Modern Self Protection Podcast

So you want to be a hero?

For this podcast, I got with Rob Morse of the Slow Facts Blog, Self-Defense Gun Stories, and Gun Freedom Radio.

We talked about some of the terrorist attacks in Israel and what you can do if those come to our shores.

You change your carry ammo on a schedule… right?

Here are two ways to set it up; Time-based or usage-based.

If you carry every day you should change out your carry ammo every two years max. If you aren’t carrying that gun every day and it lives in the safe more than on you, five years is the max.

Ammo doesn’t really go “bad” in that time frame but, it does start to show wear and can have some corrosion on the casings. Ammo is exceptionally precise in length, width, depth, circumference, and weight. Any change in any of these measurements can make the bullet go off its intended line or cause a malfunction in your firearm.

Ammo is cheap, life is expensive.

Ammo gets worn out by going in and out of the chamber or by getting handled.

Rifles with a floating firing pin, like your AR-style rifle, ammo should only go into the chamber once and then go into the training bin.

How to tell if it has a floating firing pin and why. When you chamber a round with a floating firing pin the firing pin crashes forward as the bolt closes and actually bounces off the primer. There is not enough energy to set off the round, but it will leave a dent. If you continue to chamber that same round, eventually you will have a problem.

In your rifle you should probably only chamber a round once, and then let that one go to your training bin. I wouldn’t depend my life on it.

Handguns

I dry fire almost every day. I dry fire my carry gun. My carry gun is my everything gun. I shoot competitions with it, I carry it, and I train with it. I’m not the gun-of-the-month person. I’m a one-gun person. I probably should have a second carry gun exactly like my primary so that I can rotate them out.

Every time a round comes out of my gun I mark it with a sharpie. First, one line across it. The second time, I add a line at a 90-degree angle so it looks like a cross. The third time a round comes out I blackout the entire back of the round. And that is the last time it will go in and out of the chamber. I rotate that round to the bottom of the magazine and when it comes up again, it’s time for new ammo.

Ammo wears in a couple of critical ways, the rim gets torn off or rounded, the bullet is set back, the crimp weakens or fails, the jacket or finish wears and corrodes, and the primers break. Anyone of these could be a critical failure that could cost you your life with carry ammo.

The rim getting torn off or rounded is less and less of a problem because more than one police officer has lost their life because of this. Every time you chamber a round the extractor grabs the rim. When you pull that round out of the chamber the extractor is the little claw that holds onto it. Since the extractor is made of hardened steel and the case or the round is brass, the case rim wears. Eventually, the rim will be rounded off or break off and the extractor will have nothing to pull the case out of the chamber with. You will have a one-shot gun.

Bullet setback creates overpressure inside the chamber. When you chamber a round, the correct way, you let the slide slam forward and strip the round off the top of the magazine. The round accelerates forward and the only thing holding the bullet is the crimp. If you have a cheaper crimp, or there is something wrong with the crimp, the bullet will go inside the casing a little further. With less volume in the case you will get more pressure and an overpressure round is not going to send the bullet true and could cause the case to rupture or get stuck in the chamber.

Every time the round is chambered that crimp has to hold the bullet in place. It will only do its job for so long. The crimp will fail at a certain time. It has to so that the bullet can leave the casing and do its job. If the crimp fails completely the bullet will come off and the powder will get stuck everywhere in the gun. I have seen the crimp on the primer fail on an AR rifle and had the primer lock up the trigger and the gun would not fire.

The case is made of brass, steel, or aluminum (now in some cases plastic). Sooner or later it will corrode. The corrosion could cause all sorts of problems inside the chamber. Don’t bet your life that it will work correctly.

Lastly, if the crimp on the primer doesn’t cause your problem, the primer could go bad from being beaten on for a long period of time. The primer could go inert and just not fire, or could fall off like above, or could just slip out a hair so that there is not enough energy from the striker or hammer to break the primer and set it off.

Stay Safe,

Ben

P.S. I’m riding to raise money to fight Alzheimer’s and would love if you could throw a couple bucks at it. Click here to help me and the Alzheimer’s Association out.

Do you want to be a leader when the time comes? start leading now.

Leadership is as important in life as it is on the battlefield. I know most of you won’t end up on a traditional battlefield someplace, but you may find a little piece of hell on earth that you have to save yourself or your family from.

If the time ever comes when you have to defend yourself or your family, it will feel like a battlefield.

If you want to lead yourself, your family, and others through those times you have to start preparing now.

