How to Stop School Shootings ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
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Summary
In this episode of Field Notes, Ryan talks about the need for a strong, masculine presence in the lives of young men, and how we can address the problem of school shootings that continue to take place across the U.S.
Transcript
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who
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you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler.
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I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement, and I want to welcome
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you here. If you're new to the podcast and this is the first time joining us, I want to tell you
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really quickly that this is your Friday Field Notes. You get to hear from me on some things
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I've been thinking about and things that have been bouncing around in my brain for the past
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week or so. We've also got our interview show. I'm interviewing guys like Jock Willink and
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Grant Cardone and Andy Frisilla and Tim Kennedy and Dakota Meyer, and we had Ben Shapiro on.
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We had Steve Rinella on. The lineup of men is phenomenal, so you're going to get a great
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interview. I'm improving my skill set and the quality of guys that we're having on is improving
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as well, so make sure you check those out every Tuesday. And then we've got our Wednesday
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show, which is an Ask Me Anything, so we field questions from our exclusive brotherhood,
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the Iron Council, and we also field questions from our Facebook group, which you can find
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at facebook.com slash groups slash order of man. Before I get into the topic today, which
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is how we can address and stop these school shootings that continue to take place, let
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me just first and foremost say that we've got our Iron Council, which is our exclusive brotherhood
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that is open for registration. We shut it down for a little over a month. We've been building
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some infrastructures and systems in place so that we can help the almost 1,000 men in the Iron Council
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accomplish more in 2022 than maybe they have in their entire lives. But we also want to make
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onboarding more efficient and effective for those of you who are going to band with us,
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so we built in those systems as well. So we're going to be open for probably, I anticipate,
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another week. We've had about 75 or so people join us here in the last little while,
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and I imagine that in the next couple of days, we'll bump that up to 100 or so, and that's when
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I cap it off. So if you're interested in banding with other men, about 1,000 of us, and tapping
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into the knowledge and the frameworks and the systems and tools we have to crush 2022, then join us
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at orderofman.com slash Iron Council. Again, that's orderofman.com slash Iron Council. All right,
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guys, so let's talk about some school shootings. So a couple of weeks ago, we had this latest
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shooting in a school in Michigan, and it looks like four people have died, four students have died,
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and then many have been wounded and hurt. And so I thought we'd address this because there is a
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reoccurring theme with a lot of these school shooters, and that's a lack of a father in their
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lives. Now, I think with this last shooter, I think his father was available or is present in his life.
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I think his folks are still married. And so they're still around. But I think generally speaking,
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I'm not sure how engaged his father was. I'm not going to jump to conclusions on that. But I think
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there is a need for a strong, righteous, and that's different, masculine presence in a young man's life
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because it is men. Let's talk about it and call it like it is. It is young men who are doing these
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school shootings. And so we got to do something about it. We really do. This can't happen anymore.
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And I think the knee-jerk reaction is to jump to the conclusion that we should just ban guns and
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there should be more restrictions. There's some things that maybe we can talk about,
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but banning guns is not an option. It's not something that I'm even willing to negotiate with
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because when you start banning guns, then there's other unintended consequences or maybe intended based
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on who's proposing banning guns that will come into play that I'm not interested in. I think that,
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not even I think, we have the right to bear arms as American citizens and is to keep our government
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in check. It's not for hunting, although that is a use. It's to keep ourselves and our rights
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from being trampled on by those who would love nothing more than to control you and own every
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facet of your life. And those guns, those keep that at bay. So there is a reason why we have the right
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to bear arms. And there's a reason why I would never advocate for the elimination of firearms.
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So there's some other things that I do want to talk about here. And we as men have the responsibility
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as potential gun owners to take care of, to teach and all these kinds of things.
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So let's talk about this. Number one is guys, we need to teach proper firearm safety to our children.
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If you're going to have a gun in the house, you better teach them what a gun is. You don't need
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to hide it from them. You don't need to make it some mysterious thing that they can't have access
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to because we all know that curiosity kills the cat. You need to expose them to it. All right.
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You need to ensure that they know what firearms are, that they know what they do, what they're
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intended for, that they've actually shot these firearms. They can feel it. They can see it.
