Valuetainment - Ex-Sniper with 33 Confirmed Kills Reveals The Dark Side Of Being A Sniper

00:00:00.000 As a sniper, like being able to see something and the intent behind it was more personal.

00:00:06.160 Every sniper kill that I had felt different.

00:00:08.420 Some people say, oh, you get used to it. I never felt that.

00:00:11.220 Are you at a point right now where you can live your normal life and it doesn't haunt you anymore?

00:00:15.180 I would say I am now.

00:00:16.580 Who's the greatest sniper of all time?

00:00:17.960 Carlos Hathcock, a Marine sniper.

00:00:20.280 That was my idol, and I think that to this day that he is the best sniper godlike figure to me.

00:00:26.120 When he went in to go take out the Viet Cong commander, surrounded by himself, it was basically a suicide mission.

00:00:32.300 When he attached the unilateral scope to the Madu's .50 cal machine gun and sniped and took out a Vietnamese commander, it was like 1.2 miles away.

00:00:41.440 And that was where we get the Barrett sniper rifle from, to this day, the semi-automatic.

00:00:46.280 First confirmed versus the last confirmed. Was there meaning behind the last one?

00:00:49.760 Not my last kill, my last mission.

00:00:52.180 I lost my friend Benjamin Cobb.

00:00:54.000 I almost lost my life. My reconnaissance team pinned down by an enemy sniper and surrounded and watching the guy come in to save our life and watching him die like five minutes after that.

00:01:04.440 That was my determining factor. I was not going to re-enlist or anything.

00:01:07.340 My guest today is Nicholas Irving, a.k.a. The Reaper, who is a sniper, and not only any sniper, he was the first black sniper in Army's 3rd Ranger Battalion that was deployed in combat.

00:01:25.340 I believe he has 33 confirmed kills in a matter of four months in a tour to Afghanistan.

00:01:30.080 And he had a nickname for his, well, I'll just let him tell you when we get right into it.

00:01:35.880 So, Nicholas, having said that, thank you so much for being a guest on Bayatina.

00:01:39.720 Hey, thank you for having me on.

00:01:41.840 So, first of all, thank you for your service, you know, for somebody to get in and then, you know, you go from Fort Benning to go to Afghanistan.

00:01:49.340 You got your 33 kills and you're putting yourself on the line and there's a lot of risk on that.

00:01:54.260 But what made a person like you say, I want to be a sniper?

00:02:00.060 How does that happen?

00:02:01.840 To be honest, it was, well, I would say Charlie Sheen, but that stems from the movie Navy Seals, but it derives from my dad.

00:02:10.000 Both of my parents were in the Army.

00:02:13.180 That's where my parents met.

00:02:14.840 That's where I was born.

00:02:15.500 I was born in Augsburg, Germany, while they were both in the military.

00:02:19.360 And seeing my dad at a young age, I had to be maybe four years old, and I watched him raise the flag one day at his building, and he was wearing the Army green uniform, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

00:02:32.840 And it kind of intrigued me.

00:02:34.540 Ever since then, I wanted to be like my dad.

00:02:36.280 So, wearing his military uniform and asking questions and watching movies about the military and reading books, it started as a very, very, very young kid and my mom and my dad.

00:02:47.240 Wow. What was your dad's MOS?

00:02:50.520 They were both, they both had the same MOS.

00:02:53.440 They were counterintelligence.

00:02:54.680 So, geez, I don't know exactly, maybe at 90 something.

00:02:58.600 I honestly have no idea what the MOS was, but they were counterintelligence during the Cold War.

00:03:04.200 So, they like did Morse code and stuff like that.

00:03:07.040 So, they're, I mean, you have to score very high on the ASVAB to get any kind of military intelligence.

00:03:12.400 So, your parents are very smart.

00:03:13.140 Oh, I couldn't do it.

00:03:14.540 Yeah, I was not there.

00:03:15.520 I didn't call a lot to have that job.

00:03:17.980 Yeah.

00:03:18.320 I remember when I went and took my test and they came back with the score.

00:03:21.240 They said, yeah, you got two options.

00:03:22.900 I said, what is it?

00:03:24.160 Infantry or Hummer mechanic?

00:03:25.500 I said, you know what?

00:03:26.160 I'll go play with Hummers a little bit.

00:03:27.460 So, I took Hummer mechanic.

00:03:29.400 Nice.

00:03:29.880 Good choice.

00:03:30.860 So, sniper.

00:03:32.240 So, walk me through.

00:03:33.240 What I don't know of is, so, you go in, you know, you got boot camp.

00:03:38.820 You know, I don't know if it's nine weeks, 12 weeks.

00:03:40.560 They keep changing it.

00:03:41.340 So, whatever the timeline is.

00:03:42.380 Then you have AIT, advanced individual training.

00:03:45.280 And then you have any kind of secondary, you know, schools that you take.

00:03:48.340 What is the process of becoming a sniper if you can walk us through it?

00:03:52.020 So, for my, I was special operations.

00:03:56.260 So, the pipeline or the cycle was a little bit extended.

00:03:59.580 So, I did the, you're right.

00:04:01.380 I think it was 14 weeks with the Army basic training plus the AIT.

00:04:05.840 They changed it to where the basic training and AIT is all combined now.

00:04:09.880 And they, they call it OSIT when I went in.

00:04:13.180 It was one station unit training.

00:04:15.200 I believe it was 14 weeks.

00:04:17.860 And right after that was airborne school.

00:04:22.580 That's five weeks of, you know, getting used to heights, which I'm, you know, terrified of.

00:04:28.420 And learning how to jump out of planes.

00:04:31.040 And you should have five jumps out of, right out of airborne school.

00:04:36.760 After airborne school, I went to a selection course for Rangers, which was called Ranger Indoctrination Program, or RIP for short.

00:04:44.580 And that was about, that was a month-long course of just a physical beatdown.

00:04:51.800 And we had 85, 85 plus guys or candidates that tried out for this selection.

00:04:56.840 And we graduated seven, six of the original class.

00:05:00.680 And I was one of the six from that original class.

00:05:03.120 And everybody else quit or could not make the standards.

00:05:06.620 And from there, I went on to my unit, 3rd Ranger Battalion, and stayed there for six months.

00:05:13.920 Did my first deployment to Iraq.

00:05:17.320 Two deployments after that, we would deploy every six months.

00:05:20.660 So we would deploy for three months, four months, and come back and train up for six and keep that rotation up.

00:05:26.780 And I did three deployments to Iraq before I went to sniper school.

00:05:32.180 After that, then I officially, well, I had a few jobs before that.

00:05:36.020 I was a machine gunner, a machine gun team leader.

00:05:38.660 So I had my own little machine gun team and designated marksman.

00:05:43.160 And the step or the process or the designator right before sniper.

00:05:47.280 You're not officially a sniper.

00:05:48.500 You haven't gone through the schooling yet.

00:05:50.060 But you have a scoped weapon.

00:05:52.280 And you score expert a lot.

00:05:55.560 Held that for one deployment before I officially went on to sniper school, which was eight weeks long.

00:06:01.200 And before that, I had, like, our unit, special operations.

00:06:07.600 We had courses we would get sent to.

00:06:09.440 So private courses.

00:06:11.260 I went through two sniper schools that were not through the military.

00:06:16.660 They were private civilian run from guys who are really, really good at shooting.

00:06:20.900 And we're, like, outsourced to whatnot.

00:06:22.900 That's why I learned how to shoot, you know, I think the best when it came to precision shooting.

00:06:28.780 Nicholas, was that in the state or was that out of the country?

00:06:32.300 Oh, here, stateside.

00:06:33.280 And coincidentally, it was here in Texas where I ended up moving to.

00:06:37.420 Where I got my first case, I guess, for Texas.

00:06:39.640 I had never seen land that flat before.

00:06:42.080 And it was, I don't know, it was beautiful.

00:06:43.780 And that's why I liked Texas initially.

00:06:45.420 And, yeah, went through two sniper schools in Texas, one in California, a little high-angle precision shooting course that was privately run, and then to the eight-week sniper course.

00:06:58.420 So, yeah, it was a long, long, long fight to get there.

00:07:01.480 That's pretty intense.

00:07:02.600 So you got your one-station unit training, airborne school.

00:07:07.800 You have to jump five times.

00:07:09.040 Then you go selection.

00:07:10.560 Then you go four months ranger school.

00:07:12.280 Out of 85-7, you were one of the 6th Battalion, then Afghanistan, and you deployed three times to Iraq.

00:07:17.520 Then in that process of sniper school.

00:07:20.760 I forgot there was a ranger.

00:07:23.340 You totally, I blocked this purposely out of my mind.

00:07:26.200 Terrible school.

00:07:27.240 It's brutal.

00:07:28.320 Ranger school.

00:07:29.080 So after, you know, you serve in a ranger battalion, then we go to the 72-day ranger school.

00:07:34.560 And that's just the, you know, they starve you for, you know, however, 62 days.

00:07:40.000 I lost 35 pounds in that school, and I didn't sleep much.

00:07:43.360 So I got sick, and it was a bad, bad experience.

00:07:46.720 You normally lose a lot of weight, about 20 pounds, but I lost 35, and had to deploy after that.

00:07:51.880 So I purposely forget about that school.

00:07:54.780 So after that, then it was sniper school.

00:07:56.840 Then it was sniper school.

00:07:57.560 So sniper school, you know, is it, you know how you're going, like, what I didn't know is, you and I can join the Navy, and while we're signing up to go into the Navy, we can say we want to go to Navy, be a Navy SEAL.

00:08:10.440 I didn't know you could do that right off the bat, right?

00:08:12.360 I thought it's kind of like you go in, and then you say, hey, I want to be an 18 Delta, I go become, I'm part of the 5th group, or 3rd group, or whatever.

00:08:18.980 So is sniper something you requested from day one, or was it something that came later on?

00:08:26.120 It came later on.

00:08:27.300 Okay, got it.

00:08:28.420 So, yeah, like when I first had my contract, I wanted to ask that, but there was no way.

00:08:32.980 They had no idea, you know, if I could shoot, no way of knowing if I could shoot well or anything like that, a team player, if I would even make it.

00:08:39.840 So it was not even an option.

00:08:41.900 I wish it were, but at the time, no.

00:08:45.180 Is there automatic elimination that, okay, listen, we like you, you're great, but here's five things that automatically eliminates you from being in sniper school.

00:08:55.900 You know how back in the days they would say, if you're colorblind, if you're flat-footed, if you have asthma, you know, all these things they would say.

00:09:01.920 Was there any automatic disqualification of sniper school?

00:09:05.160 Oh, yeah.

00:09:05.520 I had my first run-in being colorblind.

00:09:10.300 Before I wanted to join the Army, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL, like everybody else does.

00:09:15.180 And, you know, I went into, I did the whole process.

00:09:17.940 I was talking to the Navy recruiter.

00:09:20.400 I went through a Navy SEA cadet corps my mom put me through, or, you know, I asked her to be in.

00:09:25.620 And I went through this little program called Baby SEALs.

00:09:28.740 And they put you through like a little mock Navy SEAL course, and you, you know, get scuba qualified and all this, like 15.

00:09:37.240 And I thought that was pretty neat.

00:09:39.280 And I went into the Navy recruiter, and I took the color vision test, and it turned out that I was 100%, not 100%, but I was red-green colorblind.

00:09:48.700 And completely disqualified me.

00:09:51.160 So I went to the Army thinking that I could fool them and somehow cheat this color vision test, not with the intention of wanting to join the Army, but retaking this color vision test.

00:10:02.720 And failed it again.

00:10:04.160 But this Army nurse was there, and she kind of like, I was crying a lot.

00:10:08.720 You know, it was a dream that I had of wanting to join the military.

00:10:11.140 And I was crying in the office on the little station where you take your physical at.

00:10:15.640 And she saw me crying, and she brought me into her office and asked what the problem was and found out that I was red-green colorblind.

00:10:22.820 So she pulled out this booklet, and she traced with her finger all the numbers that I couldn't see.

00:10:28.280 And I called them out, and she scored me 100%.

00:10:31.020 That's how I got into the Army.

00:10:33.500 She helped me out.

00:10:34.940 I had no idea what a Ranger was until I remember watching Black Hawk Down, but it didn't stand out to me.

00:10:42.300 I didn't find out what Rangers were, you know, pretty much until I, you know, signed the contract and was going in.

00:10:49.700 So neither Ranger or neither sniper was negotiated up front?

00:10:54.140 No.

00:10:54.660 Oh, just Ranger.

00:10:55.660 Ranger was negotiated.

00:10:56.800 I asked for, I wanted something that was going to be the closest to Navy SEALs as possible.

00:11:01.620 They said Rangers was it, except for Rangers, they don't swim.

00:11:05.080 And I was like, well, perfect.

00:11:06.040 I'll take that.

00:11:07.220 And that's how I became a Ranger.

00:11:09.520 Got it.

00:11:09.880 Yeah, I mean, Ranger is, you know, I know Rangers, and they tell me the story, and it's not a –

00:11:18.500 Not easy.

00:11:19.320 No, no, no.

00:11:20.120 I mean, seven on 85.

00:11:21.500 85 goes, 77 come out.

00:11:23.280 That's – those are the numbers for you.

00:11:25.440 So sniper school, were there any automatic disqualifications or no?

00:11:29.960 Yes.

00:11:30.900 I don't have 20-20 vision.

00:11:32.640 And so if you have color vision and 20-20 vision, if they cannot be corrected, that automatically disqualifies you.

00:11:41.040 I don't think there was anything else as far as being flat-footed.

00:11:45.640 Got it.

00:11:46.200 But basically, eyesight was the number one thing that would immediately disqualify you.

00:11:51.120 Did they recruit you to become a sniper, or did you make the ask?

00:11:55.080 I had to ask my platoon, my first, my team leader.

00:11:59.820 Then it went up the chain of command before I could actually become – or put in the paperwork.

