Incoming

So there are posts in the works (I swear). Life, like always is never dull around here and time is always precious and has to be prioritized.

I've got a rough post etched out on my time down on the Arizona/Mexican border back in October. There's a sit down with a local journalist discussing work as well (so we shall see).

The next installment on here should be regarding a piece of (ahem) "tactical clothing" that doesn't look remotely tactical in the much overly-misused-sense-of-the-word.

There is also a small transition in specific articles coming probably starting mid-winter aimed at personal protection written from two perspectives. One from a work stand point for some of you other professionals out there who share the same line of work (or are considering as a career path). The other is taking some of those personal protection techniques of what the layman calls "bodyguarding" and the rest of refer to as "EP" or "Executive Protection" and how all of us can apply strong defensive roles to our domestic life.

I think for the immediate future the "Dark Arts for Good Guys" is wrapped up. There maybe the odd and occasional post in the next year or two but, I'm looking forward to these new series.

That said, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas forth coming.

The .22 LR Pistol and You

Once upon time I spent a week with a retired CIA spook (in Oklahoma of all places) who was kind enough...well actually he was paid, to give me some training in electronic counter measures, lock picking and a few other useful skills that would aid me in some of my future en devours.

One evening after a steak dinner someplace he went to pay the tab and was looking for a pen or something in one of his pants pockets and in the process laid out a worn pocket holster with a small automatic resting inside. It turned out to be an equally worn blued Walther TPH (German made) and, having never seen one before I wanted to know more about this Walther PPK someone had left in the dryer.

He told me of a few misadventures surrounding the piece but, it was his parting remark that stuck with me "If you are lucky enough to travel around the world armed and doing it mainly alone do yourself a favor always carry a .22 pistol, regardless of anything else you pack."

It was a piece of advice that I remembered sometime later when I was tasked with recovering someone who was missing on purpose because bad men were hunting him. For a real nice ten days I had a Beretta Bobcat that never saw use only because the gentleman who was in-charge of granting me access to where I was decided he liked it as well and the price of admission was...you guessed it. One itty bitty .22 pocket gun.

Some nights later sitting in the dark with the no-longer-missing-person-in-question getting ready to make a mad dash for the territory ahead so to speak and, people with not-so-questionable intent well within my comfort space...which was down the stairs. I didn't think about wanting a rifle, or even one of my beloved 1911s I remember longing for that .22. Not because I thought it superior weapon to anything else (because it certainly is not) but, rather due to the fact I should have had it with me.

I see you. Your neck all tense your fingers locked in tight. You've barely made this far without leaving me your expert opinion in the comments section.

Breathe man.... breathe.

If you are going to compare the calibration of the .22 long rifle to anything else (minus the .25) you have to ask why are you even having the internet figh....I mean discussion. Obviously it falls short so if you can bear that in mind you should be fine reading the rest of the post. If not there's not much I can do for you.

While some of us who inhabit parts of this planet are allowed to own, shoot, and carry a wide array of calibers, actions, and magazine capacity, others are not so fortunate.

For example contrary to popular knowledge gun ownership and even handgun ownership for self defense in Mexico is not actually illegal. It is just damn near impossible.

Why?

Because in Mexico there exists only one legal gun store and it sits on a military base in Mexico City. The law says a household can only have one defensive arm and it can be either a pistol or a revolver but, it has to be within the .22 to .380 scale...and you can only possess 200 rounds of ammo a year.

If I were a honest Mexican citizen and left with that choice I'd choose the .22.

"Whoa!" you say

If you live in such a place where it simply is that difficult to obtain a firearm what do you think the availability of shooting ranges are? Hence some things need to be done covertly where a drive into the country side and back into the trees you can fetch you some quality private time without a lot of unwanted attention.

And for people who live in countries such as those with restrictions it's also easier to FIND .22 ammo on the pseudo black market without having to delve truly deep into conversations with individuals your mother wouldn't approve of let alone the policia.

Say you had to be on the move through a varying landscape from Urban to semi-rural for a few days with various unfriendlies about. And you had to do this primarily on foot, or catching the occasional mass transit system, or train, or negotiating a ride for the next twenty miles. Maybe its to get in and find someone and extract them...maybe its just getting out. There on your hip concealed in all of its glory is your beloved full size center-fire pistol and two fully loaded magazines.

