens would have stopped this attack cold, and factually and statistically do. (No, no, you go ahead, because we still will not read and will never read your corporate-owned and generated stats and links that have, in point of FACT, been repeatedly PROVEN to have no factual or scientific basis in reality.)

        This will only never change the mind of many an enslaved U.K. citizens because they are just as deluded and brainwashed as you, reduced to bleating, state-worshiping apologists for the terrorists in your midst.

        These incidents are INCREASINGLY COMMON in the U.K. and relatively RARE here in the U.S. I guess you refuse to eat the crow that you baked after what some state-worshiping whackjob did in Florida. Which is far less catastrophic than what has REPEATEDLY happened in the U.K., France, Germany, and throughout the E.U.

        It’s actually easier to fight back against a radical nutbar when you’re armed with a gun, because that IS what’s coming next — and you’re also more likely to survive a gunshot than a stab wound, anyway.

        Neo-Nazis like you should stop being GUILTY of everything you could ever care to accuse Robert of — a Jew whose family was mostly destroyed in the Holocaust by YOUR Nazi fellow-travelers. The U.K. is NOT now and has NOT been for a very long time anything resembling a “free” country, and the E.U. is FAR MORE DANGEROUS and has FAR FEWER FREEDOMS than the U.S. They are all becoming a 3rd-world backyard.

        There are actually more DGUs than accidental deaths and homicides by a factor of at least 5.

      • “ciivlized” ????

        How stupid do you have to be to misspell a common word like that, on a website with a spell check?
        Not mention your grasp on the proper tense of verbs is lacking. Try reading your post back to yourself before you hit the post comment. Or maybe you just think simple grammar has no place in your reality to?

      • Res,
        Your points would be more persuasive if you would not be so dismissive of those who disagree with you. In the US there is a big difference in crime rates among communities. Arlington, Virginia has little violent crime. Washington, D.C. just across the river, has lots. Virginia has concealed carry.

      • How right you are. If this had been the U.S. the thugs would have been armed with assault rifles and instead of 7 deaths there would have been way over 100.

        The Right Wing Fanatics live in a fantasy world of Rambo. The real facts are that the nut case terrorists have all the advantage even if you are armed with a pistol. The terrorists often wear bullet proof vests while the average citizen would not because of they are hot and uncomfortable and most vests only stop pistol bullets not rifle bullets out of an assault rifle. Even a mediocre shot with a rifle can gun down a person much farther away than even an expert shooting back with a pistol and most people who carry pistols are far from expert shoots. It takes constant practice, lots of time people do not have and lots of money for ammo whose prices today have hit astronomical levels.

        Britain’s gun laws worked well in this instance by keeping guns out of the hands of the terrorists. They were even prevented from getting shotguns which can be owned in Britain. I do not advocate the draconian British laws but the U.S. could vet all gun purchases and require the use of safes and security alarm systems that would reduce crime and nut case mass murders by a substantial margin.

        I remember the nut case shooting in the U.S. in Colorado I believe in a movie theater. The nut case had a bullet proof hat, vest, high collar and pants on which would have made it almost impossible for a citizen armed with a pistol to take him out. Even though he had been under mental health care the law failed to detect him and prevent him from buying an assault rifle and if it had detected him he would simply of went out and bought a second hand gun and done the same deed. Better vetting and vetting of all guns is long overdue in the U.S.

        • The joker was covered head to foot in body armor? Wow, you need to kick whatever you’re doing. It’s causing you to hallucinate.

          If you’re clean and sober and making up stuff like that you must be an alex jones fanboy.

    • Even during the Crusades they weren’t taking Islamic expansion seriously, which is why the Church had to dress up the military response in mythical garb to get the knights and noble classes to take care of business for the first time in centuries.

      • Yup, both sides were more interested in relative internal struggles. There was a back-and-forth escalation. The team M was militant but balkanzed -> team C became militant and centralized -> team M became militant and centralized. Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

      • The only problem was Saladin beat the shit out of the Crusaders. The Crusaders were not sought out by the Catholic Church quite the opposite. The Crusaders were recently unemployed mercenaries looking for another war of rape, pillage and conquest. The raped and murdered women and children to try and draw Saladin into a trap and he knew it but attacked anyway to try and save the women and children from Richard the Lionhearted. Saladin proven the to be the far more human leader in the war. The myth that Christians were being attacked by Muslim fanatics was a lie the Crusaders dreamed up to start the war. The reality was that both Muslim and Christian pilgrims were being robbed by highwaymen and even Saladin was hunting them down and killing them long before any Christians invaded his country. Richard got the shit beat out of him and his men and in this case the good people won who where the Muslims under Saladin who by the way always were in those days very tolerant of other religious people visiting their country and the holy land.

  7. To the camera man’s ‘tactical’ credit, I’ll bet he didn’t end up in the hospital with a dozen knife wounds (and death by cirrhosis brought on by endless free drinks to look forward to). This guy was clearly not feeling “Millwall” that day, which was certainly his decision.

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