Category: Media Review (Book, DVD, etc.)

The Worthless Youtube Gun Review And My Proposal

I take issue with how most popular youtube firearms channels conduct their gun reviews. It’s like the hollow, superficial gun magazine reviews have bled onto the internet in long form video. I get it. Guns are guns. They’re generally boring and you have to pretend there’s something fancy and new about this specific gun you’re reviewing to fill time and have something to post every week. However, I think it could be done better. Reviews in gun magazines when I was reading them in the early 2000’s went like this:

  • “This pistol well balanced and feels good in the hand”
  • “Ate all 100 rounds I tested flawlessly”
  • “Here’s a shot grouping with XYZ defensive ammo”
  • “Innovative features” that are minor variations of features on all other guns
  • …more drivel…
  • The End

The blatantly bought and sold gun reviews in print media became the laughing stock of the internet. Fast forward to the mid-2000s and we saw independent folks started having a voice with forums, blogs, and eventually YouTube. Once Youtube took off and people realized they could monetize views, we started to see these semi-professional independent gun reviewers gain popularity. Arguably, today these folks are the most recognized people in the industry at large.

Good for Plinkin’, but completely lacking in substance

Tips for Spotting Useless Information

Here’s some things to keep in mind if you’re relatively new to guns and are watching one of those YouTube gun celebrities review a gun on their home range with all the steel targets and soda bottles.

    • “Feels good in the hand” is completely subjective and is totally dependent on the person holding the gun. It also doesn’t matter what it feels like at the gun shop, it matters how it feels while it’s being shot. Some guns that feel good, shoot poorly. For instance, a very comfortable framed gun can be like a bar of soap in recoil that has no index points when establishing grip in the holster. This results in inconsistent presentations on target. Some that “feel blocky” in the hand, actually allow a more repeatable hand index and presentation.
    • “Follow up shots are really fast!” Show me a timer. Show me a grouping on paper. If they don’t have a timer and corresponding holes in a target, you can safely disregard that comment. Here’s a clip of Ernest Langdon talking about his ‘lie detector’ (Shot Timer):

  • “The Trigger is great!” Another subjective comment. More useful information is the method of operation, trigger weight, length of pull, and a description of the feel of the trigger press throughout the shot cycle.
  • “This gun is really accurate” For me, watching someone shoot a 10″ piece of steel at 10 yards isn’t proof of accuracy. Most guns are mechanically more accurate than the shooter. I’d like to see benched 25-yard groupings, which show mechanical accuracy, as well as off-hand 25 yard groups which factor in trigger, sights, and operator ability all together.
  • “This gun is a hoot to shoot!” Maybe. All guns are. I personally am after reliability and performance. Does this pistol allow the reviewer to do something better, worse, or the same as he can do with any other pistol. What? Why? How? This is what I want to know.

Without quantifiable data, you’re just shooting bottles of soda. Look at it as entertainment, not an actual review. Subjective reviews have certain limited value, but numbers matter. Only Performance counts.

What Does The Perfect Gun Channel Look Like (to me)?

If I ran a youtube channel, one of the main features would be to start a performance board similar to how the BBC Show TOP GEAR would review cars around their home track, and rank them on a chart. Think of all the possibilities for quantifying a gun’s attributes! I would pick a few drills that I decided would best demonstrate all important attributes of a gun’s operation by removing outside variables as much as possible, put them on a timer, and rank them by the numbers. The shooter’s ability doesn’t have to be world class, it just needs to be the same shooter for all the tests (me in this case). The viewer would have a direct comparison between any guns I ran through that battery of tests. Scores, Times, Weight, Size, Caliber, reliability are all quantifiable. There would be some subjective input, but I’d keep it minimal. I realize that might be boring to the casual gun person. It’s probably a dumb idea. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to watching Hickok45 shoot steel rams and chuckle at the *GONGGGGG*.

 

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Review: Combatives For Concealed Carry: Clinch Fighting Volume 1

I’m always looking to improve my grappling. I do my Jiu Jitsu and get together with training partners and integrate grappling with weapons whenever I can. However, it’s very difficult to find instructional media that deals with grappling in a weapons based environment. Justin White of Mad Science Defense has a series of DVDs about this topic.

In case you don’t have time to read this: I recommend this DVD.

