Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Home Security, Alcoholism, and Skydiving without a Parachute

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Three very diverse topics for today: The complexities of first-time gun ownership for an expat returning to the US and advice on how to make your home a harder target. The delicate balance of friendship and concern and the heartfelt worries of a listener regarding their friend's alcohol consumption, and how to navigate the fine line between support and confrontation. Last, a deep dive into extreme sports breaking down the technical precision and high-stakes margins involved in Luke Aikins' historic parachute-free jump from 25,000 feet. ⁠www.vote4america.org⁠ Wolf 21- Check out what they have to offer for the best sleep of your life: ⁠https://www.thewolf21.com⁠ Use Code: "clearedhot" for 30% off of your 1st order The Speed of War Comic Series: ⁠https://www.thespeedofwar.com/⁠ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/⁠

What's going on, everybody? Welcome back, normal Friday for today. We're going to do some Q&A, get you into a weekend. Fourth of July is just around the corner, which is awesome. Before we do that, I am recording it. It, by that I mean this episode. It is Thursday the 27th of 2024 for anybody living in the future. Tonight is the first presidential debate. And I'm not even going to get into my thoughts on any of that. But I will say this. I'm concerned about the trajectory of our country from a political perspective, from a government perspective. I think they're very intrinsically tied, obviously. And I at times feel exactly the same way that a lot of people do. And I say that based off of just listening to people talk, not that I'm out soliciting for anything political because anybody who listened to the podcast hopefully should know this. I expect to disagree with about. about 50% of the population in the United States because a lot of issues cut people right down the middle. And I don't have a problem with disagreeing with people. And I also don't ever want to wear politics on my sleeve because I think there's so much more to life than which political party you may align with. Regardless of what party it may be, you're still my neighbor. If I come up on a car crash, I'm not going to be looking at the back of your car to see which bumper sticker you have before I decide whether or not I'm going to do the best I can to render aid to somebody in need. You're an American

you're a citizen, you're my neighbor, and I'm going to do the best I can, regardless. But I do understand when I hear so many people say that they just don't know what to do, that they're super frustrated, that they feel like, and this is probably the most common one, that their vote doesn't matter anymore. And they'll say that based off of a variety of things. Some of them think that the electoral process, the way that it is, it doesn't matter if they vote or if they don't. some people think that the voting systems themselves are fraudulent the way that we run elections, whatever it may be. People, a lot of them say, I don't feel like it matters if I vote.

And I feel like that is a very dangerous place for our society to trend towards. Whether you agree with the democracy that we have, the republic that we have, the structure, whether you agree with it or not, it is the structure that we are we have. And almost every issue that I think we face as a society has its roots back to politics. And that has its roots back to the people that we elect to go into office. And if we stop participating in that as a citizenship, citizenry, citizenship, whatever one of those words would be correct, I think we're in deep, deep trouble. And I also think there's a targeted effort to make people feel like their vote doesn't matter, to reduce the number of people that go to the polls. Very recently, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine I've known for quite some time.

And he introduced me to a man who works for an organization called Vote for America. Specifically, their website is vote foramerica.org. I don't care what party you vote for. I don't care what your beliefs are. I would actually sacrifice my own life to ensure that you could vote for something that I deeply disagree with just so you had the opportunity to do so. That's how much I care about someone's ability to go out and vote and how little I care about what they actually vote for. The election is in November, obviously. The first debate tonight, I feel like it's going to be, what's the technical description? A shit show. And I'm worried that people aren't going to participate. And it is my ask that people participate.

and that's why I was willing to have this opening discussion about getting people to go out to the polls. Again, I don't give a shit who you vote for, but I do think it is essential that every citizen that is able to goes out and votes. I think we have to fight against this narrative that your vote doesn't matter because it does matter. It matters because a lot of the problems, like I said, cascade down from what we're seeing in society, through government, politics, people we vote into office and then those that are voting them into office. I'm not saying a perfect system. I'm not saying it isn't flawed. But you do have a voice and it does matter. So my ask, if you are registered to vote, please go and vote. If you know somebody who isn't, please talk to them about registering to vote. I'm going to put in the show notes, www. www.voteforamerica.org. If you don't want to go to the show notes, it's vote, the word vote, the number for America, normal spelling and all of these things. So a word, a number, a word. and register to vote. I don't care who you vote for, but I do care that you vote.

