Gun & Prepping News #97

Some links that may be of interest: 

• "Practical Pistol Practice"--Tactical Anatomy Systems. As the author notes, firearms practice is tradeoff between the very real costs of ammunition versus the benefit obtained from a lot of shooting. Therefore, he presents a practice/training regime for the handgun incorporating a mixture of dry fire, using a .22 pistol, and a 50-round practice drill shooting your larger caliber defensive pistol. The author uses dry fire both to practice basic pistol skills between range sessions and as part of his warm up at the range. Then he moves on to the .22 pistol to work on pure pistol skills: grip, stance, sight picture, trigger press, and follow-through, writing: "I like to fire 3 to 5 sets of 10 rounds, slow fire, at 7-10 yards. Each successive target will show a slightly tighter group. Your last target will typically be quite a bit better. At this point, you’re warmed up." Finally, he recommends:

Pick a good 50-round practice drill. A 50-round practice drill every week will benefit you far, far more than a 200-round practice drill once per month. Frequency of training has been proven to be far more effective than total time/ammo spent in training. As for which 50-round drill you should use, there’s a plethora of recommendations out there. This morning, I did a quick googly search for “50-round practice drills” and got pages and pages of recommendations. Pick one, and use it. Most of the time nowadays, when I go to the range I start with my dry fire warmup, then usually a 22 rimfire warmup, then I do one of the many 50-round practice plans that are available online. I’ve used a bunch of different 50-round drills over the years and they all have their strong points, so if you rotate through different ones you’ll find yourself working on more pistol skills than if you stick with a single program. 

• "Homeowner’s Gun Stops Intruder Where the Law Failed"--Shooting News Weekly. Key bit: "The residents woke up to a stranger in their home. The homeowner did the adult thing: he armed himself and when Xavier confronted him, the homeowner changed the intruder’s preferred pronouns to was/were." 
• "Know How: Understanding and Obtaining a Cold-Bore Zero"--American Hunter. Barrel temperature can effect where a bullet strikes. And since you first shot will be from a cold barrel, you need to know where that bullet will land. 
• "Revolver Malfunctions and Stoppages"--Revolver Guy. Revolvers are more dependable than semi-autos in the sense that they are more immune to neglect, poor grip, or poor ammo, but that does not mean that they cannot malfunction. The article covers some of the more common malfunctions and breakages that can occur with a revolver including broken springs, broken firing pins, a broken or worn hand (the part that actually turns the cylinder), worn ratchets, a broken or worn cylinder stop (the part that aligns the cylinder with the barrel), and more. Along the way, he provides information on diagnosing problems, cleaning and lubrication, and other trouble shooting. 
• Some firearm history: "The Hand Cannon: The First Handheld Firearm"--American Rifleman. An excerpt:

One of the more striking details in the segment comes from American Rifleman Executive Editor Evan Brune, who pointed out that many surviving hand cannons share a bore diameter in the .75-to-.78-caliber range—a size established in the 1330s and 1340s that persisted as a near-standard all the way into the early 19th century. That’s roughly 500 years of continuity in a dimension that was arrived at by medieval metalworkers without the benefit of ballistic science. It suggests that the practical limits of what a person can hold and fire were understood early and changed slowly. 

• And some new technology: "The Problem with Pressures: A +Peak Revolution?"--American Hunter. The Peak Alloy cases are a type of steel case that can handle significantly higher pressures than traditional brass cases, but without resorting to hybrid designs such as used by the military for the 6.8 mm. Moreover, assuming you're not trying to use it in an older rifle with inferior metallurgy, it can offer that performance out of existing rifles. However, it is currently only offered for the 7mm Backcountry and 6.5 Creedmoor.

The elevated pressure limits will certainly increase the demands on the rifles receiver, and that was probably a big factor in choosing the popular 6.5 Creedmoor as the first cartridge to receive the +Peak treatment, as the vast majority of rifles so chambered are of relatively new construction, and have the stronger metallurgy associated with the 21st century.  

• "Unrivaled Upgrades: Competition-Bred AR Parts for the Rest of Us"--The Truth About Guns. These do not appear to be competition parts, per se, but parts that were influenced by what Unrivaled learned from making competition parts.
• "PSA JAKL-10 .308 Review – A Modern Battle Rifle?"--Ammo Land. A long stroke pistol design that uses an AR-10 style lower, and a stock similar to the ACR. The author notes:

Good open-tip match-grade ammo would undoubtedly tighten those groups further, but even a 2.25 MOA group isn’t bad at all. I think you could run it as a DMR, but it would probably function best as a battle rifle. This isn’t due to inherent accuracy limitations, but rather to the inherent characteristics of the long-stroke gas piston system, which is where the gun truly excels. 

