Making Shooters Better
Making Shooters Better
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Your Vision, Brain, and Memory Will Betray You. Here’s How to Prepare Anyway.

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In this episode of Making Shooters Better, Terry sits down with Brian Baxter, combat infantry veteran, retired Texas State Trooper, and CEO of Force Science, for a conversation that changes how you understand perception, memory, decision-making, and accountability under stress.

Why can two honest people experience the same event and remember it differently? Why might body-camera footage miss the very information that drove an officer’s decision? Why can a defender continue an action for fractions of a second after the threat changes, even when they are trying to stop?

Brian breaks down the science behind time compression, tunnel vision, attention, automaticity, fragmented memory, and the uncomfortable truth that human beings do not make life-or-death decisions the way calm people imagine they do from the sofa.

This is not a conversation about excuses. It is about honest accountability: holding people to clear standards that are actually within the limits of human performance.

Whether you are law enforcement, an instructor, an armed citizen, a home defender, or simply someone who wants to better understand how the brain behaves when the stakes become terrifyingly real, this episode delivers rare insight from the world of Force Science.

You will learn why you are always behind the power curve, why “vision” is not the same as a video recording, why memory is not a playback device, and how better awareness, better training, and a little more patience after a critical incident can matter far beyond physical survival.

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I mean we've got research on how long it takes to start doing something, how long it takes to stop doing something, specifically shooting.
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Uh and and you're looking at a little over three hundred milliseconds to start shooting, and you're looking at almost four hundred milliseconds to stop shooting.
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So what does that tell us?
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It takes longer to stop than it does to start.
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Here's your signal to start shooting, and when you see this signal, I want you to stop shooting.
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And so people would shoot as fast as they could, and then the signal to stop would come on and they'd shoot one or two extra shots.
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Well in this more recent research, and we don't know if it's if it's trigger differences or mechanical differences, what it is, but there were up to three shots that were fired after the stop signal that that people would look at and say, Why did you keep shooting?
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Why were there additional shots after the guy dropped the gun?
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Why were there additional shots after the guy fell to the ground?
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Why were there additional shots after the guy turned his back?
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Uh and that's the answer.
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It's the limits of human performance.
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Where he leads world-renowned research, training, and consulting on human performance under stress, drawing on more than 30 years in armed professions, a master's degree in applied psychology, and collaboration with some of the world's most renowned scientists.
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Brian and his team of experts help explain human perception, cognition, decision making, and performance during life's most critical moments.
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Brian addresses groups across the globe, so it is not hyperbolic to say that the information we're going to be learning today is usually only available at special events and is going to be invaluable to anyone who might be called or even forced to react effectively in a life or death situation.
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Brian, welcome to the podcast, mate.
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Terry, thank you very much.
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I'm happy to be here.
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This is going to be good.
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It is.
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You and I met at a conference and you we started nerding out on some of the stuff that you teach within minutes, and I'm like, oh, we've got to hold this.
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We've got to get this recorded.
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So I'm really excited about this one.
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How old were you when you first started shooting?
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I was about about eight years old, I'd say seven or eight years old, uh out of kindergarten, but still still a little kid.
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I started shooting uh probably like many of your uh friends.
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I started shooting with a little uh daisy BB gun.
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And uh you graduated from a daisy BB gun to what next?
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Well so the next one I had to be twelve years old.
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Uh when I turned 12 years old, I'd been shooting other stuff, but I didn't have my own uh 22 long rifle until I was 12 years old.
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But that was the the next graduation was shooting 22 long rifle, and I uh uh my family really enjoys dove hunting.
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And so I would go dove hunting, and I had an uncle that that thought it would be smart to put me on a 410 because it's a smaller shotgun, than to start me off on a 12 gauge.
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And what I learned real quickly was the weight of that 410 single shot was so light that that recoil was a lot stronger than a than a pump action 12 gauge.
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So I I actually, when it came to shotguns, I started shooting 12 gauge real early.
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It's funny because I started on approximately the same thing, or maybe the British equivalent, it wasn't a a BB rifle, but it was an air rifle.
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So it was a break the barrel to put the air in, you know, put your pellet in, single shot and go.
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And it was one of those activities that got me not only out of the house, we lived out in the country, but it started my journey on what does it take to actually be accurate?
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And just learning through trial and error, I would set up all my action figures down the drive down this the back of the side of our house where it was just wooded, you know, for miles, and shoot all my action figures once I got through the page.
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And I did the same thing, and I I I I would take action, I don't know if you remember these, but there was these little spring-powered guns that would shoot little discs.
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And and you could load a magazine with discs, and then the the little plastic gun would shoot them.
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I would set my action figures up high and I would put vampire Halloween vampire blood down on the desk below, and I would shoot the action figure in the feet so that they would fall and it would look like an action film.
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Uh I got pretty accurate pretty fast.
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I I also learned not just the accuracy side, but the responsibility side, which is huge.
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Right.
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Uh with uh with an air air rifle, a BB gun in my backyard, I was shooting a little paper target, and uh, you know, dad turned his back just a little bit too long, and there was a bird and a tree in my backyard, so I I shot that bird and it fell.
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And my dad came, all he said to me was he picked up that dead bird and he said, Wow, they sure aren't as pretty when they're dead, and broke my heart, man.
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I re that was the very first moment where I put together the the gravity of not just how to use a gun and how to shoot a gun and how to be accurate, because I was pretty accurate.
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I got that bird, uh, but also the responsibility that goes along with it.
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Yeah, that was huge, very impactful.
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It was.
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So after decades of studying human performance, both in combat, law enforcement, critical incidents across the board, what do you think is one of the things that every um citizen, police officer, instructor, even an experienced shooter believes about human performance under stress that the science says is simply wrong?
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Uh there's a few, but I would at the top of the heap I would say decision making.
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I'd say we get that we don't get it wrong, we just don't understand it.
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We don't understand the way human beings make decisions under time compression.
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I think we all we have this belief that that we're smart people, and most of us are, and we're responsible people, and that when we have a choice to make, we weigh options, we look at the the different choices we have, we look at the pros and the cons of those choices, and we look at, okay, what if I implement this choice, uh, what's likely to occur as a result?
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Well, that's not optimal, so I'll go with this choice instead.
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And we have this consequential, rational process that we use.
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And hopefully we do when we have time.
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We use something like that.
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When we're operational planning, when we're strategic planning for our business, hopefully we're using that kind of method.
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But under stress, that's not how humans make decisions.
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There's great research out there by guys like Gary Klein and Daniel Kahneman, who talk about uh Daniel Kahneman talked about system one and system two thinking.
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Uh the really fast and frugal, I don't have time to think about this.
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You know, the rock is flying at me, I'm gonna move, uh, versus system two, which is what I kind of described with that consequential method.
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Uh and and Gary Klein talks about uh recognition prime decision making.
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He talks about using our experience and our knowledge and our training and our education to recognize patterns.
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And when we recognize a pattern, for example, a firefighter inside of a building.
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Uh they've been inside buildings before, they've smelled smoke before, they've felt heat before, and they've also heard rafters cracking before.
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So when they hear rafters cracking overhead in that smoke-filled room, they don't think, what should I do?
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They just leave.
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That's the first choice that matches that pattern in in that scenario, and they don't go with necessarily the best of all options.
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They go with the first choice that matches the pattern.
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So I'd say uh we we know very little about decision making, most of us.
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And so we we hold ourselves to a standard that's not realistic uh when we're forced to make a decision in a very high stress, time compressed situation.
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I already have so many questions.
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However, I know we're gonna be deep diving some of this, so we're gonna go on to the next one and then sort of revisit that because I want to look at time compression and then heuristics and the d the ways that we sort of circumvent the cognitive process to get to an instinctive decision based on very little data, but we will in just a little while.
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So you were a combat infantryman, and then you went to Texas State Troopers, and then obviously CEO for Force Science.
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Was there a specific incident where you realized that what people believe happened in a critical incident and what actually happened can be very two different realities?
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Yeah, well, uh just for specificity, I I was a I became I was in the Army or National Guard, and it wasn't until well into my DPS uh state trooper career that I was activated and sent to Iraq.
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I went to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and so I got my combat infantry uh badge after I had been a trooper for 20 years.
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Uh so that that goes into that old saying that combat experience is that thing you get right after you needed it.
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And I was fortunate enough to have had decade or you know, almost two decades of uh public safety service before I saw actual combat, which which definitely informed and and I think improved uh the way I handled business over there.
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But but yes, uh uh to answer your question about different realities, I I remember as a kid hearing my grandparents argue.
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Uh they'd talk about a really good roast beef sandwich that they had when they were on vacation, and that was in that was in Memphis, and it was at that restaurant in Memphis.
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And then my grandmother would correct him, no, no, no, that was when we were in Nashville.
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That wasn't Memphis.
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That was and then they'd get into this big argument because each of them, through their perception and the memory that they've constructed over time, uh, because memory is a thing uh we don't remember the event.
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We don't remember the roast beef sandwich.
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We remember the last time we remembered the roast beef sandwich.
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So they're they're constructing this memory over time, and each of them uh is a hundred percent confident and a hundred percent honest, uh, but one of them is a hundred percent wrong because their their memory is incorrect.
