The title threw me. It sounded to me like something suited for soldiers entering Tikrit. When I asked the author, Rob Pincus, why he chose that title, he answered me, but I must confess that I was still not entirely sure.
Now I understand. The title says it all.
Think for a minute. When we leave the restaurant for the car, or leave the car for the treck across the parking lot to the supermarket, we are not knowingly heading toward a place where we know we will stand to shoot at a target, which will be located "down range", and we are not going to be given a command to shoot, and we will not be scored by a timer or a number of hits, nor will our score be reduced for misses or hits out of sequences. No! We are not heading out to shoot at all. That is the farthest thing from our minds.
But, should the unlikely and unexpected and worst occur--an ambush--we will have to make some rapid cognitive decisions on our own, observe, react, recognize, and respond. That is not the time to rely upon improvisation. It is the time to utilize basic skills learned in training.
As an attorney from Arkansas likes to put it, a gunfight is not the time to learn new skills.
The book goes into depth on psychology, physiological reactions and how to train, and still more on training. There is a little bit on shooting, firearms, and ammunition, but those are not really what the book is about.
I think the book is great, but don't take my word for it. In his foreword, LTC Dave Grossman starts with "You hold in your hands one of the most important book of our kind. First, this a vital, lifesaving resource."
Pincus spends a lot of time discussing the philosophy, the beginnings, the raison d'être, and the evolution, over the last couple of decades, of the I.C. E. Combat Focus Training course. The discussion covers the years in which it was delivered at Valhalla Shooting Cub, when key customers included SOCOM operatives and instructors from both Army and Navy units as all as agents of foreign governments.
Let me be clear that what I think is most important about it is the knowledge it contains that could be useful to ordinary armed citizens going about their daily business, and trying their best to avoid combat.
By the way, the course is now available at several Gander Mountain Academy locations under the title Dynamic Focus Training.
Im my opinion, Counter Ambush is a must read, and a must for the bookshelf.