Rare Breed Triggers, doing us all a solid.

It seems that Rare Breed Triggers is refusing to knuckle under ATF’s latest capricious attempt to turn everything into a “machinegun”.

Well said, sir, well said. We need more like you.

Personally, I may have little interest in such a device for serious purposes, but that has nothing to do with defending others’ right to do up their own guns in whatever way they may choose. Vive la différence.

Such defense should be vigorous and unapologetic–and at least on the strength of this clip, Rare Breed Triggers is doing it right. Thank you for your effort.

A butt-cuff for pellets?

I have long been a fan of the “butt-cuff” device to carry spare ammunition for a rifle or shotgun, in which a leather or nylon cuff is lashed to the buttstock, with loops sewn into it to carry five or more individual rounds at the ready.

I’ve used them on turnbolts, leverguns, and pump shotguns, but probably my very best use of a butt-cuff has been on my old Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifle. Equipped with a five-round leather cuff, I can reload the single-shot’s chamber–from the shoulder, eyes off, reliably, and without fumbling–within two to three seconds. The cuff may be a great way to top off a levergun or boltie, but it’s the primary feed system for the Ruger One, and you know, it’s a good one.

So at some point, having been a little stymied by what to do to reload my TalonP airgun for a followup shot, I thought of a way to try and simulate a butt-cuff that seemed worth trying out. The AirForce action is a nifty little marvel of design, being clever, simple, and very modular, but what it is not, is easy to load rapidly and without fumbling, especially with tiny little pellets and fingers possibly numb from cold during the winter months. I’d previously been using a drop pouch, but the problem with those of course is that they’re not necessarily on or with the gun when you grab it to, say, take after a squirrel, and while I don’t normally need a second shot, I do in fact want to have a second available, as eyes-off and fumble-free as I can manage.

So, I fashioned a redneck butt-cuff prototype for the airgun.

And you know, it works! It’s not perfect, of course, but the way I cut the little detents in the foam, the pellets do stay put reasonably well, and yield to the pinch-out. Improved with Velcro and some proper straps instead of rubber bands, I should be able to keep the apparatus from sliding around too much on the air tank, and I can probably discover the optimum details of spacing, thickness, etc., with just a little dedicated range practice. So far, it’s done just what I needed it to do–provide three rounds on the gun when I pick it up, and and a means of keeping the gun at the shoulder for reloading the chamber–and I’ll go about seeing what can be done with Velcro and some nylon.

I have to say, at some point I still do want to get myself a Benjamin P-Rod, as a primary squirrel gun. At about fifteen foot-pounds of energy (compared to nearly fifty with the Talon), the P-Rod is still plenty powerful for squirrel at the ranges I’m seeing here. Its .22 caliber is easier to work with than .25 caliber. It is integrally suppressed where the TalonP is (for an airgun) pretty loud. Refilling its smaller air tank from my hand pump would be quicker. And the P-Rod is a boltie repeater, which I’d prefer over the single-shot, not for its capacity, but for its fumble-free reloading. Some day.

That said, I’m excited about this pseudo-butt-cuff idea for pellets on the TalonP. It gets that system about as close to fumble-free and efficient as I think you could make it, and the gun itself is certainly worth that effort.

More to come once I get a suitable design implemented!

Rob Leatham on the importance of trigger control.

Ran across this YouTube clip just a few days ago. I figured from the title (“AIMING IS USELESS!”) that there was a nontrivial risk of it being pure clickbait, but because I’ve been aware of Rob Leatham since the early 80s and the title didn’t seem to match what I know of him, I took a peek anyway…and actually I’m kinda glad I did.

Shamelessly salacious title? Oh, hugely so. Rob never makes the claim that aiming is useless; his point here is that for most people most of the time, at typical combat range, trigger management is far more important than precision sighting, and that he therefore focuses on establishing trigger control first, with new students especially.

Sure, absolutely; I can totally see Leatham’s point. And he does a really good job at demonstrating it.

