 Georgie, how are you? Yes, wonderful. Absolutely delighted to host you today. Robin, how are you, sir? Morning, Chris. I'm cool. Yeah, ready to go? Good, good. I like your backdrop. Yeah, well, it hides the boxes behind. Yes, who dares wins? Hide boxes. So our dear friends at home, massive welcome to you. Thank you for joining us. This is a really special edition of the bought the t-shirt podcast because I have two fantastic guests who and I think the three of us have a shared connection is that we've all fired rifles or shotguns in in our time. My guests have done a lot more of it than I have and there's certainly a lot more accomplished. Oh, sorry, I forgot the stop, the all important stopwatch. Georgina Roberts from the British shooting team is going to represent us at the Paris 2024. I've got to write that down because I don't really watch much television. So, yeah, I guess. Are they starting to promote that, Georgie, already? Is that something that's in the media? So I'm sure they have done, but they'll be making a big push of it much closer to the time. Probably wants to take a kind of done it out of the way. Yes, good job. We'll come and we'll come and talk more about that in a sec. Robin Horsfowl, former SAS trooper, one of the legends of the Iranian embassy siege, although he's probably going to tell me not to use that word. Very proud paratrooper and also quite an accomplished author. In fact, I think after we've had our chat now, we're going to do a second video and talk about Robin's latest book, Warrior Poet, which I've been reading this morning. And yes, got a lot to say about that, Robin. It's a great piece of literature. So yes, Georgie, the Olympics, how that it must be a dream come true, isn't it? Yeah, so it's something that I'm still working towards. But it's been my dream for the last maybe last five years, as long as I've been shooting, is to be able to go to the Commonwealth, go to the Olympics and to have... So my performance at the moment is the best it's ever been. I've got the kind of new coaches on board working on different elements like strength and conditioning and nutrition and everything's really coming together to put me in the best place for this next Olympic cycle. So it's going to be hard work and there's lots to be done, but I'm so excited. Oh, well, you should be a massive congratulations. What exactly are you going to do in the event, Georgie? What is it involved? Is it a fitness aspect to it? A run or what? I don't know anything about it. No, so Olympic Trap is an event which is over 125 targets. So there are five stands and there are 15 traps in front of you and so there's three traps in front of every single stand and there's... Out of the three traps you've got a straight, a left and a right. So when you call for the target you don't know which one you're going to get and say there's 125 targets in qualification and then at a minute when you go into the final you shoot 50 targets, single barrel and then you have go on to the last three so everyone drops out so the lowest score will drop out until you get down to the final three. When bronze drops out it's just the golden silver medal match, which is 10 targets and then the winner is... The gold medalist. Georgie, what and I've seen you firing shotguns Is this the same weapon? Yeah, yeah so we use 12 gauge shotguns. Do we call a shotgun a rifle or is it? There we go. All a boat ship. Failed at the first hurdle. Oh brilliant, brilliant and Robin can you tell us a bit about being a trained sniper and trained by the Royal Marines? Absolutely yeah I was I was always in the day I arrived in a barrister and I was on the shooting team even before I joined my battalion I was straight on the shooting team and so I had an affinity for it and Robin can you just speak up a bit, it's gone a bit quiet. I think we used to call me Bob when I was in the Army so I've got the nickname Bisley Bob and because I was always shooting at Bisley and always talking about Bisley. Why is Bisley such a name that we all recognise? Well it's the main small arms shooting centre in UK and all the biggest competitions always used to be held at Bisley and they still are and but you know that the Army Army got smaller it's less so now but you know they've got the ranges you know you go back to you go back to 1500 meters you know so it's and you know the longest range I ever worked that was 1200 but when I went to the Royal Marines and did the Royal Marine Sniper Course it's I always divide sniping and marksmanship. Marksmanship when you can hit a target with a weapon but being a sniper is about being invisible hitting a target and then escaping without getting killed so there's an awful lot more to being a sniper than being a marksman but the marksmanship skills are the same you know the the way you the way you function with the weapon the way you breathe the way you use your eyes you know we used to do all sorts of things black in the foresight I mean my eyes now I'd struggle to see the foresight of a rifle but I will say one thing with great respect to Georgina when I I was great with a pistol I was absolutely awesome with a rifle but when it came to a shotgun I couldn't hit idly squat anything really I couldn't useless with us we're useless when it came to um when it came to play pigeon couldn't hear a damn thing yeah we um we uh when I was on ship I was on ship for aircraft carrier for a year as one of the marines in a marines detachment and we got quite a lot of range time which was great we also got to fire the 7.62 SLR which had gone out of service by the time I joined but was still being used in in in the navy on on on board fantastic to get the different experience between 5.56 and 7.62 especially a long barrel weapon like the SLR the accuracy over long distance it was just completely different whereas the SA-80 SLR I could guarantee hitting a man at 500 meters you know whereas and your section firepower was 600 with a gpmg as part of your fire team as soon as they dropped it down to 225 and the SA-80 I mean your section firepower is reduced by 250 meters terrible never ever supported the idea of putting that piece of rubbish into the british armed forces we're talking about the weapon georgina the SA-80 which is a weapon the british arm is still used today um not a supporter of it yeah well apparently I don't want to talk too much kind of you know nitty gritty war stuff but in Afghanistan the 5.56 wasn't stopping the enemy um apparently if they're high on whatever drug is in favor over there they will just keep coming and so the fssg and and and the like and the special forces got this shorter barreled 7.62 I'm apologies friends at home can somebody put in the comments the rifle I'm talking about um just because it had had more more stopping power but yeah well it's a it's a similar size weapon it's um obviously a european european brand I believe but the the shotgun anecdote I was going to tell was we're on ship and on the range one day someone pulled out this pump hatch and shotgun and he could load up 10 10 cartridges um what do we call them cartridges cases yeah shotgun cartridge isn't it sorry my other screens just flipped off um um we had a chat Paul hello Paul if you're watching I'm not going to say your surname but Paul grabbed this shotgun went up to the target and and they were graciously allowing us to shoot from from five meters or something anyway ten times and managed to miss every single shot which is it that's almost unique in itself we're pumped back to the shotgun to miss from five meters but how many are you hitting out of how many georgina to get up to the standard you're at um so out of one two five a minute my personal best is 118 wow so a minute about a one ten would be making a women's final yeah yeah tell us a little bit about the the technique you use in order in in in terms of leading the the target and so on so an olympic trap there's no lead because the gun movement obviously when you call for the target the target leaves immediately there's no delay um and so it's just based on reaction time and it's the gun speed from the initial movement through to the target um as soon as you reach the target you pull the trigger so you don't see any lead um it's just the momentum to the target will obviously pull a barrel in front of the target naturally and um put it in the right place is that's where i was going wrong when you guys say lead is that is that if you were clay pigeon shooting and you sort of follow like this or am i misunderstanding yeah so um so with sporting targets you would you would give things leads if it was a crossing target you were if this is the target you would have to pull through the target and give it a gap pull the trigger in front and then the target will kind of catch up with you and have to put the shot um but with an olympic trap because they're going away you don't have to we don't have to do that so they've got up to 45 degree angles and but again with the the momentum and the gun speed you you don't see that lead yeah i think you're going to have to explain traps again because i might be speaking for people well probably speaking for people at home well when you're saying trap i'm i'm am i getting confused with the clay pigeon launcher yes that's what a trap is yeah okay sorry that's what i thought it was but i wasn't sure if it was i've maybe um got that mixed up yeah so there's 15 of them lined up in front of you underground and there's three in front of each stand so you if you'd stand on peg one there'd be three directly in front of you and when you pull pull you're going to get a left a straight or a right hand target ah yes of course now it makes sense from what i've seen right okay and you're saying it it wings it out in a straight pretty much a straight direction so you're just up and shoot yeah so it's 40 foot between um straight ahead of you to a 45 degree left or right hand target