Tag: Gunfighter

Taking a Break to Usher in the Future

I take a lot of pride into being able to produce a lot of work in a 24-hour period. However, presently I have a lot of big projects that I’m working on so for about 60 days I’m going to take a bit of time off this news outlet so that I can contribute that time to a book I’ve been thinking about for several years now called A Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Even with my very busy schedule I write around 1200 words per day, and to get the book done, I need to give myself that time to put those words into an actual book. The strategy for doing this is obvious from my perspective. When you want to put more chips on the table to sweeten the pot, you have to make sure you have the right hand, and I do. The timing for this project is ideal so its time to make that move.

Don’t worry, I’ll return to this effort after the time indicated. But in the meantime, I need to focus on the themes of the book instead of covering everything all the time. I have always viewed this site more as a talk radio program where freedom of thought can stream over the words without worrying too much about grammar and little structural errors, in the same way that my experience with talk radio taught me. Not to get too hung up on the 8th grade English teacher rules of language and focus more on getting the ideas out of your head and down on paper so that people can share in those sentiments and help build a movement toward a more creative and more free future. The reality of such experiments is that most people think the same things, but what they have to overcome is the alienation that comes from structured politics in isolating people from their biological need for collective sentiment, a parody of our ancient past. The wave of the future of course is the one of the American, independent, wanting to break the rules of conformity which holds us back, and the understanding that we make money in America, we aren’t ruled by it.

I have offered all this work free of charge because I want to help people come to terms with themselves, and to ultimately allow that freedom to be reflected at the voting booth. This new project of mine is for sale, so there are higher expectations for the results. If I want to do my best on it, then I need to give it the time required. Regarding the book and how it gets to market and all those elements, it takes a lot of work and won’t be a fast deal. But nothing happens until you actually write it. Lately as I have come to understand the need for a book like it, my mind has been obsessed over its contents. It took a few years for me to work out the theme and how it would distinguish itself from other business books on strategy. Thankfully, over the last several months I have had all my points sharpened into what has given me a distinct and unusual way to look at the world of business not under previous presidential administrations where some of the concepts I’ll be proposing would be laughed at by previous modes of thinking. But the Trump economy is a very real thing and will have long lasting impacts, and that change in market focus will require a uniquely “American” perspective, which will be the primary theme of the book.

For so many years America has been studying how other people do things and has been concerned about the feelings of other countries to the point of crippling our own economy to appease them. Yet America is the premier market driver of the world and has the strongest economy. So, it should be obvious that they should be studying us, not us them. And we need to understand that what we do is more effective than what others do and to finally be proud of that attribute. There has been an invisible force active and I see it every day when dealing with people no matter where in the world that they are, that highlights the weaknesses of our natures instead of seeking to overcome them, which has a direct impact on overall productivity. I think there is a lot more juice that can be squeezed out of the orange and I am very excited to show others how to do it.

The way the world works is that even if I put these thoughts down for people to read for free, they would not value them. By paying for the work, naturally more value is applied to the subject matter. So for the long term gain, the short term refocus is more than worth it. Ironically all this became very clear to me the other night, while playing poker. There are so many terms that come from poker that are applicable to business and I couldn’t help but think of the early days of pure capitalism as adventurers, pirates and politicians invented what we consider poker today in the saloons of New Orleans, just ahead of westward expansion, which unleased one of the most ambitious periods of world history. The shackles of mankind fell away. Not only was the practice of slavery coming to an end due to the American Constitution and the philosophy of it but also the concept of kings and queens of Europe suddenly not being a concern of average people. Those people could suddenly gain land and wealth if only they had the courage to endure the wild frontier, and it was along those lines that the idea for the gunfighter emerged, not like the samurai of Japan dedicated to protecting the house of their lord, but the gunfighter was out for themselves essentially for the first time in history. Poker was a game that emerged out of this culture and involved playing kings and queens for advantage, not worship.

That is essentially the game of American business. I’ve read many books on the subject and to some degree or another everyone misses the mark. My life is unique in that I have had my foot in lots of different fields and at high levels. Yet I have always stayed very grounded. I recently had a very important meeting with representatives of the Trump administration and an hour later was playing with my grandkids in the yard. In my mind I consider all those things equally important, and it is from that perspective that I have some unique thoughts to offer on the matter of business conduct not just around the world, but from the perspective of the American.

