Jocko Podcast - 338: Uvalde School Shooting Tragedy. Tactical Response Assessment.

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Jocko discusses what happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. Suggestions and an assessment.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 338 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. When I was teaching close quarters combat, which is, you know, going into rooms, going into buildings and clearing rooms and clearing buildings, clearing hallways, clearing stairwells, there's all kinds of things that a seal has to do correctly when they do this. And there are a lot of rules, a lot of standard operating procedures that you have to follow. how you enter the room where your feet go where you aim your weapon and where you

don't aim your weapon how far you stay off the wall what you say to your shooting buddy when you need to move what you how you respond to your shooting buddy when he needs to move there's a bunch of verbal and nonverbal signals that you give with your voice with your weapon with your posture with your actions. You got to know how to give those signals. You got to know how to receive those signals. And then there's a bunch of calls that you actually make. And again, some of those calls you make and you pass that word via verbal or other types of visual signals, when to move, where to move, what to address in a particular room or in a hallway or in a building.

Because you've got to prioritize and execute when you go into a room. There's multiple things going on. to figure out which one's the most important one you got to support your shooting buddy at all times that's cover and move you got to do all this with simple clear concise communication you got to make sure that while you're doing all these things you're supporting the overall intent of the mission which is decentralized command so there's a whole bunch of things going on when you're doing close quarters combat and when i taught this there was you know we as instructor cadre Would get really critical about the actions that the guys entering the room made because we wanted them to stay tight on the SOPs because Imagine you enter a room and you go where you're not supposed to go you can get shot by by your partner

So so you got to get guys to do the right thing and then they've got to be able to make decisions they got to be able to make decisions quickly and so us as cadre you know we would we would definitely harp on these guys and and and And give them firm critique when they screwed something up. Hey, you're too far off the wall. Or you should address that open door first. Or you didn't clear behind that couch over there. So we're getting on these guys. And there's a million points to critique and criticize.

And we did that. And again, the reason we did that was to make sure that they follow the SOPs. Because when you get into a platoon or you're in a platoon and you don't follow the SOPs, there's some SOPs if you don't follow them in CQC. you can get yourself killed, you can get your buddy killed, you can get the, everybody killed. So we're hypercritical. Now, as I watch that, and as my cadre, as I watch my cadre, you know, I sort of detached and would, would let the cadre sort of run those finer points of the standard operating procedures. And I got to a point where, you know, I would talk to guys when they do.

something wrong where I'd say hey you did what you did let's figure out why so so in other words oh echo went into the room and he addressed this door instead of that couch first you know and I could say hey that door was open it's a bigger I would say hey echo you you address the the couch and you turned your back on the door what were you thinking about because I wanted to know why you did it so that I can learn more and it can allow me to teach better, right? If I know why you did something and you say, well, you know, I thought that the biggest threat was the one that was closest to me. Well, this one might be further away, but if it's a bigger space to hide behind whatever the case may be. So as I learned why people made mistakes that helped me be able to teach these things

better because then I could close some of those loose ends as I'm teaching it. And I took this to other areas of training as well, especially with the leaders, right? Especially with the leaders, the young seal leaders, trying to understand not just what they did wrong and point out to them what they did wrong, but why they did it so that I could adjust the training to address the shortfall and I could address and adjust my own, my own methodology of instruction to make sure that I explained it in a way that they understood why we were doing something a certain way. So I needed to figure out, I needed to figure out what they were thinking and why they were thinking it. And I learned a lot from doing that.

And of course, we would do this type of thing after missions as well, the debrief. We get done with the mission. We immediately are going to go do a debrief. What happened? Why it happened? What we could do better? And of course, if we had someone on the team that messed something up, I would talk to him about why they did it,

not just ream them out because they screwed up, but hey, what were you thinking when you made that move? What were you thinking? Why did you move into that building? What did you think was going to happen? And, you know, if you read Extreme Ownership, the first chapter after the Blue on Blue, of course, we obviously debriefed

and we created some new standard operating procedures to prevent it from happening again, or at least mitigate the risk as much as we could. And if you read the rest of the book, there were even more situations that we talk about in the book that were close to being catastrophic fracturicides, catastrophic blue-on-blues. But we were able to stop those from happening,

either from our procedures that we had put in place or our better understanding of what could unfold or our awareness of what was happening. And when I got home from that deployment, I debriefed that operation, that blue-on-blue. I debriefed it over and over again to the SEAL teams and the platoons that were going through training and the troops that were going through training to try and pass on the lessons learned to everyone. And then we set up training that we organized the training so that those lessons learned would get embedded into these young SEAL leaders. understand how these things happened so they could prevent them from happening. And I was told many times over the years that the training and awareness that we gave people prevented many

friendly fire incidences from happening. And I mean, case in point, Jason Gardner's got a few in that he, that happened to him on his deployment to Afghanistan where he straight up said, you know, like, hey, if I wouldn't have been aware, if we wouldn't, wouldn't have had that blue on blue training, we probably would have had a blue-on-blue for real. So I heard that many times. Now, a lot of people have been asking me about the horrific scenario that unfolded in Yvalde, Texas. Psychotic and sociopathic gunmen entered a school and killed 19 innocent children and two adults. And I can't even fathom the grief and the, the, the, the, just trauma for those families, the horror, the, the whole in their lives that they have now that can never be replaced. And the potential of life that was thrown away before it even had a chance to grow.

And it's just a completely heartbreaking situation. And what has made the situation even harder to process was the response from law enforcement on the scene. And of course, we all like to think about and talk about what I would have done. What I would have done if I were there. And I get that. Everyone is horrified by what took place. And we all like to think that we would have been braver, that we would have been more decisive,

that we would have had more situational awareness, that we would have handled the scenario in a way that created a better outcome. Of course, we all like to, we would all give anything to be able to create a better outcome in that situation. and unfortunately and the situation has already happened the outcome is complete and we can't change what happened and what the response was

any more than I could change the decision a young seal made when he walked into a room and moved the wrong way or addressed the wrong threat I couldn't change what he had done I could tell him what he did wrong but what I really needed to do as I said, was to understand why he made that decision and learn from it and then figure out how

I could teach other people to not make that mistake. And that is unfortunately the best I can offer in this situation as well. Now, there are other things to talk about with regards to contributing factors in this situation and you've got mental health, you got media violence, you got dehumanization of people, you've got gun laws and their enforcement or lack of enforcement. And I talked about some of those on the Jocko Unravelling podcast with Daryl Cooper and all those. The thing is with all those, those are massive subjects. Those are massive subjects, all of them, that are being discussed at the national level

and will take some unified efforts to solve. They'll take some unified efforts and by that I mean people actually working together which we don't seem to have any of. So as that conversation continues to take place, I just want to look at what happened tactically on the ground and try and figure out why it happened

and I'm going to use a timeline, follow a timeline from the Texas Tribune. It was last updated on June 9th. And just to note, we're recording this today on June 13th, 2022. And it's just based on simple open source reporting. And I'm sure that there will be more detailed information available in the future. And maybe at some point we'll go over it with more detail. But the thing is there are lessons to be learned even from what we know right now that that I want to talk a little bit about again from the tactical perspective to try and figure out why things happened like this in this event.

