Michael Castillo and Dan Jarecke " Precision Rifle from a Practical Approach"

Summary

The TTPOA Podcast: "Precision Rifle from a Practical Approach" Summary

Release Date: January 6, 2025

In this compelling episode of The TTPOA Podcast, hosts Derek and Brandon delve deep into the intricacies of precision rifle training tailored for law enforcement and SWAT teams. Joined by esteemed guests Dan Jarecki, a competitive shooter turned sniper instructor, Mike Castillo, a sniper team leader from Central Texas, and Sean Harris, an experienced sniper and instructor, the conversation bridges the gap between military precision and practical law enforcement application.

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1. Introduction to the Guests

The episode kicks off with a lighthearted banter among the hosts and introduces Sean Harris as a seasoned sniper team leader with a rich background in both military and law enforcement.

• Brandon (00:47): "Sean is one of our regional directors and he's also a sniper team leader instructor with and other... all the stuff."

2. Precision Rifle Training for Law Enforcement Snipers

Dan Jarecki shares his transition from competitive shooting to training law enforcement snipers, emphasizing the need for speed and accuracy in high-stakes environments.

• Dan (01:56): "The notion is to get law enforcement snipers to be able to hit maybe longer distance targets or even shorter distance ones accurately and more quickly."

• Brandon (03:05): "Speed and accuracy. They're not competing against each other. They're married to each other."

3. Bridging Military and Civilian Techniques

Sean Harris recounts his journey from the Marine Corps to law enforcement, highlighting the discrepancies between military sniper training and what’s currently offered to LE snipers.

• Sean (10:07): "I had to break that barrier down myself. But you get around guys, like Rob Latham... they're just civilians, but they're phenomenal shooters."

• Brandon (13:09): "Why aren't we doing it in the sniper community? Yeah, we're not doing it at all."

4. Instructor Responsibilities and Training Quality

The conversation shifts to the responsibility of instructors to provide comprehensive and practical training, beyond mere marksmanship.

• Sean (31:03): "Are you, Chris, you have certificate."

• Brandon (32:04): "What are the parameters? You know, so a lot of it comes from ASA..."

5. Positional Shooting and Practical Application

Emphasizing the importance of positional versatility, the guests discuss training snipers to operate effectively from various positions, not just prone, to adapt to real-world scenarios.

• Sean (44:25): "More than half of them are other than prone. And then the other biggest portion of the position that the shot was taken in is standing."

• Dan (45:29): "If you've got a notion of what it takes to hit positionally... you're not going to hit a one MOA target at 800 yards."

6. Equipment and Ballistics Knowledge

Mike Castillo underscores the critical need for snipers to understand their equipment and ballistics thoroughly to ensure precision and accountability in the field.

• Mike (56:37): "Backdrop needs to be an extremely important factor... knowing the type of ammunition and why we're selecting that depending upon the situation."

• Dan (57:00): "Dope is data on previous engagement. Elevation adjustment or windage adjustment for that distance."

7. Overcoming Egos and Fostering Collaboration

The hosts stress the importance of humility and collaboration among instructors and snipers to foster continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.

• Brandon (16:49): "If you don't take that and go back and go, how do I get where this guy is? Then you're a fool."

• Sean (34:54): "If you didn't continue to learn, you need to get out of the game."

8. Honoring Fallen Officers and Foundational Legacy

The episode takes an emotional turn as Mike Castillo honors fallen officer Jorge Pastor, highlighting his legacy and the establishment of the Jorge Pastor Foundation to support training for first responders.

• Mike (70:06): "His ultimate sacrifice... inspiration... if he can do it, then that means I can do it too."

• Brandon (70:06): "Men carrying their fallen brothers... honoring their legacy."

9. Conclusion and Call to Action

As the episode wraps up, the hosts encourage continued training and collaboration, emphasizing the collective responsibility to enhance sniper training and honor those who have sacrificed.

• Brandon (84:49): "Keep training hard and be safe out there."

• Sean (85:01): "We need your professionalism, your input, your experience."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dan Jarecki (01:56): "The notion is to get law enforcement snipers to be able to hit maybe longer distance targets or even shorter distance ones accurately and more quickly."

• Brandon (03:05): "Speed and accuracy. They're not competing against each other. They're married to each other."

• Sean Harris (10:07): "I had to break that barrier down myself. But you get around guys, like Rob Latham... they're just civilians, but they're phenomenal shooters."

• Dan Jarecki (57:00): "Dope is data on previous engagement. Elevation adjustment or windage adjustment for that distance."

• Mike Castillo (70:06): "His ultimate sacrifice... inspiration... if he can do it, then that means I can do it too."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Integration of Competitive Shooting Techniques: Leveraging PRS (Precision Rifle Series) strategies enhances speed and accuracy for LE snipers.

2. Comprehensive Training: Quality sniper training goes beyond marksmanship to include ballistics, legal liabilities, and scenario-based exercises.

3. Positional Versatility: Training snipers to operate from various positions ensures adaptability in diverse operational environments.

4. Continuous Learning and Humility: Overcoming egos and fostering collaboration among instructors and snipers is crucial for ongoing improvement.

5. Honoring Legacy: Remembering and honoring fallen officers like Jorge Pastor inspires current and future first responders to uphold high standards and commitment.

This episode of The TTPOA Podcast serves as an essential listen for first responders, highlighting the importance of advanced, practical training and the unwavering dedication required to protect and serve effectively.

Transcript

[Mike Castillo]

Foreign.

[Dan Jarecki]

Welcome to the TTPOA podcast, a podcast.

[Brandon]

For SWAT officers, military and all first responders. We'll be talking training, tactics and leadership with the best subject matter experts around. Here are your hosts, Derek and Brandon. Oh, yeah, brother, it's the macho man here. Yeah. 2024 TTPOA conference 40 years. How you doing, Graham? Doing well.

[Graham]

I'm assuming you had your first drink since this morning.

[Brandon]

Okay, doesn't drink. And look at Sean here's over there.

[Graham]

That's right, Sean here. So we got a good show for you coming up. And yeah, we're going to be talking ballistics, moas, all the stuff, yeah, all the stuff that we had to bring in the TT QA big guns for. So Sean. Sean is one of our regional directors and he's also a sniper team leader instructor with and other.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Graham]

You keep basic, advanced, all that stuff. So I'm gonna let Sean kind of introduce himself and I'm gonna stop talking.

[Brandon]

Oh, we already kicked Graham off, man. That's just crazy. We already got him dismissed from the podcast and stuff. So. No, we make, we make fun of snipers and stuff, but I think this is gonna be a little different than what you're used to because we're bringing the practical. We got to jump down and, and, and get down and, and send around downrange really fast in the practical side of the shooting as far as that. So I'll let these men introduce themselves and we'll just kind of go from there. So to my left, who do we have over here?

[Dan Jarecki]

My name is Dan Jarecki. So, yeah, yeah, I've been, I've been training snipers for what, five years or so?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Dan Jarecki]

So been doing some classes with ttpoa. I taught at TP TTPOA last year. And so my, my background is not law enforcement, it's competitive shooting. So precision rifle series, that's been my deal. And that the notion is to get, to get law enforcement snipers to be able to hit maybe longer distance targets or even shorter distance ones accurately and more quickly.

[Brandon]

So. And that's what I like about you, because you haven't taught for TTPOA until you came to Region seven. Right. Before that, you started doing some stuff with the local teams in our area. And then I got turned on to your name and then reached out to you because it was the same, it was the same time period when I was bringing in practical shooters for the handgun and rifle side of it. I'm like, oh, man, if I can now combine the speed and accuracy for snipers this is going to be something I'm, that I'm very interested in. And then obviously, you in our backyard. So I'm very, like, excited about that exploding even more and getting that even bigger. And I think Yalls program from when it started to where it is now is probably completely different, isn't it?

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah. Yep. It's been, it's been good. I mean, we've, I haven't kept track of the roles, how many I've taught, but it's. Man, I just feel blessed. It has been a lot of law enforcement snipers, and I haven't heard anybody complain about it. So hopefully it's, it's applicable to what they're doing, too. More accurate, more quickly.

[Brandon]

So that's, that's a good thing. That's important. The speed and accuracy. They're not competing against each other. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're married to each other. So that, that's a good thing. And you are a very, very humble guy, but you're also one of those men that you're not afraid to critique in a very professional way. And you're like, man, I'm not trying to hear, to hurt your feelings, but this is where you're lacking. And, and I appreciate that. And, and it was kind of surprising because your demeanor is a little different when you put on the instructor hat and start like, hey, man, you want, you want me to come out and watch? I'll watch, but here's what I'm going to say.

[Dan Jarecki]

So lead follower, get out of the way. If it's my turn to lead. Yeah, then I'm, I'm, I don't mind talking to 500 people. What I don't like is talking about myself. So things like these podcasts and stuff are. Hell, yeah, this is not cool.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, say we're not talking about you anymore. We're gonna go switch over. So who's our next guest over here, man? Who's this guy with a great beard with a little bit of gray, but it's enough gray where it's sexy.

