Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 22

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Full Auto Friday is for rapid-fire Q and A, topics selected by the listeners, five-minute time cap per answer.  1. Dealing with the loss of a close friend 2. Battle Belts and Body Armor 3. Are human Special Forces Operators needed 4. Do we limit ourselves by celebrating warriors over scientists/engineers 5. Why do I want to kill everyone in Guantanamo Bay Enjoy

Ladies and gentlemen, full auto Friday, 22, I think. It's been a shit show. Had some technical difficulties in the studio today, but we're going to make it through it. Before we get into this, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by On It, which is your landing page, your destination for total human optimization. Onit.com forward slash hot. You will know you're in the right place because you'll see the podcast logo. And just above that, supplements, nutrition, fitness, apparel, sale and more, and then content.

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Round 22. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. It's been a day of frustration. I don't like it when electronic things don't do what electronic things have been told to do. But I digress. Some questions and a little bit of weekend action. and we on our way. Started off with a relatively heavily one.

This comes from Zach. Hey, Andy, this past Monday on October 5th, I was on the phone with one of my best friends. I knew he had been struggling with depression, and I was reaching out to try and see if I could help him and give him some motivation. After being on the phone and having a normal conversation about life for about 15 minutes, it got pretty deep and emotional.

I told him I loved him and that he was a good person. He asked me to take care of his. dog and before I could say anything, I heard a blast, and then a shell casing hit the floor, in parentheses, I think. My best friend, someone I would consider my brother, ended his life. I drive semi-trucks, and it was at work, and I was at work with about 270 miles until I got home. I know you're not a professional, but I'm pretty sure I've listened to every single podcast

you've put out, and I was curious if you had any advice for me. Thank you for everything, Zach. Damn, man. first and foremost, I am incredibly sorry for the loss of your friend. And obviously to everybody who knew that individual, it's what you're describing is unbelievably heavy. I can only imagine. I can imagine that it feels like actual weight on your shoulders.

I am not a professional. I thank you for clarifying that because that's exactly what I would have said to start off, this answer. I've never been on the receiving end of the phone call. like that. So I can't speak from experience. And I don't have a ton of experience around suicide in my personal life. And for many years, what I would have said is that I don't understand suicide at all.

But if I'm being completely honest, which I try to be as often as possible, the past 18 months of my life has given me a better understanding of how people arrive at that place. where they think that ending their life is the only option or the only way to make what is happening to them stop. And I'm not saying I'm suicidal because I've never had suicidal ideations. I have never truly considered that to be an option. And also in the last 18 months of my life, I have also experienced what I would consider to be some of the highlights that I ever have in my life. So I've taken the good with the bad. But some of it for me in my personal life has been, bad to the point where at least I think I understand at a personal level. There's still so much though that I can't say that I understand.

There's still so much about it that doesn't make sense to me. But I can empathize with this person and a small part of me understands how they arrive there. Now to answer your question, the only advice that I could give you is don't try to carry this weight alone. I'm sure this audience is probably tired of me talking about mental health and seeking out professionals. But in this environment, I think this screams for somebody who is trained and a professional at understanding and helping people deal with this, whether it be just the grief of the loss or however you may feel about this. There's people who understand how the brain works,

how the body works, how emotions work, how they're all tied together. And I'm not one of those people, but they exist and they're there to help you navigate through this. So don't carry the weight on your own. Don't be reclusive and don't disconnect from the world around you. Talk to people. Share with people how you're feeling, regardless if you might be concerned that it will change their opinion of you or you're worried that you might be embarrassed.

I don't care what it is. talk to people. And beyond that, I, maybe because of my previous background and the occupation that I had and it, and it was an occupation that touched death on both sides of the coin, meaning taking life and then also life being lost, there's a good chance that I've probably spent more time than most people thinking about what life would be like for those in my friends and family group had I ceased to exist on the planet. not in a suicidal perspective, but just loss of life. And I think what I would want most from anybody is for them to honor who I was by continuing to be the best friend that they could be for those that were still around them. You know, he asked you to take care of his dog. And if you can, do.

And maybe that only means you can help it find a different home and adoption. I'm sure if you're driving a semi-truck, that might be difficult. But do you best you can to honor his best wish. and then be there, or his last wish, not his best wish, and then be there for the friends and family that are left behind. Because one thing I do understand about suicide is the destruction that it leaves behind. It's horrendous. And it often leads or leaves more questions than answers. And that sucks. Be there for people who need you to be there. And then I hope what you can do is take a little bit of solace and a little bit of comfort in the fact that you were doing everything that you could.

