by Marty Hayes, J.D.
This column is kind of personal, so bear with me and it will make sense by the end. For the past four years, I have been dealing with medical issues; not life threatening but none-the-less annoying. I’ve been sidelined to the extent that, as a result, this otherwise active 69-year-old man has done little training or practice or competition with firearms.
It is an axiom in the training industry that “skills are perishable,” but, of course, my ego would not accept that the truism could apply to me. Well, this last weekend I found out I was human. I had the occasion to re-take John Farnam’s Tactical Carbine course. I took it previously, several years ago, and never found the final graduation exercise too difficult. I always passed it on the first try. It is a timed, accuracy drill: you must get your hits under a certain time.
Well, the accuracy was still there for me, but I found myself running out of time before I could complete the exercise. That happened three times! I finally sucked it up and made it on the fourth attempt. It seems that these old bones have lost a step or two, and I have a decision to make. Should I accept my new reality, or try to get at least one of those steps back? There is a saying, “don’t let the old man in,” and it certainly applies to me. So, it looks like I need to get in a little more training and practice, and start competing again, pushing myself to go beyond my comfort level.
I used to compete actively in IPSC and then IDPA when it started up, but both disciplines evolved to the point where successful competitors were those who could run fast, as opposed to those who could shoot well. To counter that issue, my friends here in the Pacific Northwest, Sandy Wylie and Robin Taylor started yet another shooting sport, called Action Shooting International (https://asi-usa.org/). Perhaps we will see you at a match one of these days, if you shoot this discipline here in the Pacific Northwest.
To all our senior citizen members of the Network, do yourself a favor and get out there and train, practice and perhaps even complete. As they say, “don’t let the old man in.”
Coming Soon
It’s been a while since we released a Network educational video, but we just put one together with our friend and mentor John Farnam. It will be released later in this eJournal and added to our member education thumb drive. We also recorded a second video with John which we will release on our Educational Foundation’s YouTube channel at https://armedcitizenstv.org/ when editting is finished. We will call it, Who is John Farnam? It was my intent to get a video into circulation to educate younger generations of armed citizens about training industry legends. I hope you like it.
I want to close with a word of encouragement for our Washington state members and friends. Progress continues toward a solution to the problems caused by the state’s order not to take any transactions from Washington residents. I hate to make you wait, but until it is approved, I can’t go into detail. So many people contact us about this issue that I wanted to let you know we’re working on a new way to address members’ legal needs after self defense.