So again from the Texas Tribune, this is May 24th, 22 around 11 a.m. The shooter sends Facebook messages. The shooter sends private Facebook messages to a girl in Germany. He met online and tells her about his plans to shoot his grandmother. The gunman shoots his grandmother in the face and calls the police. The shooter steals his grandmother's vehicle and drives from his home to rob elementary school, which is about two miles away. So there you have a clear declaration that something bad is going to happen made by the individual himself.

And I don't know if there's some kind of a social media 911 call that you can make. It seems like there should be some kind of a social media 911 to call where if someone is making threats of violence via social media, that people that see these threats can have someone to contact where, Action can be taken and I don't know if there is an AI that can screen for things like this My guess is yes considering that if I Google search something on my phone or on my laptop The very next screen that I click I get advertisements for whatever that thing that I just searched is So to so to think that we couldn't come up with or that the tech companies couldn't come up with something that was combing through messages combing through posts looking for threatening content it seems like that would be a feasible thing and and at a minimum to have something where there's like a

universal 911 call to make if someone is posting threatening things it seems like that would be a move that would be able to help these when these situations unfold move Moving to 1128 a.m. The shooter arrives at the school. The shooter crashes the vehicle into a ditch near the school. He fires his gun at two male witnesses who began approaching the crash from a nearby funeral home. The witnesses flee and call 911. So this is at 1128. When you get a shooter that's in the vicinity of a school, there's got to be a really good lockdown protocol that happens. And This is something that when we talk about lockdown protocol, one thing that that I think needs to be discussed is if you have a shooter that's external to the school, lock the doors. But when you have a shooter that's in the school, everyone should get the hell out of the school. You shouldn't keep people in the school anymore. So having a couple different immediate action drills when it comes to when a shooter is either in a school, we're going to get out of the school.

If he's outside the school, we're going to stay in the school. We're going to lock it down. Those require two different reactions, not one. Because if there's a shooter in the school, you should get the hell out of the school. 1130 a.m. a teacher calls 911. A teacher at the elementary school makes a 911 call reporting the crash and seeing the shooter noting he has a gun. The shooter walks toward the school, climbs the fence into the parking lot, and shoots at the school several times. Again, if the shooter's outside the school, we should have an instant protocol to keep him outside the school.

1131 a.m. shooter walks through the school parking lot. The shooter reaches the last row of vehicles in the school parking lot, firing his right. rifle throughout. Police arrive at the funeral home. So you remember the people that initially reacted to the crash, they ran back to a funeral home called the police. The police now arrive at the funeral home. A school district police officer speeds in the direction of a person they think is the man with the gun reported by the teacher, but drives past the gunman and heads to the back of the school, mistaking a teacher for the shooter. So you have a problem of positive identification now where you got teachers who are the only adults in the schools.

except for the shooter. So how are you going to tell them apart? This is where we look and say, hey, is there an armband that we have? Is there in an emergency, everyone knows to put on a certain t-shirt or a certain vest? And I know, you know,

you might be thinking, oh, that sounds stupid. If you've ever been into a combat situation where there's multiple people running around on the battlefield, positive identification is a real problem. It is really hard to identify who's who. And you can make,

Make it a lot easier if you throw if you give people some kind of a uniform to put on where oh all the teachers are wearing a vest that says teacher on On orange vest 1133 a.m. The shooter enters the school Shooter enters the school for the back through the back door He shoots at least a hundred rounds inside classes classrooms 11112 which are connected Authorities originally said a teacher left the door propped open but later said a teacher closed the door and the automatic lock failed. And there's a quote here. She remembers pulling the door closed

while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because the door is always supposed to lock. I've heard some people talk about the horrible idea of, or what seems like a horrible idea of turning schools into, you know, bunkers type of thing.

Oh, well, you're going to have arm guards at every, And look, no one wants to bring their kids to a school where the school feels like it's a reverse prison, right? Or some kind of a prison environment where you've got barbed wire and you've got bars on the window and all this kind of stuff. No one wants to bring their kids to school like that. But there is a way to properly secure schools where it doesn't look like some prison camp. There's absolutely a way to make that happen. and I think that just about any parent, I think actually any parent would be okay

with having some security in place so that the school is a place where people can't get into unless they're supposed to be there. So the back doors open, look, does this mean I'm a little bit paranoid? Yes. Yeah, a little bit paranoid. And I think a little bit of paranoia

is actually okay. A little bit of paranoia is actually okay. So that was at 1133. At 1135, the Yuvalde police enter the school. Three police officers rushed to the same door that the gunman used to enter, which was closed.

They enter and receive grazing wounds from the gunmen. They retreat. So response time has been, well, 1128 a.m., the shooter arrives at the school. 1131 he's walking through the parking lot 1133 he enters the school the the police arrive pretty quickly now if there was some kind of security guard there guess what response time is zero minutes and does this mean that your kid feels like he's going to school in a in a in a damn prison because there's a plain closed security guard there i'm okay with that do i love it no no I don't but this is not that big of a price to pay to keep kids safe.

The idea that a guard or an armed guard has to be some overt presence that the kids have to walk by to get to class. Oh, there's, you know, Mr. Fred with the with the AR-15 guarding us. I feel intimidated because I'm a little kid. I don't like I don't like it. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be like, no, it doesn't actually have to be that way at all. There can be a very low visibility option for that. And it can be a low visibility option that the children don't know much about, but the public does know about.

And therefore, it also causes deterrence for a would-be school shooter. If the would-be school shooter knows that there are armed people in the school, they're probably going to figure out a different target. So the police officers enter the school They get shot at Receive grazing wounds They retreat So this is a tough one to With what I know about you know the only words here

They retreat and that they received fire This could mean a bunch of different things This could mean full automatic fire that is at the shooting at the door that they're trying to get through And if that's the case and they proceed in there they're just all going to die And now they can't help or is it some rounds came and they immediately retreated. I don't know. I don't know what happened there. I do know this.

When you're getting shot at, you now have information. You have very pertinent information. You know the general location. If you're taking rounds, you know where they're, you know at least a little bit where they're coming from. So now we can start to formulate some kind of a plan. You also know that you've got a high threat scenario and you've got children in there. Now you can't just put down cover fire and shoot back at a person into school because there's a bunch of kids and you can get a friendly fire scenario happening. So you can't just lay down cover fire like you would over in a foreign country in a war, but you know where the bad guy is, generally speaking.

You know at least the door that you're at. He has covered, which tells you what. there's other doors that he may not have covered, meaning other doors where he may not be able to engage. So we've tried one entry and we have now information that we can't get in there. So now what are we going to do? Find another place to go.

At this point, going back to the timeline here, Pete Eradondo, the chief of the school district's police department, also arrives at the scene around this time. He does not have his radios. Eradondo wanted both hands on his gun if he encountered the shooter and believed the radios would have slowed him down, his attorney said.

No, that's, this is not, this is not even a thing. It's not even a, this is not even a remotely squared away concept in any way. What, the radio slowing you down? A, the radio slowing you down. be both hands on your gun I mean you don't carry your radio in your hand while you're shooting you have you have your radio you have a a mic to talk into if you need to you going into a situation like this communication during an event like this is beyond critical It's beyond critical, especially if you're the chief.

If you're overall in charge of what's happening, you are the one person that absolutely needs a radio. And you know what? So does everybody else. Now, you don't always, sometimes you don't always have every single person with a radio. But if you're overall in charge, you're the one that's going to be communicating, receiving communications, giving directions. you're the one that's supposed to get an overall concept of what's happening. Now, this is an insane lack of judgment. And I would love to pull the thread on this and figure out what actually happened.

