First off, recall that I live in a, “BAN STATE,” meaning that if you are buying magazines in the store or online, you won’t find any that exceed ten rounds in capacity here. And of course, it is illegal to bring them in from a free state. So you’re stuck with ten rounds. Not the end of the world, as according to who you ask, the average number of rounds fired in a civilian defensive encounter is some number between one and three, and as many as 11 total! Obviously, if there is more than one attacker, you might need to fire more rounds. That goes without saying…we all hope that the squad of attackers will break contact when one of them is shot, but I don’t know if I’d hang my hat on that. That would be a perfect, best world scenario, but nobody that takes defensive preparedness seriously plans for the, “best case scenario.” If that were true, we’d all spend 100% of our time working on our verbal deescalation techniques and move on. But verbal deescalation techniques don’t work 100% of the time…and neither does the careful application of gunfire. But, when forced, we have to choose the BEST, worst decision out of a list of options, and we have to do that in a flash, with no time to weigh our options. This is why pre-planned responses are a worthwhile endeavor to consider and formulate.

In the state I live in, the criminals here are undeterred by the justice system, and law enforcement is so overwhelmed with their dwindling numbers (we are dead last in the number of LEO’s per capita) that ambush attacks go off here, daily, and they are often unreported or under-reported by the left wing media. And it isn’t getting any better as time goes on. Meanwhile, the legislature and the governor/attorney general do whatever they can to further neuter the law-abiding’s ability to lawfully defend themselves, while they continue to go lighter and lighter on violent criminal offenders. It makes no sense! But you didn’t come here to read about politics.

I firmly believe in carrying a pistol you are capable of getting yourself out of trouble with. Meaning, if I am attacked in an ambush fashion…most violent attacks are ambushes. If you are walking to your car and someone yells out your name and begins to shoot at you, that’s an ambush. You are at a deficit to react, so you better have your ears on, so to speak. Being distracted by any number of things while traversing transitional spaces is just silly, while cars drive in and out around you, having your head down in your phone is just asking for something bad to happen.

If you are sitting in your living room and someone starts kicking in your front door while screaming at you, that’s an ambush. They utilized the element of surprise to catch you (the victim) at a moment of disadvantage.

The core idea around the ambush attack in a general sense relies on concealment of some kind…this could be literal concealment, or this could just be someone parking up the block from the home they intend to invade. Or ducking down amongst parked cars in a parking lot works and even simply being, “hidden in plain sight,” when the ambushing attacker was there all along, you just didn’t see them there. The next factor of an ambush is timing, or waiting for the right moment to strike. If you are leaving the shooting range, and someone is going to rob you for the contents of your pockets and your range bag, the time to do that would probably NOT be when you are walking back to your truck with a long gun, and you just put a fresh magazine into the weapon and ran the bolt/applied the safety. Initiating the attack at that point would most definitely result in loud noises and defeat for the attacker. Similarly, attacking someone inside of the entryway of a Walgreen’s wouldn’t be ideal either. The bad guy isn’t trying to get caught…so they want to have as few witnesses as possible. They also want to get you alone; if they have to move out of the way for customers entering and exiting the store, it is hard to accomplish their task and they also run the risk of some random person intervening and ultimately spoiling their plan. The last element of the ambush attack is sudden action… the cat pounces. We’ve all seen it, whether it is the family pet locking in and attacking the faux mouse, or the tiger on the African Savanah clobbering a grazing herbivore, there is an acceleration of action and movement that immediately precedes the attack. Human behavior IS animal behavior after all. Don’t get it twisted!