The point two two handgun, as the Brits like to say, offers a level of flexibility to your self-defense/feces-impellar kit.

There are times and places in this world were suppressive fire is just good application. For some folks who work alone, far away and, outside of official channels there is a place for the .22 in your life.

A fixed, threaded, or extended barrel can be temporarily suppressed, ripped off and tossed away in a moment solving an up close situation.

Likewise it can serve as a not so gentle reminder that incoming fire has the right of way to those who are actively shooting at you and trying to close the gap.

Perhaps the need in solving the problem is less than conventional.

In a mobile pursuit or an about to be mobile pursuit tires can be flattened from a distance. Traffic jams can be created BEHIND you thus assisting in the escape. Being pursued on a long and rural darkened road head lights can be shot out (don't intentionally misinterpret that as one bullet for one head lamp as if it were an steady and calm Olympic event). 

And say what you will. I've never met a soul willing to pursue at a high rate of speed in near pitch black conditions. And while I've seen plenty of spare tires on vehicles I don't recall too many spare headlights.

What message would it say to your would be aggressors walking down the street if a shot rang out, then another and still another as street lights systematically were shot out. A man (or woman) willing to not only embrace a fight but, to deliberately do it in the dark will give pause to most anyone.

All that can be done without having to sacrifice your limited ammo availability to your primary center-fire handgun.

Because two hundred rounds can be squirreled away most anywhere let alone fifty or a hundred.

But then you knew this...

You know if need be, you can stash a couple hundred round of .22 high velocity long rifle rounds into a 20 oz Starbucks paper cup without having the bottom fall out.

There is something else you have to remember about bullets. All of them. The lowly .22 included.

Bullets cause destruction when fired into living things and in self-defense situations where it is your life or the bad guy's, creating trauma that stops his onslaught is the general idea.

Oh I know....I know. Your brother's cousin's nephew once put a .22 through his frontal lobe while squirrel hunting and, sneezed it out a few days later.

Bullets do weird things but those weird stories are about solitary rounds.

But five or six of those itty bitty rounds into the forehead or sternum cause repetitive systematic destruction.

Take your index finger and tap yourself once between the eyes. Just once.

Now do it five or six times.

If those where fast moving .22 rounds what do you think it would do to you.

Mentally? Not to mention physically?

Now apply this to a bad man.

Bone has been fragmented and broken, the body's primary control area has received substantial damage and things begin to shut down and not in some priority status way. The visual ability to target a victim has been either removed or compromised, not to mention the most basic ability to conceive, maintain, and rely upon any real thought process is gone....gone.

The attack breaks. Because the attacker is breaking down.

Repetitive-Systematic-Destruction

There. Again... I see you. Arms crossed. You are gonna play the trump card.

".22's misfire...end of story".

Guess what. There are no free lunches anywhere when the fight for your life is on.

Clear the fucking round and get back in the fight. There is nothing different about a misfired .22 and a stove piped 9mm. Both require you to disengage, do some manual labor and, re-engage. Personal responsibility isn't going anywhere.

One gentleman I knew, who worked all over the world in varying capacities carried two guns for the majority of his work. A Browning Hi-Power and a Ruger MK II.He managed to repeatedly come home from really shitty places and situations and, to do so he had to put in a lot of personal effort.

So do you.

Ultimately there the opinion of many out there who don't ever favor the .22LR for defense work. I can say for me it has been a choice at times and it is never my first choice but one does have to remember this amidst the "stopping power" business. Bullet holes of any caliber in the throat end a fight as do puncture wounds to the lungs especially multiple ones. Regardless if they come from a .22, a .460 Rowland or a kitchen knife.

Gear Review: Pathfinder Water Bottle & Cup

When I was a kid I carried this old school WWII/GI surplus canteen and web belt, the ones wear the canteen pouch was felt lined and the whole thing was khaki. By the time it came my way it was easily forty years old and, it escorted me on every summertime bike and creek adventure, squirrel hunt and, deer hunt of my youth (and more than a couple of my professional adventures as an adult).

