Reply to Massad Ayoob's Kooky Screed
-by Shawn Dodson
Massad Ayoob, Shawn Dodson, Reply to Ayoob's Kooky Screed
My first experience with Massad Ayoob's writings, that I can recall, was in 1984, when I attended basic law enforcement training. My instructors handed out photocopies of a
three-part article he'd written about the California Highway Patrol's Newhall Massacre, which had been published in Police Product News. Ayoob masterfully authored a gripping account, and the hook was set. I found Ayoob's articles and books informative, instructive, and entertaining.
In the 1990s, I began my study of wound ballistics, and it was here where I discovered troubling issues with Ayoob’s credibility, specifically in articles that dealt with shooting incident reports and “stopping power.” My distrust grew as I encountered questionable claims that I had reason to believe were untrue. I instigated a skunk fight with Ayoob when I described my doubts about his testimony in a purported “court” case (which Ayoob erroneously refers to as "Christine Hansen et. al., v. Federal Bureau of Investigation").2, 3, 4
“I testified. The court listened.”5
As documented in Hansen v. Webster (p. 3), Ayoob never testified in “court.” Indeed a “court” never heard his testimony.
In June 1980, Ayoob testified, as an expert witness for complainant Christine A. Hansen, against the FBI, in an administrative hearing conducted by a Complaints Examiner for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
ONE of the items claimed, which Ayoob supported, was that the FBI issue, medium-frame Smith & Wesson revolver was inappropriate for female agents because it was designed to fit the hand of an average male. FBI lawyer John Hall cross-examined Ayoob. Hall blind-sided Ayoob with a magazine article that Ayoob recently authored, in which he recommended the K-frame Smith & Wesson revolver as the ideal weapon for women. This is the very gun Ayoob had just testified was unsuitable for women! Hall instructed Ayoob to read aloud from his own article that contradicted his earlier expert testimony. Ayoob reluctantly complied in a subdued and hushed voice.
Conclusions. When people ask me about carrying guns for women, I generally recommend a small .38 Special with exotic ammo, knowing that they’ll probably wind up with wadcutters no matter what I say. I recommend something on a moderate frame for small hands. Colt’s Police Positive, revitalized two years ago and sadly being discontinued this year, is a good choice as is the Diamondback, which has a chance for survival. In the Smith line, a K-frame .38 Special should have the round butt, and be fitted with a Tyler-T grip adapter, a combination that fits many female hands, and small male hands, superbly. [Emphasis added]
My second choice would be an S&W Chief Special with 3" barrel... [Emphasis added]
-Ayoob, Massad F.: "Selecting the Woman’s Defense Gun." Guns, March 1979; pp. 8, 46-49.
(Ayoob's "second choice", the Smith & Wesson Chief's Special, is also known as the Model 36 (M36). It is a small-frame (J-frame) revolver.)
In the same article, Ayoob describes “exotic ammo”:
…with an "exotic" load, the 38 Special is a moderately effective manstopper.
By that we mean hollowpoints. Not semi-jacketed “softnoses,” which despite their theoretically equivalent ballistics on the mathematical sheets offer little more shock effect than the feeble old round nose, but either semi-jacketed hollowpoints from 110 to 125 grains, or maybe the 158 grain all lead H.P., (all of which are known generally as "Plus-P"), or maybe the new Scorpion.
The all-lead HPs, available only in the full 158-gr weight, generally mushroom reliably, but again, since recoil is primarily a function of bullet weight when pressures are equal, as in Plus-P factory .38 stuff, they kick harder.
-Ibid.
Unfortunately for those with female hands, the FBI did not issue wadcutter cartridges as duty ammo, and it had no intention of doing so. It issued the dependable .38 Special 158-grain +P LSWCHP cartridge (“FBI load”), which "kick harder" as Ayoob described accurately.
"Dodson gets his false interpretation of Hansen from the aforementioned mentor."6
-Ayoob, Massad: “Dodson Response.” August 20054
Ayoob's bizarre speculation, above, is inaccurate. According to retired SSA Urey W. Patrick, former Assistant Chief of the FBI Firearms Training Unit:
John Hall demolished Ayoob - in a civil, polite and unmistakable manner....
