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The Armed but Unprepared: Why Shooting Skill Isn’t Enough · Making Shooters Better

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I get parked and I'm getting my stuff and I look up and okay, bad situational awareness, this guy's right at my door.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um I roll the window down a little bit, about that much, and very sarcastically I ask him, Can I help you?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, you know, I I saw you park and that you seem like, you know, you'd be a kind of a nice person to come over and to talk to.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, What?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wearing like a sweatshirt, some jeans, and like go going to Home Depot outfit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: My my my sexiest sweatshirt apparently on that day because I think I'm being hit on, but I don't know.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's been a while.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he says this to me, and I'm thinking, this guy's whack.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, stop right there.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you're not Italian.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because he had a shirt that said Italia across him.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I go, You're not Italian.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I said, second of all, you have a gun?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: He kind of stepped back.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Are you armed?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a gun?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, No.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I go, well, one of us does.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Get the fuck out of here.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Making Shooters Better, brought to you by Laser Ammo.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: What if being a good shooter is actually giving you a false sense of security?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: My guest today is Luann Hamblin, a retired police officer with 22 years on the job, more than three decades teaching human performance and motor skills as they pertain to firearms and personal safety, and she has trained thousands of students across law enforcement, military, and civilian communities.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: This conversation is going to go far deeper than just marksmanship.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about why carrying a gun does not make you prepared, why some highly confident instructors may be far less capable than they appear, and why experience can actually make you a liability when your curiosity disappears.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Luan's also going to share some brutally practical lessons about situational awareness, fitness, verbal skills, pressure testing your abilities, and what happens when the version of yourself in your head collides with reality.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: If your entire personal safety plan begins and ends with the pistol on your hip, this episode may well challenge that perspective.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So let's roll the episode.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Luann, and welcome to the podcast.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Terry.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you uh jumping on here.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So how old were you when you first started shooting?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, well, growing up on a farm, there were opportunities to shoot all kinds of things.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was forced to shoot a raccoon in a dumpster when I think I was about six years old.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that that didn't go very well.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of let put that thing down for a while, and then I think really formal training was in the Reserve Police Academy.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was in my early twenties, I want to say, when I got my first uh formal training with a with a revolver, you know, a 581 Smith and Wesson L frame.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Still have that gun.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You still have it?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, listen, the the best thing that could have ever been put in my hands was that was that revolver that really taught me uh trigger discipline like like nothing else.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I still have it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what did you try shooting the raccoon with?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: My dad gave me, it was like a Ruger 22, and it was just one of those things, like you want to be one of the boys?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is and so I, you know, it's a really gross story, but I ended up shooting the raccoon's like jaw off, and I just remember him looking at me like, what the are you doing?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know, here, take that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to I don't I'm done.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta finish him.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, I can't even do that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like eight years old, it's ridiculous.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that was a very young age to have you start trying to take out the uh the rodents.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the raccoon population on the farm, yeah, I agree, but you know.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So where was the farm?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Where'd you live?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Plymouth, Mich Plymouth, Michigan.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Midwest.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you still have the farm?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: They sold that ash shoot.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Late nineties, I want to say.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: After forty forty-two years, yeah.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Have you watched any of Clarkson's farm?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, it's a brilliant TV show.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Clarkson, who was formerly on Top Gear, bought a farm in England, and basically it sounds like it would be in truly mind-numbingly boring, and it's not because he's a bloody character.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: But he bought a c a farm in England, and now his this show is about him running the farm.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, it's a fish out of water.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a guy that helps him run the farm.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's bloody hilarious.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if you haven't seen it, especially if you have a farming background, I think you would probably enjoy it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a lot of humorous moments in it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Give it a whirl.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I have read a couple of things about you, and one of the things that you're a big advocate for is developing a personal arsenal, which is above and beyond just having a firearm and then being proficient with it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what is a personal arsenal in your opinion?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's just a very well-rounded uh way of going about your daily activities and um, you know, how you see uh life in general and just preparing.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's decisions that people make on a daily basis.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I put together like a survey for the women when I do this workshop.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Building Warrior Women.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a four-hour workshop.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the questions have to do with like, um, do you believe that your entire family should be trained up in everyday situational awareness?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um more specifically, you know, do you spend more time uh when you're out in public on your devices, you know, focusing more on what's on the other end of that screen than you do your surroundings?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um when I was a street cop, uh one of the things that I really made me unnervous is having a car uh drive alongside me on the freeway for any period of time.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't like somebody eyeballing me, and I still to this day don't.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll either speed up or I'll change lanes or I'll slow down, I'll do something so that person is not riding along next to me.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So just certain types of things.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, checking when you go to pump gas, do you do like a a complete 360 of the gas station before you pick your spot or you just pull right in and you don't really you're not aware of the entire environment.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean when I'm talking about personal arsenal.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Situational awareness, um, do you keep yourself fit, a certain fitness level?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's even more so important the older we get.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: That you can move your body, that's what it was designed for, locomotion, and how well um, you know, people you know, they they don't do something for years, and in their mind they're they're just as fit as they were in their thirties.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And here 20 years later, they they really have they haven't tested themselves, they've not been tested, they don't really know what their capabilities are physically because they haven't done anything in a while.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So just, you know, d I mean, doesn't everybody think about that stuff?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just basic stuff.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think more people should be thinking about it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know necessarily that they do.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think a holistic approach to all things that are self-preservation and personal safety it is often uh there's a lot left lacking.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: People they they're not practicing those skills.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're not practicing their resiliency to stress.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: They feel, as you said, that something they may have been good at 20 years ago is gonna have some sort of spillover into modern day um problems or challenges, and invariably they won't, because the skill sets are perishable and the situations are gonna vary, and it the more stress that is on someone and the less mental conditioning or physiological conditioning they've undergone in the last you know 5, 10, 15, 20 years, the less likely they are to be able to handle it and respond the way they envision in this perfect uh world where they're gonna have a good, solid response.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we had an instance uh not too long ago where shooting the simulator at one of the law enforcement conferences, and we were integrating a um accuracy under fire.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: They have a simulation system, injury system that you slip a it's a nearprint sleeve.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And effectively it's a battery pack on the back, nearprint sleeve that goes over your arm, and it electrocutes the arm that is usually the strong side for for drawing.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the challenge in this was to shoot the scenario that we had put up onto the onto the screen with the smokeless range and see if you could um draw your firearm from the holster outside the whole outside the waistband with the support side only.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a guy step in and said, Oh, I'll I'll give it a go.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the scenario played out, but when he tried to reach for his gun, support side, guess what?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Couldn't get it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't even know he couldn't get to his gun in this situation.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it was sort of revelatory, I think, for him to realize that his uh rotund frame was no longer going to allow him to do to improvise.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if he was in a compromised situation, he was completely compromised.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we fantasize about, you know, what what we would do and how we would look doing it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when we first got in-car cameras, you know, uh I get involved in a foot pursuit, and of course, the guys go into the fence right as I exit the patrol car and I start running.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I go to grab this guy, and I, you know, I don't get him, whatever.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I go to review my in-car camera, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, the way I think I look, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like I look like I got my Catwoman suit on, you know, and I'm looking good and I'm fast, you know, and doing all things tactical.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have tunnel vision and all this stuff.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when I review the camera, all I can say is, man, does my ass really that big?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Holy shit, I can't, oh my God, what, you know, in my mind, I'm the superhero.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I see myself going, man, you you're lucky that you didn't face plant, you know, go into this thing.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're lucky he didn't rear back and kick you in the face as you're trying to, you know, grab his legs.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're lucky, you know, so on our minds, we we probably overestimate our performance in other areas as well until you get pressure tested and you're like, oh yeah, that I really thought I could do that a little bit quicker in real life, you know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: People, you know, I see it all the time, but you know, in law enforcement, we just have really good examples because there's cameras everywhere and you get a chance to really evaluate other people, unfortunately.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and a lot of armchair court quarterbacking also.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, unfortunately.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of those quarterbacks when they're criticizing other people and they're sitting comfortably without any stress, they're going, I would have done X, Y, and Z.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they've sort of fantasized and idealized what they think they would do in that situation, and the reality is usually vastly different.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: We saw that with this uh this uh ICE agent shooting recently and with the Renee Good in Minneapolis.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there was a lot of debate uh uh across every platform about whether that officer was justified and um and I'm like, you know what?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh have you ever been dragged by a car?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And until you've been dragged by a car uh by a motorist, you know, you we're not gonna we can't have this conversation because you're not even close to being in that dude's shoes.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even though he wasn't the person that was shooting, he had been d dragged by a car previously.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he had been in those shoes.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He'd already starred in that movie.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so just there's a lot of I call him sergeant I'd have done, I'd have done this and I'd have done that, you know, that arm chairing that a supervisor will normally um, you know, make conclusions, draw conclusions about what they would have done if it were them.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you you know, mm-mm.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there's a there's a lot of opinionated people out there.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, unfortunately.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: With no real experience to base that opinion on.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, a couple of things that we've got some police departments that have run into recently that are starting to do, they they're actually using our equipment, the smokeless ranger I mentioned a minute ago, to take into either schools or public events and put civilians into scenarios to see how they'll respond.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And invariably it's much worse than they would have expected.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I just saw a clip of an active shooter training, and what they did was they gave all of the teaching staff uh training firearms, simulations, and they ran an active shooter drill and had the teachers.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't give them any training prior.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: They just literally threw them in at the deep end and said, show us how you do.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was an absolute dog's dinner as people tried to tactically move through a building, down hallways, make entry to a room where the shooter was located.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was a shit show.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a brilliant eye-opening shit show, which is one of the things I found I think most of the people after, you know, sort of the after action report for this were talking about that was way harder than I expected and may way more stressful.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yes, it bloody well is.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that using that technology is is is absolutely brilliant for courtroom settings, also.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you get jurors or you get, you know, people who really that's the closest you can get to the real world situation is putting those people, and we used to use heart rate monitors uh when we when we did our scenario-based training.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: The the Polar uh 800 series used to capture a beat-to-beat.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if you had a spike in your heart rate, I mean it would we would capture that interface, download that stuff into a computer and then print it off, and you could see, you know, judge your you know what you were doing over here and then what you were really the biofeedback over here, what you were experiencing in real time.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So doing that for the teachers, for the the the jury, I mean, that's really I I mean it's I I've especially with officer-involved shootings, you know, when they're when they're judging whether or not an officer did the right thing or how much time they they had versus what they thought they had, which, you know, i I mean, the the using the technology is really it has really made a big difference in in training people and for raising their level of understanding about what reality is.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Brian Baxter was a uh guest a couple of episodes ago, and he's the CEO for science.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: They do a lot of cognitive psychological performance-based training for law enforcement.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things he said that I thought was super interesting was it takes the average human, law enforcement in this particular case, because they've been tested extensively, about 300 milliseconds to start shooting and 400 milliseconds to stop.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: To start.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like the decision-making process is significantly harder in the midst of an action, which I thought was really interesting and probably very eye-opening, especially for the general public, in understanding why shootings may perhaps last a beat longer than you might as the armchair quarterback in that case, as a jury member, think it should have lasted.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like you get major league baseball players that can't even check their swing.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, once that motion starts, you know, they they and they they train for that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they chain for train for checking their swing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And being able to stop that bat when it's in full motion and hip rotation and all that going on.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you you you think, well, no, they can't because it's a moving object, you know, that they're trying to hit or then not hit.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, that's a force science is just a that's another group that's really um changed the way we look at human performance improvement.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Lewinsky and all I mean, you know, he's really broadened his staff, and though those people are probably some of the smartest trainers out there right now.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: First shot accuracy from a holster, whether that's outside the waistband or carrying concealed inside, comes down to one thing: reps.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: How many reps are you putting in each week?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you can't draw from either concealed or especially outside the waistband in less than a second and hit your target every single time, you have work to do.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when it matters most, you're not going to get a warm-up rep.