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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It’s easy to think of self defense as a thing you do in response to a bad guy. After all, that’s what most self defense courses focus on: bad guy appears and you perform the indicated response.
So neat. So tidy. So precise.
And so misleading.
Self defense doesn’t start when the bad guy appears, or when he starts his attack, or when you make the decision to ...
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Sorry for not having a Hump Day List last week, but I was down with a nasty cold. What’s worse than a cold in summer? I don’t know and I don’t want to find out!
I get lots of questions from people who are just starting to suffer from arthritis, scared that their shooting days are coming to an end. It doesn’t ...
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Most people’s vacations are over and it’s back to the grind — but the Hump Day Reading List is here to give you a mid-week break!
What would you do if you or someone around you had a severe allergic reaction? It might be from a bee sting or a food allergy, but either (and more besides) can be dangerous ...
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In addition to this week’s great articles, I have an announcement!
I’ll be in Phoenix, AZ on December 1 & 2 teaching my Threat-Centered Revolver course at the beautiful Ben Avery Shooting Center. The weather in Phoenix that time of year is gorgeous, and I can’t think of a nicer place to be. Please plan to join ...
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Instructor Georges Rahbani showing a kneeling position with the defensive shotgun
If any firearm could be said to be overlooked, it’s the defensive shotgun. While not a tool for the inexperienced, it must be acknowledged that the shotgun loaded with a defensively-appropriate shell (preferably in the buckshot category) is a force to be reckoned with. As a tool for ...
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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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It’s the first Wednesday of August — time to get your learning on!
Turns out that carbon fiber knives are, in fact, detectable. The author of this article looks at materials for undetectable knives, what works and what doesn’t, as well as looking at whether these are tools you should even be considering. Excellent information.
I recently shared to my social media accounts a story of an attempt by a local government to impose storage restrictions on gun owners in their city. The ordinance specified that firearms had to be locked up, except when they were “in use” (whatever that means).
Of course this drew the ire of many people, including the NRA.
(Just to be clear, I am a proponent ...
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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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It’s been my observation that only a very small percentage of gun owners think deeply about this business of shooting another person. By that, I mean beyond the aspects of sight picture and trigger press.
What brought this to mind were the reactions of people to a recent story out of Oklahoma.
It seems the owner of a vacant home had tired of people breaking ...
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I haven’t let this heat wave stop me from gathering more great self defense and preparedness articles for you! (Now, where did that iced tea go…)
“I don’t need to identify my target, because I can tell my girlfriend’s steps from an intruder in the dark”. Someone actually told me that, in explanation for not having ...
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The great physicist Werner Heisenberg is responsible for describing a very interesting phenomenon in quantum physics: our observations effect the behavior of quanta (quantum particles). In other words, by simply observing an experiment, it’s possible that we inadvertently change the outcome.
Quantum physics gets really weird after that, but this is as far we need to go. For now.
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Be sure to join me tonight at 6:pm PDT/9:pm EDT for another great episode of Training Talk, the Personal Defense Network show where we talk about preparing and equipping for that “worst case scenario” to keep you and your loved ones safe.
My guest this week is attorney James Fleming, and we’ll be talking about some common — and wrong — ideas about self defense training and the law.
Here’s the link to the show page, which goes LIVE this evening. I hope you ...
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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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No matter what the preparedness focus, be it just self defense or a full-blown disaster, in the back of everyone’s mind is a little voice that wonders if they’re not being just a little silly.
“After all”, the little voice says, “you’re spending a lot of your time, energy, and money on something you don’t know for sure will ever come to pass. What if it ...
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Our country was founded on what was, at the time, a unique idea: that people have rights, and that their government should respect and defend those rights.
One of the things our founding fathers left unsaid — perhaps because they thought it so obvious that it didn’t need to be said — is that with rights always come responsibilities. We spend a lot of time ...
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A few weeks back I wrote an article on why I don’t entertain the notion of “what-if” scenarios. If you haven’t read it, you should.
On a somewhat related note, I also don’t entertain the notion of the foregone conclusion scenario. It’s the one that presupposes a specific outcome or a specific event in an effort to support a particular conclusion. For instance, I was going ...
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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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Why do so many survival kit suggestions have fishing gear in them?
Over the years I’ve noticed that survival/escape/bugout/get-home kit contents always seem to include fishing gear. I don’t mean poles, reels, and aluminum boats with fish-finding radar, but hooks, line, and perhaps some weights.
The idea is that if you’re stranded somewhere you can pull out the hooks, attach them to some line, and drop them ...
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Wednesday the 13th is extra lucky, and I’ll prove it by sharing some really great articles to help keep you and your family safer and more secure!
This article from the Preparedness Advice blog is pure gold. The author looks at five pieces of common preparedness advice and takes each one apart, and I agree with just ...
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Let’s assume, for the moment, that you have a perfect teenager. He or she is always polite, gets schoolwork in on time, excels in extracurricular activities, has above-average SAT scores, and has never been in trouble at school — or anywhere else, for that matter.
This is a kid you can trust, and who has never betrayed that trust. You can rely on him or her ...
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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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In my job I get some wonderful emails from people who’ve read one of my books or taken one of my classes. I also get awful emails, usually from people who’ve done neither of those things.
There is a special class of email, though, that I really dislike getting. It’s the “but what if…” question about something I’ve said or written regarding the use of ...
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This week I bring you more great articles to help you and your loved ones live safer lives. Why not grab a beverage and do some reading?
An introduction to some of the ways to keep your guns from being stolen. (Frankly, I wish the author had simply said “never keep guns in your car, period.” I realize that ...
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The concept of minimalism intrigues me, because of its emphasis on personal growth rather than the acquisition of things. It forces one to ask “what’s important to me?” and “what do I really need?” rather than “oh, look, free shipping if I spend more money than I originally intended to!”
Sadly, in this case the self defense and firearms media is always working against you.
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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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A couple of decades back I started to talk to my defensive shooting students about the likelihood of being attacked and needing to use their firearm to defend themselves. It seemed to me that some people, based on their lifestyle and habits, were more likely to need to use lethal force than others.
It also seemed to me that, even when the defensive firearm was ...
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Is it Wednesday again already? How time flies when I’m collecting articles to share with you!
Krebs on Security posted this article about credit card skimmers — but this time there’s a new wrinkle: they were placed on card scanners at the checkout lines of grocery stores, right under the noses of the clerks. He even ahs video of ...
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