My guess is the chief didn't look in his car, see his radio and go, you know what, I'm going to leave my radio here. My guess is that's not what happened. That might be what the lawyer is saying. as a rationalization, well, he thought he might need it, he thought it might slow him down and thought that he want to have both hands on his guns, on his gun. That might be a post-operation rationalization excuse. My guess is that in the panic of the situation, he didn't think about it and forgot it. And by the way, this points to an equally insane last.

of training because no one ever in any kind of scenario ever where more than one person is acting at in different parts of a team decides not to bring a radio that's not a decision that anyone is going to make i would grab my radio before if i was in charge i'd grab my radio before i grab my weapon how you like that so to be in charge and to decide not to bring your radio is complete and utter failure and you know i've seen some things where they ran some scenarios Like this, the training, if you train one time doing this and you're in charge, you'll say, damn, I better make sure I have good communications with my team. If you do this one time, if you approach a hostile target where there's bad guys in there, one time, no hostages, no children, just one bad guy, you put him in a building and you have you and one other person, you'll make that radio. an absolute priority one time.

Now you take a situation where you've got an active shooter and there's a bunch of kids and you got different units coming in from different places, you're gonna freaking need a radio and you would know that if you had any training whatsoever. Here's the thing. It takes practice and I know this sounds crazy because everyone's, look, everyone's an armchair quarterback

and everyone can sit there and look, of course, I would have brought my radio. I'm telling you, I'm telling you this. It takes practice to know this. as obvious as it seems to everyone right now, it takes practice. You hear kids screaming, you hear gunshots going off,

you're the person in charge, you kind of panic and you go. You haven't been trained to the proper level and you go in there without a radio. So it's again reflects bad training. And at this point, former officers, including a deputy with the county sheriff's office,

also enter the school at this time. So now we have seven police there against one. And again, I'm going to need to see the breakdown detail of the building itself, of where people entered. But you've got more people in the school now. And by the way, by my numbers, that's seven police against one shooter. And I like those odds.

Seven against one, I like. 1137, gunman fires 16 more rounds. Again, you have a school. with little kids in it and the gunmen is shooting what that means is you go that's what that means let me rephrase that if you didn't already get the signal that there's a freaking gunman in a school and you haven't done everything you can to get in there and now that gunman is shooting again that's another blaring signal to get your ass in there and by the way these are not these are lessons that have been learned when you look what happened at cal

Columbine, they came up with these same kind of conclusions. There was too much hesitation. There's too much waiting. When you hear this stuff happening, you have to take action. This is exactly the type of scenario where when I was teaching the Young Seals, I had to teach them to be default aggressive. This is the exact kind of scenario. The problem's not going to solve itself.

You have to go and solve it. That's what you have to do. And the reason that I had to teach them to be. aggressive and have that be their default mode is because when things like this happen, people's natural mode isn't to take action. For many people, their natural mode is, oh, I don't know what's happening. I'm going to wait to try and figure out what's happening. That's what their instinct is. And we have to train that instinct out of many people, not all people. Some people, you actually have to train in the other direction. Some people you have to say, hey, hold on a second. You have no

idea what's happening. Don't go running in there. Most people, You have to train, hey, if it's going on and you can't tell what's happening, you need to get aggressive and figure out what's happening. You need to take action. And in a situation like this where now you have a gunman in a school that's still shooting, it is time without question to do whatever you need to do to get in there. Now at 143 a.m. Rob Elementary and Yuvalde Police post on Facebook.

They announce it that the school is under lockdown status to do gunshots. in the area by the way this is like 150 rounds have been fired the students and staff are safe in the building the building is secure in a lockdown status school officials say in an announcement so there's no emergency communication in the building and what I mean by that there's no there's no pro word so in the military you have something called a pro word which is one word that means something that means a whole whole scenario is taking place So if I'm out on an operation and we start taking fire, heavy fire from the target building, and we haven't entered the target yet, I have one word that I can say. And when I say that one word, everybody knows what to do. Everyone knows that there's no friendlies in the building, that the target building is shooting heavy fire at us. I can say one word and everybody knows what to do. If we have people in the target building and we start taking fire, I have one word I can say and everybody knows what to do So there's a breakdown of communication here because no one has put out hey there's a freaking shooter in our school

That's gunning people down No one knows this so no one knows what's happening So as you think through these scenarios you need to come up with some pro words so that everyone understands what's happening At the same time the Evalde police department posts on Facebook large police presence at Rob Elementary, we ask the public to avoid the area. So there's not communication between the school and the police. Are there police radios in the school? That seems like a really obvious question. But does the school have the ability to communicate with the police directly through radios? Because this is not a very hard thing to figure out. It's not a very costly thing

to figure out. 1144 a.m. The police officers are inside. Police with the city of Yuvaldi are and the school district are inside the school. This is 1144. Uvaldi police officers enter the building where the shooter is from the north entrance. They hear gunfire are shot at, move back and get cover. Again, if you're getting shot at, you now have a general idea of.

of where the shooter is. And if you have a general idea with where the shooter is, then it's time to maneuver. It's time to flank. A shooter can only cover so many different directions at the same time. And how do I know that? Because I've been on both sides of those scenarios. When you train properly,

you not only act as the good guys, you spend time as a bad guy. So you start to realize what works and what doesn't work. That's the benefit of training back to the document around this time Eradondo and another Yuvaldi police officer enter the building through this south entrance Eradondo witnesses the gunfire he then checks the door to the classroom that the shooter is in finding it locked He uses his cell phone to call for SWAT teams snipers extrication tools and keys to the classrooms This is at 1144 so all this has taken

taking place for almost over 20 minutes this has been going on and only now we're getting a call for SWAT team snipers, breaching tools, and it's on the cell phone? I mean, how, why are we making calls on a cell phone? Why is that happening? We have radios. There's a reason you have radios, direct communication, instantaneous, immediate direct communication to a whole net of people. Oh, that's right.

Well, he doesn't have his radio. So he's making cell phone calls. It says, there's a quote in here. Initial officers are there and receive gunfire, therefore do not make entry. Officers call everyone in the area for additional resources. Tactical teams, equipment, specialty equipment, body armor, precision riflemen, and negotiators. They're evacuating students and teachers during this time. And this is from Victor Escalon, a DPS official.

during a press conference on May 26th. From the very beginning of this whole thing, you clearly have an active shooter that needs to be hunted down and killed. That's completely evident from the first moments. As soon as a car crashes and two guys go to help and he gets shot at, or those two guys get shot at by someone

who then maneuvers towards a school, this is a active shooter situation and someone needs to hunt this guy down and kill him. And that's the mode that needs to be gone, into instantaneously. And there's going to be risk. There's going to be risk when you're going up against someone with a gun. There's a risk that you're going to die.

And that's what we in the military and law enforcement sign up for. And we have to think through that, actually. And you have to train for that. And the first time that you think about getting shot and the probability that you get shot shouldn't be in an actual gunfight. This shouldn't be the first time this is going through your head. You should do training. and you need to do training

where you understand what you're going to be put up against and you should understand what that feels like and you should either get over it and accept that as part of your job or you should get a different job. 1148 there's an officer's wife is shot so Yuvaldi

CISD police officer Ruben Ruiz can be heard telling other officers as he arrives inside the school that his wife Eva Morellis has been shot. So you look at this woman, this school teacher just seemed like an amazing human. She's got pictures. There's pictures of her. She's outdoors.

