Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 109

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week:   1. A variety of questions about SEAL training, those that make it and those that don't   2. Parenting, and how to set healthy boundaries with grandparents   3. Is the military to blame for the "obsession" with the AR-15 platform   Enjoy

What's up, everybody? It is Friday. Time for Q&A. Before we get into that, I think if you listen to the podcast, if you've found the podcast, if you hear the sound of my voice right now, you probably realize that this episode and the rest of the episodes this year and next year and the year after, well, they're brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Not only am I a fan of the people who started the brand. I'm a fan of the coffee itself. I'm not even going to waste my time or yours to tell you what they offer. Just go to black riflecoffee.com and check it out yourself. Everything from coffee to the equipment you need to make it, apparel, merchandise, mugs, hats, t-shirts, the whole nine yards. A question that I get, though, is how come your cleared hot podcast coffee is not on their website? And their answer to that is, I asked them not to put it there, because if you want that, you need to go to the podcast website, which I think is shop.com, wait, shop.com.com.com. Sounds about right. And if that's not right, then I don't know what to tell you. Don't buy any of the damn coffee.

But it's the best coffee that they actually make. I say that from a completely biased position. That's it. Let's do Q&A. Keep it a little bit lighter today, maybe. Yeah, let's go. 109. Full Auto Friday, 109. Here we go.

I'm looking at danger close now. All right, we're back. Variety of questions today. Got some military, specifically seal-related questions, got some parenting questions, and maybe end it with some or A, not some, but A firearms. Not even necessarily a firearms-related question. But, yeah. Yeah, I guess it's related somehow.

Who cares? Let's get into question number one, which is actually a three-part question. And I get a lot of these, so I figured it may not be bad to answer. Question one of the first email. How many sailors graduate buds, but don't actually make it to a SEAL team? And why not? This is a great question. Maybe I should describe actually what it takes to make it into the SEAL community from an operational perspective.

So obviously, you're going to need to be in the Navy. Now, you don't have to actually start off. by joining the Navy. I just did a podcast yesterday that'll be out in a few weeks with a man who started off in the Marine Corps. And there was actually a Marine Corps or previous Marine Corps officer in my Bud's class. And they did what's called an inner service transfer. Whether or not they still call it that, I have no idea. But that's what they called it when I was going in. So at some point, you're going to have to become a member of the United States Navy. For most people, you're going to go to boot camp, which when I went through was eight weeks long, and then they're going to have you select an occupation, an A-school. And for me, that had to happen before I went to Buds. Now, this is where the path deviates from when I went through. And now there is a specific pipeline, SO. I believe that stands for special operator. For me, I had to go with the reverse of that.

I went OS, which is operations specialist, which is a radar scope operator. Never have actually seen one in real life. I went to the course that was on the Damneck Naval Annex, had no idea that development group was just down the road. and did radar scope operations for, I think, an additional eight weeks after boot camp. And then I went to Buds. You finish Buds, which stands for basic underwater demolition slash seal training. You are not a seal at the end of Buns.

It's a six-month selection in Crucible. And then now the pipeline has changed again. When I went through Buds, I immediately checked into, well, I should take that back. I went to Static Line Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia. and they threw my entire class in with the Army class, which probably was not a great idea from a good order and discipline perspective. Then I checked into my first team, SEAL Team 5. And then there was a change even from the people before me

because SEAL Team 5 used to do their own internal training. And then they would do a Trident Review Board where it was basically a day or two where you would travel to each one of the departments. You'd go to diving. You'd go to land warfare. You would go to air operations. You'd go to the armory and you'd do demo and you would plan a dive. You'd do dive calculations.

You'd take apart weapons while answering questions from senior list of personnel. You'd do demo calculations. You'd plan a route navigation. You would talk about parachuting systems. And at the end of that and the training leading up to that would be anywhere from six months to a year, you would be awarded your Trident if you passed. Right when I got into Team 5, Group 1, which over 1, which over time, you'd be awarded. overseas, all of the West Coast teams created what they were calling at the time. What was it for me?

S-T. Shit. Now I'm confused. It was either S-Q-T or S-T-T-T. I think I went through S-T-T-T-T, CLE tactical training. So they took all the West Coast people, trained us together. Then we went back to our team, but we still took our tried and review board test at each individual team. So it could be different.

