Drill Sergeant Joe B. Fricks Rules For A Gunfight

1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammunition is cheap - life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap - funerals are expensive

3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)

6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a semi or full-automatic long gun and a friend with a long gun.

7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running. Yell "Fire!" Why "Fire"? Cops will come with the Fire Department, sirens often scare off the bad guys, or at least cause then to lose concentration and will.... and who is going to summon help if you yell "Intruder," "Glock" or "Winchester?"

9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

11. Stretch the rules. Always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

12. Have a plan.

13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work. "No battle plan ever survives 10 seconds past first contact with an enemy."

14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible, but remember, sheetrock walls and the like stop nothing but your pulse when bullets tear through them.

15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

16. Don't drop your guard.

17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees. Practice reloading one-handed and off-hand shooting. That's how you live if hit in your "good" side.

18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. Smiles, frowns and other facial expressions don't (In God we trust. Everyone else keep your hands where I can see them.)

19. Decide NOW to always be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.

20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.

21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.

22. Be courteous to everyone, overly friendly to no one.

23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with anything smaller than "4".

25. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. "All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket." At a practice session, throw you gun into the mud, then make sure it still works. You can clean it later.

26. Practice shooting in the dark, with someone shouting at you, when out of breath, etc.

27. Regardless of whether justified of not, you will feel sad about killing another human being. It is better to be sad than to be room temperature.

28. The only thing you EVER say afterwards is, "He said he was going to kill me. I believed him. I'm sorry, Officer, but I'm very upset now. I can't say anything more. Please speak with my attorney."

Finally, Drill Sergeant Frick's Rules For Un-armed Combat.

1. Never be unarmed.

When I'm at work I miss my wife so much, it's a heartache. Things change when I get home. I don't understand myself sometimes.

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Son got a big old sticker in his foot. Ouch! Dang it! Seems OK now.

Wife's dental visit was successful and uneventful.

Grocery run successful

Breakfast at 1:00 PM

WIfe's off to get some Kanga water. Everybody is asleep save myself. So, breakfast after handling a work call.

Baloney and Velveeta omelette. Yum! Side salad makes it all the better.

My wife bears the brunt if this error. She is (so far) quite patient and tolerant of me.

Still, it can't be an attractive trait to possess.

What's up with my comm cycle? It seems that I wrap it up early, as though I already got what the other person has to say. Quite often it's not the case.

start of blog

I'm keeping this simple, I am not looking so much for readership as I am a place to set my thoughts down to cool off for a while. Sometimes it gets crazy and I want to start using simple, easy to remember Anglo-Saxon terms to describe my situations. That's when I know it's time to vent.

Yesterday I asked the eldest household-residing child to empty the dishwasher and then load it up with the sinkful of dishes he and his girlfriend had deposited there right after I'd unloaded the dishwasher, filled it up and ran it. (growling and snarling icons would go here)

That was yesterday around 11:00 AM. Fast forward to 7:0 AM today and still no action. I mulled my options - wait until he and Miss Bit get up and ask them again, storm in their room and roar them out of bed with an exhortation to "do the Anglo-Saxoning dishes you Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxons!" or do it myself and try some other plan.

I just unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher.