Bullets and Bull

The successful soldier must educate himself to say ‘Charge‘. I say educate himself, for the man is not born who can say it out of hand..

Civilization has affected us; we abhor personal encounter. Many a man will risk his life with an easy mind, in a burning house, yet recoils from having from having his face punched. We have been taught to restrain our emotions, to look upon anger as low, until many of us have never experienced the God sent ecstasy of unbridled wrath. We have never felt our eyes screw up, our temples throb, or have the red mist gather in our sight.

And yet we expect that a man…shall, in an instant, the twinkling of an eye, divest himself of all restraint, of all caution, and hurl himself upon the enemy, a frenzied beast, lusting to probe his foemans’s guts with three feet of steel or shatter his brains with a bullet. Gentlemen, it cannot be done…not without mental practice.

Therefore, you must school yourself to savagery. You must picture the wild exaltation of the mounted charge when your lips curl back in a sneer and your voice cracks with passion. You must imagine how it will feel when your sword hilt crashes into the breastbone of your enemy. When you have acquired the ability to develop when necessary,  momentary and calculated savagery, then you can keep your twentieth century clarity of vision with which to calculate the changes of whether to charge or fight on foot, and having decided on the former, the magic will transform you temporarily into a frenzied brute.

General George S. Patton in a lecture to Cavalrymen in 1921

“Having a high level of technical proficiency while essential to winning a lethal force confrontation, is just one aspect of ensuring that win. Psychological proficiency is much more important since without the psychological preparation for an encounter, no weapon will reliably save the day.” Unless you are an experienced combat veteran or LEO who has trained and responded with deadly force encounters then you have no idea how you will react when the fear factor, adrenaline dump, flight or flight, sets in…

The human brain can perform millions of calculations instantly as evidenced by your ability to drive a car in traffic and it does it unconsciously. In the same respect our brain can be trained to deal with the fear, SNS, adrenal dump of a fight to some extent. Physical skills can be taught but how to train the Mind is the question and where most of us fail. When learning how to fight with a pistol or a rifle, teaching a man how to shoot is vastly easier than teaching him how to think(or react if you prefer) his way through a gunfight in a life or death situation. Constant training is necessary to improve upon and/or minimize degradation of learned physical skills. How many times have we said “hesitation Kills”…99 of 100 people on this board will hesitate..why? Because they neither have the experience of actual combat, street fights etc. They have never trained for the fear factor, the startle response, the violence.

Taking the life of another human being is an unnatural act for all human beings. It is a learned behavior that goes against our genetic coding. In fact, the preservation of human life is one of the strongest urges of the human spirit, so strong that the noble will sacrifice their own lives in the defense of the helpless, and so important that the principle of “Reasonable Doubt” guarding against accidental execution of an innocent man is based on the 18th century precept of William Blackstone, who said: “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”…

God help the person, LEO or soldier who makes the wrong decision, and yet God will surely meet that person who hesitates while trying to navigate through the maelstrom of uncertainty that often accompanies a lethal force encounter, only to be bested by an opponent who has prepared in advance for a lethal encounter through his own pre-conditioning to take a life. I am talking of the pre-conditioning that many of society’s predators have received from their experiences in the ‘Streets”…We as the good guys are a product of a completely opposite social environment and it can be a paralyzing impediment during a life threatening encounter…

In self defense, preparedness and practice are paramount.  Become familiar with your firearms operation.  Be alert.  When outside the home, the importance of maintaining an awareness of one’s physical surroundings is obvious, with increased vigilance required under unfamiliar or suspect conditions.

In a like manner, it is just as important to understand  and anticipate the instinctual alarm reactions your mind and body will likely assume in the event you ever experience a violent attack.

In a life threatening situation, the intended victim’s “fight or flight” reflex manifests itself.  This reflex, honed by millenniums of adaptive human survival behavior, results in increased heart rate and cardiac output, higher blood pressure, accelerated respiration, greater carbohydrate metabolism, and virtually instantaneous supercharging of the body.

The stress, rage, and fear which overwhelm the intended victim thus create a bodily alarm reaction which expresses itself as a period of greater strength and faster speed, accompanied by near impervious reaction to pain.  At the same time, fine motor skills grossly deteriorate, dexterity noticeably decreases, and the hands, arms and legs may tremble.  The intended victim will also likely experience an altered state of perception as well.  One, indeed, is not calm, cool and collected.

The perception of time may become distorted.  With the body alarm reaction, the mind processes stimuli at a fantastically accelerated rate when compared to normal.  The result may be the perception that activities are occurring in slow motion, even though movements of the event may actually be extremely fast.  The reverse may also occur: the event may seem to transpire faster than one would expect.

In its in incredibly heightened state of awareness, the mind of the intended victim tends to focus with tunnel vision on the identified threat.  This results in the exclusion of normal peripheral vision.  Knowledge of this potential visual reaction to an attack is valuable in the event one is ever faced with multiple assailants.

The “fight or flight” reflex allows the mind to draw upon memory resources that are not normally used.  The intended victim may experience a sense of precognition, an anticipation response to a subconsciously perceived sequence of circumstances.  You “see it coming”, even though to the casual observer no violent threat as yet exists.

Be prepared to experience a denial response to a life or death situation.  One tends to seek mental and emotional shelter in normalcy.  When this state of mind is horrifically shattered, the intended victim’s reaction may be “this can’t be happening”.

One may experience “hysterical blindness” during or after an attack.  Essentially, the mind refuses to visualize any longer a terrifying event perceived by the eyes.  This may translate into fleeing the scene of an attack, even if one successfully, and legally, used lethal force to survive the incident.  Needless to say, law enforcement officials will take a dim view of this evasion.

In a highly trained person who has practiced to a degree that the body’s reaction to a stimulus is automatic, the “fight or flight” reflex may create the illusion of “watching one’s self “.  The body movement is so fast, without the guidance of deliberate thought, that one’s conscious mind can’t keep up.

Everything that we do begins in our minds, and the two most damaging things that we can experience are fear and doubt. The two feed off of each other and can lead us to be unwilling to tackle any difficult or challenging task. For me (my peers and students) it is imperative that we constantly move out of our comfort zones and challenge ourselves. Crazy? Maybe…but in times of need this mental attitude will virtually ensure your survival

We all have something inside us that will come out only when under the most demanding situations…the goal of training (in my opinion) is to frequently put ourselves in demanding, stressful situations until the sheer determination to succeed is truly an integral part of our character.

The things you now are going to see as very difficult will be second nature to you in the years to come and you will be the wise old teacher. No kidding, that’s how it works! I find myself doing things now that I never dreamed were possible…things that my instructors did effortlessly (and I was helpless to defend against) are now a part of me.