You knew your friend was struggling, so you did the right thing. You reached out and you tried to help. You let the individual know that you loved him and that you cared for him and that you thought he was a good person. And the reality is the decisions that people make are the ones that they're going to make. And you only have so much impact on that. Even the most influential people in the world only have so much impact. I hope that you can find comfort in knowing that you did what you could. And I hope that you can continue to do everything that you can to support everybody that was left behind and impacted by this.

And most importantly, in that group of people that were left behind, the person that I hope you can help the most is yourself. Because what you described is horrendous. And I'm incredibly sorry that you had to deal with it. Fucking rough opening to full out of Friday. But I hope that it helped, Zach. and reach out again if there's anything else that I can do to help you, any questions that I can answer in any way that I could help you move through it. Moving on. Question number two.

It comes from Thomas. Thomas says, I wanted to get your take and thoughts on battle belts and plate carriers. The past year and a half, I have been noticing more and more people at the range wearing battle belts or war belts. And I'm going to stop here and hopefully clarify what we're talking about. I think you're talking about a range belt, which would be, you know, you are a concealed carrier, and I'll cover this here in a minute because you write it down. Obviously, a concealed carry holster, wow, great English today, is covert in nature. It goes underneath your clothing because you want it to be concealed.

When I hear you say battle belt or war belt, I think you're talking about a range belt, which would traditionally have a holster of some kind on an external belt that you strap over the top of everything else. Usually it's padded for comfort. We'll have probably rifle and pistol magazines on your offhand side. Strong hand side would be your holster, probably a medical pouch, probably a tourniquet, maybe an admin pouch or just a drop pouch on the back, something along those lines. If that's what you're talking about, then cool, this answer will make sense. If that's not what you're talking about, I'm sorry because I'm going to answer the question as if that's what you're talking about. You continue. I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment

and carry almost every single day. With that being said, while I'm at the range, a big focus is drawing from concealment because I've heard many instructors say to train for the real world. Couldn't agree more. I'm not a police officer or military. I'm a regular guy who wants to protect my family and myself.

But at the range, looking around sometimes, I wonder, did I miss a memo? With that being said, are plate carriers in battlebelts, something that regular people have an actual need for? Or are these guys larping? Which is one of my favorite words. if you haven't gone onto YouTube,

you need to go onto YouTube and put in LARPING Lightning Strike, or I think it's Thunderbolt, and watch this man throw ping pong balls at another man while yelling Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt. It's one of the most amazing things ever. I think I picked your question, Thomas,

just because of the fact it had the term larping in it. But let's dig in. First off, I love where your head's at. You carry concealed for personal defense and defense of your family, and you put your primary effort into practicing and training with the gear that you carry around with you 24-7. I love it. That's exactly what you should do.

What concerns me is when people get a concealed carry holster, a concealed carry license, a concealed carry gun, and they never practice getting it from point A, which would be an actual concealed carry position underneath clothing to point B, which is out of the holster, extended sites on target ready to do work. If you don't practice that and that moment presents itself for you, stand by. You're probably going to struggle. So if you're going to carry concealed, you need to practice concealed. Now let's talk about concealed pistols, and I'll use the one that I use as an example,

because I actually do have a, I'm going to call it a range belt, not a battle belt. And I use both, and I'll explain why. So for a concealed carry platform, I am currently carrying the SIG 365 XL with a red dot site. And that is still a very small pistol. It's a subcompact for sure. Smaller in my hand, less purchase of my hand on the weapon. Smaller sight radius if I was using the iron sights, the red dot site kind of defeats that. But when I carry concealed, I also don't generally have.

Actually, I never have multiple magazines. So if I only took my concealed holster to the range, I could work from draw to engagement, but I also want to work the gross motor skills of reloading. just for proficiency with pistols and rifles. They're similar, and they work off of the same principle, but you need to practice both. So I go to the range, and I will practice coming from a concealed position

to a position where I'm ready to use the tool, and then I'll put it away, and I will grab my range belt, which has a full-size frame pistol. I'm currently shooting the Zev-09C, and for one, the magazine capacity of the Zev is substantially greater than the SIG, and I have more magazines,

and I have a position for them on my belt. And what it allows me to do is work through those gross mechanics of slide lock, recognizing slide lock, coming to a reload, reloading, working through my gear. The larger pistol frame gives me more of a purchase with my hands on the gun. I have a red dot side on the Zev as well, so I'm not really concerned about the sight radius, even though it would be greater on the Zev.