Here are 5 things you can do to start becoming a battlefield leader:

Learn: Become an expert in self-defense, fighting, weapons, avoidance, and anything else that you think you might need. And keep learning.

Build Relationships and Leadership Capital: People want to follow others they know and that they know are competent. Others also want to be heard and have an influence on other people. Build relationships with everyone around you so they know you and your skills. Build leadership capital by leading well when it is called for, following others, and supporting leaders above you and around you.

You need leadership capital (a lot of it) if you are going to be able to give commands and have them followed when the chips are down and the battle is raging. People will have to know and trust you so they will do what you are saying and you can lead.

Performance: You have to perform at everything you do and prove yourself every day to keep your leadership capital. As soon as you are seen slipping or you don’t do something as well as you could, people will see that and think you aren’t as good as you say you are at things. You have to preform at almost every meaningless task all the time to have people follow you on the battlefield.

Be Decisive but not Rigid: You have to learn to make a decision and be known as the person that can. This goes all the way down to picking a place to eat. But you can’t have it your way or the highway. In everyday life, suggestions are a good way of making a decision but not being rigid about it. May I suggest Texas Roadhouse (one of my favorite places for food) for dinner? Then see what everyone says. If someone brings up an objection, then overcome it with feelings and reason, or suggest another place. In everything, take in information, make a decision, explain your decision so everyone is on board, then execute.

Practice: This means the little things like “Where should we go to dinner?” Yes, this seems like a pointless thing, but it is a way to practice your leadership. The more you practice now, the better you will get at it, and the better you will perform if you ever need those skills.

Stay Safe,

Ben

De-Escalation is a skill you should be using as a tactic. When was the last time you practiced it?

Like every skill you have for self-defense, de-escalation should be practiced any time you can.

I actually got a chance last week on the way home from work. It looked like a traffic accident between a bike and a car had just happened right at the entrance to my neighborhood. At first, I thought I’d help medically, but when I noticed that the driver and bike rider are having a screaming match I knew I wouldn’t need that skill.

Both men were yelling mostly absurd things and blocking the road. I thought I’d wait and see what happened. It didn’t cool down after a couple of minutes, so I asked the question of the rider, are you okay? Are you hurt?

Don’t miss this, I did it from a position of advantage. I was in my car, armed, but more importantly, I had a way to escape in my car without being hurt. If you are going to practice de-escalation it is normally between individuals that are very emotionally charged and that could mean they are a danger to yourself or others. Don’t give up your personal safety to practice self-defense skills.

After I asked the second time and got the bike rider’s attention he said the car just barely missed him and he was okay. I told him I was glad to hear that and does he need any help.

The rider actually said thank you and was very moved because no one had asked if he was okay after the near miss. He reached his hand through the open passenger side window and shook my hand thanking me for taking an interest in his well-being.

Again, don’t lose your position of advantage. My left hand was on the wheel, the car was still in gear, and I still had a place to run. Remember, these situations will change continuously, continue to know your way out.

After that, the bike rider got on his bike and started to leave. I pulled forward a little to get between the driver and the rider to let the rider leave. And he did.

The driver was something else… the first thing he did was accuse me of being part of black lives matter and then start calling me a bunch of racist crap. The white driver had already been calling the black bike rider a bunch of racist crap. I was quite taken aback by being called a race traitor and that I would side with that N’ because he was black.

I laughed and asked if he was okay. Then asked if his car was okay. He settled down a little and then told me someone needs to teach that N’ a lesson. I simply said that won’t help anyone. He got frustrated with me, noticed the crowd forming, and left the area.

Worked out okay.

I always do after actions on things that happen. I was at a loss for words when I found out how racist this person I was dealing with was. That was a mistake. No matter what he said, I should have been thinking two steps ahead for my personal security and the security of those around me. What he says doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. Thinking ahead matters a lot more.

What’s the old saying, if you think you have heard it all, something is coming you never thought of. It happens.

The next time you can de-escalate a situation without giving up your personal security, you should try it. Maybe it’s just an argument between your significant other and your kids, or two people you care about and there is no real danger to you, practice. The skills of defusing your family members’ arguments are the same as defusing a hostile argument.

Stay Safe,

Ben

How skilled are you with your EDC? Are you skilled enough? Do those skills matter?

You’ve seen all the pocket dumps. I’m sure you have argued and heard the arguments of what gun is better to carry and why. Whether it’s for the zombie attack or to carry every day. We argue about gear all the time. Then, sometimes, we talk about skills with that gear.