[Mike Castillo]

So, you know, hey, everybody, Mike Castillo here on a sniper team leader on a, on a team here in Central Texas. A lot of respect for the two guys in this room that are on here with me. Learned quite a bit from, from Sean Harris, who you're going to meet here in a second. Taken majority of his classes. He comes with a lot of experience in the law enforcement sniper world, as well as a military background. So many of the skills and abilities that I've had an opportunity to learn over the course of, you know, guess the last 10 years have come from guys like him that kind of took it upon themselves to become a part of TTPOA and put out solid training to guys so that we can kind of spread that knowledge. And then with Dan, Dan was able to kind of bridge that gap of law enforcement and push it out more into the, you know, PRS style like long range shooting that believe it or not, depending upon where you're at in a, in a city, whether you're doing like an overwatch assignment, you're in a rural area where it's not statistically, you know, according to American Sniper association, statistically we're looking about 56 yards is the, is the average sniper engagement. But again that's an average. So when you look at some of the larger, the more spec other end of the spectrum, you're looking kind of more towards like the 595, I think, I believe 595 was one of the longest ones ever recorded in the last 20 years by law enforcement. So when you look at that, you're talking a 600 yard shot. It's like how many law enforcement snipers have the capability right now on demand to pick up their bolt gun, know that they're having to deal with potential environmental factors like wind, high angle, shooting, a moving target, or a mixture of all those, which are a lot of times common types of targets that are in the PRS world where if we can get snipers to that level, where we may not use it all the time, you know, like with, with looking at like entry guys, sure we may not do hostage rescues every day, but, but we train it weekly because that's kind of the highest level that we need to be able to operate at now. Now that shouldn't be any different with the sniper community. Whereas we should be training to meet the extreme, the highest spectrum of something that we may need to handle and be able to handle that on demand. And with guys like Dan coming in and taking the time with his own personal experiences being successful like in the PRS world and sharing that knowledge with law enforcement snipers, I think is crucial to allow guys to continue to learn and share that information.

[Brandon]

I think that's, like I said, that was my passion when I was introduced to Dan and then reached out to guys that I know in the metroplex that are snipers and that have worked with Dan and when I mentioned his name, they're like, hell yeah. Yes, you need to have him out there. Because I'm, I'm. I've never professed that I'm a sniper or do all that kind of stuff. So I do reach out to guys that I respect in the industry. They're like, hey, what do you think about this? And then they, when they tell me that, I'm like, you're good to go. Because to me it's like, I know you do like competition tiles with pistol and stuff like that. So for me, man, I'm like, that's the same realm, it's just a different platform. Because at the end of the day, it's combining the speed and it's combining the accuracy and making them go together. Because I look at, there's times where you don't have the perfect platform to get in my little sandbag and my little perch right here. And I get five hours of set here. There's times where it's like get out and go. Even for patrol guys, there's, here's what's happening and stuff. And I think that needs to be pushed, continue to pushed in the sniper community or anything that now we're dealing with rifles and we're having some distance. Sean, what have you seen you, you've been in this industry for a while now on the sniper side. What's your, what, what's your opinion on that and how, how has that evolved from when you started to, to where you, where you are now?

[Sean Harris]

So I first came into this industry through the military on the Marine Corps side and had an opportunity to go to a coveted school at Quantico and earn a certificate there in a rite of passage. And then fast forward, that was the mid-90s. And then fast forward to going into law enforcement career in the mid to late 90s as well. And in early 2000 was tried out for the SWAT team and was brought over for the reason that they obviously it took three times to get onto the SWAT team. So it's not. They just picked me, said, hey, you go over there. But the billet that was open at the time that they needed that they had a void was the sniper. And so they were like, this is a good reason to pull this guy over now for that. So I got over there and I had to go through the gauntlet of going to an LE sniper school, which in my mind was my first exposure, but in my mind was a bit ridiculous. Very ridiculous. Just the lack of time that was put into the instruction, the quality of instruction. And you're talking about plussing somebody up and a 40 hour work week.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Harris]

And then after that, 40 hours, then you're going to throw them into a position to take a long range shot on a deadly four situation by themselves. And more so in defense of a third person, not a defensive view. So I mean there's, there's the color of that as well. So I learned, hey, there's a lot more to this and, and the shots are closer up, so it seems easier. But military and LE are two completely different worlds. And it really is kind of like where the fresh and the salt water mix a little bit. And then what is that? Hydrocline or something like that is what they call it.

[Brandon]

Oh, geez.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

No, you're the smart guy here.

[Dan Jarecki]

It's brackish.

[Brandon]

I know that.

[Sean Harris]

But then, so I had to evolve quickly to be relevant in, in this arena. So fast forward and you know, 18, 18 years on the team as a sniper and then evolving to different levels of responsibility within that particular billet, then I'm like, I'm seeing what's out there in the industry and I'm not pleased with it at all. And I'm not pleased with, with what we're, what we're providing and what I was receiving as far as instruction and stuff like that. The big thing that stuck out to me is even being in the military is the military is good. Specialized units, Special Operations, Tier 1. They're good about seeking out whoever's good at a particular skill set. And for instance, if you want to learn how to drive cars really fast and be evasive, they pull in race car drivers. Makes sense. They want to learn how to climb mountains and do it really well. They pull in civilians that, that teach that and they're experts in that craft. And they're not just, it's not like they're trying to do it organically. They're reaching out to those that know how to actually do it. And another thing that I learned was like, which I had to break the stigma in my own mind about is like, what is this civilian going to bring to me that has no LE experience, no military experience? What, what is it that they're going to teach me?

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

So I wasn't mentally even allowing a civilian to even train me. Yeah, maybe in the same room. But was I mentally receiving information? So I had to break that barrier down, you know, myself. But you get around guys, you know, like Rob Latham and, you know, people like that, that they're just civilians, but they're phenomenal shooters and those units bring those individuals in and teach them.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

Why aren't we doing it in the sniper community. Yeah, we're not doing it at all. And so you have, you have fresh water and salt water, the military and, and the le side of that profession, then you have the civilian side. And that's like, that's like the oil that's sitting on top of the water. It's always floating there. It's always there, but nobody's finding a way to. To make it mesh, make it work.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah. I like what you said with. That is. And that was, that was kind of my passion with, with, with bringing Dan in, is that if it works for pistol and assault guys, why would it work for sniper?

[Sean Harris]

Absolutely.

[Brandon]

And I think it goes back to breaking down some walls and some barriers that we put up as like, well, we're law enforcement. This guy doesn't know what. He don't know what we're doing. You know what? You're doing the same damn thing. You're getting behind a gun and you're putting rounds accurately at a target, whether that target is a human or whether that target is some small piece of steel. At the end of the day, you're trying to get accuracy and speed and, and that's the end game. So if a guy can teach you how to do that more efficiently and better, and he has no skill set of. Man, I know what it's like to be called out at three in the morning, all that kind of stuff. Dude, screw that. At the end of the day, how do you shoot this gun better? You should listen to that person. And I think too, like, going back to Dan, he doesn't like to talk about himself and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's awesome when you show up to a class because I've seen that guys show up, hey, man, I'm so and so, yeah, I'm a competitive shooter. Let's go shoot. And then within 10 minutes of the class, guys are like, who the fuck is this dude, man? He can shoot like. And you, you and you, because you're used to the, quote, tactical shooting and some instructors, like, I'm from so and so, blah, blah, blah, been on swat, blah, blah, blah. I can do this. And you're like, yeah, okay, I'm pretty close to you, your instructor. I'm not too far off from you, but there's a night and day difference from a true competitive shooter to most le guys. And that's awesome. So have you, have you seen that?

[Dan Jarecki]

Well, I.

[Brandon]

So you can brag on this show.

[Dan Jarecki]

Well, I don't know. Okay. I mean, A little bit. But yes, you should say it's. So it's some of the competitions. You'll see. You'll see seals show up. You'll see CAG guys, you'll see the. The best guys in their respective units that are employed as snipers come to PRs. So it never used to be that way, and it is now, but. But you'll also see LE guys come to the matches.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah.

[Dan Jarecki]

And I'm like, okay, so the seals, the, the CAG guys, they shoot well, but they've got a lot to learn. And the LE guys don't do well traditionally. And then you don't see him anymore, which is a shame. So I think that sort of bothered me. I mean, God blessed Mike with a talent to sing. You know, that's his thing, we said. And God made it so I can shoot guns. And that's. I don't know if everybody's dogging on the police. Let's. This is how I'm giving back. And if that helps save one of your teammates or something like that, then it's mission accomplished for me.

[Brandon]

And I think that comes back to too, is LE putting their pride down and not being so ego driven to go, hey, what can I learn from you? You just kick my ass. Because if you go to any pistol, uspsa, or any type of shooting competition, when it comes to shooting with civilians and you've never done it or you've done it a few, you're getting your ass kicked. The dude who's the plumber or the dude who's the accountant, who looks like a dork, who doesn't have the cool tattoos, who doesn't have all the muscles, and you're like, golly, what the hell, man? What is going on here? But to me, if you don't take that and go back and go, how do I get where this guy is? Then you're a fool. You really are.

[Dan Jarecki]

And I got to tell you guys, I mean, candidly, so call me a nutball, but we were walking through a park one day and there's a bunch of people around, and I said to my wife, you know, you've got. We said this morning, you've got your lone shooter. What if you had three shooters that knew how to shoot and the guys at the PRS know how to shoot? I'm like, you could. This could be a real bad day for a whole lot of people. And then so that the SWAT community would show up and not know how to respond.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Dan Jarecki]

So that's. That's where I'D like to help. So to give them a leg up on some type of long range response. Yeah, Quick, accurate, that's that type of thing.