She's enjoying life. She's out running. She's hiking. She's doing Spartan races. She's doing CrossFit. She just seems like an awesome woman. And had a daughter with Ruben Ruiz. So he gets word that she shot.

11.51 a.m. more police arrive. More law enforcement officials arrive at the scene. Again, so what are we doing at this point? Who is running things at this point in time? Now you got 15, 20 law enforcement officers on scene, and you got one bad guy. That's a fight we can win all day long. All day long. We're going to win.

And we might take some casualties. But we can win that fight all day long. 11.54 a.m. There's an onlooker starts filming. 21 minutes after the shooter enters the school. An onlooker streams a live video showing parents begging police to enter the school. Now, this is very difficult to watch. This is actually sickening to watch.

There are parents that are going crazy with frustration. They want to help their kids. And in some of these videos, you can see that the parents are being. held back by officers with long guns, with rifles, with assault rifles. And what they're doing is keeping the parents at bay. Now here's what's difficult to understand. Most likely I can just about guarantee these officers that are doing this have no idea what's going on.

They have no idea what's happening. They probably think they're doing the right thing, which is, hey, there's an active shooter in there. my teammates are in there killing this guy, so I need to make sure these civilians stay safe. That's what they're thinking. And why are they thinking that? Because no one in this whole scenario is detached and connecting the pieces,

which is what needs to happen when this kind of thing goes down. Someone has got to take a step back and piece together what's happening and put together a plan. So these parents, you watch these parents, they actually are somewhat detached. the parents are kind of detached because they can see that there's why is this shooting continuing why is this happening 1203 police continue to arrive and a student calls 9-1-1 from inside a student calls 911 from room 112 for a minute and 23 seconds and identifies herself in a whisper meanwhile as many as 19 officers are positioned in the school's hallway 19 officers and now we know that we got kids in there

alive and you have 19 officers 1210 student calls back student calls 911 again and says multiple people are dead so now you know for sure the shooter is a psychopath that needs to be stopped that's what you know 1213 p.m. student calls 911 again student calls a third time authorities have not expanded on our comments during this call 1215 Border Patrol tax unit arrives border patrol tactical unit members carrying shields arrive and she look ballistic shields are a great an awesome tool to have for sure they're they're great we're not waiting for this if there's kids that are going to be killed we're not waiting for shields to show up 12 16 p.m.

student calls 911 once again the student calls 911 again saying eight or nine students are alive so now we know we got live kids in there and we got more than enough people to make this happen. 1217, oddly enough, the school announces there's an active shooter on campus. I mean, what's happening in our overall, from an overall leadership perspective between the school and the police, when we have at 1217, as there's dead children, dead teachers, and now we're announcing that we have an active shooter on campus? the onlookers, the parents are now begging for action. Here's a little pullout. At some point during the standoff, onlookers begged police to charge the school,

according to the Associated Press. Parents try to break windows and are not allowed to immediately be reunited with their children. Again, there's video of this. It's sickening to watch. There's parents yelling out, what are you doing? Get inside the building. Go protect the kids. And there's one mom.

One mom, Angelie Rose Gomez, she gets cuffed. She gets cuffed for, quote, intervening with an active investigation. And I can't even give this woman enough props and praise. She, she, like, pretended to calm down so that they would release her. Once they released her, she distanced herself from the crowd, got away from, like, all the hype and all the mania. and then she jumped the fence, went in and got her two kids out. Meanwhile, she said that other fathers got tackled, pepper sprayed, and tased. Again, somebody has to take a step back and get control of the situation, and no one did that here.

And is there a chance that someone in this group of people, one of these police officers, happens to be a really good leader and happens to understand what to do in dynamic situations, and happens to have the authority and the leadership skill to get control of this situation. Is there a chance that someone might have that? There's a chance. There's also a chance that no one has that. And that's why you have to train people so that they can perform in these situations. And by the way, the training also is a screening to see what kind of personality people have

and see what kind of shortfalls they have as leaders. And some people don't have the cognitive capacity to make these decisions. and some people don't have the cognitive capacity to take a step back. And some people don't have the wherewithal to press through in tough scenarios. And so as leaders, we need to know who those people are. This mom, Ms. Gomez, Mrs. Gomez, she is that type of person to take action, to be default aggressive, get things solved. She was detached enough emotionally to realize she had to get away from the mob,

get to a position where she could maneuver in. She was able to do this. Some people have that natural ability. Some people don't. And I'm going to get to this in a little bit. There's also training that has to be overcome. Sometimes people fall into training habits that aren't good. So we have to train to the point that we recognize

when what we've been trained to do isn't working. 12.19 p.m. Another student calls 911 from room 111. hangs up when another student tells her to. 1221 gunman fires again. Authorities say he was believed to be at the classroom's door. On a 911 call from a student, three gunshots can be heard. This is over and over again.

Things that would mean to me as a tactical leader, we go right now. There's time after time, after time, after time. there's execute criteria. A room full of kids. There's a guy in there. He's shooting. You go.

There's not a debate. You go. That's what you do. You go. You go through the windows. You breach the doors. You do whatever you've got to do to get in there. That's what you do.

1236 student in room 111 calls back again. Same student calls back for 21 seconds and is told to stay on the line quietly. 1243 gum and shoots the door. The student tells 911 that the gunman shot the door. Okay. There's another execute criteria. And you do what you have to do to get in there. Windows.

You put ladders up to the windows. You crash through those windows. You crash a vehicle into the windows. You shoot the door off the hinges. That's what you do. 1246. I can hear the police next door. student called 911.

1246. Eradondo gives the approval to enter. If y'all are ready to do it, you do it, he says, according to a transcript of police body cam footage. 1246, 1246, over an hour. 1247 911 call from a student. Please send police now. 1250, Border Patrol tactical unit officer breaches the room and uses the room and uses. Using a janitor's keys and kills the gunman and I don't have I don't have any details on on how that actually happened yet

I've I know Bortak people which is the Border Patrol Tactical unit Bortak I know them I've actually worked with them a little bit I've got some reports that that they disobeyed orders where people were telling them not to enter and they did it anyways good on them But, you know, what I've been saying this whole time, go in, go in, go in, go in. And you think to yourself, well, if you go in, are you going to get shot? If you go in, is this going to happen? You don't know. But look what happens when these guys finally go in. They go in there and they kill the guy.

That's what happens. You've got to go on offense. 1251. Children are moved out of the room. So 1251, 106, police. Police announced the shooter is in custody because the Border Patrol went in there and killed them. And then Yuvaldi police announced on Facebook that the shooter is in custody authorities recanted that information later. So there you have it.

