Matter of Facts: Beginner to Novice

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwefpodcast dot com. On Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nicker on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcast Network. I am doing my absolute level best to be a tiny bit more professional than usual, and that will be immediately screwed up by my lack of sleep, like of caffeine or nick yep. One of those three things will derail I have. To do my best to keep the patrons happy, and some of them, like when I derail yourself, there you go, ugh, Some most. Most of them, most most just the ones that the opinion. For the rest of them, I'm pretty sure they go along with the two anyway. Give the pressure, but only when it's funny. I was about to say, per peer pressure in the throw the air quotes up bud. He I think our patrons are mostly our peers. I guess what I'm saying is you don't need to be pressured to derail me for your own amusement. That that is also correct. Yes, I know. Anyway, if you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron that links showed description, you can become a patron. You can put nickup to derailing me for his amusement, your amusement, and the. General internet's amusement. If you'd rather buy merge from the Southern Gals that Linco's also showed description, there's shirts, there's koozies, and possibly more fuckery in the near future. And if you'd rather prevent war crimes with a disaster coffee, use code MOF so we can tell that I instructed you to go buy coffee because remember the monthly subscription services but has been turned off. So now you must be reminded on a regular basis do you go buy coffee? I need to buy coffee on Sunday. Although I will say this much, if you're a habitual user, then I won't have to be the one that reminds you. Your co workers, your spouse, your priest, your local police officer, someone's going to remind you you need. To be caffeinated. Who just depends on how much of. Before you were behaving like true true, or what day of the week it. Is when we run out. Yeah, we had a guy at work one time didn't let us know that we were out of like caffeinated coffee. So the fucker started mixing in decaf, like cutting in decaf with a caffeinated coffee because he said, coffee is coffee, it's fine, and y'all, y'all, we had migraines for like a week and a half until somebody realized what he was doing. We were having all of the like furnaces inspected for carbon monoxide. Turned out one of them was leaking carbon monoxide. So some of the headaches might. Have been related to that, but most of them we're probably withdrawals. Yeah, definitely caffeine withdrawals. And I'm assuming somebody like beat his ass in the parking lot or something, right, that's just a given motivational coolant tank cleaning duties. Motivational coolant tank cleaning m. Yeah, for for anybody that's in the chat that serve serve in the military, that that's like blanket party levels of re education. You've got like. Eight to fourteen inches of clearance depending on the machine. And uh, most coolants that they that we use nowadays are what's called a water soluble oil. Yes, it occurs. I don't understand the chemistry behind it. It's witchcraft. But what it does do is biodegrade over time and turns into this weird and more a sludge that grows all manner of terrible smelling bacteria. So you have to empty him ounta now and then. Very unpleasant. I take it, wildly unpleasant. Good he deserves He did deserve it. I mean normally that's an apprentice job, because the apprentices tend to be a little smaller of guts and they fit in the space better. He is a large man. Then perhaps he should learn not to mess with people's coffee. He hasn't, since. Learning does occur. Sometimes learning has occurred, all right. Taking a quick look through the chat before we get to talking, I see the proud text and complaining about why hasn't the show started a full seventeen minutes before we went live, because you know, he's usually the one that's a half an hour late and then telling us to start over. So there's that. I see a raggle fraggle. The chemical you flush it out with is water because it's water soluble. So basically what you do is you siphon out all the old stuff and then hose it down and continue siphoning it out. It's cleaned out. Sounds gross, doctor, scary guys also with us, and I. See your wife. My wife is here. The coolant smells horrible. Does the coolant smell worse than used heavy gear oil? Can used heavy gear oil smell like a rotting corpse? That's right, you don't you? You you didn't spend time working mechanics shops. Your strictly machinist shops well, and for a bricklayer and a farmer and a couple other things. So did you have you ever changed the gear oil out of your rear end of your truck? Nope? I pay a man with a fancy lift to do that. Okay, that the stuff is some of the worst smelling crap to come out of any automotive vehicle ever anywhere, period discussion. It's god awful smelling. Interesting. You can put it in drive around the block and dump it out. It already smells like it's frigging, like a burnt ass. Huh makes no sense to me. Like you, it smells like oil when it comes out of the at a model on the rear end and take it out immediately smells like death. Weirdest thing on earth. I'm pretty sure it goes into the pocket dimension. Well, okay, are most of those rear ends cast iron gears? Not if you wanted to last for any amount of time. I mean, the reins are cast, the rear cans are cast. That might be that. That might be it, because cast iron does this weird thing where when it's exposed to certain chemicals, it puts off a really nasty smell, certain coolants, certain oils. Steward agrees with me. Gear oil is the worst. It might be. It might be. I mean, okay, and I see a gil rab here too who's catching flak for a threatening feeder by bugs. But that's the story for another. She just promised to bring bug included cookies, and I thought i'd try that. Yeah, you try lemon and how it works for you. I've already tried them and didn't care for much. You know, I'm willing to try most foods, and I do I do mean most. I'm willing to try most foods at least twice, because the first time you try it, if you're expecting something that it's not, you're not going to necessarily appreciate it for what it is. Did you try any of the boot am this past summer? Oh? Hell yeah I did. I ate two full sticks of that stuff that was amazing. Wasn't too spicy for you? Huh? I would have doubled the seasoning in it, given my like of spicy food, but then my wife wouldn't be able to be in the same room as it. I thought it was a good amount of spice for general audiences. Yeah. It Raggle provided that for us to bring up and really good. Uh gil Rab saying it's happening. I may start sending a little packages to all the patrons. I mean, I'm not fight free cookies. Let me know, all right. Mini topic ahead of the big topic is Scota is going to nuke the assault weapons bands finally, before before we give our opinions for anybody that's been living under a rock. The Supreme Court has apparently decided that now was the time to choose violence, and they want to hear a challenge to definitely Chicago's assault weapons band but there was a state levels Cook Counties, Cook Counties and the state of Connecticut. They're hearing them both. I was not the Illinois plaintiff. I tried to get onto the fpc's lawsuit as the Illinois plaintiff because as a model citizen that's only ever been pulled over a dozen times for. Speeding and for the time that you you you tried to intrastate, like smuggle a palette van. It wasn't interest state, it wasn't even okay, it was across county lines, but only by like ten. Miles technicalities, technicalities. I would have been an excellent aside from the social media, you know, the podcast all that, I would have been an excellent example for the lawsuit. I'm sure I wasn't arrested. Yeah, and they were looking for people that were arrested under the Illinois assault weapons ban so they. Can show damages. It always makes me wonder when like you have to commit a fricking felony in order to have standing to insinuate that the state has usurped your rights, when it seems to me. Like being very stressed of my private possessions is not usurpation of my rights enough apparently. I tend to think it falls into that whole right delayed is a right denied thing, and the simple fact that they have like preemptively deny that I have the right to do something is in and of itself damaging. But who am fpc's concern? And I did speak with a couple of their people and one of their lawyers about it, because I'm fairly active in my local area as far as cologies goes, Well, it's the only place my voice will actually make a difference is when I can, let's say, call all of my county board members on their personal home phone numbers and leave them very long and detailed messages about what I'm upset about, because that is the level of communication access you have with local representatives. FPC said that because they allow a registration, the state allows a registration, they're concerned that without someone being imprisoned or charged, that Scotus would say, well, it's no different than the FOID card and be less likely to take the case seriously. So the more. Damage that they have that they can show for an individual, the more likely the case is to progress through the courts and actually be heard. Even though the arguments would be exactly the same. It would be. But you know, all right, let me punt Stewart in here first, because he left his opinion in chat. And then you and I can so proud texts in three sixty five saying sta, there will be mass shootings in the month before oral arguments. Any response Roberts and Barrett may flip or water down the ruling. Very possible. But we here and I were saying right before we went live that based on patterns in history, you have an opinion, so I do. My opinion is given the Supreme Court ruling and Bruin and how they applied the constitutionality of various other laws in that there has to be a like kind rule from what was a seventeen ninety one when the Second Amendment was ratified. Yep. Now, the only laws that I know of. I'm not a constitutional historian. I'm just a bit of a amateur reader of history. The only laws I know of that regulated who could possess what weapons was slave laws. Not a great thing to hang your argument on. Not really great. Although the state of Illinois has been hanging their argument on slavery codes. I think Hawaii tried to as well recently. They did. Apparently slavery is great as long as it's stripping people of their rights. Yeah, slavery was always wrong. It was always a bad idea, and it's a good thing it's gone. But nothing says equality like treating all of your citizens like third rate, like they don't have rights exactly. Now. The other one is some of the Native Americans weapons trading codes. Now, that's also a racially based or largely racially based system of weapons control. There was a couple and a few jurisdictions that had to do with indentured servants and their right to own various things, but it was mostly down to property. It was mostly a property restriction and not so much a weapons restriction. To kind of something to the tune of like you can't bring firearms on other people's property without their permission or something. No more, you were not allowed to own property unless it was given to you by the holder of your contract. All proceeds of your labor are deliverable to the owner of your contract. So it was just slavery by another name, and mostly irishmen. Yeah, And to answer Raggle Fragle, yes we are all tax slaves. Don't believe me to stop paying your taxes. See