Chapters and Topics:

  1. Introduction – An explanation of why we might need to deal with a standing contact range fight with weapons.
  2. Dummy Guns
  3. Weapons Access- Discussion of accessing a weapon while in an entangled fight. Discussion of a universal draw stroke.
  4. Posture/Angle/Level- A solid discussion of the fundamental requirements to have sharp grappling.
  5. Clinch from Strikes – Achieving the clinch from a Cover and Crash or off of a striking blast.
  6. Clinch from Grabs – Front, side, and back
  7. Offside Underhook – Options for when your weak arm has an underhook
  8. Strongside Underhook – Options for when your strong arm has an underhook
  9. Overhook – Options for when you can’t achieve an underhook.
  10. Skill Development – Drills to work at home. 1-2-3 dominance drill, slo-mo drill

Extras:

  • Choosing Dummy Weapons
  • Using a Training Dummy
  • Striking With a Handgun
  • Scenario Training

Things I loved:

Expert grappling instruction. It is obvious that Mr. White is a talented grappler and instructor. His teaching progression is logical and starts with the fundamentals of posture, angle, and level and he then introduces techniques that will allow you to close distance and achieve a clinch. He progresses from a solid clinch (underhook and far-side wrist control) to either a tie up, or taking the back of your opponent. He finishes the progression with accessing weapons from these dominant positions.

His details cleared up a few sticking points I have been having while standing. I’ll be taking them to our training group. His emphasis on doing the work was much appreciated. He urged the viewer to seek training and emphasized that this stuff won’t just happen if you don’t practice it. He even gives some exercises to work with a partner to get better at this stuff at home.

Good stuff.

Minor Gripes:

I don’t envy anyone who has to try to cram a topic as dense as standing weapon-based grappling into an hour presentation. There just isn’t enough time to mention all the details. For the person who hasn’t seen this material before, I would have loved to see a brief discussion on why the clinch is such a viable fighting platform for an extreme close range problem. Why we don’t want to get in a speed draw contest with our opponent at close range. Mentioning the importance of monitoring hands while in a clinch to prevent the other guy from getting his weapons, as well as a discussion of why underhooks are such a dominant position just in case the viewer doesn’t glean that from the instruction. But of course I understand why it was omitted, those ideas were inferred in the material and we only had an hour.

The other gripe I have is in one of his tie-up positions from an overhook. He advocates shooting from this position while pointing his gun at himself (43:00 of video). I know (from simunition experience) that it’s easy to shoot yourself if you’re not super careful about your muzzle-target line. I talked with Mr. White about this and he recognized that it was a bit of an oversight. This was the only flub like this I noticed.

In conclusion:

This DVD would be a solid buy whether you have experience grappling or not. If you have trained with any of the Shivworks collective, this will be a good reminder of your options in the clinch. If you haven’t, you’ll get an idea of what this topic is about. I hope I get to train with Justin one day, as he has a lot to teach. I need to pick up his ground fighting DVD next. Recommended.

Be Safe,

Mark

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Book Review: Left Of Bang

This is one of those books that is on nearly every self defense instructor’s must read list. And for good reason. The book was written for Marines to detail the principles of the Combat Hunter Program. It is essentially a step by step manual on how to characterize a location, and notice patterns in the people so  you can quickly determine when something or someone is out of place. It is essentially a ‘situational awareness’ manual for combat. Being Left Of Bang simply means having the information necessary to be able to act before (left-side on a timeline) the *bang* of an attack.

Buy Left Of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life
In both personal protection and combat (so I read) we have to make decisions with less-than-perfect and incomplete information.

It is necessary to have heuristics to allow us to make good-enough decisions more rapidly. Sometimes ‘good-enough’ right now beats ‘perfect’ too late. This book details these methods for Marines. With some adaptation, we can use them when at the mall or shopping for groceries.

This book is critical for a war-fighter or police officer. If you work (or live) in the same area/neighborhood/block for an extended period of time, you can fully implement the author’s suggestions.  The authors primarily use military situations and anecdotes to relay the principles. If you personally like the military tone and that appeals to you, then you’ll have no issue translating the lessons to civilian life.

I personally wouldn’t give this book to a teenager or 20-something university student who is living alone in the city . The military stories might seem too alien and it might not hold their interest. A better book for that audience with more visceral day-to-day anecdotes would be The Gift of Fear.

The Principles

  • A summary of Cooper’s color codes, the limbic response to stimuli, avoiding ‘right of bang’ reactionary living.
  • Establishing a baseline in an area allows us to recognize anomalies, which should warrant attention.
  • Using “human universals” which are common features of culture, society, language, behavior, and mind that span all ethnography and history.
  • Kinesics – Conscious and subconscious body language. Posture, gestures, and expressions that indicate inner emotional state. None of which rely on seeing the face. The body betrays the conscious mind and facial expressions aren’t as important. Dominant vs. Submissive, uncomfortable vs. comfortable, interested vs. uninterested. Very useful for personal protection and reading people in general.
  • Biometric Cues – The uncontrollable outward expression of stress. Skin flush, pupil dilation, blinking, dry mouth, pacifying behaviors, etc.
  • Proxemics – The study of distance and movement. How certain people and places either attract or repel people. e.g. a person changing their speed or altering their course to follow you in a parking lot.
  • Geographics – How people act in certain areas. Whether they are familiar, comfortable, and how they interact with the area. For us, think malls/restaurants/amusement parks/shops. Home field advantage is a real thing and people act differently where they are comfortable.
  • Iconography – Colors, symbols, graffiti, flags, bumper stickers.
  • Atmospherics – The ‘vibe’ of an area. For instance, the feeling at the DMV is frustrated and anxious. The feeling at a carnival is joy and excitement. A sudden change in the vibe of an area, or a person or group not fitting with the vibe warrant attention.

