The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) has been asked to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies in Washington State in order to get retired law enforcement officers qualified to provide additional security on a volunteer basis. The rationale of the 2004 federal law is to enable law enforcement qualified personnel to legally carry weapons in all fifty states provided the retired officer can requalify (just like active officers qualify on a yearly basis) in the jurisdiction from which he or she has retired. WASPC, according to our sources, maintains that law enforcement agencies are exposed to additional liability if an agency certifies retired law enforcement officers (LEOs) as having met Criminal Justice Training Commission standards for firearms qualification.

The purpose of the LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS’ SAFETY ACT OF 2004 (18 U.S.C. Sec. 926B and 926C) is to supplement active law enforcement personnel in order to deter crime and prevent terrorist activity. The federal law accomplishes this by anticipating that additional armed law enforcement personnel that have already been trained will be present within each jurisdiction as officers travel from one jurisdiction to another while on business, vacationing or for any other reason.

The Act authorizes retired officers and active police officers from any jurisdiction within the United States to carry a concealed firearm within any jurisdiction of the United States; thus, increasing the likelihood that an armed officer will be present if circumstances warrant appropriate use of armed force. The retired officer must qualify annually per the standards that officers are required to meet for firearms proficiency within the agency from which he or she retired. For a retired officer to carry a weapon in all fifty states, the federal statute requires:

“… a certification issued by the State in which the individual resides that indicates that the individual has, not less recently than one year before the date the individual is carrying the concealed firearm, been tested or otherwise found by the State to meet the standards established by the State for training and qualification for active law enforcement officers to carry a firearm of the same type as the concealed firearm.”

The LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS’ SAFETY ACT OF 2004 is an aid to law enforcement and the public that costs the state or the federal government very little because the training has already been provided at the state level and each retired officer essentially becomes a volunteer who must pay the cost of maintaining his/her qualifications at the state and/or local level.

RCW 36.28A.090 reads in part:

Firearms certificates for qualified retired law enforcement officers.

(1) The purpose of this section is to establish a process for issuing firearms certificates to residents of Washington who are qualified retired law enforcement officers for the purpose of satisfying the certification requirements contained in the federal law enforcement officers safety act of 2004 (118 Stat. 865; 18 U.S.C. Sec. 926B and 926C).

(2) The Washington association of sheriffs and police chiefs shall develop a firearms certificate form to be used by local law enforcement agencies when issuing firearms certificates to retired law enforcement officers under this section.

(3) A retired law enforcement officer who is a resident of Washington may apply for a firearms certificate with a local law enforcement agency. The local law enforcement agency may issue the firearms certificate to a retired law enforcement officer if the officer:

(a) Has been qualified or otherwise found to meet the standards established by the criminal justice training commission for firearms qualifications for active law enforcement officers in the state; and…

We have produced a legal opinion letter that we will make available to any law enforcement agency in Washington State.

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Liability for Mistakes in Low-Light Environments

Nevertheless, the question of liability for officer shootings in situations where justifiable use of deadly force becomes an issue is a very common situation for officers that needs to be addressed at a number of different levels according to experts.

The following information is from the Police Policy Studies Council and Law Enforcement News (a publication of John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY):

Police shootings involving unarmed suspects often occur in a darkened setting. Many law enforcement agencies do not train their officers how to shoot under such conditions.

According to the Houston Chronicle, 59 percent of the 189 shootings that occurred in Harris County from 1999-2004 occurred between sunset and sunrise. In at least five cases involving unarmed suspects officers appeared to have mistaken an object for a gun in low light.

Research conducted in Los Angeles County, Baltimore County and New York City by Tom Aveni, a sworn officer, and trainer with the New Hampshire-based Police Policy Studies Council, turned up similar results.

Since most shootings occur under low light conditions, it makes sense for armed citizens and police officers to get specialized training in low-light combat shooting tecniques. The Firearms Academy of Seattle provides such training along with training in most aspects of rifle, pistol and shot gun tactics.

Although most state officer training only requires qualifying under daylight conditions that bear little resemblance to the environment in which police officers do their job, the study indicates that such training is critical.