It is essential, I believe, to sustain what we have. And that's it. Let's get into this for Friday's episode. Let's the red smoke. Okay, Kathy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, let's dive in.

Three incredibly different questions for today. Really spanning the buffet table. Question one. Andy, thanks for taking my question, which relates to first-time gun ownership. We know each other personally, but for the benefit of the audience, here is some context. I'm an American who's lived in Asia for the past 15 years in two of the safest countries on earth. Violent crime is virtually non-existent, but soon I'm moving back to the U.S. where the same cannot be said about crime. Hence, I'm thinking of getting a gun for my home.

I am not worried about defending myself on the street, as I'm a reasonably big guy who can box and I'm a BJJ Brown. belt, but at home, I may want a gun should I ever have to face an intruder, and wrist locks will not suffice. I'm ashamed to say that I agree with you. Wrist locks, although awesome on the mats, if applied properly, don't hurt your training partners, because actually really the margin of those is pretty tight, are kind of awesome. A lot of people say they're an asshole move, and I don't know, maybe sometimes you need to be a little bit of an asshole, not too much. I digress. Here's my question. What type of gun should I consider, and what type of training would you recommend? end. I think I've touched on this topic many times. And usually when people ask me about guns and

what's going to work best for them, I always say instead of going in with like a preconceived bias, specifically, usually when I'm talking about a pistol, go to a gun store and experiment with as many guns as you can. Shoot a variety of different manufacturers, a variety of different calibers. Play around with it. I mean, they are largely going to have most of the time, depending on the gun store. Gun cases and oftentimes they will have rentals and you really can play around with it and figure out what fits best in your hand. That's what I start people with. We can have the caliber conversation later on, you know, magazine capacity, all of those things. And I would recommend that for you. But self-defense, and I've said this many times, to me, the way that I look at this is in terms of distance.

The farther you have away from somebody who may want to do harm to you, the more time that you have. and why not stop or deter a threat from an extreme visual distance before it gets to the point you need a firearm or Brazilian jiu-jitsu? In my mind, that is optimal. So how can we can control all of our ranges? At the closest range, you're already a brown belt in jiu-jitsu. And I do know this person personally. I have visited him in these countries and they are incredibly safe. The laws are very different.

And I've rolled with him. He's an excellent jiu-jitsu practitioner. so I'm not worried about somebody breaking into his house and like, hey, do you want to, you know, pull guard and have a jujitsu contest? He's going to be just fine. The middle range, I'll call the firearm range, but I'm going to take it a step further. Let's talk about the visual range from farther away. I'm pretty sure I know where this person is going to be living, but we'll leave that out of it for the sake of anonymity. Do you want to be a target? My wife teaches women's self-suffer. defense classes. And one of the first things that she talks about has nothing to do with a gun or your ability in jiu-jitsu or striking or whatever martial art you may pursue. It has everything to do with how you carry yourself. Just changing your posture changes the way that a potential predator may view you. And that is based off of conversations with predator, not directly via her, but through law enforcement connections that we have that spend time talking to people convicted of

violent crimes preying on others. They are not actually looking for hardened targets. They are looking for soft targets. So if you can think about the difference in how your posture and the way that you carry yourself applies in a physical perspective, why not attach that to where you live as well? So let's talk about some things that maybe would deter somebody before even coming to your house. How about this? A well-kept yard that does not provide a lot of opportunity for concealment. Sometimes people confuse cover and concealment, right? Concealment is the ability to move unseen. Cover is something that stops bullets. One helps you in hide and seek. The other one helps you stopping bullets. They're confused sometimes, and that's unfortunate, especially if

somebody is shooting bullets at you. Why not, though, if you had a house side by side, one yard is completely disheveled and you could move around in it and really not be seen based on shadows or just the fact that it's unkempt. And the other one really gives you no opportunity to do so. And you'd be in plain side of everybody approaching whatever entry point that you think you would want to access. How about lighting? How about great external lighting that is on at nighttime? And why would somebody want to do that? Because there probably is an additional cost of at least several dollars per month. You're deterring somebody, especially if the neighboring houses don't have that. As someone who's not a criminal, but can view things from a tactical perspective, I would much rather approach a house

that is blacked out that provides cover and concealment than approach a house that is well lit that provides neither of those things. How about a security camera? I mean, in this day and age, just go on to Google. I know one of the common brand names that comes to mind, and I have no relationship with this brand whatsoever, is ring. And I don't actually know if they spell it with a W or an I as the first letter. But they make every version of camera, from sensor-based cameras to cameras that can turn on lights that are recording all the time that are coming to your phone.

