II

MENTAL CONDITIONING

Most mammals have a preternatural aversion to killing members of the same species.  When dogs fight, one will submit to the other by rolling over and exposing its throat to the more dominant one.  Upon this submission the dominant dog will cease the attack.  When sheep fight, they smash their heads together, and again one will prove more dominant than the other, and in this case the lesser sheep will run away as a sign of submission.  Human beings do not have this same sort of aversion.   The reason for this aversion is to ensure the survival of the species; they don’t kill each other off. 

Human beings do not have this aversion.  When we are children we go through stages where we bite people, hit people, or hurt animals.  Our parents punished us for this, thereby eradicating that behavior.  We were taught that it is not nice to bite your sister, or it is not nice to hit the dog.  After enough exposure to the rewards of good behavior and penalties of bad behavior, pre-punishment warnings were given such as the ever present “Play nice!”  This is known as operant or instrumental conditioning.  Operant conditioning is defined as the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of voluntary behavior.  Operant conditioning uses positive and negative reinforcement, as well as positive and negative punishment in order to modify voluntary behavior.  So when we bit our siblings, we had our toys taken away and/or received a spanking.  The repeated loss of a tangible object that we liked combined with the addition of an unpleasant sensation for each of these occurrences caused us to stop doing them very quickly.  As we grew up and matured, the process was still applied.  We were grounded, we had video games taken away, we couldn’t go outside, or we had to sit in the corner.  Every time we reached “that age” when a new set of bad behavior would begin, our parents were there to eradicate it.

Unfortunately there are those in this world whose bad behavior was never eradicated; otherwise we would not continue to see the school shootings, the gang violence, the rapes, and the molestation of our children.  These people will always exist.  And as explained by Colonel Rex Applegate in his book, kill or get killed, the average person does not have the mental capacity to survive violent encounters with these people.  He was referring to our nation’s enemies at the time of his writing in 1943, with the Germans and Japanese, and again in 1976 with the Vietnamese.  He said that the only way to survive violent encounters is to become more ruthless than your adversary, and to use it before the adversary could use it against you.  In order to survive a violent close encounter, the average person needs to relearn how to hurt, how to maim, how to kill. 

                We relearn to hurt, maim, and kill; how to not play nice, by the use of the same methods that taught us to not do these things.  In WWII there was a study done by Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, in which he determined that only 15% of Infantry rifleman would voluntarily fire at the enemy with lethal intent.  Although this hypothesis was challenged, it held enough weight that the Military began researching on its own.  In WWII, the Army was still using bull’s eye targets for marksmanship training.  The Army began to make the transition to human shaped silhouettes during the Korean War, where around 55% of Infantry rifleman would voluntarily engage the enemy.  Training continued to evolve, and the use of a pop up E type silhouette was standardized across the military.  During the Vietnam War, it was estimated that a full 95% of Infantry rifleman were lethally engaging the enemy.  Why?  The increase in willingness to engage the enemy took place because of the use of the silhouette. 

It is man-shaped, so you are conditioned to shoot at the human silhouette.  It falls down as soon as you hit it, so you receive positive feedback.  The Military awards marksmanship badges, so the better you are at knocking down pop-up, man shaped silhouettes, the higher the degree of award, either marksman, sharp shooter, or expert.  If you are unable to knock down 25 of these targets, you do not qualify and must retrain and reshoot.  Conversely, retraining may take place for hours on end in the heat of the day, or on a weekend.  The conditions of the retraining is meant to be unpleasant, this reinforces the necessity of learning to shoot these targets.  These methods are still in use today.  The Army Infantry also uses the repetition of the Infantryman’s Creed to reinforce the necessity of aggression and violence.  In fact until Jan 2008, the Mission of the Infantry as stated in Army Field Manual 7-8 read “The mission of the Infantry is to engage the enemy by means of fire and maneuver, to destroy or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat, and counter attack.  In urban warfare training Soldiers are taught that in order to achieve victory you must have Security, Speed, Simplicity, Surprise, and Violence of Action.  Buildings are cleared through forward momentum and extreme aggression. Military marksmanship training makes killing a reflex action, kept in check only through strict discipline.

                The advent of violent, life-like video games is making use of this same principle; except that it has gone unchecked.  Although the games come with warnings as to appropriate age, anyone may access them.  You receive points and awards for the more people you kill, injure, or maim.  There have been studies by Doctors, Psychologists, and Child Psychiatrists that found the one common factor among 10 school shootings is that the perpetrators were “infatuated with violence in the media”.  What this means for the purposes of this book is that these are not Soldiers or Marines, these are elementary, middle, and high school students; kids.  They are receiving the operant conditioning to commit violent acts, but they are not receiving the discipline needed to control it.  I am only five years older than Nintendo and Duck Hunt, so I remember when there was no lifelike violence.  We had Contra, which was a two dimensional war game, with no blood or gore.  I remember that Mortal Kombat was the first video game with actual blood and gore, and you had to buy a magazine or, if you had the means back then, go on the internet and look up the “blood code”, I was 13 years old then.  We went from a time when you couldn’t see anything remotely lifelike, let alone blood and gore, to having to research a code to see the blood and gore, and now 15 years later, you can’t not see the blood and gore in a video game.  The majority of violent crimes being committed in America today are perpetrated by people born in the 80’s and 90’s.  They have relearned to commit acts of violence, and in order to survive these acts, the rest of us need to learn to respond in kind. 