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They can be exposed to some degree, the consequence of putting a piece of lead through another person
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or an item or a metal target and actually know what it's like to operate these things.
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I think the more that we keep them from our kids and unless we talk about them and the more that we
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try to keep them a secret and keep them away from our children, the more that they're going to be
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curious about it and they're going to find information about it. And when they find
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information about it, it's not going to come from you, the direct source, the individual,
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the man who it should come from. If they're learning about these things, whether it's firearms or drugs
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or alcohol, pornography, sex from anybody, but you, man, you're doing your kids a huge, huge disservice.
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What a, what a pathetic waste that is that you have access to information. And because you're afraid
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and you're worried about their delicate feelings or their innocence, which to a degree, you know,
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you should be, but that's different than the conversation I'm having. You need to expose them
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to these things. You know, for example, here's another analogy or an analogy is you're not going to
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not teach your kids to swim and just keep them away from pools. What are you going to do? You're
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going to teach them how to swim so that when they're in front of a pool or they fall in,
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it isn't the first time they've ever been exposed to that environment. And the same is true about
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firearms. If you've got firearms in your house, whether it's pistols, rifles, shotguns, et cetera,
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and you're not exposing them to that, then you're failing. You're failing. You've got tools in the
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house and that's what firearms are. And you're not teaching your kids appropriately. I'm not going
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to teach my two-year-old, for example, how to hold a firearm, but my five-year-old, can my five-year-old
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shoot a 22? You bet your ass he can. He's going to do it under supervision. He's going to do it with
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me right there, probably holding the rifle, but a five-year-old can shoot a 22. A five-year-old can
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experience that. It's not going to hurt the child. And then you graduate from there. You know,
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you maybe move into an AR-15. And even in spite of some of these weenies who pretend like it's the
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end of the world, this big explosion in their shoulder hurts and the smell traumatizes them
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from an AR-15, that's a ridiculous thing. Those things don't hurt at all. So a young child,
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a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old can certainly shoot an AR-15 without having some
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sort of traumatic experience. If you as a father is there, you might move into a 410 shotgun.
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My young teenager had a, the first shotgun he had was a 410. Then we moved him up to a 20 gauge,
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and now he can shoot my 12 gauge just as well, if not better than I can. And he's 13 years old.
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So if they're going to be around and they are, and you're not going to get rid of them, whether you
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like it or not, they're going to be around. They're going to come across one. When I was little,
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I actually, I was out in the street and I saw this, this revolver in the street and I picked it
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up and I thought it was a cap gun and I brought it inside. It was heavy. I was like, man, this is
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heavy for a cap gun. I must've been eight, nine, 10 years old, brought it inside. And I showed my mom,
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she's like, let me see that. Well, it turns out that was a real gun. Now, obviously, you know,
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it's unfortunate that that thing was in the middle of the street in a neighborhood that was densely
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populated with children, but just goes to show you that there might be a moment where our children
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are presented with firearms and they better be somewhat familiar with firearm safety rules,
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procedures, make sure you're locking them up, but don't hide them, expose them to it.
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And the more they're exposed to it, the more training they have, the better off it's going
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to be. And the less likely it is that they're going to need to scratch this curiosity that they
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have with regards to your firearms. All right. Number two, watch your damn kids. All right.
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If you don't know what's happening in your kids' lives, shame on you. If you don't know who their
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friends are, you don't know where they're going, you don't know what they're doing. That's your fault.
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That's your failure as a parent. And if you're not doing that, then what the hell are you doing as a
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father? Because you're not doing your job. That's for sure. We had a young kid in Utah. In fact,
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he was in our neighborhood and he ended up taking a homemade bomb to something that he had built in
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his garage to a school. And the way that I understand it from the reports and I went through
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them a lot. In fact, I taught this young man in our church congregation and organization.
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He's a very strange and awkward kid. I didn't know that he was going to attempt to kill
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innocent children. So it's hard to know at times for sure, but he took this homemade bomb that he
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had fashioned and he brought it and he tried to detonate it in the cafeteria of a, of a school,
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local school. Fortunately, the thing malfunctioned, it just smoked. It didn't blow up or explode or
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hurt or injure anybody, but how, how in the world is a child? He must've been,
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I can't remember exactly, but he must've been 14, 15 years old, maybe 16 tops. How can a child
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build a bomb in his garage and parents not know what's going on? What in the hell is happening?