[Brandon]

So, so what are you doing? That is, I guess, showing the Ellie sniper a different way to do what they've been doing. Like, what does that look like?

[Dan Jarecki]

Well, so I guess from, from my take, there's, there's two types of missions. The one typical for SWAT is overwatch. So sit there on a, on a tripod for hours and hours and do nothing. Or on a rooftop. What about a more rapid engagement where we don't have. How do we range? Maybe where we can get ranges of wind estimations and an engagement very, very quickly. So if I could give somebody a ranged hack and get a shot out of that gun from you holding the rifle to a shot out of the gun in 10 seconds, that's my goal for that.

[Brandon]

It's funny you say that, because last competition, it was the first top competition I've ever worked that I was actually on the range watching every team because in the past I've always competed or when I wasn't competing, I had to do podcasts or I was doing some things that weren't allowing me to be on the range. This year was the first time. And so it was, it was cool because I saw almost pretty much every sniper come through that event. And you could tell the ones that were efficient and had a skill set outside the traditional law enforcement, you know, like, template, and then the guys who would get down and, and send it like within a few seconds, those, those guys always won. Because now the way the competition is set up for us, if you don't have a, an efficient sniper who's in shape, you're behind the eight ball on this competition stuff now. And you can see the guys are like, okay, let me measure this, let me do this and let me get all these. I'm like, how much are you carrying? Like, because I, I was even thinking in a practical situation, okay, you get down range and all of a sudden the hostage and the host taker come out and you're like, oh, hey, wait a minute, I don't have my stuff ready yet. Like, I mean, it's go time and stuff. So is, is that kind of some of the stuff you're talking about?

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, basically. And you know, Sean, it'd be the same thing the military is teaching. You know, you've got your 19 year old kid or whatever, and he needs to know how to engage a target very quickly. How do you do that? Well, so we can, we've got some leeway maybe with range estimation. Teach them how to do that. There's some fudge we can, we can do with that. And then wind estimation techniques and edge of target holds for a given size target. Very quick. So we don't need Kestrels and laser range finders for every single shot.

[Brandon]

Sure thing.

[Dan Jarecki]

Within, within a certain range. We can engage very, very quick, quickly.

[Brandon]

So Mike, what's been your journey as far as first time you got your eyes open to this type of like way of doing things from what you were doing.

[Mike Castillo]

So I think for me I have this kind of endless like desire for knowledge and Dan will, Dan will tell you. I'll tell him, hey man, I got.

[Dan Jarecki]

The unlimited cell phone plan.

[Mike Castillo]

Yes.

[Dan Jarecki]

So I could take all the mic's.

[Mike Castillo]

Phone and if anybody knows me, I'm like, hey Dan, I got a question for you real quick. I mean five minutes, it's an hour and a half.

[Brandon]

I'm the same way with guys that I've. That I know in the industry or that are trainers or. Man, I beat their ass, man. I'm like, stuff like that. But they appreciate it. I like what, what, what Matt Prankett talks about. He, he always says, hey man, I'll meet your effort. And he does like, if you like you said, wear his ass out, he'll, he'll answer everything, you know, I love it. I just.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, it means. So he's hungry.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Dan Jarecki]

You know, he's going to take it to his guys and share it. So it's awesome.

[Brandon]

So I'm sorry to.

[Mike Castillo]

No, no. And I think that's kind of been the coolest thing for me to see is. And it was very humbling. The first prs, like legitimate PRS match I went to and I wanted to know more about wind and you know, you have the formulas, like people about the formulas. You can sit there and calculate it on paper like Dan said. Um, but go and, and I'll give you example the. At this match, I'm familiar with a lot of the environmental effects on, on bullets. But in law enforcement you generally don't have to deal with most of them. So like you can read about it, you can learn about it, but until you actually need to like exercise it on demand, you don't. I feel like you don't know it as well. It's almost like the, the old saying, you know, if you can teach something, you truly know it. Yeah. Versus only just reading. But yeah, I'm familiar with that. So. So an example is this, this match I went to, there was a target that was somewhere in like the 850 yard distance. So got all the wind calculations. I had the calculation on the dope shot, you had to do a mag exchange. So broke my first two shots, good impacts. The wind call was correct. Well then I switched mags and then I went to re engage, same hold, no change in the wind. And then I missed that target like a foot above the target. And I didn't think I did anything different. And fortunately I end up meeting another PRS guy there that used to be a barrel maker. And so I'm just trying to learn pick these guys brain because all these guys are up there and they hit all four shots like it was nothing. And granted they were on some, some gamer guns, whereas I was shooting a 308. But it wasn't something that should have had that big of a change because I didn't feel like the position was different. So this guy walks over to me and he was like, hey, I noticed the magazine that you had in your gun was the one you had in your pocket. And when you did your mag exchange, you pulled the other one off the top of your backpack. And that one was sitting in the sun. So we know sitting there that you're getting sunlight on those bullets. And it was hot day. So we're talking higher temperature, higher pressure, faster bullet. I missed. And so it was the effects, you know, of the bullets sitting there in the sun, heating up, which I'm familiar with that I just never really needed to employ that because I've never really needed to train or practice at an 800 yard distance. And we'll do it, we'll go out, you know, and the guy's like, hey, we're gonna go to Fort Hood and we're gonna get some thousand yard dopes and you kind of walk it in. But is that realistic training? Like are you training just to get an impact or are you actually, is this something that you're going to be able to do on demand? And so I've never really had to deal with anything like that. And so that thirst for knowledge kind of is where I ended up meeting Dan and. And how'd y'all meet? So the first time I met Dan, I actually took his class here at ttpoa.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Mike Castillo]

And it's the same two years ago.

[Brandon]

Two years ago.

[Mike Castillo]

Okay. And it's.

[Dan Jarecki]

You did.

[Brandon]

I did.

[Mike Castillo]

I remember that.

[Sean Harris]

You were.

[Mike Castillo]

I must have not talked much.

[Sean Harris]

You were, you, you were a standout student.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah, I must have been.

[Brandon]

Or you just did so. Well, you didn't need a lot of corrections.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah, there's two ways. Definitely not the case. But that kind of opened my eyes.

[Dan Jarecki]

And okay, now I'm okay. So. Yeah, I was taking Hebrew and Mike had a Hebrew tattoo on his. On his arm. And I'm like, okay, so let's figure out what that says.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah, let's. On top of that, you're the only.

[Brandon]

Guest has ever taken Hebrew, so congratulations.

[Mike Castillo]

So. Well, the tattoo actually says, fear not for I'm with you.

[Brandon]

At least that's what the tattoo artist. Correct. Is that what it says?

[Dan Jarecki]

Dude, it is what it says.

[Mike Castillo]

Okay, good. And since the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, I put it in Hebrew.

[Brandon]

I like that.

[Mike Castillo]

But I'm not Jewish. But that's the reason for it. So Castile is not Hebrew. No, no, I think it's Spanish. Guys will debate that because I don't speak Spanish though.

[Brandon]

You're a coconut.

[Mike Castillo]

Like, absolutely. They see, they see my last name and they walk up and start talking to me and I'm like, I don't.

[Brandon]

You're like, oh ho, ho, wait a minute. You're 15 words into this.

[Mike Castillo]

Stop, stop, stop, stop.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I hear you.

[Mike Castillo]

I'm getting there. Four years of Spanish. Didn't, didn't. Didn't remember any of it. So with Dan went out there and, and the best thing about his class, and that class is actually being taught again here this year. And I highly advocate it. And a lot of the things that I've learned from Dan, I've started incorporating into my sniper schools. We just recently put on an advanced school. Got a lot of great feedback from it. We're probably going to do that school again here at the end of the year. And with Dan's class, like he was saying earlier, he kind of breaks it down into like simple terms. So you. And not to like throw out all his content, but you think about a human sized target. We're talking probably like a 10 inch plate. So to the point of having to make like a hasty shot, you do have win. Say, you know, if we're talking full value win, like a 90 degree win, like that's what the is being is the effect on your bullet is at the 90, which as Dan says, like all the bullet cares is what it's hitting at the 90. Regardless if it's a 45 degree angle, whatever it is, the only thing that the bullet cares about is it's what it's doing to it at a 90 degree angle. So Dan has a really good curriculum where it breaks down okay, well, if you're at 300 yards and you got a 10 inch plate and you have a 15 mile per hour wind full value or less and you hold the edge, you're going to impact that plate. If you push it out to 500 yards and, and you got a 5 mile per hour wind or less on a 10 inch plate and you hold edge or in, you're going to hit that plate. And so like those are the kind of things that law enforcement snipers need to look, need to know and be familiar with. Because when you do get that situation that's quick and on demand, you're not going to sit there, you're not going to pull out a Kestrel, you're not going to go through like the 4 or 5 mile power gun method, you're not going to have time to do that stuff. But you need to have the confidence to end that threat because now you're talking about lives being on the line. No.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Dan Jarecki]

And I'm, I'm, I'm a thief, guys, I'm going to tell you.

[Brandon]

And any great instructor is, yeah, so.

[Dan Jarecki]

I didn't, I didn't make that stuff up. That's from SOCOM and Emil Presslick and those, the wind gurus and stuff. And I'm like, I'm just trying to give nuggets like applicable nuggets is what it is.

[Brandon]

That's good.

