AR-15 Podcast 458 – MMT review

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Welcome to the AR-15 podcast. This shows for you if you just bought your first AR or if you've been building them for years. There is something we can all do to take our black rifles to the next level.

My name is Nick Dooley, and I am joined as always by my co-host, Garth Over. We are here. We are a little late, but that was a scheduling thing. And then I did my thing to make us late even more. So we're here. Yes, we are here. We are live. We are doing the things we are joined tonight by our special guest, Joe, who got to hang out with me for a little over a month.

Like probably a little more closeness than most people would want to have. Not any closer than we've spent in the past. This is true. Did you guys get to share a room? No. Well, then it wasn't that close. That's what you mean. We've been closer for longer times. Yeah. What were you doing? Army stuff? Okay.

So totally, totally nothing made. In, he was somewhere in 2013 who him and I spent more time sleeping in the same spot than him and his wife. Between us being a guard together and her being a guard by herself and motorcycle trips. And yeah, that's what you get for being in the Air Force. What's the army? Yeah, if you're in the army, you get to like spend time with me. All of it's glory and splendor.

Uh, right on, uh, Mick is joining us. He said he just finished assembling the, uh, the unique AR or the upper with the unique AR handguard he won from us. That was the red one, right? Yes. Okay. I remember that. Yeah. It was a while ago. Hey, that's cool, man. At least it's done because I've had done parts that I still haven't built anything. It's been five years. So I find it best to not talk about gun parts.

Yeah. I have all the upgrades for my shadow too, still in the boxes that I ordered them in, because I bought my sig after that and started to run that instead. No, it totally makes sense. The entire upgrade set, it is just sitting there. Good call until a month. All right. Don't go green on that. That red was a little bit there, but hey, hey, go red.

No, it's actually true, though, Joe, because I went over to Nick's house last night to do some suppression paperwork. And we were just randomly talking about different things and shooting deer possibly in a week or two for East River. And he asked me what scope I was going to run. And I was, oh, no, I really don't know. I think I might run that. Swamp Fox Sabre on it, five times Optic, Prism Optic. And he's like, or?

you could try this primary arms optic and he just hands me this optic. I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do? Put on your rifle. Okay. You can get a suppressor. This week. Oh, good for you. It's late from when we were there, but yeah. That's exciting. Yeah.

So, along with the other exciting things, and we can talk a little bit about what we've done cool, but mostly the only cool thing I've done with guns since we've been back, I did go out and we will talk ad nauseum at some point about the upgrades and changes I made to an air 10 build.

with the the swapover I did to make one of mine a 6.5 creed more and I'm just going to say this if anyone is ever looking at a like adjustable gas block system or really if you need a adjustable gas block

rifle speed is the only way to play. I bought one, made the chance I tried it, and now going forward, I truly think that'll be the only way I do it. Right, I mean, no, I held that thing last night when I was there too. It's a solid build, super solid build.

Thanks Drew, I appreciate it. I just finished it. Like literally, that's kind of why we were late tonight is cause we were gonna start at eight, but I'm like, please don't. So yeah, it just got done. It's not quite done, but it's pretty much done. So the sticky tack holding the guns up is gonna fail and they're all gonna fall. Oh no, I use a good amount of screws that thing is not going anywhere.

It's definitely not straight or true because I didn't, I just screwed the boards up. You know, I didn't really dowel them together or glue them or anything like that. So. Yeah. It was a guard project. I hate getting too specific on squareness and make sure everything's perfect and even I'm like, she put it up there. It'll look just as good. Well, that's why I used the corner of my room. I was like, that's as true as I'm going to be. So I just slammed everything up to the corner and then just went from there.

The wife will say that we need to make sure that I'm like, our house is not square. We live on a hill in Fort here. This thing is so crooked. It doesn't matter what we do. Then when you hang stuff, it's not hanging right. It's yeah, I'm just like, let's just make it look nice. I may have a picture upstairs that I intentionally hung a little bit of crooked just to mess with my wife. I believe that. You're wedding. You're wedding.

No, it's not that one. So we should probably get into what we're going to talk about tonight. Tonight's episode may be boring for some people. Super exciting for others. We're going to talk a little bit about the class that Joe and I just got done with. The class, of course, what would we call it, Joe?

Yeah, either or I think course. I mean, it's M.M.T.C. was course, not class. Advanced knowledge training course. Yeah. Yeah. It was course. So the two of us just completed marksmanship master trainer course. And that was the most intense military course I have ever done. Same. I mean,

We're not infantry. We haven't done all the cool fancy high speed classes courses. But for the, what I can compare to that I've taken, it was definitely the most strenuous high pay or high intensity class. Like it started, you get the ground running and kept running until day 29. Cause we were losing people at a 28 out of 30.

I was going to say, how many people started the class versus how many did you finish with? I mean, it was a pretty intense course just from the workload you guys kept sending me on Snapchat. Yeah. Out of 50 started students, we graduated 35. 32. We had a couple of people fail their G2s. The last day on day 30. That would suck. Yeah. Thanks for coming.

Yeah. Uh, so the course we went to was, it's what we talked about. This is our marksmanship master trainer. So obviously this is a shooting based course. And with, with that being said, it wasn't just a range class, nor was it just a classroom class on instruction and doctrine. Uh,

One of the things that was interesting and, you know, when we got there, I think, I think the first two days were the only, or were the, like, we had four days total or something we weren't on a range. We're the first week. And then that, yeah, I think it was closer to five or six because we had those last two right in the, in the middle. Yeah. Well, and it's when I say first two days, we showed up on a, on a two, on a Tuesday.

And, you know, it's when I was reported at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and then. So Tuesday, we did like all the in processing normal stuff that we'd have to do for a class. We started we got there. We in process and we're we were we were doing homework. We were getting instruction by seven zero seven. Yeah. We were doing instruction before we went to breakfast.

That's how fast we hit the ground. Yeah, we took our initial knowledge exam, like immediately, and then got some instruction, went to breakfast, came back and got equipment issue. Yeah, and to be fair, like,

You guys are in the South Dakota Army National Guard. This wasn't a guard-specific class, though. You guys were there with some of the best and the best, right? I mean, you were there with Rangers, you were there with recruiters, you were there with higher ranking, full-time Army guys, right? Well, not higher ranking. It's only E5-37, which technically, me and Julie outrank most of our instructors.

I'd say there was a handful of us at E7, quite a few E6s and 75s. No, I'm just a sergeant. The big thing was that class, their class load is 75% drill sergeant. So that's where the majority of it's made up is those guys that have to teach those troops that are coming in, how to shoot. It's one of the, you know, if you're on the trail, you pretty much go to whatever class you want, especially if you're not picking up.

Yeah. And so it is based around teaching, you know, one of the main things we did is it's one, we learned a lot about individually how to do stuff because it was the theory behind it is anything that we teach. We have to be able to score a minimum of 80% on to include shooting and any written tests or anything like that. Yeah.

If you've been doing, if you're in the military, most schools, most classes you take, it's a 70% pass. So 70%, if you don't pass first time, you get a second chance. Our call, or the rifle qualification day, in the army, you need a 23. We had to have a 28, which means we had to shoot just under sharpshooter to continue in the class. And yeah, it was,

There was a lot. We learned a lot. Because the class is, like, doing the same. The class is set up so that we can go back to our units, back to the state, and teach a unit how to qualify better, what practices to employ to become more efficient at what they're doing.

And that's where they said that 80% came into play was we were supposed to be subject. We are now subject matter experts in the .40 for the army, the .9, the .40 and the .35. We are experts in that, so we should be able to teach it to anybody at any time. So really, there was no

In this case, 70% was passing because to in order to teach, and that's why you guys were there, it was you had to have the 80 or better. Yeah, this was 70% was the pistol. Oh, even that was higher. I've done that. I think that because we shut it was 21 out of 30 is only 70%. Oh, but I think that's mainly because most people don't shoot it.

But there was a standard that you guys were going to hold to and meet because, well, otherwise, what was the point of being there, right? Yeah. Yeah. You don't. Yeah. Now, I think it was, you know, we'll get into it later, but it was stressful because one, you don't want to go and fail any, any school you did the army sends the pays the money to send you to. But as the class went on and

We were noticed on the firing lines and in the classroom, we were kind of trying to live up to ourselves as well. And it was brought up by one of the instructors. I mean, Duly and I know each other, so we did pretty much everything together. And one of them made the comment. He was, I think it was pistol aggregate. Duly had beat me by one or two. And he's like, you're going to, you're going to beat you? And I'm like, yeah.

