• The CDC’s Web Page – Fast Facts: Firearm Violence Prevention – A Critique

    Risk Management In one of my first blog posts, I talked about risk. Any self-defense tactic or methodology you employ is a risk management decision. However, where we get our information around risk is often suspect. Many of the providers of this information have conflicts of interest. We must sort through a lot of information…

  • Suicide and Firearms

    I’m an existentialist philosopher, so I tend to have deep conversations with people. Unfortunately, a few of those people I had conversations with aren’t with us anymore. I didn’t know at the time of those conversations that, later in life, they would kill themselves. Suicide was never brought up. Instead, they seemed to struggle with…

  • CDC, DGUs, and FOIA

    Time for the TLA decoder ring: CDC: Center for Disease Control and Prevention DGUs: Defensive Gun Uses FOIA: Freedom of Information Act With that out of the way…. I was working on my book in 2020 when COVID hit. During the year, I became extremely frustrated with the CDC. Their advice sucked, to put it…

  • Talking to Law Enforcement

    [note: this post contains some foul language that is relevant for describing a criminal escalation] The public and its relations with law enforcement (LE) have strained over the last several years. This characterization is mild, as law enforcement officers (LEOs) have been deliberately targeted and killed. A lot of the difficulties with the public stem…

  • Comfort and Light Recoil

    A helpful way to improve your self-defense preparation is to focus on your likely threat. In my book, I tried hard to eliminate misperceptions and rely on vetted statistics so that the attributes of the threat would be identifiable. Knowing these attributes allows us to prepare appropriately. For the self-defense industry, the threat a civilian…

  • Small, Medium, and Large Caliber Handguns

    A study titled “The Association of Firearm Caliber With Likelihood of Death From Gunshot Injury in Criminal Assaults” was released in mid-2018. I’ll cite the article at the end and link to it. Unfortunately, the study is often presented as a rebuttal to the slogan “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This rebuttal is…

  • Fast-Access Safes

    I discuss safes a lot in my book. One type of safe homeowners use is a fast-access safe for firearms. These safes can be in several different configurations. Some open with a manual key, some have biometric (e.g., fingerprint) capability, some have keypads, and some have RFID. These safes allow faster access to a firearm…

  • Speed vs. Safety

    When I grew up, I did a lot of hunting. Firearm safety was paramount. My first two single-action revolvers had the transfer bar safety mechanism, allowing you to load six rounds safely. No matter; I loaded five rounds anyway. There was never a round underneath the hammer. When rifle hunting, it was rare that there…

  • Bill of Sale

    If you CCF, I recommend carrying the bill of sale of your concealed firearm with your identification. This bill of sale needs to have the serial number of your firearm on it. In addition, you need to be identified as the purchaser. As I discussed in my book, you should keep your identification separate from…

  • Understanding the Threat

    Self-defense methods are difficult to evaluate unless the threat is adequately understood. The first part of my book showcase how most Americans misunderstand their most likely violent crime threat. More specifically, they assume their violent crime threat is a stranger who is an armed violent criminal who will confront them in a public location, such…

Got any book recommendations?