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Laser ammo gives law enforcement and responsibly armed citizens the tools they need to train consistently, safely, at home or at the department.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Five, ten, fifteen minutes a day could make all the difference in building your draw speed, building your first shot accuracy, and building your confidence that your performance will be there every single time.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Train more, train smarter, train with laser ammo.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Go to laser ammo.com to find out more.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now back to the episode.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So do you think perhaps the firearms community carrying a firearm gives people just a false sense of security in that they feel like they've got the ultimate answer to anything they might come across?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, they're neglecting other areas, including fitness, awareness, judgment, communication, medical skills even.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even medical skills, yeah.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when's the last time they I I see they've got tourniquets and they're still in the wrapper.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, you might want to take it out of the wrapper, because that's time.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: The clock's ticking, and you know, and you get about 15 seconds to figure out if you're gonna be a hero or a zero, and so that's gonna include taking your tourniquet out of the out of the plastic wrapper.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um You know, I um for the longest time when I was when I was the police, I thought there were only two people that that had guns.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was the police and the bad guys.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because for the longest time that was the reality.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't have a concealed weapons permit unless you could prove that, you know, you had a need if you transferred cash to the bank or you know, you were an attorney or whatever.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: The you just didn't there was not that go-between.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I came across a lot of people uh prior to the the concealed carry movement.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going back probably fifteen years ago or so.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe more than that.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um just a lot of people carrying guns that shouldn't be carrying guns.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still true today.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: You carry a gun, but you don't train with a gun.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's problematic in my opinion.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I have relatives, you know.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was uh I hope he I hope my brother never sees this.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: He probably never will.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're about to tell a bad story about him.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're we're traveling tandem and we stop at a uh to get fuel and for him to to let his dog out.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he lets his dog out, beautiful German shepherd, and the dog's taking care of the business, and then he puts the dog back in and he's openly caring and uh which is fine for where he was, and I've got eyes on him, but I'm looking at everybody, you know, at the gas station.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: He decides he's gonna go in and use the bathroom.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I go, hey man, put your jacket on for me before you go in there.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I said, because your gun is exposed.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Nobody's gonna mess with me.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like First of all, I can't go into the bathroom with you.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be literally on your own holding your own, which is the same side as your gun, and these three dudes in this pickup truck, then what?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, I pity the fool, and I'm like, You are the fool.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: You please put your jacket on when you go to use the rij just stuff like that.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, why would you like when I was working undercover, the very last thing you wanted somebody to know is that you were the police.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was working prostitution decoy on Eight Mile, I refused to work that detail unarmed.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, y again Either she's a cop or she's whatever.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But um but yeah, the last thing you want people to know is that you got a gun.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's and the last thing you want to do is have to use it, you know.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean by pulling a trigger on somebody.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not threatening to do it, but actually doing it.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's you want to do that.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I entered a grocery store in one of the I'd say shadier part of parts of town, and they'd had a couple of instances with people robbing the place.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just by virtue of the fact that even though it was only mid-afternoon, it wasn't like a late night shopping run, we just needed some items, and this was the most convenient store on my way home.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I entered, doing the usual trick, just scanning the environment, being in tune with what's going on.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they had armed security present.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: The guy was carrying outside the waistband in a non-retention holster.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So no finger depression, no thumb depression, nothing.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was in fact, I think he had one of those stupid little Velcro clips that maybe went over the top, except it wasn't even Velcroed.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Velcro was sticking up in the air, right?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I got to within two sh two steps of him before he was even aware I was there.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking at this dude going, You have a guy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You think that makes you a badass, but your head's up your ass, and if I wanted that gun, I've just taken it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And now what?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was insane to me that there was this sense that, well, I have the gun.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: No one will mess.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the speed at which a disarm could occur at that distance would would have absolutely, you know, rocked his frickin' world.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he could this was just a guy who was overconfident in the fact that because he had a gun, he had the answer to whatever problem may occur.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Two steps.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Two steps.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he I'd have been like, gun's gone.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, open carry.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it's popular in a lot of places, but not advisable.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not sure.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: You still see still see cops showing up.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was at a at a cop uh conference and I was working security for the um the vendor day, the expo.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there's police chief or administrator with his two guys.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey, uh Chief, you know if that holster's got a thumb break or retention system on it somewhere?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Oh, I don't know.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, and he goes, You think that's important here?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he I says, Yeah, we're in St.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Louis.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I think that's important.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to cover that, just pull your shirt over just so we can because it's a general public through the hotel, you know?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it again, just that that arrogance, that, you know, just level of comfort that, you know, the for me on the job, it wasn't that you were gonna get your gun taken away from you.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: You get your gun taken away from you and I get shot with it, and I'm gonna be pissed.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so weapon retention was a was it because I'm, you know, at the time I'm five foot five, 125 pounds, you know.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the worst thing for me is like I get my gun taken away from me and you get shot with it, and now I gotta go face your wife and tell her how sorry I am.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Try to come up with some explanation as to why I couldn't retain my equipment, and then somebody else dies as a result.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I could live with that.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone who's listening to this wants to conduct an honest audit of their own preparedness, what questions do you think they should be asking themselves like, uh let's move that person beyond just I carry a gun, so I must be ready.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have some other level of of defense?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you carry a flashlight with a strobe?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you carry pepper spray?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you carry a cane, even though you don't need one?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you use a cane?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever trained with a cane?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sixty years old right now, I don't need a cane, but I train with one and I take one with me on a lot of places that I can't take a firearm.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cause, you know, think about the cane's thirty some odd inches in length.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've just, you know, increased my reach on somebody by thirty inches.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you know how to swing a cane, if you know how to use a cane, if you train with a cane, that's what I tell 'em, tr you train with your firearm before you have to use it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Train with a cane before you have to use one.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just little stuff like that.