Training vs Common Sense!

Don't take this as a personal attack, Avenger, . . . but I think you need to go back and re think your statement:

"Responsible gun ownership and self protection is 99% common sense and your inate ability to know right from wrong."

There is a synopsis for every training class given by anyone, . . . anywhere.

There is no, . . . I repeat, . . . NO, . . . synopsis or syllabus for common sense.

Common sense for Nancy Pelosi is everyone turn in your guns, then no one will be shot.

Common sense for Ted Kennedy is that all guns should be taken from everyone who is not a senator or a Kennedy.

Common sense for Sarah Brady is that you and I should be locked up as we are seriously defective in our thinking capacities.

Common sense for Charleton Heston is "From my cold dead fingers, . . . "

What I am getting at is simple: common sense cannot be defined, . . . therefore, . . . without an agreed upon definition, . . . one cannot assess if it has been followed or not. Training records, . . . training skills, . . . even training scenarios can be graded, defined, critiqued, improved, assessed, etc.

I'm in the camp that says if we define our goals, . . . make them achievable, . . . then we won't sound like Hussein Osomma-bomma. Once defined, . . . we can strive to achieve them, . . . whether it is a two handed shooting skill, . . . knowledge of the difference from a SA, DA, DAO, type handguns, . . . or scenario reaction where you are in one line as another line is being robbed in the bank.

Think about it, . . .

May God bless,
Dwight
 
I don’t understand the question here.:confused:
You thing common sense will make you hit your target and react as you should under stress when attacked?
Or that there’s a gun school out there that will teach you what you only learn as you grow up, under the wing of good parents?
My friend, it’s training AND common sense.

FerFAL
 
without common sense, all the training in the world is useless.
By the same token, common sense, with no training, is, well, not really common sense.
 
Personally, I think most of the courses, books, awareness training, etc, only exsists to help guys justify to themselves, family, (or whoever) owning lots of guns that they honestly dont need. (And before somone flames me, realise that Rights, Needs, and Wants are three very diffrent things)

I know a gentleman who owns over 350 pistols for self defense. Chances are, he'll never use even one for its intended purpose. The training videos and weekend ninja courses he does regularly gives him an excuse bring them all out on the weekends, and to purchase more, when he'd be much better served with a small group of pistols that he praticed marksmanship with weekly.
 
Sorry RedneckFur, but I don’t agree with you on a couple of points there.
If he says that all 350 guns are for defense, then yes, he’s not too bright.
Could it be, that he simply likes collecting them? I sure do.
Have some guns for defense, some spares, and some that I just enjoy shooting.
Second, does he dress up like a ninja or something? Because if its self defense shooting classes he’s been taking, that’s actually a pretty good idea.
And no, target shooting wont do you any good for defense, you are much better off taking the defense shooting classes instead and practicing what you learn there.

FerFAL
 
Practicing with your firearm is a very good thing! Common sense is not something you can acquire thru training, practice, or imagining scenarios.
 
The range is useful for basic marksmanship

but it can also be useful to have to move through a police style course, engage targets over cover or through windows, shoot in varying lighting conditions, etc.

And the two are really nothing alike.

From another perspective, I'm a pilot, formerly Navy, now commercial. I meet a lot of people who have private licenses. They enjoy flying, and they fly pretty well. However, the difference in training levels becomes apparent when, say, an engine quits... or something catches fire... or the weather gets suddenly and expectedly bad (and this can happen rapidly in the southeast).

Flying isn't very hard. Flying when conditions go to hell is extremely hard. Training is all the difference in determining odds of survival.

Common sense is a very useful thing, and can help to avoid those situations where training and reflexes become necessary. But sometimes, things just break, and we do tend to fly / shoot / sing karaoke / what have you as we train.
 
If you don't acquire common sense through training and practice, how do you acquire it? What is it, and how do you know if you have it? How will common sense help you to know when to use your weapon (has proposed by BreacherUp!)? How will common sense tell you when you must shoot (as proposed by kgpcr)?