00:12:03.740 You have to put in this packet that's signed off by your chain of command.

00:12:09.020 You're worthy of going.

00:12:10.260 They trust that you'll go and represent well, and you're a team player.

00:12:14.540 Or, you know, all these, you know, little pre-qualifications in this packet that you have to have submitted to sniper school.

00:12:21.700 They look at it.

00:12:22.760 They only accept so many per year, and that's when the courses start.

00:12:27.760 Five weeks, eight weeks long.

00:12:29.300 And, yeah, day one, it's, you know, the first day – I want to take that back.

00:12:35.140 The first day, you can get cut pretty easily where they shoot in.

00:12:39.220 It's called a shoot-in process where they give you a standard AR M4 rifle, iron sights, no scope on it,

00:12:45.900 and you have to be able to shoot a grouping, like five-inch grouping at – I forget how far, 25 meters or something like that.

00:12:54.220 And if you can't, that immediately disqualifies you day one.

00:12:59.840 You know, your bags are not even unpacked, and that can get you disqualified.

00:13:03.820 Right off the bat, day one.

00:13:05.720 Oh, yeah.

00:13:06.100 That happened.

00:13:06.780 We had, like, two guys in our class who went in, and literally bags still packed.

00:13:12.480 As soon as we got there, an hour or two, as soon as the class initially started, they were already back home.

00:13:18.220 Yeah.

00:13:18.320 So it's pretty quick.

00:13:19.440 It's not like – so they're immediately getting – it's not like they're getting rid of 50%, but they're getting rid of the bottom 5%, bottom 10%. 0.71

00:13:26.260 Oh, yeah.

00:13:26.960 There you go.

00:13:27.520 Yeah, exactly.

00:13:28.600 So then what was it like?

00:13:30.460 I mean, if you go – I'm assuming – I'm assuming sniper school has to be very different than Ranger or Airborne.

00:13:38.040 Like, there's no screaming because it's more poised.

00:13:40.060 You have to stay calm.

00:13:41.240 I'm assuming it's a different angle.

00:13:42.720 They took different direction.

00:13:43.600 They took with sniper school.

00:13:45.620 100%.

00:13:45.980 It was a – I want to say laid – a little bit more laid back.

00:13:50.140 There was rarely anybody that yelled, none of the instructors or anything.

00:13:54.300 It was like a personal – it was not like what you expect when you turn on and look at, like, drill sergeants are getting yelled at and stuff like that.

00:14:03.480 It was a really gentleman's course, if you want to call it that.

00:14:08.300 You're your own – you have your own responsibilities.

00:14:11.720 And, you know, you're a sniper.

00:14:13.000 You have to get used to working as one man or two men, very small teams and have a lot of responsibilities.

00:14:18.360 So we had a lot of, you know, leeway when it came to that.

00:14:21.340 Not a lot of yelling or fussing.

00:14:23.480 The – I guess the hard portion of sniper school that, you know, really stands out is the attention to detail.

00:14:30.740 There is a lot of attention to detail that is, you know, incorporated with sniper school.

00:14:36.460 It's not all shooting.

00:14:37.500 I would honestly say the shooting portion maybe makes up 20%, 30% of all sniper school.

00:14:44.180 Everything else is learning.

00:14:46.260 There's eight-hour, 12-hour days of sitting in a classroom, staying awake, watching hours of PowerPoint.

00:14:52.580 Or going out to the field and learning, you know, how to read the wind.

00:14:57.020 Or looking for, you know, a toothpick or a toothbrush in the woods with the binoculars and stuff like that.

00:15:03.300 A lot of attention to detail.

00:15:04.920 Not much shooting.

00:15:06.300 That was the hard part.

00:15:07.440 Not what I expected.

00:15:09.140 So finding a toothpick or a toothbrush in the woods, like, you have to find it.

00:15:14.960 So you're literally sitting there and you have to find the toothbrush.

00:15:18.060 Yep, so there's a portion called target detection, and they place out small objects in the field, you know, 100 yards, a couple of hundred yards or however far away in front of you.

00:15:31.440 And you use your naked eyes, binoculars, and your spotting scope to find these 10 small objects.

00:15:38.260 It might be a bullet, a string, a military shoelace, toothbrush, small, small stuff like that.

00:15:47.880 A clear protractor was one I distinctly remember.

00:15:50.760 A clear protractor taped to the side of a building.

00:15:54.560 And what made it stand out were the numbers, like the little tick marks that are not normally on the side of a building.

00:16:01.480 So attention to detail, looking for really small things that don't fit, that was really, really, you know, harped on at Slipper School.

00:16:09.700 Nicholas, when you go to, when I meet a Ranger or a Special Forces or Delta, these are all gun-cold guys.

00:16:17.320 Like, you look at them, you know, like, respect.

00:16:20.240 You know, you see a commonality.

00:16:21.920 Studs, stud-up studs, right, when you see.

00:16:24.180 I know that look.

00:16:24.840 Oh, yeah.

00:16:25.220 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:25.820 So, you know, but you can see, like, this makes sense, right?

00:16:30.060 When you went to Sniper School, did you see a commonality amongst the soldiers?

00:16:38.100 Like, was it extremely technical?

00:16:40.920 Was it quieter?

00:16:42.220 Was it more shy reserve?

00:16:44.340 Was it a lot of loners?

00:16:45.880 Was it a lot of, you know, I'm not a, you know, I'm more like sports.

00:16:49.540 You know, some kids do better at tennis because it's a one-man game or golf or boxing versus teams, 20, 30, 40, 50 people.

00:16:56.980 What sense did you notice amongst the Sniper School?

00:17:00.060 You know, I never really thought about that.

00:17:01.880 But now looking back at it, that's a really good question.

00:17:05.260 And I would say it's a really, wow, the commonality would be, I would say the loner aspect.

00:17:12.660 Everyone has that, I guess they were the nerds or maybe didn't have that many friends in school.

00:17:18.820 Not because of, it was just they chose to maybe, quieter, more reserved, people who like to think a lot, or people who think more than they talk.

00:17:30.780 You know, I would say that was one of the biggest characteristics of, you could tell a Sniper, if you put him in the crowd of people, you would be able to tell who the Sniper is.

00:17:39.820 They don't look like the chiseled, you know, you know, guy you see on the poster or anything like that.

00:17:45.540 They were just like your average, really, really average, average, average guy.

00:17:51.960 Nothing stand out.

00:17:52.940 Nothing stand out.

00:17:53.880 It's very average guy.

00:17:55.280 Some guys I looked at and I was just like, I don't know what you're doing here, you know.

00:18:02.660 But there was one guy on my team and I'm not like, we all made fun of him, but he was very, he wasn't, he called, he knew he was not attractive to the eye, you know.

00:18:13.620 And he was just a very average, very below, maybe a little bit below average looking guy, maybe.

00:18:18.920 And, but he was the best shot and he outshot everybody on the team, the best shot to this day.

00:18:26.060 If I had to go up against this guy, I would lose the best, pure talent, best shot I've ever seen in my life.