In many if not most of these shootings, the low light conditions are such that a cell phone is mistaken for a gun especially where the suspect acts in such a way that the suspect’s body language is interpreted as intense or aggressive.

“When I see officers getting into trouble, it’s because they’re shooting at things they haven’t clearly identified.”

David Klinger, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and the author of “Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s-Eye View of Deadly Force,” believes that as much information as can be gleaned from real-life situations should be integrated into training.

“I can’t say that no police are ever trained [in low-light conditions], but it’s a training issue where many officers don’t get the opportunity to fire under those circumstances, absolutely.” He told LEN. “We want to make our training as realistic as possible so police officers are able to have spent some time in a variety of environments if they find themselves having to make a life and death decision. To the extent to which officers are not getting realistic training is the extent to which we’re not preparing them as well as we should.”

Just shooting at targets is not the kind of training that is needed in order to protect the officer and the public from the shootings that occur with a great deal of frequency, usually under low light conditions. Many shooting schools provide low light training for officers and non-police civilians; e.g., Firearms Academy of Seattle.

One example of an innovation that augments the traditional firearms training is the situation created at a recent IPSIC competition at Paul Bunyan Shooting Range in Puyallup. I participated in a scenario that created the sort of chaos present in the street environments faced by officers in real life where we started out in a mocked-up drivers seat, exited from a vehicle while engaging multiple targets that were behind partial cover and shot at moving targets.

Another situation involves engaging targets where lights may be bright in one room, dark in another and you have to move from a low-light environment to a brightly lit room.

I recently completed the defensive handgun class at FAS in which we were introduced to low-light combat techniques and learned the basics of shooting from cover. The low-light training is conducted in a darkened room with dimmer-controlled lighting. We learned two different methods of deploying a flashlight while shooting. The learning curve is rapid at FAS and by the end of the two day class all of us were shooting multiple shots with accuracy and speed that I never expected to achieve even after quite a bit of previous training and competition.

Incidentally, experts like Massad Ayoob recommend IPSIC and IDPA competitions because the degree of stress engendered in racing through multiple targets creates enough stress that a shooter begins to function like he will under the extreme stress of a gun fight. Continuing to function after your gun jams is a matter of survival that is inculcated by such competitions in which you find yourself racing through a maze of targets, making tactical decisions as to when to load another magazine and which target to engage first.

Perpetrators tend to run in packs and malfunctions are almost inevitable, especially during rapid fire shooting. Good shooters continue to move while they clear a jam (or stay behind cover). And the first rule in real life combat is that the situation is constantly changing. You may look up and find an innocent bystander standing in the doorway from which shots were fired a moment before. The ability to keep on thinking and functioning in these situations develops from constant repitition under stress with a professional trainer to push you past your normal limits of endurance.

Competition will also get you out there pushing your comfort level. So what makes the difference between officers that survive gunfights and those who don’t survive or make critical mistakes at the expense of unarmed civilians?

“The answer, simply put: ‘It is the difference in training.’ ”

Aveni’s findings summarized above are significant for officer survival, training, investigations, policy-making, and courtroom defenses. Compare the training of U.S. police officers to Japanese cops.

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.

Proverbs 21:31
King James Version (KJV)

The ultimate force is love. Everything we do has to be motivated by love. That is why we constructed this site. To express love for our community, our servicemen and law enforcement; to encourage sensible solutions to the threats that seem to be gathering.

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. Proverbs 29:2

We can blow the trumpet until we are blue in the face but if it is not motivated by love, we have accomplished nothing.

So why does our site advocate self-defense?

10 USC 311. Militia: composition and classes

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are commissioned officers of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are–
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia,which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or …

The above referenced federal law recognizes an organized and an unorganized militia. The United States Constitution and the Washington State Constitution clearly recognize an individual right to keep and bear arms. It also states that there is no right to maintain a militia. The prohibition against militias is in reference to a standing (or organized militia) as opposed to the “unorganized” or militia at large (as it used to be known).

The media often equates the concept of a militia with vigilante actions. Militias have been associated with racism and unlawful activities in times past. The concept of the militia-at-large is a legal concept that has its roots in the interest of the people in assisting our government in times of need. There is no place in society for people to take matters into their own hands when it comes to meting out justice. The only situation in which a citizen would be justified in using deadly force is in defense of self or others. All the Founding Fathers and every generation of Americans recognized this concept up through the present time.

