Death Warrant of Freedom

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

While out running errands today, I stopped in the post office and walked by the Declaration of Independence, as I'm sure everyone does. I wondered to myself; how many people walk by and never even think about the document? I stopped and read part of it and then looked at the names of the men who signed the letter to the King and once more realized they were signing their death warrant.

Had those men failed in their effort to succeed from the British Empire, they would have been hunted down and hung from the gallows.

The price of freedom is great.

Just a thought.

Training, training, training.

So this summer MilCopp Tactical was busy with several different rifle courses, both Level I and Level II. The Level II course we just finished was a two-day course set in the wilds of rural Ohio and brought students from all over the US, which was very cool for us as a start up company. The competence of the students was very high for this course; we as instructors were very impressed with the motivation and skill level of the students. There were seriously, no fuck-ups. We honestly expected a couple Mall Ninja's due to the fact that the class was organized by website members of Zombie Squad. They were in no way Nunja's; every person came to learn and participate 100%, which is more than I can say for some of the students in other, recent. classes. The ZS members gear was all squared away, they were competent with their rifles and they had good skills in place to build on. More importantly, they had all zeroed their rifles BEFORE the class. Other than a sling adjustment or a vert-grip change up, we did not have to spend any time on gear-speech's or unfucking someone's rig.

At first, the range we ended up on was considered the "third string" of our choices. The first choice being closed due to legal troubles with neighbors, the second choice closed to us due to the FUD mindset of one of the co-owners. Once we got the "Cow Pie City" range as the students were calling it, everything fell into place. We had nearly five acres of range area and three backstops to play with ranging from a gravel pit to a ravine and finally another older gravel pit which were separated by a nice hill at the center. The area became the staging for the highlight of the class; the team oriented Bounding Overwatch Drills at the end of day two.

The students themselves had experience ranging from current military service to classes with other instructors, to first time taking a class of any sort. In spite of the experience gaps, not a single student bowed out, nor did we have any kind of range infractions that brought danger to any instructor or student. This is a concern when running a class that keep rifles and pistol "hot" at all times and on the body from minute one to the last second of the day. It was a demanding course which built on itself with each new skill introduced. We at MilCopp Tactical are very proud of this class.

If you follow the link (embedded in the title), you can read the student After Action Reports. These are all their impressions of the class.