Life Liberty and the Pursuit

LLP #138: Budget Drills, Real Skills

• Life Liberty and the Pursuit

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Training shouldn’t stop just because the economy hurts. Eric and Matt open the toolkit for building real gun skills on a tight budget—no Gucci classes required. We start with the cornerstone: daily dry-fire done safely and deliberately. From clean draw strokes and confident presentations to one- and two-handed trigger presses, we map out home routines that build true muscle memory while revealing gear problems before they become fight-ending failures. You’ll hear why mirror checks before stepping out the door matter, how to clear heavy winter layers when carrying appendix, and why a few smooth reps can transform your confidence.

We get practical about tools: snap caps that enable realistic manipulations without live ammo, and shotgun dummy shells that teach the feel of cycling under load. Maintenance becomes training as we break down cleaning, inspection, and magazine care, including how to spot bullet setback in carry ammo. Then we stretch live-fire dollars with .22 LR—dedicated trainers and AR conversions that mirror your manual of arms so you can run your actual optics, lights, and controls while drilling sight picture and trigger control. Fundamentals transfer across calibers; we explain where recoil truly changes the game, especially with micro-compacts, and how to validate your grip and timing with some full-power reps.

Value beats hype. We outline how to choose local basics classes to lock in manipulation and safety, then step up to two-day intensives when you’re ready—and how to snag discounted seats and ammo deals by watching timing and inventory. Throughout, the mindset remains the constant: complacency kills. Treat everyday life as a training lab—clear your garment, verify retention, run a few clean draws, and keep your gear honest. You don’t need to be the fastest shooter on the internet to be effective; you need consistent fundamentals and calm under pressure.

If this resonates, subscribe on your favorite app, drop a rating to help more listeners find us, and share this episode with a friend who trains on a budget. What’s your best low-cost drill or gear tip? Tell us—we’re all getting better together.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome back, everybody. This is Eric and Matt, and this is Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit. Your beacon of freedom and the American way of life. Tune in every Monday for a new episode as we dive into the world of liberty and what makes our country great. All right, boys and girls, welcome back. This is Eric and Matt here with LLP. You're home for all things normal in a world gone completely mad. Welcome back, everybody.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome.

SPEAKER_01:

Hope everybody is having a great week, and we're going to dive into today's episode. And uh, you know, a lot of times with the show, y'all, we will recognize certain trends that are going on, or we'll recognize things that we're seeing going on in the world, and uh we'll factor that into what's going on because you know we want to keep things pertinent. And what I've noticed, um, you know, the economy is is really in tough shape for a lot of people, and this inflation has been pretty rough, and we are going to talk about that more holistically in a future episode. But I want to talk a little bit about training on a budget. Because I've noticed that there's a lot of people who are having more difficulty getting some training in these days, and um, and when I when I say training, this is primarily um going out and shooting your firearms and things like that and getting actual gun training, like maybe you can't afford to take classes, maybe you can't afford to buy extra ammo. What are some things you can do on the cheap to increase your uh your training regimen? Or what are some things that you can do that are nearly free? Uh we'll talk about those things a bit. And we'll also give some uh real-world examples of uh situations where life sort of throws these real-world training scenarios at you. And we'll we'll talk about how life can be a giant training exercise and how to have the mindset of treating your everyday life as if it is this um training exercise. And I think if you understand the concepts we're gonna lay out in this podcast, I think you'll come away with maybe a mindset of like, wow, there are actually a lot of situations where you know you're presented with an opportunity to learn something. And once you become sort of a conduit to that knowledge, uh, you'll find that wow, life is is full of plenty of opportunities to learn things.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's um a lot of opportunities to train for, you know, free, essentially, um, or for a very low cost. Sure. And, you know, if and if you budget, if you have it in your budget, maybe you save a little bit of money here and there. Um, you know, you can probably save up for a couple of classes. And classes in general uh are great. It allows you to apply the principles that you've been training, uh say at home in a live situation. And you know, you don't have to go, like it's great to go, but you don't have to go to like these super Gucci like shooting schools that you see online. Sure, it looks great on Instagram, but that might be a little bit more than what you need. Sometimes you just need to go to a local, you know, shooting class with like highly qualified professionals that that do it for a living. And I hate to, you know, I hate to like beat a dead horse, but there's a lot of you know, uh defensive firearms instructors that you know, people like, oh, they're just a uh uh instructor because they're a police officer. This might be true, but at the same time, they probably have a lot more experience instructing and teaching someone that has no experience than someone that has experience. So I mean, I wouldn't say just because they're a police officer or you know, a SWAT officer or whatever that they're not qualified to instruct. I think they are, um, but you'll only if you're willing to absorb the knowledge that they're they're providing.

SPEAKER_01:

