So I'm reading Col. Cooper's book on Principles of Personal Defense and come to the chapter on aggressiveness.
My aging mind flashes back to some 50 years ago. I'm in college. Three friends and I decide to go target shooting at the river. I have a .303 Enfield, two friends have bolt action rifles, and one has the then new Remington Nylon 66 semi-auto .22 I guess no one worried about college students having rifles back then.
We're on a bluff some 30 feet above the left bank of the river plinking at drift. Great target practice - the river providing the moving targets.
Suddenly we hear bullets whiz by up overhead, and between us. The rounds are coming from our right, somewhere in the woods below the bluff.
So we holler that way and wave our arms that we're there. Then the gunfire at us heats up! What? Some nut! We were all ROTC guys back then so hit the ground behind a low berm at the edge of the bluff. Still the bullets whizzed over us.
The guy with the Remington had a box of .22 short tracer rounds and loaded his tube with them. When he was ready and the firing hadn't stopped yet all four of us opened up on the apparent source of the gunfire.
I don't know how much whoever it was firing at us was impressed by our three bolt action rifles, but I'm positive the incoming tracers made an impression on them because the firing stopped.
Seemed a good example of what Col. Cooper meant by aggressiveness, though he hadn't written his book yet.
You have me confused? Not certain what you mean by "Or what?" Can guess at he chapter title which is "Aggressiveness." Was no way to run away off the bluff without being exposed. Suppose we could have laid low until he ran out of ammo or came up to shoot us one at a time if he'd chosen. Not knowing the intent of someone who was obviously bent on shooting at us, if not killing us, firing back in volume seemed the best action at the time. Enlighten me with more clarification if I've missed it.
A situation like is dangerous for all sides. Obviously whoever continued to shoot at you after being warned not to was being malicious, but blindly firing back at an unknown threat could've resulted in tragic collateral damage. I would only have done so if my back was to the wall and there was no way out of there without getting shot. But then again I wasn't there so I can only imagine your scenario in my mind.
i'm not sure about your situation, or whether you bothered to learn the outcome, but I remember Col. Cooper, at an NRA life members' banquet, saying something like this:
"People always complain that returning violence for violence only begets more violence. Well if someone shoots at me, I certainly intend to return violence upon him in quantities that he will find extremely unpleasant."
Back in the mid '80s, there was a problem with poachers where I hunted in OK. Mind you, I had no problem with those people poaching, because they were poor and needed to eat also, but they had issues with normal hunters taking their game. One of them fired a round into a tree a foot above a friend of mine's head. My friend got the message and left. Where I hunted was not far away, and I hunted with a HK 91. I had the normal 5 round magazine, but I started carrying two loaded 20 round magazines and wearing my father's old 1911.
I did not want trouble, but I was prepared if it showed up.
Can't fully-judge your situation as we were not there...Yep, easy to say run away but you may have got a round in your back. Overall, from the info presented, you made the right choice defending yourself from what may have been a really crazy POS person.
Keep reading that Cooper stuff. It is timeless in the SD genra. I just watch his DVD series on gun handling for about the 10th time and as I always do at the start of the shooting season (ie, winter ending!).
Aye on collateral damage. We were in a very remote area and the "sniper" was firing from heavy woods, so little concern for collateral damage from our return fire. All we could do was guess that it was someone "toying" with us, or a drunk with a rifle being stupid. We certainly weren't trespassing since many others used that bluff to plink at drift passing in the river. It was one of those, "you'll never know" situations. That's why reading Col. Cooper's book struck me at that chapter. I also bought his book on the rifle and sprung for Another Country...so now have three to read. And again, for perspective, all of us on the bluff were 19 and 20-years-old. The frontal lobes of our brains had not fully developed yet; limiting our ability to make a wise decision, though I think we lucked out and did make a sound decision. An incoming tracer round, even from a .22 short, has to be an impressive thing. And the woods were wet, no danger of causing a fire.
The three of us with rifles fired a few shots. Not sure how many the other two with rifles fired. I fired four times. The guy with the tracers emptied his tube as fast as he could...think it held 10 or 12 rounds...enough to make an impression.
