Month: May 2025

May 30, 2025 – In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection, Chapters 10-12

May 30, 2025 /

This week we have three chapters that are all about personal protection in action. Some anecdotes are personal while others are first hand. I will spend the majority of today’s work talking about the last one but each chapter will get a little bit of analysis at least.

Before we actually get into the specific chapters this week, I have been reading mention of the term “Super Vel”. I figured that it must be some sort of ammunition but I have never heard of it. I decided I would look into it a bit. As it turns out, Super Vel is a brand of ammunition. Based on the history (in the link), I would say that it was one of the first boutique, high performance cartridge manufacturers. Today’s equivalent would be Double Tap or Buffalo Bore. Sadly, Super Vel went out of business in 1981 right after this book was published.

The good news, a contemporary of Ayoob at Guns Magazine purchased the name and is producing Super Vel again. I have never seen it in the stores but looking around it can be purchased over the internet at what appears to be reasonable prices to me. It is 50% cheaper than the Underwood, hard cast lead .38 special I just purchased. Cool, retro packaging and story, now I know.

Chapter ten, I think is about justifying an informed choice to carry a handgun. While I am no Massad Ayoob and I do not claim to be, I don’t think that the advice is that good. What Ayoob is implying is that flashing your firearm (brandishing – see last week) can be a deterrent all on it’s own. While I believe that can be true, what if there was another assailant behind that I didn’t see. I repeat again, only show a firearm when you are justified to use it. An intimidating guy leaning against a car does not meat that standard.

There is also another phenomenon in self defense. The first person to contact the police is the victim. It would not be beneath a low life to call the police on you for flashing a firearm and all of the sudden you are arrested. Show your firearm only when you draw it. Draw it only when you are justified to use it. If you cannot shoot them on the spot, best to turn around if your are feeling intimidated.

In the next chapter, it talks about two things, discretion and competency. I made my feelings known about discretion already. As to competency, I whole heartedly agree to the concept. Some states require competency for your permit. But, going deeper than that a well placed shot beats misses every day.

When it comes to caliber or capacity, there are a lot of mall ninjas out there. The fact of the matter is that if you cannot hit your target, then all of that is moot. But even more than hitting the target is hitting the target to stop it. I have seen enough animals hit in less than lethal spots to run off or hole up to be dangerous. An animal is enacting the fight or flight reaction where as a person hellbent on suicide by cop might start coming for the person shooting at them.

Finally, the last chapter this week is the gold treasure of the book. You can do all the fundamentals right, a justified shoot, no other injuries and lose nearly everything. As soon as the ‘victim’s’ family decides to file suit, your second hell is about to begin. This happens with police departments all of the time. They have a nice insurance policy to accommodate the situation.

Criminals have figured out that they can get one more payout from the state. Generally, it is in the form of a settlement rather than invest all the resources in a trial. If $10,000 makes the problem go away then that is saving a week’s worth of lawyer fees. Hence, this is why Ayoob’s advice on cash wrapped in a matchbook is a cheap insurance premium.

Who has cash and needs matches these days? Don’t be an idiot, figure out some token that you can sacrifice to potentially eliminate years of pain (if you make it out of the situation). There are also concealed carry insurance funds out there. It would be wise to belong to one of those if you have made that choice to carry a firearm. The principle that I always go back to is “If you think that you are walking into a place that you will need to use your firearm, then it is best to avoid that place”.

End Your Programming Routine: If you are reading the book along with me and you are having a hard time with me contradicting Ayoob, I would say that you need training. I will admit that I also need more training and do not consider myself an expert. But, my words are coming from years of multiple, consensus sources in a developing field of civilian concealed carry. Don’t forget that this book was written before any of that began.

May 29, 2025 – Doing My Duty

May 29, 2025 /

We have probably had more than the average number of exchange students. Since I have been married, we have hosted four. When I was a kid, we had two. I guess that I cannot technically count those two but I can add those to the numbers that I have been exposed to. With the exception of one, the rest have been very positive experiences.