you don't know which right it's going to go so for a 45 degree would would you have to lead slightly again no because of the gun speed you wouldn't you wouldn't see that it's just so quick yeah okay right i'm i'm gonna try and put a bit of video footage at the at the beginning of our podcast just so people will will get a clearer picture wow it's the direction as well because it's going away from you you don't you don't the lead wouldn't make any difference it's it's firing from in front of you straight away from you you know off it you know it within that certain at those certain angles whereas when you start playing play pigeon it goes across the front of you um like a bird would and so you you do have to lead uh you know i i understood what it i understood where you were coming from yeah there's difference between the powers of the brains right um what what about safety georgey in that kind of uh arena and obviously it's as tight as anywhere on any other range does it throw up any issues or any or any sort of changes need to be made um so we are very very safe in the UK obviously everyone's licensed um and there's always like um a cpsa safety officer on site somewhere um and most shooting grounds in the UK you you can't actually just go around by yourself unless you do have that um shotgun license and you are an experienced shot so if you are a beginner and you'll always be escorted by an instructor and he can make sure that every or like safety precautions being followed and everyone's going to be nice nice and safe as they're going around the ground which is is great for the sport as well because it means that you know we get so much negative press that we we wouldn't want any mishaps or any accidents to um to kind of damage the sport further what are you negative at just in terms of of guns and gun handling um and crime associations yeah yeah we don't very much anti gun in the house very much anti guns in the public domain but um when you're in a controlled environment like the sport environment where you know the weapons come out and it particularly can throw away and they're completely supervised and everything's very controlled you know that I think sometimes people have just taken advantage of the word gun without looking any deeper into it um I think there's definitely a bit of education piece around it and and that's one thing that I've really been trying to to make a push towards is trying to show and demonstrate that actually shooting is an olympic sport it's got so many different benefits and there's something within shooting for everyone so whether it's taking your kids out for a day um whether that's with an air rifle or a fore tent um you know something small that they can kind of get their hands on and get involved with or you know family days out hendues and stag dues are becoming ever more popular um and so although it is an olympic sport there is uh a level and for everyone all different ranges of ability everyone can get involved and that's why it's such a fantastic sport so it's just getting into those places who've got no experience of shooting for what shooting is and what it actually is and explaining to them why it's so good and that actually guns aren't bad you know it's the the person in control of the gun that would potentially be the issue however with the licensing in the UK you know that's that's no longer an issue yeah there's um there's big cultural issues about the places in the world where guns are an issue where you have mass killings on a regular basis i mean i live in the Czech Republic and um every Czech person's allowed if they wish to buy a license and carry a weapon um and then we have no gun crime here at all so there's a there's a cultural aspect behind it but if you mix if you mix an idiot with the free access of weapons then you've got a big problem yeah yes i think i've shot once in a what what we'd call a safe environment and that was the range that i was talking about in the navy um second time was quite obscure we were in i think we're probably in the Mediterranean or somewhere on this aircraft carry and the pipe came over the tannery to hear it to hear it if anyone would like to shoot clay pigeons go to the such and such boat deck well of course i think 12 marines immediately just went to the boat deck and one of the sailors had just brought his shotgun and he was massively into clay pigeon shooting and they'd set the trap up and um yeah we all let it go at popping a few clays out over the ocean and the second time was my mate called me up said you want to come shoot shooting i said yeah so we went to his cousin's farm and he just handed me a shotgun and we just we walked around the farm looking for for rabbits and the like and finally a pigeon flew over and i went up one one feather feather came down that was the i must have got reason to be close to it unless pigeons shed feathers when they're scared yes i tell you what we should do folks is let's go into the questions because otherwise i think we're we're we're going to be recovering them if that makes makes sense or you're going to ruin all my the hours and hours i've spent preparing plan boulder it will go wrong yes all the best laid plans so first question georgia if you want to take this one first what kind of mind and body warm up would you do in preparation for your for your shoot um so that's a really good question i've just done a bit of a piece on this um through my coaching so for a mind warm up it's very much um listening to music going through my process which is kind of very ocd laid out following different steps so it's kind of like a checklist making sure that everything's ready before you go on to the to the round and so yeah listening to music making sure that i'm putting my vest on it and the right order and things like that and and getting to the range and whilst you're on the range there's loads of different things that you can do so one of my favorites is watching the targets of the squad that's in front of me to warm my eyes up get used to what the the background looks like looking at the angles of the targets which are the bigger angles on which are the stands so i can prepare myself for that and also orange tennis balls are fantastic for again activating that hand like coordination like your i don't know receptors in your eyes or something just fires them up a little bit more um and again just warms your reactions up your vision up so because you have to react to the target so quickly you need to be able to make sure that your eyes are going to be able to adjust to the different depth perceptions um see that's another fantastic one just as you're standing there getting ready um and for the physical side of things i've also got some resistance fans so i've worked with a physiator and come up with different warm-ups i can do for my upper body um to activate muscles rather than to step the energy away from them before i go on um so one of the things i've learned recently that i didn't know was actually that using static um warm-up drills uh just like this actually staff energy from you before you go and do your physical exercise or you're shooting whatever that might be um and just to again do little like movements that are going to warm up the muscles that you're the specific muscles that you're going to use um so there's we've i've just recently done a couple of videos of the different warm-ups with the different resistance fans and how to go through them um and i've sent them to my athletes that i'm coaching at the moment so they can use those as well but it's really interesting to when you start working with um kind of people in high performance that there's so much untapped knowledge that i just never knew about before i got into the world class program so yeah it's really fascinating to know the different things that you can you can do to warm up um and and then the last kind of more technical thing that i could do when i'm on the range is just a bit of dry mounting um so if i was training um just by myself i could you know do a bit of single barrel training just to warm myself up um but when you're about to shoot a competition you can't just have a go at a few shots before you know they they say ready and so it's just getting on the stands and mounting the gun up into your shoulder and doing a few movements to make sure that you know that you're you're mobile you're ready and just making sure that the gun's sitting in the right place in your shoulder that all your layers are right and your vest isn't all crumpled up and things like that and then just making sure that you're ready to go i'll be um i think i'll be listening to some abba are you gonna are you gonna let us in on what you'd listen to it depends on mood i'm in so um recently i've been listening to a little bit of arctic monkeys um but before that i've listened to queens i'm a diehard queen fan and yeah really just it depends if i'm already in a hype.mood i'm ready to go and if i need a little bit of motivation and a little bit of a kick up the bomb to get myself psyched up for it so yeah it really depends. Robin what would you be listening to i picture you a bit like myself an avril levine fan. Well if it came to um a stalk and a shoot then the first thing you'd very very different scenario all together because um the first thing you'd be doing is looking at your map um looking at the relief of the land looking for the cover looking for where you can be seen where you can't be seen looking at your air photography making your plan and your route then making sure your weapon is completely clean and ready and your ammunition is good and um your camouflage is fantastic and you can't be seen and then knowing which areas you can walk through and which areas you need to crawl through in order to get within range of your enemy or your target and then to be able to get in there to be absolutely unseen you have to make sure