October 17, 2024 • 21 mins
Whether it's a church or synagogue service, perhaps a meeting of the loca civic organization there are things to consider. This month Charlie Strickland, Talon Training Group, returned to The Morning Show and visited with Preston on some important lessons to learn as well as ways to properly train.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to our Conversation podcast and a little bit of
a different intro to the segment. This time Charlie Strickland
back with me from the Talent Training Group. It's been
a while since Charlie's been able to join us, and
we got to talking about an event that took place
just the night before and it actually led to our
entire discussion this morning on the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Last night we had a big church safety event at
a manual Baptist We had a couple hundred people plus
there at this event, and Stephen Wilifford from suther Southern
Springs Baptist Church that stopped that shooting was there and
there were a lot of people came up afterwards, iod, Hey,
listen to your Are you in Preston in the Morning
or JD. And I said, I am back. There you go,
(00:46):
and I'm back.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Let's talk for a second about that church gathering and
remind everybody, the gentleman that you had in as your guest,
what happened in that church.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, what happened was a stranged person from one of
the church members went in there looking for a relative,
you know, he wanted to do some bad things and
went in with an AR fifteen and and a pistol,
and he walked around the church and just started shooting
this church up on a Sunday morning from the outside
(01:19):
and ultimately and they thought it was just something firecrackers,
something going on outside. Next thing you know, will it
start coming into the church, into the sanctuary. And then
he comes into the church and starts shooting people with
a rifle and then walking up and executing him with
a pistol. And he shot He killed like twenty two
and shot twenty four more. I mean, there was forty
(01:42):
something people wounded, injured or killed in that. And mister
Wilford was a member of the church and he was
several doors down taking the day off. First time in
like eight weeks. He didn't go to church, but he
was going on call at the hospital as a plumbing
person or something. He was a retired guy, but he
worked part time in the hospital and he's in our instructor.
(02:04):
He hears the gunshots. His daughter goes in and says, hey, Dad,
wake up, there's a there's something going on at the church.
He grabbed an R fifteen, didn't have loaded magazines. He
popped about eight rounds in the magazine, walked, ran down
the road barefooted, yelled. The guy stopped what he was
doing because he heard somebody coming, walked outside, immediately engaged
(02:26):
mister Wiliford with his handgun. Wiliford shopped back, hit him
a couple of times in the guy's body army. He's
wearing a level three body armor and a kevlar helmet,
and they engaged in a vehicle pursuit. He hopped in
a truck with someone else, went down the road and
the guy ended up offered himself after mister Wilfrid shot
him several times. And I mean there would have been
(02:46):
more people killed had he not done what he did.
I mean, he intervened, He did what he what people
should do. There was you know, I think miss listening
to Stephen talkie and I think some of his only
regrets not being able to respond sooner sure having a
loaded magazine and being able to be there quick, or
not having gone to church that day because the entire
(03:08):
church safety all the people that were armed in that
church were somewhere else that day. Oh my, it speaks
to how important it is to have people in the right place.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
We're back with Charlie Strickland of the Talent Trading Group
our Personal Defense segment, talking about a meeting at a
local church here just last night, and you mentioned that
just circumstances were such that in this church they didn't
have really anybody ready.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
At the time. They didn't have a team per se.
There were several well I think he's three, four or
five guys that you know, all had guns and shot.
They were the people who were normally armed in the church.
And they felt pretty good about this. And this is Texas, too, sure,
but the and it's not a small small church. I
mean there's forty something people shot in this thing, so
(03:52):
I mean it was its big. You know, it's not
a tiny church. But the So yeah, somebody was out
of town that day, and somebody was running late, and
mister wiliferd was taking the day off because he had
to go on call all night that night and was
getting some rest and just turns out that there was
nobody in there that was armed on that particular day,
(04:13):
which was unusual. So you know, God in weir body
armor for nothing, may bee he anticipated resistance, But so yeah,
I mean it's important, and you know some of the
takeaway from that are making sure that you have in
your organization. And this doesn't just mean churches. It can
be other organizations as well. But if you're in a church,
(04:34):
you really should have a team. And it is very
prevalent now it is the norm that people will have
some sort of organized group of guys, either formerly endorsed
by the church or people who just get together and
say we're going to do this. A lot of people,
you know, well, we don't want the church knowing per
se because we don't want to do with insurance issues
or all this. But so what's happening nowadays is becoming
(04:56):
more common for a formalized plan, standard operation procedures to
be put into place, forming a team, selecting a team,
having people who lead that team and are responsible for
training that team, and that that team getting training and
going to the range and spending time doing things and
working on de escalation techniques and how to encounter somebody
(05:18):
at the door, where you've got greeters who are should
be armed that know how to you know, make eye contact,
judge people based on you know, their body language and
appearance and you know, casually maybe just shake their hand,
maybe put their arm around them see if they've got
a gun on them or something. Welcome, brothers, thank you
(05:39):
for coming. Yeah, I mean, so it's people in churches
tend to be in the South, tend to be a
little touch you pheeley. This is a great opportunity to
do it unless you're you don't want to be patting
down women or anything. But at the same time, unless
you're a woman, and if you've got a female ushers
and men aren't going to object too much. So it's uh,
you know serious, sure, yeah, so so but you know
(06:05):
that's that's it's their techniques to it. I mean, the
thing is is that if you're in the house of worship,
you should have people there that know what they're doing.