We're gonna get into a few things, a few examples. Um, before we uh get too far into today's show, I do want to thank uh the show's first sponsor, and that is my Patriot Supply. All right. Cold weather will be here before you know it. And you know what I realized the other day? If the power goes out when it's really cold, I have no way to keep myself and my family warm. Isn't that crazy? We could actually freeze. But when I heard about the Vesta off-grid space heater from our friends at My Patriot Supply, it's a space heater that doesn't use electricity. It runs on something called canned heat, which is an indoor safe fuel. With a Vesta stashed in my closet, I know we can keep warm no matter what, and it doubles as a stove to boil water or cook food, which is pretty cool. Now the best part is you can get a Vesta and a bunch of other free gifts when you order the winter prep special for my Patriot Supply. Just go to mypatriot supply.com slash LLP. That's Lima Lima Papa to see everything included. This offer won't last long, neither will this nice fall weather. So go to mypatriot supply.com slash LLP today. That's mypatriot supply.com slash LLP. That's Lima Lima Papa. And a big thanks to our friends at Mypatriot Supply for supporting today's show. And a quick reminder, we post the show every Monday at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Uh actually, this last week, we accidentally posted the show on Sunday, and we got a lot of great commentary about posting the show on Sunday. So let me know in the comment section below if you'd like us to post the show on Sunday instead, because a lot of you guys seem to have watched the show on Sunday. So if you want us to post on Sunday, maybe we'll switch the day up. But right now, every Monday, 9 o'clock Eastern Standard Time on the YouTube channel, you can see this in video form. And then also you can find it where all of your favorite podcasts are found. Uh Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, et cetera, et cetera. Uh we'll see you there. So you can download the show in audio form as well. This is a podcast first and foremost, but obviously we record video as well. So you can find it on my YouTube channel, IRACVeteran8888. Okay, so as you said, Matt, there are a lot of different trainers out there. And so what can a person do when they're in a position where let's say they want to train, they want to further their skill level as a shooter, but maybe they don't have access to a range. And that actually winds up being one of the most common, um, not really complaints, but but I guess it would be a complaint, you know, if you're in a position where maybe you can't necessarily get to a range very often, maybe you don't live near a range, maybe your only option is an indoor range, or maybe they have rules against drawing, against time drills. You know, that can be really difficult. If you don't have access to an outdoor range, how in the world can you possibly practice the skill set needed to protect yourself, such as drawing from concealment, um, you know, working on your shot splits. Some indoor ranges, in fact, many on indoor ranges, do not allow you to draw. Uh, first safety considerations. Now, let's face it, a lot of people who shoot at indoor ranges, I'm not saying it's all of them, but a lot of people that shoot at indoor ranges tend to be less experienced. And I think the owners of the ranges are just trying to kind of play it safe and go, hey, we don't want people drawing in here because we don't want someone accidentally cranking around into the barrier to the side through the wall or behind them, or really, we don't want to have a discharge in here, period, no matter what circumstances it may be. So part of that is because of safety considerations. You have other people nearby. So it's a liability for the range to allow someone to practice their draw or to do time splits or to draw from concealment. So, how in the world do you practice these things? Well, I'm gonna tell you a little quick story, and uh the story has uh a glory but happy ending. And uh, so a good friend of mine used to work for Atlanta PD. Uh now, y'all, this has been some time ago, all right? Uh, many, many years ago. This was back in like, I believe the 70s, okay, or the 80s, early 80s, late 70s. So um, I'm dating this gentleman by a little bit here, uh, by mentioning how long ago this happened. And this was back when Atlanta PD was issuing Smith and Wesson Model 19s. So it may have been the 70s, they were still issuing 19s, uh, which are the 357 Magnum uh revolver, okay. Um, very different time, okay. Uh they didn't start issuing auto loaders until the 80s. I think they switched to Smith Wesson Model 59s, but anyway, point in case, um, this this story involves, you know, one of my cop buddies was getting up to go to work. I have told this story before on some of my other videos, but I'm gonna retell it here just so some of you that haven't heard it, y'all are gonna be like, holy crap. Okay. So he's getting ready to go to work, mining's on business. Well, every morning, this gentleman would put his gun belt on, take his revolver out, make sure it's unloaded, holster the revolver, and he would do about a dozen to 15, maybe 20 presentations from his holster every morning, right? He would, you know, stand with his arms at his side, you know, picture, I don't know, threat, whatever, some sort of stimulus, and then draw his revolver and point it and do some dry fires, you know, before he loaded the gun for the day to go about his business, right? So he would practice his draw, practice his presentation, and just kind of, you know, get himself accustomed to his gun every single time he would go out uh on patrol that day. Well, uh, this guy is a fantastic pistol marksman, okay? So obviously the shooting skills are there, all right. This is more about, hey, you you yes, you can shoot all day long, but can you present? Can you can you pull the gun from the holster, present it, fire it, and do that in one smooth motion that maybe it's not the fastest draw in the world, but it's smooth, right? They say, they say slow is smooth and smooth is fast. That type of thing. Well, anyway, he practice his draw. All right, I'm ready to leave for the day, loads his revolver, checks his stuff, calls in on the radio, hey, I'm on the coming on the way in, whatever, and proceeds to walk out the front door. Well, what would happen, mind you? A guy was waiting in the bushes with a shotgun. All right, it was somebody he arrested sometime before. Okay, I'm not gonna go into the details about what happened or about what this arrest was about, but let's just say the gentleman was highly disgruntled about being arrested by this guy and found out where he lived. Well, Buddy pops out of the bushes with a shotgun and says, I'm gonna kill you, and points it right at him. And just as quickly as he could assess the situation, he grabs his Model 19 out of the holster, presents it in the same way he just did in the house before he even walked out the door, and double action squeezes one right in the guy's head, shoots him right there in the head, right there in front of his house. Killed him right there. But the guy had a shotgun. I mean, look, to be fair, he had a shotgun and pointed at him and said, I'm gonna kill you. I mean, that's he has a he he he carry he he uh have it had a threat and a way to carry it out. And you must assume that if someone's saying they're gonna kill you and they point a shotgun at you, that they mean it. Okay. And of course, they did all the research and they figured out, oh man, this is somebody arrested. And then they put two and two together, like, oh, he must have been trying to get some revenge. Point is, it doesn't matter if it's him, this cop that I'm talking about, or if it is somebody um else uh that that goes about things in the real world. Complacency is a killer, and you don't ever want to be in a position where you're not being, you know, you don't want to be complacent when it comes to these sorts of things, okay? Now, would an average person be presented with a situation like that in some sort of regular circumstance? Maybe not as not as readily would someone have to face a threat like that under those types of circumstances. But how do you know someone's not trying to rob you or or worse? Or maybe someone's just out for blood, you know, you never know. But that's an example, okay, that I'm giving you a long-winded example, but an example of how um that training didn't cost him anything. You know, some dry fire presentations out of the holster didn't cost him any ammo, didn't have to fire a single shot, but developing the muscle memory that he needed to perform the deed that he did. Okay, now had he not gotten into the habit of practicing his presentations every day? What if he was a lazy cop who had a holster that was all jacked up and his gun is gonna snatch on his holster without him realizing it? I mean, you got to check your stuff. What if some stitches came loose? What if a button got tightened that wasn't supposed to get tightened? Or what if something broke on your holster and now somehow the gun won't come out of the holster? If you're not checking your equipment on a regular basis, how do you know you can really depend on it? Right? How do you know your holster's not gonna catch up or the gun's gonna get caught or something like that? So by practicing his presentations, he's not only practicing the muscle memory of presenting the firearm, he's also checking his gear, making sure the retention on the holster is good, making sure nothing's gonna hang up, making sure that when he draws that gun, it's actually gonna come out when he pulls it. These are things that some people may not think about. And these are tiny little training attributes that you can add into your everyday life that don't cost you zero money.