• "Old (Un)reliable: Finding a Magazine that Works for Your 1911"--American Rifleman. Some advice to a reader that is having issues with certain types of rounds not feeding reliably. Thus, there is a discussion of magazine maintenance and different types of followers for specific types of bullet profiles. 
• "Magpul’s Modified Coyote Brown"--The Truth About Guns.  A new color that is slightly darker than its usual Flat Dark Earth. 
• "IEDs Found in the Carson National Forest"--American Rifleman. A warning that it isn't just aggressive animals that hikers and hunters need to watch out for. The article mentions the destructive devices found in Carson National Forest in New Mexico, the risk of running across pot plantations and meth labs, and that "[o]n July 16, 2026, two female U.S. Forest Service biologists were kidnapped and held hostage on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest." 
•  The return of the pen light: "The Streamlight Wedge SL: EDC Done Right"--The Truth About Guns. This is about the size and shape of a partially used carpenter's pencil, so it carries flat in the pocket. It features three output settings: 50 lumens on Low, 100 lumens on High, and a 500-lumen THRO mode. It is rechargeable. As the author notes, "not every flashlight needs to be tactical. Tactical lights today produce ridiculous amounts of light. That’s great if you’re searching a backyard, clearing a building, or trying to identify someone at a distance. ... [But] [f]or most day-to-day tasks, all of that light can be too much." I carry an old Olight EOS that I have on my key chain for my EDC flashlight--it uses a single AAA and it twists to come on. Not tactical but it does 90% of the things for which I need a flashlight. It would be nice to have something with more throw at times. But I continue with my old, beat up EOS because it is easy to have on me (I almost always have my keys) and not something I'm likely to forget. 
• "Six Days to Anarchy: Silent Weapons for Urban Collapse"--The Truth About Guns.  The author argues for three silenced weapons: a .300 BLK carbine/SBR, a duty pistol, and a .22 pistol. But what caught my attention was the hypothesized cause of collapse:

     Six days.

    That’s the timeline investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen lays out in Biological Warfare: A Scenario for a biological incident to move from outbreak to anarchy and insurrection.

    Not six months. Not six weeks.

    Six days.

    Jacobsen recently discussed that scenario on the Shawn Ryan Show, and one of the more interesting things she brought up wasn’t simply how deadly a biological weapon could be. It’s what happens when fear of infection begins to break down the systems we normally depend on.

     According to Jacobsen, declassified government material repeatedly raises the concern that fear of infection could send the United States spiraling into “anarchy and insurrection.” In the scenario she constructed from her reporting, it takes less than a week to get there.

    Most of us tend to think about preparedness as something with a little runway. You see the storm coming. You watch things getting worse. Then you make a few last-minute runs for food, water, batteries, fuel, medicine, and whatever else you should have bought months ago.
    
    Six days doesn’t give you much of that.

    If something capable of causing that level of disruption ever happened, there probably isn’t going to be time to get your shit together once it starts.

    You either did it beforehand, or you didn’t.

But the fear of the epidemic was the key reason for collapse under the scenario:

     Jacobsen boils a biological threat down to three basic questions: How does it spread? How deadly is it? And is there a medical countermeasure?

    Now imagine nobody has reliable answers.

    People don’t know who is infected. They don’t know exactly how the pathogen spreads. They don’t know whether the information coming from the government is accurate. They don’t know whether there is enough medicine to go around.

    Later in the interview, Jacobsen walks through a scenario involving a limited supply of a perceived medical countermeasure and a population desperate to get it. Law enforcement and first responders face the same exposure risks as everyone else; government resources are stretched thin, and thousands of people are trying to get their hands on something they believe could save their families.

    At that point, you don’t just have a biological emergency.

    You have scared, desperate people competing for limited resources. 

The article links to the video of the interview as well as a video from Garand Thumb on urban collapse and operating in an urban collapse as well as containing more details on his reasoning for each type of silenced weapon, why 6 days is not enough time to prepare, and the importance of keeping a low profile.

