27July04

From one of my instructors in SA, confirming principles of training well known to all of us:

"Shooting any gun in a stressful, dynamic environment is vastly more challenging than casual plinking or competition shooting. Everybody naively believes they're a good deal 'better' than they really are. In a fight, none of us will perform nearly as resplendently as we do in our own daydreams.

Comment: The foregoing is why we should spend our training time inspiring our students, rather than trying to impress them. Students need to be encouraged to dare and press on, making their mistakes as they go, repenting and going forward. When instructors or students insist they are already perfect and incapable of error, unable and unwilling to honestly confront their own shortcomings, no growth will take place. Disappointment and disaster await them. Fame is a trivial, petty thing, as fickle as the weather. Only fools lust after it.

/John