Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 81

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. Thoughts on the Rittenhouse verdict 2. SOF members teaching shooting and clearance tactics 3. Advice on moving on from an LEO career to a "small town," how to translate your MIL/LEO experience on a resume Enjoy

Good morning, everybody. Here we are again. We find ourselves on Friday morning. This is the day after Thanksgiving. I'm recording this the day before Thanksgiving. So I have the hope, let's start with, that everybody has an amazing day surrounded by their friends, family, people that they love. And before we get into this Q&A, which today will be a little bit of Q&A and a slight rant, perhaps, I have one sponsor for today's show. And that sponsor is Benchmade. Now, I've done quite a few ad reads for them. So what I'm going to suggest today is, is that you go to benchmaid.com. And I'm going to suggest that you do that because the holidays are right around the corner. And if you want to have an awesome stocking stuffer, then personally, my thoughts are a useful knife for whatever purpose that they may be into, maybe tactical hunting, everyday carry. Maybe they just like having a blade on them. They have fixed blade. They have folding blades. Absolutely go check it out.

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Actually, I'll throw one last thing in there. This will come out on Friday, which I think is Black Friday, and then Monday is Cyber Monday. I always get a little twisted up about that, meaning I get confused on what you're supposed to do and what the sale is supposed to be. Here's the deal. I'm in town until December 15th. I'm going to launch some new shirts for the podcast, probably as this, not maybe not as, as this episode is coming out, but on Friday, I'll launch some. There's not going to be some crazy sale because guess what?

I'm a one-man show, small business owner trying to make it work as well. So if you're looking for stocking stuffers, though, as I mentioned with Benchmade, I got T-shirts, I got coffee, I got stickers that they can put on Gettys or vehicle windows, whatever you want it to be. Go to shop.clerhotpodcast.com and find those things. And if you order it before December 13th, I can guarantee that it'll get you before Christmas. If you ordered it after that, it's going to be a problem because I'm going to be out of the country for a little bit. So get on there, check it out.

And yeah, let's just dive into this. Full Out Friday number 81 coming at you. Good morning, everybody. Like I said, in the ad read. This is going to be recorded, or was recorded, I guess by the time you guys hear this, the day before Thanksgiving. So what do we have? We have a four-day weekend. So I'm not going to waste a lot of time.

I'm going to try to keep this as short as a possible, but also impactful, and get everybody into their holiday weekend because I would much rather you enjoy the weekend or do something while listening to this in your weekend that is enjoyable. So here we go. First topic today is Kyle Rittenhouse. And to be honest, I'm not a fan of this topic because it is, in my opinion. And actually, before I even get into my opinion, let's talk about what I'm not. I'm not a legal expert. Not a lawyer. I've been into a courtroom one time, and I was not being directly charged in that particular instance.

And what I'm saying is that I am not an expert in this field. So when I talk about the Kyle Writtenhouse situation, it is my opinion, in my opinion only. It's obviously not anything that is based or backed in legal experience. So let's just keep that in mind. Now, why do I actually hate this particular topic? I hate this topic because I find it to be a very broad set of conversations that many people, not all, are trying to jam into one very specific thing, specifically being that trial. In my opinion, there are a variety of different conversations. There is a conversation about having somebody that age with a weapon,

where they were. And I say that without judgment. I'm saying that there's a conversation about that. There's a conversation about what led up to the societal or social unrest that led to this individual being in that situation. There is a discussion about self-defense and probably a variety of other ones that are escaping me right now. But the point is, what I see is that people are trying to focus on the trial and wrap all of those things into one. And they're trying to take a verdict that, in my understanding, at least, is specifically about self-defense. And they're trying to wrap all of those other things in. And I think that that is incorrect. I think what the trial, or what the trial was all about, was justifiable use of force in a self-defense situation.

And I'm assuming that in that they talk about what led up to the use of force and probably shortly what after. But it's not a trial about the parents of a 17-year-old kid and the decisions that were made and whether or not he should have been allowed to go there. If they knew to go there, a lot of the other things that rolled into this. So I'm going to focus specifically on just my thoughts on the trial, which it is very interesting to hear people's thoughts. and there are some very vocal people. And I won't name any names, but I'll just list off a few things that I've heard very recently. One of them was essentially if he didn't break any laws, then we need to change the laws. And the other one is essentially that we need to throw out the system because of the result that was netted.

