In my observation and experience, 90% of the time it does not make a bit of difference if you have the latest, coolest gun, or RDO. That said, I will still take them and use them, as it
may give me an advantage, and I may be in a situation where I need to slow down for just a literal second and take a truly precise shot within a small window of opportunity. There have been times where I wish I would have had the equipment I have available to me now. Plus my eyes don't see a front sight like the used to.
Most the time, it is
what you do, and
when you do it that matters. I will give an example.
Years back, I was sitting at my desk pretending to be interested in typing a report. A call went out of a bank robbery in progress. That sounded better than the report I was writing. My partner and I suited up and went. Long story short, there are two bad guys. One gets taken down in a parking lot. The other we locate in a house. He gets called out, very non compliant. Extremely large native American guy.
Everyone is behind cover (he had robbed the bank with a sawed off shotgun). Various people are screaming "Don't move, put your hands up, do the hokie pokie". All the usual.
It is getting met with "Go fornicate in a solo fashion!"
It is going nowhere, so I run at the guy rifle up yelling. When I do, my partner does too. I grab him by the arm and go to take him down. Nothing happens. For a second I wonder if my partner is pulling the other way. I Look. Nope, he is just that big.
Then I see his pony tail.
Grab the pony tail and drive it into the ground. Put my gun on him from there, and all of the sudden we are surrounded by cops.
Bad guys looks up and says" Dick move Bro".
***sidebar below****
Anyway, the point is that it is not the gear that gets things done, it is you. YOU deciding to act is what will cause you to win or lose. You can have all the cool guy stuff in the world, and be as trendy as you want, but if you hesitate, or are not fully committed to the fight, it really does not matter one bit. You have to be
willing. The rest is just stuff.
****sidebar****
I don't know much about fighting, so I always followed two simple rules.
1. Where the head goes, the body follows.
and
2. You can't fight if you can't breath.
Those two seemed to work quite well. Not PC today, but they worked for me.