what happens now? You know, given given the Brewin test and given the other recent rulings that have come out, such as them striking down Hawaii's vampire rule, I who want to call it that, because that seems to be the common parlance. It looks to me like they will at the very least say no, you cannot ban specific rifles for features and functions now, and I think they'll say that this is a federal level issue. The states cannot do X, y or z. To defend the the NFA, essentially, I don't I see Scotus saying no, local jurisdictions cannot do this. It is above local level politics, including state level politics. This is a federal congressional issue, and that is how they will defend the NFA, while at the same time saying sorry. No common use and no law. Precedent dating back to seventeen ninety one other than slave codes, which I think a lot of them will have a hard time agreeing apply to modern citizens given that we've gotten rid of slavery except for or people in prison. So that's your vote, like this is going to swing our way. Mostly. Finally, I think what's probably in the top two most likely things is one they say no bad dog bruin test, go back and do it again, okay. Or two they say nope, we told you already to go back and look at it via the Brewin test. You did not bad, it goes away. I think those are one of the two things we get. I think we get a narrow enough ruling that they can defend the NFA because I don't think these justices are While I do think there are a lot of them are more constitutionally leaning than prior administrations Supreme Court justices, I don't see them being Hurrah to a enough to say machine guns and RPGs for everyone. And see I agree with you except you and you and I have talked about how how incredibly some would say unfairly but very very critical. I've been to the Supreme Court over the last twenty years. Yeah, I think that's fair. So and every time we have this discussion around Stewart, he's he's quick to remind me like this, the Supremeware has to rule on the case as it was presented. Ruling yah to be fair. A lot of the cases that have been brought up have been building in this direction. That's fair. But here's my issue. My issue is that a narrow ruling on a narrowly held point that relates to a const constitutionally protected activity does not seem sufficient, nor rational. Nor fair. No, this is not an issue of a person can to wear pink socks on a Tuesday. This is not an issue of a minor. This is not a minor issue. This is something that is on the same grounds as voting rights, no citizenship. No, I think it's more important than voting rights and citizenship. Okay, because it gets to the very heart of what of the rights that were enumerated buyer founders, that were enshrined in the Constitution, that were promised to us as a result of the conflict we had just finished having with the King and with the King's men. The right to protest your government, the right to keep and bear arms, the right not to have soldiers quote in your home. These are not minor issues. These are not fun little concepts that you get to go on social media and talk crap about the orange man of the White House or the bumbling full that was in there a couple of years ago. That's not what this is. This is literally like foundational to what it means to be an American is that you can tell your government piss off, and you can have a small arsenal in or home without the government having the ability to hamstring you on what arms you feel like you should have to protect yourself from government intrusion. Call what it is. We don't have guns to hunt deer. We don't have guns to defend ourselves against the gang banger down the street. We have guns in case our government shows up to put us in concentration camps. And I admit that sounds crazy, but historically that is what just happened to the people who wrote these things down in the US Constitution of the Bill Rights. I mean, it's also happened to the Australians, since they stripped them of most of their firearms rights. It's aesthetically the indigenous Australians. It also happened to Native Americans. It also happened to like whole host of ethnic minorities all across the United States over this nation's history. Like, let's be adults and admit that this has happened in time or two. So my issue is this is not a minor issue. This is not something that is like voting rights or citizenship. Those are important issues, but this I think is more important. And that is why every time we get a tiny in their little ruling where Scotus leaves just enough of a tail hanging out for some states, some some locale to continue to screw with people about the Second Amendment, to continue to screw with people about their gun rights instead of putting their foot down in everybody's neck and saying foul shout. Not the end, and there is no ruling that will ever be good enough for me until that one, and every argument, every argument about building up too or will get there one day is irrelevant to me, because a right delayed is a right denied, and our rights are being have been delayed my entire life, and your entire life, and Stuart's entire life, and the entire lifetime of every person who watches this podcast. One more so, one more day, one more year, one more administration, one more whatever, until we finally get to the ruling we think should be is not good enough. It is still this a lifetime spent under boot. We should have never felt from the work. Go. No, that's that's very fair. But this is the difference between the reality of getting into the Supreme Court and a person like yourself who is a bit of an ideal log in this case, the people that the kind of people that make a career in law are pretty rarely ideal logues. That's bold given some of the justices we have in the world today. Yes, it does occur, it does occur, and they are they are problematic. But there's at least two of them in the Supreme Court right now. There are. But what I'm saying is is the majority. Uh oh, I bet we just lost Nick. So just for the listeners who were listening and not watching this on on stream, when your co host video suddenly starts to go dark and then free and he stops responding to you, usually that's an indication that he's lost power at his house. Oh internet dropped out, So he'll be coming back now, Doctor scary Guy and Stewart y'all can both hang around you one. Nick's just not here to reel me in anymore. So, like my issue here is, like I understand what Nick saying, I get it. The difference between Nick. And I is that I am extraordinarily cynical and extraordinarily unmoved by arguments about what could be what should be progress, yeada YadA yah. I'm tired of this. I've spent twenty years being the guy in the second community that's screamed bloody murder about we should be able to buy RPGs out of vending machines because that's what the Second Amendment says. And I am sick to death and tired of being told over and over and over. We need a little victory here. We need to be patient, We need to be good law abiding citizens, because good law abiding citizens do what the king tells them to. This nation was founded by people who shot at the King's men because they were doing stuff. They had no right to do. So all I'm saying is I'm sick and tired of waiting for the Supreme Court to finally say what the second Man has always said, and that be that. My internet, you say, did? Yeah, well, right before your you you froze. Everything behind you got really dark, and I was like, oh crap, did he just lose power? I did, My computer stayed on everything, but my internet stayed on. But hey, well you weren't here to reel me in. So I just like God, us both put on another government watch list. Fair enough, man, Hey, look what I'm saying is, historically speaking, the kinds of people that got into the Supreme Court did not make these broad, elaborate declarations, not historically, not really. If you look, if you look back at Supreme Court decisions, for a long time, it was a lot of milk toast decisions that were that were or at least acceptable to both sides. It was a lot of milk toast justices that were acceptable to both sides. It's not been until like the last I'm gonna say, forty years. Christ the sixties is longer than that. We're in twenty twenty. Call it. Basically since the nineteen sixties that we've started to get these more aggressive justices, some of them on the Supreme Court. And Supreme Court doesn't have that rapid a turnover, So I mean, look, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the radical justice of her time when she was elected to the Supreme Court. Look how long we had to deal with that bullshit. And even she herself admitted that some of her rulings would never hold up long. Term, which I guess. I guess. You're making your point, but I feel like you're kind of making my point too, though, I am because my issue, my issue here is that you're right to most of these most extent and your most of these decisions. Most of these decisions have been incremental and milk toast and this, that and the other. But my issue is the ones that benefit us tend to be the narrow, milk toast ones, and the ones that screw us over tend to be the ones that swing really hard the other direct. Absolutely, they know where their bread is buttered. Man, they know they know who the CIA has a gun aimed at right now, and I guarantee you it's the Supreme Court justices too. They kill the president at least once that we know of. I mean, I'm pretty sure they smoked a chief justice. But that's neither here nor there. There's pretty well there's not in substantial evidence to suggest that that's possible. Yeah, And there's not in substantial evidence to suggest that the CIA was also behind manson the explosion of rap music and the decline of rock and roll music, flooding the ghettos with flooding the ghettos with crack, and I get that, Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of people in our government that are willing to do absolutely atrocious and immoral things to advance their position. We shall see. I, in my opinion, As limited as my opinion is, I'm no legal expert. I just followed the gun stuff and a few of the other laws because hey man, that's what affects my life. A lot of the. Trade regulations stuff, that's what affects my living pretty pretty much. It seems to me chances. Are higher that we have a ruling that at the very least opens it up a bit for us in this In this case, I don't think Cook Counties. I mean, Cook County already got slapped down for their pistol ban. They're going to get slapped down for their AR fifteen ban. In my opinion, I think Connecticut is going to take the same thing. I think they're using this as a backdoor to deal with PICA, because PIKA is kind of all of the most terrible gun bands rolled into one. And if they can get connecticuts, which is very not that dissimilar to PIICA, then they can get most of them nationwide. I live to be proven wrong. But oh look, I don't think this is going to solve anything. All it's going to do is delay the Democrats in these states long enough that hey, we get a liberty. Year before they pass another one. Yeah, because they'll just they will just do what they always do, and they will rewrite it with three different words, send it again and say, huh, sue me in ten. Years, which is when Phil has to be the one to say that, until these assholes can be individually held liable without the air cover provided by the government and their office for the bullshit that they're trying to get passed, there will be no change. No, not real measurable change, either that or tarring and feathering in minecraft. You know, I don't know that tarring and feathering would solve this issue