What can we learn from this? And again, at this point in time, I'm focused on what can we learn from this tactical situation that unfolded? What can we learn from it? I know there's a whole bunch of a whole slew of other topics to talk about and those are happening on a massive level and those will continue to happen. But as an area that I actually know a decent amount about is this. So that's what I'm talking about. And first of all, and I've been saying this for years, police need more training. police 20% of time 20% of working hours for police should be spent training that's what should happen

that's what needs to happen and listen you think oh that that there's now going to be less people out on patrol less police out on patrol their their effectiveness will more than make up for the fact that there's less police on patrol who would you rather if you were in a hostage situation with some crazy person in your house, who would you rather have show up 10 untrained people or 8 highly trained people? And if you're not sure about that, let me tell you, because I guarantee you all day long, I'll take 8 highly trained people over 10 untrained people all day, all day. And I'll tell you, I am now, I've started to talk to some organizations to see how echelon from my company can help do this on a national level.

level what should this training can consist of what are we training policing well combatives for one thing shooting breaching first aid trauma de-escalation and anybody that's listening that doesn't know much about the police you might think they do all this stuff all the time they don't they don't do this all the time they barely get to shoot I bet you 99% of police have very limited training, if any, in breaching, in how to breach a door with a shotgun. Combatives, barely any, barely any training. Close quarters combat, room clearing, urban combat clearance. How do you handle an active shooter?

How do you handle a barricaded shooter? And then you've got to run scenarios. You've got to put people into these situations. You got to get Sim munition or some kind of round that can be fired at other people during training. You need assets. You need role players so that people get used to it.

And you absolutely get better. This is exactly what I did for a living was train young seals so that they understand what to do in these types of situations. And you can watch and see them learn and get better. And over time, they eventually get to a point where they know exactly what to do. Yeah, they learn about the basic fundamental principles, cover, and move, simple, prioritize,

and execute, decentralized command. They're going to learn about those things. They're going to learn about decentralized command, which means when I show up and there's something going on and I'm the junior guy, but I'm the first person there, I can make things happen. I can make decisions. I know what the priorities are. That's what they learn. They learn how to detach.

You've heard me say someone's got to take a step back and figure out what's happening broadly. Well, that's what people learn when you run them through the appropriate training. They learn how to communicate. They learn the importance of communications. They learn not to go into dynamic scenarios without a radio so they can communicate with the rest of their troops. So much of this whole thing was people not seeing the big picture. No one assembled the entire scene to understand what was happening. And therefore no one made the broad call that needed to be made, which is get in there.

Get in there. We're going. And this does take training. It does take training. Now it doesn't take training. If you're a parent and your kids in there, that doesn't take any training. That's instinct. And I'll talk a little bit about that.

But it takes training. I had experienced seals. I would have experienced seals that would fail to take action when they needed to. And we'd have to have them do that training again. And maybe again and maybe again. and maybe again until they realize that when they don't take action, everything's going to fall apart. So even seals would have a hard time in some cases figuring these things out. Now, like I said, the parents that were there, they were detached.

And maybe not emotionally because they're obviously horrified by what's going on. But some of the parents, you can go watch the videos. They're making matter of fact statements about what, What's going on? They're saying there's kids in there. They're shooting going on. Now to this idea of instinct, which I mentioned, instinct versus methodology versus instinct. You have an instinct of what to do.

And in some cases, you need to get trained against that instinct. It's just like in jiu-jitsu. There's certain things where your instinct is wrong. And so it takes some training to teach you to overcome your instinct to learn a methodology that's superior to the instinct. And there are times when the methodology is wrong and the instinct is correct. What do I mean by that? I got a story about J.P. Dinell.

One of my guys in my last deployment to Iraq and an outstanding guy, Seal. Sniper, point man, outstanding guy. And when we first started working together, we were out in the desert. And we're doing a patrol out in the desert. And the patrol stopped, and I'm looking at JP. And JP's standing out in the open. He's just standing out in the open. Now, we're out in the desert, but it's not a barren desert.

There's rocks and shrubs and micro terrain features. And we stop our patrol, and JP's standing out in the open. And I walk over to him and I said, hey, JP, if you were 10 years old right now and we were playing war, where would you be standing? And he pointed over to a little bush with some rocks around it with a little terrain to hide behind. And he said, right over there. And I said, let your 10 year old instinct. Let it come to life. Let it do its job.

That's where you should be. I know the standard operating procedure is when the patrol stops. You set down in your position in your field of fire, you halt and you stay there. But if you can move six yards and have good cover and concealment, that's what you should do. So sometimes people train to a point like these police officers probably, and I've heard some talk about this. Hey, it's a barricaded shooter, which means we, he's going to be staying there and we should negotiate. So they got in this mode of, well, barricaded shooter. he's not he we should just negotiate with him the reality of the situation it wasn't barricaded

shooter he was moving around he was still shooting the entire time that's not a barricaded shooter that's decided to hold up and negotiate for some kind of ransom not at all they got stuck in that mode what needed to happen was action a methodical entry a perfect entry into the building if you were to plot out the perfect close quarters combat operation for this school and how many people you would need and what methodology you would move for the building and what type of breaches you would use on the doors and which would be most efficient. All that stuff goes out the window when there's an active shooter in a room with a bunch of kids. Your instinct needs to be to get in there. And some of those parents had that instinct, yelling, get into the building. But the training methodology had boxed these guys.

guys in mentally where they thought, oh, well, we don't have shields. And this is, I'm speculating at this point, but oh, if we don't have ballistic shields, we shouldn't go in there. Hey, we were taught not to go into a shooter situation, an active shooter situation without ballistic shields. We're waiting for the ballistic shields. No. That's the methodology you've been talked.

It's not working right now. What about the windows? Walking up to the windows, smashing a window. shooting through the window you can do that throwing crash grenades through the windows put 10 crash grenades through the windows on this guy there's a bunch of different things that if if you do what you would naturally do in a situation you're probably right so what you have to do is you're going to have instinct you're going to have a natural instinct the instinct could be wrong, the instinct could be right. I mean, here's an instinct. Somebody's shooting me. I'm going to run

away. I'm not going to go back. So police officers have to overcome that instinct to go and stay and maneuver towards fire. That's overcoming their natural instinct. But there's sometimes where the methodology is wrong. And so you have to be good enough to overcome your methodology and go with your instincts sometimes. It's another thing I used to say to these young seals. If you, I'd say, Hey, if you were going to go in that room right now and I was in there and you were 10 years old and I was 10 years old and I had a squirt gun and you had a squirt gun and you were going to enter this room, how would you do it? And they'd show me. And I'd say, doesn't that make more sense than what you just did? And they'd say, yeah, it does.

But they would follow some standard operating procedure that didn't make sense in a particular room. But they would do what they were taught to do even though it didn't make sense. and the ability to decide whether your instinct is right or wrong, you get that ability by being able to take a step back and assess. And the way you get that ability to take a step back and assess is through training. And it takes time. And that's why I use that term, that, that idea of 20% of time for police officers should be spent training. And you're going to end up with infinitely more qualified and prepared police.

there was a there was a fighting methodology a combative's methodology a system that was being used in the seal teams And it was it was it was ineffective it was an ineffective system but one of the reasons that it was argued To be a good system was because there was a one week course of instruction of this fighting methodology That if you took this one week course of instruction then you were a qualified and allegedly prepared for combat. Well, you can't learn to fight one week. It's not going to happen. You can't learn good combative skills in one week.

And so I was bringing up to my chain of command, hey, this combative system is ineffective. We should use some kind of a more mixed martial arts combination of jiu-jitsu, wrestling, boxing, Muayy Thai using our weapons in those scenarios and one of the arguments that I got against that idea was that oh that stuff takes years to learn it takes takes years to learn this stuff this stuff we can teach people in a week well you know what I said to that I said well we're in the damn teams for 20 years let people get good you shouldn't tell someone that after a week of training they're going to be good to go they're not training has to happen all the time and by the way eventually we do have a great jiu-jitsu wrestling boxing moitai based combative system in the seal teams

which is you also utilize your weapons you utilize your gear but it's based in these things that work and it takes time to get good at no one says oh you've been through a one week course you can handle yourself now because we know that that's not true so it comes down to training and there's a look are there a bunch of other factors a bunch of other things that we can address yes there absolutely are there are a bunch of other things to talk about but like I said this is something that I know and something that I understand training people for stressful dynamic dangerous situations and that's what we need to do with our law enforcement we need to train them properly because we owe it We owe it to them.

