Written by Greg Ellifritz Terrorists worldwide use bombs as their weapons of choice. Occasionally, these bombs will be supplemented by sniper fire, grenades, or active shooters but it’s the bombs that get media attention. Many of my readers have been to numerous shooting schools and have trained in martial arts for years. How many […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Last week, I posted an article linking to my most popular posts in 2020. In that article, I discussed how my “most popular” articles were not the same as my “best” articles. I liked many of the most popular articles (ranked by page view), but I think other […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Seth Godin made a very powerful statement in a recent 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 […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz There are more competent firearms instructors teaching quality classes than ever before in human history. None of us has a corner on the market. Just like I’ve trained with dozens of top instructors over the years, my students will also train with other teachers. That’s a good thing. In […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Air travel is starting to increase from the nadir of the Covid-19 pandemic. As more and more people feel comfortably flying, I’ve seen a huge number of incidents where violent or erratic passengers have disrupted airline flights in the past few weeks. Before reading further, check out the articles below […]
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are undoubtedly familiar with the writings of Justin White from Mad Science Defense. Justin recently contacted me about running a few of his most successful articles as guest pieces on my blog. He is closing down the Mad Science Defense site and is focusing […]
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are undoubtedly familiar with the writings of Justin White from Mad Science Defense. Justin recently contacted me about running a few of his most successful articles as guest pieces on my blog. He is closing down the Mad Science Defense site and is focusing […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I had an unusual experience at the range today. The gun I was shooting blew up in my hand. In a 20+ year career as a full time firearms instructor, I’ve seen a few guns blow up. I blew up a Kahr PM-9 once (stupidly) shooting reloads from an unknown […]
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are undoubtedly familiar with the writings of Justin White from Mad Science Defense. Justin recently contacted me about running a few of his most successful articles as guest pieces on my blog. He is closing down the Mad Science Defense site and is focusing […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I found a very interesting piece of research linked up on the Practical Eschatology website. The report “Understanding Decisions to Burglarize from the Offender’s Perspective” provided the conclusions researchers amassed after interviewing more than 400 incarcerated burglars. The study proposed to answer the following questions: 1. What motivates […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I had two different friends send me messages last weekend requesting my thoughts on what policing is going to look like in the future. I thought about it quite a bit and here are my predictions. We have to recognize that police are a part of our […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz Do any of you shoot with a tactical light mounted on the rails of your self defense or police duty pistol? If so, you have likely experienced immense frustration trying to remove the burnt carbon residue from the light’s lens after a long shooting session. The lenses get […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I find it endlessly fascinating to listen to my students’ thoughts about the “best” course of action to take in a crisis situation. Especially when teaching female students, I hear a one very common response. Whenever I ask the students how they would respond to a challenging and dangerous situation, […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz With predictable regularity, the media and various civil rights groups become indignantly incensed when the cops or an armed citizen shoot a criminal in the back. It somehow violates society’s ideal that all confrontations should be settled “face to face” and be a “fair fight.” That doesn’t happen very often […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz It’s like clockwork. At least once a week, I open my email and see some version of the following question: “I’m worried about (your choice: crime, the declining economy, right wing politicians, mutant zombies, societal collapse, left wing politicians, etc) and want to buy a gun. I don’t have […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Dan Ariely’s book The Upside of Irrationality is a book about making rational and irrational decisions. Books like these are a goldmine of information for firearms and combatives trainers. We regularly see people making irrational decisions in the context of self defense. It’s nice to figure out why they are doing […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz When listening to experts describe how to flee from an attacker who is shooting, the most common statement heard is “Don’t run in a straight line.” Many people advocate running in a zig-zag pattern or running in a crouched position instead. A target that is small or that moves randomly […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I spent all of last week attending Massad Ayoob and Marty Hayes’ Deadly Force Instructor class as a student. We spent some time discussing the use of weapon mounted lights and the safety concerns associated with them. It caused me to realize that I haven’t written about this topic […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I was working day shift police patrol when a call went out at about 9:00 a.m. I was dispatched to a very large house in a nice neighborhood. The dispatcher said that the resident had called to report suspicious activity. The resident said that she had heard someone banging on her […]
Violent protests, mob action, and rioting scenarios fill up your news feed. Lots of folks are contacting me about mob violence issues. Let’s look at some of the issues involved… To date, the majority of mob violence events have occurred in very large public gatherings and at the sites of large political protests. […]