because the kind of people that we are dealing with are ideologues of the opposite ben and they would they would make themselves out to be a martyr because of it. I mean realistically, realistically, I mean, look what happened to Fps Russia mm hmm. Gun community made him out to be a martyr. Look at what happened to what the senator from what was at Utah that got shot a while back. They made her out to be a gun control martyr. I mean, hell, they tried to make Biden out to be a cancer martyr or a dementia martyr after he got out of office, and Jesus Christ, I mean. After the screen bloody murder for how many years? They Yeah, nothing like having your face pissed in and being told it's raining. Oh yeah, exactly, Like I don't know, all. Right, we got to get this topic. We're a half an hour in. All we've done is goof off and you've had to I don't know. I was gonna say you probably had to recite the incantation to appease the machine guides. But you know, well, yeah, the incantation of unplug it and plug it back in. They that is a time honored it. It technique. It works, it's yeah, it's traditional. Yeah. My, if my, uh, if the internet connection had not died coming into the neighborhood, I wouldn't lost We wouldn't have lost connection. It would have just been a little power blip. To be expected. Mm hmm. All right. So the topic for the day is how do we take a person from a beginner shooter to a novice. But before we talk about that, I think we have to we have to first agree on what we consider a beginner to be sure, because everyone has a different idea of what a beginner is, including beginners. Yes, and I kind of I kind of want to like just your idea of my idea, like what what what are the what are the boundaries, what's the box that is to go first? Beginner? So I tend to think of a beginner as a person who in order to to like, in order to be at that beginner level, I think you're a person who is, like, you've done some basic farm's familiar familiarity. You know which end to point it downrange, you know which end to put it against your shoulder, you know basic farm safety. May or may not know how to field strip your weapon and clean it, and everything may not may or may not be zeroed, but you can at least get out to the range and safely handle the firearm. Okay, maybe not using correct techniques, maybe not hitting the target that often, but you can at least get out there and like be safe without shooting yourself or somebody else. I call that beginner level because once you get I feel like, once you get much passed off of that X, now we're we're progressing to or it's something more like a novice which is where I'd like most people to get to at a minimum. But I feel like it's important to point out like what I consider to be a beginner versus a novice, because I feel like a lot of people probably think there's still a beginner. When I say, no, you're probably closer to novice than you realize. Like, once you get to the point where you're reliably mayhap to jump. Yeah. But at the same time, like what I've seen in the last several years is I've seen lots and lots and lots of content come out that's. Aimed at the beginner. It's aimed at the brand new gun ner, the person that just bought their first firearm. There were hundreds of thousands of newly minted firemowners during COVID who were rushing out the gun shops, buying up everything they could, whatever anim they could get a hold of, any magazines they could lay hands on, and hopefully that ammunition of those guns and those magazines all work together. We have a funny incident at the gun dealer. I got to he's not a gun shop, he's a kitchen table FFL. I was there at the same time as another guy who's brand new to guns, and he had ordered some ammunition from our gun dealer. He had ordered thirty eight Special. Okay, cracking, it's. Pistols of Walter pp K. That's three eighty auto. That's that's thirty it's not going to work very well. Special. She don't fit. Dan was very forgiving about that. Dan's a great guy. I gotta try to convince him to command on one of these shows some one of these days. He'd be he'd be a funny guy to have on. But yeah, I mean that, that's that's the point at which I kind of drop everybod and say, okay, y'all are beginners, Like you've got some stuff. You know how to handle yourself safely. You don't quite know the right the right way to do anything yet, but you can at least go out to the gun range and like you know, tea teacup grip and miss half your shots at ten at ten yards, but at least they're going into the burm and at least you're not flagging everybody. Like that's beginner level to me. The how I tend to call is you can go to the range safely by yourself. You can manipulate the weapon by yourself safely, all right, exactly, maybe not handle all of the malfunctions that there are some malfunctions that are more complicated and more difficult to deal with until you've seen them or. Or seen it demonstrated. Where I think you cross into novice from beginner is where you start to take that next step into seeking greater education for yourself. Like my wife, I've considered her a beginner shooter for a long time. She has just started getting into going to shooting classes on her own, motivating herself to do better and looking to improve with purposeful intent. That's when I think you cross out of beginner territory. Okay, I mean that that sounds fair. It sounds like our appraisal of what's the beginner versus novice isn't really that far off from each Yeah. Really, I think to get in my opinion, to get to the novice shooter category, or at least enter the category, you need to be purposefully critiquing yourself seeking to do better in a structured manner. Because you can go out. And hell, I've got cousins that when they go out to the shooting range, they playing tin cans. That's all they've ever done. That's probably all they're ever gonna do. Shoot golf ball, shoot tin cans, shoot cans full of tannerite, shoot at an old busted down car, whatever. That's you know, where it's shooting for leisure more than exist they're really it'd be no different than them throwing black cats out the window of their truck as they're going down the road. I mean, they're just making noise, really, is what they're doing. Occasionally stuff moves downrange. That's really where they're at. The difference is when you when you decide to take that and try to better yourself with intent. That sounds fair. So let's start off having a discussion about like where I tended to. I approach this from the perspective of like several people that I've tried to help help them improve in their sh shooting, And the very first thing I'm always like very quick to do, and I prefer to do this in a sterile environment, like no live ammo, away from a life, away from a range. Yeah, this is the way I did it. For my daughter when she first learned to shoot. We were here in my office right over here, with no ammo anywhere in the room, and like I showed her the proper way to hold her little twenty two caliber you know, chipmunk perfect, and you know, proper way to get her cheek on the stock, proper way to line up the sites. We actually took. And duct taped an empty twenty two twenty two shell to the butt stock so that all she had to do was like touch her cheek to it, and she was in the rights. Because I was trying to I was trying to teach her, like, you know, get into a natural get it, get into something that's comfortable. Don't like crane your neck really crazy for it or anything. But wherever your cheek touched the stock, I wanted to be in the same spot on the stock every time so that you start to build muscle memory as far as this is the. Way this should feel. So I dunk tape duct taped an empty case to the stocks. All she had to do was touch to her cheek and she knew she was in the right spot and everything else, her hands just wherever they reached. But that's always where I started, is like, this is the proper way to hold this firearm. This is the proper way to load it to unloaded, to make it safe, to make it rate a fire like this is the proper way to do all these things. And I saw Raggle mentioned a minute ago, like administrative stuff, and there is a certain amount of gun handling that's not just shooting, it's how to administratively handle the firearm. To your point, can they go to the range and manage themselves by themselves if I have to unload the firearm for you, You're not at that point. Yet, correct. But my goal for my daughter was when I started teaching her shoot, was that I can put you on the line and I can tell you load the gun, unload the gun, put. The safety on. You know, I can coat. I may have to talk her through some of these things because she was seven, Yeah that's reasonable, but she knew how to do it, and that was very important to me to show her, like from a baseline, this is the right way to do all these things, the right place to put your hands, make you know, make sure you're muzzle. Make sure you do it this way so the muzzle stays downrange, you're not pointing up over the berm. But I think you always have to start from a perspective of like proper technique for whatever firearm you're dealing with. I think the thing you skipped over right there that I really want to hammer home is you cannot critique your own technique. It's very, very difficult. You really really can't. I mean, once you, once you've done shooting enough, like Phil, when when you and. I were on the line the other. Day, as a beginner, you can. As a beginner, you can critique your own shooting. I agree with that. You and I can both tell when we pulled a shot. The second we squeeze that trigger, we know that SHOT's going out wild. I literally told you at one point while you were you were watching me with the spying scope, I pulled the trigger. I'm like, I pulled that yep. And like I don't know where late where it went, but you very obviously I heard you say, oh, yeah you did, Yeah you did. It wasn't even on the steal, but yeah, I I as soon as I saw I saw the the. Trace in the air, that's gone. It's not gonna be anywhere near where it's supposed to be. I couldn't see the trays in the air because you know, my head is down back behind the scope. But like just I felt it. I felt the trigger pull, I felt the release, and I immediately knew like, I don't know where that went, but it did not go where I wanted it to. Yeah, and look, this is why having a friend or having a range got a range officer or whatever. If you go to the range and there's a range officer there and you're the only two there and you're a beginner shooter, grab and say, hey, if it's okay, can you watch my technique and help me? Can you tell can you tell me if. You see something I'm doing wrong, because it is especially if you're not one hundred percent sure of how your biomechanics need to be so that you can you can manage the recoil of say like a semi automatic pistol, well, semi automatic pistols, revolvers, any pistols. Pistols are hard to shoot well, and. If you're you cannot watch what your arms are doing while you're focused on a site picture you can. I've been telling people for years shooting rifles is to me, it's easier to be a pretty decent rifleman than to be a pretty decent pistol shooter. Five minutes, I can have anybody I've ever taught making headshots at three hundred yards five minutes. You're talking about with the rifle. Yep, okay, I thought you mede with a handgun, and I was like, that's that's that's a strong that's a bold time. But it's behind an unmagnified rifle. I can have people making headshots three hundred yards. It's not difficult. The rifle does all of the work for you. Yeah, especially if you have something like arrest or a sandbag or a bipod like