Jan 08

Maybe There Is Still Justice After All…

A Miscarriage Of Justice

What happened to the Bundys can only be described as criminal activity by the U.S. Government.

Now it appears as charges against Cliven Bundy and 3 others have been dismissed.

From the story (emphasis mine):

A federal judge dismissed all charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his two sons and another man on Monday after accusing prosecutors of willfully withholding evidence from Bundy’s lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro cited “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” in her decision to dismiss all charges against the Nevada rancher and three others.

At least there is one honest judge in the judiciary, let’s hear it for U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro!

Where’s the outrage, mainstream media?

Full Story:  Click HERE

Jan 08

Spot A Bad Guy In A Crowd In Less Than 60 Seconds

And you don’t have to be a combat Marine

There is no doubt that in this day and age personal security is a high priority on your preparedness list.  We can comb the headlines and see story after story of terrorist attacks, church shootings, robberies, and murders.

Like many of you, I practice with my weapons.  I send several hundred rounds downrange each week; no responsible gun owner wouldn’t be proficient with his weapon.

This got me to thinking, though.  I spend a lot of time SHOOTING, but I haven’t spent much time learning WHAT TO SHOOT!

I realize if a bad guy is gunning people down then the target is clear – this is what’s known as RIGHT OF BANG.

 Think of a timeline, with Bang being the event.  IED, active shooter, mugging, or any other dangerous event.  That’s bang.  On a timeline, anything happening BEFORE bang is “Left of Bang”, and anything occurring AFTER bang is “Right of Bang”.  Traditional military and police training usually focus on right of bang.

But in a fight, whoever attacks first as a HUGE advantage, and often wins!

It was sometime around 2009 that Gen. James Mattis (you may have heard of him) ordered a program created to help Marines on the ground notice and discover attackers BEFORE they struck.

James Mattis | I DON'T HAVE CONCERNS I CREATE THEM | image tagged in james mattis | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

On Gen. Mattis’ orders experts, both civilian and military, from psychologists to expert big game hunters to develop the Marine Corps Combat Hunter program.

You can learn to read people!  Easily determine who’s a threat.

Authors Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley have written a comprehensive book, titled (you guessed it) Left of Bang – How the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life.

In it we learn that human animal still exhibits kinetic behaviors based upon the “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” instinct.  We all do it every day.  We can act in one of several domains:

  1. Dominant/Submissive.    Humans may appear to take up more room in a space when acting dominant.  They may lean back and extend their legs, or they may lean towards another person.  Conversely, acting submissive a person will attempt to take up less space.  They may cross their legs beneath their chair, or hunch.

  2. Comfortable/Uncomfortable.  In any given situation, people will behave certain ways if they’re comfortable.  They may cross their arms behind their head.  Uncomfortable people will show it.  They may cross their arms, subconsciously attempting to protect themselves.

  3. Interested/Uninterested.  Humans can’t really multi-task.  If someone is only pretending to do a task, but really doing something else (like observing a possible target) the primary task will suffer.  It will be noticeable.  Notice what people are interested or disinterested in within context of what’s going on.

Any anomaly from one of these domains isn’t in itself enough to warrant scrutiny, a general rule is if there is a flag in 3 of them watch out for that guy!    And of course these are only a few examples.  I advise you to get the Book to learn for yourself.

There are other domains as well, beyond the kinetic (actions a person takes).

There are proxemic signs.  These describe how people interact.  Humans will naturally be drawn to sources of pleasure, and be naturally repelled by dangerous things.

There are geographic concerns.  Humans (and animals) will always follow the Natural Lines of Drift (NLD).  These are pathways through areas.  They may be goat trails in Afghanistan, or pathways through urban cities.  The locals will know them.  And use them.  If they aren’t using a NLD, there may be something wrong.

All of this and more can be learned in the pages of Left of Bang.

==>Click Here to get your copy today

Dec 19

How To Survive an Active Shooter Situation

What’s the best way to survive an active shooter situation?

Let’s remove reason and morality from the equation and imagine YOU are the active shooter.

What do you want? An unrestricted field of fire in a target-rich environment. To be the only one dictating the tempo so you can maintain all of the above.

Like a shark cleaving through a school of fish, you want everyone responding to what you do in such a way as to reinforce your operational dominance. In other words, you want the crowd to surge away from you.

When they run they move into your work area and provide a target better than the broad side of a barn… the backside of a crowd. They clear out space in front of you so you are free to fire at will. And best of all, they leave you alone to do what you came here for, and in spades.

This understanding—as reprehensible as it is to dwell on it—is valuable because it tells us what we really need to do in these situations: we must, as a group, swarm the shooter.

We have to tackle him, weigh him down with numbers, immobilize him with our sheer mass. This is the only way to limit his access to victims, interrupt his ability to operate and strip him of control over the engagement—essentially reversing the roles and forcing him to worry about defending himself from a panicked mob.

