"... subduing him. Two patrons then pinned the gunman down until police could arrive, according to the club’s owners, who viewed security video."
From "Here are the latest developments in the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting" (NYT).
It's hard to picture grabbing a handgun from a man who is in the middle of using it. But then to use the gun to hit the erstwhile gunman.... I guess your hand is not in the position to fire the gun. It's reversed and pointing more or less at you. And isn't the gunman's hand grabbing to get back to the trigger and shoot you? Once you've gone that far, perhaps the only thing you can do is to grip the barrel and clobber the guy with the grip.
Is that what happened?
Whatever happened, kudos to the man who disarmed the murderer.
CORRECTION: Oh, no. The difficult tangle I tried to picture is wrong. The murderer was using a rifle and carrying a handgun. That made the handgun easier to grab and to grab by the grip. If you got that far, would you use the handgun to hit the murderer?
IN THE COMMENTS: Enigma reminds me that there is a standard term for hitting someone with a gun: "pistol-whipping." Actually, there are 2 terms — "pistol-whipping" and "buffaloing," as I learned from the Wikipedia article, "Pistol-whipping":
Pistol-whipping or buffaloing is the act of using a handgun as a blunt weapon, wielding it as an improvised club....
The term "buffaloing" is documented as being used in the Wild West originally to refer to the act of being intimidated or cheated by bluffing. It would develop into a term meaning to strike someone with a handgun in the 1870s when Stuart N. Lake reported Wyatt Earp doing so.... The new use of the term developed because the act of hitting someone with their revolver was seen as an additional insult to the character of the victim....
The practice of using the handgun itself as a blunt-force weapon began with the appearance of muzzle loaders in the 15th century. Single-shot weapons that were tedious to reload were used to strike opponents directly in close-quarters combat after their projectile had been expended. It was entirely up to circumstance whether the user had time or chose to reverse the gun in their hand and strike a blow with its handle or merely swung the heavy weapon as a club or baton holding it normally....
Author Paul Wellman notes that clubbing an opponent with the butt of a gun held by its barrel, as seen in some Westerns, is problematic. First, the danger of an unintentional discharge could fatally wound the wielder. Second, many early revolvers of the black-powder cap and ball era, were relatively fragile around their cylinders relative to solid single-shot weapons. Third, rotating a gun so that it can be held by its barrel takes extra time, potentially crucial in a conflict.
To avoid the risk of damage or potential delay, pistol-whipping may be done with the gun held in an ordinary manner, hitting the target with an overhand strike from either the barrel or the flank of the gun above the trigger. It was a fairly common way to incapacitate a man in Western frontier days....
The practice was seen as a means of avoiding fatal confrontations. Instead of opening fire, an officer could knock someone unconscious with the barrel of their revolver which they claimed lowered mortality rates. This technique would later be considered a form of police brutality....
AND: The NYT has more detail on the man who took down the killer: "An Army Veteran Says He Went Into ‘Combat Mode’ to Disarm the Gunman/Richard M. Fierro, who served for 15 years in the military, said he was at Club Q in Colorado Springs with his family, and took down the man who killed five people."
Fiero was at the bar with his wife and daughter to see a drag show. When the shooting began, he got down on the floor, but when "he saw the gunman move through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of bar patrons had fled... he raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him."
The gunman, who Mr. Fierro estimated weighed more than 300 pounds, sprawled onto the floor, his military-style rifle landing just out of reach. Mr. Fierro started to go for the rifle, but then saw that the gunman had a pistol as well.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Mr. Fierro said.... [H]e yelled for other club patrons to help him. A man grabbed the rifle and moved it away to safety. A drag dancer stomped on the gunman with her high heels....
Posts
65 comments:
He sounds like a gun-grabber.
Yes.
Search for "pistol=whip"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pistol-whip
This works if one cannot fire, and also works if the gun is out of ammunition. Guns typically have a lot of sharp pointy metal bits, so they might be as effective as brass knuckles.
Polymer (plastic) framed guns like Glocks offer a kindler, gentler way to pistol-whip.
ma'am? do YOU know where the safety is, on That gun? Or how to cock it?
Guns aren't the hardest things in the world to use, but they do take a lot more training than clubs do
It’s a move I learned early in my martial arts studies, along with the warning that it’s a last ditch move because if it goes wrong you’re probably dead — so only use it if doing nothing also means you’re probably also dead. Krav Maga has a similar gun takeaway move. (Or if you have reason to believe he’s out of ammo )
It does explode the myth of gay men as cowards, in case anyone still believes that.
