Practicing Awareness
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Awareness – noun – Dictionary.com
“The state or condition of being aware; having knowledge; consciousness.”
One of the topics often stressed in the self-defense community is having ‘situational awareness.’ As my friend Craig Douglas says: “You can’t DO a noun.” Therein lies the core of the problem; we don’t teach people how to do it, so talking about it is mostly lip service.
When you want to learn to do something, you have to practice it. Once again, the dictionary defines practice as something done repeatedly or habitually. So if we want to learn to be aware, we need to work at it repeatedly. There are a number of ways that I practice my awareness and I do them every day, sometimes repeatedly.
In terms of awareness, one of my friends describes it as “what is wrong in my right world?” That’s one way of looking at it. A variant of that is “what is different or out of place?” That can be from the perspective of either what was before or what should be.
When I wake up, one of the first things I do is look out my front window. Is there anything different outside my home? Are there different cars there? Does the neighbor across the street have the porch light on, as it usually is? Is there anything different in my driveway or front yard? If not, then on with the day. If so, does it bear further investigation or do I just file that bit of information away? The essence of what I’m doing is checking for surveillance or an ambush. Having dealt with stalkers and possible attackers, both for clients and personally, I consider that very important in my daily routine.
I take a brisk walk around the neighborhood on a four day on, one day off schedule. The route I follow is the same so I can track my time to various checkpoints I’ve established. I don’t wear headphones, although occasionally I will have my phone playing John 00 Fleming Global Trance Grooves at a low level.
As I’m walking, I check out the houses, cars, and yards. I know them fairly well because I’ve been doing this regimen for almost two years. Which houses have been put up for sale and which have been taken off the market are obvious things that I look for. And there a lot of other things that I try to notice, such as cars, people, animals, etc.
Next post, I will list some of the things I observed and cataloged on today’s walk.
Stupid Caliber and Weapon Choices
I was helping teach a firearms familiarization class for spouses at my gun club around the year 2000. The class was oriented toward spouses who had little familiarity with firearms at all. Unsurprisingly, I was doing the handgun portion. The course of fire we had laid out was very basic, just a familiarization fire, nothing demanding at all, given the projected audience.
One of the attendees was a petite lady who brought along the gun her husband had given her for home defense and concealed carry; it was a .45 Colt Commander. She could hardly get her hand around the gun. The pistol was not particularly reliable as she shot it and I had to clear several malfunctions for her. He had never gone over the manual of arms for the pistol in any depth with her. Being the inquisitive type, I asked her if I could shoot it, which she readily agreed to. It didn’t run for me either. It was loaded with the ammunition he had given her, which appeared to be a handloaded H&G #68 lead SWC. I commented to her that perhaps a different pistol would be in order for her. She asked if I would tell her husband that because he was at the club that day and I told her I would be happy to.
At the clubhouse, I spoke to him and commented that the pistol didn’t run very reliably. He admitted he had handloaded some ammunition ‘a little lighter’ for her. I also told him that a different pistol all together might be in order for her. He said: “I was thinking that myself; I’m going to get her an H&K USP Compact in .40.”
Although most likely it fell on deaf ears, my reply was: “Well, I was thinking something more like a Beretta in .380.” I don’t know what the end result was.
For me, that was the beginning of the end of recommending full size service pistols for novice shooters and non-dedicated personnel. The gun has to fit the person and their lifestyle or it’s simply not useful as a tool. While not malicious in intent, the end result of that gentleman’s ‘choice’ for her was not really far removed from those idiots that we see on YouTube who give a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with magnum buckshot to a first time woman shooter.
Different kinds of experience
There’s a saying among police officers that “Some police have 20 years of experience and some have one year of experience 20 times.” What that means is that some people do the same things over and over again in the same way. They don’t learn from their experiences and they don’t try to expand their experience base or skillset.
That’s not the way my personal approach to life works. In this blog, I am going to relate the things that have broadened my experience and skills. That’s a never ending process for me. Hopefully, you will find something of value in it.
tacticalprofessor 