002 – Tim Larkin: Preparing for the Worst-Case Violence

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In today’s episode of Survival Dad, Buck chats with Tim Larkin, founder of Target Focus Training and developer of a hand-to-hand combat training program used by the US Navy Seals. Tim tells us about the ineffectiveness of using traditional combat-sports teachings as self-defense training, and how his principle-based self-defense system teaches you to respond to any threat, regardless of its nature and location.

In this “no-holds-barred” interview, Tim introduces you to how you can use fear to your advantage when facing threats much larger than yourself. You will also learn to distinguish between asocial and antisocial violence, and discover what exactly Tim means when he says that sometimes violence is the only answer.

In Today’s Episode:

0:00 – Introduction to Tim Larkin

0:55 – What exactly does Tim teach?

3:00 – Why people are not prepared for acts of violence/savagery

5:36 – Violence to combat violence

6:40 – Principle-based training versus technique-based training

8:56 – When to use violence

13:48 – When NOT to use social tools

15:34 – Consequences

17:04 – Martial arts versus asocial attacks

18:21 – Encounters or behavioral change

21:36 – Mismatch?

23:56 – Channeling your fear

25:46 – Limitations of firearms

27:49 – Closing notes

 

Introduction to Tim Larkin

Buck: Hi folks, Buck Rizvi here with Survival Dad. I’m here with Tim Larkin. And Tim has been researching and perfecting effective fighting methods really as a lifelong passion. And during his time in the US military, and because of his martial arts background, Tim was assigned by the admiral in charge of all US Navy Seal teams to research and develop a more effective form of hand-to-hand combat training.

That was over 20 years ago, and since that time Tim has further developed these techniques into what’s become his Target Focus Training program, or TFT. TFT is taught to elite members of various military, law-enforcement, and corporate-security units including SEAL Team Six , the US Army Special Forces, and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Tim offers public live-target focused training courses in countries around the world, including the US, Hong Kong, Australia, and the UK. Tim, you there with us?

Tim: I sure am, thanks for having me.

What exactly does Tim teach?

Buck: Thanks for joining us. You teach people how to completely shut off another human being, and those are strong words. Can you explain what that means exactly?

Tim: Yeah, you set to put it in the right context. Basically, the conditions are [that the situation] is unavoidable. You’re dealing with asocial violence, you’re dealing with imminent violence versus something that you can choose to participate in — anti-social aggression, somebody takes your parking space, or something like that.

When you say “shut down the human body,” the assumption is [that] if we’re facing imminent violence the threat’s going to be bigger, faster, and stronger. We assume they’re going to carry weapons, and we assume that there’s probably more than one. So any effort that you put into protecting yourself has to produce a result, and the way we gauge a result is injury to the human body. And that means either destroying a function of the human body, structure of the human body, or a sensory system of the human body. So, that’s essentially it.

Buck: Wow. So how is what you teach different from combat-sport fighting?

Tim: In combat sports, the goal is not to injure the other competitor. The goal of combat sports… one [sport] is not better than the other, by the way, it’s just what is the goal of your particular training. In order to gamify violence, you know, so we can have a good event, you have to take injury to the human body out.

Buck: UFC fighting, for example.

Tim: Yeah. Well, the last time I checked with the UFC, they had 31 rules. 27 of those rules took out injury to the human body.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: So that’s how… and the reason is, as we’ve all seen in combat sports before, when an injury occurs the competition’s over. You know, we’ve seen people break limbs, we’ve seen people unfortunately get ankles taken care of. We’ve seen boxers get hit to the liver, and they’re just… they can’t continue on. This is after taking a lot of trauma to the human body, non-specific. But an injury is something that [means] you can’t continue your function.

Why people are not prepared for acts of violence/savagery

Buck: Okay. You know that specific… You just described a couple of examples of injury, which are, I think you call it, savagery. Why are we as, let’s say, westerners if you will, typical folks, raised in the US. Why are we not prepared for acts of savagery?

Tim: We basically… we’re very considerate around success. We’ve been extremely successful in protecting ourselves as a society. And we, really in the last 50 years, pretty much outsourced any idea of personal protection to agencies, you know, police department, security. We haven’t had to really remind ourselves we live in a physical world for the most part.

There’s a very small part of society that understands that we live in a physical world. And that’s why it’s so shocking when, you know, that happens to us. When there’s a physical assault, it’s so unfamiliar because very few people participate in any sort of self-protection training at all or even combat sports. As popular as it is, the actual participants in combat sports are a pretty small part of society.

