Armed Israelis: Learn the Tueller Drill

"Two of the officers noticed the attacker as he approached them and demanded that he identify himself. Instead of cooperating, the terrorist pulled out a knife and stabbed them."

I cannot give legal or professional armed self-defense advice, but it is vital that armed Israelis familiarize themselves with the Tueller Drill. The basic takeaway is that, if a knife-armed assailant is within 21 feet (7 long paces) from you, he can cover the distance to stab you before you can draw and fire a handgun to stop him. This means that you do not let somebody whom you reasonably believe to be armed with a knife get this close to you before you draw your weapon and prepare to fire.

I learned this the hard way in a fortunately simulated scenario in an armed self-defense course taught by a law enforcement professional. We were confronted with simulated situations in which we had to decide whether to fire at a potential assailant. I got one in which I faced a suspicious-looking man on the street who had his arms behind his back. He then rushed me suddenly with a knife, and the computer determined that he had killed me before I could aim and fire a drawn handgun. There was another scenario in which a man hit a woman who fell to the ground; only afterward could I see that he had actually knifed her. That is how dangerous a knife-armed attacker is if he can get anywhere near you.

If we had in my neighborhood what is going on in Israel, I would not let an unknown person with unknown intentions get anywhere near me. I would cross the street if necessary to keep substantial distance between us. If he began to close the distance, I would draw and arm my weapon while keeping it pointed at the ground; you are NEVER justified in pointing a firearm at anybody or anything you don't know for sure you want to shoot. I would continue to retreat while ordering him to keep away but, if he began a sudden rush to close the distance, I would put him down on the spot. I think it is reasonable to assume that, if somebody charges somebody who is holding a drawn and cocked firearm, he has the means to cause death or grave bodily injury, and/or is so hopped up on drugs (or a fanatical belief that a martyrdom operation will get him some kind of heavenly reward), he will kill or maim you if you don't stop him. In addition, his rush brings the firearm itself into the picture; if you don't stop him, he can take it away from you, kill you, and then go on to kill others.

With regard to the latter, I have also read that terrorists have in some cases managed to take weapons from Israeli police officers, and terrorist sympathizers on the Mavi Marmara took at least one Israeli's weapon. Israel needs to embrace the principle that a police officer or soldier NEVER allows himself or herself to be disarmed. Napoleon punished some men whose weapons were taken from them during a riot by forcing them to appear on parade for a month with wooden instead of real swords. When my father did military police duty during the Second World War, he carried a baton and a .45 Automatic Colt Pistol. His orders were that, if somebody grabbed his baton, he was to let go of it, draw the sidearm, and use deadly force if necessary to put the other man under arrest.  I am pretty sure that anybody who tried to take an American police officer's sidearm would be shot dead on the spot, and rightly so because perhaps a quarter of police officers who are murdered are killed with their own weapons.

One can also put this in the perspective of Colonel Jeff Cooper's color code for situational awareness.

• You are hopefully always in Condition Yellow; aware of your surroundings, and not daydreaming or talking on your cell phone. Wild animals generally live their lives in Condition Yellow because those that don't get eaten.
• Condition Orange means you are aware of a potential threat, such as a person approaching you suspiciously. You are not justified in drawing a weapon on mere suspicion. This would be the point at which the terrorist approached the police officers in such a way as to alarm them.
• Condition Red means you are aware of a specific threat. At this point, you know you might have to fight for your life or safety, and you are justified in drawing a weapon. My po‎sition would be that somebody who continues to advance on you after you have tried to retreat from him while telling him to stay away (even offering to give him whichever side of the street he wants while you take the other) would change the situation to Condition Red. If the aggressor then creates what the law's hypothetical reasonable person would construe as a "him or me" situation, you aim and fire.

If you don't have a firearm, and Israel's gun control laws are definitely a problem here, there are other things to carry that can be used as weapons. A cane or walking stick can cause very serious injury if driven into an assailant's body like a bayonet (rather than swatting at him with it, which is likely to leave little more than a bruise). An umbrella (Google on "fighting umbrellas") could conceivably be used in the same manner. The nice thing about these is that the momentum of the attacker's own rush does a lot of the damage. However, the basic right to self-protection should not depend on the physical strength and agility necessary to use improvised weapons of this nature.