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you uh again, your driving habits.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to gas up at night? 'Cause for me, gassing up at night's a totally different experience than gassing up during the day.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you go inside the gas station, do you do a walk around your vehicle before you get back in it?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um how much again, how much time do you spend looking at that phone when you're out in public?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um elevators can be very dangerous for women.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are you okay with stepping out of an elevator?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody steps in and you don't like the way they look, the way they smell, their height, their mannerisms, their general behaviors?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are you okay with telling somebody to F off?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right in front of their I mean, can you tell them?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you a story.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to uh grocery stores a Saturday, and this is probably about five years ago.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And can how much can I swear?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: As much as your d you want to.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's this is entirely up to you, but okay.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is a this is a big kid podcast because I want to be able to say exactly what I said to this guy.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rocket.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I get parked and I'm girting my stuff and I look up and okay, bad situational awareness, this guy's right at my door.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um I roll the window down a little bit, about that much, and very sarcastically I ask him, Can I help you?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, he's probably about 5'11, maybe six foot, he's a little taller.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Yeah, you know, I um I noticed you when you were coming out of the dry cleaners, and um, you know, I I saw you park, and that you seem like, you know, you'd be a kind of a nice person to come over and to talk to.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wearing like a sweatshirt, some jeans, and like go going to Home Depot outfit, my my my sexiest sweatshirt apparently on that day, because I think I'm being hit on, but I don't know.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's been a while.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he says this to me, and I'm thinking, you this guy's whack.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, stop right there.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you're not Italian.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because he had a shirt that said Italia across it.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I go, You're not Italian.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I said, second of all, you have a gun?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: He kind of stepped back.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Are you armed?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a gun?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, No, I go, well, one of us does.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Get the fuck out of here.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the guy's like, whoa.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes off running, and I'm like, are you kidding me right now?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he could have had the door if he wanted it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's on me.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But being able to communicate to people in a way that might be outside your daily conversation, like being able to have some communication skill that in uncomfortable situations, especially women.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some women, they can't swear on command.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I grew up with six older brothers and I was a cop for 22 years.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can, I can throw out whatever needs to be said in a controlled way.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I tell a lot of women, you know, you you gotta be able to, you gotta have something on board that will switch the the shift the the cognitive thought of a person to catch them off guard, to make them reevaluate what they're thinking or doing or what they're thinking about they're gonna do.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of that can get done verbally, having a really good strong verbal skill set um to to really get their attention.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had to do that in uh we were down in Dana Point, California, and uh a guy approached us.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was me and my my partner there, and uh, and this guy was coming at an the pace was wrong.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we were on the sidewalk and he was coming up from this park and and just his pace coming to us before we got to that intersection.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what we will normally say is if something's out of whack, we'll say, check it, check that.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna check that, whatever that is, and okay, got it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so as he's coming up, kind of like at my four o'clock position, right?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not slowing down, I'm like, Well, let's see what that's we where we're at.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I carry a neck knife and I reach up and I pull the neck knife out and I kind of blade it back so he can see it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And his response was, Well, that's not too obvious now, is it?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, hmm.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the right response.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I I turn and I kind of open my hands up like this, and I've got the knife and one hand and my partner.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've separated.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not standing right next to one another.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: We triangulate.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: So now he's gotta choose.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you go with that one, you're gonna get cut and probably shot.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you come at me, you're probably gonna get cut and probably get shot.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he's gotta decide, choose wisely.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know what, sir, you need to keep a safe distance for yourself.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it it literally stopped him in his tracks, and he's looking at me, and he's he's looking at Kathy, and he's looking at me, he's like, You gotta be shitting me.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he turned and walked right back down and then paralleled us till we got to the marina where the where the restaurant was.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the the strong verbal skills and the shocking his whatever he thought he was about to do to the, you know, the two uh soccer grandmas basically um you know, I we we shocked his system.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't expecting that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we didn't have to do anything to him, but we were certainly ready to do something if we had to.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, just strong verbal.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: We be have a and I I just did some training for women in construction, and they wanted some security, safety, and some leadership type training.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it was out of Nashville.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't believe the horror stories that these women have to deal with with the guys.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we got called because in November of 2025, there was a female welder out of Minneapolis area, just outside of Minneapolis, and she was bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer by a coworker.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started doing some research about the types of things that these women have to deal with.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, okay, you know, having really good situational awareness is challenging when you're wearing a welder's helmet.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Your vision's compromised, your hearing's compromised, you're hyper-focused on that one thing that you're working on, you have no idea what's going on around you.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're wearing hearing protection.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't necessarily hear what's coming up behind you, you know, so so there's situational awareness is is challenging in those types of environments.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so some of the things that these women have to deal with, I'm like, do you have a speech?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have something on board that you can say that you have written down like a script of things that are not going to get you into trouble, but especially if you're heightened awareness and you might get a spike or two and you're you're really uncomfortable, because you can go from like conditioned white to black like within a fraction of a second.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to be in that hyper-vigilant state.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So have something on board that you can practice, I said practice at home.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how does this sound?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Practice with your co-workers.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the stuff's like sexual harassment and stuff that could lead up to workplace violence, and OSHA doesn't do any training for that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they might get some active sheeter type stuff, but not the day-to-day stuff that they deal with.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: So have have some communication skills that you're comfortable with.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't sound, you know like I can I can tell somebody, you know, we're the bear shits in the woods at any given time, at a drop of a hat.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that's just again growing up, you know, six older brothers and working around men my entire life.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Super comfortable.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's one of the things that you teach during your programs, Jeff Cooper's colour code, because you referenced white and black, and we need to fill in those blanks there.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you can associate a certain um uh heart rate level to performance.