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We are at such a lack of fatherhood in this world that kids are literally building bombs
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in their garage and parents don't know what's happening. Come on now. Like something's got
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to change there. Not to mention these kids are watching porn. They're sending each other
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inappropriate texts. They're, they're doing drugs. They're drinking. How do you not know that's
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happening? Like I don't, it's, it's unfathomable to me that a parent wouldn't understand that.
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So guys, parent your child, be involved in their life. Maybe don't work as much as you currently
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are. Maybe ask some questions, maybe have dinner at the dinner table. So you can ask about your
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kids' lives. Maybe know what's going on under your own damn house. What kind of man are you? If you
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don't even know what's happening in under your own roof, that's despicable. So guys, watch your kids,
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watch other kids, by the way, in the community too. You know, a lot of these active shooter kids,
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like there's warning signs. They're posting stuff on their social media accounts. They've had run-ins
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with the law. They've already had issues with school. Like, why are we watching these kids?
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Because we want to turn a blind eye and we don't want to ruffle any feathers. We want to make sure
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nobody gets offended. And then somebody gets killed because we're unwilling or incapable of doing
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our job as men. Number three, this one's a little different because look, there's kids in your
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community who you don't have any control over, right? So although you might be doing all the
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right things, you're teaching your kids about firearm safety and the firearm rules, and you're
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exposing them to firearms in general. You're watching them. You're a good steward over your own,
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your kids and your household. And you know everything that's going on and they're on the up and up.
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There's things that are beyond your control, which is other kids who don't have the luxury of having
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a permanent father figure like you in their life. I can't control what these kids do. I couldn't
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control what that kid did. I mean, I was teaching him for crying out loud every Sunday, every Tuesday
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night, and I can't control what he's doing. So you better damn well teach your kids situational
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awareness because there's some real threats. And if you're packing your little boy or little girl
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in a transformer or my little pony backpack, which are probably outdated at this point,
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and you're sending them off to school and you're not telling them about how to deal with themselves,
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how to look for threats, what to do in situations, what to do in threats, man, you're screwing up.
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What a shame. And it would be easy to say, well, I shouldn't have to. I agree. I don't want that to
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happen. I don't want this to happen to any child or any family. I never want a parent to experience that.
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But what I want is not always in alignment with what reality is. And so if you don't want your
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child to be exposed to this, one thing I'd do is I'd consider homeschooling your children. That's
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something I've been an advocate for for years now. We can talk more about that than I have on other
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podcasts. But if you are going to send your kids to school, and even if you're not, you should teach
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them about situational awareness. You should teach them about emergency preparedness. You should teach
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them about how to cover and conceal and move effectively. You need to expose them to this
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stuff. Like if you're going to put them into a threatening situation, you probably ought to make
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sure they're prepared. It sucks. It's unfortunate. In fact, it's tragic that this conversation needs
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to be had, but it does. So your desire for this utopian society, although very nice, doesn't match
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with reality. There's other companies out there I've seen who have plate carriers that you can put
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in backpacks. Not a bad idea. Again, teaching them about firearm safety and firearm rules so they know
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the consequences of it. But man, situational awareness, run through drills, run through procedures,
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teach them about cover and concealment, and keep them safe. If you're going to ship them off to
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government schooling, keep them safe. That's your responsibility. Nobody else is going to do it.
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School teachers aren't going to do it. Bless their hearts. They're not adequately trained.
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They don't have any weapons. They don't have firearms to defend themselves and their students.
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They want to, I'm sure. I'm sure they want to make sure their kids are safe. I have no doubt about that,
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but they're incapable of doing so because we don't allow them to do it, which leads to my next point
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that we ought to consider giving our school teachers some training.