It’s time to stop apologizing, or hiding our thoughts and feelings to appease others, and to get to the concepts of value and how they come about in business, and therefor the conduct of politics on the world stage. Most of the books of this nature that are offered on the local bookstore shelves all in my mind have their value, and I have learned a little bit from all of them. But what is needed is something that unites many fields of thought into a concept that isn’t just a reflection of where we have come from, but where we are going, especially in this new Trump world. To me its very exciting and I think everyone who reads here every day will enjoy the results. So, don’t freak out when you don’t get a daily article from me for a few months. They’ll be back. And once I get this project moving forward, I think you’ll find that the daily articles will be better than ever.

I was originally planning to write this book about ten years from now, however recent events on many different fronts have convinced me that its needed now, (now being loosely affiliated in the publishing world as during the Trump administration years). By the time we arrive at his last day in office in 2024 America will be very much a different place, much better than it was in 2016 when he started office, and American business will be the envy of the world. At that point in time people are going to want a guidebook, so that’s why I’m writing it now. It’s an endeavor that is worth doing, and in these kinds of things, timing is everything.

Rich Hoffman
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The Morality of being a Gunfighter: How guns make America a more intellectual culture–and improve lives

From the anti-gun people, especially after the Vegas mass shooting there has been this constant term they use “you don’t need so many guns.” They say it as if they were the authority on living and had the complications of life all figured out as a superior philosophic matrix. Yet I look at their lives, the losers on Saturday Night Live, the Hollywood industry, the open criminals like Hillary Clinton and the DNC workers of 2016 and I must conclude, who on earth would take advice from people so messed up? Who are these people to give us advice about anything? I wouldn’t trust them to tell me where the corner deli is in New York city that could sell me a pack of gum, let alone advise me on how many guns I should have or even why I should have them. Even worse, their declarations that guns should be made illegal in any form indicates a complete lack of respect for the kind of living we have in the Midwest of the country—essentially the Red State middle of the entire country. Essentially only the coastal regions have these liberal losers driving policy. Guns for everyone else is a fact of life. They are certainly a big part of my life. Here is video of what I do almost every night for exercise. It’s how I practice Cowboy Fast Draw in my private range. The goal of this activity is to draw and fire my Ruger Vaquero as fast as I can once the target light blinks on solid. Once the target blinks three times it lets me know that the next time the light comes on that I need to draw and fire. My time is registered on a display on my workbench. It’s a fun activity that really sharpens your mind, and I enjoy doing it almost every night at least for 15 to 30 minutes.

When people say that we don’t need guns, well I’d say, we don’t need footballs, golf clubs, or baseball bats either. All of those things could be used as weapons if people were so inclined, but in a civil society nobody would even think of such a problem. Most of the people I know have guns and nobody goes out on a killing spree after dinner. When shooting in my private range I never think to use those guns on other people. Always my use of them is to increase my speed and accuracy in shooting a target under conditions of duress. The process of doing that helps me in other parts of my life. Now to the pot smoking loser on Saturday Night Live who does things during the after party that they’d never want to tell their parents, I wouldn’t expect them to understand my love of guns. Because they are still looking for mechanisms in life to help them manage all the pressures they experience. I look at their lives where they smoke, drink or have too much sex and would say that those are all factors contributing to the problems they have in their lives. I don’t have those problems. Instead I shoot and spend time in my range working out solutions to very complicated problems. Shooting helps me and many others live a better life.

If you visit England presently you will find everywhere some visage to their Norman period where knights were part of their national identity. It doesn’t mean that people want to go cut off the heads of their enemies when they hold a wooden sword from a gift shop in London—it’s just means that people are paying regional respect to an order which built the identity of the nation. If you go to Japan you find much of the same, everywhere is some visage to the samurai culture and behind that is the constant symbol of the sword. Even going to a hibachi grill to get some very expensive Kobe Beef you will see the cooks emulating the ghosts of their samurai heritage as they prepare food in front of you. It is very important to them and is a huge part of their national character. You don’t see radical leftists attacking these countries for their history of violence and the modern respect that is still given regarding the weapons which forged their nations.

In America it is the cowboy which created the nature of our country. And behind the cowboy was the six-gun and the mythology of dueling. The reason that dueling is still such a romantic idea in the period of the Old West is that it is respectable that people would face off against each other to settle a value judgment. To have a value that people were willing to defend to the death is actually a noble idea—especially in these complicated days of leftist interpretation into the events that leave people always feeling empty. In that emptiness they seek to fill the void with bad habits—such as the smoking, drinking and over charged sex. Regarding sex, if you spend more than a half hour per day thinking about sex—you are wasting your time. When you are young and always looking for some flower to pollinate, maybe you spend more time thinking about it if you are a male. If you are a female you likely won’t because you are in charge of the sexual experience and can decide when and how often, but nobody should spend more time on average than a half an hour per day. Anything more is an obsessive activity that degrades the experience. People who do think about it more than that allotted time need to develop more hobbies.

