Greg Ellifritz has published a new article at his Active Response Training blog on "Institutional Memory." The gist of the piece is that too many trainers and students don't know of the pioneers of defensive shooting or even of the many that have further pushed it along and developed the art of self-defense with firearms. As an example, he notes that when he mentioned in two recent classes that Ed Lovette had died, none of his students knew who he was.
But perhaps more importantly, not only are many students ignorant of the identity of these pioneers and past teachers, but they don't know what they contributed or taught about shooting. And because of that, they lack the "institutional knowledge" that would come from studying this prior work, including what worked and what hasn't. And the problem with forgotten lessons is, as Greg points out, that sometimes the art regresses when some new fad gets picked up that had previously been tried and found wanting.
Greg points out that much of this problem lies with the fact that so many people get their knowledge on defensive shooting from the Internet, but the prior art, so to speak, is mostly to be found in old articles and books. To assist people with this issue, Greg has listed many of the significant books on shooting by past masters and some other resources. So be sure to check it out.
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