Wednesday Wisdom: 31 December 2025

Medal of Honor: Donald Gilbert Cook

Captain Cook willingly and unselfishly put the interests of his comrades before that of his own well-being and, eventually, his life. Giving more needy men his medicine and drug allowance while constantly nursing them, he risked infection from contagious diseases while in a rapidly deteriorating state of health. This unselfish and exemplary conduct, coupled with his refusal to stray even the slightest from the Code of Conduct, earned him the deepest respect from not only his fellow prisoners, but his captors as well. Rather than negotiate for his own release or better treatment, he steadfastly frustrated attempts by the Viet Cong to break his indomitable spirit, and passed this same resolve on to the men with whose well-being he so closely associated himself.

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A New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up with Nothing but a Zip Code

An offer of cellular service for your existing phone that makes near-total mobile privacy the permanent, boring default of daily life in the US. “We're not looking to cater to people doing bad things,” says Merrill. “We're trying to help people feel more comfortable living their normal lives, where they're not doing anything wrong, and not feel watched and exploited by giant surveillance and data mining operations. I think it’s not controversial to say most people want that.”

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Gunfight Training That Works: A Case Study

“If I can’t hit my opponent, I can’t possibly win.” A case study in producing gunfight winning performance at scale is to place zero emphasis on qualification, apply training process frequently and consistently over time, and adopt an “All basics—All the time” approach with an emphasis on hitting small targets at speed.

“Evidence-based” is one of the hot new buzzwords in professional firearms and tactical training circles. As a general concept, of course, everyone should support this. We all should just want to do what works.

In practice things are a bit more complex. We simply don’t have a lot of good data regarding successful performance in gunfights. The big data sets that we do have (i.e., LEOKA and UCR) are mostly based on failure.

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Heckler & Koch Close Assault Weapon System (CAWS)

In the early 1980s the US military’s Joint Service Small Arms Program (JSSAP) launched the Close Assault Weapon System program. The CAWS program evolved from several other efforts, including RHINO and Multipurpose Individual Weapon System (MIWS) to create a new combat shotgun. CAWS aimed to create a shotgun with greater range and more firepower than a conventional shotgun which could engage targets within 100m to 150m. The weapon was to be used in anti-area, material and personnel roles using a variety of specialized shotgun cartridge loads. The need for a CAWS was based on both British experience during the Malayan Emergency and American experiences during the Vietnam War when shotguns had played an important tactical role during close range engagements.

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Shots Fired: Skokie, Illinois 08/25/2008

There were 17 total hits on his body including three fatal shots to his head, a couple to his torso, and one to his abdomen," Gramins says. "Which means that even though Maddox was mortally wounded before the head shots, he was still able to engage me.

"People don't die the way we think they do," Gramins says. "I had 17 rounds in the guy. That will teach you how critical shot placement is."

Gramins' inability to successfully place rounds in the early part of the engagement is readily understandable given both the spontaneous nature of the attack and the confined environment he'd found himself in. Still, he'd made the most out of suppressive fire.

"Early in the fight, I didn't see where my rounds were going," says Gramins. "I had a favorable backdrop but didn't have my front sight. You need to find that front sight as fast as you can.

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Davidson’s Exclusive Smith & Wesson J-Frame Revolvers

Smith & Wesson has just added two new options in the form of the Davidson’s Exclusive Model 432 and Model 632, both J-Frames chambered for .32 H&R Magnum. The two wheelguns are functionally the same besides their finish colors, with the 432 sporting a black-anodized aluminum matte finish and the 632 featuring a matte silver finish.

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Finding Your Reason

“It’ll just get taken away from you and used against you.”

This annoying and offensive sentence, with its unspoken accusations of female inferiority and lack of resolve, is nevertheless based on an important truth: If you carry a gun and are not prepared to use it if necessary, you are indeed at risk for a gun grab or worse.

A lot of concealed carry folks swim in a sea of euphemisms; I just did it myself. “Use it if necessary” avoids the blunter but more honest, “to kill another human being in order to save an innocent life.” If speaking bluntly about the purpose of our concealed weapons doesn’t come easily to most of us, how much more difficult would the deed itself be? Socially, psychologically, and emotionally, few people unwaveringly consider the full implications of carrying a deadly weapon for self defense.

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There Are Many Like It: 250 Years of Marine Corps Service Rifles

Since its founding in 1775, the United States Marine Corps has earned a distinguished reputation as one of the world's premier naval infantry forces. This legacy is built on an unwavering fighting spirit, strict adherence to the highest standards, and formidable marksmanship skills; forged in combat using a tool of warfare that has evolved dramatically over the last 250 years - the rifle.

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Point of Law: The Limits of Electronic Searches

In March 2025 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in United States v. Holcomb, 23-469 (9th Cir. 2025), where the court considered “whether an individual can be prosecuted for despicable criminal conduct based on evidence obtained in violation of the United States Constitution. Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit judges wrote, “In the circumstances of this case, respect for the Constitution and the rule of law requires an answer of “no.”

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Raising Boys into Men: Reclaiming the Game

There was a time in America when boys learned how to become men not from lectures, school counselors, or influencers on the internet, but from the direct example of older men who lived lives worth imitating. Fathers, uncles, veterans, tradesmen, and community leaders used to take boys out into the woods, onto the water, or into the workshop and teach them through doing. For several generations, the greatest expression of this was something Robert Baden-Powell called a “game for boys.” That is all Scouting originally was, just a game, but one so well-designed that it shaped the character of millions.

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When you outsource your security to the government--You get government security

Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that two terrorists rampaged with a five-round bolt-action Beretta BRX1, and a tube-fed shotgun for AT LEAST ten minutes — on bloody video — while four (4) armed Australian police officers … didn’t stop them.

Four armed officers on-scene while two bastards armed with weapons that don’t reload quickly played Whack-A-Mole … and a citizen had to be the one to rush them.

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Wednesday Wisdom - 24 December 2025

Medal of Honor: Melvin Earl Biddle

 
At daybreak (24 December 1944) he again led the advance and, when flanking elements were pinned down by enemy fire, without hesitation made his way toward a hostile machine-gun position and from 50 yards killed the crew and two supporting riflemen. The remainder of the enemy, finding themselves without automatic-weapon support, fled panic-stricken. Pfc. Biddle's intrepid courage and superb daring during his 20-hour action enabled his battalion to break the enemy grasp on Hotton with a minimum of casualties.

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Why Locks Are Pickable

We’re able to pick locks because the world isn’t a perfect place. Every machining operation produces a product with small defects but still within specified tolerances. If you machine a hundred parts, no two are precisely the same, no holes identical in diameter, no line perfectly straight. Yes, the variations may be small, but they’re there and they’re cumulative when you assemble all the different parts into a lock. THAT accumulation of defects is the crack that we are trying to exploit. Our tools and senses allow us to detect the subtle differences between pins, cores, spring tension and feedback – all of which contain defects and remnants from the manufacturing process.

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When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds

Complex games like chess and Go have long been used to test AI models’ capabilities. But while IBM’s Deep Blue defeated reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the 1990s by playing by the rules, today’s advanced AI models like OpenAI’s o1-preview are less scrupulous. When sensing defeat in a match against a skilled chess bot, they don’t always concede, instead sometimes opting to cheat by hacking their opponent so that the bot automatically forfeits the game.

That is the finding of a new study from Palisade Research, which evaluated seven state-of-the-art AI models for their propensity to hack. While slightly older AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 needed to be prompted by researchers to attempt such tricks, o1-preview and DeepSeek R1 pursued the exploit on their own, indicating that AI systems may develop deceptive or manipulative strategies without explicit instruction.

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Stay On Your Feet! Remember, Ground Fighting is a Sport!
 

Never, ever, for whatever reason, intentionally go to ground in a self-defense situation. There may be some instances where you are called to subdue a single person until help arrives, and holding out in a grounded side control might be what's necessary. But for the most part, getting stuck on the ground is a bad idea. So what should we do? How should we prepare ourselves? In self-defense, if you happen to lose your feet, the rule of thumb is to do whatever it takes to immediately get back up.

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The Reactive Shooting Canard

Outside the confines of the range, the enemy and the legal system both get a vote.