that your barrel is completely clean of oil so it doesn't leave any smoke because that's going to give you away it's no good just to get into a position take a shot and then be seen and then having somebody bring mortifier down on you so you um you need to be able to get in there fire a shot uh one shot take out your target and then be able to withdraw into the dead ground and move away and nobody ever knows you were there um a good a good team of snipers can stop a battalion advancing because their fire is effective so you start to take out specific people for specific reasons leaders um people carrying heavy weapons and so on um and you're also passing information back so you're not always in a position of shooting you have to maybe let people walk past you and pass the information about them back to headquarters um sometimes you bring down gunfire on them as well so it's um it's a very different scene it's a very different preparation as far as music is concerned you know um maybe a bit of Wagner in the background you know but no absolute silence it's immediately you pick up a very different vibe between the two environments don't you yeah sport sport is wonderful and sports is important it's great and it's good for everybody um you know taking taking a military environment and trying to compare the two is is is very very difficult what the skills the shooting skills of a person with a rifle if Georgina was um involved in rifle shooting then the skills would be absolutely identical in terms of the marksmanship but um the skills that she has with a shotgun uh just not just not on my um on my palate at all hey i'm just going to dive in there for our friends at home um this is just a bit of fun folks this isn't a competition or we're not trying to say you know an sas sniper is better than a a british um marks marks person right it's it's i'm fascinated with this conversation so before you key war warriors go oh this is bloody it's it's you know i i hope people at home are enjoying this as much as i am the amazing thing about weapons is when i was um when i was bodyguarding i was the bodyguard to the prime minister of levin on raffi cariri and we used to live in paris and underneath avenue fresh there was a shooting range for hand handguns and all my all my weapons training with pistols have been with um a nine millimeter automatic weapon and um when we got to paris we had to have a port d'arm which allowed us to carry revolvers but not automatics so um i couldn't hit a damn thing with the revolver until a man called andretti who was shoulder gold bodyguard at one time put me aside and taught me the different uh finger pressure technique with a revolver because the first pull on the trigger has to rotate the drum whereas that doesn't happen on an automatic and with that with maybe i was about an hour straining with this guy privately all of a sudden my shooting standards were up to level again so you know i'm sure if i had an hour with georgina she'd get me to hit at least two out of 125 you know definitely definitely next question then um so back to georgi um in your case i'm going to say gun and ammo preparation and then when we go to robin i'm going to say rifle and ammo preparation um so yeah how would you prepare your weapon is it right to call it a weapon in your that sounds a bit aggressive doesn't it well they are technically all weapons i guess um but a shotgun gun yeah so how would you prepare your shotgun and and your ammunition um so again like robin said just making sure that's all clean there's no like blockages in the barrel um take it all together so it's just we have like lockable hard cases so the forend and the barrel are separate to the stop any action so you just slot the barrels onto the action and then side the forend on and just break the gun so side the top of your cross make sure that um there's no ammunition already in the gun and then you just got to make sure that you've got enough ammunition to take on for each round so with trap shooting gets 25 targets but you're allowed two shots at each target um so you're allowed to take 50 shells or 52 because you're allowed to clear your gun first so when you go on your first round of the day you're allowed two shots just to make sure that the gun's in working order and and there's no damage or anything to the gun everything's fine and then you're allowed two shots at the rest of the round so in total you could potentially take 50 shots at each target so just making sure that you've got enough ammunition to see through the round but it's all um you know what from the ground um so I know that I and I don't know if you do Robin but I know that with rifles you could a lot of people do some reloading um but that's not something you'd ever really be able to do with shotgun cartridges so everything's just shot bought and is there a an expiry date on these cartridges is that something that is an issue in the sport not especially not the rate I go through my cartridges um no there's not really um so again you wouldn't leave cartridges lying around for 40 or so years and expect them to perform as well as um a new batch would however as long as I kept in you know a dry environment then you know they should be absolutely fine and which part of the shotgun would you be cleaning I I picture that you've got the long brushes right for the for the barrel is that I think we've all seen those what about the other parts of the so it depends so um if you're having like a really a bit of a spring clean then you would take it completely to pieces so um you take the trigger out and use maybe use a compressor and spray all the dirt and mark out of all the levers and the coil springs and whatever you've got going on in your trigger system um however that will potentially be once or twice a year um or if you're getting your gun serviced um but the rest of it so you take I've got a fixed choke barrel um but for those who don't they take their chokes out at the end of the barrel and clean them oil them put them back in again just clean the um the barrel and you spray the outside so again if it was raining you know they go rusty which has happened before um and so I do the wood as well so for the stock that I've got at the moment isn't quite finished yet so I'm still every now and then shaving a little bit off here and there around the palm so I'll just to make sure that it's it's sitting nicely in my hand and I'm really comfortable with it um how do you shave it off it sounds like a bit of sandpaper or something paper yeah because it's only like not even half a mil at a time it's just making sure that it's just the tiniest bit if it's a bit rough I'll just sand it down a little bit more um and then when I'm 100% happy with it I just need a bit of you know wet to dry sandpaper raise the grain take the grain off um and then oil it oil it down which I haven't done yet but I need to fascinating I should point out again for friends at home the reason I keep making the uh the distinguishment if that's even a word between a rifle and a gun is if I was to call a rifle a gun my marine former marine colleagues would crucify me it's a it's a golden rule in the rural marines you never call a rifle a gun and you certainly don't do what the army do is call it a gap which is even a bigger sin for us as well so yeah I'm not I'm not trying to sell picky um I'm just trying not to trip over my term terminology here so Robin um rifle and ammunition preparation and this gets a bit more serious I suppose because it's life and well no no not more serious winning a gold medal at the Olympics is probably the most serious moment in your life uh but what Robin's done is equally has equally serious implications well if you um as I say you know you take um the most difficult case which is you're going out alone on a stork sometimes you're on pairs of snipers but um you're going out alone on a stork um your weapon is your life um so and it can it can it can betray you as well as help you so you need to make sure that your weapon can't do that so you'll strip clean assemble it you'll make sure that it has almost no oil in it once you once you've cleaned it because smoke from the oil will give you away you zero the weapon which means you take it to a range if you have the opportunity and you make sure that the the weapon is the weapon is firing exactly where the sights are pointing um you make sure that your scope is good you make sure that your lenses are clean you make sure that your camouflage is not obscuring your lenses you make sure that your camouflage is obscuring the tip of your barrel because that can be visible to somebody with binoculars at a distance um you make sure your ammunition that the one thing people don't understand about um rifles is that the accuracy depends as much on the ammunition as it does on the fire if you have factory made ammunition in a 762 caliber then 100 meters the chances are you'll get the best you're going to get is a three to four inch group and that's not down to the 100 meters and that's not down to the fire that's down to the ammunition the quality of the ammunition whereas if you get match filled ammunition which is measured to the absolute minimum grain and um handmade then the same fire it can probably get a one to two inch gap two inch group at 100 meters now when you take a target back to 800 meters to a thousand meters that's a huge difference even on a still day that one inch difference of a group is going to be eight inches at 800 meters and then you add the wind into it and you add the change of light from change of light from greater difference as well but where your shot falls and the angle that you're shooting at whether you're shooting down the slope or up a slope um they make a difference to your perspective so they make a difference to where the the shot falls um so all these things have to come into consideration and you get one shot um so