The Hansen suit was not lost on the firearms allegations. Actually, the suit was not lost at all – it was settled. The settlement terms did not substantially change the FBI firearms program – they substantially changed the FBI physical fitness requirements, recruiting practices, and some other personnel and training measures. The FBI agreed to identify a smaller weapon to have on hand to offer female trainees who could not physically handle the issued S&W M13, but with no compulsion to actually issue them except in individual cases where the instructor and the student agreed after the student failed with the M13. An M36 with 3” barrel was selected to meet the terms of the agreement. Issuing it never happened, since those who failed with the M13 did not want to try a smaller weapon with a shorter sight radius, lighter weight, reduced capacity and increased recoil effects – all of which they were given the chance to experience.
The other change in the firearms program was to mandate uniformity in the remedial program for students who failed initial qualification. Prior to the settlement, remediation was left to the Principal Firearms Instructor for the class - some would devote far more time than others. The settlement agreed to make remediation uniform so that all failed trainees got equal time and instruction. The downside was that any extra time beyond what was specified in the official remedial program was absolutely forbidden. Those instructors willing and eager to provide some extra time to their students could not do so - legally barred from it.
"Job critical" was the key. Ability with a firearm was clearly job critical - and the court [as opposed to the EEOC hearing cited by Ayoob] supported that, and supported the expertise of the FBI in deciding weapons/ammunition best suited to meeting the needs of that criticality. The court deferred completely - with the single exception of the remediation program, which was deemed unfair to those with less conscientious instructors. Essentially, the court said that in those areas that are truly "job critical", an agency has a pretty free hand to do what is best and require what is best, as determined by the agency.
As you may infer - Ayoob had nothing to do with any of that. But then he knows that nobody is going to read the settlement, the transcripts or get anything out of the FBI so he promotes his own view for his own interests - as with so much else he does.
-E-mail to Shawn Dodson, March 2005
Ayoob is a master of self promotion - never overly constrained by consistency or fact. The FBI’s experience clearly proved the problem was not the fit of the gun, as Ayoob dishonestly hypothesized in his embellished “court” testimony; instead the problem was the "hard kicking" ammo he truthfully described in Guns magazine several months earlier.
________________________________________
Stuck on Stupid: Ayoob and the FBI-Miami Shootout
Ayoob is offended by falsehood, which is how I describe his "FBI Miami Shootout" reports.4, 7 It appears in two places, the title and conclusion. Considering that he believes his only error – HIS ONLY ERROR – is to misspell Gilbert Orrantia's surname, I doubt he'd accept any word that suggests the slightest hint of inaccuracy. His complaint, however, has not fallen on deaf ears. Ayoob compelled me to reconsider falsehood, and I concede it might be inappropriate. I believe ******** is more fitting.
On the issue of weasel-words, Ayoob’s mischaracterization of court and falsehood are prime examples. Anecdotal is another. In a scientific context, an anecdotal report simply means the data are incomplete, subjective interpretation, or have not/cannot be verified. Nevertheless, in a contrived effort to discredit critics of his pal’s stopping power survey, Ayoob disingenuously weasel-words anecdotal, applying his now recycled “debater’s trick” malarkey:
Critics of the IWBA like to scoff at the Marshall study as “anecdotal” rather than “scientific.” That use of the term is a cheap debater’s trick. It relies on the public’s connotation of the word “anecdote” as meaning a joke. Actually the first definition of an anecdote is “a short telling of an incident that happened.”
If it doesn’t fit the expectations of some guy in a lab coat who shoots bullets into gelatin, does that mean it’s a joke? Quite the contrary.
…Anybody who says anecdotal reports are a joke is telling you that your [law enforcement] experience, and the collective experience of your professional community, is useless.
-Ayoob, Massad: "CopTalk: Anecdotal v. Scientific." American Handgunner, March/April 2000; p. 75
Anecdotal versus Scientific? Ayoob relies upon anecdotal reports to make a living, so of course he's going to defend them. Unfortunately the "joke" is on Ayoob's readers, who make decisions based on inaccuracies and speculation he authoritatively presents as facts.
In desperate attempt to vilify me, Ayoob deceitfully misrepresents my critique of his FBI-Miami shootout articles as a personal attack on Gordon McNeill and Edmundo Mireles:
...Ed Mireles and the late Gordon McNeill...came into the limelight through no intention of their own, but because they were deservedly acclaimed for the great valor and spirit they showed on 4/11/86. When Dodson snidely accuses them of falsehood by extention [sic], he goes too far.
