OSD 242: Excellence is nerdy

Separating yourself from the crowd requires separating yourself from the crowd.

Last week Bill Rapier (DEVGRU vet and owner of Amtac Shooting and Amtac Blades) posted this Instagram video of his morning coffee routine:

amtacshooting

A post shared by @amtacshooting

He wakes up, makes some coffee, and then stands in his kitchen doing dry fire and knife practice.

Zoom out and change two things about this video. Imagine (a) that the person doing this is in middle school and (b) that instead of guns, they’re into something that, unlike guns, doesn’t have a cool factor to it. Say, Dungeons & Dragons.

Those tweaks help clarify something: this is a really nerdy thing to do. That’s easy to miss because guns are cool. (And of course, around here “nerdy” is a compliment.) But make no mistake, this is exactly the kind of behavior that in middle school would make you the target of all the bullies.

Why is that?

Well, a few things. First, it’s a commitment way beyond what most people are willing to make. Second, it’s driven by what Bill decided is valuable rather than what’s popular. And those two things together make it unusual.

There’s a parallel fact that’s important here: Bill Rapier reached the highest levels of his profession. As one of the Instagram comments said (quoting John Wick), he’s the guy you send to kill the boogeyman.

These facts aren’t unrelated. Excellence means performing better than the vast majority of others. Getting to that level requires training better than the vast majority of others. And pretty much by definition, that means you’ll seem unusual. After all if you were doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you’d get the same results they’re getting.

Being unusual doesn’t guarantee success. But being usual does guarantee the lack of it. Something to consider in your own training.

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This week’s links

Ordnance Lab: how to make smoke grenades

Would be a fun project to make with kids.

Time Since Launch

This is weapon-related only in a slight aesthetic sense, but if you like this newsletter you’ll like it. It’s a clock that has a grenade-like pin. When you pull the pin, the current time is permanently burned onto the silicon and it starts counting up to 1 million days. Built to have a battery life of 150 years.

“Military Surplus from Another World”

Speculative future gun culture.

Police officer cleared in fatal shooting after illegally breaking into a man’s home

Summary from Radley Balko: “Cop illegally breaks into home to confront man suspected of a misdemeanor. Man shoots at cop. Cop kills man. Cop is protected by Wyoming stand your ground law, which says the law doesn't apply when you shoot a cop, even if the cop acted illegally.”

A gun control supporter’s perspective on the internal dynamics of their cause

Have you noticed how the only people who talk critically about Bloomberg’s role in the gun reform movement are the pro-gun zealots? Is it healthy for the work of the “good guys” to be so dominated by one ultra-rich man’s checkbook? Well, there are a LOT of people who have good reason to not talk about Bloomberg’s role, because either they are also benefiting from his funding or hope to be.

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Merch

Gun apparel you’ll want to wear out of the house.

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