Buck: You mentioned talking about SEALS and so forth. I was in the Air Force, so we always sent the officers to go fighting [laughs] and press buttons. So, even in the military, many folks are distanced from what they’re actually doing — you know, sending them cruise missiles or dropping a bomb or something like that.

Tim: Yeah, and that’s what you’re seeing across the board. The actual physical hand-to-hand… That’s why when warfare changed, you know, back when I started I got injured. And my intro sounds very good, that you gave me, and I appreciate it, but I want everyone to understand I was just a junior guy with a pretty good martial arts background, and that’s why they liked me. They liked me because I had no business being with the group that I was in at that stage of my career. I was very, very fortunate.

But, what was interesting was back then, the Berlin Wall had come down, and we were starting to have to realize that “hey, the military is going to have to put hands on people again.” You know, before it was the Cold War, and it was basically large movements of weapons.

And now they basically were predicting what we see today. You know, that type of warfare where guys were kicking doors in. Having to absolutely close in and having to deal with people within arm’s reach. And at that time, that really hadn’t been done since the Vietnam era, and that’s why, you know, when we looked at this, we had to start putting in parameters of what we’re going to be facing.

Violence to combat violence

Buck: We lost our edge to some degree. I’ve heard you say, “violence is the only way to combat violence,” but a lot of people might shudder when they hear that. What would you say to them?

Tim: Well, the whole quote that I’m usually quoted for is: “Violence is rarely the answer,” and everybody loves that part of the quote.

Buck: [Laughs] Yeah.

Tim: And the second part of the quote is: “But when it is the answer, it’s the only answer.”

Buck: OK.

Tim: And so, it’s really the differentiation of how we put the information out, meaning I’m going to make sure my clients understand how to avoid all the avoidable. And that’s what gets us in a lot of trouble sometimes. We participate in things that we don’t have to participate out that can lead to violence. Whereas where everybody has a real problem is when violence is imminent.

There are very few people that actually give you any good instructions on what to do when you don’t have a choice. And to me, that’s the fascinating part of the equation, and it’s also the one that’s the most controversial. And the thing is that, you know, if I get sound-bited by the media, I sound like a maniac.

Buck: [Laughs] No, I completely understand. Is it really possible to learn the basics of what you teach? Sort of like riding a bicycle, so that they’re always there when you need them.

Principle-based training versus technique-based training

Tim: Yeah, and the idea is that it’s a difference between learning a principle-based system and a technique-based system.

Buck: OK.

Tim: The idea is principles will save your life, techniques will get you killed. So, most approaches to combat sports, reality, self-defense, whatever you talk about, they talk about scenario-based training, and, you know, I understand why they do it. [But] I think they’re misguided, because violence is so random that, especially for a civilian, scenario-based training is very limited in its application. Law enforcement, military… there’s absolute valid reason to be scenario-based training.

What you want to do is you want to give somebody the ability to respond regardless of the threat. And so what we try to do is we give them the parameters of how to injure the human body. We give you various site pictures, we put the body in various site pictures, and then you learn how to affect an injury in it.

And that is very useful information, meaning the targets are always the targets. You know where to put your efforts in the human body, and so the retention is much higher than in most combat sports or martial arts when you’re looking at actually what to do.

Buck: Don’t you need years of training for this?

Tim: Well, that’s the best part. The most interesting thing in the world is the best people at killing other human beings have zero training in combat sports or martial arts. They all reside in the prison systems and its intent.

Buck: So that’s a training ground, I would imagine, too, right?

Tim: It is a training ground, but yet we have to realize it’s really on-the-job training. And so, these guys observe violence, and they’re very… Unlike us, we put all sorts of filters on the information, and we don’t extract the useful parts of the information on how violence works.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: And because we stigmatized it so much. And oftentimes, the type of violence that would absolutely be useful to you — if your life’s on the line — is shown in the wrong context; it’s shown in a criminal context, and therefore we just dismiss it. And so we’re kind of throwing the baby out with the bath water or sometimes as far as our own personal protection.

Buck: Hmm. That’s really interesting to hear you say that because we… The whole filter concept and the whole idea of “this is bad, therefore I should not, I should never take part in this kind of event or do this kind of thing.” Can you provide some tips on how to mentally shut off morality and fair play circuitry when you’re faced with a sociopath? ‘Caus it kind of talks about the same thing.

When to use violence

Tim: Well, you know what, it would probably be more helpful if I put it in this kind of context for you. Okay, so let’s look at three different scenarios. First scenario. I am sitting at the bar, guy comes up, calls me a couple of choice names, spills a drink on me, and then calls my mother, you know, a something inappropriate. So, I immediately I guddle up, I slam him into the solar plexus, grab his hair, throw him down and I gouge his eye out, you know, and I’ll go “Whoa.”

Buck: [Laughs] That’s an over-the-top response.

Tim: Second response: you’re at the Whole Foods parking lot, and you’ve been waiting patiently for the Prius to pull out. And it pulls out, and then some guy just zooms in and steals your parking space that you’ve been waiting for. So you close your door, you run out, you pull him out of his car, slam him up against the car, and you gouge his eye out. Crazy, right?

You are now one of the administrators at Sandy Hook. The shooter’s just dropped down for a reload. He’s already shot three people. You then were able to close distance, you slam him to the side of the neck, grab the back of his head, gouge his eye out, and that’s what stops him from being able to do more damage with the firearm, and you have him under control.

All of a sudden, in that context, we’re not… there’s nothing outrageous about it, it’s absolutely clear. And then you can say, “OK, that is a situation where this information would be absolutely critical and useful to me. And that’s the problem. You won’t ever do anything against your moral code; I’m never worried about that. What I have to do is tell you it’s OK to look at the subject matter because you would’ve only used this thing… it’s like your own personal nuclear weapon: you would only use it in the most extreme circumstances.

Buck: So, maybe you answered it with the multiple-choice scenario. How can someone know whether or not it’s a fight-or-die situation, especially early on in the encounter? Are there some rules of thumb?

Tim: It’s a very simple thing. Actually, we make it very simple for you: it involves choice.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: If the question is ever in your head, “Geez, is this the time to use violence?” [then] it’s not the time. You know, you will not have a question in your mind as you’re facing imminent violence. What you want to do is also the training environment, you know, that if you train this stuff.

I’m in Vegas, and so I have a training centre here in Vegas. And literally, right across the parking lot from where I’m at, is one of the largest MMA gyms in the county, and it has all the top UFC guys there. I actually go and work out there. They got a great weight facility, and I work out there all the time.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: I love that facility. It is so much fun. I get to see top competitors and the camaraderie, the back and forth. They play really cool music. And it’s great. These guys are helping each other out, going back and forth.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: If you came over to my facility, when my people are training, there’s no music, it’s dead silence. There is no communication on the floor. It’s just people, literally, you know, understating that “Hey, asocial violence involves no communication, and therefore I need to train in an environment, so I know when that triggers.”

And that’s probably the biggest gift that we give our clients, because they always come back and say, “I recognized asocial. And I recognized asocial because I understand what it’s like to train in an environment with no communication.”

Buck: Right.

Tim: And that’s really what the predators do. It’s a lack of communication that really triggers the idea, meaning if you don’t, you know, it’s a situation that if I do not respond with, you know, an injury, you know, going after somebody, then I’m basically participating in my own murder. This person is coming in to go in. So, there’s a very specific, narrow window, and I’ll make it very easy for you to understand when it is.

So, it’s not a question of you having to, you know, have some moral dilemma on whether or not you’d use this. The other good information is that the majority of our civilian clients, when they’ve had to use this to protect themselves have recognized non-functional in the threat prior to doing what would be considered probably the lethal move. Meaning, they’ve affected injury on the person, and they see that the person is unconscious.

Buck: So there’s an assessments step? A rapid-assessment step?

Tim: Mm-hmm. And that goes back to what I told you. You’re not going to do anything to violate your moral code. Once they realize, “Oh hey, no longer a threat,” they’re done.

When NOT to use social tools

Buck: I’ve heard you say that once you’ve made the decision to engage an attacker, you should stop talking. Kind of like, you know, I’m a pilot, and pilots typically stop talking during takeoff and landing, that’s a critical phase of a flight. Why is this? Why stop communication?

Tim: Yeah, I think probably the context that you might have heard that is… Funny in context that we want to use violence really when it’s not necessary. Meaning, you know, we’re the first ones to defend ourselves on, you know, “somebody said something about my football team.” I want to get in that guy’s face. Anytime we feel like bragging about using violence, you know it’s usually inter-male aggression for the most part. Most women don’t experience this, thank God.