It stings a little bit, but that's how we are. It's neither one of us is gonna upshoot the other one by, you know, 10 rounds, 50 points or whatever. But we're gonna, we're right there neck and neck pushing the other one to get better. And he's like, yeah, I like that. So. Yeah. And this was, uh, it was also kind of unique in that a lot of people who are do this even on the military side.

don't get to experience because they don't do it properly, but they don't. We got trained up on a lot of extra things that like at 20, you know, 23 years in the army, and you know, multiple deployments and trainups and stuff of that nature, we were doing things that I had not ever been properly trained on. So there was a giant learning curve with that. There was, yeah, there was stuff we haven't been trained on in the stuff that so

2019 is when the new dot 40 came out. And that's when the, they started rolling out the new, or the other new qualification standard. That's, well, kind of standard because the way we run it, instead of shooting your 20 from the prone and supported and not supported in the kneeling, we went to the prone pro and kneeling with barricade. So there's a lot of stuff that we took from how we used to do it. And we were still teaching that. And

Basically, when they didn't come straight up, tell us no, you're wrong. But through just listening and watching, we learned, hey, this is a better way to teach this. This is a better way to have our soldiers training and practicing this.

And one thing that they did say was like day one, we went through. And one of them mentioned it as kind of an offhand comment. And he's like, I know you guys might do it differently, but when you're here, you should try it our way. And I know that the two of us both went, all right, hey, I'm going to run this your way. Like I'm not going to do it 100% my way, like how I used to doing it. I will, I will try this back and forth to try it, you know, to be successful as best we can.

And that's where we noticed it. And the instructor was noticed it as we went through that is worse, you know, we shoot a lot. This was, oh, we left two weeks after the three unmatched. So a lot of habits that we have from is we shoot more civilian side than we do on the Army side or the National Guard side. So there was a lot of

things that we do not necessarily bad habits, but habits that are more ingrained to competition or USBSA type shooting that we had to not necessarily break, but adjust to doing it their way during the class. Where they kind of open it all to you guys, as far as, you know, just to clarify, I know that these, we've talked about these things off air and stuff, but

Nick was telling me and I'm sure we'll get into it later about a nine point system between transitions and stuff like that. Now, was that the standard? That was how you had to handle things or were they open to ideas once they kind of found out your guys' background and stuff or

No, so some of these things that we had to do, like when we were doing drills and positions, it's there isn't this is one of those where there's the right way, the wrong way in the army way. Okay. And when they were doing this, it was you had to do it by the book. And it wasn't that you had to recite it verbatim, but it was you had to hit like certain words in your description of it. Ballpoints and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of things they said we

from, you know, Nick's shot more of like the national matches on the on the guard side than I have, but just from what I know about shooting and like ways we have shot that stuff like a kneeling pistol as opposed to how we were supposed to do it for this class was completely completely different. And they even said that there was one of the instructors was on the, I don't know, this Fort Benning or some sort of group off of Benning that went to the all army match. And he's like, yeah, that

You know, and there's a reason we teach it that way. And there's a reason that we do it that way for the, for the match, but for training and hitting a whole bunch of officers qualified.

This is how we, this is the best way to teach it to get it done. Yeah. And instead of being like, Hey, this guy's a subject matter expert in pistol and happens to own a training company. We're going to have him do tips and tricks. It's here's a book. You guys have all read the book. Everyone can have the same training. Yeah.

That's fair. That's cool. And so there was stuff, there was other things, but it's they weren't like our instructors were not completely closed minded. I know that we both ask questions or use terminology that they had never heard before. And they're like, okay, wait, what? And it was

All right, we're going to like, they're like, I'm going to put that in the toolbox because that is something that I had never thought about phrasing it that way. Well, it's good to hear stuff like that. Cause you know, you get into these traditions at schools like this who are, well, this is how we've been doing it for 34 years. And this is how we're going to continue to do it. Well, you know, like you said, there's your way you're their way in the army way. So that's a way in a lot of places. But like I said earlier, we're only five.

years into this new qualification standard. And as we were there, they had a guy from lethality that was on the range of those every day, just about every day, to rewrite the doctrine and rewrite the class. They're also looking at, we may have, this may have been our last chance to go because they're going to switch to now the M's to the new rifle, the SIG rifle, which is going to completely change the school. And there's going to be no point for us to go to that because we're not going to see that weapon until

are ever speaking of which is good. This is a off topic tangent that knew this the XM seven, the six, eight by 51 ammo. I saw a wholesaler have that come up today where they were selling like crates of it. And they had government overrun ammo for it. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of interesting. Like, what's what's this look like?

And I saw the prices on it and just went, Oh my God. Uh, let's see here. So would any, this is again, I'm going to, I'm going to make somebody really mad. But would anyone like to guess what like dealer cost is on a 400 and 60 round can? This is the bi metal case.

Well, for 460 rounds. So, so not quite 500. Yeah. I'm going to go with $1,200, Bob. $940. All right. That's not that way. It's for those who don't have a brass case to make it cheaper. Well, no, because that's the, that's the.

brass and steel case. Yeah. It was, it was, it was not 1854, the 900 round box. That's cheaper than air. That's, that's cheaper than the A1. That's us. Someone did the math quick. That's like,

It is, but it isn't. That's the first government overrun, but that doesn't have the right bullet. That's just the first government overrun, because they have their own A1 style bullet that they're supposed to run. This is with a lead core bullet. So this is not proper military ammunition. This is something different. It's, hey, we're selling these rifles. We have to provide some ammo.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's just with a normal 270, 150 grain bullet. Um, but I digress, uh, back to the, back to the class. God.

that when they change it, like he said, we were there with somebody from, so it's weird to think about like an office of lethality, but like big army has that. And that was the one thing they said, that was like, when the first day or two, like, why are you here? What is the point of this class to make you more legal? Yeah. And, you know, it's that somebody from the office of lethality there to make the class more effective and look at how things were going.

And then get into, yep, this is what it is. Also guys, we're not going to get into like any trade secrets or anything like that because we're not going to break it down into that much detail. But it was definitely a very interesting course because it's, you know, we showed up and I said the first day we did like in processing some classroom stuff. We got gear issued to us. The next day we did.

some more, like another iteration of classroom stuff, and then we started on drills. We're right back. Okay, Joe's running away, but leaving else with. With the steering man with no head? Yeah, I mean, that's probably a Fortnite skin. I'm guessing so. I don't play, so. Neither do I, so I don't know. No, but so like going through this when we got into doing the drills,

One thing that it really brought up was that it made me get back into how important dry fire is and dry fire can be. Just doing those drills because we all do a lot of dry fire and we preach a lot about dry fire and how important it is. But the fact that we've done it and practice it so much, it's

becomes glaringly obvious when you get around people who do not do dry fire or practice it or things of that nature. Because as they went through when we got into drills, like we saw people who were at this course because they got volen told to go and like they had no idea how to set up their kit.

And not that like I am the grand poo ball wizard of setting up your kit. But I had run mine before. So I knew how things were and then kind of like reloads where I automatically went to places for reloads. And just doing the drills and some of that stuff on retention and moving that around was a really, really great and amazing opportunity because it's

It was watching it across a large scale instead of just yourself. Well, it's amazing what repetition reps will get you. When you have a right handed shooter that has their kit set up, so their drop. So their drop pouch is on the right side of their body. They have to let go of the trigger to ditch this magazine. Like that's like, Hey, you shot it this way. You've tried to do this now. What do you think you need to do?

Like, that first week, people were changing up their plates, their kits, their main pouches all week trying to figure out what fit where. I've never, I've never wore a plate carrier outside of like an IOTV. So, Julie had one, wore Julie's X-ray one.

wore my taps over it, which was a pain in the butt to get everything clipped. But it worked because I still had my, I still had my seven magpouches and my mags right here. Was it day three? I think we went, I went and bought a different battle belt and a mag pouch. So I had everything. So I got some of it on my hip. Yeah. Um,

Yeah, learned a lot on how to set that stuff up and in the best way to wear it and just getting that practice. I know the first couple of days, one of the big things that the instructor said, you know, when, because they would work with us and observed was I was turtling a lot. And I'm like, well, part of that, I'm like, one, I know I have that issue. Two, I don't shoot in plates and kevlar.

So trying to just adjust to that, but by the end of it, nobody, you know, I wasn't running into that issue. Yeah. And, uh, and running that through where, like he's talked about it with turtling, turtling means that if I, like in my turn to the side here, when you bring a handgun up and you drop your show, you bring your shoulders up like a turtle.