You can do doorbell. I mean, I've seen them in backyards, corners, whatever it may be. Having visible cameras pointing external. How about even just an alarm sticker in your window? The choice to get an alarm is up to the homeowner. but, and I'm not saying lie about having an alarm, but from a visual perspective, if you have a house that has, again, a company that for whatever reason I've seen enough, so it sticks with me,

ADT, I have no relationship with them, that stickers in the window versus a house that doesn't have that in a window. If you were a criminal in somebody who was worried about response time of law enforcement, I think that decision may largely make itself. Whether you have an alarm or not, again, is up to the homeowner. But all these things that we are talking about are things that are a deterrent from distance. Another thing that I would recommend people do is put much longer screws into the hinges of their doors than the traditional, I think it's an inch or an inch and a half. Throw a three inch screw into each one of those holes, and you'll be surprised at the difference and how sturdy your front door is. Present a non-soft,

target. Everything I just described is a long-winded version of trying to say exactly that. Present yourself and your home as the place where somebody doesn't want to come for their first opportunity. It's not to say that it's never going to happen and that they may not make that choice because there's certainly crazy people out there and they do crazy shit. But make it the choice that they don't really want to make. that it's like, God, this is like my measure of last resort if I have to do this.

All of the things I just described are passive, right? You really, I mean, other than lawn upkeep, but I guess you could outsource that to a teenage kid trying to start their first business. All of those things, they're not hard. We know, once the cameras are up, they're up. Once the stickers in the window, it's in. Once the lighting is on, it's on. It's not that hard, and it might buy you a lot more safety and security than you may think.

So that was the far distance. We've covered that the short distance with Jiu-Jitsu, and you added in their striking. I have said this so many times. I don't think Jiu-Jitsu is a complete self-defense system. You have to be able to manage your ranges. And that includes punching, kicking, and everything in between to include when hands come together and then you're grappling. So, now to the gun thing. Like I said, if you want to go the pistol route, go find one that fits well in your hand, and then we can start talking about caliber. And there is such a debate between, is it 457 magnum, should I get a 10-mill, should I get a 9-millimeter? Then it's like

hollow point versus ball and do I need armor piercing rounds that's obviously more for a rifle platform and the reality is this accuracy is more important than the type of projectile that you are shooting at somebody if you gave me the choice between being able to shoot rapidly at somebody with a huge caliber round or take a well-aimed shot and hit what I am aiming at with a smaller caliber I'm going with the latter, not the former, because accuracy is final when it comes to actually ending life with firearms. I have personally seen people shot many, many times, and they are obviously injured, and they probably will expire at some point. But they continue to be able to fight. They continue to be able to do damage. They continue to be able to come after you. This shit is not

the movies. You shoot somebody with a pistol and they don't go flying backwards. You should somebody with a rifle and they just don't always fall to the ground unless you shut their lights off. How do you shut their lights off? Accuracy. It almost doesn't matter whether or not you're shooting a ball round, a frange round, an armor-piercing round, or a fucking tracer right above the bridge of their forehead or the bridge of their nose. It almost doesn't matter. Actually, I'm going to say it doesn't matter if you have that level of accuracy. Accuracy is final.

Worry about the caliber later on. So you have handguns. And for most people, and I have heard the data. supports this, but I've never seen it myself, that the most terrifying noise for somebody to be on the receiving end of is the pumping of a shotgun. So it doesn't have to be just pistol. If it's just purely for home defense, I would consider a shotgun as well. There are some complications with that because it's a little bit of a longer platform. It's actually a way longer platform. But, you know, depending on the type of round that you're shooting, you have to worry far less about

penetration through walls, penetration through actual buildings and structures, pros and cons. And And I tell you what, I don't think I would ever want to be on the receiving end of the old as it's pumped and you're ready to go. I would go ahead and start running at that point. I also probably definitely wouldn't be outbreaking into somebody's house, so less worried about that. But it's food for thought. Whether you go pistol or rifle, another thing I would consider is this. A light source on the pistol.

