 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today we're gonna talk about gun training. So I've been kind of seriously in the gun world for probably close to 10 years now. Taking a, I don't know, a dozen-ish, dozen-plus classes. My whole resume of what I've taken is on my website. You can always check that out because if people ever come learn guns with me, I think they should know what they're getting. But really, what I wanna talk about in this video is having done a lot of reading to this point, having taken a lot of classes and practiced things on my own, and having just consumed a lot from the gun world in the last decade, as I'm sure a lot of you have. There is one thing that has become increasingly, increasingly clear to me, which is this is all made up. Now what I mean by that is that, of course there are techniques that are effective and there are techniques that are not effective. But what I mean is that gun teaching, gun technique, it's an American martial art. It's just made up. We made this up out of thin air. There is no gospel final word truth on any of this stuff. And that's important to understand. That's important to understand because you can go to a very highly vetted, combat veteran, been teaching for 25 years, person, and they'll teach you how to run a gun one way. And then you can go over here to a very vetted, combat veteran, highly qualified, been teaching for 20 years, person, and they might teach you the exact opposite. For example, I know one gun trainer who I mostly respect who would teach you to shoot a rifle with your elbow out, like parallel, because that's how you're gonna get a better aiming platform, he's gonna argue. And most people these days, of course, will teach you to tuck that elbow in because you don't want that elbow out there because you don't want to take a bullet through it, right? I tuck my elbow because I'd prefer not to get shot in the elbow. But, again, that's something that's literally the exact opposite. Another example, of course, a very famous internet debate, is when you get to this part in your pistol, right? Your pistol's out of bullets. Well, what do you do now? Some people say you slap that mag in, you push the magic button, close the slide. Other people, of course, would say, no, no, no, that's a slide catch. It's not a slide release. So you put the magazine in and you power stroke it and close the slide, right? Again, some of that's just kind of internet debatery and is gonna go on forever and who really cares? Just close the damn slide and finish the fight. However, I think, again, it's important for you to understand that this is all made up and you can kind of do what you want at some point. You should have good reasons for your techniques. If you're learning to shoot guns because you want to save your life and lives of other people, you better have good reasons for your techniques. However, you need to understand that you can go to highly qualified trainers that are competent and good and helpful and they'll tell you different opposite things at points on certain stuff because this is all made up. I say that to hopefully prevent a lot of debating and anger and frustration because I think you can get to a point where you can say, hey, this isn't right. Like I learned it this way, now I'm being told this way, where's the truth here? And the answer is there is no absolute truth when it comes to gunfighting. There is absolute truth but that's a different video and another topic. So I hope that's helpful and I hope that especially helps new people. I know that when I first started learning guns, I remember I was very fortunate to go to tactical response and I was eating dinner that night and we were eating with the trainers and I got to sit across from James Yeager. I got to talk to him for like five minutes. Cool guy. And I remember asking him, I'm like, well, hey, you say to do it this way but this other guy, and I think it was Clint Smith, it was an example that I used because I said, I know you like Clint Smith and he says it to do it this way. And he's like, well, what's your problem? And I'm like, well, I'm trying to like figure this out. And he's like, well, do whatever you want, man. And honestly, that was super helpful to me. That was super enlightening. And really I'm a James Yeager fan until I die because of that moment, because he was saying, hey, look, like there's different ways to do this. People have different systems and at the end of the day, you got to do what you want. If you pull someone's part out here and someone's part out here, they might not meld very well as an overall system but at the end of the day, you got to choose what you want to do. And there's a bunch of different gun instructors who are gonna have really good systems and really good methods and they're gonna have really good reasons for those methods and they might disagree. And so at that point, you just got to discern for you what the best way is to do it, which is a big reason I try to avoid a lot of the stupid internet debates about how do you close the slide on your pistol? On your rifle, you're supposed to hit the bolt release or you're supposed to rack the charging handle, right? Like who really cares? The point here is to get back in the fight and finish the fight. If we're getting broken down into minutiae of how to close slides and close bolts and whatever, then of course at that point, we're forgetting what gun fighting is about, which is about winning fights, not debating over minor minutiae. Now again, people are gonna have very good reasons for the way they do it and this is why you should take different courses with different instructors over your lifetime so that you can get those different perspectives and really decide what you think the best method is for you in your context and your mission set and whatever and how you're gonna accomplish that. Overall, like I said, I hope this was helpful to decrease the debatery of stupidity and increase our combat effectiveness so that we can focus on the majors because the majors are probably coming. Do brave deeds and endure.