I’m here to tell you that tactics are more important than the gear and the skill you have with the gear. Your understanding of what is going on and your move toward what you want to happen is your tactics.

A definition of gear is obvious, it’s the stuff you have. The definition of skill is how you can use that gear. Your tactics are the overall mindset and how to employ your skills towards a goal. It’s just bigger thinking.

The first part of being better at tactics is defining a mission. Think strategically now, because when someone is trying to kill you it’s hard to think about anything else besides surviving and panic.

Decide what you will and will not do to further that mission. Some hard questions to ask yourself are will you pass an injured kid to stop a killer or evacuate your family? What about a kid you know that is calling your name for help? To even the toughest warrior, that is a hard question. Answer them now so later you don’t have to stop in the heat of the moment and make a decision.

Part of defining your mission is knowing your priorities of work. Those priorities becomes your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). Mine are, in this order, on purpose, my wife, my kid, myself, other people in my charge, extended family members, kids, and other people when I can.

If you look at my priorities of work; mall shooting with my family at my side, you are on your own. A school shooting with my kid in a class room, everyone else is on their own. I’ll help if I can, but my kid comes first.

Part of my priorities of work is also my mission parameters; 1 – I have to be able to look myself in the mirror every day no matter what I do or don’t do. 2 – My family has to survive, then me. 3 – Is the United States’ “Justice System.” I’ll deal with life in that order.

So if it is a school shooting and my kid is in there, law enforcement better have a good plan and be executing it when get there or I will. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something when no one else was and my kid didn’t survive.

When you start thinking at the upper level everything just starts falling into place. In any situation, I will figure out my mission very quickly by going t hrough my mission parameters and priorities of work.

If you do the “what-if” game when you see things in the news and go through your priorities of work and mission parameters you will figure out what your mission is and how to execute it.

If you need a quick reference the Marine Corps provides the acronym DrawD or what the enemy can do in the defense; Defend, Retreat, Attack, Withdraw, and Delay. If something happens in the “real world” you are in the defense and you can choose one of the five.

Whatever you chose, do it, and do it well. Your life depends on it. These quick thoughts are the beginning of tactics.

Stay Safe,

Ben

Everyone seems to be catching up to me lately… and it sucks.

I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps including a combat tour and being part of an anti-terrorism force. I left the Marine Corps to return to Iraq as a private contractor for the U.S. Government fighting terrorism. I gave a large portion of my adult life to fighting terrorism and the horrors that most people don’t want to deal with. To me, a terrorist is about the lowest scum on earth.

Then in 2008, I was called a terrorist for the first time by then-President Obama. The term domestic terrorist had just started and I was on the list. Being a white male, military-aged, former military, contractor, Christian, and gun owner I was on the top of the list. Everyone thought I was crazy for saying the United States Government could do such a thing. The truth is they have been doing it for a long time. Welcome to the party!

Through the years it has only gotten worse. I know I’m on every watch list the government has which makes me both sad and proud. Yes, I will associate with the deplorable’s, that is almost half the country. Yes, I cling to my religion and my guns. Yes, I’m proud to be an American. Yes, I think our government f’s things up a lot. At least I’m not on the no-fly list… yet.

All of these lists that you don’t know you are on, how you got there, or how to get off are a threat to every free person in the world. And I don’t know how to fix it.

It is not time to fight the great boogaloo (which is now a terrorist word as indicated by a leaked FBI memo). I’m trying to get more involved at my local political level because I know local politicians grow up to be state and federal politicians.

This blog is about self-defense. So you might ask how all that plays into your self-defense. Well, the “Justice System” hasn’t been not been impartial for a long time, it has gotten worse. If the “they” of the world think you are on the wrong side it appears unlikely you will get a fair trial.

Do you remember the Austin protester during a BLM protest that was carrying an AK openly and gave a weird interview with his rifle right before the shooting? Then an Army Sergeant driving for Uber, carrying a concealed handgun with a license smoked him after ending up in the crowd by mistake. The Army Sergeant got convicted of Murder early this year over three years after the shooting.

I’ve known since I was a teenager that the deck was stacked against me if I have to use deadly force. It was what I was taught in Law Enforcement and it didn’t take much research at the time to see that if the U.S. Government wanted you, they were going to convict you.

So, you are out there, just trying to protect yourself. Take extra care in what you do. Be more mindful to stay out of places that might put you and your family in danger. Be more careful about where you insert yourself into other people’s problems. And be more careful about who you argue with. All of this could end you up in prison for the rest of your life… and is more likely to happen now than it was five years ago.