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That's the first time I started wondering how how and why does this happen?
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There's only one way this could have gone down, uh, but what I've learned is there's two human perceptions, perceptual systems involved.
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And so the in '95, I was involved in a pretty serious incident in Austin, Texas.
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We had a riot.
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Uh it was Halloween, and and there was a club that let out, and there was a whole bunch of fighting and a whole bunch of shouting.
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And one of my partners was rendering aid to a man that had been shot.
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Uh he had been shot in the chest, and my partner's trying to put direct pressure, do whatever he can to help this kid not die.
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And I'm off to his left dealing with another person, but I'm not doing first aid, I'm handcuffing.
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While I'm handcuffing, I've got a very narrow external visual focus of attention on my task of handcuffing.
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Uh a car in a panic is trying to get out of there.
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They're not trying to hurt anybody, they just want to get out of dodge.
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Well, they hit reverse and they run over my partner.
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And and he's a now, this guy, he's one of those guys that's got arms like legs and legs like people.
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I mean, he's a big old boy.
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So that car ran over him, and it probably hurt the car worse than it did my partner, but it still flipped my partner over and he maintained pressure the whole time on that kid.
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I didn't see any of it.
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I didn't see my six foot four, two hundred and fifty pound partner get run over by a Cadillac, and it happened about 15 feet from me.
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So his memory of that event is vastly different from my memory of that event, uh, and yet they happen at the same time in the same place in pretty close vicinity.
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And it comes down to what not necessarily what is going on around you, but what you are able or what you choose to pay attention to in the midst of everything that's going on around you.
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That th those are pretty good examples of man, you can be in the same experience in the same place at the same time and have completely different experiences.
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If you're serious about becoming a better shooter, here's a question.
00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:41.600
How many repetitions are you getting in each week?
00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:50.879
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00:12:51.039 --> 00:13:03.840
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00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:06.799
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00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:05.919
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00:14:06.879 --> 00:14:19.120
So if you had sixty seconds to explain, I think you've already given some good examples already as to why forced science exists, and particularly why every person who carries a gun for defense should care?
00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:20.000
What would you tell them?
00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:24.399
I would I would say that in about 2002, Dr.
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Bill Lewinsky started asking questions that nobody else was asking, specific to law enforcement and public safety.
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And these questions were around perception, cognition, decision making, and performance.
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Uh why does the officer tell me that the threat was facing him with a knife and the officer shot that person, but the bullets are in the back?
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It's because the officer perceived what they perceived before they shifted their attention to the front sight.
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When they shifted their attention to the front sight, it was at the expense of everything else, tunnel vision, sensory gating.
00:14:59.360 --> 00:15:05.279
Uh what there's a whole lot of sixty cent words we can use to describe these things, but it comes down to tunnel vision.
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And and so what I would say is that force science exists to examine the humanity behind the tool in a time of crisis.
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We're not just taking measurements, we're not just counting shell casings, we're not just looking at at defects in the wall, we're not just looking at uh medical examiner notes.
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We're looking at the human being behind the tool in the time of crisis and what were their perceptions?
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What was their designated area of focus?
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Were they dominated by their vision?
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Were they dominated by their hearing?
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Uh were they were they completely internally focused and disassociated from the experience?
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What was going on with that human being?
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And then that informs us what we should expect them to remember and what it's really, really reasonable for them to not remember and and have a more holistic, uh realistic accounting of what went on based on their story.
00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:14.720
And and and as I want to get to later, I want to I want to talk about this standard of honest accountability that requires that kind of investigation.
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It requires an understanding of human performance and the limits of human performance.
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:23.759
See, I find this fascinating from from both perspectives.
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Both the okay, critical incident officer needs to analyze and everybody needs to analyze the the actions that came due to the behaviors that preceded.
00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:34.960
I love that.
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But I also like it from the perspective of what the general public has got into their heads about human performance when it comes to law enforcement, particularly, is completely and utterly in most cases wrong.
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And the human element is very rarely ever even considered.
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There's this belief, I think, unfortunately, and that's where you know companies like yours who are able to train civilians to understand the human variable are so invaluable because most times we hear of a shooting or we hear of an incident, just as you described, somebody had a knife, they were facing the officer, the officer drew the gun, he was still facing the officer with that knife as a actual uh threat, and then transfers visual uh processing his fixation point to the front site, and in that time suspect shifts.
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Right.
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So we end up with shots in the back.
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Well, how in the world does that happen, says the civilian.
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And because the time it takes to do that is so much faster than you think.
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And to transition the thought process away from the threat was there facing me, and suddenly the threat has spun and is now taking off is fractions of a second, potentially.
00:17:48.720 --> 00:18:01.519
But there's no as far as civilians are concerned, there's no understanding or no appreciation for that hum that human variable and the decision-making process that comes as sort of part and package of a life-threatening incident.
00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:12.400
Yeah, the the what would you describe the the time that it takes, the the very, very short amounts of time that those movements take, that's where the answers lie.
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Uh for years people would question uh how long does it take someone to uh you know, could someone have turned around in the amount of time that it took for the bullet to get from the end of the barrel to their body?
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And that's not what we need to be measuring.
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We need to take into account the perception time, the the there's a if if you hook somebody's brain up with a bunch of wires, you can kind of see when they become consciously aware of something.
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And that's generally between 200 and 500 milliseconds uh from the from the stimulus, from the light turning on, from uh from whatever the stimulus is.
00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:50.559
There's about two hundred to five hundred milliseconds.
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Well, it takes three hundred milliseconds to blink.
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So if you take into account that blinking, you could miss not only the the entire stimulus, and this is a simple laboratory stimulus.
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When we look at timing things in a laboratory, it's hey, when the light turns on, start shooting.
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When the light turns off, stop shooting.
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First of all, nowhere in the real world is a stimulus going to be that clear, unambiguous, and simple.
00:19:19.359 --> 00:19:28.480
Uh however, that's how you start timing these things, such as how long does it take for somebody to become consciously aware of a change in their environment.
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And that's between that 200 and 500 milliseconds when we're talking about vision.
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But you've missed it.
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If if if it happened, a person can turn 180 degrees in about a third of a second.
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That's about the same amount of time that it takes you to become consciously aware of that initial movement if you were able to see that initial movement.
00:19:50.559 --> 00:20:10.559
And I think to your point, that's where a lot of us get it wrong, is we assume that when we look at a video recording of an event and we watch it, we rewind it, we pause it, we frame by frame, we slow motion it, we back up again, we look and we go, aha! Right there, the guy's hand moves, and you can see his hand moving in his pocket.
00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:23.839
That took a lot of time and a lot of effort in a HVAC, uh, unlike this room, an air-conditioned room uh with good lighting and probably some help to say that's the definitive first movement.
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And then we go from that to say it took this amount of time for that 180 degree spin to happen or for that gun to come out of the pocket and fire a shot.
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People on the scene who are scanning their environment for additional threats, movement, changes, are not going to be most times looking exactly where they need to be looking when that initial first movement happens.
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So that puts them well beyond the normal time curve.
00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:54.640
I guess to sum all of that up, we live behind the power curve.
00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:59.599
We are always behind uh something that's going to potentially happen to us.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:08.799
Yeah, which includes the capacity and ability to stop an action once the cognitive process and decision-making event has occurred.
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:09.920
Absolutely.
00:21:10.079 --> 00:21:12.799
I had a case uh that I worked out of East Texas.
00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:15.279
It was one of my first expert witness cases.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:26.960
And in this incident, uh there was a man holding a woman hostage, uh, had an AR-15 pointed at her, she's in her car, and he's got her blocked between his garage and his great big pickup truck.
00:21:27.119 --> 00:21:32.559
She can't leave in her car, she's afraid to get out of her car because there's a guy walking around pointing an AR-15 at her.
00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:39.920
So she calls 911, tells, and this is right after the Parkland tragedy, the murder of all those children in Florida.
00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:45.119
Uh she tells 911, there's a guy holding me at gunpoint, please help.
00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:51.359
Well, they arrive not to negotiate, they arrive to take care of business, to save this hostage.
00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:53.680
And when they approach, it's a little clumsy.
00:21:53.759 --> 00:21:59.759
They've got rifles with no slings, uh, they don't really have a plan of attack, but but we're looking at time versus accuracy.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:00.960
Trade-off.
00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:13.599
So as they approach, the the the hostage taker has already dropped his rifle, but he grabs the rifle of the lead deputy, and they start struggling over this rifle, fighting back and forth, pulling, pushing.
00:22:13.839 --> 00:22:23.440
They end up on the ground, and another deputy there has his rifle and he sees the bad guy trying to take the rifle away from the good guy.
00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:27.920
Clearly a reasonable assessment of deadly ri deadly threat here.
00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:30.799
If that guy gets the rifle, we're all in bad shape.
00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:39.680
And so he buttstrokes the bad guy, butt stroke to the head, which is considered deadly force, takes his rifle and hits him as hard as he can in the top of the head.
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:40.480
One.
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:43.599
Guy's still got the rifle, they're still struggling.
00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:46.559
Bam, strikes him a second time.
00:22:47.119 --> 00:22:50.079
Bam, strikes him a third time and a fourth time.
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:54.240
As he strikes him the fourth time, he's already made the decision.