The point of this article is not to parse words or argue over terminology, but rather to clarify some concepts. There are some critically important, real-world things that have become significantly more difficult to both discuss and teach in recent years because of how the term “reactive” is being commonly used across the industry.

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There Are Monsters Among Us, and That’s Why I Carry

There are stories you read once and stick with you forever. Stories that knock the wind out of you and leave you staring at the wall, hands shaking a little, wondering how the world can be both beautiful and brutal in the same breath. It's stories like that answer the question of why I carry.

This story of a Tiffin, Ohio murder suicide. . .is one of those stories.

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The Point of No Return

You can't take anything back. Whatever you've done is done, so in a sense every action is a point of no return. You can never become the person you were before you took a specific action or before a certain event happened.

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False-Positive

Intuition is always right in at least two important ways;

    -- It is always in response to something

    -- it always has your best interest at heart

                                          -Gavin De Becker.

I raise these two cases (out of countless others), not only to emphasize just how suspicious a completely non-hostile individual can seem, but because they also show you that no matter how knowledgeable and experienced you may be, you can’t always make an omelet without breaking any eggs. When you’ve only got a limited amount of information and time to operate under, and the stakes are high enough, you sometimes simply need to act now and apologize for it later.

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Police Warn Public of Surge in 'Jugging'

Authorities are warning that bank jugging is on the rise, with perpetrators lingering at banks, eavesdropping on conversations, and then targeting individuals who withdraw significant sums.

Jugging is a term used to describe a criminal activity in which individuals loiter around banks, ATMs, or other check-cashing establishments to observe customers who are withdrawing cash. These criminals patiently track their target and wait for the opportune moment to commit a theft or robbery. Individuals need to remain vigilant both during and after the cash withdrawal process, especially when transitioning to other locations, as this is when targets are most vulnerable to potential jugging incidents.

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In Closing: Merry Christmas

Little Drummer Boy?

"The Little Drummer Boy" shouldn't be the name of a song; it should be the title of this week's "Unsolved Mystery:"

One chilly night in December, Frank left home with his drum and traveled to a small town.

Once there, he played his drum — enthusiastically — for a young, first-time mother, who had been forced to give birth in a stable, after spending a week travelling by donkey.

We caught up with her husband, Joseph — "Joseph, Joseph! Sir, what do you know regarding the disappearance of young Frank?"

Wednesday Wisdom: 17 December 2025

Medal of Honor: Jose Mendoza Lopez 

Occupying a shallow hole offering no protection above the waist, he cut down a group of 10 Germans. Ignoring enemy fire from an advancing tank, he held his position and cut down 25 more enemy infantry attempting to turn his flank. Glancing to his right, he saw a large number of infantry swarming in from the front. Although dazed and shaken from enemy artillery fire which had crashed into the ground only a few yards away, he realized that his position soon would be outflanked.

Again, alone, he carried his machine gun to a position to the right rear of the sector; enemy tanks and infantry were forcing a withdrawal. Blown over backwards by the concussion of enemy fire, he immediately reset his gun and continued his fire. Singlehanded he held off the German horde until he was satisfied his company had effected its retirement.

 

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Some Notes on Using Blanks for Training

There are significant dangers involved in using blanks for training. An insufficiently-trained individual can mistake live rounds for blanks, as in the 2016 fatal training accident in Punta Gorda, Florida. Remember, blanks themselves can sometimes cause death or serious injuries.

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Man Tackles, Chokes Armed Walmart Shopper

Don’t be stupid. Wanna-be hero – took matters into his own hands and landed in hot water when he attacked a concealed weapon permit holder.

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Meditations on Paper Armour

A single sheet of paper can hold ideas, hopes, dreams; it can carry a song, orders, love; it can recall history, bear witness when none are left and it can serve as the base of art for bairns as well as their great-grandsires.

For all of it's utility and history, though, there is one area in which paper is sorely lacking: It makes lousy armour.

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Personal Boundaries 

The purpose of analyzing this stuff beforehand is to make sure that even my frozen brain and my in-denial guts cannot lull me into cooperating if I am ever in one of the extreme places where a victim really needs to fight if she is going to survive. Because I’ve thought about this stuff in advance, if something like it ever happens, even my frozen brain will have a definite decision point.

