God bless America. While American business owners face a maze of bureaucratic red tape that would confuse Tal Brodi (gratuitously enough), nothing stands in their way when it comes to making a buck. I mean, creating innovative products and services. Hats off to Illinois firearms trainers O2DA for their new Business Defense training. Their website might be as busy as a Chicago cop on a summer night but their marketing message is both timely and focused. Check this little PR ditty from co-founder Mike Smock [via ammoland.com] . . .
At Pulse O2DA, we believe that the next several years are going to get dangerous. Disgruntled employees, organized gangs, domestic and foreign terrorists, union thugs, and rioting mobs have all placed businesses in their cross hairs. Half of the United States of America now view business as the enemy, spurred on by a political class fanning the flames of class warfare.
Conventional mechanisms like law enforcement, the judicial system and business insurance coverage will not cope with these increasing dangers, and will no longer provide the level of security that business owners have come to expect. Prudent business owners understand that they need to provide for their own defense and security.
What’s going to work? Teammmmwork! Smock’s partner in anti-crime, Marine Ron Danielowski, reckons businesses need to defend themselves against the 99 percenters by putting together their own little SWAT team.
We will teach you and a select group of your employees how to defend your lives and livelihood. You will learn three weapons systems – handgun, shotgun, and rifle, and the small unit tactics necessary to operate as a cohesive fighting unit. The training you receive from us will be equal to, and in many cases better than the training provided to your local law-enforcement SWAT teams.
Our instructors all come from significant military and law enforcement backgrounds. We start by teaching you how to eliminate the threat before the authorities arrive. We train you on exactly what to do from identifying the threat and the firing of the first shot, to the arrival of the first responders.
You know, if Pulse 02DA’s main premise were true—if multi-employee American businesses faced organized violence on a regular basis—this training would be flying off the shelves (or something like that). And who knows? It may become true.
And OK, yes, it is true for, say, a liquor store operating in an economically deprived area. Or a jewelry store. But I’m thinking that failing an outbreak of violent class warfare, there are only two ways Pulse 02DA’s training is going to really take off:
1) Biz owners get some kind of insurance discount for taking the training or
2) The company can sell it as a fun-day-out team-building exercise.
Insurance-wise I think a company’s rates would go UP if it tooled-up. And somehow I don’t think Pulse 02DA thinks of itself as executive entertainment:
We don’t teach competitive shooting or recreational gun handling skills. We teach a devastatingly effective gun fighting methodology we created called the Pulse Engine, a method that quite simply unravels an adversary.
Good luck selling that to HR. But hey, what do I know? Smock and Danielowski are chasing the dream by selling the nightmare. And why not? Non semper erit aestas. It will not always be summer.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson quotes
GREAT QUOTE from T.J. !!!
And now . . . swapped out. Put it after the jump though.
Disgruntled employees, organized gangs, domestic and foreign terrorists, union thugs, and rioting mobs are nothing compared to one angry ex. I’d rather take on Al Qaeda.
The ex has the advantage of being able to rob you from a distance. Even a .50 cal isn’t going to reach most appellate courts. For that people must outsource to an air force, spelled l.a.w.f.i.r.m, “when the target’s distant and drones won’t do.” We still pay a lot, but get to chose the beneficiary. This makes divorce feel a bit less less like forcible rape and more like a poker game. In the meantime I notice the blond highlights and blue eyes of Mz. Brodi, and detect RF has a bit of Heidi Complex going. And who, really, could blame him? Not me. Defend your business, indeed. Good replacement for that pre-divorce course justification, “I’ll defend my wife!” Well, you really would have, but…. I’m thinking I’ll defend my dog. It’s deserving. Is their a small-arms course for that? I’m tellin’ ya there’s a market for that. Forget the pheasant bit. I’m thinkin’ man and dog drills for anti-mugger mayhem.
Before I started working as a private security officer, I worked at a local gun and hardwear store. While not in the worst location up here, we had a few folks attempt to rob us, mostly unsuccessfully- and we had one great manager get fataly stabbed.
The other guys and gals at the gun counter were encouraged to open and conceal carry to work, and the employer sponcered us in various tactical and semi-tactical shooting matches.
I still know the management at this store, and will have to ask if they’re going to do something like this.