As in all cases of media narratives, wait six months before believing anything reported.
Oh, no. The difficult tangle I tried to picture is wrong. The murderer was using a rifle and carrying a handgun. That made the handgun easier to grab and to grab by the grip. If you got that far, would you use the handgun to hit the murderer?
No.
I'd use it to shoot him.
I think I would do whatever my adrenalin compelled me to do at that moment.
Rationally (if I were acting rationally), since the main weapon was a rifle, I would want to stay up close and tight with the gunman, where the rifle couldn't get me. Being that close, I might find it easier to use the gun as a club than as a gun.
The safety may have been on, the defender, in the one or two seconds he had to fire after grabbing the gun, couldn’t disengage it, and in desperation just whacked the shooter with it.
First rule of close combat: whatever works.
The safety may have been on, the defender, in the one or two seconds he had to fire after grabbing the gun, couldn’t disengage it, and in desperation just whacked the shooter with it.
First rule of close combat: whatever works.
is not citizen shooting another shooter in greater legal jeopardy for bodily harm?
in this great nation of laws?
what? no beer bottles or bar stools to hand
You may as well ask: "If you called 911, and the police showed up and you let them in your home, would you then go back into the residence to be in a position to be attacked by a hammer?" The nightclub heroism makes soooo much more sense, even crediting the victims of violence with unexplainable decision making. None of us knows how or why we'd react?
If you're not familiar with the pistol, you're not familiar with disabling the safety on the gun.
Unless you are familar with the specific handgun and have had practice with it, it might take 2-3 seconds to figure out how to fire it (unlike the movies), during whcih the shooter can turn his long gun on you. Seems like hitting him with the gun was a smart move. But after the shooter went down, I might have taken those 2 or 3 seconds to figure out how to shoot him in the stomach several times (from the movies that is supposed to be the most painful way to die).
This thing is so awful. My daughter used to live just a couple blocks from that bar and had g/l friends with whom she would hang out there. She was planning on being in CS that night (plans changed) and could have ended up there. We need to institutionalize more of the mentally ill than we are doing now.
I doubt I'll be the first person to say this but in a crowded space, hitting him with any object would be much safer than attempting to shot him. I also think it's highly unlikely that you'd be able to establish enough command presence quickly to get him to stop just by waving a gun and yelling at him. Remember he's armed, too.
If you aren't particularly familiar with gun safety, bludgeoning the guy is probably better than trying to shoot.
The gunman was not hit hard enough or often enough.
If one is not familiar with guns, getting the thing charged--or knowing if it is or is not-- and off safety-- while not sure if perhaps you are putting it back on safe--in the middle of a struggle where somebody is being shot every second could be a fatal delay.
If you're close enough to grab the hand gun, you're close enough to fracture the guy's skull in half a second.
Count me in with those that say you are not familiar with the weapon as designed, so do whatever you need to do to disrupt the aggressor and take control of the situation. I was glad to hear the people in the club took action to save themselves rather than wait to be saved.
As others have said, an unfamiliar semi-auto might be difficult to figure out under pressure...you could end up ejecting the magazine by mistake...
I wrote my previous comment before your correction, Professor. Short answer, it depends on whether it’s a revolver (shoot him!) or a semiauto. If the latter, you need to figure out — in zero seconds — whether it has a round chambered, whether it has a safety, and if so is the safety is on — so easier to use the gun as a metallic rock. (Alternatively, if it was a semiauto, he may have tried to make it go “bang” and failed because slide needed to be racked and:or safety on, so used it as a rock.)
(For fans of the 1911, I am aware that a round may be chambered and the safety off and it still won’t fire until the hammer is cocked.)
gee, why didn't you just shoot him in the hand, or leg or.... It's dark, it's total chaos. You don't have seconds, you have fractions of seconds to react. to live or die.
It's also not hollywood. john wick isn't coming to save you.
Firearms are all different. Was it loaded? round chambered? You don't have time for that.
close combat isn't pretty-you do what you have to. second guessing is for the NYT and wapo writers to say how it should have been done.
He was subdued, and that is what matters.
@ Enigma
Thanks for the search term. Will update the post re "pistol whipping" — which, of course, I've heard of over the years but haven't really thought of.
As for the safety... I originally thought the gun was being used in the shootings that were happening (and was thinking about things like how hot the barrel would be).
Why didn't I know a rifle was what was in use? I don't click on murder stories for the most part. I only clicked on this this morning because I was interested in the choice to hit someone with a gun. You have a gun. When would you it someone with it rather than shoot him?
"It's hard to picture grabbing a handgun from a man who is in the middle of using it.'
An Omaha cop did it. And the guy had the gun in his pants! One of the most impressive athletic moves of all time.
If a man came into a space using a rifle with a gun at his hip I would not grab the gun at his hip.
I would grab the rifle.
Most likely the shooter was neutralized to some extent before the pistol was grabbed and used to beat him. After you gain fire superiority and knock down any assailants you would go back over the combat space and clear the area. This is when you would shoot the assailant a couple of times as you stepped over him and kick any obvious weapons away from him if Army trained, but it sounds like the assailant is still alive and that is unlikely at a Colorado gay bar.
Even with brave untrained people I find it unlikely that a person standing with a rifle at ready and firing had his pistol grabbed from a hip holster and was subdued by it. That would be very hard compared to grabbing the rifle and tackling him.
I think that this article is not really accurate chronologically. Shocker.
Ann asked, "If you got that far, would you use the handgun to hit the murderer?"
I don't know with any certainty what I would have done but ... knowing nothing about guns I would likely have made an adrenalin-fueled swing at the shooter. And, knowing something about my lack of skills at hand-to-hand combat, I would have missed.
This is why I hate your links to the NYT - I am apparently out of free articles this month, wasted on less interesting stuff. But they are the very last newspaper I would give a penny to.
In any case, I would be interested in seeing how this guy got that close to the shooter, whose first imperative, with a long gun, should have been to keep everyone at a safe(😉) enough distance that they can’t grab at his rifle. If I had been the shooter, I think that I might have used an AR pistol instead of a rifle, because it would be harder to avoid.
I don’t know why anyone would think that there wouldn’t be gay guys in a gay bar that could take care of themselves like this guy did. The gay guys I know in MT grew up around guns, and you see them at the range at times. I would expect any of them to have taken care of business, as this hero did.
Witness said...
If you aren't particularly familiar with gun safety, bludgeoning the guy is probably better than trying to shoot.
I agree, but in that situation a person unfamiliar with a pistol probably shouldn't use it to hit someone.
Almost anything you could use would be more effective as a bludgeoning weapon, including the rifle which was the primary threat, and the chances of an accidental discharge are not insignificant with an unfamiliar weapon.
“When would you it someone with it rather than shoot him?”
I know, I know!
When I was out of bullets?
Whatever happened, kudos to the man who disarmed the murderer.
Ahem ... or woman (lesbians, transwomen) or person of other gender.
Whatever works. But once he’s on the ground, you should do the Mozambique Drill.
Hey, do whatever works. But once he’s on the ground figure out the safety and give him the Mozambique Drill.
Do we yet know the name and/or ethnicity or the shooter?
Ann,
Learn Krav Maga... lots of ways to disarm a rifle or pistol.
What would Alec Baldwin do.
Perhaps the guy grabbed the pistol, pointed it and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened because there wasn't a round chambered or the safety was on and the guy didn't know how to work the gun. At that point he didn't have time to try to figure it out and was fully committed. Using the gun as a club before the shooter could bring the muzzle of the long gun to bear was the next best thing.
I'm in my 60's and the only meaning of "buffaloed" I'm familiar with is "the act of being intimidated or cheated by bluffing." Was in wider use when I was much younger. Never heard of its later meaning of using the gun as a club, interesting.
Grabbing a gun while the shooter is shooting?.. pure bravery.
Whatever happened - the bravery saved lives.
As others elaborated, yes out of expediency the first move would be a quick strike to the head with the body of the handgun in order to stop him from shooting and stun him might as well keep beating his head until he’s completely under control. God bless the quick moving hero (heroes?) who did just that.
The 4 stages of drinking tequila are:
1. I'm rich
2. I'm good looking
3. I'm bullet proof
4. I'm invisible
Maybe the gun grabber was in stage 3.
If it's a semiautomatic and you're within punching range, and you know the guy you're fighting has a rifle, then moving immediately to clobber him in the head as hard as you can is almost always the right move.
You don't know if the pistol is already on safe.
Maybe you can find the safety with your thumb on the first try, in the dark, and maybe you can't. Do you feel lucky?
You don't know if there's a round in the chamber.