Now it's buds. And then you start the S-Q-T pipeline, seal qualification. training. And I believe it's anywhere from 12 to 18 months and you do static line and free fall and cold weather and all of the other things that we were doing, but it's all in one place. And now when you graduate SQT, you are awarded your Trident. And so everybody who arrives at a seal team is a seal and you have a baseline template. I think it's actually a really good idea. Everybody has the exact same training in general. Obviously there'll be deviation in abilities, but it's a baseline product. So the graduates of SQT should all largely know the same things, largely be capable of

the same thing so they can integrate right into a SEAL team and then the SEAL team knows what to expect. The process and pipeline that I just laid out, you know, let's see here, eight weeks for boot camp. And let's assume that you get everything back to back to back with no waiting time in between schools, which full disclosure never happens. If you've been in the military, you understand the theory of hurry up and wait, which is a lot of what happens when you're waiting for duty stations, but eight weeks for boot camp, another 26 weeks for buds, call it another 52 weeks at minimum for SQT. And we're getting into the, you know, approaching two years of being in military service. So to get to the question, now that you understand the pipeline, how many

sailors graduate buds, but don't actually make it to a seal team? I don't have any raw doubt on this, but I would say if there was a class of 50, give you. getting ready to start SQT, my guess would be somewhere between 45 to 47 would graduate. And now for the people who do not make it through, I am personally aware of those who have just changed their mind post-Buds and decided that they did not want to continue the pipeline, so they self-selected out. Catastrophic injury is possible. And just like at Buds, although the standards in SQT are largely going to be performing. based, you know, there's a difference between grading somebody's shooting and grading somebody's mental toughness underneath the telephone pole. Standards have to be adhered to, and not everybody,

even though they have already been through the crucible of buds is going to have the ability from a operational perspective to meet those standards, and they have to be held. So a few people are going to fall short. There is remediation training. I do believe you can get rolled back. They'll do everything that they can to continue you through the pipeline, as long as you're putting through the effort. But at the end of the day, not everybody can achieve that standard. And that's exactly the way it should be. If everybody is meeting the standard, I would suggest that you actually raise it, because it's probably not very challenging, or not suitable for the task at hand. So the reasons really deviate. The ones that suck the most, and actually for me as an instructor,

the hardest to see, were the injuries. And I didn't know about this going in. as a student when I was very young in the 90s, I had really no idea how many students don't make it through because of injury. And it just, it sucks to watch a really motivated person take a fall off of one of the higher obstacles on the O course and not only ruin their chances of making it through the pipeline, but probably substantially alter the course of their life after that. Broken hips, broken back, dual tib fibs, femurs. Doesn't sound awesome when you're there and hear it, and you can imagine the impact it would have. So those injuries are the toughest ones to deal with because you take somebody, or it takes somebody, the injury being, and they could be

an amazing asset to the team, but it prevents them from physically being able to do so. And that sucks, and I wish that there was a way around that, but I do think that people, they need to get hurt in training. It needs to be dangerous enough that injury and death do occur. I don't want people to get injured, and I don't want them to die. But if that never happened again, right with the standards, If everybody's meeting it, it may not be acceptable for the job you're going to be asked to do in the future. So part two, do all seals go back as an instructor at some point in their career? They absolutely do not. And in the peak kinetic years, which I'll say was probably 6 to 10, 2006 to 2010, not that many people wanted to go as a Bud's instructor because it's considered shore duty.

any of the operational seal teams are considered sea duty. The instructor billets are considered shore duty. And what I will say looking back on my career is that I think everybody would be a little bit more balanced if they had a better balance of sea and shore duty. And I don't know if forcing it on people would be the right thing, but it's a great way to decompress. And I look back at my career and that instructor tour was actually one of the most rewarding tours, if not the most rewarding tour that I did because you can directly impact the community moving forward. You can have this enduring impact on what the community will become. You can really reach into the clay, for lack of a better term, and start molding it. But it's a choice that not everybody makes, and I have nothing but respect for that.