No, that's exactly where my mind went. I couldn't help it. I could see that running through Gar's head. Oh, yeah, 100% was. But then that's one word. Again, I'm not trying to sound like I was the master of kit or anything like that. But

I went down there and I had, I had, as Joe said, I've been to go quite a few national matches and regional matches. So I brought my chest rig down, but I opted to never wear my chest rig and only wear my, my plate carrier and plates. And, uh, I still had, uh, not checked. Well, part of it was just getting used to things. Or as you say, it's, uh, was it, I, I like to do things the hard way.

But you also were able to meet what was needed to be done. We were issued seven eggs. Never did we actually need to have more than four odds. And that was the actual wall was the only time we had that four loaded bags when we went to the line. And even at that, I could carry, because I also took my personal battle belt that I run for competition, which

I have, you know, set up strangely enough to work in this scenario as well. And it's like to the point of I run, I run three pistol mags and then two rifle mags on my belt. And then my plate carrier, I have three across the chest and then four on the sides. So I could run everything I needed to with what I had on me.

But I didn't, I actually wound up a space I didn't need to. But how did that vary from how the standard of the army had you guys set it up? Or was it like they let you kind of choose in that regard? Long as you could, as long as you had an ample amount of magazines on you at one time, you were free to set it up how you felt worked for you. So if you were good drawing from your chest,

which I did most of the time, because that's, I mean, after I went to my hit mag, everything else is still on my chest. So it was totally up to you. Some people found out that when you have mags or rounds in a mag and you go to lay down, the pressure will pop those mags out and you end up six rounds short on a 40 round court, on a 40 round exposure.

And then there were guys that were running like the straight issue gear, but they're like, Oh, I don't want to run the taps because they think it's going to be too bulky over a, which the taps is the army's rifleman kit and how they set everything up. It's a seven meg or seven or eight meg shingle that goes. It's the army's chest rig and it's what it is. But with great and what's the use of green screen?

But yeah, it's this, but with a little suspender like harness until you attach to do something else like an IOTV or a chest rig or a plate carrier. And running those, it's.

But you saw a lot of guys who are running just like the standard IOTVs or something like that, running the, the, I call them a three meg shingle, but it's the three meg holder, just like piece of your quarter of fabric with snaps to, you know, to secure your magazines. And they have Molly on the front and they molly to your vest. And they would just go, Oh, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to put another one right on top of it. So they have six magazines mounted right over top of the, their belly.

Get me to find out. It's hard to do proper shooting from position because those are the people who started to have issues because they weren't looking at how things placed on their body. They were just, oh, I just have to slam this on here because who cares about it. Like I said, I ran, I ran my taps over my play carrier, but I had one on my hip and then I would put the other two or the other ones on the, on the fact and leave the middle.

open so that when I did lay down, I wasn't stacked up on my magazine. I knew I've shot, you know, that was one of the things I learned out in Guernsey at the MAC was where I want to have my magazines, how are they comfortable to get down into a prone firing position that I can still get a proper side picture.

Yeah, and so one thing we should talk about, the equipment we used on this, I know we said we used issue, we got a little bit into what we had. So obviously this was a military course. So what we did was we used military equipment and it was, we shot M4 rifles with both irons or with iron sights.

the CCO M68 CCO, which is an aim point. And then the RCO, because you can't call it an ACOG, even though it's on it. But explain what RCO means, because you had to do it to me the other day. Rifle combat optic. Thank you. I didn't know. Yeah, I would guess.

Yeah. And then also we had PEC 15s and PBS 14s, which we will, we'll talk a little bit about PBS 14s at some point, but. So why don't you, I mean, I know we've talked kit a little bit and it's great to hear, but why don't you guys tell.

our listeners, you exactly what it was you guys were doing there in the first place with your rifles and what you learned and all the math stuff because I hate shooting with math. I despise it, but you guys learned a lot of good stuff and why you dive into that a little bit. Well, it was there wasn't there was a little bit of math. We were math that we were taught. You I mean, we had

time to use it, I guess, but you wouldn't have time to use it in combat. And it really, it only applies in the army world. We'll say this in the military world. You're only making wind holds when you're beyond 300 meters. You have 300 nan. It's shoot center mass. Well, I'm not saying it's. Center. You hold you hold sternum. It's just you have a little bit up and down depending on

on your target, but once we moved out to the four to 500, that's where we were using. And on the machine gun range that we went to up to 725, that's where we would start using the wind hold math. So, you know, we were able to say you're at, you have a wind, say straight across a full value wind at 500 meters. How far left or right do you have to hold? And then, you know,

They piled out the clock. And if you have a half wind coming from either the five, the seven, the one or the 11 o'clock, you know, taking that in half, getting your top, you know, getting your wind holds, um, distance leads at, at, uh, you know, different, different spots. It's, you know, and then the other math was just basic LOA and,

You know, it's just like most of us are gonna site in at 100. So we know if we're this many inches off, we have to make this many clicks. But we did it at, you know, we were learning math. If you're trying to group in zero at 600 and you're 36 inches off, how many clicks is that for this object? So like the RCLs have two different types of objects, one adjusts in a third MOA, the other adjusts in half.

The CCO adjusts in half. Your iron sights, the front sight posts adjust in 175 and your rear sights adjust in 0.75. So it was more knowing what your rifle adjusted in or what your sighting optic adjusted in and how far so that you could say, hey, I'm this many MOAs off or I'm this many inches, how does that equate to MOA and how does that adjust the clicks?

Most people, you're doing it at 25 or 100. You don't need to know it. Even if I'm shooting 700 yards, am I really going to be making big adjustments off of that versus what I saw at 100? You start getting wind. There was quite a bit on ballistics, which was interesting.

Yeah, it was getting into like the ballistics and some of the drop and those things. Like we actually didn't get into the math for drop because like, no, man, do that stuff at sniper school, which is across the field. Like on the other side of the compound, we're in the same compound. They were just on the other side.

You guys are over here sniper schools over there. I you want to learn this stuff go over there for three weeks and Because that their their classes shorter than ours, but when you when you go through it all Like yeah, they did it. It was important, but the main thing they said is if you want to learn about this Make good dope and learn it as you shoot out you know our

Second week was zero and shoot the rifle, the army rifle qualification day and, you know, assisted night with the pecs. So that's normal for us. That's, we didn't learn a lot on that one. Like, that's where we did try to learn like, hey, maybe our practice of holding the magazine well is outdated now.

go back to holding the, you know, the C clamp as far out as you can by that front side post. Their reasoning behind that is these are, yeah, they're not free flow barrels, but that handguard isn't fully hooked to the, to the barrel. It's just kind of, but they did say, and even our slings, like we were using two point slings, we weren't using the old parade sling. So we could still even use that tension on our slings.

because it's not using that stupid little sling on the barrel. So that's, you know, and then they're like, yeah, if you're if you're not using that sling, you get you have more control over the barrel of the weapon, especially from a unsupported positioning, whether it's standing, kneeling, squatting, or

or even the unsported from the pro and you have more control over the weapon with your hand out there. So that's something I think we know we both kind of brought back that we'll have to make an adjustment to and you'll pick fights with people I think they're smarter than us that we've been fighting with for years. The other thing that I will say is like I learned one of the big things for me was learning some of the proper ways on zeroing the pack.

you know, like it day or night because you could do like you can zero a peck during the day, but having the like, Hey, this is your little square. Then you put it up here because you add a square off to the top left corner on your zero. That's a six M away square. And your whole thing is you want it to be in that six M away square when you aim at the center. Well, even if you back up even before we did that, the

the bore sighting. That was new to me using that, that army bore site bore light and having the offset target so that we're 25 meters. So when we did the, when we did the bore light, it was 10 meters. So most people, if I say go bore like this, you're going to put the red dot on the wall and you're going to adjust your site to line up with that dot.