[Sean Harris]

Well, it's, it's, it's fast things that help boost the confidence of the shooter. So these long ranges that you know the competitions and these long ranges that Ellie go and shoot should give them the confidence that anything inside of 500, anything inside of 600 yards, because that's the arena that we're dancing in right now, is a doable shot. But what we were lacking, I felt we were lacking on the instructor side or the knowledge side was teaching people how to leave the turrets alone and how to read the environments and how to decide what's an acceptable sight picture. And once you have the acceptable sight picture and knowing the parameters of your gun and your ammo and the environments, then let's put that round on target. Because we do it with patrol rifles, we do it with pistols. Why aren't we doing it with sniper rifles?

[Brandon]

Yeah, well, I think too, I mean, it goes back to. And the good thing about the way we do podcasts and the bad thing we do podcasts, there starts to become a theme because we do them back to back to back. And like, okay, if you're listening to, you're like, well, I Didn't listen to this one. This is the, you know, six months from the first one I listened to or whatever. But the theme starts becoming. Is, for this conference, to me, it's been instructors. Like, there's a lot of responsibility on an instructor. And I think for. For law enforcement, we have failed a lot. And, And. And tonight, guys, they're listening to this podcast. It's not tonight for y'all, but for. For us. We're going to have Chris Palmer. And we just had Chris Palmer on, you know, a few hours ago, and he's a keynote speaker for this conference. And that's one of the things he's talking about, is how we have failed ourselves in training. Like, you know, everybody needs more training. Yes, we. We. We need more training as far as to continue to build your skill set. But there's a. We get enough training. It's just, we bitch about this, we bitch about that. And there's gatekeepers sometimes in every field that we have in law enforcement. So the gatekeepers of the sniper community don't like people like you, let's be real, because I'm good with that. Not everybody, because we have two guys here that are there, but there's some people that are not going to like what you're saying because it makes them irrelevant or it makes them have to work, or it makes them go, what do I. What I have been telling my students, man, there's someone else that's doing it better. Oh, man, my little platform that I have, you're a chat. You're. You're. You're challenging me, and I could lose that. And I think that's wrong. And I mean, do y'all see that? Y'all two sniper little boys over here, you know, your blankets and stuff, you know? You know, I love y'all. So what do y'all see?

[Sean Harris]

This is where we sit in silence and don't even recognize that.

[Brandon]

You know, we have to banter back and forth. That's why Graham is over there. He's in my back, man. He's got a knife ready to stab y'all.

[Graham]

No, but I think it goes down to going to that instructor level course does not make you the instructor, Right? It's years of experience. And then, like, for me, if I went to a basic sniper instructor course, right? And I'm going to go put stuff together. I'm going over to Sean, or I'm going over Mike and say, hey, y'all already run these advanced classes. What do we need to do to prepare for this? You know, Lesson plans and all that. So. And then being on the range with you, right, and seeing how you run the course and how you run the course. And I think that's what he was talking about before, you know what I mean? Because we had that certificate. So I'm gonna go back and I'm an instructor at my agency.

[Sean Harris]

But are you, Chris, you have certificate.

[Graham]

I agree with you.

[Sean Harris]

Right? I agree with you exactly what you're saying. But, but are you. I mean, maybe you are, but I guess the bigger question is, is will you. And can you. Can you actually teach? Can you regurgitate this material? Can you. Can you as an instructor say, hey, I made a mistake like the last time I taught. Mike went through my class March of last year, so a year ago. And that course has changed exponentially since when he went through it. I mean, I've even changed my win formula, approach. And so if you're not willing to accept that you're not the end all, be all, there's a better way to do it and there's a more proficient way to do it, then you need to get out of the game, because that's where we're failing. And Chris Palmer and I were talking last night. Night.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

Is that's what we're filming? There's plenty of training. There's great, there's, there's, there's. The quantity of training is there, but where's the quality?

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Harris]

And are we as instructors being dogmatic, institutional inertia and because that's the way we've always done it, approach, or are we evolving and are we giving a better product than what we were given to help promote our community and to help, you know, safe, you know, safety of the community, but to help promote the officer's confidence and ability in what they do. And once we have a student, whether it's a mandatory class or it's a class that they've paid for out of pocket to go, once you have their attention, that's your opportunity to put the hook in the mouth because you just gave them great training and to put them on that trajectory of, I want more. I want to know Dan. I want to have. I want to have that relationship or the phone number and hope that Dan has that unlimited plan so that I can call him and get that number. Yeah. So we as instructors are missing a huge opportunity. If we're just like, we're just checking boxes, we got to get them through, and we're not. We're not making the product better every time we have the opportunity so what.

[Brandon]

Made you change your win calls?

[Sean Harris]

It's very, you know, I call wind El Diablo because it's always changing. You can. Once you think you have it figured out.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

It's gonna laugh at you.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

Three more times before you figure it out the next time.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Harris]

But I was in Virginia beach with all the who's who and the Ellie and and military sniper community and Todd Hodnett was up there at the time. This was I think 2018 at the time. He had a very complex wind formula and once you got it down, it was in your head, but it was a perishable formula.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Harris]

He got up there and now I had mastered this wind formula. I could do it on the fly, but I had to continuously do it to be good at it all the time. He gets up there, he goes, guys, he goes, I'm going to tell you something. He goes, that wind formula that I've been pushing out and that you guys are using, that's mine. He goes, forget it.

[Brandon]

Oh shit.

[Sean Harris]

He goes, it's wrong.

[Brandon]

Oh.

[Sean Harris]

And I'm just like, that's huge. I custom for a couple minutes internally.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

And then I'm like, okay, so what, what do we have now? What, what is it now? But with if guys that are smart, super smart, figuring all this stuff out, you've got the Brian Litz's and you have all these programs, all these other things you can learn so much from the guys that are actually in the weeds with it all the time, I mean they're nerding out, I'm nerding out on what they're doing. They're nerding out, I mean just big time on it. So I'm learning from the.

[Brandon]

And snappers are nerds. Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah. So you learn a little bit. And it's like, okay, where did that come from? How did we get to this point? Like how did that wind formula in a 308 go to a mile an hour gun? Where does that come from? And then have that mile an hour gun then turn into a tenth of a win call at full value. And then how did that work? Where did that come from? So then we have to get into the ballistics of it and all the things that go into that ballistic calculator. Why are we skipping at 6 or 700 from a 0.7 to a 0.6 to a point 7 or from a 0.7 to a point 8? Why are we skip point? Where does that come from? And my answer was like, that's what the sniper gods told Us or somebody smarter than us said so. I don't know why. So I was like, I need to know that. Why. So where was I going with that? Is.

[Brandon]

I've already fallen asleep because you started talking about math, so.

[Sean Harris]

I know, I know.

[Dan Jarecki]

I'm. I'm wide awake.

[Brandon]

This is awesome.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I'm like, favorite point, 6.4. Okay. I'm.

[Mike Castillo]

I don't know.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Mike Castillo]

Well, Dan wants to say it's aerodynamic jump. That's. That's why it is.

[Brandon]

That's why Graham.

[Dan Jarecki]

It's a lunar drift.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah. Lunar drift.

[Dan Jarecki]

Lunar drift.

[Sean Harris]

Well, it's a coriolis effect as well.

[Mike Castillo]

I mean, spin drift.

[Sean Harris]

If we jump up right now, then the room should shift before we hit the ground at 600 yards.

[Dan Jarecki]

Today is Friday, so that's, you know, it's only half value on a Friday.

[Mike Castillo]

That's true.

[Sean Harris]

That's true. And what percentage is the Earth turning?

[Brandon]

Nerds.

[Sean Harris]

Nerds.

[Brandon]

Nerds. No, but that's huge. As an instructor to go, hey, what? I have built my platform on my little plastic Jesus here. It's not. It's not the gospel. This is what I've seen from my own shooting journey. So to. To be able to humble yourself, to do that, that. That's huge. And then for you to go, you know what? I'm gonna humble myself and say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna. Approaches in a different manner is huge. That's what great instructors do. You know, not to repeat the same podcast as two hours ago, but I go back to this podcast, the nights in the hospitality suites. The true guys that put ego aside will talk with other instructors and just start throwing out. And it just, it. The conversations just keep building and building and building. And there's. There's things that I'm like, I don't even know about that, but, man, that's interesting. Like, I've never looked at that, that approach of that. And, and that's. That's what you should do because y'all had a huge conversation. I was getting pulled back and forth from different people coming up, and I was like, damn, I want to listen to this. You know, okay, I got to be nice and do all this, but I love hearing that because it first started off as like handgun type stuff, and then you're there, and then all of a sudden it just started evolving into just instructor related things. So that's really good. I don't know what I was going with, that kind of lost train of thought because my partner is behind me doing.

[Mike Castillo]

I know we're Talking about, to your point, Brandon, talking about ego and students being able to walk into a classroom and set that aside. And again, you know, like going to Sean's classes and learning everything I can from, from him. Dan.

