CCW Safe Podcast- Episode 67: Prepare To Be Your Own First Responder

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Transcript:

 

Rob High: Hi, welcome to the CCW Safe Podcast. I’m Rob High and I’m joined today again by Phil Naman. Welcome, Phil.

Phillip Naman: Hey, Rob. Thank you. How are you doing today?

Rob: I’m good, sir. I appreciate it. Phil and I have been talking a little bit about some of the current events going on. One of the things that we had discussed, it’s got limited information on it but it’s one of those things that seems to be more common in this day and age than ever before. It’s people resorting to violence over some of the most insignificant everyday happenings. This one was an incident at a gas station in Houston, Texas. One vehicle next to another vehicle and the door gets opened and dings the car next to him and a man winds up getting shot and killed for nothing.

Phillip: Well, he did ding the car door, it’s not for nothing. Boy, that’s just such a serious offense. Everybody should come out guns blazing. Robin, it’s the sad reality of the world we live in is there so little respect for life, especially someone else’s life, right? That someone would escalate something from the ding of a material object. I don’t want my car door dinged. All right. To say it’s an overreaction is the understatement of the year. Somebody lost their life over an incident in a gas station. As we talked offline earlier, you were saying that, even though you’re caring, even though you have that ability to defend yourself in some situations, it’s best not to put yourself in some situations. Maybe you can comment a little bit on that?

Rob: Absolutely. I was in law enforcement for a couple of decades and carrying a gun was just part of life for me. It’s having the understanding that when I make a decision to carry a firearm, I forfeit the right to respond to things emotionally and humans are emotional creatures. It’s just how we’re wired. I have to hold myself to that higher standard. I can’t just fly off the handle and just respond violently to everything. That’s just crazy. We always talk about it– Go ahead?

Phillip: You have to have situational awareness, right? We talk about that all the time. It’s what’s around you. Take a look, keep your head on the swivel. I teach my kids this all the time. What’s coming up behind you. Be aware of your surroundings. You almost have to do the same thing emotionally is to check yourself. Why am I so angry about this? Yes, my door got dinged. Okay. Fine. It’s a $50 comprehensive claim on my insurance. They’ll repaint the stinking thing. I’m good, whatever. Check your emotion the same way you would check your surroundings. I think that’s a very important thing to do because a bullet doesn’t think.

A bullet is a physics equation. It is traveling at a certain speed. It is going a certain direction with a certain twist, with a certain amount of foot-pounds of impact. That’s all the bullet knows, right? You can’t get them back. You can’t resend like an email, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shoot that.” Once the bullet’s gone, man, it has done whatever you’ve sent it to do. The situational awareness and the emotional awareness have to go hand in hand, especially when you’re carrying. You’ve been an investigator for Uses Of Force and you see something like this. Somebody was so upset that they reacted violently over what we are all agreeing, later on, is really a minor thing.

Well, lives are materially changed. The bullets he sent did whatever he sent them to do and somebody lost their life somebody else should be in jail forever. This is a felony murder, homicide, whoever you want to call it. Somebody used their emotions out of check and took someone else’s life. Probably wasn’t this person’s first emotional outburst and violence. A rough guess on my expert– As a police officer, if somebody jumps out of a car and shoot somebody else because they’ve had a door ding, is that their first run-in with the law? Did they start there?

Rob: No. We discussed this a little bit. It’s what our culture has become. When I first got into law enforcement, I had a pager. I didn’t even have a cell phone.

Philip: You’re dating yourself now.

Rob: Yes, pagers were a new deal back then.

Philip: It made you feel cool. Cops and drug dealers had pagers, it was that cool.

Rob: That’s about it. Yes, and everybody had their own little codes and everything else. It’s one of those that– Now, we have that ability to stay anonymous. We hide in anonymity. I see something posted online and I don’t like it, and oh my gosh, I just go on the attack. We were talking about this. These keyboard warriors that have this false sense of security, and they bolster themselves up. I’ve seen the same thing with just people driving cars. You have no earthly idea the skill set of the guy next to you in that car and suddenly-

Philip: Oh, actually– I’m sorry. Now I’m in Southern California, I know exactly their skill set level, okay? All I ask them to do is just don’t run into me, I’ll get around you as quickly as I can. Just stay in your stinking lane. I know their skill set level, it’s zero. Actually, it’s like Mario Brothers, it’s like they hit as many things as they can thinking they’re getting points. Start with that assumption and you’ll never be disappointed.