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's n it's it's not just uh germane, it's not like a a number, but you can kind of get uh an average between, you know, what where your fine motor skills might become perishable, for example.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And with Cooper, he never had the condition black.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was added at another time.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: He only went to condition red.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, condition white is uh most people know, is pretty much where you're at when you're asleep.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your your heart rate's at its lowest, depending on who you are, very subjective.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I wear a monitor at night.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm somewhere in my mid-50s, you know.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um condition yellow is is where most cops reside most of the time.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're constantly aware of their surroundings, or they should be.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, anything could jump off at any given time, and what's wrong with that over there, you know?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, that's interesting.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Condition orange is when you see something that is absolutely interesting, you know that that's a problem.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And condition red is when you're in a fight with that problem.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're actively engaged in some type of physical altercation, uh, and now your heart rate is somewhere, again, depending on you, somewhere above 145 beats per minute.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, anything over 175, this goes back to Bruce Sittle stuff back in the day, PPCT management systems.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anything over 175 beats per minute, you're really fight or flight, you're asking your your large muscle groups, you need to get a a a dump of of uh glucose into your big motor groups.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know sometimes in over 175 beats per minute, you're you're in a crash zone.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're in trouble.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's it in a nutshell.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some people might argue those numbers.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's fine.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it's hard to have a pertinent point for most people.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Most people are not familiar enough with their own physiology to even know where their heart rate may actually reside.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're not physiologically or cognitively aware their heart rate has spiked to and then whatever degree that that is now impacting fine motor skills.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: And even understanding where we reside in that 115 to 145 heartbeats per minute heart rate range for optimal survival.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: But then that sort of that naturally leads me back to what you mentioned earlier with having other tools and other responses ready to go.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that as we go through the color code system of awareness and awareness, both in terms of what is happening externally as well as what is happening intrinsically, we have responses at each step theoretically.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: A planned, okay, if X happens now, the best response for me is going to be Y.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think contingencies for most people are outside of first responders or military veterans and others that have spent time in those environments.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Contingency plans are often completely and utterly underutilized.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there's sort of a it's either black or white, right?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm either going to have a threat and I need my gun, or there's nothing in between.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, along that sliding scale, are all these other tools or all these other uh responses that we could have readily available to us if we just pre-plan.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's where scenario-based training, you know, Craig Douglas Shiftworks does a great job inside of motor vehicles and and pressure testing a lot of that if-when or if-then thinking.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it goes back to the original question, uh, questions that you had when how you think you're gonna respond to something, and then that doesn't work.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, shit.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now what?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's if we're talking about other people's research, we could talk about Boyd's oodaloop, you know.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that and it never ends, by the way.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're constantly reevaluating that action through observation.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as you're going through observing, you know, orientation, what does that mean to me right now?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: How much time do I have to do a thing, make that decision, then act?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then how did that work out?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: That observation again.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a constant loop that we're going through.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if that didn't work out, well then you gotta have a plan B.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cause like pepper spray doesn't always work the way it's supposed to.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Neither does a taser, neither does a baton.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ask me how I know.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: How do you know?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thanks for asking.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cause sometimes this shit doesn't work.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that you know, you go through, you talk about a sliding scale.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's uh for law enforcement, that's use of force, right?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can go from verbal to empty hand to soft to hard empty hand, if you will.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when that doesn't work, then you start working your way up the scale, or you could go right from verbal to spray.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when that doesn't work, it's stick time, you know, and then when that doesn't work, you know, you gotta be prepared to work up and down that scale.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, by the way, you're probably talking throughout it if you can, which is almost impossible, by the way, for people that think that they can talk and shoot at the same time or something like that.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, under stress, it's you gotta do one or the other, you know.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: When we I was working on a dope team, and uh I was always number two in the door because the long gun, after we probably had to breach the door, usually they had some type of fortification.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um we use a halligan tool a lot of times to get the you know, the metal door, the security gate, if you will.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And going through the door, I was number two because I was short, I was agile, people could see around me, over me, those types of things.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was always the one who was saying, police get down, get down, get out, get out.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the number one guy, he's not your talker, he's your trigger guy.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one that's you know, if there's a problem, immediate problem.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's a shooter, he doesn't need to be talking.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: In a pursuit, same thing.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you're pursuing and your number two car gets behind, your number two car is the one that's giving all all the directions and the speeds and what's happening, because your number one car is driving.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a pro tip.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great tip because most people don't anticipate that.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: They don't think no extra charge.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, they think they can do certain things and talk through it.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, and and and women are the worst, by the way, because we want to talk about everything.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's a time to talk, and there's a time to shut your mouth and and think and do.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to know, and through training is when you figure out when to talk and when to hit or run, you know, or shoot.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's through training.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or to start out, was you said earlier, with an assertive tone and a direct command to back the hill up.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times, at least over the years when I've been teaching personal safety, there's always this tendency to want to try to be nice first.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: If I can be nice, maybe this person will, you know, take the hint.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, you need to be comfortable taking what maybe potentially to you at least feel like an immediate step to an aggressive back the fuck up.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're done with this conversation and I'm done being nice, right?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: If even if they weren't nice at all, but it's getting that mindset right to be ready to, okay, I have multiple choices available to me because I have time.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Which one am I selecting?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's often the case I've found that that there's a default setting of I'll try to be nice first, rather than going, okay, that shit is not going to work.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: The situation is all wrong for that.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: I need to escalate straight to uh you know a verbalization of how unhappy I am with the situation.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in law enforcement, we've gotten into trouble where we we literally talk ourselves to death.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the that loop, sir, put the gun down, sir, put the gun down, sir, put the gun down, sir, put the gun, and the next thing you know, you're you're you're a bullet sponge.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean how many how many times is there like a is it four?