There were (and are) a lot of things I liked about it, first I'm a sucker for old school stuff, second it was a metal canteen that sat in a metal cup. As a teenager I was caught up in everything "survival", reading every Tom Brown Jr, Bradford Angier, or Army Survival Manual I could get my hands on. My favorite "trick" so to speak was that I could boil water to purify it in my canteen and drink it in the cup that it was wedged into (do that with a plastic canteen).

Then I grew up and abandoned the old G.I. canteen to the plastic Nalgene bottle trend at the start of this century. It did however leave me wanting.

See I've got this slightly different perspective on the whole SHTF scenario in that I've been there when it's happened on those micro occasions as opposed to the "big event" we all talk about and plan for.

Which having come through those situations combined with my survival skilled-and-filled youth left me liking to be prepared. The down side was in all that over prepping I developed the bad habit of over packing or rather packing in redundancy.

Over time I've learned to shed the extra gear and not be so African fetish about it in the process... it just took more than a few layovers, custom officials and back breaking runs to airplanes to learn how to stream line and find multiple uses for single pieces of gear.

Fortunately, when you sometimes spends hours and... days alone you get a lot of time to think and mentally sort out details of your personal kit, perfecting it along the way. You also mentally write a lot of blog posts that show up two years later...

One of those stream lined pieces of gear I wanted to find was a wide mouth stainless steel water bottle (like a Klean Kanteen), with a cup to go with it. Like all things I added to the basic idea.

I wanted a way to also turn it into a portable coffee maker for those times when gear REALLY had to be limited. Nothing complicated, just be able to put the bottle on a small stove or straight into a fire, boil water, then add a bandana full of coffee. That thought developed into wanting to design a French Coffee Press for my new kit I didn't have.

Then on one expedition to a local sporting good store I saw it. A french press kit for a Nalgene bottle....which of course meant you had to pour boiling water INTO the Nalgene bottle then make your coffee in it. As opposed to...oh I dunno....that aluminum camp coffee pot I already had trucked all over the world, and done the same thing with.

But a fool on a mission is undeterred. I bought it. And no other piece of gear ever sat so beautifully unused on my equipment shelf.

But a patient man I am. I knew....I just knew...one day.

A few years ago when he was still on youtube and before "Dual Survivor" hit the Discovery Channel, I had enjoyed Dave Canterbury's Pathfinder school vids. By happenstance earlier in the summer I came across his on line store. Low and behold Dave had a 32oz stainless water bottle and, 25oz cup combo for $35.

Done and done.

Ordered on a Friday it arrived on the following Tuesday.

Let's be honest, there isn't really anything overly exciting about a water bottle or a cup but it is the combination I've wanted for a long time at a price I like. The measurement gradients inside the 25oz cup (GSI's is 18 oz by the way) may prove useful in cooking some remote meal at a future point and I thought they were a good inclusion.

So what about the whole "French-Pressed-coffee-over-an-open-fire" thing (see pics below). It works rather well actually. The only hiccup in the plan was the lid/top of the press is made to Nalgene specs and wouldn't screw down but, it proved to be unnecessary anyway. The press part works in the bottle superbly and....I can always buy an extra lid and drill a hole for the press rod, another for a spout and, a third for airflow and be good to go (life ain't perfect).

The truth is what I like is that I've got a make shift way to purify water or sterilize med gear or cook in a situation where I'm working with minimal gear in a shit situation. I also like that I'm not out a ton of cash in the process which is nice for the bottle's main purpose in my life.

My primary Go-Bag is a BlackHawk! Mobile Operations Bag (size medium). In one of the three side pockets are a stainless steel Thermos (no handles) and the PathFinder waterbottle/cup combo. Both sit idle but ready in the bag until it's time to roll out...which doesn't seem to be slowing up anytime soon for me.

"But is it THE BEST!" you ask.

Because you know the Internets demand all your gear be THE BEST.

Dude, its a metal water bottle that seals up tight with a metal cup on the end what else does it need to do?

