Only In New York!! LOL!!!!!

 

Sunday With Blackthorn - Today We Have A Two-For-One Deal - First-Up We Have The True Story Behind The Michael Mann Movie "Heat". That's Followed By An Article On How Hamas Pulled Off The Surprise Attack On Oct 7 Of This Year

 I',m pretty sure most of the regular Blog readers have seen the Movie 'Heat' With Pacino, DeNiro, Kilmer, et. al. The final shootout after the bank robbery is one of the most well choreographed, and now Iconic gun battles in the annals of Crime Movies. The video below will explain what really happened on March 25th, 1964 on the streets of Chicago.

**********************

The link below goes to an article explaining how HAMAS  successfully pulled off their infiltration of the Israeli border with Gaza.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-hamas-broke-through-israel-s-border-defenses-during-oct-7-attack/ar-AA1iXGuM

Where NOT To Go On Your Next Vacation!!

 Definitely NOT on my Bucket List!!

Monday Morning Humor At The Blog

 

Sunday With Blackthorn - Today We Discuss Which Is More Productive For Self Defense - Long Term Training or Basic Skills Development

For those of you who read this Blog I’m going to assume that you do so to a large extent for helpful information on Self Defense. Now this begs the question, which is more worthwhile and efficient, to stick to basic techniques and just work them on a regular basis, or to devte your time and effort to long term (almost lifetime) training?

Most criminal assaults are not convoluted affairs, but rather are themselves simple and straightforward situations that require only basic strategies and tactics.

I’ll let regular contributor Steve Forester give you his take on the matter

Long Term Training Or Basic Skills Development?
by Steve Forester

So, I was reading about Paul Vunak's Enigma videos below;

"How does one train for now and how does one train for a life time in the martial arts. This balance for learning how to fight now and not 10 years from now was a point that is invaluable to so many martial artist , fighters , instructors , law enforcement, military and everyday people like you who want to protect themselves and loved ones .

Fast forward 10 years later and now we have the next phase of the Enigma Series. Paul continues to show you what its like to take the guess work out of your training.
 
This is where Paul Vunak and Contemporary Jeet Kune Do steps in. The turn around time and demand for learning to be functional now is the goal. To be a complete street fighter or martial artist that can train for a life time but have the necessary skills now to protect yourself and loved ones".

*****************************************************************

That caused me to think about the shift from the emphasis on skills that can be learned quickly for self-defense, versus lifetime training skills.

1. Specifically, who has the time, motivation, money, etc. to train for a lifetime? Now most of us do some sort of regular maintenance training. I talking about someone who goes to a gym/dojo 2-3 nights a week for 1 1/2 hours, and paying someone for training.

2. And, is long term training beneficial?

Personally, I have only known one person who truly devoted themselves to life-long martial arts study. What I saw in my own formal training was the typical beginning student stuck with it for a few months and then quit. A few lasted a year. 2 or 3 out of an original beginning class of 30 will continue for two years.

I have mentioned before about talking with a contractor who was working in my home and I asked him if he trained, as he had the look. He said he did when he was younger, but then he got married, and now has two kids which brought an end his training career. That is more typical of what I see.

Yet, long term training seems to be the rage now and has been for some time. Not picking on Vunak, but he used to emphasize the RAT system he trained SEALS on, and his Street Safe series which was simplified civilian self-defense. His Enigma series seems focused more toward long term, MMA type training.

We look at another example in BJJ. It takes about 10 years, more or less, to earn a BJJ black belt. Two years of whichis spent at the blue belt level just perfecting the guard position. Many BJJ students never make it out of the blue belt stage.

I am not knocking any of these arts, or long term training. My instructor Carl was a devotee of long term training.  He always said that he believed WWII Combatives provides the best foundation skills for self defense, but  then went on to say that one can go further.

Now that leads to the question of how beneficial is long term skills training? Long term skill development - not maintenance practice.

There is an argument to be made that for only personal protection against a street assault, long-term, complex, skills training may actually be detrimental.