I just said rifle. I mean shotgun. Even though rifle is a viable option. rifle platforms, though, are going to present to you challenges when it comes to penetration and over penetration, especially if you miss a shot. Yes, the human body will show a slow a ballistic item down, but rifle rounds are coming out at thousands of feet per second. They're going to be coming out at faster, unless you're using like subsonic type, you know, 300 black type stuff. The vast majority of the time, the rifle round is going to be cooking a lot faster than a pistol. that comes with complications.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't consider it, but if it were me first time, I'd probably choose between pistol shotgun. Half of every day occurs at night and having a light source on that particular item, I think is a very good thing. If you end up, if your strategy is to turn all your lights on in your house, if you hear something or somebody,

just understand that you're leveling the tactical playing field a little bit. You can see them, but they can also see you. And if they're coming into your house, unless it's somebody that you know that is targeting you for a totally fucked up reason. And this is a, that would be a gnarly situation because they'd have some level of understanding of your home. You're going to have the tactical advantage in your home. You know your house layout better than anybody else is going to.

You know where you could go and it could provide you both cover and concealment. You know where you could go. Maybe if you have all the bedrooms upstairs, you could be at the landing at the top versus pursuing somebody downstairs. All of those things that could come into it. do you want to turn the lights on and level that playing field? I have a pistol in my fanny pack. I walk around with it all the time during the day,

but it has a flashlight on it because of what I just said, half of every day, except for in Montana in the summer, when four hours of every day occurs at night, sometimes you need a flashlight. And I think it's better to have a flashlight on your weapon than to turn all lights on in a house and level that tactical advantage.

Personal preference. just think about it in addition to selecting the tool of your choice it is my personal opinion that if you are going to purchase and own a firearm you need to purchase and own a safe for just a pistol this could be something that is biometric in nature or a very simple combination that can go right on the bedside if it's a shotgun that's not going to fit in there so i would get something vertical or actually they make some horizontal and they do make there's a lot of companies out there that make secure storage devices that look like modern day furniture. So you could securely store it in areas that people may not even recognize that it is there. A lot of the times, though, that

requires like a fob of some kind or like a, it looks like a credit card, almost like a hotel room key to swipe over the certain area and then it will open. You may not have that on you. Simplest form is going to be just a safe. So you're going to need to get something to securely store this firearm and obviously needs to fit the firearm in itself. I do not. think one should be purchased without the other. And that's where I would start you. Cover all of your ranges. You're already great at one. Focus now on the other two. Decide if you're never going to leave the house with it with the pistol, I honestly would probably push you towards the shotgun. If you think that you were going to go towards a concealed carry someday, I might lean you a little

bit more towards a pistol or both just because that way if you're going to conceal carry at some point, you're going to need a pistol. So that would be my reasoning behind that. And hopefully that helps and creates a bigger picture of how I view security of not only individual, but property and, you know, that visual distance. Question number two. This one I'm going to leave a little bit of personal details out of because the person asks me to and I want to keep it nice and broad. All right. My best friend of two years is in her late 20s. Successful career, good social life, goes to the gym regularly, and also has about three plus drinks a day. You could multiply that for weekends.

She openly admits to me that her drinking is unhealthy, but she doesn't feel or want or need to stop. Because according to her, she's never let it negatively impact her profession or social life. However, all of her friends, except for me, also drink a lot. The main thing I struggle with is how to express my concerns with her lifestyle in a respectful but effective way. When I casually express how she would benefit from drinking less, she tends to agree with me. Our friendship cruises along, but she doesn't change anything. On the other hand, when I seriously confront her about her inability to stick to her sober weekday, self-commitments, and suggests that her lack of self-control is more concerning than she makes it out to be,

and that quitting will only get harder the longer she puts it off, her response is to tell me I'm not her boyfriend, that I'm not her father, and that I'm crossing boundaries. She then chooses to hang with me less for a bit after such confrontations and hang instead with her friends who make her alcohol consumption feel normal. thankfully she forgives me and our friendship eventually returns to normal once or twice i've seen her do a full dry month by her own will and actually stick to it that gives me hope for her but her then her drinkly eventually trends back to what it was before my overall concern is that the long-term trend doesn't look good i'm concerned that if she doesn't commit to actual lasting change she will eventually cross a threshold they can't be returned from or she will get a DUI and that whole thing about her professional life not being affected will go out the window I am aware that quitting alcohol is a personal decision that she has to make for herself and that I can only control my own decisions. My current plan is just to be her honest friend, lead by example, and hope that I can at least have some passive influence on her, which I seem to currently.