After we stopped firing we stayed low and waited. No return fire came but we didn't know if the nut case shooting at us was moving in or not so we hunkered low back to the car parked on the road at the base of the other side of the bluff and sped out of there.
We never heard or read any reports of a missing person so don't guess we hit anything...didn't have a point to aim at, just a general direction.
They could have been just shooting at stuff in the river like you guys were. They could have been shooting at bird or squirrels or they could just been "chasing you off their land" who knows.
I don't have a bit of problem with your response though.
People who shoot guns have an obligation to KNOW where those rounds are going. If they don't and if those rounds make me feel they are coming at ME, expect some coming back and I don't miss much so don't expect much warnings to stop.
Ah, the good old days. I went to college in Indiana forty years ago and I was surprised at first to see the farm boys carrying sheath knives. Why? Because they did on the farm. I'm sure that today such activities would be frowned upon. The times they are a changing.
Back when I was a kid, deer season was like a two week national holiday in my rural town. The school would do anything that it could to encourage kids to actually show up for school during this time. There was no problem if we wanted to bring our rifles and ammo to school so that we could hit the woods as soon as the final bell rang. The only rule was that you had to give them to the Principal to shut in his office for the day. You picked it up on your way out. They did not want you to leave it in your car because someone might steal it. I guess times have changed a lot. Imagine showing up at a school principals office these days with a rifle and an ammo belt.
There was no "base" to report to. We were college students who were required to be in ROTC back then...wore our ROTC uniforms on Tuesdays when ROTC classes were - but that sparked our interest in accurate shooting that took us to the river in the first place.
We kept our rifles in our fraternity house rooms. Off campus location.
Land wasn't posted, a common spot for target shooting at drift in the river. If we were somehow on his land he could have driven/walked up and asked us to leave.
There is no doubt about the sound of a bullet passing close. He was shooting at us. There were no trees for squirrels to be in on the bluff and our own target shooting had long ago driven away any birds.
If one is being fired upon in such a manner, the practical options are to fire back or run.
The internet is no substitute for being "there", in your shoes. Given that each person in your group reacted similarly, I have to presume that your response "fit" the circumstances.
All the same, looking at it from an armchair, shooting at an unidentified target isn't the best example of firearms handling protocol. But you were there, and that makes a lot of difference from sitting in an armchair.
For sure. 19-year-old boys don't have their frontal lobes completely grown in yet - make poor decisions. We just knew we were shot at, warned the shooter, and the warning increased the shooters rate of fire.
My guess is, being in thick woods he had good cover, making it difficult to kill him even if we knew where to aim. Guessing if we had killed him he would have died with a well fired rifle and lots of brass around him.
And we'd have four guys telling the same true story.
Right 19 year old boys do not have their frontal lobes fully grown in.
Sounds like a good reason to prevent anyone that does not have a fully grown in frontal lobe from having access to a firearm. And as you say this was decades ago. I am sure that the judge would have been very sympathetic to that argument. You guys really sound like you are a bunch of knuckleheads to me. And your access to firearms in general might be questionable as well. Anybody with any brains. That determined that rounds were coming their way from an indeterminate location. Without any previous determination that they were meant to kill you, as that is what firearms are intended for. Well it just plain says to me that I should with draw from the situation. Or I should neutralize the threat. Throwing rounds from firearms back and fourth between groups of people for no apparent reason. This just tells me one thing. That at least one or more of you idiots on either side of this alleged altercation are just plain idiots. Furthermore that firearms ownership by any one of you constitutes a clear and present danger to society as a whole, let alone the responsible gun owners that manage to live and breath amongst each other without partaking of "casual/recreational" gunfire going on amongst ourselves.
Well, to me it's blatantly obvious that they've not changed a bit, and we are at risk of this group of guys shooting blindly into the forest. Fortunately, they're not able to get together, as they've all separated, and live far apart, so we don't have to worry about another bad group decision by a river bank. I don't want to take their guns away, but I'd would like to discourage any more reunions.
Had some idiots purposely shooting our way one year during deer season. they were like a half mile away on an adjacent property sending 22LR rapid fire our way. We packed up and headed out. No one got shot. Also, to the OP's story about sending 22 shorts back towards the enemy - well, a Remington Nylon 66 won't cycle with shorts
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