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Training in situational awareness, training in threat prevention, hell, even potentially training
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with firearms and allowing school teachers to carry firearms. If we're not going to do that,
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then we ought to secure our schools. I know there's plenty of men who are former law enforcement
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officers, former military members who would be willing to A, either volunteer to run security at
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schools or be paid to do it because we as taxpayers, again, if we're going to ship our kids out,
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I think we probably ought to keep them safe. So why don't we have security guards? Why don't we have
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trained fathers, trained members of society who are in there and keeping our kids safe? Why aren't we
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training school teachers? Why aren't we allowing school teachers to carry? You have a right as an American
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citizen to carry a firearm, barring some crimes or some minor exceptions, but you have a right to do
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that. So why do we strip that right away from a school teacher? Now, does there need to be some
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training? Yeah, I think there should. I think they should prove that they have some level of competence
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and proficiency with a firearm if they're going to be in there, but damn, if there's other people
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with firearms, don't you think it'd be a good idea to arm the good guys with firearms? So let's give
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them some training. Let's make sure they're proficient. You ask your teachers to have degrees
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that prove to some element that they're capable of teaching young children. So we can do the same
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with firearms. We can bring school people in or security in. We can bring fathers in. We can do all
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of that. And we should be doing all that because it's clear there's a threat and we need to be able to
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deal with it as men. So, so far we've got teaching your kids firearm safety. We've got watch your
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kids, make sure you know what's going on in their lives and who they're around and what they're doing.
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You've got number three, teaching situational awareness to your children and providing them
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with what they need to stay alive in this dangerous, potentially unfortunate. Well, it's not
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even potential. It is an unfortunate, tragic situation. And I don't want kids to come across that,
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but if they are, I want them to be protected. And then number four is let's arm school teachers.
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Let's have security detail there at the school to be able to protect our young,
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our young little ones. And the last one guys here is just get involved in your community.
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If you're going to, you know, be, be, be running security, for example, in one of these schools,
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if that's an option, uh, if you can teach young men in your neighborhood, if you can coach these young
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men on football or basketball or wrestling or baseball team, uh, if you can lead a young men's
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ministry through your local church, whatever you can do to get involved with these young men.
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And again, it's young men who are doing this. And so many of these kids, and it does, it's not an
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excuse and it doesn't make it okay. But so many of these kids do not have father figures in their
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lives. And you as their baseball coach might be the only stable, permanent fixture, manly fixture
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in their life. And that might just be enough to teach them about sacrifice and honor and integrity
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and working hard and take them from a path that they were on a horrible, tragic, negative path
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they were on and put them on the right path of, of, of, of being the kind of men that we need society
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to be, to be self-sustaining, self-sufficient, confident young men who are going to move forward
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in their life and confidence and have their own family and do for their family. Some of the same
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things that I'm talking about with you today, we got to have these conversations. And again, I'm,
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I'm, I'm not willing to sacrifice my right to carry a firearm because of, of this threat,
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but there are other ways to deal with these threats and there's five of them right there.
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And so I would encourage you to implement these in your own, the walls of your own home,
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talk with your school boards, run for, for office, run for school boards. So you can talk about these
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things, run for office at the state and County level so that you can administer or issue or
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introduce some of these bills that will keep our kids safe and protected and give them a fighting
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chance. In the meantime, we got to work on how we're going to fix these young men who continue to do
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this. They're lost. You see them, they're lost, soulless, dark eyes and menacing stare that they're
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just dead inside. And that's our failure too. That's society's failure. You know, we're, we're,
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we're talking about all sorts of things in society about what's wrong with, uh, school shootings and
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what's wrong with it, but we're not talking about mental illness. You know, we're talking about COVID,
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but we're not talking about physical health. We're talking about the band-aids. We're not
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talking about the prop, the solutions to actual problem. And the solution to actual problem is
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taking men who are manly, who've learned how to harness these masculine tendencies into productive
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outcomes, and then teaching them to the young men who need them, who maybe don't have the luxury of
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having that kind of man in their life. We got to do better guys. We can do better. And this is how
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we start. So get involved, teach your kids, firearm safety, get them introduced to guns,
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watch them know what's going on in their lives, help them with situational awareness,
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arm or school teachers, or at a minimum provides secure security. I don't want that. I wish that
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wasn't the case, but it is. So let's do it. And then make sure that you're involved at, at the
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deepest level you can within your community. We've got a lot of work to do guys. Let's make it
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happen. Let's keep our kids safe. Let's create and build an amazing thriving society. We'll be
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back next week. Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.
00:21:13.800
Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
00:21:18.260
and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.