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the standard?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is it, you know, did I have to tell this guy, you know, to to step back how many times?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I there's no standard.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I told him to step back for his own safety.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: He he saw that I had a blade.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: He you know, I I gave it I gave him I I'm justified at that point.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I gave him ample time and opportunity to to choose something else.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, you know, if you if you want to come, because I'm gonna fight you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna fight.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then I t I try to explain that to a lot of women who I train uh outside of law enforcement.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be prepared to fight.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna fight this person.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if they're inside, you know, you don't have a physical barrier.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you're fighting to get to your gun.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's the decision that you've made, then you're gonna be in a fight.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And how quickly somebody can close that gap.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a you know, Tuler studies forever about how quickly somebody can go from twenty-one feet to to collapsing into your you know, into your sp into your space.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so mobility, what is your mobility like?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you get good mobility, uh then boy, your your chances of survival just went up upsta uh you know greatly.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I I talk about that quite a bit when we do a shooting and moving class, and the first thing we do is I teach them how to move.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can you move your body?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna kind of important, you know?
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: And how How quickly can somebody move forward compared to you moving backwards?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of shoes are you wearing?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: What what are you wearing?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember I did a class for the Department of Energy, and they're all women uh investigators, basically, agents.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I asked him, I said, What do you wear during the day?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: We usually wear, you know, suits during the day, and then we go do a search warrant or whatever, we wear attack vests and we were said, You have you ever shot in heels?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever shot in high heels?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, strap them on, ladies.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'll bring a pair too.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've done that more than once.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, shooting from a seated position, standing up and shooting on the move in high heels.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Try it sometime.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: You may have trouble selling tickets to that show.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe, maybe not.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Vegas, so anything goes, really, it's uh Yep.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think for those of you who are not familiar with the tool of drill, it's effectively was a training research that revealed that a military-age male can cover 21 feet in one and a half seconds.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I had somebody argue the point with me at uh at a situational awareness, a personal safety conference.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I gave him the rubber training gun and said, put that on, you know, inside your waistband, put your jacket back on, and then I'm gonna come at you with my rubber training knife, you draw and shoot me before I get there.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we did this, you know, best of three, right?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're all three times he got cut, and I cut him in places where you know he's not recovering.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was eye-opening for the rest of the group to see how quickly that distance can can be cut down, and suddenly somebody is all up in your grill, and you know, as I was at that particular case, just slicing and dicing.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: But you think about most people, most civilians, particularly women, they're not gonna start anywhere near 21 feet.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be two, three, four feet, and it probably gonna be somebody you already know.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so this mental attitude of I must be prepared to fight and defend, and not just fight in a way to try to just dissuade, right?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cause enough pain that that person decides, well, wow, this is not worth it.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, incapacitate the assailant so they're incapable of continuing the attack.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, a lot of that for me came, you know, was working on, okay, what cognitive processes, what decision making do we need already in place?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I would try to teach is especially, actually, not in instead of, but especially if you know this individual and they're doing something you don't like, it is a problem.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not bill anymore, it's not robbed from accounting.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is causing you a problem and it needs to be stopped.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it needs to be stopped in any way that you know you are capable of delivering in the moment to make it stop.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so funny to teach women that dehumanization process in order to facilitate better defensive responses.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have something similar?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Turning like a loved one into an it, I mean, that's that's the hard like you said you know them, like you reside in the same house, and I mean that's boy, that you're it's a big ass.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is a big ass, but you know, when you when you take a look at domestic violence, because that's really what we're talking about here, um you know, they've dehumanized the victim already.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you, you know, dehumanize the the threat?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: The threat.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's a strategy strategy that's used in law enforcement quite a bit.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a a nine-year-old kid with a pistol.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is the threat.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so, you know, a lot of times that those intimate type assaults, you know, with women, you know, they think pulling that butcher knife out of that block and threatening somebody is is gonna stop a problem.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they've never really emotionally been there where they're actually stabbing that person and and processing the the blood and the slipperiness of blood and the fact that your nice, you know, tile floor or whatever, I mean, it's gonna make a mess.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all the things that we you know, violence is ugly.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways I think that strategy that you're talking about is is to reference it as an it or a threat, you know, something that's going to harm you.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if people can wrap their heads around that, uh, then they're much better off, not just during that incident, but the aftermath.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, live with that for the rest of your life.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the decisions uh have people imposed uh violence on me as a cop?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have I done the same in return in the course of my duty?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, absolutely.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, you know, much of the healing process is how the people around you deal with it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the support that you have.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like law enforcement's uh officer-involved shooting, oftentimes the PTS has nothing to do with the actual shooting, it's how they get treated by their agency as a result of being involved in a critical incident.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can testify on that firsthand.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're healthy to begin with, you know, you you don't have a lot of baggage about, you know, yourself or your relationships, your family.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have a spiritual uh guide of sorts to help you through these types of incidents, then you're gonna come out on the backside a little bit better than you were coming into it.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I had a firearms instructor one time that tell me that told me you don't have to suffer as a result of being involved in a critical incident.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to be better as a result of a critical incident.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's the goal.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Ew, okay.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and so I I think that's a lesson that gets lost with a lot of a lot of police agencies because they're so political.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the leadership is so only worried about themselves and can really give a shit about their their frontline people.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're willing to sacrifice those people and their lives before they sacrifice any part of their career.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you take that and put it into the civilian world, um, you know, you choose to have a gun in the house, you choose to have a gun in the car, you choose to have a gun on your person, the whole family is involved in that decision.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: At least they should be.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you've got a two-gun family or a three-gun family, you know.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's it's a it's a personal decision, but it's a family decision.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it also brings up another important case for the realism of the training that you're given, and that it isn't just one-dimensional.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're going to shoot and hit this target at this distance from inside the waistband, outside the waistband.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's an entire process, thought decision, slash know your mind ahead of time, pre-incident and post-incident.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: And even hearing that one law firearms instructor tell you that it's okay to come out better for this experience, that it doesn't necessarily mean that it's because something bad happened and you were forced to make a difficult decision that now you have to suffer for the rest of your life.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that is something you need to know before that shit happens.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because afterwards they can tell you to their blue in the face, you're gonna be better after this experience.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna be like, you're wasting your breath, right?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because the emotional sort of turmoil or the emotional impact is already so well ingrained, it's so hard to pull yourself out of that negative space.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I tell people, you know, what you've got to make this call or you've got to explain what you did.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Limit your communication.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: You get involved in a shooting, somebody attacks you.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember, it's because of them.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's what they did.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: That person attacked you.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: That person got shot.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: That person is no longer that it's that person.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's their behavior and their decision that caused you to defend yourself.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's what they did.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what okay, who shot 'em?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't feel well.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm only gonna tell you so much.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only gonna tell the police so much.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: They need as much information for them to understand that you're the victim.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: You you you use whatever defense you need to use while still maintaining your victim status.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's important.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of what they did that caused me to have to defend myself.