Equipment And The Point Of Diminishing Returns

One of the most common questions I get is, "What gun should I get?"

I used to spend a lot of time responding to these inquiries because I genuinely love helping people. I loved being in gun sales. I love finding guns that fit people and I love helping them find that good fit. I love taking them to the range and helping them take their first shots even more.

Through the years, however, I've come to the conclusion that internet-based advice is more-often-than-not a waste of everyone's time. I have nothing new to add to what has already been written about what kind of gun is ideal for any number of different specific situations; be it jogging, home defense, deep concealment, etc. Without seeing someone shoot and seeing them with the firearm and having the opportunity to assess them in action, it's nothing more than a best-guess anyway.

That being said, it's still the reigning question for a few reasons:

1) The volume of options is overwhelming and people want to have it narrowed down for them, presumably by someone they consider to be an authority on the subject.
2) People generally overestimate the role of equipment in performance and therefore want to get the "best" gun, ideally at the lowest cost.

I'm going to skip over the first point for now and just hit you with a few general truths regarding the second:

• What gun you choose doesn't make as much of a difference as you think it does. 
• Your first gun will likely be the wrong gun, purchased for the wrong reasons.
• You'll more-than-likely not put enough rounds through it to figure out whether or not it is right/wrong for you. 
• You'll go on your merry way possibly advising others on what they should get based upon your limited experience training/shooting with a gun that probably isn't the right one for you.

The end.

You may be thinking that what I said was contradictory. How can your gun choice not make a difference but be wrong?

Allow me to explain...

A gun is a gun is a gun and even an ill-fitting gun put in the hands of someone who is skilled in shooting will perform adequately. He will get accurate hits at a good rate but he would perform better and more comfortably with something that fit him better. So also, if your skill were the same (or as it increases) you would be able to better assess the fit and feel of your firearm and what makes it right or wrong for you and adjust accordingly.

Skill is far more vital to performance than your equipment (presuming, of course, your equipment is quality enough to last). And eventually, as you get skilled enough, you can better gauge whether or not your performance will be augmented by your equipment and through what change--a small-handed person having better control with a single-stack firearm or having the grip reduced, a cross-dominant shooter getting better sight picture with a red dot, an individual with arthritis getting a trigger job, etc.

Most people do not seek out enough skill to where their equipment choice matters that much. There are exceptions, but that's the general truth. They buy a gun, they put maybe a box or two of ammo through it a year (if that) and whether or not it is the right one for them is irrelevant compared to their lack of skill.

So what does that mean for you? 

Well, it means nothing if you aren't committed to gaining skill. If you are committed you've likely already purchased a firearm, trained with it to the point where you've figured out what is working and what isn't (or your about to) and you might even be on your way to your next gun or a modification of the one you already have. Or you are lucky enough to be one of the few who bought a good fitting gun the first time but found you have a preference you'd like to change (sights, a cleaner trigger, an extended magazine release, etc).

I caution you! There is a point of diminishing returns. It happens all the time. A new shooter buys a gun. As he gains skill he finds what he doesn't like about his firearm and he changes it or modifies it. He gains more skill and changes or modifies his gun again. He often attributes his increase in skill to the modifications or new firearms he's purchasing. Then one day he finds out that a modification or new gun doesn't help. In fact, it hinders or he improves slightly in one area but worsens in another. The new gun doesn't shoot the way the old one did. He had better sight picture with the last sights. If he's not careful he can get stuck in a rut of cycling through gun after gun, throwing hundreds and thousands of dollars of equipment at a skill problem.

The solution? Find the gun that fits you best, make any modifications you have to (if any) and then leave the gun alone. Work on gaining more skill.

Now, there are a lot of people out there who say you should never (ever, Ever, EVER!!!!!!!) modify a carry gun. A lot has been written on that subject so go read it and make up your own mind on the matter. If you make a modification to your carry gun make sure you have a good, logical explanation for why you did it. If you have the disposable income, time and inclination to go nuts on a competition or range gun? Go. Be wild, my friend! But keep your carry gun as close to stock as feasible and avoid the equipment rut.

Finally, there are reportedly those out there who get lucky. They go into carry and shooting with a committed and realistic mindset. They wisely choose a stock firearm that fits them well, they train with it extensively and they gain in skill until they perform masterfully with the first and only gun they've ever bought. I have yet to personally catch said unicorn. Though I have met many who have been issued firearms for duty and gained skill to a very proficient degree with that duty gun that they apply to a personal firearm that fits them better when off duty. Even the best of the best out there have their stories about the guns they started out with and the changes they've made along the way.

