It does not matter what someone else (whoever they are) can do, it only matters what you can do.

I stole the title for this post (and made it grammatically better) from Jeff Gonzales's post Skill development and then some.  Lots of good stuff in that post, let's look at some of the highlights.

First, let's talk about this "gunfighter" business.  I'm not one.  Neither are you.  About the only people that can, and should, be using that term are those with current or previous employment like Jeff's.  That's it. Not cops (and I'm including SWAT... perhaps ESPECIALLY SWAT), not 7-11 cashiers, not accountants, attorneys, or doctors...  So I'm ignoring it.  And the thing is, shooting is shooting either way, so who really cares?  "Gunfighter" is getting to be like "sheepdog".

Isolation vs. Compound Skills
Friggin' awesome.  Something that escapes most people, and also applies to virtually every single task you physically perform.  One might even argue that there is a third level, which is Fundamentals.    I don't know if the below is how Jeff would break them down (probably not), but this is my take.

Fundamentals
Fundamentals are the basics.  Sight alignment, trigger control, and stance.  "Fine motor skills" could also fall into this category.  Things like pressing the magazine release button, manipulating the mechanical safety, etc.  Think of them as the most basic skills or manipulations that you can perform individually.  You can, and maybe should sometimes, practice ONLY your trigger press.  Or dropping magazines.

Stance
Some will argue stance doesn't matter because in a gunfight/match you won't get to use your perfect static range stance.  That's silly.  If you understand stance and what aspects are important, you can make intelligent choices about what to sacrifice, when, and why when you are confronted with less than ideal circumstances.  To equate this to hunting, if you are presented with a shot on a deer at 100 yards that will require you to shoot offhand standing on a hill, and you understand stance, you may choose to move four feet to the right and rest the gun on that fencepost.  Or wait for the deer to get closer.  Or get off the hill.  Or not take the shot.  If we don't teach people stance and the concepts behind it, then they won't be able to make those decisions.  Or at least not intelligently.  Not teaching a good stance right out of the gate is doing students a massive disservice.  and "because tactical" is a bullshit reason that only exposes your own lack of depth.

Trigger Control
Trigger control.  Press the trigger straight to the rear.  It matters not whether you do that after an "ease to reset", or "slapping".  Whether you're shooting a revolver or a 1911.  In order to disturb the sights as little as possible, press the trigger straight to the rear.  Seems pretty easy, right?  After nearly 20 years of shooting, this is still the one I have a problem with.  Go figure.  Teaching it correctly, and why it matters, and forcing the students to work on it (even if it's to the exclusion of teaching disarms and ninja rolls) is critical to producing good shooters.

Sight Alignment
Sight alignment.  Provided the gun is mechanically adjusted correctly, and you understand the method of alignment with the target that the adjuster made, the projectile's path is determined by the alignment of the sights at the moment said projectile leaves the barrel.  If you understand this, you start to understand trigger control and why it's important (not to mention that stance thing) a whole lot better.

Isolation Skills
To me, these are one step up from the fundamentals.  Put Sight Alignment, Trigger Control, and Stance together and you have the "isolation" skill of marksmanship.  Put together the fundamentals of breaking your support hand grip, pressing the magazine release button, retrieving a fresh magazine, and inserting said magazine into the gun, and you have the "isolation" skill of the reload.  Walking is probably an isolation skill, or it could be if you include doing to in a way that least disturbs the sights on the gun.  Think of it as the first level of combining fundamentals.

Compound Skills
Shooting on the move.  Engaging multiple targets.  Shooting around objects/people/obstructions.  Shooting on the move then reloading while engaging multiple targets around objects/people/obstructions.  See where this is headed?  There are compound skills, and then you can string together the compound skills to have compound-compound skills!  But just like everything to this point you should probably break down and learn to shoot on the move before you work on adding a reload to the mix.  Work on shooting around barricades with your other weak hand before you try to do it with your weak hand.

Evaluation of Skills
If you're not doing something to evaluate your skills and track your progress, you're doing it wrong.  You might as well just go back to the public range with the dirt-shooters and... well... shoot dirt.  Seriously.  If you took up golf you would be forced into this because they do things like keep score.  Even if you just went to the driving range and worked on the isolation skill of the drive, you would still be forced into an evaluation of distance and accuracy.  I guess if you went to the beach and hit balls into the surf you could avoid it.  And for most people, if it were legal, they might as well shoot guns that way too.  and if you're not going to add a timer at some point, you might as well stop using targets too.  Unless, that is, shooting the tightest groups possible with all the time in the world is all you're after.  Shoot one round per day for a year at that point, for all I care.

Gunfighting/Tactical/Sheepdog/Self-Defense/RAHOWA....
"But Rob, I could get in a gunfight on my way home from class tonight!"

Yeah, and pigs could fly out of your ass, eat the monkeys that flew out yesterday, and then win the lottery.  So shut up with that shit already.  Have you ever done the math of just how statistically insignificant the likelihood that a suburban adult man will get himself into a "gunfight" is?  Not to mention the completely inequitable amount of time you sink into "preparing" for this statistically insignificant eventuality?  "But Rob, I don't live in a good neighborhood like the suburbs!"  Then fucking move.  And take the monkey-eating, lottery-winning, flying pigs with you.