00:18:32.640 But as far as looks, you would not be able to tell.

00:18:35.780 And he was really, really heavy into like a WWF or WWE.

00:18:40.640 He was into wrestling as a grown man.

00:18:42.780 So it was, that's how average it was.

00:18:45.340 Very interesting.

00:18:46.200 So, you know, did you, did you guys, I'm assuming there's a level of camaraderie build.

00:18:50.980 Is there follow-up till today where you guys keep contact with each other?

00:18:54.080 Is there, is there some kind of a, you know, community of snipers being friends together?

00:18:58.300 Big time, big time.

00:18:59.440 It's a huge unity.

00:19:00.260 I, I talked to my spotter to this day, to, not spotter, my original spotter I've talked to.

00:19:06.900 And I have a friend that was not my spotter, but we were in the same sniper platoon together.

00:19:12.080 We still, we, I mean, hung out for years after we got out of the military.

00:19:16.620 We shot at this little facility, help instruct different military units at a facility that we went to go shoot at at one point in our careers and keep in contact.

00:19:26.840 We've been in business together.

00:19:28.460 And as my old team leader who got shot on a mission that I was in, he's a, I think he's a preacher now.

00:19:36.100 I want to say he's a preacher, but we keep in contact here and there on, on Instagram and Facebook and stuff like that.

00:19:42.440 But yeah, I don't think that there's not one guy or one sniper that I don't have contact with, or at least, you know, six degrees of separation somewhere on social media.

00:19:54.460 I bet that makes sense because I mean, how many are there? It's not like it's a community of 300,000 or 600,000 small community.

00:20:01.160 So, and, and to do that, you have to be part of a very elite community to decide to do that.

00:20:06.920 I mean, it's not easy.

00:20:07.820 I remember going out there, even just trying to shoot something that was, you know, 200 meters away from you, 100 meters away from you, 300 meters from you.

00:20:15.460 And then you're looking at numbers, you got to be, how do you even do that to go, you know, that far with some of the things, you know, you guys.

00:20:22.720 And so now let's, let's go to the other side.

00:20:24.720 Is the mindset of, would you consider yourself a superstitious person or no?

00:20:29.600 Superstitious? I, you know, yes.

00:20:33.900 Would you say that's common amongst your peers or no?

00:20:36.460 I would, I would say so. I think that, oh yeah. Oh yeah.

00:20:41.320 Especially like on the last deployment, there's a big superstitious, I was big into it.

00:20:46.380 Everybody is that you're going to die.

00:20:48.820 It's it's, you're going to get shot. You're going to get wounded or you're going to die.

00:20:52.060 It's going to be a worse deployment.

00:20:53.720 And for me, it legitimately, it legitimately was my worst, scariest deployment.

00:20:58.360 And I noticed that amongst everybody who I saw get out, either they got shot and it was just this thing that happened.

00:21:07.160 And if things would not go right before a mission or something was out of place or something didn't happen as normal.

00:21:15.400 Oh yeah. There's a big superstition amongst that.

00:21:17.780 Or Friday the 13th was one for me.

00:21:20.140 I didn't like doing things on holidays.

00:21:23.780 You know, we kind of weird me out a little bit doing missions on the holiday.

00:21:27.360 I can see that because, you know, there is, there's so many attention, like stuff that has to do with details.

00:21:34.240 Like, look, everything's got to be good for me to feel comfortable to make this.

00:21:38.400 So what is that? You know what?

00:21:40.280 So fast forward to you going on your tours and it's 33 confirmed in four months.

00:21:49.160 What is the difference between your first confirmed versus your 33rd confirmed?

00:21:53.300 What was the difference between Nicholas on his first versus the 33rd?

00:21:56.100 The, my first one in my career ever, I was 18.

00:22:00.300 I was a machine gunner with my first ever.

00:22:02.980 And my first as a sniper, well, I killed 33 as a sniper, as a machine gunner.

00:22:07.400 I legitimately have no idea.

00:22:09.520 It was a few.

00:22:10.360 I would maybe as much as a sniper, maybe a little bit less, but it was a, it was a bit.

00:22:16.040 And the first one as an 18 year old kid, I had a dream about it for many, many years.

00:22:23.920 And as a sniper, it was a separation.

00:22:28.100 I think of how close it was like being able to see something and the intent behind it was more personal.

00:22:34.980 So I had the sniper kills set everything apart from any other kill.

00:22:39.620 And every sniper kill that I had was all weird, not weird, but they all felt different.

00:22:46.980 Yeah.

00:22:47.100 They all felt different.

00:22:48.460 I never, there was nothing that feeling that some people say, oh, you get used to it.

00:22:51.960 I never felt that I never felt used to killing anything.

00:22:56.880 I would have this weird set of emotions that I would go through.

00:23:01.100 And the motto for our sniper community is without warning, without remorse, without warning part,

00:23:08.600 nine times out of 10 is what happened.

00:23:10.200 But the remorse part for me personally was every single time I felt some weird way about it.

00:23:15.400 I'm not sure if it, you know, derives from coming from a religious background and,

00:23:18.620 you know, growing up in church and stuff like that.

00:23:21.300 But I was, it was weird.

00:23:23.640 It was a weird experience for me to after the fact, really weird.

00:23:28.380 You're the first person that I've heard say the disposition that you have.

00:23:31.960 It's typically the other way around, which is it's part of my job.

00:23:35.200 It's part of my duty and I want it to be good.

00:23:37.200 And, you know, you know, you know, it's almost like a script that you hear, but you're saying.

00:23:40.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:41.160 Did you, when you were active, did you have contact with your parents?

00:23:44.740 Like, did you talk to your mom and dad?

00:23:46.020 Could you come in?

00:23:46.700 So when the first time it happened as a sniper, did you call your mom and dad and try to process

00:23:50.840 it with them?

00:23:51.420 Like, here's what I'm thinking.

00:23:52.500 How do I handle this?

00:23:53.780 And what feedback did dad give you? 0.60

00:23:56.560 My first kill ever.

00:23:57.940 I remember going to, I was in Iraq and I went to across the street to this MWR place.

00:24:03.560 And I forget what MWR stands for.

00:24:05.960 Um, but it's the, we had like computers and stuff in there and internet access.

00:24:12.380 Um, we could go in there and go online and make phone calls.

00:24:16.300 And I called my dad, my first kill ever.

00:24:19.180 No, I emailed him, then called him.

00:24:21.120 And he told me, Hey, don't talk about that stuff.

00:24:23.260 But I was like, dad, I killed somebody.

00:24:25.220 And he's like, Hey, don't talk about that.

00:24:26.800 And we never talked about it after anytime after, but it was my very first kill ever,

00:24:31.680 ever in combat.

00:24:33.180 It was like, uh, just eight, a little bit over 18.

00:24:36.200 I was in to crit, uh, to crit at that point.

00:24:40.320 Yeah.

00:24:40.480 My first deployment to Iraq was to crit.

00:24:42.160 Second one was to Mosul and third was to Baghdad.