But I fear that when I leave for the military, 100% of her social circle will be drinkers, and by the time I get out, she'll have gone too far down the path for us to be friends. I fear one day I'll regret not having taken more assertive measures, but I also suspect that doing so would only expedite my removal from her life. I'm probably taking too much ownership of a problem that is completely out of my control, but it's hard not to when you care a lot about someone. Man, deep question. I'm going to break this down into a few parts here. I'm trying to find the first one. Okay. She doesn't feel a want or need to stop because, according to her, she's never let it negatively impact her.

her professional or social life. Yeah, cool. Yet. Just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it's not going to. Just because you get away with something that's not a good idea does not guarantee, like much in mutual funds, if you read the bottom or any investing, you know, past performance is not an indicative or is not indicative or what is the language they use? Past performance essentially does not guarantee future performance. why do they say that? Because it's true. Just because it has worked in the past, just because it worked yesterday, does not mean that it's going to work tomorrow. You know, I drank a lot in my 20s.

The community of people that I was with, it was almost an equity. You know, it's not actually not equity. It was currency. How much you could drink was literally a measuring stick to a degree. And it got old as I got older because it hurts more. And we got to lay with a lot of dumb shit. But I have no doubt had we continued down that path and maybe not even accelerated, but just kept doing what we were doing, the consequences would have come and they would have sucked. And I say that because I know people that didn't deviate from that path. And that is exactly what happened to them. Because it doesn't matter if it worked yesterday.

That isn't a guarantee that it will work tomorrow. Personally and professionally, I don't think you should ever be shooting to aim for the status quo. That good is good enough. You should constantly be attempting to improve, fill in the blank. In the military, you could say you're fighting position. In a relationship, you could say your relationship or communication, with your significant other. Always trying to be a little bit better.

Maybe she could live her whole life like that and escape the odds. She could be statistically anomalous. I know very few people that have been able to do so. And maybe her behavior will naturally change as she gets older, as the consequences of drinking from a physical perspective, get more severe. But also maybe not, because habits, especially those with addictive qualities, like alcohol, it 100% can physically and mentally and probably even emotionally

addict you. If the hooks get in deep enough, for some people, you cannot get them out. So, of course, modifying behavior earlier on is better, and I hope that she can, because the odds are not in her favor. It's like the reverse hunger games. So how do you, your question, the bottom line question is this. how do you express your concerns with her lifestyle in a respectful but effective way? Do you want to be respectful or effective is my question?

And I hate binary choices because I don't believe what I just asked you is legitimate. There's, of course, C, if A is respectful and B is effective and C would be both, right? You want to be both. But what if respectful isn't working? And you need to be more on the nose. You need to be more confrontational. what if you have to be so confrontational this person doesn't want to be your friend anymore? But what if you not being her friend anymore eventually becomes the change that she needs to potentially save her life?

And again, there's a lot of hypothesis going out here. A lot of assumptions being made. Which one of those would you rather have? Would you rather have this person as your friend that ends up doing something stupid? and I worry about DUIs for people, but far less than I worry about them killing somebody else. Because oftentimes it's not the drunk driver that dies. It's the innocent person that they hit. So I'm far more concerned with a drunk driver hitting somebody else than killing themselves. So would you rather be kind and have your friend kill somebody or the person that you need to be

and give them the feedback that they need to hear that might sever your friendship and relationship but potentially save their life? It's a choice for you to make. I'd also say this. Have you ever considered that what you allow in your presence is your standard? You see this behavior. You are voicing your concerns. They are going unheeded up to a degree until you push hard enough. And then it all comes back together. You're voluntarily engaging in this. You are getting ready to join the military. You are going to be leaving this person's life. How much does it mean to you? I'm not going to say you're enabling this person because it doesn't sound like you are, but you're tolerating it.