"It does not matter what someone else (whoever they are) can do, it only matters what you can do. "
This is something that has been a concept of great interest for me for a long time, especially when one factors in the likelihood-of-a-violent-encounter : time-spent-training-for-same ratio.  Everyone's heard me harp on the physical fitness and general wellness thing enough, but to sum up that track, if you're spending more time at the range than you are getting exercise, eating reasonably well, and limiting your intake of toxins, you're fucked up and you aren't prepared for shit.  But beyond that, you have to do what works for you in your situation.  Real people have real responsibilities.  Real jobs, real families, real day-to-day issues of life.  Just because some instructor or pro shooter can drill the center out doesn't mean you can, or even need to.  In fact, if he can't, I'd be shocked.  Every time someone tells me "oh, ninja-x can do this and this" the first thought I have is "no shit, he's supposed to!  It's his JOB!" (reminds me of this scene)  Do what you need to do, with the time and resources you have available, and be happy with it.  But at the same time, be honest with yourself about your situation, both why you're really training and the reality of the likelihood that you'll need that training, and if you're missing out on hours per week with the family to prepare for something that is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, or spending your retirement money on learning ninja rolls, you're probably fucked up.

"Why are guys so in love with mil-spec parts?"

This is pretty entertaining on several levels.
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1517007_Why_are_guys_so_in_love_with_mil_spec_parts_.html

Level 1 is probably the most important, and that is that he is missing the point.  As I've repeated over and over again, the issue is not that so many companies exceed the minimum standard of "mil-spec", it's that so many companies can't even bring themselves to comply with the baseline.  The ignoramuses (ignorami?) of the internet constantly assume that a company that doesn't comply is exceeding the spec.  This defies logic.  I'm a maker of a knockoff brand of ARs.  I want to make money.  I am presented with two materials, one costs twice what the other costs.  I even have a third option, which is to spend thousands of dollars on R&D to come up with my own proprietary "better" material.  Which do you think I'm going to choose?  90% will choose the cheapest material (DPMS, Olympic Arms, etc.), 9.99% will choose the more expensive material because they have some integrity and want to do it "right (BCM, Daniel Defense, etc.), and 0.01% will look to actually innovate (KAC..., and I can't think of any others).  Again, "Mil-Spec" is a minimum standard, and it's a minimum standard that very few can even bring themselves to meet.  Those that are not required to hold to a standard (Colt), rarely do.

Level 2 is where the fun begins.  And that is that despite two pages of replies, almost none of the people posting can articulate the above.  Why?  Because they are just as clueless as the guy that started the thread.  They fell into the trap of just buying whatever is more expensive and got lucky.  The AR world is very much one of Sneetches when looking at the vast majority of buyers.  Whether one has a sub-standard, non-mil-spec gun or a gun that meets or exceeds the spec is largely a matter of luck and personality type.  The guy that is always looking for a deal and to save a few pennies winds up with a DPMS and the guy that mistakes expense for quality winds up (luckily) with the Colt.  What is truly entertaining is when you get the dummies from group 1 and the dummies from group 2 ARGUING WITH EACH OTHER!  It's like a food-fight on the short bus!  Hey Colt guy, you don't know shit from brown bread any more than the DPMS guy does, you just got lucky on this one.  If you can't respond to a thread like this with content similar to the first paragraph of this post, you are just as bad as the guy that started the thread.  The scary part is when you get someone like the thread-starter who thought he was getting quality because he over-paid and turns out to have bought a bunch of snake oil at 2013 inflated prices.  Ouch.

Level 3 is the guy that started the thread.  Oh boy.  As is usually the case in these situations, he gets outed for being all sand-in-pussy over previous slights on the internet.
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_118/617203_SUPER_EXPENSIVE_AR__over__3000__PICTURE_THREAD.html
He over-paid for sub-standard parts, and still didn't come out with a quality gun or even one that's truly expensive, and gets trumped by the first person replying who posts a truly expensive gun (albeit one that probably cost the poster not $1 and in fact probably MADE him money).  Then we go on to discover that this rocket-surgeon started another thread before that to brag about his "most expensive AR"
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_118/617197_Most_expensive_AR_.html
Frankly, I think the worst part of all of this is that he gets people replying.  Which means there are more of him.

Level 4 is the Chart.  Even after all of this time it's still getting referenced.  I suspect that most of the people that posted about it in the original thread did so because they were being smart asses, but they are referencing it nonetheless.  What is equally interesting is that the Explanation of Features is still live and all anyone has to do is link to it, but for whatever reasons (mostly pathetic Dr. Phil type reasons, I'm sure) they won't.  Not to toot my own horn, but I still haven't seen a better answer the the thread-starter's question than the E of F.

Why do you Care? (or, What's the Point?)