Buck: Yeah.

Tim: We want to respond, you know, in a violent or a projection of violence–type of manner. What’s very interesting is those same people, for the most part, when they’re facing real imminent violence, what do they normally want to do? Meaning, the door gets kicked open, there are four guys with shotguns, balaclavas, and one guy with duct tape. And the guys that is ready to go at the bar, or the guy who, you know, just said something about his football team. What does he want to do now?

Buck: Talk his way out of it. [Laughs]

Tim: [Laughs] He wants to talk. He wants to sit there, “Who are you, why are you here?” And he’s going to engage socially in an asocial environment, and that’s the problem. So the education process is really understanding when and where you can use social tools. And don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place [for] social tools, you can talk your way out of things.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: But for my clients I give… There’s one particular example I give that really delineates that. That’s what you really want to know — when is it OK for you to use your social tools, and when is it absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Consequences

Buck: Well, it seems that Hollywood and the media do us a disservice. I know Hollywood movies, they’ve got plenty of scenes where violence is used to teach a bad guy a lesson, sort of in a what you call an antisocial situation, not an asocial situation. Maybe this is rhetorical, but is it ever OK to use what you teach in situations where it’s not life or death?

Tim: Oh, it works great. [Laughs]

Buck: I’m sure it does. [Laughs]

Tim: And I tell my clients that. It works great. Hey, listen, you want to use it in a bar fight, that’s great. Then I show them videos, and what I’d normally do is show one video of the epic bar brawl. Two big guys just going at it. Knocking the hell out of each other. I mean, it’s epic, and then one guy gets up and they’re… you know, he says OK, they survived.

Buck: Right.

Tim: I will then show another one where two guys, same thing, two guys, kind of same size… One guy hits the other guy, he falls down, cracks his head in the concrete and he’s dead. Like that. And I go “there’s your risk.”

Buck: Mm-hmm.

Tim: And there it is. Was it the right time? Meaning, in most incidents what I say is, you know, does anything — you’re about to use total violence on somebody — does it pass the three-day test? Meaning the incident that you’re about to use, you’re about to respond to and use violence on… three days from now, will it matter to you? Will it be worth the…

Buck: You’re reflecting back on it. Right.

Tim: Very, very few things pass the three-day test.

Buck: I love that. I’ve never heard that three-day test before. We could apply that to a lot of things in our lives, couldn’t we? [Laughs]

Tim: Absolutely.

Martial arts versus asocial attacks

Buck: What is it about traditional martial arts, such as tae kwon do or judo — let’s say competitive martial arts, which I know you’re an expert in as well. Would a black belt in a competition rated martial art be able to easily defend themselves against an asocial attacker?

Tim: It would be extremely difficult for the most part. And you see highly trained individuals get taken out by people with very little skill sets at all. And reason being… I am not denigrating martial arts or combat sports, they’re fantastic.

Buck: Right.

Tim: And, you know, there’s a lot of history in them, a lot of legacy; there’s a lot of tradition. And so, there are a lot of great things that you can get out of combat sports and martial arts. The idea is, what I really use as my arbiter of everything is absolute, real violence. And what I mean is, you know, when you watch closed-circuit TV of acts of real violence, you have to ask yourself, “OK, what I’m currently doing right now, would it work in that arena? Would it work then and there?”

Oftentimes, the combat sport does not pass that test. It does not mean that combat-sport practitioners aren’t excellent candidates for training — they’re some of my favorite guys to train. I just have to take something that you used for a submission, and I’m going to show you how to turn it into an injury.

Buck: OK. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of students that come back and say, “Wow, I learned so much,” or maybe they’ve had an encounter after training, that this made the difference.

Tim: Oh yeah, we have that all the time. There’re two things I liked, it’s fantastic when a client comes back and, you know, unfortunately has had to deal with asocial violence and survived. Most recently I had a 52-year-old dentist. Never had an incident in his life. Go in on a Sunday, a couple of weeks after training and there was a guy breaking into his pharmacy. And he recognized it right away, the guy raced up on him, charged him, this guy recognized, “Oh, this is it. This is the time.”

Buck: Yeah.

Tim: He was able to come, and he charged towards him ‘caus he realized that he needed to close distance, and he slammed him on the side of the neck. Which, the injury on the side of the neck…

Buck: Lights out?