And tolerating it and not taking the steps every step that you could, I'm not going to say you're complicit if something does happen, but I bet you'll have a sense of regret and you'll have a sense of remorse. And I don't want that for you. So I would flip this a little. little bit, put yourself in her shoes. What would you want from somebody that truly considers themselves to be a good friend? Would you want them to only push until you get a little irritated with it and then go back to what it is you were doing? Or would you want them to push hard enough

where you might get really pissed at them? Or you might not want to be friends with them anymore, but it causes you to question why they said to you the things that they did. I can't answer that question for you, but that's the question I would pose to you. Regret and remorse are shitty things to deal with in life. Do everything you can not to live with those. And not all friendships are meant to last. A friend will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Next question, completely and utterly shifting gears.

I recently came across Luke Aiken's jump from 25,000 feet into a net without a parachute. If you haven't seen this, please pause the podcast right now. Go to Google and put in Luke Aiken's, what would I put in? I would put in Luke Aiken's skydye without a parachute. It's fucking awesome. Having never jumped this person, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. More specifically, how difficult is it to navigate onto the target net with just free fall alone? How thin is the margin for error with your considerable experience?

I figured you could explain. I'll do my best. And I have met Luke a few times, had fantastic experiences with him. For greater context, like don't view this one jump by itself. Luke probably has, I'm going to guess, 20,000 skydives. He has an airstrip at his house that he lives at. He's also a pilot with thousands of hours. He has been immersed in aviation, both in airplanes,

and out of them for a really long time. He's a member of the Red Bull Air Force with a couple mutual friends that I have. He is a fucking legend in the skydiving community. So experience level, off the charts. This is not somebody who had never jumped before. It was like, hey, let's give this a go. Leading up to this, I've never spoken with him directly about this, but I've spoken with enough people that I think I understand how they worked up to him

jumping without a parachute. Excuse me. First, they practice with him having a parachute on. So the net, I don't know the total distance or circumference of the net, how wide it was. But one of the things that we use in aviation is there are visual indicators, and it's the colors of light. It can be all white if you're high, all red, if you're low, and a combination of if you are right on glide slope, meaning you're coming in right when you should be. So it is my understanding. that instead of just trying to spot himself over this net, they actually created underneath it a lighting system that was very similar. So it would shift colors depending on if he was, I'm going to, since he was right over the top of it, we'll just say north, south, east or west.

If he was drifting up or down or left or right, he was getting a visual indication. And from 25,000 feet, good luck trying to tell whether you are directly over the top of the net or not. These visual indicators, and you could make it huge and you can make the lights easy to see. it doesn't do the job for him, but it certainly gives him feedback as to whether or not he's on target or drifting off of target. How difficult is it to navigate onto the target net? There's a couple things here. One, the spot or the location where you exit the aircraft is, of course, going to be critical. And this comes to the practice jumps that I know that they did. They probably did the same jump run in the same area with the same net setup, and they continued probably to go lower and lower and lower and lower until eventually it got to a place where they went without a parachute. He, I am sure, spotted the aircraft himself with his knowledge and experience of both aviation and skydiving, got to the place where he knew where he needed to get out to be over the top or close to it. And you actually have an immense amount of control over the direction that you move in freefall.

You're not flying, you are falling, but you can manipulate your body, deflecting the wind, and you can go forward and back and left and right. And you can cover a substantial amount of distance, especially from 25K. So you get out at 25K, you line the lights up, and it's kind of refinement on the way down. And I say that, and it makes it sound super easy because I'm not at 25,000 feet without a parachute risking my life. He ended up flipping over onto his back. He hit the net. I'm sure it had a deceleration profile to it. And yeah, I mean, he survived.

It was amazing. Seriously, go to Google, check it out. I don't want to speak for him. There was obviously risk involved. and risk to his life. But I suspect by the time he did it live, meaning without the parachute, he felt fully prepared,

and he had a very, very, very high level of confidence. And it took a lot to get him to that point, but he took all those requisite steps. It was an amazing jump. I think it's super cool to see people pushing the boundaries in that way. I'm glad he survived. And that is all I have for this Friday. See you.