Retrieving the rifle: an overlooked skill

One of the things I teach is the idea that the rifle is the gun we are most unlikely to have on our person when we need it. It’s the firearm that needs to be retrieved in order to use, and that affects how we train and practice.

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On August 23, 2019

The myth of the “concealed carry lifestyle”

People very often refer to concealed carry as a “lifestyle”. I’m not sure I can agree with that. A lifestyle is a behavioral pattern which expresses how someone sees him or herself, and how they want others to see them. Their activities, opinions, and even how they spend their money are all reflected in […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On July 19, 2019

How to get prepared in three easy steps

I admit to a bit of creative over-simplification in today’s title, but there’s an important lesson in it. My wife and I were walking in the woods recently, and the topic of conversation touched on preparedness. Rather, the lack of preparedness amongst a large percentage of the adult population. How the other three-quarters lives […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On June 28, 2019

There are no defensive shooting experts.

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On June 7, 2019

The critical skill no one teaches

The ability to judge risk is critical to the long game of self defense. (As it happens, it’s also critical to efficient preparedness, investing your retirement funds wisely, and the choice between flying or driving to your vacation destination.) Yet, despite its importance, it’s very rarely talked about — especially in the self defense community. […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On October 15, 2018

Interchangeable chokes for defensive shotguns? Why not!

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. […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On August 20, 2018

Safe storage and self defense aren’t incompatible

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, […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On August 6, 2018

The best defense is still not being there

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On July 2, 2018

Keep your perspective as safe as you keep your jewelry

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. […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On June 25, 2018

The fishing hook fantasy

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On June 18, 2018

“But what if…”

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On June 4, 2018

A new way of looking at likelihood and plausbility

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On May 21, 2018

The importance of rifle balance

A recent talk with a colleague reminded me that in our zeal to embrace the new, we sometimes lose sight of the virtues of the past. Before you get all worked up and start calling me a “Fudd”, understand that I love the things modern technology has given us. Whether in firearms, electronics, or anything […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On May 14, 2018

Do you have conflicting security priorities? You’re not alone.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how the “I won’t go anywhere I can’t carry a gun” attitude affects the lives of those who pretend to put it into practice. The people who say things like that also have a tendency to insist that everyone can carry all the time, and fail to […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On April 16, 2018

How fast should you shoot?

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On March 26, 2018

You don’t need to win. You need to survive.

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On March 12, 2018

Porn takes many forms

Ever heard of “defensive gun use porn”? It’s a term to describe a genre of stories where good guys use their guns to beat the bad guys. Such stories are a staple of many firearms-centric blogs and news sites, and they serve not so much an educational role as they do a cheerleading one. You’ll notice […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On February 26, 2018

Things people say: “Don’t carry a nice gun.”

If you have a concealed carry firearm, and you use that firearm against another person, the chances of the police seizing that gun for evidence are very high. If your attacker is injured or dies, it’s a certainty that your gun will end up in the evidence locker. Once in evidence, your gun will not […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On January 29, 2018

What does “preparing for the worst case” mean?

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? The mind runs wild If you were to take a little time (or perhaps watch […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On January 22, 2018

More is not necessarily better, especially when you can’t take care of it

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 […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On November 6, 2017

There’s a difference between “infuriated” and “threatened”

I’ve noticed a trend in the last year. More and more news stories are covering incidents where gun owners (usually with concealed carry licenses) use their firearms inappropriately or even recklessly. Along with this trend I’m also seeing more gun owners cheering them on, usually from a “get tough on criminals” point of view. As […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On July 25, 2017

A gun on your nightstand isn’t the best idea, no matter who says so

One of the things I find myself doing on a regular basis is serving as a counterpoint to the fantasies running rampant in the defensive shooting world. I do this by bringing rational thought to the topic of personal defense, and today I’m doing it again! A recent article on the Concealed Nation website dealt […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On March 20, 2017

Things people say: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training!”

I remember my first serious (multi-day) defensive shooting course. It was a spring day in the early 1990s and, as is normal here in the Pacific Northwet (no, that’s not a typo) it was raining like crazy. It was a cold, wet, miserable day. Being a native Oregonian I was prepared for the conditions, but […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On March 6, 2017

Things people say: “Thinking while shooting”

I recently posted about the need for instructors to teach, and for students to learn, how to think during a defensive incident. Everyone agrees that it’s a necessary thing to do. The problem is that many of the people agreeing don’t really know what it means. Unclear on the concept Case in point: someone sent me […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On January 2, 2017

All training is an abstraction. Is that good or bad?

A couple of weeks ago someone posted an interesting video on social media. It wasn’t the video itself which was interesting, but rather the reactions to it. The video was of an exercise from a defensive shooting class. The exercise was a good example of forcing cognitive processing rather than a Pavlovian draw-and-fire response, which […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On December 23, 2016

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”

The quote is from comedian Steven Wright. Wright is right. Think about it the next time someone says that the path to situational awareness is to see everything. You know what I mean: “Look for out-of-state license plates.” “What color shoes are the people in the restaurant wearing?” “Do you know how many left handers are […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On November 11, 2016

Do you need to modify your carry gun? Should you?

In the dim past (which wasn’t really all that long ago), if you needed to change something on your carry gun you took it to a gunsmith. You’d wait for him to do the work, pay him lots of money, and go home happy — more or less. That was the state of things largely […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On October 17, 2016

Meaningless increments of precision — and why you should avoid them

When we talk about self defense (and particularly when gun people talk about self defense), the topic of measurement will eventually come up. In the gun world we love to measure things, and we can measure just about anything. The problem is that the measurements we make may not be important. I use the term […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On September 30, 2016

“We face the same criminals the police do!” Yes, but…

Every once in a while I see the tired old cliché “we face the same criminals the police do!” It’s usually used to justify some particular type of defensive firearms training, too often centered around the trainer’s police experience. The idea, of course, is that we need to adopt the attitudes, tactics, and armament of […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On September 9, 2016

What do you do with all your situational awareness?

“Situational awareness”. It’s one of the throwaway personal safety tips that are always trotted out after a horrific news story. So you work really hard to have it; then what? No, seriously: what do you do with all that situational awareness? It’s one thing if your situational awareness finds an imminent attack, but that’s not […]

Posted by Grant Cunningham
On July 25, 2016

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