My very first exchange student was Japanese and he was a year or two older than me. This was a short term exchange which I think that it lasted three weeks. One of the things having a short term exchange does is kind of move you to bring out your best. That means travelling to see the local sights, festivals and all the things that you wouldn’t normally try to do in a condensed time frame.

I distinctly remember going to visit my grandfather. He was going to be in the local parade with his 1957 convertible Ford Thunderbird. We didn’t visit that often and we rarely went to the local lamb festival. I think that we went twice in my lifetime, both of them as a child. But, we happened to have our exchange student with us when we went.

As I said above, we didn’t visit often maybe once or twice a year was pretty typical. His house happened to be adjacent to the main North/South rail line. Consequently, my most favorite thing to do when we visited was to put pennies on the rail for when the train came by. Most of them flew off somewhere never to be found again but usually we would get a couple smashed flat.

My grandfather knew how to show a good time. Our exchange student got to drive his Thunderbird in the pasture for ten minutes. Then he broke out his 22 revolver. We all got to shoot a couple of shots but none of us got to shoot much. That was my first time shooting a handgun. My father did not own any, nobody did as far as I remember. Come to find out that those were all violations of the hosting rules.

I knew better, so that when we went to the informational meeting for our year long student (2019), I asked. No risky behavior is permitted and shooting is considered risky behavior. That was the year that I got involved in trap shooting, so that was going to be off the table.

In my experience, that general rule of no risky behavior is pretty par for the course with most exchange programs. Ironically, it is not the case with Rotary. They allow culturally acceptable alcohol use and shooting as examples. Many of the students end up going back to their country and going back to school with this year not counted whatsoever in their education pathway. My experience with Rotary is that they don’t even really get involved when the student is failing classes.

We have had a very busy spring. Myself, I didn’t even get to the range for the first time this year until late April. It is not like I didn’t want to go but I was hyper-focused on my hiking earlier so I deprioritized potential range time. But, we are staring down the barrel of my exchange student’s departure within less than thirty days. So, I wanted to take him while there was still time.

One thing that is quintessential American is recreational shooting. Many countries have some sort of mechanism to own firearms. In most cases, owners need to fulfill very stringent requirements such a by permit only. Firearms need to be stored at a range or hunting club that you belong to and to be used at said facility. To top that off, many have a quota for the numbers that can be in your possession.

At least there is a way but lets say that you were a target shooter, it is not likely then that could both target shoot and hunt. The freedom to have 22LR for target shooting and a 22LR for small game hunting and a 22LR handgun for shooting cans in three different settings is almost impossible. Hence, I have not been exposed to an exchange student that comes themselves from a ‘gun culture’. Even if I did, I would still probably take them to the range just so that they see the differences.

We had a fun couple of hours. I had made some repairs to a revolver from my last trip. I wanted to see how I did and I am happy to report that the repairs were solid. I also took a rifle to get just plink away at ground spinning targets just for fun. There were a lot of smiles and a lot of videos that got made that day. One thing that I didn’t want to do was punish with a lot of recoil.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess that I am getting older. I enjoy going out and shooting but it is almost more fun to introduce someone to something new. Since I can shoot almost any time, I just sat back on a chair and watched as he and my son shot and reloaded and shot and reloaded. Don’t get me wrong, doing stuff repetitively can get a little boring. This is why I have introduced the chronographs and testing that I do. But when I get a chance to watch someone have some fun, maybe for the only time in their lives, that is priceless.

May 28, 2025 – Air Fryers and Frozen Burritos

May 28, 2025 /

I do these things so you don’t have to. I am still looking for a best use (or any use) for this air fryer. I will talk about some of my other results a little later, but first I thought that a fast food machine might be best used on some prepared burritos. It is like terroir in wine, pair the food with the wine from the region. In this case, pair the food cooked with the method of cooking.

