Knowledge to make your life better. If you have some free time, check out some of these links this weekend.

Very valuable information for those of you contemplating buying your first AR-15 rifle.

I love studying the history of firearms training and how it has evolved over the last 100 years. Articles like this are a great way to look back and learn about the origins of the concepts we teach today. This is an article from a 1960 issue of Guns Magazine. It’s written by the iconic Elmer Keith and covers how he trains to quickly draw and hit his target.

I’m sad to say that most of the “Gun Culture 2.0” crowd has never heard of Elmer Keith and lots of men like him who were the world’s foremost gunfighting authorities in the last century. Read this one. It’s long by today’s magazine article standards, but is quite worth your time. If you like Elmer’s style, read Hell, I was There.

“Stevens cautions that officers need to “train with a purpose,” build and reinforce good habits in training, and “avoid the temptation to be lazy and take shortcuts” during training. He believes that “training is a gift, a privilege,” and encourages officers to make the most of it, because, “We don’t choose the moment, it chooses us.”

His exceptional performance in his first-ever officer involved shooting is a testament to the power of good training and a personal dedication to wringing the most out of it that you can.”

Performing difficult tasks (either physically or mentally) will help prepare you to better defend yourself in a difficult scenario. Get out there. Try something difficult. Push through until you succeed. Repeat over and over again for the duration of your life.

“Most frightening are the parallels he draws between rodent and human society. “I shall largely speak of mice,” he begins, “but my thoughts are on man.” Both species, he explains, are vulnerable to two types of death—that of the spirit and that of the body. Even though he had removed physical threats, doing so had forced the residents of Universe 25 into a spiritually unhealthy situation, full of crowding, overstimulation, and contact with various mouse strangers. To a society experiencing the rapid growth of cities—and reacting, in various ways, quite poorly—this story seemed familiar. “

“The right question is, “What happens to us if we don’t pursue our dreams?””

“Don’t get me wrong. Tourniquets are great for saving lives and no medical kit is complete without at least one. However, it’s important to distinguish the difference between the battlefield and a crowded concert venue so that better training, mindset, and gear can be disseminated among first responders of Active Shooter Incidents.”

Want to dig even deeper? Read Incidence and Cause of Potentially Preventable Death after Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the US. From that study:

“RESULTS: 19 events including 213 victims were reviewed. The average number of gunshot wounds per victim was 4.1. Sixty-four percent of gunshots were to the head and torso. The most common cause of death was brain injury (52%). Only 12% (26 victims) were transported to the hospital and the PPD rate was 16% (34 victims). The most commonly injured organs in those with PPD were the lung (59%) and spinal cord (24%). Only 1% of PPD victims had a gunshot to a vascular structure in an extremity.”

Some very important tips if you don’t want to be swindled during your travels.

Very important information about the role of reloading in a combative encounter.

I think I’ve heard all of these.

“I thought I couldn’t carry a gun the size of a Glock 19 because it prints too much. Turns out it was printing because I was trying to carry in a garbage holster on a garbage belt in a t-shirt that I probably bought from baby Gap back when I had abdominal muscles that were nice to look at.”

Does your spouse or another family member regularly go armed? Have you ever discussed some of the issues that need to be considered with regards to “partner tactics?” If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second question, I would submit that it’s time to have this discussion.

“We speak often of instilling men and women with purpose. We know that a sense of purpose can be a firewall against despair and hopelessness. But with young men, our task is more specific. It’s to instill him with a sense of virtuous masculine purpose. How does he cultivate his essential nature to virtuous ends — especially in the face of the twin challenges of ideologies that will say that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the pursuit itself and with a developing, high-tech economy that deprives many millions of men of the opportunity to cultivate and use their inherent physical strength and sense of adventure of their work.

Let’s face it. It’s hard to feel like there’s a distinctive masculine way to inhabit a cubicle.”

Cecil teaches us a very high percentage Jiu Jitsu technique.

“Maybe what we want sucks.

For example, I want a life-size bag of marshmallows in my living room. I want to buy an eight-million-dollar mansion by borrowing money I can never pay back. I want to fly to a new beach every week for the next year and live off nothing but Wagyu steaks.

What I want is fucking terrible. That’s because my Feeling Brain is in charge of what I want, and my Feeling Brain is like a goddamn chimpanzee who just drank a bottle of tequila and then proceeded to jerk off into it.”

I’ll be reading Mark’s new book.

“In any given year, for every person murdered with a rifle, there are 15 murdered with handguns, 1.7 with hands or fists, and 1.2 with blunt instruments. In fact, homicides with any sort of rifle represent a mere 3.2 percent of all homicides on average over the past decade.

Given that the FBI statistics pertain to all rifles, the homicide frequency of “assault-style” rifles like the AR-15 is necessarily lesser still, as such firearms compose a fraction of all the rifles used in crime.”

Good advice for you parents. Thanks to Grant Cunningham for digging up the link.

While I don’t think a bayonet on a self protection shotgun is all that useful, I generally agree with the author’s take on the shotgun in a combative role.