Rob: Sure, but it’s one of those that I’m in this steel container that is capable of going however many miles an hour down the road. It’s in itself, a projectile. It’s this huge mass at speed and impact, creates great damage. It’s like a larger scale of a bullet. It just doesn’t go the same feet per second. They get this mindset that they’re invincible if they’re locked inside this car. Again, you shouldn’t have the same kind of emotional responses to things. I’ve been an idiot, not seen somebody in my blind spot and started to emerge over in front of them. Absolutely, I felt terrible about doing that. Some of the emotional responses I’ve seen to that is just good grief. I’ll just avoid that. I’m going down the road and moving on. There’s way bigger, more important things in life than somebody hurt my feelings as I was driving. Same thing that I’m parked in a parking lot, and somebody dings my door. It’s just crazy the way people react to that.

Philip: Well, again, it comes down to your mindset. Allowing everything to build up, the coffee was cold this morning. Your wife said something you didn’t like on your way out the door. There’s extra traffic because Caltrans decides to close off three lanes in the morning to do sweeping during rush hour. You’re late to your first two meetings because they’ve set you back. You heard a no at the office. This happened, this happened. It all piles up and then somebody things your door. If you’re not in control and in check of your emotions as we all should be, which is our responsibility to be in control of ourselves. This is where we see people fly off the handle.

If they have a disposition that says they don’t have respect for life, that’s a recipe for disaster. This person who came off this– I am guessing that he has a bit of a track record with the police department because people don’t start there. Somebody dings your door, maybe you get out and you yell at them. You don’t start a gunfight unless you’ve already been down the road of life doesn’t matter. The criminal mindset is what we’re looking at here. Once again, if firearms are outlawed only people like this guy will have firearms because they don’t follow the laws. They are outlaws, they have no respect for life. They have certainly no respect for the law or law enforcement.

We had another situation in Florida. This is an unbelievable shoot-out. Did you see this one where two police officers are stopped and they’re talking to a couple of guys outside their car? It was really a weird video because it seems really lackadaisical like they’re having a picnic. Cops and these guys are just, I don’t know if they’re writing them up or what, but just jawboning with these two guys that are outside their car. One cop walks up to the other car and he says, “Hey, you what, just step out the cars.” There’s a baby in the backseat, three guys, a baby in the backseat. “Do you mind stepping out of the car?” As he goes to open the door, the guy jumps out with an AR 15 pistol and lays into him. Did you see that?

Rob: I’ve seen it. Yes, sir.

Philip: The “gentlemen” that got out of the backseat of that car had 34 felony arrests on his record, only 34. I guess, if he was arrested 35 times on felony counts, maybe they would take him serious that he is a real criminal and keep them in jail. If we consider how many times they consider or constantly– not considered, consistently let felons out of jail to deal with this and amongst the innocent population, that’s the issue that we’re dealing with. That’s why people want to carry concealed. We don’t know what we’re getting into because the legal system is absolutely broken. You as a police officer, how many times did you arrest the same guy? Do you have a record like, “Joe blow on the station wall? Oh yes, I arrested that guy 11 times. Well, I got him 13 times.” There’s career criminals that they keep letting out. You’re shaking your head. Do you have a story on that?

Rob: I worked in the gang enforcement unit for years super, super, incredibly gifted group of guys that I worked with that were given the opportunity to be proactive and not reactive and actually go hunt these guys down that are out there. They do every crime known to man. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it’s a kid from a low socioeconomic background. We had kids that were in gangs that their parents were actually really well off, and they came all the way down into these little depressed areas and they catch him with these kids because they thought it was cool. You’d have a kid that was grown up really in the lap of luxury that jumps in, and all of a sudden, he thinks it’s cool to be a gangster. There’s nothing cool about that.

