AMERICAN CONTINGENCY

[Adrenaline_6]

Therein lies the problem. You can stay in small groups and remain as anonymous as possible and keeping the trust factor high, but, in the end for the most part, ineffective in the grand scheme of things.

or...you band together as much as possible, be less anonymous while the trust factor goes down, but be able to be way more effective and accomplish a lot more at a national level.

You cannot have both.

The IRA, although remaining "effective" was never really a serious threat in the grand scheme of things, more of a serious nuisance.

If big government gets to the point that we all hope it doesn't, being small isolated militias with little to no organization with others who can just be squashed one be one, will, in the end, accomplish nothing.

It's quite a quandary for sure.

[Honu]

YUP
I do think we can make a dif but its not about the size of the group its about what each one of us are wiling to do
It’s also not about how much ammo we have or guns we have that is a tiny part if needed cause once that starts its a whole other game

Therein lies the problem. You can stay in small groups and remain as anonymous as possible and keeping the trust factor high, but, in the end for the most part, ineffective in the grand scheme of things.

or...you band together as much as possible, be less anonymous while the trust factor goes down, but be able to be way more effective and accomplish a lot more at a national level.

You cannot have both.

The IRA, although remaining "effective" was never really a serious threat in the grand scheme of things, more of a serious nuisance.

If big government gets to the point that we all hope it doesn't, being small isolated militias with little to no organization with others who can just be squashed one be one, will, in the end, accomplish nothing.

It's quite a quandary for sure.

[OH58D]

Therein lies the problem. You can stay in small groups and remain as anonymous as possible and keeping the trust factor high, but, in the end for the most part, ineffective in the grand scheme of things.

or...you band together as much as possible, be less anonymous while the trust factor goes down, but be able to be way more effective and accomplish a lot more at a national level.

You cannot have both.

The IRA, although remaining "effective" was never really a serious threat in the grand scheme of things, more of a serious nuisance.

If big government gets to the point that we all hope it doesn't, being small isolated militias with little to no organization with others who can just be squashed one be one, will, in the end, accomplish nothing.

It's quite a quandary for sure.

I still think that a couple of well trained sniper teams (2 people) deployed to hot spots around the US could be very effective. It could be effective locally if need be. No tactical garb, no militia - just quiet and efficient killers to take out the problems and melt away into the population.

I had my own skills in the Army, but lying prone and doing controlled breathing before taking the shot wasn't one of them. However, there are people out there who gain such skills in the military, or do competition shooting in the civilian world. Never count out small groups of people with talent.

[Adrenaline_6]

I still think that a couple of well trained sniper teams (2 people) deployed to hot spots around the US could be very effective. It could be effective locally if need be. No tactical garb, no militia - just quiet and efficient killers to take out the problems and melt away into the population.

I had my own skills in the Army, but lying prone and doing controlled breathing before taking the shot wasn't one of them. However, there are people out there who gain such skills in the military, or do competition shooting in the civilian world. Never count out small groups of people with talent.

Its not that I doubt individuals skills, quite the contrary, but intel, logistics and support would be needed to be effective for long periods or the amount of "damage" done would be short lived and those teams as good as they are will eventually hit some bad luck and have less ability to get out of it.

[OH58D]

Its not that I doubt individuals skills, quite the contrary, but intel, logistics and support would be needed to be effective for long periods or the amount of "damage" done would be short lived and those teams as good as they are will eventually hit some bad luck and have less ability to get out of it.

What I am imagining is more of something we used during the American Revolution. Small teams of Minute Men moving to a tree line, taking shots, then disappearing in the woods. Not a big enough group that involves too much to support it. We're talking guerilla warfare that the average citizen with some kind of training could engage in.

I remember doing insertion and extraction missions utilizing two or three Little Birds and/or a UH-60 and nothing bigger than a well armed squad of operators. Easy in and easy out.

[Honu]

Always liked vigilance elite channel did not realize his first interview/chat was with glover
pretty modest dude I would say

[sundance435]

Was it "Body of Lies" with DiCaprio where the terror organization goes back to using dead drops and couriers instead of cell phones and the feds have zero clue how to monitor or disrupt that method of communication? It's a lost art and I feel like that's not far from the truth. Feds are lazy today because they have buildings full of tech-savvy analysts. Go back to the old ways and they have no clue.

This seems way too organized, with way too big of a digital trail for anyone who expresses interest, which is a red flag itself. I have a small subset of friends that I trust for these kinds of things - this might be a good "101" course for someone who doesn't have that opportunity, but it seems like it could also be easily weaponized by some of the "violent actors" it's intended to help prepare you for.

