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April 22, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
29:02
James Yeager on the coronavirus pandemic and urgent self-defense tactics
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Welcome, everyone.
This is Mike Adams with Pandemic.News.
Today, joined by James Yeager, the founder of Tactical Response.
And James Yeager is carrying out firearms training all across the country, has trained well over 50,000 people, including myself.
By the way, I've been in several of his courses.
I have suffered through the The training.
And he teaches fighting pistol and fighting rifle and many other advanced level courses as well.
He joins us today to talk about firearms and what's happening with the pandemic and self-defense issues and even some things that you can do at home right now without going to a range to boost your firearm skills even without using live ammo.
So thank you James for joining us today.
It's great to have you on.
Thanks, Mike.
It's always good to be on your show and to everybody watching.
Mike's been through my classes a few times and we think maybe once or twice more and he'll actually pass.
Thank you.
All right.
Yes.
Okay.
There's always a bit of humor when James Yeager is at work, but right now we're facing a very serious global pandemic situation that isn't funny.
It's very serious.
Los Angeles just closed all the gun stores there while releasing thousands of prisoners.
So what an amazing combination!
What do you think about that, James?
Well, I don't know what anybody really expected them to do besides that.
First off, there's no need to close a California gun shop.
You can't buy anything anyway with their silly laws and Waiting periods and things that they have.
But this is just another example of what can happen, worst case scenario.
And these criminals, these inmates, are already victimizing folks.
And in many cases, they want to own a gun, but they haven't until now, and it's too late.
Yeah, there's a bunch of Californians suddenly discovering the 10-day waiting period and also that you can't buy guns on the internet.
To their great surprise.
They're shocked.
And that there's not really a gun show loophole.
No, no.
There isn't really.
So this is collapsing the gun control narratives quite rapidly.
It also points out that if you didn't have a gun before now, it's already too late.
But what about all the people out there who have firearms, but they never really learned how to use them?
Because that's what you address a lot, is teaching people, how do you use these firearms?
Go ahead.
The main thing is safety.
And I'm not just saying that to be like some internet guy that doesn't really care about people protecting themselves, but if you shoot yourself or a loved one in a gunfight, it still counts.
And so what I would tell folks, no matter, especially if they've been handling guns a long time because of complacency or the brand new gun owner because of lack of education, keep your finger off the trigger and don't point that thing at people.
Right, right.
Isn't it amazing there are still people who will pick up a gun and immediately put their finger on the trigger, just immediately, like it belongs there.
No offense to war veterans from World War II or Vietnam or anything like that, but a lot of people say, well, my granddaddy taught me how to shoot a gun.
Well, if granddaddy walked around with his finger on the trigger, so did this person.
And so a lot of times we have people that think they're trained because their uncle or their dad or somebody showed them how to shoot a gun, but that person wasn't a firearms instructor.
If you can't be safe, you're not better off with a gun.
Right, right, exactly.
Now, changing subjects, there are over 200 police officers in New York City that have now been confirmed infected with the virus.
There are, I think, 2,000 officers that are sick on leave away from the force.
And New York City is the current epicenter of the outbreak.
We're going to see probably that happening at a much worse level in places like Los Angeles.
So police officers are not going to be able to man their cities like they have in the past.
What do you think is going to happen in terms of lawlessness or is the guard going to be brought in in certain areas?
What do you see happening here?
Well, Mike, as you know, I was a police officer.
I was a police officer during the Y2K scare and all that.
And so I've been a cop.
I've talked with cops.
And the consensus is the same.
We're going to take care of our family.
And that's just the reality of it.
Then you talk about calling in the National Guard.
I know a bunch of guardsmen that say, I've got to take care of my family.
So I'm really wondering who's going to show up to protect you.
And the reality is...
It's always been the same.
It's up to you.
You are your own first responder.
Well, yeah, that's absolutely correct, right.
I'm glad you pointed that out.
And in places like Los Angeles, they have ordered the doctors and nurses to stop testing people for the disease, which means they're not even trying to contain it anymore.
With the morgues now almost overrun in New York City, various areas of California are probably just a few weeks behind.
And then, at some point, don't the gangbangers just say, hey, it's a free-for-all.
We're going to go out and do whatever we want to do.
Well, it's kind of happening now.
There are people that are doing blatant shoplifting where they go in and they'll just have their bag because the police in a lot of jurisdictions have been saying, hey, if it's not a violent felony, don't arrest anybody.
So all these people know that they can just walk around and steal stuff and take stuff and as long as it's not a violent felony, there's no repercussion right now.