Well, that's not correct. They have an offset sheet so that depending on which optic we were using, you would put the red dot where it's supposed to be and then you would adjust your site so it was on that offset. So, you know, that was a little different, which was something I had never done. And that was to make up for mechanical offset. Yeah. Because each thing's got a little different offset, which I mean, we all know you can

bores item and some of them are going to be like perfect dying groups when we move to 25 and others are still going to be like, where's the paper? So, you know, that's where we, like I said, we've done the day call a million times, moving to the night call. You know, I've never shot with night vision. I've never shot with a peck. You know, Nick had gone to that class and think

fully, you know, like we were working together because I was having a hell of a time. My first two groups with, with the PEC that night when we were zeroing, I was, I was struggling with it. I was fighting everything I had. Like, I almost got a new life argument with the instructors. Like, I was getting fast. And we were talking.

you know, we're waiting doing something and Nick's like, so like when you're looking and you got your eyes open, you know, you can see this. And I'm like, I can't see shit. I'm like, I have to quote my eye is so freaking dominant. I have to close my eye. Otherwise I'm seeing mirrors of everything. He's like, what? He's like, I got this and grabs ahold of it and goes, well, that doesn't work. And just cranks on the diamond. He's like cranking it back and forth and getting that, that diode to move. And I'm like, he's like, got his white light out. And he's like, okay, I think that's the theory.

look at it now and I'm like, okay, if this is what it's supposed to look like, we're lucky that my two groups were like this high, we're even on paper. Because I'm like, I can't see the target, like the black of the target, I can see the silhouette, I can see the target, but I couldn't see the, and he's like, and then from then on, I was right there.

You know, Joe, you brought up shooting in the night and stuff. Why do you guys dive into that a little bit and tell us what you exactly did? Because, you know, a lot of people do not shoot at night. They don't have the capability. I mean, let's be real. Night vision is expensive. Thermal is expensive. IR is expensive. So what did you guys get to do when you were doing your night shoot? What distances were you shooting at? Conditions and everything such as that.

It was a normal. We started at 25 meters or 25 yards. We did our zero at 25. Not the next night, but we confirmed them at 100. Hold on at the KD range. Yeah. And then when we when we shot, we shot with. Well, yeah, it was at the KD range. We confirmed at 100 and then.

We shot, when we qualled, we shot out to 150. So just like the day quall, but instead of having to change, we're able to use whatever, you know, shoot from whatever position you're comfortable with. Most people choose the shoots at night, choose the shoot standing supported because it just, it's easier. But with the, you know, the IR illuminator, we've got

Glint tape that we put on the targets and we still shoot pop-ups So you're still scanning left to right looking you know wait for your target to come up And then you hit you know you put that Illuminator on the glint tape and each and you take your shot You're not actually looking down the sites You're in a good position good, you know rifle position, but you're just looking to get that reflection that brake light they called it when you're

And then you know your dead center on that target if the flip tape was in the press file. And you and you fight it. We were using what's called active aiming, which means we active aiming was using the laser to like do that instead of passive aiming, which passive aiming is this seems backwards because you think passive you

Active you would be using your sites, but you're not we were not looking through the sites and we're doing this. We were just using our our lasers and It was doing that were hey, we're doing this and I'm like Joe was saying I have I have not a ton a ton of night vision experience but I have You have on the average bear

I have more than even a lot of average people for the units we've been in. Yeah. You know, I look truck driver, the only night vision we've ever used. I mean, I drove with it with, you know, we're using the blackout lights in front of us and using that binocular to drive, but never had I had I used it for shooting, which, like I said, I went from, I hate this, like,

Visibly like it's this is working to on my night of qualification I shot a 20 out of 20 like that's It's not difficult if you have the right so if you have everything working correctly Yeah, and and that's where This is one of those things were like the right type of coaching helps as well

which was a big thing that when we went through this course, a lot of what the instructors tried to get out of us, I think, was we did get graded on our coaching ability. Well, it was definitely a big thing is we went into it open minded like we want to learn and

I had no idea. So I was putty when it came to the night shooting and was able to make those adjustments because I had never been taught anything. I'd never learned it a certain way. And that's where the whole class, like the whole five weeks we were there, Nick and I were talking to the instructors, having conversations with them just about shooting in general. We were open books. We didn't argue. We didn't throw a fit if something didn't go our way or somebody

Or we thought we were getting screwed for some reason because there was a lot of people that were upset about the range that we shot our day call on because it sucked, but Part of the class was yeah, this is how you shoe. This is what you're supposed to do.

We have so many people that these targets, I mean, you could see, like legitimately, when we walk out there to put the night vision for the Calinte Bono, you could see the holes, like, they weren't. You could hit them dead. Yeah, but that's also just a part of professionalism, which both of you guys carry highly with. I'm different than that because I'm a civilian and I can do that. But you guys are actually going to be a class act. But there are many of that work. Yeah, there's a lot of people to make.

Okay, because if you're shooting from 100 to 250, you don't hold center mass. You hold quarter form because of the ballistics on that round, on the rise and drop of it. So there are so many people that were pissed that these 150s and 100 targets, meter targets were so shot up, you basically had to shoot, you wanted to throw dirt up going over the burn to hit the bottom of the target that didn't have any holes in it.

So you would get it was quite literally aim at the bottom right to corner bottom left corner of this target. We were doing our practice. I was like, I remember a second or third shooter in our group on our lane. And there's 150 pops up. And I shoot at it. It doesn't go down. I shoot again. I shoot again. And the guys behind me are like, he's hitting center max. And I

I can only assume they were calling that off. Just seeing where the dirt was, you know, the dust was coming up behind the target. But when it came back to me, I'm like, okay, that's what I lined up as low as I could visibly see that target and knocked it down like the next two or three times. When I came back and talked to the guys that hadn't shot yet, I'm like, well, you're shooting at that target. Shoot. Hey, right. You want to shoot like Pew.

waistline like if that dude's naked you're shooting at his fucking pubes because you're looking to hit that girl in order to get a clean hit on this thing and the first guy that took that advice from me went up there and shot like a 33 on a target that I could knock down so it was some guy some people couldn't

make that adjustment. They couldn't be professional. And that's part of the, in search of like, we get it. We told you to do something, but as instructors, as coaches, you have to be able to make that adjustment and change up what you were doing because it's not working. Yeah. And there were, there were guys who, the other part of that is it's like, Oh, well, you guys are supposed to be the experts. Why'd you only have to shoot a 28 out of 30? And four was a 33.

And it also, we lost nine people that day. The rest of a shot between a five shot of, you know, a score of that range of five from 28 to 33. This is with, you know, we have one guy in the class got a president hundred tab. There's another one of the guys that went home had a governor's 20 tab. It there was a very narrow

And there was like, we were you never from 28 to 40. Nine people is a crapped on guys in a well, and like these three more that night from the night. Like there were dudes who were like in sniper sections that boloed some of this or like we were right there with us. And it's, it's not a ding on them. It was just part of the other part of this where they say 28 is

If that is okay, 28, you can walk in cold to any range if you have a weapon that's zeroed and you should be capable of doing this. One of the instructors said, given a good range, game one, instead of a pretest, we should just go qualify. If you don't qualify at 28, you get to go home because you should be able to do that.

given a good range, not range yet. If none of us know that he's tired of junk, we're going to do what we're taught and shoot for the center of our house. And it's not going to work. But yeah, it just. So that was one where we learned some tips and tricks there. After we got done with basic rifle qual, we moved into basic pistol qual.

And so through the course of this, we shot over 2,500 rounds of, you know, 5, 5, 6. And we only shot around 400 rounds of rifle. Okay. So, of nine, it was 26 and 400. So, yeah, in a month's time, that's all it was really. Yeah. Really? I'll walk. Okay. Cause the way you guys talked, I thought you guys shot a lot more rifle than we 26 on a round still.

a good amount. Don't get it wrong. But consider the average soldier will shoot about 200 rounds a year. Yeah. Zero qualify or zero. If you do it right, those, you know, shoot the zero, shoot their holds in confirmation and then shoot 80 at call. And yeah, it's

It doesn't sound like a lot, but we were, I mean, the one day though, it was one day we shot close to 500 rounds of 556. And that loaded the, uh, you are a certification day because we shot a certification right away. And then we did a lot of drills because we had to shoot the night, sir. So we did a lot of drills in between that and we shot, we shot a lot that day. And how did the pistol go? Cause you guys are shooting the M 17 now, correct? Yeah.

Um, it went as dumb as you could expect it for us. Um, so everything we did, we got, you know, familiarization rounds, then we had what they called a P1, which is a one practice round and then one, your G1, which was your graded test. And then G2. My P1, I shot at 29 out of 30. And I'm like, all right, I got this, no problem, right?

Dooley, I don't want you to say 27, you mean right there with me. It's like, I should, we both shot 29s. Yeah. So then we go, I go to shoot my, I go to shoot my, uh, my, you know, my goal, like goal one. And I let myself relax. And I guarantee looking back at it, I stopped focusing on the front side post and just start, I put seven of them into the fucking burn in front of the

in front of the target. I ended up shooting a 23. And I, the only thing I can say is I was too comfortable. I, I'd rather have shot like a 25 and then came back because I would have stayed on focus, like on target, but I'm almost certain what I did was left my or, you know, I quit front-site posts or front-site focus and was target focused and just dropping my rounds. And I got to go. I shot a 28.