00:22:54.400 --> 00:23:02.319
He started that cascade of motion that's going to bring a rifle up and bring a fifth strike down.
00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:05.119
He's developed a schema at this point that it ain't working.
00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:06.720
I'm gonna have to hit him again.
00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:11.359
So he is committed to the motor program of making that next strike.
00:23:11.519 --> 00:23:20.799
He's done four, he comes up, as he's coming up, the bad guy lets go of the rifle, the lead deputy maintains control of it, and the struggle's over.
00:23:21.039 --> 00:23:23.359
Bam, he comes down with the fifth strike.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:30.880
And it's less than a second between releasing the rifle and the and the butt stroke, that fifth butt stroke, and that's what they were after.
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:38.880
They were after after this deputy to prosecute him for that fifth strike because the threat had ceased and he didn't immediately stop his action.
00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:43.039
Well, what had to be discussed was what is the reality?
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:58.559
Where's the honest accountability in expecting a human being to be able to immediately stop something that they've already committed to uh mentally and physically, they've already sent the signals, they've already started that that uh potential to deliver that fifth strike.
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:04.319
So after the fifth strike, which was notably lighter than the first four, he did he did stop.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:05.440
There was no sixth strike.
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:17.279
But it's a great great example of a human being, not a cop, not a lawyer, not a doctor, not a bank teller, but a human being being unable to immediately stop doing anything.
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:27.119
It's evident anytime you drive down the road, Terry, when you see an intersection and you see a green light, that green light is not going to go from green to red.
00:24:27.359 --> 00:24:31.519
That green light is gonna go from green to amber to red.
00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:38.799
Because as long as we've had cars and intersections and stop signs, we've understood that human beings can't stop anything immediately.
00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:49.759
They need time to perceive the change, 200 to 500 milliseconds to perceive the change, and then make a decision and then perform based on that decision.
00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:55.519
And that's why we have that yellow light, so that we have time to go from go mode to switch over to stop mode.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:56.000
Yeah.
00:24:56.079 --> 00:25:02.160
And I think that's probably one of the things that's underestimated by most people in most cases when they hear of something like that.
00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:18.240
It's this misunderstanding, misbelief, even, that the second an event happens, and you as the Monday morning quarterback sitting there observing the call of your living room, going, Well, look, it should have stopped right then and there.
00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:25.759
No, the downstream effect of the preceding actions is now a part and parcel of the behavioral responses.
00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:27.279
And you can't just stop.
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:38.799
It there are there are milliseconds, hundredths of a second, seconds in some cases between what got this thing started and the ability to change and go, okay, I've got to hit the brakes.
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:42.960
You know, the reality or the conditions or the situation has changed.
00:25:43.039 --> 00:25:46.160
I need to now change the actions that are going to follow it.
00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:48.160
And the research is there also.
00:25:48.319 --> 00:25:54.559
I mean, we've got research on how long it takes to start doing something, how long it takes to stop doing something, specifically shooting.
00:25:54.720 --> 00:26:02.079
Uh and and you're looking at a little over 300 milliseconds to start shooting, and you're looking at almost 400 milliseconds to stop shooting.
00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:03.359
So what does that tell us?
00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:10.960
It takes longer to stop than it does to start, uh, or or certainly takes longer to stop than it does to complete an action.
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:12.480
And whether you look at uh Dr.
00:26:12.559 --> 00:26:34.160
Lewinsky's research from uh the the first go-around, or there's recent work by Lon Bartell and Associates uh using a Vertra system to to redo and and reevaluate some research that was done earlier, uh there were actually, in some cases, more shots fired after the stop signal than there were in the original research.
00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:42.799
The original research is it was about two shots after, you know, hit the here's your signal to start shooting, and when you see this signal, I want you to stop shooting.
00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:49.200
And so people would shoot as fast as they could, and then the signal to stop would come on and they'd shoot one or two extra shots.
00:26:49.359 --> 00:27:07.119
Well, in this more recent research, and we don't know if it's if it's trigger differences or mechanical differences, what it is, but there were up to three shots that were fired after the stop signal uh that that people would look at and say, why did you keep shooting?
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:10.160
Why were there additional shots after the guy dropped the gun?
00:27:10.319 --> 00:27:13.200
Why were there additional shots after the guy fell to the ground?
00:27:13.359 --> 00:27:16.240
Why were there additional shots after the guy turned his back?
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:17.680
Uh and that's the answer.
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:19.839
It's the limits of human performance.
00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:29.279
And and again, what you find in the laboratory, you gotta be real careful not to say, well, this happened this way in the laboratory, so therefore it's gonna happen this way in the real world every time.
00:27:29.519 --> 00:27:47.920
We know there's gonna be differences, but it gives us ranges and it gives us an idea of what the general limits of human performance are, so that we do take a more realistic approach to investigations and uh deception, uh things that we might think are deceptive uh when they're not.
00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:52.720
They're just recollection of real human performance and real-time compression.
00:27:53.039 --> 00:28:43.759
So I think the context here, because I I'm a bit biased here, and I I always lean towards wanting to understand the law enforcement perspective, but there are a lot of civilians that are you know concealed carry holders and one of their biggest fears and probably one of the you know the biggest um hurdles for them emotionally is not necessarily having to make the decision to defend themselves, it's the worry and the stress that comes with surviving a deadly encounter, but having all of their decisions and their judgment uh basically looked at by investigators, jurors, the media, hell even themselves, after this incident has occurred and and then finding themselves persecuted for what is effectively decisions that were made in the most stressful moment of their life, this critical incident.
00:28:44.559 --> 00:29:00.160
You think that the education of individuals could and should expand outside of law enforcement to civilians so that they have a broader understanding, especially for armed carriers, of what the human performance element is going to bring to a critical incident?
00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:01.200
Absolutely.
00:29:01.279 --> 00:29:08.319
I you know, there was a time not that long ago, of course, when you get to be my age, everything seems like it wasn't that long ago.
00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:21.359
Where force science would only accept applications for training courses from law enforcement or public safety, some kind of uh uh armed professional uh applicant.
00:29:21.599 --> 00:29:23.920
And that's not the that's not the case anymore.
00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:31.200
Uh we do not only training, but we do a lot of expert witness work for non-law enforcement, non-public safety cases.
00:29:31.359 --> 00:29:41.359
And the reason for that is if if our mission is to study the human behind the tool, we got to remember that there's a human brain and only a human brain.
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:44.160
There's no cop brain, surgeon brain, pilot brain.
00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:48.160
We all have the same human brain with the same capabilities and limitations.
00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:57.119
And so to your question, I would say we exist for all of those humans and hope to inform all of those humans.
00:29:57.359 --> 00:30:01.839
And I'd like to do it on the front end if we can, and not after a critical incident.
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:04.079
We talked about this earlier, you and me.
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:18.079
Uh when you explain things like confabulation, uh faulty memory, when you talk about those things on a podcast in the middle of the day, it sounds like education.
00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:26.640
It sounds like that's something I didn't know about how memory is consolidated and how it's malleable and fallible and constructive and all of those things.
00:30:26.799 --> 00:30:28.720
That's something that I didn't know before.
00:30:28.799 --> 00:30:29.839
That's education.
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:45.440
But if we wait until uh an armed citizen trying to do the right thing, mind their own business, is attacked and forced to use deadly force to save their own life or someone else's, and then we start talking about confabulation and faulty memory.
00:30:45.599 --> 00:30:51.759
Well, now all of a sudden it doesn't sound like education, it sounds like excuse making when we talk about it after the fact.
00:30:51.920 --> 00:31:11.599
So I would love to get this information out before a critical incident so that we could become familiar not with what makes our case look better, but with what is actually true from an objective scientific standpoint about human performance, particularly human performance under stress arousal.
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:13.599
Yeah, it would be invaluable.
00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:19.200
So I know one of the other things you teach is that uh vision is not like a video camera recording.
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:20.960
Memory doesn't work that way.
00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:30.880
It doesn't catalog a chronological or even logical sometimes uh account of what actually happening or happened during a critical incident.
00:31:31.119 --> 00:31:42.319
So how are we impacted, generally speaking, during these critical incidents with how we remember or don't remember things that happened inside of that event?
00:31:42.880 --> 00:31:46.160
Uh this is definitely one of those rabbit hole topics.
00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:55.200
Uh essentially, memory is going to be dependent on what the person paid attention to, not necessarily what they looked at.
00:31:55.440 --> 00:32:03.759
So if you've ever looked at your watch to see what time it is, and then you go back into your conversation and you realize I have no idea what time it is.
00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:10.640
I just looked dead center at my watch face, but I have no more idea what time it is now than I did before I looked.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:24.079
It's called looking but not seeing, and it's something that we do when we deploy a sensory modality, a perceptual tool, our vision, but we don't deploy attention along with it.
00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:28.640
So if we're looking at our watch but we're thinking, did I leave the garage door open today?
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:37.039
Uh we're not paying attention to the watch, and so therefore we're not, even though we looked at it, we're not going to remember what the watch face read.
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:40.240
That's a real low consequence example.
00:32:40.559 --> 00:32:56.400
A much higher consequence example is uh in a critical incident, if we have trained to be front sight focused, which many of us grew up being front sight focused all the time, and we lie to ourselves and we pretend that we're looking at the front sight on those five-yard targets.