[HCrum87hc]

Update: I'm back from the AmCon training at the Sawmill in Laurens, SC. It was pretty decent. I'm thinking my expectations may have been a little high, but knowing the classes were only 3.5-4 hours, they could only cover so much. I also need to remind myself the courses were at no expense to me (except for picking up brass), so I certainly got more than I paid for. We started each day with registration, the Pledge of Allegiance, some mindset stuff, and a safety brief. Each class also did its own safety brief. The classes consisted of 20-30 people with one cadre per 5 students in each class, so the instructor/student ratio was decent for so many people. In most classes we did relays of 10 shooters at a time. The cadre's backgrounds were legit, and I definitely wouldn't hesitate to take a 2 day version of any of these classes with them, but it's difficult to fit much into a few hours.

I had signed up for the Intro to Handgun Optics and No light/Low light pistol on Saturday and Carbine Fundamentals on Sunday. The biggest issue I noticed was that due to it being free, you get people who were...lacking. I'm glad they were there getting some form of training, but it definitely limited the handgun optics class, specifically. We wasted a lot of time zeroing and going over some pretty basic stuff, especially with one of the students. I didn't get too much out of that class, except to confirm that my process with a RDS on a pistol is good to go in terms of presentation and tracking the dot, which is nice to get confirmation on from someone who knows what they're doing. I could tell the instructors wanted to cover a lot more, but when you're limited by time and the lowest common denominator student, it's tough to cover everything.

Not having any lowlight training, I was really looking forward to the lowlight course, but again, left a bit disappointed. We were supposed to start with some classroom instruction around 6pm, but it got pushed back to about 6:45. The class was supposed to last until 10, but they wanted to cut it short so everyone could get together and do a live Face time call with Mike Glover at 9, which meant we ended at 8:40. The classroom instruction was pretty good. We went over several different techniques of using a handheld light, types of lights, light discipline, and got into the lumens/candela discussion a bit. We then had about 45 minutes of range time. I'd never shot at night, so it was good to just experience that at least. I tried out a few techniques with the handheld and then the pistol light. We then lined up in two lines and did some basic shooting on the move. The tendency for almost everyone was to stop moving forward when they activated the light on the threat command, but the goal was to keep moving. This wasn't much of an issue in the handgun RDS class, but for some reason almost everyone did it during lowlight.

The carbine fundamentals class on Sunday was definitely my favorite class and the one I got the most out of. I've also never had any formal carbine training, so it was very beneficial for me. Ron Holmes of Ryker USA was the lead instructor for this class. We definitely did the most shooting in this class and covered the most info. He and the other cadre did a great job covering a lot of stuff without overwhelming us. They also explained why we did things and delved into some more advanced stuff pertaining to what we were doing, but we didn't practice any of the more advanced stuff.

We started out with going over basic manipulation, different ready positions (low ready and high port), sight picture, and then did some dry fire. We then moved to starting at the two ready positions and doing single shots on command, then double taps, then triples. From there we broke up into two relays and did some box drills and transitions and worked on moving from standing to kneeling and back up. At that point they set us up in three lines to run relays on some steel. Each line had three targets of varying sizes and distances between each other. They would call out a random order of left, center, right and have us shoot our three targets in the directed order. On reloads, we would kneel, reload, finish the shot string from kneeling, and then stand and redo the shot string. This ensured we stayed on target when standing, as we all had a tendency to get complacent after kneeling and not checking our targets as we stood. This final drill brought everything we had done together and was a good way to end the class.

All in all, it was a good weekend. Again, I got a lot more than I paid for, and wouldn't hesitate to take longer, paid classes from these instructors. The facility at the Sawmill is great. They have some nice lodgings, classrooms, dining area, and a gym. They have numerous ranges ranging from 25 to 1400 yards. Everyone was very cordial and helpful. There were people from all over the country, coming as far as Washington State. I think the farthest that drove was from Colorado. Oh, and they had a food truck on site with some of the best tacos I've ever had. They would have been worth the hour drive alone.

[Ironman8]

So what were your impressions of the organization itself?

Impressions of the people running it (not the contracted firearms instructors for the weekend, the AMCON personnel)?

AND last but not least, what was your impression of the type of crowd that they attract (are they newbies, bubbas, “militia / III%’er” types, or fairly switched on)?

[HCrum87hc]

There really wasn't a ton of AmCon stuff being pushed. The morning briefing covered some stuff about mindset and discussions over all the crap going on right now around the country. Nothing radical or militant by any means. It mostly focused on being switched on and ready to defend your family and neighborhood.

The head guy this weekend was Scott Puckett, the owner of the Sawmill. He seemed very legit and sincere. He was happy to host us and provide a place for patriotic Americans to get some training and make some connections. I don't know if he's considered "AmCon personnel," but he was the closest thing to it. Mike Glover was not present, as mentioned.

There were no militia types or bubbas that I saw. Most people seemed pretty switched on, outside of a small handful. However, that handful seemed to have a good mindset and were intent on improving their skills. We did have one guy get booted during lowlight for safety infractions, but on the whole, in terms of the types of people attending, I was pleasantly surprised.