something to help. You stay alive. If you can lean up against a tree, it's more than enough. It's not a complicated thing to do, especially on a static target. But handgun shooting is just inherently more challenging that The thing I always try to go back to proper technique, The thing I always try to ram home with a new shooter with handguns specifically, is is like just teaching them that that very classic, admittedly what's kind of more of a modern tech technique than what was in vogue like twenty thirty forty years ago, but like very traditional two thumbs forward, getting a good wrap around the handgun. Yeah. I've heard one instructor say, your goal is to cover as much of the grip with your hands as possible, which makes. As much of the slide as you can. I mean, I've seen some guys that are there so far forward, they're like this with the grip, They're covering two thirds of the slide with their thumbs. Yeah, and there's It makes all the sense in the world when you think about the fact that, like the thing that we always used to tell each other in the car world is that no matter how good your brakes are, you cannot outbreak your tires because your tires the only thing connecting your vehicle to the ground. Well, the only thing connecting you to your firearm is your hands. Ye, So if you have a teeny little grip that just just holding on to a little bit of it, or you have your hands wrapped around that whole fricking handgun, obviously you're going to have a greater aptitude for mechanical grip by covering as much of the slide as much not the slide, but as much of the frame as possible with your hands. And then for a revolver, I always default back to, you know, like both both thumbs cross behind the I don't do that don't do that with a semi auto. You can always tell the the new semiato guy who's been shooting revolvers life there's a scar. But that's always where I start a person with handguns. It's like I teach them like, this is the proper way to hold this thing. This is the proper way to literally get a good mechanical grip so that you have the best chance of mitigating recoil between shots. Yep. And I find that if you start, if you build that habit early, a lot of other things start to really fall into place. And I want to be really clear here. I have tried to instruct my wife on how to shoot pistols. Well, she learns differently than I do, which makes it very difficult for me to explain what I'm doing, even. While I'm showing her what I'm doing. We I had the good fortune to meet a instructor. At our local range day orientation who was also becoming a new member of the range. And you know, I grabbed her and said, hey, you're an instructor. My wife's been talking about taking a class. Can I get your card? This this lady, I'm not sure how she explained it to my wife, but it took her shooting up amazingly better, just in how she explained the different way she explained how to grip the fire, how to hold onto a pistol correctly, because the technique she now uses is exactly what I was trying to explain to her. But for whatever reason, the way I was explaining it wasn't landing. This is why instructing is a skill all by it. It is, Oh, it absolutely is. I've had no problem teaching two of my coworkers how to hold a pistol. They're also machinists. I'm wondering if. It's not a little bit of how how machinists communicate with each other, how guys communicate hate with each other a little bit differently, how bit of theism I was about to. Say, It sounds maybe like the tism is linking up. It could be. It could be. I mean, it could be that these guys are used to learning a task in let me. I will first show you the task, You replicate the task I showed you, and I will correct you as you do it. And they're used to learning in that way, where she's used to learning in a different way, Which is why I'm really big on trying multiple instructors. Yes, there is almost no downside to it. Instructors quotations. I'm talking about, go shooting with your husband, go shooting with your girlfriends, go shooting with your guy friends from work. Have other people look at it, because maybe they have an explanation for how to do the exact same thing. The other people are telling you that just clicks with your brain. And it might be something as simple as they might notice something that the other person that was trying to show you something didn't notice exactly. Yeah, very much could be. So handguns is one thing. I'm going to make some generalizations about rifles and shotguns. That the audience will have to forgive me for. But I feel as though the proper technique for a rifle or a shotgun is going to depend somewhat on the individual weapon. Like if we're talking about like an AK versus an AR versus an M fourteen or a Mini fourteen, or if we're talking about a traditional hunting rifle or a bolt action or a lever action, Like there's some generalities as far as like where your hand should be and like cheek to stock and basic things like that, but as far as like proper way to load the firearm, to unload the firearm, to administratively deal with things, things start to diverge very very very quickly because there's a lot of there's a lot of variety, okay in the rifle, in the shotgun world. I dealt with this in shotguns, just in learning how to like load, unload, do slug, changeovers and everything on my A three hundred. When I realized that some shotguns, thank Christ, not a baretta, but like when you pull, when you if you run the bolt handle twice, you eject, you continue to eject shells out because. The bread of three hundred is a smart semi. Auto, but not all of them are. No, they are not. And that was that was It was hardening to realize that that was the way mine was because they kind of clicked well with the way my brain works. But like I could totally see where a person that was getting that was trying to learn shotguns from someone with a different shotgun system could be would run into some teething problems where it's like, well, my shotgun. Doesn't do that. So for those that don't know, there are four basic types of shotguns. There are dumb semi autos which every time you use, every time. You cycle the action, it shocks the shell. There are smart semiautos which only activates the feed lip and brings another shell up after the trigger has been pulled. There are dumb semi autos that work like a dumb pump, and there are smart semiautos that work like a like a smart pump. Or the only time that activates that lifter to bring up a new shell is if the firing pin has moved, if you've pulled the trigger. That's the big difference, and that makes a big difference in how you handle administrative reloads and ammunition. Changes, which we'll talk about drills later, but this also means things like how to load and unload the firearms suddenly become a little trickier with that semi automatic smart shotgun because I can't just sit there and run the boltandle bunch of times dump everything out and with. A seventy hold the safety switch and just keep racking it. And even more concerning is if let's say I pull that bolt handle twice it stops spinning shells out. I assume the weapons unloaded. It's probably not. I've I've still got a hole twoeful, thank got nothing in the chamber after you run the after you run the handle, the bolt handle twice. But still, Jim, we shall see if they are selling like hotcakes in Illinois. I said, I'm optimistic, but I'm I'm not. It's not a shirt thing. I'm pessimistic, but I'm pessimistic strategically because either I will be pleasantly surprised or I won't be disappointed. I'm gonna tell you this, if the Supreme Court does not rule on this very obvious case of infringement of a right in a two way positive direction, we're done, folks. We're based on y'all's compliance rate in Cook County already. I think everybody's already done. Yeah, yeah, there is that. I think Illinois is still hovering somewhere around two and a half percent based on the state's estimation of how many ars there are, and. That's not an accurate. Estimate, not cloth. I mean, given how the nation reacted to the pistol brace ban. I just said, compliant, and we do exactly how many were manufactured. I'm sorry, not the pistol brace band, the bomb stock ban. Even I think I think the American people are starting to lose their taste for this nonsense, which is why I'd really love Scouts to, like finally get with the times, pull their panties out of their button, do the right thing for once. I just don't know if. I believe it'll happen yet, but I live to be proven wrong. I would love fulfilled to be proven wrong. I I will. I will subject myself to all sorts of tom foolry if I am proven wrong, like it will go down. But I think I think we're in agreement. Learning proper technique requires at least a second person, if not three. I will agree with you tentatively. I will say that I do believe that, like a fair amount of this, you can actually like self rescue, self teach if you have a good exis ample to base yourself off of. I tried to do that, and I can tell you this, I am very good at teaching myself skills. I failed horribly at teaching myself to shoot pistols. Well. The difference that okay, so I spent about a year and a half shooting a shooting a bread of ninety two an Ati bread at ninety two Turkish ninety two clung. Okay uh double single action pistol. It's exactly like the bread of ninety two. Oh, here you go. Rachel was taught to banana and apple technique for gripping the gun. I have no idea. What that means. I need an explanation, because next time we get her on, we'll have her explain it. That that almost sounds like something that came out of a sex ed class. I think if I'm if I'm envisioning it correctly, it's hold it like a banana and then wrap your hand around the apple. Oh, I'm guessing. And the way I tried to explain it to her her was the way it was explained to me, is that you're applying forward and rear pressure with your dominant hand and you're applying side pressure with your non dominant hand. You know what I bet The difference is that's that. Banana and apple is a visual reference you can and you can't see when someone When someone is saying like, hey apply pressure this direction in this direction like this, they can't see the press being applies. It's the difference between a visual and a technical explanation. That's probably why it worked better for her. That I mean that makes sense to me, because I mean, you do get into There are people that and Rachel knows this because of her profession. But like there there are there are different styles of learning, and if her individual style is not auditory or visual, then her instructor. Literally gave her a perfect analogue. Yeah, an analogy that she can immediately apply to what she's doing. I'm so glad she went to that instructor because I would never have thought to explain it to her in that way, because it's not how my brain works. It's just not. And this is why instructing is its own skill set, because a good instructor can figure out how to teach you anything, even if they themselves are not the best at it, because teaching is the skill. I think. I think, I think we might. We might have hit on it. Good, good, Hey, you know what, whatever it takes to explain it to teach people. Look, my brain doesn't work like that. I can teach machinists because a lot of us think remarkably similar, and I think it has something to do with the structured nature of the system. We are actually discussing this at work with the intern the other day. He's like, there's a lot of autistic people in this building. That's buddy, that's the industry. So if you're not okay with it, you best bail now. Well before we move on to the next bullet point. Proper