00:24:44.680 So to crit was my first kill ever.

00:24:48.000 MWR United States army families and moral welfare, welfare and recreation programs.

00:24:53.540 There it is.

00:24:54.180 I knew that recreation was in there.

00:24:55.420 Yep.

00:24:55.640 That's what it was.

00:24:56.720 Yeah.

00:24:56.820 Yeah.

00:24:56.980 So, so, so you call your dad and dad says, Easton, this is not something we talked about.

00:25:01.180 So you're kind of like, okay, I'm going to keep it to myself.

00:25:03.420 And you go back at it and you have in 33 total and each one of them has a different

00:25:08.840 feeling and emotion for it.

00:25:10.300 Are you at a point right now where you can live your normal life and it doesn't haunt you

00:25:14.080 anymore?

00:25:15.460 I am now.

00:25:16.560 I would say I am now.

00:25:18.780 Um, I think that maybe over time, I don't think it'd ever go away because it happened.

00:25:24.180 Like there was a point in time where I never wanted to forget any of this stuff.

00:25:28.500 I thought it was, it was just stuck and I was fine with it.

00:25:31.180 It was who I, it made me who I was at that moment, but then it started to like really

00:25:36.760 affect my personal life and family life.

00:25:39.000 And that guy did not intermingle with this world, you know, too well.

00:25:44.160 So it took some time and it honestly, legitimately was the birth of my son, uh, four years ago,

00:25:50.320 four years ago was the complete 100% turnaround.

00:25:53.580 You know, from being, I had to be, it was just a weird, weird thing.

00:25:58.120 I, from everything I've ever, ever experienced watching my son being born in the room was

00:26:03.340 like, I don't know.

00:26:04.900 It was out of body experience, maybe weird.

00:26:08.840 I've never felt that before.

00:26:09.980 It was just really, really intense, really weird and, and scary.

00:26:14.060 Yeah.

00:26:14.580 Scary at the same time.

00:26:16.340 Really scared.

00:26:17.260 That was a different scared though, but it changed me in a good way.

00:26:19.580 I just couldn't be, I don't know.

00:26:21.980 It was like, I didn't matter so much anymore.

00:26:26.180 It wasn't being like me.

00:26:28.360 You know what I mean?

00:26:29.140 I didn't have to be me.

00:26:30.600 It was like, I have to be cool for this guy or different for this guy.

00:26:36.060 It was just a weird train.

00:26:37.920 It was a weird thing, you know?

00:26:40.080 Nicholas, when's your birthday?

00:26:41.220 What month's your birthday?

00:26:42.860 November, November 28th.

00:26:44.440 Me and my son share the same birthday and weird, weird, weird thing happened.

00:26:49.820 My son was born, well, he had this heart condition.

00:26:52.960 His heart would skip every once in a while.

00:26:55.600 And my wife's sister just lost her baby 12 hours after she was born.

00:27:04.460 She had a heart condition as well.

00:27:06.540 So I was, you know, already worried about it.

00:27:08.960 And the doctors were going to, you know, induce labor.

00:27:13.860 I think it was December.

00:27:15.340 December 8th is when they wanted to induce it.

00:27:17.880 But when I first met my wife 13 years ago, I told her I wanted to have a child no later than 30.

00:27:25.640 And on my birthday is when my son was born.

00:27:29.740 I was like, wow.

00:27:30.500 So we share the same birthday now.

00:27:32.340 November 28th.

00:27:34.520 November 28th, 1990 is when I came to America from Germany.

00:27:38.160 You're kidding.

00:27:38.920 No, November.

00:27:39.880 I mean, I will never forget November 28th.

00:27:41.640 Oh, you came to it.

00:27:42.460 You know what?

00:27:43.040 So did I.

00:27:43.700 I came to America.

00:27:44.720 We moved from Germany in 1990.

00:27:46.900 But yeah, November 28th is my birthday.

00:27:49.160 And 1990 is when we moved to Florida and America from Germany.

00:27:52.160 Let me tell you, November 28th, 1990 is when I left Germany and I came to America.

00:27:57.400 You're kidding.

00:27:58.420 No, I was in Germany.

00:27:59.980 Staying here.

00:28:00.440 I was in Germany by a military camp in Erlangen that had a refugee camp.

00:28:06.340 And we went from there November 20th, 1990.

00:28:08.780 I came to America, landed in New York, ended up in Glendale, California.

00:28:13.000 Wow.

00:28:13.800 What a small world.

00:28:16.120 What a day.

00:28:18.780 Yeah, November 20th.

00:28:19.720 So November 20th has got a lot of meaning for both of us.

00:28:21.880 Your birthday, your son's birthday.

00:28:23.240 You come in here.

00:28:24.020 And, you know, for me, it's me coming to the States.

00:28:26.800 So you said something earlier.

00:28:28.060 And you said, when I asked you, I said, tell me about the first versus the last, number

00:28:32.300 one and number, you know, 33.

00:28:33.580 And you said, I had some that wasn't even the confirmed snipers.

00:28:37.020 It was, you know, different that I had to.

00:28:39.020 I think you said, what was the weapon?

00:28:43.120 Gunner.

00:28:43.700 The machine gun.

00:28:44.760 The machine gun, you said.

00:28:46.140 But you said something about the last one.

00:28:47.460 You said the last one was kind of emotional.

00:28:49.020 What do you mean by that?

00:28:50.540 You said something about the last one.

00:28:52.980 My very, oh, my very first one deployed was the most emotional one.

00:28:56.820 I had the most dreams about.

00:28:58.460 It was the one that haunted me.

00:28:59.300 When you said the first confirmed versus the last confirmed, you said the last confirmed

00:29:04.200 had meaning behind it.

00:29:05.860 It almost like the enemy was somebody that took out a friend or something.

00:29:09.800 Was there meaning behind the last one?

00:29:11.380 I would say it had more maybe along the lines of the mission with where I lost my friend

00:29:16.300 Benjamin Cobb.

00:29:17.780 If that's the one that were not my last, killed my last mission, where it changed my life,

00:29:25.080 where I was never, that was my determining factor.

00:29:27.560 I was not going to, you know, reenlist or anything.

00:29:29.500 My last mission, when I almost lost my life, my reconnaissance team pinned down by an enemy

00:29:35.120 sniper and surrounded and watching the guy come in to save our life and watching him die

00:29:40.360 like five minutes after that was when, you know, I think was my determining factor.

00:29:45.220 I don't think any kill actually, you know, different from any other kill.

00:29:49.700 They were all different and all emotional.

00:29:51.820 I had remorse for all of them.

00:29:53.640 I'm not going to say remorse.

00:29:54.900 I felt sad, though.

00:29:56.080 It wasn't, I did feel sad.

00:29:58.960 It was a sadness, but not like a sad as in I wanted to cry necessarily.

00:30:04.500 Maybe an emptiness, maybe like it didn't feel good.

00:30:08.960 You know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to say it felt great.

00:30:11.880 I didn't feel good about it.

00:30:13.140 It was just, wow.

00:30:13.900 I don't know.

