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Your Gear Isn’t the Problem: The Skills That Actually Matter in a Gunfight · Making Shooters Better

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing one teenage girl shot four times in the torso with a forty-five ACP by her father.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time I was carrying a forty-five ACP and we thought, well, you know, that that's that's the one to take care of business.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she was sitting on the curb talking to the paramedics while they were getting ready to transport her and was fully conscious.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean she was in pain and she was well shot, but uh she didn't die and it it seemed to be a minor inconvenience and that that clashed headlong into what our expectations were.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: So calibers we quickly or not quickly have come to understand that um if it's a standard service caliber, uh it's it probably works about like all the others do.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to Making Shooters Better, brought to you by Laser Ammo.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Wayne Dobbs has been teaching people to shoot for nearly five decades.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: He spent 25 years in law enforcement, has trained literally generations of shooters, and today works in law enforcement sales for Aimpoint.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you might expect this episode to be about guns, optics, and gear.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: It isn't.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because Wayne's central message is far more uncomfortable.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot buy competence.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: A better trigger won't fix bad fundamentals, a red dot won't rescue a broken presentation, and carrying a firearm does not mean you're mentally prepared to use one when another human being forces that decision upon you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we're going to dig into why grip matters more than most students want to admit, why the obsession with substack and drawers and lightning fast reloads may be solving the wrong problem, and why the most important part of defensive firearms training happens between your ears.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Wayne has spent almost 50 years separating what looks impressive on the range from what might actually keep you alive in the real world.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And some of what he has to say may make you rethink the way you train.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: So with all that out of the way, let's get cracking on the episode.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Wayne, and welcome to the podcast.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you uh invited me to be here with this for this.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm glad you managed to carve out some time.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I know you're busy instructing, so uh feel uh privileged to get you on here.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I asked every guest the same way with the same question.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, how old were you when you first started shooting?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh that goes back a long way.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was I first remember shooting uh when I was probably about four years old, four or five years old.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't to say I was shooting, uh you'd have to qualify things a bit.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: My father was would hold uh this single-shot 22 Remington rifle that belonged to my maternal grandfather, and uh he would hold it and aim it, and I would press the trigger.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then as well, within a year I was shooting when I was five, I was shooting uh that same 22, and I I have it now in my safe.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it was made back during the depression.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I I harvested my first head of small game with that rifle uh when I was five.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: There was uh uh a very unfortunate cottontail sitting in a dirt road on my grandparents' farm, and I pestered my father until he finally gave up and let me shoot at it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh standing at about 25 yards, lost a shot and uh knocked the rabbit over.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my father was sitting on a log drinking out of a thermos, drinking coffee from a thermos, and he sat up and looked down there with this look on his face like, did that poor rabbit just have a heart attack or something?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because he couldn't envision me hitting it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so from that then on, I was I was uh in that world and and continued to get more and more deeply involved and hooked into it as time went on.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: What a great experience though, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: To sh to impress your dad with did did it fall over or did you hit it?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, no, I got it.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hit it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: I had a similar experience with my son out on a hike while we lived in Wyoming, and there was a bird sitting, I don't know, probably about 30 yards away up in a tree.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the rule was you could shoot, you know, whatever within reason, but you if you killed something, we were going to eat it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you choose, you know, very carefully what to shoot.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Dad, can I have a go?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I I don't remember, he's probably about seven or eight, but it was the same, very similar standing, and I was like, sure, have a go.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like busy just minding my own business, thinking there's no way he's hitting this thing because it was a relatively small bird at a long shot.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: He nailed that thing, fell out of the tree.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, damn, now I've got to teach him how to pluck it and get it ready to eat.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: But he impressed me.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh, he really did.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so you've been teaching for a lot of years, and one of the questions I kind of wanted to hit right out of the gate is why do you think that people will spend 600 bucks on a trigger,$700 on an optic, and all the peripheral fancy gear that people tend to take to the range, rather than doing something like changing how their hands grip their gun?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to buy something.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in modern times, certainly, uh, with the advent of almost instant gratification uh with uh equipment, uh, we we tend to want to do that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, there's uh somewhat peer pressure either directly from peers or what you're seeing on the internet or Instagram, whatever about gear, uh and just the culture of advertising that's existed for literally a century, that you can buy competence, you can buy attraction, you can buy capability, whatever.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's I I think that culture overwhelms us, uh, whether we want to admit it or not.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a lot easier to buy something than to change something.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't really equate that, perhaps, in my head, but buying all that equipment gives you the impression that you're going to suddenly become competent or better at that skill if you have the thousand dollar optic on it, then how could you possibly miss?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it goes it goes way back.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I remember in my twenties uh as a young police officer, and I started going to uh various competitions that were uh available to me in the Dallas and Fort Worth area.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um you would get there and you would see all of this equipment that these guys had and expensive pistols and and things like that, and you would be or I would look at it and think, man, there's I don't I don't know if I can do well on this.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um I may be beat, you know, coming out of the gate because I don't have all that stuff.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what I did have was um a deep fundamental background in what I was doing, and I worked hard at it, and I could shoot, I could align sights, I could roll triggers.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were revolvers for the most part back then.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I got out there and started uh doing very, very well, extremely well, and people would like look at me like, How is this guy with this this duty rig and this four-inch Smith and Wesson 19 kicking our butts?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So and and as time went on, I got into the 1911 world and and started carrying a 1911 for a duty gun and seeing the same thing.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a fairly functional, decently set up uh pistol and and good equipment, you know, good basic equipment, and you have a very solid skill set, then you'll be uh you'll be okay.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fundamentals.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: I often run into it where somebody will, you know, once they feel the fundamentals are done, they must now move on to something advanced.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, in my opinion, it's performing the fundamentals under a variety of conditions.
