Last Sunday I taught a shotgun class. A curious thing happened. I snapped a quick picture and shared it on Facebook the day after the class. Here’s what I posted: “A thought for all you folks who prefer bird shot for self defense… In the shotgun class I taught yesterday, […]
Two weeks ago, I spent three days teaching and learning at the Rangemaster Tactical Training Conference in Dallas. I’ve now taught at the last 11 Tactical conferences and my TacCon blocks are regularly some the most fun classes I teach every year. The conference consists of three days of material taught by […]
Last weekend I attended the Rangemaster Tactical Conference. I put my new Lipseys .32 revolver through a workout during Wayne Dobbs’ revolver fundamentals class and then drove home right before the total eclipse. My drive home was directly in the path of the eclipse’s totality. People were acting insane. Everyone was massing chaotically […]
I imagine it’s a question quite a few of you folks ask yourselves. I have to admit that I ask the question myself more regularly as I age. When I was a cop, I had a reputation of staying calm in life threatening emergencies. I’ve been retired almost four years now. Since my […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I’ve been interested in firearm stopping power for a very long time. I remember reading Handguns magazine back in the late 1980s when Evan Marshall was writing articles about his stopping power studies. When Marshall’s first book came out in 1992, I ordered it immediately, despite the fact that […]
A couple months ago, Alex Ooley interviewed me on the topic of travel safety for his “Forge of Freedom” podcast. Alex was an excellent host and I really enjoyed talking with him. You can watch/listen to the podcast at the link or embedded video below if you are interested, but doing so isn’t necessary to […]
Since my police retirement, I have been spending a large part of the each winter living in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Last year, between living out of the country without a gun and my cancer surgery, there was a period of approximately two months where I didn’t fire a single round or do […]
I was just re-reading Tools Of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers and came across the following quote: “Are you doing what you’re uniquely capable of, what you feel placed on Earth to do? Can you be replaced? Life is short. Put another way: a long life is […]
I love to travel and tend to visit some crazy third world countries. For the past two decades I’ve spent at least four to eight weeks a year traveling in places where it isn’t safe to drink the tap water. As a retired cop, I can carry a gun almost everywhere in the […]
Have you ever considered the difference between being in a dangerous situation and being in one where you have limited response options? I think a lot of us in the gun/self-protection world get those feelings confused. I reached this conclusion on New Year’s Eve. I’m spending a good chunk of the winter […]
Seth Godin once made a very powerful statement in a blog post. “My most popular blog posts this year…weren’t my best ones. As usual, the most popular music wasn’t the best recorded this year either. Same for the highest-grossing movies, restaurants and politicians doing fundraising. “Best” is rarely the same as “popular.” Which means […]
About seven years before I retired from my police job, I encountered a chaotic situation involving a criminal, a couple cops, and an armed citizen. The call could have gone very badly for the CCW carrier and I want to describe what happened so that none of my readers ever place themselves […]
I just finished the book Be a Hero. It was a very good book, full of useful information about how to successfully survive an active killer attack. There was one section, however, with which I profoundly disagree. The authors talk about setting off fire alarms, breaking bottles full of slippery liquids in hallways, and […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz The 2022 school shooting in St. Louis has provided an excellent illustration of a fact I have been noting for years. Active killers often have weapon malfunctions during their attack. Read this witness statement: “All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” […]
This is a guest post from Caleb Causey, owner of Lone Star Medics. Caleb is an experienced Army medic who provides top notch trauma medical training to law enforcement agencies and armed citizens alike. Caleb intended this article to be a list of potential medical training scenarios for police roll-call training sessions. These drills […]
I have a confession to make. I like guns and gear. If you are reading this website, then you probably do as well. Nothing wrong with that. Guns are cool. Having the latest and greatest new gear makes people happy and drives growth in an industry where many of us make our living. […]
When I research active killer attacks all around the world, I nearly always see that victims rationalize the sounds of the gunfire as some more innocuous noise. Read this article about the 2016 San Bernardino active killer attack. The article summarized the attack which eventually led to 14 people being killed an 22 more […]
I recently saw this video and it caused me to think about how common criminal attacks are fundamentally changing. Take a few seconds and watch the clip. Surveillance video shows brutal attack on cashier in gas station robbery Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Traditionally, the most likely criminal attack most folks […]
*This is a guest post from my friend Ron Borsch. Ron is a retired police officer/trainer who is one of the world’s leading experts on the behavior of active killers. In his article below, he shares the most well-researched list of common active killer personality traits and pre-incident behaviors that I have seen. Becoming aware […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Way back in 2013, I began noticing a trend. School shootings were starting to happen outside of classrooms and outside the normal operating hours of the school. To avoid lockdowns, killers were attacking large public areas that couldn’t be easily defended during lunch breaks, before school and after dismissal. […]