[Sean Harris]

That I stole from somewhere else.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah, exactly. That's saying. And you got guys like Kelly Purkle, like Matt Harmatuk, Mike Saxy and all these guys that are putting really great training out in the, in the, in Texas. Like, we didn't invent the moa. I didn't invent the mill. Like, all I'm doing is taking that information that I've learned from you guys and applying it and trying to teach it to other snipers. But I think to that point, it's a huge responsibility on an instructor to know what you're talking about. I know Derek Bartlett's real big on that too, with the asa. If anyone's ever been through like his instructor course, you do a presentation, he's going to ask you, he's like, I'm going to ask you follow up questions and make sure that you know that what you're actually talking about, you're not just regurgitating information. You went to an instructor class, you checked a box, now you're instructor. And then you turn around. Now all of a sudden you're the subject matter expert on that. That's a huge responsibility for people that decide to take that instructor role. Knowing that, like what Sean was saying before, a lot of these sniper classes that are taught in Texas generally come down to being about a week long. You look at all these military sniper schools and these higher level schools that it takes a long time to develop that and exactly. We're tasked with taking a sniper, potentially somebody from a smaller town that has zero experience on a bolt gun, has no idea what snipers do, and you're expected to take them for 60 hours and then that next Monday when they go back to work, they're on a rooftop, deployed as a sniper by their agency. Because now, boom, we checked you off. You're certified.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Mike Castillo]

And so knowing that that timeframe isn't really something that's going to change because of the nature of the industry. That's a huge responsibility on the instructor to pick the correct topics that, that these snipers need to know in order to turn around and potentially have a deadly force encounter the following week. So with the school that we developed, our agency, it was taken from like guys like Sean and Kelly and all these other areas of, of, of deploying somebody as a sniper in such a short amount of time. So really 10, 10% of it, you know, at the end of the day is shooting. Because there's so much more to being a sniper than, than pulling the trigger. And obviously we do need to know ballistics and all those advanced levels areas. But when you're talking about like a basic sniper school, I think ultimately the goal with that is to send those students out into the field with confidence. So one of the things that we do in our school is after we do fundamentals, building up the rifle, teaching guys fundamentals of marksmanship to where they're confident on the gun. We know that at 100 yards they're going to be able to put that bullet where we want it to go.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Mike Castillo]

But then we roll into operational stuff where we're doing live role player scenarios. We're doing. And one of the most important things towards the end of the week is we start talking about like legal liabilities. We talk about Tennessee v. Garner Granby, Connor Scott v. Hendrix, like getting to that point now you're going to have to be able to defend yourself. And a lot of schools don't go into that stuff. And I feel like with what we generally do in our class is when those guys leave that school, they can turn around and okay, I know how to run the gun, I know how to set up a hide. I've had live moving humans in my scope. I've seen the whites of their eyes, I've pulled triggers, firing blanks. And now going through the litigation side of it, I know the path and I know the expectation of what's going to come. So I think it's more than just doing a full week of shooting. Let's go shoot out to a thousand yards and I'll get you hitting a thousand yard target, you know, in five days. And so with people that are going into the instructor arena, I think that's kind of the lens that it needs to be looked at. As you're putting your name on that certificate that you certified this person as a sniper and they're potentially going to be involved in a lethal force encounter the following week. Like, have you done everything in your power and the knowledge that you've gained over your experience to set that person up for success? And I think if we do a better job of that, then you're going to have guys that have a more of a solid foundation that when they do go to those instructor classes and they know what they're talking about and they have the experience that they're just going to be able to continue to build upon Those skills and ultimately end up being a better sniper.

[Brandon]

So, so sure.

[Sean Harris]

So being on the picking what you're going to teach because there's so much in long range shooting and precision shooting that, that you have to bottle up that's relevant for LE snipers. So great, great point on that. So I'd like to take that point and segue back over to Dan and ask you, because what you see, you said it earlier, and this is right on the mark is LE snipers or ELLIE shooters will show up at a competition and their performance is subpar and it's humbling and it's embarrassing because I've been there and I didn't perform well. And I'm thinking these people are looking at me like you're protecting our community and you can't even compete. You're the hero in a non stressful situation. And so that's kind of, you know, that's a heavy burden as an LE person and to work through. And I think most people, LE guys won't work through that and so that's why they don't come back. But the other thing too is on that particular topic, where are we getting our information? How are we getting our information to teach what we teach? What are the parameters? You know, so a lot of it comes from asa. They're pulling all this data in and that's where we need to kind of focus on. So our longest shot And Ellie in Usle is 595 yards. It took that shooter six shots to get on target. Yeah, I mean, is that, is that acceptable? Yeah, right.

[Mike Castillo]

It's a problem.

[Sean Harris]

And then the other thing too is, is what, what are our positions in which we're shooting? As LE snipers, our average engagement is between 57 and 59 yards. It's kind of a moving little. So it's a two yard difference difference there. So where, where are we training? Why are we training? And then our positional shooting, we're training most of the time what I'm seeing, we're not doing it. But what we're seeing in our community is a lot of it's in the prone on our bellies and it's comfortable.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

And we're not taking ourselves out of that comfort zone. And now you go to Dan's arena and in your arena, Dan, as a PRS shooter, you are, you are applying fundamentals in positions under time and through environmental factors as well. So what are the things that you feel and PRs that can relate besides getting people on targets quickly, whatever distances? What do you think about the positional side of it.

[Dan Jarecki]

Oh, man, that's huge. I think if you've got a notion of what it takes to hit positionally, like, what is that Once someone shows you how to build a good position, a good foundation, and then, and then a big part of it is a bag. If you just throw a rifle down on the hood of the car and it's going to rock all over the place, you're not going to hit a one MOA target at 800 yards.

[Sean Harris]

Just for the community out, for the knuckle drivers out there, a one MOA target at 800 yards is a, an eight inch target.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

All right.

[Sean Harris]

Okay, there we go. You with me, Brandon?

[Mike Castillo]

I'm following out, man.

[Brandon]

I woke up and I'm falling out.

[Sean Harris]

Okay.

[Dan Jarecki]

So, yeah, so, so part of it is I, I think it's a skill set. How do you, how do you build a position and then what equipment do you need to do it? So, so while we're talking about that, the, you know, what equipment should I buy? Probably everybody. I've got a closet full of bags that I'll give to people I don't like. And so there's the Armageddon. I mean, they make it with a light fill. It weighs less than a water bottle. I mean, it weighs nothing. And you could put that on the hood of your patrol vehicle and you could shoot one MOA to whatever distance that weapon platform can shoot positionally, not, not necessarily prone.

[Sean Harris]

So, so, so to give more credence to why we're talking about positional stuff and why we want your input on how to build those positions, why it's so important is in le community of the recorded shots, reported shots, more than half of them are other than prone. And then the other biggest portion of the position that the shot was taken in is standing. And standing is the position that was utilized more than sitting and kneeling combined. To put it in perspective.

[Dan Jarecki]

Okay. Yeah. So if you've got something, first of all, that, that if I want to get really good at shooting and practice at home, I'll shoot standing and I'll shoot standing with a.22 and 100 yards or 50 yards. And so that gives you trigger control. Your reticle is, or the rifle is always going to move. So there's timing involved. So that can be done at a short range. You could do that at the LE range. It's a pain to do it with a full size rifle. So to critique technique is hidden by recoil sometimes. So that's why.22 really, really shows you. But the second thing is building a position with a bag. Like I said you could. I can shoot somebody 56 yards or 560 yards with that bag with the same amount of accuracy. There's no degradation. And if I'm on a bipod, a bipod sort of welds you into the shape of that car's hood, maybe. And then if I need to move it, I'm. Now I'm screwed up. The rifle's too high or too low. If I'm on a bag, I can do everything and anything. Multiple targets.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah, you can traverse and elevate. So you go to like, even tripods. I mean, what are the, what are the more functional tripods that are going to be the ball mounts? Because you have that ability to just. And flex to whatever's happening. Because, you know, another good friend of our organization in CTPOA is Mike Panone. And one of the things that he says in a gunfight that you're going to find true. And if you go back and look at all the situations that you've been in, three things are guaranteed to happen. You're going to be moving, your target's going to be moving, and the lighting conditions are going to be different than what you trained in or prepared for. And if you go back and reflect that, then that's true. So we need to build a position that's not dogmatic on the equipment, like the bipod, like you said.

[Brandon]

Well, I just look at the prone position. Yes, there's a time and place for it, but there's so many things that you just go out in a, an urban environment, get prone in Walmart parking lot.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

What are you going to see? How are you going to shoot through 15 cars that are all part. How are you going to do that?

[Sean Harris]

Great point.

[Brandon]

I mean, that to me, because it goes back down to the lowest common denominator. I mean, you could take me out right now, give me three hours of, of sniper training and go, hey, man, get in this prone position and shoot something at 600, 700, 800 yards. I can do it. You just tell me where I need to do. I can do that. I mean, that's not the hard thing. It's. The hard thing is, is doing it in something that's income. Like you said, standing. That's not easy with any type of rifle. Standing, doing 25 yards. Sometimes you're like, oh, shit, man, that's not stable. Because. But I think that's where guys get into this mindset of that's not the Practical side of stuff like go prone out in a. Just look at any area environment, go pronoun in a neighborhood. How hard is that sometimes?