00:32:56.559 --> 00:32:59.119
Uh, or maybe you're not lying, I don't know.
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:10.079
But when we're front sight focused, we are paying attention to that front sight, and at the expense then of everything around it.
00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:12.319
We have this thing called foveal vision.
00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:16.720
It's it's it's where we can focus on something and identify objects.
00:33:16.799 --> 00:33:20.400
It's it's dependent on combs, uh, cones depend on light.
00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:36.319
There's a whole lot of complexity in our visual system, but in general, the what vision, the ventral stream object identification process involves our ability to focus, and it's it's an area no larger than the width of our thumb at arm's length.
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:37.839
That's our foveal vision.
00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:51.200
If you look at a book and you're reading a sentence that says the sun is bright, you're looking at the word is, the words sun and bright are going to be visible but blurry.
00:33:51.359 --> 00:33:54.079
You wouldn't be able to identify them without the context.
00:33:54.319 --> 00:33:57.359
So the first component of what we're talking about is foveal vision.
00:33:57.680 --> 00:34:01.200
We're focusing our vision for the purpose of object identification.
00:34:01.279 --> 00:34:04.799
It's very narrow visual focus on the front sight.
00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:11.360
When we do that, we miss everything else if we don't pay attention to it.
00:34:11.519 --> 00:34:29.119
So we can shift our vision, we can go from the front sight to the door or from the front sight back to the car and scan our environment with a visual fixation here, a transition to another visual fixation, and then we kind of paint a collage of our environment.
00:34:29.199 --> 00:34:36.719
Uh, and in that way we see with our brain more than we see with our eyes because we've created this mental image of what's around us.
00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:40.639
Uh but all of that decides where our vision is.
00:34:40.800 --> 00:34:43.840
Even if we're looking at something, we might not be paying attention to it.
00:34:44.079 --> 00:35:01.679
So uh there's a really good study that that was uh led by Force Science, uh, we call it the the Mesa study, uh, where we took body cam footage, and it was the first study ever of its kind to take body cam footage and compare it to eye scan footage.
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:12.079
So we had all the participants put eye scan glasses on, we calibrated the eye scan so that wherever their eyeballs were, there would be a circle on the on the screen.
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:17.440
We knew where their eyeballs were at all times, but we never knew where their attention was.
00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:28.559
If they shifted their attention to the radio because they heard their call sign, they're no longer focusing their attention where they're looking, they're focusing their attention uh now on the radio.
00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:46.400
So because of all of those things, vision, attention, uh, and then memory being dependent on what we pay attention to, uh man, it's it when we look at a video and compare it to an officer's memory, uh, we're gonna see vastly different outcomes.
00:35:46.800 --> 00:36:00.400
A video, unlike the visual system that that gives us that little narrow point of focus at distance, a video is gonna capture everything that happened within that frame at generally 30 pictures per second.
00:36:00.559 --> 00:36:08.079
It's gonna take 30 pictures every second, and if something was in that frame during one of those pictures being taken, it's gonna be there.
00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:20.320
There's a lot deeper stuff that we can get into about video, about uh different kinds of frames, predictive frames, bidirectional frames, uh why sometimes a brown thing disappears on a brown background.
00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:32.239
But without getting into the really technical stuff of video, just talking about comparing, assuming we trust the video to be accurate, comparing that video to a human being's memory, they're never gonna be the same.
00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:40.880
Because the video is gonna capture everything that's within its frame, and the human is only going to capture what they paid attention to.
00:36:41.199 --> 00:36:49.599
So that's kind of intuitive at this point, that the camera is going to capture things that the human didn't capture, because there's no way a human can do that.
00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:55.840
What the Mesa study showed us was that not only is that true, but the opposite is also true.
00:36:56.079 --> 00:37:08.159
That study revealed that about 75% of the information that officers were using to make force decisions was not available to the body camera.
00:37:08.559 --> 00:37:12.239
We saw it on their eye tracker, but we didn't see it on the body camera.
00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:26.480
Either they're looking straight ahead at some threatening cue, and the body camera's blocked by the by the gun and the arms, or the officer's looking 90 degrees to their right or their left and the camera's shooting straight ahead.
00:37:26.559 --> 00:37:38.480
So the officer, the person, the human, is taking in uh signals and information and cues that they're using to make decisions that aren't captured on the body camera.
00:37:38.559 --> 00:37:49.199
So when the officer says, when he pointed the gun at me, I rolled my rifle, confirmed my reticle, and press the trigger, but the body camera doesn't show the person pointing a gun at him, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:51.440
It just means it wasn't captured on the body camera.
00:37:51.599 --> 00:38:04.800
So in in that way and in hundreds of others, uh the human visual system is vastly different from a video camera, and the human memory is vastly different from a digital recording.
00:38:05.199 --> 00:38:18.159
Which is I think probably one of the most understated and underutilized teaching tools available to us when it comes to situational awareness, critical incidents, scanning the environment.
00:38:18.639 --> 00:38:36.960
Because in addition to the limitation of our foveal vision being such a very narrow cone with everything else than you know becoming our peripheral vision, we also have sarcadic suppression where the incoming visual data is suppressed in order to facilitate a smooth viewing experience.
00:38:37.199 --> 00:38:56.480
So we have an illusion that we experience every single day without even knowing it, where we're building up our surroundings and our sense of knowing what's in our surroundings, basically in our imagination, because we're not taking in that much actual data or visual detail in any given environment.
00:38:56.559 --> 00:39:16.320
And if you add the stress of a critical incident or an attack, if you're a concealed carry holder and suddenly find yourself being targeted for a crime, you're you've already taken in much less data than you think, and now your band of focus goes from perhaps being somewhat broad to incredibly narrow.
00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:23.760
And that's that's you know, we like to use the word tunnel vision to explain a lot of different phenomena.
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:30.639
We talk about uh sensory gating, where your visual system takes over the colour visual dominance effect.
00:39:30.719 --> 00:39:41.039
There's a lot of research behind vision being the dominant source of information gathering, uh absent a disability, uh vision is going to be the strongest source of information gathering.
00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:52.559
And then in a critical incident, if if the most threatening thing in your world is something you're looking at, well, you might not hear things and you might not feel something touch you.
00:39:52.639 --> 00:39:55.440
Uh your visual system is going to be that dominant.
00:39:55.519 --> 00:40:00.800
And that's something that's that's very, very real in the the the psychadic suppression.
00:40:01.039 --> 00:40:18.159
When we look at experienced people versus inexperienced people, and you look at their search pattern, their visual search pattern, you see those saccades, you see those, I'm looking everywhere, and I'm not I'm not fixating my vision for more than eight hundred eight tenths of a second.
00:40:18.719 --> 00:40:21.519
I am not taking in any of this information.
00:40:21.599 --> 00:40:30.880
It's all being sloughed off, it's all being disregarded, it's not making it into the cone of what we use to make decisions because we're just looking all over the place.
00:40:31.039 --> 00:40:31.840
We don't know where to look.
00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.639
So there's this concept called game intelligence, and that comes with experience.
00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:47.840
Game intelligence tells us if, for example, we're shooting a five uh target array of steel, and we're supposed to go left to right.
00:40:48.159 --> 00:40:49.440
Targets must fall.
00:40:49.599 --> 00:40:51.440
We've all we've all played these games.
00:40:51.679 --> 00:40:52.800
We start left.
00:40:52.960 --> 00:40:57.760
If we've never done this before, we might forget, oh what, oh, it's to the right.
00:40:57.920 --> 00:40:59.280
I don't know where to look next.
00:40:59.360 --> 00:41:08.400
But with game intelligence, with experience, we know I'm going to drive my attention and then my vision and then my gun to the next target, and I'm gonna press the trigger.
00:41:08.480 --> 00:41:25.039
And while I'm pressing the trigger, I'm driving my attention, then my vision, then my gun to the next target, and we can, by knowing what to look for, where to look for it, how to make sense of it when we see it, uh, by knowing all those things, we call them the what, where, when, and how of game intelligence, we know what to look for next.
00:41:25.119 --> 00:41:29.199
And so you look at those search patterns, and they're not all over the place.
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:32.480
They're not a great big cloud of color like you see with the rookies.
00:41:32.639 --> 00:41:37.920
They're very focused, and you'll see fixations, transitions, and fixations.
00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:44.400
And not only are they more focused fixations and longer fixations, but they're where they ought to be.
00:41:44.559 --> 00:41:51.119
So in that Mesa study, we had a notional event where a man beating his truck with a baseball bat ultimately shoots someone.
00:41:51.360 --> 00:42:05.519
Well, he goes from the back of his truck, walks on the opposite side of his truck so that the participants can't see him, and you look at the eye scan footage, and on the rookies, when he disappears behind his truck, they're their eyes are going everywhere.
00:42:05.599 --> 00:42:07.039
They're trying to find the guy.
00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:19.519
But on the experienced officers, you see the visual focus, the eye scan footage, go from the back of the truck right up to the window so that they know the next time I'm gonna see this guy is gonna be through this window.
00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:24.719
They're not wasting their time looking where he might be or where he where he is right now.
