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If, by “expert”, you mean someone with a significant amount of first-hand experience in the activity (i.e., shooting people who attacked them) .
Here’s the dirty little secret no one in this business will admit to: none of us have enough — in most cases any — shooting experience defending ourselves against a criminal attacker, sufficient to derive lessons worth teaching.
No one you’ll find ...
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Welcome to the Hump Day Reading List! Here are what I believe to be the three most important articles you can read this week to enhance your personal and family safety:
When we speak of defensive shooting with a handgun, there are two likely ranges: within arm’s reach ...
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Welcome to the Hump Day Reading List! Here are what I believe to be the three most important articles you can read this week to enhance your personal and family safety:
About a decade ago, I started talking publicly about the idea of context: the condition or environment in which something can be understood ...
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Welcome to the Hump Day Reading List! Here are what I believe to be the three most important articles for you to read this week.
We in the defensive training world spend most of our time talking about the neat stuff: shooting, punching, kicking, and the like. We spend very little to no time on ...
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Today I’m proud to announce the publication of a new book: PRAYING SAFE — The professional approach to protecting faith communities!
This book is all about helping churches, synagogues, temples — religious institutions of all types — protect themselves from a wide range of threats.
This book came about because my co-author, Joshua Gideon, and I have grown annoyed with the superficial and often ...
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It’s Wednesday, and time once again for my hand-picked selection of this week’s best articles to increase your safety, security, and survivability!
Cecil Burch is “the guy” when it comes to dealing with attackers who are in physical contact with you. In this informative PDN video, Cecil introduces a simple yet effective “survival posture” to ensure you’ll stay ...
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I unearthed some really good articles for you this week. Read them and increase your safety, security, and survivability!
Whether it’s a criminal attack or a natural disaster, many people — perhaps, even, most people — simply don’t believe it will happen to them. This is an insightful article about why people don’t take threats ...
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It’s Halloween, and I’ve got some great stories to help you tackle frightening topics!
In the self defense world, many people seem to have comfortable ideas of how things happen in defensive incidents. That was fine back in the days when we didn’t have objective evidence, but today we do — and yet many misconceptions still exist. Cecil ...
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This story made the rounds of social media last week. For those who haven’t seen it (or the graphic video shot by the girlfriend of the man who was eventually killed in the confrontation), the story boils down to neighbors having an ongoing disagreement over trash between their domiciles.
The argument had apparently escalated over time, to the point that one party showed ...
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I’ve got an interesting mix of articles for you this week, all of which I believe to be worth your time to read. Yes, even the infuriating one at the end!
How should you handle a traffic stop when you’re carrying a defensive firearm? Greg Ellifritz is a police officer in Ohio, and he has some thoughts on the matter. ...
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We may be in the dog days of summer, but I don’t think you’ll find any dogs in this week’s selection of defensive preparedness articles!
This year I finally became an Uber user and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Turns out, though, that there are scams Uber drivers can (and do) pull on people. Here are the most common ...
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I found more interesting articles for this week’s List, some of them guaranteed to make you think twice!
I’m not sure where to start with this article, but I’ll boil it down to this: Just because an alarm goes off doesn’t mean there’s a threat, and blindly firing through a closed door without first ascertaining an actual ...
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Wow, is it ever hot here in Oregon! If it’s scorching where you are, cool off with a nice beverage and these great articles!
This is an article about how a photographer gets access to make pictures at the top of high-rise buildings. But it’s not a photography article! The reason it’s interesting and ...
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Believe it or not, the job I do isn’t actually all that pleasant. I’ve run into a lot of people who tell me they’d “love” to have my job; they tell me that “it must be fun”. They see the travel, or focus on the guns and shooting, without thought to what those things represent.
Trust me, it’s not all sunshine.
The reality ...
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It’s another Hump Day, and I’m here to share some more great personal defense and preparedness articles with you. (Which is actually redundant, because personal defense is but one form of preparedness, though not everyone realizes that — yet!)
A self defense plan (which is really just a part of an overall preparedness plan) is, I believe, ...