HOW TO NOT GET AMBUSHED

We have all heard of these mental games we can play to be mindful of our surroundings. Like Tom Givens teaches, ask yourself, “Who is around me and what are they doing?” Or the counting game…look around you and count the people in your proximity (one, two, three, four etc.) and be mindful of what they are up to. In the decade or so that I spent in the armored transport industry, I used to play mental scenarios in my head in the real world, when I was sitting in the truck at one of the hundred and fifty or so, various locations we would traverse in a day. I would look at avenues of approach, gaps in between buildings, blind corners, unusually parked vehicles and other obstacles that would provide concealment for the attackers or hard cover for me. The most successful armored car attacks took place in actually quite simple ways. They aren’t the Hollywood flash of glitz and effects that are so pervasive in the entertainment media. The worst one I saw in my time there took place in an area where instead of using the size of the truck to dominate a space in a busy parking lot, the crew decided to go for the speedy approach, where they move at top speed to try and get done sooner than every other route (yeah these guys exist). So because they didn’t hog up space in the parking lot, the messenger (the crew member that runs the money to and from the truck is called the messenger…the third crewman who carries a long gun is called the shotgun messenger) who was working alone had to run between two parked vehicles, one of which was a van. When he opened the door, the van door immediately slid open and unleashed a fusillade of gunfire that killed the messenger, and because the crew was in such a hurry, they left the front bulkhead door open which meant that the ambushing robbers now had access to the cab and driver of the truck. Both crew members were killed and the robbers had unfettered access to the contents of the truck. So to recap my previous points, the elements of their ambush were, 1. CONCEALMENT: the robbers created a choke point through manipulation of the scene to funnel the truck and the crew to exactly where they wanted them, AND they did it in such a way that their vanilla appearing vehicle parked in a conventional location for the area didn’t trigger any alarm bells 2. TIMING: the robbers waited to spring their trap until the window existed when the messenger was exiting the truck and the door was open. Had the door closed, they would’ve killed the messenger or had a hostage, but they still wouldn’t have access to the money in the truck. Their goal is to get paid…they’ll kill to do it, but most of these financially motivated criminals aren’t looking to JUST kill someone. Had they triggered the trap and initiated the ambush sooner, the truck would’ve just kept on trucking! Or if they triggered the ambush when the messenger was returning to the truck, there would’ve been perhaps an exchange of gunfire but the attackers would be at a geometric/spatial disadvantage AND the truck (the goal) would be again, trucking away 3. SUDDEN ACTION: the door opening and an immediate volley of high powered projectiles raining in on the messenger and the truck cab wasn’t what was expected. Had they known that was the move, they could’ve taken other defensive actions or even pulled the UNO REVERSE card on the robbers.

THE ARMORED TRANSPORT INDUSTRY AS A HYPER-STAKES VERSION OF THE REGULAR CIVILIAN DEFENDER…

If you’ve ever taken classes with me and I speak about the armored truck industry, I’ve said it is a hyper-real version of everyday life. Meaning, it’s two or three dudes, who are usually friends or at least friendly, who are going from point A to point B, to either deliver or pickup something of value, and then take the pickup to another location. So it is essentially a massive checklist of errands, in both populated and often rural areas. There are the same hazards that any normal person would face…traffic, road ragers, rioters/demonstrations, extreme weather. The big difference is that when YOU (the average American John or Judy) are out running errands, very few people are going to want to carjack you for your Costco load of groceries. When you are in the armored transport business, you have cash, coin, precious metals, precious stones, sometimes documents, bonds, software, and a few other weird things that someone is wanting moved safely from the point of business, to usually a financial institution. And you have the candy everybody wants. So you will attract the criminal element from the low level dipshits who have caviar dreams, all of the way up to the more sophisticated criminals who have an inroad to the inside baseball that gives them an advantage in terms of timing. Everything else relative to the ambush in concealment and sudden action, are similar. Just as an aside here, if you REALLY want the best deep dive into how to dissuade a bad guy from selecting you as their victim, as well as how to spot the behaviors that indicate what the criminal element will do next, check out Craig Douglas/The Shivworks Collective. Craig and the crew do a fantastic job with their MUC (Managing Unknown Contacts) material and they are world renowned for it, by some of the most dangerous people on the planet. Check them out!

FOILED AMBUSH

I’ve had some crazy stories happen to me in my years of service in the armored transport industry as well as during my decades as a professional first responder. When I look back, probably like lots of middle aged men, I am both shocked and impressed that I made it out of several times relatively unscathed. Like most intelligent humans I learn best from my mistakes, so here is an incident where I was the victim of an ambush robbery that turned out great for me, but only by being extremely lucky.

This was in 1997. I was working a morning route with another fella who was fifteen years my senior and was a bit of a space cadet. Meaning, he was on the clock but he wasn’t really awake until he’d had about 64 ounces of coffee and made 2-3 bathroom stops. I, on the other hand, was full of JOLT cola and ready to leap over the Swiss Alps if given the chance. So we went to a bank, prior to them opening for business, to deliver a substantial amount of cash as well as pickup bundles of circulated cash and canvas bags of circulated quarters. When we pulled up to the bank, the lot was empty except for the employee parking spots. As was customary (the bank had tinted windows…great for that southern exposure but terrible to assess what is happening inside the bank) the staff would see/hear us and they would open the door to let us in. We used a large aluminum handtruck to transport that amount of money. It was so weighed down that it didn’t matter which hand you used to push it; if you needed to let go of the cart and draw your gun, the cart simply stopped with a, “THUNK,” and remained where ever it was you let go of it. There was no worry of it rolling away…