If you’re the shooter, you want distance, not people closing, close or right next to you, spoiling your aim, restricting your field of fire, imposing a time-limit on how long you’re operational. If you’re the shooter, you want time and space within which to work.

If you’re in the crowd, you want to restrict, constrict, and eliminate that time and space.

While it looks great on paper, it should be understood that the swarm tactic won’t reduce casualties to zero. But if it’s the difference between three or 13 dead then the cold equations say it’s better that we lose a few instead of many. It certainly can’t be any worse than what we currently have (and experienced once again in Texas)…the herd-tactic of hoping he has so many targets you’ll be the lucky one who’s overlooked.

Swarming an active shooter isn’t an easy thing, compounded by the fear that you’ll be the only one who goes for it. It’s only going to work if you know at least some of the people around you are going to pile in with you, that it’s not just you vs. the shooter, but the entire crowd.

We need to decide, as a society, that we are done allowing the insane to exercise their madness on us freely and without immediate consequence; that we will not be picked off as terrified individuals but will rise as one and end any threat before it can gain traction.

Dec 18

Food Storage – How to Begin?

 

How and Why to Store Survival Food

Why do we store food?  Zombie Apocalypse?   Not happening.  EMP?  Not likely.  Financial meltdown?  Sorry boys, I doubt that’ll ever come to be.  It’s fun to envision SHTF scenarios, and it’s fun to do things like store survival food in order to prepare for them.  But the likelihood of ANY of those things happening is just about nil.

However.  A month ago my mother in law moved to a town near me in Texas from Florida. It was not a survival situation.  But when they arrived, for about a week they weren’t completely unpacked; weren’t completely ‘open for business’, as I say.  They didn’t have time or energy to cook.  Eating out was an option, but would be expensive (as well as unhealthy).  But since I store food, I was able to take them meals.  It didn’t cost me any extra money, or really take any more time.  I simply heated up canned storage we had.  If you store what you eat and eat what you store, you can use preparedness food for more than just SHTF situations.

Think of it like this:  If you buy 25 years worth of MRE or dehydrated Mountain Man foods, that shouldn’t be the entirety of your food preparedness.  That’s more like a 401K or a life insurance policy.  You hope to never need it and if you have to use that survival food it’s not pleasant!  You need a ‘savings account’, for the more common emergencies.  We use our bank savings account if the air conditioner goes out.  Or if the car breaks down. The savings account is a short term solution.  In my lifetime (40 years), I can remember ZERO zombie apocalypses, ZERO EMP blackouts, ZERO financial system crashes leading to widespread rioting.  I can, however, remember floods, hurricanes, ice storms, and terrorist attacks that created regional public panics and made food hard to find, or hard to travel to acquire.  I’ve known people who had car accidents, and had to spend many days in the hospital.  During these time, nobody is going to eat MRE in place of home cooked meals.  More than likely they will eat out.  They’ll spend money in an already financially troubled time.  We need a food ‘savings account’.

‘Eat what you store and store what you eat.’  I can’t say this enough.  If you buy a bunch of crap that you’ve never had, never prepared, and expect to live off of it if things get rough you’re doing one thing:  WASTING MONEY.  Here’s a simple, and cheap way to start storing food that makes sense.

Food diary.  This one’s easy.  Put a pad of paper in the kitchen.  Write down everything you eat.  Simple as that.  If you eat or drink it, write it down.  (Added bonus:  you’ll probably stop eating certain crap once you see how much of it you eat!)

Anything on the list that stores easily, such as canned items, put a star by them.  When you go to the store for the week, pick a couple of items and buy double what you normally would.  If you normally eat 1 can of canned chili, buy 2.  Within a few weeks, you’ll have an inventory built up.  Pick another item and do the same thing with it.  Over time, you’ll have a stock of these items.  Canned meat such as chicken are good for this.  They work in lots of recipes.

Water is an easy one.  Do you or someone you know drink soda in 2 or 3 liter bottles?  How about fruit juice bottles?  Simply empty them out and clean them, and fill them with water.  It’s not glamorous, but it works.  You can get several dozen gallons of extra water this way.

Using these 3 simple steps, you’ll acquire an inventory of survival food.  It will last years if need be, but be usable as everyday food also.  Remember to use FIFO inventory management, and rotate as needed.

Bonus Tip:  We tend to make more food at meals than we need.  We have lots of leftovers.  Even though we do eat most of them, a lot would go to waste.  We bought a pressure cooker canner to save them.  Now after we make too much stew or chili, we put the leftovers in pint jars and can them.

Chicken or brisket too.  We can the meat in broth.  This stuff lasts for YEARS.  And if we need a quick meal, not necessarily due to devastating end of the world scenario, we can heat up a jar quickly.