Ironically, many generations of large scale military bureaucracies and the collectivist mentality fostered by big government programs have resulted in the idea that the people should surrender all control over the means of self-defense, including personal protection.

The Book of Jude makes reference to “…men that speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals- these are the very things that destroy them.”

With all the freedom in the U.S. to question our leaders and aggressively express dissent, we should not forget to respect our government. People that rail against government seem to be the kind of people that are referenced in the Biblical passage quoted above. On the other hand, it takes a very shallow-minded individual to think that the world will be safer if we all just trust our government to keep us safe. While the sheep dogs are burying a bone or two, the wolves may be scarfing up the sheep!

Dictators and arrogant bureaucrats are usually intent on depriving citizens of the means for meaningful alternatives to governmental monopolization of force

When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.

Proverbs 11:10 (KJV)

We want to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have. But to do so with gentleness and respect….

We are blessed to live in a free nation that has the strongest military in the world. We should not take either of these premises for granted because the very attributes that make a free nation free and successful can undermine that nation. History is replete with many successful civilizations that faltered and lie buried in the dust. You and I are the militia just by virtue of being prepared, vigilant and jealously guarding our liberties. We welcome President-elect Obama and look forward to a new time in U.S. government, a prosperous time in which our liberties will thrive.

Freedom: A democracy is two wolves and a small lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

See also Surveillance Detection.

What do Charlton Heston and Rev. Martin Luther King have in common? Along with the fact that both men pursued callings in which they portrayed the Biblical role of Moses descending from the mountain top, both men were committed to the struggle for civil rights. In fact, Heston marched with Rev. King in the South and often stated that his commitment to Second Amendment issues was a natural corollary to the struggle for racial equality. The history of that struggle reveals that Heston was not engaging in mere NRA rhetoric.

The NRA was the first national organization to become integrated when it was founded in 1871. No other association existed in the U.S. in which integration was the rule. Quite possibly this was because General Ambrose Burnside, one of the NRA’s founding members, was a leader of Black Union troops during the Civil War. Even by the time of the Korean War (1950-1953), most white officers were reluctant to lead Black troops because of the perception that this would ruin an officer’s prospects for promotion.

President Truman was the first President to begin desegregating the United States Army. In fact, the United States government still practiced rigid segregation in the civil service during and after Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

Modern gun control started with post-Civil War laws enacted in the former Confederate states restricting the right to keep and bear arms to whites only. Newly freed black citizens returning from military service on the sides of both the North and the South were forced to submit to weapons searches in their homes.

Resistance to such gun control measures would often lead to lynching. In 1921, a whole section of Tulsa, Oklahoma was destroyed and as many as 300 may have died (most of them blacks) after some black men, many of them returned WW I veterans, attempted an armed defense of their neighborhood against a violent white mob.

Tulsa’s black section was a shining example to the world of what black professionals and business people had accomplished in the United States. Its destruction by angry white mobs raises the issue of whether a member of a racial, ethnic or religious minority should trust exclusively in government for safety.

Mahatma Gandhi, the architect of nonviolent resistance, lamented that one of the greatest injustices was the colonial restriction on the right of the Indian people to possess firearms.

Gandhi recognized that nonviolent resistance, the strategy adopted by Rev. King, was not an end in itself, but that nonviolence was the only way to gather the moral force to persuade England to give in to the demands of justice.

Would Northern liberals have supported the civil rights movement if pictures of armed black men had appeared on the evening news?

One important group within the civil rights movement, the “Deacons for the Defense”, showed up at marches and demonstrations all over the South with shotguns, rifles and pistols. These were armed churchmen like Condoleezza Rice’s father, a theologian and preacher. According to Ms. Rice, they guarded each other’s homes and families from night riders when the lives of civil rights protesters were at risk in Birmingham, Alabama.

Cities like Chicago and Washington, DC (two of the most segregated cities in the U.S.) still favor gun control. The Founding Fathers anticipated that democracy would be a bumpy road.