                The first step is to learn to kill reflexively.  By making use of a three dimensional man-shaped target, a couple of sturdy boards, a heavy object, a hook, pulley and some string you can make a very effective pop up target, or there are several companies that sell automated pop up targets, such as Larue Tactical.  The key is not just the shape of the target, but to make a reward/penalty system.  Hits on target equal reward, missing equals penalty.  When you are capable of 80% or 90% accuracy at varying distances, some should be easy close shots, some should be difficult long shots, then challenge yourself with smaller targets, such as a 6” circle center of mass and a 4” circle on the forehead.  Again hits equal reward, missing equals penalty.  You want these targets to pop up randomly, to best replicate the suddenness of attack.  Once you learn to kill reflexively, you need to learn to kill discriminately.  You need to learn to positively identify lethal threats, as well as non-threats.  This is also part of the discipline of military training, called target discrimination.

                Target discrimination requires seeing more than a simple silhouette of a person in order to fire.  You have to look at the person, is the person armed?  Is the person being physically aggressive?  Is the person being verbally aggressive?  In order for you to use lethal force, the antagonist has to be conducting himself in such a manner that any reasonable person would be in fear of severe bodily harm, or in fear for their life.  There are a few commercial paper targets which are specifically intended for target discrimination training, such as the hostage/hostage taker target.  My experience with target discrimination has been on this target, but also on simple items such as ping pong balls, paper plates with different colored triangles, clay pigeons, and vegetables.  All you need to do is have someone call out a target repeatedly.  If utilizing the paper plates, call out a specific color, this forces you to actually look at the target to see which is blue or black or green.  Once you are good at discriminating between inanimate objects, you must incorporate a humanoid target.  .  Mix the hostage targets in with normal ones.  Mix pictures of innocent, non-threatening people super imposed on normal targets in with normal targets.  By doing this you are not training to kill people reflexively, you are training to identify valid, hostile threats. 

The best method I have been exposed to for any type of firearm training is force on force.  There is a group of people appointed as the Friendly Force, a second group appointed as the Opposing Force, and a third group of role players appointed as Civilians on the Battlefield.  The Friendly Force conducts patrols and raids in an attempt to kill or capture the Opposing Force.  They must deal with the Civilians on the Battlefield to accomplish this.  They have very specific rules of engagement that tell them exactly when they are authorized lethal force.  The Opposing Force attempts to kill and disrupt the Friendly Force.  The effectiveness of this type of training is invaluable.  You are actually interacting with the environment, and yes you are using real live humans as targets.  And it is still based on the reward/penalty system.  You are rewarded for killing or capturing enemy combatants, you are penalized for wounding or killing civilians, and you are also penalized for being killed or wounded.  Force on Force reinforces every aspect of firearms training, from shooting fundamentals, to use of cover, to target discrimination and use of force.  You are conditioning yourself to kill threats reflexively, but at the same time to leave non threats unmolested, to not harm innocent people.  That is the difference between the criminal element and everyone else.   

Use of force dictates that one always uses the minimal amount of force necessary to subdue an enemy.  We use target discrimination to ensure that we are in compliance with these laws.  In general, the Military will say that any hostile threat to life, limb, or eyesight warrants immediate lethal force, i.e. a man pointing a gun at you, or waving a knife at you while moving toward you.    But what if he is simply waving his fist at you?  A man acting in an aggressive manner, shouting and waving his fists, rarely warrants lethal force.  What separates the sheepdog from the wolf is the ability to discern between a lethal threat and a non-lethal one, between enemy and friendly, combatant and non-combatant. 

                When you have relearned the ability to injure, maim, or kill DISCRIMINATELY, you also need to learn tactics with which to apply them.  For instance, in the Army, we undergo operant conditioning from day one.  But we do not learn to apply them until week six or seven of Basic Combat Training, when we start learning Battle Drills.  A Battle Drill is a collective of rapid reactions to a given situation, which may be performed with the absence of orders.  Every Battle Drill, with the exception of two requires extreme aggression, but they also require strategy.  We would be told that we have to “set the condition to move”, meaning we have to be able to put effective fire on the enemy, in order for us to move and progress to the next step of the drill.

 We would be told to achieve and maintain the initiative.  The advantage in any encounter lies with the attacker, this advantage is known as the initiative.  It means to keep the enemy on their heels and off balanced, so they cannot launch a counter-attack.  We would be reminded to maintain momentum.  You have to keep moving through the enemy.  Studies conducted of failed enemy ambushes during Vietnam found that the majority of them failed because our Soldiers fighting there, rather than simply “dig in” and return fire, would launch an immediate counter-attack with as much weaponry as they had available.  The only way to survive a close range ambush is to assault through it.  This is no different for civilian encounters.  You are walking down an alley, and just as you are passing by a dumpster, two men jump out demanding your money, you just got ambushed. 

If you wish to fight back you need to apply the same principles.  You need to set the condition to move.  Put yourself in a position where the attackers are off balance, then attack forward, with overwhelming firepower, if unarmed you are using your arms, hands, feet, and anything you can find, you need to completely mitigate their attack. Maintain forward momentum.  Under no circumstance do you want to become so fully engaged with one of them that you cannot protect yourself from the other.  This requires extreme aggression and violence of action.  The initiative lies with the attacker; you need to put them on their heels, keep them there until they run away or are neutralized.  SECURITY, SPEED, SURPRISE, SIMPLICITY, AND VIOLENCE OF ACTION, these are the principles of urban warfare.  Without them, your chances of success drop exponentially.

Tags: Tyler Guyett Operant Conditioning Defense Mind Set Lethal Force

Bookmark: