Wednesday Wisdom: 10 December 2025

Medal of Honor: John Upshur Dennis Page

On the night of 10 December 1950, the convoy reached the bottom of the pass but was halted by a strong enemy force at the front and on both flanks. Deadly small-arms fire poured into the column. Realizing the danger to the column as it lay motionless, LTC Page fought his way to the head of the column and plunged forward into the heart of the hostile position. His intrepid action so surprised the enemy that their ranks became disordered and suffered heavy casualties. 

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A Burner Phone?

Whether you should be using a burner phone depends on your risk model—the factors and concerns that are specific to you. Every one of us is exposed to a different set of risks that can vary depending on your nationality, citizenship, political views, profession, and much more. For example, lawyers, activists, and journalists may be at higher risk of being targeted than, say, an electrician or a stay-at-home mom.

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Learn Interrogation Techniques from a Professional

Professional interrogators are just that — professionals. Their techniques are not rocket science or mysterious sorcery, but they work. If you want to figure out what happened in a given situation or if the person you are talking to is lying and how to get them, as we say in the trade, to make statements against their best interests, read on.

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The Modern Version: The Ant and the Grasshopper

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

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What is Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) and why do you need it?

U2F security keys help to keep your online accounts secure even if your passwords are compromised.

Passwords alone aren’t enough to secure your online accounts. Too many passwords are easy for hackers to crack, and even if you use unique, strong passwords, they could still be stolen any day in a phishing attack or data breach.

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Red Dots – Are We Training to Use Them Best?

The thinking is that officers would save the time typically spent shifting back and forth between the intended target and their sights to make an accurate shot. Thus, officers could fire their pistols sooner and hopefully more accurately.

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Myth: Criminals buy guns at gun stores and gun shows

Fact: Fewer than 1% of crime guns are acquired at gun shows, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Fact: In total, about 10-11% of crime guns come from retail sources where background checks are conducted. About 2.3% of guns used in violent crime come from retail sources.

Fact: One study of adult offenders living in the Chicago area determined that criminals obtain most of their guns through their social network and personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or even theft. This agrees with other, broader studies of incarcerated felons.

Fact: Another city-wide study, this one in Pittsburgh, showed that 80% of people illegally carrying guns were prohibited from possessing guns, and that at least of 30% of the guns were stolen.

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Cooper Commentaries: Vol. 2, No. 14; 10 November 1994

Per Jeff Cooper: Let us consider the "L-shaped Pepper Popper." The standard Pepper Popper goes down when it is well hit, and stays down. This makes it necessary for somebody, usually the shooter, to step forward and set it up again. This is fine for pistol activity where the ranges are short, but when one uses the Popper as a rifle target the problem of getting it to come back up again becomes "labor intensive." At the recent Gunsite Reunion at Whittington Center, John Gannaway showed us some heavy-duty Poppers which were designed to bounce but not fall when struck solidly by a rifle of adequate power. They worked quite well, but they were somewhat difficult to judge at 300 meters - or even 200. Now then, let us consider the provision of a forward-extended counter-weight affixed to the base of the popper. This could be a smooth metal rod on which a sliding weight could be adjusted for calibration. When properly set up this popper would flinch to a hit by starting over rearward and then it would come back to vertical due to the adjusted weight on the rod. Such a device would be more complicated to manufacture and hence more expensive than a standard popper, but it would be more useful for training and practice purposes, and if made of proper armored steel it could be made reactive for almost any caliber, even including the 223. Why didn't we think of this before? (Many years ago, I shot matches in Maryland with THE John Pepper – the inventor of the Pepper Popper. He was a great shot.)

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Out Where the West Begins: A Deputy and His R8

I think I’ll do okay,” he told me with a slowly-developing wry smile under a horseshoe mustache (not to be confused with a Fu Manchu) and an immaculate platinum four-inch brim Serratelli western hat. I always wondered how he kept that thing so clean patrolling our infamous red dirt roads. In retrospect, I had probably come across a little incredulous as to Garfield County Deputy Cory Rink’s choice of new duty pistol while we were discussing the dynamics of modern law enforcement shootings, split times, reloading speed and accuracy. 

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