technique. So I made a comment to you the other day about how I still to this day see a lot of chicken wings at the rifle range and a lot of teacup grips at the pistol range. And that's a lot of what I wanted to try to hammer on about proper techniques because I truly believe that, like, if you teach someone and admittedly some of this has changed over the years, some of this is still changing and modifying itself as we go. But I think if you teach someone the proper way to build a firing grip, to build a firing position, to arrange their body biomechanically to work with the fireman, not against it, then you're immediately having a better time dealing with recoil. You have more stable platform, You're gonna get less fatigued over time. It can only improve your shooting, and that all goes towards elevating you from that beginner guy who's like you know, chicken wings up, shooting the ar and kind of bumbling around them. Straight of work to the person who has a good firing grip, elbows down, good mechanic, you know, good biomechanical platform to allow themselves to stabilize that weapon and they can start to do real work, fine tuning little things once you have the basics down. Absolutely, Look, anything you can do that improves your ability for control passively, because that's really what proper technique does. It improves your ability for control passively because you're using the structure of your body instead of fighting it. To answer raggle. No, I very rarely see someone like one handed shooting handguns, unless it's unless it's something like target shooting bullseye like Olympic style, you know, like that. But like, no serious defensive work is being done one handed, unless unless unless it is one of the things we're gonna talk about later, which is to practice one handed drills. Yep, that's fair. Look, I have seen I have seen people shoot at the range one handed dueling style shooting. I've seen it. I tend to not stand near those people because they also tend to be the people that don't know how to load or unload their fire and without pointing at the booth to their left. Yeah, that's why. Furthest right hand booth is usually the best place to be in a public range. This is true. This is true, all right, So before we start talking about live fire. Drills, I did want to detour in here to talk about dry fire now, in the name of full disclosure. There was a time, a long time ago, I thought dry fire was the goofiest, most boring bull crap on the face of the earth. And I never wanted to do it, and I thought it was nonsense. I did not advocate for it, and I certainly didn't participate in it. Sure, and then COVID happened and my local gun range got closed down because it was on state land for quite an extended period of time. I had a very similar experience in Kentucky with red dots on pistols. Didn't warn a proponent, and then you tried and was like, oh, this is as bad as I thought it was. No, I tried a bunch of red dots on pistols, and I think the issue is down to the prescription of glasses I used to have. It was not correcting well enough for my stigmatism, and so those dots look at one point. Have you ever been driving down the freeway at night and you get that flare that lights up your entire windscreen? Oh yeah, because the asshole. In coming at you never turns off their high beams and it lifted f one fifty because it's always that guy or a. Beamer, or you just have a stigmatism and you're looking at normal headlights. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to get people to relate that don't have any stigmatism. But every red dot I had ever tried up until we went to Kentucky, and I have prismatic optics on a couple of firearms in mysel if that was the only ones I could I could use because of the lens flair so bad. The dot it wasn't a dot, It wasn't even a starburst it would be. It was a cloud. Lens was a cloud of red. So I'm like, fuck, I don't know kind of in the right direction, pull the trigger. I think that my new prescription that I got a couple of years ago, and I hadn't tried a red dot since I tried one of Chris' is one of our patrons on his suppress twenty two, which, oh my god, a suppress twenty two with a red dot is just the funniest shit ever. You want to know, it's funny. I was in my late thirties before I realized I had an astigmatism because all the years I had spent looking at bright lights and red dots, I just assumed everybody's the high's eyes work that way, right, And it wasn't until somebody mentioned like, oh, yeah, you know you have an instigmatism when a red dot looks like a cloud. I was like, it's not supposed to. Well, I knew I had an astigmatism. I didn't know what it did. I just knew that's why my eyes were fucked. So point of order. Though I had twenty ten vision when I was younger. Oh, which, think about this, I had twenty ten vision and a stigmatism. Oh so I could read street signs like a block away. But bride Light's bright lights kind of messed with me. I just so had. I did figure as a kid that the lights were just really bright. But that's kind of my point is that it never even occurred to me something was wrong with my eyes, because I was like, these are the only eyes I've ever had, and like, I figured out how to make them work. So my eyes were bad enough. I was getting migraines in high school. Yeah. Well, as evidenced by the fact that you're wearing glasses in your thirties and I'm forty three, and still I can still pass the d I can still pass the eye exam of the DMV without them, so I'm not getting them yet. Yeah, but anyway, but yeah, I technically can pass the DMV test without them, just barely barely. So I always a do not like you memorize the AR chart or anything. Look, let's not discuss who's memorized what. Well. I can tell you this, I've had my glasses stolen by a river once before, and if it ever happens again, I don't want to get a ticket for driving without them. Fair But like I was saying, dry fire, I think dry fire. First of all, I make it a point before I ever go out to the range with a brand new firearm or something's unfamiliar to me, I spend time dry firing it so I get familiar with the trigger, I get familiar. With loading and unloading. I you and I have talked about the fact that I have dummy rounds for every cartridge, that any of these firearms fire same, and that is mostly used to run drill, so that I know how to load the firearm, unload the fire and do all the administrate of work, how to clear malfunctions. I make sure I beat all that into my head before I ever go out to the range for the first time, so that when I have live ammunition and a range full of people with live ammunition, I'm not the rude that's out there bumbling around the gun that doesn't know how to work. So I think dry fire not only can teach you like you can, not only help reinforce away from the noise, away from the recoil, away from the concussion. It can help reinforce good habits like having a nice, stable trigger press. It can help reinforce habits like correct posture, correct grip on the firearm. It can help reinforce the things you really should be learning at this point, which like administrative and malfunctions and his clearance. But you can do all those in. A sterile environment with no AMMO, no risk. No pressure from other people around you. Yes, because look, anytime you introduce pressure in a new task you're trying to learn. It makes it harder, it does. I mean, look, if you don't believe me, download one of the free shot time or apps on your phone and see see how bigger groupings start to get if you've never shot under a timer before. I just realized I have these things right off the right off nice. So you know what these little things are, right? I need to buy those. So this is a manus x ten mm hmm. That's a fun, little, fun little dry fire training aid that we've talked about on the show before. I uh, part of my my push to get myself back behind back out to the range and back to getting my training back on schedule. I actually pulled these things out and charged them recently, because that's how long they've been sitting around. But you know, like for dry fire, something like this is really helpful. It kind of bridges the gap between just doing regular dry fire and actually running drills. It can give you some feedback to help get you pointed in a better direction. Especially if you don't have the second person in the room watching your technique. Yeah, I would never call it a replacement for a for a good trainer, because it certainly isn't, but it certainly beats the hell out of it. Certainly beats the hell out of like and guessing exactly. Remember those old pie charts that every range had hanging on the wall that were completely fucking bullshit. My range still has them, but yes, yes, so. Does mine, and I make fun of it and sometimes people stick sticky notes on it of No, this is what you're doing. It's not the gun you just suck. Yeah, it's not the gun you just suck. Oh, my range does have it. It's not the gun, you just suck. Poster on the wall, which is great. I love that. Excellent. Yeah, but yeah, like I said, I if you are the person that like that once to spend some money on cool stuff like this, I like Mannis's stuff. None of this was given to me. I think this might have been a slight discount or this was one or the other. But I paid my own money for a fair amount of this stuff. I do all of my dry fire just with snapcaps. Currently, I would like to get a Mansa system because I'm gonna start doing holster work and my wife is going to be starting to do holster work here coming up, so that will be very helpful. But that was the thing I was going to say, Man, this is cool. Man, this is fine, bare minimum. I highly recommend you just go get some snapcaps, or or you can make your own. If you happen to have a reloading press. You literally just take a bullet smash it into an empty case. I like to fill the primer pockets with a silicon RTV, preferably blue, because then there is no debating at a glance that is one hundred and ten percent not alive row with blue goop pouring out of the primer pocket. Ragel. No, the mantis will not prove that it is the gun. What. The only thing that will prove it is the gun is you give it to a person that is a good shooter, or you put it in a pistol device or rifle a vice system. So I will say that in defense of the mannis what. This will not prove that the gun is definitely the problem, but this will help you to not add to the problem. Put it that way. Now, I will say that as far as like how well this thing works, I believe it works because I got curious one time and I put the barrel clamp. Because this thing comes with a variety of attachments, one of which is literally just a clamp to go around the end of a barrel. I clamped this onto the very end of my three away Winchester's barrel, so I was like, as far, you know, as far away from me as possible. I'd get the most range of motion if I goop something up on my side. I was trying not to gain the system. Yeah, I put this on it, and I put a put a blank round into the chamber, got myself into a good firing position on the uh you know, on the on the bipod, have my fists underneath the rear hear of the stock. Exactly the shooting stance I get into when I'm doing when I was doing load development for this thing, and I breathed on that trigger. Now I have it on good on good authority from the president of this company. He was on this. Podcast years ago that the best shooters he's ever seen can occasionally hit a hundred on this on a bipod in a firing in the prone. I was able to hit like ninety nine point seven niney nine point eights. But I can also group four rounds together one hundred yards. Sorry, Stewart's right. Not