It would be over and over and over again. It was like a revolving door with some of those kids and some of them got out of the life, but the vast majority of those kids got shot up or they went to the penitentiary or both.

Philip: Exactly, but I mean, the point of that is that we are– you don’t know who’s pulling into the gas station next to you. I am not saying to be paranoid about everybody you see. You don’t know if this is the guy who’s been arrested 34 times and doesn’t care about his life at all he’d rather have a shootout than a cup of coffee. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. Again, keeping our emotions in check, keeping our staff squared away, knowing your surroundings. If you know your surroundings and you keep yourself out of a danger zone or somebody is approaching and they see that you’ve got some awareness, they tend to veer off. It’s like the shark comes in and veers off, goes to find something else a little easier. Your best course of defense is your alertness and keeping your emotions in check.

You won’t put yourself and you don’t get into the ego, the chest bump, the stupidity that guys get into when they get too emotional over a situation. That’s what we need to do, especially when you’re carrying a firearm out there. You don’t want to introduce it into a situation where it doesn’t belong that you’ve put it into because then you have a lot of explaining to do. Everybody, later on, will Monday morning quarterback you have to pick it apart. That’s kind of what some of the things you did is you as a use of force expert. Maybe we can take a look at that and we come back and we got to do a quick break, but I’ll let you bring us out to the break on that.

I think that’s something that’s very critical is when you let your emotions run, it’s never a good idea. When we’re dealing with carrying firearms and we’re dealing with deadly situations, you can’t go backwards, right? There’s no, do-overs, it’s like retirement. There’s no do-overs well, in a use of force incident, there’s no do-over. You have to live with that result, so your judgment is absolutely imperative, right, Rob?

Rob: Correct. Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in and come right back. Well, take a quick break and we’ll be with you here in a minute.

Philip: That’s at 14 minutes. Ready?

Rob: Welcome back to the CCW Safe Podcast. Rob High. I’m here with Phil Naman just talking about some current events today. We welcome you back, Phil.

Phillip: Obviously, we’re on the CCW Safe Podcast. CCW Safe is an absolutely important aspect to your self-defense. You have the right to carry a firearm. You’re a non-felon, you have the right to carry a firearm. I highly suggest everybody who can do it. I like all good people to be armed. That’s where it should be. I’m in Southern California. If you’re in Southern California, realize that the district attorneys are not your friends. We have Gascon, who was put in by George Soros in LA County. He’s great for criminals. He’s not really good for people who are Second Amendment Law-abiding types. He doesn’t like them for some reason. I don’t say that off the top of my head. I just look at his actions, what he’s done.

If you have to use a firearm in a defensive use of your life, or life of someone else’s here in Southern California, you are going to be so scrutinized over any of your actions. You’re going to have to make sure that you’re in the right. One of the best ways to do that is to have CCW Safe. The way that they control– not control, but the way that they review the incident and the information that they give you and how they help you out with legal services from day one, from the beginning, where you don’t have to come out of your pocket for it, is amazing. Maybe, Rob, you want to give them some of the highlights on that.

Rob: It’s one of those that we’re very honored to be trusted by our members. As you know, it’s a membership program, and as a benefit of that membership, in the event that you’re involved in an incident or you’re required to use lethal force to defend yourself, whether it results in a death or not–

Philip: It’s not just a firearm. If you have to defend yourself with force, you guys are there.

Rob: Absolutely. It’s any weapon of opportunity for us.

Philip: These hands are lethal. Register with the FBI. No?

Rob: I know some of those guys, please don’t do that. It’s one of those that even as an officer, I never understood the cost of a defense. I had an attorney that I have great respect for, a defense attorney that had contacted me. He was representing a gentleman that was involved in a self-defense incident, and there were some political things that played into the decision in his case as well. He was charged with shooting with intent to kill. The man didn’t die. I looked at it and I thought it was a really clear-cut case of self-defense, and so I agreed to come on. I had been a use-of-force expert for the agency I worked for. I had been tasked with casting a critical eye on uses of force involving police officers.