We know street assaults are very quick and very violent affairs. In training for something like this, how many complex skills will one be able to perform, or even remember? How many skills can one make instructive, reflexive, and convulsive? How many complex skills will be usable under severe Sympathetic Nerve System (SNS) stress?

The argument against long term training for street survival goes something like this. Instead of learning more and more skills, what about if we just take the Fairbairn/Sykes WWII “Gutter Fighting” techniques and work on perfecting those skills. Honing them until they are implanted in our sub-conscious and can be used without thinking?

After looking at all sides of the argument, and doing some longer term training that was not Fairbairn/Sykes related, I can say that I, personally, can see the merit in this argument. But my training goals are only to protect myself from street assaults.

Lets look at it this way. Anyone who has seen what is on Carl Cestari’s Old School 1 DVD. Knows how to position themself, control distance, and make a preemptive strike using only two techniques: the Edge Of Hand (EOH) and the Heel Of Hand (HOH) blow.

Simple, right? Any one of us could teach the average new student these skills in one day or less.

But, now what if we took those same skills and relentlessly trained them into the ground. Start with just the drop-step EOH. Do just that for say, 10 sets of 10 reps, on both strong and weak side. Perfect establishing distance. Perfect your relaxed ready position and your position of advantage. Are you really in a solid, balanced position? Are you telegraphing your axe hand strike? Are you hitting with power, speed, and accuracy? Do you have that elbow up and chin down, snapping that axe hand out and back?

Now, after a few days, add a second, follow-up, short EOH. Are you moving your training dummy or Heavy Bag. Are you establishing Aggressive Forward Drive?

When the two axe hands are perfected, then add a third.

I have been doing this type of training recently and this is what I discovered. Doing this repetitive training of simple, basic, skills, imparts them not only into your sub-conscious, but into your very soul. They become who you are.

You are developing an aggressive MINDSET, which is critical. You are taking charge of the situation instead of reacting to the assailant. This is what you will automatically do under pressure. You are training the subconscious to automatically assume the relaxed-ready POSITION when our situational awareness detects a possible threat. This automatically put us in Condition Orange if we want to think in those terms. We automatically are controlling DISTANCE. Not letting an attacker stand in our safety zone and attacking anyone entering that zone.

We are training to take his BALANCE and establish MOMENTUM by using aggressive forward drive. Developing POWER, Speed, and ACCURACY in our blows.,

I believe this is critical for dealing with real life attacks.  While the skills are simple, doing them under the pressure of SNS stress in a real life attack is NOT. Go to Youtube and look at videos of real attacks. Look at the videos of the recent knife and unarmed attacks and how they are initiated. Imagine, if the victims had employed these simple tactics?

If we are totally honest with ourselves, have we really trained these simple skills into the ground till where they can be used without conscious thought. Automatically (notice I use that word repeatedly) kick in when a possible threat is detected?

Here is something else that we may think obvious, but are we really studying video of real street attacks and visualizing these in our training to see how out training prepares us to handle that assault? Basically, taking our basic technique skills and tactics and applying to real self-defense situations we will encounter on the street?

Again, it sounds simple and obvious, but are we really that?

Now, lets add the HOH to this this intensive, daily training. Developing the power in the HOH to really take someone out. To perfect that HOH take-down and then use follow up methods as needed. You can build a complete fighting method on just those two techniques.

Now think about adding a few other techniques such as Knee strikes, Elbows, Savate style Low Kicks, and the Head Butt, and then training to the level I described above

I was thinking of Aaron Cohen's book (Brotherhood Of Warriors) and how they trained Krav Maga. Along with the aggression training, they started with just one technique - the left jab - and trained that thousands of times before adding the straight right. Then that combination thousands of times.

It is almost overwhelming to me to think of training just these simple technique to this extent.

We talked about "training a little, a lot", as a valid training concept. Doing 3-5 blows a day is certainly better than no blows, or doing a lot of reps once a month.

But, what if we trained 30-40 minutes a day in this intensive routine for 3-6 months? Think about how much better we would be. How much more confidence we would have in our skills.

Now, to this, lets add a a separate physical conditioning program: free weights, KB's, body weight (or a combination of these) that focuses on developing strength, agility, and total body power.