We owe it to our police and law enforcement to train them properly. We owe it to the law-abiding citizens of this country. And of course, we owe it to the innocent children that are just trying to get their freaking education in a school. So that's my initial take on this scenario. Again, I talked about some of the other factors with Daryl Cooper on our unraveling podcast. I wanted to address this here and try and get this word out. With that, Equitralz. Yes.

You know, like, a lot of times where sometimes when these things happen, you hear of like all these solutions, right? Whether it be armed guards in schools, gun control laws, like, you know, everyone has their take. What do you think are some of the solutions that off the top of your head that are not practical? Or doable or probably wouldn't be effective that you've heard. There's there's there's there's a whole slew of things going on and there's many facets that lead to this situation as far as I don't really think too much about Hey, what wouldn't work and and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this is this is this is this is what I know will help in a situation like this if you train people properly. They'll be able to handle these situations

If you could snap your fingers and have all the schools, you know, be totally safe. Of course. Of course. We'll take that all day long. We don't get to operate in fantasy world. There's crazy mentally disturbed people out there. And if you haven't listened to that podcast I did with Daryl, one of the most shocking statistics that came out from it was in 1955, there were 340. inpatient beds for every 100,000 people in America that needed mental health help.

340 beds forever, every 100,000 citizens. Those beds were dedicated for mental health. Wait, they had that many available for them? Just totally not necessarily taken up, just available for them. So out of every 100,000 people, there's 370 inpatient mental health beds. available in mental health facilities, right? In 2007, there was 17. Yeah, 17.

So that's a 95% reduction in the amount of available mental health facilities for people that need help. And by the way, during this time, we've added all kinds of other crazy things into the mix with drugs, legal drugs, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, all kinds of media violence, whether it's social media, whether it's violent movies, whether it's violent video games, all that's added into the mix, the SSRIs, the isolation of being on social media in the first place, the breakdown of the family structure, like all these things are happening.

You throw those, all those things into the mix, and then you have less mental health available. That's where you end up. It's one of the things that you end up. So I don't know if that necessarily answered your question about what would not help. I try and look at what can we actually do immediately to try and start getting people in a better situation,

getting these things freaking moving in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking, because I remember you said something about, like you were an advocate of like having an armed guard at the school, right, where they're retired military or this was a while ago.

And then I remember hearing the option of training teachers or arming the teachers. That's what it was. Yep. So how do you feel about arming teachers? It's the same thing. You need to train teachers. Are you going to train the teachers? Because you've got to train the teachers.

Which can you train the teachers? Yes, you can. You can train some of them. Some of that want to get trained. You know, the armed guard thing, my mom was a school principal. And then she was a superintendent of schools. And I remember when these school shootings started happening, I was immediately like, hey, you should put, there should be two dudes sitting in a closet, you know, with video cameras, close circuit television cameras. They're watching what's going on.

And if anything ever happens, they come out and they kill a bad guy. I wish I would have been super vocal about it. Because some of these things would have been stopped a lot quicker. And then, like I said, there's some people that say, well, you know, what kind of world are we living into when we need to? Let me rephrase that because I'm using a horrible voice. Some people say, hey, what kind of world are we living in where we have to put armed guards in a school? I'll tell you, the world that we created. The world that we created, you need to have armed guards in school because we've got some serious issues, some serious cultural and societal issues that makes an 18-year-old kid want to get a machine gun and go into a freaking school and start killing kids.

That's why. So if you say to me, what kind of a world are we living in where we need to put armed guards in schools, I want to be. will say the United States of America. Do I like it? Do I like the fact that we have to do that? No. Do I like the fact that I got to, you know, wear a seatbelt when I drive a car? Because I might crash. I don't really like it, but I'm going to do it. I remember I was in high school and there was security there. They didn't have, they weren't armed that I knew of, but I feel like, granted, this is high school, so elementary school is a little bit different. And I'm thinking back if they were armed, I don't think that would have made that much of a difference. If they were, I mean,

if there were like prison guards, like, you know, ordering, actually these security guards are pretty mean, too, to everybody. And we're like hosts, you know, I envision it where they should be nice, how, like, almost like nice teachers almost kind of a thing, like chaperones, you know. Sometimes teachers get like yard duty. That's what they call it in school, where they go out and monitor the kids. Which is going to Folsom? No, God. No, it was like, well, I'm talking so elementary school teachers have yard duty right certain ones and basically they just go outside and recess and just make sure no one acts up or whatever and no one really acted up yeah so what you're talking about is people that are people that are employed at the school to keep the students in check yes there's a difference between someone that's at school to keep the students in check and someone that's at school to prevent someone from coming to harm the students yeah so those are two different people you'd be looking for yes but in in high school when I'm thinking about the security that's what these and actually there were ladies two of them and They were there, yes, to keep people in check in all capacities. But what I'm saying is maybe one or two levels more advanced, we'll say,

is instead of two ladies with just radios, they were retired military or guys with guns, not necessarily overt, you know, with badges and, you know, but their presence is kind of known or whatever. It's not intimidating. It's more of like a host kind of scenario. You know, like someone who's on the kid's side kind of a thing more so than someone, you know, with their eagle eyes open for any trouble, you know, that kind of thing. Even though that is what they're doing, that's not their presence. That's not like what it feels like.

Yeah, you need to be careful with that. If you're going to have someone that's going to be doing security, they should be doing security. Look, can someone be dual rolled? Sure. But if you're going to put someone on security, like their purpose is security, you don't want them breaking up fights over potato chips in a school yard. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you want them to be focused on what they're supposed to be focused on.

Is it smart to have people that are dual trained? Sure. But someone has to be, if you put someone on security for the purpose of being on security, they should be on security. Now, like you said, and like I said,

this doesn't mean they need to be walking around with body armor, visible body armor and a weapon, an assault rifle, like, posted up. They don't need to be like that. But they, I mean,

they could literally be sitting in a, central location in a closet with with closed circuit TVs and when something like this happens, they know what to do. I remember the arming the teacher's option and I remember kind of talking to some of our friends that are actual teachers and it kind of put things into perspective because at first I was like, yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's not like, you know, give them just a little bit of training or whatever, but at least it's one more good guy on the field, you know, with, you know, who's armed and can

protect but then I thought about it after talking to some of the teachers you think about it like who wants to become a teacher and then now becoming a teacher becomes a whole different thing like right now it's like I want to teach these young minds you know to get to the next level in life and all this like basically all the the things that people pursue being teachers yeah over um it shifts to something completely different yeah that that being said I bet if there was an option where if you're a school teacher, you can go to a four-week summer course on, you know, active shooter response. And then inside of a school with 30 teachers, there's three people that have been to this course. I think we're, I think I'm feeling good about that. Yeah. Yeah. And

they do a refresher course every summer. And that, you know what I'm saying? Like, you got, you got to train people. You have to train people properly. Yeah. But people are willing to train. because it's beneficial in a multitude of different ways. Yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about that. Where it's like kind of the optional training or whatever, because I was just thinking of it in terms of like, hey, because this is how they'd say it.