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, the the presentation drills are something that you know everybody should be doing. I'm guilty of it. Like I go out when I, especially like in the wintertime. So like when it starts getting fall, like it is right now, when you're starting to have wear a couple more layers, you're wearing either like a vest or you're wearing uh a jacket. And even in the wintertime, when I wear my big puffy down jacket, um, I'm still carrying. So I'll, you know, like most people in a master bedroom, you have a full-length mirror. Um, you're checking yourself, making sure you're like one, you're not like printing too bad, like you know, nothing's sticking out that shouldn't be sticking out. Um, and you know, if we're going out to dinner or we're going to go meet some friends, yeah, making sure you look right. But you also have to make sure that you're getting that presentation because hey, I'm not, I only wear a jacket here in Georgia. Winter seasons, like two or three months, man. You're not wearing a big heavy jacket for very long. So it's not something that we're accustomed to here in Georgia. So you're wearing this big jacket, like, can I even draw my firearm? Because I carry appendix. So I'm like, all right, can I am I able to yank up? Can I defeat the garment? Can I pull my weapon? So you're doing that a couple times before you leave the house. And then, like, once you're satisfied, all right, if I need to, I can I can draw this firearm. Boom, I'm at the house. Um, so yeah, I do that at least two or three times just to get that muscle memory down.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's a pristine example. Yeah. Everyone's gonna look in the mirror before they leave the house. Make it part of your protocol. For the love of God, make sure your gun's unloaded. Don't shoot the mirror, please. Uh, I'm gonna be quite embarrassed if I hear a story about one of y'all shooting the mirror. Let's try to avoid that if we can, okay? Do some presentations, make sure you can get the gun in and out. Those are little things that can go a long way. And I can't tell you how many times I've I've heard of and seen situations where people will, you know, look, I understand things are expensive right now. And people, you know, all right, they saved up some money, they bought themselves a nice gun, they got themselves some ammunition, maybe they bought some targets and some ear pro and some, you know, safety glasses, maybe they got themselves some gloves, a shooting bag, et cetera, et cetera. You know, they're taking their undertaking seriously, right? They they want to make sure they can show up to the range with all their safety equipment, their PPE, uh their ammunition, their targets, uh, all the things they want to take to the range, their spare magazines, et cetera, et cetera, their cleaning kit, whatever it may be, the things that you might want to have. Okay. Uh, and they undergo this ritual of making sure they have all their stuff, but then they don't, you know, they go home and they and they sort of just set the stuff in the corner in their closet, and they don't ever touch the equipment again. They might go to the range and take a basic class, then it stops there. They feel like, oh, well, I know how to shoot the gun, I know how to manipulate it, I can hit the target halfway decent. Now I will never manipulate this gun again. And that's the wrong attitude. It should always be sort of uh, it's like animal husbandry, like the same way you take care of your bees. Like the beekeeper can't just put a bunch of bees in a box and just walk away and never, never see them again. No, like you've got to constantly check on the health of the hive, like you've got to constantly fill their sugar water up. You've got to, you know, make sure that there's no ants getting in the box. Like it requires a little care on the part of the beekeeper. And guns are the same way. Like, you shouldn't just throw the gun back in the case and go, well, I've got it if I need it. You should always, you know, if you're gonna go through the process of carrying a gun, then it would absolutely behoove you to make sure that you practice those presentation drills. And those are free. All right. What's another way that you can practice on the cheap? Dry fire training. Okay, now we've done some videos before on the channel and both and also on the podcast, we've talked about like the cool fire trainer system. There's the Mantis X app that's a dry fire training system. Um, there's a ton of different stuff like that out there that you can utilize. Snap caps, uh, if you want to go low-tech and you just want to use action-proving dummies, you can buy yourself a bunch of snap caps and practice cycling the gun and dry firing it safely without causing any sort of damage to the firearm. Uh, if you want to train on the cheap and you don't want to spend a lot of money, say you don't want to buy the cool fire trainer or the mantis app or any of that other type of stuff, you can always just get some snap caps. And when you're watching TV or something, watching a movie, just sit there and manipulate your gun. I know it sounds crazy to be messing with your gun while you're watching a movie. If you're single, you know, maybe if you have your spouse with you, she's not interested in hearing a gun clicking throughout the whole movie. But if you just want to sit there while you're watching a movie or something and just manipulate the gun and squeeze the trigger. If you have a double single action, practice double action, practice single action. If you have a revolver, same thing, right? If you have a semauto, practice running the slide. And here's a little trick, okay? You want to really learn your way around a gun. Don't look at the gun while you do it. Don't look down the sights and practice side alignment. Just practice trigger squeeze. And this is kind of one of those crazy things. Watch the TV. Don't pay attention to the gun. Have you five or six magazines sitting there, okay? And load five or six dummies in each magazine. For the love of God, boys and girls, make sure they're snap caps. Don't put live ammunition in your gun, please. I'm gonna be real embarrassed if y'all shoot a hole through the TV or through the living room wall or wherever you might be, okay? Action-proving dummies, snap caps, look them up, all right. If you take your snap caps, load up about five mags, all right, without looking. Grab the mag in the gun, cycle the action, place a nice squeeze, watch TV while you do it. Don't even pay attention to the gun. All right, maybe next to your TV, put a little dot on the wall, like one of those little black uh round stickers that you see the stores use sometimes, or like a little, even a white, whatever color, a little round sticker like you see the grocery stores use. Stick that on the wall next to the TV. And then while you're watching TV, just divert your attention to that dot and now practice your presentation and your squeeze, one-handed, two-handed, whatever you want to do or both. Weak-handed, strong-handed, one-handed, whatever you want to do, single action, double action. Then get to the point where you can drop and change magazines without looking at the pistol. This is all free. You can do this in your living room. You do not have to shoot live ammunition to get in some solid gun handling skills. Okay. So keep that in mind. Presentation, drawing. Drawing and presentation are two different things, right? Drawing is the act of getting the gun out of the holster, like Matt said. If you have to clear garment, okay, you may have to clear a garment, etc. etc., depending on the way you're carrying. Yeah, that's gonna depend differently. Also, depending on your build. Okay, now I'm talking some of you girthy folks out there. Look, I mean, I used to be girthy myself. If if you're a lar a little larger and you carry a pendants, it's gonna be a little extra to get around, okay? I mean, look, you get you, and I know it's painful for me to say it, but you gotta get used to get it, get it out of the way. Whatever is getting in the way of you getting that gun out, even if it's your own body, you know who you are, and I'm not causing anybody grief here. I'm just saying the reality is some of us are a little heavier than others, and that's okay. Whatever it is, get it out of the way and practice getting the gun out. So drawing is the act of getting the gun out. Presenting is the act, uh, guess what, of presenting the gun. So work on presentations, work on drawing, work on side alignment, trigger squeeze, uh, firearms manipulation, running the slide, dropping magazines, inserting magazines. Those are all things you can do in the comfort of your home that require zero dollars.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And I think that you know, the presentation and um defeating the garment, clearing the garment, drawing the draw stroke, those are probably the most important part of shooting. Like pulling the trigger is the easy part. It's it's being super consistent. And think of this like any other type of like sport or athletic. I don't uh and people are like, oh, shooting isn't a sport. It's a major sport. There's a lot of high-level shooters out there that are representing, you know, either weapons companies, gun companies, or themselves. Um, there and there's lots of low-cost opportunities for you guys to go out and compete if you want. But just remember, half of the people that are uh competing, they're doing the free training themselves. It costs them nothing. They're just working on drawstroke presentation, super important. Have to be consistent with the presentation every single time. When you're bringing that weapon, you're presenting it. When you squeeze the trigger, it's already going where it's going. Like you, it's just the way it is. Um, now, as far as Snapcap goes, barrier to entry, very low. If you're a fan of Amazon, say what you want. I like Amazon. You can buy them on Amazon. Yeah, I bought my Snapcaps on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01:

I think you can get like a six-pack for like 15 bucks or something. Yeah, a couple of dollars or something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, somewhere in the line of nine to fifteen dollars, depending on like how fancy you want to go. You have the snap caps that have the little internal springs that kind of absorb the shock of the striker. Yeah, um, if you have a wheel gun, you don't even need that. So they just have like the regular snap caps because it's just gonna start banging them out.

SPEAKER_01:

Um you can also make snap caps.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's probably not an option that many of you can explore, but they can you can make your own.

SPEAKER_00:

You just put a round in a empty.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you can you can seed a bullet back into a fired case. And what I used to do is actually take the primer cup, pull the anvil out, and take myself uh a piece of thick pencil eraser and put the rubber down into the cup and then seed it, and now you have like a little rubber cup.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Make sure you pull the primer or use one that's already used. Like as Eric would say, for the love of God, don't go and don't go and pull one out, dump out the dump out the powder, and then just reseat the round and use it because you will get a snap. All right, that will definitely be.

SPEAKER_01:

You can make your own, but the reason that I like the factory snap caps is because they are clearly not a live round. Yeah, they're orange. You can't get it confused. If you if you take a piece of ammunition that used to be a live ammunition and make your own dummy-proving cartridge or snap cap, uh, now you have to worry about keeping up with it. Now, one way you can do that is just take yourself a Sharpie and paint uh the bullet red or paint it green or blue, or you know, paint it some off-color so you don't accidentally get it mixed up with a live cartridge. I would say for beginners, snap caps are going to be your most foolproof way to make sure you have your action-proving um, you know, type of stuff in play.

SPEAKER_00:

It it also helps you feel confident in carrying with one in the chamber. Um, that was really what when I first started carrying years and years and years ago. Obviously, you know, carrying appendix has its own challenges as far as trusting your gear. Um, you know, no one wants to go down that route of getting shot down there. No one wants their dick shot off. Yeah, for lack of a better term. Um, and trust me, man, when you're driving in your car and that thing is like right there, you're like, holy crap, this thing is this if this goes off, like I'm done for. So, you know, to kind of get over that, uh, I did some research and someone had a you know said something really um, you know, I would say authentic. They said, hey, put a snap cap in there. That's the first round, rack it, keep it, because obviously you want it in the chamber in the pipe, and carry it. And every day I would wear that, I would come home, and they said, pull the trigger when you get home. And every day I would come home, I'd you know, take it off, I'd pull the trigger, it'd go click every time. Click, click, click. And that kind of solidified my belief in the gear and in the weapon that, like, hey, this thing is not gonna go off unless you purposely pull the trigger.

SPEAKER_01:

The safety, yeah, the safety works. The holster is a defective holster that's not gonna allow the gun to accidentally discharge. I mean, look, holster designs are a thing, and you know, most mainstream holster manufacturers do a really good job of making obviously an extremely safe holster. Uh, but there have been situations, and I'm not gonna necessarily mention specific situations, but I'm just gonna mention that they have happened. There have been situations where a person's holster was at fault for why the gun discharged. And that's usually because a person doesn't have the safety on. Quite frankly, a lot of times it's 1911s and things like that, or single-action pistols with a single action trigger, and someone has the hammer back, maybe the safety's not on, and sometimes the holster can squeeze the trigger in just the wrong way and the wrong amount of pressure being put on the gun, et cetera, et cetera. There are some circumstances where a gun can discharge in a holster. It's rare, but you should always, again, vet your equipment because of that reason.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the thing you run into a lot, and that's one of the reasons I don't use a light on my weapon, is because you see that a more often than not with weapons that have weapon-mounted lights on them, because the the light is the retention device, not the actual weapon. So they have to create the holster around the light, so that leaves space for like foreign objects to get in there and kind of snag on that. And you know, I carry a gun that doesn't use a uh external safety. So that's very important to me. So I don't use a I don't use a weapon mountain light for that reason, just because I've seen and experienced a lot of stuff like that. Um, not to say it's a bad idea if hey, if that's your cup of tea and you trust your gear, go for it. Uh, I just don't trust it as a retention, a point of retention for the weapon. Um shotguns, guys. There is no better training tool than the snap caps for shotguns, especially if you have a pump that really allows you to get used to cycling the ammunition and loading the ammunition. And I mean, get yourself, they sell they sell them big orange faux 12-gauge shotgun slugs or shells, and it allows you to feed them in there, boom, boom, boom, you can rack it four or five times, get the feeling because racking an empty shotgun is different than racking a shotgun that you're having to force an empty hole out of. And quite frankly, a lot of it can get jammed up. Like if you might have to like sit there and try a couple times. So get used to that as well. Um, you don't necessarily like again, shooting the shotgun, the easiest part is manipulating the shotgun because they're very if you're not used to it, like it can be very intimidating. You're holding a blunder bus, essentially.

SPEAKER_01:

That's true. You know, shotguns do require, you know, a little bit of finesse. And you know, they finesse, but also, you know, you have to know when to manhandle them. With a pump shotgun, don't be afraid to, you know, drive smartly to the rear until it stops, and then push smartly back up front until everything locks up. And especially in the firing cycle of a shotgun where, you know, when you are withdrawing an empty shell, but also putting in another shell. So that it all feels a little bit different. So the more you shoot them, the more you get used to it. And a lot of pump actions are actually quite um quite forgiving. Um, one of the most forgiving ones is the Browning BPS. They are very smooth uh and very forgiving. And I would say that the Mossbergs are probably a little more forgiving than the Remingtons. Um, so anyway, that's a great point on Matt's part. The other thing that I'll mention too is gun cleaning, gun maintenance. So um, let's say you don't have a lot of money to train, but let's say maybe you went out last time and and did some training and uh you still want to mess around with some of your gun manipulation, but you don't really have money to go to the range and shoot, and maybe you're tired of dry firing, uh, engage in some maintenance. Um learn how to take your gun apart and clean it. Uh that's part of being a gun owner anyway. You should absolutely practice maintaining your firearm, and it allows you to become more proficient with your firearm. The more times you take it apart, the more times you get used to it, the more proficient you are. And it's it's way, way better as a gun owner to know how to diagnose your own minor problems, how to take your gun apart and clean it, learn how to take your magazines apart, clean the magazine bodies, all of that. And you'll find that in the event you do have to use your firearm, you're gonna be in the best possible situation to be able to have make sure that your firearm is at its absolute best performance in that moment when you need it by keeping it clean. So if for whatever reason you don't want to do any training, but you feel like messing with your guns, pull them apart and clean them. Uh, that's a great way to get in a little time with your guns and actually mess around with handling your guns without actually having to spend any money. Now, um, let's segue a little bit, Matt, to all right, what are some low cost training things that we can do? Maybe a minimal amount of cost. There's still some cost involved, but probably the best thing that we can do for training. That requires the least amount of money but still allows us to actually fire live ammunition. You can see where I'm going with this, is 22s.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

22s are a huge, huge, huge benefit to someone who wants to train for a very minimal amount of money. And even someone who's training on a budget generally can afford to buy a few boxes of 22 ammunition.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So 22, just make sure you're sticking to like your more atypical 22, like your 22 LR. Um, I mean, yeah, all there's more for those, I know some of you know there's different 22s. There's like 22 Magnum, there's 22 LR, there's like a few others that are kind of obscure. So just stick for the 22 LR. The ammunition is plentiful for the most part. That's where you're gonna get your cost savings at. Um, so yeah, if you can get out there, um, even if you get to a gun range, you can sit there and plink for quite a while at a gun range with 22s. Um, next, I would say uh stick to your more common rounds, like nine mil. Obviously, those are gonna be plentiful. I know everybody wants to uh you know have like the the coolest gadget. They're like, oh, I want 45, I want 40, I want this, and like that. When you start getting off into the weeds on the a little the more obscure rounds, you're gonna pay more. That's you're pricing yourself out of of training at that point. It's like the guys that have like 300 blackout, like, all right, you're not you're not shooting that for training, like you're gonna shoot that and then that's it.