I’d observe, also, that it is (still*) straight out of the Modern Technique‘s core principle set. The compressed surprise break, which is ultimately what Rob is moving toward here, is a bedrock fundamental principle, as is the flash sight picture, which is exactly what he describes here, as he advocates not worrying about precision aiming at close ranges. Rough alignment, with a non-disruptive trigger stroke, will always get better hits than mashing the trigger on a perfect alignment. Yes! A very bookmarkable resource.

Despite the salacious title, and the source. I see that the clip is from Funker Tactical, which…has not exactly impressed me the (admittedly few) times I have run across it before. If memory serves, I can recall some serious “full tactard” content under that name, including some that would pretty much explain the “AIMING IS USELESS!” headline here. I’ll not speak any further to that, since I’m working from memory, but caveat lector as always, and anyway in the present case, this clip with Rob stands on its own merits.

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* Jeff Cooper was at least once asked about how Leatham’s conspicuous success in competition squared with the Modern Technique; Cooper famously responded with, “Rob IS the Modern Technique!”

And just so. Critics of Cooper have long loved to miss the point by reducing core principles to trivial minutiae, and by conveniently forgetting that the whole idea was intended to evolve with new developments that actually worked. I can recall much ink spilled, over the years, about the imminent obsolescence of the Modern Technique because of winning competitors’ use of trivially specific things: isosceles stance, optical sights, compensators, high-capacity magazines, reduced-power loads, etc. Cooper of course was often critical of rule changes that seemed ever less practical with time, and he was pretty famously difficult to convince of radical changes away from already-proven ideas…but those principles, the basic ideas, are as relevant today as they were when originally codified in the 1970s. And I think that “Rob IS the Modern Technique!” still holds up rather well.

Ruger One, and Sako 375.

More to come on both of these lovelies, but for now I’m just happy to say that we’re all back at home.

The conventional rifle is a Sako .375 H&H for which my dad wanted a good home, which of course I will be very happy to provide. I’ve always wanted a .375, and while I may well change the glass at some point, the Sako action is first-rate, and that wood is just lovely.

The gorgeous stubby below is my own Ruger No. 1 Light Sporter in .30/06, done up in “scout” trim many years ago now at Gunsmoke Guns in Denver, now back with me after a number of years with family in Montana. It’s been a long time, but I still don’t think there is a friendlier, more compact full-power mountain rifle to be had anywhere. Lightweight, short, fully ambidextrous, lightning quick to the shot, and surprisingly fast to reload from a butt cuff, it’s also as versatile as you could ever ask for.

Stay tuned for development, coming as soon as possible. (Yes, I realize that might take a while, with all the things to do now we’re back.) 🙂

So…small game then.

I’ve got to say, this isn’t quite how I’d pictured it. For well over a generation now I have had on my list of “to do” items, to try hunting small game. I’ve contemplated it, planned the guns with which to do it (first .22s, of course, and more recently airguns), and even told myself I’d use small game as a way of introducing my own kids to hunting.

Great ideas all. But life has this way of getting in the way of things, and somehow I just never “got around to it”. And so less than a month ago now, when I managed to connect with my very first squirrel, it was really as a matter of pest control, not of hunting. But today, as I took numbers six and seven, on “Hey Dad…” tips from the kids, it occurred to me that I should probably rethink the distinction. Yes, ultimately we need to keep the squirrel population out of the house, but…why not think of it as hunting?

I mean, I’ve certainly treated the critters that way, as well as the mechanics of the shots that took them. I’m now reasonably efficient in a variant of the quick skin-and-gut method which suits me, and I’m starting to see how we might use squirrel more regularly in the general food plan. And although none of the kills have been more than twenty yards from the house, we do live in the woods; as the stew pot came to its boil this evening (ironically, we’d planned on our first attempt at squirrel stew last night), I went out after what became number seven, and as I tried to find him (he’d stopped any sort of chittering once I came out) I realized that I was, indeed, hunting him. I had to look for him long enough, that I distinctly noticed the unique thrill of the brief hunt–in contrast to several of the other recent kills in which the critter was already in view from the moment I stepped outside.

Very well, I’ll consider it a beginning.

