How To Build a Lock Library
There is a ton of material out there about lockpicking and how to get good at it. There isn’t a whole lot of material about actually building a collection of locks with which to practice. As someone who has been very good at lockpicking and taught it for a living for five years I can tell you: having access to a large number of locks is essential. Today I’m going to talk about how to build a lock library that supports learning and progress.
Dry Practice Function Stacking: Targets
With a lot of you working from or otherwise hanging out at home, I hope a lot of my readers are using their time to learn some stuff. One thing I hope everyone stuck at home is doing is dry-practicing. Another thing that might nudge some into dry practice is the current ammo shortage. Today I’m going to talk about some very simple, low-cost things you can to do increase the value of your dry practice time.
Adjusting Your Safety Margins
I could have also titled this article, “Two Places I Don’t Want to Be Right Now.” We haven’t been out much lately. We were about a week ahead of the curve on “social distancing;” we stopped eating from restaurants, going to the gym, and going to BJJ. My girlfriend works from home and my work is travel-based, so naturally that’s shut down right now. As a result we’ve been pretty isolated.
Eating Through the Quarantine: Favorite Recipes
My girlfriend and I haven’t dined out in over a month, or ordered takeout in three weeks. This isn’t totally because of COVID-19. It’s mostly because we usually cook at home for financial, health, and lifestyle reasons, and dine out only occasionally anyway. We are very atypical. With restaurants closed across the country, many Americans are probably having a hard time. Today I’m going to offer a few of my favorite “quarantine” recipes. Hopefully they spark your imagination.
Ammo Rotation with a Heavy Dry Practice Regimen
I have dry practiced every day this year and I dry practiced over 320 days last year. The vast majority of that practice has been with my carry gun. This necessitates a lot of loading and unloading of my carry gun, and some wear and tear on my carry ammo. This is how I manage ammo rotation with a heavy dry practice regimen.
Scattered Thoughts about the COVID-19 Crisis
Today I want to offer just a few scattered thoughts on the current COVID-19 crisis. There really isn’t a common theme to these, they’re just some thoughts I’ve had as I’ve worked my property of the past few days.
My Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK)
I told you guys a few weeks ago I’d give you a look at my individual first aid kit (IFAK). I was kind of hesitant to do this one. First, don’t do what I do just because I do it. Greg Ellifritz says in his classes that if you have training, you already know what you need. As I recently heard in an episode of Uncensored Tactical Podcast (unrelated to first aid but still applicable), “if you know how, you’ll know when,” or in this case, what. Still, everyone loves a gear article, so here goes.
My Favorite Books, Part I
At the time of writing we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope many of you are using your newfound time to read some books. If you’re looking for something to read, I am going to offer some of my favorite books, and I’ll keep this series going, hopefully well into the future.
Wives’ Tales, Sea Stories, and Gun Shop Lore
I recently had to attend my state’s concealed carry permit class. While I offered a detailed review of the class (you should really go read that for a more full explanation of this post), these are some of the wives’ tales that were passed off as gospel. I’m not going to fully explain all the ways that all of these are wrong; we’d be here all day. There’s going to be no consistent theme here – just a list of some of the dumb stuff I heard in class.
State Concealed Carry Class Review
I recently had to attend my state’s concealed carry class. Most concealed carriers don’t get to attend these classes too often. I haven’t attended one in years, but through a bit of a fluke I had to attend one to one to get my current state’s resident permit. I love training, but was I ever disappointed in the class. Today is going to offer an after-action review of my state concealed carry class.