They should there should be a plan in place that
should be in writing if if it's endorsed by the church. Listen,
and it was down there. It just you got to train.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Backward. Charlie Stricklin of the Talent Training Group, And we're
just sort of taking advantage of the recent event as
in last night.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, that's pretty.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Recent and the proliferation of churches and organizations now mindful
of security. And let's talk a little bit more about
about the planning and the don't let this happen either
type of scenarios that we were talking about, where you
have multiple people inside, all with the best of intentions,
but if something goes wrong, you need to have a
(06:58):
plan for when something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, there was one church I was watching a video.
It's been it's been a while since it occurred, where
a guy comes in, pulls a shotgun in the middle
of the church and shoots a couple of people. One
was trying to shoot him and he got shot first,
and another one drew and shot this guy. And you
look on a video in like half of there's like
four or five people jump up and are all point
(07:21):
and guns and there's a lot of movement in there.
And so there was some good came out of that.
Unfortunately two people were killed, but the good of it
was that multiple people that did in fact respond. But
you have to you have to be you have to
consider the fact that there are a lot of sheep
dogs that are going to church, people who want to
(07:42):
be armed, people who are armed, and you can't stop
them from being armed. They're gonna carry but they may
not be part of your team. They may not be
part of the response. No more than as a business
owner or someone who has a plan for your business,
you can't help which which customer happens to draw a gun.
And you, as a as a armed citizen, you may
draw a gun not considering the fact that other people
(08:04):
don't know who you are. And now all of a
sudden you're walking running around with a gun and responding
officers or other people see you with a gun and
you may be the one that gets shot because there's
a lot of there's a lot of factors that go
into this. But in a church, so if you've got
a team, and you have a formalized team, then you
want to let everybody in the church know that we
have a formalized team, we have a plan. If you
(08:24):
carry that spot. However, if something happens, unless it's right
next to you, you need to let us do our
thing because we don't. You don't if you're not part
of our training, you're not part of the solution. You're
just you're just attending here. Yes, protect yourself and your family. However,
(08:45):
let us do the job because that's what we have
prepared and trained to do, and we have a system
worked out. Now, if a couple of your team members
are down, then obviously, you know Katie bought a door,
it's time to make a change in that game plan.
I would have a hard time sitting there as a
twenty year SWAT veteran, sitting in a church and leaving
with some guys who have some weekend training do something
(09:07):
without me intervening. But then again, if I were going
to a church regularly, I would be on the team
so well.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And if not, for example, I know of situations where
someone that has your background is not part of the
team for a myriad of reasons, just timing or whatever.
But they're aware of what we do and they understand
that we do have this ofce you know there, so
there and at that point that they can be helpful
because of their years of experience.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, I mean, and you have to if you're running
a team and you're you're working with a team, you
need to look at what's going on. You've got a
guy shows up with the Briger LCP in this front pocket.
That's not a church. That's that that's get off me.
That's not responding to an actual shooter in a church
firearm because it's not accurate. Beyond you and I are
(09:57):
four feet apart from each other five feet apart. That's
the limit of the accuracy, particularly under stressed with that.
And that's body shots. Yeah, I mean that's a run up,
screw it in his ear and pull the trigger gun.
It's not beyond that. And so and I know people
that carry one in their pocket regularly, and that's great,
but it's not if you're If you are planning to
respond to an incident in a crowd where accuracy is
(10:21):
absolutely important, you need to be training, training headshots, training,
shooting under stress, training, moving and shooting, stepping to the side,
trying to find an angle where you can get a shot,
and all these and you need to be shooting a
competent weapon with some sembilance of accuracy. Let's be honest.