All in all I’m pretty happy with my shots. These squirrels are not large, with the biggest maybe eight inches from nose to rump, and a full inch off of the aim point will mean either a bad hit or a clean miss. Range to target has varied between seven and twenty yards, with angles from maybe twenty degrees plunging to sixty degrees elevated. Times to the shot have been…well, I’d call them reasonably efficient. We’re not talking snapshots or anything, but there’s no dallying, either. Once the carbine hits the shoulder, the shots have come anywhere from 1-2 seconds later, with up to a half-second of that being a compressed surprise break. At three diameters’ magnification on the glass, I’ve been using the first mil-dot beneath the crosswire as my “home base” for compensating for sight offset, which obviously has been working pretty well.

I’ve fired ten pellets for the seven squirrels. One of those was a clean miss as I saw the critter move the instant before the shot broke (I don’t expect them to stay still long), one was a clean miss as I tried to get cute and make a super-precise top-of-head shot, and one was a finisher for a squirrel I shot right at dinnertime; all the kids could see through the window that he was still moving, and so I hit him again to put him out of his misery. Strictly speaking that critter was already dead, but hadn’t acknowledged it yet.

The performance of the .25-caliber, 31-grain “Baracuda” semi-pointed pellets has been impressive. Squirrels are known to be able to take a lot of damage for their wee size, and based on what I’ve seen thus far, I can see why. The one that I gave the finisher had been hit squarely, just maybe half an inch further down into the thorax than the rest of the hits, and yet he hung on valiantly for the good thirty seconds it took me to retrieve another pellet and deliver the finisher.

As was the finisher, the rest were essentially lights-out hits, in pretty much the exact same spot, right at the base of the neck/top of the shoulders. All shots penetrated completely through, and really didn’t damage too much meat beyond the caliber-size crush cavity. The hits have been consistent enough here, that I should try raising the point of aim a little further still, and see if I can do headshots reliably. If we’re going to save our pest carcasses for the pot, then I’ll see if I can adjust to avoid disturbing the meat parts entirely.

I still find it a little perplexing that they keep showing up within range like this. Mentally I keep figuring that they’ll learn to avoid the area at least for a while, but not yet, at least. My kids tell me that they’re apparently very territorial, and what we’re experiencing now is a simple case of moving in on the new vacancy. Maybe so, and to the benefit of the larder!

The first attempt at the pot was pretty good. I definitely ran it as a T&E experiment, wanting to learn things specifically such as how much meat is actually on these little things, how long it takes me to get the meat off of the carcass, etc. And so, to document a few notes here:

• A quart freezer bag pretty neatly holds four dressed-out carcasses. As new ones came in I’d just add them to the bag.
• The Instant Pot worked well to get the meat cooked with little fuss. Today I did four carcasses (from frozen), a proud cup of broth, a little rosemary and sage, cooked on high pressure for 12m with a natural release.
• Result was reasonably tasty (will experiment with seasonings of course) and carcasses were “pluck-able” pretty soon afterward. Meat was not tough this way, and pretty flavorful on its own, although I’d like to try a brining variation or two.
• The 4 carcasses yielded just proud of a half-pound of meat, which for a family of five works fine for a soup with other hearties in the mix (today we kept it simple, with potatoes, corn, mushroom, and onion). Picking meat off the bones was slightly tedious as you’d expect with a tiny critter, but straightforward and the meat is pretty flavorful even on its own.
• Tonight’s soup was worth trying again, and I’m encouraged to do variations. Specifically I’d now like to try squirrel in place of hamburger in the creamy poblano pepper soup that Cathy and I like so much. We’ll see!

Anyway, again, it may not be the introduction to small game that I’d always envisioned, but then again, this has the not-inconsequential benefit of having actually happened, so I’ll take it! 🙂

First blood for the AirForce TalonP.

This is really a simple documentation post, with all kinds of additional backstory that deserves separate bookmarks but for, you know, available time. Kinda like tab clearing, but it happened today, so not quite that either.