In summation, if you're serious about this gun/carry thing, put the effort into getting a gun that fits you well. Take a class, rent, shoot with friends, ask for advice and (please, I implore you, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!) listen to what that person tells you. Purchase a firearm and then commit yourself to gaining skill. Make note of what you like or don't like about your firearm as you train with it, talk to others about it, have an instructor critique you and make an educated decision as to whether or not it is an equipment problem or a YOU problem.

Adjust accordingly.



PS... If you are somehow misguided into thinking I have it all figured out, let me assure you that I am still struggling with my own likes, dislikes, frustrations, biases, stubbornness, changes, adaptations, learning curves, etc. If I ever figure it all out, you'll be the first to know.

Stripping Vs Dumping Magazines

If you train at any number of shooting schools long enough you will find that even if they agree on certain aspects of shooting where they can almost violently disagree is in the small stuff.

How many forum death matches have been waged over whether or not to use the slide release or rack the slide; whether to use to the strong side thumb to release a magazine or the support hand; whether to bring a gun to a low ready or high, SUL or something else?

Just as hotly debated is the sequence of events surrounding magazine changes.

For the first four or five years I carried and trained in firearms I traditionally hit the magazine release with my strong-side thumb while retrieving a fresh magazine and pretty much expected the magazine well of my gun to be empty by the time I got back with my fresh magazine.

When I went to the Tactical Defense Institute for the second time (the first time was a knife class so there wasn't a lot of talk about magazine changes) I was introduced to the concept of "stripping" an empty (or troubled) magazine from the gun before retrieving a fresh one.

With stripping the magazine, once the firearm is empty and the slide locks back, or if the gun jams to the point where a magazine change is required, one hits the magazine release with the strong-side thumb (or however they hit the release for lefties) and physically rips or "strips" the magazine from the auto-loader with the support hand before retrieving a fresh magazine.

The reasons the instructors gave for this were primarily three-fold:
1. Your magazine can get hung up and doesn't always drop free.
2. You could be in a strange position where gravity will not help your magazine out of the gun.
3. If your gun is jammed with what is commonly known as a "double-feed" (or, more accurately, a failure to extract). Your magazine will not fall free and you will have to physically tear it from the gun.

I've always appreciated the attitude of the TDI instructors. They don't go to any deep lengths to force you to do things their way (as long as you are being safe) but they do ask you at least try their method, see if it works for you and move on. If it doesn't, no big deal.

I can respect that. So I tried it. It was a heck of an effort to back pedal and unlearn just hitting the button.

It took some effort but it's become my standard reload to the point where I would have to unlearn the practice if I tried to change it again. I don't see that happening because I've seen the benefits of it several times, especially since I have been going to different classes that require shooting from strange positions with firearms and have higher rates of malfunctions because of said strange shooting positions.

The most glaring example was while I was at ECQ last fall. We were practicing drawing and shooting from all sorts of strange positions on the ground, one of them being flat on our back, shooting over our heads. I'd taken shots from all sorts of strange positions before so that wasn't particularly new and when my slide locked open upon empty, I didn't even think about it, I stripped the magazine, retrieved a fresh one, reloaded my gun and just kept shooting.

My husband happened to be taking video and took a quick screen shot.

Stripping the empty before retrieving a fresh magazine

Now, I'll be the first to say this isn't a perfect magazine change. I could have brought it back to my chest so I didn't have an empty gun just sticking out over my head, my hands wouldn't have had so far to travel, yada, yada, yada, but for the purpose of getting more ammo in the gun it was enough. I was reloaded and shooting again before it really even dawned on me that my newer practice of stripping a magazine vs dropping or dumping it made a change in a position like this a total non-issue.

Being able to strip my magazines more effectively (especially if really jammed up) is also why I have cutouts in the bottom of both of my Glocks.

Try it out. See what you think.

Rangemaster Tactical Conference 2014

Every year Tom Givens puts on a conference in Memphis, TN, at his facility. It is called the Rangemaster Tactical Conference. It consists of three days of instruction by top instructors in the firearms and self defense community. At any given time there can be three to five instructors presenting on any number of topics related to self defense, particularly with a firearm. Most instruction blocks are two hours in length but from time to time and with an important enough topic it's not unheard of to see a whole four-hour block dedicated to one instructor and his information.

After years of hearing great things coming out of the conference we finally made it a priority to attend this year.

The Conference was held on Feb 21-23 and the hardest part was deciding which instruction blocks to attend vs the others.

