Keeping your home and your loved ones safe from bad guys is a multi-faceted, multi-tiered, and highly-contextualized enterprise, but there's a number of nearly-universal principles and practices that can be adapted to your situation. Any common sense security and defensive plan begins with the right mindset. A lot of people might think my family and I (John Lovell) are a little crazy in all t

I (John Lovell) have adjusted my thinking about open carry. While I haven't yet embraced it for myself, I've come to believe that when it's done responsibly, open carry is an asset to the cultural exchange. There was a time in the not so distant past when my perception of open carry guys was of a podunk man with a crappy gun in a crappy holster worn on pants with a plumber crack in the back.

The John Lovell-designed medical kit provides a securely-fixed trauma kit easy to access from the belt-line or elsewhere without impeding movement.Finding everything you need in the throes of battle is a persistent challenge for operators, especially when the adrenaline is pumping. This is particularly true when it comes to field medicine and trauma care administered in the midst of hostile encoun…

Your legacy is written in your children and their children's children's lives. What will your legacy be to the third and fourth generation of your family? How do you measure a man’s level of success and the value he brings to the world? Is it cars? His cash value? How attractive he is to women? His bench press? The size of his house, his intellect, his GPA, etc.? Probably not. The metric you use

Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” I’m not interested in labeling anyone a bug here, but I did want to offer a few thoughts about real-world tactical preparedness.  But first of all, a story. Once upon a time, there was a Delta operator and he went into a competitive shooting ma

Victim mentality and victim culture have been a human tendency and temptation since Cain blamed Abel for bringing God a better offering. We've all got the capacity to blame others for the way our life has become, but sadly, in our narcissistic age, that victim mentality has empowered people to declare themselves our moral heroes who deserve our praise, our endless apologies, and our penance. This …

Nobody is born brave. Not even former Army Ranger Jeff Struecker. Courageous men and women are made, not born. I (John Lovell) sat down recently with Jeff, one of the bravest men I know, to talk about the importance of courage and how to grow in courage day by day. As you might know, Jeff was featured in both the movie and the book Black Hawk Down, which chronicles the actions of U.S. Army Rangers…

I (John Lovell) have talked to people so frustrated by their red dot that they've been tempted to get rid of it. This is almost guaranteed to be user error and easily corrected with consistent, meticulous draw and presentation.As you probably already know, I'm a big fan of red dot sights. I keep one on my pistols at all times, including the WarPoet CR920, which comes with a Holosun 507K. I lo…

Tweaking and refining your Everyday Carry is a wise exercise on occasion as skills and needs change, technologies improve, and circumstances require up- or down-regulation of your tactical preparedness. John walks us through his EDC this year. I wanted to talk briefly about what's changed and what hasn't with my Everyday Carry this year as we roll through the months of 2023. Many of these are

I (John Lovell) am one of the last people ever to deter you from owning and carrying a firearm everywhere you go, and I'm certainly not doing that here. But I am encouraging you, maybe pleading with you(?), to get good concealed carry training. It can save you a lot of trouble in the end. After literally decades operating with and training people on pistols and other guns, I've seen and heard a lo…

Sometimes I (John Lovell) like to go through tactical scenarios in my head to figure out what I would do if I were, say, surrounded by a mob of black-masked Antifalites, those SJWs who just love to take you by surprise with a haymaker for neo-Marxism. Here's what I've come up with.My friend was talking about coming to Atlanta with his wife but he was freaked out because he was pretty sure a group …