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The Right, Responsibility, and Readiness of Carrying a Handgun

Watch the news on any given day and you will clearly see we live in difficult times. Grab a history book and you will learn this is nothing new. Log onto social media and you will notice there are a lot of experts on both subjects, and they are more than willing to tell you all about it. Whether you believe the news is fake, history is a lie or social media experts are idiots does not change the fact the fight is coming, and we need to be ready.

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Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, May 1954

A short History of Viet Nam. In 1858, the first French colonists arrived in what was then called French Indo-China, which included modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Over succeeding decades, French missionaries converted many locals from Buddhism to Catholicism. Ethnic Chinese came down from the north, at the invitation of the French, to become shopkeepers, as the area was increasingly influenced by French culture. The French built schools, dams, hospitals, sanitation systems, factories, churches, and plantations. However, like the Romans before them, they had zero tolerance for rebellion. French secret police ruthlessly tracked down local dissidents. Most were quietly executed. Like so many civilizations facing colonization by external forces, indigenous Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians saw their ancient cultures relentlessly dissipating. Rebellion was always just under the surface. 

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The “21 Foot Rule”

Hint: There is no such thing. To put everyone in the readership on a level playing field, this “21 Foot Rule” is what many of us also know as the Tueller Drill. In the early 1980’s, Sgt Dennis Tueller conducted studies involving how quickly a subject armed with a knife could cover a given distance, before an officer could react, draw and fire effectively at the knife wielding attacker.

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Threat Modeling: Profile Elevation

Profile elevation is a fairly intuitive concept. For our purposes we can describe it as† “the generally undesirable condition of:

-- becoming more visible to one’s adversary, and/or

-- becoming more interesting to one’s adversary.”

Being either or both more visible and/or interesting to your adversary is a bad thing in nearly any adversarial situation (Murphy’s Laws of Combat: Try to look unimportant, the enemy may be low on ammunition). If you are highly visible to an adversary your movements, whether online or in the real world, are easier to track. If you are interesting to your adversary, he or she will be willing to invest time and money to pursue you, digitally or physically.

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British Man Arrested in England for Posing with Shotgun While on Vacation in Florida

Richelieu-Booth Posing with a Remington 870

John Richelieu-Booth, a 50-year-old self-employed IT contractor from England, was arrested by British police after returning home from a vacation in Florida for posing awkwardly while holding a Remington 870 shotgun in the Sunshine State.

Richelieu-Booth told the British newspaper The Telegraph that he was completely shocked by the “Orwellian” decision made by his local constabulary, the West Yorkshire Police, who first warned him about the picture he posted on his social media but then arrested him several hours later.

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Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS makes its closest approach to Earth on 19 Dec 25

Every now and then the Universe reminds us of just how small we are. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth on Friday, Dec. 19, marking a key moment in the journey of one of the rarest visitors ever observed in our solar system.

Discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescopes in Chile, 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object known to have passed through our cosmic neighborhood, following 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Its trajectory shows that it originated from beyond our solar system and will eventually travel back into interstellar space.

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A Modified Department of Energy Shotgun Low Light Qualification Course

In the November 2025 Sensible Self Defense Academy Home Defense Shotgun Low Light Match, I modified the Department of Energy (DOE) Shotgun Qualification Course* for low light competition. I did not use kneeling for safety reasons and substituted moving to cover on one string where the DOE course uses kneeling. The DOE Protective Force are the guys and gals that protect nuclear weapons in transit (within the United States) and nuclear facilities.

For practical purposes and to save time during the match, we use steel silhouette targets. Fired in three strings from the twenty-five-yard line, the fifteen yard line, and the seven-yard line, firing ten total rounds. For this match, we scored time only as long as the competitor made the hits.

The competitor in the video for this course of fire used a standard Winchester SXP Defender pump shotgun. The video is available here.

Course of fire:

String I: Immediate response to a lethal threat at a moderate range while moving to more advantageous (cover) position. From the twenty-five-yard line: four rounds, two targets.

From standing with four rounds in the shotgun. At the start signal, fire one hit on each target, move to cover (barricade), and fire one hit on each target.

String II: Immediate and continuing response to a lethal threat at a moderate range while reloading. From the fifteen-yard line: four rounds, two targets.

