Reality Based Training

When you train for something, you want your training to be as close to the real thing as possible. We can think of many occasions where people actually engage in their activity of choice for practice. People play basketball to practice basketball. Drill alone will not make them a better player. Musicians practice by actually playing their instruments... not simply reading music and imagining their movements. The same can be said for dancer, painters, carpenters, etc... just about any skill.

Then what about those of us who train to engage in deadly situations? You can't exactly practice a gunfight. Or can you? It's true that there are some amazing technologies and installations that allow great training. Kill houses and Simunition being at the top of that list. Where the threat gets as real as it can without actually throwing real ouchy, hurty, killy bullets your direction. But why is it so important? Why cant you go to the range, practice drawing, firing your rounds, and re-holstering and call it good? It's because deadly threats will never present themselves as static targets with bulls-eyes painted on their chests. You may be really good at shooting a three inch grouping at 10 yards.... but see how well you do it when there is a criminal bearing down on you with a knife intent on doing you harm.

A day at the range and a home invasion are not even close. If you think so, you are training for failure.

Let's break it down a little farther. Let's take a simple home invasion. Let's assume you have a family, they are asleep, and a bad guy forces a door open and comes in. You grab your gun and intend on ensuring your family's safety. Here are the factors you may not have considered: It's probably a low light situation. Is that a knife or gun in his hand or the steak he was planning on throwing to the family guard dog? that could be the difference between justifiable homicide and murder. You may be in an unconventional shooting position. Peering around corners with feet dodging furniture and other obstacles, it's going to be pretty hard to keep that weaver stance. You have to think about where your bullets could go if you miss... or if the bad guy misses. We all know the "Know your target, and what's behind it rule", but how often do you consciously review that before you press the trigger? I can safely say that pretty much no one at a range ever consciously thought about where the bullets go after punching a neat little hole in your paper target. Your rounds can go through walls and injure sleeping family members. And yes, I hear the cries of "That's why I use hollow point or frangible ammunition". Sure, that works for you.... but what about Mr. Badguy? I'm sure that when he got his bullets, he was thinking about shooting through walls accidentally. Are you inviting stray pullets to go past you and injure a family member? Then there is the mental and physical trauma associated with coming face to face with someone who may try to kill you. Oh and the tunnel vision that may not allow you to see Badguy's buddy.

What happens when all this is put together? The heart rate increases to levels that under any other circumstances would warrant a visit to the ER. Your thinking brain gets hijacked by your instinctive brain. Logical thinking and fine motor skills go out the window. You actually revert to a neanderthal like state of physical and mental ability. As crazy as it sounds, it's well documented. It's the reason police officers in gunfights miss 80% of the time. It's all about your body trying to preserve itself. And it does that by increasing the heart rate, releasing chemicals that cause faster blood clotting, blocking the pain senses, eliminating complex thought, tightening muscles ( your body actually hardens your muscles to create a kind of armor that harder to penetrate), and increasing cellular energy production. Put all that together, and you become a very different person. How do we overcome this to be effective in life-threatening situations?

Reality based training is the answer. You will interact with situations that artificially create those body fight responses and your thinking brain and start to adapt. Think of the first skydive with the one-thousandth. How different would they feel from a physiological perspective. You would go from being out of your mind scared to calm, cool, and collected. A place where you could deal with a chute failure or other malfunction. Something you could not have done your first time around. Don't let your first gunfight be your first gunfight.

Master the fundamentals with good practice and technique.  Think beyond the tangible. You will fight how you train... so train how you want to fight. A static caveman with a bulls-eye painted on his chest? Or a mobile, thinking warrior?

Stay Low, Move Fast

Kill First, Die Last

One Shot, One Kill

No Luck, All Skill

Blame Game

A few days ago, another unfortunate incident happened where a 12 year old boy lost his life because he did something stupid. Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police who were responding to a 911 call about a male who appeared to be pulling a gun out of his pants. Police told the boy to raise his hands and was shot when he tried to pull the "gun" from his pants. It turned out to be an airsoft gun without the orange warning tip. Details are limited as the investigation is ongoing.