At one point in his strange screed, Dodson insists that McNeill's .357 S&W Combat Magnum was loaded with .38 Special ammunition. He may not have had access to the official FBI materials, but that's no excuse; Dodson makes frequent reference to my book "The Ayoob Files," so he has obviously read it. Therein, Mireles is quoted on his recollection of being able to distinguish between the "pops" of the .38s and 9mms, the louder reports of McNeill's Magnum rounds, and what he called "the psychologically devastating ka-boom" of cop-killer Michael Platt's .223 rifle.
Dodson calls it a "falsehood" that Platt's accomplice Edward Matix sustained ear damage from Platt firing the .223 in direct proximity to his unprotected face. Gordon McNeill, far closer to the investigation than Dodson or his puppetmaster, said otherwise and was so quoted in "Ayoob Files."
I may have to put up with Dodson's crap. But when he implicitly accuses these two genuine American heroes of "falsehoods," Dodson is contemptible and unforgivable.
-(see Ayoob: “Dodson Response.”)
Unfortunately for Ayoob, his phony moral condemnation is exposed by the very lawmen he tries to selfishly exploit. McNeill and Mireles personally reviewed Forensic Analysis; both endorse the report that Ayoob dismisses as “a speculative account.” Their written statements appear in Appendix III. McNeill testifies (p. 112):
The report will serve as a model for all of law enforcement in the area of crime scene reconstruction and will finally set the record straight on one of the most significant and tragic events in FBI history. [emphasis added]
I would like the reader to know that to the extent that was humanly possible, Dr. W. French Anderson’s research and conclusions are correct. There might be some slight variation in the sequence of some of the events as we know them, but to the extent possible, the events documented are, to my knowledge, correct. The reader needs to bear in mind that this event was reconstructed by Dr. Anderson ten years after the fact. Four out of the ten participants are dead. We will probably never really know exactly what all their actions were, but I agree with Dr. Anderson’s forensic analysis. [emphasis added]
-by Shawn Dodson
Massad Ayoob, Shawn Dodson, Reply to Ayoob's Kooky Screed
My first experience with Massad Ayoob's writings, that I can recall, was in 1984, when I attended basic law enforcement training. My instructors handed out photocopies of a
three-part article he'd written about the California Highway Patrol's Newhall Massacre, which had been published in Police Product News. Ayoob masterfully authored a gripping account, and the hook was set. I found Ayoob's articles and books informative, instructive, and entertaining.
In the 1990s, I began my study of wound ballistics, and it was here where I discovered troubling issues with Ayoob’s credibility, specifically in articles that dealt with shooting incident reports and “stopping power.” My distrust grew as I encountered questionable claims that I had reason to believe were untrue. I instigated a skunk fight with Ayoob when I described my doubts about his testimony in a purported “court” case (which Ayoob erroneously refers to as "Christine Hansen et. al., v. Federal Bureau of Investigation").2, 3, 4
“I testified. The court listened.”5
As documented in Hansen v. Webster (p. 3), Ayoob never testified in “court.” Indeed a “court” never heard his testimony.
In June 1980, Ayoob testified, as an expert witness for complainant Christine A. Hansen, against the FBI, in an administrative hearing conducted by a Complaints Examiner for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
ONE of the items claimed, which Ayoob supported, was that the FBI issue, medium-frame Smith & Wesson revolver was inappropriate for female agents because it was designed to fit the hand of an average male. FBI lawyer John Hall cross-examined Ayoob. Hall blind-sided Ayoob with a magazine article that Ayoob recently authored, in which he recommended the K-frame Smith & Wesson revolver as the ideal weapon for women. This is the very gun Ayoob had just testified was unsuitable for women! Hall instructed Ayoob to read aloud from his own article that contradicted his earlier expert testimony. Ayoob reluctantly complied in a subdued and hushed voice.