In this incident, I really felt like this guy was in the right. We go through, we worked the thing. The court system never works the way you think it does. It never works as fast as you think it does. This case went to trial about two years after the occurrence.

Philip: What happened to that guy’s life for those two years?

Rob: He’s just absolutely living under the stress of what’s going to happen. He’s a single dad. He’s got two children. He was a physician. Just the pressure of having that hanging over your head for all of that time, even though he’s got an attorney on one side and me on the other side saying, “Hey, everything looks good”. We’re confident here. We are not the jurors. It’s going to 12 people at the end of a trial, and they’re going to make that decision. Fortunately, we had a really quick return on the verdict. This man is a good friend of mine now. I remember asking him, I said, “It’s none of my business, and don’t share if you don’t want to, but I’m curious what your defense costs you.”

It was more than $600,000. It was funny because the founders of this company were friends of mine that I I worked with as a police officer. After that incident came down, I called and joined. I’ve been a member ever since. It was one of those that I understood if I was involved in an on-duty shooting as a police officer, I had investigators and experts and attorneys and everything in place, chaplain services, whatever I needed. If I was traveling with my family and I was on vacation two states over, my department, they weren’t going to come and back me then and I carry a firearm with me everywhere. I became a member then before I was ever an employee here. I understood what they did and what they stood for and the kind of team they had put together.

I knew that if anything ever happened that I’d be well taken care of. They don’t just cover the criminal end of that. They’ll get all the trial costs and court costs with a criminal investigation and trial including attorney’s fees and expert witnesses and investigators, jury consultants, there’s so many things that go into that. People have no earthly idea the price of that. If I’m with company A over here and they tell me, “Yes, we’ve got you covered. We’ll pay $250,000.”

Philip: Which sounds like a lot of money when you’re first signing up for the program. You’re like, “Wow, I’ll never need that.” Yes, because you’ve never dealt with lawyers before.

Rob: Correct. You have no earthly idea. Then suddenly, you’re not even through a preliminary hearing and your money is used up. It’s one of the things our founders were were really big on was a no limit on those court costs and the defense costs. I would be broke forever if I had to try and pay for something myself like that.

Philip: You won?

Rob: Yes. I won.

Philip: Here’s the thing, like in California, this is why this is so important, especially guys who live in California or Oregon. Oregon has some crazy DAs, obviously important. Maricopa County, Arizona, you might think you’re awesome, but Maricopa County is off-limits. Clark County, Nevada, they have, again, the liberal DAs. All they have to do is file charges on you, then they go to lunch. Now, you are fighting for your life the second time.

Rob: Yes.

Philip: You had an incident where you’re fighting for your life on the street, whatever happened on that, now, you’re fighting against a bureaucracy that is going to do a slow roll and just wear you out. The money, this is your retirement savings, your house, everything you’ve worked for, that’s getting drained immediately. The second thing is your life force gets sucked away from you. If you don’t have a way to cover this and have somebody on your team, you’re not only losing money, I honestly think you’re losing years of your life over the stress of all these things as it just grinds you down. If you’ve ever been involved with situations like that, we’ve seen the legal system at work.

You see the participants and they’re just hammered. The hope is gone. Having the program, CCW Safe, having them on your side is such a godsend. Now, number one, I pray that you carry your CCW weapon everywhere you can and it never clears the holster. That’s the best scenario. You don’t brandish it and it never clears the holster. That’s the absolute best scenario. Number two is if you have to use it that you use it correctly and you save your life or the life of a loved one in that situation. If you do all of that and you haven’t done your homework because just no, just no. Unless you live in some of those counties in Florida or Texas, you’re going to get filed on.

The DA is going to do something. It’s not that the officers or detectives don’t understand. It’s somebody who wants to become, I don’t know, maybe like Vice president of United States. She was a DA for years and you don’t want to run into a situation in court against somebody like that who has all the money and time behind them of the entire government, state, county, federal and you’re trying to do that on your own dime. Even if you win, you’re broke and you’re a beaten person. That’s why you need to have– Oh, geez. For the cost of the CCW membership, you can sleep at night. It’s absolutely amazing what you get for as little as a cost and that ccw safe.com in case you didn’t know.