And I'll start maybe with that one and work my way backwards. This, to me, is very similar. to the presidential election, where obviously there were two parties. Each party wanted the result that those individuals on that side of the political fence were looking for. And for one party, they didn't get the result that they wanted. So they basically said that the system is invalid. My problem with that is if the system had netted them the result that they wanted, they would hold it up as the pillar of perfection. Look, this is the result. This is what we wanted.

It cannot be questioned. And to me, there's a huge cognitive dissidence in that position. Because if you don't get the result you want, you want to tear down the system. When you do get the results you want, you want to hold the system up. as something pure and that is beyond reproach. And it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes, believe it or not, people listening to this or watching this, you're not going to get what you want and things that you don't agree with or believe in are going to happen. And that doesn't mean the system is flawed. Let's go back to the verdict, the not guilty verdict when it came to.

And again, my understanding of what the trial was about was about the justifiable use. of force in a self-defense situation. And people will argue about what led up to that self-defense situation, whether it should have ever occurred. And again, I'm not a legal expert, but my understanding of what happened in that case is they looked at it purely from the justifiable use of force. When I look at the actions that that individual took and what led up to him actually pulling the trigger. One, my opinion doesn't matter. But two, he was tried by a jury of his peers that had more evidence than I have seen, more information than I am aware of. They heard from both sides of defense, you know, the prosecutor and the defense. And they came up to a unanimous

decision. And this is how our system is supposed to work. What I'll tell you is this, is that I'm I'm not an expert in the legal aspects of self-defense. But what I will tell you is this. If I had been in that situation, I likely would have reacted in exactly the same way. And again, back off here a little bit too, because I'm not saying I would have taken the actions that he did leading up to it. I'm not even going to enter into the conversation about somebody showing up in that environment with a long gun, that age for my. Myself, personally, I think it would be very unlikely that I would have been there. But I'm just interjecting myself into exactly that situation where it came to the use of force.

I think, based off what I have seen, what I have read, what I have listened to, I very likely would have taken the exact same actions. And people may not like hearing that. Actually, there's probably a large portion of people that don't like hearing that. And they're probably the same people who are saying that the verdict shows that our criminal justice system is broken. And on this particular issue, it is my opinion and my position that I disagree with you. I do believe that human beings have the inherent right to self-defense. And if anybody thinks that somebody's swinging a skateboard at you or pointing a gun at you is not a threat to your life, then I don't actually know what to tell you.

I'm not going to argue with you about threat and what you should do or what you could do. what I'll say to you is you've probably never been in that situation and I'm really glad that you haven't but if you ever are in that situation you're probably going to really hope that you have the means to defend yourself and if I'm being totally honest I might have actually acted quicker than that individual did somebody points a gun at me I'm sorry but you're probably not going to walk away with just your arm injured. But that's just me. And my background is obviously very different this individual.

But let's say that it was me in that situation. What would I hope for? I would hope for a jury of my peers to hear all of the information, all of the evidence, and to make the best decision that they thought was possible. And I do believe that is what has happened in this situation. And I actually think it's very important that the verdict came back with what it was because if it hadn't, it would have eroded individuals right to defend themselves. And I think that is a very, very dangerous place to be. I am not glad that those individuals were

killed. I actually believe that the taking of life should be the measure and metric of absolute last resort. But if you get to that place and you need to take action and you are legally justified in protecting yourself, then the system that we want to put our faith into, hopefully it's going to net that result. Because like I said, if it didn't, it's going to erode the rights of individuals to protect themselves. Now, for people who are really upset at the result and they think it's an injustice of our criminal justice system, I don't know what to tell you because I'm pretty sure.

I'm not going to say I guarantee because I hate absolutes, but I'm pretty sure. If the verdict had come back as guilty, you would have put it on that pedestal of, yes, this is exactly what this country needed. This is proof that our system works. So it's not the system that you actually have a problem with. It's just the result that came out of it. And that's not how it works. I also think that for people, let's say those who disagree with the verdict, let's say we'll enter a fantasy land here for a second, that they somehow were put into that situation. And I'm sure they would argue like, well, I would never be there.