[Sean Harris]

Right, so, so Dan, when you go up to a stage and I mean, you know, stage, it's either going to be like the tank traps or you know, what have you. And relating a stage to an an LE encounter, you know, in LE we're looking at a deadly force situation. You know, so there's somebody's life is in danger of serious bodily injury or death. But going into that position, I'm going to say is no different than a PRS match because you have to, you have to know the environments, you have to know your distance, you have to know your target. What's an acceptable sight picture. And I'm not pulling that trigger until I have built a good solid position. So what goes into your mind when you come up to a stage and you're like, hey, I have to build this position to be successful.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah. I mean so in a match you might have, on a two day match you'll have 20 stages. A good match director might make three or four of those prone. So 25, less than 25% of the match is prone. Everything else is some type of basically off your stomach. So you're using the bag in some fashion. Movers off a bag. I don't know, just, just anything other than prone. So, so you've got to be able to, to set up on that obstacle very quickly. Get the bolt, you know, target acquisition, close the bolt and squeeze the trigger off again within if you can do under 10 seconds, that's the gold standard.

[Brandon]

Wow.

[Dan Jarecki]

At whatever, whatever that distance is. And it really doesn't matter. The closest thing we'll traditionally shoot is 400 yards, maybe 350 and then we've shot as far as 1500. But really 4 to 800 yards is the meat and potatoes of any given match.

[Sean Harris]

So you're, I mean essentially what we're hearing you say is you have to build a good solid position and you're building a supportive position on whatever is there.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, it might be a car. In fact, we've got cop cars, old cop cars. And we'll set up, we'll shoot from inside the car, off the hood, off the trunk, 500, 600, 700 yards, then change positions, do it again and you'll have what, what would that be? Maybe nine positions or something like that off of different things in 90 seconds.

[Sean Harris]

And so I'm relating, not that we're going to take 800 yard shots in 10 seconds or less. Usually. Is it something we might be faced with? Absolutely. But when I'm equating that to the LE community is that even our engagements are much closer. The room for errors, what you introduce as a shooter into Your platform or 809 yards are exaggerated at those distances.

[Dan Jarecki]

That's right.

[Sean Harris]

And so we have the same problem in the LE community because our window is small. Even if it's a hostage situation, it's even smaller.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

So that's exaggerated by our position and by the movement of the target. Because your targets are stationary.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep. And, and so you've got, you know what Mike was saying earlier, you're trying to train your, your units to the, the worst possible contingency. So 595 yards, for instance. But time stress. So time, it's, it's an artificial stress. But that's why you see guys from CAG and SEALs, you know, showing up and, and they're doing this because it's the closest thing you can get to narrowing a stress window without actually going down range.

[Brandon]

Why does it look at it in that? If you're going, if you're competing, you're a sniper, you need to be competing. You need to go do these competitions.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah. I was doing a once monthly match in Greenville. The range went away. But I would tell the guys, I'm like, come on out and be Bill Smith. I mean, and don't show up in your squad and nobody's gonna know, man. It'll be our secret.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Because the thing is that if you're training and you're doing things that, hey, I'm having to get down, and the gold standard is 10 seconds. And now I'm shooting something that's 800 yards and I'm doing it in 12 seconds. Now take that. And now I'm doing real police work. And I show up to a call and I'm under 60 yards and I'm doing that. That's a chip shot now, because, man, I have trained for this crazy shot under these really tight time constraints. It's like if you're training for CQB and you're shooting your rifle at 70, 80, 100 yards, and you're 120 yards and you're doing CQB style rifle shooting. And now you go to a real cQB Distance of 7 yards, 10 yards, that's. It's easy. You're like, you built these skills in that, that, that have the skill is a skill. No matter if you're 100 yards or 800 yards, it's still the same but now you're looking at like this is easy. And I think that's what you're trying to get to that.

[Dan Jarecki]

And, and so beyond that, if the department's concerned about liability and bullet accountability, what about the weapon system? So, so sometimes guys show up, they pull the rifle out of the case. Let's check your zero. We're, we're three mils off. Yeah, this, that's the rifle that was about to go downrange. So if you've been at a competition, you've, you've engaged, you know, on a one day 100 rounds and you're proofing the weapon system, you're proofing the optic tracking of the scope and then, and then your physical ability. So you're very confident in what you put back in your squad car in its case when it's ready to go downrange. And if, if the gun starts to go away, you're going to see that it's a very exact thing for that.

[Sean Harris]

So I want, I want to ask a two part question. I'm going to ask Dan on the PRS side and then I want to turn it over to Mike on the PRS slash LE side just to get your perspective in the room. What's your checklist? Going to a position. Let's just hypothetically say you've got a 650 yard target and you have, you name the barrier, non prone, whatever position you say and then Mike, I want you to then take that same scenario and related to an le, what's your checklist for building that same type of position under a life or death situation?

[Dan Jarecki]

Cool. Yeah, I mean I tell the guys three things, three D's distance, dope dials. So if you've got your distance to the target, the dope has to be on the rifle and you have to have good dope. It can't be.

[Sean Harris]

Can you explain what dope is to our, our knuckle dragger?

[Brandon]

I know what dope is dude.

[Dan Jarecki]

What is it? Brandon?

[Brandon]

Smoke it.

[Dan Jarecki]

Well, almost.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Oh that's different.

[Dan Jarecki]

That's.

[Brandon]

Oh, that's spelled with a. Okay.

[Sean Harris]

Not in our comics. Oh, there's, there's a period between every letter. Yeah, it's an acronym.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Dan Jarecki]

So it's, it's data on previous engagement. So it's just that the elevation adjustment or windage adjustment for that distance. So distance dope and then dials. And typically I, I like to dial stuff in if we're shooting smaller targets. So before I engage the target that my 3ds I gotta make sure that distance or else I'm gonna send a shot that's. That's off. I need to have. Have that accurate. The dope's gotta be good, and I've gotta trust it. And then the dials on the optic have to be set.

[Sean Harris]

That's good. Okay, so that's great. And that's a little nugget that came up that I wasn't even expecting. So that's great. But a quick side note on that.

[Brandon]

Are you dialing derp too?

[Sean Harris]

I'm sorry?

[Brandon]

You just learned what dope means too? Is that what you mean?

[Sean Harris]

We're way past.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Sean Harris]

When. Stop interrupting when I love to. Yeah. Speaking of dope.

[Brandon]

Stop it.

[Sean Harris]

There's a dope in the room. Do you. Do you dial for wind? What are your recommendations on wind?

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, so that's dollar hold. Yes, both. So I. I won't dial or I won't hold elevation unless there's some threat of physical violence. So I will dial whenever I can on a target. And again, most of these targets, they go from 2 moa to 1 moa. So they can be very small. And that's one of the reasons I do it on the wind. So let's say our wind is from 5 miles an hour to 11 miles an hour. So there's a window of wind. It's always at least 5, but it might gust to 11. I'll dial in the low wind, and I'll. So I'll be on the center of the target if the wind is 5, and then I'll hold the additional.

[Sean Harris]

Okay.

[Dan Jarecki]

So then that way I don't have to hold downwind. If the wind drops off, it's always at least five. So I kind of do a hybrid of both good and that. That way, if we're shooting a mover, let's say I just do my lead. I don't have to hold wind into the lead as well. Whether the guy's running from the left or from the right, I just hold.

[Sean Harris]

Now, what about your. That's your engagement checklist. What's your checklist for building your position?

[Dan Jarecki]

So position is. It's almost a feel thing at this point. I'll throw the bag down on whatever. I keep both eyes open behind the rifle, and I. This is something you can practice at home. Lay the rifle down and you're. You're looking behind the optic to make sure that the. The rifle is pointed at the target. And you can get very good at pointing that rifle at the target without you being behind the Magnified opt. So when you drop in behind the gun, you're seeing the target in the optic already. You don't have to fish around with a magnified optic. If you do, you did it wrong. So that's a skill you can practice before going live. You don't need live rounds to do that. So drop my bag and drop the rifle on, making sure it's pointed at the target and then drop in behind it. I should see the target already through the optic and then close the bolt and then send that shot.

[Sean Harris]

So what I'm hearing you say is, I mean you're essentially establishing a natural point of aim, you know, because our natural point of aim as, as taught to me by Jacob Bynum. And like I said, we steal this from everywhere. But Jacob Bonham's a huge mentor of mine. He says, you know, natural point of aim is simple. It's weapon aligned to the target and it's body aligned to the weapon and therefore you have your natural point of aim.

[Dan Jarecki]

That's right. And I, I do things a little different. You know, if you meet me, I've got really long arms and I look goofy. So I hold my rifle differently than a lot of guys might. So I'm, I'm kind of bladed a little bit more. I do that for recoil control. So on the follow up shot I can, I can see if my five mile an hour wind hold was accurate. And if not, then I gotta, I gotta watch what that bullet did on target or the shot. I'm blind, I can't see. I need to see what that bullet did.

[Sean Harris]

So for those listening, Dan's talking about, he's, he's helping control recoil by a forward grip instead of a bent elbow with the bag trying to hold everything at the back. So. Yep, that's. So that, so you, there's enough room there to fudge that blade so that you're, because you're managing recoil with a forward grip just like you would like a patrol rifle or something like that.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep, exactly. So I'll trade a little bit of natural point of aim for some recoil control follow up because I might need a second shot, third shot, eighth shot for the, for the rest of the stage, for instance.

[Sean Harris]

Perfect.

[Dan Jarecki]

But a police officer and militarily, you know, as opposed to the two man sniper team, they want guys that can spot their own shots now and they might have two guys on guns as opposed to a sniper spotter and kind of double the firepower of the team. So they're, they're, that's one of the Things the military is trying to do is get guys to spot shots.

[Sean Harris]

In the Marine Corps, they just taught us to lay on each other.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Harris]

And then keep your feet flat or else gunny was going to walk on them. But.

