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Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

Saturday, October 17th, 2015

Magic and the Easy Button

The firearms and tactical training trade is rife with people “selling magic”. By that I mean being a vocal advocate for the newest “great idea” that hasn’t really been vetted but looks good on YouTube. It’s always amusing to see these new ‘groundbreaking’ techniques that are either poorly thought out or have been preceded by better techniques years and sometimes decades prior seem to get overnight popularity.

One I have addressed previous is the Temple Index and the inherent flaws of it. Another example of selling magic is the widespread use of vehicles as a prop for a shooting class. This is done in complete contrast to vehicles being a useful training aid for teaching sound tactics associated with open air conflicts around vehicles. The point is missed completely because many are trying to entertain more so than teach.

When I played lacrosse in college, my coach Bill Tierney (probably the most successful lacrosse coach in history) rode us hard on the simple things. He reminded us that controlling the ball and consistently working hard on offense as well as defense would win over a more talented but less disciplined team that made mistakes on simple things like catching and throwing. We spent lots of time on ball drills because if you can’t scoop a ball, pass and catch then the rest was a waste of time. The principle was what Brian Searcy from Tiger Swan (also my first TL at JSOC) called “brilliance in the basics”. Greatness is the basics done flawlessly and on demand.

On the shooting side I have often been asked what special techniques SFOD uses or favors. I find that a bit amusing since there are no secret techniques nor any secret tactics. There is only one principle that guides the best units or sports teams or for that matter anyone to repeated success. That is a mastery of the basics and the ability to replicate them on demand precisely and consistently. In life and in training there is no Staples “Easy button”, there is only hard precise work.

So in the end, the magic is…that there is no magic.

– Mike Pannone

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Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

CTT Solutions

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

Saturday, September 19th, 2015

SARAH MCKINLEY INCIDENT AND MINDSET

On New Year’s Eve 2011, alone except for her infant son and scared for her life and the life of her child, 18 year old Sarah McKinley still had the composure to give her infant a bottle to keep him quiet and ask a dispatcher if it was okay to shoot an intruder if he entered her home before she did in fact shoot and kill him. She never had a mindset brief; she got it done just the same.

Mind-set

Noun

1. The ideas and attitudes with which a person approaches a situation, especially when these are seen as being difficult to alter

I’m often asked why I don’t put greater emphasis on mindset in the form of “mindset briefings” or what I like to call “popcorn pep-talks”. I call them that because in the end, they’re really mostly hot-air. The concept of having a proper mindset is crucial in not only a combative environment but literally anywhere that an individual wants to compete, excel and succeed. The desire to persevere, endure, survive and win is a requirement for success in all but the rarest of events that just by sheer chance end positively. That said, here is something to keep in mind with all these flamboyant diatribes about how “you need to be the guy that’s going to get it done” and save the day.

I’ve been a couple of places and done a couple of things and have served amongst the best our nation, two different services, and three different special units could produce. I have seen what a good mindset can do in a bad situation and how it sometimes is all that saves lives even when the odds are not in your favor. In those dark times of consequence it has never been a briefing that got a guy through. It has never been someone yelling over their shoulder that has gotten them through. It is simple and pretty easy to explain how they got the mindset needed to persevere and win. It was the culmination of decisions and actions long before the event.

Understand that nobody can convince you to do something that you can’t convince yourself to do first. Mindset is not a brief you get; it’s not a condition of thought that just “happens” to you over time. Mindset comes from the life you lead. Be candidly honest with yourself. Be under no illusions as to who you are and what you are willing to do. Sarah McKinley never got the briefing, but she had the mindset to fight, win and survive.

Mindset – stop talking about it and start living it.

– Mike Pannone

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Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

CTT Solutions

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

Saturday, August 29th, 2015

Targets, trash and a Sharpie

I see a lot of different targets out there, some are very simple and some are quite ornate and expensive. A target is designed and intended to give the shooter speed and accuracy feedback based on historically significant data from other shooters across the spectrum of various shooting disciplines. For that reason I use almost entirely USPSA metric, IPSC classic, IPDA standard, B8 pistol and SR-1 rifle targets. I choose these because I want to know how accurately and how rapidly I shoot in relation to other accomplished shooters worldwide and those targets give me a legitimate comparative scale. If I don’t have them I can draw them with a Sharpie on a piece of cardboard from the trash and voila! I get the same feedback damn nearly.

I’ve spent deployments in far less developed countries where the targets that were supposed to be there were not. We ended up taking all the 9mm and 5.56 out of the boxes and dumping them back in the ammo cans so we could use the cardboard boxes as targets and used stencils and spray paint for both pistol and rifle targets with whatever target skins they did have. When we ran out of those we cut up and drew consistent sized target areas on any trash that would show bullet holes and we could glue, tape or staple to a backer. In the end it really doesn’t matter what you shoot at as long as you scale it comparable to what is considered a standard for your particular task. I have found LE qualification targets tend to be far too forgiving in the size of their scoring areas so I take my trusty Sharpie and draw a 6”x11” A-Zone, 8” IPDA -0, 5.54” B8 9-ring or 6.35” SR-1 9-ring. I will also use my pen to make non-standard shapes for offset or surgical shot drills and to put numbers in the shapes as well to add another mental component to the drills and training (the picture below is from a recent Marine class where we were exercising sight offset for M4 carbines. The shapes are all smaller than the height over bore). In the end, targets are anything that allows you to print shots and by using standard sizes and distances it gives you legitimate data to base your training goals or evaluations on.

Last point, it really doesn’t matter if a target has all kinds of scary faces or humanoid looking drawings or looks like a human anatomy char, it just matters that you can put the bullets exactly where you choose or where it is required as fast as possible. Everything else is flair and flair at a cost. Buy a Sharpie, pasting tape and some simple targets, maybe make a stencil or two and then get to the business of refining your shooting technique and spend the money saved on bullets. My last Unit in the Army used USPSA cardboard, NRA B8 and SR-1 targets for more than 90% of our marksmanship training that was not shot on steel for the reasons mention at the beginning of the piece.

MPTarget

– Mike Pannone

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Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

CTT Solutions

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

Saturday, July 25th, 2015

Temple index failure points

Or

Why I prefer a different and better variation.

When I was leading the stand-up of the training cell in the Seattle Field Office of the Federal Air Marshals in 2003 a good friend, former Special Forces soldier with me at 1st SFG(A) and very accomplished stand-up as well as ground fighter Ron Haskins (God rest his soul) and I used to vet many of our techniques in an old school practical way. We would put on shorts and a t-shirt with Bollé goggles and fight over/with guns. The rule was we had a Sig229 with 2 Simmunitions rounds in it…if he got the gun…I got the Sim rounds. Having a “pain penalty” for failure makes people fight like they mean it. We concluded that many things taught, though they “briefed well”, were not effective and in some cases were prone to failure. With that as an overview of how I evaluate techniques, below are the 4 reasons I do not like the “temple index” (from now forward called TI) as presented and why I prefer what might be called “high port”. I view this specifically through the prism of training and experience in 1st SFOD-D, Federal Air Marshals (*we never executed nor taught this even in aircraft which is as confined a space as I have ever worked with both organizations) as well as working protection details in and around vehicles in a high threat environment in Iraq. All of my experiences in those venues have put a premium on confined space weapons management. To evaluate it, I’ll use with what I consider my validation template:

• What is it – Temple Index (TI)

• Why you do it (desired end state) – keep safe orientation and control of weapon in confined space or proximity to others

• How it works – the weapon is held in a normal dominant hand shooting grip pointing straight up in one hand by the temple so it cannot inadvertently flag yourself or another

• Identify the most likely failure points or mistakes:

  • Easy to get fouled or strike objects in confined space –
  • If you draw a pistol in a confined space like a vehicle and then attempt to maneuver or exit with the TI you are far more likely to strike something like the roof or A/B/C –pillars or get fouled in a seatbelt depending where you are seated.

  • Has poor control –
  • The gun is floating in one hand exposed to any blind spots in your vision and depending on how vigorous your movement is, it is far more difficult to control because it does not have strength or dexterity in the range of motion it utilizes.

  • Extremely weak retention –
  • Effectively you are holding the gun in the weakest manner, in a blind spot unless you are looking straight forward or towards the weapon, it is away from your body where it is extremely easy to disarm and the most difficult to defend from take-away attempts.

  • Slow to engage –
  • It is a poor “start position” if rapid engagement is needed and lends itself to a poor presentation grip. I say this specifically because it is in a position with very little strength and dexterity that is about as far from a normal draw and presentation shooting position you can have and still have a gun in your hand.

    • Precede those with proper training – practice and use high port

    Practice and use High Port-It is the same general concept but the pistol is positioned across the body 30 degrees forward and 30 degrees towards the support side in the same point as port arms with a rifle. It keeps the pistol up, away from you at about a 30 degree angle as well as any others that may be around you unless they are within a foot shoulder to shoulder and over 7 feet tall and then awareness not any specific position is what overwhelmingly keeps you from flagging people.

    1. When using the high port you have the gun silhouetted in the footprint of your body without flagging anyone in the car so movement in and out of vehicles is only restricted or impeded by your actual physical size and removes the ability of the gun to be fouled by the roof, A/B/C pillars, seatbelts or anything else.

    2. Because the gun is within the range of motion for strength and dexterity even with vigorous activity it is under complete control.

    3. By keeping the gun in high port if a disarm is attempted it is far less exposed and any attempts must be done from the front minimizing an adversaries element of surprise. For that reason it is easier to defend against disarms with the high port.

    4. From the high port position you are less than 6” from your normal position for pistol presentation known as position #4. This location makes it very fast, very natural and much more like your normal presentation sequence.

    While I understand and agree with the needs for the temple index for certain situations, I have no doubt there are far too many failure points and likely errors in the technique and make it an unacceptable default position. The high port will do everything the temple index will but does it with better control. It better protects from disarm attempts and all with a more natural and rapid ability to engage due to the location. The only time either is needed is during limited times when the gun is not being used and/or movement is required in and around others. The widespread use of the temple index in my opinion is done far more for cool points than practicality. I say that because only one person has been able to defend it with a cogent answer as to why he does it but it still hasn’t sold me for the abovementioned reasons. The window of application and practicality is very small and the technique is FAR too easy to disarm. Nearly every photo of it I have seen in application the gun is not anchored and the elbow is out. As far as I am concerned it is another position Sul (holding a pistol with one hand pointed at your support side foot always seemed like a bad idea). By that I mean though the concept is good the actual technique and its application have great failure points built into it, the greatest being weapons retention. In my experience its range of application is extremely limited and its proponents often cite the application based upon the precept of bad awareness and poor gun handling by the end user. I have never used it, seen it used or taught until now but have seen it done for extremely brief moments because it was a last resort to maneuver with a weapon in one hand. Also, even if you are shoulder to shoulder the high port does not flag anyone under 7 feet tall and overall muzzle awareness makes up for that. I look at it as an absolute last resort for a specific extremely limited use, not a signature “go to” position.

    Other than running with a pistol I have only used a high port in limited situations and those were extremely tight confined vehicle exits and even then only until I was clear of the vehicle. Again, that is real use in a high threat environment not a training theoretical use.

    I find a technique like the Temple Index is a bad replacement for proper weapons awareness and handling and violates the biggest concern when in confined areas or close proximity to theirs which is weapons fouling and retention. I can hold the pistol right in front of me like I would if holding a rifle at port arms and do all the same things without the problems of fouling or retention TI has.

    When formulating techniques that revolve around non-standard positions it is very important to identify likely failure points before you institute the technique as a default.

    When I was in the Special Forces Qualification course in 1992 I was given sage advice from an old SF soldier who was one of my cadre’ teaching planning- “If you don’t find the flaws in your plan first, they’ll find you…and it’s gonna hurt.” The temple index is a plan with too many flaws for me. With a minor variation on the theme, i.e. making it a high port versus Temple index, the technique mitigates the biggest concerns any shooter will have while employing the Temple Index. BTW, people have been using some variation of high port for years because it made sense to them technically, tactically and physically … and all without fanfare.

    Roll how you like but that’s why I don’t use the Temple Index.

    – Mike Pannone

    GFmomentpic

    Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

    In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

    CTT Solutions

    Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

    Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

    Saturday, June 20th, 2015

    Feeding Eugene Stoners Brainchild

    This is just a quick one over based on my experience using for both training and operationally just about every magazine that will fit in the M16/M4/AR15.

    First let’s look at the 3 critical components of a magazine: spring, follower and body.

    Follower– A great deal of the early M16 magazine issues was due to bad follower geometry and design. Legs that were too short allowed them to tilt and bind causing failure. This portion of the magazine has seen the most changes and advances over time and has a great deal to do with reliability. The anti-tilt followers are pretty much the gold standard. It is so much so that nearly every aftermarket magazine I can think of and the new USGI magazines have anti-tilt followers in them and from field reports the new USGI magazines perform extremely well. All my mags in IZ were USGI with MAGPUL no tilt followers and they performed flawlessly.

    Spring– Modern springs will easily outlast the body of the magazine. Early magazines suffered as well from older and less refined spring technology. Modern springs take an initial set when loaded but are not dramatically degraded by being left loaded for a very extended period of time (think years). Springs will fatigue when they are compressed and released in the firing cycle. Think of a piece of flat metal stock. Bending it doesn’t make it crack or fail. Bending it back and forth repeatedly causes metal fatigue which eventually will cause it to break. Over time and repeated use (and I mean a long time and lots of use) magazine springs will eventually fatigue enough to fail but not from being left loaded.

    Body– Singularly the biggest cause of malfunctions in the modern incarnation of the USGI M16 and really any others for that matter is the body. If the feed lips begin to separate they change the original design geometry and will cause double feeds. This is not fixable in any consistent and reliable manner and so they should be replaced.

    Common mistakes people make:

    1.) Loading 31 rounds into a 30 round magazine. If you can’t press the top round down about 1/8” then you have overloaded the magazine. If you try and seat the magazine with the bolt forward on a live round it will be extremely difficult because the bullets cannot do down the required 1/8” or so. What happens if you hammer it in is they go out and at the weakest and most crucial point of the magazine, the feed lips. This causes accelerated wear and can permanently damage metal or polymer magazine which I have witnessed personally on more than a few occasions.

    2.) Putting 550 cord loops under the base-plate on a GI magazine. It was not designed to be held by the 4 metal tabs at the base. Those tabs are only there to keep the base plate on. If you feel the need to do it, tape the 550 cord to the outside of the magazine with riggers tape.

    3.) Not maintaining magazines properly. They should be cleaned when they have been used in field environments and left dry. DO NOT LUBRICATE MAGAZINES IT WILL HOLD DIRT AND DEBRIS AND CAUSE FAILURE TO FEED MALFUNCTIONS. Side note- do not over lubricate you rifle because it drains into the magazines causing said problem.

    4.) Kicking, throwing, or generally abusing/misusing them. For instance, they can open bottles but they are not bottle openers. You fill in the rest from your experience. The only use for a magazine is to hold bullets and reliably feed your rifle.

    5.) Not marking magazines. If not then people never really know which one failed and just keep recycling. Once a magazine malfunctions and it cannot be traced to debris, it will only get worse. Get rid of it. A little paint marker goes a long way.

    6.) Believing magazines that don’t drop free are still serviceable. If you bought “non-drop free magazines” for your M4 please let me know where. One of the requirements for the US Military was that the empty magazine had to fall free from the rifle when the magazine release is pressed. If it doesn’t it means that on a GI magazine the feed lips are beginning to separate or on a polymer magazine the body is beginning to swell. Both are by that very fact unserviceable.

    7.) GI magazines are crap. In the picture below you will see 3 magazines. The one with yellow marking is what I call the “magic magazine”. The only magic is if you don’t abuse your kit it will treat you well. It is marked 1-92 and I got it from a bucket of s#*t magazines in OTC. To this day it still runs fine and I have used it for 18 years. The other two “new magazines” are both 12 years old (5/03 & 6/03) with the only additions being one has a MAGPUL and the other a CMMG no tilt follower and I can’t even begin to estimate the round counts on any of them.

    Myth

    USGI magazines were only designed to hold 28 rounds. FALSE

    Does anyone really believe that the US military would buy 5.56 magazines by the millions over the last 45 years (official fielding of the 30 round magazine in RVN was approximately 1970) that are spec’d for a 30 round capacity but (wink, wink, smirk) only really hold 28? That is absolutely absurd. The biggest current problems are stated above, overloading of the magazine, poor reloading technique (if you can’t get a 30 round magazine to seat with 30 rounds in it…news flash…it’s not the magazines fault) and third in the ultra-rare instance where the specs of the lower receiver, upper receiver and magazine don’t line up correctly. This can happen if the upper and lower are fit very tightly from the factory but is exceedingly rare. The looseness of the upper and lower by design actually allow damn near any magazine to fall within the collective specifications necessary to allow positive lock-up of a magazine…but back to short loading magazines. I once carried 28 rounds in all my magazines…that is until I went to the Operator Training Course at JSOC. There a gruff guy named Sam E. wasn’t buying it and told us we could do whatever we wanted IF we made it across the hall but here “you will have 30 rounds in every magazine you carry and 30+1 when you enter the breach point on every hit.” I never had a problem and never witnessed problems other than genuinely unserviceable magazines and that is with the incredible amount of shooting we did in that course. He was correct…it was a useless action based on out of date information.

    So what do I use? I use primarily USGI magazines because they work great, they’re cheap, I already have a ton of them, they will fit in anything that has the appropriate lock-up geometry at the mag release for an M16/AR15 and they drop free very consistently. I designed the MagCap for USGI magazines (with the Marines in mind because of the IAR mag well not accepting many aftermarket magazines) so that the base was protected from dirt and damage and for an additional gripping surface without giving up any capacity. As I say “it’s the best thing to happen to the GI magazine since the no tilt follower.”

      
    On the polymer side I used just about everything available but prefer Tango Down ARC Mk2 magazines. The 3 pictured were given to me to T&E in the summer of 2009. They were immediately loaded and were kept loaded or were fired and immediately reloaded nearly non-stop since then. Having been loaded and fired over 300 times each none of the 3 have malfunctioned or failed to drop free. Some people say the sealed bottom will hold water but most people carry magazines bullets down so dust doesn’t settle in them and if you put an ARC magazine in water, pull it out and fire it through your M4 there will be about 2.5 oz. of water in the bottom. The space is displaced by the bullets. It’s a non-issue as far as I am concerned.

    There are lots of great magazines out there so whatever you choose to feed your rifle with then have at it. My biggest problem is that the entire magazine topic is littered with misconceptions based on conjecture, urban legends, improper use or abuse or driven by bad technique. Know why you do what you do and vet your own kit. Go out and test what I have put forth on your own and see what you come up with. Mine is based on lots of shooting and lots of record keeping.
    – Mike Pannone

    GFmomentpic

    Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

    In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

    CTT Solutions

    Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

    Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

    Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

    Noner’s Rules

    #1 GOOD LUCK IS FOR NOVICES, BAD LUCK IS FOR EVERYONE. BANK ON SKILL, AT LEAST YOU CONTROL THAT.

    #2 EVERYTHING IS A REHEARSAL FOR SOMETHING. THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO DO THINGS: THE BEST WAY…AND ALL THE OTHER WAYS. FIGURE OUT WHICH IS WHICH.

    #3 A GUN IS LIKE A PARACHUTE. WHEN YOU NEED ONE IT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO SAVE YOUR LIFE, IT HAS TO WORK AND YOU HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO USE IT.
    -Mike Pannone

    “TO BE A WARRIOR IS NOT A SIMPLE MATTER OF WISHING TO BE ONE. IT IS RATHER AN ENDLESS STRUGGLE THAT WILL GO ON TO THE VERY LAST MOMENT OF OUR LIVES. NOBODY IS BORN A WARRIOR, IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY THAT NOBODY IS BORN AN AVERAGE MAN. WE MAKE OURSELVES INTO ONE OR THE OTHER.”
    Carlos Casteneda “Tales of Power”

    Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

    In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

    www.ctt-solutions.com

    Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.