blank round a dummy round, that's fair. But the point is is. That I know, and this is bare in my mind that like normally I'm shooting in like the eighty range maybe eighty five's with handguns with car beings, when I'm doing more dynamic drills. So like I can definitely see. And as a point of order, when I first started teaching my daughter how to shoot, I put this on her twenty two and had her snap the trigger I think twenty or thirty times and watched her score climb from the forties up into the low seventies. Yea, So like they're great training aids. They can definitely help make dry fire more appealing, more structured. It. It kind of turns it into a video game. And that's that by itself has value because it kind of encourages people to, like, you know, try harder. It does. It does. It's it's any like any training aid that provides you with feedback, it can help you improve. Yeah, you know. To further address Ragles point, I have shot a lot of guns, a lot of handguns. I have shot a lot of other people's handguns. I have been I have gone to the range quite a number of times with beginner, novice and very very new shooters, and I have only ever one time seen it be the gun when the gun was not hitting where you were aiming. Only one time, and that was a Torus Revolver, And when I took it home, I said, let me take a look at it. The barrel is bent. That'll do it. The barrel was bent. Now, that's not to knock Taurus. I guess it could technically happen with the smith and Wesson. I've never heard of it, but the barrel was bent. I mean, there was a clear and obvious defect in the firearm I have heard of. I think it was. I want to say it was a kimber rear sight being out of location from the factory. But it was so clearly out of location that when the guy pulled it out of. The boxes, oh weird, that sight's off center. Let me move that back. And then they drifted it back and it was fine. Maybe the setstree didn't get set right rough handling and shipping. I don't know. I've only ever seen it in real life once, and I've only ever heard of it a second time. Usually it's not the gun. So before we get to drills to comments, So dumpster fire Reel was saying he was watching the Cabin Meat podcast miss This Live seven point thirty pm Central on Thursdays. Unless something weird happens, we will be here streaming. So unless it's a holiday on Thursday typically or we're in the summer meet up. Yeah, I mean there are exceptions to the rule, but the rule is the rule for a reason. And Ragle fraango ass out of curiosity, how many shooters have you come across it had a natural talent for shooting zero. I will say there are people that are naturally better than others. There are people who are naturally better, and I will go so far say there are people that take to it a lot faster than others. But I have never met a truly I've never met somebody that was like brand new and just right out of the gate was like, you know, knocking them dead. And I've also never met anyone that shot at a really high level that hadn't spent a stupid amount of time training. I will say this, the people that take to shooting the fastest are the same exact peace people that if you brought them into a new workplace. They're also the people that are going to excel the. Quickest, not because they're talented, because they take instruction. Well, diligent and they're diligence. They take construction well and they put in the work. My daughter took to shooting very quickly. Yep. It was still the product of several range trips and instruction and time spent dry firing. Now she improved rapidly, but quite frankly, everything she's ever done she may have inherited a little bit of a little touch of that for me. But like anything she says I'm inntioned in this, she goes into it full blast until she gets bored with it and then she's like, Okay, I'm over it now. But as long as she hasn't gotten bored with it, she is full blast all the work, all the time, kicking her butt, trying her best, and she improves rapidly. So there was some level of physical aptitude, though, Like if you have a person with the physical disability that causes they're probably not going to be a good shooter. It's just going to be harder for them. But they're not going to be shooting you know, bull size of a thousand yards without an extreme amount. Of practice, potentially, But I still think that if a person is willing to put in the work, they could outshoot They could outshoot a beginner without those handicaps. If they put a lot, a lot, a lot of work. Oh no, absolutely. What I'm saying is that there are people that, because of their physical abilities or inabilities, have it either an easy or harder time with it. But it's really it usually comes down to the people that are willing to practice and that are willing to take the instruction. I'll go with that. Jeff Jaggs Stewart tried this same maneuver saying he's here now, started over several times and we told him no. So the answer is the same. For you, mostly because it's funny, mostly because it's funny. But if we're not going to do it for Grandpa, we're certain they're not going to do it for you. He doesn't have nearly as much time left as you do. Yeah, well, he also lives close enough to me to like make a day trip to come straighten me out if you really, if you. Really wanted to, he definitely could. Although I'm pretty sure I could play cadom with you know, Southern cooking and booze. Yeah, probably all right drills and not the fun electric No, not the fun electric kind. And I'm I'm gonna go like I'm going to say that to me when I talk when we have a discussion about drills aimed at beginners, Firing drills are the last ones I recommend. Yep across that line into a novice shooter. Yeah, you're gonna doing a lot of live fire drills. Yeah, Well, I guess what I mean is like you know, like your Mozambique and your bill drill, and your your your pyramid. Drills, You're done two threes, any of those all that stuff. That's great. That teaches you a lot of like problem solving in real time. It teaches you a lot of requel mitigation. But it is they are not the drills I advocate for a person to go from beginning or too novice because at that at that point when when the sum total of your ability is I know how to like safely conduct myself at the range and not shoot myself or anybody else in the foot. Or the face. Yeah. I think a lot of the drills I recommend people, you know, people undertake are really things like administrative drills, reloads, stoppages, malfunction clearing, Like I want a person to be able to competently handle the fire and when it misbehaves, because firearms are mechanical things, and they do misbehave sometimes they do. I want you to know how to, how to. I want you to know what to do if you get a stovepipe, what happens if you get a double feed, A failure to eject, a failure to extract. That could be really exciting if you've never done that before. I want you, I want you to know what happens if your your ar suddenly decides it's time for like you know, pornhub time, and it tries to shove three rounds into the chamber at the same time. By the way, that doesn't end very well. No, and that's usually a bad magazine. It's usually a bad magazine. But here's the trick. You and I know how to deal with that problem almost immediately. Well, because we've worn out a couple of magazines. Yeah, rap the freaking bolt to the rear, lock it in place, dump the magazine, give it a good you know, give it a good hood shaking. Get all those rounds out of there, Double check your chamber, double check your feedway, and then pop a new magazine and go back to work. But for the person who's. Only ever like magazine in, drop the bolt, bang bang bang, and then all of a sudden it does something unfortunate. Yah, And let's say you know, oh, I got to run the charging handle. You run the charging hand. Now you got three rounds fighting to get into the chamber. You flip this over look at the charging hand or looking through the ejection port, and you're just looking at a group activity that shouldn't be taking place in there. The way, my shooting instructor that taught me how to shoot car beans well said, went in doubt, rip it out. If there's a malfunction going on and you're not sure what the hell's going on, rip the magazine out, dump it on the floor, start racking the charging handle and see what falls out. Because at the very least you've taken the mag out of the equation. Yeah, Raggle says, I've never done a single one. I'm terrible. I wonder what he's referring. Never worn out a single bag. I mean I have. I haven't worn out of meg since I was enlisted, but I'm pretty sure those mags were already worn out. When I When I got them, they. Were, But to be fair, understand army regulations, they have to be worn out before the boots get them. But to be fair, I've ever. Done a single drill. Raggle came on you. We will hear pressure you into doing many drills. But I question if he's if he's thinking about drill the way I'm talking about drill. I'm talking about something as simple as like have you have you ever trained how to mitigate a mitigate a failure to feed or a failure to eject? And if you have a fire out of a holster, and if you haven't, it's really really simple to reproduce. Get your sel some freaking dummy rounds, Pop your ejection port open, drop one on into the chain, drop one into the ejection port, and then run the bolt handle real fast. Now you got two fighting to get. Into the chamber and we now have a party. It's time for time to do work. Mm hmm. I guess my old thing is is like the drills I recommend are first and foremost from a defensive shooter's perspective. If the gun goes down, you need to know how to get the gun back up and hot as fast as humanly possible. So I'm going to teach from a defensive standpoint. If your gun misbehaves, this is the first thing you do. And then if that doesn't work, then you need to like slow down a little bit, investigate a little closer, maybe try to figure out, maybe try to work through the problem. But you're you know, your immediate action is always immediate action for a reason, like that's something they beat into us in the armies. If your ar doesn't, you know, misbehaves, you do this, this, this, and this quickly automatically, and then if that doesn't fix the problem, now you have to turn your brain on and look at things. Exactly because we look the vast majority of the time. If you're if your gun goes click instead of bang, usually it's a dead magazine. Your mag is empty and the bolt just didn't hold open. For whatever reason. It happens. Sometimes maybe because it's dirty, maybe because your hand was finger fucking with the slide release, maybe because you'll let guilty of that before you go fully into battery. Or fully to the rear of the recoil cycle. Have you Have you done that before? Ridden the slide stop. I used to do that on my XDM all the time. That's when you have a really exuberant superrint thumbs forward grip on that handgun. I did, And you know what, you know what I just started doing is I would just shoot until I got a click, drop the mags, slap a new one in rack. It happens. So it happens so often in uh training for competitions and in competition shooting that I just. Dead, all right, dump mag mag rack. You know I obviously tap rack, click a second time, dump the mag new mag rack. Go. But you know I have found with a different firearm this does not happen with my MMP two point zero Compact. I don't have that issue. Don't know why, Probably because the the slide release is in a slightly different location. Yeah, And insofar as like so, some of this is not really going to be applicable with like a flat range because like most flat rangers