Handguns are tough guns to fight anyway. You really should
(10:42):
be fighting with long guns. But people aren't carrying long
guns since churches. Sure, bad guys will come in with
one and you're fighting back with the pistol. Don't let
it be a six shot rigger LCPN three eighty that
you know you've you've shot out of your pocket a
few times. It needs you need to have. You need
to be competent and use the right equipment and and
I'm really encouraged. I'm just made that we have to
(11:04):
do this as a country. But we've seen it coming
for a long time. Instead of people hiding their church
teams and having conversations in hushed tones. It's becoming more mainstream.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And if you're in a church or a temple or
mosque or where whatever you may worship, and you don't
have the mindset in that house of worship to protect
that house of worship, then you are yeah, I mean
you really should. Now you can always hire armed security
to protect your place. Now that happens a lot. I
mean I have a company and we protect a couple
(11:36):
places people high law enforcement. It's not fool proof, not
fool proof you still, I mean there's you should layer
this to where you have different layers of protection. But
sometimes it's good just to throw a uniform presence out
front if you want it, If you have got the money,
you can spend the money, then you know that's certainly
(11:56):
an option.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Thirty five minutes past the hour, two more segments with
Charlie Strickland of the Talent Training Group. Our Personal Defense
segment We've been talking about church security, and it really,
like you said, devtails into any organization, any large group
where you have an organized security presence in some way,
shape or form. I've heard you and JD talk about
this on Talent Outdoors. You and I have discussed this
(12:19):
off and on over the years, the growth of red dots. First,
your thoughts on them for the person that is in
this security team role.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I used to think those things were cool, and
then I tried using them, and I didn't think they
were cool. And then they got better. And now some
of them sit lower on the bore axis, they're closer.
I mean, you're gonna co witness some of the newest
ones with your pistol sites now. And so now, for
an old guy like me that shot hundreds and hundreds
(12:51):
of thousands of times in my life with regular sites,
it's not as hard for me to utilize them. They
are very accurate because and they're no more accurate it
inherently than open sits. But the thing is is the
red dot you can shoot with both eyes open very easily.
It's tough to train yourself to shoot with both eyes
open with standard sites, but with the red dot, a
(13:13):
holographic site, not a fixed laser that projects on it
for the people that are listening, but the one where
you look through the glass and you actually like the
radical of a rifle, you see a red dot or
a circle with a dot or something like that. Then
what that does allows you to keep both ice open,
utilize all your peripheral vision, and still see the dot superimposed,
(13:33):
and where that dit is is where the bullet goes
every single time, as long as you can maintain gripping
and trigger control and you're not bobbling the pistol around much.
It's easy to practice with these dry fire. With these,
you unload the gun and push it pointed across the
room at something on the wall and pull the trigger,
and then work your slide and point again pull the trigger,
so repetition ways to do that. They are awesome in
(14:00):
technical environment because you can in fact see where you're shooting,
and instead of trying to focus on the front sight,
which is how you shoot accurately with with standard sites,
it's you reference your rear sight, but it's front sight focused,
front sight focused, and you superimpose that clear front sight
(14:20):
on the blurry target. But in real life that's really
not how things go down. When you see a threat,
you are so focused on the threat, the person with
the gun. The gun, you know in scenarios we shoot.
When you're doing force on force training with plastic bullets
or whatever, you get shot in the hand. More than anything.
It's the one you have the gun in, or the
(14:41):
knife or the hammer or whatever we were presenting a
threat with. We get shot in the hand a lot
because people are so focused on the threat, that's what
they're pointing things at. But your eyes are going to
focus on the target by just that's what you're going
to look at. Okay, And unless you are really really
really advanced in your training, that's where under stress you're
(15:01):
going to look is at the target. The sites are
going to be a secondary thought, if at all, and
so getting that accurate hit is going to require you
to consciously pull back away from the target and look
at that front site in order to get an accurate hit.
But with a red dot, any kind of holographic, whatever
brand it is, if you repetitively shoot with that and
(15:25):
you actually train with it, so your eye goes to
that through that site and sees that red dot, you
can still focus on the threat. And you because your
eye can only focus on one plane at the time,
they see either the rear sight, to the front side,
or the target. You can't focus on multiple distances at
the same time. But with the red dot you can.
You're looking at the target, you're looking at the threat,
(15:47):
you're sizing up the threats as it is what it is,
assessing that and the red dot happens to be there
and that's where the bullet's going to go. So there's
a lot of value, which is why you're seeing most
law enforcement agencies go to red dots. In this day
and age, the technology has come come a long way.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
All right, final segment here, Charlie Strickland, our personal defense segment,
and we're going to just take it to the final
I guess length here of the run and that is okay. Training.