That's right, welcome to lawless California, where it's illegal to serve a plastic straw, but it's legal to crap on the street and shoplift.
So, there you go.
What about, are you altering your training scenarios in any way to account for maybe, do you think there's going to be a different type of encounter now, whereas before maybe it was home invasions or muggings or things like that, but now maybe it's more looters or desperate people?
Looking for food and breaking in?
I don't know.
Are you about to change some of the context of what you're training for?
That's a valid question, but violence has always been violence.
It doesn't really change.
People are going to kill you for what you have, and all that's changed over time is technology.
But as far as what I do, unless there's a technology change, it's still good guys not wanting to be victimized by bad guys, and we carry guns so people can't impose their will on us, and there's not really much going to change as far as what I teach because of that.
Okay, what about mindset?
Because I think a lot of people still think that they're living in a polite, lawful society.
In your opinion, do you think people might be slow to accelerate their response to the proper level of applied violence to stop those who are trying to, you know, kill them or steal their stuff?
Yeah, that's a tough one, Mike, because a lot of people, since they've never really faced a violent encounter, there's a huge learning curve from zero to one.
And if you live through one, now you can recognize it, but you've got to live through that.
So there are a whole lot of people, very polite, wonderful, moral, ethical people that don't want to hurt anybody that they don't have to, that could potentially wait too long and wind up endangering themselves or their families.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm hearing people, just sort of friends, distant family members and so on, who are still asking me questions that show that they're stuck in the past.
So there are a lot of myths floating around.
Myths like, you know, if you shoot somebody outside your house to drag them inside and all you gotta do is pump a shotgun and then people run away.
And those things aren't true, but they've been repeated so many times that people think they're true and it can get somebody in trouble.
But going from Going from mild-mannered citizen to, you know, avenger of mild family, that's a huge jump, and I hope that people can get educated quickly enough that they can make that leap and not sustain an injury or be killed from their family.
The best way to do stuff like that is through force-on-force training, scenario-based training.
Yeah, because the violent criminals, you know, they've already blown through that whole curve a long time ago.
They've seen violence.
They've committed violence.
There's no hesitation on their part.
Whereas the average law-abiding citizen wants, oh, let's negotiate.
Let's be civil.
You know, that doesn't even exist in the realm of the bad guys.
Yeah.
Most bad guys grew up with a single mom, and she couldn't catch them to tan their hide if they needed it.
And even if she caught them, it didn't hurt.
And if they fell off their bicycle and scraped their knee, they just got back up and got on the bicycle.
Where a lot of regular, ethical, moral people raised in a home with two parents.
Not all, but raised in a home with two parents.
And if they fell off their bike, mom sprayed some Bactine on it, put a Band-Aid on it, and stuff like that.
And it's really two different worlds, and they are animals.
Yep, yep, absolutely.
Okay, quiz time for James Yeager.
Tell me, how many rounds do I have loaded in my AR-15 mags?
28.
You are correct, because I learned that shit from you, so thank you.
That is absolutely correct.
Not more than 28, because you have problems loading those rounds if they're packed in too tightly.
Your rifle won't cycle.
Well, a lot of guys are like, well, I've never had to do that before and mine always works fine.
Well, if you load with the bolt all the way back and put a mag in, yeah, 30 is fine.
Most of the time it will strip off the top.
There's two problems.
Number one is a lot of mags you can get 31 rounds in and then it won't strip off the top.
But if the bolt is forward, In 30 rounds or in there are 31, it's just hard to get it seated.
So if you strip a couple off the top, it makes it easier to seat.
A lot of people want to argue with me about that, but those people are what I would like to call wronged.
Okay, yes, and you are correct again, because we have proven this in your classes that 28 works pretty much all the time, and 29 or 30 doesn't work all the time.
Okay, and when you're dealing with these scenarios, you want it to work all the time.
But talk about ammo, because you had a very interesting talk in your most recent class in Central Texas about green-tip ammo and why it's not What kind of ammo should people be loading in those 5.56 rounds or even 9mm or whatever their pistol round is?
What kind of ammo do you recommend for this context?
Well, let's talk about AR-15s.
It's not that green tip ammo is bad ammo or I hate it or something, but it doesn't do anything well.
What I mean by that is it's got a steel core in it, but it's not a hardened steel core.
It's not armor-piercing, and it also doesn't do well against people.
It's just kind of like...
Yes, that would kill people, but we're talking about the difference between lethality and incapacitation.
Lethality means you shoot them and they'll die eventually.
But what we want is incapacitation.
So the short answer for an AR-15...