• "Retired cop shares inexpensive items everyone should keep in their home to save them from intruders"--Daily Mail. Recommendations to have door braces, door wedge alarms, carrying pepper spray and a personal alarm when walking or jogging, a faraday bag to protect someone copying the signal from your car fob (but also keep the fob near your bed so you can set off the alarm if you have an intruder); as well as a recommending that single women purchase a pair of used, sort of beat up men's work boots, to put outside the door of a house or apartment (remembering to bring them in at times and move them around) to make it look like a man lived in the residence. 

RPG Saturday: Visualizing the 6-Mile Hex

A 6-mile hex is a traditional map scale used in D&D and other table top fantasy games. But just how big is it in a more concrete sense? In this video, the author hikes around an area that would fit into a 6-mile hex to demonstrate how much can be in that size of area and the impact of terrain on what characters would be able to view.  

 VIDEO: "How Big is a 6-Mile Hex? Visualizing TTRPG Space on the Map"
Chubby Funster (8 min.)

Weekend Reading #72

Some longer or more involved reading:

• Jon Low has a new Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter.  Jon notes, correctly in my opinion, that:   

      De-escalation only works if the other guy is willing to calm down.  

     My father would always tell me that "You can always walk away."  But, I learned that's not true.  

 It must have been a generational thing because my father essentially said the same to me. Some other points:

• I found this interesting. Jon quotes the following from an article entitled "Police handgun qualification:  practical measure or aimless activity?"  by Gregory B. Morrison and Bryan J. Vila:

    "The authors’ own conclusion is that qualification, as American departments practice it, is not a valid measure of gunfighting ability.  It tests an officer’s capacity to shoot a fixed number of rounds at a clearly defined target at a known distance, with set time limits, and clear and arbitrary threshold.  None of that mirrors what happens in an armed confrontation, and none of the prevailing doctrine, technique, or threshold-setting was developed by looking at field-shooting data or evaluated against it after the fact.  Their words:  “the rote firing of time-honored courses and their derivatives produces well-practiced range marksmen, but it does not assess their ability to perform in gunfights.” "   

 That sounds like a lot of our (speaking of civilians) training and practice. 

• Jon links to low light readiness challenges and targets to use.  The link to the article takes you to some instructions, but the full instructions are in an embedded video. It looks fun.
• Make sure to go down to the section on "Techniques" as Jon has linked to some good material on concealed carry as well as adding his own thoughts and tips. He also has some pointed comments for those who insist on open carry:

     Open carry is an act of criminal stupidity.  Don't do it.  

     The element of surprise is the difference between life and death.  

     There is no advantage to open carry.  You will be mistaken for a policeman or courier of high value items.  In either case, you will be shot first in any criminal scenario.  

     Your pistol is a high value item.  Criminals and crazy persons will attempt to steal it from you.  And then they will kill you and everyone around you.  Actually, there are a lot of documented cases.   

I remember something I read from Massad Ayoob years ago about a store owner who always open carried to make sure that thieves would know he was armed and not rob the store. The thieves, indeed, did know. And so he was shot through the glass window at the front of the shop before he ever knew there was a problem.

• Also check out the articles and videos in the "Medical" section.
• I have recently posted some links and had some comments about DA/SA pistols. I don't mind DA/SA pistols that much, probably because I have a fair amount of experience shooting double-action revolvers and I tend to do more dry fire practice with the DA/SA pistols (it is nice not to have to rack the slide every time you want to practice a trigger press). But Jon has some valid points against using the DA/SA pistol which are worth noting:

     I think double action only (DAO) pistols are fine, because every trigger press is the same.  

     I object to double action / single action (DA/SA) pistols, because they have two very different trigger presses.  Which means the shooter must have practiced two different trigger presses.  (2000 correct repetitions to make the trigger press automatic.  Thus, 4000 correct repetitions to make the DA/SA automatic for both trigger conditions.)

     I think this over complicates the manual of arms.  I think every trigger press should be the same.  

     First round hits are critically important.  (because if you can stop the fight with one shot, you eliminate the possibility of collateral damage with the subsequent shots)  So, the first press should be the easiest, not the hardest.  Making the first trigger press long and heavy is not conducive to accuracy.  Accuracy is more important than safety when in the process of engaging 
an enemy.  

     The reason the DA/SA shooter had to fire more than one shot is because he missed with the first shot.  Because the first shot had a long heavy trigger press that he could not stage, that he could not control as well as the single action trigger press.  

     Docent also points out the the first shot in a DA/SA pistol has a much longer reach (pull length).  Some people can't reach the trigger for the first shot.  