um it's um in our test with the Royal Marines um you've got one shot and then a man came and stood behind you within five meters and the observers who were out to your front had to see if they could see you through inoculars if they couldn't you'd pass that bit then the man would come and put his hand on your head or on the tip of the barrel and if they then couldn't see you you'd pass you know so you know being invisible was extremely important your camouflage has to be very very good they would also look through your sights to make sure you could see the target because clearly on a day when their observers are in front of the firing blanks but um yeah there's a there's a huge amount I really get annoyed with the press when they refer to people on roofs and people in various conflicts as snipers they're not they're just firing they're they're they're just gunmen they're shooting um a sniper is a man with a huge number of skills designed to make him a military weapon um and it takes a long time a marksman is a different thing a marksman is one skill to be a sniper and a marksman is somebody you can hit a target at a long range very very effectively that's a marksman um and the terms are misused when you when you're in the raw marines and you do the pw3 the sniper course um if you if you get 65 percent out of everything on the course then you're quite you're classed as a sniper if you get 80 percent on everything on the course that's every single aspect then you're a sniper marksman and if you fail on any category by a quarter of a point then you've failed the whole course and that's how serious is the raw marines formed the best sniper group in the first world war and they're the only unit in the in the world who have maintained a sniper training system uh since then so for over a hundred years and it shows in the quality of their quality of their training their people nobody comes close to it you just reminded me of something then when I was in training at limestone and we had to do the stalks I guess we were what marks marksman training to be marksman on the stalk so not not a sniper but very similar to what robin's talk about we have to crawl into position the guy comes and touches your he points like this and they have to say yay or nay and um as soon as they you're all lined out and the enemy is over there and you have to get close to them as possible and they say go everyone just drops to ground or that's what everyone was doing in my troop and I would just head into the dead ground and run as fast as I could cover the quarter of a mile just follow with the dead ground basically and just get as absolutely as close as I I could before I went to went to ground just to just to make the whole thing easier um so yeah so all the potential raw marine recruits watching there you go there's a good tip for you if you go back to what Georgina was saying it's something that we probably do have in common that she was nodding and that's quality of ammunition and you have to have your ammunition made especially for you because you know you're going to get the same effect every single time you pull the trigger yeah some of the war zones you've been in Robin and some of the conflicts I guess there's a big difference between say maybe Swedish or French made ammunition and and Indian for example no it's not so much that it's just that um if it's factory made it's um you know it comes off a machine that's pumping out and um and you know it's a standard for everybody you go down the you go down the local um shooting shop and you buy 12 12 gauge cartridges and you know they just get made in a factory when you get match filled ammunition when you get handmade ammunition then the differences are minimal and minimized absolute ends degree so that you're going to guarantee getting almost exactly the same effect with every single shot you fire incredible so you so the British military would actually factor that in if you if you're sent off to war they're going to have snipers ammunition especially for you not really they used to have a thing called black ball which was selected ammunition from the factory batches so it was the best factory batches um when I was with special forces we used to buy Winchester match um and when I was on the counter terrorist team that was Winchester match so that we had this high quality ammunition um you know because we were we had the budget and we were capable of doing it I mean most soldiers in conflict don't even look at what they're shooting at it's just pull the trigger and hope for the best um you know the very very best trend and then the old decks and so on you know they'll they'll take the time they'll breathe they'll shoot the target but if you've got uh 50 men shooting at an enemy across a field there's probably only 10 on each side they're actually aiming yes of course Georgie have you ever or do you make your own ammunition no um so you wouldn't be able to get as consistent if you were reloading shotgun cartridges however there's a big difference in the different manufacturers so the best um kind of quality ammunition you'd get really is from Italy um you know it's their their bread and butter um and it's kind of especially with Olympic track you need kind of a quicker foot per second so Olympic track targets are shooting um or they're flying out and they're traveling 76 meters so you want to make sure that your ammunition is you know you know your pellets are going to get there before it starts to drop off and hit the ground so yeah there's a big difference but we'd never reload our own cartridges you get sponsored for for your training and stuff do you I mean do you get any kind of sponsorship are you allowed that uh yes you are allowed that I'm really fortunate that I'm sponsored by um shooting star who are the importer for RC cartridges um so I get my cartridges um sponsored thankfully but sponsorship is so few and far between in the UK it's really really difficult to get um and I'm one of very very few who have got cartridge sponsors so yeah there are there are a lot of people out there who haven't and shooting star if you're watching yes thank you just giving you a shout out on the bought the t-shirt podcast that's a tenner please um what are we on next I've I've got um pressure as in dealing with the pressure of the situation posture and squeezing the trigger what can what can we say about that Georgie you can say something for everything so I'm excited I have shot um I'm all right with the rifle I've obviously done a lot more shotgun than I have rifle um but there's a huge difference in squeezing the trigger so with shotgun it's much more of a um clunky movement so it's just give it a good old jank and rather than a gentle squeeze that you would do um you know for a rifle um so yeah that the first time I shot a rifle that was a bit of a surprise for me um because no one told me that um so mindset and and dealing with pressure is just the more you know the more you you know expose yourself to competition that the easier it is to cope with and once you've been on the world stage competing in world cups you know the pressure is always that as long as you care so you always want to feel some kind of pressure and some kind of nervousness because if if you lose that then you know it doesn't matter anymore and that's probably when you should stop competing because you it needs to matter to you do you have a specific technique to say block out the crowd or block out the magnitude of of of the event that you're involved in and just try to be yourself is there anything you you you say to yourself or yeah there's lots of things that I say to myself so there's a few different things and so I've got like a mental routine as I'm shooting so um it would be just to remind myself to like of my process is probably one of the main things so if I if I'm keeping my head down um say there's tv cameras or whatever floating around keeping my head down and when I'm in between stands and when I'm on the stands my eyes are out on my pickup point for where I'm going to pick the target up and just focusing on on there and I'll use like positive phrases to kind of big myself up and give myself almost affirmations as to you know you deserve to be here you're going to smash that target and using visualization so in a final we use flash targets so you shoot the target and it's got powder underneath the target so when you shoot it explodes the big pink puff of smoke um and so I just visualize that in between every single target and you just break it down into it's not a competition of 125 targets for the final it's 125 miniature competitions of one target I just have to shoot this one target okay I've hit that one fantastic right forget that one I've got just got to shoot this next target fantastic I've hit that one and even if you miss one it's the same thing doesn't matter you've missed one onto the next one next competition of one target fantastic I've hit that one and then having a mindset like that is is rather than build it trying to build a score in your head you're like I don't know how to explain it you're just shooting I'm focusing on that one simple task rather than having this huge job in front of you and breaking it down into tiny little steps instead of having a huge set of ladders in front of you it's just so much easier to cope with mentally and but when I'm shooting yeah I'll tell myself all these different positive things and I'll calm myself down and I use acceptance therapy and acceptance and conversion therapy I think it's called so it's just accepting what's happening if you have like you're never going to be able to get rid of your negative thoughts that you can try but your brain can only focus on one thing so if you're trying so hard to get rid of that one negative thing you're just focusing on it more and giving it more attention so actually just saying okay I've got this negative thought there's nothing I can do about it I can't get rid of it just accept that it's there and park it for now and I can deal with it later it's not going to go anywhere and so just leave it in a box and then shoot that target and then you can think about it in between the next target and then as soon as you're ready for your task you're going to shoot that target okay you can stay there it doesn't matter just focus on the process and keep going like that and one thing that I found really really helpful is actually almost going into like a meditative state so just being solely focused on that one thing and just being really like almost in a trance because it's such a repetitive sport you know you've got a love repetition to shoot Olympic trap or Olympic ski but it really makes you focus and it doesn't matter what's going on around you no one's going to pull you from that and it's just it's one thing that I'm working on at the moment is how to call myself in and out of that like trance and when I need to so if someone on the range and comes and gives you a yellow card or something like that and you have to break yourself out of it and if there's a trap breakdown you're waiting for 10 minutes before you can continue to shoot it's okay I need to come out of this now go back on to stance okay back to work back into that state of mind and that's one thing I'm really really working on and it's it's hard work but when it works then you get it right you're unstoppable hey there's got to be a great book there isn't there zen and the art of shotgun yeah it fits in that fits in perfectly um is a zen experience you're talking about I did martial arts for more than 30 years until I broke my neck and um but um one of the things I would add is that you must train under pressure you must train with fear now that's just not the fear of being killed that's the fear of failure the fear of missing the fear of making full of yourself all those fears and um so you must train with that pressure all the time and there's a famous writer and a psychologist called Malcolm Gladwell who wrote tipping point and blink and what the dog saw and uh you know he essentially said that a lot of people uh make mistakes uh with firearms because they um they're placed in a situation they're not used to so a policeman with a gun who suddenly gets confronted by something he's not very fit um his heartbeat shoots up you can't make minor cognitive decisions when your heartbeat goes above 145 beats a minute so if the fear gets to you in any capacity then you can't function properly which is why special forces soldiers where athletes um you know uh of your with with specific skills have to train with pressure and the other thing is don't let the little voice come into your head have you ever been rehearsing something or practicing something and a little voice comes into your head is what about and you know you get distracted you must learn to keep the little voice out of your head which is then um once you get the little voice out of your head you're operating with a part of your brain that's natural and all you need to remember is the first thing you ever do in every system so if the first thing you ever do is put your feet in a particular position so long as you remember to put your feet in that position everything else will follow through providing you don't let the little voice come into your head. Robin was that um obviously that must have been a factor in the Iranian embassy siege because the policeman who was held hostage had a pistol didn't he? Yeah Trouble Lock had a uh 38 smith and wesson um not smith and wesson walfa i think it was um anyway he had a 38 revolver that he never drew on use because he knew that it would have made situation worse but he held on to it right until the very last moment when we assaulted the building um but again he was thrust into a situation that he wasn't prepared and trained for he was a policeman with a gun and all of a sudden this disaster happened where he suddenly held hostage with 23 other people in a building for six days and he's got this gun fucked down his jacket all the time um and he has the discipline not to use it because he realized that it only make things worse um he he um struggled with that decision later because one of the hostages was murdered um by one of the terrorists and uh he didn't do anything about it and he always struggled with that but i reassured him when i met him that it was the right thing to do um but you know zen is um is is getting into that automatic um system of functioning where all your training and all your um input and everything else comes together in a moment and all the noise seems to disappear you're in a kind of um you're in a kind of container where even if there's a crowd they're at a distance they're outside the noise is coming from far away and um for that short moment when you're practicing your skill you're contained in this very very special environment where everything seems to be slow motion and yet it's not it's an absolute full speed absolutely focused on that one thing that you have to do and complete in that short period of time and if you can hold on to it it's amazing what you can do but it takes it's not it's not just something in the brain it's it's years and years and hours and hours of constant repetition work practice and instruction and listening and absorbing what other people can give you and finally putting it together and uh in that moment you know you you very rarely forget the moments when that happens to you wow you heard it here first folks what have i got here next so um georgey how does atmospheric some weather affect what you do quite a lot um so again being on the shooting range we're outside we're kind of exposed to the elements so um quite often in the uk we've got a bit of a shelter so we've got um a kind of a roof over the layout but there won't be like a back or any sides to where it's just to kind of get the rain off us um but any extreme weather conditions so wind has a massive massive impact on targets um making them skip dive bring them back over the top of us um so i can't remember what the storm was called but we had a very windy storm a couple of weeks ago when we've on a gb training camp and um some of the targets um the left hand targets were shooting out and then coming back over the top of us like this um and because you know in those situations it was only a training camp so we were able to have a bit of fun with it um we would instead of when we saw it was the left hander coming out instead of shooting at them um we would wait and we would shoot them sporting styles so we would wait for them to come back over the top of us and then shoot them um as they reached their kicking we're on the way down just to have a little bit of fun with it um so yeah i think we're the olympic trap and severe weather um you do need to have other skills so it definitely benefits you if you have a little bit of experience of shooting skeet or shooting sporting so they're you know crossing targets like you talked about earlier Robin the one that you do have to give lead for and just being able to use your shotgun at anything you put it to and just knowing that the gun fits you properly so wherever you point it it's you know it's going to break the target um and knowing that that fits you well as long as you put that to be on the site is on the end of the barrel on the target you know it's going to break it's definitely going to help yeah i remember um in my military training if there was say a wind gusting mildly you would aim off the the figure 11 target comes with a set of rings around if i remember rightly and you would just aim for the so if the wind's coming from in from the left you would aim to your left one one ring so maybe a hand whip a hand whip from from the center if it was a sort of moderate to strong wind you'd aim at the edge of the target and obviously the greater the distance the more you increase this aiming off but with the SA80 if you were firing at say 300 meters in a in in a strong wind you'd be aiming off sort of several several target whips it was almost like a sort of guessing educated um guessing game is that the same when when you're shooting yeah absolutely so we don't have any kind of marker points to go okay well i need to be this many rings over and it's just you kind of just have to read the target it's just going off natural instincts and again it's just having that experience in other areas of shotgun disciplines that's going to help with that and just reading the target how much the target is dropping and then again like you say an educated guess as to how much you need to be in front or underneath or over the top of it and depending on where the wind's taking it wow incredible yes same question to you then robin what atmospheric some weather it seems when you watch these films like american sniper and he's got his wingman there and they're adjusting and it um yeah i mean all those things that like that are relevant um um the the greater the range the more the relevance so um if you're shooting at somebody 100 meters away um then the atmospherics are not going to make a big enough difference for you to be too concerned about it unless somebody's running or walking across your front and you have to leave them but if they're standing still uh or in a fixed position then you're going to it's not going to make a difference when you get back to ranges over 600 meters over 500 meters then all the atmospherics actually come into play the light the level of light changes the fall of shot because it changes your visual perspective um the air temperature changes the air pressure changes it if a whole dry weather the air is thicker than warm wet weather so you know over a long range that's going to make a difference to the fall of your shot on a cold dry day your shot's going to fall lower at 1200 meters and it is on a on