Automatic Self Defense

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“Automatic Self-Defense: The Armed Citizen’s Ultimate Muscle Memory Checklist.” October 2011 All rights reserved. Copyright © 2003-2011 by US Concealed Carry Association No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

AUTOMATIC SELF-DEFENSE: THE ARMED CITIZEN’S ULTIMATE MUSCLE MEMORY CHECKLIST Table of Contents Introduction by Tim Schmidt - United States Concealed Carry Association, President & Founder

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The 13 Steps to Automatic Self-Defense

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Conclusion

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AUTOMATIC SELF-DEFENSE: THE ARMED CITIZEN’S ULTIMATE MUSCLE MEMORY CHECKLIST

Introduction

the most prepared, most ready, and safest armed citizens on the  street.

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The purpose of this training is to help you train yourself to automatically - without any hesitation or snags - draw your pistol, point, and fire accurately at 1 - 21 feet. You’re going to develop this critical ability with just five or ten minutes of your time each night, and with NO ammunition cost. I’m confident that this is the most cost-effective, and easiest training you’ll ever get as an armed citizen.

Tim Schmidt

y far the most critical question and concern that I get over and over is this: How do I train to be effective when I do not have access to a range, and little money for professional  training? As armed citizens, we need to be ready for anything that may come our way. This becomes a big challenge when you look at some of the FBI’s statistics out there that show, among other things, that over 80% of gun fights happen not only in the dark or other lowlight condition, but also at very close range: between 1 and 3 feet.

Before you begin this training, you will have needed to master four critical components of carrying concealed for self-defense: 1. You will need to have a reliable pistol tucked safely into a reliable holster located within easy reach of your hand on your body.

The only answer to these extremely sobering couple of statistics, is training. Not just any training though: because as you’re about to learn, training the wrong way can be just as dangerous to you, is no training at all.

2. You will need to have a solid understanding of the correct way to grip your pistol with two hands – in other words, the two handed grip.

So, what do you need to train? How should you be training? Before you answer these incredibly important questions, I want to give you a warning. It’s going to be incredibly easy to ignore what you are about to read. The hassles and struggles of day-today life will try to tell you that practicing the following skills is unimportant. The difference between automatic self-defense skills and a white chalk outline on the pavement can come from just 5 to 15 minutes per day of practice. But the fact of the matter is that very few armed citizen’s (or even police officers) take the time to develop these life-saving skills.

3. You will need to have a safe routine and a place in which to conduct dry fire practice, and you’ll of course need to have learned how to dry fire practice. 4. Finally, you will need to become comfortable with carrying your concealed handgun with a round in the chamber. Once these four critical components of carrying concealed for self-defense have been settled for you, you are ready to begin your automatic self-defense training.

My challenge to you then, is don’t fall into this trap. Right now, you as an armed citizen are on fire. You’ve got more motivation than you ever will, until after the first time you have to draw your gun on a living, breathing human being. When that happens, it’ll be too late. Many people need a wake up call like this before they will go through the effort of developing these skills. The problem with that is, most of those people who waited, don’t get to live to see this training through.

The key to automatic training is: You need to learn to make this critical series of actions - drawing, pointing, and firing - into an automatic reflex that your body will be capable of doing under stress and in any situation- without even thinking about it. How can this be done? You’re going to make these actions muscle memory.

I know you’re not one of those people. With that said, congratulations. Three months from now, you will have automatic self-defense programmed into your brain, and you’ll be one of

Here’s how: the key is repetition. It is true what professional trainers say: When you’re forced to defend yourself, you

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The 13 Steps to Automatic SelfDefense

won’t have time to think. Your instincts will take over, and you will revert to your most basic form of training. I’m about to give you a 13-step list that you can use to make the drawing and firing process completely automatic. This is critical, because if this skill isn’t ‘programmed’ into your brain, when the time comes and someone is charging at you holding a weapon, your mind is going to become that of an animal... By that I mean, all logical thinking will leave you, and suddenly your mind will revert to instincts  alone.

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hen you’re doing this kind of auto-pilot training, it should go without saying that your gun is unloaded and there is no magazine in your gun. If you need your magazine inserted because it’s part of the handle, just make sure it’s completely empty. Start out slow and smooth. Don’t try to be fast, just try to do it right, with no mess ups. I’m going to assume you are carrying on your belt, but you’ll want to adjust these steps depending on where you’re carrying on your body. If you’re not sure of what draws should look like for certain carry positions, go to the USCCA website after this presentation, where we have articles and videos that will help you with that...