     Handicapping yourself because you fear shooting yourself or having a negligent discharge is wrong.   

I will point out, however, that I give greater weight to the safety issue than does Jon. I specifically chose a DA/SA pistol for my "night stand" gun because I wanted a weapon where that first shot was because I wanted to take that shot, not because I tripped over something or was startled by the cat or one of my kids when investigating the proverbial "bump in the night". On the other hand, I can remember that the first DA/SA pistol I owned had such a long trigger reach and so heavy of a trigger pull that it was unreasonably difficult to shoot in double action mode. So test it out before you buy.   

• And there is a lot more in the newsletter, so check it out. 

•  Greg Ellifritz also has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump posted at Active Response Training. Some links of note:
• A look at handguns versus bear spray. The article's information is accurate, but not really complete. For instance, the statistics on the use of handguns involve actual attacks, while the studies on the bear spray include incidents where the spray was used to drive off curious bears, not just attacks. Thus the actual effectiveness of the bear spray against an attacking bear is much lower than what the article makes it seem. 
• An article on "Sinister Studies"--i.e., shooting with the left hand, which has a lot of tips for the left-handed shooter. 
• An article at American Cop looking back on the DAO (double-action only) semi-auto pistols from Smith & Wesson.
• SHTF Armorer discusses cleaning and maintaining your magazines.
• An article on the history of the M1 Garand as well as detailed instructions on field stripping and cleaning this rifle.  
• The Organic Prepper has a piece on black markets. Greg comments: "This is an important concept to understand.  I’ve been to actual black markets in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Paraguay, and Argentina.  They are coming to the USA eventually."  
• And a "how to" on zeroing the red dot for a shotgun. I learned a lot from this article. And while it seems obvious in hindsight, I truly hadn't thought of starting out with zeroing it with slugs before testing the pattern of the buckshot.  

•  "To Shatter Men’s Souls"--Postcards From Barsoom. The author writes about the Pitești Prison Experiment which ran from 1949 through 1951, in the small city of Pitești in Romania, while under Communist rule. The article begins with a lengthy semi-fictional account describing the torture inflicted on the prisoners, then explains why he made such a graphic account:

    When comparing the record of atrocities left by the twentieth century’s ideologies, it is easy to get lost in simple numbers. Communism was worse than fascism, many on the right will say, because communism’s body count was so much higher. Hitler might have killed millions, but communists killed a hundred million. The pyramid of skulls is incomparably heavier, and weighs down the scales of justice decisively on the side of communism being by far the greater evil.

    But as Stalin is reputed to have said, one man’s death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic. Raw numbers do not communicate raw horror. Statistics leave the heart unmoved.

    When challenged on the relative body counts of National Socialism and Communism, leftists will usually reply that the Bolsheviks, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, Afro-Marxists, et al. may well have killed far more people than Hitler, but that Hitler’s einsatzgruppen and death camps were still uniquely horrifying, because the Nazis targeted people for their race rather than their ideology or social class, while doing so with a bloodless mechanical efficiency that utterly dehumanized their victims.

    The implication that the communists did not also do these things is tendentious – they were not at all above exploiting ethnic divisions, indeed they did so routinely – but the true reason that it is beyond the pale to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with a hakenkreuz, while a display of the hammer and sickle is unexceptional to the point of being unremarkable, ultimately comes down to emotional programming.

    No one cares how many millions were killed by this dictator or that warlord. These are mere numbers, the output of cold equations, processed by a part of the brain that has nothing to do with emotions. What matters is that, for decades, our media have produced an endless stream of lurid histories, novels, movies, documentaries, and television shows depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. These images have burned themselves into people’s minds. Small children are traumatized with them at an impressionable age – made to watch Schindler’s List or read Elie Wiesel’s Night or study The Diary of Anne Frank as part of their education. The victims of the Holocaust become, not mere numbers, not decontextualized names listed on a memorial somewhere, but real people, human beings with faces, hearts, souls, dreams, families, friends, lovers, and quirks of personality ... they become, in people’s minds, friends who were abused and murdered. Thus the Nazi who murdered them becomes the ultimate beast, not a mere villain of history, but a personal enemy.

    The horrors unleashed by communism, however, are never talked about in such terms.

