Latest John Wick training video...

[BaiHu]

Didn't see it posted elsewhere.

https://youtu.be/F-WyWK8ypdg

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Clusterfrack]

Looks like they are playing with an operational but "empty" rifle with no special markings or chamber flag. That's how people get shot by "accident". It also trains poor safety procedure. Thumbs down.

[Stephanie B]

Looks like they are playing with an operational but "empty" rifle with no special markings or chamber flag. That's how people get shot by "accident". It also trains poor safety procedure. Thumbs down.
At least Keanu said that he was not comfortable with pointing that gun at the instructor.

But yeah, I wasn't impressed. The entry technique may be solid, but somebody's going to have a manslaughter beef someday.

[scjbash]

Dude was a SEAL, which reinforces the point that one's background doesn't preclude them from doing unnecessarily careless shit.

I know a guy who took a class from Shawn Ryan and has nothing but good things to say about him but I wasn't impressed with that part. Kudos to Keanu's reaction though.

[Duelist]

Rubber duck blue rifle or shotgun costs less than $200. When I was teaching a firearm safety class in a high school, I had one of each and some handguns as well.

I practice room clearing at home with a rubber duck pistol, not a live gun.

That said, I learned from what he said, in spite of the real gun with the bolt carrier removed. Guy on the screen isn’t hurting me.

[Jesting Devil]

Looks like they are playing with an operational but "empty" rifle with no special markings or chamber flag. That's how people get shot by "accident". It also trains poor safety procedure. Thumbs down.

In the video he does say that the bolt carrier has been removed so it's a bit less egregious than it appears on a video. Still gives me the heebejees (and Keanu as well).

[Clusterfrack]

I missed the part where the BCG was removed. It looked like the charging handle was still in? People don't have X-ray vision to see that the BCG isn't in the gun. And doing the training on a shooting range where people could enter with live guns makes it so much more risky. It's simply irresponsible to post this video without making it obvious that it's a safe gun.


Coincidentally, last night in my training group, we were working on active shooter disarms using an AR with no BCG or CH. However, it was in a closed room, where no other people could enter. No video, no open windows, no observers. There were just three of us, and each had personally inspected the gun. It's serious business training with real guns, and the benefit needs to outweigh the risks.

Ok. I just watched it again. Those assclowns have mags with live ammo on their belts. Combing live and "safe" weapons is complete retardation.



Rubber duck blue rifle or shotgun costs less than $200. When I was teaching a firearm safety class in a high school, I had one of each and some handguns as well.

I practice room clearing at home with a rubber duck pistol, not a live gun.

That said, I learned from what he said, in spite of the real gun with the bolt carrier removed. Guy on the screen isn’t hurting me.


In the video he does say that the bolt carrier has been removed so it's a bit less egregious than it appears on a video. Still gives me the heebejees (and Keanu as well).

[scjbash]

I must have also missed the removed BCG part. Regardless I agree with everything Cluster just said.

[JRB]

BFA's (Blank firing adapters) are a cheap and obvious fix if one needs to use live rifles in an inert state for training purposes. At least as far as AR and AK variants are concerned using typical muzzle threads and A2-ish muzzle devices. For introductory/basic classes yes we need BFA's and chamber flags etc if we don't have blue guns. Blue guns are definitely best for newbies.

Honestly, though, so long as everything is shown clear to the students/instructors and there's no confusion about the scenario, it's not that big of a deal. Getting upset about people not showing clear to the camera is borderline safety virtue signalling IMHO.
I'm perhaps a bit jaded and grumpy about it, because people getting overly uppity about safety is literally fucking ruining the entire US Army. There needs to be a transition point in training where the cuddly bumpers and training wheels come off and it's time to play by big kid rules because advanced firearms training for force-on-force scenarios etc is a big kid game.
Being overly reliant on institutional safety measures is where most Soldiers get complacent and the fundamental goal and expectation should be zero complacency.

Regardless of the situation, it's up to students and instructors actually on-site to voice their concerns for a given scenario - which Keanu did.

[Jay Cunningham]

Regardless of the situation, it's up to students and instructors actually on-site to voice their concerns for a given scenario - which Keanu did.

I like the cut of his jib.

