Weekend Reading

•  Jon Low has up a new Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter. At the top of his post Jon warns of a scam going on in regard to a new book by Ed Monk entitled First Thirty Seconds, discussing how to deal with active shooters. Apparently, though, there are scammers that take note of new books on Amazon that are doing particularly well and use an AI to produce a book with a similar title and appearance. Thus, in the case of Monk's book, a couple fake titles that have popped up are "First 30 Seconds Workbook: Fix in Ed Monk's Teachings Into Your Mind" and "The First 30 Seconds". 

 Some other points: 

• "You must be more willing to use force than the bad guy."
• "It’s one thing to own a gun for self-defense. It’s another thing entirely to be prepared to use it — safely, legally and with confidence."  
• "Put simply, the goal isn’t to win a fight—it’s to avoid being selected for the fight 
  in the first place."
• "Many people don't realize that your awareness skills are more important than your marksmanship skills."
• "John Farnam says the primary reason for negligence discharges is unnecessary 
  gun handling."
• "The weapon isn't the problem.  The person holding it is.  And when you focus on shutting down the PERSON instead of the weapon . . .  Everything changes."
• "Most violent attacks involve drugs or alcohol.  Yet almost all self-defense training completely ignores this reality.  Most instructors won't even mention the possibility
  that your attacker might be intoxicated.  They teach techniques as if everyone feels pain normally.  As if everyone thinks rationally.  As if everyone stops when they should. But that's not the real world . . . "

Be sure to check it out. 

•  And Greg Ellifritz has a new "Weekend Knowledge Dump". Some notable links:

•  A piece from Modern Survival Blog on how to actually survive an armed robbery with advice on avoidance, recognizing pre-attack indicators, how robbers select victims, how they make their approach, what to do if you are robbed, and more.
• Shotguns versus drones--shotguns, ammo, other equipment, and training.
• "The Safety Sin--Revisited" discussing how making safety mistakes is so stigmatized in the shooting community that it hinders our ability to share and learn from mistakes.
• Advice for owners of gun stores and their employees on how to be better salesmen and -women.
• The August 2025 Rangemaster Newsletter. Inside are a couple great articles teaching how to better describe a criminal or a vehicle, respectively, to police.