The investigation is not the point of this post. The point is about the public hysteria that is happening. People are crying racism, that police officers need to show restraint, the he WAS 12 YEARS OLD how much threat could he be, cops are nothing but power-drunk bullies. Many people are blaming everyone but the boy. Now, I don't mean to make light of the fact that he was killed and loss of life is a terrible thing. Is getting killed the appropriate punishment for a mistake like this? No. So, something is to blame. But what or who do we blame? The officers who fired the shots are the easy answer but not the right one. That's like blaming the train that smashes into a car trying to run the crossing. You cannot blame things down the line of cause and effect. Yes, the train was the one that smashed the driver into little pieces and yes, it was the responding officer who fired the fatal shots. But what happened before this incident to set things in motion? With the train, it would be someone making a foolish decision to try it in the first place, perhaps it is because of his parents who didn't properly warn about the dangers of playing chicken with a train. Did Tamir know better than to play with a realistic looking toy that way? Did he know better than to do exactly what officers tell you? If he did then it was his fault and he paid the ultimate price. If he didn't, who's to blame then? I say parents. Plain and simple, the parents are responsible and they are paying a high price as well for their lack of proper parenting.

The public must stop falling for sensationalism! Put responsibility where it is due and not on the easy scapegoat. If we do not, we are heading down a very dark road.

More Intimate but Less Personal

There is no argument about the fact that the internet has revolutionized the way we interact with each other. Whether that is for better or for worse is the question.

Some would point to the fact that we can share information almost instantly from almost anywhere in the world. That ideas can flow freely from one person to others in real time. We can digitally store our photos, videos, and documents on "the cloud" where they can't be destroyed by fire, or hard drive crash.

But then there is the other side of the coin. Everything we do on the internet, everything we ever post is there forever. Nothing ever gets totally deleted. With so many young people publishing their foolish mistakes for all of Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter to see; no one can yet say for certain what ramifications that may have for the future. We can create digital copies of ourselves though our Facebook or Linkedin Profile, our Twitter, Youtube Channel, Instagram Account, Blogs, and other media sharing outlets.

Despite what you may think, interacting with others on that level isn't interaction person to person. Our digital selves are interacting with other digital selves. Recreations that may or may not actually emulate a persons character, beliefs, or mannerisms. More often than not, they are not even close to the real person. Humans are so complex that human-made digital personas could never even begin to capture the real person. In the touch of a few keys, we can find out where someone works, what high school they went to, the names of their kids, their pictures, jokes they find funny, commentaries about events, opinions on beliefs. All things that used to be reserved for your closes circle of friends. But now that old acquaintance from high school that you had one class with one year is put in the same circle as your spouse. I dare say that is too much intimacy for one and not intimate enough for the other.

The internet has created additional social scourges. The advent of slacktivism and the ability to personally attack anyone you don't see eye with has made everything less personal. Profile images and stylizes names represent the front of an interaction instead of looking someone in the eye to tell them that you are praying for them, that you support their cause, or think they are the dumbest piece of shit to ever walk the planet.

People are loosing their social skills and replacing them with social media skills. We will eventually produce a generation that does not know how to communicate face to face. The flourish of the well spoken word will disappear in the same fashion as the elegant handwriting of the greatest generation. You don't have to have special tools to look ahead and see the cliff ahead.... you just have to look up from your smartphone.

Real Men

What makes a real man? Where has the art of manliness gone? I would postulate that manliness is getting lost with all the other skills that have been fading away over the past several decades. To name a few: spelling, handwriting, etiquette, respect, and many more. When did people stop caring about what was happening in places other than their own sphere of influence, which despite the internet has grown increasingly smaller. Why is manliness associated with sexism and bigotry? To embrace who you are is only okay if who you are is a gender neutral, morally flexible, doer of much, master of nothing, acutely unaware of anything beyond your Starbucks kind of person. And I use the word "person" carefully because that's probably offensive to some group that doesn't like species segregation. After all, aren't we all just blobs of biological conglomeration floating around in the good vibe ether? Like it or not, there are biological differences between species and between genders. To vilify and emasculate the male gender will break down society in a way humans cannot yet understand. There are always balances, yins and yangs, pushes and pulls. To promote one over the other without realizing their complimentary nature leads to disaster.

Men have a responsibility to rise to their gender. Nut up or shut up. Be competent at a lot of things. Be diverse in your learning. Acknowledge the beauty of both a revving engine and a flower in their own rights. Draw moral lines and dare anyone to cross them. Stand up for something even if you know you are going to get knocked down. Learn to try and fail and try again. Don't be afraid to get hit in the jaw... just make sure you have the balls to hit back just as hard.