To that, add EOH and HOH conditioning on the brick and/or iron palm bag to develop these blows into real weapons.

Do visualization to develop the combat mindset, and what-if drills in daily life to hone tactics. Practice assuming a position of advantage on people in everyday life without them knowing what you are doing.

We might be thinking: "Who has time for all that"?

Exactly!

If we have not developed our foundation skills to the point where they need to be, why are we even thinking of training long-term complex skills?  IF, our goal is only protection from a street assault.

There are many good reasons to train long-term complex skills. They are fun, and provide good exercise. They also provide some supplementary benefits to our foundation unarmed combat skills. But if real life self-defense is your primary goal, then I believe our training focus should be on just that.

Carl Cestari: "A student of close-combat trains just that. Close Combat".

Just empty words, though, without doing the work.
 

Oregon Gun Store Refuses To Sell Firearm To ANTIFA Member

And of course he's claiming his 2nd Amendment rights wee violated.

 https://www.kezi.com/news/florence-man-claims-gun-store-violated-his-2nd-amendment-rights/article_0886393a-67d8-11ee-b5e3-3b1367881876.html

Today We Have Two Retired Navy SEALS Trying Out WW2 Point Shooting

I've never seen these guys before, but they were pretty open-minded about giving Point Shooting  a fair shake. The bulk of the video covers old WW2 training, and 1950's era FBI era point shooting training using old training footage that I'm sure most of us have seen. In the end they were happily surprised and came to the conclusion that Point Shooting had a great deal of merit.

 However they did do quite a few jokes about the sometimes odd positioning of the Offhand position as regards those shooters who held their empty hand out to the side /up in the air. They referred to it as the "Yippy Ki Yay" position. 

At the end of the video they admitted to the fact that the hardest part for them was having to remember NOT to use the sights as they had been trained when they were still in the military. 

 

Wheelgun Wednesday - An Overview Of The Classic S&W J And K Frame Revolvers

The .38 Special revolver, an American classic. The sidearm of choice of  Law Enforcement for almost 100 years. In the snub-nose (J-frame) variation it was the choice of Detectives (Police and private) and in the 4' or 6" versions (K-frame), carried by both Beat and Highway Patrol officers. These days the most common ones are the J-frames, small, light, and easily concealable, being carried by regular citizens for self defense.  This article covers their history and both their Pros and Cons in the modern era currently being dominated by Semi-automatics.

https://www.swatmag.com/article/smith-wesson-classic-fighter/

Sunday With Blackthorn - Today Paul Harrell Discusses 20 Ga. #1 Buckshot For Hunting And Home Defense

 As a 20 Ga. shotgun owner myself, I can attest to the difficulty in finding any buckshot other #3. Even after viewing this video I doubt I'll be able to find any in the area where I live. But you never know, it might turn up some time in the future and I'll get the opportunity try it out my self.

In any event, here is another fine review from the inimitable Paul Harrell.

 

It Appears That The Israeli Military And Or Intelligence Was Compromised By Hamas

There's no other explanation, based on  information and video footage of an attack on a major Israeli Intelligence Hub at the beginning of the attacks.

 https://dnyuz.com/2023/10/13/the-secrets-hamas-knew-about-israels-military/

Some News From Paul Harrell

 And it's not great guys.

Sunday With Blackthorn - Today Chris Baker Discusses The Pros And Cons Of Pistol Caliber Carbines

 For the past few years the PCC has become the big thing in long guns. A lot of the popularity is centered in Urban Areas where full power rifles for self defense are more than problematic for self defense use. Short, light, maneuverable and capable of using matching handgun ammunition, in both Semi-Autos and Lever Actions. Their current popularity is right up at the top of the list. Today, Chris Baker gives us an overview of the good and the bad of the PCC.

Think Your 'Right To Privacy" Is Safe In Your Car? ....Think Again

Check this Bullshit out. Read the article in the first link , then click on the second link and select the manufacturer of your current car.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/podcast/2023/09/what-does-a-car-need-to-know-about-your-sex-life

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/

 

Just An Example Of Just How Fast A Situation Can Go Bad

 I have no background info on where/when this took place, or what prompted what looks like it started out as a routine traffic stop. As I said in the title, an example of a routine traffic stop going bad.