My schedule started with Shane Gosa, instructor with CQB Services International, talking about The Mental Trigger. This entire two-hour block was largely centered around mindset. Shane had a unique perspective on Jeff Cooper's color codes of awareness, how they were intended to be used and how to apply them to daily life. We did one group visualization technique, discussed mental barriers and the aftermath of violent encounters and finished up with a training exercise on what Shane called, "Accessing State." The exercise is meant to train the mind and body to work together and to limit or completely eliminate the freeze response and allow for a faster and more efficient aggressive, defensive or offensive response. Not only did it address turning the aggression on, immediately, but also turning it off (often the hardest and most damning part of self defense). The lecture concluded with a discussion on winning vs survival, the importance of combat breathing and other tips on getting the most out of training sessions.

Next was Kathy Jackson, author and instructor for Cornered Cat. Her lecture was very bluntly titled "What Women Want" and centered around getting more women to attend professional firearms and self defense training. She opened with statistics about how many women were getting their carry permits and buying guns compared to men (hint, it's a lot more women than you think) and on the high note she dashed us down by showing the number of women who attend regular training past the basic carry class (hint, it's way less women than you'd hope). She drew parallels from other male-dominated fields and how they have fought to retain women. Her discussion on how women often feel in the firearms community (and other male-dominated fields) left my mouth agape in it's accuracy at how I have often felt. She then held back nothing as she talked about some of the common flaws in firearms training that set women up for failure or at least for being undermined in the industry. She slaughtered a few sacred cows (which I was gleeful to see butchered (there were at least two times I literally almost clapped)) and moved on to the best strategies for encouraging women. She was very frank that if you are going to teach women you have to be okay talking about and at least have a working idea of some women's issues like drawing around big breasts, discussing bra or thigh holsters, or even being able to address long fingernails and how it relates to shooting. In short, if you want women to come to your classes, you need to make them feel like they belong in a human space vs feeling like they are guests in a man's house.

After lunch I was off to Jim Higginbotham, a former instructor at Gunsite, from Riposte Training. His lecture was called "Fire for Effect" and entirely centered on how the body reacts to gunfire and how bullets may (or may not) physically stop a determined attacker. He discussed the factors that influence incapacitation, how one should train to maximize the effectiveness of their shots if they are needed and what physically needs to be achieved in order to stop a determined attacker instantly, rapidly or marginally. He addressed head-on the growing concept that it's better to spread your shots around vs making tight groups and how ineffective that can be. He addressed the issue of training scars developed through targets with poorly defined targeting zones and concluded with practice tips on improving ability to make better incapacitating shots.

My last class on Friday was Chuck Haggard, a former SWAT officer and current supervisory officer in Kansas. I had the privilege to meet Chuck at the Rangemaster Instructor Development class in September and we've kept in touch ever since. His block of instruction was on Active Shooters/Terrorist Events. Chuck has been personally involved in two active shooter events and his unique perspective was insightful when going through some of the information. A good majority of the class was going over many of the major active shooter events and discussing the tactics used by law enforcement and what worked and what didn't as far as slowing or stopping the events. He talked about what motivates active shooters and what civilians can do to better prepare for an active shooter event.

Saturday morning started with a four-hour block of instruction by John Hearne; a Rangemaster instructor, federal law enforcement officer and self-proclaimed research geek; called "Performance Under Fire." He gave the four-hour version of an eight-hour class and if I ever get the chance to take it in more depth you will find me there. A long-held belief is that humans are predestined to become quivering masses of unpredictable goo when confronted with traumatic events. John's lecture went over the brain, how it works and functions with other body systems to respond to emergencies, why it is conditioned to do what it does under stress and how it can be optimized to respond better or entirely differently. He explained the difference between the neocortex and limbic system and their roles in traumatic events and how to keep the neocortex in control. He defined what it meant to be untrained, to have learned a skill and what was an overlearned skill. My favorite part of his lecture was what he called the "Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse" that took on the concepts of heart-rate being a key factor in performance, the idea that a "natural" response is somehow superior vs an overlearned response, the famed "startle-response" we all train to start from, the supposed innate aversion we are said to have against killing other humans, and whether or not we really do loose our ability to perform fine motor skills and see something as small as a front sight when fighting for our lives. He concluded his lecture with training tips and tips for instructors on how to maximize student learning. All-in-all a very intensive and eye-opening block of instruction.