[Brandon]

And use crowns.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah, but. So let's translate that over to the le side. Mike, what, what is your checklist coming into a call into a position non prone.

[Mike Castillo]

So all the things that Dan just said, some of those and actually picked up from him on what he was talking about towards the end, not really much different. I think it's more of. There's a. There's a couple things that would be added because we're having to think about some things that, that the competitors aren't having to think about. And one, one of the biggest ones is backdrop. So that needs to be an extremely important factor in us as snipers determining when we're going to break that shot. Is. Is. Is it open in the back? Is am I going to send around through into a neighborhood? Do I have a downward trajectory? Like we need to know what our bullets do, which is why we test them through media and we test them through like organic material. And that's huge for us to know that I may impact my target. But what, what's going to. What is fragmentation or spalling? Like what's going to affect what's beyond my target? And that's extremely important things that I try to drill into my students. And then the second thing added to that is what type of ammunition am I using? I know like reloading is huge in PRs and some of the stuff that I'm working with on Dan right now to build extremely accurate bullets.

[Sean Harris]

So sexy bullets.

[Mike Castillo]

Yes, yes, yes. And I built some bullets and they didn't explode my barrel. So I did something right or Dan told me something correctly. But outside of that, you know, we're shooting ammunition that is designed for a specific purpose. So it's not only incumbent upon us as snipers to know the type of ammunition that we're selecting, but why we're selecting that depending upon the situation. You know, people listening to this, I challenge the guys that, you know, even if you're not a sniper or you're not on a SWAT team, you're. You're a patrol guy that's running, you know, patrol rifle on whatever call you're on, you need to know the type of ammunition that you have. If you don't know that you're not running an open air, you're running a bonded round. And the over penetration effects or lack thereof of what your bullets are capable or incapable of, that's huge. Like, we, especially as cops, I think there's somewhat of an assumption there that we know everything about guns and we know everything about bullets. Right. It's almost like a community expectation. But guys like snipers that are in the community, they're getting new. They're new into this. It's absolutely a crucial piece of information that we need to have so that we can pass that information down. So if snipers are keeping knowledge in house, even amongst. You know, the thing we talked about between snipers and entry guys, if your entry guys don't know ballistics or they don't know the type of ammo that the snipers are using and why we was. Why we'd select like, I challenge you to create like one or two, one or two day class or something where you can merge that knowledge. Because talking about ballistics, like, entry guys need to have drop charts on their guns. Entry guys that are running LVPOs, they need to know what the turrets are doing and what the. What, what, what you can do with the sub tensions on your reticle. Now, granted, if they're not going to necessarily use those, I think it's still important if they're going to be running that type of equipment that they're familiar with it and they know, they know how to properly mount it and torque it and make sure that anything that that's asked of them, they're able to relay correct information.

[Brandon]

Right, right. No, that's good. That's a good question, man.

[Dan Jarecki]

Cool.

[Brandon]

You got to start a podcast for snipers.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah, I have you guys, you guys just run it. Call me up, you know, out of the bullpen whenever you need a.

[Brandon]

That, that's, that's good. Listen, listening to this, it. My mind starts turning. So, you know, don't give me an answer now, but something I like to think about or y'all need to think about because kind of challenging your performance on demand. I would like to see y'all do a basic SWAT or basic sniper school in my region. But y'all kind of come up together, combine your two little heads together and come up with a class that's obviously has to meet the standards of t cold basic swat. But to do something where now we're taking the practical side and we're taking the. The le side and we're going to marry this together and come up with something. But I would love to host that, man, because I'm always looking for things that are different in my, in my Region that are going to serve our, our members. And I would love to see y'all do that. And Sean, if you want to jump in, you know, jump in on that. But I think that would be great. So if you are willing to accept that challenge, man, I have, I have.

[Sean Harris]

Better locations and facilities in my region. So I think we should crack that.

[Brandon]

That region six is. Whatever. I came up with this idea. So if you want to get on board with region seven, come on, man.

[Sean Harris]

But if not, we're going to do a basic sniper. He said basic swat.

[Brandon]

So I might, I probably said that, but I went basic sniper is what I meant to say.

[Sean Harris]

Not nitpicking, but okay. So that, that is a thing that us as instructors and I want to say, you know, leaders in this arena for our group is that there's a lot of things that don't come into play on the le side. Our engagement distance is short. The environmentals are, you know, almost, you know, Buford Boone said this. He goes, you know, everybody's wrapped around having, having this one sub MOA gun. And if you shoot a two inch group, you just, you throw everything out, you tear the rifle apart. You, you know, you have a heavy night of drinking or whatever it is, however you deal with, with that issue. He goes, but let's look at the reality of it. He goes, if your engagement is around 50 yards, average engagement, you're. And you have a 2 moa gun, you're a 1 moa gun. So why are we getting wrapped around the axle about things that don't matter? So that, that, that brings into play like, okay, learning about environmentals, learning about aerodynamic junk, learning about what are some other things. Elevation, cosines, angles, flex, capacitor. That only on the SUS 2000. But once we're learning about, you know, all of those things and then we learn it, we teach it and we show it and be like, you know, hey, it's great to know, but now just take that out of the problem because it doesn't matter. Does that make sense?

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

And it kind of goes right back to what we started talking about before. It's like we're trying to get this, we are trying to get a precise shot. However, what's an acceptable sight picture? What are some things that, that we should not have to work through? Knowing how they work and how they don't affect.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep.

[Sean Harris]

That, that you put into your skill set.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yep. Yeah. I mean, and there's, well, it's, it kind of depends on the team. I mean, some, some guys are Hungry. They want it. And other guys are pissed because they got to be on the sniper team. I mean, honestly, that's what it seems like.

[Brandon]

Or they've been on the sniper team, and I ain't. I ain't changing. Like, this is the way we've always done it. So. Yeah, don't come here with your. Because we already know how to do it.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah, we've done a pot. What podcast number was that? Go back and look at it. Yeah, it's an earlier one, but, yeah, we talked about that. The sniper team.

[Brandon]

I mean, it's all over it.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

It's. No matter what it is. It's. This is my little arena. And don't come in and tell me that I'm. Could do it better, but it's.

[Sean Harris]

It's that thirst of knowledge. Go ahead.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, I was just gonna say, but all you can do, I guess, is drop truth bombs, and then if people want to pick it up, then great. So I like that idea of. Of the school like you're talking about that. Would that be awesome?

[Brandon]

There you go.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Throw some stuff out. Let's go, boys. Come up to Region 7. Leading. Leading the way, man. You know, that's what I do. Anyway, we'll.

[Dan Jarecki]

We'll.

[Brandon]

We'll start wrapping this up, because I don't want to get in a fight with Sean anymore. So, Mike, man, lost fellow brother on the SWAT team. The SWAT community, a big deal, and especially when it comes from your home agency and friend and things like that. So I know there's some things in the works this year. He was. Graham, you want to speak about that as far as what? Officer of the Year, Correct.

[Graham]

Yeah. So TTPOA every year recognizes the SWAT Team of the Year and Officer of the year. And for 2023, Officer Jorge Pastor was named the SWAT officer of the Year for his heroic and brave actions on a hostage rescue last year. So there's some good things that are coming out of an unfortunate incident.

[Sean Harris]

Right.

[Graham]

So, Mike, if you want to kind of explain a little bit or talk a little bit about Jorge himself, and then in the kind of what the family has created and what the TTPOA is, is trying to help turn in, like you said, a tragedy into a good thing.

[Mike Castillo]

Absolutely. So for those that don't know him, training. Training was his life. Like, that's. That's. That's everything. And not just training himself, but training other people. He got a lot of excitement out of helping other people improve themselves and be safer and better at the job that they do. So I Know, not. Not everybody would have had the opportunity to attend the. The funeral services. And we spoke on this a little bit, but he. He'd only actually been at our apartment for a few years, but he was a firefighter in Florida for years. He had rank out there. I believe he was a lieutenant. He was also a medic, emt. And he explained this to me one time because, you know, trying to determine where his passion came from. You know, I know he had interest in the team when I first met him. We met on honor guard. So, you know, I want to get to know him as a person and find out where this passion came from. And he had told me that a couple times in his fire career. He went to some active shooter scenes, the aftermath of those scenes, where bodies everywhere, people screaming blood. And each of those incidents, he basically said that after he experienced those things, he got tired of being the second person there to clean up. He wanted to be the first person there to prevent these things. So he was extremely motivated in that regard. He had seen something about the. The bombing incident that occurred in. In Austin. And so he. He knew right away. He's like, that's. That's where. That's where I want to go. So he came to the department and did everything he could to get over the team, and just. Just a phenomenal guy. I can't say enough good things about him. He actually went through our sniper school, and he had no intentions of being a sniper. He was just wanted training. And I asked him, I was like, do you want to be sniper? And he was like, I don't know, but. But I want to. I want to soak up as much knowledge as I can. Well, he ended up being one of the top three shooters in that school and had zero knowledge on. On the bolt gun. Just everything that he did was about getting better. And so just a quick example, he. We had a student that ended up proning out during a scenario, and he got in the. In. In an ant bed, torn up with ants to the point where it was like an allergic reaction. And we had to take the student into one of the classrooms. We called ems. Excuse me. And as we're walking him in, I see this dark figure sprinting across the parking lot as we're taking the student inside the building. And I'm like, the hell is that what's doing? So then we get the student side. I'm going, I'm looking for some supervisors to try to start that whole process and get EMS there. Well, when I come back in, Pastor is sitting There in front of the student. He's got the student shirt off. He's Sharpie markered every ant bite that he had. He's feeding him Benadryl. He's got an EpiPen right here in his right hand. He's got his bag open that has all his med gear, like, ready to save this guy's life. And then so EMS shows up and he stands up, he introduces himself, shakes her hands like a friendly professional, goes through the whole list of this, this, this and that, and, and like, he didn't have to do that. And it was amazing to, to see, like, how much care he had for somebody that he didn't know. Like, and he was, he was on work, he was on a scenario himself. He wasn't even involved in that. He just saw it, boom, ran right at the parking lot to his car to take care of this guy. So that's the kind of person he was. And so with the foundation to the what you asked, his wife is creating the Jorge Pastor Foundation. They already got a website going. The ultimate goal with it is to kind of maintain that mentality that that pastor had, very similar to what we're doing here at ttpoa. And the goal would be to raise money to where we can pay for people to go get training.