As for the coffee makin'....

pics are below. How much coffee does it make? By the mark of my coffee pot in the kitchen, seven cups which works out to roughly four mugs of coffee. Note: the smaller mug in the blue Nalgene bottle is an 18 oz GSI Camp mug shown for comparison.

Do ya get it.

When we woke up this morning, like the rest of you, we learned of movie theater shooting in Aurora by James Holmes. When the report said it was at the premier showing of the Dark Knight Rises, I immediately thought of the above scene and told, The Wife "He wanted to be the Joker. That's the whole motivation behind his attack."


I'll be interested to see if it bears fruit, though it matters not.

I'm a student, as it were, of spree shooters. In my work one has to be a student of many things and, violent people are one of them. There is no mystery to them. In the countless number of profiles I've read most of them didn't "just snap" over some event. Some claim it, without a doubt, but generally they do it because they want to.

On a Monday morning in January 1979, Brenda Ann Spencer, a seventeen year old high school student, opened her bed room window and took aim at a play ground at the elementary school across the street with her .22 rifle and started shooting. When she was arrested she didn't fight, she didn't complain, she just said "I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day."

And that is that.

I grow weary of the immediate blame thrown out by the media, the politicians, and others the hours after these senseless massacres towards every gun owner and conservative. Which is rarely accurate. And in most cases these individuals identify themselves as "anarchists", the type that are in the fringe of the Left more often that the Right. Though politics in any of it is horrid.

The fact is he could have jammed the doors shut taken out gasoline and done the same thing....and its happened. If you don't recall it may be because it's the M.O. of mass killers in parts of the world where there isn't access to guns or ammunition or more likely the money to acquire several hundred dollars of guns and ammo. A few liters of fuel and a willing evil son of a bitch is all that is required.

At the gym today I got a call from someone I know wanting me to weigh in professionally on this. Later he turned the topic to handguns and he told me about the pocket gun he carried religiously...mostly. He wanted to know if it was enough...which the irony is in the blogger dashboard under "draft: Mouseguns". He said finally "you know...my fear is I'd piss my pants if that ever happens." I'll tell you like I told him "piss them and then shoot the son of a bitch".

This is my parting advice to you all. Stop with the ridiculous caliber debates, the "my gun is better than yours because...blah blah" debates. Get the fuck off the seven yard range and hit the 25 yard and yes...the 50 if you can. If your gun doesn't have a front sight or a rear and it can be milled put a fucking set of sights on it. Carry reloads, carry a flashlight....always. Look at the world around you, what is bullet proof, what is not....

Tactics aren't a color or a cloth. They are plans. What is yours?

Finally above all. Be Brave.

We are so devoid of heroes these days.There are three kinds of people, those who commit evil, those who want to reason with evil, and those who stand against it. When "Dark Knight" came out a few years ago I was leaving a cafe' and I saw a teenager wearing a black t-shirt that had the face of Heath Ledger's "Joker" on it. My heart broke. We need every generation to understand that evil isn't to be embraced it's to be fought against....at all costs. At-all-costs.


Don't flee from evil. Engage it. Fight it. Kill it.

Proper Leverage

Sometimes in the American gun culture there is this all or nothing idea when it comes to being prepared for bad situations; often ignoring the reality of the middle ground in the realm of day to day preparedness.

On one end there is the OCD end-of-the-world-zombie-apocalypse idea that if you haven't squandered your families earnings on MREs, multiple military grade rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo you are, as Chris Rock says, "gonna die".

The flip side of the coin is this weird obsession by the gun market and manufacturers to build uber light weight .380s and 9mms that can only be held onto with two fingers, has a light rail, and no sights (don't want to weigh the gun down you know...'cause there's a light rail).

One could suppose, justly, that my cynicism is leaking through.

Earlier this week I had to escort a client on a protection detail that on a threat assessment chart was medium edging towards high. The information in his care was literally worth millions but, he was basically an unknown player in the world. The problem was further exacerbated by the fact the opposing side knew 60% of the intelligence he was running, coupled with the two hour drive through both urban and rural areas to get there and back.

That morning as I was getting ready to leave The Wife walked past the dining room table were I had laid out all my gear the night before and jokingly said "think you have enough firepower?"

"I will, unless I run out. Then I won't."