Rob: The other part of that is not just that weight on me. Gary and I have talked about this, he’s our critical incident response manager. He and I work together very closely and we’ve discussed what I refer to as the concentric ripples. It doesn’t just affect me and the other person, it affects his family. It affects my family. It affects those around us. We know people that have lost their job. They’ve lost employment because they were involved in an incident, even though it’s a remarkably justifiable incident.

Philip: Let’s just say that you’re a salesperson and maybe you do house calls for your company. I don’t know. You’re a solar salesman and now you’re in trouble because the DA’s filed charges on you. Is your company going to allow you to go to individual people’s homes? No, they’re going to fire you. They have to for their own purposes. You’re going to be out of a job. Is it going to be a little bit stressful on the marriage? Yes. Probably most people don’t survive in a marriage on that. It strains the kids, why the kids. “Oh, your dad did this,” blah blah blah. It’s all the way around a bad deal. It’s too bad that we have to– that’s the situation we’re in to defend our lives and the lives of our loved ones and that’s why you make sure that you have your backdoor cover.

Rob: Absolutely. It’s one of those that it’s like my car insurance. I have to have it. I’m required to have it to operate a motor vehicle. I hope that I never ever need it, but if I am involved in an accident, man, thank goodness I got it. Same thing with this incident. We’ve had people that have tried to come around and join after an incident.

Philip: My house burned down. Can I get some insurance? Oh, by the way. All this stuff was inside of it.

Rob: I get it. It doesn’t work that way. If I call Allstate and I say, “Hey, I wrecked my car yesterday, I’d like to get a policy. Can you handle that accident I was just in?” They’re just not going to do that. It’s not a big deal. Truly the price is negligible for what you’re up against. It’s one of those that I recommend people do their homework. They do their research. They figure out what you’re really getting for your dollar, and making their decision that way as opposed to who has the big pretty ads and everything else. That’s a really big deal. Understand the substance that you’re paying for, what you’re getting out of it.

Philip: Well, it’s a substance over flash over facts. Stick with just the facts, ma’am. That’s where we want to be. Folks, this is Phillip Naman and Robin high. Join us back here at CCW Safe right after this.

Rob: I’m brilliant. I just know– Welcome back to the CCW Safe Podcast. Again, I’m Rob High with Phil Naman just talking about some current two-way events. We wanted to go this last segment and cover a little bit about your method of carry, your equipment, some of the things that should be, first and foremost, in your selection. Moving forward, Phil, what are your thoughts?

Philip: Well, it’s so broad. We could probably do about a month worth of shows on all those different topics. One of the big things that we’re seeing is constitutional carry, open carry, concealed carry. Maybe we should just focus on what concealed carry is, what open carry is pros and cons.

Rob: Absolutely. We had a huge thing in Oklahoma when we went with open carry that we had the first day that was out guys that wanted to show that “I’m exercising my rights and look at what I got there.” They’re walking around.

Philip: Single point sling in their AR and the grocery store.

Rob: We’ve had that too. We had a guy that was doing his little– what do you call it? His 2A audits that he was going around being filmed all the time. He didn’t realize that going into a restaurant with that slung AR was actually a chargeable offense.

Philip: Is the alcohol serving?

Rob: Yes, it sure was. You got guys that just want to show you that, “I’m just exercising my rights.” That “The law says I can, so I can.”

Philip: Let me back up a little bit for history here for those of you– Again, I am calling in from the People’s Republic of Occupied California. If you look, there’s an AR 15 on the wall backward. AR 15 on the wall with a really weird-looking handle, right? We have to do that. We have to put fins on them. We have to secure– Anyway, lots of stuff we deal with from the People’s Republic of Occupied California.