We were just talking about just standing still and pointing
at a paper target doesn't really get it done when
you're talking about preparing for critical stress.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Now, if I'm standing shooting at a paper target, it's
either because I'm having a qualify for one of the
four dead Gum qualifications I have to do every year,
or it's because well involved in different groups and different
licenses on. You have to qualify. Okay, I reckon, I'll shoot,
so I'll figure out some way to put a hole,
strall and go. But when you go to the range
(16:45):
to actually train, if I'm shooting in a paper target,
it's because I'm working on my draw yep. I'm working
from drawing from concealment, trying weapon presentation, things like that,
or I'm just confirming all of the things still work.
I'm going through the motions. I'm finding the front site fundamentals. Yeah, yeah,
just working on fundamentals. Otherwise, what I'm doing is I'm
working from behind cover almost exclusively. I'm working or to
(17:08):
the right or the left of cover. I'm utilizing my
strong hand. I'm either using a crossover technique or I'm
transitioning to my support side hand. I'm using the other eye,
so I'm not presenting too much of my head from
behind the corner of cover. So I'm working cover. Or
I may be you know you mentioned on the break,
you know, getting up out of a chair. I may
be drawing from a seated position like I'm in a car.
(17:30):
I turn, you know, turned to the right ninety degrees
and my target would be on my left like it
was on my driver's window, or turn the other way
if it's my passenger window. So if you're training for
a team type response, it's critical that you work as
if you were in a crowd of people moving around,
and so you're sitting in a chair or a pew,
(17:52):
or you're standing by a door working the doors cover
as if someone were coming in the outer area of
an organization and trying to get into the sanctuary, pretending
there's a crowd of people. You know, a lot of people.
Forget that there are three dimensions when it comes to this.
There's not just left, right, forward and backwards. There's also
(18:14):
up and down, and so taking a knee and shooting
moving to something where you have a steady or also
thinking in terms of a lot of people are going
to be standing up and you're all of a sudden
you can see someone across the church, across the sanctuary,
and all of a sudden, everybody stands up starts running around.
You can't see them anymore. So if you've got a
(18:35):
sturdy enough position to stand on, you just want to
get a fold and chair or something. But if you
have something a sturdy enough bench, you may want to
consider stepping up to a higher getting above everyone's head,
and shooting down into a situation where you know, now
you can see above everybody and you can take a
shot from a different angle. You want to think about
(18:57):
the different angles, different positions, maybe moving. I don't move
and shoot, I move to shoot exactly. I move, I pause,
and then I shoot from a standing position and I
move again. I don't try to shoot into a crowd
or the crowd and while I'm walking. You know I
used to do that with us in law enforcement. Move,
(19:17):
don't stop, keep shooting. That's oppressive fire, that's not accurate fire.
I mean, if I'm trying to hit a headplate on
a on a steel rack while I'm walking, I'm not
likely to hit it as what I need to I
need to move. Pause. But you also, you know you
should work on how you move smoothly, gun up, then
also work How am I going to work around a crowd?
How am I going to work through a crowd? So
(19:38):
if I bring my gun down to a safe position,
muzzles down, how do I push through a crowd of
people to get to the threat. You know, one hand's down,
the strong hands down, muzzles pointed down, I'm as outside
of the trigger guard and and I'm moving through the
crowd and I'm moving people out of the way. And
you can do this with your group dry where you
(20:00):
just unload the weapon, make it safe, and have all
the people stand around, and you have to push through
there and then come up and then drive fire. You
can then do that live if you trust the group
and you've got a good instructor. You just need to
you know, things to be careful with. We do it
with law enforcement. So it's just you have to judge
your group on their skill set. But you can set
(20:22):
up barricades or where you have to move through a
certain team to try to get to something. There's so
many different things that you can do. Keep it, keeping
it interesting, keeping it cutting edge, keep giving someone different.
Because if you're just gonna come to the range, everybody shooter,
stand around and shoot, they're gonna shoot their mouths off
more than they're going to shoot their guns, and they're
not going to enjoy it. You've got to throw something
(20:42):
interesting at them. And then you also, as a formal team,
you want to document that training. You want a roster
of who showed up that day, a written summary of
what you did, and then keep that as a record.
I mean, you want training records because when you go
to court and it's a civil suit, you keep in
mind you don't want to go bankrupt because you're trying
(21:04):
to pay for all the legal ramifications of what you
did in that situation, just because you're trying to protect
your church. It's really important that your team record these
things and keep records and document it because it's going
to come up in court. They're going to go, did
you train, Yes, we did, all right, we want to
see your training records, and you're going to go When
(21:24):
we look at the calendar, I'll tell you what days
we trained on and we'll all get together. No no, no, no,
write it down. Good stuff. Thank you, good to see you,
Good to be here. Charlie Strickland Talent Training Group. He
and JD host Talent Outdoors.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
You can listen to it on these fine radio stations
every Saturday morning. It's forty seven minutes past the hour.
