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Defeating Doomsday Derp: Tactical Tidbits for Threepers by John Meyers
Posted on October 11, 2016 by Bill
Publisher’s Note: Like John, I too have evolved beyond the Threeper parchment worship and infighting that pits various factions within in eternal handbag fights. Even the late Mel Tappan would be embarrassed by the equipage and carriage of the incipient insurgents. I would like to add that when it comes to pistol carriage, carry it everywhere including your home. Two reasons for this: it generates unconscious competence and you never know when you will need it. You don’t head to work in the morning and inform your wife you’ll be having a head-on collision on the way to work and will be late for dinner.
Dry fire is the king of practical training in these difficult times of ammo scarcity and price spikes.
And I want to assure my friend, Max V, that the reference to TFBC has nothing to do with him. -BB
I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for the Three Percent (III) movement even though I have ideologically evolved past it. Nonetheless if you want to pluck my heart strings just mention Samuel Whittemore or the British defeat at the Battle of Kings Mountain. I’m guaranteed to succumb to the romantic notion that there still is a Remnant in these united States that retains that fighting spirit of the Revolutionary generation or perhaps the tactical prowess of guerrilla tacticians like Francis Marion or Daniel Morgan.
Having a naturally conservative disposition with affection for history and certain traditions, I generally don’t see too much of the fighting spirit of the original III being translated into modern weapons handling, tactics and procedures. Much of what is still being pedaled in the Threeper world is based on Mark Koernke YouTube clip’s of pudgy militia men patrolling in M81, ancient ALICE gear and whatever assortment of “North Idaho Sniper Rifles,” (Scoped SKS as John Mosby tells us) Kalash’s or M1 Garand’s they can push into service. Hello, the 80’s called and they want their tactics back.
There are several people out there that I consider separate from the mainstream firearms training industry and more aligned with the preparedness or III world, including John Mosby from the Mountain Guerrilla Blog and Max Velocity, (and some others who probably don’t want to be named publicly) that are doing a fine job of mitigating a lot of these unfortunate Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP) that are rampant in that community.
Lets cut to the chase. The Derp can be deafening at times. In an effort to help combat some of this and save a lot of folks a lot of heartache, I am tossing out a few tactical tidbits for those interested. (All while staying in my lane of course)
“It costs to much to train.”
Recently an article I penned generated several comments about how certain shooting drills are not really things Threepers should be practicing. Things like Non-Standard Rounds (NSR), FAST drills, VTAC 1-5 drills, 2-2-2, High Smith Rifle Drill, 2-2-4-2-2, Bill drills, Mozambique, cadence drills, etc. The argument was that you can’t do a drill that uses 15 rounds (although it works skills that may save your life) because it requires a little bit of expense on ammo and such drills can only really be done effectively by .mil or cops because they have free ammo to shoot as much as they want. Mundanes such as us do not have an ammo sponsor. And furthermore, when SHTF (that’s as subjective as what the term “constitutional” means) ammo will be limited, so shooting a lethal threat till they stop doing what they are doing is a no-no.
Yes, ammo costs can be a concern and I hardly have the ammo budget that some instructors or competitive shooters have of 1000 or more rounds per week. But you CAN get money to buy training ammo if you put your mind to it. What is your life worth? One of my ideological mentors is Boston T Party. He famously said that he would rather have 100 rounds and 900 rounds worth of quality training, than 900 rounds and only 100 rounds in quality training.
I wrote previously about the dangers of an apocalypse (#Barrackalypse) only focus in your preparedness or self defense training, while ignoring the much more likely every day scenarios that are all the more likely to occur. The corollary unmentioned previously to this is that you have to balance the likelihood of X event with the cost of not being prepared for it. Stated differently, most of us will go our entire lives without having to resort to lethal self-defense, but the cost of not being prepared to employ your gun or pull a blade while in the clinch is so great, you can’t afford to be unprepared. Founding member of Magpul Dynamic’s years back and current shooting ninja CEO of Haley Strategic, Travis Haley, describes those events as the “less than 1%” that you have to be prepared for even though statistically it may not be that great of a chance you’ll ever find yourself in those situations”.
