Category: Uncategorized

Rory Miller: Learning, Responsibility, and Power

Rory Miller of Chiron Training:

Here’s the way I see it.  I will assume 100% responsibility.  If I am the teacher it is 100% my responsibility to be understood.  And if I am the student, it is 100% my responsibility to understand. These percentages and the concepts of teaching and learning, the relationship of teacher to student are not exact realities. A huge amount of every interaction you have with other people is being created in your head. Humans don’t deal, almost ever, with objective reality. We ascribe meanings from our own histories, and interpretations from our own internal connections to everything we hear and everything we see. You can and do control this process. A fairly large amount of it you can control mindfully, consciously. And some you can only influence…

Continue reading at Conflict Research Group International

New FB Group: Special Needs Self Defense And Safety

Jason Miletsky of Exceptional Fitness, Self-Defense, and Safety started the Special Needs Self Defense And Safety group on Facebook.

“Jason Miletsky earned his B.S. degree from Nova Southeastern University in Behavioral Science. Jason is a certified Exceptional Student Education teacher. Currently he is an ESE and Behavior Specialist for the Broward School District. Jason has an extensive background in Applied Behavior Analysis, athletics, fitness, recreation management, martial arts, program development, and implementation of developmentally appropriate programs and curriculum for typical individuals as well as those with special needs of all ages.”

Looks like there are some good resources there.

John Danaher on Student Information Overload

John Danaher:

Information overload: When I first began coaching I was anxious to pass as much detailed information as possible to students when demonstrating moves; in the belief that the more details they had, the more perfect their performance of the move would be. I soon found the opposite effect took place. The students did not have the experience to know which details ought to be given priority and so tended to emphasize the least important details over the most important. … My job then, is not dumping information – IT IS ABBREVIATING AND PRIORITIZING INFORMATION. Once I feel it is absorbed in ways that a student can utilize it under stress, I can add more. As soon as I made this adjustment…

Continue reading on Instagram

h/t Torin Hill of TORIS

Tamara Keel: Dressing Around the Weapon

Tamara Keel:

We do not live in a world where everybody can wear an untucked polo shirt over a gun belt with a Glock 19 and centerline fixed blade knife, and can take all their vacation days every year to attend gun school. Nor should we. By making that sound like the lowest hurdle for responsible self defense, we turn off more people than we attract.

Read it at View From the Porch

Randy King: Training for Escape

Randy King of KPC Self Defense and Randy King Live has another awesome installment of his Randy’s Rants series. This one’s on training to escape.

Personal story: few years back I discovered an almost 100% reliable way to confuse and eventually piss off a room full of martial artists. Fight only to create an opening for an escape and then take it. There’s a sort of predictable pattern: confusion, OK I get it, haha you’re still doing it, and ok but seriously why aren’t you hanging out to fight me for fun for the next 10 minutes. (Yes, eventually we probably do have to stay in longer than we would so we can learn.)

Kathy Jackson: What Certifications Do You Need?

Kathy Jackson of Cornered Cat and IDJ:

From elsewhere, in response to sumdood asking what certifications he “needed” to have in order to teach home defense and gun safety:

At the heart, a “home defense” instructor asks (and even expects) people to bet their lives and the lives of their loved ones on the quality of the instructor’s information and the instructor’s ability to impart that information to them in a meaningful way.

If that thought doesn’t scare you down to your toenails, it’s not the job for you no matter what classes you’ve attended or what certifications you have. If it sounds silly or overstated or like anything other than the bare truth … same thing.

If that sobering thought does give you some hesitation, you won’t ever again ask how little education you can get away with having. Instead, you’ll start asking how much you can absorb, and of what quality.

Handgun Training Device Induces Hard Malfunctions

Haven’t tried this yet, but we’ll be pretty excited if it works as advertised. What makes it cool is that you can load live rounds on top of it, making it possible to present contextual problems that aren’t predictable to students.

“The hard malfunction device is the only tool on the market that will simulate a full stoppage of your firearm like a double feed malfunction. Simple to use, the device goes into your magazine and no matter how many times you tap and rack, the device won’t clear. That requires you to know and perform a true hard malfunction process to clear the firearm. This trains your body to fix your firearm rapidly, even under stress. Our handgun hard malfunction training device works with all 9mm and .40 caliber handguns.”

The Hard Malfunction Device is $24.95 from Range Systems. Check it out here.

FBI Releases 2015 Uniform Crime Reports

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 2015 are now live.

(If you aren’t familiar with the UCR: “The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media, and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation [USA].”)

From the press release:

Today, the FBI released its annual compilation of crimes reported to its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program by law enforcement agencies from around the nation. Crime in the United States, 2015 reveals a 3.9 percent increase in the estimated number of violent crimes and a 2.6 percent decrease in the estimated number of property crimes last year when compared to 2014 data.

According to the report, there were an estimated 1,197,704 violent crimes committed around the nation. While that was an increase from 2014 figures, the 2015 violent crime total was 0.7 percent lower than the 2011 level and 16.5 percent below the 2006 level…