Welcome to our Conversation podcast and a little bit of
a different intro to the segment. This time Charlie Strickland
back with me from the Talent Training Group. It's been
a while since Charlie's been able to join us, and
we got to talking about an event that took place
just the night before and it actually led to our
entire discussion this morning on the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Last night we had a big church safety event at
a manual Baptist We had a couple hundred people plus
there at this event, and Stephen Wilifford from suther Southern
Springs Baptist Church that stopped that shooting was there and
there were a lot of people came up afterwards, iod, Hey,
listen to your Are you in Preston in the Morning
or JD. And I said, I am back. There you go,
(00:46):
and I'm back.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Let's talk for a second about that church gathering and
remind everybody, the gentleman that you had in as your guest,
what happened in that church.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, what happened was a stranged person from one of
the church members went in there looking for a relative,
you know, he wanted to do some bad things and
went in with an AR fifteen and and a pistol,
and he walked around the church and just started shooting
this church up on a Sunday morning from the outside
(01:19):
and ultimately and they thought it was just something firecrackers,
something going on outside. Next thing you know, will it
start coming into the church, into the sanctuary. And then
he comes into the church and starts shooting people with
a rifle and then walking up and executing him with
a pistol. And he shot He killed like twenty two
and shot twenty four more. I mean, there was forty
(01:42):
something people wounded, injured or killed in that. And mister
Wilford was a member of the church and he was
several doors down taking the day off. First time in
like eight weeks. He didn't go to church, but he
was going on call at the hospital as a plumbing
person or something. He was a retired guy, but he
worked part time in the hospital and he's in our instructor.
(02:04):
He hears the gunshots. His daughter goes in and says, hey, Dad,
wake up, there's a there's something going on at the church.
He grabbed an R fifteen, didn't have loaded magazines. He
popped about eight rounds in the magazine, walked, ran down
the road barefooted, yelled. The guy stopped what he was
doing because he heard somebody coming, walked outside, immediately engaged
(02:26):
mister Wiliford with his handgun. Wiliford shopped back, hit him
a couple of times in the guy's body army. He's
wearing a level three body armor and a kevlar helmet,
and they engaged in a vehicle pursuit. He hopped in
a truck with someone else, went down the road and
the guy ended up offered himself after mister Wilfrid shot
him several times. And I mean there would have been
(02:46):
more people killed had he not done what he did.
I mean, he intervened, He did what he what people
should do. There was you know, I think miss listening
to Stephen talkie and I think some of his only
regrets not being able to respond sooner sure having a
loaded magazine and being able to be there quick, or
not having gone to church that day because the entire
(03:08):
church safety all the people that were armed in that
church were somewhere else that day. Oh my, it speaks
to how important it is to have people in the right place.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
We're back with Charlie Strickland of the Talent Trading Group
our Personal Defense segment, talking about a meeting at a
local church here just last night, and you mentioned that
just circumstances were such that in this church they didn't
have really anybody ready.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
At the time. They didn't have a team per se.
There were several well I think he's three, four or
five guys that you know, all had guns and shot.
They were the people who were normally armed in the church.
And they felt pretty good about this. And this is Texas, too, sure,
but the and it's not a small small church. I
mean there's forty something people shot in this thing, so
(03:52):
I mean it was its big. You know, it's not
a tiny church. But the So yeah, somebody was out
of town that day, and somebody was running late, and
mister wiliferd was taking the day off because he had
to go on call all night that night and was
getting some rest and just turns out that there was
nobody in there that was armed on that particular day,
(04:13):
which was unusual. So you know, God in weir body
armor for nothing, may bee he anticipated resistance, But so yeah,
I mean it's important, and you know some of the
takeaway from that are making sure that you have in
your organization. And this doesn't just mean churches. It can
be other organizations as well. But if you're in a church,
(04:34):
you really should have a team. And it is very
prevalent now it is the norm that people will have
some sort of organized group of guys, either formerly endorsed
by the church or people who just get together and
say we're going to do this. A lot of people,
you know, well, we don't want the church knowing per
se because we don't want to do with insurance issues
or all this. But so what's happening nowadays is becoming
(04:56):
more common for a formalized plan, standard operation procedures to
be put into place, forming a team, selecting a team,
having people who lead that team and are responsible for
training that team, and that that team getting training and
going to the range and spending time doing things and
working on de escalation techniques and how to encounter somebody
(05:18):
at the door, where you've got greeters who are should
be armed that know how to you know, make eye contact,
judge people based on you know, their body language and
appearance and you know, casually maybe just shake their hand,
maybe put their arm around them see if they've got
a gun on them or something. Welcome, brothers, thank you
(05:39):
for coming. Yeah, I mean, so it's people in churches
tend to be in the South, tend to be a
little touch you pheeley. This is a great opportunity to
do it unless you're you don't want to be patting
down women or anything. But at the same time, unless
you're a woman, and if you've got a female ushers
and men aren't going to object too much. So it's uh,
you know serious, sure, yeah, so so but you know
(06:05):
that's that's it's their techniques to it. I mean, the
thing is is that if you're in the house of worship,
you should have people there that know what they're doing.
