The Centerline Blade
I’ve carried some sort of blade on me for over 30 years, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “Knife Guy.” I can’t tell you why one type of steel is better than another and other such things, and…
Playing The Odds
If you’ve been in one of my concealed carry classes, you know that I quote a statistic from a 2022 Georgetown University study which showed that 81.9% of lethal force encounters end without a shot being fired. The bad guy…
Lessons From New Orleans
Normally I follow the 72 Hour Rule and don't comment on these incidents until we know more about them, but I think there is enough information right now to talk about how everything went down and what we can learn…
Lose Your Illusions
There was a recent discussion on social media about why some people are obsessed with learning how to shoot from the driver’s seat of their car. Speaking as someone who set the internet on fire when he suggested that car…
Philosophy Is The Talk On A Cereal Box.
Creating the Cadre Sessions has given me a chance to think about my own particular teaching style. Every instructor starts off mimicking a style, be it of the NRA/USCCA instructor who taught them or some other trainer they’ve learned from.…
So Anyway, I Started Blasting
I like competing in practical pistol, and honestly, I don’t do it these days as often as I should. I am much more in the defensive mindset now than I was a dozen years ago, where I would shoot at…
Picture This
From 1990 to 2001, I was an editorial and advertising photographer. I had a decent client list (IBM, HP, Sports Illustrated) and shot thousands of frames each month. Heck, sometimes each week. I had decent gear, Hassies for medium format,…
Normalcy Bias Is Far Too Normal
I live in a small community that’s literally built around a large Catholic church. It’s full of “good people” who love God, raise families and regularly vote Republican. Oh, and there was a domestic violence incident here today where one…
With A Bit Of A Mind Flip
“An ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.” - Harry Dean Stanton, “Repo Man” I’m working on standing up the security team for my church, and part of that…
Mass Hysteria
My friend and mentor Michael Bane had a great podcast episode this week on the difference between a mass shooting and an active killer. I will confess that tended to confuse the two before I listened to his podcast (and…