00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:27.280
Uh Wayne Gretzky said it best.
00:42:27.360 --> 00:42:30.400
He said, Don't go to where the puck is, go to where the puck's gonna be.
00:42:30.559 --> 00:42:33.280
So we don't look where he is, we look where he's gonna be.
00:42:33.440 --> 00:42:35.599
And and that's what the experienced officers did.
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:38.159
So in that way, vision is very predictive.
00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:43.679
Uh and and and again, we see with our brain more so than we see with our eyeballs.
00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:47.440
So it brings me on to now the memory for us under stress.
00:42:47.519 --> 00:42:53.280
After a traumatic event, people often say, you know, just you say, just tell us exactly what happened.
00:42:53.360 --> 00:43:03.360
But from a scientific standpoint, what's actually happening inside the brain, minutes, hours, or days after the incident is vastly different than what may have transpired during the critical incident.
00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:09.280
Aaron Powell Yeah, there's a and there's a couple of there's a couple of roads that I think both are important.
00:43:09.440 --> 00:43:11.840
One is what type of memory are we talking about?
00:43:12.079 --> 00:43:20.559
If we're talking about uh what time did you wake up, when did you brush your teeth, did you take a shower, uh that's episodic memory.
00:43:20.639 --> 00:43:24.800
And that's stuff that that we had to pay attention to or we won't remember it.
00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:27.599
Just like I mentioned earlier, that I leave the garage door open.
00:43:27.760 --> 00:43:32.880
If you don't pay attention to closing the garage, you're not gonna know for sure whether you did it.
00:43:32.960 --> 00:43:34.320
You've done it a thousand times before.
00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:37.199
I probably did, but I don't know for a fact I did it this time.
00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:39.360
That's episodic stuff.
00:43:39.440 --> 00:43:43.360
Uh what happened and in what order and how did it happen?
00:43:44.159 --> 00:43:47.280
And so if we don't pay attention to episodic memory, we're not gonna remember it.
00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:54.800
Procedural memory is the same as far as attention goes, but those are the things that we don't have to pay attention to.
00:43:54.960 --> 00:44:02.320
Uh in the in the regular world, we talk about things like moving our Foot from the gas to the brake.
00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:05.519
I'll often ask students, hey, did you drive to the venue today?
00:44:05.599 --> 00:44:06.800
And I'll say, Yes, I did.
00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:12.559
Say, okay, can you tell me generally the route you took to get from the hotel to the training venue?
00:44:12.719 --> 00:44:23.679
And they'll think for a second, they'll go, well, yeah, I left the parking lot, took a right, took a left on Apple Street, took a right on walk, left on don't walk, and then I took a left into the parking lot.
00:44:23.840 --> 00:44:28.000
They're able to reconstruct that because of the things that they paid attention to along the way.
00:44:28.239 --> 00:44:29.599
And then I'll say, okay, great.
00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:31.280
Sounds like you were paying attention.
00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:34.079
How many times did your foot touch the brake?
00:44:34.480 --> 00:44:35.840
And of course they don't know.
00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:39.199
And the reason they don't know is because that's an automatic function.
00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:42.000
That's something they practice to what we call automaticity.
00:44:42.159 --> 00:44:46.159
They've done it so many times that it just happens when it needs to happen.
00:44:46.320 --> 00:44:49.199
They don't need to deploy attentional resources.
00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:51.519
It's time to move my foot from the gas to the brake.
00:44:51.679 --> 00:44:58.079
They did when they were learning to drive, but they've done that hundreds of thousands of times now and it became it happens automatically.
00:44:58.239 --> 00:45:00.079
That's a procedural thing.
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:04.880
And so we can't expect people to remember procedural things.
00:45:05.039 --> 00:45:06.880
How many times does your foot touch the brake?
00:45:07.039 --> 00:45:08.239
That makes sense to everybody.
00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:16.880
But when I say don't ask an officer how many times he pressed the trigger, don't ask how many times he shot and expect him to know the exact number.
00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:27.199
Because it's a procedural thing, just like moving your foot from the gas to the brake, he's not having to deploy attentional resources to every six millisecond trigger press.
00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:37.440
He is pressing a trigger until the threat stops being a threat, and then he has that window of time required to notice the change in his threat environment and then adjust his behavior.
00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:40.480
So that's the procedural side of it.
00:45:41.039 --> 00:46:01.519
Now that we've talked about the different types of memory and how how they either get attention and get remembered or don't, there's also the things that happen in our body, the physiological things that happen, the excitatory neurotransmitters that are released, and all the things that can affect the way our memory is cataloged.
00:46:02.239 --> 00:46:07.360
And to oversimplify it, I don't like the use of the phrase lizard brain.
00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:13.119
But I I will just to oversimplify it and make it make sense.
00:46:13.440 --> 00:46:19.039
Either your your uh my friend Mike Masingo, he's a genius.
00:46:19.199 --> 00:46:27.519
He calls it the good librarian, uh the thalamus, or the uh Conan the librarian, the amygdala.
00:46:27.679 --> 00:46:39.599
The amygdala is in the the emotion center of the brain, and the amygdala is the fear center, and when the amygdala is activated under a sympathetic nervous system response, it changes the way we store memory.
00:46:39.760 --> 00:46:58.000
So instead of reflecting on a an event that was a birthday party, and you're picturing the mom come out of the backyard with the birthday cake and the candles are lit, and you watch the child run up and try to blow the candles out, and everything's happening in kind of a cinematic playback.
00:46:59.360 --> 00:47:14.320
A traumatic memory oftentimes will be more uh flashes, more uh fragmented pieces of memory that that don't even go in the right order sometimes.
00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:31.679
They're just it's the smell of the attacker's breath, it's the flash of the muzzle, it's the visual of the great big knife, it's the car uh crossing the intersection, and and because of a visual effect getting bigger and faster as it gets closer, that's how traumatic memories are formed.
00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:39.039
So some things we gotta consider before we ask somebody, I think your words were exactly what happened.
00:47:39.199 --> 00:47:46.559
Uh we need to first have a reasonable expectation of what they might and might not remember.
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:52.800
We need to expect the memory to be faulty, not accept it when it happens, but expect it to happen.
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:54.960
And we need to give them a chance to decompress.
00:47:55.039 --> 00:47:59.440
There's a lot of research out there, uh even what I call it nerd fights.
00:47:59.599 --> 00:48:07.599
There's some some people that don't necessarily agree on a lot of things, but when you take all of their literature and stack it up, it paints a pretty clear picture.
00:48:07.679 --> 00:48:14.079
We need to give people a little bit of time, not too much time, but we need to give them a little bit of time uh to decompress.
00:48:14.320 --> 00:48:16.320
And and sleep can help also.
00:48:16.480 --> 00:48:18.800
Sleep can help consolidate memories.
00:48:19.039 --> 00:48:34.800
So we don't want to we don't want to tie investigators' hands and say thou shalt never interview somebody within 24 hours of an event, because we all know there are critical things that we need to we need to know for this investigation to move forward.
00:48:34.960 --> 00:48:35.760
Which way did they go?
00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:37.039
How many of them were there?
00:48:37.119 --> 00:48:40.800
Uh if they fired shots, generally which direction were they fired in?
00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:42.960
Uh do you remember the color of the getaway car?
00:48:43.039 --> 00:48:43.519
Things like that.
00:48:43.599 --> 00:48:45.199
We need it right now, right now.
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:50.639
But as far as the exactly what happened stuff, where were you when you drew your gun?
00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:52.239
Where were you when you fired?
00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:54.079
How many shots did you fire?
00:48:54.320 --> 00:48:57.039
Those kind of things we have to be pretty flexible about.
00:48:57.199 --> 00:49:10.000
Uh there's a there's a great example uh that I use in training of an officer who confronts a guy with a knife, she ch he he charges the officer, she shoot shoots two or three rounds, but he's eating the bullets.
00:49:10.159 --> 00:49:12.800
And that's another myth that people don't understand.
00:49:12.960 --> 00:49:17.039
They think that when you shoot someone, they immediately fall because that's what happens in Hollywood.
00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:26.079
This guy's eat eating the bullets and continuing to charge her to the point that her Glock makes contact with his torso and causes a misfire.
00:49:26.960 --> 00:49:39.199
This officer takes two steps back, clears that malfunction expertly, and was able to fire additional shots and stop the threat and save her own life.
00:49:39.360 --> 00:49:42.079
I mean, this guy had a a a big knife.
00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:49.199
And when asked, hey, or or actually complimented, hey, that malfunction clearance was amazing.
00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:51.360
You did an amazing job with that.
00:49:51.679 --> 00:49:54.639
Her response was what malfunction could it be?
00:49:55.920 --> 00:49:56.960
I don't remember it.
00:49:57.199 --> 00:49:57.440
Yeah.
00:49:57.679 --> 00:49:59.920
Because it was practice to automaticity.
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:03.920
She had spent hours on the range because that's what good officers do.
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:05.519
They train their their craft.
00:50:05.599 --> 00:50:07.360
That's what good armed citizens do.
00:50:07.519 --> 00:50:09.039
They train their craft.
00:50:09.280 --> 00:50:23.599
And she was clearing that malfunction quicker than than she was able to pay attention or even didn't need to pay attention to the to that motor program, uh, got back into the conflict and and won the day.
