It is often said that power corrupts. But, it is equally important to realize that weakness corrupts too! Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are faults of the weak. Resentment on the part of the weak springs not from injustice done to them, but from their own sense of inadequacy and impotence.
— Eric Hoffer, 1980
Month: September 2009
Combined Skills
Next weekend (Sep. 12 & 13, 2009) KR Training will be holding a special Combined Skills course.
Students will work with Tom [Givens, of Rangemaster] on pistol skills for real fights. Southnarc will cover Managing Unknown Contacts, Practical Unarmed Combat, and In-Fight Weapon Access. This is a unique opportunity to obtain dove-tailed training in integrated pre-fight management skills, empty hand skills, and street proven gun skills.
Topics: group shooting at 7-25 yards, presentation from holstered and ready positions, multiple shots/single target, multiple targets, targets at varying ranges, one handed shooting (left and right hand), reloads, shooting on the move, shooting from kneeling and prone, shooting from cover, drawing and shooting from seated positions, and more.
This is some serious training, covering a lot of skills by two of the nation’s best instructors in their respective fields. It is not a beginner course, and looks to be rather intensive. I expect it will be educational, stressful, and humbling.. and you’ll probably go home hurting a bit. 🙂
Opportunities like this don’t come around often. If you’re within reasonable travel distance to Central Texas and the KR Training facilities, I’d recommend signing up for the course. There are still some slots left.
I’ll be there. I expect to be humbled and educated, and come out a better person for it all. It’ll be long and tiring, but should be good. I’m sure I’ll have reports afterwards.
Sick day?
It’s the day before a 3-day weekend, and I see the emails going about the office saying “so and so is out sick.”
Uh-huh.
4 day weekend? 🙂
Now I don’t actually doubt they’re sick. It is the start of the school year and thus begins the giant petri dish of illness. In fact, both Wife and Daughter have visited the new “urgent care” clinic down the road from us just this past week and are currently working their way through their antibiotics.
But it got me to thinking, like it does every year.
Sick days are a disadvantage to working from home.
When you’ve got something that’s bad enough you wouldn’t want to go into the office to spread germs about, but it’s not incapacitating sick, well…. you can still work. Is there expectation that you’d work? Maybe. I know I at least put that upon myself, and maybe because I’m home, I’ve nothing else to do, I’d likely sit in front of the computer anyways, so might as well be productive.
But it also means I rarely use my sick days in a day. I may still get sick, but no one’s going to get my germs anyways, so I continue to slog away.
Oh well. A minor disadvantage really. The fact that some days I’ve been able to program in my underwear, that works just fine. 🙂
Another shot at competition?
There’s an ISPC match tomorrow. I’d like to go. I’ve been wanting to compete, but it’s just not happening for various reasons.
Thing is, I suspect tomorrow’s match will likely suffer the same fate as my prior attempt at competition. Weather predictions are for rain through much of the weekend, possibly heavy.
I’m happy, we are in desperate need of rain. Any rain we can get is good and I’m not going to argue with (other than wanting more). But given the predictions and the way the sky looks even this morning, I’m not going to plan on tomorrow’s IPSC shoot being my first. Another time….
Meantime, I must prepare for what’s coming next….
Quote of the day
Moral of this story: Nothing is more expensive than something the government provides for free.
Leave it alone
Governing a large country
is like frying a small fish.
You spoil it with too much poking.Center your country in the Tao
and evil will have no power.
Not that it isn’t there,
but you’ll be able to step out of its way.Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.Tao Te Ching #60 – Translation by Stephen Mitchell
The important part is the first block. Think about it. What happens when you fry a small fish and you keep poking it? It falls apart. Or remember how your Mom told you to stop picking at that scab? And you didn’t, and what happened? It got worse, it got infected, it left a scar.
This country was founded upon “leave things alone.” Don’t tread on me. Stop interfering in people’s business. As Brian Enos said, “Freedom is letting things be.”
Why have we forgotten that?
When you remind people of that, why do so many resist it so much? Why is the response “Yeah but…”?
Life isn’t fair and no amount of effort, legislation, begging, praying, pleading, is going to make it fair. But the more you keep screwing around with things, the less you leave things alone and letting them work themselves out in a natural way (yes, that means being patient, even if it means it doesn’t happen in your lifetime), the more you’re going to risk screwing things up even more than they already might be.
Stop poking the fish.
Use it or lose it
I’m constantly amazed at how long it takes to gain things, but how quickly they are lost.
Since I switched my martial arts study, I haven’t done any Kuk Sool work — I’ve barely thought about it. However I realized that I’m losing a few things. Not the mental knowledge, but the physical conditioning that Kuk Sool gave me. Granted, I’m using a different set of muscles and physical movements, so I’m gaining physical conditioning in other ways. But some of the losses I’m not liking. For instance, Kuk Sool did a lot of leg work. My current studies aren’t as heavy on leg work. Consequently, I’ve noticed my legs fading a bit.
So this morning after doing a bunch of kali stick work, I opted to run through all my Kuk Sool forms. Nothing intensive, but just something to feel the burn again.
