You’re Not Fooling Anybody
This comment was left on a recent video I did. "I wear a 5.11 vest. In 29 years I have had approximately six people ask me if I was a fisherman or a photographer." Six people realized "That ain't right"…
Signalling Your Intent
There's an interesting quote in this article by John Farnam on open carry: “Security discussed is security compromised.” As he sees it, a defensive firearm in plain sight is a firearm that is not as effective as it could be…
Seeing The Elephant
Many years ago, I attended a two-day training class with a rather famous firearms trainer who was also a veteran law enforcement officer. Not only that, but he had served many years on his agency's SWAT team and was the…
Three By Three By Three
Claude Werner has an interesting drill based on the "three yards, three rounds, three seconds" rubric for armed self defense. I'm neutral as to whether this idea is as applicable to the armed citizen as it is to law enforcement,…
The Expert’s Gun
I spent many a night in the darkroom of my local community college when I first started out on my (successful) quest to be a photographer, learning how to do black & white prints from 35mm negatives. The skill level…
Can We Get Serious Here?
What separates a serious practitioner of the martial art of concealed carry (or someone who has fully embraced the concealed carry lifestyle) from the casual gun owner? I saw this question on social media recently, and my answer was, "A…
Trainer or Therapist?
Maybe we're approaching the 1 Percent Problem from the wrong perspective. We know, by the numbers, that almost 82% percent of all armed encounters end without a shot being fired: All the armed citizen needed to do was a) have…
Justified Use Of Force
Justified was one of my favorite TV shows. The dialogue just sparkled, and the gun handling was... okay. There was one scene in particular, though, where Raylan Givens, our hero, is confronted by Dewey Crowder, a sub-genius bad guy who…
Par For The Course
I just finished up a piece for Springfield Armory on the implications of Karl Rehn's "Beyond The One Percent" series, where he lays out that only one percent of gun owners take any training beyond the bare minimum required by…
50 Rounds And A Cloud of Dust
I have never been a big fan of all-day practice sessions. I am not a sponsored shooter. I don’t have an ammo contract, and while yes, I could round up some practice ammo from the people I know in the…