• 8:03
  unknown: True.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Potentially very stressful, well, that is the advancement.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that the fundamentals change, they're fundamental for a reason.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of interesting that people think there's some secret source over here where everything will get better, and yet, really, in a lot of cases, it's just the capacity to adapt and utilize and lean on the fundamentals in a variety of situations and environments that lead you to be better.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, effectively, especially when it comes to guns, self-defense speaking.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, especially in the self-defense uh arena, if your fundamentals are truly fundamental, then they are driven down basically to where you're uh almost, if not totally subconsciously operating whatever tool you're using.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that frees whatever limited cognitive ability you have, and it is significantly diminished when one of these events takes place, but your cognitive ability can then be put to use solving problems and assessing situations instead of uh if your fundamentals are terrible, you have to use all your cognition on the tool, which means that you are at a distinct disadvantage in a confrontation.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I read some of it that you know our uh cognitive horsepower, so to speak, is good for like 42, 43 bits of data.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know we're not computers, but it kind of equates to we can kind of do about 42 little things at once comparative to our subconscious, where it's 11 million bits of processing bits of data.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's crazy for most people, I think they underestimate how quickly their cognitive bandwidth is completely and utterly consumed on one or two things, especially obviously kinesthetic awareness and trying to get the mechanics of something right.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: If it's not ingrained and you're having to think about, well, are my thumbs in the right place?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Bandwidth is already used up.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now decision making is compromised, etc.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: You already train very hard to make the shot, but do you also train to make the decision to shoot or not shoot?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: At the range, you usually know when the drill is going to start.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know what the target is.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: You probably even know when the drill's gonna be over.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: The real world gives you none of that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: It gives you uncertainty, movement, innocent people, changing threats, and sometimes a reason not to shoot at all.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's where the smokeless range VST Pro comes into its own.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you're training at home individually or teaching students, working with armed security, preparing law enforcement officers for the real world.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: VST Pro lets you train through the realistic scenarios that challenge judgment, awareness, and decision making, not just marksmanship.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because hitting the target is only part of being prepared.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: The harder question is knowing when to act, when to not act, and when the situation has changed completely.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Don't wait for the real world to give you your first scenario.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Train for it now with a smokeless range VST Pro.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Visit laseramo.com, select simulators and targets, and then smokeless range to find out more.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: And now back to the episode.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you deal with someone who perhaps says to you in a class, but this grip works for me?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if if they say the grip works for them, and if it does uh work for them, then I'm I am now fairly cautious about trying to uh evangelize them into something else.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that is rarely the case.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, what people have for a grip is is suitable for making fired brass under no stress on an indoor range at a target that's positively enormous.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it has little application to true defensive encounters or or problems with with human threats or even animal threats.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um the threat target, the vital zone on it is not near as big as what they've been working with.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: The situation is dynamic.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are oftentimes complications in the arena about uh things and people being present that you don't want to shoot, um, and having to having to look for that opening, that opportunity to to sink a shot.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that whole arena is exactly like team sports in my experience.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Football, soccer, it's not football.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know you call it football, but that's not football.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Football is football, and then there's soccer, basketball, um, baseball.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of those, if you look at 'em, there are little quarter and half second opportunities to make some kind of successful play.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the game is continuing on, the clock is running, but there's these tiny little bits and pieces of time when someone can make a shot, when they can sink a ball, when they can when they can hit a ball, whatever it might be, whatever the action is in the team versus team sports, um, there's not unlimited time to do that that act.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're trying to train people to is to build the fundamental skills to such a depth and to such a level of robustness that when that opportunity comes, they can deliver that performance right then without cognition.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: They just they have the kinesthetic or the propriocetic response available to them to pull off the uh the act.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's it's all all of that stuff, all of those sports, guns, whatever, it's all a fight.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a matter of what are the stakes and what are the risks of the fight.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it is interesting that it is a fight.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people forget that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like I had somebody at the range years ago now, but they said, Well, I don't understand why you sort of get into this athletic stance.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't, you know, overly athletic.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: I just softened my knees.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: But having taught martial arts for a bunch of years, that to me sort of aligns with okay, mobility and uh you know the capacity to move at an instant's notice in any direction.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like it's wasted energy or wasted time shooting, and of course, in a competition, an argument might be made for that, possibly depending on circumstances.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: But it's uh for new shooters or people who are coming in and they're picking up using a firearm for defensive means, potentially, that getting into a position that feels a little bit outside of their comfort zone, a little bit unusual perhaps for them based on their previous experience, it can be hard to get them to sort of fake, okay, but this is the position you're going to be in because this is a fight.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: You may not be, you know, throwing hands, but you're going to be throwing something.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: So what is the best athletic position for you to do that from?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it's always interesting, isn't it, trying to get people to adopt something that feels like outside of their norm and having them sort of fake it until they arrive at a place where it feels natural.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and when you get right down to it, um we have an increasing population of people out there that have never been in any kind of conflict, any kind of physical conflict, nor have many of them ever engaged in any kind of team sports conflict.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that doesn't apply to everybody, but it's not uncommon to see that.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you start trying to use um some kind of context of fighting, uh they they don't have any context for it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, you'll find many of them um to include police officers these days that don't have a context for the idea of of human evil out there.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and so they are they are not ready for it, and to try to get 'em to understand that is uh is sometimes a a a tall mountain to climb.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, agreed.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: So you you've been teaching, I mentioned at the very beginning, for decades, I think forty-six plus years.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: So what I'm so curious, what have you changed your mind about most when it comes to firearms or teaching firearms that perhaps you thought or were thinking differently about it in the beginning?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um calibers.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we used to uh and I and I I'll confess, Terry, to I I remember sitting working an extra job where I would sit at a security desk overnight in a big shopping center, and uh, I would have a calculator out, and I had all these stopping power formulas that I had read about, and I would calculate, I would sit there and run this calculator and saying, well, that's no good, and that's great, and everything.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and then as time went on, you started seeing, well, I and I remember seeing one teenage girl shot four times in the torso with a 45 ACP by her father, and at the time I was carrying a 45 ACP, and we thought, well, you know, that that's that's the one to take care of business.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she was sitting on the curb talking to the paramedics while they were getting ready to transport her and was fully conscious.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was in pain, and she was well shot, but uh she didn't die, and it it seemed to be a minor inconvenience, and that that clashed headlong into what our expectations were.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So calibers, you know, we we quickly, or not quickly, but over time we have come to understand that um if it's a standard service caliber, uh it's it probably works about like all the others do, which is most of the time mediocre.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a little subset up at the top that's spectacular, and another subset at the bottom that's horrific.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're more alike than they're different.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um how we uh how we teach people to grip pistols and stand, I mean I was I was a modern technique weaver shooter and teacher for a long time, and and there's nothing wrong with that, except you find out that when you start putting people under stress, they don't shoot that bent arm weaver anymore.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: They they tend to roll into an isosceles stance.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the the active or the dynamic isosceles that started coming forth, I guess late 80s, early 90s from uh Rob Latham, Brian Enos, and others, uh, we adopted that and adapted to that and started seeing how much better it worked.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh obviously we have seen sites change.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen plain black iron sights turn into colored iron sights, turn into tritium iron sites, and tritium and colored iron sights at the same time, uh, and then optics, uh pistol optics.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you you have to change or you have to look at things and say, is this what we need or is this going to get us anywhere?