The same instincts that let people dodge cars at the last second without even realizing what they’re doing are going to kick in. When that happens, you’re going to get a massive adrenaline dump, which means that you’ll become Hyper-Aware. Time will seem to slow down, and you’ll see things in ‘slow motion’ as all the energy that your brain usually is dedicating to considering your environment, the past, and the future suddenly focuses on the ‘here and now’.

These are the steps to draw and fire from your belt: 1. Reach across your body and down, grabbing your shirt with your off-hand. If you’re right handed, you’re going to be grabbing your shirt with your left hand.

You will get tunnel vision, and even though your attacker might be 30 feet away, all you’ll seem to be able to see is his weapon and chest. This is because your brain is concentrating all of its power on this one little area- it will be like zooming your camera in. Your hearing will become very acute for some things, but it will drown other things out completely. For example, many police officers report after a shooting that they didn’t hear their guns firing at all, but they did hear the brass casings ‘pinging’ when they hit the ground. Here’s why programming your ‘auto-pilot’ instincts are so important: When all this happens, because of the massive adrenaline dump you’re going to get, your fine motor skills and your ability to think are going to FLY out the window. This isn’t some psychological thing either- it’s purely physical. The part of your brain that controls instincts and reactions - the Limbic system - gets almost ALL your energy. That means you won’t be able to think! All you’ll be able to do is tap into previously learned responses: Jumping. Screaming. Flailing your arms. Putting your arms in front of your face... these are examples of the responses of unprepared people. Your goal needs to be to get “drawing your gun and accurately firing” from the HUMAN part of your brain- the frontal lobe - to the ANIMAL part of your brain which is called the Hippocampus. If you do this, you are going to stand a FAR better chance of successfully defending your life during a deadly encounter. If you don’t do this, you stand a high chance of hesitating and freezing in your moment of truth.

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2. Pull your shirt up high and clear of your weapon. It’s WAY better to be safe than sorry here, because if you don’t pull your shirt up high enough, you might tangle your gun on your shirt, and then you’re in trouble.

4. Next, firmly draw your handgun, and begin angling it up to point in front of you as quickly as possible. You want to be able to pull the trigger and fire the moment you get your gun out of the holster, because your attacker may be running at you, or he may already be in front of you. So, the moment your gun draws clear of the holster, before you push it out away from your body or bring it up any higher, work on pointing it forward by pulling your wrist in (or ‘back’) 90 degrees. While you’re doing this, you should also be angling the barrel away from your body slightly. What I mean is this: Instead of holding the gun parallel to your body, you’ll want to tilt it so the barrel is a bit further from your body than the grip of your gun (at about a 45 degree angle). This is going to make sure the slide on your gun doesn’t get tangled in your clothes if you’re shooting a semi-automatic pistol, but even if you’re shooting a revolver, you’ll find that you’re more accurate from this firing position than you are when you’re trying to hold your gun straight up and down. It’s just more natural for your wrist.

3. Then, reach down and grab the grip of your gun with your strong hand. Make sure you get a good, solid grip, and don’t draw unless you could fire from the way you’re hanging onto your gun- so don’t draw if you only have the grip with two fingers. If you get a bad grip, adjust it before you drawslide your hand up the grip and make sure you’re in the right position. As you’re doing this, yell a verbal warning to the attacker like, “STOP, or I’ll shoot.”

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5. Once your gun is pointing in front of you, disengage the safety of your handgun, if it has one. Now, decide whether or not you need to fire a shot. Take a moment to mentally decide: Fire, or not? If ‘yes’, dry-fire your handgun. It’s important that you “program” into your mind that you CAN fire from this position. Eventually, when this process is ingrained into your muscle memory, you’ll have decided before your hand even touches your gun whether you need to fire or not when your gun is in this position.

7. When the gun is at chest height, you’ve either been shooting the whole time you’ve been drawing, OR you have enough time to get set up for accurate fire. Either way- once you’re on autopilot, it will take you only one second - sometimes even less - to go from reaching for your shirt to standing in this position. From this position, you’ll be able to instinctively ‘point shoot’ any attacker out to three feet with almost perfect accuracy. You just have to be careful, because if your attacker is that close and you’re firing, your instincts will also be screaming at you to stick your weak hand out and prevent the attacker from getting close to your body. If this happens, you stand a good chance of shooting your own hand. Now, as bad as it sounds, shooting your own hand is a heck of a lot better than getting stabbed by some murderer. And trying to keep the attacker at bay while you dump a full magazine into his center-mass MAY be the only chance you have of saving your life. At a distance of 3 feet, all bets are off. If he’s got a knife, one random slash to your throat and you’re done… so do what you’ve got to do to stop this guy. Look- I know it’s not pretty, and you’ve probably never heard anyone tell you that you might have to be okay with shooting your own wrist and hand... but listen, these fights are never pretty. They’re gruesome, and if he’s dead set on killing you, then it’s either you or him. We’re talking life and death here, and the truth can be an ugly beast.