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It’s the first Wednesday of June? Why, let’s celebrate with some great self defense, personal safety, and family preparedness articles!
When you have children, defense planning gets substantially more complicated. The younger they are, the more impact they have. This article looks at the five biggest myths people have about keeping their kids safe, and it’s worth reading.
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I have no witty introduction this week, just a hand-curated assortment of articles that are worth your time to read. And a plug for my PDN show at the end (don’t miss it!)
I cover proper grasp in depth in my Threat-Centered Revolver course, because I believe it to be the single most important step to shooting ...
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It’s Wednesday, and this week I have a particularly good selection of articles for your perusal!
Tomorrow evening, April 5, be sure to tune into Training Talk on Personal Defense Network. My special guest expert this week is Joshua Gideon, and we’ll be talking about active killers: what can we do to stop them? We’ll be looking at the ...
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For at least a decade I’ve subscribed to the idea that a teacher needs to be open to change, and that in fact one of the best ways to gauge the quality of a teacher is to ask what he (or she) has changed their mind about. If they’re learning, if they’re growing, they’ll experience evolution in ...
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Last week I talked about the mistaken notion of seeing self defense and personal safety as a battle to be won, because such a mindset can lead to bad decisions. Today let’s look at a related topic: your view of the place for your concealed carry gun might be affected by some mistaken training notions.
Shortly after I wrote last week’s article someone sent me ...
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It’s almost the Ides Of March, but I’m not going to stab you in the back — instead, my new camel caravan has brought information to keep you from being stabbed by the sharp knives of misfortune of all kinds!
Preparedness is more than just guns; I advocate an approach that recognizes the wide range of hazards you face, and ...
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In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a fan of macho nonsense. And I don’t particularly care where it comes from.
So much of the defensive training world is built around the lifestyles of people who spend all their free time on the range or at the gym; some shooting instructors quite literally live at the shooting range. Surprisingly few of them have ever held ...
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It’s the last day of February and I’m finishing out the month with more great resources for your health and safety!
It’s probably fitting that, in some circles, I’m known as “The Revolver Guy”. I’ve written what have been called the “standard works” on the topic, teach one of the few national revolver-centric courses ...
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Happy Valentine’s Day! Here are some Hump Day articles to help keep you and your Valentine safe, secure, and happy!
It’s not exactly a secret that my concealed carry autoloading pistol-of-choice is a Steyr S9-A1. I started carrying its predecessor, the S9, more than a decade and a half ago; it’s reasonable to say that between the two ...
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What’s great about Wednesday, you ask? Why, the great articles on self defense and preparedness that I have for you, of course!
Man sees teenager rifling through his car and goes out with his gun to confront said teenager. He decides to hold the teenager at gunpoint while they wait for the cops to arrive, and when the ...
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A popular concept taught in many defensive shooting courses (including mine) is movement off the line of attack. It’s variously referred to as “getting off the X” or “lateral movement”, and probably some other terms I’m not remembering, but the concept is pretty consistent: make it harder for the bad guy to hurt you by getting out of his way.
In both the self defense and prepping communities, people talk about preparing — training and equipping — for “the worst case scenario”. “We train for the worst case”, schools brag (and their students claim).
What, actually, is the worst case?
If you were to take a little time (or perhaps watch an apocalyptic movie or two) I’m sure you could imagine an absolute ...
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With the recent attack on a church in Texas, in which 26 people were killed and dozens injured, many people are looking for ways to prevent or respond to such attacks. And there are others ready to prey on that need with bad or incomplete information. Everyone, it seems, is suddenly a “Church Security Consultant”.
As a result you can find lots of misguided articles and ...
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Any preparations you’ve made for your safety and protection — whether physical skills, gear and equipment, or storage commodities — need to be maintained to be useful. There is a cost to maintenance, and it’s one we often ignore in our zeal to always acquire more.
That cost may affect your ability to respond efficiently ...
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As I write this it’s been five days since a man opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding over 500. While information is still being processed by law enforcement, and there are still many unanswered questions about the motives of the attacker, enough information has come out about the circumstances of the incident that we can ...
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