are not going to have the civilians out there practicing holster work, and you know that kind of thing. Private range as will private. Ranges will if you're in the if you're in that fortunate position, but this is also why I say that some of these things should probably be practiced in dry fire first, and then you transition to a range if you have that ability. But things like reload drills, Nick, I'll be the first to men and the gun community will screen bloody murder. But a lot of times I don't carry spare magazine. You know, I think that's not an unreasonable take. I carry a spare magazine because I've had a lot of magazine related issues, mostly because I kind of abused my magazines. I'll take that shit, rip it out of the gun, throw it on the fucking floor, bounce that shit across the concrete. Magazines are a consumable item. But the one time I always carry a reload. Is when I have my jframe. Mm hmmm, because I. Got only five shots. I got five shots in a fifteen ounce jframe. If I'm carrying that thing, that's usually on my ankle, and my reload is a Biance speed strip downloaded to four rounds, which sounds weird to people, but. Hear me out. So you can only drop two rounds at a time out of a speed strip into a jframe. If you never played with a jframe, it's the way the cylinders can figure. Like that you are not lining up for two at a time. Yeah, only lines it for two at a time. And I've I've spent some non insignificant amount of time like training this, timing myself and everything else. And what I began to realize was that per rounds in the gun, it was taking me a disproportionate amount of time to get that fifth round into the. Chamber versus just mechanical rhythm, versus. Just drop one drop, another drop, drop once drop the second time, snap the snapped the cylinder in. And the best part was was that even if that first cylinder happened to be dry, I don't care. There's full more right behind it, and they're all hot. But the big thing for me was also that I began to realize that when I took that Bianchi speed trip out of my pocket, I trained myself so that my index finger goes in between the four rounds. Yep, So I've got. Two here, two here, dropping in the cylinder, dumped the speed strip and I'm back high. And I trained myself to do that only because like a Bianchi speed strip, WI lay flat in a back pocket. Sure most of the time. If I'm carrying that jayframe, Dude, I'm wearing like a suit. Yeah, that's reasonable. Look, you have to you have to train with the equipment you're actually going to carry. I usually carry a fifteen round in the gun with plus one in the chamber and a fifteen round on my left side. Yeah, I'm a big guy. I can get away with that. It's not uncomfortable and actually balances out the feel of the belt and the holsters on my body. So it's actually more comfortable with the second magazine on my left side. And that's really why I stuck with carrying it. It's more comfortable. That makes sense. The other thing I would say, in addition to like carrying like train, the way you're going to carry is train with what you normally wear, Like if you are if I had this conver used to have the conversation with Andrew all the time. Apparently it's like sweat. It's like hoodie weather up in Michigan, like nine months out of the year. Yeah, at least at least two thirds of the. Year, which sounds hilarious to us down here because we wear we wear hoodies like nine minutes every year, you know, just deep South kind of thing. So like down here, my my normal thing to train in is usually like long pants and a T shirt or fishing shirt because this is what I wear nine times out of ten I'm not running around days i'm running it. I'm running a button collar, button down, collared shirt tucked in. Yeah, I have more shirt to clear over my gar away from my gun than if I was wearing an untouched. And that's kind of the point I'm driving towards is if your normal way is, oh, I like to tuck in my shirt, then you better train like that so that you know how to get the how to get the shirt up, how to clear the gun you're training consistently. I've pulled my shirt up this far to make sure I'm clear of the gun and not cheat the system and be like, I'm going to train in a T shirt, but I'm not gonna wear that when I'm out running errands. The number of shirts I have torn ripping that ship out from between the hole stir and my belt is maddening. I have a a not inconsequential number of T shirts that you'll notice on the right hip at about two o'clock, has little shirt had this little scattering of holes in them from from the from the belt clip, that little metal belt clip, just just the corner, just rubbing on the shirt for years. Deal. If you know what to look for, it's not hard to spot the guy that carries all the time. No, especially if you wear like those like the huck fishing shirts that I like. You'll notice the right hand side of my shirt is more fuzzy because the MMB grip is functionally sand vapor. Yeah. And the other thing I would say is, like, you know, we had this discussion not too long ago. We were talking about how like my CZPO nine, the holster I have for that gun is a level two retention holster. I personally more power to all of y'all disagree, but I personally do not believe in open carrying firearms in many circumstances unless it's in a retention holster that's reasonable. The PO nine for me is never a gun I would try to conceal because I'm not that damn big. And that's a nineteen eleven sized firearm, except it's a double stack nine millimeter er, so it's even thicker. I was carrying for a while my XDM with with a twenty one. Round and a plus one base. That's a beefy gun. That's a lot. That's a five and a quarter inch slide. That's a bunch of firearm. Oh, it was a lot of firearm. That was when I was trying appendix carry. It turns out it's not comfortable for me with a gun of that size. Yeah, I've never been comfortable with appendix ever, not even for five seconds. I mean, I've got a bit of a gut. You've got a bit of a gut. But I don't know. All the guys I see doing appendix carry are far trimmer than me working on it. I'm not there yet. But strong side three o'clock has always been very comfortable. Yeah, very concealable. Strong side two to three o'clock right in front of the right in front of the midpoint of a belt line works perfect. But I guess that's kind of the thing that That's the thing I always point out to people is however you carry, is the way you need to train. I train with that gun out of a level two retention holster, because if I'm ever wearing it, it's open carry, wide open, with the thigh strap around my thigh and it's a it's a it's a mid ride holster, so it's not like a thigh holster, and it's not like, you know, way up on my belt. It's it's a gun that I would never try to conceal, but for that reason, it's in a retention holster. So when I train with that gun, I train to be able to release the retention to draw it in such a way that it will actually come out of the freaking holster the first time. It's a very different draw stroke than it is with like my inside the waistband or my outside the waistband with my carry gun. But whatever, whatever you're going to however you're going to use this thing in reality. If it's an if it's an iWB undershirt, train like that, yep. If it's an outside the waistband under a hoodie, train like that. But you need to train the way you're going to carry. So Rago brings up a good point that I hear from a lot. Of people that are getting into concealed carry. I hate wearing oversized shirt, so concealed carries the chart. I don't wear any different sized clothing when I concealed carry. The key is you find a holster that is suited to your gun and your body's shape. That's the key for me. It's a crossbreed style holster, you know, one of the big long bastards. Actually, you know what, I have one without a gun in it right here. A crossbreed style holster that spreads out the gun and a very high quality belt. Do not get about with cheap, crappy belts. Spit a gun belt. Get a specifically made gun belt, or find your local crazy horse girl and ask who does her saddle work. That crazy old bastard. Down in his basement will make you the best leather gun belt you will ever buy. I will say that there is merit to having like an honest to god gun belt. And I personally like withinside the waistman holsters. I've never felt like I was printing hardly ever, I mean even wearing like so. Last weekend I was mowing a lawn. I was wearing I was using my outside the waistband holster because iWB, when you're sweating and you're mowing a lawn's a little uncomfortable, you know what I'm saying. Outside the waistband was a little more comfortable. I had my T shirt just kind of pulled over it. But it wasn't like an oversized T shirt. Was I printing probably, yeah, did any But was I printing enough that anybody was going to notice from like, I mean, you're thirty yards away, Like I'm. Wearing, I'm wearing a shirt that fits me pretty al right. I mean it's not super tight, but I can wear my athletic undershirts throwing over my gun when I go to Ace Hardware, and if anybody. Notices, they don't give a shit. And it's just a black athletic tea that's mostly form fitting except for like the last three inches. Yeah, Stuart saying he used to conceal an old pair of fourteen forty five. Stuart is also not a big boy, like overweight, but a big man. He is just a very large gentleman. Like he makes me look small. Yes, he's He's a large enough man. He can conceal pretty much whatever he damn well please. Almost half a foot taller than me. I mean that's not exactly a big thing for me, because I mean I'm shorter than you are, and I'm. I'm six one. I'm pretty tall. Yes, Raggle, everything really is bigger in Texas, except apparently you're not in Texas. You're in Louisiana. I'm from Texas. Yeah, but you quit. I didn't quit. I re immigrate. I repatriated. There you go. I mean, you know it's this is being a river exchange program. It was my turn to come back to this side. But yeah, as far as like, like I said, as far as drills, I never get once a person has gotten to a novice point and like we're making we're making repeatable hits, We've got Oliver admitt work down where we're doing, We're off to a good path. That's when I'd like to start recommending different drill to like really stress test a person till the wheels come off the bus and then you figure out how to put them back on. And that's how you get better from the novice point forward. But like to get from bare bones beginner to novice, I'm really much more focused on can you draw from the whole store without muzzling yourself? Can you remediate malfunctions? Can you do reloads under pressure? Like I'm much more concerned about administrative safe gun handling above them beyond what is I typically encounter from the beginner who is still like working on the basic fire and safety rules like make sure my rounds go into the burm and make sure I don't muzzle my friend, and you know, basic stuff like that. But to get up to the novice. Point, I want your gun handling to be able to encompass when the gun misbehaves and how to get this thing from a carry position into a firing position. Once you get up to that point of novice, where like we have proper shooting technique, proper grip, proper we're building up a proper biomechanical shooting stance. Once we've done a lot of drive fire to get familiar with the gun, once we've done a fair amount of administrative drills, I feel like at that point we've built up a novice to a point where not only are you like self defense capable if that's what your intent, but you're also much beyond just the beginner. You're much beyond the basics. Now you're at a