a wet day believe it or not i mean everybody imagines that oh it's wet it's thick it's humid well believe it or not the the air is thinner on a warm wet day than it is on a cold dry day um you learn this if you ever fly helicopters it's aerodynamics um you know so all those things come into play the wind is is vitally important you have to be able to read the wind and a long range the wind may be still where you are but you have to look at the trees or the grass or the vegetation across the whole distance that your your shot is going to travel because you may find that there's a gap in the trees where the wind comes through and or look at the tops of the trees where it's swaying backwards and forwards the grass on the ground is a good indicator of what the wind's doing all the way down to the target if there's grass um the ripples on the top of the water will give you an indication um all those things come into play if you're going to be able to hit somebody along a long distance and the closer it gets the less important these things become they're all relevant i'm going to disappear for 20 seconds for a very important reason i'll be back okay i'm just gonna uh i will chat to george then yeah i guess you've got to go and punch your bear robin so give it one from me i was going to talk about ranges george but you've i think you've already i mean your car are you is your sport a sort of fixed range or i i guessing they can set the trap at different powers for probably using the wrong wrong word but yeah they can so um within olympic trap if you are shooting an i'da bless f event or it's like a great britain selection shoot they will always be set to kind of maximum output so they're all going to be traveling the 76 meters um because that's kind of like the international standard is is that 76 meters a second um no just that's the distance that the target will travel is that before it starts to dip or when it hits the ground so that's from the trap to it's um kind of final destination so hitting the ground yeah okay yeah thanks for clearing that up yeah so it's if you're a coaching beginner or getting someone new into the sport you would then wind the trap back um and you'd ease off the prep their power and the pressure kind of thing on the springs just so it's not as soul destroying for someone who's just getting into it because you want to hook them in you want them to enjoy it you want them to be able to hit some targets you don't want to like let them hit absolutely nothing the first time around they'll put them off the life um because it's so destroying i think we're all parents aren't we i think i know robin is yeah i'm not no all right so uh that i think that rings a bell with all parents out there making it a bit easier yeah i'm a great grandfather three times a great grandfather yeah you look way too old for that robin i know i know and that's without a beard um what's what's the longest sort of shot you've taken them robin and had a bit of success with at 1200 meters 1200 meters on a man-sized target and um you know uh you get it i got everything right on that particular day and you know you sit back and uh you say okay the most important shot any soldier ever takes the first shot and so you do all use all your skills and all your readings and you hope you've got it right and then you lay down and you you know you breathe out i mean the breathing system with um with a rifle is very very important because the only time you're if you're laying down then you would be at 1200 meters um your your the only way you're going to get exactly the same position with your chest is to have empty lungs so you breathe out and then you squeeze bang if you breathe if you have air in your lungs it's going to change your firing position on the ground but the only way you're going to get a consistent position is have empty lungs every time you every time you shoot so you get everything absolutely right and bang that first one goes and at 1200 meters if you've got a number two next to you uh bringing you on to target then he's got binoculars so you can actually see the swirl of the shot as it affects the air going down the range especially on a hot day where you've got heat haze you'll see the round fly down to the target and you'll know it went straight through the center of that target before anybody indicates at the other end that you did um those are 1200 meter range rather than you know anything real um in a war situation you take shots if you shoot at somebody from a great range in a war situation if you hit them they fall down if you don't hit them they get down so you don't know the difference you're used to know the difference if somebody starts shooting you do if they shoot back yeah exactly yeah um but 1200 meters is the longest shot i ever got um on the first on the first round yeah one of the things that was unique when i went through training is the SA80 was fitted with a sousat site so an optic optical site as opposed to iron sights on the SLR do we have any thoughts on those georgie? sousat sites were invented in came into the british army in 1973 i think and were issued to the british army in northern ireland in 74 75 and they gave you an indication of a red dot on a target they didn't place a red dot on a target they gave you an indication of a red dot on a target it was um it was um you had to have both eyes open and um so it was a an optical illusion but they weren't as good as iron sights they weren't as good at iron sights really just to verify the SA80 was an actual telescopic site sousat i believe it was called although it was a sorry i've got it mixed up yeah no no no that's those so the red dot things that's did the um special air service use those kind of no it came into standard british army use the northern island um uh in the hope that you know you're patrolling the streets at night you haven't got a good visual visual sort of uh theater um so um they tried it for a while but i never liked it i much rather i took it off and uh just rather fire over iron sights yeah much much better a bit hollywood isn't it where the the bad guy suddenly sees the red dot land there and you all know it's game over well um yeah those come from night viewing goggles essentially night viewing aids so um usually you're wearing you're going into pitch blackness and you're wearing night viewing goggles so you know your your your um your goggles are putting out infrared light so that they can read it and so that you can see when the other person can't see and so often those red dots that you see in movies come from the goggles rather than the weapon um the idea that you know you're going to fire a you're going to have a laser on the end of your rifle well that's a good idea and that can be done too um but i'm not sure that it's actually going to the laser is actually going to help you with your shot in many ways great with a tank yeah i had tony haze um former sbs on the podcast and he went out on a patrol in afghanistan and all his team were kitted up with a lake that you know the these what's the matter there's a name for them i can't again folks put it in the comments i my gray cells are not working but um uh they all went out with their night night vision goggles and nvgs do they call them i don't know and um his broke so everyone else can see in the dark except him so i so i said tony did you get your torch out then everybody else wouldn't be able to see yes the the thing about the um susan site is a great site it's an optical site it's just got a pointer in and it brings i don't know i i'm not i don't know the technology the technological term but it would sort of bring your target maybe four times closer but with the slr which obviously has an eye insight it was just as it was more accurate than the se 80 with the and i'm not one of these guys that slags this weapon off against this i'm just saying uh over 300 meters you you just can hit the target every time with the slr so really i'll do it for you i'll do it for you the sa 80 is that it's the worst infantry weapon the british army has ever had since the muskets it's the piece of garbage uh the ammunition's low caliber um so as you said you know it doesn't guarantee not be a person down it was it was a convenience to um manufacture a weapon that was british made but with nato standard ammunition which was yeah they wanted to keep it in house british didn't they you could see that i think we should point out in all fairness it's gone through several evolutions and the final weapon i've heard people speak i think the term terminology for that is polishing third yes and i think now it's all going to be be be be replaced with um yeah i mean there's there's a lot better weapons companies out there aren't there some of these swedish ones and and swiss and um yes another thing about low caliber ammunition on 25 is cheaper than 762 so ultimately it's some accountant somewhere made the decision about what the army shouldn't shouldn't use cheaper and lighter isn't it it's lighter for you to carry it's lighter for for the um you know logistics i i i suppose and of course the americans use it don't they with their armor lights all that is that the armor light is that the right terminology i can't they are 15 yeah 15 yeah but it's a longer weapon they are 50 if they just bought ar-15's then they'd have been fine you know it would have done exactly the same job but better i'm better a self-cleaning weapon that floats i mean you can't really go wrong for marines can you i say self-cleaning that's what they used to say useful in useful in close close combat environment um not great when you come to places like the forklands or the desert where the enemy sitting back there at a long range and you can't even get close to him because your weapons won't fire that far not good but soldiers don't decide what the what the army uses accountants decide yes accountants you know that yeah