Fight Alone, Fail Alone

(Part seven of a nine part series, courtesy of Fred’s M14 Stocks)

Today, Fred talks about why teamwork is the only way to win, whether in the ‘soft war’ or something more grim:

The Rifleman knows that the defense of Liberty is a team effort, and that’s why he always defends Freedom as part of a team. As one Army instructor observed back in 1942:

“Experience has shown that in the absence of team training, the fire of a group of riflemen in battle is poorly controlled and is haphazardly directed. This fact remains true even where every individual in the group is an expert shot (emphasis added)….”

So becoming a Rifleman is only the first step — an important step, a worthy step — but only a first step. If it ever comes to defending Liberty, if you are out there all by yourself….well, it’ll get lonely, at the very least. Although you’ll be effective firing twenty or maybe even thirty well-aimed shots per minute, you will be terribly vulnerable both to frontal and flanking attacks. By fighting alone, you will be ignoring one of the central Rifleman rules — to stay alive to fight tomorrow.

Compare that “lone wolf” vulnerability to the concentrated firepower of three trained guys, shooting as a Rifleman team. Sixty, even ninety well-aimed shots, each minute, penetrating the heart of the foe. Comrades to each side of you, sharing the pain, and the joy, of the battle for Freedom. A miniature ‘band of brothers’, guys you can count on to never let you down, who’ll share the risks and cover your butt while doing it.

If you are really lucky through persistence in recruiting, you’ll be able to set up a second Rifleman team. Think what tactical advantages two Rifleman teams offer: mutual support (thwarting both frontal and flanking attacks), fire and movement, and mass rifle fire from different points (devastating to an opponent). With two teams, you also move more securely, using the techniques of traveling, traveling overwatch, and, if necessary, bounding overwatch.

For all members, your team’s security will go through the roof, while your effectiveness goes up – not 2X – but 8X or more. And during training, competing teams sharpen up everybody’s shooting.

Most importantly, with the ‘soft war’ in full fury right now, that same group effort which will sustain you through a Rainy Decade will make your team’s political power almost irresistible, at least to any politician who wants to keep his job. The “force multiplier” effect of allied voters communicating in a coordinated fashion will be even more powerful when you and your teams network with other teams.

But your basic problem, now that you are a Rifleman or soon-to-be Rifleman, is to find two more kindred souls — today.

The prospect, in present-day America, is kinda depressing. You’ll be surprised at the percentage of gun owners ignorant of both the past and the future. People who should know better instead are content to sit and wallow in that slowly heating pan of water. Your audience is crowded with lazy, arrogant know-it-alls, nurtured by the best in liberal education, who are going to wilt like a spider on a hot brick as soon as you mention freedom and the traditional role of the rifleman.

But you will persist.

You’ll persist, because it’s part of being a Rifleman.

You’ll persist, despite discouragement, rejection, and scorn, because you know the battle for freedom has to be won.

You’ll persist because you understand that the only people who are going to win it are people who are mentally alert, know their history, respect those brave men who have fought before in defense of freedom, and are determined that freedom will not be lost on their watch.

And the only way to get those sloths awake is to wake ’em up yourself. Your duty as a Rifleman is to be the stone in the pond, sending ripples traveling in all directions, disturbing the existing calm.

Remember, by becoming a Rifleman, you have accepted, at least implicitly, the responsibility to:

1) learn how to shoot, consistently from field positions, at or above the Rifleman standard of 4 MOA from 25 meters to 500 yards;

2) recruit future Riflemen;

3) educate your fellow Americans about the need to become Riflemen, to stop further Second Amendment infringements, and to bring back what the JPFO calls a “Bill of Rights culture”; and

4) spread that message wherever and whenever you can.

The short form?

Shoot
Recruit
Educate
Communicate
Persistence is the key — the only key — to meeting those four obligations.

Now, how you go about your recruiting is up to you. But a few suggestions can be made.

A prime way is to simply let others see you shooting to become a Rifleman. As people watch you going through your shooting drills, welcome their interest by letting them try the AQT with you. Encourage them to overcome their miserable lack of skills with a little practice, using yourself as an example. This is probably the easiest way to bring new members into the fold.

Once you get a couple of guys lined up as “students”, your recruiting may tend to snowball, so that the second team recruits quicker than the first. You see, your first team’s practice sessions are the bait for the next crew — or so you hope it will be, anyway.

Another more risky way to recruit is to attempt to wake people up through words and information. Understand though — for whatever reason, you’ll find even many gunowners to be less than receptive. Most gunowners who’ll do anything at all will donate $35 to the NRA and go back to sleep on the couch.

Even though to you it seems as plain as the nose on your face, those folks on the couch just don’t appreciate what gunowners can accomplish by working within the system — and working together. That cheap surplus ammo you are able to buy in unlimited quantities now? You know it came from the Reagan years, and the 1986 Gun Owner’s Protection Act. In other words, that case of $150 South African 7.62 ball in your safe today was brought to you by an Act of Congress. Without wide-awake, no-fooling Riflemen campaigning and voting for the right people, it would never have happened.

The Good Guys can win. Most times, it happens only by work — lots of hard, unrelenting slogging towards a goal that may be only barely visible, at least at the beginning.

Sometimes, it happens by luck, or by fate.

But don’t fool yourself. Luck and Fate are darned slim reeds to pin your future happiness on.

We have to get this country to wake up, so that the Good Guys win by design, on purpose, through hard work – not by the whim of fate. If we don’t, dark days await us.