You know, they don't go into depth or nothing. They're just like, yeah, I'm the teachers. Like all the teachers, they got guns now. Yeah. So to your earlier question is like, what's a solution that won't work? The problem with that is, the problem with that is the details of any solution.

You take any one of these solutions, and there's certain details that would make it, better and some details if you don't include them are going to make it a disaster. Like you just throw weapons into every classroom with random people that haven't been trained. You you you that's going to be a problem. Right? Because you got teachers that are that are that might go crazy. Right. There's all kinds of things going on. So you take any of these solutions and you take it to a certain extent. I mean, some of the some of the ways of looking at things can be so different depending on who you are that like what's the term they use reasonable gun control.

Reasonable gun control means completely different things to different people depending on who you are and what your background is. So true. And so to just say, hey, we should have reasonable gun control. Like I said, that means completely different things depending on who you're talking to. So that's why for this, for this, I just want to talk about, hey, here's something I do know about and here's a pragmatic solution that will help. And it should be it should be implemented.

Bray, that's so true, huh? Because there are guys, and this is going to come as no surprise, but when you put it into perspective where there are people who at six years old, they got their first gun, six. Yeah. Then same country, same state a lot of time, maybe even the same neighborhood. There are people who've never shot a gun ever in their life, and they're like 60 years old.

So you figure someone who's never shot a gun, never handled the gun or whatever, the idea of a gun potentially can be like that is just a death tool. That is just an object of death. So they just don't know, you know? And then versus the guy who got their gun at six and guns are all around the house and cases and the truck and all this stuff.

Where it's like, no, it's not a thing of death. It's just a tool just like a saw or a hammer or something like that. Where you know how obviously people say this all the time where it's like, hey, you know, if someone kills someone with a hammer, you don't outlaw hammers. It's like they literally feel guns are the same exact, in the same exact category.

You see what I'm saying? But then the guy, the person who's never shot a gun, how he's going to feel is like, no, a hammer is to hit nails. If someone gets all crazy and starts hitting heads with it, that's different. Guns are made to shoot people kind of a thing. That's their attitude, you know, or how they feel about it. So it's like, yeah, then okay, now, okay, now we need laws now, right, for the guns. But these laws apply to everybody. The six-year-old guy or the gun is gun at six?

and also the guy who's never shot a gun ever in his life. These laws have to apply to both people. So it's hard to land those laws, you know, effectively where everyone's going to like them. Yeah, it's very hard. And what makes it even harder is that the two sides don't talk to each other in a reasonable way to try and figure out what would be a reasonable solution. Yeah, man.

So there I am using the reasonable gun laws myself using that term. That ambiguous term. Yeah, it's true. Well, and then, yeah, because you kind of, it makes sense on a certain level, even though it's still not effective, right? Where let's say I got a gun, my first gun at six, you know, 22, a rifle, that's freaking awesome. I grow up all kinds of guns, right?

I have all kinds of guns. I've shot. My kids shoot guns, all this stuff. And then you have someone, a whole family of people who live next door or whatever across the street. And they've never shot a gun ever in their life, and they're scared of them. So now they're like, hey, you know, we'll just say highly intimidated or something like that. So they come about and they're like, oh my gosh, like a gun or whatever. And then the person who's used to guns are like, you're kind of being dumb.

You're kind of being unreasonable right now. Like this gun, you have to pull the trigger, shoot, you know, point out something, pull the trigger for it to shoot, whatever. It doesn't just automatically kill people, right? So you're dumb for being scared about that kind of stuff. It's reasonable that that would, that feeling would kind of take place. You see what I'm saying? And then you have the opposite.

feeling where it's like, oh, you guys are gun nuts. Like you have like, you have 50 guns, 50. I've never shot a gun in my life. I'm scared of guns. And you have 50 of them. Is it unreasonable for me to be uncomfortable if I'm like that? Seems pretty normal is what I'm saying. So I'm saying like that conflict makes sense to me.

Yeah, there's just a total disconnect. Yeah. Ineffective. Ineffective for solving problems. But it's, you can kind of see how it. No, you can, you can see how the disconnect occurs, but it's a disconnect. and the problem with the disconnect occurs when you don't make any attempts to connect. Yes, sir.

And I just look at you and say, oh, you are a gun nut and you're crazy. And, you know, I, it just falls apart. And you look at me thinking, oh, you're a person that wants to take all my guns away. And so I'm just not talking to you. Yeah. You're some chicken, some, you know, incapable chicken trying to take away. all, you know, my guns. Yeah.

Disconnect. Disconnect. With that, if you want to support this podcast, you can go to joccofuel.com and get yourself some stuff to make yourself prepared from a physical sense. Yep. Because we got to be prepared mentally. How do you do that? You do that through good training.

You got to be prepared physically. How do you do that? Do good workouts, train jiu-jitsu, and eat some good. good food, take some good supplementation. Yeah, the training thing, the more you think about it, and this might be obvious to you, but the more you think about it, you understand how deep training and how valuable training in every single way. Like you get someone untrained in a situation.

It doesn't even matter the situation. I don't care if it's swimming in the pool. Okay, so if someone jumps in the pool, falls in the pool, they can't swim or they can't swim very well at all. Now it's dangerous for them. Now you get a normal person who just knows how to swim, try to go to do. jump in there and save them. They could get drunk.

They could both die now. Now you get one person trained. Probably going to save everybody. Yeah, exactly right. So man, you can take the most arbitrary thing seemingly and you train someone, you're better off. Yeah. It's weird how people, like, the funny thing is start with leadership because, you know,

I teach leadership and people think that they should already know how to lead. And so then you start breaking it down from you. like oh damn I don't know what I'm doing fighting people think they just know how to fight oh punch him when I start seeing red better look out no it's like oh you roll with someone that that's you know a jihitsu player yeah or a real boxer yeah you go square off with someone if you've never box before and you square off with a boxer he's not panicking at all bro yeah you're done you're done moitai you get one kick one kick if you don't train moitai you get kicked in the leg one time yeah there's a decent

chance you're done fighting yes sir well from a leg kick yes sir of the There's a decent chance you call it right there. You're like, all right, this ain't happening. Yeah. So anything that you do, if you want to be good at something, you know, the thing I always use is guitar. There's no more reason that you would be able to fight or lead without training than you would be able to play a guitar without training.

It doesn't, you just can't, you can't win. You know, like someone that played basketball will beat someone that didn't play basketball, 100% of the time. Yeah, the basketball one, I think, is really good because when you see someone playing basketball, you'd be like, yeah, you just take that ball. You can't hold it, you got to dribble it or whatever, bounce it, and you put in that hoop.

Like, I know what to do. Now when you go try to do it, you're like, bro, you can't even do it. Again, like, if someone's trying to do it too with you or against you or whatever, but you can't even do it. Yep. So imagine getting a gun and you don't know what to do with it, but you think you know what to do with it. You think you're just going to shoot. Or you think that there's going to be a dynamic situation,

at an active shooter and you think you're going to know what to do or you think the people are going to be panicking and you think you're not going to be panicking yeah you have to train in everything that you do think about even you who's kind of trained in a lot of things think about how many things like the normal person is trained in pretty much nothing yeah not much it's like if you have highly like if you're highly trained in two things you're like a jack of all trades almost kind of a thing Think about it. Bro, we're not trained in anything, huh? Well, I am.