SPEAKER_01:

Like so there are some options um for that as well. Okay, so say that all right, Matt mentioned that you want the cool guy gun, but you you know, maybe you don't want to get you maybe you have your your carry gun. Let's say you have a Glock or something, or or whatever type of pistol, and your carry gun is let's say a nine millimeter, but you don't want to always have to go and buy four or five boxes of nine millimeter to go out and train. You want a 22 instead. Well, you know, Glock makes a dedicated 22 pistol.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, they do.

SPEAKER_01:

So you can always purchase. Now it does represent an additional cost to buy a second gun in 22 to train with, but many people do that, right? Some people will just buy a dedicated 22 just to have to train with in lieu of their center fire guns as well. And that's more my route. Um, I like the Ruger 1022 for just general training. Um, I like them because they're accurate, they're handy, you have fast follow-up shots, they're semi-automatic. Um, the magazines hold a decent amount of ammunition. So, as a backup semi-auto, let's say you have an AR and you don't, you know, want to have only one rifle that's a semi-auto, you want to have a backup. The 1022 is a fantastic backup that I would totally recommend. You can also get bolt conversion devices. Um, CMMG sells a bolt uh carrier uh insert that you can basically pull the 556 carrier out and use their dedicated magazines and carrier, and you can convert an existing 556 uh AR over to 22 long rifle. And you get the benefit of using the same magazine, same sights, same flashlights, same whatever gadgets you have on the gun. You are training with the actual gadgets that are on your full rifle that you have in 5.56 as your home defense option. So um there are conversion devices, there are dedicated 22s, uh, many pistol companies. Uh I can't, I mean, maybe Walther, HK, SIG. I mean, there's a few pistol companies that make their nine millimeter version, and then they have a nearly identical 22 version that you can purchase as well for training.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that might be an option for some of you. And they're often marketed as trainers. So you'll see, like, oh, like the Walther, like trainer or youth. So like it's marketed, you know, obviously for youth slash training, but it has the same manual of arms like Eric mentioned. That's really why you would want it. So like you have the ARs that are uh 22s, the Glocks that are 22s, you know, the Walthers or whatever. It's it's you want the same manual of arms. So you're again when you're working your presentation, when you're working your drawstroke, your holsters still work, your accessories still work. Like everything is the same. It's just the ammunition is different. Um you're of course not going to have the same recoil or anything like that, but that is neither here nor there. Like you're getting the same training for the most part.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like a 22 is a great option for practicing your trigger control, your presentation, your drawing and presentation, your trigger control, your breathing, your sight picture, testing your accuracy, see how accurately you shoot. I mean, in the moment of truth, let's say that all you can afford is to train with a 22 all the time, and you don't really have as much opportunity to sling full powered nine millimeter. I mean, I would recommend you try to shoot some full powered nine or whatever your carry gun is, say it's a 40 or 45 or 5'7 by 28, whatever your carry gun is, I would obviously recommend trying to spend some time shooting the full power version at least here and there, as often as you can. But if all you let's say all you do is train 22 and nothing else, does that mean that when you go to switch to 9mm and in the moment of truth, you've practiced your presentation, you've practiced your drawing, you've practiced your trigger squeeze and your side alignment and all of these sort of dry fire, dry run things that build muscle memory? And let's say you go out to the uh the range live and when you shoot 22, it's super accurate, you're hitting everything you aim at. Does that mean that when you switch to a nine millimeter, that you're all of a sudden you're not gonna hit the right side of a bar and you're gonna be a terrible shot? I think that answer is no. I mean, I think in the moment of truth, if you know your adrenaline kicks in, you're probably not gonna think about it. I mean, nine millimeter doesn't kick that hard. So it's not like the recoil difference is gonna be something that's so extreme that it's gonna put you at some major disadvantage. Now, are there situations where you may be at a disadvantage if you don't train with full power ammunition? I think the answer is yes. Maybe in the case of very, very small 380s or small revolvers, okay? Or even um like your Micro 9, such as the SIG P365. I mean, the 365 is a fantastic handgun, but it is a snappy little devil. And the smaller the gun is, the more the inherit recoil forces are going to have an effect on your ability to maintain control of the gun, to have fast follow-up shots, and more importantly, to be accurate and maintain side alignment. And quite frankly, the smaller the gun, the hard it is to manipulate in terms of grabbing it, getting a good purchase on it, pulling it, presenting it. So is that to say that if you just spend a lot of time cranking out rounds from a small 22, that you're going to be able to go right over to a Ruger LCP or to a SIG P365 or to some other type of very small micro 9 and be able to shoot it just as accurately as a 22, I think that's where maybe some more inexperienced shooters might have some problem because the smaller the gun, the more the recoil forces are apparent. And if you're not used to feeling those recoil uh forces in training, it may surprise you in the moment of truth. Now, hopefully it wouldn't. The larger the gun, the less that factor of surprise is gonna be uh relevant.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I agree. I have never seen someone shoot better with a smaller micro gun than with a larger full-size gun. It just doesn't happen. It's it's it's like just physics, all right? Like physics, inertia, mass. Right, all of it works in your favor with a larger gun.

SPEAKER_01:

There is no such thing as a free lunch in physics, y'all. Okay, the smaller the gun, the more you recoil forces you're gonna feel. Yes, the easier it is to hide, the easier it is to conceal. Those are all good things, right? But generally speaking, it's gonna require a little bit more time on your part to be familiar with it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Uh and uh I'll go back to you you mentioned something that you know kind of hit a hit a chord with me. In jujitsu, we have a saying, and it's uh the mats don't lie. So you can go around as a as a practitioner and you can make yourself believe that you're better than you are, that you know, you're a higher rank, you're a higher belt, you can lie about these things. But the truth is when you go out there to actually practice and train, the mats don't lie. The the truth will reveal itself when you're out there fighting other people because they will tell, like, you are not that good, or the truth will reveal itself to yourself and you're gonna say, I'm not as good as I thought I was.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Which that's good too, because that that makes you improve.

SPEAKER_00:

It does, but the same thing can be said about firearms. When you were talking about, oh, switching from a 22 to a nine millimeter, if you're a if you lack the fundamentals, then you lack the fundamentals, and switching your caliber isn't gonna help. Just because if you're if you are a bad shot with a nine millimeter, you're also going to be a bad shot with a 22 because the fundamentals are why you're not shooting correctly, not the caliber. Once you tighten up on the 22 and you have the correct fundamentals and everything is uh consistent, that's gonna carry over to the nine millimeter. That's gonna carry over to the 45, possibly, if your grip can take it. Um, but that's what it comes, and that's what it reminded me of because I was like, a lot of people get in the habit of like, oh, it's the gun. Oh, it's the it's the I'm not used to this caliber. Oh, I shoot better with this. Like, no. If you're a good shot, you can pick up anything and be consistent. Are you shooting bullseyes on everything? No, but you're hitting you're hitting A zone on whatever you pick up because the fundamentals are allowing you to hit the A zone.