My wife was in Las Vegas during Cinco de Mayo. She kept sending me a bunch of pictures from the city wide ‘street party’ with giant margaritas and festive food. I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit jealous that I had planned beef bourguignon that night. I wondered if using the air fryer with prepared burritos. I liked them in the oven better but it seems insane to bake for 45 minutes.

I thought I would buy some bean and cheese burritos so that we could all eat, meat eaters and vegetarians alike. I would doll them up with some fixings like you see at a Mexican restaurant and they would be something like a chimichanga or fried burrito. So, that is what I did.

I didn’t make much in the way of sides so I had a couple of mangos that were end of their lives, leftover whipped cream and I paired that with some shortbread to make a shortcake kind of desert. I sprinkled Tajin on the top of it all for that flair.

I won’t lie, you can see the picture as well that I thought it looked pretty good. In actuality, the burritos were terrible. The tortilla was like leather. The bean and cheese filling was kind of tasteless clay. The added vegetables and salsa made it somewhat palatable. My mango shortcake was excellent however.

This critique comes with two aspects. The first is frozen burritos are a low quality product. I mean, what would you expect at $1 a piece. Once I get through these, I am done with them forever, unless I am starving to death. I feel like thirty years ago I used to like them as an occasional, inexpensive snack but I am also sure that the quality ingredients has steadily declined in that period as well like everything else in the food industry..

As to the air fryer… For sure, the air fryer didn’t help with the exterior. They turned part of that tortilla into leather and other parts into a cracker. I have used this air-fryer probably half a dozen times now and I am about to give it the pass in my kitchen.

Last night, I made steak fries and the outside was definitely crispier but the inside was potato-y. They were very dry in texture overall and not appealing to me. That pretty much sums up my experience with the air fryer. It does make the outside crispier but is also dry’s out the food, leaving a less than taste.

I won’t say that an air fryer doesn’t have utility. It is convenient when I am using the oven for something else at a different temperature. But if the results are going to be substandard, I don’t know if it is worth the utility. I have also found that I can run the air fryer and the toaster on the same circuit at the same time. I didn’t do the math before I tried it, but I was definitely surprised.

Before I let the air fryer rest in peace I have one more complaint. The overall volume is very small. When I have made something like French fries for dinner, I have to make them in batches. This results in either eating cold food or eating in batches, neither of which is really satisfactory.

End Your Programming Routine: I would confidently say that I have used the air fryer enough to determine that I wouldn’t recommend it. It is fast and convenient but the overall result is less than satisfactory. If it turns out that that my household becomes significantly smaller, then maybe but it would require a lot of experimentation. At this point, I am not willing to suffer through the investment of time when other methods yield better results.

May 27, 2025 – Podfade

May 27, 2025 /

A term coined in the mid-2000s about podcasts that stopped releasing new episodes. A show that I listen to recently announced that they would stop making new episodes. I talk about what that means to me as well as some personal information going on in my life and how that effects AltF4.co.

May 23, 2025 – In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection, Chapters 6-9

May 23, 2025 /

**Note: May 26, 2025 is a holiday. I am taking one, you should too.**

This week gets into the tactics of concealed carry. It covers the basics of where you might possibly have or use a firearm. I do think what is conspicuously missing is our interactions outside of our own business, home, street or car. We are missing things like church, restaurants, stores and all the places we might be besides the four that he talks about. That being said, we were years away from ‘shall issue’ concealed carry when this book was written. As a result, it is understandable the focus and the omission.

I never knew this but apparently, Ayoob grew up in a family business. A jewelry store to be specific. Rightly so that he was exposed to potential conflict while at the shop. I don’t know but that is possibly as risky of a proposition as being a convenience store owner operator. For most of us, I would guess that having a firearm stashed at work is probably a no go. Likely, carrying concealed would be a better proposition anyway.

My grandfather was a sole proprietor in an shady business. He was a landlord that dealt in the lower tier of renters. As such, he was robbed several times in his career during office hours. Unfortunately, they did get away with his Purple Heart awards from World War II. I would say that he could have benefitted from a gun at his office.

A gun in your home is the most likely place that it will be. While there are many people that are permitted to carry, I suspect that few will actually do it. But, having protection around at home is much more likely which is what makes going into somebody else’s home so risky. Ayoob offers what I think are reasonable tactics still today for dealing with a home invasion and family protection.

When we were living in South Carolina, I don’t think concealed carry was a legal construct. I didn’t investigate thoroughly, but I was told by many residents that it was legal to have a firearm in the glove box. I do know that was the case in other states and so I had no reason to doubt that. This has never been a practice that I have ever been comfortable with or employed.

Today in Oregon, to have a firearm in the glovebox would require you to have a concealed carried permit. Surely others will do this as well but it still doesn’t make it a good idea. I was home a few years ago when the police rang the doorbell. They said that the neighbor had a firearm stolen out of the car and wondered if we had any doorbell footage. I told him I would check and didn’t see anything.

The point being, is that leaving a firearm in the car leaves it out of your control. Run of the mill break-ins can have your property ending up in the black market. It also would be hard to reach when you really need it too. That being said, I could see putting a firearm in the car when going on a road trip or something. Where legal of course.

I know that I skipped around a little bit but the last chapter I am going to talk about is the gun in the street. Ayoob really is focused on the tactics of deploying a firearm in the streets but this is really the run of the mill concealed carry. I suspect that it is pretty sound advice but I do think that it should be taken with a grain of salt. A lot of this has changed but you do need to be aware of the term brandishing.

Brandishing is flashing a firearm with the intent of intimidation. I am more than sure Ayoob is not implying that you brandishing is a valid technique, but the wording and the way that it is written kind of, sort of seems that way. Once again, in states where that is a crime you are only legal to display a firearm when you are legal to use one. States that permit open carry typically do not have brandishing laws. The point remains that you need to know your state laws down pat.

There is a concept in this chapter that is talked about but it also comes up later in the book in a big way. That is, it is cheaper to not get in an altercation than to be in the right. I will save most of that for next week. Suffice to say, carrying a gun is a tool in the toolbox. It doesn’t mean that it is the first or best or only tool.

End Your Programming Routine: Good stuff. I keep saying that with all that has changed in this landscape, the tactics remain good and legally defensible. It helps to know and understand the history and evolution to be able to pick out the nuances and changes. Reading this book has inspired me to get the updated book that Ayoob has published because I suspect that most of what is wrong here gets corrected. It won’t be the next book but it will be soon.

May 22, 2025 – Hiking the Oregon Coast Trail

May 22, 2025 /

This is the self proclaimed guidebook that you don’t need. I didn’t say that, Bonnie Henderson the author did. The Oregon Coast Trail is a route that runs the entire length of the Oregon Coast. It is also one that I have hiked a portion of in the early 1990s as it was being actively developed.

One of the things native Oregonians stake their claim on is the precedent setting legislation that happened in the 1960s. But it actually starts much earlier, in 1913. Governor Oswald West declared that the Oregon Coast was a state highway. The declaration claimed that the high tide line was the extent of guaranteed access.

In the 1960s, a bill was introduced to make all beach access public. This would be all the sand/shoreline above the high tide land. After a supreme court case was settled, all the beaches became public property. The book claims that there are 262 miles of beach, other sources say 360 miles. It probably depends on how you define beach as to which number you go with.

The reason that the author says that you do not need this guide is because 90% of the trail is on the beach and therefore no trail guide is really needed. I can say with my experience that we walked a lot of the beach, in my memory it was more like 50/50. Memories can be fallible for sure and I have no way of measuring or validating that number. I simply remember spending a fair amount of time in the coastal forest.