Very often people ask me one of the other of the questions above, or some variation thereof.  They want to know why I bother, why I care, why I engage with "idiots on the internet", etc.  Ironically, it also often comes along with "you're a dick".  I find this ironic because I'm being both accused of caring about other people too much and being a dick.  I'm not sure I get that leap.  

Why I care is that I genuinely want people to avoid the same mistakes I made in the shooting sports.  And I have made a lot.  Most of them have resulted in a ton of money flushed down the toilet to no benefit, and a set of shooting skills that are below where they should be for someone that shoots as much as I do, and for as long as I have.

But what I really want people to do is ENGAGE THEIR FUCKING BRAINS, and be honest with themselves about what it is they want and need from a firearm.  Since all we have to go on are the way that someone presents themselves and the words they use to describe their situation, 

"Grab & Go"

I get a lot of questions from people about "grab and go" solutions.  My first response is typically "what do you think you're grabbing and where do you think you're going?"

To set the stage a bit, and to keep me having to re-write more than necessary, the articles that people have typically read that lead them to asking me these kinds of questions are

Load Carriage for Training Classes

Make Holes, Prevent Holes, Patch Holes

Gun & Gear Recommendations for Starting Out

Some seem to miss the first two for what they are, which is examples of the concepts outlined, not a recipe for what to buy.  Further, the first article was posted 4 September 2008 and the second article was posted 1 January 2010.  The specific gear outlined may not even be available now, let alone what I actually use.  The last, at least, is up to date but is pretty basic.

So let's talk about the concepts, and the core questions.  What are you wanting to grab, and where are you wanting to go?  Some mean they want to grab a pistol and a few supplies for inside the home, while others are wanting something to run off into the wilderness with to use in fighting blue helmets, zombies, or whatever.  Some seem to think these things are one and the same, along with the rig they're going to use for competing, training, etc.  Most often the reason for using the "grab and go" rig for the last two is some clutching to the concept of "train as you fight".  A much better approach is what Pat McNamara calls "train for a fight".  That subtle difference matters.  There is a time to get all geared up and run around in all your muticam goodness, but that time is not every single time you pick up a gun.  A boxer does not solely train by sparring while wearing all his ring gear.  A quarterback does not solely train by playing scrimmage matches.  A race car driver does not solely train on a track filled with dozens of other cars.

I can only assume, then, that at least part of the reason for this quest is one of attempting to save money by having a singular rig that does everything.  In my experience the quest to have one setup to do everything means it will do everything half-assed and nothing well.

Something else to consider is what you are used to carrying.  If your daily exertion is maxed out walking from the house to the car, and the car to the desk, and the desk to lunch, and the reverse of those three, you're fooling yourself if you're going to "go" very far with all that shit you "grabbed".  Most prior military folks will have something of an advantage here in that they may know what it's like to carry a bunch of shit around, but depending on how long ago that service was they may have unrealistic romanticized notions about the "good old days" and may be failing to acknowledge that the guy at the desk isn't the same 22 year old kid humping a pack.  Carrying more than you need, no matter how strong or willful, is stupid.  As is carrying less than you need just to save weight.  Factor that in to your decisions in your "grab and go" kit.

I am a big proponent of being prepared.  Don't get me wrong.  But the truth is that most of that preparation is mental and physical, and far less reliant on gear.  People ask me "what do you use for home defense?" and my response is "whatever is handy."  If my (or your) home defense plan is reliant on a specific gun, in a specific holster, in a specific place in the safe or closet, and you are not in a position to "grab" all that specific shit, it's useless to you.  Or, worse, you go running looking for it and waste all that time only to find that it's in your range bag because your training rig is the same as your panic rig.  Oops.  If your end-of-the-world rig is sitting home on the day of the rapture and you're at Disney with the family 3,000 miles away, you're probably equally well good and fucked.

If you still think you need a "do all" solution, I'm probably not the best person to ask.  I prefer to have specific gear for specific tasks while focusing instead on maintaining "muscle memory" (spare me the hipster , contrarian, arguments, I understand that muscles don't actually have brains or memories).  I put my pistol in the same place, every time, all the time.  I put my pistol reloads in the same place, every time, all the time.  After my mental faculties and situational awareness have failed, and I find myself in a gunfight, I'm going to be happy that I know where to find the things that I need.  While I may not have control over what portion of my house I'm in when the meth-heads down the street (by the way, if you do, in fact, have meth-heads down the street, you don't need a grab-n-go, you need to move) finally perform their brazen daylight home invasion, and therefore separate me from my armor, howitzer, and 5 million lumen strobe light on the other side of the house, I do have control over where on my immediate person I choose to place my pistol and my spare magazine.

It is my opinion (there, happy?  I am trying to appease those easily upset) that for anyone outside of soldiers in a combat zone, your brain is your primary, you training is your secondary, and your pistol is your tertiary.  Given that, it is important that your tertiary be prioritized and made readily available, and be where you expect it to be on your person when you expect it to be there.  So whatever you grab and add to it, for wherever you're going, and whatever you're doing when you get there, have your pistol where you know how to get at it.