What is interesting is just a few short years ago, we had open carry, we did. These brilliant brainiacs decided that we should push the limit and have 50 guys show up carrying a weapon wherever and they called them open carry rallies. They were showing their Second Amendment support. I said, “Dudes, you’re poking the bear.” Law enforcement gets called in because that’s unusual for a downtown area to have 50 guys walking around with pistols on their hips or rifles on their back or whatever.

Eventually, the state legislature says, “That’s enough of this foolishness. We’ll write a law specifically so you can’t do that,” so it gets taken away. Poking the bear like your 2A audit guy is never a good idea. If you have it, just enjoy it. If we have something on our side, don’t screw it up for the rest of us, right?

Rob: [unintelligible 00:31:34] please.

Philip: If I have open carry and I want to do it when I’m hiking or we’re doing something like that, that’s fine. Personally, I prefer a concealed carry. How about you, Rob?

Rob: Absolutely. If nothing else, if there’s somebody that enters into your local convenience store, you just stopped to grab a loaf of bread after you gassed up and you’re headed home, I don’t want to walk in on an armed robbery in progress and all of a sudden, my bad guy notices that I got a gun before I noticed that he has one and I’m the first target.

Philip: Because his is concealed?

Rob: His is concealed. He’s hiding it.

Philip: Action beats reaction. He pulls and fires and you’re like, ” Ah, I still got my thumb strap down.” How about this scenario? I’ve got a beautiful Wilson 1911 TAC 45, great gun on my hip, hammer back, I’ve got the thumb strap over the top. I’m grocery shopping and a felon who just got released from jail who doesn’t have a firearm notices that I’m shopping the same aisle he is in the coffee canner. He grabs a 1-pound canner, a 3-pound canner, folders, and beans me in the back of the head with it while I’m shopping. What happened to that beautiful Wilson 1911? [laughs] It’s gone off your hip, right?

With open carry, there’s so many things that you’re making yourself a target. Look, concealed carry, I’m not saying don’t carry it, I’m saying don’t show all your cards, right? If you’re playing poker, they play the seven-card poker, why do they keep two cards down? I think that’s two, I don’t know. I don’t play poker, but I know they keep some cards down. They don’t share them with everybody at the table, right? Because you’re going to lose.

I think that that’s the difference between concealed carry and open carry. Open carry is fine. In certain situations, you guys are out doing your thing. I think it exists as a law for that purpose, but if you’re in town, if you’re in a mall, you’re shopping, you are in church, whatever, I prefer concealed carry. I want to be a wild card that they can’t factor in and I want to be not the first person who gets shot because I’ve got a gun on my hip.

Rob: The other part that I’ve always noticed is the guys that are out there exercising that right and showing everybody in their dog that I’ve got a pistol on my hip, they’re strapping that thing to their body with a $12 plastic bolt that they got at the Walmart and it’s–

Philip: Uncle Mike’s universal. I got a lot of pistols. There’s one holster.

Rob: Absolutely. It’s in a $7 holster and you don’t understand the amount of training that a law enforcement officer goes through on weapon retention and holstered gun defense and things like that, even with a holster that has tremendous retention systems built in automatically. I still know cops that have had their guns taken away from them. These aren’t just like your average cops, I know of some really high-speed guys that have lost guns in fights. If you don’t think that guys in a penitentiary don’t practice taking things from people, they do.

Philip: If they can get side control, they can get you down, get side control, the angle that they’re working at can release that firearm.

Rob: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s part of the deal. There’s so many people that think that just owning that firearm is enough. If you think just possessing, that is enough to scare somebody, you probably shouldn’t be carrying a firearm.

Philip: Maybe on one of our upcoming shows, we should do something on holsters because that is such a big thing. You get a bucket holster where the gun slides in and maybe there’s a thumb strap. Maybe it goes over the back of it, maybe it’s not even a thumb break, maybe it goes all the way over and three inches down the side and there’s a snap on it. There’s lots of things we can talk about for proper retention. Here’s the other thing is you’re walking across the street, you’re texting because you’re not paying attention and you trip over bubble gum on the floor and you fall down, you fall forward on your knees and your hands because you just tripped, maybe you’re wearing flip flops, I don’t know. I don’t wear flip-flops and the guns spill forward.