Just like you I'm a private citizen, held to the same rules and the same potential legal problems only coupled with a "for hire" tag. So there is always this fine line of being more than adequately prepared for the worst, while being completely aware if the worst does happen I may be living it out on the national news the next day.

The other half is that I work alone. I do this intentionally because I have trust issues you might say....all for good reasons but, that isn't the point to be made here.

So when I work I carry a lot of hardware....like the other day. Two to three handguns, multiple magazines and a rifle. What you might find ironic is that I heavily avoid a "tacti-cool" image. Nothing I use is less "tactical" looking than my choice of rifle.

Simple and straight I have always preferred the lever action rifle for defensive work in a non-combat theater. And the reasoning goes beyond it's humble appearance. 

When we think of a rifle in use for fighting it is easy to imagine the "Super Fight" scenario. Mount an AK or AR to the shoulder it's not unlikely to imagine you against overwhelming odds with hordes of Tangos descending upon you as while ripping through one hi-cap mag to the next, empty and gleaming surplus casings at your feet.

What we rarely consider is a rifle's ability to be concealed.

"Concealed? Surely you jest....why would I need to conceal a rifle?"

You don't ....if it never gets beyond the range or back of the closet, but to put it in use or rather potential use where the world is NOT ending and the day to day is the norm concealability and discretion are the watchwords of the day.

The charm of the compact lever gun as a working defensive arm lies in it's slim, compact design in contrast to the large profile of an assault rifle (not a pejorative term by the way).

For instance a thirty round magazine in an AK variant makes the overall height measure out to be around 10-11 inches from the bottom of the mag to the top of the receiver and that is with out some type of glass mounted atop or receiver rear sights. The AR and M14 are in a similar situation.  Width is easily around two-three inches and, we haven't even really begun to clamp things onto those wonderful picatinny rails, that even flashlights come with these days.

In contrast a lever gun varies between three and a half to four inches in height and an inch and a quarter to and inch and three quarters wide.

Nice flat and compact.

So compact that I can often stash one of my lever guns along side the driver or passenger door (i.e. next to where I am seated), under foot of a bench seat, or if no one is seated in the back seat I can slip it to where the back rest joins the seat and lay anything from a blanket or towel over it. The magazine is fully stoked and should the need arise I simply need to yank it from its location and work the lever justly in that process and I am ready to make my stand with a rifle. All of them are fitted with peep sights and shoot inside a playing card at a hundred yards.

"ah yes" you say "but they are very limited in magazine capacity".

No disagreement there but I am supremely confident... just like I was earlier in the week, that seven rounds of .30-30 170grn soft points in my model 94 Winchester will see me through. If they don't I'll reload and keep going.

I see a raised eye brow of doubt.

The most predominant used long arm in civilized countries amongst civilians, including police forces, is the 12 gauge pump shotgun whose tubular magazine capacity varies from five to eight rounds. Few people would consider this inadequate firepower for most any task involving a fight with other humans. And while it enjoys immense popularity its always the least trained with because a scatter-gun doesn't do what a rifle does (or is supposed to) to do...deliver little tiny groups on a target which leads to confidence building in the head of the user.

The other strange irony is contending that seven or eight rounds simply isn't enough ammunition in a rifle should it come to a fight. Yet it would be remiss not to point out that some of the most popular selling handgun choices in the concealed carry market today are single stack magazines that hold between six and nine rounds.

Until I sold it a few years ago I carried a Marlin 1894 in .44 Magnum loaded with 240 grain jacketed hollow points almost everywhere for every job. Today my two primary work rifles here in the U.S. are either a .357 Magnum Marlin or the previously mentioned Model 94 in .30-30.

I value them for their ability in protection work not only for concealability but, also in the event of an ambush that leaves my vehicle disabled I have adequate fire power to make a prolonged stand as need be (I never said I didn't carry more ammo elsewhere in the vehicle) over a range of a few yards to a couple of hundred. Given that most police snipers rarely take a shot over 70 yards and both of my lever guns can put all their rounds into a human head at a hundred I'm not concerned.

There is significant reasoning in the ability to shoot through or into a vehicle at a distance and disable the bad guys on the inside of their vehicle or the vehicle itself some capacity.