With a disarming drill, you don't try to fire right away, because if there's no round in the chamber you lose time. You rack the weapon in one smooth, fast motion as you take it away, and you step back to get out of punch or grapple range. So you wind up a couple of steps away with his pistol.
But that only works if you don't think the other guy has another firearm. And It will only work if you do a TON of practice, and with different actual working pistols, not plastic dummies like they use in classes most of the time. Because otherwise you're not going to be able to rack the pistol.
If you know he's got a rifle, you lose, because he can level the rifle and fire at you a lot faster than you can charge the pistol, take it off safe, and fire.
And if he's got a good vest, your pistol won't penetrate anyway. So maybe you go for a head shot instead of center of mass. But that adds a lot of risk... You're MUCH more likely to miss, and you're MUCH more likely to hit someone else behind your target, or hit a bottle of good scotch.
To add to our vocabulary, "buttstroke" is what it's called when striking someone with the butt of a rifle.
If it was crowded it might have been the only option without firing the gun and possibly hitting a bystander. The guy/girl, whatever, got the situation under control. Good for them. Fast thinking in a stressful situation.
"Okay, but just a couple of drinks. Nothing crazy."
okay, i've given this more than 25 seconds of thought now; and i think
Our hero (or ONE of the heroes) grabbed the barrel of the riffle and pointed it away (up? down? doesn't matter), with one or both hands).. And, Meanwhile Our Hero wrestled the handgun away from the villain's belt/holster/hand.. And whipped him with it.
Since there was a crowd of people,
it's A GOOD THING, that Our Hero didn't try to learn how to shoot at that point in time .
(i personally, think it's Too Bad, that after Our Hero whipped* the villain, he didn't whip him 10 more times)
whipped* The villain is KILLING people. If you bop him on the head once, he might recover; if you bop him 11 times, he PROBABLY WON'T. Always remember to double tap.. And Ten is MORE, than two
I fall into the category of having never handled a pistol, so would probably use it as club if an option. Was taught 50 years ago to fire a rifle, so dimly recall more to it than just picking it up and pulling the trigger.
You only attempt to shoot him with the handgun if you know at an instinctive level exactly what to do with the handgun to be able to fire it. Otherwise, too many things can go wrong when he turns the rifle on you and shoots you point blank.
While I know exactly how to prepare to fire such a pistol, it isn't an instinctive reaction for me. I also wouldn't have grabbed it in the first place if I were that close to him and felt I had to fight back to survive- I would have grabbed the rifle with both hands instead, and if he released the rifle to use the pistol himself, I would have used the rifle like a club- a much more effective bludgeoning tool.
So were/are Buffaloes known for making bluff charges?
About a year ago this guy threatened his family and neighbors with a homemade bomb. Local law enforcement intervened. The guy remained on state and federal radar as a wacko. Family and neighbors knew he possessed firearms. Yet no one pursued an action using Colorado's red-flag law. Why? The same thing happened a couple of years ago in east Denver. Why aren't (potentially unconstitutional) red-flag laws used when passed?
Even with brave untrained people I find it unlikely that a person standing with a rifle at ready and firing had his pistol grabbed from a hip holster and was subdued by it. That would be very hard compared to grabbing the rifle and tackling him.
@Achilles, lots of information still to come in, but note that the shooter necessarily has two hands on his rifle and therefore zero hands anywhere close to the handle of his handgun. If the shooter was using a normal, “strong side” carry, or (better yet!) a small of the back carry, then a person who has worked his way behind the shooter has an easy grab. Not so, obviously, with appendix carry or a shoulder holster. Do we need more info, which will trickle out eventually.
Two asides. First, I think the term “buffaloed” went out with the 19th century. It was supposedly a favorite tactic of Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, and on the day before the gun fight behind the OK Corral Earp buffaloed one of the men he would later shoot in that fight.
Second, I have read a claim that lawmen of the Old West used to carry their guns with the butt forward, so that a bad guy couldn’t come up behind them and murder them with their own gun. Certainly James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickok is know to have carried his guns butt forward. It forced the lawman to learn how to do a “twist draw.” You reach for the gun with your hand twisted do the palm is out. Grab the gun butt and lift straight up until the barrel clears the holster, then rotate the hand and cock the revolver as you bring your hand level. It takes practice to fonsafely.