[TGS]

BFA's (Blank firing adapters) are a cheap and obvious fix if one needs to use live rifles in an inert state for training purposes. At least as far as AR and AK variants are concerned using typical muzzle threads and A2-ish muzzle devices. For introductory/basic classes yes we need BFA's and chamber flags etc if we don't have blue guns. Blue guns are definitely best for newbies.

Honestly, though, so long as everything is shown clear to the students/instructors and there's no confusion about the scenario, it's not that big of a deal. Getting upset about people not showing clear to the camera is borderline safety virtue signalling IMHO.

Agreed in the virtue signalling part, but the safe use of actual weapons in these situations requires a line out, not a fucking BFA. A BFA allows the gas system to have back pressure to cycle a blank, it's not a good damned bullet trap.

I got no beef with using an actual weapon, but line outs are a necessity to doing so. Purposely leaving ammo in the vicinity or on your person is totally unacceptable. Full stop, end of fucking story.

The military learned this lesson years ago, and it was NOT "newbies" who shot each other. The LE community see's these lessons reared almost on an annual basis as well, almost exclusively when a class comes back from lunch and the staff fail to do a line out.

[HCountyGuy]

About 10:55 when Keanu expressed discomfort at pointing the gun at Shawn is when somebody comments on the bolt carrier having been removed. Nevertheless, I cringed because using some other sort of training aid would’ve been a bit more preferable. Much respect to Keanu for wanting to respect the rules regarding safe gun handling.

I’ve watched some of Vigilance Elite’s other videos before because they were suggested by the mighty YouTube Algorithm. The videos I watched smacked of typical former-SEAL-turned-high-speed-trainer bravado.

[Clusterfrack]

I don't understand how calling out Vigilance Elite for posting a promotional video that shows poor safety procedure is virtue signaling.

I've heard "big kid rules" used to justify some shockingly dangerous behavior, so that doesn't work for me. What is standard practice among professionals in advanced firearms training and force-on-force? Based on my experience (playing by big kid rules with the big kids), it is not what we see in this video. There are simple, unambiguous procedures that cover training with live weapons vs. training weapons. Mixing the two is a recipe for disaster.



BFA's (Blank firing adapters) are a cheap and obvious fix if one needs to use live rifles in an inert state for training purposes. At least as far as AR and AK variants are concerned using typical muzzle threads and A2-ish muzzle devices. For introductory/basic classes yes we need BFA's and chamber flags etc if we don't have blue guns. Blue guns are definitely best for newbies.

Honestly, though, so long as everything is shown clear to the students/instructors and there's no confusion about the scenario, it's not that big of a deal. Getting upset about people not showing clear to the camera is borderline safety virtue signalling IMHO.
I'm perhaps a bit jaded and grumpy about it, because people getting overly uppity about safety is literally fucking ruining the entire US Army. There needs to be a transition point in training where the cuddly bumpers and training wheels come off and it's time to play by big kid rules because advanced firearms training for force-on-force scenarios etc is a big kid game.
Being overly reliant on institutional safety measures is where most Soldiers get complacent and the fundamental goal and expectation should be zero complacency.

Regardless of the situation, it's up to students and instructors actually on-site to voice their concerns for a given scenario - which Keanu did.

[TGS]

I don't understand how calling out Vigilance Elite for posting a promotional video that shows poor safety procedure is virtue signaling.

It's not the calling out is virtue signalling, it's the "you didn't show ME clear in your video" thing.

100% agreed on your second paragraph.

[Clusterfrack]

It's not the calling out is virtue signalling, it's the "you didn't show ME clear in your video" thing.

Copy. And agree.

[JRB]

Agreed in the virtue signalling part, but the safe use of actual weapons in these situations requires a line out, not a fucking BFA. A BFA allows the gas system to have back pressure to cycle a blank, it's not a good damned bullet trap.

I got no beef with using an actual weapon, but line outs are a necessity to doing so. Purposely leaving ammo in the vicinity or on your person is totally unacceptable. Full stop, end of fucking story.

The military learned this lesson years ago, and it was NOT "newbies" who shot each other. The LE community see's these lessons reared almost on an annual basis as well, almost exclusively when a class comes back from lunch and the staff fail to do a line out.