And then there's the other side of that coin, too. There are people that hide out on shore duty billets because even in the time of war, they're running from the sound of the guns, as opposed to to the sound of the guns. And that's a conversation in and of itself, but it absolutely, happens for some people. Part three. In the video view as an instructor with the U.S. men's water polo team, what level of hardcore did you dish out to them compared to an actual Bud's recruit? And instead of trying to break down what was happening in that video, I think you can just Google it, probably my name and U.S. Waterpola Team. Let's rate it on a 10. A one would be easy.

A 10 would be a pretty damn difficult day. I'd say gave them a four or a five. But you have to remember, I was dealing with a team, but not a military unit. And a lot of the things that I was asking them to do probably didn't occur in their normal day-to-day team life, like head counts and breaking up into smaller teams and going and fighting, finding obstacles and coming back and reporting and working on a little bit of disaggregate leadership. And all of those things when they fell short and they did almost every time involved a physical punishment. So it was actually, it wasn't that I was necessarily trying to grind on them. I just would give them tasks and they were falling flat on them for a couple of reasons. You know, it's leadership in the

SEAL community is thought of very differently than it is in an academic sports-based environment oftentimes. And two, they just weren't used to a lot of the tasks. But communication and leadership could really could have bridged the gap. And that's what I was kind of trying to hammer on with the leaders of that team, but I gave them about a four or five. So it was a pretty mellow day. I had a very time-limited window to work with them. And probably what would have made it go up into six, seven, or eight is if they had just done what they were doing for longer. So it was the shortness of the duration that lowered the overall, what was the word that you use, hardcoreness to use your term. That's kind of what's at the bar for that. All right. Question two. It's about fatherhood or parents.

being a parent, I suppose. And it's a two-parter as well. Number one, what is the one advice you would give yourself as a new father if you go back to the moment that you became a father? I think I've talked about this in the past, and I'm curious if my answer will be the same, because I don't remember what I said last time. I think the biggest advice that I would give myself would be to let myself know it's okay not to have all the answers. And I mean that, I mean, now I'm looking at this through the lens of my oldest will be 19 this year. And I still don't have all the answers. But I think it can be very overwhelming when you go from waking up one morning and not having a child to at some point in that day.

You now are holding something that you are responsible for. And it is an overwhelming sense of responsibility and love and compassion. And I don't know how anybody can not look at their child in the eyes and just in that moment know that you would do and give anything for them at any. time throughout their life. And you're filled with uncertainty. That would probably be the number one emotion that I was filled with when I was a brand new father. And it would have been nice to have my 19 year in the future herself come back and be like, you know what? You don't have to have all the answers. Children are incredibly resilient. If you make your decisions from a position in place of love and trying to do the right thing, things are going to work themselves out and they

are going to be okay. In addition to that piece of advice, what I would say is take a lot of pictures. And for me, as a dad, I'll be totally honest. The first few years of each of my children's life was not as, I don't want to say rewarding, because that's not the right word. I didn't feel like I was needed as much. And the reality was, I wasn't. All three of my children were breastfed, and what they really needed was their mom. So they were pocket buddies more to their mom in those formative first, you know, 18 months to two years. Not that I, you know, changing diapers and, you know, rocking to sleep and doing everything I could and, you know, and all the things that you can, you can do as a father. Of course, obviously do those things. But for me, it was, you know,

you can't communicate with them. You can look at them and make, you know, bubbly noises and tickle them and blow on their stomach. And that is hilarious. Make sure that they're wearing a diaper when you do so because I have had urine go in my earhole, up my nose hole, in my mouth, in my eyes. Not a big deal. I've heard it's been, uh, or I've, I've heard that it's considered to be sterile. And it was my own kids. Piss. So, you know, what's the worst? Also have been shit all over. Um, I won't say what kid it was, but I was in the room when they went for the old rectal thermometer check and, uh, the child explosively detonated the far wall in the doctor's office. I mean, these are things you'll never forget, regardless of what you may see in your life.

Um, and maybe don't take pictures of those things, but be as present as possible in, as you can and do as much as you can in those years where they're probably going to need your mom or their mom more than they need you. And that's okay because as your kids get older, it's such so fascinating. The things that you can talk about, the things that you can do, the explorations that you can have. And for me, my rule has always been, well, my hope has always been my kids would never want to follow in my footsteps occupationally. And none of them have expressed any desire, which has been great. If they did express in a desire, I would support it.