Is XM193. And it does what's called high velocity fragmentation and deformation where it hits something and breaks apart and blah, blah, blah.
But as far as shooting people for self-defense, just generically, widely available and relatively inexpensive.
Train with it and carry it.
XM193. Okay, all right.
Good for people to know.
Now, what about skills that people can practice right now?
Let's say they're in a lockdown situation.
They live in an apartment in San Francisco.
They can barely go outside, but they have a handgun somehow, amazingly.
Maybe they got permission from the mayor or something.
They have a handgun, and they don't have much ammo, but they want to practice.
What can they do right now without going bang and blowing through the walls?
Well, believe it or not, for free on your website, you can watch Fighting Pistol, my Fighting Pistol DVD, absolutely for free.
And then people can replicate the things they see in that video, hopefully ammo in a separate room and all that stuff.
But they can replicate drawing the pistol and doing reloads and things like that.
Might be a good positive way to pass the time.
Do you think that gun confiscation may be coming in certain cities?
Yes.
There is the unstoppable train of the Second Amendment and the unstoppable train of gun confiscation and they will collide at some point.
Okay, I believe you're correct, too.
I mean, they're closing the gun shops.
What's next?
They're just going to try to take away the guns, especially as the violence starts to spill out.
Because, you know, right now, think about it.
People are locked in their homes, which is a very small time window of sanity for most of America.
Maybe they can handle it for a week.
There's a whole bunch of reasons why those frontiersmen killed their wives for cabin fever.
Okay.
Cabin fever.
There you go.
That's happening nationwide.
So, I don't know where this is going exactly either, but I... I think that the American people, many of them under lockdown, are about to lose their cool.
I mean, you and I are lucky.
We live in rural America.
I can go walking, you know, with my donkeys across hundreds of acres or whatever, which helps the sanity factor, even though it sounds silly.
But hey, you got to get outside, folks.
But the average person is locked in.
And what about barricading If they suspect that looting may begin soon, what can they do to fortify their position where they are?
I believe instead of using a board to board up the door, use it to make a sign.
Those signs work.
Those, you loot, we shoot.
Those signs work.
Even if you don't have a gun, those signs work.
You know, so the whole object, in my opinion, is to avoid the confrontation.
So if I can put out signage, like if you come to my house, there are signs that say video surveillance, that say beware of dog.
There are plenty of little clues, as we call them in police work, for somebody that wanted to do something bad at my house to understand that this isn't the house for that.
Up to and including the door says, welcome to the house that guns built.
Exactly.
Okay.
Good advice.
All right.
Another question, then, in terms of the escalation of readiness for all of this.
Now, I walk around with a pistol on my hip all the time on my ranch.
It's chambered.
It's ready to go all the time, except when I'm sleeping.
I'm not wearing it, you know, when I'm sleeping.
But it's readily reachable.
The average person in America does not carry a gun at home.
Should that change now or at some point?
When should they carry a loaded weapon at home to be ready 24-7?
Everybody should carry a gun all the time.
I mean...
Except when you're sleeping.
That shouldn't be a new thing.
And you'll not rise to the occasion.
You won't default to the level of training.
You'll default to the level of training you've mastered.
And if you haven't even mastered wearing a gun, you're not going to do well in the apocalypse.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
The understatement of the day, exactly.
What about barter with ammunition and firearms?
I've got a friend here in Texas.
He is trading me 5,000 rounds of plus P 9mm full metal jacket, unfortunately that's what's out there, for eight buckets of food from my warehouse that I'm purchasing with my own private money.
So I'm trading him food.
He's giving me ammo.
Not that I needed more ammo, but I'm trying to help the guy out with food, basically, and I can't just give it away.
So, you know, it's got to be a fair exchange.
What do you recommend about people trying to barter guns or ammo or anything related to self-defense?
No.
It's short.
I'm not going to trade out guns or ammunition that somebody will use to come and kill me and take my stuff with.
So you're not getting any of the guns or ammo I've got at all.
What about acquiring?
What about trading other stuff to get more guns and ammo?
Yeah, they're going to be really expensive.
Well, seriously, the CIA tracks how volatile third world nations are based on the price of AKs.
If AKs are $25, everything's good.
But when an AK goes over $300 in sub-Saharan Africa, there's going to be something kicking off.
Yeah.
Wow.
Good point.
The economics of mayhem.
Okay.
We're talking to James Yeager, everybody, with tacticalresponse.com.
And Tactical Response has training operations nationwide.
They've got traveling teams that train people in cities all across America.