This quote taken from a novel does a good job of summing up skills that every man should have. Think about it and if you can't do all that, maybe there are some skills to learn.
"A [man] should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Baby Oil and Fame

When did we become a culture where the guy who sprays baby oil on Kim Kardashian's bare ass becomes a pseudo celebrity overnight? In case you happen to not pay much attention to any entertainment news, here's the picture that has everyone buzzing:

This picture has for some reason managed to make headlines everywhere and the "lucky" guy who got to apply the baby oil used for this shoot is also thrust into the spotlight. Why? Apparently he "has the best job in the world". I disagree. Firstly, it's Kim Kardashian; a person that has a laundry list of questionable things on her celebrity resume. A person who's only fame has been derived from doing outrageous things on camera. This will only add to that laundry list of embarrassing feats. So I don't consider being in her presence very gratifying.... even if the rest of the world is in envy of her body. Secondly, when is being the baby oil flunky anything to brag about? It's kind of like bragging about cleaning Beyonce's toilet.... not that impressive.

So what does this tell us about our current society? Not much.... other than the fact that a large portion of people consider this newsworthy. And that is sad.

Into the Fray

If you haven't seen "The Grey" starring Liam Neeson, you should. It is story that grips the soul and refuses to let go. The Grey depicts a great struggle for survival, the human condition, existence of God, and strength of will. While there are some glaring issues involving the reality of the major plot elements, it it well done and the flaws do not detract from the message. A word of warning: It earns it's R-rating for it's language and depictions of violence. Remember, the best stories hit you in the gut and leave questions to answer.

That being said, I will not spoil the movie by quoting a poem used in the movie:

Once more into the fray... 

Into the last good fight I'll ever know... 

To live and die on this day... 

To live and die on this day...

For those who follow the path of Bushido, these words have a deep meaning.  No mention of victory or defeat is made. For a warrior, the glory isn't in victory: It is in the fight itself. To truly live means to face death with a smile and an indomitable spirit. The result of the battle becomes much less significant when the battle is fought for the right reasons. Death becomes a simple consequence of doing the things that must be done.  The last lines of a quote attributed to Tecumseh sums Bushido up very well: 

"When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

For most people this sentiment may be meaningless and indecipherable and perhaps that is where it should be left.

Why I Carry A Gun....

Why do I carry a gun?

I don’t carry a gun to kill people.
I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don’t carry a gun to scare people.
I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid.
I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m evil.
I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I hate the government.
I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m angry.
I carry a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don’t carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.
I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don’t carry a gun to make me feel like a man.
I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don’t carry a gun because I feel inadequate.
I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don’t carry a gun because I love it.
I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me

I carry a gun for the same reason I wear a seat belt while driving, lock the doors and have a security system in my house, have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in my house, wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, keep tools, flashlight and spare tire in my automobile, wear insulated gloves when working with high voltage, and stock food and water during hurricane season.

It is planning ahead of time for my safety. Hopefully I will never need to use it, but it is available should the need arise.

United States case law has found that Law Enforcement Agencies are under no legal responsibility to protect you should you call.

A person can be killed in the blink of an eye with a gun, in minutes with a knife, in seconds with a blunt instrument. Average police response time (in a city) is 10 minutes from the time 911 is called.

Whether you like it or not, someone will risk their life (and possibly give it) to protect yours. Will you let someone else give everything, make their children orphans, make their wives widows, and remove one more good person from this world? My life isn't worth that much.

Because I can't run with those who I am obliged to protect on my back, and I will not leave them behind!

God isn't going to miracle my butt out of every bad situation. He gave me a brain in the same manner you give a man a fishing pole instead of a fish.

If you don't know now, I can't tell you.

There is evil in this world. There are rapists, murderers, tyrants, and other butchers. In the unfortunate event that we are confronted with such vileness, and escape is impossible, there are two choices: submit or fight.

The sanctity of the innocent victim cannot be protected through submission. The innocence of a child, the life of a sibling, and the freedom of a nation cannot be protected through submission to intolerable acts.

I will not submit. I will not look on, as savage cruelties are inflicted upon my fellow man. 

I will fight. And I will be prepared for that fight.