The best example I had of this I had today in class was…
A student who has not been to class in 3 weeks comes the day of his skill test with the handgun. He was not in class for the lectures on the handgun or any of the practice days. He did not know today was the test. He had no idea how to fill the mag. He did not fare to well on the test.

Situational awareness can save you money. Not to mention hastle and head ache.

Recently my brother-in-law had his situational awareness save him $200 worth of groceries and ammo.
He was at wally-world. He had purchased some ammo then did his grocery shopping. After getting through the grocery line he was making his way out side. On the way he stopped to get a red box movie. The box at this particular place is set up so he had no room to the sides to park his buggy. He parked it directly behind him. During his movie transaction he caught his buggy moving out of the corner of his eye. When he turned around he saw a guy heading tword the parking lot with his buggy. He grabbed the push bar to stop the guy as the bad guy was pulling from the front. After a brief struggle and some cussing the BG let go and started across the parking lot.
As strange as it sounds a cop was right there. He stopped the argument. The BG had a good story line all set up. In the end my bro in law told them to just forget it. He didn’t want to spend the day watching WM camera footage to prove the guy was a thief.
Watch your stuff. This is more common than you would think.

I have advocated this for years in a specific case. Recently it came up again with a student. Said student was quizing me about buying a new gun. He wanted my advice. He was down to 2 Glock models.

In conversation it comes out that he has a very nice SIG pistol. He likes it a lot but didn’t want to carry it for fear of scratching it. He would like to carry it. He just didn’t want to mess it up.
My advice do him was to unload it and then take it out to his drive way. I told him to then drop it on the ground.

He then would not have to worry aboutt scratching it or getting holster wear on it. From then on he could enjoy it for the tool it was designed to be.

Rather than forcing this wear I much prefer to earn it from honest use. There is not much more beautiful to me than a well worn tool. This is especially true if the tool has been well cared for as well as used.

Even though we don’t usually think of fall as gardening time, we should take advantage of it. It is cool out. This is perfect weather to be building outside projects. Preping a garden bed for spring anyone?