In conclusion, welcome to this shitty party that somehow we all ended up in.

Stay Safe,

Ben

Going against the grain takes humility, guts, and the chance to lose.

Last month I went to shoot a competition with Bob Mayne at the Handgun World Podcast. Not unusual, Bob and I shoot competitions at least once a month if not more. I normally beat him, but there have been times when he has beaten me. We are normally in the middle of the pack someplace when it comes to overall scores.

Last month was different because I invited a former military guy and current law enforcement guy that are always asking about shooting and one of them tells me how good he is at it. My arrogance and experience come in here when I say that most law enforcement and military guys aren’t very good with their weapons. They lack training and lots of practice.

I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t ask people to shoot competitions with me because they will not. It gets really old, really fast, and excuses are like assholes; everyone has one, and they all stink.

My wife “highly suggested” that I ask these guys, so I did. And no big surprise, I got an excuse for why they both couldn’t go.

That got me thinking about others’ lack of guts. With the chance to lose and look foolish on the line, almost everyone in the military and law enforcement will refuse to play a game with their profession’s chosen tools.

It got me pissed. I am out of both professions and getting too old to play the game professionally anymore. I rely on these people to keep our world safe, and they don’t have the guts to lose or look foolish in front of people they don’t know. How are they ever going to stand up for the things that are needed? When a police officer gets direction from their command to do something against the Constitution or against the people, how are they ever going to say no when they don’t have the guts to shoot a competition with a bunch of civilians?

When the military hands down UnConstitutional, immoral, or illegal orders, how will the individual fighter or commander say no to their command if they can’t shoot a competition?

Courage, like most things, is a muscle that you have to exercise in life. If you don’t practice courage, it will atrophy and die.

How often do you practice courage? Moral and or physical? Do you do new things that you are going to look foolish at? Do you accept challenges when others ask you to do something that should be possible? Do you do things that are hard that others say are hard, shouldn’t be done, or is impossible? Do you do different hard things on purpose because they are hard and scary?

Take a challenge. Do something hard. Say something when you know something should be said. Practice your courage. If what people are saying in the firearms/2nd Amendment culture is true, we are going to need courage both moral and physical soon. Now would be a good time to practice.

Stay Safe,

Ben Branam

Should you give medical attention to a bad guy after you are forced to defend yourself?

If you have to defend yourself should you give medical aid to the person that just tried to hurt you?

No. Is the simple easy answer and should be the end of it. There are only two reasons this may not be true, and I would argue that it should still be the rule: 1) If you are legally obligated by law to help people under any circumstances, or 2) the person you had to defend yourself against is someone you care deeply about and you really don’t want them to die.

Barring, or even in the two exceptions above, there are three things to consider when helping someone that just tried to hurt you (and this all goes double if you had to use deadly force):

The Tactical Situation

If someone tries to hurt you and then you put them down on the ground so hard that the preditor now needs medical attention, that person just became that much more dangerous. That person is now a wounded animal and you never know what that wounded animal would do.

If I was losing a self-defense situation and was on the ground and had the other person coming up to me, I would assume that person is there to finish me off while I’m down. It would never cross my mind that the person was there to give me medical attention.

Remember most dirtbags (people that commit crimes for a living) are very familiar with criminal violence. In the criminal culture, you don’t give help, pity, or empathy to a person outside your circle. There is no way the person you just had to use force against is going to think you are there to help them.

That person may give up and you might be able to help them, or they may fight back with everything they have trying to take you with them. I would. Wouldn’t you?

Morality

On the surface, it may seem that the morally right thing to do is help someone. Under normal circumstances it is. You should help people that you can, need, and want your help.

A self-defense situation where someone just tried to hurt or kill you is not a normal circumstance. It’s not something you do all the time, it’s not something you probably have ever experienced before. After being in 11 gunfights in Iraq I can tell you after everyone I was overly excited and not thinking as well as I should have after the adrenaline dump. And the more gunfights I got in, the angrier I got that someone was trying to take my life.

It’s hard to help someone when you are angrier at this one person than you have ever been in your life. When you are seeing red, you don’t always do things the way they should be done. I would be afraid to make a mistake and do more harm than good.

I can get that person and anyone else that needs help faster and better by calling for help.

Legally

If you have the knowledge to help someone that is hurt very badly, do you have the knowledge to make it worse? Of course, you do. You have been told how things can go wrong if you put the tourniquet on wrong, or could pull a wound open more to make it bleed faster. If you have more advanced life savings training, you know a lot more things that could go wrong with someone you are working on.