Conclusions. When people ask me about carrying guns for women, I generally recommend a small .38 Special with exotic ammo, knowing that they’ll probably wind up with wadcutters no matter what I say. I recommend something on a moderate frame for small hands. Colt’s Police Positive, revitalized two years ago and sadly being discontinued this year, is a good choice as is the Diamondback, which has a chance for survival. In the Smith line, a K-frame .38 Special should have the round butt, and be fitted with a Tyler-T grip adapter, a combination that fits many female hands, and small male hands, superbly. [Emphasis added]
My second choice would be an S&W Chief Special with 3" barrel... [Emphasis added]
-Ayoob, Massad F.: "Selecting the Woman’s Defense Gun." Guns, March 1979; pp. 8, 46-49.
(Ayoob's "second choice", the Smith & Wesson Chief's Special, is also known as the Model 36 (M36). It is a small-frame (J-frame) revolver.)
In the same article, Ayoob describes “exotic ammo”:
…with an "exotic" load, the 38 Special is a moderately effective manstopper.
By that we mean hollowpoints. Not semi-jacketed “softnoses,” which despite their theoretically equivalent ballistics on the mathematical sheets offer little more shock effect than the feeble old round nose, but either semi-jacketed hollowpoints from 110 to 125 grains, or maybe the 158 grain all lead H.P., (all of which are known generally as "Plus-P"), or maybe the new Scorpion.
The all-lead HPs, available only in the full 158-gr weight, generally mushroom reliably, but again, since recoil is primarily a function of bullet weight when pressures are equal, as in Plus-P factory .38 stuff, they kick harder.
-Ibid.
Unfortunately for those with female hands, the FBI did not issue wadcutter cartridges as duty ammo, and it had no intention of doing so. It issued the dependable .38 Special 158-grain +P LSWCHP cartridge (“FBI load”), which "kick harder" as Ayoob described accurately.
"Dodson gets his false interpretation of Hansen from the aforementioned mentor."6
-Ayoob, Massad: “Dodson Response.” August 20054
Ayoob's bizarre speculation, above, is inaccurate. According to retired SSA Urey W. Patrick, former Assistant Chief of the FBI Firearms Training Unit:
John Hall demolished Ayoob - in a civil, polite and unmistakable manner....
The Hansen suit was not lost on the firearms allegations. Actually, the suit was not lost at all – it was settled. The settlement terms did not substantially change the FBI firearms program – they substantially changed the FBI physical fitness requirements, recruiting practices, and some other personnel and training measures. The FBI agreed to identify a smaller weapon to have on hand to offer female trainees who could not physically handle the issued S&W M13, but with no compulsion to actually issue them except in individual cases where the instructor and the student agreed after the student failed with the M13. An M36 with 3” barrel was selected to meet the terms of the agreement. Issuing it never happened, since those who failed with the M13 did not want to try a smaller weapon with a shorter sight radius, lighter weight, reduced capacity and increased recoil effects – all of which they were given the chance to experience.
The other change in the firearms program was to mandate uniformity in the remedial program for students who failed initial qualification. Prior to the settlement, remediation was left to the Principal Firearms Instructor for the class - some would devote far more time than others. The settlement agreed to make remediation uniform so that all failed trainees got equal time and instruction. The downside was that any extra time beyond what was specified in the official remedial program was absolutely forbidden. Those instructors willing and eager to provide some extra time to their students could not do so - legally barred from it.
"Job critical" was the key. Ability with a firearm was clearly job critical - and the court [as opposed to the EEOC hearing cited by Ayoob] supported that, and supported the expertise of the FBI in deciding weapons/ammunition best suited to meeting the needs of that criticality. The court deferred completely - with the single exception of the remediation program, which was deemed unfair to those with less conscientious instructors. Essentially, the court said that in those areas that are truly "job critical", an agency has a pretty free hand to do what is best and require what is best, as determined by the agency.
As you may infer - Ayoob had nothing to do with any of that. But then he knows that nobody is going to read the settlement, the transcripts or get anything out of the FBI so he promotes his own view for his own interests - as with so much else he does.
-E-mail to Shawn Dodson, March 2005
Ayoob is a master of self promotion - never overly constrained by consistency or fact. The FBI’s experience clearly proved the problem was not the fit of the gun, as Ayoob dishonestly hypothesized in his embellished “court” testimony; instead the problem was the "hard kicking" ammo he truthfully described in Guns magazine several months earlier.