Tim: The guy started to do the fainting process on him, and he then grabbed his head on the way down. Slammed him into the door jam, and he dropped to the ground. Just when he was about to, he said he goes “yeah, I was thinking I’m just going to drop my knee right on his throat.” And because he saw the guy trying to dig something out at the beginning. And at that point, that’s where he recognized non-functional. And so he called the cops… they came in, they just went ensure the guy he had was trying to pull a knife on him.

Buck: Sure.

Tim: The guy had a rap sheet a mile long. Interestingly enough, the cops said, based on who this guy was, they said that you would’ve been absolutely justified in killing him with the threat he faced. Now, that guy had never had anything happen before. We didn’t show him, you know, “head to the door jam”; he just recognized, “hey that would be a good way to injure somebody.”

Buck: Right.

Encounters or behavioral change

Tim: That’s what I’m talking about, the principle-based rather than technique-based approach to things. Now, the ones I really like, the feedback I really like, is the feedback I got from a big, old country-boy bar brawler. He was a very wealthy Texan who came into the training, and you could see he just liked to go to honky-tonks and get into it.

He came up to me on the morning of the second day of training and he said, “I just want to thank you.” And I said “Okay, why?” and he said, “I called my wife this morning and told her she didn’t have to worry anymore.” He said, “After the first day, I realized how lucky I’ve been that (A) I didn’t inadvertently kill somebody, Or (B) that I wasn’t seriously injured or killed by participating, wilfully participating, in these kind of anti-social aggressions.”

And it was a behavioral change, and that’s really what I like to get out of my clients is the idea of recognizing, “Hey, I’ve been doing something that could potentially lead somewhere I don’t want to. I’m going to change my behavior.” And that to me are the better, I like to hear [about] those more than [about] people [who] actually have to use the information.

Buck: Well, I tell you, I’m sure when you and I were younger men, we’ve been hot-headed at times. And I still get hot-headed occasionally. Hate to admit it, but I think I have some perspective, and I think one of the things you talk about is this notion of once you have these tools, this great responsibility that goes along with that and the willingness to back down and say the antisocial situation, where you know, you don’t need, you know, maybe the guy said something to your wife, but you don’t need to go take him on. You can go and just… you and your wife could go leave the scene. Because you do have the tools you could, you know, you could escalate this, but you don’t need to.

Tim: Right.

Mismatch?

Buck: And I really like the fact that you teach that. The other thing you teach is sort of, kind of unbelievable, is that a 5-foot-3, 115-pound woman — which is, you know, my wife, she’s 5’4” — going up against the 6-foot-4, 300–pound, heavily muscled attacker. How is this possible? [Laughs] Defying the laws of physics.

Tim: And again, this is where sometimes the context of that statement is taken out of. It’s taken out of context.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: It’s not a competition —you see this like the idea of going up against [somebody] — that means both sides know what’s going on.

Buck: Squaring off. Okay.

Tim: What I’m talking about is I have… sleeping upstairs, I have twin one-year-old daughters, actually 14 months. And they’re just bundles of energy. They’ll throw their heads back, hit me in the nose, they’ll poke me in the eye, they’ll do things that actually temporarily injure me. It’s not intentional.

What I’m talking about is a predator gives you an opportunity because they are bigger, faster, and stronger. And they don’t see you as a threat. And they pull something very close to you that is highly vulnerable to attack. And so I had a 10-pound weight literally dropped from chest height onto my toe, and it shattered my toe. That was 10 pounds.

Buck: Yeah.

Tim: And so, what I’m talking about is your wife, you know, somebody of your wife’s size having the ability if given the opportunity. She can think and move still, she’s fully functional, maybe she’s just being grabbed at that point. And then there’s an opportunity for her to affect an injury on this individual, and then he does all the work after that. You know, it’s his body pulling away from the strike, or whatever you’re doing, and then you can put multiple injuries on somebody at that point and put him out.

So, it has nothing to do with their size, strength, or physical ability because any injury takes the brain out of the equation at that point — they can’t will their way past an injury. So, that’s the context that I’m talking about. I’m not talking about an actual competition where everybody knows what’s going on.

Channelling your fear

Buck: I get it. And that’s… I’ve already spoken to my wife, and she is going to be going to Target Focus Training, and she’s already kind of excited about that. I think every… I have two daughters, one is 5, and one is 20. [Laughs] So I’m definitely going to get the 20-year-old involved. It’s interesting — there was a quote, and I’m sure you’re familiar with it… Tom Cruise movie, have you seen Edge of Tomorrow?