SPEAKER_01:

The only thing a 22 really does is just give you more trigger time and have a low consequence trigger time with less recoil, uh, you know, and all that sort of thing. You get to shoot more, you get more trigger time with the 22. But if your fundamentals stuck, uh suck, you're still not gonna hit the right side of a barn with a 22, like Matt said. So 22 simply give you the ability to train more, shoot more, and ultimately work on your fundamentals more.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's an important consideration. Here's another question we'll ask, all right? Or at least we'll pose this this question here in today's podcast. How good of a shot does an average person need to be to protect themselves adequately? Let's just say against the public at large. Um your average person who is untrained versus the average person who has maybe a bit of training, how much more dangerous is a person who has even the modest amount of training than just your average off-the-street person who likely has never touched a gun in their life? Well, for one, the person who's never touched a gun in their life is probably not the person that's gonna use a gun to harm you. So you have to assume that whoever's gonna carry a gun and try to use it against you, be it a criminal or whatever, let's just say someone who's intent on committing a crime, maybe they're gonna rob you, maybe they're gonna shoot you, maybe they're gonna, you know, whatever they're gonna do, kidnap your kid, steal your car. I don't know. They're hell bent on using a firearm to commit a crime. All right. That person, I guarantee you, they've they've practiced with that gun a bit. I mean, they may not be the best. Now, there are a lot of dumb criminals out there. You may run into a criminal who's an absolute idiot and didn't even have a round in the chamber or a magazine in the gun. Or, you know, there are many situations where um criminals have gotten uh wiped out. I mean, I'm talking just shot and killed over stupid crap because they didn't actually even, you know, have a round in the gun, or they made some extremely dumb, fatal mistake because they assume that the mere presence of the gun is enough to rile a person up and get them to comply with their uh criminal activities. And of course, someone who's all the wiser. I know there was one shooting video that I watched one time where a person had a gun pulled on them and it was a really expensive gun guy. I don't remember if it was a trainer, it was or a cop, it was it was somebody who was very experienced with guns. Well, the guy pulled a gun on him and the slide was cheated back, and he he could tell that the gun, that the gun was jammed. So he knew it wasn't gonna fire. So he pulled his gun and shot the guy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because he knew that that guy didn't know what the heck he was doing. And what person who's gonna go into a shooting situation, a shooting environment, an environment where you're gonna use your gun and point it at another person and hate, and you're gonna walk up knowing your gun's jacked up that you don't even have around in the chamber, those are all dumb mistakes. And yes, criminals make dumb mistakes. Again, that provides the question, okay? How trained does an average person need to be to be able to survive against the average moron out there who's trying to hurt someone with a gun? You ain't gotta be John Wick. You don't have to be the most trained person in the world. You know, the likelihood you're gonna go up against a John Wick type person who is extremely good, or go up against somebody like Jerry Mitchelick, someone with that level of training and speed and proficiency, the likelihood of you going up against a shooter who's that good, who is not already a good person that wants to harm you is probably slim to none. You really, and I'm not saying don't get to that level. I'm not saying don't train yourself to the utmost level you can. What I'm saying is the average villain out there is pretty dumb. Okay. Even the average honest person out there is not probably going to be your most brightest person in the world. I mean, look, it's just let's face it, like there's a lot more people who are, let's just say, you know, maybe a little, a little indisposed towards maybe not knowing more than they do, especially when it comes to guns. So if you have good proficiency, you make an effort to carry the gun properly in a correct holster, you practice your um drawing and presentation, you spend a little bit of time with trigger squeeze, side alignment, get a little training in, you are already a million steps ahead of the average person out there that is untrained. You are a million steps ahead because the average person, especially, who doesn't want anything to do with guns, certainly doesn't know anything. They know way less than you, even if you have the most modest amount of training. Another great example is weightlifting, right? When you again, I don't want to go far down this rabbit hole, but I know Matt can can agree with me on this, is like whether it's someone who's training jujitsu or whether it's somebody who is doing um, you know, weightlifting, like in my case, I do powerlifting. All right, even the lowest person training jujitsu or training powerlifting is gonna be already way more disciplined than the average person by a huge margin, simply by showing up to the gym, putting in the work, and staying consistent. You may not be the most skilled compared to the other people competing jujitsu. But for the, and I suppose it's probably best to let Matt comment on this, I'll comment more on the power lifting. If someone's coming in and doing power lifting and they're staying at it on a consistent basis, they're probably already stronger than 90% of the normal people out there in the world just by proxy of the fact that they show up to the gym and they work, and they're already going to be way stronger than your average person. You can't compare yourself to other people in the gym. You can only compare yourself to normies, right? Now, if I go in the gym and I bench 255 and a powerlifting meet 255 is not a big bench at all. It's actually quite a quite a weak bench, right? But to the untrained normal person out there that's that probably can't even bench one plate, much less two, you might as well be He-Man compared to those people. So you can't compare yourself to the best. You have to compare yourself to the worst. And I know that's a hard mentality. I'm not saying don't be the best. I'm not saying don't strive to be the best you can be. I'm saying that the reality is, is the person who's going to bring you harm in the world with a gun is probably not going to be your brightest person. Because for one, they're already using a gun to commit a crime, and that already requires a certain amount of stupidity. Especially in this world, knowing that everybody's probably got a dang gun, you're a moron to want to try to hurt somebody. But let's just say I feel like the majority of the people who engage in that type of conduct are probably not going to be your smartest people anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. No, I I agree. And it doesn't take much, like you said. I think there was another example of that uh it was a Jimmy Johns. A guy was trying to rob a Jimmy Johns, and he pulled a gun on the cash poor cashier, and the cashier looked at the gun and saw that uh there the slide was kind of uh jammed. And the cashier was like, No, I'm not he he didn't like grab the gun, but he was just like, No, I'm not gonna give you the money. It was it was a pretty funny uh video, and the guy just like ended up leaving. He was like, ah, and he just walked away. And they interviewed the guy. He was like, Yeah, you could see that the gun was jammed, and I didn't have to actually do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Or someone points a gun at you and it's got an orange tip, it's a fake. Oh my god, yeah. So let's that stuff happens.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's uh so we we talked about like basically free training, right? We talked about some low-cost budget options, and we're still gonna stay budget conscious, but everybody's budget is different, all right. Your idea of what cost savings is is different than what mine is. Mine, when I look at training, I look at something like what's a good value, all right. There's a difference between budget conscious and value. I am a value shopper. I look for something that should should be worth more money, but it's not. So if I'm talking like, oh, let's do a two-day shooting class or a three-day shooting class, all right? Let's break that down. When you go to a shooting range, let's say you go to whatever such and such indoor shooting range. They have some really nice shooting ranges here in Georgia. We are blessed here in the South where we have some nice gun clubs, all right? Stoddards. Yep. You have like, well, for naming names, you have like governors, you have like they have like indoor uh skeet ranges. So you can actually go indoor and shoot skiet.