And I can tell you exactly what I did for both of the rounds I missed. And it was, I got in my own head or started looking at things because for whatever reason, my hands were a large topic of discussion. Because they were so large. For both the students and the instructors. And

They were talking about my grip on the pistol. So I was like subconscious and thinking about it. So I was like, yeah, my thumb does drag on the slide. I should move that. So I moved it shot. Oh, that doesn't work. Went back to shooting how I normally do. And then went, Oh, wait, my thumb's drinking on the slide. And then went back and did it again. And it's like, this is, this is not how this goes. But I knew exactly what I did for the rounds I dropped.

I still don't understand. It was like they had never met a large human before. And you know, they were talking about the guy that was there before us that lost like 50 pounds in the class being a giant. It's like, like, you weren't that much bigger than Frazier and Kennedy. So I mean, to be fair though, Nick went to this class probably weighing 280 and came back weighing 250. I mean, I could see the substantial weight loss just because you had the only lost five pounds that, you know,

The fun part in that time from when we shot rifle call to shooting pistol call and then moving into URM was the amount, and we didn't get a lot. Like I said, we don't have foreign rounds at pistol, but we learned some pretty cool drills, some pretty cool technique. Last week at the range, I ran Garth and our friend Craig through an aggregate.

It did. Oh, you know, through a 30 round aggregate. And then we did the wheels fall off drill. And it's interesting to see the lock up, which is crazy because we're shooting it in the instructors are like, they're like, I want to see, I want to watch him shoot this. So of course, they're hovering around to watch Nick's shoot. We're going to have to watch me shoot. And even they're looking at me and they're like, you can shoot faster than that. And we're shooting faster than most of the line.

And it's we're shooting it. So when they shot faster than the whole line, when they what this drill was from five meters, they've got what basically melts to be a target. It's they call it a C. C. E. T. Target or C. Yeah, remember, but it's a five it's a five by a little sheet of paper with like a ring in it. And with a full may, you're supposed to keep everything within

was it a seven ring? Well, it was on paper. How fast you can shoot before you can't keep within the group. Yeah, because we did this thing and Nick yelled at me. And I thought I was shooting plenty freaking fast. And they're like, you can shoot faster than that. I'm like,

I understand that but it's also like when i hit a hundred and thirty on my motorcycle i know i can go faster but i just i'm not i don't want to you don't want to get the death wobble what they're what they're saying with us is like. I had two instructors how fast you can make these things go.

Yeah, it was an instructor standing on each side of me screaming, go faster. Yeah. And I did that to Garth and he didn't know what to do. I did. I thought I was going fast and then Nick got in his instructive voice and went, go faster. I don't know what to do with my hands. And we're on this line and it's we're shooting a lot faster than ever. And not just shooting the fast, but shooting a lot faster than most shooters.

And they're like, you guys need to be shooting faster. Like, we get it. We understand what you guys do. And we understand speed accuracy is better than speed. But this is not about accuracy. This is how fast can you go without completely losing the target? And yeah, we did that. That was fast. Yeah. All faster than we thought we could. But

Yeah. When I did it with you and Craig on Friday, I actually backed us up and we were because we shot that at like five yards, I think. It was five. And I tried it. I tried it on Monday at 10 and I couldn't. Yeah. Fast as I did there. We shot at five, 10 and 15. But I think we shot the go fast one at like seven or something. Yeah, we shot it at seven.

And yeah, that was it was a fun drill to get into, but it also kind of makes you one of the things about it is you're like, Oh, it's Meg dumping into trash. But it really makes you think about how the mechanics of your trigger finger works. And no, I mean, so not to jump in here, but it's a mega dump, but it's not because the point isn't to just

throw all the make around though. You're still trying to keep them within a target space. Whether you are 100% of what we call the paper, whether it's the eight ring or the sixth ring, whatever, it's how fast can you control the gun, make sure you're getting that site picture back. It's just a bill drill with a full make.

Yeah, but no, like think about it, when you first got into pistol, like this is what I did. I bought those 33 round fun bags, you know, and you'd go to the range and you would just mag up and everyone was like, oh, you're just wasting ammo. I'm like, yeah, but it's super cool. And you had enough people, you're like, no, you need to learn control before you can do that crap. And so then you learn control and you learn how to shoot properly and breathing and technique and stance and grip.

and trigger press. And then you go back to this drill and you have your big 6'4", 280 pound friend yell at you to tell you to go faster. You're like, I'm going as fast as I can. And it doesn't compute in your head. But I understood the whole process of it and it's super cool to do. I'm not going to do it every time at the range. But super neat. I think what you hit was

When you go, when you first get a gun, you want to go do this because it's so cool. Let's see how fast you can show. This is not a beginner drill. Like this is an example. This is not beginning. I would put this in the advanced because you have to trust that this person with the gun knows what they're doing. I do, Drew. I do. I have duly PTSD. And it's not just for Ranger panties.

No, that that that that's just a normal fuck. Yeah, like if we keep moving along with the classic, yeah, then we went into, you know, you are urban rifle marksmanship, where we're shooting everything between five and 25 meters with with pistol and rifle. And I think we're we had a day and night on

habits that we already had, especially when it came to transitioning from, oh, your rifle's out of ammo. We just wanted to drop, grab, make and throw it in, but we're supposed to move it into your workspace, draw the pistol, because your pistol is your lifesaver, make your, you know, eliminate the threats, reload, uh, pistol, make sure there's no threats, holster, and then

Not necessarily reload, but get your weapon, your rifle back into the fight. Was that you, Nick, that I told me that the the pistol is my.

My defensive weapon and the rifle is my offensive. No, it's, it's this is how they phrased it is the when you go through and do any of this, they go, the first thing you load is your pistol, because your pistol is your life saver. There you go. And your rifle is your life taker. There you go. That's what it is. Yeah. And that might go on a shirt. That's good. Now I'm writing it down right now.

But yeah, that was one where we made changes is probably where we struggled the most because we are so ingrained into if we're shooting fast or if we're shooting without break It's drop make new Meg, you know, we were I understand that retaining the Meg or or anything like that. It was straight Go and

And they understood that but and we that's where we had to slow down so we could be like all right how and that one day we had three different targets set up. There are three different lanes set up with anywhere from three to five targets on them. And it's like you're going to shoot this many and when that gun runs dry. Go to the you're going to go to the pistol and you're going to shoot three with the pistol.

reload with retention, which retention means you're not dropping the mag, you're putting it in your pouch, because it's not empty. And then you're going to bring the rifle back up. And that's where I think we struggle. Honestly, that's where I struggle the most in the whole class was just getting used to that motion, because it's not something we ever worked on or did, because shooting competitions, it's, oh, whether or not, even if it's even a mag, we know the mag isn't dry, it's gone mag, new, or, you know, fully loaded mag.

Oh, yeah, the body over drill. So this is one of the drills that we had. Here's the three drills that he's talking about with one of the three targets beside each other. And for anybody watching, you can see where you're dumping, you know, one, it's, it's called the chaos drill, but it's, it's chaotic. Yeah. Yeah. So that mean there was, there was a lot of stuff that we got to

got to learn, got to pick up, you know, some new drills to try at the range. Definitely stuff that we can work into, you know, putting on a intro to carving or a carving one class in the area. That was, you know, that was fun. And then we did the exact same thing only at night with, you know, night vision and your, and your illuminator and your pet, which the, the URM third was,

super stressful because you gotta reach out and you gotta hit this button on top of your, on top of your pack to turn on the light, the laser. Cause you can't have the laser on, you can't have the laser on if you're not pointing it at something. The laser has to be on target or, and if you don't have your laser on and your gun goes off, it's counted as a negligent discharge.

So I mean, while we're practicing, I pull up. So if you don't hit that, you got to hit the button twice in order for the laser to stay out. So it's either you hold the button, which means if your thumb slips off, laser shuts off, you better not be in the process of pulling the trigger or you better stop that trigger finger very, very fast.

Uh, Nick, what'd you do that just about got you? Um, that was, that was what happened was my thumb slipped. Yeah. And I, I rolled it back on and it like the laser, like it came on as I pulled the trigger. I had to think of me during, during one of the practice runs where I came up to shoot. I'm going to pull the trigger. I think it was on because we're most of the time we were shooting doubles.

