Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)
This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)
LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:
Sort of a break today. These are kind of police-related videos, but they’re also directly relevant to my interests, and I hope to the interests of at least some of my readers.
First up: “The Fundamentals Of Double Action Revolver Shooting”. This has Air Force/DoD tags on it, but it looks like it was produced by the FBI and dates to 1961.
Bonus video #1: “Shooting for Survival”, a FBI video from sometime in the 1970s, back when they were still using revolvers.
Bonus video #2: Sometimes the short ones are the best. “Training With the Speedloader”, a 1988 Indiana State Police video on how to use the revolver speedloader. Those are Safariland speedloaders, which happen to be the ones I prefer.
Some people might find that the scenario at the start of this video reminds them of something else.
Fifty years ago today, just before midnight on April 5, 1970, two California Highway Patrol officers, Walt Frago and Roger Gore, stopped a car with two men in it. There had been reports that a similar vehicle had been involved in a road rage incident a short time before.
The two men in the car, Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, were heavily armed criminals. They had been planning the theft of explosives from a construction site near where they were stopped. Davis had dropped Twinning off earlier in the evening to scope out the construction site (other sources say that they were testing walkie-talkies they planned to use in the robbery, and that Twinning was taking some target practice), made an illegal U-turn across a highway median, and brandished a firearm at a driver he nearly hit. The display of the firearm was what prompted the call to CHP: the responding officers had no knowledge of Twinning and Davis’s criminal past, their plan to steal explosives, or of the weapons they had in the car. As a matter of fact, the initial report stated that there was only one occupant in the car.
When they were stopped, the two men initially refused to exit the vehicle. Gore managed to clear Davis from the car and started to frisk him. But before they could get Twinning out of the car, he shot and killed Officer Frago. Officer Gore shot back at Twinning, but was shot by Davis at close range.
Two other officers, James Pence and George Alleyn, were nearby and responded as backup for Gore and Frago. They got to the scene just after Office Gore was killed and immediately came under fire from Twinning and Davis. Alleyn fired on Davis with his issue shotgun, but was unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of rounds. He then drew his issue sidearm and continued to fire on Davis, but was hit with multiple rounds of 00 buckshot from Davis’s sawed-off shotgun and killed.
A nearby citizen, Gary Kness, tried to help the officers, returning fire with Alleyn’s service revolver, but was also unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of ammo.
Officer Pence emptied his revolver at Twinning and had to reload. CHP did not issue speed loaders at the time. He loaded six rounds and was closing the cylinder on his revolver when Twinning snuck up behind him and killed him.
Twinning and Davis fled as a third CHP unit arrived. Davis broke into a camper, pistol-whipped the occupant, and stole the vehicle. CHP was informed, stopped the camper, and Davis (who at this point had no loaded guns) surrendered. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. He apparently committed suicide in his cell in August of 2009.
Twinning broke into a house and took an occupant hostage. The house was surrounded by police, and after a several hour standoff, they deployed tear gas and stormed the house. Twinning killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from Officer Frago.
None of the officers had been with CHP for more than two years. Three out of the four probably would have survived if they had been wearing soft body armor, but this was 1970: bulletproof vests at the time were heavy and bulky, and Richard Davis didn’t design the first Second Chance vest until 1976.
This is one of those moments in history that justifies the use of the phrase “agonizing reappraisal”. After the incident, CHP authorized, and then started issuing, speed loaders. CHP also reevaluated their training, and shared their investigative findings widely. Ultimately, the Newhall incident was one of the events that kicked off the “officer survival” movement in the US.
Mr. Ayoob’s followup, “New Info On Newhall“, is available online at the AH website, as is a third article focusing on Gary Kness and Daniel Schwartz (the camper owner): “The Armed Citizens Of Newhall”.
I’ve been looking at California newspapers thinking there would be a retrospective, but I haven’t found one. If I do, I’ll add it here.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, Gary Kness is still alive (he’d be around 82 today). He was honored by CHP for his efforts to save the officers, and is regarded as a hero by the California Highway Patrol to this day.
If anybody has anything to add about this incident (hi, Karl!) please feel welcome to leave a comment. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, but some of the information out there is contradictory, incomplete, or inaccurate.
…I’m gonna go have me some fun!
And what do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun!”
–Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”
Now that I’m on indefinite home confinement (like the rest of Travis County) I’ve found myself not just reading more, but also watching more crap on YouTube.
“Crap” may not actually be fair. I’ve enjoyed the USCSB videos for a while now. AOPA’s Air Safety Institute videos are educational as well. And, yes, I’ve been watching my share of Ian’s videos in these times of struggle. Shamefully, I’ve also been watching clips from “Bar Rescue”.
My point, and I do have one, is: some interesting things have been showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I thought I’d start highlighting those. At least, until the crisis passes.
Rules: I want to keep them short, and ideally want to pick ones that people haven’t heard of. So no “Surviving Edged Weapons”, because that’s close to an hour and half and has been highlighted on Red Letter Media. But I think at least some of these will be vintage police training videos…
…let’s start with this one, “Vehicle Ambush: Counterattacks”. If for no other reason than that awesome 1970’s wakka jawakka opening soundtrack.
Tomorrow: I’m trying to decide if I want to go with Jack Webb (although I don’t think the video quality is all that great) or possibly a vintage US Navy training film. (Nothing about VD, though.)
I check out Uncle’s site somewhere between every other day and every day: he’s been on top of what’s going on in the gun sphere for as long as I’ve been following him. I join with everyone else in that sphere in extending my condolences to him and to his people.