And oftentimes when I'm teaching people to shoot, I'll start them on a bigger weapons platform so they can get a better understanding of the grip, the pressure, the trigger control, the trigger maintenance, and all of that will overlay and apply to the smaller pistol. But the smaller it gets, in my experience, the more difficult it is to shoot. So I don't think these people are necessarily larping. What I think they're doing is putting range time in with a bigger platform. These range belts or battle belts or war belts, they're not meant to be concealed.

And if you're wearing these things around town, you're a complete fucking asshole. so don't do that stuff. They're designed for the range. And in my opinion, they're not larping. They're just putting time in on a weapon system that will give them more options when it comes to training. Now on the plate carrier side of the house, most people will carry their magazines if they're wearing a plate carrier on their chest, which is a nice thing to do. It removes a lot of weight from your belt. And you actually, if you organize your plate carrier and chest carry appropriately, you can take everything. off of your waist and put it up on your chest. Raises your center of gravity up a little bit. It takes a lot of weight off the hips, like I said. It's easier to move around, to climb up and down things, to take a seated position. And, you know, if you work in an environment where you might need ballistic protection or you want to have ballistic protection, you should absolutely train with it.

If it's like a novelty and, you know, I mean, I guess there's probably some people out there who have body armor in their car. And I'm not going to make a value judgment on that. do what you feel is right and live your life the way that you feel that you need to for your own protection and safety. But if it's going to be a tool that you use off the range, you need to train with it on the range. And having said that, there's probably some people who are just using the plate carry stuff because they think it's cool. And that's all right too. I don't know if I'd call that larping or people just pursuing things that they find to be

inspirational or aspirational. So I don't think you missed a memo. But also, don't judge those guys too harshly. I think they're finding different ways to get more reps in. And like I said, those reps could help you with a lot of the fundamental issues that people encounter when it comes to shooting. So food for thought. And that's all I got.

Hopefully that helps, Thomas, two of them in. Question three, got two questions here, both requesting to be anonymous. So we'll go through one at a time. How critical are special forces human operators versus technology like drones and cyber like Stuxnet? Now I had to look this sucker up. Stuxnet is a computer virus. And I'm not a computer person.

So I'm sorry if I'm not describing this incredibly accurately, but I did watch a documentary on this a long time ago. This particular virus, I'm almost positive, was created by the United States, like 99% positive. and we embed it in the embedded, embed it, embedded it, whichever one of those words is correct, into the Iranian nuclear development program, and it really jacked it up. So it was a way to attack actual infrastructure, digital infrastructure. And I think there's a great use for that, an incredible use. So that cyber like that is critical, I think. Then there's drones.

Drones are also critical. You can find individuals, whether you're using a sensor, visual sensor and electronic sensor, you can establish patterns of life. You can provide surveillance, intelligence, you can provide Overwatch. You can push these sensors out into high ground or areas around target to make sure that you're not being maneuvered on, make sure you're not being flanked. And you can also use them as essentially close air support. Hellfires, and I think they're dropping a dumb bomb, well, not dumb bombs, probably J-DAMs, which would be a GPS-guided bomb off of these things as well. They're great, but both cyber and drones have limitations.

So let's talk about cyber limitations, at least in my experience, and in my opinion. Attacking the Iranian nuclear program was awesome and preventing them from getting a nuclear device. Or, you know what, let's take it out of Iran. Let's go to Made Up Astan. Made up a stand has a group of people that want to create a WMD and they want to use it against those who do not have the same ideology and beliefs that they do. So we find a way with cyber to limit that particular approach. But the issue is those people still exist and they're going to try to find another one. So cyber took that avenue away from them.

Awesome. So we follow them in a drone, right? We figure out where they are. We follow them in that drone. But they get into a car and that car is full of women and kids. So we're not going to drone strike that car. And that drone strike, or not the drone strike, but the drone follows the vehicle back to a compound or a series of compounds. Where these people get out of the vehicle and they go into the homes.

And you're looking at this and you're watching and the pattern of life shows that in fact there are families there, women, children, people who have nothing to do what's going on with these individuals and their malicious ideologies or insidious ideologies. So what do we do? Well, not going to use cyber in that situation. What you need is a human being. and that is the role of special forces. At some point in time, a threshold of a door where these individuals are sleeping or eating or meeting needs to be crossed. And it needs to be crossed by an individual that can think and make decisions and positively

identify and take the actions that are necessary. It's great if in a faraway land you can figure out where somebody lives or where they're going to be. But if you don't have a way to go to where they are, to go into the compound, to go into the structure to go into the room where they are and take that chess piece off of the map. And what I'm saying by that is shoot them in the face if they need to be. None of those things are capable by drone and cyber alone. So I think that humans are critical.

But so are the technological or, yeah, the technological aspects or the electronic and cyber aspects as well. And I think what makes the U.S. incredibly successful and lethal in those environments is the combination of all three. If you take the electronic components away from the warfighter, I'm here to tell you right now, they're much more limited. But if you add them in, they can be much more precise and much more targeted. So we need them all.

And human beings, in my opinion, at least, will always have to be part of that finish cycle. Find the individual, fix them in place and finish them. Whatever that finish may look like, capture kill, you choose on target. I'm not here to tell anybody how to do their job. Question two. Again, request to be anonymous. Are U.S. Americans? U.S. Americans, that's a slight redundancy there.

Are U.S. Americans limiting our potential by focusing or celebrating kinetic operators over scientists and engineers? And then in parentheses, again, while no one should take for granted the honor and sacrifice of kinetic warriors. I agree that no one should take for granted the honor and sacrifice of kinetic warriors, but that can be taken too far. It's an occupation. It's nobody was born as a kinetic warrior. You go to a selection process. You're taught, you're refined, you're trained, experience practice, experience, practice, real world operations back into the crucible of training and preparation and training and preparation.

But at the end of the day, at some point in time, you leave that and you still need to be a functioning human being at the end of that. So we should honor the sacrifice and what those people are willing to risk, but we shouldn't take it too far. And I guess that really leads into my answer to the beginning of this question. I think we're limiting our potential, and we always limit our potential when we focus on one thing to the detriment of others. Let's look at COVID pandemic that we're going through right now, right? the dumpster fire shit show of 2020. No kinetic warrior to use your terms is going to help us get out of this. We need scientists and engineered. Engineer. I don't know which one of those is correct. Engineers. That's what we need. And right now, the people who I see being the most celebrated,

and they should be frontline medical care workers, firefighters, police, first responders, scientists, people working on vaccines. That's exactly the way that it should be. But there will be a post-COVID-19 era, and I think the pendulum will naturally swing back and forth. And I think that's fine. I think it's designed to swing back and forth, and it's never designed to lock in place

and elevate one category of individual via job title or position to a status where we focus on them to the detriment of others. And I think that's the key. So honor, you know, the sacrifice of people who are willing to sacrifice quite a bit, but put a limit on that and make sure that you see all of the effort that is being put in by everybody. Because I tell you right now, Kinetic Warriors, if you look in the past, let's say 200 years. It's the scientists and engineers

that have moved our society and the human rays forward, not the kinetic warriors. And I'm not saying they don't have a place, but let's take a look at how far we have come in those 200 years and what categories of people have really enabled that. And I think you'll find scientists and engineers are kicking ass. Last question. Okay. This was a longer email, so I only cut into the question portion. It said last Friday, I was really impressed with how you argued the use of lethal force to protect property. It sort of reconciled me with your podcast after your statement on the Guantanamo prisoner. Boy, that one left me reeling. And if people are lost in this question, I'll feel you in in a second. It almost made me cross myself, and I'm an atheist. I bet my bewildered look when I heard

you say you would murder prisoners without due process was a good match to Tate Fletcher's. So if I get it right, you are very moderate when it comes to the use of lethal force in U.S. soil, but would have no problem executing prisoners of the United States who have endured years of unjustified detention and have not committed any crime against the U.S. How do these two positions reconcile? I understand you want to protect your country. I would argue that is not only the right of every American, but even their duty. It isn't the rule of law part of parcel of American society.

Anyway, I realize I'm just an outlier among your audience, and my question may not be of general interest. Your question is of general interest, and let me lay this out. This is referencing the first time I was on Joe's podcast. I was there with Tate Fletcher and we were having a conversation about Guantanamo Bay. And there was two aspects of the conversation. One was a hypothetical. And I'm going to start with a hypothetical and we'll work our way backwards. And before I do, let's just be clear.

I'm not always crystal clear and precise with the words that I use. I do the best that I can. I try to think through everything that I'm saying. saying as I'm saying it or before I say it, but sometimes I don't unpack things to the level that I wish that I would. And then sometimes things get published and you wish you would have said more or wish you would have said less. This particular one, um, as it like the 80% of I think what I was trying to say. And I'm glad you asked this question. And I picked it because perhaps it'll spread or shed a little bit more light on how I feel. Um, I'm going to dive into the

middle here. You said, I'm very moderate when it comes to the use of lethal force on U.S. soil, but would have no problem executing prisoners of the United States who have endured years of unjustified detention and have not committed a crime against the U.S. Incorrect. All right, that's kind of a conflagration of what I had said. And let me talk about how I get to how I actually feel. But I am, I'd say moderate when it comes to use of lethal force in general. Okay, so on Rogan's podcasts, me, Tate and Rogan were having a conversation. And I And I laid out to them a hypothetical situation, and I know it's unrealistic, but I laid this out because I'm curious to where people's line in the sand is. Sometimes when you say to people, would you take a life, a single life, to save another single life?

And oftentimes people will say no. But what I have found is, as you increase the number of lives saved, you reach the threshold with which somebody, even somebody who would generally consider themselves to be a pacifist, crosses that line and says, yes, you know what, I would take that innocent life to save X number of thousands or million lives in the aggregate. And that's kind of the situation I laid out for them. It's a hypothetical. You are in a room with five people. You have the benefit of being able to look backwards in history and the person that you know is in that room, in that group of five people. And the key to this is you're not able to identify this individual by what they look like, and you're not able to identify them by bringing in witnesses. It's impossible for you to determine positively the

identity of the individual that you are seeking amongst this group of five people that you have in confinement. The person you're looking for is Adolf Hitler at the age of 18. And you know who Adolf Hitler is because, like I said, it's 2020 and you can look backwards. And you know the millions of people that he is going to be responsible for killing, the genocide that his third Reich is going to be responsible for. And what I pitched to them was, okay, again, hypothetical, not trying to get people to say, oh, I'm a murderer and kill everybody. That's not, that's not the point. You have two choices. You can either kill every single person in that room, knowing that it would save millions, tens of millions of lives in the future. Or you can let them all go. Those are

the only two choices you get. They all live or they all die. Now, why did I bring that up in relationship to Guantanamo? You position Guantanamo as an environment where there are people who have endured years of unjustified detention and have not committed any crime against the United States. And what I would say is there are probably some people there, or were it, let's say, at the peak, that fit that description to a degree. But Guantanamo is not the only detainment facility. And in my understanding, it is one of the most secure detainment facilities for those who have been the most radicalized. So is it possible for somebody to show up there by accident? Sure.

But I'm not going to paint the entire facility or all of those people there with that brush. And what we were talking about was essentially what do we do with the people in Guantanamo. Guantanamo. And the way I, or the reason I guess in my own, the way my own mind works, I brought that situation up with those five individuals, the hypothetical is, let's say somebody did end up in Guantanamo Bay and they were there by accident. But in being there, they became equally as radicalized as the most extreme individuals that were in Guantanamo Bay. So you're right. They have not committed a crime against the United States. But given the opportunity to do so,

they would express through violence and terrorist acts their ideology. And I think what it comes down to, and I can only speak for myself and my line in the sand, and my experience having actually locked eyes with these individuals on target and felt the, I don't want to say electricity in the air, but actually palpably felt the hatred and disdain for everything that I stood for as a human being and could equally see that they had the desire to take my life, just like I had the desire to take their life.

There's no re-education out of that position. There's not. There's, you could attempt that, the gloved hand approach, where you could put a fucking bullet through that person's face, which is the option that I have taken. every single time that it has presented itself when I am presented with one of those people. And that is where I land when it comes to people who get incredibly radicalized in those environments. I am not going to present to them the opportunity to do an untold amount of damage. Would they be able to do it on the level of Adolf Hitler?

Probably not, because obviously that was to a degree. I want to say state sponsored because that might be the incorrect terminology. But he was the leader of a nation. and he had access to the things that come with being the leader of a nation. These individuals, they don't have that, but they're looking for it, and I am not going to give that to them and allow them to do something catastrophic before I take action. I'm not looking to murder anybody. I'm not looking to deprive people of due process,

but there are a very narrow set of circumstances, in my opinion, and my opinion only, based on my own experience, where the action needs to be taken first. And that in Guantanamo Bay is one of those places where I feel it would be appropriate. And I don't expect people to agree with me. And you can judge me as harshly as you want to. I have no problem with that. And I can talk about this topic ad nauseum. But hopefully at least that impacts a little bit how I actually feel about this particular topic.

And I wish I would have done a better job on Joe's show. unpacking those thoughts, but guess what? I didn't. And it was a couple years ago. And you're a son of a bitch for dragging it back up again. No, I'm just kidding. Hopefully it helped. And that's it for this Friday. Hope everybody has a good weekend. See you on Monday.