Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a bibliophile of the highest order. I flat out love books. I love learning, and books tend to have the best bang for the buck in that realm.

One aspect of this that never fails to amaze me is how much knowledge there was before, that gets lost. We get a bit complacent in the 21^st century with all the advantages to the internet age and assume that we know so much that prior generations did not, and to an extent, that is true. However, it is not true across the board. Often, we forget hard won chunks of information and knowledge and are forced to waste time and re-discover things.

A great illustration of the point is this book. It is about case studies in police survival situations, and it was written in 1975. Take a look at the chapter headings. How many of those are still being brought up in an effort to learn? Chapter 12 in particular stands out screaming at me, and is perfectly applicable to the armed private citizen and their self-defense needs. “Beware of the typical and average” could have been written on a social media or blog post yesterday. It covers how there truly is no such monster as “an average gunfight/self-defense situation”. Look at one of the pages from that chapter that just shows how many of these incidents start.

You still hear this kind of advice in the defensive hand gunning community – “the typical gunfight is …….” And yet in 1975 it was understood by some folks that there is no such thing. And yet nearly 50 years later we are still fighting to get that out. Just amazing to contemplate.