Well, you are. Shoot, you got to think about, like, of all the things to be trained in. And I'm not saying expert. I'm just saying trained. You have, like, good usable training. What? Four things? Five, maybe?

Yeah. At the most, even. Pick out some good stuff to train in. Yeah. It gets yourself some joccofuel. Joccofuel. Come check it out. Oh, by the way, new flavors. Yep.

Updated. Yeah. This is on me. On me. Oh, right. Yes. You know, I wrote a book called extreme ownership. Yeah. Well, guess what? The early flavors? My fault. Well, here, this is what you did. I understand. I thought about this. This is what you did. This is all you did. Taste is good to me. So, you know, when you're when you're young, right? Yeah. Did you ever have those, you know, like an orange juice or whatever, the constant. trait, you know, the one where it's like in this. Oh, it's like a frozen like sleeve. Yeah, exactly. Right. And you put it in a mix water, right? So if you look at the dirt, okay, so my mom guys would get that for us. Right. Orange juice. Yeah. It's supposed to be like four to one or something. Yes. So that's what they did. They did four. They fill it up four times and put it in the picture, right? The jug or whatever. So I'm like, oh yeah, cool. Sweet. Later on when I grow up in high school, I look at it. I look at the directions. It's three to one. see what I'm saying yeah so it's like they were giving us the more watered down version of it

we liked it loved it because that's what we're used to see what I'm saying but I tasted the three to one I was like brother this is a little bit too concentrated a little bit too sweet for me a little bit that's what you did yeah because you're all used to water yeah it's your main drink of choice

so you're like ooh you put some monk fruit in this new energy drink all this stuff and you're like it's super sweet to me you got the four to one going yeah but the three to one is more our speed I think A lot of us. You know, it's really like a two to,

it's almost like, it's almost like, I was like nine to one. So anyways, we got all, all new flavors. All new flavors. They're hitting stores right now.

Yeah. So go check them out. They all taste so freaking good. We're gonna win on taste now. Like we, we were kind of crushing everyone because we're making it healthy. It's pasteurized.

It's, you know, sweet and with munk. Like, that's how we're winning. Which is still the case, by the way. Still the case. We're still the case.

We're still winning. We just made adjustments and now we're gonna win on taste. So now you have, now you have awesome, awesome upside and awesome flavor and no downside. So there you go. So check that out. Also you can get them at the, you get the stuff at the vitamin shop, you get the drinks at Wawa, you get stuff at H.E.B. You see me at H. What is H.E.B?

Down in Texas. It's like the big grocery store and it's iconic. Everyone loves it. It's like when you're in Texas, people are kind of hyped on it. Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, I rolled into HEB. People were hyped. Yeah, I dig it, man.

So check out HEB. We got you covered there too. Because people have been screaming. Let's face it, down in Texas, people have been, people are in the game in Texas. And they were, I was getting all the time. For years, I've been getting, hey, HB, HB, HB, HB. Took us a while. We're in HEB.

If you're in Texas, you know the deal. Go get some. If you want to get some clothing, that's made in a moment. America, go to OriginUSA.com. We got awesome clothing. We got hump line coming. We got jihitzy geese. We got jeans. We got boots. All that's made in America. It's made in America right here.

So go check out OriginUSA.com. Help America. Help your community. Help the economy. Help shut down slave labor. Just get on board with the program. That's what we're doing at OriginUSA.com. And don't forget, we have a store.

Echo made up the name. What did you call it? First off, you made up the name. Actually, I didn't make me. No, you did make up the name 100%. All right. It's called Jocko Store. So if you want to represent, trained or untrained, but we prefer trained.

But you want to represent on this path. What is what you're training. Discipline equals freedom, which is true. The more you think about it, the more true it becomes. So you got your shirt locker shirt on today. Yes, sir. One of the favorites, the fan favorites. What's deal with the shirt locker?

Shirt locker. Every month you're going to get a T-shirt. Yep. New, creative. design some designs have controversy behind them I'm just gonna say it as it turns out some there was the design that a guy emailed in seemingly nice guy I don't know obviously but emailed in said hey his wife was offended by the shirt oh dang he needs to return it which one is it everyone must get stoned no which one was it the anarchy rip oh okay

because she thought it was anarchistic yeah she was like it looks too much like the anarchy symbol and I was like thinking in my head uh good okay but I'm just saying so you made one just sort of knows reason made like an anarchy sign but it was a D for discipline kind of turned sideways it was there was a resemblance yeah it was just kind of a merely a resemblance it was straight up I'm gonna be honest it was an homage to the anarchy symbol there you go it was straight up it served its purpose I'm just saying it was controversial apparently you know so there you go okay You get those from time to time. But anyway, they're creative.

You know, good design. A new one every month. Subscription scenario on Jocko store. It's called the Shirt Locker. Right on. Subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. We're about to record some of those Jocko Underground.

Answering a bunch of your questions. Talk about life. Talk about other aspects of life. Go to jocco underground.com if you want to get into the game on that. It's also how we're going to survive getting banned. We don't own this platform that you're listening to unless you're listening to on jocco underground.com. We don't own the platform.

So we could get banned. We get shut down. People don't want to hear what we have to say. So support us that way. We appreciate it. YouTube. You can check that out. Psychological Warfare.

Dakota. Dakota Meyer just got a medal for life-saving. And he also, so he's out just saving lives as a firefighter. So support Dakota. You can support Dakota by going to flipside canvas.com and buying something cool to hang on your wall. Check that out. I've written a bunch of books.

You know what the books are. You can check some of those out. Also have Eshalant Front where we teach leadership to solve all the problems that you have, which are leadership problems. Eshlamfront.com. Also, we have online training at the Extreme Ownership Academy. Extreme Ownership.com. All the little lessons that will help you in every aspect of your life.

Is it about leadership? Sure, but it's about life. Go to Extreme Ownership.com and enroll. You'll see me on there. You want to ask me a question? You'll see me on a Zoom call. I'll be sitting right here saying, oh, explain the details. Give me some context.

So come and check that out as well. And also if you want to help service members active and retired, their families, the Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom's charity organization. It's called America's Mighty Warriors.org. And also check out heroes and horses.org. Those guys are out in the field right now, Micah and the crew. And you can find us on the social media stuff. Don't get isolated on there Don't get all freaking spun up about the comments

Don't worry about some jackass You know 729 alpha 3 Who insulted you don't worry about that But if you want to say hi you want to say what's up Echoes at echo Charles I'm at Jocko Willink Watch out for the damn algorithm And to the rest of our troops in uniform out there right now Stand and watch 24 7 365

Thank you for what you do And also, thanks for the service of our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol. Shout out. Getting it done. Secret service. All first responders. Listen, you have a complex grinding job that requires you to be a family counselor one minute and a tactical assaulter the next. And it's a hard job.

And we thank you for what you do. And we want to get you the training that you need to make it happen. And everyone else out there, there's evil in the world. Evil that we cannot understand. Evil that will attack a schoolhouse filled with children. Evil that will kill innocent children and kill school teachers. And we certainly need to mourn that loss. but we also need to remember that evil is still out there

and we need to do what we can to be prepared for the next time it rears its ugly head and until next time this Zeko and Jocko out