Making friends with other gun carriers
(second in a series)
DALE CARNEGIE’S SECRETS OF SUCCESS (nee The Golden Book) is a valuable resource for improving our relationships with other members of the gun carrying community. The hard copy I have is six pages long. I’ve kept it on my desk for over 20 years since I went through Dale Carnegie training. The book is available online as a free download.
https://www.dalecarnegie.com/en/resources/dale-carnegies-secrets-of-success
The first part of the book is a three page section called Principles from How to Win Friends and Influence People. It covers three topics.
- Become a Friendlier Person
- Win People to Your Way of Thinking
- Be A Leader
Each of the topics has a series of numbered bullet points that can guide our interactions with people. Here’s how we might apply those Principles in the situation of seeing someone whose way of carrying isn’t what we would ordinarily recommend.
Become a Friendlier Person
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
5. Smile.
2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.
- You’re carrying a gun – Excellent!
- Your holster has a safety strap.
6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Introduce yourself
- Ask the other person’s first name if they don’t give it in return.
7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
- What kind of gun is that? (Regardless if you know what it is.)
- How long have you been carrying?
- Have you done any training?
Questions are powerful, much more powerful than criticism, condemnation, or complaints. By starting a friendly interaction with a person and then asking kindly questions, we have the opportunity to be guides to people who are less knowledgeable than ourselves. It puts us in the position to Win Friends to our community and influence them to Success. Our people skills are the single most powerful weapon in our arsenal.
We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
–Benjamin Franklin
Can we be a little less judgmental?
(First in a series)
There’s a picture of a woman carrying a pistol non-doctrinally (i.e., a lot of people are unhappy with the way she’s doing it) circulating on the Internet now. The pistol is in a holster attached to her yoga pants and despite being a small pistol, it’s pulling her pants down some on that side. I’m not going to post the picture because it’s unnecessary to my point. The picture has generated almost universal criticism, the following being typical.
The freedom to carry a gun is a great thing.
But you will never, EVER convince me that carrying a gun without training is smart decision. If you’re untrained[,] you do stupid things like this, which actually puts you and those around you in more danger than if you were unarmed.
Carry a gun. But don’t be an untrained fool about it.
My comment about the picture is:
At least she has a gun and her holster has a safety strap.
“Get some training” is a meme in the industry. Unfortunately, both the size and the availability of the training base are very small. This is true even if every NRA and State certified CCW instructor is included in the number. There’s also the issue in my mind of those who make statements like this but got their training from the government while in the pay of the government. That generates an ethical issue you can ponder some time.
Here’s an infographic about the availability of training to gunowners. The concept of ‘the training base’ is something that people who haven’t had to regularly conduct resource intensive training for a lot of people simply don’t understand. Once again, it’s the Tactical Professor with those pesky little numbery things again.
That tiny triangle where the three circles overlap is the real availability of ‘training’
And my estimate of training facilities is based on those capable of supporting at least NRA Basic Pistol not any kind of ‘meaningful’ training for carrying a weapon. Basic Pistol or its equivalent is as far as most facilities are prepared to go, for various reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number where holster oriented training is allowed is less than 1,000. The good news is that the NRA Instructor base has grown to over 120,000 so we’re probably under 500 students per instructor now. Other good news is that the NRA Training Department has created a CCW course. However, that will take years to generate any significant number of CCW Certified Instructors.
Here’s my first question:
Did the person who took the picture approach the woman and offer to help her out with her knowledgebase, either personally or by referring her to someone who is a trainer?
As a community, we need to do a better job of the way we interact with beginners and novices instead of just being socially maladroit jackwagons and calling them fools.
More in the next installment.
BTW, my Concealed Carry Skills and Drills eBook would have been a nice reference to point her to or maybe even buy for her if the observer actually really cared about her welfare. Or was finger pointing, ego stroking, and shaming the real object of the exercise?
Tactical Professor books (all downloadable PDF files)
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
Helicopter crash
Fifteen years ago today.
30 Marines, 1 Sailor killed in helicopter crash
“While we mourn the loss of these heroes, we will honor their sacrifice by continuing our mission to bring democracy to the people of Iraq,” said Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general, I Marine Expeditionary Force.
Vallejo Parking Lot Shooting – Collateral Action
off-duty cop shoots and kills father-of-six
How about that as a way to describe a convicted felon who kept “a semi-automatic handgun with a 30-round magazine [in] its hiding place under the hood”
Hat tip to my friend and colleague Greg Ellifritz https://www.activeresponsetraining.net for bringing up the incident. Greg mentioned the fact that concealing weapons [and drugs] underneath the hood is a common technique for the criminal element.