00:50:23.840 --> 00:50:33.039
So those are all great examples of how memory essentially fails us, uh, especially in those traumatic type critical incidents.
00:50:33.440 --> 00:50:39.199
That information is absolutely invaluable, particularly for a home, let's say a home defender.
00:50:39.280 --> 00:50:40.800
I'm just going to use that as an example.
00:50:41.519 --> 00:50:43.920
You've just got to survive the worst thing possible.
00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:52.000
Let's say it's a home invasion, and there are two people who are uh had the lights turned off because they broke into your home.
00:50:52.400 --> 00:51:03.920
Officers arrive on scene, and there's going to probably be an urge to tell them as much as you possibly can because you want to state your case, you want them to know.
00:51:04.960 --> 00:51:16.079
But understanding the flaws in our memory system and understanding that there are going to be details you haven't you couldn't possibly be consciously aware of.
00:51:16.239 --> 00:51:22.159
You're going to want to share things that could eventually contradict what comes out during the rest of the investigation.
00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:27.360
And understanding you're not being evasive when you say, I've just been through the most traumatic event ever.
00:51:27.519 --> 00:51:29.360
I'm still processing what happened.
00:51:29.519 --> 00:51:31.199
These guys broke into my house.
00:51:31.360 --> 00:51:32.880
I I fought back.
00:51:33.119 --> 00:51:39.920
And now I want an attorney because I'm just I'm absolutely shaken beyond anything I've ever experienced in my life.
00:51:40.079 --> 00:51:41.760
That is not you being evasive.
00:51:41.840 --> 00:51:51.360
That is you understanding the flaws of your own memory and the chances that you are accurate in the description in all details of what happened next to none.
00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:52.320
Yeah.
00:51:52.639 --> 00:51:52.960
Yeah.
00:51:53.119 --> 00:52:15.360
And and so that from the from the forced science perspective of education for the law enforcement community, we hope to instill that knowledge in investigators, not just who are investigating other officers in critical incidents, but who are investigating any armed citizen who is forced into a these aren't good choices.
00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:16.239
Right.
00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:19.679
That home defender did not get three choices.
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:22.079
Two of them are are bad, one of them is good.
00:52:22.320 --> 00:52:25.519
They had a you know what sandwich that they had to take a bite of.
00:52:25.679 --> 00:52:28.960
They had to make one of three bad choices.
00:52:29.199 --> 00:52:32.800
Uh do something right now and live.
00:52:33.039 --> 00:52:38.079
Don't do something right now and die, or let's just see what happens.
00:52:38.239 --> 00:52:40.079
Let's just throw it to fate.
00:52:40.239 --> 00:53:01.039
So we hope officers will learn in investigations in general about memory and about memory consolidation and about gaps and confabulation and about uh attention and focus and all the things we've been talking about, because those will help that investigator get to the most and the most accurate information during the first interview.
00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:05.519
The more we interview someone, the more we risk traumatizing that person.
00:53:05.679 --> 00:53:09.440
And and that's a reason not to re-interview.
00:53:09.679 --> 00:53:14.320
What's not a reason not to re-interview is that, oh, I might say something different.
00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:18.880
This this person might say something different, and it's gonna hurt my prosecution or it's gonna hurt my defense.
00:53:19.360 --> 00:53:22.880
We should expect, I've said this, I think this would be the third time.
00:53:23.119 --> 00:53:26.400
We shouldn't accept faulty memory and changes.
00:53:26.639 --> 00:53:29.519
We should expect faulty memory and changes.
00:53:29.599 --> 00:53:39.360
So with that mindset, hopefully the law enforcement side of that home defender critical incident would be a fair application of human factors.
00:53:39.679 --> 00:53:42.639
The other side is just Brian's opinion.
00:53:42.800 --> 00:53:44.400
This is just me talking.
00:53:44.639 --> 00:53:53.760
If it's me in my home and you show up at 1 AM and the smoke is clearing, I am not going to interview right then.
00:53:53.920 --> 00:53:59.519
I will tell you which way they ran, I'll tell you the color of the car, I'll tell you how many of them there were.
00:53:59.760 --> 00:54:00.400
That's it.
00:54:00.559 --> 00:54:02.880
Public safety stuff is where I'm gonna stop.
00:54:03.039 --> 00:54:04.960
Not because I don't trust the police.
00:54:05.280 --> 00:54:08.880
I was with the state police in Texas for over 30 years.
00:54:09.039 --> 00:54:10.559
I love the police.
00:54:10.880 --> 00:54:18.480
I trust them to do right by me, but I don't trust everybody involved to understand the limits of human performance.
00:54:18.639 --> 00:54:24.159
So what I'd like what I am likely to do is to something very similar to what you said.
00:54:24.400 --> 00:54:26.800
Hey, officer, I understand what you're doing.
00:54:27.039 --> 00:54:28.239
Ask me your questions.
00:54:28.320 --> 00:54:33.360
If it's public safety or something you need to get on this person right now, I'm gonna do my best to answer it.
00:54:33.519 --> 00:54:41.760
But man, if it's about what I did, what I saw, what I thought, what I feared, I'm gonna I'm gonna hang on to that until I get a better grasp of it because my mind is spinning.
00:54:41.920 --> 00:54:44.079
I don't I don't even know what happened.
00:54:44.239 --> 00:54:46.719
I'm still dealing with with all of this.
00:54:46.880 --> 00:54:55.119
I mean, I'm I'm probably not gonna verbalize all of that, but those are the reasons that I'm not going to give a lengthy interview at the scene.
00:54:55.199 --> 00:55:01.840
Uh and hopefully when I do give a lengthy interview, it's going to be done in a cognitive interview fashion.
00:55:02.000 --> 00:55:02.800
Uh Dr.
00:55:02.960 --> 00:55:04.800
Geiselman does a great job.
00:55:04.880 --> 00:55:33.280
Uh, we've got a block on our LMS that talks about cognitive interviewing, and it's a way to get the most and the most accurate information rather than using one of these uh tricky read interrogation methods where we're likely to get a false confession, we're likely to get uh false information because the way we're asking the questions is leading this person to give an answer, whether or not they actually had the answer.
00:55:33.440 --> 00:55:42.079
So one of the other things I would remind people, uh, you know, you know, you gotta trust yourself, you gotta trust your perception, uh, you gotta give yourself time.
00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:50.159
You don't want to rush into an interview, you don't want to uh be rushed into an interview, you gotta get some sleep, that's probably gonna help.
00:55:50.320 --> 00:56:00.320
Uh decompress as much as you can because that anxiety, that trauma-induced anxiety is going to affect your ability to consolidate memory.
00:56:00.480 --> 00:56:04.000
Uh and it's gonna affect your physiology during the interview.
00:56:04.159 --> 00:56:08.880
Uh nobody wants to be fidgety and and twitchy while they're being interviewed by the police.
00:56:09.039 --> 00:56:13.519
Uh so I would remind you to do all of that stuff and and obviously call an attorney.
00:56:13.679 --> 00:56:15.360
That's that's why we have attorneys.
00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:22.639
It's not deceptive or uncooperative to exercise your constitutional uh protected God-given right.
00:56:22.800 --> 00:56:32.320
Uh, but I would I would remind people of all that stuff that uh you just gotta take your time and and uh if you don't know, you don't know.
00:56:32.559 --> 00:56:39.599
If you don't know the answer to a question, and cops are the worst about this, uh why were you standing right there?
00:56:39.840 --> 00:56:43.280
Well, I hear that question as I was standing in the wrong place.
00:56:43.679 --> 00:56:55.519
So now my answer to that question is gonna be an explanation that makes me not look stupid instead of a factual answer that talks about the the circumstances that drove me to that place.
00:56:55.760 --> 00:56:59.920
A better a better way to ask that is tell me about your position here.
00:57:00.480 --> 00:57:06.159
Now I get to tell you about why I'm there, where I think I am, what I think the advantages and disadvantages are.
00:57:06.320 --> 00:57:19.119
Uh so a cognitive style interview is going to uh most times we've also we've also got to consider out there uh we've got felons, we've got crooks, we've got bad people doing bad things on purpose.
00:57:19.360 --> 00:57:23.119
Cognitive interview ain't gonna work with them because their whole intent is to deceive.
00:57:23.280 --> 00:57:33.679
We have to use a different, more interrogative style questioning process with people who we have good reason to believe are intentionally trying to deceive us or get away with a crime.
00:57:33.920 --> 00:57:41.440
Not someone who is in their home at night, rushed out of bed, and had to fight to the death to protect their family.
00:57:41.599 --> 00:57:42.960
Those are much different situations.
00:57:43.039 --> 00:57:47.119
Aaron Powell So you've been championing the honest accountability.
00:57:47.199 --> 00:57:54.159
So tell me more about that and also the framework you developed for evaluating human performance during crisis events.
00:57:54.239 --> 00:58:01.920
Aaron Powell So honest accountability is something my friend Von Klein uh I give him credit for teaching me this phrase and this concept.
00:58:02.159 --> 00:58:08.000
Uh honest accountability is a standard.
00:58:08.639 --> 00:58:16.320
We often hear people say that police, armed citizens, Second Amendment supporters need to be held accountable for their actions.
