 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are back with another edition of Tactical Book Review. And I'm gonna warn you, this one's gonna get philosophical. So today's book is the guerrilla gunfighter, clandestine pistol carry by Mr. John Mosby. John Mosby here, as far as I can tell, is a pen name. John Mosby, if you're not familiar with John Mosby, you should look it up, but he is a very famous confederate. I think he was a captain or some such thing, confederate officer during the American Civil War, and he is kind of one of the founding fathers of like the American tradition of special forces, guerrilla warfare kind of thing. He's one of the people that they hearken back to, because he did a lot of like hit and run raids and night raids and stuff in the North behind enemy lines and stuff like that. So he's a pretty cool figure to learn about, and I just kind of know your general military history and your origins of these certain kind of things. So anyways, I'm pretty sure that's a pen name, and that's the pen name that he's pulling from here, which makes sense with the guerrilla gunfighter, because John Mosby, famous guerrilla. Anyway, so right from the outset, the big, big issue I have with this book is the author's philosophical slash theological worldview. And it wouldn't be such a big deal, except he harps on it a lot, and it's kind of his founding principles, right? So for all of us, we all believe in something, and we all have some kind of foundational principles. Whether or not you're aware of what those are, you have them, I guarantee you. And you build everything else on your foundational principles. And if you disagree with someone on foundational principle level, it's kind of hard to get past that, right? Cause that's, like I said, it's the foundation. It's as low as you can go. And so if you can't agree on the foundation, there's no point talking about other stuff. Now, we're talking about shooting guns here. So my philosophical perspective and someone else's philosophical perspective may or may not actually matter when we're talking about how do I get the gun out of the holster quickly, right? Like, what I think about shooting someone or not shooting someone in what's moral, doesn't really have a lot to do with the actual mechanics of drawing a gun. I get that. However, this book, like I said, he harps on his philosophical slash theological perspective a lot, and because I just so staunchly don't agree with it, it was very hard for me to, I don't want to say enjoy, but like there's some good stuff in here. Don't get me wrong. But I have a hard time going further when I so staunchly disagree with it. So, you know, I come from perspective of I'm going to take the Bible as the moral truth of the universe, okay? Jesus is real, God is real, heaven and hell are real, afterlife is a thing. Like I believe all of that. So there are certain things the Bible does and does not allow. And among those are things like vengeance. Vengeance is explicitly condemned in the Bible. That's different than self-defense. People conflate that. That's in the video. We'll do that some other time. But the point is, is that within this book, John Mosby would advocate an idea of returning to kind of your clan relationships, right? Like me and my people and kind of screw everybody else. And if someone screws with me and my crew, then we're going to burn their whole village down and murder everybody. And we're going to seek vengeance so that no one, everyone knows not to mess with us. That kind of outlook. And it really reminded me of the revenge cycles that the Vikings fell into, right? Where they had blood feuds going back generations. And your family hates that family. Why? Because they always have. And someone's grandfather long, long time ago wronged someone else and now who even knows who started it and we're all mad and we're just, we're blood feuding. That's kind of what this book reminded me of. And it would even seem like he's purporting that as a good thing. Like look, in the collapse of the American empire, the best we can hope for is to stick to you and your clan and protect your people and to help anybody else and burn it to the ground. And I just can't get behind that perspective. I would ultimately assent to the fact that God made man. He made Adam and Eve and all people are descended from Adam and Eve. And so we're all part of the same clan. We're all made in God's image. We're all people. And so there are certain moral obligations I have even to my enemies. Now, you could say it's insane dealing. You're going to die. And that's when I realized when I was reading this book, dying is not the worst possible outcome to me. And I say it wouldn't be to the author of this book as far as I can tell either. But there are worse things to me that could happen than me and my people being raped, killed and murdered. There are worse things than that. And among them is losing your soul. And that's what this book actually helped me realize. So in that sense, it was helpful because I would imagine that the author's worst fear in life is that his people would be pillaged, raped and destroyed. And obviously that's horrible and I'm going to shoot people before that happens. However, that's not the worst thing. The worst thing would be losing your soul and being under God's wrath forever. So I warned you this was going to get philosophical and theological, but because that is such a staunch disagreement, I again, and he bookends the book with that, right? And he starts in the beginning with his philosophical perspective, gives you a very good foundation of what he believes, and then at the end of the book he comes back to it again. So that's his main kind of mantra and sandwiched in between there is kind of his thoughts on shooting and stuff like that. He did write this to be kind of a training manual. I, to be honest, I didn't, if you've been shooting for a while, I think this book will be helpful for you because it's a lot more philosophical understandings. He goes through things like the oodaloop and dressing in your environment and stuff like that. I think it's super helpful and I think there's some good stuff in here. But by and large, I'm not going to be able to recommend this book. I don't like this book because I have such a staunch disagreement on the philosophical theological level with it. So that's just my issue. Now that may issue may or may not belong to you. You may be like, yeah, vengeance is great. Let's murder those bastards. But for me, this is a no-go. I do think he has some good perspectives in here when it comes to carrying your gun concealed so that no one knows ever and how and why that's important and kind of day-to-day life. I don't entirely agree with that. In general, when I print, when I'm wearing a pistol, I'm kind of like whatever, I don't care. But again, I live in South Dakota, which is a different area. But it definitely gives some perspective and kind of hits things from a different angle that I'm used to and that I would really agree with most of the time. And it's good to read things that you don't agree with. There are some points in here where he goes after some of my heroes that I've read books from. He goes after the book On Killing by Grossman and he goes after Courage Under, I think it's Courage Under Fire by SLA Marshall. Two of the most foundational books for how we understand human-to-human interaction and killing he says are complete garbage. Now, I don't believe that. I think those books are still great. I've read both of those. I've reviewed both of those on this channel. But he goes out of his, maybe not out of his way, but he does slam those books as worthless garbage in this book. And I'm thinking, well, I'm sorry, but I just don't think you can dismiss some of the most foundational watershed books in the last 75 years in like two sentences. For me, that's just not gonna work, right? I'm gonna need a little bit more than that. One of the things that I really do like that he talks about is fighter mindset and how he's like, that's just life. Like you're just living. You don't need to have this special super ninja fighting mindset. He does a very good job of talking about how training is important. And there are trained and untrained people and the more you train, the more you're able to perform at a high level, even under severe stress. I think that's super helpful. I think he's right. So there are definitely things that I agree with in this book and things that I think were helpful. But like I said, by and large, I think there's about 15 books you should read before you should read this one. And that is really my hold up with this. I think that's all I got. The guerrilla gunfighter, clandestine pistol carry by Mr. John Mosby. Do brave deeds and endure.