The Vallejo POlice Department posted several videos of the incident on YouTube.
Video #4 is very useful from the collateral action (avoidance of becoming collateral damage) perspective.
It wasn’t these folks’ first rodeo; you don’t see them trying to get video for WorldStar.
Evaluating handguns for YOU
This subject came up again today and the evaluation criteria are worth repeating.
Before you buy a gun, you should go to a range that rents guns and try different ones out to see which one is best for you.
What does “try them out” mean? How do we measure “which one is best for you?” Here is a list of worthwhile items to evaluate for you to make an informed decision about an autoloading pistol. For those who are helping a prospective purchaser, demonstrate the technique but then place the pistol in a sterile (unloaded with slide forward) condition and let them do their own evaluation without comment or coaching. You won’t be there to coach them if they need to use the pistol for real; that’s part of the evaluation.
- Load the pistol. This has two components.
- Load a magazine to full capacity.
- Load the fully charged magazine into the pistol and chamber a round.
- Manipulate the controls of the pistol.
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Clarification about the .25 ACP
An article about the .25 ACP pistol cartridge came to my attention today. It says I endorse the use of that caliber for Personal Protection. This is not true. Through personal experimentation, not on humans, I have determined it simply does not have enough penetration to be a viable cartridge for the purpose.
The only incident in my database in which an Armed Citizen was seriously injured after shooting a criminal with a ‘mousegun’ occurred with a .25. The first round bounced off the attacker’s teeth at point blank range.
I would much rather have a .22LR for Personal Protection than any .25 ACP. At least it will penetrate a piece of wood enough to stick in. That has not been my experience the .25 ACP.
S&W 43C .22LR revolver
First shots of the decade
First shots of the decade for me. I was invited to a local indoor range, so I shot the Ill-Annoy POlice qual and the Swiss CCW qual with a .22 revolver and .22 autoloader.
The ammo was Winchester M22. The 43C had one Failure to Fire so I applied Immediate Action, to wit: press the trigger again. That solved the stoppage.
With the M&P 22 Compact I had no Failures to Fire or other stoppages.
The Ill-Annoy qual is 30 rounds and the Swiss qual is 18. The target for the Ill-Annoy qual is a piece of legal size paper in portrait mode, so I used my letter size equivalent. The specified target for the Swiss qual has a hit zone approximately equal to the -1 zone of an IDPA target so I used my letter size target to increase the challenge slightly.
They are both timed courses, which can be problematic on indoor ranges. I used theDry Fire Par Time Tracker phone app and corded the phone to Howard Leight Sync Muffs. That solution worked reasonably well.
It was nice to get out and do some shooting.
Muzzle direction
Muzzle direction is the primary safety; always has been, always will be. –Bill Rogers
Just a little reminder. It’s important even for a Jedi to remember Rule #2.
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make http://seriousgunownermistakes.com
Indoor Range Practice Sessions http://indoorrangepracticesessions.com
Concealed Carry Skills and Drills http://concealedcarryskillsanddrills.com
Advanced Pistol Practice http://bit.ly/advancedpistolpractice
Shooting Your Black Rifle http://shootingyourblackrifle.com
Updated version of Boyd’s Aerial Attack Study
The link for the updated version of the AAS changed slightly but is now correct.
Boyd’s Aerial Attack Study is the most useful of all his documents in terms of tactical theory. Hardly anyone has read it, though.
Thanks to Rob Pincus, I have found a cleaner copy of Colonel John Boyd’s Aerial Attack Study (AAS). It was recreated by Mr. Mark Hart from the declassified 1964 version. The recreation is much easier on the eyes than the reproductions of the original mimeographed edition that are generally available.
Prior to Colonel Boyd’s AAS, fighter combat was viewed by the majority of fighter pilots as an intuitive skill rather than one that could be codified. Some conceptual principles had been developed along with elementary tactics such as the Thach Weave, but Boyd was the one who wrote the definitive book. Only Major General Frederick “Boots” Blesse had preceded Colonel Boyd in writing a book, No Guts No Glory, about jet fighter combat. Major General Blesse’s book wasn’t the exhaustive treatise on the subject that the AAS was.
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Factors relevant to church shootings
After my initial thoughts about the White Settlement church shooting, a list of other relevant factors came to mind. The conversation about the incident mostly has centered around the ability to make a 12-15 yard head shot. The tactical factors have largely been ignored or overlooked. That’s a Strategic Mistake.
Here’s my list for those wishing to do their own research and METT-TC analysis.
tacticalprofessor 
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