Your Combat Mindset and Self Defense #1

           
In my world of fighting, firearms, and warfare, I have discovered the importance in the meaning of the old adage, “Train like you fight”, and it has been driven home very deeply within me. When I  first that I heard that ‘salty’ one combat deployment Lance Corporal tell me that a few days after I got to the Fleet Marine Force in Hawaii I thought it sounded cliché, I mean that’s what Marines are supposed to do right?  Until I got into combat in a little town called Karma a few minutes outside of Fallujah, Iraq and realized that no training will totally prepare you mentally for close-in combat. The training that we receive is the best in the world, and the U.S. military as a whole is the best trained and equipped military to ever walk the face of this earth, the whole act of “pulling the trigger” on someone is over-rated as being a life changing event. I would postulate that it’s not the act of actually pulling the trigger, but seeing the aftermath of that deed that is the life changing event.  This is the crux of the matter that we are about to discuss. In home defense, training can only take you so far, you have to be willing and able to not just point your weapon at someone, but be willing to actually pull your trigger and send them to wherever it is that they are headed. This is called your Combat Mindset.

     Proper Combat Mindset is simply being ready to kill if necessary, and with a violence and lethality that will shock your opponent(s) with its ferocity. When you are defending your home and loved ones, nothing less is acceptable. People in today’s society tend to shy away from accepting the natural lethality that is bred into our nature as human beings. We did not become a dominate species only because we are smart, but also because we have a pre-disposition to kill. The people that cannot accept this are commonly referred to as sheep, and they rely on the people that HAVE accepted this fact of life, commonly referred to as sheep dogs, to keep the wolves of life at bay for them. This is fine with me as long as they do not try to hinder me from doing MY job as a sheep dog. Those that have also accepted this responsibility need to be aware of the sheep around them that need to be protected. These sheep are characterized my the subservient way that they walk around the streets of life, with their head bowed, with no situational awareness as to what is going on, and not meeting the eye of passersby as if  they are afraid of what they might see if they do. A prime example of  these sheep are the sheer number of people who are hit by cars each year while they are walking across a road. If they simply observed what was around them, they would see or hear that car that is about to hit them, and not walk out in front of it. When something bad happens to these sheep, they are typically shocked into inaction which sadly often results in their untimely death.

In the next post of  "Your Combat Mindset and Self Defense" I will cover how to properly arm yourself and train to defend yourself and your loved ones.