Sunday With Backthorn - The Escape Of David Sweat And Richard Matt

In  June of 2015, two convicted criminals both convicted of murder, escaped from Dannemora Prison in NYS. The following article written by Massad Ayoob describes the background of the two escaped killers, an overview of their escape, and the following manhunt.

This is a bit of a long read guys, but as worth reading as it is chilling.

 

                    Photo of the Dead Richard Matt

 LETHAL MANHUNT
Written By Massad Ayoob
copyright @ AmericanHandgunner.com

https://americanhandgunner.com/our-experts/lethal-manhunt/

Situation: Two particularly vicious murderers escape from prison, holding a whole region in a grip of fear.

Lesson: There are some situations only righteous gunfire can solve. Marksmanship matters.

In the northwestern corner of New York state sits a little village called Dannemora. It is populated by some 4,000 people, roughly three-quarters of whom are inmates of the prison known as Clinton Correctional Facility. Many of the law-abiding residents work at the prison. They and other residents call the prison “Clinton.” Most everyone else colloquially calls the prison simply “Dannemora.”

Among the men listed as the most potentially dangerous of those thousands of inmates were David Sweat and Richard Matt. Despite their history of ruthless, murderous sadism and escape attempts, they had of late maintained “good behavior” and earned some privileges inside the walls. They also groomed at least a couple of prison employees as friends who would bend rules for them. As a result, they were able to escape during the first weekend of June 2015.

In the days that followed, my wife and I were teaching in upstate New York, Saratoga Springs, and like everyone else in the region kept an eye out for the faces in the mug shots that dominated the news media. Half a decade later, I came across the most thorough documentation I’ve seen yet of the escape and the massive law enforcement operation that followed, the book Dannemora by Charles A. Gardner. Aptly subtitled Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State, it was written by a municipal court judge retired from a quarter century career with the N.Y. State Department of Corrections who lived in the area.

Preludes

It is axiomatic in criminology many violent criminal actors had troubled childhoods, and equally true that a great many people with those disadvantages grow up to be law-abiding, productive citizens. Not David Sweat, violent even as a child and kicked out of elementary school at age nine for carrying a concealed butcher knife in class. His adventures in drug dealing and burglary saw him in and out of penal institutions starting in his teens. By 2002, he was into ripping off gun shops, and bragging to acquaintances how he would kill anyone who might send him back to prison. One night in July of 2002, he and a couple of cronies were gathered in a darkened parking lot celebrating a successful gun shop burglary when they saw a Broome County Sheriff’s Department patrol car pull into the lot.

As Deputy Kevin Tarsia, 36, exited his vehicle, he was ambushed by the gang, Sweat firing at him with two stolen guns. Several bullets stopped on the lawman’s body armor, but not all: wound channels ripped through his intestines and one kidney. He was down but still alive when David Sweat drove his getaway car over him, brutally dragging the body across the asphalt parking lot beneath the undercarriage. Sweat watched as one of his thug buddies snatched the severely injured officer’s own issue GLOCK .40 and cold-bloodedly executed the now-helpless deputy with two shots to the face.

Hunted down not long after, Sweat proved to have no stomach for pulling guns on cops already pointing theirs at him and meekly submitted to arrest, quickly snitching off his accomplices. A year later, he pled guilty to first degree murder and was on his way to Dannemora.

The hulking Richard Matt was older than Sweat, and if anything, an even more vicious murderer. The son of a criminal, he graduated from foster homes to “reform school” by the time he was 14. A lifelong bully since childhood, he had a high IQ and talent in art, but it seemed from the beginning he would rather steal than work. He was skilled at manipulating people, particularly women. By age 19 he had twice escaped from jail. The escape from Dannemora in 2015 would be his fifth attempt and his third successful one.