I have two rounds on that silhouette. And I know that one, I shot the recoil, slipped my thumb. And I was in the process of doing a double tap and luckily got my thumb back on that. Or no, I stopped before, because that one actually, they said I shot late. And I said, yeah, because I had to hold up. But that, I think, was to add that stress in of, hey, something like you,

It's kind of out of your control and you, you know, do what you're doing. You go home. Yeah, for anybody watching live or that's watching this on video, I do have a video up that I took with the scionics camera. So you can actually see some color of like running forward, taking a knee and firing. And, you know, like at the targets and you can kind of see what's going on there.

Yeah, it was. It was the, I mean, you got 25 guys online sprinting forward, taking a knee and then firing in the dark under night vision. That's a, that's a stressful environment.

If I could pop in, Eric drew ahead a question for you too. How many started the class? How many finished the class? Who was the top student? Well, we did cover that right away, so we missed that. We missed it, but let's just go ahead and do it. So we actually, there was actually two classes running side by side. Each class had 25 students. We were class 01, they were class 02. There was 50 total students that started between the two.

We graduated. I thought it was 35 and it said 32, which it's still a lot, 15 or 18 failures. Um, it's a lot of over over one third. It was more of a third attrition. Um, the second class. So then the course itself gives each class a top shot and an honor.

the second class did not have an honor grad because nobody passed a traditional first try. So you get two chances of pass every test, whether it was the two written tests we took, the drills and positions that we had to give out, or the UTP at the end of the class. So if you didn't get a go on that, you got to retry. Well, they didn't have anybody holding for

that. They didn't have a top shot. We had a top shot. Our top shot was a sniper from Fort Polk. Or what does it know? No, no, so that was our honor grad. Oh, yeah. The old villa was there. Yep. Our honor grad was a sniper from Fort Polk at JRTC. On top of all the things that can get you not the honor grad. If you crossfire it on a target, if

you were a G2, any event, crossfires, any safety violation. One guy, we were getting rid of ammo, fired, realized the CCO wasn't on, stopped to turn it on, fired his next round, and got sent home because that was a safety violation. I know there was a, I'm pretty sure one of the first days we were in the Katie range, there was,

Uh, slam fire that got somebody sent home. Uh, but yeah, if you crossfire on targets, you think that got a lot of people, whether it was at night shooting through the barricades where you know, we had the T wall with the holes and different spots in it. So when you're down there trying to look through an optic, if you weren't on your lane and fired and and they noticed and somebody saw that that was a crossfire that got a lot of people tell us old, uh, so that.

Becoming honor grad or top shop was more attrition than it was being the best of the best. Yeah. So the guys that did get honor grad and top shot were like 95 or 97 percent, like even on their, uh, their qualification scores or their cert scores. So.

Yeah, but no, they were, they're all good dudes and everything like that. Yeah. To finish up, you know, the, you are in portion of this. So it's 20 rounds, moving, turning and, or snap shooting at like 25 meters, but you have a silhouette. You should, but so you have the FBI clause in the way. And

If one of your rounds is not on that silhouette, that's a fail. Like you can shoot 19 out of 20, but if you don't have 20 holes on this silhouette, you fail. The only ones that counted towards your score were in the light field firing. So if you look at the, I have a picture up on screen and you can see this is at five yards. This has the silhouette we shot at even though it has some paint on it.

The bowling pin in the center of that target was the only thing that counted. And that was like snap shooting at 30 yards and doing all those words. You didn't have to have it. Control pairs for everything you did, whether it was traversing, whether it was turn and shoot or any of the turn and shoots, it was all two seconds to get two rounds. They had to be in the five in order to count as a hit.

And if one of them missed that target, you got a no-go. Yeah. And that was like you were, we were walking and shooting. We were advancing and shooting. Like, I mean, like we're, we're going from side to side and having to engage it. We couldn't stop as you had to shoot while you were moving. Yeah. So that was, that was URL. And then we moved out to the part Nick and I really wanted to, to study and not really,

into complex, which is where we moved out. We started shooting snaps and movers at 200. The 300 meter target was just a half a silhouette and shooting from 400 and 500 meters with and that's when we switched over to the RCO from the red dot. So we spent about a week at the Katie range getting shooting off

Not even sandbags. Like we had you, your backpack is what your shooting bag was. So. And that was only from the, to collect data, we could do it. But when we went into quals, you could only use any sort of arrest at the 500 meter line. And, I mean, we started, I think I remember was a Thursday or a Friday. And we didn't.

do the actual cert until Wednesday. And every day, it's nice, it's sunny, nothing in the snow, not cloud in the sky, calm as can be. And of course, the day of the cert, it's cloudy with gusty swirling winds. Yeah. So you had to know your dope, you had to know your holds. And if anybody's not familiar with the RCO or the, you know, also dope.

Dope, dope is important. Dope is a good thing to know. Dope is actually ending is an acronym. Because it's dope stands for data on previous engagements. So yeah, so we spent four days getting getting dope. Not all of it was recordable because we still had

You know, working on the snaps and the movers, which is really hard to write down. Hey, I shot this moving target. You just kind of had to know I was holding. Some of us got a new rifle in the middle of it. That was exciting. Yeah. So there was that was a lot of fun. We got a lot of good data. But like I was where I was going was. So the RCO is, you know, the rifle combat optic, maybe I trade you kind.

There's a couple of different versions of it. It's the A-code. Yes, the A-code. The A-31. The Stadia lines are in meters and designed for the 855, the Green Tip Road, so that if you're shooting at 500 meters, you should be able to hold that five and hit. Well, guess what? This is America. We don't use meters. We shoot from yard lines with a different road. Back to back World War champs. All right, I'm done.

Right? So that's where you want to track this data because you're going to zero at 300. And then we're going to back up to 400, 500. And you got to know where to hold that line. And it kind of worked out that shooting up the A1, the ERP round at 400 yards. Lines up pretty good with 400 meters.

because of the ballistics offsetting the difference in distance. They're very close. I don't know whether or not that would equate to trying to shoot Xs and Fives at an actual match versus making sure you just had a center mass hit. It might be a little different, but we were we were from 400. You could pretty much hold that four in the stadium line right on the right on the chest and get solid hits all day long.

Dude, John, I'm with you 100%. I feel like a dope, not knowing my dope. I'm that guy. That's why I cheat and use the BDC objects, which I know Nick says that's not the way to go about it, but that's how I do it. So that's what, but that's what we're talking about. That's legitimately what exactly what we're talking about. What we're talking about is the BDC is the compensators on in the ACOG or the RCO, but

you have to know where they line up versus your round and at what distance. So if you go by a Nikon, BDC, reticle, or optic, three by nine, deer rifle, you put on your rifle scope, you still have to know, like, okay, I zero this at 100 using the crosshairs. Now this line, where does that at? When I put that center mask at what distance is that? And that's what we're learning. That's what we were doing. It's just that

when the army tried to dumb it down for everybody, they did it in meters and then they switched the route. So, you know. Okay. Time out, time out, time out, time out. We've talked a lot about your guys' class and we could have a whole month's worth of show of what you guys learned. But what I would like to know from Nick and Joe right now of your 30 days there,

What is the biggest takeaway each of you had from this class that you were going to apply not only to your National Guard Army status, but also to your civilian life as far as what you learned and what you took away from it? All city planners should go to Columbus and figure out how to build their main street. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Now, I want gun related shit, Joe, knock that on. All right. Well, I have this like I know exactly what it is. And I have definitely you'll think I'm going to bring it back for both my civilian side and to use like on the guard side when I'm teaching that.

But i do know that the number one thing that really needs to be taken away from that is that is that the army needs to switch to busy grips and busy zips are great because they're made from a solid block of g 10 and g 10 is great because it's durable and does it get slippery and covered with blood or sweat 17 degree grip angle wide variety of textures for mild to extreme.

as well as color options are available. Shorty versions as well. 1911 grips. Well, we still have a couple in the MTO with these. You can get extreme customizability, standard slim palm. So I'm not just safe to get spot on profiles and more. More than 25 textures and 27 colors are available. There is one coupon code that is good for 15% off all handgun and rifle grips. And that code is AR 15 podcast.

This is perfect because I just went and got them. Guys, if you are listening here, if you're going to listen later to the show, check this shit out because I'm going to swear a little bit. We are going to do a couple of giveaways in December. I am super stoked for this. VZ Grips hooked us up. We have four super awesome prizes. So in the month of December, because it's going to be the Christmas season, which is not too far away, we have two alien gear

These the grip. They're not alien gear. So stop. They're alien, whatever. Let me let me get the right term. Alien. They're called alien alien the alien gear. My bad. My bad. My bad.