Right now, we are in the pre-WWII period, fat and complacent, sure of our superpower status. Even 9/11 did not really wake us up. We are still bankrolling the Middle Eastern lunatics who would slaughter us, rather than develop domestic oil and gas resources. Worse yet, we are still pouring billions in trade into the Chinese economy, which is dominated by the Chinese Communist military, just like we did 70 years ago with Japan.

And those lean and hungry Chinese boys are not going to be stupid. If you want a taste of what the future possibly holds, check out Jeff Head’s Dragon’s Fury novels at http://www.dragonsfuryseries.com/. It’s a five volume series, and it is explosive!

Because the entire country is asleep to the lessons of history, we are going to repeat some bloody chapters in our foreign policy history once again, just as soon as we elect another appeasement-at-any-cost liberal to the Presidency.

That’s why now is the time to build your Rifleman team. While you know it will likely be hard to get other team members on board, it’ll help you narrow the search if you know the kind of person you are looking for, so you don’t waste time on the wrong – i.e., worthless – prospects. “Summer soldiers” and “sunshine patriots” have no place on a true Rifleman team.

No better advice can be found than in an old AMTU Rifle Instructors Guide. Here’s their list of questions to ask:

Is your prospect easily perturbed?
Does he quit easily?
Is he easily discouraged by unfavorable conditions?
Is he susceptible to rumors?
Does he worry too much about equipment?
Does he have the will to win?
Is he cooperative?
Can he work with others, of different skill levels?
Is he ambitious?
Is he honest?
Is he reliable, even when being so cuts against his interests?
Let’s see – steadiness, doggedness, calmness, determination, honesty – sure ’nuff sounds like a good person to have around if TSHTF. Go ahead — be honest. How do you stack up?

Now someone is sure to ask — “But Fred, what about shooting?”

Don’t get me wrong. As you build your team, you bet you’re gonna work on your team’s shooting skills. They will need to become Riflemen, after all. But in recruiting, you should remember an old business saying — “Hire for attitude, train for skill.” If your recruit doesn’t have the gumption to persist and burn through the frustrations that he will encounter on the path to Rifleman status, he’ll be less than worthless.

Why? ‘Cause at the same time that you’re pouring your efforts down the dry hole of your prospect’s bad attitude, there’s likely to be another recruit who does have the stuff to become a Rifleman, just waiting to be found.

Plant your Rifleman seeds where there’s a good chance they’ll grow into strong trees. Perseverance and willingness to learn are the good soil and water for this particular crop.

Find those character traits listed above, and you’ll have a good prospect. Then, using your experience and the Guide to Becoming a Rifleman (http://www.fredsm14stocks.com/catalog/acc.asp), help that recruit through the struggles that you went through as your shooting improved. Your prospect may not be perfect – after all, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to shoot well, for one thing – but as long as he is willing to learn both the shooting and the teammate skills, I’d sure give him a chance! And once those Rifleman skills are in the bag, you and your new Rifleman should start to integrate team shooting drills into your practice — just read the Guide for lots of suggestions.

Remember — you are unlikely in the current environment to find anyone decisive enough to commit to the team idea, which is why the first technique suggested earlier is a good one. You don’t sign them up in advance. Nope – you sucker them in gradually, until they are already a team member and confident enough to be decisive.

Part of the outcome of Rifleman training is a new personality – confident, decisive, knowing who you are, what you can do, what you should be doing, knowing your goals, working to attain them. As the AMTU guide put it, “Individuals must possess outstanding qualities of sportsmanship.” Of course, this was written back fifty years ago, before the angry, victimized, she-male types who are so prevalent today.

So what? So it’s harder to find good-natured people with integrity. Heck, it’s hard to do anything in the battle for freedom. Just that first step away from the couch in front of the TV is too much for many people.

You’ll persist, however, because you are a Rifleman.

One final thing: As a Rifleman, and as part of a rifle team, you want to get prepared and to be the best shot you can be. You know and understand your role in the defense of liberty, as visualized by the Founders when they drafted the Constitution.

But never forget the ‘soft war’ that’s raging now. You and your team should be fighting that ‘soft war’, in hopes of avoiding a future ‘hard war’. You and your team should be waking people up, personally & with Letters To the Editor, educating ’em who to vote for, getting ’em to the range, and helping them to shoot well.

And guess what? In the ‘soft war’, it doesn’t even matter one tinker’s damn if some of your teammates can even shoot!

What do I mean? The ‘soft war’ is a political war, and the ammunition in a political war consists of contacts and ballots. Think of contacts — letters, faxes, emails, phone calls — as rifle rounds, while ballots — “fired” only on Election Day — can be considered as heavy artillery shells. There’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t get as many “soft warriors” as you can, each sending as many pro-Second Amendment contacts — pro or con, as appropriate for the particular politician — as they can send between elections. Then on Election Day, a barrage of pro-Second Amendment, pro-freedom ballots comes crashing down…..in support of our pro-freedom political allies, and in opposition to our socialist, gun-grabbing foes.

In those ‘soft war’ battles, anyone — as long as they are of voting age and registered to vote — can and will be a freedom fighter, even if they have no desire whatsoever in learning how to shoot.

Pretty neat, eh?

So, non-shooters can and should be a part of your team in defense of Freedom. And you never know — lots of us didn’t grow up with guns. We came to the tradition through people who cared enough about us and our country to be patient with us. You, as a Rifleman, need to be patient as well. Remember, the crime is not shooting badly. Everybody shoots badly when they start out. The crime is not learning to shoot better.

Sure, it’s tough — all of it. But not tough compared to what it’ll be if you DON’T do it. So you do it, because it is important. Don’t forget to have fun, too!