I'd have very honest conversations about what they'd likely be getting into. But for me, it's always been about them finding out who they want to be and helping support that. Take the pictures. Don't be too hard on yourself. If the first period of time when they're born, they seem to want mom more than you, that's totally fine. You're going to have rich, deep relationships later on once they are able to start communicating and moving around. It's it becomes a whole different journey in each phase from like, you know, one to three might be with mom and then three to five, the walking mobile talking school.

Six to ten is a bizarre phase. Ten to teenager. Holy shit. Into middle school, into high school, driver's licenses, drugs and alcohol sex. Holy shit. It's going to be wild ride. Try to avoid. I was going to say avoid. Try to enjoy every step along the way and take a little bit of pressure off yourself. Second part, grandparents. How would you set healthy boundaries with your grandparents? Well, if you're a brand new father right now, the grandparents are probably just going to want to be there to hold and spend time with the child. And it can, you know, primarily, I would say, if this is like right after birth, guard against your wife's or the mother's rest.

So make sure that baby and mom are getting his enough rest as possible. And the easiest way to do this when it comes to boundaries, healthy boundaries of any kind, whether it's with your grandparents or interpersonal, is be upfront, be honest, and set the expectation. Let the grandparents know, like, hey, this is what we are open to being a part of. This is what we maybe potentially are looking for from you. But these are our boundaries and our boundaries have to be respected and then involve them as much as possible. inside of those boundaries. A common situation you might find later on is that grandparents want to spoil your kids,

perhaps more than they spoiled you. And you may have boundaries that you have set with your children that your grandparents or their grandparents want to slightly deviate from. What I will say again with that, open, honest communication, set the boundaries. If a boundary is deviated from, address it up front. So that way it doesn't slide slowly over time. But grandparents are looking at this from the perspective of love as well. I mean, I think of myself.

If any of my kids had a kid right now, if any of my kids had a kid right now, what a sentence that is. What would I want to do? Smother the child would love. Spoil them, turn them into a rotten little brat. So my kids would have to experience some of what I went through. But I'm not saying, do that. I'm just being honest.

So boundaries are all about communication. Question three, and then let's get the hell out of here for our weekend. A little bit of a longer one. As an Air Force veteran, I've been struggling with the gun control slash 2A debate in what it means for the veteran community. I sold firearms at a large retailer after getting out, even though I never owned a firearm before joining. So I would watch as total novices bought AR-15s just in case of terrorism or because of some perceived infringement on their rights or a zombie apocalypse. I would never want to be on the same range as some of these new gun owners. It got me wondering how the AR became this country's most popular rifle and is the military to blame.

How much of today's gun culture and fascination with AR-15s can be attributed to 20-plus years of military-armed conflict? Generationally, veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have inadvertently memorialized these rifles as symbols of freedom. But those that never served don't understand the context. Post 9-11, the number of manufacturers producing AR-15s grew significantly, in part due to military contracts, but also a growing civilian market, many of which are either veterans or military fanboys. But mass murderers are perversely twisting and exploiting that uniquely American gun culture to suit their wicked and infamous ends. These disturbed individuals are choosing these weapons because of the culture, because of the culture of war. around the AR-15, in addition to its lethality and ease of access. Should veterans be more vocal in condemning this type of violence,

considering our familiarity with these tools we have used in service? Even though veterans aren't committing these act of violence, are we complicit in perpetuating the culture that is exploited, that is exploited by the evil few? Man, this is a complex question. It's a fascinating question, and I have never thought about people's, desire to own an AR. I say that as somebody who does own them. But also, and I try to say this every time that I talk about anything weapon related, to me a gun, whether a pistol or a rifle,

probably feels the same or I look at it the same as a construction worker or a carpenter with a tool belt on and a hammer swinging from a loop on that hammer. I'm not trying to say an AR is a hammer. What I'm trying to say is that carpenter, knows how to use that tool and is an expert at it. He has a different relationship with that hammer than somebody who doesn't use it every single day. Hasn't probably been licensed to use it to, you know, if you want to become a licensed carpenter or, you know, probably was mentored on how to use it, taught how to use it, and then has a bunch of experience. So my optic on guns and ARs is different based on my experience. And I try to take that into consideration. And I will,