If that person dies or has a major problem after the incident, every lawyer that person has will say you did it. And they will come after you. What might have been a cut and dry self-defense case now looks like a lawsuit and maybe a criminal prosecution if the prosecutor thinks they can win a case against you… especially if they are anti-self-defense.

There isn’t really any way helping that person will help you legally. Even if you go to trial and have most of the jury believe you were just trying to help the person, there will be a few (and it only takes one) that will doubt your intentions because they don’t think they could have helped someone after that person had tried to hurt them or their family.

Conclusion

Don’t do it. Call 911. Get lots of people there to make the scene safe for you and the other innocent people around. Get the professional medics there as soon as possible to give that person the best medical attention they can.

Stay Safe,

Ben

Habits are good and bad, but Training Scars will get you in trouble.

2003, Iraq, somewhere between Kuwait and Baghdad:

There I sat, doing what I was trained to do. Dressed in 75 pounds of combat gear including body armor, 14 mags, M16, 3 Frags, 2 Smokes, radio, and dozens of other pounds of assorted crap that a Marine in combat needs, but you wouldn’t think of like binoculars. I was in the back of an open-topped truck with 20 other Marines in crammed together, hiding behind sandbags for cover as a machine gun opened up on the convoy from the only structure within miles.

I fired a couple of rounds back from my M16 and then started helping to lay in the mortar system. My real job was “running the board” for the mortars section. I turned locations on the map into actual data to put on the gun systems to make them hit targets miles away that you couldn’t see from the gun line.

This target was easy. It was a giant house about 350 yards from the road and someone with an AK was firing from a balcony. It looked further than that over the open desert, but my range finder confirmed the distance.

I stood up to get a better view and a clear line of sight for the range finder. Standing was a training scar I had picked up over the last year. Every time we did live-fire we were on an admin range where all of us just stood around like we were having fun, instead of thinking about someone shooting back at us.

I stood in the back of that truck getting the range, telling the gunners what to put on their guns, and looking through binoculars waiting for them to fire a round so that I could adjust for them. Stupid. It was one of many times that my habits and training scars would try and get me killed in combat. Luck, a little skill on my part, and a little lack of skill on the enemy’s part kept me alive.

One mortar opened up on the house in handheld mode. The gunned held the gun tube in place and trigger fired a round without a site. Mostly Kentucky winding it onto target.

The second mortar was setting up in conventional mode that would be able to hit the target house multiple times within the time of flight of the first mortar. Like clockwork, the handheld gun fired another round adjusting off the first one, and the conventional mode gun got up and fired a round.

We were going to lay waste to this building. Then the command ”check fire” came down the line. We stopped firing and just waited. A bad habit we had picked up from training. We should have reloaded and been ready to continue the fight. Instead, we stood there waiting for further commands. Two Humvees came up from the back of the convoy and laid waste to the building. One with an M2 .50 Caliber machine gun and the other with an MK-19 belt-fed grenade launcher.

I heard the weapons firing and didn’t have time to see the outcome. We were ordered back in the vehicles and we moved out just as they opened fire. This had become our “drive-by” technique of fighting to get north to Baghdad.

Looking back I saw both my training scar and my bad habits that I had picked up from the Marine Corps and didn’t notice them until they almost got me killed.

Our problem with bad habits and training scars in self-defense is we don’t know what we don’t know. If we knew we were doing something that might get us killed, we would do something else. This is why training scars and bad habits are so dangerous.

I even disagree with some habits that professional shooters and other trainers use constantly because I saw it cause problems overseas in a combat zone. “Cold” weapons became a problem and the habit of clearing weapon systems by pulling the trigger become an issue.

If you carry a firearm around for long enough and it is unloaded, lots of people stop treating it like a firearm. It becomes an extension of them that you wouldn’t worry about like pointing at someone. And you point your rifle at people all the time. ”Don’t worry, it’s not loaded” was always the excuse for poor weapons handling. And they were unloaded until they weren’t. Now you have live weapons being pointed at people you don’t want to kill or destroy. Law Enforcement and the Military are the worst you could ever see at their daily gun handling safety practices.

Pulling the trigger to confirm that a weapon is unloaded came from the competition community where you are only playing a game. And we thought that was a good idea to adopt what they did to the battlefield but that caused more negligent discharges than you can shake a stick at. And instead of the Army and Marine Corps looking at the problem to fix it, they doubled down and started ruining the careers of all those people standing there when a rifle went off into the clearing barrel.

