Peaceful protests, vehicle fighting, and kiddos

[Caballoflaco]

That's pretty much what we've seen, but there is the exception of other people in the crowd being armed and then engaging the person in the vehicle. Some of these people are dedicated in a way that suicide bombers are.

A similar trend I’ve noticed watching a lot of these videos is that if you brandish any sort of weapon the crowd may back up, but they also announce loudly that you do have a weapon, and if they have armed people or folks willing to press a fight, those folks then move in and now you’ve got a messican standoff in the making.

These videos also show that the crowd is far more likely to grease a squeaky wheel. In the middle of an angry mob is not the time to verbally debate the crowds political beliefs. They’re all waiting for a chance to prove in front of their comrades how devoted they are to the cause and we all know that social approval is a powerful motivator of human actions.

[JohnO]

I only read the 1st page so I don't know if this has been discussed yet.

Most of the strategies advise keep moving. This implies the ability to do so. I've seen (on the news) where my local interstates and limited access roads have been blocked by protesters. Being penned in by other vehicles unwilling to keep moving is a real scenario one could find themselves in. On a highway a vehicle could easily find itself gridlocked with nowhere to go.

What disgusted me was seeing I-84 in Hartford, CT blocked by BLM protesters. Traffic was a parking lot for miles behind. The protest was right before the highway exits used for 3 area hospitals, Children's Hospital, St. Francis Hospital and the Level 1 Trauma Center, Hartford Hospital. The really disgusting part, CT State Troopers were taking a knee on the highway with the protesters.

[CraigS]

RJ that is basically what I am doing, sliding the holster forward. But in it's stock form it ran into the front right belt loop on my jeans and stopped. So I basically shortened the forward part of the holster so it will move further.
20200822_113350 by craig stuard, on Flickr
The left is a Crossbreed that the kydex cracked on so I replaced it w/ diy kydex that is the next thicker version. The one on the right is my recently modified one. It is actually completely diy. It started as a copy of the tan one but in a color that blends in better w/ denim jeans. You can see that the right side leather belt loop has been removed.
20200822_113359 by craig stuard, on Flickr
This is the back side. You can see the kydex belt loop. Removing some leather and moving the loop let's me slide it about 1.5 inches further forward. BTW the tape is a UHMW tape that stops the leather on leather squeaking.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

That's pretty much what we've seen, but there is the exception of other people in the crowd being armed and then engaging the person in the vehicle. Some of these people are dedicated in a way that suicide bombers are.

Yeah, fair enough, for sure. Although I think that even there you'll benefit from seizing initiative. I'm not sure if we've seen a situation yet in which the driver hit back fast enough, hard enough.

I'm speculating, of course. I'm just thinking back to a million years ago when I was a bouncer at this biker bar and how one weekend I had a group of guys giving me a headache and I was really trying to be reasonable, which often causes me problems. I grabbed one guy at a convenient moment and shoved him hard out the door but it just resulted in me taking a bunch of hits from a couple of his friends and I barely got them out the side door while the manager held the front.

A couple of weeks later I saw them again and I was pretty sure they'd intentionally come on a night when I was working alone. This time, once it started to heat up, I didn't grab anyone, I headbutted the first guy who got in my face and flattened him before managing to catch the guy on his right, my left, with a hard uppercut. Very different response from the friends this time.

I've had to re-learn that lesson a ton of times because I naturally want to be reasonable. But dialing it briefly to 11 shut down the same guys who'd recently been very interested in fighting and proven it a couple of weeks prior.

I realize "violent enough fast enough" isn't a lesson this particular group needs to hear from me or anything; I'm just illustrating my rationale for the idea that there's still a big advantage to be gained if the armed response they face is violent enough.

Again not intended as a lecture, I understand the audience here does not need my advice and this is all stuff many people here have direct experience with also. Just illustrating my thoughts.

[Totem Polar]

I'm not sure who that article was aimed at, but as a random civilian geezer out driving with his family in suburbia, I don't think it was me. I read the whole thing, and got next to nothing out of it.

This is a great example of why the abbreviation “OMMV” was invented.

I’m *still* thinking about some of the concepts brought up in that article, but that certainly doesn’t mean that others are required to. It’s all good.

[Totem Polar]

Is that the switch that gets flipped when driving a rental car? Asking for a friend.

Matt Graham told the Mrs and I an anecdote about working with some SOF from Sweden when he was under agency contract. They’d rented some SUVs from the local airport. The training included a mobile medical component involving taped-over windows, the removal of the back seats, and several live goats, IIRC. Fortunately, they’d allowed the rental guy to upsell them on the extra insurance: “even if you bring it back to us in pieces in a giant box, it’s totally covered...”

[farscott]

Have a friend who is from the army aviation side of things. More technically oriented, competent than me. He's not from my locale but visits fairly regularly because of his better half's family. In the aftermath of the post-Floyd riots, locally, he'd asked about better routes from the airport he was flying into to where his better half would be. We discussed the various options and confirmed the route - one he was already familiar with. He flies in, lands, gets his rental car. All the while punching in the address he was going to via the various mapping, direction giving programs. ALL were telling him to take a very different route involving surface streets, a bridge, and into a city with protests/riots that evening because of "heavy traffic, delays" on the planned route. With the knowledge of how these programs are spoofed and the protests that night, he stuck with the planned route. Zero issues with his travel. No interruptions, no delays.

Apparently, with only a handful of motorists, all logged into the same program(s), driving really slow together, and potentially reporting delays, accidents, whatever all together, these programs can be made to believe there are problems and they'll re-route drivers.

That is troubling as it is an exploit of the crowd-sourced data paradigm. In any event, it means the tool is not reliable. It also means we can only trust information from trusted people and the apps are compromised.

[HCountyGuy]

Honestly, it's one of the places appendix carry shines. It's easy to access while seated, your elbow isn't hitting anything, and the seat belt isn't in the way.

I unfortunately can’t say I’ve had a similar experience. I carry appendix and my seatbelt gets in the way of the grip. I’ve kinda figured out how to work around it but my seated draw in the driver’s seat kinda sucks.

[RJ]

This is a great example of why the abbreviation “OMMV” was invented.

I’m *still* thinking about some of the concepts brought up in that article, but that certainly doesn’t mean that others are required to. It’s all good.

If it came across as an eye poke; I assure you it was not. I apologize. I absolutely agree with OMMV, and I didn’t mean to imply it had ‘no value’, just could not really pin down relevance to me. All is well.

[Cory]

This came up in a private facebook group I'm in. I won't be sharing the name of the group, but I imagine a few here are in the same one. Some seriously important stuff to take note of here. Including the mob use of OC and strobes to remove the ability to PID threats individually. Noting the way the police respond is also not helpful - though there seems to be no effective way for individual cops to intervene either. The 4 involved are conceal carrying but don't find themselves in a position to really use that effectively.

https://twitter.com/@twitter/status/1294901716853198850

I'm going to share this here, as my brother that was involved in this wanted his words and experiences heard.

A brother of mine just dumped this on me about his recent events in Portland.

Very basic background. My friend is a prior service 1st LAR 0311, 0351. Multiple tours in Iraq and other places, in the early to late 2000s, then DoE SRT, then was put through selection and went to work for Colonel Tom Green as a team member. Since leaving, he has been doing other contract work. The three other guys with him served with him on certain teams.

He is an experienced and capable meat eater and the furthest thing from a pussy or coward.

Try to learn from his experiences.

"Me and three of my buddies were in Portland this weekend, got attacked by antifa. There’s a Twitter video with millions of views on it They ended up on Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro etc., of us getting beat with bats and rocks the size of cantaloupes thrown at us, getting spit on etc. We were all carrying pistols as well. Opportunity ability and jeopardy, We were in a deadly force situation and we could easily articulate the use of deadly force, but they had pepper sprayed us. They were using industrial strobe lights on us, etc. We couldn’t PID our target and what lied beyond it, They did a great job of taking our situational awareness away, it was fucking incredible.

Bro my perspective on this changed so much.

The reason we were there, wasn’t to counter protest or some shit, G*** and I****, two of the guys with me, one of which is a bronze star and Purple Heart recipient. They’re both in the hiring process for Portland Police Department. One is from Ohio and one is from Virginia. They both flew in that day just so they could come check out the city before they move their families across the nation.