Bringing this all together, if you cannot find the money in order to train, it’s really a matter of evaluating your priorities. Not to turn this into a Dave Ramsey lecture, but if you find yourself complaining about not having ammo money, yet you have cable or satellite TV subscriptions, Netflix, car loans, designer clothes with the holes already torn in them, Blue Apron meal programs, a tanning membership, eat out more than 1 time per month (yes including the drive thru) or you smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, eat pizza’s and wings on Sunday afternoons at your football parties, drink four Monster energy drinks per day or get a Starbucks Venti Grande Mocha Latte Cup of Asshole two times per day, I simply don’t want to hear it. Your conviction to defending life, liberty and property is a lie.
People often lament, “A class costs to much!” Meanwhile they have 3 1911’s that cost 1000$ each that don’t even run in a training environment, 11 Budget build AR’s (run em through a class to see how many different ways they’ll all break) and milsurp Night Vision Devices (NVG) sitting in the safe. In the grand scheme, taking classes early on actually saves you money in the long run. You’ll expend much less ammo on net, because you were taught to do things right the first time instead of just making noise for years and not really getting anywhere. Sell a couple of your Wackmaster 6000’s, and get a good top shelf AR rifle (back-ups are always good) and use the rest of the money to take a class and buy ammo.
Classes show you the whys of the employment of certain techniques or tactics, what and how to practice on your own time, as well as the art of self-diagnosis. For instance, it sounds great that X school you saw on YouTube teaches you to constantly move while doing your reload or clearing a malfunction, (to simulate real world movement to cover) till you are being taught to use cover at Instructor Y’s Force on Force shoot house class and you end up shimmying your jolly old self out from behind cover to perform the reload, when you should of just stayed in place, and you get smoke checked. These courses help break bad habits.
On a final note, we hear “we train all the time!” And this notion often gets associated with the airsoft and paintball crowd. Yes, these guys play quite often. Many take it really serious. But lets not confuse games with legitimate real world practice or training. Yes, there are some serious Mil-Sim guys out there. But lets remember its still a game.
A training mentor of mine was relaying a story recently about how he participated in a Force on Force event with some air-softers. One of the airsoft guys ran out of ammo and called for a magazine from his friend. The friend just ran out in the open and gave the guy a mag. During this time, the OPFOR who was trained in legitimate SUT popped the guy in the gourd and rolled up the entire team and the game was over. They can train the wrong thing 10,000 times, and we’ll still win.
Posted on October 11, 2016 by Bill
Publisher’s Note: Like John, I too have evolved beyond the Threeper parchment worship and infighting that pits various factions within in eternal handbag fights. Even the late Mel Tappan would be embarrassed by the equipage and carriage of the incipient insurgents. I would like to add that when it comes to pistol carriage, carry it everywhere including your home. Two reasons for this: it generates unconscious competence and you never know when you will need it. You don’t head to work in the morning and inform your wife you’ll be having a head-on collision on the way to work and will be late for dinner.Dry fire is the king of practical training in these difficult times of ammo scarcity and price spikes.
And I want to assure my friend, Max V, that the reference to TFBC has nothing to do with him. -BB
I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for the Three Percent (III) movement even though I have ideologically evolved past it. Nonetheless if you want to pluck my heart strings just mention Samuel Whittemore or the British defeat at the Battle of Kings Mountain. I’m guaranteed to succumb to the romantic notion that there still is a Remnant in these united States that retains that fighting spirit of the Revolutionary generation or perhaps the tactical prowess of guerrilla tacticians like Francis Marion or Daniel Morgan.
Having a naturally conservative disposition with affection for history and certain traditions, I generally don’t see too much of the fighting spirit of the original III being translated into modern weapons handling, tactics and procedures. Much of what is still being pedaled in the Threeper world is based on Mark Koernke YouTube clip’s of pudgy militia men patrolling in M81, ancient ALICE gear and whatever assortment of “North Idaho Sniper Rifles,” (Scoped SKS as John Mosby tells us) Kalash’s or M1 Garand’s they can push into service. Hello, the 80’s called and they want their tactics back.
There are several people out there that I consider separate from the mainstream firearms training industry and more aligned with the preparedness or III world, including John Mosby from the Mountain Guerrilla Blog and Max Velocity, (and some others who probably don’t want to be named publicly) that are doing a fine job of mitigating a lot of these unfortunate Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP) that are rampant in that community.
Lets cut to the chase. The Derp can be deafening at times. In an effort to help combat some of this and save a lot of folks a lot of heartache, I am tossing out a few tactical tidbits for those interested. (All while staying in my lane of course)
“It costs to much to train.”