I carry an ankle holster every day at work. I think it’s a great location for a secondary or backup firearm, but a poor location for a primary weapon.

I’ve used all five of these strategies to improve my outlook on life. I think the first one is the most important. If you wouldn’t tolerate a stranger being intensely critical of your actions, why should you tolerate the same criticism from yourself?

The simple military triangular bandage (or cravat) is an essential part of your first aid kit. While it doesn’t do many tasks perfectly, it can serve as a perfectly adequate tourniquet, a bandage, wound packing material, a sling, a splint attachment or a dust mask. I carry one in my shirt pocket every day as a cop (in addition to the tourniquet, chest seal, and hemostatic gauze on my duty belt).

The new hotness in weapons-mounted rifle lights. I’m going to buy one of these for my duty AR-15. I’ll give you all a full report after I’ve run it hard.

This is a common garden “weed” that you should know about. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the plant almost looks like a succulent. It’s one of the more tasty edibles. Learn more about it HERE.

This is an absolutely fascinating podcast series about what a second Civil War would look like in America. The series starts with two episodes describing a scenario that would cause the right-wing to start the war, then an alternate scenario that would cause the left-wing to start the war. After these two episodes, the host looks at the likely effects of such an action.

The podcast writer states right off the bat that he has liberal political views. But unlike many liberals he also claims to have a self-described “fuckton” of guns including both AR-15 and AK-47 rifles. He grew up in Texas and has been shooting since he was seven years old. He seems to understand the gun world quite well.

The podcast has a slight leftist slant, but does a good job describing the competing narratives and motivations on both the right and the left. My hardcore right wing friends may not like some of what he says, but I think he explores the issues fairly.

It’s a frightening look at what may happen in America’s near future. I’ve listened to every episode now and have been entranced. I think a lot of you will like this one.

Thanks to Justin at The Revolver Guy for turning me on to it.

This is who will be coming to save you when you call 911. Oh, and open carry very clearly deters criminals. Read “Friends Don’t let Friends Open Carry” for 50 more incidents just like this targeting both armed citizens and cops who openly carry their firearms.

The original training version of the Ka-Bar TDI knife was discontinued several years ago. For those dedicated to the TDI platform, Andrew Henry makes this excellent trainer. Matt from Zulu Bravo Kydex can also make you a plastic trainer/sheath combination as well.

A rather unique take on the use of a bicycle during coming social unrest. He also shares some unconventional ways to carry a low profile long gun while riding. If you haven’t read Mr. Bracken’s work before, you’ll enjoy his books, especially his “Enemies” Trilogy.

The problems the author describes are real. Constant fight/flight adrenaline dumps cause cops to make bad decisions and take a toll on their health (both mental and physical). While the “resiliency training” and increased mental health counseling the author recommends might help, I propose a couple radically different solutions.

The first is to increase police skills and confidence. That adrenaline dump happens primarily when officers are scared. Quite simply if officers knew how to fight and shoot better, they wouldn’t get scared as often. I work patrol every day. I rarely get the adrenaline dump I would regularly get in my early years on the job when I didn’t have as much training. Now I know I can fight and shoot well. I know I can handle almost any situation I confront. That confidence dramatically reduces the number of harmful adrenaline dumps I experience.

Another even more controversial approach would be to have officers use psychedelic drugs in the presence of trained counselors and medical doctors during therapy sessions. There is a lot of underground research in psychedelic-assisted therapy going on right now. First responders and soldiers are using DMT, LSD, MDMA, and Ketamine during therapy to literally re-wire their brains. I personally know quite a few cops, soldiers, and paramedics who have experienced life changing improvements in their mental and physical health after a very small number of sessions of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Besides helping the patient better process past traumatic experiences, the “ego death” one experiences when using these medicines helps a person come to terms with his own physical death. As one prominent facilitator of such sessions once told me “Dying is easy after you’ve done it a few times.” First responders who don’t fear their own deaths don’t get as scared in life-threatening situations. They don’t get that big fight/flight response that causes all the health problems the author describes.

Both of these solutions are proven to work. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. With that said, I don’t think they will ever be commonly used in law enforcement.

Most cops don’t want to do the hard work in training to become truly adept fighters and shooters. Many of the psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions are illegal (at least in the USA) and place officers at risk of losing their jobs. There are a few practicing physicians who legally work with these chemicals (generally ketamine or analogs of the other drugs that haven’t yet been scheduled), but they are hard to find and aren’t likely covered by the officers’ insurance. Getting into one of the few legal FDA studies using MDMA is almost impossible.

Officers aren’t going to risk their jobs or take the chance of going to jail using Schedule 1 controlled substances in the USA. Not many will travel to countries like Peru and Brazil where these same substances are legal and constitutionally protected as religious expressions.

These facts don’t give me much hope for the future of those folks who want to spend a career as a first responder. We are going to continue to see a lot of broken cops and firefighters who lack the resources or determination to change their fates.

For more information about how stress affects performance, read The Difference between “Fight or Flight” and “Rest and Digest”.

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