Rob: Yes.

Philip: You got this across, across the asphalt. You got some explaining to do. There’s lots of things as far as your firearm, not only when do you use it, but how do you carry it? How do you carry it responsibly and comfortably? In the county I’m in, you can get six weapons on your CCW list. Sounds like you should have them all but six is rather generous I think because other counties are one or three. I have a breadth that are on there from a 642, which is a very small 38 special that when I’m wearing my suit, that’s probably what I’m going to have on me. Or a P365 if you can find one of those in California, small, small, compact. I’ve got a 21 and a Glock 21 and I’ve got a Smith & Wesson 29 on there.

Why? Because when I’m out hiking in the mountains, I got a 629 on my hip, it’s a whole different situation. You can carry it for the breadth but what you notice is when you first get in– and all of the CCW investigators out here say the same thing. Everybody puts all these guns on their first time they get it. When they renew, they have one or two and they put the 629 on and the Glock 21 on, and then the 17 and all the stuff they like, the CZ75. They put all this on and then they come down and say, “Okay, I want just the lightest smallest thinnest [chuckles] just stick with the M&P shield at the end,” because five pounds of iron on your hip wears at you after a while. Or you’ve got a Glock 21 appendix carry and you get in your car and you’re like, “Okay, this is not going to work, we should you do something else with this.” I think maybe one of our future shows about just holster design to be a good idea.

Rob: Absolutely. There’s just so many things out there and it depends on what is your method of carry. Are you going to do appendix, are you going to go on your hip? There’s still a lot of people that want to put a gun behind their back.

Philip: Magnum P.I. did it. That’s where I got the idea was like, “Oh, I’ll just slide 45 in the back here. What could happen?” It worked for him, he got the girls and a Ferrari.

Rob: Absolutely.

Philip: He always got shot right here in the one same spot. I think it was just– he had duct tape over the hole, he got shot there so often.

Rob: [laughs] That’s so funny. That’s the other thing is there’s so many pieces to this. Are you carrying an additional magazine with you? I don’t always, I’ll tell you that. When I was still full-time law enforcement, if I carried a firearm with me, I always had a set of handcuffs with me. It just made sense. The vast majority of the times I’ve deployed a firearm, I didn’t have to touch a trigger. The effective display was typically enough, but that’s not always the case.

Philip: We don’t have that power so if there’s a bad guy, you can’t stop him and then say, “Okay, now I’m going to handcuff you.” That opens up, especially California, a whole other issue of stuff. You don’t have the power to lock him up and hog time as much as you would like to. Maybe you should, zip ties?

Rob: I still thought-

Philip: How about the Chinese, the Chinese finger thing? You just shove them in that [laughs]

Rob: The thumb handcuffs,

Philip: As you go.

Rob: I still think it’s a really big deal for people. We discussed earlier your situational awareness. You don’t really have to train a lot after you’ve been on the street for a while as a cop because you just develop that hypervigilance. You’ll see a lot of these guys that were coming back from deployment that had seen combat that they can’t pass a piece of trash on the side of the road without immediately- [crosstalk] in because they’re looking for-

Philip: IEDs.

Rob: -fires and explosives, absolutely. It’s just part of the thing that becomes part of you. It’s one of those that, I don’t want everybody living in fear, but I want everybody to pay attention to the things going on around them. We discussed that a little earlier about not– I’ve taught the situational awareness course for women. I’ve done it for nurses that are working overnight shifts and things like that. I’ve done it for real estate groups. Typically, those are people that are confident and can follow these instructions pretty good, but you get some housewife that has never been in those situations, and they see somebody that looks mean, and all of a sudden, they become submissive, and they-

Philip: I’m calling in from California, ao I’m going to say, I want to correct this. It’s not that the housewives have anything wrong with them or demeaning. It’s that they have not been in those situations before. That’s what you’re alluding to, right?

Rob: Yes. You’re absolutely correct.

