OSD 230: On excellence in the basics. Or: being not stupid beats trying to be smart.
In which Charlie Munger teaches you concealed carry.
There’s a fun discussion in the replies to this tweet, speculating about the professional background of Taylor Swift’s bodyguard in the embedded video:
Here you’ve got a guy with, let’s assume, some military training in close protection, and he has successfully transitioned to the civilian sector. Now he accompanies Taylor on tour, ever-ready to Mozambique drill the first Travis Bickle who steps out from the crowd of teenage girls.
As the people in the Twitter thread point out, the guy is demonstrating a lot of fundamentals. The position of his hand. Pointing his feet at the crowd. Constantly scanning back and forth. And so on. In his day-to-day, for his job, those are the basics.
What are your basics? It’s tempting to go learn about how Delta Force does close protection, or to take a course with a retired operator who will help you shave tenths off of your target transitions. And there’s nothing wrong with that — at the very least it’s fun, and you can posit extreme cases where it could save your life. But if you have to prioritize, then the way you train with guns should be informed by the way you’re actually going to use guns.
There are two quotes we like on this subject:
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
At my last class, down in Florida, one of the guys was saying, “When are we going to get to the cool stuff?” I asked him, “Do you think staying alive is cool? Then you’re doing the fucking cool stuff.”
– Bob Keller, a Delta Force vet whose courses focus heavily on ready-up drills
For most people, the basics of carrying a gun are:
Carrying the gun discreetly and comfortably.
Using it safely and with above-average (but not competition-level) competence.
That’s it. If a concealed carrier meets just those two criteria, they’ll be in great shape. But go on YouTube and see where the focus is. You’ll see a lot of great videos that go into excruciating detail about how to get a sub-second draw time. How many are there that devote that same effort to teaching you how to sit down with an appendix holster?
The flashy stuff is fun, and it can get people in the door. But day-to-day basics are what pay off in the long run. Let’s always be doing the cool stuff — and in doing that remember that if you’re measuring by effectiveness, the coolest thing is just excellence in the basics.
This week’s links
Paul Harrell has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
What is there to say that the SpongeBob pajama pants video hasn’t already said?
“An Essay on Crimes and Punishments”
From a Discord user. This 1764 essay by Cesare Beccaria is the source of this quote, often misattributed to (but actually quoted by) Thomas Jefferson: “The laws of this nature, are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent.”
FPSRussia talking with Brandon Herrera
Also from a Discord user. Here’s another video from a while ago where Kyle (aka FPSRussia) talks about his last day in prison.
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Merch
Gun apparel you’ll want to wear out of the house.
Office hours
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