Not too sure about that. I just reread the first post and am pretty sure that he is saying that everyday Joey Bagadonuts is different then LEOs or Military and should treat the way they view their role as a person whom carries a firearm and other gear with a less is better attitude.
I think it's more of a "Don't waste your hard earned money on a bunch of useless junk that you will
never use" attitude
I think "tactical" was the right word, I think there is a level of common sense risk assessment that we all have to do.
As a private citizen I don't face the same level of threat that a police officer or a soldier faces because I don't have a duty to go out and deliberately put myself in the same situations they do and I don't
need to carry the same equipment they do. (This is not to say that I don't have every right to waste my money buying all that junk if I choose to.)
To me this thread isn't so much about gear as it is about this idea that I have to approach life like I live in a combat zone. Having said that, I have noticed that the same mindset does seem to manifest itself with an obsession with gear.
When I first started to legally carry a gun I didn't have a lot of information so I turned to the internet. As I said earlier once I got there I ran into some folks that believed that their level of risk really
did match that of a soldier in Fallujah and they equipped themselves accordingly.
I said this before and I want to clarify that I'm not exaggerating but there was a guy that used to post on THR that spent thousands every year going to Gunsight and Thunder Ranch and taking tactical pistol / carbine courses and studying different martial arts and buying gadgets and so on.
This guy (if his posts were to be believed) literally did not leave his home unless he was dressed in what amounted to full BDU because he didn't want to be caught unprepared. He lived his life as if every time he left his home he was patrolling enemy territory.
As I also said earlier, there was a time when I bought into that mindset. I thank God I don't make a lot of money or I would have probably pissed away thousands myself on all the latest whiz bang tactical gear that would never get used.
I had a list longer than my arm of stuff I absolutely could not leave my home without and an even longer list of stuff that had to be in my car at all times lest the zombie apocalypse occur while I was in Safeway buying a gallon of milk.
For me the epiphany came one morning while I was getting ready for church. I had my gun, 3 magazines, a CPR barrier device, 2 knives, a bunch of other junk and a 200 lumen flashlight. I was putting the light in my pocket when it occurred to me that it was 8 AM in the freaking morning and I was expecting to be home by 10 AM at the latest and why in the hell did I need a tactical flashlight so bad that I couldn't leave my home without it in broad daylight?
When I go grocery shopping, I'm going grocery shopping in Colorado Springs not going outside the wire in Kandahar (although if I go to the Platte Avenue Wal Mart after midnight it's hard to tell the difference) and I don't need to have on full battle rattle to do it.