Can you name some of the cities or towns that you're offering training coming up this year?
Well, if you want to train with Mike and me, you'll meet us in Bastrop, Texas, Anvil, Pennsylvania.
Of course, home is in Camden, Tennessee, Fort Pierre, South Dakota, Coon, Idaho, Titusville, Florida, Raton, New Mexico, Jacksonville, Texas, Tucson, Arizona are some of them.
Okay, alright.
And what's the name of the other instructor that was with us in Texas?
That was Tim Morris.
Ah yeah, Tim.
Tim.
I have to recommend to all those watching that Tim offers a very rich cultural experience.
That cannot be missed and that will help elevate your consciousness to the level where you might be able to deal with insane bad guys.
So thank you, Tim, for that experience.
It is much appreciated.
Yeah, if you can handle Tim, you can handle anything.
Yes, yes indeed.
Okay, all right.
What else should people know?
I'll just give you a couple more questions here, but what else should people know right now about their firearms preparedness, firearms skills, and what may be coming in certain areas?
Now, certainly rural America may be way better off than where some of these cities are going, but what should people keep in mind and kind of customize that to where people live, if you could?
It's pretty simple.
If you look like you're eating, people will attack you for your food.
It's that simple.
Unless you look like a refugee or somebody from a third world country, when this goes down, they're going to come and try to take your stuff.
You have to be prepared to keep it.
Again, it goes back to the signs.
You come past the sign, then we have a different conversation.
Are you recommending that people run Like, night watch teams or that kind of thing?
I mean, what about getting hit at night by a small team of dedicated, starving people who are going to try to catch you sleeping?
Are we at that point yet, or will we be?
Well, here's the thing.
I don't think that people are going to try to burgle you.
I think people will be jealous of you, and they'll just set your house on fire so you can't have the food either.
But to your question, yeah, you should plan on having 24-hour watch or surveillance inside, outside your home, and cameras aren't good enough.
And just really quick, well, imagine that a house is square or rectangular.
You don't have to have four people.
You can have one person at opposing corners that can watch the house.
Two people can watch the whole outside from opposing corners.
And if it's a weird shaped house, they just go out further.
And now they don't have fields of fire that cross one another.
Right.
So you can do it with minimal manpower, but you still need manpower.
And as far as getting burned out, people should remember that toilet paper is flammable.
So all of you who stocked up with 500 cases of toilet paper, you've just created a massive fire hazard right next to your stored gasoline.
Yeah, they probably have 5,000 rounds of ammo and all that stuff piled together.
Right, I wonder what the fire marshals think about all this.
Hey, if I could add something on that, there's a product, I don't know if you've ever seen it, Mike, it's about this big called a fireball.
Have you seen that?
No, I don't think so.
It is pyrotechnic.
When it gets into a fire, it's got a fuse that burns and there's an explosive inside and boom, it blows dry chemical fire extinguisher powder everywhere.
And it's automated just when it gets in the fire.
Those things are awesome and I've got them all around my fuel stores and my ammo stores and all that.
Wow.
You can get them off Amazon.
I've got no financial interest in those, but they're the neatest thing as far as fire prevention I've ever seen.
Wow, very cool.
They're called Fireball?
Yeah.
Wow.
What a great idea.
I'm sure the inventor of that is doing well and probably has a patent on it.
Great idea.
Very cool.
Okay.
It doesn't require anybody to be home either.
Yep.
It's just the laws of physics activate this sucker.
Okay.
That's great.
All right.
Lastly, for people to attend your courses, I know you've been over this a million times, but For this interview, for our audience, can it be a total newbie who's never shot a gun or what basic skills do they need in order to attend your class?
And this is a new one for you.
What are you doing in your classes to keep that separation that's being recommended out there so that people don't spread the virus to each other?
Okay, so who can take a class?
Well, it should be understood that a healthy, strong person can take a class.
But we specialize in training everybody.
And that means people in wheelchairs, people on crutches.
Like some guys will say, well, I signed up for a class, but I broke my arm, so I'm going to come to a different class after it heals.
No, come.
Let us show you how to fight with that other arm so you're not victimized while your arm's in a cast.
And so if you're old, if you're fat, if you're short, if you're...
We've taught legally blind.
We've taught legally deaf.
And so I want everybody to know that people that aren't young and strong and healthy, they have to be able to protect themselves more than people that are young and strong and healthy.
So I don't run a boot camp.
There's no push-ups or anything like that.
So that's number one.
I would rather people have shot a gun before they get there, but I've trained plenty that haven't.
I'd rather you have shot one, but...
We'll get past that.