A BFA isn't a bullet trap but it beats the shit out of nothing and it's a clear indicator to all observers that a weapon isn't immediately live. I have no idea what a 'line out' is but I'm assuming that's rodding on/rodding off or similarly having an instructor or leader verifying clear and safe on each and every weapon going in or out of a training environment. On that we agree emphatically.

We also agree on how stupid it is to have live ammo anywhere in a weapon-clear environment or scenario. That is straight-up fucking retarded and un-needed.

But the military 'learned' those lessons back in the days of finger-on-trigger 24/7 and arms rooms riddled with .45 bullet holes in the ceilings. The tradecraft of weapons handling and marksmanship have evolved considerably from that point and there's plenty of room to reel in the over-safety derp in higher leadership.
We're not gearing up a bunch of conscripts for jungle warfare or to fight Ivan in some field in Europe anymore, either - we're doing it to clear weird buildings full of weird assholes mixed with innocent civilians and the Military's overall refusal to accept that there's risk in training with firearms PERIOD and there's risk in the mission we need to train for PERIOD just kicks the can down the road to where we have 19 year old PFC's carrying SAWs clearing buildings full of living civilian no-shoots, when they'd never even done real building/MOUT training until a couple weeks before they arrived in-country. Even that training wasn't using blanks better than half the time. Worse, when it does use blanks they're likely to spend more time looking for every fucking piece of spent brass than actually training.
That is the wrong fucking answer and the number of shitty, stupid close calls we have in the live operational environment could seriously be reduced if only we took that kind of training much more seriously HERE.
To get there, leadership and group-think need to accept that it's good for 19 year old PFC's to fuck up with blanks and learn all those mistakes in that environment, and perfect their confidence in the skill-set with live ammo after they've learned from those mistakes, and THEN mobilize.
But that's now how we're doing any of this - and we're never going to get there if every asshole with a camera in a training environment needs a 5 second interruption for every weapon to get shown clear to the camera.



I don't understand how calling out Vigilance Elite for posting a promotional video that shows poor safety procedure is virtue signaling.

I've heard "big kid rules" used to justify some shockingly dangerous behavior, so that doesn't work for me. What is standard practice among professionals in advanced firearms training and force-on-force? Based on my experience (playing by big kid rules with the big kids), it is not what we see in this video. There are simple, unambiguous procedures that cover training with live weapons vs. training weapons. Mixing the two is a recipe for disaster.


My beef with it is that too many people offer nothing except whining about not showing a camera weapon-clear. But I'm equally sick of bearded gym-rats with a DD214 flapping on about tactical operational tactics in operational operations with some VIGILANCE TACTICAL SPARTAN ELITE BRIGADE tank top on, talk like they're the billyest billy badass out there, and proceed to fuck up all kinds of basics on video.

Insofar as current hi-speed standard practices - I hate to say it but whatever that is, I've never seen it and it's unlikely that I'll ever see it anywhere in the Army. I'm simply looking for an across-the-board reality check that safety with firearms in training environments is the personal fucking responsibility of each individual student and instructor, and nobody else.
We cannot make institutional or cultural demands for safety-at-all-costs and still get training that has any value. Safety-at-all-costs = never touch firearms or drive a car or go outside ever.
Sure, best practices are easy to justify and maintain, such as finger-off-trigger. Common sense should prevail as well, such as keeping live ammo off out of a training environment using a live gun that should remain clear at all times. But there's no way to please everyone's personal idea of what's safe and what isn't and still get anything done.

My concept of big kid rules is fundamentally an absolute unyielding individual responsibility to follow the 4 rules, and personal ownership of any and all fuckups therein. If you're not comfortable doing a specific exercise using a functional weapon or live ammo or whatever, it's your responsibility to speak up - back to everyone's a range officer. If you can't take correction from an RO without getting huffy when you violate one of the 4 basic rules, you shouldn't be on that range as a student. Period.

Having run dozens of ranges for misc REMF elements and Reserve elements over the years, I have seen institutional safety practices completely replace personal safety when it comes to weapons handling and marksmanship. It's created an Airsoft-style nightmare where Soldiers are so used to their weapons being unloaded and disabled that they overwhelmingly do not treat them with the respect they should.
The sooner we demand individual accountability for good practices instead of putting the water wings and training wheels on everything, the sooner we can move away from truly bone-headed mistakes and bad practices across the whole Army.