And from there I stood in line for twenty minutes waiting to attend Craig Douglas' workshop on Managing Unknown Contacts. Craig Douglas is often known through his former screen name "Southnarc." As his handle would suggest, he was an undercover narcotics officer who has since retired and started his own training company called shivworks. The man has a stellar reputation in the training community that is well-deserved. Many of his techniques were developed directly from his own experience interacting on a regular basis with the criminal element. The workshop was based around the simple premise that you are being approached by an unknown individual. You need to decide whether or not this individual is a potential threat with enough time and/or distance to do something about it if it turns out this individual means you harm. We spent most of the instruction block working his three-part interaction system of Verbalizing, Moving and preparing your Hands for action. He then went over four of the most common pre-fight indicators and we practiced identifying them in class. Lastly, we talked about what to do if we are still unsure of the genuine intent of an individual but decide we want to help them vs shutting them down. This was mostly a live-action class worked with other partners and a great exercise in staying relatively safe while deciding if someone is a legitimate threat or not.

My final Saturday class was Skip Gochenour, a retired police investigator who specialized in homicides and helped prepare cases for trial. Skip's lecture was titled "Problem Two: On Trial." In other words, you've survived a lethal encounter (problem one) but now you are being charged with a crime (typically some form of homicide). He opened his lecture with some pretty harsh facts about the law and legal system, the hardest to accept by your average gun-totter being that the truth has absolutely no relevance in a court of law. If a question cannot be clearly answered by the evidence it is what is considered "a jury question" at which point a prosecutor and defense attorney will both make a case on how they interpret the evidence and the jury makes a declaration and what they believe the evidence likely indicates what happened. He went over a lot of history of our legal system and broke down what four main questions a prosecutor will ask in order to determine whether or not someone acted in self defense. He then moved on to what criteria the jury will look at as to whether or not they will convict (or acquit) someone of the various degrees of murder. One of the quotes of the class that particularly resonated with me was, "When you decide you will take on problem one you agree to accept the bill and pay for problem two no matter what the cost." Be that emotional, financial, physical, legal or in prison. A sobering reminder of the responsibilities involved in carrying a firearm.

Sunday morning opened with Cecil Burch, a career martial artist and instructor. His block of instruction was titled Immediate Action in Extreme Close Quarters. In short, you've just been taken by surprise in a violent attack and you can't get to or don't have a gun. What do you do? This was another live-action workshop and we spent much of it on our feet working with partners to protect our most vital area (the head) and work on switching from a defensive posture to an offensive one and gaining ground to either fight, access tools or flee.

Next I attended Tom Givens' Active Shooter lecture. His lecture differed from Chuck's in that he did not spend a lot of time discussing individual cases but rather patterns across many active shooter events. He went over a lot of information that is already known in the community such as the fact that most active shooter events happen in gun-free zones, a large portion of them being schools, and that the shooters tend to be lone, white males with one gun. He went over the phases of an active shooter from fantasy all the way to the shooting and how the best time to stop an active shooting is in the planning or preparation stage. He discussed the difference in outcomes with civilian's have responded to active shooters vs law enforcement with the results being in favor of a civilian response. Lastly, he talked about what to do if caught up in an active shooter event and wrapped it up with an admonition to be armed and fight for abolition of gun-free zones.

After lunch was William Aprill's lecture titled, "Fatal Choices." William Aprill is a psychologist who works with criminals in a law enforcement capacity and a brilliant speaker. His lecture was primarily about what makes a criminal pick a particular individual to victimize. His initial task was to distinguish between those who are targeted and those who are victimized. Anyone can be targeted but only a portion of those are actually chosen to be victimized and that comes down to a criminal deciding whether or not that target is a "go" or "no go." How does he make the decision? William went into depth about what is called "thin-slicing" and it's connection to the intuitive mind that allows us to make instant and more-often accurate decisions about people based on very limited, external data. Facial expressions, gait, appearance, even the amount of multi-tasking we seem to be taking on in a particular moment, can all be factors in what makes a criminal decide whether or not to victimize a particular target. He talked about what we can do to lower our chances of being targeted in the first place or even "deselected" as a "go." Of all of the presentations at the conference, it was William's that fascinated me the most and has made me want to research much more into the topics of thin-slicing and how it relates to criminal choice.

Finally, when I thought I could cram no more into my little brain I sat down in Greg Ellifritz's "Armed Citizen Response to Terrorist Bombings." Anyone who has followed my blog for any length of time has seen Greg's name before. He's one of my favorite instructors and this is my third class with him. He's the author and lead instructor for Active Response Training. He holds more instructor certifications than I care to list at the moment and his topic of the day was bombs. He went over what they are, how they work, how we might be able to identify them and how they are being used by terrorists and active shooters. After pretty much letting us all in on the terrifying reality that there's not much you can do about a bomb he dampened the mood even further by alerting us to the fact that most active shooter/terrorist bombs are homemade and unstable and it's not even a safe bet to try to shoot someone, even if you are 100% sure he has a bomb. If you choose to do so you're doing so with the expectation that you're going to die and generally not going to stop the bomb from going off anyway given the instability of the device, handlers who will set it off anyway, timers, or a hit to the device that triggers it early. He did try to end it on an upbeat note by assuming if we were involved in a bombing we were far enough away or able to get to cover quickly enough to survive. He talked about steps to take to identify secondary devices, how to manage other survivors of the blast and then talked about relative safe distances and cover from certain sizes of devices (which can vary depending on device).