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I still use optics or I still use iron sites quite a bit.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I both teach and sell optics.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm full-time for Aimpoint as a Western United States law enforcement sales manager.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So optics are out there and optics are a good thing, but optics aren't a good thing if you're not already a good fundamental shooter.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in fact, they will make you slower than you've ever been if you're not a good fundamental shooter.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you it's I I think it's been a journey of of um learning more objectivity about things.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And also having a deeper understanding about the dynamics of of encounters and what they look like and and what people um are required to accomplish during them.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's always interesting because caliber size will bring up some fiery content.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: When you start saying it should be this and it shouldn't be that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I've always been a big believer that, okay, whatever you can be most accurate with is probably more important than what you're throwing, because if you're hitting what you're aiming at, that gives you the best chance.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that sort of leads nicely into training people to respond to the potential that your first shot, second shot, or as you just said with that victim shot four times with a 45.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Just because you shot someone once doesn't mean they're going down.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it doesn't.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uh that whole expectation has been created by by film and television and depictions of bad guys and good guys shooting at each other, or good guy or bad guys and bad guys shooting at each other, whatever it might be.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's there's this expectation, um, whether we want to admit it or not, that if you shoot someone fairly well centered, they're gonna fall over.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and that bleeds off into the the uh population that believes, hey, if I can if I can deliver a subsecond draw and hit versus a one a second and a half or two-second hit, then that means I'll be better off.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is is none of those shots take effect as fast as we want to think they do, uh, with rare exceptions.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of that kind of situation uh creates I I think it creates a situation where people are that are in these fights are actually stunned when what they're doing isn't working.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the caliber side of it, I I I typically recommend that people land on a nine millimeter platform of some sort.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm I don't rule out 45, but you know, when you get right down to the idea of of what does it cost to buy the gun, what does it cost to feed the gun, what does it cost to train, what does it cost to fix parts or replace parts, etc.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the nine millimeter keeps on being an excellent choice.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not down on the on the other service calibers.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am I am pretty blunt with people that I think you ought to avoid uh the sub nine millimeter calibers.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not necessarily because they won't work, it's just that we have a bar a body of information uh that seems to indicate that they are pretty substandard most of the time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I always tell people, hey, those work great on the good guys, and they do.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, good guys that get shot with those little guns typically fall over and lots and lots of them die, so that's a problem.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the bigger problem and the bigger reason I object to them is because of the guns that you're uh acquiring to shoot them.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're typically small, uh, they're typically blowback instead of lock breach, and they are, whether we want to admit it or not, very, very ammo sensitive and very, very maintenance sensitive.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing lots and lots of the 380s and 32s that don't run reliably for 50 rounds.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's one of my big that's one of my big objections to them and one of my big cautions to people is that those guns may disappoint you at a really terrible time.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that'd be an awful time to find out, wouldn't it?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's there's there's one there's one gun that I dealt with uh running department firearms that people wanted for off-duty guns or backup guns or plainclothes carry guns, and uh without going out and saying the uh the make and model James Bond liked them a lot in his movies.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've never seen one shoot 50 rounds without a malfunction.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it got so bad that people would get upset, and I said, if you will bring 50 rounds of ball and 50 rounds of carry ammo, and the gun shoots all 100 rounds without a malfunction, then we'll qualify and carry it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know how many I qualified?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not a single one.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: So so you know, there are other 380s out there that that will run, but but they're all I I find them all a little bit on the uh the dicey side of robust reliability, especially if they're dirty and dry.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I d actually did not know that they could be that unreliable.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: I've never owned one because I didn't believe in the caliber.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Here we go with the argument.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't call them Jeff, I think it's Jeff Garcia, or Jeff Gonzalez, not Jeff Garcia, Jeff Gonzalez one time that threw a title out, and he was not necessarily talking about those, but I adapted it to those little guns.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I call them the one-shot wonder.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that is they fire the round in the chamber and then they malfunction uh because you got a blowback gun, which is depending upon all the all of the recoil energy of that round, uh, which is possibly uh possibly handicapped by a poor grip or an injured hand, something like that.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh you've got uh a short-running slide that may not pick up the new round and feed it properly.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they can they can be problematic.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm sure people will get mad and say, well, I I mind where it runs fine.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if it does, hey, good on you.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I would then slay the challenge that would bring 50 rounds of ball and 50 rounds of duty and shoot it and see if it'll give you a hundred rounds without a malfunction.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And find out your truth.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of scary though, isn't it?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because you think somebody that would make that argument blindly may well find out that in the middle of an actual fight, like, oh shit, he was right.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Then that is that's a bad thing.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Famous last thoughts.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: So uh you've said, and I read this about you, one of the articles I think about you was talking about having a consistent, robust, process-driven draw and presentation.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then an optic may slow you down.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: So what does a truly reliable presentation process actually look like?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like the same thing over and over and over.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is like you are doing it on rails.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the grip and the and the most important thing of anything as far as the the performance in a shooting situation, whether it's sporting or or in a fight or a competition, is if the grip on the pistol is not established uh extremely well and extremely repeatedly and consistently, then everything after that is going to turn into work.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: If the grip is good on typical pistol problems, then the grip does most of the, it does 90% of the work for you.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing, the foundation move, is grip on the gun, usually in the holster.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then the the transition out of the holster to the hands meeting up or marrying up, and then to moving that gun onto the target, that has to be a process driven.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you've learned it by smooth, careful repetition over and over until it's subconsciously wired into your brain.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is absolutely responsible or absolutely required to get that pistol to line up on the target where you see the optic dot without having to hunt it down or look for it or hope for it.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that consistency of draw and presentation for an optic will also it will also uh serve you even better on iron sights because a lot of the iron sight shooting I've I've watched and done and taught is um you you can see lots of inconsistency with iron sights, but the fact is is that with iron sights is they are seeing a lot more of the uh of the area around the gun to where they can negotiate or or curve that into a uh curve that into a shooting solution.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I think we've been presenting iron sights in curves for centuries uh from holsters.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you try to present an optic pistol in a curve to the target from the hands marriage, uh you're not gonna find that dot.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the dot has been great to show us our our fundamental failings or inadequacies on training and learning uh of pistol presentations for a long time.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been valuable for that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I am not, please don't think I'm down on dots.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think if someone has learned the dot uh and learned all of the fundamentals around the dot, I think it is the far and away best way to go uh on a defensive pistol.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not gonna do the work, if you think you're buying a plug-and-play solution, then you're gonna be uh horribly disappointed.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I must admit I was somewhat reluctant to go red dots.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: I've always been a little bit of a you know old old dog here with iron sights all the way.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's just what I had used mostly in the military anyway, other than the SUSET site.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I was very much sort of enmeshed in that belief or that philosophy.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then my eyes started to get worse.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: And picking up that front sight post started to become more and more challenging.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And somebody said, give this a go.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, spit on your red dot, but I'll give it a go because I can't find my front sight post.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what a difference.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, there was definitely a learning curve.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if I'm honest with what you've just said, with if you have a habit from iron sights that is not good as far as the fundamentals are concerned, there's a curvature to the presentation of the firearm rather than a straight out.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: It takes you longer to pick up the red dot.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize that habit had even sort of made its way, you know, into my firearm presentation, but it had, and it interfered with my capacity to acquire the red dot as quickly.