SPEAKER_01:

Governors is nice, Stoddard's is nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, you know, and they're very large. They have like they're like country clubs, man. They got steakhouses on the inside of them. Like you're making reservations, they have like cigar lounges, like it's it's pretty posh, man. Pretty legit. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Um, and you can go in there and drop hundreds of dollars, like easy, like gun rentals, range rentals, dinner, ammunition, fun for the family, like all kinds of stuff. So now you look at like a you know, a regular shooting class, like a purpose-driven two-day shooting class with professionals, anywhere between four to six hundred dollars. All right. And that's two days of like full instruction. This isn't like, oh, we're gonna go and we're gonna train for two hours, take a break, come back for two hours. It's legit like six or seven hours of instruction. You take a short lunch break, you brownbag your lunch because you're not leaving the range, you brownbag your lunch and you're back at it for two days straight. Like your hands hurt, guys. Like you're shooting so much, like 500 rounds of ammunition, like your hands are sore, your fingers are sore. Like 400 bucks, that's a good deal, man. Like, if you break that down, yes, you have to provide your own ammunition, but the training, the hours of training you get out of those two days is immeasurable. You're taking that back to your real world. Like, to me, that is probably the best deal that you're gonna get. Now, here is the escalation of force, guys. If you have zero experience, that is not something you do first. You don't jump into a two-day RDS pistol course without having any experience. You have to be familiar, like I'm not saying you have to be an expert, but go to the shooting range and familiarize yourself with the weapon, load the magazines because guess what? Those instructors are not there to babysit you, they're there to say, hey, and matter of fact, if you're not competent, they don't allow you on the line, put it that way. If you show up to that class and you're kind of fumbling around, it's not that they're trying to gatekeep the class, they have to ensure safety for everybody on the line.

SPEAKER_01:

True.

SPEAKER_00:

You're right so it's their responsibility to make sure that everybody stays safe. If you're fumbling around, if you're kind of not, if you don't look like you're very like confident, they might work with you to make you confident. But if you're just kind of like, you know, Mr. Bean over there, nah, bro. You're they're they're gonna they're gonna, hey, you just watch, or you know what? It is what it is. Yeah, but safety first on in that particular uh aspect.

SPEAKER_01:

So there's some things that I want to add to that. Um, before we get too much further, though, I want to give a quick shout out to the next sponsor in the show, and that's our friends at Allegiance Gold. You ever notice how gold doesn't get much airtime until the system starts to shake? Well, here's what nobody's talking about. Starting July 1st, Basel III global banking rules classify gold as a tier one asset, the same level as cash or U.S. treasuries. That's huge. It means that central banks will now treat gold as the highest quality form of capital. They're not doing this just for fun. They're preparing for something. If gold is good enough for the world's most powerful banks and governments, why wouldn't it be good enough to protect your retirement? This may be the moment we've all been waiting for. Gold could reach levels we've never seen before. Whether you've got 5K or 5 million to safeguard, now is the time to act. We've seen plenty of gold companies advertise and come and go. But I chose to partner with Allegiance Gold because they actually care about their pricing, their integrity, and doing the right thing by their clients. They make it simple to move part of your 401k or IRA or savings into real physical gold and silver. As a veteran, you may even qualify for up to$5,000 in free silver. Call 844-790-9191 or visit AllegianceGold.com forward slash veterans. That's 844-790-9191. It's smart, secure, and simple. Call today. And a big thanks to our friends at Allegiance Gold for being a long-term supporter of LLP. So one thing that I want to mention, Matt, um, to get back to your point is that yes, those types of training classes are great and they do require maybe a little bit upper beginner to intermediate level to participate in some of those more advanced training classes. Uh, you can go and take basic classes with an instructor uh for like maybe like an hour or two. Okay. So he had mentioned those two-hour classes. Uh, that is a thing. Let's say that you're brand new to guns, but you want an instructor to spend some time with you and go over some safety with you for a couple of hours, go over all the basics, loading and unloading, uh, trigger squeeze, side alignment, you know, those basic things that you need to manipulate the gun. Let's just call it firearms manipulation. If you need some help in that, there are trainers that specialize sort of in that basic 101 level uh gun handling. And sometimes those classes, you know, can be had for you know$100 to$150 for a single class. Now, granted, it's only maybe two or three hours, but that's a huge uh deal if maybe you have a limited amount of money. Maybe you already bought yourself a$500 gun and a whole bunch of accoutrements and ammo and things. So what's another$150 at that rate to take a basic class teaching you the basics? Now, there are a lot of great videos on YouTube that give you a very basic overview of some of these things. In fact, I might actually make a few videos on my own just for the good of the group uh and everything like that to try to help people that are new to guns, okay? Uh when it comes to the actual gun handling and some of the tenets of safety uh that you need to consider, which uh there are some basic rules that once you understand them, it's pretty simple to make sure you don't get hurt and that nobody around you gets hurt either. Uh, but I wanted to add to what Matt said that that yes, you you absolutely, you know, can go the more advanced training route. Sometimes the more advanced training classes, um, some of the instructors, like let's say it's a slow time of year and they know they're not booking a lot of classes. Now, a lot of instructors generally are booked out pretty solid, but let's just say maybe there's a window of opportunity where a trainer just doesn't have a lot booked and he wants to fill his classes up, sometimes offer discounts. So if you have a trainer you're interested in training with, right, no matter who it may be, and you want to take a class, follow their social media and look out for that sort of stuff. If you're you're more value-minded, you're more savvy, and let's say you're open to you know when you actually go and train and you don't mind, you know, you have a flexible schedule, yeah, wait for a discount. They may say, hey, we've got eight more slots for this class and I'm doing them for 25% off. All right, well, there's 25% off. That saves you some money. So um, it may not be a ton of money, but hey, saving money, if the point here is to save money, don't hesitate to wait on some of those deals to pop through. Same thing goes for ammo. Like Matt said, let's say you do want to shoot nine millimeter and you don't want to mess with a 22. Well, by all means, every time you go to the store, look at the nine millimeter and see what the prices are. You know, if they have it marked down to$11.99 a box because somebody in the warehouse accidentally transposed a number on the invoice and they ordered two pallets instead of one. Oh, we have way too much ammo. We have to get rid of it. We weren't expecting to buy that much ammo. Well, not that they would. Most places, they're gonna order a lot of ammo. But let's just say it's a smaller shop and they're like, oh crap, we ordered way too much and we need to get rid of it quick. Then yeah, they may blow it out for the cool guy price until they get down to a comfortable level that they want to stock. And you might have an opportunity to buy brass case nine millimeter for$10.99 a box or$11.99 a box. And if that's the case, sure. Buy a bunch of it, uh, buy cheap and stack deep if you can afford it at the time. You know, you're saving yourself 20-30% on a box of ammo. Or you go in and they have carry ammo priced out uh on sale or something. Yeah, maybe then you you purchase some carry ammo for a reduced rate. So you can always be smart and savvy as a shopper and and save yourself money as you go along.