You are in a crowded venue, someone starts shooting, people scramble, you grab the pistol from the shooter. Do you then discharge said firearm at arms length risking your shot missing or exiting and killing someone else? You went to a club, are mentally prepared to shoot someone in the ear to ensure immediate ending of their ability to be a threat? Do you know how to operate a gun at close range? If you separate to do the firing range stance, you are now beyond the rifle barrel and also the pistol is out away from your body so easy for someone else to take. What if the pistol was not ready to fire which now the gunman has turned on you? And finally, if you are seen pointing a gun, anyone else responding with a gun will see you a legit target. Where are the police? If there's a cop, the policy is shoot everyone with a gun in hand when the enter an active shooter situation.
No, you take a firearm and are within arms length, you beat the shooter to death or unconsciousness.
At the time of the Founding, the single-shot pistols of the time often had a brass buttplate to facilitate its use as a bludgeon. In the Old West era, pistol-whipping/buffaloing became feasible when the revolvers evolved to have an enclosed frame, which made breakage/damage much less likely. There were also a few attempts at handgun/brass knuckle hybrids, such as the Reid's "My Friend" Knuckleduster.
“Well I was buffalo-ed in Buffalo
And I was entertained in Houston
New York, Yew Nork you gotta choose one
It's a tripe face boogie
Gonna boogie my sneakers away”
I'm amazed the patrons of the bar didn't lynch the shooter. He certainly deserved it. They are better people than me.
Blogger Milo Minderbinder said...
About a year ago this guy threatened his family and neighbors with a homemade bomb. Local law enforcement intervened. The guy remained on state and federal radar as a wacko.
He was more than that. He was charged with two felonies and other charges after a several hour long barricaded suspect standoff with cops. Why was he not in custody ?
Prosecutorial discretion. Psychiatric ethics. There are diverse precedents, most recently (during the Obama administration, I think) at a school attended by another lunatic, under surveillance, who returned to open a mass abortion field at his school.
I have more than two semi-auto pistols. On some, the safety goes up for safe. On others, the safety goes down. What kind of pistol was it? Time is important.
"It does explode the myth of gay men as cowards, in case anyone still believes that."
I think it takes a lot of courage to some of the things gay men do...IYKWIMAITYD....
"Buttstroke" ...I'll leave that one for Laslo.
Try https: // archive . ph for seeing what is behind a paywall.
Kudos to the people who fought back - it takes courage and fortitude. As for hitting rather than shooting, I'm familiar with handguns but the odds of knowing if the pistol is loaded, where the safety is, if a round is chambered, etc. are real issues. Grab and strike is a lot faster than fumbling around with an unfamiliar weapon.
Buffalo buffaloes buffalo Buffalo buffalos.
So a straight army combat vet there with family tackled 300lb shooter from behind. Rifle went flying, he found pistol in belt and whipped shooter with it. Combined with others' blows he was rendered unconscious by time police arrive. So police arrested vet, covered in blood, and kept him in squad car for an hour while one in his party bled out. I'm sure details will be revised with more reporting, but DAMN.
300lbs! That is a big guy. It's just so sad that he was able to kill so many before being taken down.
"It does explode the myth of gay men as cowards, in case anyone still believes that."
All this particular story explodes is the idea that everyone in a gay bar is gay: "Fiero was at the bar with his wife and daughter to see a drag show."
Rendering is right. The combat veteran -- not a gay man -- tried to protect his family, then followed and attacked the killer from behind. He knew what to do and was extremely heroic. Other men then helped him, one by moving the rifle, the other, in drag, by using his high heels to stomp on the killer's hand. Ouch. Thank God for the bravery of men who run towards danger. Even in high heels.
It's awful that the hero was handcuffed and put in a police car, while his daughter's longtime boyfriend was among those killed and his wife and daughter had been right there with him. In defense of the police, he was covered in blood and there was chaos and a crowd with a lot of dead and injured people to attend to. But this guy seems capable of deciding how to react to that experience too. He has already said some interesting things that challenge stereotypes across the political spectrum. And the bar seems to have attracted a lot of non-gay patrons. It's too bad all victims of crime aren't valued equally. Of course the Times is behaving as if this is far worse than other mass murders or single murders. Can't all murder victims be treated equally? No. Our media and legislators do not behave like the three men in that bar who risked their lives to save everybody.
Most of the gay people I know well are veterans, and I don't think of any of them as being wimpy. They're all much better at handling guns than I am.
The road to accidental discharge is paved in pistol whipping.
Post a Comment