Tim: I have not seen that yet. Hear it’s great.

Buck: So, there’s a crusty old sergeant, and he uses the famous Eddie Rickenbacker quote, “There can be no courage without fear.” Can someone be successful with these techniques even if they’re scared out of their minds?

Tim: Oh yeah. I fully believe that you’re going to be shaking… Shaking, there’s going to be urine probably running down your legs, all those other things.

Buck: Okay.

Tim: And you’re going to get myopic vision ok, cause tunnel vision. And the great thing about what we’re talking about is, you know, with Target Focus Training there are so many options in the human body [where] tunnel vision actually works really well for us because it allows us to focus in on that one area. And what my clients have all come back to report was, “OK, it’s going on right now. I’m scared to death, it’s there, but I know I can do that. I know I can take this part of my body and throw it there,” and that’s really all it is. It’s just that one ability to start with one target, and then you can just go from one target to the next at that point.

Buck: Wow.

Tim: And that’s the decision making that we put into you, and the kinesthetic training that you get when you’re introduced to how we put our information out.

Buck: That’s great. So leveraging the fear, leveraging tunnel vision to your advantage. That’s the first time I’ve heard that. [Laughs]

Tim: Absolutely.

Limitations of firearms

Buck: So, you teach also how to deal with armed attackers — edge weapons, knives, and guns. So, do you carry?

Tim: Yeah, I have a concealed carry. I have it in all the states. I have another business here in Vegas where I have a machine-gun range, and I have armorers that can make me anything I want.

Buck: Well, go ahead and plug that. What’s the name of that business in Vegas?

Tim: It’s called Machine Guns Vegas. It’s great.

Buck: Machine Guns Vegas, OK.

Tim: And the reason I bring that up is because I don’t want anybody to think I’m anti-firearms. Very pro-firearms, but as a concealed carry holder, you know, I found it — and I travel quite a bit — I found oftentimes it’s not a very useful, as useful a tool as you think it would be. And meaning there’s a lot of gun-free zones, there’s a lot of things you have to participate in because we’re law-abiding citizens.

And so, a lot of times what you’ll hear people say is, “I don’t need self-defense training because I’ll just shoot them.” And that’s a very big fantasy because, you know, there’s a couple of things working against you on that. If you look at the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. This happened in Tucson, Arizona. I’ve lived in Tucson, Arizona, everybody carries.

Buck: Everyone’s got a gun. Great. [Laughs]

Tim: The shooting went down. It was three middle-aged citizens that literally had no training whatsoever that took the guy down. It wasn’t a shooter because nobody in that particular situation could get their gun out and decide who to shoot. It was somebody that saw somebody going for a reload. And the gentlemen said, “I saw him shoot the guy next to me, I know I had nothing to lose.” And he basically went in, they were able to swarm this individual to come in. So when I try to tell people, “Listen, if I could drive around…” — I tell people this all the time — “if I could drive around in an M1 tank all day, it would be great.”

Buck: That would be my first option. [Laughs]

Tim: I would love it, you know, but it’s not. So, what we try to do is I want to make sure that, “hey, first my brain understands what to do, I coordinated my body so I know how to use my body tools to effect an injury.” And then if I had the luxury of putting a tool back in, even that much better because the idea of being called Target Focus Training is we focus on all the vulnerable areas of the human body. So it may just mean that much better when I have a knife, gun, a club in my hand. I’m much more effective with that tool with the training. So it’s complimentary to that.

Buck: Yeah, not “instead of” but “in addition to.“ It’s going to be part of your tool kit.

Tim: Right.

Closing notes

Buck: Fantastic. Yeah, I have a concealed carry permit. I don’t have it in every state. I’m from Virginia, and unfortunately there’s no reciprocity with Virginia and Colorado.

But this is fantastic. I thank you for taking the time in sharing this with us. Very eye opening. I’m a customer of Target Focus Training. I know we’re going to put some content that you’ve very graciously offered to extend to the Survival Dad audience at survivaldad.com/tft. So you can go there and check it out and find out how to get more information about Target Focus Training and Tim Larkin. Tim, thank you very much. I would very much like to have you back on the show at some point in the future if you don’t mind.

Tim: Anytime. Thank you for giving me the time to actually explain some of these subjects. I really appreciate it.

Buck: This is awesome. Thanks again, Tim.

Tim: All the best.