Like, that's okay. That's beside the point. That's not what I'm saying. Let's say that you are. And you took whatever actions you felt necessary. And there was either injury or loss of life. You would be thanking your lucky stars to get a jury of your peers to hear all of the information. And I think it might actually change what you think about that verdict. But the bottom line in all of this and why I'm not a fan of, again, talking about this topic is that there are so many micro conversations.

I find it very difficult for people to peel the onion and talk about them in small sections without trying to ram it into just the verdict in and of itself. Because the verdict in and of itself, from my understanding, is a very slim piece of the pie. And I don't think it's necessarily over. I do believe that this particular individual might have some civil liability. And again, I'm not an expert and I'll let that play itself out. But I think our system works. I think that people need to take a step back and detach their emotions before they start trying to rip down a system and criticize a system that they would be relying upon if they had been put in that exact same situation. Just because you get the result that you don't want doesn't mean that the system is broken.

It just means that that's how life goes sometimes. And instead of tearing down something that is not perfect, and I'm sure there are flaws in the system, instead of tearing it down and basically leaving nothing behind, like if you have a better structure, you have a better approach or a better strategy, I'm all the years. And maybe there are improvements that we could be made. But just because it's something that you don't like to say things like, well, this system is broken. I don't think you know what the fuck you're talking about. So I hate this topic. I have no issue talking about the little small segments and pieces of it, but I just think there's so much of the forest loss for the trees on this

that it's something that I would rather stay away from because it's very hard to have an objective conversation about it. And I think there was something else that I opened with. There was two things. But you know what? I can't even remember what the first one was. Oh, it was somebody saying, if there were no laws broken, then we should change the law.

laws. Well, for that individual, what I'll say is your vision will be better if you pull your head out of your fucking ass and take a look at what self-defense actually is. And just because you've never been in a self-defense situation doesn't mean we need to change the laws again because a jury of individuals unanimously came up with a decision that you don't like. Get over yourself in your fucking Twitter page and let's maybe find some reasons that we can come together. The whole situation was a complete and utter shit show. I wish to be. none of it had happened. And maybe we should tackle the issues that led up to this happening because at this point, the trial has been concluded, and I think our system, although not perfect,

works. And I don't think people realize what would happen if he had been found guilty based on just the justifiable use of force alone. It would have been an erosion of the individual's rights of self-defense, and that had been a very, would have been, in my hypothesis, a very, very dangerous and slippery slope. Two more questions for today, and then you guys are off for your holiday weekend. Question one, is there a particular reason why there is next to no footage of you shooting guns on YouTube? What is your stance on former soft members teaching specific shooting and CQB techniques to civilians? Well, there's a lot of things that there are no next to no footage of me doing on YouTube.

Cooking would be a good one. Doing jiu-jitsu would be another one. Riding a bicycle would be a good one. Flying an airplane would be a good one. I don't know, there's a lot. And the reason that there is not a lot of footage of me shooting guns on YouTube is that it's not what I do professionally anymore. There are so many people out there who specialize and focus on specifically firearms education, training, reviews, fill in the blank. And what I would much rather do is point individuals at those organizations.

One of my favorite, fieldcraft survival with my Glover. Fantastic fucking human being. one of my favorite people on the face of planet Earth, and they specialize in doing this stuff. So I see no reason to try to, well, not only is there no reason, there's no desire to try to curate that type of content or record it for myself and put it out there when it's just so easy to go say, hey, go look at what they're doing at Fieldcraft Survival and do that. And this ties directly into, what's your stance on former soft members teaching specific shooting in CQB techniques to civilians?