________________________________________
Stuck on Stupid: Ayoob and the FBI-Miami Shootout
Ayoob is offended by falsehood, which is how I describe his "FBI Miami Shootout" reports.4, 7 It appears in two places, the title and conclusion. Considering that he believes his only error – HIS ONLY ERROR – is to misspell Gilbert Orrantia's surname, I doubt he'd accept any word that suggests the slightest hint of inaccuracy. His complaint, however, has not fallen on deaf ears. Ayoob compelled me to reconsider falsehood, and I concede it might be inappropriate. I believe ******** is more fitting.
On the issue of weasel-words, Ayoob’s mischaracterization of court and falsehood are prime examples. Anecdotal is another. In a scientific context, an anecdotal report simply means the data are incomplete, subjective interpretation, or have not/cannot be verified. Nevertheless, in a contrived effort to discredit critics of his pal’s stopping power survey, Ayoob disingenuously weasel-words anecdotal, applying his now recycled “debater’s trick” malarkey:
Critics of the IWBA like to scoff at the Marshall study as “anecdotal” rather than “scientific.” That use of the term is a cheap debater’s trick. It relies on the public’s connotation of the word “anecdote” as meaning a joke. Actually the first definition of an anecdote is “a short telling of an incident that happened.”
If it doesn’t fit the expectations of some guy in a lab coat who shoots bullets into gelatin, does that mean it’s a joke? Quite the contrary.
…Anybody who says anecdotal reports are a joke is telling you that your [law enforcement] experience, and the collective experience of your professional community, is useless.
-Ayoob, Massad: "CopTalk: Anecdotal v. Scientific." American Handgunner, March/April 2000; p. 75
Anecdotal versus Scientific? Ayoob relies upon anecdotal reports to make a living, so of course he's going to defend them. Unfortunately the "joke" is on Ayoob's readers, who make decisions based on inaccuracies and speculation he authoritatively presents as facts.
In desperate attempt to vilify me, Ayoob deceitfully misrepresents my critique of his FBI-Miami shootout articles as a personal attack on Gordon McNeill and Edmundo Mireles:
...Ed Mireles and the late Gordon McNeill...came into the limelight through no intention of their own, but because they were deservedly acclaimed for the great valor and spirit they showed on 4/11/86. When Dodson snidely accuses them of falsehood by extention [sic], he goes too far.
At one point in his strange screed, Dodson insists that McNeill's .357 S&W Combat Magnum was loaded with .38 Special ammunition. He may not have had access to the official FBI materials, but that's no excuse; Dodson makes frequent reference to my book "The Ayoob Files," so he has obviously read it. Therein, Mireles is quoted on his recollection of being able to distinguish between the "pops" of the .38s and 9mms, the louder reports of McNeill's Magnum rounds, and what he called "the psychologically devastating ka-boom" of cop-killer Michael Platt's .223 rifle.
Dodson calls it a "falsehood" that Platt's accomplice Edward Matix sustained ear damage from Platt firing the .223 in direct proximity to his unprotected face. Gordon McNeill, far closer to the investigation than Dodson or his puppetmaster, said otherwise and was so quoted in "Ayoob Files."
I may have to put up with Dodson's crap. But when he implicitly accuses these two genuine American heroes of "falsehoods," Dodson is contemptible and unforgivable.
-(see Ayoob: “Dodson Response.”)
Unfortunately for Ayoob, his phony moral condemnation is exposed by the very lawmen he tries to selfishly exploit. McNeill and Mireles personally reviewed Forensic Analysis; both endorse the report that Ayoob dismisses as “a speculative account.” Their written statements appear in Appendix III. McNeill testifies (p. 112):
The report will serve as a model for all of law enforcement in the area of crime scene reconstruction and will finally set the record straight on one of the most significant and tragic events in FBI history. [emphasis added]
I would like the reader to know that to the extent that was humanly possible, Dr. W. French Anderson’s research and conclusions are correct. There might be some slight variation in the sequence of some of the events as we know them, but to the extent possible, the events documented are, to my knowledge, correct. The reader needs to bear in mind that this event was reconstructed by Dr. Anderson ten years after the fact. Four out of the ten participants are dead. We will probably never really know exactly what all their actions were, but I agree with Dr. Anderson’s forensic analysis. [emphasis added]