His odyssey went on to include a stint in Elmira for a murder-for-hire plot. In 1997, on parole at age 31, Matt was offered a job and a chance at redemption by an elderly man who owned a food company. Matt thanked him by first stealing from him, and then finally abducting him and torturing him for the stash of cash Matt believed the man had squirreled away. Frustrated to find no money, Richard Matt broke the old man’s neck with his bare hands, dismembered the corpse with a hacksaw, and threw the body parts in the Niagara River.

Detectives cracked the case fairly quickly, but by that time Matt was already in Matamoros, Mexico where he stabbed an American tourist to death to steal a few hundred dollars. Quickly captured and imprisoned there, he was eventually extradited to New York for the murder of his benefactor, and in 2008 was sentenced to 25 years to life and on his way to Dannemora, where he would meet and conspire with David Sweat.

The Escape

I’m not going to publish a guide on how to escape from a maximum-security penitentiary. Suffice to say Sweat, and particularly Matt, had a trait common to sociopaths and psychopaths: the ability to charm the gullible. Particularly vulnerable was a heavy-set, middle aged woman named Joyce Mitchell, who ran the prison tailor shop where both convicts worked. It was confirmed she definitely had a sexual relationship with Matt and possibly also with Sweat and was excessively chummy with both.

Both cons had made life easier for themselves by informing on other criminals before they got to Dannemora, and inside the walls, Matt had cultivated prison guard Gene Palmer. The bulky killer con also painted portraits for Clinton staff to garner more favors, including getting situated in proximity to Sweat in the relatively lightly monitored “honor block” area of the prison.

Mitchell bought hacksaw blades, hiding them in frozen hamburger meat she smuggled into the prison, and gave to Palmer to deliver to the pair. They used the hacksaw blades to cut through the cell walls, allowing them access to tunnels that ultimately led to a manhole cover in a Dannemora street outside the prison grounds.

It would later be claimed (and denied by Mrs. Mitchell) the plan was for her to drive to a pickup site after Sweat and Matt had cleared the walls, and head for Mexico — and before leaving town, the cons would murder her husband so she could collect his half-million-dollar insurance policy. Exactly how this would work out if she was in Mexico with two hunted men, one of whom had a murder sentence to serve in that very country, was never explained. Detectives theorized the pair simply planned to murder her after the escape, dump her corpse, and drive on. It became academic when Mrs. Mitchell failed to show up at the pickup point, and the fugitives desperately headed into the surrounding woods on foot.

Enter The Governor

Andrew Cuomo, known to our readers as a sworn enemy of gun owners, doesn’t seem to have much love for police and correctional personnel either. The Governor of New York saw the whole thing as a PR opportunity and turned his tour into something close to The Convict’s Guide to Escaping From Dannemora.

Wrote Charles Gardner, “The visiting officials from Albany paraded through the prison with cameras and cell phones documenting the escape route and crime scenes. In one of the many ironies surrounding the case, this was a violation of several departmental policies, including strict rules against cell phones and cameras inside prisons. In other words, top state officials were breaking some of the same rules about which they would later beat up on Corrections officials. The governor’s entourage gave their photos and video to the news media and posted them on social media.” (1) Added Gardner, “Apparently indifferent to investigative protocols, the governor, acting commissioner, and their staffs crossed crime-scene tape and handled physical evidence while touring the escape route. Investigators watched silently as this parade of people contaminated active crime scenes. Why Albany bigwigs allowed photos and video from the crime scene to be publicized, the investigators couldn’t understand. But they kept their mouths shut.”

Gardner also noted the correctional officers and police officers alike were disgusted Governor Cuomo referred to the cop-killer and the torture-murderer as “gentlemen” and “Mister.”

Meanwhile, two desperate criminals with proven homicidal tendencies were at large.

Murderers In the Woods

While Andrew Cuomo was performing for the news cameras, the two fugitives were in the woods surrounding the area. They’d headed there as soon as they realized Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t coming with the getaway car. Realizing the futility of their plan to escape to Mexico without wheels, they headed north to the other border: Canada was very close, “hiking distance” if not “walking distance.”

Neither had a history of hiking, hunting, camping or other outdoor sports. They had managed to get hiking boots smuggled into their cells unnoticed, but as they plodded through the forest, they still gathered blisters, and were tormented by mosquitoes. Had they had to live off the land, they might have become starved enough to surrender.