6. Now, bring the gun straight up along your body to about the height of your chest. If you have to, you can fire the whole time you’re doing this as well.

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8. Let’s say your attacker is further away though, and you want to continue the draw and get locked into a nice stance for accurate shooting. The next step is to start pushing the gun away from your chest while bringing it closer to eye-level. As soon as you start pushing the gun, you need to start pushing your off-hand out to meet it.

10. Continue pushing the gun away from your chest with both hands until your arms are fully extended, and you’re looking down your sights with both eyes open. Now you’re in a good, accurate shooting stance.

9. Your off-hand should “slap” onto your gun’s grip (over your dominant hand) when your gun is about twelve inches away from your chest, and it should automatically assume the “two hand grip” position that we described earlier when it makes  contact.

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11. Aim, and fire many shots at where you are imagining your attacker to be (remember, you’ll be dry-firing)

his hand and pocket were full of empty casings. The time that he should have been spending reloading was spent trying to figure out what to do with the empty casings once his pocket was full. This story could make me CRY, because nobody warned this poor man about the beauty and DANGER of muscle memory.

12. Imagine seeing your attacker fall to the ground, or turn around and run away. Now and ONLY now, visually check to see if your gun is empty or at slide lock- because you may not realize that you’ve fired all your ammo. Many police officers have reported thinking they fired only one or two shots, but in fact they had fired their entire magazines.

To that end, learning WHAT NOT to train into your muscle memory is just as important as learning what TO train into your muscle memory. So... when you’re done with the final step and you’ve scanned the area for more threats, then break the pattern. Relax. Tell yourself the threat has been neutralized, and step behind cover in case he gets back up and has a gun, and tell yourself that you need to call the police. NOW... you can re-holster and start the repetition series over.

13. If your gun is empty, and if you usually carry extra ammunition or an extra magazine, quickly reload. Once you’re reloaded, or if your gun wasn’t empty, break your tunnel vision by lowering your gun slightly and scanning the area for more attackers. He may not have been alone!

Once you have this whole system perfected, make it a priority to spend just 15 minutes every evening standing in a room alone, acting out these 13 steps in a safe manner. Each repetition will take you about 20-30 seconds to complete all 13 steps, including the ‘cool down’ period between each one. If you do this an average of 5 nights per week, within just a couple weeks you’ll be able to complete this process under some pretty high stress.

Conclusion

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his is the full automatic self-defense process. Do this daily. Yes, doing this slowly will look and feel goofy at first, but do it until you are doing every step perfectly on autopilot without looking at yourself in the mirror, or without looking down at your gun or hands. You need to be able to keep your eyes on the threat. You’ll know when this skill becomes autopilot, because you’ll find yourself thinking about everything BUT drawing your gun while you’re doing it- what you’re going to make for dinner, what you’ve got to do at work tomorrow, etc. It’ll feel excruciatingly slow and easy to you.

Keep it up, and after a few months, you’ll have succeeded: you’ll have automatic self-defense. It’ll be so far ingrained into your muscle memory that you’ll be able to do it under unbelievable amounts of stress. In short, you’ll have turned yourself into a lifesaving, unstoppable machine. After that, just do it a few times every month to keep the skill sharp, but you’ll be set for life. This information is of critical importance to all responsibly armed citizens everywhere. That is why I want to invite you now, to share this report with as many of your friends and family members who carry concealed (or even just thinking about it) as possible.

Once you’re to that point... speed things up a bit. Try to do it a little faster. Increase the speed that you complete these steps, until it’s FAST, SMOOTH, and you make no mistakes.

If you have received this report from a friend or family member, I hope you’ll use it as a launching point for your journey as a responsibly armed citizen. Just as tens of thousands of Americans have already discovered, the membership of the United States Concealed Carry Association is the ultimate resource for the armed citizen. I hope you’ll check it out:

One note of caution: Do NOT make re-holstering your gun part of this procedure. DON’T do it. You do NOT need or want to have the act of re-holstering programmed into your Hippocampus. Listen- if you train yourself to draw, fire three shots, and then re-holster, you WILL do this during a gun fight, and it may get you killed.

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That sounds crazy, but let me explain: But here’s why this is SO important: I once heard an old story about some police officers. They carried revolvers while on duty, and when they trained at the range, they would eject the empty casings from the cylinder into the palms of their hands after each round of shooting, and then put them in their pockets. Well, one of those police officers was later found dead, shot to death after he lost a gun fight. And guess what -

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