Episode 6: Practical Defense ft. Bryan McKenrick (Part 2)
MAGLITE: 00:07 Welcome back to the MAG-TAC Podcast. We're all about personal safety, keeping your family safe, and you're going to get a good dose of information about weapons, non-weapon defense, hiding, running, personal security, family security, and of course a lot about Maglite and how Maglite (flashlights) figure into your personal security. Joining us here on the MAG-TAC Podcast today, again for his second edition here on the MAG-TAC Podcast, we have Bryan (McKenrick) from American Tactical Defense. Bryan, how are you sir?
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 00:45 Doing great Lou. Thanks for having me back.
MAGLITE: 00:47 Great to have you back. You know, I have a personal favorite new Maglite (flashlight) and I don't know if we've gotten one into your hands. I know the ML150 the rechargeable, you've seen the 4-Cell and the smaller version as well. The Maglite (brand) has a new product, which is a flashlight that will stay on for over two weeks of continuous use. So this is we're billing as the ultimate survival lights. And if you are someone who's going to need a reliable Maglite that you can call on at any time and you're going to be sure it's going to work, this is the ultimate survival light and you're going to want to check it out @ maglite.com . All right, Bryan. So let's talk about hiding because the process we've learned in a tactical situation run first, hide if you can't run. So let's talk about hiding. What's covered, what isn't covered, how do you find it? Let's go through it.
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 02:06 Right? (Inaudible) You find yourself having to hide. You got to think about Cover and Concealment. Basically now. Cover is anything that will stop a bullet while Concealment is just simply hiding where your location is. So, if you are behind walls within a home, for example, that's the only dry wall and that is only as good as concealment, so don't let that false sense of security feel safe because bullets do travel through walls. If you're behind a large concrete wall, barrier, anything like that in-between, that's good cover. So ideally you want to get out of the scene, out of the area view for sure and you want to make sure that if you have kids with you in classrooms, you want to get them off to at 90 degree offset away from that what we call a fetal funnel, which is the opening of the doorway and anything that he can see or spray bullets at.
MAGLITE: 03:04 Okay. So to recap that, just go through that one more time to make sure people heard it and understood it clearly.
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 03:11 Yeah, absolutely. So if you're a teacher and you have kids in a classroom, you're out in the mall ...you're going to have to hide somewhere, get away from the doorway off to the side, get down under in a low position and you want to get under something that is solid, like a solid wall. If you're out in a parking lot, which has this happened in a Walmart, they'll pass a shooting. If there's shooting going on out there and get behind engine blocks, get behind rims of wheels, stuff that is steel and heavy that should stop a bullet.
MAGLITE: 03:41 So you have to think about Concealment vs Cover and just to go over this again, concealment is just, yeah, you're hiding behind something. But if it's plywood or it's an aluminum store shelf that's not stopping a bullet. Concealment is one thing, but Cover means being behind something that's got some heft that's going to stop a bullet.
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 04:04 Exactly. You don't want to be hiding behind a piece of paper when somebody's just randomly firing into one of those, bullets could travel right through it. Even like you said, just then pieces of wood it'll go through. We've tested them at the range. We tested various objects.
MAGLITE: 04:17 So this situation is one where people have to again, be more aware. You have to be thinking about things. How do you train people to think, Bryan, in a panic situation? What, how do people get good at that?
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 04:38 Yes. Good point. How do you train yourself to react in a proper way? You don't want hesitation. So with that being said, you have to live through like an experience. You have to go through it. If you banged your car up against somebody else's in a fender bender, you're more likely to know what to do when cards breaks all upset instead of freak out. Same thing with this. If you run through reality based training scenarios where you have someone portraying the shooter and you run through it, you're going to get that adrenaline rush and guess what? It's going to personalize you, with that situation. Therefore, you will always remember from there out on what you need to do. You'll get past the hesitation and you'll react according to training and training takes reps. You have to do it over and over,
MAGLITE: 05:21 And this is why I read a book called "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" (by Laurence Gonzales) many years ago. I don't ask me why I'm a freak about survival situations. I just enjoy reading about them and so this, I'll never forget them saying, pay attention when you're getting on an airplane and they're pointing out where the exits are. Pay attention to any safety stuff that you're being told when you're on a cruise ship, when you're on something that you're unfamiliar with because the people that die are the people that didn't listen and they weren't prepared and they didn't go through it in their head and that's basically what you're saying is a much more advanced version of that which is, you have to go through it, which is why you guys do the reality based training that you do at your American Tactical Defense.
BRYAN MCKENRICK: 06:03 Yeah, absolutely. You always want to think about stuff ahead of time. What if, what if? We don't want him to compare it. However, with that being said, Be Alert. You know, don't walk out aimlessly out of your car without looking around, you know, just think of things that will put you in a better situation.
MAGLITE: 06:21 All right, that's Bryan from American Tactical Defense here on another episode of the MAG-TAC podcast (by Maglite Tactical). By the way, ML300L LED (4D) is the Maglite (flashlight) I was talking about earlier and give you over two weeks of continuous light. Got to check it out, ML300L 4-Cell LED. All right.We're going to talk about next time we have Bryan on the podcast. Next week we're going to be talking about Barricading: Pros and Cons of that. Why you do it, why you don't, how to do it, how not to do it. This has been the MAG-TAC podcast (by Maglite Tactical). Thanks for listening. Talk to you again soon