From standing with three rounds in the shotgun. At the signal, fire one hit on each target, load one round in the magazine tube, and fire one hit on each target.

String III: Immediate and continual response to a lethal threat at a short range, using an alternate method to load. From the seven-yard line: four rounds, two targets.

Load with two rounds in the shotgun, chamber empty (house or cruiser ready). At the signal, charge the shotgun, fire one hit on each target, load one round in the chamber and one round in the magazine tube, and fire one hit on each target from a standing position.

Lessons: This home defense shotgun low light match demonstrated some lessons that we seem to repeat each match.

    -- Know your shotgun’s manual of arms. I saw the same shooters having the same challenges they had in the last low light match. One competitor using a Berretta 1301 forgot that the 1301 will not load from the magazine simply by pulling the charging handle. You must place a shell on the lifter first.

    -- Depending upon your personal circumstances, you may not need to have a light on your shotgun; however, I believe you must have practiced manipulating the shotgun “by feel” rather than relying on seeing what you are doing. If competitors did not have lights, the Safety Officer illuminated the target area with just enough light to see the target. Even so, the competitor still had to manipulate their shotgun by feel. Some struggled with this. One competitor took eight seconds to find the ejection port on his shotgun so he could insert a shell.

So, with my modifications is still the DOE shotgun qualification? No, it is not. To see the standard DOE qualification click here.

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 * DOE Protective Force Firearms Qualification Courses, July 2011

Wednesday Wisdom: 10 December 2025

Medal of Honor: John Upshur Dennis Page

On the night of 10 December 1950, the convoy reached the bottom of the pass but was halted by a strong enemy force at the front and on both flanks. Deadly small-arms fire poured into the column. Realizing the danger to the column as it lay motionless, LTC Page fought his way to the head of the column and plunged forward into the heart of the hostile position. His intrepid action so surprised the enemy that their ranks became disordered and suffered heavy casualties. 

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A Burner Phone?

Whether you should be using a burner phone depends on your risk model—the factors and concerns that are specific to you. Every one of us is exposed to a different set of risks that can vary depending on your nationality, citizenship, political views, profession, and much more. For example, lawyers, activists, and journalists may be at higher risk of being targeted than, say, an electrician or a stay-at-home mom.

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Learn Interrogation Techniques from a Professional

Professional interrogators are just that — professionals. Their techniques are not rocket science or mysterious sorcery, but they work. If you want to figure out what happened in a given situation or if the person you are talking to is lying and how to get them, as we say in the trade, to make statements against their best interests, read on.

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The Modern Version: The Ant and the Grasshopper

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

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What is Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) and why do you need it?

U2F security keys help to keep your online accounts secure even if your passwords are compromised.

Passwords alone aren’t enough to secure your online accounts. Too many passwords are easy for hackers to crack, and even if you use unique, strong passwords, they could still be stolen any day in a phishing attack or data breach.

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Red Dots – Are We Training to Use Them Best?

The thinking is that officers would save the time typically spent shifting back and forth between the intended target and their sights to make an accurate shot. Thus, officers could fire their pistols sooner and hopefully more accurately.

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Myth: Criminals buy guns at gun stores and gun shows

Fact: Fewer than 1% of crime guns are acquired at gun shows, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Fact: In total, about 10-11% of crime guns come from retail sources where background checks are conducted. About 2.3% of guns used in violent crime come from retail sources.

Fact: One study of adult offenders living in the Chicago area determined that criminals obtain most of their guns through their social network and personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or even theft. This agrees with other, broader studies of incarcerated felons.

Fact: Another city-wide study, this one in Pittsburgh, showed that 80% of people illegally carrying guns were prohibited from possessing guns, and that at least of 30% of the guns were stolen.