and the accountants take their take their advice from the the clowns right let's i think we should speed speed this up before before we bore people with gun stuff but uh george favorite weapon what's what's your favorite thing that you you have shot or like to shoot um so shotgun i've got a proxy sc3 um which is my absolute baby it's got ported barrels handmade stock it's just perfect to me what barrels and they're ported so they've had holes drilled into the end of them to help and expel extra pressure and gas release the gas so i get less recoil and is that i should have asked you do you find double barrel at all or is it always a single barrel um so it's a double barrel gun and i take two shots um at one target until you're in the final which is just one one shot and do you still use the double barrel gun or would you swap to a single barrel then no it's still the same gun you just use one cartridge because i guess you're all in the in the zone then aren't you you wouldn't want to change weapons at that stage not allowed not allowed okay yes bloody rules um robin any any particular well i've got to go back to back a long way to 1984 actually um when i trialled a new weapon that was going to be introduced um through the british army as a sniper rifle and it's taken over from the old court to do which had lost you know it had lost it had its day and um it was it the trial weapon was called a p-38 it was a 7.62 36 inch um free floating steel chromium barrel the pistol grip was fitted to my very very small hands and um so it would size so i could use a second digit on my finger on the trigger i had a bipod on the front um and uh have we um yeah i think he's frozen yeah one second oh there we go robin you froze then for a second yeah yeah so the solid steel chromium barrel um the bipod on the front um had um perfect uh position for my for my elbow to um everything was fitted to me and then match filled ammunition and so um we had these very small targets of the size of the human head called hunter heads um and um with a running man going across from the front at 400 meters i managed to hit nine targets out of ten um that's that's that's that's pretty good um now yes i was a bloody good shot then when my eyes were but um also it was the weapon in the ammunition as well it was wonderful but by the time they'd cheapened it down to something that was going to be sold you through for the british army the weapon that actually came in about 1986 um didn't live up to those standards at all sadly my favorite funny enough well no i'd never really had a favor i did probably didn't shoot enough to begin having favorites but i loved firing the um the smg was it sterling submachine gun you stuck the i think you had a 30 uh 30 rounds nine millimeter obviously apparently it wouldn't go through a wet blanket so um what wasn't necessary the best weapon for for stopping an enemy but the thing i loved and of course it was prone to stoppages because it was quite quite dated technology now um but the thing i loved about that and also firing the gpmg so the general purpose machine gun was that you can even though it's going off quite quickly the gpmg much more so than the smg you could feel the mechanism in your you you could feel the and there was something about that but i don't know it's obviously appealed to me uh 30 years later there's an incredible feeling of power when you're you've got a weapon that's going you know firing for four or five rounds a second um and uh accurately that's something that's six eight hundred meters away uh gpmg's fantastic i am the best machine gun for accuracy that i ever used was the lmg which was a conversion to 7.62 from the old second world war brengum and um the problem with it was sometimes it didn't spread the rounds enough to be an effective machine gun so you have to change you have to actually move the weapon in order to get the coverage but the very very useful sniper weapon too very very good weapon indeed i carried one in northern island four months in south almarm absolutely brilliant um brilliant piece of equipment now is it the one that has the magazine on top that's right yeah how do you look around that or am i being slightly at the side slightly at the side of the um weapon yeah you touch down the side of the barrel rather than on top of it and georgie we should ask you is there such a thing as a stoppage in in competition or it may be either a stoppage or or a shell that just is a dud yeah um you get dud cartridges every now and then thankfully i i've not really had many of them um and you're allowed to have three or you're allowed to have two per round and if you get a third one you lose the target it's a yellow card um and there's nothing you can do about it because nine times out of ten especially if you're and traveling around the world you buy the cartridges from that range but even though it's a manufacturer's fault you still get the yellow card and get deducted a target must be a tough sport to be a refereeing because you everyone you're dealing with has got a shotgun in their hand right let's let's bring this to a close with one last question and then i think georgie i'd like to ask you how people can get involved in the sport because i'm i'm a big um you know i i believe as in english when we have the right to bear arms it's in our constitution i think it's in there for a reason and i i know a lot of americans feel feel the same so my last question is what are our thoughts on uk gun law it's a tricky one so i think i understand why um we have such strict laws because we are trying to kind of not contain the sport but make sure that um people who should have them can have them and if you do want them then you can have you can apply for a license um i think some of the rules around the licenses are um a bit too strict in some cases and they could be stricter in other instances so and i know that they differ as well from um district to district or county to county um but i know that shotgun certificates are a lot easier to apply for and get hold of than firearms certificates and so we are quite fortunate in that respect yes and so i guess we've got many different scenarios haven't we we've got people that are going to the range where it's very controlled or at least you you'd like to think so you've got farmers who will have a shotgun because that's what farmers have always had for what what they would call pest control but don't i wouldn't say that to someone who loves the foxes um and bloody hell there is a lot of foxes in this country my friend goes out he's got a he's got all he's been shooting for years he's got the gun case with all the very plush looking weapons in it and i mean he'll shoot three foxes on a on a on a in one night um and the farmers kind of welcome it obviously especially in is it landing season um but then um um i guess it was was it pistols that was banned in the uk yeah so you're still allowed air pistols um because we still have uh teams for world comps with our pistols but um any handguns yeah yeah and i'm guessing automatic weapons that are there are no no in this country are they no so i think you are still allowed some automatic weapons but i think they're not on a shotgun certificate they would be classed as a firearm yeah got you robin any thoughts on that subject no it's some very strong thoughts on it be honest um i remember when the children were murdered by a man with a pistol these schooled children the infants school were murdered in scotland i can't remember name of the village don't don't blame don't blame yeah the um i had stopped my car when i heard it on the radio in shock that um the evil of the whole situation and the gun laws in britain were tightened they were already fairly strong but they were tightened even more um i personally believe that where handguns are concerned um where shooting and sporting weapons are concerned uh they should be um in a secure environment and so if you're in a gun club and you want to go pistol shooting it's in a secure armory um in a gun club where you sign it out you sign it back in before you leave um and they shouldn't be in the home because everybody has a bad day and some people cope with their bad days differently um i don't i think that all semi-automatic weapons um should be banned in the united kingdom um unless they get again they're in that sporting environment where where farmers are concerned uh yes they should have single-shot weapons like shotguns that they can use to control burning where hunters are concerned yes they should have single-shot weapons to do that um there is nothing in britain doesn't have a constitution so you know we have no rights to bear arms in the united kingdom no we robin we do believe me i've i've chatted with gray and more who's an absolute expert on uh it i don't think it's it's it's off the back of the magna cata no the magna cata isn't law either um so i would check that out but that's that's probably another story um you know but if you if you combine the freedom free access to a weapon that can kill multiple people then you allow somebody who's having one of those breakdowns to kill multiple people whereas if they don't have access to that they'll they'll get a knife and kill one or two a person with a shotgun you know can only pull the trigger twice of a person with a handgun will be able to pull it six to twelve times a person with an automatic weapon can kill a lot of people in a very short space of time before he's stopped you know so the idea that you know there's some kind of um personal right that gives me on any on any day um the right to walk around the streets and if i'm fed up with the world then decide i'm going to end it to take as many people with me um is morally wrong um you know so guns should be available in a sporting environment in a hunting environment um but they shouldn't be available to everybody and there should be stringent