They're called the Alien Grip, super smooth, not like Nick, because he likes sandpaper when he shoots as they are. It's gross, don't trust him, it's awful. But awesome, awesome grips, they have a red one and a super gray one. But here's the thing, okay, we have two of these, okay? Right now, I'm gonna show you this right now, okay? You see this thing? It's a number two pencil, right? You think it's a number two pencil? It's not a number two pencil. This is a G10 composite

Peace.

pencil dagger. Awesome. This is what John, you ever watch John Wick, right? John Wick killed three guys with the pencil. This is the pencil he used. All right. 100% hands down, not going to make it up. This is what the guy used in the movie to kill three guys. I'm not saying you should do that by any means, but if you ever feel like you can't take a gun somewhere, you can't take a knife somewhere. This guy right here is the backup. This is what you want right here. I can get two of these bad boys away.

Can we get a go fund me to get Garth playing tickets to see if he can get that on a plane? Oh, yes, I'll do it yourself Do you think he can get on a plane? Yes, I think 100% I'll get on a plane with this I know people that haven't been able to get those stupid little credit card Well, that's still a knife. Yeah, that's still a knife

But that thing, I wonder how that would look going through a bucket. It's going to come through the x-ray weird. It looks like a pencil. It looks like a pencil. If I'm on an x-ray, I guarantee you that if that thing's not wood and lead, it's now going to show up on an x-ray like a normal pencil does.

Well, I'm going to wear my hand pack from Vertex. So I'm not wearing my Vertex bag and it's going to go through the mouth. Well, I guess you have to send through anyway. But they're like, what's that? It's a pencil. Pencil.

Yeah, we'll see. I'll do the magic trick. Anyway, we'll move on. I'm just saying, super cool. Can't wait to give these away. So guys, for listening for the tens and tens of you watching live, we thank you. So if you guys haven't watched it live, come back, watch it live, so you can see all the cool stuff we're going to give way in December, they're going to be listener-based shows. So you definitely want to tune in live in December to win some cool prizes.

Well, as we move on, I'll answer Garth's question though about some things that I brought back. I did learn a handful of drills that I would like to use because it's just a couple drills to push out that were different than what I had done in the past. And there were just a couple small techniques

where it wasn't like anything that was majorly mind-blowing, but it was little things that I can change to be more efficient. Yeah. We got to come to a class to find that out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to know such as, like, give me, give me your touch. Easy, drunkie bear.

First of all, you calm down. I want to hear a talk through your list. So I already talked about like that wheels fall off drill that I had you guys run and the aggregate. Those are two things that I think are very important to do. Um, that is like that is very much so. Two of the major things that I will bring back to run with the, with both.

pistol and rifle to do those aggregates and do those at distance, just so you can kind of run those things to get a better feel for where you're at. And then that dope collection would be the third thing I think is probably the most important. I think for me, going like in front of troops with it is definitely getting back to full extension on your non firing arm.

Just the positions and drills in general there on how to nail in front of a barricade.

being that when you're shooting supported, kneeling, you have the firing the opposite or not supported. That was, that was one that I had caught. Cause that's actually, I've had that question on the range, like, Hey, this doesn't feel right. What do I do? I'm like, whatever feels comfortable. But now I know, Hey, this is what doctrine would say. And it is, is the most comfortable thing. Yes. Like we said, like Nick and I had the conversation,

If we'd have taken this class in March or June, July, when we went to the Mac in Guernsey, knowing what that dope was on that round and that optic would have been super valuable to us. So yeah, definitely the dope going into the National Guard matches. And then, yeah, the drills all around just the different pistol drills, the different

rifle drills that we ran through, stuff that we hadn't seen or different versions of doing something we may have already known, but being able to use them on the range, because we did all the drills we did, we did on a 25 meter range. So, if you want to load it down pretty and we can practice all those drills on the bigger age, just set your targets up.

The only thing we did that wasn't on a 25 meter range for drills was what you generally would call a nine hole drill, but we did it as a four hole drill. And that we're shooting out to, when we're shooting out to range through the slots in the barricades, which was a lot of fun. You know, one of the coolest videos you guys might have sent me.

was, uh, you guys been down the pit and then having bullets come down range while you were down in the pit. That was super cool. That wasn't even the best part. Well, for me it was because I was watching when I'm shooting not over us, but past us at their targets that day was like blow people's minds that have never done anything that worked at a grain, get up on a National Guard camp.

And as I've reported, and if you're engaged, you've never been shot at before. That's what gunfire, or that's what it sounds like when bullets are coming at you. I had been shot at. I've been shot in the eye. I was 13. It sucked. It was awful. I blame Luke if he's watching your dick. Anyways, I have one more question for you guys. 100%. While you guys are there, I know, like, I don't know what the Army standard is.

But was anyone blinged out because if they weren't, they should definitely check out Patriot Patch, Patriot Patch.co. For all your patch needs, you can get things like the bazooka turtle shell, which I think is awesome. It was just in the patch of the month. This is, well, no, this came in the patch of the month, but that's because Jake likes me and he sends me extra shelf. No, I can't. It's not that one to everybody. Well, Danny, well, then good for him. Cause I, Jake is a great, you're sure we all got that one.

Are you, are you patching the month member gel? I am. That is fantastic because the answer your question is bling down people. You found me. It's the Claymore with the Easter egg grenades. Absolutely adore and love this one. It's going on the gun wall. I'm actually thinking about plastering my gun wall with all of Peter patch stickers because

Why not? Let's spice it up a little bit, you know? It's like only fans, except it's yours in a gun wall. No one wants to see that. People pay me $5, not to do that, 100%. Maybe I should start one. I don't know. But anyway, check out Patriot Patch. Patriot Patch.co, join the Patch of the Month Club

Super awesome. You get super cool things like this bazooka turtle shell, which we all know from Mario Kart 64. This is badass. It's a red shell. It should have been the blue shell. No, no, this is the tracking shell. This is the one that's the one that

All right, Israelis keep throwing at the Hamas leaders. Well, Hamas and Israel have pretty much come to a standstill because of the election. Thank goodness. I mean, all of the wars in the world have kind of like, we're not going to do that anymore. But I digress when I go. Oh, get daddy home. Yeah, we got a guy. Get the music down. Yep. Oh, no. Hey, what's up? Anyway, so yes, check out Patriot patch, Patriot patch.co Jake and all the guys over there do a fantastic job.

That's all I got. Correct. And he really does. It is awesome the stuff they do. And it is definitely good. The shirt doesn't come off until we're in the pool.

But you got to be, you got to be present for that. You got to come to gun con to see that stuff. So yeah, the gun con's a wild time, man. Oh, gun con is so good. No, we have Nick, we have myself and now we have our new media relations. Joe, which I'm kind of sad. You didn't change your name to that media relations because that's who you are now. You know that, right? But anyway, we'll go back to one thing about the class.

We did finish out. So we finished out with doing the complex firing, where again, we fired, you know, moving targets at 200 and then three, four and five. And that one also took a handful of people. So that was three. So that was on Wednesday, graduation was on Friday. And I know it would last at least one. And like I said earlier,

fate would have it when everything we did to get our dope was sunny and calm, no wind at all. And on the day of the search, it was gusting and swirling and overcast. So it was, yeah. No, it was. And then our final stuff was UTP, which is stuff nobody cares about. So we're not going to talk about it.

Right? Yeah. No one cares about building a unit train. We just had to do it. Yeah. But Garst like, yay, they're almost done talking about this class. No, you don't.

Guys, I absolutely adore that you guys took this class. It was fantastic. You guys have a plethora of knowledge that you're going to share with me on the range and I cannot wait. Nick has already shared some of it with me. But yeah, some of the stuff goes over my head because I just don't care. And it's not met in hostility or mean or anything like that. You guys learn more in a month than I'm ever going to take in about shooting and stuff like that, ever.

We got paid. You got any. Exactly. Hey, we got paid to take intro to carbine, carbine one, carbine two, and precision carbine, because we were shooting from 500 meters. We shot 500 or from five meters to 500 is what we were graded on. And the one day we had target to six, six, 50, and seven, 25. Yeah. And that's a hundred yards.

Hard meters longer than my range at my farm right now. I don't like to take long distance shooting because I just don't want to miss because my theory about life and about if we ever have a Second Civil War, which thank goodness we're not going to do that right now, is there's a guy out there with a bigger gun who's a better shot than I am. And I just know I would not suit well, but I'm not going to go look for a fight. I'm a defensive guy only. So with that said, you guys enjoy. I loved it. I'll let you guys continue on now.