It seems to me that common sense in this context is a pretty amorphous and borderline meaningless concept. Among other things, if you are being asked why you shot, you're going to need to come up with a better answer than, "It was common sense to shoot him."

And sometimes it sounds like the professed reliance on common sense is an excuse to not bother with training.
 
Responsible gun ownership and self protection is 99% common sense and your inate ability to know right from wrong.
If you were born without common sense, then no amount of training will overcome it's absence.
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Knowledge can be aquired. Training can enhance knowledge.Common sense cannot be taught or aquired thru training.
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Common sense can be useless or wrong without contextual knowledge. While any of us might be able to reason out a common sense response to a threat if we have enough time, there may not be enough time to do so without training on how to make it happen. Without training, in time critical high stress situations, many people make decisions that don't reflect common sense decisions.

Jeff Cooper used to say, "Having a gun doesn't mean you're armed any more than having a guitar means you're a musician."
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Wow, that is just one of those analogies that simply doesn't work.

To be armed is to be in possession of a weapon. Having a gun makes you armed. It doesn't make you a fighter. Cooper's saying would have worked had he said "Having a gun doesn't mean you are a fighter any more than having a guitar means you are a musician.
 
Nope Double Naught Spy, I'll go with the way Jeff Cooper said it. A man isn't really armed unless he can use his weapon effectively. Just having a weapon doesn't mean you can use it effectively. And BTW, what are your qualifications for second guessing Jeff Cooper?
 
Breacherup! said:
Canuck,I gather what you are saying. But scenario trainng does provide more than testing skill sets.
Since you have done CQB, you know that running a hall/room/ danger areas enough times in scenarios, you begin to learn "pattern recognition." PR decreases judgement time and deployment/employment times. Done enough times with a core group, and everyone begins to recognize these patterns and react as a unit. After all, there are only so many ways to skin a cat.
In the same way, going through enough shoot/no shoot scenarios increases PR.
But, I agree that utilizing training scenarios just to learn and defeat that particular scenario, is amateurish.
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I do not see anything to disagree with here. What I see is, in essence, an expansion of the concept.

We only ever ran each scenario once in the training cycle, they would even keep it out of circulation for several runs of the course (to prevent the next course from doggin' it, or so I've been told). The PatRec did happen, but what they wanted from us was stimulus (PatRec, of course) to skill set activation. When we were clearing buildings we not only had to be safe in the building we were in, but the buildings around us too. The worst was running a stairwell, clearing the landing and the hall and then getting tapped from across the street from another building after smoking a room. The CIs never let us have a break, from your callsign I'd say you know why and how. ;) Hey did you guys have to throw the buttstock over your shoulder for CQB too? Or did you have 4-pos?
 
you can train tactics and handgun skills. you cant train common sense. The best fight on the street is one you dont get in
 
Nope Double Naught Spy, I'll go with the way Jeff Cooper said it. A man isn't really armed unless he can use his weapon effectively. Just having a weapon doesn't mean you can use it effectively. And BTW, what are your qualifications for second guessing Jeff Cooper?
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No, a man with a gun really is armed. Being armed isn't the same thing as being an effective fighter.

What are my qualifications for second guessing Jeff Cooper? First, I am not questioning Jeff Cooper. I am questioning the correctness of the statement. There is a difference. It matters not who said it.

My qualifications have nothing to do with the correctness of the statement. If the statement is accurately reproduced here, it is in error. "Armed" (possession of a weapon) has been confused with (as you put it) being able to fight effectively. You can look it up yourself and by dictionary definition, civilian legal definition, or military definition, to be armed is to be in possession of weaponry. It really is just that simple. The definitions state nothing about the effective ability to use arms.
 
To expand on my prior post and clarify why Jeff Cooper is correct, the word "armed" doesn't mean only "having a weapon."

For example,

[1] Merriam-Webster Online defines "armed", among other things, as follows:

"1 a: furnished with weapons <an armed guard>; also : using or involving a weapon b: furnished with something that provides security, strength, or efficacy..."

[2] Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language (1989) defines "armed" to include, "...prepared for any specific purpose."

