Episode 2: Tactical Defense with Bill Murphy (Pt. 2)

MAGLITE: 00:05 Welcome back to the MAG-TAC Podcast brought to you by Maglite. We encourage you to discover all the great products like the all new ML300L 4-cell D LED. This is the ultimate survival light that will give you more than two weeks continuous light on one set of batteries available at maglite.com. Here on the Maglite podcast, we are today doing the Practical Defense Series of podcasts and our guest once again is Bill Murphy who has had a long and storied career in law enforcement and also tactical training. Just a few highlights, he's been a law enforcement officer for more than 40 years, he's currently a Deputy Reserve for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. He was a S.W.A.T. team member, Senior Patrol Officer, Firearms Instructor, Armor... I could go on and he is also the proprietor of Firearms Training Associates in Corona, California. Bill, thank you for being back on the program.

BILL MURPHY: 00:58 No, my pleasure.

MAGLITE: 00:59 Let's talk about the gun mounted versus the non-gun mounted light. What are, as you see, advantages and disadvantages with the both?

BILL MURPHY: 01:10 Well, weapons mounted lights, whether you're talking pistol, shotgun or carbine are always an advantage for you... If we're carrying pistols and we're doing CCW [Carrying a Concealed Weapon], they're a little bit bulky and generally what happens, people won't carry them cause they're trying to get the smallest profile they can. But when you're working, when you're out on the street, when you're thinking in a tactical mindset, weapons light is a huge advantage because as I draw my weapon, I'm putting light right in the bad guy's eyes and I'm overloading his optic nerve and causing him to shut down. And if I can cause him to blink, I slowed down his ability. Cause, all advantages go to the bad guy. I'm responding to what the bad guy's doing. I'm reacting to them. So, if I can overload that optic nerve causing problems, then it's going to be a benefit for me. So, I think a weapons mounted light with pressure switch is an excellent tool. Handheld. This is what most people use. And even a lot of the law enforcement agencies haven't come into the realm of weapons, mountain lights.

MAGLITE: 02:09 Okay. So, so in, in reality, I'm that homeowner three o'clock in the morning, I hear glass break, uh, I hear loud banging at my front door, somebody rams a car into my garage. I'm groggy. And most people don't have in their drawer next to their bed a gun mounted light, right?

BILL MURPHY: 02:33 That's works because a lot of people aren't aware, they haven't gotten training in night operations, is that using a handheld flashlight and a weapon by NYPD, they found that less than 5% of the shots fired hit the bad guy. So, when three o'clock in the morning comes around, I jump out of bed to grab stuff. What am I wearing? I got socks on. That's about it. So, I got no place to stick extra flashlights and extra mags. So, I like it on my gun. I want to go ahead, grab my pistol. I want to have a nice normal standard capacity, which means somewhere around 20. And then what happens? I want to have my flashlight on there if I can. But since most people don't do that, the reality is they're going to have the flashlight in one hand. They're going to have the gun. In the other hand, they're going to have a phone somewhere that they're going to be trying to communicate with, and the standard capacity magazine gives me the time to go ahead with 20 rounds in there to be able to call 911 to get the police coming and defend myself. And, there's cases of this documented through the legal system.

MAGLITE: 03:35 But in the state of California, you're not going to have 20 rounds, at least not legally as a civilian...right?

BILL MURPHY: 03:40 No, no. That's you Out-of-Staters talking right there, the law was overturned here by a good federal court judge. And he said that this is my constitutional right to have standard capacity mags, the state. This went on for a week, April 28th to May 5th and then they put a stay on this, pending further hearings. So, it is lawful for Californians that bought magazines either years ago or during that week to carry them.

MAGLITE: 04:12 Okay. So, I hear that loud noise, hearts going, adrenalines pumping. I grabbed my Maglite ML150 or my MAG-TAC that’s by my bedside. I turned that on, I've grabbed my hand gun. What's my technique bill, as a homeowner that I should be using?

BILL MURPHY: 04:29 Problem is most homeowners don't do training unless they do it with us in flashlight. So, we have the Harry's flashlight. We have a method developed by Chris Karachi. We have neck indexing, we have all these different techniques, but unless they've been trained in one, they won't successfully partner the firearm with the light. And that's where we come in, is that we do our night shoots for everybody and we have them come on out and practice the Harry's technique and use Chris Karachi's technique that he developed in the neck indexing and the FBI modified, so that we raised their potential to get hits. And don't forget this is going to be very close, but think about that ML150 flashlight from Maglite. You're talking a thousand and eight-two lumens with a beam that goes 400 yards in somebody's eyes. How much deadly force do I need? Because most people without us, secondary reason to want to do this is that they're going to run off because they're going to be overwhelmed by the light in their eyes and not being able to see. And then the side benefit of this is that if they did get too close you could use this as an alternative weapons system, not deadly.

MAGLITE: 05:43 So the MAG-TAC say or one of the other programmable lights that also has strobe, that's an even, another option that you could use to disorient... correct?

BILL MURPHY: 05:55 Yeah, MAG-TAC is fantastic light, and it's probably one of the best on the market and its charging system with the bands around the bottom, not mattering how you put it in the charger, you can just grab it right out of the charger and go. So this thing, it's 670 lumens and what happens...got a fantastic burn time and then rechargeable. This is a great amount of light to put in somebody's eyes... And you've got to remember it's going to be dark in your house at three o'clock in the morning. So, when somebody's eyes are adapted to darkness, now they're hit with 700 lumens of light. That’s gonna cause them to shut down pretty quick.

MAGLITE: 06:32 That's about the time we have for this edition of the MAG-TAC Podcast on the Practical Defense Series with Bill Murphy. When we come to the next podcast, I want to talk about the basics of Low-Light Training and also High Lumens... are they always the right choice? Bill, you're going to join us again?

BILL MURPHY: 06:51 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for inviting me.

MAGLITE: 06:53 This has been the MAG-TAC Podcast, the Practical Defense Series. Thanks for listening.