also say I'm not an expert on, I'm barely, I would say I'm barely an expert on an AR on how they function and a few pistols. I know how to use them, but I'm not an expert on how they are produced. I understand the inner workings. Again, I'm just trying to lay the context here. I can only speak for myself in my own experience, but that's where my own experience comes from. I'm not really fascinated by ARs, but I also have a lot of experience with them. I'm not fascinated by flying airplanes either, but I also have a lot of experience doing so. So, you know, I think it's important to point that out every single time. So I'm going to work this one backwards. Are veterans complicit in perpetuating the culture that is exploited by the evil few? So I have to jump back over here

and talk about, you know, the memorialization of AR-15s. I don't know if it's the military members that could be accountable for the, and I don't know if exploitation is the correct term, for the highlighting of the tools that they use, because it's not the military members generally that are the ones out there that are reporting on it or that are creating things that are seen by the masses. Most military members are going to be issued a gun. They're going to go do their job with their gun. They're going to train and focus and put their time, energy, and effort into that. they're not creating content for the world to see. They're not, you know, the exposés or movies

that are being done or generally not being done by the veteran. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure that the actual individual holding the gun in service of the country should be the one where the explosion of interest comes from. I think it is probably due to the amount of exposure that the wars, the past 20 years specifically, 20 plus years at this point, probably the amount of exposure and coverage that it received. Because it certainly was the primary tool for, I mean, there's obviously, there's mechanical differences between, you know, M16, A1s through A, whatever they come through, M4s, AR-15s.

It's not worth getting into the differences, really. It's a 556 or 223 caliber round. It shoots the same round. Magazine sizes may be different. You know, collapsible buttstocks, carrying handles, all of these things. You can research the difference between those if you want to. It'd be very easy to look at all of those rifles from somebody who doesn't know the difference and assume they are the same thing. And probably since the age of Vietnam, I mean, I look back at the Vietnam era movies that I watched growing up, they were using an ARM16 type rifle. So I think it's been something that's really just been consumer facing for a long period of time. And there's a a reason that the military uses it as a platform. It's reliable. It's lightweight. It can have a high magazine capacity, a good range to reach out and touch somebody. So I don't know. I think it's a combination of all those things, but I don't think that the veteran itself, the veteran or the military member holding that rifle being reported on is necessarily to blame, if that's even the right word to use for the interest and desire for people to buy those rifles. I think it's just

much more in our face. And again, I think it goes back to the fact that it's a competent weapons platform that has decent capability. That's where I would probably land on that. Should veterans be more vocal in condemning the type of violence, this type of violence, considering I'm familiar with these tools that we have used in service? I think everybody should be more vocal in condemning the types of violence that we saw in places like Texas. This fucking asshole goes in and shoots kids.

Like, if you're not vocal in condemning that, if you're not condemning that, I don't know what that says about you as a person. And you don't need to be familiar with this tool to condemn that type of violence. It's just wrong. And again, I've said this before. I don't know how anybody lands at a headspace where that's the actual thing that you decide is what you need to do other than full on mental health crisis slash snap, which I don't have the ability to understand, but I do understand those people exist. But yes, everybody should be vocal in condemning this type of violence. Now, one thing, and I've talked about this, I think on the podcast that may come out on Monday. This country, for whatever reason, has a very interesting optic when it comes to types of

violence. So the tool that was used in Texas, I kind of hesitate to say this, but I do believe it was an AR platform rifle. And if I'm wrong about that, then that's on me. My point in saying that is there is certain types of violence in this country that gets a very, very narrow focus. And there are some that seemingly is ignored. If you look at gun violence in general in this country, AR platform rifles are not number one. They're not number two. They're not number three. I believe it falls to at least number five or it may be number seven.

So we'll say somewhere between five to seven, which actually makes a lot of sense. Because smaller weapons, by that I mean pistols, are so much easier to conceal. You can carry it. I mean, that's why you go, I went and got a CCW. I carry a 9mm pistol on me. I'm not carrying an AR tucked into my pants underneath my shirt because that's ridiculous. So many more people are killed with pistols than rifle caliber rounds. Most mass shootings, and I'm not talking about mass shootings at schools.

I believe for it to hit the mass shooting criteria on the FBI list is it's either three people or four people. Most of those are executed with pistols. But we focus almost all of our attention as a country on instances like ones in Texas. And I totally get it because I have kids and I can't think of a more nightmare scenario. But I still believe that to this day, the most deadly school shooting ever occurred with a 9mm pistol and a 22 caliber pistol. And right now, of course, the location of that school escapes me. But a lot of times, like what happens in Texas, they start focusing on the tool. Of course, that tool was used for the conduct of a horrendous act.

And I get that. But what's not focused on is, and let's say the last 30 days, the number of people who were wounded and killed and just, I'm going to use an example of one city, Chicago. The vast majority of those are going to be through pistol caliber rounds. So when it happens at a school, and again, I understand why this optic is placed on this because we can all kind of connect to that. And we all just want to rally against making that not happen again. and it's very easy, I think, to point at the weapon that was in the person's hand, but it paints an inaccurate picture of actual gun violence in the United States from the perspective of the tool that was used. So even though AR-15s may be the soup de jour for people, what are the three things that you said?

It was a zombie apocalypse infringement of their rights or in case of terrorism. They may be purchasing those type of weapons for those reasons, but the vast majority of gun violence is not executed with those types. of weapons. So they might be super popular from a visual perspective, but if you look at the actual data, they're not used that often. God, everybody has got to be vocal against that type of violence. And what else did you ask? Here, hold on. Mass murders are perversely twisting and explaining that uniquely American gun culture to suit their wicked and infamous edds. Yeah, crazy people are going to do crazy shit. I don't know if they are twisting and exploiting gun culture.

They're taking a tool that was designed to end life, and they're trying to end life with it. And that's the downside of rights and freedoms. They can be, you know, a weapon. How was the shooting in Texas stopped with a weapon? You know, it was executed with a weapon and it was stopped with a weapon. Two different people. I know it was not the same platform. I'm going to use the term weapon broadly here.

Each of them had a weapon. One chose to execute an act of incredible evil. And the other one from all accounts that I can determine, use it to execute an act of incredible bravery and ran towards the sound of the guns. So it's more about the person that is holding it in their hand than it is the tool itself. I would caution people against thinking that the United States government is going to solve the problem that we have of gun violence. I would like to believe that there is a way that we could legislate our way out of it or responsible, you know, to use a term that you'll hear responsible gun laws, which I think we have a substantial amount of now. I don't think you can regulate somebody who is hell bent on not paying attention to the law into not doing so by adding more laws to it. I actually think personally that we need to, of course, have those things.

We need to have the structure in place, which I believe that we do. But we need to look into the motivation behind these individuals. And personally, I've heard Joe Rogan talk about this. It was a tweet. And I'm going to probably just butcher this tweet. But it was essentially, the United States has a mental health crisis that is what was the word that he used? The United States has a mental health crisis

that is somehow appearing to be a gun crisis. I totally just fucked that up, but I think people get the point. The tool used at the end state, we need to take every action possible to make sure that we are doing everything that we can, that they are in the hands of those that have the legal right to possess them.

But if we don't spend an equal amount of time, energy, effort, and money on the individual and how they landed at the motivations to do evil with those weapons, then we are on a perpetual left-hand turn in our vehicle. And we're going to keep crossing over the same territory over and over and over and over again. And I don't want to see that. I don't want my kids to have to continue to deal with that. I don't want their kids to have to continue to deal with that.

And until we can at least put as much energy and effort into the person, and into the why, as we are putting into the weapons themselves, I don't think anything is going to change. So I think I had opened with we're going to do a little bit lighter today, but that's where we're going to land. We're going to land with a little bit, I guess, a little bit more of a downer. But is it solvable? Fuck yes.

I think it is absolutely solvable. We're going to have to take a really hard look in the mirror, though. And I appreciate this question because it really got me to think. Is the military and the aspirational nature that some people have towards the military, is that, is that a really a driving factor why people would want to have these types of weapons? And I think it could be. I definitely think that it could be. But again, you got to go back to the stats and the actual raw data. It may be a really popular platform, but it is in when it comes to pure data, when it comes to gun violence, I don't even think it's in the top five. So that needs to be

considered as well. And that's it for Friday. See you guys all on Monday with, actually I'm not going to say who it's going to be with because there's a chance I might release a different episode on Monday. So I'll just see you all on Monday.