I have not watched Yaeger's response, but I don't need to see it to know that I don't agree with his actions. I do heartily agree with Marshal's comments — there are a lot of different training philosophies out there. I don't agree with all of them, but taken as an aggregate they have helped push training to a higher level.
From a purely ethical standpoint, every time I've taken my film crew onto a range, every time I've worked as a rangemaster, a match director, a safety officer or a range officer, every time I've taught a class, I have taken responsibility for the lives of the my crew, my competitors, my spectators, my students. Only a fool takes that responsibility lightly. Safety may indeed be a myth, but Col. Cooper taught me that a rigidly enforced, systematic standard of gun safety works. Look at the various disciplines of practical pistol...I'm proud of what we've accomplished with the National Range Officers Institute and standardized safety. A lot of us have agonized over safety as we've moved from the square range to simulations...we suspend Rule 2 — Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy — for the sake of more realistic training using Sim, AirSoft or dummy guns. Simulation training works, and it works without exposing us or the people we have accepted responsibility for to lethal threats.
From a purely philosophical viewpoint, in addition to my time with police, military and civilian firearms trainers, I worked in very high risk sports for more than a decade. My philosophy of training is based on the truths that I learned in the field, using myself as the ultimate crash test dummy. One absolute thing I learned can be summed up in an unattributed Zen-like quote: The map is not the journey! We train with the knowledge that we cannot understand the challenges we face until we face them ourselves. You can read every book on mountain climbing, memorize THE FREEDOM OF THE HILLS, train in as harsh an environment as you can with as many different famous instructors as you can find, but the awesome reality of a Big Mountain doesn't reveal itself until you stand on its slopes. I've been there, and was humbled.
I believe we are more, however, than automatons destined to follow our programming. We train the basics, we innoculate ourselves to stress, we deal in realistic simulations to buy us time when and if the balloon does go up, the microseconds necessary for us to adapt to reality. Ironically, I believe that confusing the map with the trip opens us to more, rather than less, danger. Overconfidence is a disease that is often fatal...I have seen it kill people smarter and better equipped than me. Mark Twight is one of the finest climbers of this and maybe any generation...he is also a shooter who studied with the great Brian Enos and a person I'm honored to call a friend. In his book EXTREME ALPINISM, Mark wrote: "Nobody controls a situation in the mountains. It is vanity to imagine one can. Instead, grow comfortable with giving up control and acting within chaos and uncertainty. Attempting to dominate constantly changing circumstances in the mountains or to fight the loss of control serves only to increase fear and multiply its effects. Embrace the inherent lack of control and focus on applying skills and ideals to the situation."
Michael B
MBTV
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