I think we first started and I had shared dualities in the same sentiment, but I'd go back again next month and redo the whole day in class. Oh, yeah, I would. I would, but this time I'd be like, no, you guys are going to let me use some of my toys. I'm not going to use your PBS 14. I'm going to use my dual tubes. But that's a me thing. Yeah, it was.

And that's, you know, and guard schools are very interesting with the selection of people you need to meet. And we have a great group of guys with the instructors who know their shit. They're really, they were as willing to learn from us as we were from them. When they thought duly shooting like this, what are you doing?

Why are you doing that? You know, uh, I was big autism. Did you know that if you put the weird site post up to look at your dot, it clears up the dot? Well, I heard they only learned the last like week of class. Nick was a instructor for his own company and had a podcast and he blew all their minds. So I mean, it wasn't straight up advertised, but.

in small group conversations, it might only cure there. Well, that's what I'm saying, because I've learned that the hard way. I've advertised for him, and he's like, hey, shut up. I'm like, I'm sorry. But no, I get it. We're sitting at the bar with the Rangers on Halloween. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was too nice. I wasn't wearing any of any of the gear. Yeah, you guys are hanging out like I named Jameson, whatever his name is. He's a dick. I heard.

Now, Jamison's nice. I don't mind Jamison. I've never minded Jamison. But just, yeah, you, especially in a school where the people that didn't want to be there kind of washed out pretty quick and just talking with shooters about shooting stuff and getting to see other things and engage how other people do it.

Uh, yeah, there was definitely a, there was the most interesting thing about this course was like kind of the dichotomy of people we had there because there was like, there was one guy who was there. Super great kid. Great dude. You know, I shouldn't call them all kids. It's such a hard thing to do is like, yeah, wait, they're like, no, no, no, you, you can call them kids because explain why you can call them kids. Oh, because I'm really looking for like the oldest people there.

No, no, no, no, because we're because we're going before you guys signed up to join. Yeah, they're kids. Because we're over 40 truck drivers going through an infantry school and hanging right with everybody, whereas 25 year old drill sergeants are right there. No, crazy. Yeah, I'd be scared of both of you guys. There's a night that the class went to the 18th Amendment.

And we were talking, I was talking to the guy that sat at the table with Dooley the whole time and said something about, about being a nerd. And I'm like, we're all nerds. It's just what is it for? Like Dooley's a gun nerd and this kid's a quad race. And I'm like, you're a nerd in that venue, right? And he's like, yeah, I guess so. I'm like, some of those are whiskey nerds, some of them are cigar nerds. Like not all nerds are just video games and, you know,

duct tape glasses where you're a nerd and what you're nerding. And you're a nerd because you don't want to unmute yourself. I am muted. Yeah. You better have old men and dangerous professions. That's what Eric Drew says. Thanks, Joe. You're so kind to me. You jerk. That's why he's our media guy. Oh, 100%. 100%. I am so glad I can't wait to go to our next function. How many people get my background reference?

I don't. Is that Fortnite? What is that? No. What is it? Well, it's a guy that doesn't have a head holding a Thompson. Oh, it's rolling the headless Thompson gun. I was looking at it because I didn't blow it up. I was like, is that Sid the sloth holding a gun? I thought it was from Mario Brothers. But no, we were, we were definitely kind of the old guys there.

But like the one kid I was legitimately worried about him having a heart attack. He he does that to himself. Yeah.

I'm going to answer. You answer that question and then we should probably get close to signing off. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So I just use a couple two by fours, uh, streaming the studs and then I did some one by, uh, sixes by the, uh, appropriate length, which is in this case, 63 inches and stain them in my garage. And, uh, yeah, I will, I will move out of the way so everyone can see this stuff. Absolutely.

Up top, I've got my fire fighter gun. I'm so proud of that because, well, I am a firefighter. I have the Fox Drop mic ranch rifle, the Keltech RDB, the mini 14 that Nick and I spent, I don't know, probably an hour on trying to get together because, well, I put together wrong and he saved the day. Got my goat guns, a little FDE AR or sorry.

M14 right there hanging out my 357 lever action, of course my SIG collection of the X5 the DH3 and the AGX with the fuse slide on it, of course the platypus has to get there, the Glock 34 Glock Tendo and then of course my bolt action Ruger.

that takes AR mags. And I'm currently, well, I'm waiting on three guns to get added. I wanted to add a couple of mirrors, legs, and the Henry Supreme, when that comes out, whenever it may be, of course. Oh, sorry, I forgot the two revolvers up there. The Jerry Mecalek 9mm 8-shot revolver, as well as the... 929. Yes, 929, that is it. And then the Chiapah Rhino

Stormhunter is what they call that from a movie. I haven't seen yet. Stormtrooper. Well, it would have been copper, right? Yes. 100%. So Stormhunter from whatever movie. I don't know some movie I haven't seen yet, but it just looked cool to me. So I had to buy it. Devin, if you're listening, do not overpay for that gun. Damn it. That's just a shout out. Love that kid.

Also, a are true if you are looking for a sling bag for 320 bags or something of that nature, you need to look up victims and their bags. They have a couple sling bags that are kind of right up the what you want. Say, man, I don't know, man, like I wanted the bun arms so bad, but then, you know, it's vaporware. Well,

gosh dang, Nick and Sean went and checked it out at goals that I could not attend, or Nick could attend. And I heard the magazine release was in a bad position. Now I'm a left-handed shooter, so I don't know. I'd have to check it out in person. I have not got to shoot it yet. So that will determine, but if they ever drop it, I heard they're like Generation 4 and, you know, the Henry Supreme is

been known for about a year, but they haven't even put it on their site yet. So I'm getting kind of tired of all this stuff. And I've called Henry a few times and chewed them out, but I don't have enough pole for that to matter. So it is what it is. Well, they know you have a podcast. I mean, it's like the most dangerous thing in the world. Yeah, they don't care about my podcast, which is now about this podcast. And I just come and hang out.

Oh, no, the Henry Supreme is high on the list, super high on the list. Because I did get to shoot that gun. And wow, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a 300 blackout, but still super cool gun. Well, and with that before we digress too much into this, as we said, we were going to start wrapping it up. Oh, wait, stop.

Hammer time. No, I'm kidding. Don't do hammer time unless you want to. But what you guys should do is check out dangfree.net. We have an app. Sean Herron from We Like Shooting has created this awesome platform where everyone who is like Nick, I and Joe can hang out, share ideas, talk about guns. Guys, if you have not signed up for dangfree.net, they have the App Store, iOS and Android. I believe Android. I don't know. I don't know.

Okay, good deal. So check out DangFree.net, sign up, subscribe, they have all the awesome things, they have homesteading, they have camping, they have cooking, they have our podcasts, they have all the podcasts on the network, and then go check out our show, please.

because we're trying to look for a new theme. I know some of you guys really love our theme, but it's generic because I've heard of other social media platforms and I want something that embodies Nick and I and now Joe. And so please check out dangfree.net and give us a like on which theme you like because I've posted a few of them and we're looking for a new one. And we're going to find one soon. We're going to debut that in the near future.

That's all you're going to say about that. Now you can deal with your bond. Yes. Yes. First of all, I have 80 no matter what. I'm on pills. Welcome to my life. And why do you meet me? That was BS. I saw that pop up there before I saw a pop up there. You needed me again. What a dick. I don't know what you're talking about.

Joe, do you got anything to add before we sign off for tonight? No, I think we covered it, we covered everything that we, I mean, I don't think we scratched the surface of that, of that course. No, that, that course was definitely what I think everybody had to do. So we got paid to do some critical shit. Yeah, it was definitely awesome. Garth, 20 seconds or less, anything else?

Now I can be unmuted. No, I'm good. Thanks. All right. Well, everyone, you know what I'm going to say. Remember that no one is going to save you. No one is coming to save you. You are your own first responder. Expect a self rescue.

With those things being said, everyone go out, get training, you know, take a class, take a rifle class, take a handgun class, take a medical class, go out, get training, do better for yourself, your family and your community. And guys, everyone out there, you stay safe and stay armed.

support the people who support the show. Primary Arms, VZ Grips, 4patriots.com, and Patriot Patch Companies. Be sure to check us out on social media, AR-15 Podcast 2.0 on Instagram, AR-15 Podcast 2.0 on YouTube,

AR 15 Podcast 2 on Twitter. AR 15 Podcast on Facebook and wherever podcasts are found. If you just want to drop us a line, let us know how we're doing or give us a show idea. Make sure to send that email to AR 15 Podcast 2.0 at gmail.com.

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