point where you are like a functional You're a functional shooter. You know. I I have always advocated, you talked about holster drills that anytime you're teaching somebody to work from a holster you should always start with no ammunition involved. I tend to think you start everything without ammunition, absolutely. But my reasoning for holsters especially is because a lot of the stuff that I've seen online where people are watching guys doing holster drills and stuff like that, not only are they moving out quick, they're moving back in quick. And that is where most of your most. Dangerous issues start to happen, is when you try to get back to. The holster fast. There is no reason to ever go quickly back to a holster. I think this is part of the misconception that people have when they try to drive from beginner to novice, though, is that they I think in that pursuit of going from beginner to novice and probably from novice to to expert, I feel like they find someone that they believe where legitimately does well out shoot them and they try to emulate that person. Which is fair, there's nothing. Wrong with that. Everybody wants to be Jerry mitchellak. But I think a lot of people budge it. But I think a lot of people equate speed with proficiency, and that's where these kinds of habits start to get built. As far as like out of the holster, fast in the holster, fast and I'm on. My point of view was always like, if you cannot do it at a certain speed, you were going too fast. You know where. I think a lot of that came from. Oh tell me, the internet influencers. Westerns came from. It came from eighties westerns. I don't think so. Though, mm hm, because what does a quick dray guy do. He shoots you, and his gun's already back in the holster by the time he realized you're dead. Yeah, but some of the a lot of the the a lot of the sins we're talking about now, these were committed by people that I don't think have ever seen eighties westerns because. They're yeah, uh huh. We all grew up watching them. We all grew up watching them. At every gun guy I know grew up watching except for maybe you, most of the gun gays, most of the gun guys I know grew up watching cowboy westerns at least occasionally. And I think that. A lot of the early influencers, now this is before the Internet, A lot of the early influencers were the Western cowboy action shooters, because that that was the start of that is that is the root of like IbpA IPsec stuff. Maybe this is the reason why I look at the good community the way I do because I didn't grow up watching westerns. I grew up watching like war movies. Sure, you know, but okay, and reholstering quickly isn't a thing in that. No it's not, but okay. So I think the reason why maybe I think about it this way is that all of the all of the people that I've been involved in shooting with the older class of individuals that were like the founders of the local IPsec club, they got their start in Cowboy Action Sports. I think Raggle might might be on it might be. It could be competition. I mean, Cowboy Action Sports was the shooting competitions. I mean there was no three gun competition. The three gun competition was pistol lever, you know, wheel gun lever action and then pump shotgun in the Cowboy Action shooting sports world. I mean, that's that's where a lot of it grew out of because I don't know, at least around me, all of the different IDPA IPsec clubs, the three gun clubs, all of that are all guys that were shooting Cowboy Action sports, and then all these great semi autos came around and they're like, this is cool too, Let's take Cowboy action shooting sports setups and just do it with semi autos. And even even a lot of the older shooting clubs they've got a saloon that you're shooting out of set up there. What I'm hearing is is that this might be like a carryover from like Old West. I think it is movies that infiltrated into the competition world, I think, and then became the blueprint for a lot of newer defensive shooters. I think a lot of it start I think a lot of it started there, and it's been evolving ever since. But you still see those guys that are like, you don't. See it so much with like Pewview or a lot of the newer gun influencers, because they're more focused on the actual mechanics of the shooting and the trick shooting and not so much that I've shot you with my guns back and the wholes a kind of shenanigans because it's it's usually multiple target engagement instead of single target engagement. That was a fun little tangent. It was. I guess my point is, though, is like I just I don't see speed as being anything more than a byproduct of familiarity. So it absolutely is what I'm focused on the right way to show your errors by trying to push your speed? Yeah, and I guess that's the point is like, once, once you start doing these drills and your your your proficiency is adder near one hundred percent. Now we start introducing speed to make the wheels come off the buzz, But the goal is not. Speed speeds the by product. Yes, yes, But is. There anything else that we want to tuck in here before we start rolling this out about? Like how do we how do we bear in to mind that we set the bar pretty low for a beginner shooter. And I feel like everything we laid forth is really a good blueprint for a person to say, these are the things I should be looking at to get to the novice point. I want to say, find a good mentor, But Jesus Christ, if you're a beginner, like, how do you even find a good How do you know what a good mentor is? And not the guy who's going to get your head shot off? You know what you do? You try a couple basic training classes and you find the trainer. Look, it's very easy to see which trainers aren't safe. It is. It will be even as a beginner if you. Understand the fundamental firearm safety rules. Ah, that's a great question. If you understand those safety rules and you watch an instructor teach a class, if you ever see them violate any of those rules, that's the last class you take. Yep, you leave. I don't care how much you spent on the class. Fucking leave if they If a student violates those safety rules and it is not immediately and suddenly corrected by the instructor and their staff, their safety staff, you leave and you go get someone. Else, rag gless. Is competition the next step for a novice, I don't think. So, not necessarily. I think if you are the kind of person that enjoys a competition, go for it. I mean, the only thing, the only thing I've done in recent history was like that project Appletsy Shoot Forever ago, and that was honestly more just for the experience and the camaraderie the guys I was shooting with. Like, competition isn't even a destination for a lot of shooters because their focus is elsewhere. I think competitive shooting is a lot of fun. I think it's a. Great way to drive yourself to train, to like motivate yourself to train, if you're the kind of person that's motivated by that. I also think it is. A way that new and novice shooters get suckered into paying to win. And I've seen it. I've seen it and seen it and seen it and seen it. Most recently at the orientation class I took at this new range. Just about everybody at the new. Member orientation wanted to get into the concealed carry base so they could do holster drills for IDPA ipsick practice or for their concealed carry practice. There were three of us wearing concealed carry rigs throughout the orientation and that's what we shot with. There were two guys in particular that we're wearing the raced out meta rig that you see on all the top level competitors. The three guys that were wearing the concealed carry rigs that were serious about their self defense, were faster out of the holster, were faster to first shot on target, and were faster with follow up shots because they had put in the reps with their system. They weren't buying the better system. Instead, they were training with what they had and they could excel because of it. Maybe that person's like, Hey, I've got plenty of money to throw out this hobby. I'm gonna buy all the best stuff for the hobby so that I. Can learn the hobby. They tend to not. In my experience, they tend to not. Yeah, but that's almost why I see I see this path diverging where like the ven diagram where it's like defensive shooter or com petition shooter, they're going to over a crossovers. I mean, I'm a defensive I trained primarily for defensive shooting, and I also do a little bit of competition now and. Then, and I get into. It, and I don't do competition, and don't know that I ever have felt the need or. The want to go do competition. I would like to do some training classes, but that's for me, not to compete against somebody else. Different. Here is how I look at competitions. I don't look at the competitive shooting world as me competing with the field of people. I look at it. As me going blind into a match, competing against my prior performance at the other match. I went blind into and these other people there, Yeah, they're doing the same thing. Look, I'm not I'm probably not going to win when I walk onto a shooting sport field. I'm not Eddie, I'm not Jerry Mitchellak, I'm not pew View. I'm just a dude that likes to shoot guns. So I'm competing against my prior performance, my shot on target percentage, like my azone hit percentage. I'm looking to up that while not losing part time or my split time on the shots. You know. That's that's what I'm competing against. I'm competing against myself. The fact that there's other people there, and I'm getting to see all the cool guns and watch everybody do the fun thing, and we're all having a good time together. That's just a bonus. That sounds reasonable. All right, let's punt this one out the door. Man, It's been an hour and a half. My wife asked me before we started, this was going to be an hour long, and I grinned and said, I don't think so. We had at least a half hour of Scotus. Yeah, we did have a half an hour of Scotis and a slight intermission for your your power blinking. But you know that's just a thing. Yeah, we're on the edge of a severe thunderstorm somewhere around here. We're catching Illinois two hundredth tornado or so something like that. I think Illinois the new Tornado Alley. That's that's unfortunate. But you know, if you decide you want to repay, if you want to immigrate down south, I'd be happy to help you home for property. Not that far south. It's so hot. We have Louisiana weather currently, and I'm not a fan. I mean, then you you have a chance to get used to it. Oh Ragle Frago saying, don't forget the admin work. I did the admin work at the very beginning of the show. I didn't distract him that badly. No, because I've learned my lesson. I do the admin work at the very beginning before Nick gets engaged. Just you wait, you're gonna You're gonna not be vigilant, and I'm gonna get you. I'm sure. I'm sure. Anyway, this is a matter of facts podcast. We're gonna go out the door. This has been an hour and forty minutes of bitching about scotis followed by how to take a beginner shooter and get him to a novice level. And if you are. A beginner, I hope you'll take some I hope you'll take some heart in this that you're not as far away from being novice as you think you are, and the work can be done fairly, quickly and easily. You just need to commit yourself to it. And look at this as you're not competing against the knuckleheads on Instagram or the knuckleheads on YouTube. You're competing against who you were yesterday as far as shooting. And if you get better than that guy, you're already doing better. All right, matter of facts, Going out of the door, good night, everybody, bye, talk to you later. Stay out of trouble. Yeah yeah yah, right Baer