00:58:16.480 --> 00:58:17.360
And I agree.
00:58:17.599 --> 00:58:20.639
I agree that I I want to be held accountable.
00:58:20.800 --> 00:58:29.519
I want the government to be held accountable, I want someone who through their actions another person was seriously injured or died.
00:58:30.000 --> 00:58:34.239
We all need to be held accountable for our decisions and our behavior.
00:58:34.480 --> 00:58:36.960
But it has to be honest accountability.
00:58:37.360 --> 00:58:40.559
And what that means is two things generally.
00:58:41.119 --> 00:58:51.599
One, that the expectation that we're holding this person to, the rule, the law, the policy, the expectation is clear and unambiguous.
00:58:51.840 --> 00:58:55.599
It's been socialized, it's been crystallized, it's been trained.
00:58:55.840 --> 00:58:59.360
It is the standard that the person knows they're being held accountable to.
00:58:59.519 --> 00:59:20.400
So a an armed citizen that goes to a licensed to carry class and they learn about the penal code in that state, they learn about the use of force laws in that state, they learn about home defense, self-defense, defense of others, that is the standard that that person should be held to because that's the expectation to which they were trained.
00:59:20.559 --> 00:59:50.800
When we start inserting concepts like lowest level of possible force, or only the force necessary, or uh, you know, exhausted all other options, we start throwing these other concepts that feel good, uh, that muddies the water, and it now holds this person to a standard that they were neither trained to, they don't understand, and they didn't expect to be held accountable to.
00:59:50.960 --> 00:59:57.920
They can't measure the lawfulness of their own behavior based on the standard lowest level of force necessary.
00:59:58.239 --> 01:00:07.519
Because that's not in the law, uh, that's not in any case law, it's not in statute, it's in policies and places, uh, which I would caution against.
01:00:07.760 --> 01:00:15.280
But that standard depends on something that is excluded from a force analysis, which is 2020 hindsight.
01:00:15.519 --> 01:00:22.719
The only way I know what was necessary is by knowing how the story started, how it proceeded, and how it ended.
01:00:22.880 --> 01:00:27.519
If I don't know how it ends, I don't know what ultimately was necessary.
01:00:27.679 --> 01:00:32.159
I know what I reasonably believe to be necessary in this moment.
01:00:32.320 --> 01:00:43.840
And I reasonably believe that as an armed citizen, when someone breaks into my home with a crowbar or a firearm, it is reasonable for me to believe it's necessary to use deadly force to protect my home.
01:00:44.079 --> 01:00:45.760
So that's a clear standard.
01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:50.000
Whereas, but you didn't use the lowest level of force available.
01:00:50.159 --> 01:00:51.440
That's not a clear standard.
01:00:51.679 --> 01:00:55.679
So that's a that's a lot of words for the first prong of honest accountability.
01:00:55.840 --> 01:01:00.880
The standard has to be clear, it has to be established, it has to be trained, the person has to be aware of it.
01:01:01.039 --> 01:01:07.679
They have to uh know that that's the standard against which they judge the lawfulness of their own behavior.
01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:15.840
The second prong is that that standard, whatever it is, cannot be beyond the limits of human performance.
01:01:16.079 --> 01:01:21.519
It can't require that you stop using force immediately when the threat ceases.
01:01:21.679 --> 01:01:28.320
Although that feels good and intuitively makes sense, the word immediately means immediately.
01:01:28.480 --> 01:01:33.119
It means it's got to stop the instant that the threat horizon changes.
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:51.920
And as we've talked about today, that is well beyond the limits of human performance, not just in use of force, but in driving, in baseball, how many sports, how how many aspects of life can you fail 60% of the time and still be considered a world record holder?
01:01:52.159 --> 01:01:58.400
If you're a baseball player that shoot that hits a 400 batting average, that's man, that's crazy high.
01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:00.960
That's that's the the highest you could ever hope for.
01:02:01.119 --> 01:02:06.000
There's so few people that bat 400, it's almost unheard of.
01:02:06.159 --> 01:02:08.719
That means they fail 60% of the time.
01:02:09.039 --> 01:02:18.480
They got four uh about a four-tenths of a second to gauge a pitch, to make a decision, and to either swing or not swing.
01:02:18.639 --> 01:02:23.679
And so when people think we should just check your swing, we've all watched baseball.
01:02:23.920 --> 01:02:29.760
Every once in a while somebody checks their swing, but it's because they really weren't committed to hitting that ball in the first place.
01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:31.920
Checking a swing is almost impossible.
01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:38.559
It's it's expecting a human being to immediately stop a motion that's already been started.
01:02:38.880 --> 01:02:57.840
So in the spirit of education versus excuse making, it helps to paint pictures in sports, it helps to paint pictures in traffic, it helps to paint pictures in regular parts of society so that it doesn't sound like we're only talking about when deadly force is being administered via a handgun.
01:02:58.000 --> 01:03:18.159
Uh so in in reverse order, or to sum it up rather, real uh honest accountability means that the standard has to be clear, unambiguous, and and trained so that the person can judge the lawfulness of their own behavior, and it also has to be within the limits of human performance.
01:03:18.400 --> 01:03:35.039
As long as we hold people, armed citizens, officers, security officers, corrections officers, soccer dads, uh doesn't matter who they are, if we hold them to a standard of honest accountability, then we know that it's a it's a legit inquiry into what happened.
01:03:35.360 --> 01:03:37.119
So I have one more question for you.
01:03:37.920 --> 01:04:00.239
If you knew that everyone who was listening to this podcast would someday experience the single most stressful, consequential thirty seconds of their lives, what would you want them to understand about human performance, training, perception, and accountability that might help them survive physically, psychologically, financially, legally?
01:04:00.639 --> 01:04:05.599
That that uh that concept is something my good friend Ken Murray talks about at length.
01:04:05.760 --> 01:04:08.639
He wrote a book called Training at the Speed of Life.
01:04:09.119 --> 01:04:24.400
Uh and he talks about the seven survivals when, and it it it has to do with physical survival, spiritual survival, societal survival, financial, legal, all of those survivals that are required uh that go well beyond just living through an event.
01:04:25.039 --> 01:04:35.039
I would say you don't get to pick when it's gonna happen, where it's gonna happen, who's gonna be involved, or how it's gonna go down.
01:04:35.280 --> 01:04:36.400
You just get to be in it.
01:04:36.480 --> 01:04:44.960
And knowing that, I would say that the concept of game intelligence, knowing the what, where, when, and how are key.
01:04:45.119 --> 01:04:52.960
Having an external focus of attention, uh, we we throw this the phrase situational awareness around as if we understand it.
01:04:53.280 --> 01:05:06.719
I would say situational awareness boils down to uh knowing what to look for, where to look for it, what it looks like when you see it, how to make sense of it when you see it, and what to do next.
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:18.719
Uh so although we can't predict exactly how something's gonna go down, and I almost guarantee if you if you practice uh for situation A, it's gonna be situation zucchini.
01:05:19.280 --> 01:05:19.679
It is.
01:05:21.360 --> 01:05:25.840
Just being aware and focusing your attention where it best fits.
01:05:26.000 --> 01:05:34.719
Whether you're on a walk at the park and you're going through a uh under a bridge, focus your attention on where a threat might emerge.
01:05:34.880 --> 01:05:38.000
Focus your attention on where a dog might run around the corner.
01:05:38.159 --> 01:05:41.920
Uh, and then when you pass that point, figure out what's important next.
01:05:42.079 --> 01:05:57.679
Uh I I would say, you know, in the spirit of of uh of catchy phrases, situational awareness also includes what's important now, when that's how you win, what's important now, and what's important next.
01:05:57.920 --> 01:06:04.239
Uh I think if we just kind of incorporate Those into our daily routines, our training routines, our priorities in life.
01:06:04.480 --> 01:06:06.639
And it ain't all about guns, ladies and gentlemen.
01:06:06.719 --> 01:06:11.599
I mean cardiovascular disease is going to kill most of us more than a gunfight will.
01:06:12.400 --> 01:06:18.000
So it's it's in what you eat, it's in how you exercise, how often you move, uh do you train?
01:06:18.719 --> 01:06:21.840
All of that stuff goes into situational awareness.
01:06:22.079 --> 01:06:25.920
And uh uh again, just be as prepared as we possibly can be.
01:06:26.079 --> 01:06:32.159
Trust yourself, give yourself time, give yourself a chance to sleep and uh and don't be rushed.
01:06:32.559 --> 01:06:42.239
I think if we were to throw anything else into the mix there, it would be one of the things I think we struggle with daily is fully being present.
01:06:43.119 --> 01:06:54.400
We have so many distractions from minute to minute, second to second, that it is invariably um easier to multitask in any environment we are going through because we've got things to do.
01:06:54.559 --> 01:06:58.800
We've got lists to check, we've got conversations we've had, conversations we're going to have.
01:06:58.960 --> 01:07:05.760
There's a multitude and a myriad of things that will pull your cognitive focus away from your surroundings.
01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:29.440
And to say, be present in any environment where the general public could access, could get access to you, be fully immersed in that environment and perhaps Yes, even look at the environment through a predator's lens, asking yourself if I was going to get me, how would I do it in this environment right now?
