Ten years ago today, one of the world’s truly great firearms instructors passed away. Louis Awerbuck served in the South African Defense force before moving to the USA to teach at Gunsite. He was chief range master at Gunsite until 1987 when he formed his own company, Yavapai Firearms Academy. He wrote […]
After the outstanding responses to Dr. Lauren Pugliese’s previous article on emergency trauma management for dogs, she had numerous readers contact her for followup information. One of the most common questions she was asked was how to apply a longer term bandage once bleeding has been controlled. She wrote an excellent followup post to address […]
A couple weeks ago, I saw that Tom Givens had posted the article below on his Patreon page. I’ve been seeing the same things in my classes and wanted to warn my students. I asked Tom for permission to reprint the article and he graciously agreed. If you aren’t a member of Tom’s Patreon page, […]
This is a guest article from Dr. Lauren Pugliese. Lauren is a DVM and board-certified small animal veterinary surgeon. After her wildly successful pet first aid classes at the Lone Star Medics Field and Tactical Medicine Training Conference, Lauren has been contacted by several students asking for followup information. Lauren wrote this article (and one […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz With the growing number of commercially made tourniquets, an increase in availability of medical courses focusing on gunshot wounds, a greater chance of getting caught up in an active killer event, and the classes like Stop the Bleed being offered everywhere, the issue of tourniquets is on many of my […]
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 […]