Buffalo Bore makes some wonderful dangerous game rounds for both the .30-30 and the .357 magnum (to the point the .357 loads out of a rifle surpass standard .30-30 loads). That allows for a lot of penetration in a civilian shootout.

The third reason I like the lever gun so much for work use....travel.

While there is no law in the U.S. that restricts rifle ownership overall, some states do restrict the type or mag capacity. With any lever gun I can travel wherever need be, and this bodes for outside of the U.S. as well. Where some countries may allow you, in a security role, to bring in a long arm they might not be to keen on the self-loaders or military calibers. But a manually operated firearm chambered in a "hunting caliber" has this cowboy charm to it that has this innocuous way of being presented and dismissed in the same moment.

You might also be surprised as to the amount of lever action rifles still in use all over Central and South America in the hands of the civilian populous...even where they aren't supposed to be.


A couple of years back a friend of mine who is a new gun owner and has just a couple of handguns said he wanted a long gun, "I was thinking a pump shotgun or maybe a rifle but, I don't think I need something...you know...complicated", I told him I thought a Marlin 336 would make a fine choice.

Still do.

Don't mistake my support of a fixed magazine lever gun as being against the citizenry owning assault rifles. I think as long as the financial means bear it and the Individual so desires it a good high-cap rifle and a stockpile of ammo to feed it, is a good idea to thwart the Huns should it ever come to that. It is just that we are so inundated with a gun culture obsessed with the "tactical entry this" or the "long range sniper that" too such a degree that we often over look simple effectiveness and practicality in the wake of what is en vogue at the moment.

Lest we forget

Never will there be a way (here) to memorialize all the men and women who died in sacrifice of this great nation but, there are some who are easily over looked and forgotten.

Simply put here are a few of those many who sacrificed their lives for this great nation and not all of them wore uniforms and in some cases died alone working and gathering the intelligence so that those in uniform could perform. Others..like Operation Eagle Claw one of the worst tragedies in the early history of America's Special Operations Forces became the mark of a phoenix rising from it's ashes in which those who sacrificed their lives for mission that never happened help to create to better warriors twenty years later.

We oft forget that those who are in the greatest debt in this great nation is those of us who breathe free air delivered to us by the dead.

Never can we repay such sacrifice nor, valor.



Operation Eagle Claw (April 24th-25th, 1980)

Airmen Major Richard L. Bakke
Major Harold L Lewis Jr.
TSgt Joel C. Mayo
Major Lyn D. McIntosh
Captain Charles T. McMillan.

Sgt John D. Harvey
Cpl George N. Holmes Jr.
SSgt Dewey L Johnson.

July 9th, 2003
Gregg Wenzel

Camp Chapman Attack (December 30, 2009)

Jennifer Lynne Mathews
Harold Brown Jr
Elizabeth Hanson
Danner LaBonte
Scott Michael Robertson
Dane Clark Paresi
Jeremy Wise

2011 Chinook Shootdown (August 6th, 2011)

Lt. Cmdr. (SEAL) Jonas B. Kelsall
Master Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Louis J. Langlais                                 Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Thomas A. Ratzlaff
Senior Chief Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EXW/FPJ) Kraig M. Vickers
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Brian R. Bill
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) John W. Faas
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Kevin A. Houston
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Matthew D. Mason
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Stephen M. Mills
Chief Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EXW/FPJ/DV) Nicholas H. Null
Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Robert J. Reeves
Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Heath M. Robinson
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Darrik C. Benson
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL/PJ) Christopher G. Campbell
Information Systems Technician 1st Class (EXW/FPJ) Jared W. Day
Master-at-Arms 1st Class (EXW) John Douangdara
Cryptologic Technician (Collection) 1st Class (EXW) Michael J. Strange
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL/SW) Jon T. Tumilson
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Aaron C. Vaughn                                   Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Jason R. Workman
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Jesse D. Pittman
Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class (SEAL) Nicholas P. Spehar

