Over the next couple of weeks I will make a series of posts related to equipment. For many, this is our favorite topic and what we spend the majority of our time focused on. For those of us that are serious about training for a violent confrontation, whether military, law enforcement, or a private citizen, we must realize that WHAT we use is not nearly as important as how and when we use it.

What we find in our courses is that equipment related problems slow down the pace of training and make learning more difficult. Many students spent much of their time on the line fighting their equipment rather than learning. One of the benefits of a formal training course is that you get to work out the kinks in your equipment selection. You will learn quickly if your gear sucks. Unfortunately, you may spend the rest of your time fighting equipment rather than learning to fight bad guys.

1. Mental conditioning
2. Tactics
3. Skill
4. Equipment

The Priorities of Survival are in this order for a reason. Superior mindset, tactics, and skill will allow you to overcome any equipment related problems or deficiencies. This is true in training and in real life confrontations. Mindset always triumphs!

Most of us are “gear queers” on some level. Cool toys are fun and they should be. However, equipment should make your job easier, not more difficult. In a violent encounter, dominating a bad guy is difficult enough without the added complexity of equipment that handicaps you. Equipment is by far the lowest priority. As a rule, your equipment should make your job easier; if it does not, discard the equipment and move on.

Any idiot can make and market a tactical widget, give it to his friend in the Army and claim it is “Mil-Spec.” Just because someone makes a piece of equipment and everyone on your favorite forum claims it is the best, does not mean you need to buy it. Equipment needs to be evaluated based on YOUR system. Tactics and skill determine what equipment works and what does not.

If you don’t have a system, then don’t go buy a bunch of crap because it looks cool. You will just be wasting your money. If you have embraced a system, then you probably should buy the same equipment that your instructors use. They have already thought through the issues in more depth and detail than you. They have likely already tried all the gear that you are thinking of trying. They know what works and what doesn’t.

If you look at all the Insights instructors’ guns and gear setups, they are almost all the same. We don’t do it for the cool factor; we do it because it works. We have a shared system of tactics and skills. This gives us principles we use to evaluate equipment.

Next Post: Handguns Designs