 And it is because the Left and its media allies won't tell these stories, won't even bother to learn these stories. Because they sympathize with the Communists. The article ends:

    Thousands of young men were fed through Pitești. The numbers were not so large. The duration was not so long – the experiment was shut down after two years, not because the communist leadership were bothered by it in the slightest, but because rumours of what was happening in Pitești were circulating and threatening to cause unrest that might destabilize the fragile new regime (the experimenters themselves, including the prison warden, were later tried and executed – someone had to be thrown to the wolves).

    What it lacked in scale and duration, Pitești more than made up in psychological sadism. It plumbed infernal depths that I have never encountered elsewhere in the history of mankind. The communists sought not merely to break the bodies of their subjects. Nor was their goal only to shatter their minds. Their objective was to smash men’s souls, to strip them of absolutely everything – faith, nation, family, will, self-respect, identity – that made them individual human beings. They sought to scratch out the Imago Dei.

    When you think of communism, don’t think of bread lines, famines, anemic economic growth, clunky consumer goods, or ugly buildings built with substandard concrete. Don’t think of fucking statistics.

    Think of Pitești.

    Pitești reveals the spiritual essence of communism in is purest, most distilled form.

Immigration In A Microcosm

The New York Post reports about a grandmother that stupidly opened her home to "Erik Eduardo Navarro, 26, of Orange County, after he showed up at her home claiming all his belongings had been stolen," and he needed a place to stay before an upcoming interview. 

    The kindhearted woman took him in, cooked for him every night and came to believe he was a “sweet kid” down on his luck.

    After two weeks, Navarro began “making demands and taking over her home,” the family said.

    Garcia then allegedly told Navarro on Aug. 25 that it was time to leave, which set him off.

    Navarro allegedly took up a metal baseball bat and began clubbing her while she was sleeping.

    Family described the brutal ordeal, which only ended after he believed the grandmother was dead, in a GoFundMe.

    “She was in and out of consciousness, and every time she woke up, he would beat her again,” the family said. “This lasted for hours. He stopped only after she completely lost consciousness and apparently believed she was dead. He then took her phone, credit cards, keys, E-bike, and other belongings and fled.” 

Only Police Should Have Guns: Negligent Discharge While Holstering

"Off-duty NYPD cop accidentally shoots himself in leg inside Bronx home: report" reads the headline from the New York Post. Not much information other than that Officer Demitrious Caceres "was preparing to leave his home and attempting to holster his gun when it accidentally fired and struck him" in the left leg. 

For My LDS Readers: Micmac Symbols On The Gold Plates?

 I long ago noted that the only places you find characters similar to those in the Golden Plates were from the Micmac language (in North America) and characters copied down by a 18th Century expedition exploring the Amazon. Apparently there is a researcher that contends that the Micmac language is not native to those people but was introduced by French missionaries. However, in the video below, the author went to the sources cited by that researcher and discovered that is not what the sources say, but indicate that the Micmac were already using the characters when the French missionaries arrived. 

In any event, the author also compares the Micmac characters with those copied from the Gold Plates and you can see that many are the same or very similar.   

VIDEO: "Mi'kmaq Hieroglyphs on the Gold Plates?"
Uncovering Lamanite History (41 min.)

Satan Welcomes Home One Of His Own

The Daily Mail reports that feminist “icon” Gloria Steinem has died at 92. 

The Conspiracy To Invade Ceuta

From Breitbart: "Bombshell Spanish Police Report Accuses Moroccan Agents of Orchestrating Ceuta Migrant Invasion, Contradicting Sánchez Government." The article relates:

    Contrary to the myriad of potential masterminds put forward by the leftist government in Madrid [such as Russia, Israel, or even right-wing groups], the Spanish National Police accused the Muslim Moroccan government of orchestrating the invasion, which the report claims was an operation to undermine Spanish sovereignty over the North African territory, El Mundo reports.

    The police dossier claimed to have evidence from the National Centre for Immigration and Borders (CENIF) that uniformed Moroccan gendarmes were on the ground at Castillejos, a town across the border from Ceuta, on the day of the invasion, directing the flow of migrants towards the fence which separates the two countries.

    Furthermore, the report said that police are in possession of “graphic evidence” showing plainclothes Moroccan government agents giving instructions to the uniformed gendarmes on where to send the migrants, specifically the sea surrounding the fence.

Why the sea?

This came just weeks after the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that illegals arriving by water could not be pushed back, opening a loophole for the Ceuta territory, where migrants could simply walk into the water on the Moroccan side of the border and technically arrive in Spanish territory a few feet down the coastline by sea.    

 While most of the 80,000 the Muslim invaders were forced out of Ceuta, there are still 8,000 or more remaining; and, according to Daniel Greenfield, it doesn't appear that those will be leaving anytime soon:

    Despite initial promises from the prime minister that all the migrants would be returned, many thousands of the invaders have remained behind. Some sources estimated the number of remaining invaders who have occupied beaches and overrun entire areas at only 8,000, but Spain’s Ministry of Health is sending 45,000 doses of vaccines to deal with the migrant outbreaks including 10,000 polio, chickenpox, and diphtheria-tetanus vaccines and 15,000 MMR vaccines suggesting that the true number may be between 10,000 and 15,000.

    What the vaccine regime reveals even more than the numbers is the fact that they’re staying.

    The fiction that the migrants will soon go back is falling apart. There would be no need for over 10,000 vaccine doses for the migrants if they were on the verge of being deported back home.

    MMR vaccines with the second booster shot operate on a 4-week schedule. The chickenpox vaccine is spread out over 2 months, and the polio and diphtheria-tetanus vaccines operate across 6-12 months. The Spanish government expects thousands, and perhaps even a full ten thousand migrants, to stay for at least a year which means that they will probably never leave.

    The new unified command is preparing to seize housing for the migrants for the rest of the year which means that the government expects the occupation to continue until at least then.

Meanwhile, the locals have had to put up with a 1,000% increase in crime. But that is not all:

    Prime Minister Sanchez, who famously wrote a New York Times op-ed titled, “I’m the Prime Minister of Spain. This Is Why the West Needs Migrants” to promote his policy of legalizing 500,000 illegal migrants, helping spur the invasion, has been running out the clock by offering meaningless reassurances and delaying any emergency intervention until now.

    As Spain’s former head of immigration, Ramón Caudevila from Ceuta, pointed out, under the law “after 31 days from the application date, undocumented immigrants have the right to go to the Spanish mainland.” What that means is that in around a week, thousands of invading Ceuta migrants will enter Spain proper and then all of Europe will lie open before them.

    No wonder they’re getting vaccinated. 

40 Million ARs?

The Truth About Guns reports that William English’s 2026 National Firearms Survey was used by attorney's fighting so-called "assault weapon" bans before the Supreme Court. The interesting thing to me were the numbers. Extrapolating from the survey:

    Put together, 30% of American gun owners — roughly 26.4 million adults — currently own at least one rifle commonly targeted by so-called “assault weapon” bans. About 22.1 million own an AR-15-type rifle specifically, per the survey.

    English estimates Americans possess around 40 million AR-15-type rifles and another 20 million similarly styled semi-autos. That’s roughly 60 million rifles.    

That should make the AR the most prolific rifle ever produced in the United States, and the second most prolific world wide. It also tells me that even if you don't own an AR and have no intention of ever owning an AR, you should nevertheless know the basics manual of arms for an AR in case you ever have to make one safe or end up having to use one. 

Ellifritz On "Professional" Attire For Firearms Instructors

In a recent piece from Active Response Training, Greg Ellifritz answers a question as to what is appropriate attire for a firearms instructor. The short answer he gives is "who cares?" and, if you do care more about what he is wearing than what he is teaching, he doesn't want you in his class. But he does provide some history of the 5-11 slacks and polo shirt which seemed almost a uniform among certain types of people. He relates:

    FBI firearms instructors started wearing Royal Robbins climbing pants (the pants model was called the 5.11, named after a difficult climbing route) and polo shirts as their uniforms in the 1990s. Royal Robbins spun off the 5.11 pants into a separate sales division called 5.11 Tactical in 2003.  That’s the brand you all know well.
 
    There weren’t a whole lot of professional commercial firearms instructors in the business in the 1990s as compared to now.  Most of the commercial instructors in the business at the time had taught at the FBI academy or at least at their regional offices.  Those commercial instructors emulated the FBI instructor/agent look because it appeared sharp and was somewhat unique.  I remember when wearing 5.11 pants from an obscure outdoor clothing company (which had to be ordered by mailing the company a physical order form and a paper check) was like a secret code.  It meant that you were one of the cool kids who played with guns for a living. 

    Looking back on that time, it now seems quite odd.  Most firearms instructors I know are free thinkers and a bit anti-authoritarian.  Even if those instructors were (or had been) cops, very few had a high level of respect for the FBI.  Yet everyone jumped at the chance to LARP like an FBI instructor without the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance.