Learning Day: How to Protect Yourself Until Police Arrive

A renegade murderer has your family cornered with a shotgun. He says he is going to stab you. He moves closer, killing several of you. He grew up in Wisconsin, and she is actually the ghost of a first place cat who died of kindness. Your family has betrayed you, siding with the burglars. Now, legally, can you shoot it?

This is the type of legal and philosophical question you’ll be faced with in HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF UNTIL THE POLICE ARRIVE, the 1996 book almost guaranteed to not be what you’re picturing. My copy was once Mark’s, and it was signed by the author at Shot Show ’97.

The survival book was pristine, almost as if it had never been opened. And maybe I’m a cynic, but maybe your estate wouldn’t have gotten donated to GoodWill if you had been more of a reader, Mark. The author, Police Officer Daniel L. Barber, folded up a flier for the event and slid it inside. His book was $15.95, reduced to $6.95 after he autographed it. Unremarkable cop, Daniel L. Barber, knows the value of his signature and it is -$9. You get 45 cents of additional discount if you buy the book nine more times, which sounds insane, but think how funny it would be for police to arrive at your murder and see your ten copies of HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF UNTIL THE POLICE ARRIVE. Alright, let’s be the first people to read th–

Oh my god, yes. It opens with a drawing of crime and a stashed business card for Police Officer D.L. Barber’s undescribed side gigs. It’s already so special. This man wrote what looks to be a manual for holding burglars at gunpoint, and it is illustrated by a kid he arrested for linear perspective violations. This drawing looks like it should say, “Does this LOOK LIKE cursive practice, Sean? Stay behind during recess.” But this isn’t the work of a child! These NPCs from one enchanted third grader’s homemade Double Dragon RPG were drawn by an adult police officer! This is the work of actual Boulder detective Steve Ainsworth. And this is not the only drawing he did.

After the table of contents, there is a complete list of Steve’s illustrations. Why? And for what reason? The book has a glossary in the normal and expected place for someone urgently trying to find “shoot the worst threat first.” In a thousand books written by countless madmen, I’ve never seen someone do this. Steve was so proud of these 128 clumsy doodles he pulled rank on Daniel and demanded they get their own table of contents. Then his phone rang and he said, “Detective Ains– You again? Pal, we’ll get to your cousin’s murder, but feet are harder to draw than you think! No, the only other officers on duty are recording a demo for their new band, Arrested Hearts. Yes, I understand you’re upset, sir. Yes you’re right, Bullet Train is a better name.”

The book starts off shaky. I don’t expect you to read this clipping, but you should know it exists:

Daniel opens with a 23 page rant about gun rights with all of 1996’s most tired talking points. We don’t need to go through them. If you don’t think people should have guns they are silly and unconvincing. If you are already wearing a gun, they seem kind of logical, you guess. The interesting part is how he keeps bringing up how hard it is to be a cop with all these damn rules. Also, we aren’t harsh enough with our child incarceration. Again, let’s not get into the zany politics of it, but to calibrate the author’s judgment, he’s typing this from 27 years of progress ago in the country with the most prisoners policed by men who famously shoot and arrest whoever they want. The fact that none of it –none of it- is related to the rest of the book is fantastic. Dan sat down intending to help you survive a robbery and accidentally wrote a 7000 word complaint about how you assholes won’t let him shoot more, let’s call them, youths.

Daniel is desperate to convince firearm owners who bought a book about vigilante justice sold exclusively at gun shows that guns are fine! They’re fine! In 1994 they killed fewer people than water, accidentally. This is a strange way to put it, but he’s not wrong. In 1994 there were 38,505 deaths, and if you remove all the homicides and suicides from that number, along with 400 more for reasons only Daniel knows, you do end up with 1500 “accidental” firearms deaths. I have many, many followup questions, but it’s still a perfectly reasonable side in the classic debate between “these devices marketed through paranoia and designed only for killing are perfectly safe” vs. “hey, wait a minute.” That being said, there are a couple dangers to go over before we take a mugger prisoner.

Gun safety is a big responsibility, especially while steering a body that fills with madness chemicals when it gets upset and doesn’t know what’s going on when it was recently asleep. So Daniel has a few ideas to trick your future self into not executing your kids. They’re reasonable and useful. Good for Officer Barber for making your safety his second priority after that thing about him and his cop friends having too many fucking rules. Speaking of, I should mention the book’s disclaimer. It is, at least in Daniel’s estimation, airtight. He makes it extremely clear that he’s not liable for goddamn anything. He’s not telling you to get a gun or fire a gun or execute the gang member in your living room, you sons of bitches, and he says IN A MUCH LARGER FONT that you can send your book in for a refund if you don’t accept this, his total lack of responsibility for all things by all book owners. It’s nuts. I have wife poisoning books with less intense disclaimers. Have right wing gun owners always been this paranoid [1]? This was the ’90s in Colorado. Even if you weren’t a cop, you could take out a billboard that said “Budweiser Light: If You’re Going to Drive Anyway, Budweiser Light” and nobody would do shit.

1. ^ Yes. (1775 to present) Anything, All Things

“Guns are for using, sort of.” – Daniel L. Barber, COP

After three chapters of gun safety tips, it’s time for Chapter 4: Home Firearm Safety. It’s the poorly organized thoughts of an armed man whose mind skitters from murder fantasy to terror.

“Don’t take your gun to super bowl parties if you might murder.” – Daniel L. Barber, O.nly High School

Dan doesn’t want anyone carrying a gun if they’re prone to fits of excitement or impaired judgment, which makes him very close to getting it, but before he considers this describes all people (especially including himself), he has moved on to a scenario where you’ve shot a badguy (his word for bad guys) and how to avoid what’s known as a Fort Collins Possum Trap (pretending a non-fatal gunshot wound is fatal inside a stranger’s home).

This won’t sound right, but what follows next is about 40 pages of gun drawings. Weird, pointless gun drawings. Be as generous as you want; is there a situation across infinite universes that would make this useful? Officer Barber, in his sudden attempt to write an instruction manual for all gun situations of any type, has decided the reader should know every variation of bullet, rifle action, and butt-plated stock. Why, Daniel!? What home defense scenario is this for? Am I sending my child to get a very specific rifle from my collection for this emergency where there is no time to explain? Am I a masturbating gun nut? I’m a masturbating gun nut, aren’t I.

I can’t stress enough how strange and useless this is. He shows you the parts of a single shot handgun like you’re protecting your homestead from just the one Apache warrior. If I’m stalking my home intruder with a fucking blunderbuss, I don’t need your help, Officer Barber. I am clearly trying to make this hard on purpose. I want this bastard to feel like he has a chance so my family can watch the hope leave his eyes. This is the way of the hunt, my beautiful daughters.

If you’re hunting men in darkness, your erection pulsing against the night, Officer Barber has some flashlight gunfighting tips. It’s vital to hold it properly to illuminate your target, but if it’s kind of getting in your way, go ahead and ditch it.

Learning to shoot at night is important since most murderers are working as dentists during daytime hours. That means training in darkness, but remember: guns are not toys! And you can prove it by playfully racking a shotgun to get everyone’s attention. Seriously, though; look at that little shotgun man. What sad pizzazz. Daniel had the detective draw a cute murder doodle for no reason under the words “go read a different book to learn shotgun safety” and above the words “here’s how a baby might describe a shotgun.” There is nothing dumber and scarier than the intended audience for this, and I saw the fifth Rambo movie*.

* And loved it. Rambo builds a barn with 200 deadly man traps but then also emerges to shoot guys whenever they fall in one. And when I say “guys,” Rambo fucking means MEXICANS. Maybe now I see every critic’s point.

The illustrations never stop being funny. Why bother with them? They’re either aggressively irrelevant or it would be faster and more effective to use a photo. They are childlike and lazy, but in an adorable way because I think Detective Steve was trying to draw the author? It’s sad but endearing like how Rob Liefeld would sketch the man who shot him in his drawing hand.

Without warning, and for only one paragraph, Officer Barber addresses what might happen when you yourself get shot. It includes no medical tips or tactical advice. It is a pep talk for someone who has literally just been shot. “Get up, you hole-filled lady! The pain is your food! The only treatment is revenge!! The Grim Reaper is taking someone at the end of this blood trail– make it some other goddamn son of a bitch!!! A pistol is a type of firearm, or gun, you can use in one hand.”

This new tone rules, obviously, but it’s gone as quickly as it appears. Soon Officer Daniel is back to making sure you understand guns are dangerous, laws are complicated, police are bad listeners, and you should never shoot anything, ever. The following examples are from two pages alone:

This is the real theme of the book– there are no circumstances where it’s okay to murder someone, but wink.

I made fun of the book for being clogged up with loose thoughts and useless information, but this is a useful tip if you’re facing off against every character class of murderer at once. Daniel has boiled all of his self-defense paranoia into one ideal situation and even then he’s cautious about giving advice. Three men are attacking you with weapons and he still qualifies it with an “if you have to shoot…” You bitch ass coward, Officer Barber. Let your readers have one justified homicide. “In this comic the reader plays the role of Budge Rocklin, Convincing Undercover Prostitute,” said illustrator Detective Steve Ainsworth, but I don’t know how that’s relevant. Back to what I was saying, we’ve learned all Daniel has to teach us, and it’s time for the final lesson of the book. You’re going to love it, it’s a quiz.

Before we start, Daniel wants to make it clear, as he has several times a page for 129 pages, he is not telling you, the gun-owning reader, to shoot anyone. In fact, you should let criminals do whatever they want just like the goddamn conduct regulations wrapped around the Boulder police department’s throat, but again, wink. Officer Barber is going to put you in deadly force situations to see if you know which ones are okay to solve with bullets. Scroll through the next part slowly if you want to play along at home.

This one is easy, right? A thief is on your property threatening to kill you with your own child’s toy. Light him up. Light this piece of shit the fuck up and tell every kid at little league why there’s blood on your son’s bat.

What!? You should not shoot? Why did I even buy and carry this gun? And you want me to now call the police? And tell them what? “I really blew it, emergency dispatch. Maybe I’m only now realizing it’s a sex thing, but you can walk on me, pee on me. No, that’s all I wanted to say. You don’t need to hear any more details.”

Okay, Daniel. Let’s see if you can turn things around. A literal gang member has thrown a knife at me. By any rules of engagement I get to shoot him.

What the fuck!? You’re allowed to kill me as long as you’re currently out of murder weapons? This feels like a real “time out, time out nobody attack; okay time-back-in KNIFE ATTACK” situation to me.

Okay, Daniel. I’ve waited for this home intruder to pull out a knife, charge me with it, and say the actual words he’s going to stab me. This is so easy. At most your answer should be five words: “Okay, fine, shoot this one,” but I think we can get it lower.

Oh my god, Officer Barber. How fragile is your ass that it needs this much covering? The correct answer was SHOOT, not “golly if you really think your organs could be in danger from a second or third machete hacking, I suppose some district courts would consider a drastic course of self-defense to be within your rights.” You tiny baby. You crawling slug of a shower cap warning label. Let your readers kill one imaginary knife madman without all this fussing.

An easy scenario. I shoot him in the leg, once, so he goes down slow and minimizes the damage to my Playstation 5 and priceless jewels. If he’s carrying my wife’s cookware, I blast the fuck away, trusting in the HexClad brand durability. Let’s see how wrong I am!

Yeah, yeah. I already knew, Dan. “Hello, police? Yeah, it’s me again. Another one got away. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. It turned out to not be a sex thing, though.”

This one feels like a trap. Officer Barber, when you say “gang member,” am I familiar with this specific criminal because I’m in a rival gang, or are you testing to see if I know you mean “black guy wearing too much of one color and jogging with a flashlight”? If it’s the first one, blast him, gun-sideways, these are my fucking streets, fool. If it’s the second one, absolutely not and maybe you should explain yourself.

This answer feels like a trap too. Do I really call the police if I see a “gang member” running down a street with “a gun”? Aren’t they busy drawing dozens and dozens and dozens of myopic gun pictures? Do they really have time to go arrest an unrelated person of the same racia– oh, they do? Oh.

So the killer thief saw me witness his murder, and he’s currently pointing his gun at me. I’m concerned I don’t have a ton of choices here. I guess I quickdraw my pistol faster than the human eye and put six rounds in his heart, dramatically blocking his own bullet with a metal tray I put down my shirt earlier in the robbery, Dan. You dumb fucking idiot. You simple racist clown.

Dan gives another hair-splittingly qualified endorsement for shooting someone long after they’ve already killed you. Is he doing a bit? Is this outrageously silly henpecking part of the wink? It feels like Rob Schneider and Jim Brewer on a podcast complaining about how you can’t even kill your gardener these days. “Today, before shooting you have to be mindful your MURDERER isn’t TRIGGERED by any MICROAGGRESSIONS from your gun’s report.”

“Yeah, yeah, and FART, Rob! BrRRAAP into a pillowcase and eat it later, you know?”

What? He’s only some guy running away from gunfire? You think this is a tough decision, Dan? I wouldn’t have shot this guy if it was Scenario One. You’ve already told me to keep my gun in my holster while burglars strip my home and charge me with knives, so a scared jogger probably isn’t where you say, “Not one step further, crime!“

Good call, Dan. A lot of police training involves shooting people and hoping they were bad later, but we can’t trust civilian book readers to know when this is appropriate.

Here’s tomorrow’s headline from my local paper, Officer Dan: “Former Rampaging Ax Maniac Found With So Many Goddamn Holes in Face.” There would be a picture of me putting my entire arm through his skull to point at the ax up his ass with the caption “Local hero fools around in killer’s remains.” But I’m sure the real answer is to write your Congressman to get the latest county ax attack laws before taking further action.

Holy shit, I was pretty close. I may have made this point before, but Dan, that is a very, very, very long way to say “Reader, you face COBRA agent Lumberjack! Lethal force: authorized!”

Oh my god, enough details. And I had a gun this whole time? I shot this fucking guy like seven sentences ago. The groin of his corpse is on my Instagram with the hashtag #meatloafdick. Fuck you for writing the first [2] Choose Your Own Sex Crime Adventure, Officer Daniel L. Barber, P.antiesSniffer. But okay, let’s see if we are allowed to kill him.

2. Citation needed.

Of course. The solution to all that breathless sexual assault fiction written in the second person was “Boilerplate legally non-binding advice to follow all local gun ordinances with your attacker, refer to the manual(s) and safety information included with your legally purchased firearm.” What a dry maxi pad of a self-defense manual. If Officer Daniel L. Barber was being swallowed by a python he’d tell animal control they legally had to make sure it wasn’t a snake scientist trying to see what the world’s tiniest balls tasted like.

So this is how Dan sums up his book. Never use deadly force unless you are certain. It’s great advice for cops who instantly know which joggers are gang members, but seems impossible to follow for civilians who have to get a note from an ax victim’s trauma nurse to proceed with unlocking their gun safe. I genuinely have no idea how a reader might use this book. The author is obviously some kind of night creature who needs cordite-infused blood to live and all this legal caution is theater, but to what end? I am both desperate to kill a home intruder and cranky about all the hassle it’s going to cause me if he doesn’t have his Intent to Stab documentation notarized. And I still have no idea how many Rambo: Last Blood traps I’m able to build on my property this far from the border. Is it fifteen? Come and check, The Law!

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Yannis Ioannidis, who scored a perfectly respectable 79/100 on the Acceptable Murder Quiz.

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