Anyway, the little red squirrels that sometimes climb up on the house and into the eaves have been vexing me for the last couple of seasons. Either they present a no-shoot target by virtue of being on the house right at my children’s bedroom window when I see them; or they will not stop moving long enough for me to get a viable safe-backstop shot; or, most aggravating of all, on the rare occasion when I have gotten the viable shot, I just flat miss it because I’m (QED) not adequately drilled in over-holding at close range for, you know, sight offset on a gun that requires it. Squirrels are not large, and our red squirrels are on the small side even for squirrels; I am pretty convinced that on my misses, I in fact accurately held center, but the sight offset on the TalonP (not quite three inches) was enough to cause a clean miss underneath the critter. (One of the rodents I missed in this manner acquired the nickname “Bob” when my kids told me his tail had disappeared when they saw him a few days later. That became a prime piece of confirming evidence.)

Oh, I’ve known about sight offset in a cerebral sense for many years now, but the simple fact is that I still have a nearly autonomic tendency to center-hold everything, from so many years of studying and applying the principles of “maximum point-blank range“. And frankly, this has always served me well. I am not accustomed to engaging precision long-gun targets closer than the beginning of the MPBR zone. What targets I have engaged with long-guns at close range have been large, and at high speed–and principally with guns that do not require conscious compensation for sight offset. (Hell, the only guns I have which have a sight offset greater than maybe an inch and a half, are the AR and the TalonP.) And so, after a couple of misses with the conspicuously-accurate TalonP airgun, good glass, and an uncalled shot at close range, I realized it must be the sight offset.

Then, of course, when the flag flew at the next opportunity, I second-guessed myself and, trying to make the last-second adjustment, went the wrong way and underheld. OFFS, Kevin.

Well, today the rodents’ luck finally ran out. I happened to see one through the kitchen window, and knowing a bit about their movement patterns, was able to grab the carbine, pop the lens caps, load a pellet, and get out the front door, ready for a viewing, by the time he got around there. And I got lucky; he popped his head up above the snowbank for a look at me, at a distance of about 11 yards. I was on him in a second or two, sighted on the first mil-dot below the crosswire, and once the dot settled I allowed a half-second for a compressed surprise break.

Pop. The hit was maybe a half-inch below the aim point, impact centered right at the base of the neck, and the 31-grain .25 caliber pellet scuttled him instantly. He never moved again.

Now that’s more like it.

The funny part is that it was only at that moment it occurred to me that not only is this first blood for the TalonP, but I think it’s actually my very first squirrel. I’ve hunted lots of bigger things, but not squirrels; the whole “small game” thing has long been on the list of things to do, but of course, choices and all that. And of course this was more pest control than hunting, but hell, I’ll take it, and learn from it. I even took a little time to look up the most efficient way to gut and skin the little things, to wit:

• Get the carcass thoroughly wet (helps to keep things clean and avoid lots of fur in your hands)
• Use shears (my bird-hunting Fiskars worked great) to cut off tail at anus, legs at knees, and head
• Pinch up a fold of skin on back and cut it to make a slit horizontally across the back
• Insert fingers underneath hide on each side of this slit and peel him in both directions
• Slit him down the front side and through the pelvis (a good gut-hook works great here)
• Grab entrails from upper chest cavity and dig them out from top to bottom

This worked well, although of course there’s hardly any meat there on a single red squirrel, so we’ll use him in soup stock, and see what happens if we manage to get enough at a time to use more conventionally.

Anyway, some progress made here, in terms of managing sight offset when it matters. I’d long figured I’d eventually master that by going to a proper school for carbine (and of course I still intend to do that as soon as I can afford it), but if I can squeeze in some useful self-directed education by doing battle with the local squirrel population, then it’s game on, toothy fiends, and thank you for the opportunity.

‘The Work Never Ends’. Some useful observations here.