This doesn't generate competency or skilled Soldiers, this generates the perfect breeding ground for bad mistakes once shit REALLY matters.

[Clusterfrack]

Good post, JRB. I get where you're coming from, and share your frustration with bureaucracy.

On the other hand, unless all participants share an unambiguous safety protocol that assumes mistakes will be made, someone may end up with personal ownership of an injury or death. It's not easy for some random grunt or student to step up and tell Sealy McSealface that something isn't safe--which makes Keanu's comment all the more awesome.

Safety, big kid rules, and high level training are entirely compatible. There are plenty of trainers--many on this forum--who do it every class.



Sure, best practices are easy to justify and maintain, such as finger-off-trigger. Common sense should prevail as well, such as keeping live ammo off out of a training environment using a live gun that should remain clear at all times. But there's no way to please everyone's personal idea of what's safe and what isn't and still get anything done.

My concept of big kid rules is fundamentally an absolute unyielding individual responsibility to follow the 4 rules, and personal ownership of any and all fuckups therein. If you're not comfortable doing a specific exercise using a functional weapon or live ammo or whatever, it's your responsibility to speak up - back to everyone's a range officer. If you can't take correction from an RO without getting huffy when you violate one of the 4 basic rules, you shouldn't be on that range as a student. Period.

[TGS]

A BFA isn't a bullet trap but it beats the shit out of nothing and it's a clear indicator to all observers that a weapon isn't immediately live.

A BFA indicates you have a BFA on the end of the rifle, and that's it. That might be your intent that it's not live, but it doesn't actually indicate or ensure such.

A chamber flag indicates that a weapon isn't live.


I have no idea what a 'line out' is but I'm assuming that's rodding on/rodding off or similarly having an instructor or leader verifying clear and safe on each and every weapon going in or out of a training environment. On that we agree emphatically.

Line-outs generally include your gear as well, that way people don't accidentally insert a live round into a mag or whatnot.

If a unit is only rodding barrels before going into training scenarios, that's a problem.


But the military 'learned' those lessons back in the days of finger-on-trigger 24/7 and arms rooms riddled with .45 bullet holes in the ceilings. The tradecraft of weapons handling and marksmanship have evolved considerably from that point and there's plenty of room to reel in the over-safety derp in higher leadership.

That's not the case at all.

This happened as recently as the late 90s/early 2000s, with a Force Recon unit, that didn't line out their shit and a live round inadvertently got placed into a mag, and then inadvertently placed into a Marine's chest.

__________________

In the end:

Stupid command policies should not be confused with sound safety practices, nor brought up as a red-herring when people criticize handling practices that should be rethought.

Sound safety practices do not impact a unit's training and resultant lethality.

And, more back to the OP/video, there's nothing that fucking guy is teaching that necessitates anyone lose their life because of an accident. Just get a UTM or blue gun for fuck's sake.

[Old Man Winter]

That was cringe worthy even if the bolt was removed. It appears several people had weapons in the vicinity, were they live? On another note if you wanted to bring in a SME to work with the actor, why wouldn't you turn to someone with a JSOC or HRT background?

[JHC]

I recently received similar instruction from a BTDT forum member. It was vastly more professionally conducted with fookin blue guns until we validated with live fire. Cringe worthy.

GabeWhite

[JRB]

A BFA indicates you have a BFA on the end of the rifle, and that's it. That might be your intent that it's not live, but it doesn't actually indicate or ensure such.

A chamber flag indicates that a weapon isn't live.



As found out (again) barely a year ago when a SAW loaded with a live belt of ammo at NTC shot off its BFA and put a few rounds into an airborne helo during a training exercise at NTC Ft Irwin. Hence my 'not immediately live' caveat. Chamber flags are great when they're available but frankly there's enough derp to get around that or any other method and my point is that no institutional standard gets around the need for individual cognizance and paying attention to what you're doing.




Line-outs generally include your gear as well, that way people don't accidentally insert a live round into a mag or whatnot.

If a unit is only rodding barrels before going into training scenarios, that's a problem.


We call that a shakedown, or PCC/PCI's. Same thing.



That's not the case at all.

This happened as recently as the late 90s/early 2000s, with a Force Recon unit, that didn't line out their shit and a live round inadvertently got placed into a mag, and then inadvertently placed into a Marine's chest.