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it did feel like when I transitioned from irons to a red dot, I was taking five steps backwards.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is bloody awful.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you and and the big thing out there now is uh I I joke that you can swing a dead cat and hit three red dot pistol instructors out there these days.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and some of them are are are okay, some of them are very, very good, and some of them really are wasting everyone's time.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: But uh if if that process, if you don't have an efficient process of learning that that presentation, and if you don't have some creativity on the part of the instructor on on finding out what the student needs, uh everybody's gonna walk away frustrated.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's something to be considered too.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I don't claim to to have the everything figured out, but I have uh watched and learned uh and developed my own approach to it of teaching people how to use a red dot, and and it works well.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh uh the system or the concept I I believe is is the very best we can do, but it's not the best we can do if it's not supported by a proper train up and a dedication to uh to building the skills and and maintaining them.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody comes to you and they are struggling to pick up the red dot, where do you ultimately begin the journey of trying to get them dialed in with it?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first part of the journey will be let's let's find out, let's fix a grip.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make sure the grip supports uh the consistent presentation.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you if you look at what we do with a pistol, just just as the human creature, since we're bilateral, uh ideally if we were going to be good red dot shooters, we would have an arm and it would come out from about the top of our sternum and and present the pistol straight away.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that's not how we're created, and we got an arm on each side.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if you I'm a left-hander, so if I draw a pistol out and just grip it one-handed and draw the pistol out, it's pointing to the right.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're right-handed and you draw it out and just let it let the gun orient, you know, in a natural body pose, it points to your left.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is A, make sure the grip of the master hand on the gun is high-centered and firm.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And B, when the hands marry up, that support hand, and specifically the support hand thumb, is what I've learned and taught.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: The support hand thumb has to straighten that gun out at the marry up.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, take out any kind of bias to the support side so that as you move the gun out to the target, you've got a straight, straight approach to the target, and you're literally you're not hunting for the dot, you're just waiting for it to show up and give you the green light to shoot, or the red light in the case of Aimpoint.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's well, we can get off in the weeds on red versus green very quickly.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I would say that neither one is the answer.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um what the answer is probably, and nobody's really doing it in mass, and I'm off on the on a rabbit trail right now.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is blue.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's come back to that.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I really want to explore that.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's brilliant.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: But keep going on your other thing, marrying up the hands.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the hands marry up, and when that when they marry up, that support hand thumb is going alongside the frame and slide, probably the frame.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: If it's going on the slide, that's okay.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it is it is camming the gun straight.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is straightening out that bias, and it's doing it literally in milliseconds at speed, so that as you as you move that gun on the target, uh that dot simply appears, and you're focused on the target with your master eye, and the aiming solution is confirmed.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is not achieved by that.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: That dot should be confirming aiming solution, uh, which is an entirely different concept.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're using the dot to achieve aiming solution, that definitively says you're focusing on the dot, which means you have a$500 electric iron sight you're using.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which is, again, you're you're you've gone back and regressed uh on capability and and spent money that you're not gaining anything from.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So grip, marry up where the the gun goes neutral, in other words, the gun goes straight, and then move the gun efficiently to the target.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not done in a punch, it's not done in a slam.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh basically, the gun, I I use different terms when I'm talking to people, trying to find the term that connects with their their way of learning or their understanding.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I basically say we coast the gun onto the target.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the gun just just basically it moves onto the target without being slammed because if we slam it, that definitively means at the end of the stroke, the gun's going to get driven down.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so then we'll have to bring it back up and find the dot.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: It it's really a it's really a very smooth, easy going way of doing it.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we're quick to the gun, we're quick to the merry-up, and then we are careful and coasting to the target.
• 34:36
  unknown: Okay.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the quick that's the executive summary of it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love that.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: I do have a question about support hand, because I have heard all kinds of arguments for support hand, obviously, as you go to the draw, the gun, strong side, in my case, right side, uh, put your support hand somewhere.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: My place has always been high, kind of right over the top of the uh where you get punched and you get the wind knocked out of your solar plexus.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh usually because equipment, you know, previously would get in the way, so placement was always important.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I always went higher on my torso because I always felt like if I could marry up at that higher position with both hands, it was a flatter trajectory overall.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it also got me around the bad habit, as you said earlier, of curving.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: I pick it up earlier, I'm punching out straighter.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now I just said punching out, so I'm gonna smack myself in the back of the head for you.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want to coast it.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: But you're absolutely right.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the olden days uh when we when we were in modern technique, and when we're really in the olden days of modern technique, that that that support hand was extended straight forward like we're pointing our fingers at the target.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was the original way.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is a realization that we are sure are pointing a muzzle at a lot of fingers while we're doing that in some places.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that it came up to where the hand comes up, like you say, is I I teach and I I have been taught that that hand just comes and it rests against the the torso.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: The higher we put it on the torso, then the higher we do the marry up in theory, which is exactly what we're looking for with a dot site.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to marry up at the belly button because then we're lifting the gun up like on a on an on-ramp uh to try to hunt down the dot.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're coming up.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: What we really want is to as much as possible get that gun flat to the target on the marry up so that we pick it up earlier.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this this blows some minds, but if you shoot halfway through the stroke, that's cool.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: As long as you see the dot on the target, um you don't have to be at full extension.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that that catches some people by surprise that you would shoot like 60% into your extension, you deliver a shot.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's because, hey, the dot's there, brother.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, you can go out and mess with that and find out that the dot's there, whether you're seeing it or not.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mess with a couple of little drills.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't push them out there, but I'll for myself I'll go play these little games with a dot and and a close target, three or four or five yards, and find out that the dot is on the target much sooner than you think it is.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the things I definitely personally ran into as a challenge was finding the red dot because I was looking for it in the exact same way as I would look previously for my front side post and looking for the red dot, whether that was right or wrong, I found just did not work.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: It was very much for me after the hands married up and I coasted out towards the target that if I was looking at my target now instead of for that red dot, it would 99% of the time appear.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was the problem I had with muscle memory and trying to look for the front side post that was screwing up red dot acquisition.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, do you have something in there you can because this is for me now?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: Anything in there?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Was I doing that wrong?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Am I doing it right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: What are most people doing?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So right and wrong.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know, that's that's uh then we get off into being relative.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: If it's working for you, it's probably right.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not working for you, most of the time, it's probably wrong.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it's working for you all the time, it's clearly right.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Assuming you're getting it done efficiently and at a reasonable speed.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um a couple of ways that I've uh worked with myself and others, and and I'll I'll give credit to Dwayne Buckner, who is who is our lead guy at Aimpoint and our professional training.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give also credit to Eric Gellhouse, who runs Cougar Mountain Solutions, whom I've known forever, and who does just an astounding class.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Both those guys teach an astounding pistol optics instructor class.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that I've noticed is grip the gun, make sure you got the grip and the merry up neutral, like you're supposed to, and without trying to hunt down the dot, just get the get the dot out or get the gun out on the target and build a perfect target solution and feel what that feels like to see the dot in the center of relatively in the center of the optic, on the center of where you want to hit.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And work that.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Find out that natural point of aim and then work a reverse of pulling the gun back off at a smooth, slow pace until you lose the dot, and then push it out again.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're learning is you're teaching, you're teaching the solution out there, and then we'll we'll teach how to get to it on the holster in the marry up earlier or later.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: But find it out.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I'll do is turn off the dot and just put the put the optic on the target and center the target in the in the field of the dot, and you'll find out that when you learned how to build that groove and then turn the dot back on, you're doing the same thing.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll we'll work it back to the marry up and work it from marry up out to the target again over and over again.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and mind you, this is not going fast.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is going at about uh no faster than 25 or 35 percent of what you perceive your speed is.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're process building here.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're building a groove.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the speed, the speed will take place.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't worry about speed, we worry about doing this right and worry about doing it efficiently.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you do that, then start firing some dry snaps.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we teach the trigger slack out on the way and we teach the dry press uh at different speeds, and then we'll go live with that, uh, single shots.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll go back to the holster and learn holster to marry up and very, very s smoothly and marry up to point.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically what we're doing is building block uh teaching this whole presentation.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if people will listen, if they will do what you say and and set aside what they think they know, um then you'll you'll make progress.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I'll tell you this.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had a guy, law enforcement guy, a couple of months ago that said they want he wanted to learn this, so I spent two of the most frustrating days of my life trying to teach him something.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he walked away and knew exactly what he showed up learning knowing.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I remember telling him, I think you ought to go back in iron sight, be an iron sight guy, because you won't adapt to this situation here.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's that and and and that's not good sales, okay?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I'm I I have a sales title, but but I I am in truth probably a terrible salesman because I'm I'm uh too straightforward about some stuff.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Honest.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Was it an inner failure?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: Was he unable to or you just didn't want to?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's like been doing the same old thing for so long that he couldn't get away from it or wouldn't get away from it.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the same the old way that he was doing it was also terrible.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: His iron sight game was terrible.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_04: So between the two things, no hope at all.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_04: Is he still on the job?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_04: That's bloody scary.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so now I have to ask.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: However, now I'm doubting that knowledge.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me what's the truth?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Night vision, yeah, there is a lot of green in night vision, but if you've ever worked much on night vision, you still don't feel like a human being while you're using it.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, it's horrible.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh especially, and and nowadays there's the multi-tube stuff makes it a lot easier.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember learning on ANPBS 14, and they after we got taught it, then they said, let's take a nature walk in the middle of the night on some terrain with some features.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like, man, I felt like I don't know nothing about walking right now.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: You get no depth perception, tripping over you.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Death perception completely absent.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that would that was that was terrible.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um Red, you know, red was the first one.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Aimpoint invented the uh the red dot optic uh for rifles.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, aim dot aimpoint invented is the developer of the very first red dot optic, and they developed that and and put it in the marketplace in 1975.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been around 51 years now.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously the the beginning stuff on this was really, really crude and really, really big and um uh was not was fairly unwieldy, and as time has come on, you know, they moved into uh the rifle optic uh red dot, which you know was out there for a while and started catching hold in the late 90s uh when the military adopted what they call the M68 CCO, which the original version was the aim point.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Comp M2.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then about 2004, they changed the they still call it M68, and they changed to the Comp M4.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And those were red dot, battery-powered, 30 millimeter optics.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when you put them on a carbine and taught someone how to properly use them, unlike a lot of the training that was put on where they were trying to tell them to incorporate the iron sights with the dot, which is complete insanity.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: But once you taught someone how to use that dot, shooting things with a carbine became stupidly easy.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the reason is you're teaching target focus, and you already have hopefully a fairly robust platform and mount built with the carbine that you're using for iron sites.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so the iron the optic came in there and worked great.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was red dot.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as time went on, people said, well, you know, I'm colorblind, or we've had red dot for so long, we need something different, whether we did or not.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so there started to proliferate uh green optics, green dot optics.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with green dot optics as the you know, as a concept, green dot uh green emitters, green LEDs use more battery than red do.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: We know that from our testing.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay and and it's been kind of an experience that it's easier to source quality red LEDs than it is green LEDs at times.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh LEDs are not LEDs, uh, you know, every LED is not the same as the others, it's like flashlights or light bulbs or anything else.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're essentially a fiber, uh, you know, a little tiny light bulb, and we've seen lots of quality differences there.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: So and then the blue, and I've just seen little conceptual things on that, and aim point's probably gonna cut my throat if they see this, but um blue has some interesting possibilities.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's easy to see.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the emitters, I'm not sure about the quality of, but if someone wants to look at something truly different, I I think blue will grab your attention and be usable.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think well, I think it has promise.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now then whether it's going to happen or not, I don't know.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing in the traditional equipment world moves that fast.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's there's concepts and people try it out, but as far as full acceptance or full proliferation, that's that's another world entirely.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: So does a lot of it come down to personal preference and okay, so currently available, we got red and green.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe some point in the future we might have blue, and I certainly, if they release a blue one, I'm gonna have a bloody good look at it.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: But if it if somebody feels like, okay, it's it's easier for me to see a red dot, go with red.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: And if they feel like it's easier with green, go with green.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have an opinion on that?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: The opinion is it doesn't matter.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason and when people start when people start talking about focusing real hard on dot color, or even worse, start talking about what kind of dot they see.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't see a crisp dot, I see a dot that looks like a little star, or I see a dot that looks like a comma, or whatever, uh, I know they're looking at the wrong thing.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you're using a dot optic, you're not supposed to be paying attention to the dot.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be paying attention to what you need to shoot.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it it the answer is it doesn't matter.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: It it's it's marketing, it's sales.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is it is aimpoint is is in the business to make money.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: HoloSun's in the business to make money, Vortex, Steiner, Trigicon, Eotech, whoever you want to throw out there.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're all businesses.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're businesses.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's and the the bottom line is we want to sell sites and make money.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and they all do.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so and and then we get back to the deal of of the realities in performance, especially uh performance and extremists.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're not gonna be able to show enough of a performance advantage in terms of speed that's gonna say, okay, if you have this one, you'll you'll always win.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you have that one, you'll always lose, or you you know, you're not gonna be able to look at them and say, yeah, that there's a chance that you're gonna lose more frequently with this one than the other one.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just not there.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can see all of them.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can you can put all of them there, and if the presentation of the tool or the weapon to the problem is done properly, it doesn't matter what color it is.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: As long as you're looking at the thread, as long as you've made a good decision, as soon as the dot superimposes, we press the trigger.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's all there is to it.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's it we we overcomplicate this, and since we're scared to death of those eventualities of those kind of situations, is we want to try to figure out a way to say, hey, this is gonna make sure I'm a winner.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and the equipment, the equipment is is not negligible, it's not uh it's it's not insignificant, but it's not as important as you know in what you need to do and how to make the decision and how to present the tool.
• 49:23
  unknown: Yeah.
• 49:24
  unknown: All right.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: So what do you think shooters spend far too much time practicing because maybe it looks good or it feels good, but has really l relatively little value in an actual defensive encounter?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um reloading.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say looking for the sub-second draw, and that's I think that's I I think there's an astonishing amount of energy gets spent on that, on something, and the sub-second draw is probably not gonna win you or lose you a fight because everybody is talking about the really fast draw, is is basically saying out loud, whether they realize it or not, that my sub-second draw will cause this guy to fall down faster than if I have a second and a half draw, and it won't.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh besides the fact that they're gonna probably need to do more than one shot, which will the sub-second draw support uh three or four more shots after the first one at the speed you started delivering, and oftentimes it won't.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there's we're we we want to figure out an equipment way to make sure that we win.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to figure out some kind of training way to make sure that we win.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the training will get further than the equipment.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: But reloading back to that.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I see an astonishing amount of energy spent on reloading carbines and reloading pistols, especially uh bolt lock on carbine and slide lock on pistols.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I just go back to something I remember, and boy, this is dating me really badly.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Something I remember Chuck Taylor telling me back about 1983 or 84.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is that far enough back?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: He said, So you're in this fight and your pistol runs empty, your slide locks back, and of course we were in the 1911 world then when it was a a seven or eight shot pistol and instead of a fifteen or a eighteen shot pistol today.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What does that mean?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of look at him and he said, It means one of two things.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: He said, A, it means you've been missing a lot, or B, it means you got yourself into a situation that a pistol can't fix.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I locked down on that a lot.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so it's it's one of those deals of reloading, yes, we should know how to reload, we should know how to reload well, we should know how to reload a slide closed, we should know how to reload a slide locked.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: But realize that if it if the reload is suddenly required of us in a fight, uh then that says that we have been performing at a level that's not likely to win with another magazine.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I am crushing puppies and sticking I'm goring people's oxes.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you know what?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, because that's the difference between range theatrics and actual use in a defensive encounter.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you em let's say, okay, we'll go back to the nine millimeter, right?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're running 17 and you have to reload.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: You you have.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: You either missed a lot or you need something bigger and heavier, and you need it quick.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've hosed down a neighborhood, is what you've done.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you probably haven't sunk a hit, a good hit, maybe one or two minimal hits, but but you have you have literally strafed an area with pistol bullets uh that you wouldn't set up a target on to run a qualification drill on.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're you you wouldn't set up a target where you're doing this and say, let's shoot a magazine of training rounds here.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that means that you've endangered all kinds of things.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even counting shooting the windows and the fences and the cars and everything.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about endangering people in their houses or walking down the street or in the parking lot with you.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you've done that, you haven't stopped the problem, okay, and you've wasted a pretty astonishing amount of time uh without this problem being handled.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So my my standard deal is if you draw the gun and you and you can s and you you start making hits right out of the holster and make nothing but hits, reloading will be something you do at your leisure after everything is done.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um so and and that's that's not that's not fun, that's not sexy, that's not good marketing.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'll I'll I'll swear to God, I think a slide-lock reload at speed done by a real master, I think that is dead sexy.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it is just astonishing to watch the skill that these guys go through to be able to do these these reloads, and especially the slide closed ones that you see a lot of USPSA folks doing, where they're literally uh from shot to shot uh with a magazine change in between in the sub-second and a half range.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that's impressive.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's also not too not too applicable to uh a citizen or police officer in a deadly confrontation on a street.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing on reloading, if you're gonna teach it or when you're gonna teach it, it drives me absolutely nuts that people will teach a draw to a shot with a reload right behind it.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're gonna draw and fire two shots and then do a reload, or draw and fire a shot and do a reload.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're gonna do, if you're gonna work on reloading, work on reloading from some kind of pointed in situation or some kind of ready situation instead of out of the holster.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um the people that we're teaching as a vast population uh are not going to understand uh the context of of the reload that way.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um you don't want to teach someone to draw and fire the gun once or twice and then dump a magazine and put another magazine on, absent any other's information.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not it's not uh it's not wise, I don't think.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna do that.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: No, because it teaches the habit of firing to and reloading.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not interrupting that flow, then that becomes the practice and the training.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and another thing I've noticed on on slide lock or slide lock reloads, especially, is you'll teach a one and one.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: They'll they'll fire a shot, slide a lock, and they'll shoot another shot.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when I when I teach that slide lock load, I always like to do a one plus two or a one plus three.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, make a hit, slide locks, reload it, and make give me two or three hits in succession because anybody can snag a single hit after a trashy reload and regrip.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not too many people can give you two or three right after it if their grip isn't, if they didn't do a good reload and re-grip the gun properly.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll do that on steel.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll I'll do it on eight or ten yard steel on an eight-inch plate.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: And a 15-round magazine works great.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have a 15-round magazine and an empty magazine.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: Put the 15-rounder on, chamber around, take the magazine, put it in the primary pouch, and then put an empty magazine on to where you lock the slide.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one plus two will give you five of those iterations.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: It'll give you 15 rounds uh where you'll you'll have a structured reload.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'll go and do that, you know, once a month and get in five good solid reloads with 15 hits, and and that takes care of things.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to sit there and beat it to death.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's also something to be said for training that way in order to build the habit of knowing you're going to have to do follow-up shots.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: We just had an instance at one of the law enforcement conferences that we went to.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: We set up VST Pro, which is video scenario trainer, inside of the smokeless range.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: And we had uh one of the scenarios playing out where it's a knife attack, and the officer's like, I'll go at this.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the guy attacked with a knife, of course, it's on a projected screen.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, it's as realistic as you can get.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: He shot him once and he did do a center mass hit, but the guy didn't drop.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Oh, the system didn't register my hit.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, No, he did.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: The system registered, you didn't stop him, and you didn't follow up.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it took him, you could see it sort of buffering as the wheel went around.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, What do you what do you mean?
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: I hit him center mask.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, once?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's this even for law enforcement, there is this thinking that I shot once and that should do the job, rather than shoot once, threats not stopping, shoot again, threats not stopping, like in continuing that follow-up until the desired effect.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the guys that I've known forever, I've known Steve Moses 30 years, and he runs Palisades training group.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I teach under their banner quite a bit.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, he threw out the idea, he said, all you're doing is shooting drill bits.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Right?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're shooting a drill bit, and and you're the drill bit is drilling a hole, and that's about all it's doing, is it's drilling a drill bit sized hole, or perhaps even smaller.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to figure out what size drill bit you want to shoot, and you need to know that you can shoot more than one drill bit uh to uh to achieve a success.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I asked that uh that guy in that particular instance.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, have you ever heard of the term you know switches and timers?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he looked at me like I'd gone out to lunch.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, What do you mean switches and timers?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, really?
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because we expect our law enforcement to get the training they need to perform their duties up to and including deadly force.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in most of the cases, they're getting a fraction of what they need and should be getting.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you so we went into this discussion, switches and timers.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: Timers, you hit someone, it's an effective shot, but they're on a timer to the you know, blood loss and shock or whatever, stopping them from doing what you don't want to do.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's switches, turning them off.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where is the off switch?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: You hit a timer, and he was still running and coming at you with a knife.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it didn't take very long for the reality of the situation to dawn on him, that it wasn't a technical malfunction.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: This was a cognitive malfunction.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, we've created subconscious expectations through all kinds of mechanisms, but usually TV and movies and and maybe even some of our law enforcement uh reactive training videos will cause people to believe that, okay, I I do this many and this happens.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, is um with poor shots, with poorly placed shots, uh, that thing may go on until you're no longer a, as Pat Rogers said, an earthly consumer of oxygen.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um or they may they may stop very quickly if psychologically they said, oh my god, he just shot me, I need to fall down now.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you you do interrupt something that uh that causes them to continue functioning, like if you interrupt if you interrupt a brainstem, if you interrupt a cervical spine, um things like that will tend to cause people, or even in the thoracic spine, if you if you slam a bullet into uh thoracic vertebrae, people typically will fall very quickly on that.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, but those targets are hard to hit.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're especially hard to hit when the threat's moving and when you're a mediocre shot to begin with.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um this all of this all of these little factors and sickeners don't add up to a great meal, they add up to an ugly soup a lot of the time.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: Terrible, terrible analogy, but but it is the truth.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the other things I had read about you with talking about self-defense and the the kind of the unrealistic expectation people now have in their head of what will happen after an encounter, one shot being a good example, that the movies has kind of convinced us or tricked us into believing it's true.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: We've watched a thousand people get shot once and they drop, and you're like, that is not the reality.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and sometimes it is, but not frequently.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm aware if some one shot stops, but the fact is, is that, and I teach especially citizens and to a lesser extent the police, that your success sign in a deadly force encounter where you fired on someone, your most reliable success sign is not them falling down.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is them leaving.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there is an awful high number of people that you stick bullets into their thorax uh effectively, and they do just like a deer or an elk does, they turn around and run away, which is, in my opinion, an excellent response to achieve because that means they're not there with you anymore.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and people say, Well, I want him to fall down.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: I say, Well, if he falls down, there's a good chance, you know, that his blood pressure gets a little bit better, and he may say, That wasn't so bad, let's give it another whirl here.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go for round two.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then so he's on the ground and you're above him, and you shoot him on the ground, and someone says, Oh, look, that policeman executed him.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the the idea that, you know, putting a bullet in someone or could putting bullets in someone's chest and they turn around and wheel and run off is is I I think that's a great outcome right there.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tell him, I said, don't chase that guy.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't chase him, just let him go.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the canines or the the perimeter team or somebody will find him somewhere and and you're not gonna be part of that show anymore.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's funny because I've I have never heard that the good outcome for this is him leaving.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because my thought process immediately was, where are you going, bro?
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: We have we're not finished.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, we are.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: But and you basically say, Here's here's the out here's the three outcomes.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the three here's the three outcome branches.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: One, you you sink a great hit or great hits, and as we say in Texas, he tumps over and falls on the ground.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and he's he's down right there, falls down right on the spot.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's one outcome.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Another outcome, and that's not a real high, high percentage one.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: Another outcome is you shoot him, he turns around and runs away.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: That happens quite a bit.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: The third outcome is terrifying, and that is you shoot him, and he keeps on standing there doing what caused you to start shooting him in the first place.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the terrifying outcome.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone is serious about carrying a firearm for self-defense, what do you think genuine mental preparedness actually requires before a gun ever enters the equation?
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's there's a lot.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is that uh you need to develop a mental game, a mindset that you will uh be prepared at an instant to defend yourself or to respond to some kind of threat, not necessarily defend yourself, but to be able to respond to a threat uh and and do the very best you can to ensure your continued welfare or that of whomever you have responsibility for that may be with you at the time.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's one thing, and that is understanding that there is a threat out there.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we can we can you know fudge some numbers around, and I can tell you that if you live in an urban area and you go to school, you go to a bank, you go especially to a grocery store, you go to a Walmart, uh, you go to a gas station, and we all do all of those things, you are there with a bad guy from pure numbers.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're there with a bad guy.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a Walmart or a grocery store, you're in there with two or three or four bad guys if it's got a typical customer load in it.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can play with the idea that there's probably two or three percent of the males in a population are sociopaths or psychopaths.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean they're necessarily criminal ones, but they are that.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then, like in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where I live, about one in thirty people in that area are on felony probation or parole.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that tells you you got you got a one in thirty that there's a bad guy.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: So so you roll those two numbers together and you say, hmm, here I am at at the very best grocery store in the universe, HE B, Texas based grocery store.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been to an H E B, you haven't been to grocery store heaven yet.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I love H E B and all the Texans are listening saying he's right, man.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's right.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but but if you're in the HE B on a typical Friday Saturday, Sunday, Sunday's a horrible grocery shopping day here.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're there with some bad guys.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, are they going to target you?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are they planning on doing anything bad?