CQB is close quarters battle. I'll broadly describe this as clearing rooms, hallways, and structures, things of that nature. I don't have a problem at all with former soft members teaching shooting from a mechanical perspective, even from a tactical shooting perspective. They are as far as people who have and use weapons as a primary tool in their life, they're kind of at the apex, right? There's not a lot of people who have that tool belt, and when they reach down, you're going to be pulling out a pistol. and probably have a long gun slung on you. So they're a wealth of knowledge. And the particular CQB techniques, in my understanding for the people that I know, it's a broad overview, you know, the amount of time that it would take in a civilian

shooting course or the number of civilian shooting courses that you would have to take to get people to a level of understanding and technical proficiency of. some of the units that these individuals came from, I don't even necessarily know it's possible. But what they can do is they can teach very basic principles. Angles would be a good one. You know, actions at the threshold of a door. You're not tipping the hat on like super secret tactics at all, but you are exposing people to very basic procedures and techniques that they could use in the safety of their own home to. protect themselves, you know, maybe utilizing stairs in high ground inside of your house,

maybe barricading yourself or thinking about yourself, yourself and your house from that tactical perspective, going to these courses can really open people's eyes. I don't think, and again, going back to the stuff that Mike teaches in his courses, or maybe Tim Kennedy teaches it the sheepdog response courses, they're not trying to make like an FBI HART or, you know, a meal team six or CAG or any of that stuff, it's just an intro and an overview. And as long as it stays as that, the general concepts that people can then take back and overlay to their actual real life and it's kept at that level, I have no issue with it whatsoever. If somebody is charging money and saying, hey, I'll turn you into a SEAL Team 6 operator,

or fill in the blank, I'll turn you into a Greenbury operator or Ranger or a MARSOC, that I would have a little bit more of an issue with. But what I will tell people is that if you pull the curtain back on the high speed tactics that people think we are doing overseas. I hate to tell you, they're far lower speed than you think. Their work, they work everywhere. And that's one thing I think is important. If you ever encounter somebody that claims that they have this special tactic and then you realize that only one place, like it only works in this one zip code for some reason.

And it's only being used in this one zip code for one reason or state or country. I'm not going to say it's bullshit, but I am going to say the, alarm bells should be going off a little bit because tactics should transcend geography and zip code. All right. You should be able to use it on the east coast and the west coast, north and south, all over the place. If it doesn't work in all those areas, it may not be a great tactic or a version of that tactic. So as long as they're not trying to sell this experience of training you into this high speed operator, I'm totally fine with that. I actually think a small introduction to tactical shooting and tactical thinking, which is really what CQB is, is great, as long as it's kept

within reason. And I trust the people that I know, at least, that are teaching that to be able to hold that line. Last question for today. My 45-year-old LEO, living in Austin, Texas. I've been in law enforcement for just over 20 years now, and I intend to retire next year with 20 years with my current agency. Austin was a great city when I first moved to the area in the late 90s but has turned into a political shit show that has ruined the city. My wife and I are in agreement that this is not the environment that we want our kids to grow up in, so we are moving to the mountains. Given the fact that I will be 47 when I retire from the PD, and I am not want to sit around and do nothing, I will be looking for jobs this year. I'm trying to distance myself from

LEO work as much as possible. The profession was a great one for a long time, and I would not trade my years of service for anything, but it has changed in such a big way that I no longer want to continue that path unless I absolutely have no other choices. I guess my question for you is, how do you start over? I have many skills and some certifications that I received in my career as an LEO. And some translate to the in parentheses civilian slash corporate world. But I am not sure how that will work in small town, Colorado. I served in the Marine Corps, in the mid-90 prior, Marine Corps, Marine Corps, of course there's only one, sorry, Semperify Marines. In the mid-90s, prior to going into law enforcement and have been involved in judici for 20 plus years. So I'm not afraid of

hard work or adversity. Just wondering how you trade or how you made the transition from service life in big city to post service life in a small town. Any input would be greatly appreciated. So my own personal experience on this one might be a little bit less applicable to you unless you want to go down the path that I did. And that was detaching myself from working from somebody else and creating an environment where I work for myself. And now that I've been doing that for, I actually started doing that slightly before I moved to Montana. So I've been at this for six going on seven years of self-employment, which I'm going to tell you right now, the beginning of that journey is, is terrifying. It's full of unknowns, more unknowns than knowns. It's full of