tests you have stringent tests to drive your car which is also a lethal weapon you know you have background checks you know you make sure that there's no history of mental instability and then they have to be secure um at all the time which they do if you add weapons at home anyway um you know in in the united states of america more children are killed every year by accidents fiddling around with their fathers weapons than in any other environment more people are killed by accidents than they are in prevention of crime and um they had last year 2020 in the united states they had 611 multiple killings with guns in the united states of america you know so it's crazy to think that you know somebody can write into law the fact that you can walk around and have the right to kill anybody you want whenever you want if you're having a bad day um you know there's there's a balance and the balance is wrong but if you've been brought up in rambo and um you know dirty harry and you think that um all the world's problems can be cured by a greater level of force and if you kill the bad guy order is restored then you're wrong it doesn't work that way it makes things work yeah yeah i'm i'm very well aware there's um a lot of other implications in the subject i think my a lot of my audience will know what i'm referring to i'm just not going to go there for this podcast because i'm i'm sick of doing the controversial stuff and everyone will have a different opinion but friends at home put your thoughts in the comments um just be respectful if you want your comment to say that is there's no need to be um there's no need to be rude just put your point across um because i think i think other people will probably find it fascinating so george if we can finish up with you um how can people get involved in this wonderful sport so there's loads of different ways thankfully so you can go through british shooting if you head to the british shooting website um you'll be able to get in contact with coaches and or athletes um or british shooting themselves to find out more about the sport so i host a number of talent identification days for british shooting so it or open days um so you can come and try the olympic disciplines and then kind of get your foot on the ladder of the talent pathway so it's the the bottom kind of runs of how to get to the world class program which is where i am and then on to the olympics and so we do have that infrastructure in place already for all the way through from grass roots to full-time athlete professional level sport which is fantastic um you can also get in touch with the clay pigeon shooting association or any of the home nations um who have a list of their registered grounds so you can type in your postcode and find out where your label thumb club will be um and you can get involved either contact them directly or again you can contact the dpsa um and they will put you in the right direction from from what age can people join these organize eight or go to a range um so you can go at whatever age i i would kind of say to fire a 410 which is kind of the smallest gauge um you'd probably be looking at anywhere up from 12 years old which is kind of where we allow people to join the pathway and but again there are most of the grounds that i've been to have air rifle ranges so if parents are having to go at clay pigeon shooting then the youngsters who are under the age of 12 and are comfortable to do so they can have a like a little bit of a ping with an air rifle just to get kind of involved with the sport in some way and then when they do get to that age when they are um you know able to hold the shotgun for themselves and pull the trigger without being too affected by the recoil um because if you're if you're younger than 12 but you are quite you know you're of substantial size and you can hold that that weight of that shotgun then there's nothing to stop you getting involved earlier than that um so yeah from from 12 years up and you know there are people who are still representing at the home nations who are in their 80s so you know there's a lot of longevity with the age and ability and which is fantastic what would we say to people that say georgie i i've always wanted to shoot a gun or a rifle but i'm a bit scared it kind of goes bang and um what what what what could we say there um so there's loads of different things that we can do to prevent you being put off or scared by um the recoil and the bang so is making sure that you're protected so head protection eye protection air protection making sure that um if you are really put off by it we can give you a recoil pad um which is a gel pad which will sit on your shoulder which is going to absorb some of the recoil so it's a preventative measure it's not going to stop the recoil and then can they issue them to the parachute regiment i could have got one i've had one listen guys i i genuinely feel i've been joined by a couple of legends today i um and so that makes three of us that i've got a mug it must be true i i've just thoroughly enjoyed this conversation hope to have more of them in the future um georgie paris 2024 will all be rooting for you thank you very much i know you will bring home the gold no pressure but i just know that you will and for any would it help if we put a shout out for sponsorship does that help you in any way or or how can people get in touch to promote what you're doing and support you and so probably through email or social media so you can email me at georgina at gtrobots.co.uk or you can get involved in my social media accounts so it's at georgina times and robits on instagram at georgina shoots on twitter and georgina and robits shooting on facebook brilliant i'll put those things if you can just email me those links in a nice little paragraph so i can put below our video or do you have a patreon oh what sorry a patreon platform uh no i don't no you should think about that um i'm sure there'll be many people in this fine nation who want to support your efforts and i have a patreon patreon.com forward slash chris through all folks and i i i i have the most amazing people because i don't really earn much money believe it or not doing what i do um a lot of people recognize that but but they they still want you to keep doing it right absolutely i mean for example someone very kindly bought me two shore microphones that's 800 pounds um i have one of my um patreons very kindly i won't say the name for privacy reasons but but just paid a year subscription up you can put different levels so people want to pay 199 a month they can if they want to pay 999 they can if they're if money's not an issue for them some people will come in at 49 pounds a month 100 pounds a month um my one of my kind sponsors just came in with a thousand pounds like like that and it really means it means i can keep doing what i'm doing um but for what you're doing representing the nation i'm sure i'm sure there'd probably be many people out there that would they just want a part of it you know what you can do on each level you can offer different um let's call them benefits so maybe if someone comes in um at the 100 pounds a month level you can have a zoom chat with them every you know every month or something or or or or you can do a special shooting video and obviously there's a big shooting population in this um in the uk as it is that would that would just be keen to you can give your tips through there um this kind of stuff you could do gun reviews what you know what whatever it might be i'm i'm all my sponsors for 199 a month get to come to my annual talk as vip's and bring their their partner or bring a friend get all my books for for free in ebook format this sort of stuff so there's a lot you can do there right i'd um well i'd encourage both of you to to look into it if you if you haven't done some yeah one of the things i use is uh go fund me because um i've got a um northern island veterans campaign that i'm one of the spokesmen for and um one of the things that sharp people show away from especially british people is asking other people for money um but once you get across that barrier and put something up and explain what you're doing and why you're doing it um they're saying you know you have to promote it you have to put the information out and update it regularly um but it helps it helps a great deal and um you know i've got um i've got to go from the account that does exactly that um so it stops you find yourself working on a political campaign and then you're paying for your transport you're paying for your hotel you're doing all this work on on behalf of somebody but you know after a while you start thinking well can i go forward to keep doing this but there's a lot of people that understand that if it's explained well and the same thing with what you're doing you everybody knows how difficult it is to get yourself to the olympics and um uh and the incredible cost unless you're one of those spandex people on a Nike advert you're not going to uh you're not going to get that same kind of funding so put it up put it up and go from me as well thank you very and robin thank you so much robin and i actually going to have a another chat now we're going to be talking about the warrior palette we're also going to be um looking at doing maybe a sneaky top 10 or something along these lines so if you've enjoyed this video there'll there'll be a link to uh to robin and my other videos um thank you ever so much mate um legend as always uh thank you for your commitment as a as a uk veteran and i feel silly saying this because i'm you're not going anywhere so robin hello bring us back a medal george yes thank you for enlightening us robin as to as to your um incredible career our friends at home massive love to you all as always if you could like and subscribe and support this lonely lonely youtuber it will be much appreciated and we'll see you next time