I talked about psychological stopping in this post: The Stop. In a recent discussion with a close friend we came to agree that wars are won in the will. The military talks about "imposing your will on the battlefield" but I don't know that most people really get it. You have to deprive the enemy of the will to fight. This fundamental truth is applied in all forms of human conflict. It is a matter of dissuading participation, and raising the cost of failure.

Via SayUncle and KDT:

Homeowner fired to protect his wife during invasion

So we have two 19yr old adults, one with a prior criminal history, and one carrying a weapon, put on masks and break into a 70 yr old mans home and he shoots them both.

Announcing "The Warrior Mindset"

I think Mr. Codrea is getting excited about nothing. These types of courses have been around in the firearms community ever since Coopers' Principles of Personal Protection. Generally the purpose of a mindset class is to teach people to "suck it up and drive on" when the situation gets dangerous.

If you read enough of the books, forums, and websites you will find that different definitions of a scenario is a common problem. The reason this becomes a problem is that people will find and latch on to some small theoretical detail and use that as the solution to the scenario. In the software field this would be called a 'hack.'

For training purposes I am not really interested in a solution that only solves a corner-case. I am interested in broad, robust solutions. Simple procedures that solve a broad range of problems have a much better chance of being useful that a some gimmick that is particular to a single instance. The single instance that one has a connection to, tends to loom large in our thinking. It is an individual example of fighting the last war.

Society teaches us things, all of us. We are conditioned to do certain things and not others by what the social norms are. The problem with this training is that is not necessarily teaching us the proper things to do in many situations. I think this informal training is doubly bad when it comes to women. I believe that women are now in a grey area as far as what our society expects of them. In the course of daily events it probably isn't much of a factor but on the edges or in certain situations this dichotomy creates problems.

For example, you are riding on a bus with many empty seats and someone comes along and sits on the seat directly next to you. This is unusual behavior, and the most common reactions among women are to either move seats, or to try to ignore the person. It is rare that a woman would tell the person to move. Women I have asked said that they didn't want to be rude or impolite.

This is an interesting read: Target Practice: Racism and Police Shootings Are No Game

Basically there is a computer shoot/no-shoot simulation and it seems that the general population is slightly more likely to shoot black people than white people. The simulation has people holding weapons (shoot targets) and things like cell phones and soda cans (no-shoots.) Apparently police officers do better than general public and exhibit less racial bias. The online version of the simulation can be found here

After reading a number of different sources about the various gun bills and concealed carry initiatives that currently circulating a common thread among those opposed or on the fence is their fear of guns.

These people actually believe that a firearm is suddenly going to turn honest, reasonable, citizens into rampaging lunatics. That a piece of machinery is the missing ingredient between normal discourse and mayhem. A disagreement with Boss would suddenly be a gunfight. If neighbors kids are on your lawn then start shooting. This is such a juvenile assessment it surprises me that educated people could take such a position.

I thought I was going to write a post about use of force decision making, but a quick google search found Use of Force and it is far more complete than anything I would have knocked out in a single blog post. Read it, know it, live it.