I went inside of the bank and dropped their cash, and picked up the deposit of circulated cash and coin. There was ALOT of it. More than I expected. I stacked fifteen bags of quarters onto the cart, then put the large bails of cash into my canvas bag that I hung from the bail of the handtruck and headed for the door (bears mention here that coins, when tightly packed into rolls and stacked into boxes, OR packed densely into canvas bags, do a good job of stopping incoming pistol rounds. I found this out the hard way when a coworker touched off a 158 grain lead SWCHP from an issued .38 revolver into a bag in the cargo bay). Again, as before the bank employee tended the door for me. First the inner door from the lobby, then the outer door from the foyer to the outside. I was pushing/pulling the cart, while maintaining my awareness. I saw nothing odd as I looked around the periphery of the truck, and the parking lot, and the riverside parking spots across the adjacent street. Nothing. I turned my back to the truck to pull/drag the handtruck over the door frame to get it outside, and when I wheeled around and faced the truck/started pushing the cart towards the truck, I saw a midsized, blue sedan with two male occupants, and unfortunately they were WEARING RED BANDANAS and sunglasses over their faces. I looked at my partner…he had his Rayban Aviators on and his expression was blank; there was no movement from him. I figured this was it…I was going to die in a hail of gunfire from these assholes that got the drop on us. So I did what I thought best at the time; I crouched into as narrow a profile as possible behind the handtruck and I jammed the earplugs that I kept in my body armor carrier in my ears (for long truck trips to minimize my hearing loss from the diesel engine) I looked at the car with the bad guys in it, then drew my pistol and got down behind the handtruck stacked high with bagged quarters, and picked my spot on the passenger’s chest/where the red bandana ended. About this time, my partner woke up/snapped to reality, and he threw the truck into DRIVE, and drove over several parking blocks and the sidewalk to put the messenger door next to where I was now kneeling behind my hand truck. Simultaneously the blue sedan gunned it and turned aggressively and lit out of the parking lot, quickly. I holstered, opened the door of the truck and offloaded the cart into the truck, and we drove off to the next stop, and enroutenwe radioed dispatch to give them a description of the vehicle and their direction of travel.

This would’ve been a fine ambush and payday for the badguys except a few things went screwy for them. 1. CONCEALMENT As Tom Givens says, people think that the bad guy materialized out of nowhere… These guys materialized from the employee car parking! Their car was non-descript, and it didn’t stick out, so I didn’t even notice it in the employee line of cars. I also didn’t notice it was occupied…they may have been crouched down, or out of the vehicle in another place, looking out. I’m not sure, but it got past me. 2. TIMING was on point…they were in the same airspace as me when I had the money they wanted. Their planning sucked though. The parking lot was designed in such a way, not for tactical advantage but probably just how the real estate played out, that when I exited the bank, I was a long way from them. Without significant 4×4 and torque, they would’ve had to walk/and get the money from me. Meaning they were going to have to walk/run to me. I had hard cover to stay behind…they didn’t. 3. SUDDEN ACTION was either robbed from THEM or they popped out too soon. Had they popped out while I was loading the truck, that would’ve been a problem for me, but I saw them when they were about a car length from the back of the armored truck and probably two car lengths (about 30 feet) from me. My backstop beyond their tree from my hasty currency bunker was a dirt embankment and a 200 year old oak tree. Over penetration wasn’t a worry for me if anything made it out of the car. I think what foiled their plan the most was that the actions from my truck crew they anticipated were:

A. I put my hands up, give up the money, and they abscond with the cash

B. I run to the truck door, and attempt to throw the money in and have the truck drive off, and they flank or try and maneuver into the truck with me left behind

C. I run to the truck door, throw the money and all the coin in the truck and they flank or try and maneuver into the truck and I try and get away with the truck

D. I throw the bag to them and they drive off…

None of those things happened. Had my partner been awake, the plan could’ve been short circuited in about ten other ways. It was an instructive encounter.

Luckily for you (hopefully) you don’t work in the armored truck industry and you don’t have to worry about people killing you for the contents of your coal bag, your handtruck or your armored truck. You just have to worry about getting home safely at the end of the day. So you probably don’t need a full sized USP .45 (like I had in the aforementioned ambush robbery attempt) but the pistol I am talking about here, has the same payload of that pistol, and with the developments we have in defensive ammunition, it is probably as effective as the Federal 230 grain Hydrashoks I used then. Did I mention it is about half the size? Ok maybe not quite half.

TO USE IT, YOU NEED IT ON YOU, NOT IN A CIGAR BOX ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND OR IN YOUR GLOVE BOX

The Shield X is portable. I’d say it is just slightly larger than the original Shield, but it is more pointable. The backstrap to the trigger reach is shorter.

I wish I had more rounds with which to repel the next ambush attack I find myself in. But most of all, I hope to see the signs and either avoid the attack altogether or not even be there in the first place! But with 11 rounds in a compact carry piece that gives up nothing in terms of controllability or accuracy, I’m happy with it. I carry a spare magazine and I practice weekly and attend formal training several times a year. Mostly, I proceed through life with caution. Although at this age I am more likely to fall in the woods or get into a carwreck on my commute, the existential threats here posed by humans cannot be overlooked. Until the courts catch up the true demands of the People, this is the society we have to live in. So stay frosty out there!

THANKS FOR READING!!! I hope you enjoy my work and if you do, please like, share on your social media (I am not on any social media platforms anymore) and subscribe to my feed. I have lots more work to publish on how to stay ready in a ban state, so stay tuned!