- Guns don't kill people. Stupidity kills people. Ambivalence
kills people. Denial kills people. Being oblivious to their surroundings
kills people. Most people are sheep. People with bad intentions are wolves.
Wolves kill sheep - until the sheepdog comes. I am a sheepdog. I make
people uncomfortable because I have teeth like a wolf. Sheep don't want
to be reminded of wolves - they want to pretend wolves don't exist - until
one appears.
-
- I have four simple rules.
-
- (1) live in Orange. * (I learned these from Jeff Cooper
personally.)
- (2) Have a gun.
- (3) Have it on you.
- (4) Have a plan to kill everyone you meet - they might
be a wolf.
-
- http://drtom.posterous.com/
-
- Copyright (C) 2011, Thomas C. Burnett, all rights reserved.
- Powered by Ubuntu 11.04 beta
-
- Combat Mindset - The Cooper Color Code
-
- The most important means of surviving a lethal confrontation,
according to Cooper, is neither the weapon nor the martial skills. The
primary tool is the combat mindset, set forth in his book, Principles of
Personal Defense.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#cite_note-principle-4>
In the chapter on awareness, Cooper presents an adaptation of the Marine
Corps system to differentiate states of readiness:
-
- The color code, as originally introduced by Jeff Cooper,
had nothing to do with tactical situations or alertness levels, but rather
with one's state of mind. As taught by Cooper, it relates to the degree
of peril you are willing to do something about and which allows you to
move from one level of mindset to another to enable you to properly handle
a given situation. Cooper did not claim to have invented anything in particular
with the color code, but he was apparently the first to use it as an indication
of mental state.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#cite_note-5>
-
- White - Unaware and unprepared. If attacked in Condition
White, the only thing that may save you is the inadequacy or ineptitude
of your attacker. When confronted by something nasty, your reaction will
probably be "Oh my God! This can't be happening to me."
-
- Yellow - Relaxed alert. No specific threat situation.
Your mindset is that "today could be the day I may have to defend
myself". You are simply aware that the world is a potentially unfriendly
place and that you are prepared to defend yourself, if necessary. You use
your eyes and ears, and realize that "I may have to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting>shoot
today". You don't have to be armed in this state, but if you are armed
you should be in Condition Yellow. You should always be in Yellow whenever
you are in unfamiliar surroundings or among people you don't know. You
can remain in Yellow for long periods, as long as you are able to "Watch
your six." (In aviation 12 o'clock refers to the direction in front
of the aircraft's nose. Six o'clock is the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot>blind
spot behind the pilot). In Yellow, you are "taking in" surrounding
information in a relaxed but alert manner, like a continuous 360 degree
radar sweep. As Cooper put it, "I might have to shoot."
-
- Orange - Specific alert. Something is not quite right
and has your attention. Your radar has picked up a specific alert. You
shift your primary focus to determine if there is a threat (but you do
not drop your six). Your mindset shifts to "I may have to shoot that
person today", focusing on the specific target which has caused the
escalation in alert status. In Condition Orange, you set a mental trigger:
"If that person does "X", I will need to stop them".
Your pistol usually remains holstered in this state. Staying in Orange
can be a bit of a mental strain, but you can stay in it for as long as
you need to. If the threat proves to be nothing, you shift back to Condition
Yellow.
-
- Red - Condition Red is fight. Your mental trigger (established
back in Condition Orange) has been tripped. "If "X" happens
I will shoot that person".
-
- In short, the Color Code helps you "think"
in a fight. As the level of danger increases, your willingness to take
certain actions increases. If you ever do go to Condition Red, the decision
to use lethal force has already been made (your "mental trigger"
has been tripped).
-
- The following are some of Cooper's additional comments
on the subject.
-
- "Considering the principles of personal defense,
we have long since come up with the Color Code. This has met with surprising
success in debriefings throughout the world. The Color Code, as we preach
it, runs white, yellow, orange, and red, and is a means of setting one's
mind into the proper condition when exercising lethal violence, and is
not as easy as I had thought at first.
-
- There is a problem in that some students insist upon
confusing the appropriate color with the amount of danger evident in the
situation. As I have long taught, you are not in any color state because
of the specific amount of danger you may be in, but rather in a mental
state which enables you to take a difficult psychological step."Now,
however, the government has gone into this and is handing out color codes
nationwide based upon the apparent nature of a peril. It has always been
difficult to teach the Gunsite Color Code, and now it is more so.
-
- We cannot say that the government's ideas about colors
are wrong, but that they are different from what we have long taught here."The
problem is this: your combat mind-set is not dictated by the amount of
danger to which you are exposed at the time. Your combat mind-set is properly
dictated by the state of mind you think appropriate to the situation. You
may be in deadly danger at all times, regardless of what the Defense Department
tells you. The color code which influences you does depend upon the willingness
you have to jump a psychological barrier against taking irrevocable action.
That decision is less hard to make since the jihadis have already made
it."
-
- He further simplified things in Vol 13 #7 of his Commentaries.
-
- "In White you are unprepared and unready to take
lethal action. If you are attacked in White you will probably die unless
your adversary is totally inept.
-
- In Yellow you bring yourself to the understanding that
your life may be in danger and that you may have to do something about
it.
-
- In Orange you have determined upon a specific adversary
and are prepared to take action which may result in his death, but you
are not in a lethal mode.
-
- In Red you are in a lethal mode and will shoot if circumstances
warrant."
-
- "Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of
the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons."
-
- "The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake
about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the
moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the
table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny.
In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed
with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized."
-
- "The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it
has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil
purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot
be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly
be corrected by good men with rifles."
-
- -Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle
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