00:30:14.300 It was a weird, weird feeling.

00:30:16.560 Yeah.

00:30:17.560 Interesting.

00:30:19.840 So, so your, your MK11 rifle, why the nickname?

00:30:23.480 You know, you put the nickname, the modified version of the SR-25 sniper rifle, nicknamed

00:30:28.020 Dirty Diana.

00:30:29.240 Why Dirty Diana? 1.00

00:30:30.800 Michael Jackson.

00:30:31.560 Listen, my first ever memory of Michael Jackson was sitting on my mom's lap, watching him

00:30:37.680 at a concert.

00:30:39.220 He was performing and he rips his shirt off on stage.

00:30:42.920 And for some reason, all that, the, the, the fireworks and stuff stuck with me and Michael

00:30:48.960 Jackson fan ever since moonwalking at the age of, you know, five or six.

00:30:53.300 And I love, I love Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson on, you know, on my playlist,

00:30:59.640 but it derives from this operation we were doing in Iraq and my, uh, this, yeah, we're

00:31:05.820 riding around in strikers and in the striker, it's like a modified, I want to say a mini,

00:31:11.380 if you think of a mini tank, but with wheels, there's eight wheels on it, 40 ton vehicle.

00:31:16.720 And I'm the driver.

00:31:19.060 There's someone behind me who's like in charge of looking out on top so I can drive.

00:31:23.380 And we call him the TC.

00:31:24.820 We get into a firefight and this song, uh, on his playlist, the iPod, iPad or iPod, it

00:31:31.200 was at the time we had plugged in into the internal speakers and he had Dirty Diana playing

00:31:36.300 in on the internal speakers during this firefight in Iraq.

00:31:39.320 And that was like my moment, or I guess my moment where I knew that, I don't know, I was

00:31:45.740 going to name something after it, but at the time it wasn't a sniper rifle.

00:31:48.700 It was just, I love Michael Jackson, but when I got my rifle in battalion, I had to name

00:31:53.700 it Dirty Diana just out of remembrance for, you know, Michael Jackson.

00:31:57.620 I, I don't know.

00:31:58.720 I like the song.

00:31:59.900 I don't know.

00:32:00.840 I like Michael Jackson.

00:32:01.880 I wasn't going to name her Billy Jean.

00:32:03.900 Billy Jean would have been, I don't know.

00:32:05.880 Dirty Diana was it for. 1.00

00:32:07.380 I like Dirty Diana. 0.99

00:32:08.960 And I said, that's a very unique name to give your rifle.

00:32:11.440 So, you know, let's go to a different direction with sniper.

00:32:14.720 So did you, did you study, like, were you one to study who's the greatest sniper of all

00:32:19.380 time?

00:32:19.660 Who are the top five?

00:32:20.360 Who are the top 10?

00:32:21.120 You know, what do they do?

00:32:22.500 How many confirmed kills?

00:32:23.580 What's the longest distance?

00:32:24.740 Who is this guy?

00:32:25.580 Were you somebody that got into it?

00:32:27.060 Like, were you obsessed?

00:32:27.860 Were you maniacal about it?

00:32:29.500 I was obsessed to the point my dad took my books, my library books away.

00:32:34.880 Oh, what grade was I in?

00:32:36.300 I had to be seventh or eighth grade at the time.

00:32:38.900 I was getting in trouble in school from, I would go to the library and either if I had

00:32:44.680 a library card or I would steal some books and check out a few other ones.

00:32:49.220 But all the military books that revolved around sniping and all the Vietnam special operation

00:32:55.140 guys like SOG, SOG and the old Navy SEALs.

00:32:59.100 And I learned Jesse Ventura was a Navy SEAL from, like, one of these books.

00:33:03.160 And one of my idols at the time was Carlos Hathcock, a Marine sniper.

00:33:10.160 And I had VHS tapes that I would come home after school and watch and was consuming up

00:33:14.840 way too much of my time, interfering with schoolwork and got in trouble for it.

00:33:19.060 But that was my idol.

00:33:21.140 And I think that to this day that he is the best hands down sniper of all time, regardless

00:33:26.980 of numbers.

00:33:27.680 But Carlos Hathcock, in my opinion, is the top of the top when it comes to snipers.

00:33:33.100 Tell me why.

00:33:33.680 Because I know he had 93 confirmed in Vietnam.

00:33:35.960 93 confirmed kills.

00:33:38.600 His ingenuity and the mission that sets him apart from all, and I idolized him for it,

00:33:44.720 even on my first reconnaissance mission, was when he went in to go take out the Viet Cong 0.68

00:33:50.880 commander.

00:33:51.460 He stalked in, like, 1,000 yards on his stomach, surrounded by himself.

00:33:55.700 It was basically a suicide mission, and took out a commander, a Vietnamese commander, then

00:34:01.480 had to crawl back out while being chased by a whole brigade or something like that from

00:34:05.500 enemy troops, getting bit by bugs and putting grass and stuff through the back of his, the

00:34:12.160 slits in the back of his uniform to essentially make a ghillie suit.

00:34:15.720 His ingenuity was, I think, would set him apart for me.

00:34:18.600 And when he attached the unertal scope to the Madu's .50-cal machine gun and sniped someone

00:34:27.220 off of a bike, it was like 1.2 miles away, I think.

00:34:31.800 And that was where we get the Barrett sniper rifle from, to this day, the semi-automatic.

00:34:36.780 He was like the person who invented or threw the theory out there to put a scope on a .50-cal

00:34:43.280 rifle.

00:34:44.320 So I think that is why I put him up there.

00:34:47.060 But that's what stood out in his persona about him.

00:34:50.360 He was just a white feather, his persona, and I don't know, he's a sniper god-like figure

00:34:56.780 to me.

00:34:57.920 Yeah, so I looked up a few things to see kind of what the numbers look like.

00:35:01.600 So Craig Harrison, British sniper, killed a Taliban fighter 2,475 meters away.

00:35:08.480 That's a mile and a half in 2009.

00:35:10.040 Like, and then another Canadian, I couldn't find out what the name was.

00:35:14.200 I kept looking to see what's, they won't release his name.

00:35:17.680 Okay, I know about the first one.

00:35:20.020 Okay.

00:35:21.020 Yeah, the second one is 3,540 meters, which is over two miles.

00:35:25.920 That's the world record, 39 football fields.

00:35:28.660 And they're not disclosing the name for whatever reason.

00:35:31.240 So if you can kind of put us, give us some perspective.

00:35:35.160 What is 2,475 meters or 3,540 meters?

00:35:40.080 My furthest shot is 2,022 meters on a steel target.

00:35:46.940 That took the bullet a few seconds to get there.

00:35:51.300 Let's say, so 1.2 miles, well, 2,022 meters, let's say it's 1.1, 1.2 miles.

00:35:58.220 You're looking at flight time, five, six seconds.

00:36:05.820 Five, six seconds of flight time, three, four, five.

00:36:09.020 It depends on the round you're using.

00:36:11.020 Let's say 4,000 meters, right?