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Cooper Commentaries: Vol. 2, No. 14; 10 November 1994

Per Jeff Cooper: Let us consider the "L-shaped Pepper Popper." The standard Pepper Popper goes down when it is well hit, and stays down. This makes it necessary for somebody, usually the shooter, to step forward and set it up again. This is fine for pistol activity where the ranges are short, but when one uses the Popper as a rifle target the problem of getting it to come back up again becomes "labor intensive." At the recent Gunsite Reunion at Whittington Center, John Gannaway showed us some heavy-duty Poppers which were designed to bounce but not fall when struck solidly by a rifle of adequate power. They worked quite well, but they were somewhat difficult to judge at 300 meters - or even 200. Now then, let us consider the provision of a forward-extended counter-weight affixed to the base of the popper. This could be a smooth metal rod on which a sliding weight could be adjusted for calibration. When properly set up this popper would flinch to a hit by starting over rearward and then it would come back to vertical due to the adjusted weight on the rod. Such a device would be more complicated to manufacture and hence more expensive than a standard popper, but it would be more useful for training and practice purposes, and if made of proper armored steel it could be made reactive for almost any caliber, even including the 223. Why didn't we think of this before? (Many years ago, I shot matches in Maryland with THE John Pepper – the inventor of the Pepper Popper. He was a great shot.)

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Out Where the West Begins: A Deputy and His R8

I think I’ll do okay,” he told me with a slowly-developing wry smile under a horseshoe mustache (not to be confused with a Fu Manchu) and an immaculate platinum four-inch brim Serratelli western hat. I always wondered how he kept that thing so clean patrolling our infamous red dirt roads. In retrospect, I had probably come across a little incredulous as to Garfield County Deputy Cory Rink’s choice of new duty pistol while we were discussing the dynamics of modern law enforcement shootings, split times, reloading speed and accuracy. 

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Wednesday Wisdom: 3 December 2025

“False is the idea … that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it … The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides …” Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria (1738-1794)

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 The Definitive Guide to Flying with Guns

A good overview concerning flying with firearms.

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Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.

The problem of course is that people going about their daily business is not probable cause that a crime has been or is being committed; however, it can be flagged as suspicious. 

The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then notify local law enforcement.

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Understanding the VPN Threat Model

Proton VPN is one of the best VPNs available. Its paid version is quite fast and Proton has a free plan if you'd like to try it out first. Proton’s VPN is feature rich and the pricing is reasonable for the features the program contains, especially if you bundle Proton VPN with the company's other software. I have been using Proton Mail since it was launched in 2014 and started using their VPN when they released it and I am very satisfied with the product.

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Cornwallis’ Last Guard — A Carolina Sportsman’s Ghost Story

The year was 1919. The shrill of hounds broke the night’s silence on Abbotts Creek. A huntsman followed their barking on horseback through the Carolina brush. His gun dogs, Cash and Mean, had just bolted to chase what he thought was a racoon. Gun in hand, he dismounted and made his way through the cockleburs to see his dogs barking frantically up a tree.

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You can take the clans out of Africa; but you can't take Africa out of the clans.

In Africa national borders — and thus nations — are matters of political convenience, if not flat-out arbitrary. Only newbies to Africa even think about nationality, old hands know that tribal affiliation trumps all. Remarkably, these tribal affiliations can have a direct impact on who sits in the mayor’s office in a major US city.

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Reputation 

After assisting a pair of detectives with an evidence search I escorted them out of the jail. One turned and said, "You must have a major reputation. That guy was NOT going to go easily, and you showed up and he calmed right down."  

"Naah, I'm kind, sweet, innocent and gentle. Everybody loves me."

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Doorbell Camera Shows Dekalb Woman Killed Confronting Burglars

Be careful about confronting burglars. A woman was shot and killed Saturday night after driving up to confront suspected burglars outside her DeKalb County home, police said. Doorbell footage shows the burglary in progress and captures the moment Scott pulled up to the house in her vehicle. One of the suspected burglars then opened fire, according to police.

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American Rifleman Archives: Oxford Gunsight

A very early dot sight using a small incandescent bulb. The working principle is this: The bulb is positioned at the focus of the rear surface of the lens. Light rays striking this surface are partially reflected back to the eye of the shooter. All rays from the same point of the bulb are reflected parallel, and because the aperture for the special little bulb is so tiny the total rays are effectively parallel.

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Notes on Building a Warrior Culture

Yet the truth remains: a society that cannot build warriors cannot defend anything it values. We can talk endlessly about rights, but without the men and women who can protect those rights under threat, they are fragile illusions.

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