Massad Ayoob > Quotes

“Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being. Perhaps the only more terrifying prospect is that such a fate should befall us or our loved ones. This is why we, a representative cross-section of America's population, keep deadly weapons for personal defense.”
― Massad F. Ayoob, In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection

“The experience left me with a very strong sense of just how destructive this simple, seemingly mundane tool can be. A knife never jams. A knife never runs out of ammunition; you rarely see a gunshot murder victim who has been shot more than a few times, but any homicide investigator can tell you how common it is for the victim of a knife murder to bear twenty, thirty, or more stab and/or slash wounds. “A knife comes with a built-in silencer.” Knives are cheap, and can be bought anywhere; there used to be a cutlery store at LaGuardia Airport, not far outside the security gates. There is no prohibition at law against a knife being sold to a convicted felon. Knives can be small and flat and amazingly easy to conceal. Anywhere”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Firearms, if you think about it, are power tools. They drill holes in things and chew things up. That’s their purpose. The purpose of the user is, quite simply, to puncture and destroy the right things and not the wrong things.”
― Massad Ayoob, Gun Safety in the Home

“A basic principle of American justice holds that a bad man has the same rights as a good man.”
― Massad F. Ayoob, In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection

“Those who shoot in competition seem to have a remarkably high hit potential and survival ratio in actual gunfights.”
― Massad Ayoob, Combat Shooting with Massad Ayoob

“It is important to remember that these efficiencies come from actual physical changes to the structure of the brain.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“In the end, the focus on safety should be credited to the entire firearms-owning community, the “gun culture” if you will.”
― Massad Ayoob, Gun Safety in the Home

“Gun Free Zones” have thus become hunting preserves for psychopathic murderers.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“The practice of CCW comes with a commitment, if you’re serious, and that commitment is that you will actually carry the damn thing!”
― Massad Ayoob, Gun Digest Book of Concealed Carry, 2nd Edition

“any community that does not police itself will be policed from outside.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Tell the officers you wish to cooperate with them and will sign a complaint because you are the victim. Use “sir” a lot in speaking with them. Tell them you were in fear for your life or the life of another and had no choice. Don’t say you are sorry or that you didn’t mean to kill the suspect, just scare them off, or that your gun “went off.” If the officer asks for details, state that you are pretty shaken up right now and would like to be able to recover from this traumatic event so that you can provide accurate information, and that you would like to have your attorney present when you do.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“You also have an implicit memory system. The implicit system is where we store how to perform physical tasks. For instance, if you’ve ever gone a long time without riding a bicycle and then rode one successfully, you can thank your implicit memory system. The implicit memory system is the home of so-called “muscle memory” which is really just a way of saying “well developed neural programs which can be executed without conscious thought.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“The desperate plaintiffs had even argued that it was negligence for a man who hadn’t qualified on the training range with his off duty gun to carry it at all, let alone use it, in light of the injury to the wrist of his gun hand. I was able to dispose of that with one of the shortest answers ever in my career on the witness stand: “He fired seven shots, and hit him seven times. Marksmanship is not an issue.” Our”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Law enforcement tends to think of the first involved party that calls as the victim, so it is to your advantage to get your account of an incident heard first.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“Armed citizens who were faced with only one robber, efficiently deployed a working firearm from on-body carry, and employed a ruse or distraction to create an opening to respond, have won 100% of the time.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“First, the police officer has a sworn duty to seek out, confront, and arrest very bad people for doing very bad things, and to press forward in the face of armed resistance. This is the opposite of what the citizen should be doing, namely avoidance, deterrence, de-escalation and evasion. Using the firearm is a last ditch, desperate measure, as a last resort for the armed citizen.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“to establish the active dynamic, indicate that you’ll sign the complaint, point out evidence and witnesses known to you…and then stop. Be polite. Do not raise your voice. I for one would answer subsequent questions with, “Officer, you’ll have my full cooperation after I’ve spoken with counsel.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“but a center of gravity appears to be forming around dysfunction in the dopamine and serotonin systems.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“People think their memory is better than it is in part because they are rarely challenged on its accuracy. Major memory gaps, inaccurate details, and false memories are common in everyday life, and can become worse during stressful situations (Sapolsky, 2004).”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“The defense of necessity is considered a justification defense, as compared with an excuse defense such as duress. An action that is harmful but praiseworthy is justified, whereas an action that is harmful but ought to be forgiven may be excused. Rather than focusing on the actor’s state of mind, as would be done with an excuse defense, the court with a necessity defense focuses on the value of the act.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Recognizing and Responding to Pre-Attack Indicators.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“lawyers call malum prohibitum, which means in essence “it’s bad because we passed a law against it.” This stands in contrast to malum in se, which translates to evil in and of itself: “we passed a law against it because it’s bad.” Much gun law follows this pattern.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“Thus, the great irony: the person who is prepared to kill if they must to stop a murderous transgression by a human predator is the person who is least likely to have to do so.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“Violence has been defined by the World Health Organization as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“Possession of arms is a right, not a privilege, but the law nonetheless punishes negligence when it causes harm to others.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“a concept called the doctrine of competing harms. Some states articulate it under that terminology, but many describe it as the doctrine of necessity. The two are one and the same.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The contextual considerations that frame any activity literally define how it should be trained. All pistol training has sight alignment and trigger press concepts within it, but the conditions under which one has to apply them to win a small bore bulls-eye match are very different than the conditions of a USPSA match. So it is with using a handgun to effectively thwart a criminal assault within a typical criminal assault paradigm.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“First, the revelation that only about half of rapid mass murders were ever stopped by anyone. This meant of course, that this half of the mass murdering was only stopped when the murderers said it stopped. Then, in the other half when rapid mass murder was stopped by someone, there was my astonishment that about two thirds of that half were stopped by on-site citizens (mostly unarmed) or on-site security, not off-site police officers!”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know

“Unsettling and Troubling Symptoms.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Being able to shoot a fist size group on a B-27 in no way, shape, or form resembles the task complexity of being accosted in a parking lot in reduced light by someone who does not telegraph their intentions until the last possible moment and uses a major threat of force.”
― Massad Ayoob, Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know