00:36:14.600 With the average sniper rifle, 7.62, that would take the bullet 1.7 seconds to get there.

00:36:21.680 So just under two seconds for 1,000 meters.

00:36:23.980 So amplify that over time to, let's say, 2,000, you have to factor in the fact that the bullet is slowing down now, too.

00:36:31.980 So that 1.2 seconds or two seconds at 1,000 meters doubled, it's like four or five seconds.

00:36:39.600 3,000, two miles, that is insane.

00:36:43.120 I would never attempt a shot like that just because what you're looking at, the scope, you would, that's phenomenal.

00:36:50.460 Like, you're not really looking at anything at that point.

00:36:53.200 Like, imagine looking at the crosshair and the scope, aiming at a crosshair.

00:36:58.000 That's what I, that's what that would look like.

00:37:00.460 It's, to get to that, that is a lot of, that's confidence, confidence and time, confidence.

00:37:08.640 That's confidence.

00:37:09.680 You're saying confidence, why?

00:37:11.040 Because is there a little bit of assumption and luck behind it?

00:37:13.600 I would say a lot of luck, but confidence to even attempt to take that shot.

00:37:19.580 I don't think I would have, I would, I know who I am.

00:37:21.980 I would have never even attempted that.

00:37:24.220 How far away?

00:37:25.040 The guy's two miles, negative.

00:37:26.800 Why do you say never?

00:37:27.880 Why do you say never?

00:37:28.580 Why do you say you would never attempt that shot?

00:37:30.020 I'm not, I've never even done math out to that point.

00:37:35.580 I've never shot that far.

00:37:38.020 I don't even, I just wouldn't even do, I'm not comfortable.

00:37:41.760 I know for a fact, if I did hit, I know it would be 100% luck.

00:37:46.140 I didn't mean to hit the guy.

00:37:47.720 I just put it out there. 0.99

00:37:49.340 I would pull the trigger if I would take the shot, but if I hit him, pure luck. 0.98

00:37:53.680 I would never be able to do that one more time or ever again. 0.91

00:37:57.260 I don't know.

00:37:58.480 There's so much stuff going on.

00:38:00.140 The spin of the earth at that point.

00:38:01.400 I mean, you're saying 2,200 meters though.

00:38:02.220 I mean, 2,200 meters is not like it's, I mean, when I, when I earlier said 100, 200, 300 meters,

00:38:08.600 I meant to say 100, 200, 300 yards, because there's a big difference between, but 2,200 meters?

00:38:13.940 One mile is not that far.

00:38:15.140 I would say a mile shot, maybe not the average, but well, of course not, but a mile to a sniper

00:38:21.400 is not that bad.

00:38:23.220 That's not that far on a human size target.

00:38:26.480 I take that back is pretty hard.

00:38:28.040 That is actually hard.

00:38:29.260 My furthest shot on a human target was half mile, but on a steel target, 2,022 meters,

00:38:35.700 that is pretty hard.

00:38:36.920 That took two shots within three shots to get. 0.94

00:38:39.980 That is actually tough, but two miles.

00:38:43.140 That is, you're looking at a crosshair through a crosshair, or aiming at a crosshair with

00:38:47.460 a crosshair at that point.

00:38:48.700 That's very, very small.

00:38:50.380 Looking at a mile away at a human size target is, I'm trying to make a comparison to what

00:38:55.840 that would be like looking at.

00:38:57.660 It's something very, if you stood across your standard size room and maybe looked at the

00:39:03.480 little hole inside of the wall socket, that's probably from maybe 30 feet away, that's what

00:39:11.480 that would look like.

00:39:12.500 Yeah.

00:39:13.360 Or maybe the head of a nail.

00:39:15.880 Yeah.

00:39:16.400 Very, very small.

00:39:17.420 I mean, what your, your eyes, is it then more on your vision?

00:39:24.280 Is it then more on how you set up your, is it then more on your, you know, breathing?

00:39:31.200 What, what, what is, like, you know, in bodybuilding, they say it's diet, then it's how you lift

00:39:36.160 weights, then it's cardio, let's just say, right?

00:39:38.280 What's the top of the top of being a sniper?

00:39:40.540 Is it, what would you put at the top?

00:39:44.340 Vision?

00:39:44.780 Vision?

00:39:44.900 Wow.

00:39:49.520 I would say the ability to calm, no, the ability to understand nature.

00:39:57.400 If you don't understand wind, or you don't understand the humidity, how the temperature

00:40:02.500 affects the bullet, if you don't have a really, really good grasp on that, then you won't

00:40:08.640 hit anything.

00:40:09.740 You won't hit anything.

00:40:10.680 The wind could literally, you won't, you could barely feel, feel the wind, but at a

00:40:14.980 mile, you won't hit anything.

00:40:17.060 Not anything.

00:40:17.940 So you have to have a really, really, really good grasp.

00:40:20.560 At the top, math.

00:40:22.480 Math and understanding nature.

00:40:24.720 Once you understand nature, then that converts to math.

00:40:27.040 That math converts to the gun.

00:40:28.980 Then that goes to the shooter after that.

00:40:31.920 Then everything after that, you just pull the trigger.

00:40:34.180 You just lay behind the gun, a slab of meat behind the gun is what we refer, or refer to

00:40:39.240 it as, and then pull the trigger.

00:40:41.480 Wow.

00:40:42.140 Math is at the top.

00:40:44.140 Oh yeah.

00:40:44.800 Big time.

00:40:46.740 Big time.

00:40:47.620 A lot of calculus and a lot of geometry.

00:40:50.640 A lot of geometry.

00:40:52.440 Were you good at both of those?

00:40:54.740 What's that?

00:40:55.700 Were you good at both geometry and calculus?

00:40:57.340 No, I failed high school.

00:41:01.440 I graduated with a 1.7 GPA.

00:41:04.220 I'm completely terrible at math, but it was not the type of math that I had no real, I

00:41:10.920 guess, real intention to even, it didn't excite me.

00:41:14.220 But after learning what you could do with math applied to a bullet, like the Pythagoras

00:41:19.580 or the Pythagoras theorem are the, what's another equation?

00:41:23.960 A simple equation, like A, what is it, A squared plus B squared equals C squared.

00:41:29.480 That equates a lot to like high angle math.

00:41:32.420 If I wanted to shoot off of a rooftop, that's the exact, or somewhat the exact equation I

00:41:36.660 would use for that, multiplied by cosines and stuff.

00:41:40.060 But you find out a lot about how to hit a target by using math.

00:41:46.000 Everything inside the scope is all like mil radian anyways.

00:41:48.940 So to find the distance to a target, you can use your scope reticle and the little dots

00:41:54.960 in there represent measurements, units of measurement.

00:41:58.680 And that's how I would figure out how far away a target is by looking at the size of a target

00:42:03.460 with these little dots in there, multiplied by a number, a constant number, depending on

00:42:09.240 the size of the target, divided by how many dots I see in my scope.

00:42:13.180 And that's how all that math comes out to be.

00:42:16.220 Unbelievable to be thinking about how math, maybe that's another commonality amongst the

00:42:20.220 guys is that you have to be somewhat good at numbers to be able to do what you guys do.

00:42:25.100 Exactly.

00:42:25.720 And I found they're good at working stuff out in their head a lot.

00:42:28.700 That's a, there we go.

00:42:31.060 There we go.

00:42:31.620 Maybe that's why I think the guys are quiet the way they are.

00:42:33.840 A lot of stuff happens up here.

00:42:35.240 There's a lot of talkative stuff, but everything happens up here.

00:42:38.760 So that's what it is.

00:42:41.000 That's what it is.

00:42:41.780 Thinkers.

00:42:42.320 Yeah, there, there it is.

00:42:43.800 Yeah.

00:42:44.740 Interesting.

00:42:45.600 So do you still, do you still carry, you know, do you still have guns and you go shooting

00:42:50.820 still?

00:42:51.100 Is it still part of your life?

00:42:53.460 Literally an hour and a half before I started this interview, I was at the range.

00:43:00.840 Oh yeah.

00:43:01.860 What do you do full-time now?

00:43:03.000 What's your full-time gig today?

00:43:04.980 Write books, write books.

00:43:06.200 I write other people's books and I just now have enough time to where I can work on

00:43:11.540 the stuff that I want to work on.

00:43:13.500 Not so much like military, but you know, the things that used to excite me as a kid, you

00:43:18.180 know, like fiction or, you know, science fiction and stuff like that.

00:43:23.040 And history and, you know, books that may not pertain so much towards combat, you know,

00:43:28.920 but things that intrigue me.

00:43:31.060 I tell you, you got an impressive resume for a guy that had a 1.7 GPA becomes a sniper when

00:43:36.060 he's to be getting mapped.

00:43:37.320 And then after leaving the army becomes an author that needs to write.

00:43:41.800 So, so whatever that 1.8 GPA was, maybe not a lot of accuracy behind it.

00:43:46.360 Uh, uh, final question here about, uh, uh, your four-year-old son one day comes up to you.

00:43:53.260 He's 18.

00:43:53.900 He says, dad, I want to be a sniper.

00:43:55.460 What do you tell him?

00:43:56.080 Do you encourage him or discourage him or let him do whatever he wants to do?

00:43:58.700 I would tell him, yes, only under one condition.

00:44:02.680 It's for the Olympics.

00:44:04.960 You can be the precision shooters in the Olympics.

00:44:08.000 Those, the, the ones that, that ski are, they cross country ski and then they shoot.

00:44:13.000 He could do that.

00:44:14.000 I would train him, uh, invest all the time I ever needed if he only did that, but to take

00:44:20.980 another life, absolutely, absolutely not.

00:44:24.000 Absolutely not.

00:44:24.900 So you would a hundred percent discourage him?

00:44:27.820 A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

00:44:29.180 I've changed after, I'm telling you, I've changed my views on a lot.

00:44:33.480 Like there was a point in my life where I lost spirituality.

00:44:36.500 You know, I questioned a lot, a lot.

00:44:38.500 And having the birth of him and, and getting, seeing things differently and understanding

00:44:44.720 things differently, getting back into spirituality and the understanding of how things work and

00:44:49.700 how much you need different things in life.

00:44:51.940 I just don't, I don't see the need to want to put that if he were to take another life

00:44:58.980 and how it would affect him potentially after the fact, you know, I was able to, I feel

00:45:03.120 that I'm able to, or was able to recoup or recover from the, the, the mental aspect

00:45:08.240 from it and move on.

00:45:09.840 But for some people, it's not that easy.

00:45:12.160 And I just wouldn't want that burden to be on anybody, you know, let alone my son.

00:45:17.000 So I've changed my view on that.

00:45:18.760 I think that there's a time like for, for, for sport.

00:45:22.140 I think it's great.

00:45:23.580 No issue with it.

00:45:24.660 And if it was a last resort defending my family, but to, to take life, it's, it's weird.

00:45:29.920 It's a weird experience to live through.

00:45:31.960 And I still think it's right.

00:45:33.120 I think we should step away from killing it for a little bit and love, love everybody for,

00:45:37.540 you know, give that a try for a second.

00:45:40.240 I, I, I think America definitely needs to work on that a little bit the next few years.

00:45:45.400 Oh yeah.

00:45:46.200 See how that helps us out.

00:45:47.460 We need to maybe listen to a little bit more Bob Marley and a little bit more EZE or maybe

00:45:54.400 get off a little bit of Tupac for a couple of years.

00:45:56.500 I don't know.

00:45:56.980 We can, we can hang out.

00:45:57.880 We can hang out.

00:45:59.760 Come to Texas.

00:46:01.080 Well, I got it.

00:46:01.620 Well, I, I, I know you're a big fan of San Antonio.

00:46:03.820 It sounds like you're a diehard San Antonio guy yourself.

00:46:09.800 Me and Charles Barkley.

00:46:15.180 Oh my gosh.

00:46:16.720 But anyways, man, I really enjoyed talking to you.

00:46:19.920 Seriously.

00:46:20.280 I really enjoyed talking to you.

00:46:21.480 That was fun.

00:46:22.080 Thank you for your service.

00:46:23.420 Thank you for just being you and transparent.

00:46:25.680 What an incredible story for people that are watching this.

00:46:27.820 I know you got another, uh, real cool, uh, skit that you did with inside insider where

00:46:32.240 you're talking about 11 sniper movies.

00:46:33.960 Are they real?

00:46:34.480 Are they not real?

00:46:35.620 And that's kind of how we found you.

00:46:36.900 You know, that popped up.

00:46:37.820 I'm like, what a great story.

00:46:38.780 You know, let's get them on.

00:46:39.640 And Kai recommended you.

00:46:41.120 And I'm so glad we had you on brother.

00:46:43.160 Thank you so much.

00:46:44.220 Thank you.

00:46:45.600 Thank you.

00:46:46.200 Much appreciated.

00:46:47.540 Take care, buddy.

00:46:48.880 You too.

00:46:49.660 33 confirmed kills.

00:46:52.020 Wouldn't recommend his four-year-old son to be a sniper if he wanted to be one.

00:46:55.360 Every single one of the confirmed messed with his head a little bit up until the kid was

00:46:59.300 born, son was born four years ago.

00:47:01.240 Just a very genuine guy that you could tell he was thinking about the right answer, the

00:47:07.760 most accurate answer to give during the interview.

00:47:10.760 I enjoyed it a lot.

00:47:12.180 Kirsten, I know what you took away from it.

00:47:13.440 Comment below.

00:47:14.000 And if you enjoyed this interview, I think you will also enjoy the interview with Taya Kyle,

00:47:17.980 who was the wife of Chris Kyle, the American sniper played by Bradley Cooper.

00:47:22.360 If you've never watched that one, it's a very, very different angle.

00:47:26.720 Click over here to watch that interview.

00:47:28.900 Take care, everybody.

00:47:29.660 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - February 12, 2021

Ex-Sniper with 33 Confirmed Kills Reveals The Dark Side Of Being A Sniper

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