The selling point from the author is that this book will make the experience better. For instance, if you want to keep to 90% beach hike, then you will need to ferry across some rivers. If you opt to stay on the ground, then you will need to detour up to a road, likely US101 and cross in a standard fashion. This not only adds some extra miles but also potentially makes your hike more like a highway walk.

From the central coast north, it is relatively populated. What that means is that even walking the beach you can go out to eat or stay the night in a hotel. In theory, you could walk from hotel to hotel for the night making this a very different experience than very remote Pacific Crest Trail. But, if you are more inclined for the roughing it badge, there are tons of camp grounds that provide amenities like water, toilets and cell phone charging.

I have a lot less experience south of the central coast. It is farther from me and there are many less ways to get there. In other words, it is much more wild and rugged. While the beach is 100% open all the time, the author claims that hiking October through April is not recommended due to the amount of water draining to the ocean. I can say for a fact that most cities storm water drains are piped directly to the beach. This can easily become a deluge of water given how much it rains and all of the elevation there is on the coast.

I personally think it would be crazy to hike in the wetter months to begin with. While we don’t have many hurricane type storms, I have seen roofs ripped off of restaurants due to such storms. I can’t imagine being exposed all day in that kind of weather. Not to mention, who would enjoy a day of 4 inches of rain.

My sudden interest in non-PCT trails should be obvious. With my decision to delay my hike a year due to lack of physical fitness, I need to find some places to test my abilities. Being that I am only an hour to the coast, this seems like a natural fit for more exploration. The author also claims that this is a trail that can be done in about 30 days. I am thinking that this actually seems attainable rather than the six months for the whole PCT.

End Your Programming Routine: The recommendation to hike southbound seems tame enough. That is because northbound is into the prevailing wind (which is the way I did it). Those are the kind of recommendations a book like this gives. This is a local author who has done it more than once. Even if I never do the hike, I am proud to support people who are willing to help others with their experience.

May 21, 2025 – Country V. Country

May 21, 2025 /

Staying with the theme of keeping it light, I am talking about country music today. One thing that turns me off today is the phenomenon that I call ‘Bro Country’. This is the kind of music that splits the country/popular line. If you ask me, the lyrics are kind of deep country but the delivery (and the singers are not).

My theory is that popular music (Top 40) left the main stream. It is now primarily Hip Hop, Rap and R&B. So naturally, something is going to fill the void. That is country has evolved from it’s traditional roots into popular music. Artist such as Shaboozy and Carrie Underwood live on both charts. Former country artists like Taylor Swift and Leanne Rhimes previously were on both sides.

Blake Shelton is one of those that fits into that category. I want to like the guy because the lyrics appeal to my redneck side. But there is something about the guy that I just cannot quite trust. Maybe it was his humiliation of Miranda Lambert into the arms of Gwen Stefani. It is like he literally left country to go pop. If you are not familiar with Shelton’s work, watch below.

I was introduced to Chris LeDoux in my mid teens. It was definitely his shout out and subsequent song with Garth Brooks that brought Chris into the spotlight. Chris was the real deal, 1979 NFR Bare Back champion. When he sung about Rodeo, you knew it from living it. Unfortunately, Chris died in 2003 from the same liver affliction that killed Walter Peyton, basically no warning.

Speaking of Garth Brooks, not every singer has been there and done that. I think that the difference is that they didn’t try to have an image that they had. Don’t get me wrong, I am not necessarily saying that the likes of Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and Luke Combs are bad in their own right. But it seems like legitimacy is lacking.

Nepotism runs deep in country music. Go all the way back to Hank Williams Jr in the late 1970s. He of course has one of the seminal works of outlaw country, “Country Boy Can Survive”. But, largely his body of work were covers of his dad’s work. While he is still active in music he has largely been semi-retired since the early 1980s. He spends his time in Montana for the purposes of hunting and fishing. I would say that he hasn’t really been there, done that but he sure lives like a country boy.