Training scars are hard to overcome. If you just rack the slide and pull the trigger all the time without thought or looking, sooner or later when there is a filled magazine in the weapon, you rack the slide and pull the trigger before even thinking about anything else. And you discharge a round into the clearing barrel… hopefully containing the bullet and no one gets hurt. Other times and I actually saw this happen, you miss the barrel and zing a round off the concrete barrier and it goes down the line of soldiers waiting to get into chow. With luck no one got hit, that time.

If you can’t pick out anything that is a bad habit or training scar that you do, you need professional training. We all have bad habits and training scars.

I’ve recently picked up, from competition, to move without putting my rifle on safe. It gets me in and out of (mostly out) of positions .25 to .5 seconds faster giving me a better chance of winning the competition. This is bad in the real world. I should have my long gun on safe any time I’m not shooting and especially if I’m moving. That is when you are going to hit your rifle on something and ketch the trigger and have a negligent discharge. I know, it couldn’t happen to you, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times in training and luckily only once in combat.

Stay Safe,

Ben

Be prepared for anything is about accepting what is and acting upon it.

Last weekend I participated in a church mass shooter training event. Most of the time I’m the instructor or coordinator, but this time I actually got to participate.

My church got a bunch of volunteers to volunteer to be actors in the scenarios. Our head of church safety organized and ran the training. It was a lot of fun, and I got to mix it up with the bad guys more than once. Didn’t even die this time. Not bad…. but…

Most of the scenarios were normal church shooter events; one domestic violence, one attack on the pastor, one run of the mill mass killer, but the last one was an attempted hostage scenario.

I say attempted because the safety team ended it before it could begin. A couple was arguing during church service and the guy was instructed to get up, pull a gun, and do a Hollywood gun to the head back against the wall thing to see how we would work together throughout the situation.

Turns out most of us on the team are default aggressive. One of the team members moved towards the couple when they started arguing. He is a former Army Ranger and still pretty good in a fight. When our bad guy got up and started to produce the gun, the Ranger was able to push the gun up and fire over the head of the hostage into the head of the hostage-taker. One step behind our Ranger was a former Army medic that spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan, he also grabbed the gun, pushed it up and put his own gun to the hostage taker’s head, and pulled the trigger. I was a step behind the medic and was going to do the same thing.

We all ended up next to a giant metal pillar that holds up the building. I thought our bad guy was going to take the girl and try to back into the pillar. I was going to reach around the pillar with my gun, press it to the bad guy’s head and pull the trigger.

Turns out, moving to the pillar was exactly what our hostage-taking roll player was told to do.

Even in training, it was fast. It happened in a blink of an eye. Honestly, I can’t believe how fast my Ranger teammate was able to act and win the fight. It was incredible to watch.

I bet you, like me, have never thought about a church shooting turning into a single hostage-taker situation. But you have probably thought about it in other places. So be prepared for anything, anywhere.

That is easier said than done. When I was in Iraq in 2003 I thought I had prepared for everything in War. I was wrong. And even though I had prepared for it for so long I still had an ”oh shit” moment when I was in my first gunfight. At first, I couldn’t believe I was there and someone was actually shooting at me. It took me a second or so to snap out of it and get my head in the game, return fire, and win the fight.

And even after 11 gunfights in under 4 months, I still had that ”oh shit” moment in the last one. In fact, years later, when I ended up back in Iraq as a contractor and was shot at a couple of times, I had that “oh shit” moment. The moment was less and less each time, but it has been there every time. I was even laughed at one for having that moment and hitting the deck when it turned out our own guard tower was shooting at someone over the wall not at us patrolling up to the backside of the tower. I was on point and my guys laughed at me for a week for hitting the deck.

I hope you don’t have the same experience I do. I hope you never get shot at. I hope someone never tries to take your life or the lives of people around you. But if someone does, be prepared for anything.

You get prepared by looking at scenarios that have happened. Anywhere, and any time. Then think of what if this or that had happed on top of what happened. No aliens, or Delta Force repelling down the roof to kill you, but something that might happen will keep you on your toes.

Once you have done a bunch of scenarios in your mind, the next step is excepting what is actually happening at that moment. Whether it makes sense, fits your preconceived notions, or is an alien falling from the sky attacking people. You have to accept what is happening in front of you and then react to what is going on. Push your speed and move faster than your enemy to get inside their OODA loop or you are going to lose. It’s pretty simple in the end. The person with the best tactics, acted upon faster, generally wins.

Be Prepared for anything.

Stay Safe,

Ben