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as people understand that, and less is best, they need enough information in the interest of public safety and no more at that time.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, by the way, they can't interview me if I pass out.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go to the hospital, and I'm done.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because people think, and I one of our officers he was involved in a shooting, and I was the first one there.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: And all he wanted to do, and we're mic'd up, the camera's gone, and I'm like, stop talking.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're done.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: What were they wearing?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: How many were they?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which direction did they go?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the guy had a red shirt.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where was he seated?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was in the Okay, that's it.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're done.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Talking.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need any more.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Take a breather.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: But all he wanted to do was just because he's just trying to get it out, you know, just verbal vomiting, get it out.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Blair, you gotta stop talking.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have everything we need.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Union rep is on the way.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but there's a sort of a cathar cathartic element to it, isn't it?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, if I share the you know my perspective of what happened and tell everyone that shows up what I think happened in this highly charged emotional state, there's a releasing right of the sense of responsibility or the guilt or the emotions.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we've had a guest on here recently who said you you you provide the minimal amount of information necessary to say that you uh you felt you were threatened.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the worst incident you know you've ever had to experience.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to answer any questions until I've talked to my attorney.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or I want to medically go to the hospital and be checked out before like stop frickin' talking.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're done.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but that's something that has to be trained because mo most of us were raised that you respect law enforcement, they ask you a question, you answer.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was raised that way.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Respect the law.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was trained that way.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you don't want to answer my questions?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll take the medical route out before I'll take the attorney route.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I say I want to talk to my attorney, well, I can't tell you how many people said that to me.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, really?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you'd be on both sides of the equation.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what triggered in your head why am I getting oh, this bloody Apple computer decided it was time to send balloons up for those who are listening?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's your birthday.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: It actually is in two days.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: But you've been on both sides of the equation with asking the questions and also then training individuals for post-incident not answering the questions.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: What was the thought process in your head when somebody said, I want my attorney, what triggered in your head that made you go, Oh, really?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just it's just a natural response.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, do you know?
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's that's interesting.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because if he's telling me that he's pled the sixth, right?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if he keeps talking, he forgot about the fifth.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's still focused on the first.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like okay, well, that then I'm not gonna ask you any more questions.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean he's not he's gonna keep talking.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: So one one I got challenged by that one time.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: And by by a non-cop.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this person was told, you know, the first person that calls law enforcement, that calls 911, or the first person that talks to the to the cops, they're the complainant.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, so I want to get and talk to the cops before this person does.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know where you got that.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want to call 911, you want to tell them that you've been a victim of X, Y, or Z and that you need law enforcement there, and you're gonna need an ambulance.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell them that that's what that person did.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: That I I'm not gonna say I was in fear for my life.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me what the behavior was of this person or these people that may that cause you to be in fear for your life.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta articulate that.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: This person did this, this person said they were gonna do that to me, that person grabbed me, that person hit me in the face, that person did all these things, and that person got shot.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I need an ambulance.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: I asked for an ambulance.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my ambulance?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel well, and if that doesn't work, I'm passing out.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: I might even pee myself a little bit, just for a fact.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not gonna sit there and give a dissertation to a cop after, you know, I just was fighting somebody.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, did whatever I did to protect myself.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's from a sixty-year-old heart patient.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: How about that?
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: Where's my where's my ambulance?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: Respectfully.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of uh firearms instructors who are teaching classes, I know you've said that we should vet enthusiastically who's teaching.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Give us an idea about how someone should be able to distinguish a capable instructor from one that's just run of the mill.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what what is the performer's goal?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like what is it that they that they want to do?
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you want to go shoot and learn how to shoot competition, then you take training from somebody who has not only shot a lot of competition, but has I got a lot of experience training other people how to shoot competition.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go to a military guy to learn how to shoot competition.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want anybody coming to me to learn how to shoot competition.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's so that's important.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the performers' overarching goals are, that's where they start.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't get into training civilians for a long time because I saw all the shit that was out there teaching, and I said, I don't want to be affiliated with any of that.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want, I'm not interested.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the sensationalism, the some of the horseshit that I've seen on YouTube.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm just like, I I don't I don't want anything to do with that.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll stay in my lane, law enforcement.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 2019, well, I I'd met Robin Sandoval, and I'd I'd met uh Juliana, the original founder, and I knew who Tatiana Whitlock was.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I got an opportunity to to mingle with them a little bit, uh, NRA women's thing.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: I got a chance to, you know, get to know them a little bit.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2019, I actually taught at the Girl and the Gun conference.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: And those three people you mentioned first, they're all with a girl and a gun, right?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's Sandra Wood Woodruff, there's um Robin Sandoval, who's the uh executive director, uh Sandra is the uh chief operating officer, and Tatiana Whitlock is their their national trainer, basically.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: She's the the one who um designs a lot of the instruction.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's uh uh one of their premier instructors, um think high high-level thinker, you know, and and I mean she's as I think she's as good as they get in terms of platform delivery of information, you know, any content.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's just really high-end.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: So so I was invited to go and teach at that conference.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was and I've been hooked ever since.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um because they let me do whatever I want to do.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: What whatever Robin Sandoval asks me to do also, I do.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, you're not gonna say no to her about anything.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had to deliver a uh a block of instruction on menopause two years ago for 450 women.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, really?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: Menopause?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she asked, so she got it.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, so this girl in a gun, it they've really opened up my eyes in terms of um instruction, and they get some really good instructors that go to that conference too, by the way, some heavy hitters.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and almost 800 women go to that conference every year.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's a fantastic community.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've learned so much uh from them, uh, those members, because in law enforcement the the the age group is like 25 to 45.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all cops.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: Girl and a gun, ninety percent of those women are not cops.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: They carry because they want to.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: They train because they feel that they need to.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they they take care of one another.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: The culture is amazing.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh safety first, you know, they're just in fact, if they're not girl and gun affiliated, I I typically won't I try not to have anything to do with them.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time they get to me, unless it's a holster 101 specific or advanced holster, they've already got the range stuff down, understand the basic safety, uh the facilitators are are educated.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um they carry all the different types of guns, all the different brands of holsters, and I mean it it's they're they're a lot of fun.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Two things I said I'd never do, ever.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: Train civilians and do female only classes.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm well over 7,500 women that I've trained over the last few years.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think probably more than anybody.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of students.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of ponytails.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's you know, it's a lot of estrogen on the line.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but but the girl and gun community, they're you know, they're it's just uh I enjoy it.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's probably one of the funnest things I think I've ever done.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: So after teaching for more than three decades, is I've heard you talk about staying curious and how important that is, I think, both from a student standpoint but also instructors.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can you expand on that?