So, as Jeff Cooper is stating, a person who merely has possession of a weapon is not necessarily furnished with the wherewithal to provide security, strenght or efficacy, unless he also has had training to effectively use that weapon. Nor is he prepared for the purpose of effectively using that weapon.

Indeed, when a person says, "I'm armed" he usually intends to mean more than that he has a weapon in his possession. He usually intends to also imply that he can use it effectively.

For example, let's suppose that you're walking with a companion at night. You become suspicious of the surroundings, and you voice your concerns. Your companion, to allay your concerns, says, "Don't worry. I'm armed." Is he merely telling you that he has a weapon on his person? Or is he also trying to convey the notion that he'd be able to handle things if they became unpleasant?
 
*mild observation*

Y'know, online I'm often somewhat surprised at the contortions people go through in order to talk themselves (and everyone else) out of learning how to use the weapons they own. Some people will stand on their heads to avoid admitting that maybe they could learn something about shooting from a professional trainer who works with firearms for a living.

Here's a blurb from a blog I came across a few days ago. I think the writer is right on the money:

"What's your life worth?" --People often ask that when the price of a gun is discussed.

Y'know what? Mine's worth about $200, what I paid for a Star BKM in like-new shape. Plus 20 times that in training and range time. And another 20x in ammunition. So far.

The gun is just a tool -- and you do need good tools -- but the true weapon is you. A decent tool in skilled hands beats the finest tool in untrained, clumsy hands.

What's your life worth? Train much with that UtraBlaster 4500?
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And here are my own thoughts on the issue: www.corneredcat.com/Learning/class.aspx

pax
 
Great post, Pax. (And BTW, I visit your site from time to time and recommend it to people looking for pointers.)

I don't think shootings particularly fun unless I'm hitting what I'm shooting at, and there's a good chance that a gun won't be much use in an emergency if you can't hit what you need to hit.

There's a lot about shooting, gun handling and personal defense that's not natural or intuitive -- or common sense.
 
RedneckFur said:
training videos and weekend ninja courses
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This is the problem anytime you go looking for information, and I don't just mean on the internet. Even in searching through books and magazines you have to do your homework.

And frankly, I've been very disappointed in this area. About seven years ago I honestly went searching for new/better info on self-defense on the internet. I hooked into several SD and MA forums and asked questions and truthfully got involved in discussions.

About three years ago I deleted every stinking one of them from my favorites list. It would have been better and cheaper to have a shaman swing a chicken over my head than to believe anything that I had read. The problems were so bad, so deep and so prevalent that a separate forum started up to research the credentials of guys starting forums.

For all of my wasted time I received no more than posers posing for the camera. I feel silly in even admitting I fell for such hype. To show the depth of insanity, I actually learned more about fighting with edged weapons in a thirty year old book based on prison shiv attacks.

In the end, common sense ain't common. And I'm living proof of that.
 
I am all for weekend training courses its just that crap like Warrior Forge, Ninja camp, is just a bunch of testosterone boosted crap. When you see a guy who wants to offer training and only goes by a number instead of his name then thats a tip off! Practice is a GREAT thing! its just you need to go to a course that will teach to shoot and not thump your chest!
 
lol Tourist, not to make light of my fellow man's suffering. That happens all too often. Part of the problem is that these people are trying to get you to buy into their thinking. If you buy into their thinking, you buy their product.
That includes many of the so called "top notch" schools and instructors. Most try to apply military, MA or LE tactics/techniques to civilian shootings and it doesn't work.

One well known school advocates training and working out to make yourself into a fighting machine. Can that help? Maybe, but common sense tells you that most CCW holders have neither the time nor inclination to do so.

Another claims that seeking cover should be your first concern. Common sense tells you that in civilian incidents cover is rarely available.

Others advocate learning to shoot while moving of off the X. Common sense tells you that shooting while moving is less efficeint unless you practice it to a high degree. Common sense tells you that again most people have neither the time nor inclination to.

Common sense also tells you that the best way to ensure your safety is to remove the threat. The fastest way to remove the threat is to put lead on the target. Common sense tells you that the other guy can't hurt you if he's dead.
 
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