Recently an article I penned generated several comments about how certain shooting drills are not really things Threepers should be practicing. Things like Non-Standard Rounds (NSR), FAST drills, VTAC 1-5 drills, 2-2-2, High Smith Rifle Drill, 2-2-4-2-2, Bill drills, Mozambique, cadence drills, etc. The argument was that you can’t do a drill that uses 15 rounds (although it works skills that may save your life) because it requires a little bit of expense on ammo and such drills can only really be done effectively by .mil or cops because they have free ammo to shoot as much as they want. Mundanes such as us do not have an ammo sponsor. And furthermore, when SHTF (that’s as subjective as what the term “constitutional” means) ammo will be limited, so shooting a lethal threat till they stop doing what they are doing is a no-no.
Yes, ammo costs can be a concern and I hardly have the ammo budget that some instructors or competitive shooters have of 1000 or more rounds per week. But you CAN get money to buy training ammo if you put your mind to it. What is your life worth? One of my ideological mentors is Boston T Party. He famously said that he would rather have 100 rounds and 900 rounds worth of quality training, than 900 rounds and only 100 rounds in quality training.
I wrote previously about the dangers of an apocalypse (#Barrackalypse) only focus in your preparedness or self defense training, while ignoring the much more likely every day scenarios that are all the more likely to occur. The corollary unmentioned previously to this is that you have to balance the likelihood of X event with the cost of not being prepared for it. Stated differently, most of us will go our entire lives without having to resort to lethal self-defense, but the cost of not being prepared to employ your gun or pull a blade while in the clinch is so great, you can’t afford to be unprepared. Founding member of Magpul Dynamic’s years back and current shooting ninja CEO of Haley Strategic, Travis Haley, describes those events as the “less than 1%” that you have to be prepared for even though statistically it may not be that great of a chance you’ll ever find yourself in those situations”.
Bringing this all together, if you cannot find the money in order to train, it’s really a matter of evaluating your priorities. Not to turn this into a Dave Ramsey lecture, but if you find yourself complaining about not having ammo money, yet you have cable or satellite TV subscriptions, Netflix, car loans, designer clothes with the holes already torn in them, Blue Apron meal programs, a tanning membership, eat out more than 1 time per month (yes including the drive thru) or you smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, eat pizza’s and wings on Sunday afternoons at your football parties, drink four Monster energy drinks per day or get a Starbucks Venti Grande Mocha Latte Cup of Asshole two times per day, I simply don’t want to hear it. Your conviction to defending life, liberty and property is a lie.
People often lament, “A class costs to much!” Meanwhile they have 3 1911’s that cost 1000$ each that don’t even run in a training environment, 11 Budget build AR’s (run em through a class to see how many different ways they’ll all break) and milsurp Night Vision Devices (NVG) sitting in the safe. In the grand scheme, taking classes early on actually saves you money in the long run. You’ll expend much less ammo on net, because you were taught to do things right the first time instead of just making noise for years and not really getting anywhere. Sell a couple of your Wackmaster 6000’s, and get a good top shelf AR rifle (back-ups are always good) and use the rest of the money to take a class and buy ammo.
Classes show you the whys of the employment of certain techniques or tactics, what and how to practice on your own time, as well as the art of self-diagnosis. For instance, it sounds great that X school you saw on YouTube teaches you to constantly move while doing your reload or clearing a malfunction, (to simulate real world movement to cover) till you are being taught to use cover at Instructor Y’s Force on Force shoot house class and you end up shimmying your jolly old self out from behind cover to perform the reload, when you should of just stayed in place, and you get smoke checked. These courses help break bad habits.
On a final note, we hear “we train all the time!” And this notion often gets associated with the airsoft and paintball crowd. Yes, these guys play quite often. Many take it really serious. But lets not confuse games with legitimate real world practice or training. Yes, there are some serious Mil-Sim guys out there. But lets remember its still a game.
A training mentor of mine was relaying a story recently about how he participated in a Force on Force event with some air-softers. One of the airsoft guys ran out of ammo and called for a magazine from his friend. The friend just ran out in the open and gave the guy a mag. During this time, the OPFOR who was trained in legitimate SUT popped the guy in the gourd and rolled up the entire team and the game was over. They can train the wrong thing 10,000 times, and we’ll still win.