It's happened even more recently than that - and again, institutional practices don't replace people paying attention to what the fuck they're doing. The fundamental issue is that the prevailing institutional safety practices military-wide started getting stupid in the 80's-90's and have only been getting stupider from there, using very terrible but rare instances such as the one you're referencing to justify even more unproductive and damaging rules and standards in the name of 'safety'.



In the end:

Stupid command policies should not be confused with sound safety practices, nor brought up as a red-herring when people criticize handling practices that should be rethought.

Sound safety practices do not impact a unit's training and resultant lethality.



They ARE confused for each other because stupid command policies are regularly enforced as 'sound' safety practices. Constantly. And yes, that does impact pretty much every military unit negatively and I am sure LE organizations as well. When all the people in power are worried about their OER's or annual reviews and don't want the paperwork or publicity about a training accident of any kind because we're culturally conditioned at this point to blame someone who wasn't even on that range for the fuckup instead of the people directly involved in and therefor responsible for that fuckup - then YES, it does impact a unit's training and lethality.

I swear as a population we're our own worst enemy, because these problems only compound when experts have nothing better to offer than criticism. Keanu expressed concern (to his credit) and they'd taken precautions that were effective. Just because they weren't your preferred precautions doesn't mean they were ineffective. The only failing I see is that the no-BCG condition wasn't demonstrated to Keanu until he asked about it, and he didn't check it himself.

Blue guns aren't always available, and when they are, they're not often in the exact configuration you're training to use. There's value in using the intended weapon and chamber flags are good when that's the case, if they're available. But removing the BCG works too albeit less visibly. BFA's have their place too if leadership wants that nice visually obvious 'yes we're being safe' thing because that's what they want.




And, more back to the OP/video, there's nothing that fucking guy is teaching that necessitates anyone lose their life because of an accident. Just get a UTM or blue gun for fuck's sake.

Run your instruction and safety program as you see fit. If I was a student of yours and you insisted on those things I'd be happy to follow that protocol.
But if you simply had us all verify BCG's were removed and we did the shakedown to ensure no live ammo was present, I'd be comfortable with that too - and I'd check that weapon again every time I picked it back up, just as everyone fucking should anyway.

[TGS]

They ARE confused for each other because stupid command policies are regularly enforced as 'sound' safety practices. Constantly. And yes, that does impact pretty much every military unit negatively and I am sure LE organizations as well. When all the people in power are worried about their OER's or annual reviews and don't want the paperwork or publicity about a training accident of any kind because we're culturally conditioned at this point to blame someone who wasn't even on that range for the fuckup instead of the people directly involved in and therefor responsible for that fuckup - then YES, it does impact a unit's training and lethality.


Dude....

...I didn't say that they aren't confused for eachother. I said that they shouldn't...….

...as in, when someone on this forum criticizes unsound safety practices, don't come in here with your personal bullshit drama from work about stupid COs as an excuse that sound safety habits are detrimental because you've had a stupid CO.

It's a red-herring, and it's inapplicable. There's no CO or out-of-touch military leadership in the video, or this forum, that is forcing any of us to do anything that doesn't make sense.

Further, stupid practices might impact a unit's training, but sound safety practices do not. Again, stop conflating the two just so you can bitch about big army in here.

[JHC]

I don't understand how calling out Vigilance Elite for posting a promotional video that shows poor safety procedure is virtue signaling.

I've heard "big kid rules" used to justify some shockingly dangerous behavior, so that doesn't work for me. What is standard practice among professionals in advanced firearms training and force-on-force? Based on my experience (playing by big kid rules with the big kids), it is not what we see in this video. There are simple, unambiguous procedures that cover training with live weapons vs. training weapons. Mixing the two is a recipe for disaster.

Fuckin A bruv. "Big boy rules" as justification for slop is not the way. You have find an actual big boy to discern big boy rules. In reality.

[JRB]

Dude....

...I didn't say that they aren't confused for eachother. I said that they shouldn't...….

...as in, when someone on this forum criticizes unsound safety practices, don't come in here with your personal bullshit drama from work about stupid COs as an excuse that sound safety habits are detrimental because you've had a stupid CO.

It's a red-herring, and it's inapplicable. There's no CO or out-of-touch military leadership in the video, or this forum, that is forcing any of us to do anything that doesn't make sense.