failure. It's full of frustration. It's full of stumbling points that you could turn into adversity or you could turn into motivation, but it's also incredibly rewarding to the point where I don't think I could do anything else again. I do not think that I could work for somebody else. Well, I take that back. I have the ability to work for somebody else. It would have to be an incredibly compelling reason and a great leader and a great team and a great environment. Absent that, there's no way that that's going to happen. So I didn't look for work when I moved to small town, not the Calvis as a small town, but when I moved to a smaller town in Montana. So that may not work for you, but I'm going to make some assumptions here based off your email. One, it says you're retiring,

so I'm going to assume there's going to be a pension of some kind tied to that, which is a great thing. And having said that as well, one of the things that helped me when I got, when I left working for other people, is that I do have a military retirement. I was medically retired, so I maintained my health care benefits, and I do get a tax-free pension due to my disability rating. And anybody who would claim that that's not a huge leg up when it comes to having flexibility to go and explore things on your own is what we like to call full of shit, right? It's a huge advantage. And so hopefully you have that as well because you can leverage that advantage. And it can put you into a place where you don't have to take every single opportunity. So my assumption is

that you have that. My advice to you would be take the time now before you move to figure out a job that you would wake up happy to go to every day or three days a week, whatever it may be, and that you feel would be really empowering and enriching for you. And I would back your way into the salary. I would look at the money aspect of it last and the enrichment and empowerment aspect of it first. And one thing I'll say is this. This is something that I see often when it comes to military and law enforcement. I just had a conversation about this on the weekly Patreon call that we do. And we were talking about resumes, to broadly put it, you have more than the certificates and the skills that you received in your LEO and military career. And oftentimes

what I'll see people do when they get out of the military is they'll just list the position that they had or they'll put their military awards up there, which is going to be okay if you're handing your resume over to somebody who comes from that background. But if you're going to hand a resume to somebody who doesn't come from the world that you are coming from, don't expect them to understand what those things mean. And there are, writing a resume is an art form and one that I'm not very good at, right? I'm coloring with crayons when it comes to a resume, but I have talked with enough people and gotten enough feedback and enough advice from people who are trying to help me out is it's not about the skills and certifications that you had in law enforcement. It's about your ability

to handle stress, to be a member of a team, to be responsible for, you know, in the military world, if you're a department head, you're individually responsible, at least in the SEAL community, for millions of dollars worth of equipment. So you can put on a resume, you know, communications department head for a Bravo platoon, SEAL Team 3. Nobody knows the fuck that means. Or you could write almost a paragraph on individually responsible for maintaining operation and storage of X million dollars of complicated, you know, HF, VHF, UHF, SACCOM equipment, utilized across, you know, battlefields and the number of training evolutions. And you can break out what those things are that you did.

You can say, you know, if you were a shift leader, you don't need to put down, hey, I was a shift leader. You could put down responsible for X, you know, square miles. of city area and Austin with X number of individuals underneath me. And you could talk about your ability to make decisions under stress, the personnel that you manage, the responsibilities of the job. So I'm not sure where you're going to land in small town, Colorado. But what I will say is when you go into an interview, if you choose to go that path or you're going to need a resume, focus more on what those jobs were, the execution of your duties, that's going to have a much

greater impact on somebody reading it than just this was my job, this was my rank, this was my position. A lot of that's going to be lost. So I didn't really ask me about resumes, but for anybody out there leaving the military, that's probably the biggest piece of advice I could give you when you go into those environments. Tone down the military position in military awards, obviously list them, but break out exactly what you did or were responsible for in the execution of those roles or what you got the award for. And it's really going to help you break that barrier for people who may not know what the hell it is that you're talking about. But again, I assume that you have a little bit of a buffer when it comes to your retirement, which that is great. Look now, though. Take this year and look.

I would visit many times, as many times as financially possible for you to do so, get an idea of where you want to live, get an idea of the pace of the town. And to figure out, one, what options are available for you. Two, do you like any of those options? Maybe you don't. So then three, Maybe you could create something for yourself. The best way you can do that is give yourself as much time as possible. And I wish you the best of luck. And for everybody to listen out there, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great weekend.

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