Philip: Right. Okay. [laughs]

Rob: They’re not trained to deal with those things. Something they- [crosstalk]

Philip: Hopefully not. Let me bring up, my wife, for example, she doesn’t worry about that stuff. She even says I’m so thankful that she can go on autopilot. She doesn’t have to when we’re together. She knows that I’m always the stupid guy looking over her shoulder. That’s my job, I’m not going to be on call and have something happen to my family. I don’t want to live with that. I’m the idiot that’s checking this, making sure that we’re in the right position all the time. Sometimes we’re at the mall, all of a sudden, we’re moving across. Why? It’s because that one says go over here.

I think many of the times, that it’s because they’ve been taken care of by somebody else, or father, or husband, or brother, or something else, so it’s been done for them, but they haven’t had to do it themselves.

That’s why, so many times the women who are single, widowed, divorced, all of a sudden, they want to buy a first gun, because they realize, unfortunately, folks, you are the first responder to a critical incident because you’re the victim. Rob was a police officer for years. Rob, how many crimes did you stop from happening, or were you reacting to things that had already happened?

Rob: I was fortunate enough to work in some positions that I did get to work- [crosstalk]

Philip: As proactive when you’re doing the gang stuff. If you’re in a black and white car-

Rob: -vast majority-

Philip: – you’re driving on going, “I think something’s going to happen over here. I should probably drive.” Or is it you’re responding to this call, because something happened, this call because something happened, and you’re going there after the fact. You’re not a first responder, you’re there playing cleanup.

Rob: Typically, yes, you’re the historian that’s coming to write the archived story for it.

Philip: Yes. You are the first responder, so especially, women on their own for the first time or maybe just moved out of the house or something like that, absolutely imperative that they get training, get situational awareness, like you’re talking about, get armed up with the right thing and not a $7 holster, and not your gun loose in the purse. That’s another no-no, don’t do that. Even if you’re a guy that’s not a man bag, that’s a purse. Don’t worry, get a holster. No fanny packs.

I have many more bias I’m willing to share so, just let me know when you want me to go down a rabbit trail. Flip flops and man purses, I can’t do, sorry. All right. What else? The end story folks, and obviously, this is a CCW Safe Podcast, they want you to do the product but check them out. You can see all the different levels that they have for their memberships from household coverage to individual but they all have certain great looks for him. Rob can talk more about that, but you find those at ccwsafe.com. ccwafe.com. If you want any of my podcasts, I’m at firinglineradio.com, we do a program out here in Southern California and on the internet. Check that out if you’d like. Rob, what else have we got?

Rob: Coming up, we’re going to have some of our experts from CCW Safe. They’re going to be visiting with us. If you’ve got any topics that you’d like to hear, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me at rob@ccwsafe.com. It’s super easy to get ahold of me.

Philip: These experts, we say experts, but these really are like Don West, right?

Rob: Absolutely.

Philip: Don West, one of the major attorneys, he worked on the– oh, what’s his name now? George–

Rob: George Zimmerman.

Philip: Thank you. The George Zimmerman case. That was you, if you want to talk about a highly politically charged case, well, he was one of the main attorneys for that. Another very high-profile case is Larry Vickers, right?

Rob: Certainly.

Philip: We’ll have him on. Lots of people on there that when we say we have experts, CCW actually has experts. That’s a big, big factor on that. Then we’ll go through every now and then, we’ll drop stuff like our whole holster review, or how to carry review, mag changes. How do you carry your extra mags? What kind of ammunition should you have suggestively? Lots of different things we’ll add to try and add some different parts to it, but the number one thing is be safe, be CCW Safe.

That’s a tagline you can have if you want.

[laughter]

Rob: Truly, we are honored to have the members that we do. We’re appreciative of those of you tunning in with us. If there’s topics that you’d like to see addressed, we’d be happy to look at those. As I said, we’ll have some of our experts joining in with us, be able to answer some of your questions, and be a little bit more pointed on some of the critical things that we’re talking about. We just appreciate you guys tunning in.

Philip: Awesome. That’s great. Well, we’ll see you all next week. God bless.

[00:47:48] [END OF AUDIO]