 Dylan Schumacher with Citadel Defense and it's for hey guys Dylan Schumacher with Citadel Defense and it's another edition of Tactical Book Review and today's book is On Killing by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman kind of the watershed book for the study of killing kind of kiliology. The first edition this book came out in 1995 and this book is copyrighted through 2009 so there have been a couple updates since then. Overall very good book you know it was the watershed work on the book right before this book no one had really studied the actual act of killing and what that does to people and the history of it and so forth so a couple high points in this book couple things to learn that I found very helpful for me is one he goes through the history of killing and how human beings have a resistance to killing it's not a natural act he claims to kill so there's a there's a natural resistance killing of the person. Now he doesn't really know why and I think that's interesting so as you may or may not know I'm a Jesus guy right so I think and I think it's fairly evident to me that the reason human beings have such a strong resistance to killing is because we're all made in God's image and one of the things that that means it means a couple things but one of the things that means is that for me to kill another human being would be to disgrace God's image ultimately that's why killing is wrong and there's a natural human resistance to disgrace in God's image I think that's super interesting both on a philosophical and theological level I just think that that's incredibly interesting and fascinating but human beings for better or worse and I would argue it's for better right have a resistance to killing each other and so he talks about that he talks about through history how that resistance has occurred he talks about things like during like the Civil War and stuff they would find muskets that were loaded like 15 times because guys would bring their rifle up to shoot right you bring a rifle up just like you bring an AR up you bring the rifle up to shoot and they couldn't they couldn't do it they couldn't pull a trigger so they just pretend like they shot and they'd load again with everybody else and so they just keep doing that right and eventually when they when they would run away or whatever they toss the rifle and so they found these rifles that had been loaded like 15 times just on top of each other I thought that was super interesting and basically once they got to Vietnam he talks about how they changed their training a little bit they started focusing on killing like that's what you're here to do in the military you're here to kill this book is entirely written from military perspective and you're here to do that and how they were able to increase the fire rate right he talks about during World War two only two out of ten guys on the line would typically be shooting the other eight guys would find some other job to do all of a sudden right they'd be trans I mean important stuff very brave stuff he's a good thing it's not a brave everything it's just people couldn't get themselves a pull the trigger so they'd be doing things like shuttling messages are caring for wounded people or whatever but on a line of a hundred guys only 20% of them are actually shooting at the enemy and by the time you get to Vietnam you get that number up to 95% and they did some things in the training to to handle that like starting shooting at human-sized targets right or silhouette targets which is something stand now in the industry we all shoot at silhouette targets so again I think that's super interesting to kind of learn that history and remember that comes from and learn what you're doing and what you're training yourself to do when you're shooting at silhouette targets you're ultimately teaching yourself to kill right now whether or not you like that or are comfortable with that that's what's happening and it's important for you to know that one of the best sections early in the book is where he talks about the fight-or-flight response and he says there's actually four responses it's flight flight posture or submit and he kind of breaks down with those mean I thought that was incredibly interesting that's going to get added into my classes as we talk about the fight-or-flight response he goes through distance in relation to killing and basically talks about how the further you are in physical distance from killing the less trauma it makes on the killer itself and the less psychological impact it has on the killer itself he also talks about other kinds of distance like emotional distance or social class distance and and goes through those breakdown in those factors he breaks down atrocities and kind of how those happen kind of the anatomy of atrocities which it was from an intellectual perspective fascinating I mean obviously atrocities are horrible moral evils but to kind of understand or at least try to understand how he breaks those down on how they occur and kind of what happens in people to get them to that point a couple things I disagree about with the book or didn't didn't quite enjoy is he takes a very Freudian perspective on psychology and what I mean by that is he often links it back to sex and the way he talks about killing and sex kind of being quasi-intermingled or related I just wasn't buying like I don't believe him that that's the case and and I also just didn't like it so take that for what it's worth you can read the book for yourself to draw your own conclusions the other thing that I really didn't like is this was written in the 90s but he talks about how video games are desensitizing kids to kill now in 1995 I was a kid okay I was now I was not an adult in 1995 and I grew up playing these video games so I grew up in this generation he's talking about and I don't buy it in the sense that and he's mostly talking about the point and shoot games right the arcade games are a point and shoot and he's saying that's the exact same training we use in the military and police and our kids are playing those games and it's turning them into killers now on one hand I guess you could argue and you could say well Dylan since since you've been a kid in the 90s look at all the school shootings and all the other things that have happened surely this is a contribution on the other hand I think hundreds of thousands of us have played those games and we're not going out murdering people for no reason uh so I just didn't buy that I didn't buy the argument I I've never bought I'm a video game player I've been my whole life right so I don't buy the argument that video games are turning me and my generation into these horrible murderous monsters so that is one thing I disagree with overall I would recommend on killing I I think if you're in this shooting space especially if you're you're some kind of instructor or teacher or if you just want to know more you just want to know more about the study of kileology and kind of what that means this is the book this is the go-to book he also wrote another book I think it's called on combat I haven't read that one yet but I would recommend this book if those are things you want to learn more about if that weirds you out and you want nothing to do with that well that that's fine but as a concealed carrier as a private citizen I found this book informative well guys that's it that's this episode of tactical book review until then do brave deeds and endure