Category: General Opinion

In some circles, attention is focused on a few skills (shooting, primarily, but emergency/trauma medicine also) which are indeed crucial - at times - but are also among the sexier of the skills which might come in handy in some sort of crisis. In fact, if you have some of the below skills, you might not have to use the ones named above. Side note - I have used "post-apocalyptic" in the title because it will attract attention. These things also come in handy in today's world. Tracking If you… Read More

It would be easy for me to bask in the accolades that have been showering upon me since the publication of the steel vs. brass ammo test. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally doing that. But this test would not have been possible without other people. My name is at the top, but their fingers are all over it. In Arizona: Zach and Paul are featured prominently in lots of photos from the test for a reason. They came out to the range with me countless times to shoot lots… Read More

Violence in video games is often decried as the cause of violence in real life - perhaps it is. I haven't the resources to investigate that fully. I do play video games pretty often, and I can say that while I've never felt violent urges after playing a video game, I did free climb the stone wall of an ancient temple in the Middle East just like in Uncharted 3. Also just like in Uncharted 3, I was caught by angry guards with AKMs, although unlike the game, they (luckily)… Read More

I'm sure I have managed to anger a few people with the title of this article alone. That's not my intention. As the saying goes, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar - although in this case, putting out carb-rich food wouldn't be the best course of action. I don't know you and can't say what, if anything, you are preparing for. What I can say is that almost anything you might be preparing for by going to carbine/pistol training courses or taking an active interest in blogs… Read More

So there's this site called GearScout, and it's run by a real journalist named Rob Curtis. Using his keen sense of journalistic smell, he discovered that SOCOM's armor plates are defective. "They don't stop bullets" defective, not "they might discolor in sunlight" defective. The solution is...well there really is no solution. Bad plates are being identified through the highly scientific method of SOCOM dudes tapping their plates before every mission and listening for a "ting" instead of a "thud." Yes, every mission. The problem is described as a "latent delamination… Read More

The first handgun that I bought was a Kimber Custom II in .45 ACP. I still have it, and still shoot it a lot. Even underwater. It's had basically every major and minor part replaced, and it's been completely refinished, because the original finish was simply unsuited to the real world. But that's beside the point. Why did I buy a .45, especially after carrying and being completely satisfied with the performance of my issued 9mm Beretta M9? Well, that story begins in Iraq, when I was about to redeploy… Read More

While searching an old hard drive for an essay I wrote in college, I came across some unrelated documents which I had saved at approximately the same time: ATF position papers/reports on the importation of semiautomatic military-style rifles. I briefly skimmed these documents, and found several interesting points that I would like to raise. First, a brief refresher course on some recent history, with points illustrated by photographs of cute animals. Jerry Tsai, former editor of Recoil magazine, made some comments about how HK MP7s served no sporting purposes, and… Read More

I have met a number of instructors in the, for lack of a better term, "tactical" world. I have the benefits of being a constant shooter and several years' experience teaching in classroom settings to form opinions of instruction and training for real-world firearms use. And I have had the opportunity to discuss the effectiveness of various instructional techniques with professional military and law enforcement individuals who were willing to speak frankly and did not hold anything back in their assessments. All of this has led me to the conclusion… Read More

Ever since the dumbest firearms law in America, the ban on imported semiautomatic rifles, was enacted in 1989, it's been difficult for foreign manufacturers to sell their products here. Naturally, because people are smart and politicians are not, we've basically gotten around that law by importing certain parts and manufacturing others here in the US. This means we can basically have all of the same rifles, as long as the manufacturer is willing to make an effort to import/manufacture what they need. A manufacturer's willingness to go to these lengths… Read More