Something else that I should make perfectly clear. We went to the Federal Courthouse first. There wasn’t a whole lot going on down there. We walked around and took some pictures. Bumped into a sheriff at one point. Talked to him for a while. We asked him if the are riots were over? He said fuck no, they’re trying to fuck a police station up right now on 47th and Burnside, We asked him if we could go and he said yeah it’s still a peaceful assembly it hasn’t been declared a riot yet.... So legit, we walked into this thing blind, hindsight it was stupid on our part, I had no idea that they were like that. If it had been a full-blown riot we would not have went. Bottom line man, if you had ever given me a scenario like this and said hey you’re sober and you have a gun and somebody is hitting you with a bat and throwing rocks at you that could kill you or put you in a coma, You try to get away but they cut you off with a convoy of vehicles and the assault starts again. They impede your movement and beat you with bats...

Would you shoot?

I’d be like, yeah what fucking planet are you from?

But in all the training that I’ve been through my life, I’ve never been in one where in the first five seconds of the scenario you’re blinded with a strobe light and sprayed with pepper spray....That changes everything, they were throwing these rocks from 15 feet back in the crowd, you couldn’t see who the fuck through it, etc. things like that....It’s just a good talking point for guys that carry concealed, you need to think through all these different scenarios.

It got way worse after that video ended, they chased us for 11 city blocks, They had a convoy of about 25 vehicles that cut us off at the next intersection, They had scouts on the corner with radios they had a drone following us, they had a bull horn calling us Nazis and the crowd was following a red strobe light that was up in the air on a stick, so they would announce Nazis and then people would follow the red strobe light, That video is just the beginning, I’ve got a fucking fractured hand from a baton, everyone of us has black and blue bruises up and down their legs and back, I had a guy spit in my face from 6 inches away, call me a pussy and a coward for not doing anything about it, and then tell me that he was going to find where I live, rape my mother, rape my children in front of me and then kill me.

I’ve never been more angry about something in my fucking life, the level of restraint that it took for us to not fight back in any capacity whether that was with a gun or fists is incredible. All of us have kids at home, The only thing going through all of our minds was we have to be able to justify deadly force if we’re going to go that route, there’s also hundreds of these people, we can’t see straight because of all the pepper spray, and it’s hard to PID exactly who is throwing these rocks and hitting us with batons, because they would hit you and fucking run and their buddy would run up and hit you. It was an incredibly stressful situation, they did a very good job tactically of taking away your situational awareness, And in my opinion complicating your legal defense when you split one of their faces open with a hollow point.
As we were running from the crowd after about the third block or so, we’re sprinting because the mob head caught back up to us and vehicles were trying to cut us off, I put my hand on the back strap on my appendix, And I heard somebody yell “hey bro whatever you’re reaching for don’t reach just keep running their still 30 feet behind you. Keep running straight”

We get 11 blocks down the road and this black Chevy Impala is ghosting us down the street, he’s kind of been in our shadow since block two or three He rolls his window down and starts asking us a bunch of questions why are we here what are we doing telling us we need to get the fuck out of here asking us where our car is etc., we pretty much told him get the fuck away from us because we didn’t know who he was, I finally asked him at one point who the fuck are you man you need to leave us alone, he was like I’m the fucking police bro who are you. So he pulled his car over and him and his partner talked to us, He was one of the special programs guys either with swat or SRT or whatever. He was the one that yelled at me not to reach, and tried to help us out, he said he knew that we’ve been pepper sprayed and we’re having trouble seeing, I kind of snapped at him, Like hey motherfucker, You’ve been watching this whole thing fucking unfold and you didn’t intervene at all or light the crowd up or something? He started laughing and he was like man if I got out and tried to help you guys my fucking car would be on fire right now and I’d be running next to you.

Bottom line don’t go to an antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation and expect them to employee tactics it take away your situational awareness, and Complicate the use of force continuum."

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status...01716853198850

https://www.newsweek.com/theyll-blam...-man-scolds-w…

https://www.facebook.com/20380506299...BP7wxgRdKY&d=n

#portland #pdx