Advancing the Art!

02 Feb 10

"In banking, when you're right one-hundred percent of the time, you'll make money. Right ninety-nine percent of the time, you'll break even. Right ninety-eight percent of the time, you'll lose money. Right ninety-seven percent of the time, you'll go to jail!"

Banker's Axiom

In our Art, as in banking, boldness and caution are maintained in delicate balance. Our enemies are always mis-focus and mis-direction.

After viewing glittering new equipment at this year's SHOT Show, and patiently listening, and re-listening, to all the new, and re-hashed, theories of lethal confrontation, I am, once again, invariably drawn to the conclusion that, while our Art must, and will, advance, key principles continue to stand at our foundation, keeping us from going astray.

Fancy, slick gun-trickery, designed to impress rather than inspire, is, I suppose, unavoidable at trade-shows. But, such grandstanders remind me of shallow, flamboyant snake-oil salesmen. While always garnering a gullible audience, their slight-of-hand and chicanery, masquerading as " enlightenment," represent little more than glib amusement.

In war, "victory" and "defeat" and not nearly as clear-cut to players, as to historians. In real-time, war a muddy, bloody business, and those who are directly involved are just glad to have lived through it (those of us who do, that is)!

Wyatt Earp, in his later years, observed:

"I would shun, as I would poison, flashy trick-shooting... in all my life as a frontier peace officer, I never knew a proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from the hip."

Wyatt was one of an extremely small group who, in his day, actually lived long enough to see his "later years!"

Indeed, the ever-omnipotent repertoire of confrontational and fighting skills we have the honor, in our day, to faithfully pass on to the next generation has little glamour, nor spectator-appeal, associated with it. Never will. Who long to be interviewed by sexy TV correspondents are best advised to seek another profession!

Like accomplished poker players, we are "masters of incomplete information. " We are at peace, even within chaos, boldly, incisively streaming in fluid motion. With ascendent confidence, both in our purpose and potency, we dare audaciously!

Ever gracious and unpretentious, in victory and defeat, we do honor to our Art, and our progenitors.

Like competent bankers, who never forget they are responsible for other people's money, we never forget the burden our mighty ancestors have placed upon our shoulders!

"So let the wild circle of argument rage On what wins, as war comes and goes. Many new theories briefly hold center-stage But the man with the rifle... knows!"

/John