Mas Ayoob on carry gun modifications

[Willieboy]

FYI and FWIW to you, here's a thread I recently stumbled accross in my endless surfing. I really do need to get a life.

http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1329799

[Snak3]

If you're REALLY bored, read up on Massachusetts gun laws. You'll vomit in your mouth at least twice within 5 minutes - I know I did.

[Willieboy]

I am really bored but I abhore vomit breath.

[.45fan]

I didn't click the link, but is he still yammering about going to jail for a million years if you do a trigger job on a defense gun?

[mr surveyor]

I didn't click the link, but is he still yammering about going to jail for a million years if you do a trigger job on a defense gun?

ditto

that's the reason I have little respect for the self proclaimed "experts". Still haven't seen the court cites for all the defensive shooters going down for trigger jobs and handloaded ammunition

[aray]

ditto

that's the reason I have little respect for the self proclaimed "experts". Still haven't seen the court cites for all the defensive shooters going down for trigger jobs and handloaded ammunition

It's the sum totality of the picture painted by the prosecutors. There's no case where someone is going to go after you just for that. But when you get an overzealous prosecutor, he's going to find every little thing he can to paint you as a crazy "gun nut" who took away the last chance of the poor little victim - who was just about to turn his life around and would have done so if you hadn't snuffed him right before that could happen.

* Trigger jobs = itchy trigger finger, ready to shoot before a well-reasoned person would do so.
* Hollow point bullets = Dum dums. Aren't those outlawed by the Geneva Convention?
* And what do you need with extra magazines anyway? Out "hunting" for people? What are you, a militia member?
* On your house do you have a "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again" sticker on your house? Shows you value property more than human life.
* And what about your postings on kahrtalk re: expressing glee when a BG bites the dust. Again, what sort of moral monster are you anyway?

Mas Ayoob has seen it all. He's been called as an expert witness for the defense countless times & has seen all the tricks prosecutors play. Ignore him or not, but be prepared to have an answer for the jury if you go down another path. For extra magazines or HP bullets, reference to standard practice by your local LEO is a great response. For trigger mods, that's harder to explain to a jury.

[MikeyKahr]

Good stuff

Good reply, aray. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[jocko]

to many scenarios for me!!!! Is smoothing up a trigger system considered a trigger job. I seriously doubt it. If it bothers a person, then don't do anything to your gun and carry it like it came out of the box, 99.,9995 of the time you will never have to use it anyhow in a life and death situation, so for me it is a mute point anyhow. Liskten to the experts, then do what you want to do. they are only experts becuase we put that title on many of therm.

[jeep45238]

I have yet to see anything he preaches about regarding modifications and ammo show up in court and be the basis of somebody being announced guilty by a group of their peers.

A good shoot is a good shoot, be it with a 9x19mm 1911 race gun with a compensator and a red dot sight system, or a bone stock Glock 17L. The equipment has no relevance to the cause of the shooting, nor the end result (assuming shot placement/terminal ballistics are the same between the two guns).

[aray]

I have yet to see anything he preaches about regarding modifications and ammo show up in court and be the basis of somebody being announced guilty by a group of their peers.

In one of his books (I think it was "The Gun Digest Book of Concealed Carry" but don't quote me on that) he tells of a story of a guy for whom he was an expert witness for the defense. Story from memory here so might get a detail or two wrong:

The defendant was in traffic and had a car cut him off several times, made multiple illegal and dangerous moves around his and other cars, etc. He tried to be a good samaritan & get a tag # so he could phone it in to LEO but was unable to do so. However he did see them pull into a parking lot and so (foolishly in hindsight) pulled in to the same parking lot to get the rest of the tag. Car full of thugs saw him do that, jumped out of their car, and approached his car with a baseball bat, threatening him, etc. Victim at that point pulls his 45 out of the glove box for self defense. Never fires a shot - bad guys back down when they saw the gun.

Dude is now able to leave, which he does, drives another block or so, and then pulls over & calls 911. Too late. The thugs (who it turns out had long rap sheets) called 911 first for "man with a gun". Cops respond and arrest the guy.

Anti-gun prosecutor goes after him for "brandishing" etc., despite the fact that the gun was legal and he had a CCW permit. The thugs were not charged with anything, and in fact were witnesses for the prosecution.

Part of what the prosecutor used was, in fact, that he had a spare magazine and had the gun loaded with hollow point bullets. Again as stated it was part of a larger mosaic that the prosecutor was trying to paint about how reckless this guy was, how his choice in weapons, ammo, and procedures were negligent to the point of being criminal, etc.

In pretrial motions, the prosecution tried to prevent Ayoob from testifying. Fortunately that was not successful. Ayoob was able to explain that semi-automatics fail, that when they do many times the best choice is to dump the magazine and load a new one, that in firefights most shots are misses and having a spare magazine is the right choice, that law enforcement personnel themselves carry spare magazines and for the same reasons that private citizens do, that hollow point rounds are safer for innocent bystanders due to over-penetration, that the local LEO department also carried HP bullets for the same reasons, that ...

The guy was acquitted, but I became convinced that it was only because of Ayoob's testimony that he wasn't found guilty. The final insult was that even though he was acquitted, the prosecutor tried to convince the judge that his 45 should be destroyed & not returned to the guy. It took separate follow-on legal arguments to get the gun returned to the guy.

Interesting story in general but more to the point but I learned several important morals to the story:

1. Be careful what you do when you are carrying. Things that might seem OK when not carrying take on greater potential consequences when you are. In particular, some times it is just better to "let things go" than to allow yourself be put in a situation where you have to even draw the gun in self defense in the first place.

2. Call 911 FIRST! Many times whoever calls 911 is treated by the responding officer as "the victim" and the other side as "the bad guy" - because 99.9% of the time that's exactly the way that it is! The LEO is just reacting to "the rule" and not "the exception". It may be a mistake, but cops are humans too and make mistakes just like everyone else - you just don't want to be on the receiving end of that mistake.

3. Think ahead and be ready to justify every decision that you make - from choice of gun to choice of ammunition, to ... Know and understand why HP rounds are the safest choice, be prepared to explain why you selected that particular firearm. And, if you made any modifications to it, you may be called upon (in a hostile environment) to justify that mod.

Like Ayoob, I'm not saying don't make the mods. But forewarned is forearmed - just go into this with your eyes wide open, knowing the potential consequences of an anti-gun prosecutor.

[CJB]

Mas Ayoob has seen it all. He's been called as an expert witness for the defense countless times & has seen all the tricks prosecutors play.

Gotta keep in mind M.Ayoob's testimony as expert witness was mostly in cases of LEO shootings of civilians - where LEOs are held to a higher standard, if not by law, then in the court of public opinion.

[slowpoke]

I understand the points Ayoob makes but:
I have a Glock that had a trigger so nasty that when I first got it I'd have to say that people standing around my target were in more danger than someone standing in front of it. So I'd say I was doing the innocent public a favor by giving it a trigger job.
That being said, I don't carry a Glock, I carry a kahr that is completely stock. But then again, Kahr knows how to make a trigger.

[mr surveyor]

If smoothed triggers and actions, hollow points and spare magazines are cause for a defensive use of a firearm to be turned into a case of premeditated murder, then several million of us that carry daily should rethink our choice of carry weapons. Maybe old, rusty, single action .32 cal revolvers (obviously carryed hammer down on an empty cylinder) with a flap type leather holster would be in order.

I still have NOT seen cites from actual court cases that would raise an issue regarding the many thousands of legal defensive uses of firearms that occur annual in the country.

[Longitude Zero]

It all comes down to one simple and undeniable fact. How you are treated depends upon the location, location, location. I have seen shootings handled totally differently because of the county in which it happened. The city where I live sits in five different counties. I once lived in a neighborhood where my across the street neighbors were in a different county.

[jocko]

if ur gonna REALLY worry about all of this then please don't carry. Life is to short to loose sleep over it.