[Brandon]

Awesome.

[Mike Castillo]

Without those people needing to pay for it. And that's not. And it's not just for police officers. It's going to be for ems, for fire veterans, police, any, any, any one of those avenues. Because he cared about everybody. And, and at our department specifically, he had a huge, huge role in, like, our RTF integration. So he had friends in the fire department, he had friends in the medical community. And so because of him, he, he was one of the sole creators of this huge collaboration downtown where we have guys riding around on, on Polaris, you got a firefighter, a medic, and you got a couple cops that are armed. And. And that was kind of like his baby. And, and so the byproduct of that, because the, the type of person he was is he helped facilitate so many positive relationships amongst these public service avenues that never really had a connection previously. And so that's why, like, you know, there was a lot of people that were, that showed up and all the people that were out there at the funeral at Cota, which was massive. I have no doubt that he individually had some kind of connection to every person there, and that's just the kind of person he was. So to the point of the foundation, that's kind of the goal is to keep his motivation alive and make sure that we're doing everything we can to honor the type of person he was. And so constantly getting better. And so guys out there that are considering, oh, well, I'm intimidated by this environment. I don't want to do this. Or I don't, I don't. I'm not really a big fan of training. I challenge you to get involved in that kind of stuff because once you look back on it, I guess the way that I look at it is people that get up and work out in the morning that don't want to do it, but somehow they do it anyways. When you're finished with that workout, you look back and you're like, man, I'm glad I did that. So, like, applying that same same mentality to training is you may not want to do it or it's hot or it's going to be a, you know, bad weather day, or you're tired, you're going to be glad you did it because even if you only get half a percent better, you got better. And so I think that's the ultimate goal of, of putting the foundation together and trying to promote training.

[Brandon]

And for sure, I love, I love that.

[Sean Harris]

So, so real quick, Brandon, I'm going to ask you something. I want to bring this up because I don't think it needs to be dismissed is we had range day for the conference this past Wednesday and we had a side match shoot going on and Jorge's wife came out there and she was super interested. So I'm saying this because she was, she's involved. Very, very involved, and rightly so. But she's talking to us, she's asking questions. You would never guess that she's gone through the recent tragedy and still going through what, what she's going through, but a phenomenal woman. And so she is involved, she's engaged. I was, I was thoroughly impressed and wowed, you know, by, by the conversations that we had. But then Brandon had an interaction with her that, yeah, I think we're all gonna about to tear up. So I'm glad this isn't being filmed. That was amazing. So I don't, I don't want that to get dismissed at all.

[Brandon]

And let me, let me gain my composure. So when I met her, it dawned on me. I put two and two together and I was like, wait a minute. We just. So for my region, reason seven, when we do our basic swat, one of the, one of the things that we do on Thursdays, we do a march, but that march is is a memorial march as well. So I have litters of just that I got from the fire department. And so we always have four groups. So I get four litters and then I fill them with sandbags that I had actually staccato donated for me. So at the day one I asked the students, hey, who have you lost in a lot of duty in the last five years at your apartment? And they tell me and I say, hey, write their names down into watch and all that kind of stuff. And so I gather those and then I make little plaques for them and then I paste them on the sandbag. Well, he was one of the guys that, that they lost, so he was on one of the sandbags. So I think there was like maybe a total of like six or seven guys. And so I took that photo, I went back to my phone, took the photo, I explained that to her. So hey, here's the march. So now we had 60 plus guys in this basic SWAT. And so I showed her the video, I showed the picture of his sandbag and then showed her the video of, hey, this is a, this is a memorial that that litter does not touch the ground. It's an officer. There's officers in this, in this, that we honor them for. So when I told her that, I mean she just like, you know, just tear railed up and I was like, oh, you know, crying myself. But, and I'm glad you said that, Sean, because I want the guys that are listening to this podcast who have gone through that school and, and carried her husband. That's a big deal. Like that's an officer who was lost. And I tell them, guess what? That officer that's in that litter that you're carrying, I guarantee you their wife, their, their, their daughter, their, their son, their mom would love to know that they're at the basic SWAT school in, in Garland right now. But they're not, they can't do it. So you're carrying them and you're doing it for them, for their family and stuff. And I think that's where we get down to this job is bigger than us. It just is. And if you don't have that outlook, then you need to get them another profession. You really do. I mean, just honestly, I mean, if you're not willing to put your life above someone else, and that's what he was able to do and that's what he did and he paid the ultimate sacrifice and it trickles down to the family and stuff. But also we have to step up in the law enforcement community and Continue to build people that made the ultimate sacrifice up and honor them, but continue to keep that spirit of why we do what we do. Because it affects you when you're. When you see that wasn't just a name tag with a sandbag that meant somebody. That was somebody's husband, someone's son, someone's daughter, whatever the case may. That's. That's someone to them.

[Sean Harris]

Well, you're helping by showing them that they're carrying a legacy.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Sean Harris]

Literally.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Sean Harris]

And to be able to share that with her was absolutely amazing.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Listen to the videos. And she has those now and stuff, so it was a pretty emotional moment.

[Sean Harris]

Yeah. So be a part of that foundation. It's true. It's real. Mike just spoke life to it. So.

[Mike Castillo]

Yeah. And I think that ultimately goes back to the kind of the purpose of everything. If I could. I know if he could do it 10 times over, he'd sprint right back into that house like he did. And I think one of the biggest things that we should take out of that. Any cop, any first responder, Fear's real. Going in on something like that, if you don't have some level of fear, probably something wrong with you. But I just know he had very minimal. He was a pretty fearless guy, and he knew what he was getting into, but he went anyways. And I think having that level of motivation, I mean, even his area where he keeps all his police gear, he had just stacks of books on active shooters. He had all these medical apparatuses. He had tourniquets and things he would constantly train on. I know. I heard a story back in the day where he'd walk in and he'd see his wife and he'd throw a tourniquet real quick and go, left arm. Make her do that stuff. And he's dry firing and just doing everything he can to just get a little bit better. But I think the best thing to take out of this whole tragedy is inspiration. Because I think when people see that humans are capable of overcoming that fear and putting the value of somebody else's life over their own, that if anyone ever questions that or questioned themselves, they can think about him and be like, well, hang on. So if he can do it.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Mike Castillo]

And all these other SWAT officers can do it, then that means I can do it too. And I think that right there is. Is a powerful motivation to. To help people get better.

[Brandon]

Love it. So love it. That's a. That's a great way to end this segment. This is not as nerdy as I thought it was going to be. So I'm pretty excited about that, so good job.

[Sean Harris]

Well, we dumbed it down for one person.

[Brandon]

I'm glad y'all did. I really am glad y'all for the.

[Sean Harris]

Dope, for the dope in the room.

[Brandon]

Dope in the room.

[Mike Castillo]

He thinks one moa, though, is one inch.

[Dan Jarecki]

Yeah, it is sometimes. And thanks, guys. I appreciate. I'm, you know, I'm the odd man out here. This is.

[Brandon]

You're not the odd man out. You're part of. You're the. You're in this family.

[Dan Jarecki]

This is holy ground. I mean, honestly, what we were talking about with Mike, and so it's. I'm deeply honored to just be in the room with this.

[Brandon]

I mean, we appreciate what you do, and I know you got a class coming in my region. We just haven't set that up yet, but I know. No, we will. If not, I'm putting you on the spot, so we're going to need to.

[Sean Harris]

Have one in Region 6. I just put you on the spot.

[Brandon]

Yeah. But seriously, I do want to do something. Collaborating with a basic sniper class with. Doing that because I've really incorporated that with basic swat. Bringing practical shooters in to teach these guys, and their minds are, like, blown away and stuff. So you got any parting words? Sean or Graham, you want to jump in there and boom, Mike, we with them or anything? Okay, you're good. Okay.

[Sean Harris]

No, I'm. I'm Thank. Thanks for being here. It's definitely not holy ground. I mean, you. You are definitely part of. Of this. We. We need your professionalism, your input, your experience.

[Brandon]

I mean, I mean, I have a disco helmet here, so it's. It's pretty low level stuff here, man.

[Sean Harris]

That's a whole nother podcast.

[Dan Jarecki]

It is.

[Brandon]

So. All right, man, we'll end that. So keep training hard and be safe out there.