But the hardest people that train are the people that think they don't need the training.
And so if you come with an open mind, I will teach you how to be a better gunfighter.
And that's the subtle difference.
There's a lot of people know how to shoot.
I don't teach shooting classes.
I teach gunfighting classes.
And I'll add, what I really appreciate about your training is you keep it super simple and consistent.
The same kind of hand motions dealing with racking the slide of a pistol versus racking the bolt carrier group of a rifle, for example.
You're learning things that are consistently applied.
And it's super simple.
You know, there's a lot of people who teach firearms and man, they make it complicated.
It's like, oh, nine steps to draw your pistol.
It's like, really?
Does it really take nine steps?
I don't think so.
But your class keeps it simple, which is fast.
So it's efficient and fast once you master the steps.
Yeah, that's our whole teaching methodology is how do I teach this with the fewest words?
I don't think you've mastered that part of it yet, because you still talk a lot on day two or three, whatever.
We were freezing our asses off, too, on that day.
I wish you would have made us run hills and do push-ups on that morning.
But I guess there's a whole section where you give all the legal talk about force applications, things like that.
Sorry, yeah.
Our mindset lecture, which is what most people enjoy the most about the class, where we talk about mindset, tactics, skill, gear, legal issues, emotional aftermath, how to deal with the police, things like that.
Okay.
All right.
Good.
Oh, have you had anybody take you up on your refund offer yet?
So at the end of every class, we ask, does anybody want a refund?
And we've taught 77,000 people and four people have asked for a refund.
Wow.
Okay.
And that's insane because they got the skills and then they still want a refund.
It's like four out of five dentists recommend such and such toothpaste.
That fifth dentist, he's probably a butthole.
Okay, great.
Finally, tell us, what do your courses cost, roughly speaking, and will you accept payment in gold?
There's a new question for you.
Just this morning, I got asked if I would take silver for a class, but I've traded.
I love barter.
I grew up bartering as a kid.
I love barter, so if people want to barter, I'm all for it.
Two-day classes start at $500, and five-day classes start at $1,250.
Okay, alright.
Oh, and one more question, because you mentioned this in the class.
What is the one piece of equipment that everybody should have as a spare that they carry with their rifle?
The one part that's most likely to break?
On an AR-15, a spare bolt.
Okay, not the whole carrier group, just the bolt itself with the extractor?
Yeah, just a spare bolt.
Okay.
Alright, what about AK? Do you need any spare parts?
No, like an AR you can fix in the field, an AK has got to go back to the blacksmith.
Alright, and what about Glock 19s?
What do people need to carry for spare parts, if any?
If you're going to have a spare part for Glock 19, that little bitty S-trigger spring for a Glock.
The S-trigger spring, that bent piece of...
There's an S-shaped trigger spring, it's about that long, that resets the trigger on a Glock.
If you use trigger reset, you never know it's there.
It's for people that don't know how to shoot, so the trigger comes back forward.
Okay, one time I asked another instructor, what spare part should I carry for my SIG pistol?
And he said, a Glock.
Which I thought was pretty inventive.
That's funny.
Okay.
All right.
Well, James, I thank you so much for your time.
The website, folks, is tacticalresponse.com.
And James is very proficient.
Again, he's trained now 77,000 people, or his organization has.
And you will learn life-saving skills at his courses held all across the country, even in California.
You have a course in California?
No.
No, we don't teach in slave states anymore.
Ah, okay, okay.
So where do people have to drive?
I got one thing I want to say, Mike.
So for you folks listening, when I was out there before, Mike has got a full product line of organic supplements and things like that.
And he gave me some to bring back home.
And Mike, I got to tell you, my daughter who's into that stuff, you gave her some...
B vitamins and stuff like that.
She wanted me to thank you for that.
She believes that her family has gotten through a bunch of illnesses because of that.
I just wanted to extend her thank you to you.
Oh, wow.
That's great to hear.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think I gave you some astaxanthin and some other things as well.
So, yeah.
She was elated to get the whole box.
That's awesome.
Okay.
Great to hear.
So, just back to California real quick.
People in California, what's the closest place they can get this training from you?
Arizona.
Alright, there you go.
Well, thank you, James, for joining us.
And again, everybody, tacticalresponse.com.
It's not too late to get your gun skills up before more chaos rolls out in certain cities across America.
If you don't have the ability to protect yourself and you think you're going to dial 911, think again, because systems are breaking down very quickly.
Thanks for joining me today, James.
This is Mike Adams for Pandemic.News.
This has been a Pandemic.News video report.
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