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: But virtually all of these situations you see are random encounters.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to, first of all, form the mental attitude that I will take care of myself and that I realize there are problem people out there.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: After that, you know, it's a level building a level of awareness, paying attention to anomalies, problems in the environment.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: And most of them, if you're paying attention, are pretty blatant.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're not secret.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever someone told me as a police officer that their vic that whatever criminal victimized them came out of nowhere, I knew exactly at that point that they hadn't been paying any attention to what was going on around them.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the mind game has to take place before anything else does.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think you really need to get past the idea that I will buy these pieces of gear, this this tool, this tool, and this tool, and I'll need now be ready to take care of whatever eventuality shows up here.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be trained, you have to learn the tools, you have to achieve competence with them, and then you've got to sustain that competence with frequent training.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have a basic idea about tactics.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be SWAT-level tactics, but it does need to be an idea about what what are my problems that are likely to be presented to me and and what are the what are some very basic and simple responses I can do to uh to keep an advantage or gain an advantage.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's more of a software game than it is a hardware game when you get right down to it.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: The hardware and especially the ammo is probably not 10% of your solution.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain your brain is probably 90 or 95% of the whole thing.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: I taught and still teach for personal safety, situational awareness, the cognitive processes behind awareness and how we scan.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so difficult to get people to want to come in and commit to a class like that.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now if I go that doesn't sell.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't it's not sexy.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I put on a class a couple of years ago.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was Edge Weapons.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: And this was after a quite a long time of really pushing to figure out the cognitive elements of situational awareness and teaching that.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a passion of mine.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_02: I love doing it, and people who come love the class.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_02: But we always struggled to get enough asses and seats.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_02: The second I put on an edge weapons class, filled up.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was literally like a 24-hour period, it was done.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like look, don't get me wrong, I love teaching that class too, and I had fun with those people, but I it frustrated me that the answer for most people is I'll carry a different tool and I'll train on that tool once, as was the case for this particular class, an introduction to its weapons, and that will be all I need.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like pulling my bloody hair out.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like 90%, 95% of anything you're ever going to need in the real world is you spotting it early enough to get out.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was about to say the the the best tactical package you can have is when you see something going sideways, just leave.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I'm out.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, time to go.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: Time to be somewhere else.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously there's times when you can't, but Exactly.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you see the you see the parking lot group versus group, you know, chess pecking and and stuff like that.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, that is let's get out of here.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is this whatever's gonna happen here is not gonna be good and we don't want to be part of it.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: So Yeah.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_02: That is brilliant.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_02: But it's great to hear someone with your teaching depth kind of support that, especially given your knowledge.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that one of the last questions I have for you, I think there's a big difference between somebody who is legally justified in using deadly force because of the situation they find themselves in, and somebody being psychologically ready to and capable of doing it.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do you train that?
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that you can really successfully train it.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: You could I I would say that uh if you can if you can scenario train it, I think scenario training works.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think video scenario training is useful.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I have told people, and of course this is when everybody read the newspaper every day, uh I said, when you're when your local metro newspaper shows up on the doorstep, uh don't get the sports section, don't get the main section, get what I call the metro section, which is local news.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said, get it out, and usually on the in on the front page of that or the front page and the inside of the the page two, it'll have various crime incidents that took place.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, and they all took place close to you, uh, because you're taking that paper and and read those incidents, and there's always, as a cop, you'd sit there and look at them and read between the lines quite a bit.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's look at that incident, look, think about where it happened, think about the ideas of of how that thing developed, and what would you do to either absent yourself from it to avoid being there, or if you got stuck in it, have an idea or two about how you would have responded to that.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, just doing a little mental rehearsal, a little gaming every day was one thing.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what I've noticed about most people, including cops, is that when the things start developing is they don't believe the ramifications and the realities of what's going on.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to believe that, hey, I'm a nice guy, I'm a I'm a very I'm a fine policeman, I treat all the kids well, I stop at their lemonade stands, I play basketball with them, and I do dance videos, which is all, excuse my French, horse shit.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's not what you're there for.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but they have the idea that uh that this this is this can't be happening to me.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, this is not real.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: That bad guy really doesn't want to do that.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so and and we see it in domestic violence situations most tragically, of yeah, he's beat me over and over, but he bought me flowers and told me he's gonna be better now.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um people people tell you what they are, they tell you what they're gonna do, you should believe them.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You should you should believe, you should accept their actions and their statements as truth when they say they're they have some kind of ill intent towards you.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's hard to do, and it's something hey, I work on it every week, every day.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it and sometimes people say, Well, are you value judging?
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you profiling?
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Work like champs.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I profiled all through a police career, it it put lots of bad guys in jail for me.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you you sit there and have to understand that when someone looks at you and says, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna rape you, I'm gonna rob you, I'm gonna beat you up, or you hear them doing that to someone else, hey, that's what they're gonna do.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're telling the truth.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That may be the only time they told the truth, the truth that week, but they're telling the truth right then.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to understand that and be wet ready to deal with it in some form or fashion.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And ready to accept a change in reality, right?
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because we always have this preconceived idea in our head about how the world should behave and how it should respond to us.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the reality is it could be absolutely none of those things.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you remember in Jurassic Park, and I cannot remember the actor's name.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was I think he was Australian.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like the gamekeeper at Jurassic Park, and the Velociraptor got him flanked.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Clever girl.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the same thing of you get you gotta understand the realities.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he did, and his reality was I'm done.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like it's over.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think the the thread running through this entire conversation is that better equipment can definitely enhance skill for sure, but it cannot replace the work underneath it.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Grip, presentation, judgment, mental preparedness, those are the things I think we can actually work on so that all the supporting peripheral gear is there for us, but it's there for us because we've trained everything else to a satisfactory degree.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for coming on here and sharing what is nearly five decades of experience.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's and it seems like it took about six months uh for it to all happen.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't believe it.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I look back and it's just like, holy smokes.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'll tell you what I'll do.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I will send you I will send you a picture uh from 1981 of me uh as a a young officer.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and so you will be able to see well let me show you first of all, no hair left.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So but when when I get you the I'll send you the picture and you can when you get ready to launch it, if you want to put stills in there, you can put that one in there.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a little frame of reference about how things worked.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um But it's it's it's a lifelong journey, and and I know that uh the learning never stops if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, and it shouldn't.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_02: It does for a lot of people, but um but it shouldn't.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I think with people like you out there who make the learning fun, it's a no-brainer, right?
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: They should enroll.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_02: So where do people reach out to either contact you, follow you, or take a class?
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you want them to go?
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um for one thing, look at uh Palisades Training Group's website, and that's PTG, like Paul Tom George, PTG Training LLC.com.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I will be on there, like for instance, I have, and well, we're going real retro, in a couple of weeks I'll teach a uh a carry revolver class at the Dallas Pistol Club.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm the president of the Dallas Pistol Club and I host a lot of training there.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I do some training.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I train at a lot of conferences.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I train at Guardian Conference in Oklahoma every year.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've trained at Girl in a Gun for the past two years in Colorado, which I love that.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love teaching women that want to learn.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're their motivation and their their willingness to open their minds is is significantly better than the typical male population.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're phenomenal students.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they are.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're amazing and they're hilarious.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go don't go teach a class like that if you're uh if you're a sensitive type.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I teach uh there's a couple of revolver confabs that I'm part of, Revolver Fest in South Carolina every October, and Revolver Roundup at Gunsight every November.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then some other one and one-day classes uh is what I found is a good format to teach most people in.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but I'm out there.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can reach me at Wayne.dobs at Yahoo, and uh I'll be glad to talk to someone.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: If someone wants a class host wants to host a class, we can do that.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's great, and thank you so much for carving out some time to join me for today.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed it.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thanks to everyone for listening to this episode.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Depending on where you're either watching or listening, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Your support means the world to us, and it helps us continue to bring you the guests that you want to hear from.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_02: And now that's the end of today's episode.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you in the next one.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.