FAST TRANSIENTS
The Tactical Tangents Bulletin
Intuition and Survival
WHY YOUR HANDS SO SWEATY? In his book about implicit survival signals The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker describes that your intuition is always right in two important ways: It always alerts you in response to a stimulus, and it always has your best interest at heart....
Micromanaging-Please Don’t!
MICROMANAGING--PLEASE DON'T. Imagine I’m in the back of an ambulance with my Paramedic partner. As an EMT, I don’t have the advanced training that he does—but we’ve worked together for x months or y years. We’re dealing with a sick patient. It’s not looking good. My...
Teaching to the Lowest Common Denominator
ARE YOU TEACHING TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR? A follower asked us a question on Facebook the other day about tourniquet applications. Are we supposed to apply it high-and-tight, or a few inches above the wound? The short answer is that either option might be...
Glock and AR-15 Cleaning
GLOCK AND AR-15 CLEANING One of the “benefits” of working on a SWAT team is a whole bunch time spent cleaning guns. Some days, we have plenty of time to clean, and others, we do a quick “combat-clean” before we load up for an Op. Truthfully, you can shoot most modern...
Get your affairs in order
GET YOUR AFFAIRS IN ORDER I don’t know whether you will get in a gunfight. I do know, for a fact, that you will die someday. If you have a risky career or even risky hobbies—you owe it to yourself and your family to have your act together so that if you die suddenly,...
Dry Fire
WANNA SHOOT BETTER? There is no magic to becoming a great shooter—like most skills, it is mostly just a matter of deliberate and continuous practice, with good coaching. The problem is that there are barriers to practicing shooting: bullets cost money, it takes time...
Not Much Has Changed…
WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE SEPTEMBER 11 2001? Prior to September 11th, 2001, the face of America’s enemies had a different look. It’s not that Islamic extremism was new, or that terrorism wasn’t on the radar—of course it was. But in terms of defending the homeland, our...
The People Ideas Hardware Paradox
People, Ideas, Hardware. Right? Back in the day, a fighter pilot named John Boyd investigated why American pilots fared so well against Korean pilots during the Korean War. The Korean’s were flying a MiG that had a higher cruising altitude and faster top-speed, but...
Why go to a trauma center?
TRAUMA CENTERS: LOAD AND GO! Several times in my career, I’ve had interactions with other police officers that involved a discussion about where they would take a downed officer in an emergency. Before you ask why we wouldn’t just call an ambulance, consider this...
Should kids talk to Strangers?
STRANGER DANGER! WHY "NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS" IS WRONG At Tactical Tangents, one of our goals is to take long-held ideas or beliefs that drive our decision making, and apply a layer of scrutiny to them in the name of progress. You might have heard Jim and I suggest...