The Take Aways

  • People often override the ‘something wasn’t right’ feeling they get before something bad happens. By understanding what you’re seeing, it allows us to trust intuition and avoid a problem.
  • Humans are universally creatures of habit, lazy, poor liars, will run/fight/freeze, telegraph their intentions, predictable, poor multitaskers. This is exploitable.
  • Everything a person does is created twice – once in the mind and once in its execution – ideas and impulses are pre-incident indicators for action
  • Look for the indicators in ‘clusters’. One gesture indicating unease might be a fluke. A cluster of 3 cues that indicate unease are worthy of attention.
  • The Submissive Cluster of kinesics gives us some ideas on how to appear submissive, possibly to de-escalate and avoid unnecessary conflict.
  • Be aware that your personal iconography gives away information about you. Gun guy stickers and shirts, etc. It is also easy to remove these indicators. Why advertise?
  • Combat Rule of Three – when you observe three anomalies against a baseline, you must make a decision. e.g. At a mall, the seemingly nervous kid, in a black trenchcoat, is fidgeting with his backpack and red faced and sweating. It’s time to leave, or whatever your plan is.

    Conclusion

    This is a good book to have in the collection. It would give a person a clear picture of the broad indicators of identifying things that are out of place. Even if you only use that information to decide to leave, the book has proved useful.

    Here is the website that the authors created to further your studies. http://www.cp-journal.com/

Mark

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Book Review: Surveillance Detection – The Art of Prevention

A critical aspect of personal protection is situational awareness. An important facet of situational awareness is the ability to know if we’re being watched or monitored. We as private citizens should practice surveillance detection. We want to notice if a person or group of people are patterning our behavior and monitoring us or our families (or businesses) with the intention of some sort of attack.

The surveillance could be as simple as someone loitering outside of a gas station for opportunistic crime or panhandling, through stalkers with violent intent, or as complicated as years long terrorism plots. Surveillance is a critical part of all of these criminal activities, and therefor surveillance detection is a topic you should understand.

I was interested in this topic, so I found the book Surveillance Detection – The Art of Prevention on Amazon and started to study.

The book defines terms and dispels some myths that exist around this field. Throughout the book the authors use anecdotal and hypothetical examples to illustrate their points and allow the reader to more easily visualize the techniques described. They carry the reader from designing to implementing a SD program, all the way through what to do if surveillance is detected. It’s quite thorough.

The authors give ideas for individual, small business, corporation, law enforcement, and even military level surveillance detection operations. You can be as elaborate as you choose to be.

I’ll quickly run down the major facets of SD and note things I found useful. The steps to building a personal surveillance detection program include:

  • A Risk/Threat assessment in which you list all possible threats you face, the relative likelihood of those threats, the risk factors that caused you to include them on the assessment sheet, the preventative course of action to mitigate that threat, and the residual risk AFTER you have taken the preventative course of action.
  • Route reviews which are sketched on maps that include your daily travel routes, where surveillance (SV) would be able to watch you on your routes, finding parts of the route that overlap so SV can find you each day, identifying likely attack points, and determining SV’s likely cover stories and possible escape routes. For most people like us, these are in our neighborhoods, at work, and at any other regular stops we make.
  • Building reviews which can be sketched on google maps printouts of your home/office. With this tool, you can determine the most likely places of your home/office that SV will be looking at. You can see where they will observe from, and determine where you can watch them observe you (both from inside and outside the structure). I did a similar exercise in this post.

arialhouse

  • Tips on observation. There are three categories: areas, people, and vehicles. The authors describe how to observe an area for possible SV, using arching visual fields and looking at hard corners of buildings and vehicles (think parking lot at grocery store). Noting features of people and vehicles are also covered. Practicing these skills allow you to “be a good witness”. They are valuable to everyone.

The book also goes into depth about building an operational plan for team-based SD. This is more in depth than we need to go, but I found it interesting.

While the focus of the book is primarily on a higher level, team based, corporate SD team (because it’s the most complicated), a little imagination will give you ideas that you can implement for your family. I found this to be an interesting read and worth of my time.

Thanks,

Mark
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