And burn I felt. 🙂
My legs are aching a bit from all the low stance work, going in and out of low stances does work your leg muscles quite well. It also made me realize how part of my ankle rehab was coming from doing all of that work. Furthermore, my knees aren’t so happy these days, since they’re not getting the same level of use/strengthening. It’s all crazy.
So, I’m going to resolve to at least do a bunch of deep knee bends every day. Nothing major, just something to ensure I use it and don’t lose it. And I’ll keep doing my forms from time to time. It’s good for me. 🙂
I can has Nebraska carry now?
Via Joe Huffman and the NRA’s news releases I find this welcome bit of news.
When Nebraska’s concealed handgun law went into effect back in 2006, there was no reciprocity. A lot of states, such as Texas, would recognize Nebraska’s permit, but Nebraska recognized no one elses. But now that LB 430 passed and just went into effect, the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office just published a list of the states whose permits they will recognize.
Nebraska will now recognize Right-to-Carry permits from the following states:Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota (class one permit), Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming
In addition, permit holders from the following states will be able to carry in Nebraska, provided the permit holder is 21 or older: California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, North Dakota (class two permit), and Texas
The following states do not meet the standards required by Nebraska’s concealed handgun permit statute and are not valid in Nebraska: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington
Illinois and Wisconsin do not permit concealed handguns by law-abiding citizens.
In my case, so long as the permit holder is over the age of 21 (which I am), my permit will be honored in Nebraska.
Awesome.
Relevant to me since I have family there.
InSights Training Blog
The InSights Training Center now has a blog. Just started up, but already has good stuff on it. InSights is a solid school. I’ve taken some courses from them and desire to take more of their courses.
Backing up? Go forward (sorta)!
Various gun bloggers are talking about this video:
The take-home? That’s how fast someone can come at you (Tueller Drill). Now, the video is IDPA and thus a game and you’re pretty much required to stand there and shoot. But in a real world self-defense situation, you don’t want to stand there and shoot. You want to move.
What bugs me a bit is a lot of folks are recommending that you back up.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not that good at running backwards, especially if I saw someone was coming at me at a high rate of speed with a gun or knife or somehow otherwise bent on hurting me. There’s no way I can run backwards as fast as they’re running forwards. I can’t see where I’m going and thus what I’m about to trip over. And tripping over your own feet is just likely enough and now you’re flat on your back or butt and at a massive disadvantage. Furthermore I know from empty-hand sparring, that going straight backwards does not give you any sort of chance of improving your situation. Your opponent is just going to bear down on you and you only delay getting whacked by a couple seconds — but you’re still getting whacked.
Better is to move off to the side. Let’s say you’re facing the attacker, and your facing forward is 12 o’clock. Going backwards would be 6 o’clock. The simplest thing to do would be to side-step to 3 or 9 o’clock. It’s not the best, but it’s better. Some would argue instead you should go backwards and to the side, so to a 7-8 o’clock or 4-5 o’clock position. Me, I’d argue differently.
I’d say go to 10-11 o’clock, or 1-2 o’clock.
Yes, go towards them. Well, somewhat towards them.
I learned this from InSights Training Center. What you do is make a “J-Hook” sort of run pattern. Allow me to draw a really crappy picture (tgace’s Tactical Preschool series inspired me to make a picture).
There you are at the bottom, attacker at the top coming at you. I drew it running to the left, but of course you can run it to the right as well. The key is to see the J-hook running pattern.
What does this do? Well, it gets you “off the X” and out of the direct line of attack. You do keep yourself far enough away that if they had some sort of contact weapon (knife, baseball bat, crowbar, etc.) that you’re still out of range (note: you can tighten the J and close distance, or expand the J to get away, depending upon your situation). You are moving forward and thus are moving in the manner our bodies are best suited for moving. But you are turning. What’s not shown in the simple diagram is that as you are moving in this manner you are still keeping your body (well, your gun) facing the opponent. You are on the advantage. The attacker now has to change direction and try to turn hard to keep up with you. It’s quite difficult. To really appreciate this, you need to get with a friend and try it. No need for any guns or training weapons, just use your fingers. Start facing each other at some distance apart (to start try 21′ apart, but experiment with different distances: start arms length apart, then when you start the next iteration take a step back from the prior starting point). Without any prior warning or “go” signal, one person should rush the other person and the other person should initiate the J-hook maneuver. Go to either side, you can even mimic drawing your gun if you wish. Make sure you try it as both attacker and defender so you can fully appreciate it.
Is this the be-all-end-all solution? Of course not. It’s just more fuel for Internet debate. 😉 But from my own sparring experience I know that backpeddling isn’t really a productive solution. You must put some sort of “off to the side” movement in there. At least you want the movement to get you out of the line of attack. Better, it also moves you to a more advantageous position. Best, it also reduces your opponents position. The J-hook really works that angle.
Updated: The InSights Training blog echos similar sentiments (of course, since that’s where I got the J-hook from). Also, I didn’t know InSights has a blog. I shall now follow it. 🙂
Updated 2: John Fogh @ InSights now has a specific entry on the J-Hook.
Stuff From Hsoi 