I was stationed on a battleship, actually, and we did a lot of shooting. We got shot at. There was a lot of my friends who were our boots on the ground in Iraq during that whole thing. Desert Storm didn't last that long. Like, we went in there and just, we did some work. It was fast. Importantly, in a fight, in a real fight, nobody's actually going to stand there while you're getting shot at, right? Nobody's going to just stand there. Everyone's moving. The principle is called getting off the act. You know, you don't want to just stand in one spot and get shot at. You want to move to cover if you can. You suppress if it's appropriate to do so. That's not true in most civilian environments, right? The conditions matter, all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of skills. There's the movement skills.

There's all the weapons manipulation stuff that you're not even allowed to do on a public indoor range. You've got to find people to train with that know how to do that kind of stuff that are credible and that are going to teach you safely. And then you also understanding the applications and the use of when and where all this stuff applies because Because this kind of stuff doesn't necessarily apply for self-defense.

Well, you know, the assumption for a lot of guys similar to myself that went in were like,

you know, I'm going to go do my patriotic duty.

I'm going to defend freedom.

Bring freedom to all these other countries and all this other kind of stuff.

And you'll learn afterwards that it's really not about all that.

It's really about...

Cool. We've spent a little bit of time together doing some firearms training, has some good conversation. I actually, when we're out on the range, it's pretty intense, and we're focused on what we're doing. So I don't know much about your backgrounds. I'm curious. I would like to start with your background. It's my understanding.

You were in the military? Yep. Went in the military right out of high school. U.S. Navy.

Uh-huh. Did that for almost four years. Desert Shield, Desert Storm, all the things.

Yeah. That was around, I think it went in around 80, it was 89.

Why did you decide to join the Navy?

Okay, so now we're getting into some like, I kind of, as a young guy, sometimes you hear guys talk about this kind of stuff.

We're like growing up, they just want to do like military things boys being

boys like joe man totally man I was that kid you know it's like boys being boys cowboys and

Indians like you know playing army all the things like I was so into that stuff um to the point

where in high school this is is a South Florida thing.

Some people may understand this. So you did grow up in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. South Florida. Yeah. I mean, we were the kids that were shooting each other with BB guns, the whole thing. Like, that really happened. Like, it's funny. I've got a friend who's about to retire from the Navy. He's still in, by the way. He, um, we grew up together.

I went in and six months later.

He followed me. He was about to retire from the Navy. He's still in, by the way.

We grew up together.

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