They should there should be a plan in place that
should be in writing if if it's endorsed by the church. Listen,
and it was down there. It just you got to train.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Backward. Charlie Stricklin of the Talent Training Group, And we're
just sort of taking advantage of the recent event as
in last night.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, that's pretty.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Recent and the proliferation of churches and organizations now mindful
of security. And let's talk a little bit more about
about the planning and the don't let this happen either
type of scenarios that we were talking about, where you
have multiple people inside, all with the best of intentions,
but if something goes wrong, you need to have a
(06:58):
plan for when something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, there was one church I was watching a video.
It's been it's been a while since it occurred, where
a guy comes in, pulls a shotgun in the middle
of the church and shoots a couple of people. One
was trying to shoot him and he got shot first,
and another one drew and shot this guy. And you
look on a video in like half of there's like
four or five people jump up and are all point
(07:21):
and guns and there's a lot of movement in there.
And so there was some good came out of that.
Unfortunately two people were killed, but the good of it
was that multiple people that did in fact respond. But
you have to you have to be you have to
consider the fact that there are a lot of sheep
dogs that are going to church, people who want to
(07:42):
be armed, people who are armed, and you can't stop
them from being armed. They're gonna carry but they may
not be part of your team. They may not be
part of the response. No more than as a business
owner or someone who has a plan for your business,
you can't help which which customer happens to draw a gun.
And you, as a as a armed citizen, you may
draw a gun not considering the fact that other people
(08:04):
don't know who you are. And now all of a
sudden you're walking running around with a gun and responding
officers or other people see you with a gun and
you may be the one that gets shot because there's
a lot of there's a lot of factors that go
into this. But in a church, so if you've got
a team, and you have a formalized team, then you
want to let everybody in the church know that we
have a formalized team, we have a plan. If you
(08:24):
carry that spot. However, if something happens, unless it's right
next to you, you need to let us do our
thing because we don't. You don't if you're not part
of our training, you're not part of the solution. You're
just you're just attending here. Yes, protect yourself and your family. However,
(08:45):
let us do the job because that's what we have
prepared and trained to do, and we have a system
worked out. Now, if a couple of your team members
are down, then obviously, you know Katie bought a door,
it's time to make a change in that game plan.
I would have a hard time sitting there as a
twenty year SWAT veteran, sitting in a church and leaving
with some guys who have some weekend training do something
(09:07):
without me intervening. But then again, if I were going
to a church regularly, I would be on the team
so well.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And if not, for example, I know of situations where
someone that has your background is not part of the
team for a myriad of reasons, just timing or whatever.
But they're aware of what we do and they understand
that we do have this ofce you know there, so
there and at that point that they can be helpful
because of their years of experience.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, I mean, and you have to if you're running
a team and you're you're working with a team, you
need to look at what's going on. You've got a
guy shows up with the Briger LCP in this front pocket.
That's not a church. That's that that's get off me.
That's not responding to an actual shooter in a church
firearm because it's not accurate. Beyond you and I are
(09:57):
four feet apart from each other five feet apart. That's
the limit of the accuracy, particularly under stressed with that.
And that's body shots. Yeah, I mean that's a run up,
screw it in his ear and pull the trigger gun.
It's not beyond that. And so and I know people
that carry one in their pocket regularly, and that's great,
but it's not if you're If you are planning to
respond to an incident in a crowd where accuracy is
(10:21):
absolutely important, you need to be training, training headshots, training,
shooting under stress, training, moving and shooting, stepping to the side,
trying to find an angle where you can get a shot,
and all these and you need to be shooting a
competent weapon with some sembilance of accuracy. Let's be honest.