I’ve actually never been to the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. I haven’t been to NYC in more than 30 years.
But I’ve ordered a few things from them online. I’m not a steady customer, but I do like them. I also like Otto Penzler. I’ve never met him, but I hope to one of these days (assuming we’re not all dead by then).
The Mysterious Bookshop has always struck me as being kind the kind of place that just barely hangs on. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense: pretty much any bookshop exists on the edge, doubly so if it is a specialty shop, and triply so if it is a specialty shop in NYC.
As you might guess, they’ve been hit pretty hard by recent events, and could use a little help. Why not go pick up something from them? I have (or else I wouldn’t be asking you). If you’re not a mystery fan, maybe you know someone who is. If you can’t think of anything you’d like to pick up right now, they sell gift cards (for you, or that other person who is a mystery fan).
I’d hate to see them close for good behind this thing. If you’ve still got a job, and have a little money that you’re not spending at bars or eating out or on gas for your car, how about throwing them a few dollars?
===
Based on the recommendation of FOTB (and official firearms trainer for WCD) Karl Rehn, I ordered a copy of FBI Miami Firefight: Five Minutes that Changed the Bureau from Ed Mireles’s website.
I ordered it on Friday, because it isn’t like I don’t have enough books to read while I’m under confinement. (I’d actually been meaning to order it for a while: I didn’t want it to disappear on me.) It was in the mailbox on Tuesday. Which I personally think is pretty darn impressive, under the current circumstances.
I flipped through it some last night, and, while I haven’t read all of it, my first impression is: I’m liking it more than I am the other true crime book I’m reading at the moment (which deals with another famous shootout: I may write more about that one after I finish it.) I do want to throw an endorsement Mr. Mireles’s way, though, just based on him getting the book out the door that fast.
Half-Price Books had another coupon sale last week (before everything went to heck in a handbasket), and I managed to hit most of the sale days. (I missed Monday and Thursday, for reasons.)
On the non-gun book front, I picked up mostly small beer: a copy of Laura Shapiro’s What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories for $8.49 plus tax. I know it sounds awfully feminist, but I’m interested in food history and food anthropology, and I’ve enjoyed Shapiro’s other books.
My other non-gun book purchase was the three volume non-abridged (I’m pretty sure) Modern Library edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (in the ugly brown covers) which I got on Sunday using a 50% off coupon: originally $40 for the set, so $20 plus tax. It seems to be in at least good, if not very good, condition, and I probably could have gotten it for about that price plus shipping through Amazon’s used market, but this was just easier. (Yes, I could also have downloaded it for free from Project Gutenberg: indeed, I actually have. But I’ve found it hard to read the PG edition, and it was worth $20 to me to have a printed copy.)
And what of gun books? Well, I did find a few of those…
Again, I don’t think this is any vast conspiracy: I think, as the Wanenmacher people say, they are just being cautious.
(And I can’t get that upset: Mike the Musicologist and I had put off going until November of this year, even though the April show is normally the one we’d go to in our rotation. This year, though, the S&WCA Symposium is in Tulsa in June, so we decided to push Wanenmacher’s out to November so my wallet would have time to recover.)
In other news, stuff’s getting serious: Buzzard Day in Hinkley, Ohio, has been “postponed”. It is not clear to me if anybody has conveyed this message to the buzzards.
Also, by way of Mike the Musicologist: the High Caliber gun show this weekend in Conroe has been cancelled by the city. I checked the Premier and Saxet web sites, and don’t see anything there about those shows. But none of these organizations is really good about updating their websites, in my opinion.
(For the record, I don’t see any grand conspiracy here to run gun shows out of business. I think it’s just precautionary. But I’m open to evidence otherwise.)
Mr. Miranda was the last surviving member of the quartet.
I’ve been going back and forth about this one, and came down on the side of inclusion. Not because this person was famous, but because this is another example of the kind of thing the paper of record does well: the obit for the person who was important to the community in some way, without necessarily being famous.
Apparently, though, he will be allowed to vote after he is released from prison (once he is on probation or parole). Since he hasn’t been sentenced yet, who knows when that will be: but I suspect it won’t be before the 2020 elections.
Edited to add: by way of Popehat on the Twitters, Scott Greenfield explains sentencing in New York as it relates to Harvey Weinstein:
Rape 3 Class E Non-violent felony, punishable by probation to 1 1/3- 4 years in prison.
Criminal Sexual Assault 1 Class B Violent Felony, punishable by determinate sentence, max 5-25 years in prison. https://t.co/cn3SCDDjR7
(This is a thread. If I understand it correctly, there’s no option for him to get probation on the class B felony, and there’s a minimum term of five years.)
(Also, possible defensive gun use, but it is too early to be sure.)
I ran across this story in the Statesman yesterday, but I’m linking to the Dayton Daily News coverage instead, as it makes my head hurt less. (Which is a shame, as the author of the Statesman story is someone RoadRich and I met in our Citizen’s Police Academy class.)
Cutting to the chase: guy in Ohio comes home and is confronted in his driveway by his ex-wife’s current husband with a gun. Guy has an Ohio CCW permit, pulls out his own gun, and shoots current husband dead.
Ex-wife then shows up in the driveway as well, and pulls a gun on her ex-husband. Whereupon he shoots her dead too.
The whole husband/wife apparently (and allegedly) ambushing the ex-husband seems bizarre enough to me. The local spin on this Ohio story is that current husband and wife lived in Bee Cave (a suburb of Austin, just down the road from Lakeway). Also, the wife was a former stunt woman:
