​The American Civil War is filled with lessons for politicians and warfighters alike. You could write a book about all that we could learn from the losses that were suffered by soldier and civilian alike. The war that our new nation was immersed in was an entertaining spectacle for the rest of the world. The Civil War changed warfare for the world in some ways, but in other ways, it took WW1 for the rest of the world to see the light. From my understanding of the Civil War, we are running a parallel course and at risk of repeating some of the same conceptual mistakes made back then. In this article, I am just going to hit some of the wave top subjects, or else this piece will take forever to get published.

​It may come as a surprise when I tell you that I am an avid reader. I gain a whole lot of inspiration from books, and my book collection has now overrun my bookshelf space. I download Kindle books when printed options aren’t available, but I find printed books to be my favorite method of reading. With that said, one of the largest genres in my collection is history. History is a very big genre because it encompasses everything that happened before right now. That means we will always have things to capture, record, and study in future generations.

​Since the beginning of my journey as a gun owner, I have wondered if it makes more sense to have one gun to carry all year or different guns for different occasions and seasons. I know there will be people who side with one option over the other, so I am going to briefly discuss both. Consider this a brainstorming session for evaluating both opinions. Who knows, there may be a compelling argument you hadn’t thought of before, so stick around and read through.

​The M16A2 was the weapon I qualified with in Marine Boot Camp. It was rugged and easy to use. When I was in the Fleet, I mainly had an M16A4 which weighed as much as my Tavor7 after being all decked out with sight, light, laser system, sling, grip pod, and cleaning kit in the stock. Recently I bought the 20” PSA15 (Palmetto State Armory) with the old school sight system, handguards, and Mil-Spec everything. I wanted to take a few moments to look at the concept of the M16 platform (A1, A2, A3, A4) and why I even bothered going with this type of system over the venerable and much loved M4 style (16”) rifle.

​Firearms skills is the only physical skill that I know of that is sold as something that can be taught in an 8-hour class. By the end of the day, depending on your learning ability, you will be shooting relatively well or even better than you thought you could. However, after 24 hours, a majority of that end-of-day performance will have vanished. Why? Because that is just how the human brain operates when it is exposed to a new physical skill. Sorry, but you will not just be able to shake off the rust in 10 years just because you took a particular class with someone who made you feel good about yourself for $300. My aim in this article is to expose you to the complexity of learning how to shoot. Even getting to the point of being ‘good enough’ will be trivial and difficult.