The Everyday Marksman

Mike Green is a 15 year veteran of Special Operations who began a training company in Northern Virginia as a bit of a side gig. His school has since grown into quite the training operation spanning multiple states and categories of students. One of the things that stood out to me about Green Ops is their motto, “Why Should Your Training Be Less Special?”

The theme of the month is all about balance, so here’s another one to think about. I thought about the elements that should go into decision making regarding everything we do, and I categorized everything into these three: safety, capability, and security.

As gun owners and firearms enthusiasts, we should always be mindful of keeping these things in balance.

Today's episode has to do with the theme of the month within our community over at The Marksman's Quarter: finding balance. I thought this was an appropriate topic because I just came off of a month-long break from writing or recording, and wanted to talk a little bit about what led to that hiatus and the things that have been on my mind.

I don't know why this question has been on my mind lately, but I've felt compelled to try and put words to my answer. Why is good marksmanship important? What do we get from learning and practicing it?

I think there's an assumption within the gun world that everyone already knows that marksmanship is important. But I don't think most people actually care.

Today we're sitting down with NC Scout of Brushbeater and American Partisan to talk about radio communications. Scout comes from an Army Infantry scout background, with time served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a variety of martial skills to everyday folks, including radio communications.

Today’s episode is a fairly short one. I want to touch on the idea of a modern Minuteman. It’s something that a lot of people romanticize, but we never really define. In this discussion, I want to talk a bit about what it means to me and what I think we need to do.

This isn’t a discussion about the contents of a go bag or the kind of rifle to bring to the fight. No, it’s about the philosophy of being an engaged citizen ready to put aside individual goals for the sake of maintaining liberty.

Let’s start with a long-ish quote from, of all people John F. Kennedy.

In my own native state of Massachusetts, the battle for American freedom was begun by the thousands of farmers and tradesmen who made up the Minute Men -- citizens who were ready to defend their liberty at a moment's notice. Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.

John F. Kennedy, 1961

The Minuteman

A lot of folks often confuse the Militia and the Minuteman. Even JFK made that mistake in the quote. In truth they were related, but very different.

Militia service in the 1700s was compulsory. Every able-bodied male was expected to participate in the common defense of their community and state, if needed. Of that group, a select group of volunteers were asked to become Minutemen. This group was selected from the Militia roles for their youth, strength, stamina, and motivation.

They were also volunteers.

I suppose you could liken them to a colonial-era QRF or special operations force. The history of the Minuteman goes back at least 100 years before the American Revolution, though. It wasn’t a new concept by any means.

What I’m interested in is those additional qualities: strength, stamina, motivation.

The Everyday Marksman is all about promoting a well-rounded citizenry through the study and practice of tactical skills. Buying the equipment is the easy part, it’s putting in the work that everyone struggles to do.

Even more important is finding others in the community to do the same. As a culture, we’ve become complacent. We give up taking care of problems ourselves in favor of looking to some government authority, typically law enforcement, to settle the dispute for us. This is counter-productive, as the average citizen feels less and less responsibility for taking care of their country.

The Community Problem

I ran a poll within our community, The Marksman’s Quarter, about how many neighbors would members trust to have their back in hard times. The answer was a paltry 6%.

That’s dismal. And the even more serious problem is that we inherently feel isolated in wanting to be ready to protect our homes and community from bad actors. People, as a whole, are shockingly easy to influence with “the crowd.” Most people will go along with what the crowd is doing even if they intellectually know it’s a bad idea. That’s how we end up with such widespread riots and poor behavior on social media.

The same thing works in reverse. If enough people model positive behavior, then “people” feel pressure to fall in line and mirror it.

It’s not going to be easy. In fact, overcoming the media bias and cultural negativity may be insurmountable. But it’s a worthy fight. Keeping our heads buried in the sand hoping that someone else will do it is exactly how our country got where it is right now.

Wrapping Up

I don’t have any fancy pictures for this one. I don’t have a list of things to teach you. All I can leave you with is a plea to commit yourself to the highest ideals of our nation. Find others who are likeminded and work with them to set a better example.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Today we're talking to ILya Koshkin, a prolific blogger and internet personality in the world of rifle optics. I've personally been following him for years and learning from his advice. We've recently struck up a bit of a friendship and I thought it was a great opportunity to bring him on to the show and have him share some of his wisdom.

Today we’re touching on the topic of good planning practices. This has been on my mind a lot lately because my wife and I are discussing all of the future family adventures we’d like to do. I’ve mentioned to you before that I’ve always been, “The Adventurous Type,” and I attribute a lot of that to how I was raised and the way my parents challenged me to explore, discover, and critically think about “what if” scenarios.

I opened with a quote from Roald Amundsen. He was a famed Norwegian explorer who was the first to reach the South Pole during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Expedition.

Amundsen was a meticulous planner, and his expedition to the South Pole was relatively uneventful compared to other famed explorers who made similar attempts.

But just because you have carefully laid plans doesn’t mean everything will always go smoothly. In fact, another antarctic explorer named Ernest Shackleton was another excellent planner, but his expedition never made it to the launching point.

Instead, his ship became stuck in the Antarctic ice for 10 months before it was finally crushed and sank. Shackleton’s exceptional planning and leadership skills enabled him to keep his entire crew alive and surviving on the ice for another seven months while they dragged three lifeboats to the water.

Roald Amundsen

Then there was a harrowing journey to get the damaged lifeboats to a small island for shelter. The men survived there for many more months while Shackleton and a handful of men took the last functioning lifeboat on an 800-mile open water crossing to a small whaling station to get help.

Everyone survived the two-year failed expedition.

Planning Framework

So what’s the point of telling you these tales of famous explorers. I want to illustrate that proper planning is important for both success and those times when things go bad and you have to survive. It’s important for all of us to take time and think about those “what ifs.”

Amundsen and Shackleton had years of experience, and prior failures, to work from when planning their expeditions. You and I have the benefit of learning from others and the collected knowledge of history. All we have to do is think about it.

So, with that, I want to introduce you to the PACE model. PACE, which stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency, & Emergency is a Special Forces framework for planning. It’s typically applied to communications, but I’ve found that it works just as well for thought exercises with “what if” scenarios.

The way to think about this is as follows:

Primary is the most desirable course of action and the one you would plan to do under most circumstances

Alternate is the “next best thing” whereby you get to the same result without much additional effort

Contingency is the plan that will still get the job done, but probably at increased cost, time, and effort

Emergency is the path of last resort, taking the most amount of time, effort, and cost

I’m not saying that you need to sit down and think of every possible thing that could happen and then plan for it. That’s not realistic, and there is a better way to consider those kinds of risks. But what I am saying is that you could use the PACE framework to consider activities in your day to day life and what you would do during a “what if.”

The example I use in the episode is getting home from my office. Under normal circumstances, if everything is going smoothly, then my primary and alternate routes work great. But what if there was another kind of emergency and those roads were blocked? What if vehicle travel was cut off completely and I had to go on foot?

You get the idea.

Make Planning a Habit

In the end, the most effective thing you can do for your own mental preparedness is to periodically stop and ask yourself what you would do for a given situation. Try to come up with a PACE model for that scenario. It could be as dire as an active shooter in your area, or as fun as a family visit to a theme park.

The idea is that by making planning a habit, you set yourself up for success in the future.

In this episode, I sit down with Lothaen of The New Rifleman to discuss our mutual love for the M16A5 rifle. You know...the one that never really came to be for the US Military. It turns out that both of us have our own versions and experiences, and thought you might enjoy a little casual conversation about it.

Today's episode is bringing it back to the Minimum Capable Carbine that I wrote about in my article about your first AR-15. With so many new shooters out there dealing with their first guns, I'm seeing a lot of questions about all the little minutiae that I remember obsessing over when I got started. So this episode is really about giving some advice.

Here's the short version: Don't do it.