Further, stupid practices might impact a unit's training, but sound safety practices do not. Again, stop conflating the two just so you can bitch about big army in here.

I believe we're talking past each other here. I am at fault for thread drift, but the purpose of bringing in my 'personal bullshit drama from work' is this:

There is no singular universally constant standard of what's safe and what isn't. We each have our individual standards and a lot of that is almost completely congruent here on P-F. But a lot of folks in positions of authority have a very incongruent standard that is either stupidly draconian or stupidly cavalier.

On this video, in this instance, the problem was a procedural one in that the BCG wasn't shown to be removed until Keanu asked about it. Ad-hoc methods of disabling a weapon should be demonstrated to the student before the instruction, and the student should be 100% comfortable with that method before proceeding.
BCG removal obviously isn't your preferred method but it is an effective method to ensure an inert weapon, yes?
Sure, blue guns and chamber flags are great but what happens when you're the SNCO in charge of a ~150 troop element in the field and you don't have blue guns or chamber flags? Do you just stop training because some hi-speed that knows his shit bitched about every other method available?

I am not one for insisting the camera always show the clear weapon, but for promotional purposes with a celebrity, yes, it would be a good move.

The source of my frustration with this kind of shit is that everyone's so goddamn fast to bitch about the safety methods used and have nothing else to contribute. My ranting is because the over-obsession with safety methods and protocols have fucked up a lot of shit for the military in the past 15+ years, and a forum full of really knowledgeable people that only bitch about safety and insist on a single method when multiple effective methods are available is only making things worse overall.

[Practical Shooter]

"Shit Sandwich"? life reduced to a condiment ;) ;) 8:35 in the video


https://youtu.be/F-WyWK8ypdg

[TheNewbie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfnV6XYotQ



My favorite Keanu Reeves movie. Plus the 4506 is much cooler than the Glock. Especially when carried in his old school LAPD swivel holster in the movie.

[revchuck38]

...bearded gym-rats with a DD214...

I love it! :D

[Stephanie B]

A range not terribly far from here does some contract training for various groups. They have two-hour classes in the evening for the public. Which is a serious deal, as the range time alone is sixty percent of the fee, so it's about an hour in the classroom and an hour on the range for twenty bucks over the range time.

But I digress.

In the back training room, they have racks of blue ARs and red shotguns. I'd gather that the blue pistols were probably in a drawer someplace. That gave me a warm feeling about them.

[JSGlock34]

Looks like SIRT guns.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeGGitjc30g

[SafetyFirst]

Damn the editor for not showing us clear and safe in the video. And I’m not hearing any background shots being fired. Think they might have the range closed for the day while Keanu is there? Pretty sure he can book the range for himself, but I might be wrong.

[Duelist]

...bearded gym-rats with a DD214...

Hey, now!

[revchuck38]

Hey, now!

:D

[JSGlock34]

Damn the editor for not showing us clear and safe in the video. And I’m not hearing any background shots being fired. Think they might have the range closed for the day while Keanu is there? Pretty sure he can book the range for himself, but I might be wrong.

That's Taran Butler's private training range.

[Totem Polar]

That's Taran Butler's private training range.

Which begs a question—admittedly small potatoes next to safety concerns: why TF is TB being opaque filtered for much of the vid, like he’s some sort of active contractor for the agency? I mean, A, he’s not fuzzed out all the time, just most of the time, and, B, he’s got, shall we say, a distinctive sideways profile under that logo shirt—it’s not like there are more than 3 and a half people out of all 1.6 million views who can’t figure out who he is.

Not that I care one way or the other, but that’s just a weird fucking quirk of that whole vid. Makes zero sense to me. Carry on...

[JSGlock34]

Which begs a question—admittedly small potatoes next to safety concerns: why TF is TB being opaque filtered for much of the vid, like he’s some sort of active contractor for the agency? I mean, A, he’s not fuzzed out all the time, just most of the time, and, B, he’s got, shall we say, a distinctive sideways profile under that logo shirt—it’s not like there are more than 3 and a half people out of all 1.6 million views who can’t figure out who he is.

Not that I care one way or the other, but that’s just a weird fucking quirk of that whole vid. Makes zero sense to me. Carry on...

Agreed, makes no sense.