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think people who get bored with life just die, you know?
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, again, going back to the girl in a gun, I'm super curious about where they go and train and what they do and what they know.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, that guy's teaching that?
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about that.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know that guy.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go, I want to go have another conversation with him about that.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder why he went from this to that.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, I'm curious.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that um, you know, the older people get, they just sort of they go into, you know, retirement in place.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: We used to call it RIP.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of cops before they retire, they're actually retired in place.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, um I think that the culture is moving so fast, the gun industry, the technology, everything's moving so fast, and it is hard to keep up.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I guess it would be easy for people just to give up, you know, but I still, I mean, I want to know.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I, you know, I'm just I'm still just a kid at heart when it comes to a lot of stuff, and I want to play with that.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't need that that new gun that I just bought, but I I'd like I'm curious about that gun.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna buy that gun.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just got a co a kuna, a Springfield kuna.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that that looks cool.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna buy that, you know, and then then and then go play with it, you know.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's um I just I'm just a curious person.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just you know interested in how people think and what drives their decision-making processes and um how to do things different.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that Dave Spaulding and I uh you know Dave, have you ever have you ever met Dave?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's not I name rings a bell, but I don't think I've interviewed him on yet.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dave and I were adjunct instructors at H ⁇ K's in the International Training Division back in the 90s.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he's really into kinesiology and you know, how people move, and uh half of my master's degree is in human performance technology, and so we have some really I think they're great conversations about just what the capabilities are, human anatomy, and you know.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why trainers train to do something that's counterintuitive to what you're gonna do anyway.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: And just um I don't know.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I just just curious about what what what why did you decide to do it that way?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when this is so much you know, streamlined, or hey, you know what?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to teach this female this grip, but her she's she's 75 years old.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: She can't do what you do.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: She can't physically do what you're asking her to do.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean teaching combatives related training type stuff in law enforcement, we we were always trying to find different ways of skinning a cat.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can't ask a five foot five, one twenty pounder female, you can't ask her to do that same technique that you would uh, you know, six foot two twenty.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's honestly, that's how that's how we earned our reputation a long time ago.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's different ways of of skinning that cat.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you having her try uh an iron wrist lock takedown?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: She just she needs to have her stick out.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to influence this dude's behavior just a little bit differently and you can.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because the use of force continuum, A's, age, size, gender, all that stuff, that's why that exists.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know, it's a rabbit hole, I guess.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the combination of your law enforcement experience and the decades now that you've been teaching firearms to a mixed group of students is worth its weight in gold.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: So for anyone who's interested in following up with you and exploring classes, where would you like them to go?
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: They can go to the website.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's really just a snapshot of the types of things that we can do.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's stuff that we do at Girlin Agun, the barriers and barriers class, barriers and barricades class.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't teach that really anywhere else.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go to the website, which is lucatactical.com, L-O-U-K-A Tactical.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've got uh LinkedIn um under my name, Luann Hamlin, and then there's uh Facebook, Luca Tactical Training and Building Warrior Women, Facebook, Instagram also at Luca Tactical.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: But or shoot me an email.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of things we can do.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot of very, very talented instructors who are either current or former SWAT, um, a lot of police administrators, um, supervisors.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Tammy McCormick, she's a sergeant with California Highway Patrol.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: We brought her on board.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: She's a stud.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: She knows everything.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: She can do everything, she can teach everything.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they just a ton of training.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: She ran their firearms training program at CHP for a while.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just we just we're talent magnets, and that's the reason that we've been in business for over 27 years is because we get younger, faster, stronger, smarter instructors, people that just allow us to continue to contribute.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as I have that, I'm I'm, you know, curious again, what where can we go next?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: What are the types of things we should be should we be doing?
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: Finding gaps in the industry and filling those gaps with with the talent that we have.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's my encourage people to reach out because you've got some great information.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad you stopped by for uh recording today for the podcast.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're welcome.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_00: I we talked about stuff I wasn't even prepared for, but and I I appreciate the conversation.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm in a closet basically trying to work my way out.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: So Well, don't you have some puppies out there that uh you're trying to avoid the noise?
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's three German short hairs here.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so anything, you know, if they even think of rabbits out there or a bird, then they're they're running and and running and gunning, if you will.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, so this is the c this is the quietest place I could find, believe it or not.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't hear any of them, so I think we did brilliantly.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for having me.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks to everyone for uh tuning in and listening to this episode, depending on what platform you're on.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: You may have been listening or watching.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't already, please go ahead and like, share, and subscribe.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_01: We truly appreciate your support.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, make your training as holistic as possible.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Keep your head on the swivel and stay safe.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers.