Gunner Quinn
Author’s Introductory Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Although there are references to the legal system in this essay, no part of this essay should not be construed as legal advice. This essay is for informational purposes only.
INTRODUCTION
On April 11, 1986, near Miami, Florida, eight Federal Bureau of Investigation agents engaged in a four-minute gunfight against two suspected bank and armored car robbers. The shootout took place in front of a home in a residential neighborhood.
When it was over, two FBI agents—Special Agent Ben Grogan and Special Agent Jerry Dove—were dead. Five agents were wounded—three seriously. Only one agent escaped injury. Both bank robbers were dead. Bank robber WM fired only a single shot during the gunfight, then was shot in the face and knocked out with a very serious wound early in the shootout. Amazingly, he regained consciousness almost immediately and evidently crawled out of the window of their stolen Chevrolet Monte Carlo and made it to Dove and Grogan’s car in an attempt to escape.
The second robber, MP—who along with his partner, will not be named here—carried the fight to the FBI single-handedly, despite receiving a mortal wound from a bullet fired by Jerry Dove as he exited the Monte Carlo. MP ignored bullet after bullet that struck him and must have seemed unstoppable. After shooting seven agents with a .223 Remington Ruger Mini-14, MP also made his way to Dove and Grogan’s car. He was attempting to start the vehicle when Special Agent Edmundo Mireles—his left arm nearly destroyed by a .223 bullet—approached the vehicle and emptied his revolver into the two robbers, finally stopping them and ending the fight.
For the FBI team that had been attempting for months to stop the two robbers, this was a worst-case scenario. The two bad guys had been a mystery, beyond their crimes—which included robberies and murder. Both criminals were Army veterans who trained constantly with their weapons, firing 750-1,500 rounds per week. They either purchased the ammo or stole it from people shooting on public land—people they ambushed, robbed, and murdered for their guns, ammo, and vehicles. Neither MP nor WM had a criminal record on the day they died. The agents attempting the felony car stop had no way of knowing the situation they were entering.
Every FBI agent on the team had field experience, and the agents that day outnumbered the suspects by a ratio of four-to-one. Any reasonable person would expect the suspects to surrender immediately, but MP and WM were not reasonable people. WM fired only one round of 12 gauge #6 shot, but MP fired six rounds of .357 Magnum (three shots each from two different revolvers) and at least 42 rounds of .223 Remington from the Mini-14. At the time of their autopsies, WM was found to have received six gunshot wounds, while MP received 12 gunshot wounds. Neither bad guy was wearing body armor, and neither had any drugs nor alcohol in their bloodstream.
This brief but intense gun battle became known as the “FBI Miami Shootout” or the “FBI Miami Firefight.” There have been several articles about it, but one of the best was written by Dean Speir at the now-defunct website, “The Gun Zone.” The article is available, in two parts, at the Internet Archive. See: Part One, and Part Two.
The definitive book on the topic is the privately-published 1996 work: Forensic Analysis of the April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight, by W. French Anderson, M.D. It was republished in 2006 by (the now defunct) Paladin Press. Unfortunately, the book is long out of print and only in the collections of a few libraries, probably because the author was convicted and sent to prison in 2004 for sex with a minor. My copy was obtained on the used market, so the author did not benefit financially from the transaction. You may be able to borrow it, using your local library’s Interlibrary Loan service. Some information about the book―with excerpts―is available on the Internet Archive.
LEARNING FROM WORST CASE SCENARIOS
Could I have survived the gunfight of April 11, 1986? I have serious doubts about going up against MP and his Ruger Mini-14, at close quarters, with six shots of .38 Special +P or a 9mm pistol loaded with Winchester Silvertips (what the agents were armed with). To review: seven of eight agents were shot. Two died, and three were seriously injured. But I have an advantage as a civilian that the FBI agents and other law enforcement don’t have. They have a duty to confront the bad guys. I do not. If I perceive a threat early, I may be able avoid the situation entirely, or I can try to disengage when it starts and retreat.
The only fight we can be certain of surviving is the one we don’t engage in. We often think in terms of skills, weapon choice, tactics, etc. These are all important, but just as important is honing the skills that enable us to avoid the worst-case scenario―or to perhaps to survive the worst-case situation if it’s unavoidable.
The truth is that you never know what you’re going up against. The person or persons you’re facing is an unknown, as is whether they have friends nearby, ready to back them up. An acquaintance of a friend “won” a fight back in the 1980s in Santa Rosa, California, only to have a beer bottle come out of nowhere and shatter on his face, severely injuring him. The people who threw it were the friends of the “loser” of the fight. They left the “winner” for dead on the sidewalk, where he―fortunately―was seen, picked up, and rushed to a hospital. He very nearly bled out and barely survived his foolish actions.
For a very good fictional example of the failure to avoid a conflict, I recommend the 2020 film “Unhinged,” with Russell Crowe. A mom with her son in the car ignores a chance to attempt to de-escalate and disengage from a man in a pickup truck. It’s not a perfect film, but it captures that moment when an interpersonal conflict between two people might have been avoided. Unfortunately for the mom, the man in the truck decides to make a project of destroying her life. It may sound far-fetched, but you don’t have to look very hard to find people who’ve decided to go after another person―or the CEO of a company―for some real or imagined wrong. We’ve all read about incidents where a simple mistake becomes a road rage incident that ends in bodily injury or death. We never know what we’re dealing with when we come into conflict with a stranger.
THE THREAT LEVEL TODAY
“Every violent situation is a singularity; it’s a chaos event.”
― Michael Bane, MBTV – On the Radio, March 23, 2021
When I began to seriously study self-defense, I learned how easily an interpersonal conflict can go horribly wrong. One of the kids I knew growing up went to prison for several years as a young adult because he’d been “disrespected” and couldn’t let it go. This was just one of a list of sad stories featuring people I knew in the neighborhood.
Not long ago, crime and violence in the United States and other Western countries looked to be in permanent decline. That all changed with a complex set of factors that included the COVID-19 lockdowns throughout the Western world, the George Floyd riots from 2020-2023, and the opening of the borders of the United States and the European Union to millions of illegal aliens from all over the world.
Anarcho-Tyranny
“Anarchy for the U.K. it’s coming sometime…”
— Anarchy In The UK – 1976 song by the Sex Pistols
In addition to opening their borders to the flood of illegal aliens, several Western countries seem to have embraced anarcho-tyranny as a governing philosophy. Anarcho-tyranny is a term coined by conservative writer Samuel Francis:
This condition, which in some of my columns I have called “anarcho-tyranny,” is essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety.
— Samuel Francis, in “Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.,” Chronicles Magazine, July 1994
A prime example of anarcho-tyranny today is in the nation of Great Britain, where a two-tier justice system has been put in effect, which changes punishment guidelines for ethnic minority and transgender criminals. At the same time, ordinary British citizens are being charged with “speech crimes”. In Canada, under Justin Trudeau, citizens protesting against vaccine mandates had their assets frozen. And in the United States under the Biden regime, illegal alien crime was largely ignored, while Christians who silently prayed in front of an abortion clinic suffered the full wrath of the “justice” system.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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