I recently happened (h/t Tam) upon a pretty interesting post from Ballistic Radio, “The Work Never Ends“, that I think deserves a bookmark here. I remain very interested in the nearly-outré-from-the-look-of-it notion that one should keep physical skills “sharp enough”, but invest the majority of continuing training and education energies into attitude and mind-set; and this post seems to read both familiar and true to that aim. A sample:

Put more time into understanding use of force law, principles of de-escalation, decision making under stress, physical fitness, medical, gun-handling, and the general principle of not being a massive pustulous dick to your fellow human beings. If you’re *actually* (see point #3) good on those things THEN start chasing that sub-second draw from concealment. 

Yeah, this does sound pretty familiar, and I gotta admit, serious exhortations for humility and understanding, both for others and oneself, kinda do stand out in recent times. There is much of value there, very much worth a RTWT.

One more gem of wisdom for now:

Actively train yourself to find joy in the process of learning, growth, self-improvement and discovery. At the end of the day, all of this is supposed to be fun, or at least not actively not-fun. As my friend, co-worker, and mentor Melody Lauer once said “Don’t let your desire to protect your life keep you from living a life worth protecting.”

Nicely said.

A straight-pull turnbolt from Savage? This may be interesting.

Thanks once again to Herschel at TCJ for this heads-up about Savage’s new IMPULSE rifle. It’s a straight-pull, with what seems to be impressively modern design, including a reversible and adjustable bolt handle.

Check this out:

I absolutely fell in love with the Blaser R93 (straight-pull) many years ago now, but of course could never even begin to afford my own copy; and for me the Blaser, for all its advances (the sear-less trigger is, truly, unreal), suffered an actual capacity problem: the luxurious speed and efficiency of a straight-pull’s bolt-flick stroke seems somehow wasted over a three- or four-round magazine capacity. (Huge capacity has never been terribly important to me, but in a repeating rifle I do like to start at a minimum of five, and ten is better.)

Anyway, the new Savage seems to come in a few closely-related flavors (models seem to indicate mostly barrel length and magazine type), across a few short and standard-length cartridges; presumably the action is the same and they can all take both the flush-fit (4-round) and AICS 10-round magazine boxes in their magwells. Most interesting to me of course is the 10-round .308 “Predator” model, but of course I’d go with the shorter barrel of the “Hog Hunter” if the mags truly are interchangeable.

If it runs reliably and durably, the platform shows some real promise as a general-purpose rifle, even as a “scout rifle”. Straight-pull bolts are nice when running the action hard. I’ve got no reservations about the now-long-proven AccuTrigger, nor Savage’s reputation for solid barrels, and I love the reversible and adjustable bolt idea. (I also appreciate the stock’s traditional pistol grip; I can’t stand the modern insistence to vertical-pistol-grip every damn thing that comes out; I like the feel of a rifle, and thank you Savage for offering that in a new innovation!)

I’ll want to see some more detail about how extraction and ejection perform over hundreds or thousands of rounds, and I’ve never been much a fan of Savage’s tang safety designs (which look like they should be ergonomic and positive, but aren’t, at least not for me), but at first glance this one may be a slightly different design worth meeting in person; at any rate it definitely looks interesting enough to keep an eye on. Shortening the stock like you really mean it (12.5″ LOP or under) still looks to be a custom requirement (although it may get close, if the 12.75″ low end of the adjustment range is right), and of course I’d want to see a forward mount for a true scout scope, plus available ghost-ring irons…

But this is a whole new action platform, and I kinda hope it does really well. Absolute kudos to Savage for innovating back to the straight-pull bolt idea; now, let’s see how it does in the wild!

A Rhodesian-equipped 03 Springfield?

[UPDATED, see below]

Bookmarking a thought, here, to make sure I don’t lose it in the fog of my current annoying bout with shingles. (2020 got in one last gratuitous lick.)

My bespoke-as-I’ll-ever-get 03 Springfield rifle (the banner image here at Rifleman Savant), about which I have written almost nothing thus far, has revealed only two practical flaws since it finally returned to my possession (which is itself a significant story for another time). First, the rear QD sling stud seems prone to inadvertent and unintentional release under some specific circumstances; and second, the ingenious cartridge trap that gunsmith Ronnie Jones installed in the buttstock, is ultimately a little too close to that rear sling stud for foolproof operation while looped up in the Ching Sling for which it was intended–at least for me. (Not Ronnie’s fault by any means; he had no access to me for any sort of testing during the build, and we both knew that such an untested innovation might need refinement.)