Northern New York has much beautiful forest land, but it’s not all wilderness. Many consider it vacation land. Numerous cabins and modest, privately owned hunting lodges dot the area, and the pair broke into many such currently unoccupied structures.

The break-ins provided them with more than enough food to sustain them. Located for recreation, many of those cabins had an ample supply of liquor, and occasionally marijuana, to which the fugitives helped themselves. The pragmatic Sweat indulged moderately if at all, but Matt had always been an out of control drunk when he was free and reverted to type. He would stay under the influence of alcohol for most of his remaining time at large.

Meanwhile, law enforcement had mobilized en masse for what turned out to be a three-week search. I’ve heard no one challenge Charles Gardner’s assessment this was the largest manhunt in the history of New York State. Most estimates put the “cop count” at around 1,500. N.Y. State Police were naturally there in force. Numerous SWAT teams were called in. As close as it all was to the Canada line, there was a heavy Border Patrol element involved, including BORTAC, the elite Border Patrol tactical unit. Bordering Vermont cops were on high alert status as well, and RCMP and other Canadian law enforcement entities, likewise, on the other side of the border. Even the elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team was called in.

And the hunted killers had another faction to worry about: armed citizens.

Armed Citizen Factor

Matt and Sweat considered home invasions and car theft to facilitate escape early on, but decided against it. Part of what motivated that decision may have been fear of being shot to death by occupants. The perception of “anti-gun New York State” comes from the southern N.Y. megalopolis the locals call The City and The Island. Upstate New York is largely rural and home to many hunters, and concealed carry permits are much easier to get there than downstate.

The local populace was indeed up in arms. Bird hunters bought buckshot for their shotguns, broke them out of their safes and gun cabinets, and loaded them up “ready to repel boarders.” People were reported to be openly carrying loaded handguns, illegal as hell in even upstate New York but unnoticed by the police, who were out looking for Matt and Sweat. This was particularly true in and around Dannemora: The prison was the area’s primary employer, and a great many citizens worked there. They saw the face of the enemy every day and had already armed their households. Many residents who didn’t have guns went out to buy some: Firearms retailers in and around the area reported a major uptick in business.
Encounter

On June 20, the fugitives were holed up in a remote cabin accessible only by all-terrain vehicle. Its owner, who happened to be an off-duty correctional officer, brought his dog out to check on the status of the place. The dog alerted as they neared the cabin: Matt and Sweat were in fact there. The owner drew his handgun, took a cover position, and ordered the men out. He was rewarded with the sound of a back door slamming, and a glimpse of the two men running away. They were long gone by the time he could summon the cavalry.

The bad news was by then, the fugitives had found a 20-gauge shotgun, fortunately with no ammunition. They had no stomach to bluff what appeared to be an ordinary man armed with a loaded handgun.

Unfortunately, they soon broke into another cabin where they found a box of 20-gauge rifled slug rounds. The danger level had just increased.

Matt Goes To The Mat

The prison buddies had grown hostile toward one another. Matt’s drunken, stumbling slowness grated on the more athletic Sweat, who felt his partner was slowing them down. Moreover, Matt spoke of going to the road and carjacking to escape, and of dying in a shootout with police. They separated.

On June 26, Richard Matt, now a lone gunman, concealed himself by a roadside and fired the stolen shotgun at a passing pickup truck pulling a camper, striking the vehicle but missing the driver. The driver called in, and police converged on the scene. They found Matt lying prone by a log and ordered him to show his hands.

Instead, Matt swung his shotgun — now sawed-off with tools found at another burgled camp — at one of the officers.

It was a spectacular case of “cause of death: sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process.” Matt’s target was National BORTAC team leader Chris Voss, a combat veteran former Army Ranger.

Voss beat Matt to the trigger.

Aim the M4 carbine, press trigger, reset, repeat. And it was over. Matt’s head, Voss’ only exposed target, had taken multiple high velocity .223 hits. He had been killed instantly before he could fire a shot. Richard Matt had died a quicker and easier death than his victims.