Chief Warrant Officer 4 David R. Carter
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Bryan J. Nichols
Sgt. Patrick D. Hamburger
Sgt. Alexander J. Bennett
Spc. Spencer C. Duncan
Tech. Sgt. John W. Brown
Staff Sgt. Andrew W. Harvell
Tech. Sgt. Daniel L. Zerbe


The Memorial Wall at the Central Intelligence Agency

Douglas Mackierna
Norman A. Schwartz
Robert C. Snoddy
Wilburn S. Rose
Frank G. Grace
Howard Carey
Eugene "Buster" Edens
William P. Boteler
James J. McGrath
Chiyoki Ikeda
Stephen Kasarda, Jr.
Leo F. Baker
Wade C. Gray
Thomas W. Ray
Riley W. Shamburger
Barbara Robbins
Edward Johnson
Louis O'Jibway
Michael M. Deuel
Michael A. Maloney
Walter L. Ray
Jack W. Weeks
Billy J. Johnson
Wayne J. McNulty
Richard M. Sisk
Paul C. Davis
David L. Konzelman
Willbur M. Greene
Raymond L. Seaborg
John Peterson John W. Kearns
William E. Bennett
Hugh F. Redmond
Raymond C. Rayner
James A. Rawling
Tucker Gougelmann
Richard Welch
Denny Gabriel
Berl King
Robert C. Ames
Phyliss Faraci
Kenneth E. Haas
Deborah M. Hixon
Frank J. Johnston
James Lewis
Monique Lewis
William Richard Sheil
Richard Spicer,
Scott J. Van Lieshout
Curtis R. Wood
William F. Buckley
Richard D. Krobock
Matthew Gannon
Robert W. Woods

LEST WE FORGET

EDC: Fail is Obsolete

The first time I ever flew in a private jet was when the crew had to take it up for an emergency maneuverability test. Sadly there was no barrel roll but, the hard banking several thousand feet up left every roller coaster I've ridden before or since in the dust.

On board was the Maintenance Chief (USAF-Retired) and I missed no opportunity to pick his brain on the topic of all things jets.

"A plane is like being in love with a crazy woman. If you don't keep your eye on her and love her she'll either mess around on you or kill you." 

Comforting words at fifteen thousand feet to be sure.

So I asked him what crashed most planes. "Either the Pilot making a bad call on the weather or lack of good maintenance....somebody starts cutting corners and lives are lost."

And there it is.

Life is dependent upon good or bad judgement calls and, how well your gear is maintained. Amongst us civilians who carry gear of one lethal sort or another on a daily basis we have no oversight other than ourselves as to how well it is maintained. And let's be honest, we've all been there. The unhealthy dose of lint across the hammer or striker area of our pistol, the tactical folder whose blade still holds bits of tape or glue on the blade and in desperate need of a touch up to the edge, hollow points in your spare mag (that I know you carry always...right) clogged with bits of Kleenex, the not-so-fresh batteries in your tactical light.

Our EDC (Every Day Carry) gear is an amalgamation of an emergency kit and a cog that sees regular use and, because of this we need to always be doing scheduled maintenance. Sunday night, the unofficial pre-game to the week ahead is my night to do this and rarely takes more than fifteen minutes to a half hour. Nothing overly detailed and can readily be done watching television.

For me it looks like this:

• Rubbing Alcohol on knife blades to clean. Wal-Mart knife sharpener to touch up edge.
• Empty pistol, grab old toothbrush kept in sock drawer, brush away lint.Inspect hammer area, muzzle, barrel, mag well etc. 
• Does pistol need to be lubed and/or oiled?
• Empty all pistol mags and wipe down bullets with soft cotton cloth and clean hollow points out with Q-tip as needed.
• Inspect holsters for wear/tight fit.
•  Do self-blinding test with Surefire flashlight...not blind enough...fresh batteries are needed. 
• Open extendible baton look for rust, lint, etc.
• Sort and clean out and up daily carry Go bag.Do contents match what is expected in coming week?

 In essence it is nothing more than good old fashion discipline. Just because your favorite bullet launcher can survive ten years under a glacier doesn't mean you should treat it as such. You will never regret keeping your personal gear in good working order or being overly familiar with the equipment you swear to everyone else you need. Because when the life hits the impeller you want your readiness to be ready.