Handguns are tough guns to fight anyway. You really should
(10:42):
be fighting with long guns. But people aren't carrying long
guns since churches. Sure, bad guys will come in with
one and you're fighting back with the pistol. Don't let
it be a six shot rigger LCPN three eighty that
you know you've you've shot out of your pocket a
few times. It needs you need to have. You need
to be competent and use the right equipment and and
I'm really encouraged. I'm just made that we have to
(11:04):
do this as a country. But we've seen it coming
for a long time. Instead of people hiding their church
teams and having conversations in hushed tones. It's becoming more mainstream.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And if you're in a church or a temple or
mosque or where whatever you may worship, and you don't
have the mindset in that house of worship to protect
that house of worship, then you are yeah, I mean
you really should. Now you can always hire armed security
to protect your place. Now that happens a lot. I
mean I have a company and we protect a couple
(11:36):
places people high law enforcement. It's not fool proof, not
fool proof you still, I mean there's you should layer
this to where you have different layers of protection. But
sometimes it's good just to throw a uniform presence out
front if you want it, If you have got the money,
you can spend the money, then you know that's certainly
(11:56):
an option.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Thirty five minutes past the hour, two more segments with
Charlie Strickland of the Talent Training Group. Our Personal Defense
segment We've been talking about church security, and it really,
like you said, devtails into any organization, any large group
where you have an organized security presence in some way,
shape or form. I've heard you and JD talk about
this on Talent Outdoors. You and I have discussed this
(12:19):
off and on over the years, the growth of red dots. First,
your thoughts on them for the person that is in
this security team role.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I used to think those things were cool, and
then I tried using them, and I didn't think they
were cool. And then they got better. And now some
of them sit lower on the bore axis, they're closer.
I mean, you're gonna co witness some of the newest
ones with your pistol sites now. And so now, for
an old guy like me that shot hundreds and hundreds
(12:51):
of thousands of times in my life with regular sites,
it's not as hard for me to utilize them. They
are very accurate because and they're no more accurate it
inherently than open sits. But the thing is is the
red dot you can shoot with both eyes open very easily.
It's tough to train yourself to shoot with both eyes
open with standard sites, but with the red dot, a
(13:13):
holographic site, not a fixed laser that projects on it
for the people that are listening, but the one where
you look through the glass and you actually like the
radical of a rifle, you see a red dot or
a circle with a dot or something like that. Then
what that does allows you to keep both ice open,
utilize all your peripheral vision, and still see the dot superimposed,
(13:33):
and where that dit is is where the bullet goes
every single time, as long as you can maintain gripping
and trigger control and you're not bobbling the pistol around much.
It's easy to practice with these dry fire. With these,
you unload the gun and push it pointed across the
room at something on the wall and pull the trigger,
and then work your slide and point again pull the trigger,
so repetition ways to do that. They are awesome in
(14:00):
technical environment because you can in fact see where you're shooting,
and instead of trying to focus on the front sight,
which is how you shoot accurately with with standard sites,
it's you reference your rear sight, but it's front sight focused,
front sight focused, and you superimpose that clear front sight
(14:20):
on the blurry target. But in real life that's really
not how things go down. When you see a threat,
you are so focused on the threat, the person with
the gun. The gun, you know in scenarios we shoot.
When you're doing force on force training with plastic bullets
or whatever, you get shot in the hand. More than anything.
It's the one you have the gun in, or the
(14:41):
knife or the hammer or whatever we were presenting a
threat with. We get shot in the hand a lot
because people are so focused on the threat, that's what
they're pointing things at. But your eyes are going to
focus on the target by just that's what you're going
to look at. Okay, And unless you are really really
really advanced in your training, that's where under stress you're
(15:01):
going to look is at the target. The sites are
going to be a secondary thought, if at all, and
so getting that accurate hit is going to require you
to consciously pull back away from the target and look
at that front site in order to get an accurate hit.
But with a red dot, any kind of holographic, whatever
brand it is, if you repetitively shoot with that and
(15:25):
you actually train with it, so your eye goes to
that through that site and sees that red dot, you
can still focus on the threat. And you because your
eye can only focus on one plane at the time,
they see either the rear sight, to the front side,
or the target. You can't focus on multiple distances at
the same time. But with the red dot you can.
You're looking at the target, you're looking at the threat,
(15:47):
you're sizing up the threats as it is what it is,
assessing that and the red dot happens to be there
and that's where the bullet's going to go. So there's
a lot of value, which is why you're seeing most
law enforcement agencies go to red dots. In this day
and age, the technology has come come a long way.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
All right, final segment here, Charlie Strickland, our personal defense segment,
and we're going to just take it to the final
I guess length here of the run and that is okay. Training.