No Sweat

No longer encumbered by his staggering, drunken partner, David Sweat had covered more miles in two days alone than the whole rest of their three weeks together. On June 28 he was walking along a stone wall through a field some 30 yards from Coveytown Road when he was spotted by passing N.Y. State Police Sergeant Jay Cook. Alone in his patrol car, Cook pulled over and asked the man to stop for questioning. Instead, Sweat ran for the tree line. As Cook ordered him to stop, Sweat kept running; he threw off his backpack to gain more speed and screamed he was unarmed. If he shouted that because he thought it meant the trooper couldn’t shoot him, he was wrong.

Sweat, 35, was outrunning the 47-year-old sergeant. Away from his patrol car, armed only with his pistol, alone without backup in a rural area he knew had spotty radio contact, the trooper couldn’t take Sweat’s word he was unarmed. He had positively ID’d one of the two then-most identifiable faces in New York state. And, the cardinal criterion of the governing case law, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Garner decision: Cook knew this man was a clear and present danger to innocent human life for so long as he remained at large.

There has been some incorrect info on what happened next. For example, the New York Times incorrectly published Cook went to a kneeling position. (2) Cook himself told American Handgunner what really happened:

“When I realized I had to shoot, I jumped into an Isosceles stance, with my left foot a little ahead of my right. I held the sights center mass and focused on the front sight: He was a little blurry blob. I fired the first shot and he pitched forward and almost lost his footing. His right arm flopped wildly up in the air. He managed to catch himself and keep running. I fired the second shot, and he dropped immediately.”

Cook continued, “With the heavy camo clothing he was wearing, I couldn’t tell how badly he was hit. I saw an empty knife sheath on his belt. I kept him at gunpoint with his arms out to the side. He said, ‘I’m gonna die … I just wanted to live. I just wanted to disappear.’ When backup got there, we handcuffed him and took off his upper clothing, and that’s when we saw where he was hit.”

Sweat would later say, “He hit me twice and it was — the first one hit me in the shoulder, the top. It killed this whole arm. I couldn’t move it. And the other one was on the other side. I thought, ‘Man, I’m going to hit the ground,’ and just started spitting blood up. He hit my lung.” (3) The 200-grain Speer Gold Dots from Cook’s department issue GLOCK 37 in .45 GAP had inflicted arm and thorax hits. The distance from Cook’s firing point to where Sweat collapsed from his bullet wounds was measured at 210 feet. Sweat’s empty knife sheath hadn’t been empty long: The blade was found later nearby, where the fugitive had either accidentally dropped or intentionally discarded it during the final foot pursuit.

The manhunt would later be estimated to have cost up to $28 million. Now, it was truly over.

Lessons

The two corrections officers both served time behind bars for their parts in the escape. Other occupational heads rolled, so to speak, at Dannemora. David Sweat was last heard from in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day for the rest of his life. It is from his subsequent confession we know what went on with him and Richard Matt during their fugitive time.

We know from Sweat they had monitored media; for one thing, he had a stolen transistor radio with him at the time of his capture. They had to have heard the media stories of citizens arming themselves, an obvious deterrent to attempting carjackings and invasions of occupied dwellings his drunk and perhaps suicidal partner wanted to perpetrate.

We learn twice over precision marksmanship can be critical to survival. BORTAC team leader Voss was looking down the barrel of a slug-loaded shotgun when he coolly put multiple bullets into the small target presented to him in time to save his own life and the lives of his brother officers. Sergeant Cook’s remarkable marksmanship with 100% hits on a running cop-killer after a strenuous foot pursuit, at three times the normal maximum police handgun qualification distance, was nothing less than what the late Col. Jeff Cooper would have called “a feat of arms.”
This article is dedicated to the 1,500 guardians who participated in the manhunt that ultimately kept many people safe from two particularly cold-blooded murderers.

Footnotes: (1) Gardner, Charles A., Dannemora, NYC: Citadel Press, 2019, pp. 163-164. (2) Rashbaum, William K., Swamps, “Marijuana, Moonshine: 2 Prison Escapees’ 3 Weeks on the Run in New York,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2016. (3) “Rashbaum,” New York Times, op. cit.