The Critic

 “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

My video on The Good Samaritan Drill, what many others are calling the "Eli Dicken" drill, got a lot of views and feedback. I would expect no less given the confluence of it running on the heels of a serious event that got national attention, as well as the gracious linking to that video by two well known authors.

Much of that feedback was positive, but I did get a lot that fell into the following categories:

1. You did it wrong, somebody should be shooting at you while people are running around screaming.
2. You did it wrong, you should've been doing some level of PT or other exertion before/during.
3. You did it wrong, you should've done it with (insert whatever gun).

Interestingly enough, for the people telling me that I did it wrong, none of them provided any video or other specifics about what THEY were doing. Of course, anything that garners attention will get all sorts, both positive, negative, and neutral. I suppose neutral is the worst of all if you're trying to get some information out there.

But to speak to the specifics, I'm not going to do any drill where people are shooting at me with real guns, certainly not on purpose. And if we want to involve stacking tasks like other people moving, incoming fire, etc., then that is a good candidate for sims training or similar. And I participate in that on occasion, but you won't see me post it on any social media that I have. Some things are for me and the people I'm training, not for broader consumption.

If you want to PT and mix shooting in, I think that is a solid idea if properly structured. Watch some of JJ Racaza's videos for that. Nobody wants to see middle aged fat me doing PT, and that isn't the focus of my social media. There are several very solid experts on that, and I'm not going to try to emulate them.

For anybody telling me I should've used a little crappy pistol to shoot this drill, I got news for you. I don't carry a little crappy pistol. I carry one of the following 3 guns almost exclusively: Glock 17, Glock 19, Glock 45. And all 3 of 'em have optics on them. Any one of those is more than capable of the accuracy I produced in the video. Maybe instead of criticizing my pistol choices, they should re-think their own. I'm not saying that you have to carry a full size gun everywhere, but if you do and you have to use it, life will be a little easier than trying to score hits on a moving target at distance with a snubby.

I'm not saying I'm the fastest or the most accurate, because I am certainly neither of those. But what I am saying is that I'm going to go out and DO things. And while any feedback is useful in some way, shape, or form, what I really hope is that people reading this and/or watching my video will go out and practice some more. There are a very small percentage of people who do some amazing things with firearms, but those men and women are the minority. For the rest of us, some more work wouldn't hurt.