I view shooting in America as a deeply philosophic experience. The political left has successfully painted an opposite picture, that gun users in America are a bunch of dumb hillbillies who can’t speak in words longer than two syllables. Yet the opposite is true, liberals who criticize the gun culture are the dumb people, they are ones who can’t change their own oil, or fix a leak in their sink. They are the ones who fall apart whenever there is a death in the family or run to substance abuse when they feel insecure about something. People I know who shoot guns, especially people in the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, or in SASS are some of the nicest and well-rounded people I’ve met anywhere—including in those European and Asian countries that people think have so much “rich” culture. I would argue that in America we have our own rich culture built on westward expansion—which was a very “moral” enterprise in the scope of history—and guns were the backbone of that culture that we should all be proud of.

In the video the times I was recording were in the .450 range. I’m not happy with those numbers and the purpose of the slow motion is to show myself that I need to fire the gun much sooner out of the holster instead of pushing the gun forward. That is what makes that kind of training so satisfying, and worth pursuing. Shown in regular speed everything happens very fast. But when you slow it down, I can see where I need to improve, and that requires training my mind to think that much faster. In applying those techniques to my life that I learn at the gun range, it makes me a much better person in my day to day life. I think much faster when there are problems to solve and my thinking is much more accurate. After all, the brain doesn’t know if you are trying to solve the problem of hitting a target or trying to solve global economic problems. It sees everything in context, so by practicing something productive like “shooting” it helps the mind solve other problems not directly connected to the shooting sports. That is why shooting is a good thing for all Americans to do, and if more people did, especially the coastal liberals, they’d find that they could lead better lives and would have a lot fewer problems.

I’m not personally going to allow people who are broken intellectually—which most liberals are—and have them beat on gun owners anymore. My experience with guns is a very positive one and violence has nothing to do with it. Guns may have been invented to expedite the experience of death, or make people more efficient in killing others—but as tools of intellect, they are more useful in making a respectful class of people who think independently, and can manage their affairs in a superior way over their liberal protestors. I see nothing negative about my experiences on my private gun range in the sport of Cowboy Fast Draw. The practice of it makes me more efficient as a person and gives me an outlet for the stresses in my life that shooting baskets in my driveway or playing golf don’t quite reach. People who speak against guns just don’t understand why they are important culturally, and there are likely a lot of reasons for it. Maybe they had crappy parents. Maybe they didn’t have grandparents around to teach them important lessons when they were younger. Maybe they are just losers in life. Whatever it is, it’s not the problem of gun owners to bend their habits to these broken people. Broken people are not allowed to create the standard for what America is. And gun owners are not the broken people. It’s the people who criticize that culture who are in true need of a different way of thinking. A trip to the gun range would help a lot of them. But for the rest, they need a lot more.

I am proud to call myself a gunfighter. For me it’s no different from training to be a boxer, a martial artist or an MMA fighter—it’s a sport. And becoming good at that sport has a carryover effect into other things in life that are more important to good living. That is why the anti-gun people are so wrong on the gun culture in America. They don’t like America even though they try to sell their ideas by saying they are part of our culture—they clearly aren’t and seek to change it in everything they do. For them it starts by pissing on a bar wall outside drunk off their young asses and it ends with them becoming radical progressives in congress, or heads of major networks. They are all equally wrong. To speak against guns is to speak against the concept and intentions of American life. Part of that life is displayed in the sports we use to articulate our culture. Being a gunfighter isn’t the same as being a killer. These days it means a person is building foundation skills to become more precise and quicker in their life—and it’s a personal challenge worth the undertaking. It’s certainly not something to be outlawed because the more sensitive and less intellectual people on the west and east coasts are afraid of guns. What they really fear is what they might learn about themselves if they were to embark on a journey where they had to become better at something and challenge themselves. What they might learn in that process is what they are running from—and that is all the reason why guns should be more prevalent in America, instead of less.

Rich Hoffman
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Photos of a Modern Gunfighter: The many benefits of a healthy passion

 

IMG_0159You might have noticed dear reader that I have some different pictures on my websites.  It has been a long time since I’ve updated any profile pictures and it was appropriate to reflect my new stage in life.  So my daughter at Brooke Townsend Photography.com set up a time to do a photo shoot with me and the result was some of these pictures that you are now seeing.  I have a complete life, I do a lot of things—I’ve been all over the world and done a lot of important tasks that people think are important.  I’ve raised children that I’m very proud of and I’ve been married to the same woman for over a quarter century.  By all accounts I am a very successful person bulging with skills and accomplishments that many would be envious of.  I don’t say all that to brag, but I work hard every day to be the best that I can be, and I have certainly done that.  So my daughter and I were talking about what kind of pictures to take of me—how to sum up my world views and essence into a simple photograph.  It’s not just my opinion, but those of her clients, my daughter has emerged on the world stage as a highly sought out photographer and her rates reflect the quality and uniqueness of her work, so I trust her professional recommendations.  She and I set out on an early spring morning recently to capture my essence that best represented this stage of my life and the result is what follows.IMG_0217