SPEAKER_00:

That's always a good feeling. When you walk in and you see like carry ammo, you're like, is that spear gold dot? Is that critical D? Oh, and you'd like to be like$25 a box and$50? Oh man, you don't know if you want to become like a hoarder or if you want to leave some on the shelf for the next guy. And you're just like, oh, but let's be real, guys, no one's out there shooting up a ton of carry ammo. So leave some on the shelf, get enough for yourself. Yeah, you know, the the like I'm probably honestly, I cycle through my carry ammo maybe once a year. Like I'll go and I'll I'll at the end of the year, shoot it up, I'll I'll shoot it up and I'll replace it. Because they they start to start, they start to uh what is that called when the round starts set back? Yeah, you get you start getting a lot of setback, and I rotate the rounds out, but then they all start getting setback. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01:

If you chamber the same round over and over, you will eventually begin to get set back. It's probably not a problem, you know, really. But you know, everyone has that one jank round on top that's been chambered like a million times. And it's like, you know what, I should probably just cycle this out or throw it in the trash and get another one or something. So um that's that's a very good point to bring up.

SPEAKER_00:

So just so you guys know what he's what Eric's talking about, it's you'll see it. Like that that round will start to get pushed farther back into the actual shell or casing.

SPEAKER_01:

If the length of the of the round starts to decrease and it looks like it's getting shorter, you put it next to another one and it's shorter, that's setback. It means the round that the the chambering of the round constantly has overcome the crimp of the round and cause that uh the the bullet itself to set back into the case a bit. And excessive amounts can spike pressure on a plus p round. Is it going to destroy your gun? No, probably not, because they build in a certain degree of safety, a margin of error into those things. But it's just something to look for. It's one of those many things that you should keep your eye out for. And I mean, a carry round is 60 cents. Why risk it over 60 cents? Just cycle the ammo out from time to time. I think that's a very astute way to do it.

SPEAKER_00:

So uh Eric mentioned, I know we're running short on time. I was gonna say it. Um, look at your local, if you want to do some of those more intermediate classes, advanced classes, look at your local trainers. Um, you know, here in Georgia, we have quite a few that are very good. But you mentioned that like to blow it out the end of the year. The one that comes to mind um was uh John Lovell, like Warrior Poet Society. He'll he'll could because and I say that because he's local here in Georgia. So you'll see, you'll he'll you'll see he'll he'll post like, oh, we got like three spots available for a rifle one or pistol one here in Georgia. He's he stays pretty booked up everywhere else, but in Georgia, you can only go back to the wealth so many times, right? Everybody at one at some point in time, everybody's gonna go ahead and take that course. Um, so when he posts that jump on it, man, he usually blows it out at like a little bit of a discount to fill those seats to fill those slots up. Yeah, and you're good to go.

SPEAKER_01:

But and I will say, Level is a really good instructor too. You know, he's he's a mellow guy, you know. He he's you know, John's a pretty hardcore guy overall, but he is very mellow and he's very serious. And you know, he kind of you know, he has that sort of mentality about him, but but he's a very good trainer and he's very good at articulating his points to people. And he does it in a way it's not gonna make you feel bad or anything. I mean, if someone makes a mistake now, he's gonna he's gonna be pissed. Like, you know, if you do something unsafe, he's gonna call. It quick, but in in general, as long as everyone's listening and doing well, he's a great trainer, and and he is very good at what he does.

SPEAKER_00:

John is so it's like a it's like taking a class and it's nothing but dad jokes, like everything is compared to like a dad joke.

SPEAKER_01:

You're like, ah, never-ending dad jokes with John for sure. But but he's a good guy, and uh and that's it's great that you brought that up because he's he's definitely one of the good ones out there.

SPEAKER_00:

And but I brought it up because that's one of the few well-known trainers here in Georgia that actually like try to blow out spots when they need them in a popular.

SPEAKER_01:

KD with NOC firearms, you know, he's very good. Yep. Um Kim with Provectus, he's here in Georgia, he's great. Um, you know, so Ken is great, KD is great. Uh, since we're trapping, Carrie Sloan is great, she does some training uh with ladies. Yeah. Look up Carrie Sloan, yeah. Stilettos and shotguns, she's good. Um, there's lots of people here that do really wonderful work. Go check out. We're lucky to have a really good uh you know, group of people in Georgia for that purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll I'll shout out my boy Chris from First Line Defense.org. He's a very good trainer. He works for a major uh company. Check it out. That'll be 20%, y'all.

SPEAKER_01:

Very we expect we want our checks. I want to check now.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I dude, but I say that because Chris is a good dude, man, and he is uh he is an absolute unit, dude. Like he he wrestles with us, he does jujitsu, he's a firearms, uh, a professional firearms trainer in the industry. Thank you. Um, but he's just an absolute unit, dude. He's like 6'4, just yeah, good god, man. Like he he hit me with a double leg one time, a double leg takedown, and he like sent me into outer space, man. I was like, holy crap! I was like crap like sending you flying, man. But uh good dude, good dude. Jesus.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. Well, remind me not to run into a 6'4 trainer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, man. And it's like just like a V, dude. I was like, oh my god, like I drew him and I was like, God, why? People are just like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, uh, I think this pretty much puts the uh idea to bet. I mean, you you can do a lot of things to further your training goals without spending a lot of money or very little money. So hopefully you took something away from today's podcast. And I really appreciate you guys um who support us on a regular basis. We have a very you know dedicated group of viewers that that enjoy what we do, and I really appreciate all of you who download the show uh in podcast form. Make sure you leave us a great rating. It helps us uh you know show up further in the podcast results. Also, if you're here on YouTube, make sure you drop a like. And look, if you're feeling generous and you want to buy us a cup of coffee, you can give us a super thanks up uh above. If you're signed into YouTube Red, you can always drop a super thanks and send five bucks our way or whatever you feel like giving us. And that goes towards the good of the group as well, towards lighting and cameras and gadgets and coffee and all the things that we need to keep moving. Okay, but um hey, there's lots of ways you can support us. Make sure you leave a comment down below if you're especially if you're watching here on YouTube. Um, drop a comment down below. Let us know what you do to train on the cheap. Are there some things that we left out? Are there some things that you do that maybe your fellow viewers need to know? Please let us know. We would love to hear your feedback. Um, so thank you all so very much for watching today. There's many more podcasts on the way, tons of great YouTube videos on the way. And I hope everybody has a great week. Thanks so much for tuning in. And Matt, uh, anything else for us today?

SPEAKER_00:

No, man. Train hard. I'm kidding. I'm gonna get sued.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Y'all have a good day. Many more on the way. We'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for listening to Life Liberty and Pursuit. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are found. Be sure to leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate that. You can support us over on Ballistic Inc. by picking yourself up some merch. And remember, guys, dangerous freedom. Have a good one.