Sometimes, in fields of human endeavor, there are people ahead of the curve. Rather than follow the pack, and just repeat mindless tropes, they seek to add more than copying. 

In the Defensive Gun Training world, Louis Awerbuck was such a person. Not only an experience Been There, Done That man, he was an excellent instructor. He was the lead Rangemaster when I went to Gunsite in 1987 and took 250. Col Cooper did all the classroom lectures and was often on the range, but the bulk of the day to day work was conducted by Awerbuck (ably assisted by another terrific instructor, Jerry McCown). 

Awerbuck was also a deep thinker and came up with many innovations. Literally, decades ahead of everyone today who do the same thing, he was using 3D targets, and unpredictable moving targets to get as close to reality in training as possible. 

He also understood what fighting looked like. He was an early advocate of students understanding that the entangled fight with weapons happened, and it happened with private citizens, and that it happened enough to mena you needed to train for it, Check out the following form one of his books, written in 2003. 

Book Monday – Ralph Mroz’ Defensive Shooting For Real Life Encounters is a sadly overlooked book today in the Defensive Gun community. First published in 2000, he addressed many things that were not being covered elsewhere. What I most love about his writing was that there is a genuine tone that comes through not of “this is how it is” but rather “ can we do better?” Even today, that is missing from the majority of the Gun training world. And it is an indictment of many current “experts” that few of them know anything about this book, or Mr Mroz, let alone what is in the book.