On that happy note we piled in our car, went for some good bbq and just about crashed in an information-overload coma.

These were only the classes I was able to attend. There were so many more I missed and am disappointed for it.

I got to meet some of my heroes and other top-name instructors, got to network with some great people and trainers, meet some of the people who have followed me for years and generally rub shoulders with some great, like-minded individuals.

In addition to the instruction, there is an ongoing pistol match which I shot on Saturday night and learned later that out of 129 shooters I came in 22. To say I was pleased would be an understatement.

I'm not done processing the information from the conference and I fully expect to write more in depth thoughts on several of the training blocks I attended, but for now, I'll leave you all with the admonition that if you can even remotely conceive of going to a Tactical Conference you should do so!

I plan on returning often! I hope to see you there!

Sick Of Being In The Bottom Third

Allow me to get personal (because I don't do it often)!

I recently began competing in IDPA again. I shot my first IDPA match when I was 22 years old and sporadically competed throughout the years whenever I'd catch some free time.

Last year I took a serious break from firearms. I realized that I was too dependent on my handgun to save me and I decided to avoid my gun for a while. I knew I was going to come back to it but only after I fleshed out other areas of my defensive training and reevaluated the roll I wanted my gun to play in my own defense.

I put down my gun for a year and took (and continue to take) hand-to-hand training. I started working out. I read more and worked on my awareness and interactions with others, my personal boundaries and confidence. I trained with other defensive tools like knives and impact weapons. I'm not done fleshing out my training by any means but I feel much better with where I am now than I did a year ago.

So when I decided to pick up my gun again I did it with a new kind of conviction. I was good before. I have a great mastery of the basics. I'm good but not good enough.

Without an ounce of too much pride I can say that I can pick up any handgun out there, run it confidently and get a consistent group. I can switch between platforms pretty effortlessly and even teach others to apply those basics. I can work from the holster, move and shoot, do reloads and malfunction drills effectively, use cover and concealment and shoot almost as equally well with either hand. I'm an accurate shooter who knows how to run a handgun.

I can dry fire with the best of 'em!

But I'm not good enough.

Not for my own standards.

When I compete I rank somewhere in the middle to lower third of the shooters. My biggest issue being speed. No one will argue that I can shoot. And no one has said that I'm not good or not good enough. I often get much congratulations for my accuracy but when I see my times compared to what others are shooting I get irritated with myself. 

It's time for me to step it up.

One issue has been forearm strength.

I'm a little person who has a history of taking my size as an excuse for not being strong. Not any more. Developing strength has been a huge priority in my life the last couple of months and I'm already seeing vast improvements in many areas of my life, including gun handling, because of it. I have a long way to go but at least the journey has begun.

Next is to stop getting hung up on my accuracy. Of late I've been training until I get it right and calling it good. Time to train until I fail and then work past that. The only way to get faster is to shoot faster.

It also means going to more training. Which is going to mean more money for more ammo and more classes and more matches.

I don't use the matches to get caught up in the competition. I use the matches to work skills and to learn and practice. While it's true that a good competitor is not necessarily a good tactician or going to be 100% prepared for a self defense situation no one can deny that a good pistol competitor is a good shooter.


I'm sick of lagging behind the better guys. I'm tired of being ok with being "top lady" but not posing any real competition for the long-time male shooters. This may sound a little sexist and a lot competitive but truth be told I want to be serious competition to the top five guys at our local club. I want to go to a state match one day and rank in the top third in my division and then, in the years to come, blow out of my division.


And my goal is not limited to competing alone. I want to be a better trainer. I am in no way satisfied with just teaching basic pistol classes. I want to keep progressing so that I am an adequate trainer in many different aspects of the use of firearms in self or home defense. I've decided that I have a goal of building a reputation for being a quality firearms instructor who is worth seeking instruction from.


I don't know how far I want to go with it, but I'll start with just being better than I am now.

I don't even want to think about how much money in ammo and training I'm going to have to spend to accomplish these goals.

I've got at least one, maybe two pistol classes coming up this fall. Planning my 2014 training schedule has been an agony of determining what I can afford and who I most want to go train with and what I want to learn and what I'm willing to wait on.

So there it is.. my written mission statement for the upcoming year/s.

Now, off to call for availability on another class and look at ammo prices.