Of course I can pretty much buy whatever I want these days so it should say a lot that the possession I most love is my fast draw holster rig for my .45 Vaquero.  It is specially made and is my single most cherished item that I currently have.  With that said we focused on it for these photographs because as I said some time ago, I consider my new career to be that of a gunfighter.  Standing up for the Second Amendment, taking constitutional positions that are regarded legally as Anti-Federalist instead of Federalist—and my love of history really prevents me from any other type of career.  I like to stand up against bullies, at every level of the social spectrum—in manners of career, politics, and private life—that life as a gunfighter is really my only choice.IMG_0303

Being a gunfighter to me isn’t what it was during the period of the Old West.  It’s not about killing other people—it’s more of a sport, like being a basketball player, or a football star.  Being a gunfighter is what I enjoy most in this case within the sport of Cowboy Fast Draw which I practice at every day in some fashion or another.  A lot of men my age get heavy into golf—and I can see the appeal.  It can be magical to go to Dick’s sporting goods and pick out top-of-the-line golf clubs and spend many afternoons playing rounds of golf with the material acquisitions acquired through financial success.  But that is too stereotypical for me to really enjoy because so many people do it.  I need something that represents my unique life, and a gunfighter embodies my decisions much better—to the level I am quite excited about it.IMG_0254

My daughter did a wonderful job of capturing the light in a way that embodied how I feel about this stage.  If I look proud wearing the gun and holster rig from Mernickle it’s because I am.  For one reason or another I spent ten years planning on how I could incorporate these things in my life.  Most of the reason was that I worked too much so I didn’t have time for a hobby, or career as a gunfighter—because it takes a lot of work to do it right.  It’s the same situation with my .500 Magnum from Smith & Wesson.  I thought about those guns for a very long time and finally picked them up when I was able to make a clear decision to commit some time to caring for them as a sport.  I’m not the kind of person who just buys things to have them, then puts them on display in my home for other to look at.  I actually have to make them a part of my life.  The Mernickle holster rig is something that I plan to make a part of my daily life, so it is now a constant companion to me.  I thought about it so long that of course finally wearing it made me proud.IMG_0283 (2)

I think it’s a shame that firearms in general have such a negative stigma applied to them.  To me guns are all about great precision machining, and science—the combustible elements of lead projectiles mixed with gunpowder in closed dimensional quarters guided by human skill toward an intended target are the keys to their utilization.  To get an idea of what I’m talking about click the picture on the sidebar next to this article, the one where the gun is pointed toward the camera.  That is a reaction timer test that records your ability to identify a target and react to it within thousands of a second. A good time is anything in the .100 range, from the time you see the light to when you click the mouse button.  Mastering those types of skills don’t just help you in shooting sports, but in all aspects of life—because it forces your brain to think faster and to work more efficiently.  The difference between a time in the .300s and .100s is barely perceptible to human measurement—but by practicing, you can begin to feel it when you get a good time and when you don’t.  For instance, it might be remembered that I survived a very serious motorcycle crash last year.  It was only because of lightning reflexes that I managed to walk away with all my body parts and only a few cracked bones.  My $12,000 motorcycle was totaled, but I still made it to a very important business meeting an hour later because of how I develop myself though my hobbies—with an emphasis on speed and accuracy through working with bull whips for so many years.IMG_0248

Dedicating time toward the skills it takes to be a gunfighter has a spillover effect into all aspects of life, so I see it as a tremendous benefit.  While it might be out-of-step with mainstream thought, my gun rig with my Vaquero is my most prized worldly possession and my daughter did a good job of capturing it in our photo shoot.  I wear it all the time at home and whenever I’m in my garage, it has become mandated to always be at my side while on my property.  Whether I’m in my shop reloading ammunition, or target shooting for hours on end, my new Mernickle holster rig has become emblematic with my personality, so we are making it an important part of my life going forward—which is reflected in the pictures that will be taken of me in the future.  Guns have always been a part of my life, but they’ve always been in the background.  Now they will be very much more a part of the foreground.  As society has become more progressive, those of us who love traditional American concepts should stand up proudly on its behalf.  And that is what I intend to do with each year that emerges hereafter.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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