A thank you to Massad Ayoob

[Ed L]

Reading his book The Truth About Self-Protection as a college freshman in 1982 set me on the path I am on today. Before that book, I had no grasp on the idea that guns and martial arts should be integrated. He was the first one to not just pay public lip service to that concept, but actually embody it and actively promote it.

Last year at TacCon, I even tried to wheedle him into writing an updated version of that seminal book. I'm going to keep pestering him.

I read that book as well when it first came out. It was a very good book for its time. It is a classic look back by some of the guns he recommended because that is what existed at the time.

I don't think he would do a rewrite of it because--THE INTERNET. In saying that I mean that info changes rapidly and people are accustomed to getting the most recent info on the internet, and because people spend much more time on the Internet and much less time reading books. I am not sure he would consider it worth his time.

I took LFI 1 & 2 with him in the Summer of 1986. I still have my notebook from those courses. At that time there were not nearly the number of trainers out there and not nearly the number of people who would travel for training. I think for me it was a 4 or 5 hour drive from NY to NH and a week's stay at a hotel each time.