We were just talking about just standing still and pointing
at a paper target doesn't really get it done when
you're talking about preparing for critical stress.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Now, if I'm standing shooting at a paper target, it's
either because I'm having a qualify for one of the
four dead Gum qualifications I have to do every year,
or it's because well involved in different groups and different
licenses on. You have to qualify. Okay, I reckon, I'll shoot,
so I'll figure out some way to put a hole,
strall and go. But when you go to the range
(16:45):
to actually train, if I'm shooting in a paper target,
it's because I'm working on my draw yep. I'm working
from drawing from concealment, trying weapon presentation, things like that,
or I'm just confirming all of the things still work.
I'm going through the motions. I'm finding the front site fundamentals. Yeah, yeah,
just working on fundamentals. Otherwise, what I'm doing is I'm
working from behind cover almost exclusively. I'm working or to
(17:08):
the right or the left of cover. I'm utilizing my
strong hand. I'm either using a crossover technique or I'm
transitioning to my support side hand. I'm using the other eye,
so I'm not presenting too much of my head from
behind the corner of cover. So I'm working cover. Or
I may be you know you mentioned on the break,
you know, getting up out of a chair. I may
be drawing from a seated position like I'm in a car.
(17:30):
I turn, you know, turned to the right ninety degrees
and my target would be on my left like it
was on my driver's window, or turn the other way
if it's my passenger window. So if you're training for
a team type response, it's critical that you work as
if you were in a crowd of people moving around,
and so you're sitting in a chair or a pew,
(17:52):
or you're standing by a door working the doors cover
as if someone were coming in the outer area of
an organization and trying to get into the sanctuary, pretending
there's a crowd of people. You know, a lot of people.
Forget that there are three dimensions when it comes to this.
There's not just left, right, forward and backwards. There's also
(18:14):
up and down, and so taking a knee and shooting
moving to something where you have a steady or also
thinking in terms of a lot of people are going
to be standing up and you're all of a sudden
you can see someone across the church, across the sanctuary,
and all of a sudden, everybody stands up starts running around.
You can't see them anymore. So if you've got a
(18:35):
sturdy enough position to stand on, you just want to
get a fold and chair or something. But if you
have something a sturdy enough bench, you may want to
consider stepping up to a higher getting above everyone's head,
and shooting down into a situation where you know, now
you can see above everybody and you can take a
shot from a different angle. You want to think about
(18:57):
the different angles, different positions, maybe moving. I don't move
and shoot, I move to shoot exactly. I move, I pause,
and then I shoot from a standing position and I
move again. I don't try to shoot into a crowd
or the crowd and while I'm walking. You know I
used to do that with us in law enforcement. Move,
(19:17):
don't stop, keep shooting. That's oppressive fire, that's not accurate fire.
I mean, if I'm trying to hit a headplate on
a on a steel rack while I'm walking, I'm not
likely to hit it as what I need to I
need to move. Pause. But you also, you know you
should work on how you move smoothly, gun up, then
also work How am I going to work around a crowd?
How am I going to work through a crowd? So
(19:38):
if I bring my gun down to a safe position,
muzzles down, how do I push through a crowd of
people to get to the threat. You know, one hand's down,
the strong hands down, muzzles pointed down, I'm as outside
of the trigger guard and and I'm moving through the
crowd and I'm moving people out of the way. And
you can do this with your group dry where you
(20:00):
just unload the weapon, make it safe, and have all
the people stand around, and you have to push through
there and then come up and then drive fire. You
can then do that live if you trust the group
and you've got a good instructor. You just need to
you know, things to be careful with. We do it
with law enforcement. So it's just you have to judge
your group on their skill set. But you can set
(20:22):
up barricades or where you have to move through a
certain team to try to get to something. There's so
many different things that you can do. Keep it, keeping
it interesting, keeping it cutting edge, keep giving someone different.
Because if you're just gonna come to the range, everybody shooter,
stand around and shoot, they're gonna shoot their mouths off
more than they're going to shoot their guns, and they're
not going to enjoy it. You've got to throw something
(20:42):
interesting at them. And then you also, as a formal team,
you want to document that training. You want a roster
of who showed up that day, a written summary of
what you did, and then keep that as a record.
I mean, you want training records because when you go
to court and it's a civil suit, you keep in
mind you don't want to go bankrupt because you're trying
(21:04):
to pay for all the legal ramifications of what you
did in that situation, just because you're trying to protect
your church. It's really important that your team record these
things and keep records and document it because it's going
to come up in court. They're going to go, did
you train, Yes, we did, all right, we want to
see your training records, and you're going to go When
(21:24):
we look at the calendar, I'll tell you what days
we trained on and we'll all get together. No no, no, no,
write it down. Good stuff. Thank you, good to see you,
Good to be here. Charlie Strickland Talent Training Group. He
and JD host Talent Outdoors.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
You can listen to it on these fine radio stations
every Saturday morning. It's forty seven minutes past the hour.
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