Chris LeDoux’s son Ned has continued nearly immediately after Chris’s death. I seen both of them in concert and Ned sounds and looks like a spitting image. It looks like Ned is finally breaking out of his father’s shadow. Not that it is a bad one but I hate to see an artist’s entire schtick on the laurels of somebody else.

When I really started getting into country music, Bro Country really had not become a thing. While I love Alan Jackson, I think that he and Kenney Chesney started the transition with their Jimmy Buffet leaning island songs. While I regret that this happened, Chesney has some really good songs too. So we put up with it until it is too late and a new sound and topics had already been accepted. This of course rapidly spun new artists and groups and Bro Country began.

Not all is lost though. I was watching the ACM music awards with my wife the other night and I saw a new artist named Cody Johnson. While I watched him perform, he reminded me so much of Garth Brooks in his body movements. So, I looked him up and low and behold he was also a bull rider. As I was listening to this song while writing this, I was starting to get a little choked up. Music should connect with the soul.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess this is what is good about America. People can choose what they like. I largely stopped listening to the radio because I don’t like most of the music anymore. It’s not that I don’t like all the newer songs but some of them should have some steel guitar in them, thanks Cody Johnson.

May 20, 2025 – King Makers

May 20, 2025 /

This is going to be a light week this week. Tune into next Monday’s podcast to find out more details on why, if you care. I ran across this video a couple of days ago and I don’t know exactly why I watched it, but I did. It was a real eye opener.

Back when I was young, say the 1980s, we could know nearly everything in culture there was to know. If you had cable, listened to the radio and had access to magazines then you were in the know. Being out in the country, nobody had cable until the mid 1980s. But as access was available, some people had cable. That meant MTV and Disney.

I have certainly been aware that Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez came out of Disney programming. The thing that really surprised me was that today’s artists are still coming from Disney. Those would be the very contemporary Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo.

I am fifty now and my kids are in their late teens. It has been ten years since tween oriented shows were playing in my home. As kids do, they would binge watch show after show of some of these titles. I rarely ever paid much attention other than sitting down for 10 minutes to kind of validate that the content was age appropriate. What I am saying is that I pay little attention to what is hot in the grade school demographic.

That being said, I pay little attention to all popular culture other than the headlines I see in the news and what music my kids are streaming on the TV. What got me wondering about all of this is that does Disney just select extraordinary personalities or do those come from spending your youth working on Disney shows? When I think about it, I have to believe it is the latter rather than the former.

I want to say that most people grow out of Disney stars influencing their lives on what is ‘cool’. I want to say that. But, then again I know some adults that are constantly watching Kardashian makeup tips or things of that ilk. What that says to me is that this behavior is programmed from an early age with mechanisms like Disney series.

When we hear the term Oligarchy, I think most of us think drug company execs going into the FDA or at least buying influence. But when I think about it, isn’t this another form of it? Companies taking over brain space to influence future consumer behavior. It is not a conscious behavior but a subconscious one. ‘Experts say do this…’.

Clearly, not every cast member became superstars. Some did but then others didn’t want to go further, some flamed out with personal problems and others just remained in a supporting role. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better start for an ambitious young person. A highly impressionable and rabid fan base with access to Hollywood’s movers and shakers. Think of the advantage Britney Spears had at the age of 18 compared to the run of the mill high school graduate.

It’s not that those people didn’t have talent. But talent alone doesn’t cut it it requires opportunity. It is the same reason people accel to the position beyond their capabilities. They had the opportunity to advance but not the talent/experience/education to thrive. Similarly, how many people could do the same or better job but are not known (and we never will).

End Your Programming Routine: I think that this kind of programming can be broken. It simply requires becoming conscious of the behavior and draw. I don’t hate Disney nor am I against teen programming. I am not surprised or amazed by their alumni, who else would take command of popular culture but people that have defined it their whole lives. Like all things moderation is the key.