Ronnie’s wonderful idea

Anyway, in thinking about what to do about this (since I don’t have easy access to Ronnie any more), the thought only now came to me: what about just trying a Rhodesian sling on the 03? Even with my fairly-shameless enthusiasm over the Rhodesian thus far, I’d never even thought that it might work better on the 03 than a Ching Sling; after all, the traditional boltgun’s ergonomic setup and placement of controls is what the Ching Sling was built and optimized around.

But hang on just a moment here, and think critically about this boltgun, and specifically this setup:

• First: the design of the Rhodesian does not require tension on the rear sling stud*. This is the significant idea here. The Ching Sling does put tension on the rear stud while looped up, meaning you can’t just shove it out of the way with the thumb to gain improved access to the cartridge trap. But if the rear stud is slack, even while looped up…now that is worth trying out, and if it works, then it opens up other ideas to further optimize the system. The amount of space needed here is not a lot, and this might just be…enough.
• Second: the nylon construction of the Wilderness Langlois Rhodesian specifically, may lend itself to recovering some practical operating space back where it just might matter a lot. I suspect there are a couple things one could do to achieve this, and I’ll give them a try.
• Finally: the Springfield 03 is heavier than the Steyr Scout, even with Ronnie’s beautiful streamlining efforts, and you know, with all else being equal, a wider sling (the Wilderness’ Rhodesian is 1.25″, while my Galco Ching Slings are 1″) can’t hurt, right? 🙂

I’m not fit for duty enough to try this out at the moment, and the idea may not amount to anything different, in the end, but I think it’s worth trying.

Until then: bookmarked.

[UPDATE Jan. 5] Oh, that was an encouraging test. Today I tried letting the Ching Sling hang deliberately at the rear stud, to see how the cartridge trap would work in that case. The short answer is that it does! There still are a couple of tweaks to make, to the overall system (the existing follower and spring cannot retain the last remaining cartridge; cartridges seem a little bit exposed even when retained properly; the left side of the stagger is notably more difficult to feel with the thumb than the right side), but these are absolutely in the category of tweaks or self-training, and worth taking up when the right opportunity presents itself. The basic idea seems to be quite sound, and eight rounds inside the buttstock, but available for single-loading above the 03’s magazine cut-off switch, is a feature you probably haven’t seen on an 03 Springfield before. 🙂

Now, to scrape pennies for another Rhodesian sling and the right pushbutton swivels…to be continued.

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* Technically, the Ching Sling doesn’t either. The original design employed a stopper stud in the main strap which then set the loop size directly against the short strap; if the main loop happened to be long enough, the rear stud might not be under any tension at all while looped up. But in practice, the community realized that a better way to set things up was to dispense with the stopper altogether, and instead adjust the main strap’s length so that the loop was right, when pulling the main strap to its limit–and most of us who use Ching Slings have adjusted that way happily for at least the better part of twenty years now. The main strap length remains perfectly usable as a carry strap; the adjustments for loop size are actually more precise this way; and lockup tension is distributed among all three studs. (The one reservation I still have about the Rhodesian design is that lockup tension is focused upon a single stud, and when you’re looped up properly, that sucker is tight. We’ll see how it holds up to serious looped-up use over time!)

Kit Perez, ‘The Dehumanization of the Non-Compliant’.

It is hard to overstate how important an essay this is, at this moment in time: ‘The Dehumanization of the Non-Compliant“, By Kit Perez at Victory Girls blog. I found the article somewhat randomly, and actually read it completely through before I even looked to see who the author was. (Once I did, I had to smile, as I know some of Kit’s work from following Claire Wolfe and the late (and now-much-needed) Mike Vanderboegh. Perez is the real deal, and I am very happy to have stumbled onto her again at the Victory Girls blog.

This piece is absolutely among the top-tier of “wish I’d said that” observations, and it’s so well done that the usual risks associated with excerpting any part of it apply double. With that caveat in mind, and apologies to Perez, here’s a small taste:

See how easy that is? Poof — dehumanization. Who would want to be considered a murderer, an evil psychopath? Who wants to be shunned by their family, co-workers, or friends? Who wants to be seen as inhumane? This vilification speaks to the core need of every human being: the need to feel worth, to be seen as worthy. We are social beings, and the level of social shunning going on is literally weaponized shaming, meant to strike at the heart of what human beings need. They even get blamed for the lockdowns, the increased suicides, the defunct businesses and economic turmoil and hungry families. It’s all the fault of those nasty, bad people who won’t just do as they’re told. This would all be over if we could just get people to Do The Right Thing.

(emphasis in original)

Absolutely and seriously worth it to read the whole thing.

Personally, I still struggle with the right way to bring up this topic of dehumanization, even though for well over a generation now I have been making my own cautionary references to The GULAG Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer, and the excellent work by the original, Aaron Zelman-led Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership–each (vastly different) source in their own way casting light on the absolutely terrifying question of, “How on earth could a whole society allow itself to come to such a murderous end-state?” Even though the clarity of these sources’ common observation is compelling and self-evident, it is still, somehow, a challenge to get most people even to confront it. People don’t want to confront a realization that horrible, and don’t realize that by pushing it away in the name of their own humanity, that they are inevitably sowing the seeds of “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it”.

Well, I myself may still struggle with how to bring it up, but here, Kit does it fluidly, and as well as I’ve ever seen it done. So, her article is bookmarked now, for those who need to see it. (And make no mistake, here I mean me too: even though I am now, and long have been, crystal-freakin’-clear on the long-term survival need to treat dehumanization as the black-mamba-level promise of death that it is, I remind myself regularly. I have children to whom I must answer.)

Still, why post this observation at this edition of Rifleman Savant? After all, one of my primary goals in this venue is to get back to writing more about the actual art and craft of shooting, as opposed to indulging my personal tendency to be an uppity peasant. Fair question, and in fact I have two reasons for doing it. One, is the obvious one: the cautionary lesson of dehumanizing any sort of Other applies across all spectra of affiliations, be they political, religious, ethnic, economic, whatever: it is a human concern, with no further adjectives necessary.

The other reason is one that really is specific to what I’m trying to do here–because dehumanizing some Other, in the sense of such being a societal prerequisite for accepting subsequent genocide, is a direct result of training your mind–even if that training was not your intention.

This is an interesting parallel to draw with deliberately training your mind to do something far more constructive–potentially to save your own life–using the color code system. But there is a parallel there, and it is worth confronting.

Why, after all, is the color code system valuable in the first place? Because it allows decent, normal human beings to take actions they would never take under normal circumstances. It is a system to allow yourself quite literally to overcome your reluctance to take violent action against another person, at a desperate moment when you may well need to do that to survive the encounter. And precisely because normal people do not normally take violent action against others, you must train your mind to do it.

And it works. Many people are alive today because of the “mindset”, the “mental conditioning”, that they learned from Jeff Cooper and the Modern Technique. They went back to their teacher and related their after-action stories, and nearly to a man the story was the same: “the gunhandling you taught me may have brought me confidence, but the color code is what saved my life”. The scary part is that this mental conditioning works from both sides: the color code allows us to channel constructively the beast within when we need it most, to save innocent lives which may well include our own; on the other hand, we see the destructive effects of dehumanization regularly throughout history, as otherwise normal, intelligent, and even thoughtful people tolerate (and even celebrate) atrocity, precisely because they have successfully trained their minds to view The Other as somehow less than human.

This is something to think about, for anyone who takes a martial art seriously. The human mind–our only real weapon, when you think about it; everything else is just toolkit–is savagely effective. For a sobering reminder of how effective it is to train the mind carefully, we need only consider how destructive it is when we allow the same sort of conditioning to be used against us.

If you don’t know it already, learn the color code. Then, as always, set condition Yellow, and pay attention. It’s a dangerous time.