01:07:29.679 --> 01:07:31.679
Where is the most likely approach point?
01:07:32.159 --> 01:07:41.280
And have that sense of I'm fully cognizant of what is happening in my surroundings and what might happen in this current surroundings.
01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:48.079
It helps keep some of those distractions at least to a minimum because you're going to ebb and flow over the course of a day.
01:07:48.480 --> 01:07:50.000
You just are from minute to minute.
01:07:50.079 --> 01:07:53.039
Your focus is going to be in, you know, multiple places.
01:07:53.920 --> 01:08:10.880
Just anchoring yourself in any given environment where the potential exists could very well be the difference between at least being somewhat ready, even though you're already behind the power curve, to respond as effectively as you possibly can based on your training.
01:08:12.559 --> 01:08:13.039
Yeah.
01:08:13.840 --> 01:08:15.519
That's that's great advice.
01:08:15.840 --> 01:08:35.680
Mindfulness, present being present, uh knowing that our attentional systems are set up to alert us to external threats, like all this stuff we think is new and fancy and and uh EGG reports and all these uh charts and graphs, it all comes down to our ancestors and saber-toothed tigers.
01:08:36.000 --> 01:08:36.159
Right.
01:08:36.640 --> 01:08:48.399
W when we're walking through the woods and we're being mindful of what's in front of us, we're being present and we're paying attention to the things that are most important right now and then what's important next.
01:08:48.640 --> 01:08:52.560
If a twig breaks over our right shoulder, we're gonna turn and look.
01:08:52.640 --> 01:08:54.319
That's called a bottom-up attention grab.
01:08:54.399 --> 01:08:57.600
That's when the universe says, Hey, you need to look over here.
01:08:57.680 --> 01:09:02.720
So we go from our peripheral vision to our focal vision and we say, Oh, that's not a saber-toothed tiger, that's my dog.
01:09:02.960 --> 01:09:03.680
Everything's good.
01:09:03.840 --> 01:09:04.960
And then we go back to focus.
01:09:05.039 --> 01:09:06.960
So yeah, you are 100% right.
01:09:07.199 --> 01:09:13.840
Being present, uh, being mindful, uh that's the yeah, that's the secret weapon.
01:09:14.239 --> 01:09:15.439
And underestimate it.
01:09:15.520 --> 01:09:18.319
It's been an absolute pleasure having this conversation with you.
01:09:18.399 --> 01:09:31.039
And I I know we could have done a six-hour podcast on this, and you did a brilliant job of sort of simplification for the layman, explaining the concepts that are inherent in what you teach.
01:09:31.199 --> 01:09:36.479
I know after a discussion at the conference, I know it even more now, but it really has been a pleasure to talk.
01:09:36.560 --> 01:09:50.560
And I hope, I hope that everyone that has listened to this soaks it up because understanding yourself and how your brain works and how it interacts with the environment or doesn't, as the case may be, is uh is worth its weight in gold.
01:09:50.640 --> 01:09:52.880
So thank you so much for joining me today.
01:09:53.359 --> 01:09:54.560
Man, thank you for having me.
01:09:54.640 --> 01:09:56.720
This was as cool as I thought it was gonna be.
01:09:56.800 --> 01:10:01.359
Uh, like you said, we met at the conference and we we started going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.
01:10:01.439 --> 01:10:02.479
So I knew this was gonna be good.
01:10:02.560 --> 01:10:04.479
I'm I'm very grateful for your time.
01:10:04.800 --> 01:10:05.279
Thank you.
01:10:05.439 --> 01:10:06.800
So where can people reach you?
01:10:06.960 --> 01:10:10.880
Where are they gonna try and get in contact or or have you come in to teach?
01:10:11.279 --> 01:10:12.880
Well, so there's a couple of options.
01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:19.520
Uh we've got social media for folks that just want to follow and see the things that we think are cool or funny or smart or important.
01:10:19.760 --> 01:10:25.760
Uh we've got uh we've got a Facebook page, we've got a LinkedIn page that are very, very active.
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:28.880
We've got an X page that's that's kind of active.
01:10:28.960 --> 01:10:33.760
It's just harder to uh it's harder to talk about what we talk about in those short blurbs.
01:10:33.920 --> 01:10:34.079
Yeah.
01:10:34.319 --> 01:10:40.239
Uh but uh Force Science on Facebook and on LinkedIn uh are are very active.
01:10:40.479 --> 01:10:46.399
We've got the Force Science News, you can go to the ForScience.com website and register for the Force Science News.
01:10:46.479 --> 01:10:50.159
And we put out a publication either monthly, sometimes twice a month.
01:10:50.319 --> 01:11:07.279
And it's always something human performance, constitutional law uh related to uh not just police, but anybody who is armed and prepared to defend themselves or someone else, you're gonna find something of interest in most of what we publish on Force Science News.
01:11:07.520 --> 01:11:19.439
There's also a lot of training opportunities, and most of them are geared before the ar for the armed professional, uh, security officers, corrections officers, law enforcement officers.
01:11:19.760 --> 01:11:23.199
But there's something to be gained for everyone, I would say.
01:11:23.359 --> 01:11:32.399
And you could go to our website and click on the training tab, and you can locate any one of our classes that's being presented across the country for the rest of the year.
01:11:32.479 --> 01:11:35.359
We're about to have our 2027 schedule published.
01:11:35.439 --> 01:11:42.960
Uh, but I would also encourage folks to look at their calendar for September 22nd through 24th of this year.
01:11:43.119 --> 01:12:00.239
We're gonna be in Round Rock, Texas, uh, with our Force Science Conference, and we're gonna have a few hundred uh people there, scientists, practitioners, uh, lots of presenters, uh, lots of brilliant minds under one roof, and they're gonna allow me to be there as well.
01:12:00.880 --> 01:12:03.520
These guys are gonna be uh the best of the best.
01:12:03.600 --> 01:12:05.680
We've got an incredible speaker lineup.
01:12:05.760 --> 01:12:11.279
Uh we've got uh the executive director of the Alert program, for example, is gonna be one of our keynote speakers.
01:12:11.439 --> 01:12:16.880
We've got uh researchers that uh that will blow your mind.
01:12:16.960 --> 01:12:22.399
So September 22nd through 24th on Round Rock, Texas is gonna be the Force Science Conference.
01:12:22.560 --> 01:12:24.479
And you can also find that on our website.
01:12:24.560 --> 01:12:28.640
There's a there's a conference tab that you can click on for more information.
01:12:29.039 --> 01:12:33.840
Okay, and that is open to the public as well as uh law enforcement offices, et cetera.
01:12:34.159 --> 01:12:35.119
It's a bit of everybody.
01:12:35.439 --> 01:12:35.600
Okay.
01:12:35.840 --> 01:12:44.720
I I think it's it's again, it's definitely gonna be more geared toward the armed professional, uh, but but it's it's beneficial to everyone.
01:12:44.880 --> 01:12:49.359
I had a private investigator email and ask, hey, will this benefit me?
01:12:49.680 --> 01:12:54.000
100% this will this will benefit you as a private investigator.
01:12:54.159 --> 01:12:59.199
So uh, you know, if you're a if you're a teacher who also carries concealed, maybe not.
01:12:59.359 --> 01:13:03.840
Uh there would be good stuff there, but it's just not geared that direction.
01:13:04.159 --> 01:13:17.920
But if you if you are an armed professional or or you provide training to armed professionals or you do case analysis as a lawyer or as an expert witness, uh it's definitely not just for armed professionals, it's for anybody in that orbit.
01:13:18.399 --> 01:13:18.720
Okay.
01:13:18.960 --> 01:13:19.920
That's fantastic.
01:13:20.720 --> 01:13:21.520
All right, buddy.
01:13:21.680 --> 01:13:22.640
Thank you so much.
01:13:22.800 --> 01:13:32.159
I've uh I've really enjoyed this, and I know you've delivered information that I just hope people take on board because it's been l as I said, worth its weight in gold.
01:13:32.319 --> 01:13:32.960
Thank you so much.
01:13:33.680 --> 01:13:34.239
Thank you, brother.
01:13:35.039 --> 01:13:37.039
Before we wrap this up, I just want to say thank you.
01:13:37.199 --> 01:13:45.760
Thank you for tuning in each week, for sharing the episode, subscribing, liking, commenting, and really helping this little corner of the shooting world continue to grow.
01:13:46.000 --> 01:13:49.600
Every lesson genuinely matters, and I appreciate you being part of it.
01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:51.439
I do have one small favor.
01:13:51.680 --> 01:13:59.039
If you know someone with a great story, real experience, and even lessons that you think could help make shooters better, please introduce them to me.
01:13:59.199 --> 01:14:04.800
Have them reach out to me, Terry, at laseramo.com or simply connect the two of us via email.
01:14:04.960 --> 01:14:12.880
I'd love to have a conversation with them, learn what they bring to the table, and see what a fun, valuable episode might look like with them in it.
01:14:13.119 --> 01:14:14.319
Thanks again for being here.
01:14:14.399 --> 01:14:18.479
Keep training, keep learning, and I'll see you next time on Making Tudors Better.
01:14:18.640 --> 01:14:18.960
Cheers.

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