May 19, 2025 – Tunnel Vision

May 19, 2025 /

When I look at the calendar, things are pretty booked through late July. This is only a season and I am hoping that with kids starting their own journeys that I can look forward to future years of a more controlled fashion. All this being said, too much focus on the present can loose track of steps to prepare to future projects that need to happen now. I share my tunnel vision and encourage you to take a step back so that you don’t miss the opportunity.

May 16, 2025 – In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection, Chapters 3-5

May 16, 2025 /

I know that I keep saying this but I feel like this group of chapters is another where time has probably changed prevailing attitudes. For one thing, the deregulation of concealed carry has created an industry of specialized civilian training. And with that, has come a plethora of resources that didn’t exist in 1980 like the internet and podcasts as two examples. I think that those resources have spread a broader net of better information.

I remember as a kid, we would say things like ‘shoot bad guys in the knee’. Of course, I grew up under the shadow of the early westerns and every TV show with a bad guy had a good guy. There was no such show concepts like Breaking Bad where the good guy was also a bad guy or you couldn’t quite draw clear lines. As such, we wanted to do the proverbial ‘shoot ’em in the shoulder’ because the thought of taking life would put us in the bad guy category.

With that strong desire to be a good guy, there was also the idea that we would put the bad guys away with a citizen’s arrest. This is probably the result of too much A-Team or MacGyver. Ayoob did a pretty good job of cautioning the bad guy could turn the tide from captive to captor. That is a pretty valid point because the best practices today would say you shouldn’t draw a gun unless you are justified to shoot in the first place. Holding a perpetrator at gunpoint changes the force equilibrium.

More so than the risks of a captive, if a third party calls in a 911 call, how do the police distinguish between a good and a bad guy? We assume that we are talking about the good guy holding the bad guy at gunpoint but it could be just as easily the other way (for lots of reasons). For reasons of both safety and liability, it is just best to not emulate TV shows with a Citizen’s Arrest.

Regardless of what the police would do, what are you going to do? There is probably a 95% chance that a man beating a woman in the parking lot is the aggressor. But what if you were wrong? What if it was two men fighting, now who is the aggressor? What if one is stabbing another, is that assault or self defense? We just don’t know. It is sad and selfish but it is best for self preservation to not try to pick.

An active shooter is a different story. In that case, there is a clear aggressor. When I talk about concealed carry, I am also talking about a handgun. If you are unfortunate enough to be around an active shooter event the best you are going to do is have a loaded handgun. Handgun against handgun and you have a chance if they are an average marksman. Handgun against a rifle and you are going to need some luck.

Every person needs to make the calculus on what you would do. My values are to get myself and anyone with me away from the shooter. That means that I am not typically looking to engage. If you did, what if the shooter is dead but you also hit a bystander? Are you legally prepared for a lawsuit? It doesn’t matter if the victim should be thankful, he might be looking to cash in or maybe he can no longer work. These are all of the tough choices that need to be made.

Really the last chapter I want to talk about today does not fit into the first two nor next week’s so it ended up here. One of the largest growth factors in firearms has been women. I have to say that his suggestion of a snub nosed 38 special is superseded by many, many better choices today. As an owner of one, it is difficult to shoot well. It also recoils like a getting kicked in the hand. That was probably the best you could do in 1980.

You all know that I am not a woman (even in today’s culture) so it is hard for me to really identify with those particular struggles. That being said, the number of products for women’s concealed carry is a lifetime away from where it was when the book was written. I know for a fact that 5.11 makes yoga pants with integrated holster as an example.

End Your Programming Routine: The fundamentals are definitely 1980s sound. There isn’t much that has changed from the legal standpoint. We are really talking about legal standards that go all the way back to middle ages England, what is another forty-five years? It is the gear that have made exponential improvements. From bullets, holsters, laser aiming devices, flashlights, red dot sights, glow in the dark (tritium) sights, magazine capacities, new calibers, etc. The one right choice in 1980 has a bunch of potential better choices today.