Most of the reason the owner paid for his employees to go to shooting competitions was to ensure the local firearms enthusiast community saw those clerks actually shooting- and developing relationships with the shooting community. This is a town of less the. 90K- we all know of eachother.
But- the knowledge that his staff could shoot, and shoot fairly well did come in handy a few times.
More then once I was working when an attempted robbery was halted- without even needing to fire a shot.
Hey, sign me up!! I am a sole proprietorship, with one employee (me). With no fixed workplace, I am all over the place doing my job.
So, I am oh so ready to unravel an adversary with my “pulse engine” LOL!!
Haha. Is it just me or does “pulse engine” sound like some sort of euphemism for something dirty?
PREPARE TO BE TAKEN DOWN BY MY PULSE ENGINE
Possibly, I went to their website. Reminds me of the site where I can get a deal on some swampland in the Sahara Desert.
I don’t think I would trust most of my coworkers to handle a threat so no thanks. Also, if you do shoot someone in your business after taking the class, the likelihood of being successfully sued went up.
Every business owner has a right to defend their business, but I wonder if the actual risks justify the expense of training.
Certain kinds of businesses (liquor stores, corner stores, gun stores) face the prospect of robbery far more frequent I would guess than even banks – and banks, BTW, have plenty of money to spend on security guards, not to mention the ear of the local police and FBI if there’s ever a robbery. Your average mom & pop pizza shop or dry cleaner is SOL sometimes in getting help, and these smaller businesses, which face the dangers of robbery, CANNOT afford expensive, SWAT-type training. For them, taking a basic handgun course at a local range is far more affordable, not to mention realistic.
So again… who’s probably got the money to pay the big bucks for this kind of training? Probably large banks, financial institutions, etc. I’m not sure if I’d feel 100% comfortable knowing the local big bank has a private, military-trained hit squad on the payroll, but I guess that might make everyone take their mortgage payments more seriously…
Then again, President TJ also said about banks:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. ”
The guy was a prophet.
Robbing a bank is totally nuts. There are cameras all over the place. The thief has the FBI chasing his a$$ and has to do federal time when he’s caught. Plus, the cashiers put blue dye packs in the bag with the money. As soon as the BG opens the bag, the pack explodes and he ends up looking like a smurf.
I think something is wrong with me when the smurf-ication seems like the worst part of that deal.
I was a juror on a Bank Robbery Case prosecuted in Federal Court for a Bank Robbery that occurred about five years before. The Federal Statute of Limitations is five years. So, the Fed will hunt you for at least that long.
We convicted the guy who tried to argue a “Duress Defense” that was so laughable we could not believe his Public Defenders even allowed him to attempt it.
Ralph, not all banks use dye packs. Some have done away with them all together. Some use a GPS chip that looks like a bill. And most robbers only get a few thousand. Most tellers have two drawers of cash and are limited in the amount they can have at any given time.
And as a matter of fact most robbers are unarmed because it is bank policy to always comply with the robber.
I used to work for a armored car company and man the stories I could tell of the way these places run would blow your mind.
Can I get a Pulse Engine in the 40 mega-watt range?
Does it have a shoulder thingy that goes up? (LOL)
LOL! at union thugs. All I can picture is overweight school teachers wearing mom jeans and sweaters with snowmen… These guys need to stop watching On the Waterfront…
Since a common thing here in California is for a disgruntled employee who has just been fired to go “postal” and shoot up his former place of employment, co-workers and ex-bosses, I could see the attraction of this for small or medium sized businesses. But it would depend on cost of the training, willingness of employees, insurance, State Laws and so forth, I guess. Seems a long shot for ROI.
Thanks Robert for the post. Thought I’d respond to a few items.
First, our Business Defense Training is based upon our view of what we think will be happening in America in the near future. There wasn’t a need for this service 5 years ago. Reasonable men can debate whether we are alarmists or realists.
Second, our training is targeted for the small to medium-sized privately-held enterprise, with a single facility and 50-500 employees. Our primary client is the founder/owner/CEO who shares our short term view of escalating threat and the potential harm it can do to their business.
Third, while small retail establishments in high crime areas might be a natural market for our services we instead are focusing on larger enterprises run by individuals concerned about defending their life, the lives of their employees and their collective livelihood.
Fourth, founders/owners/CEO’s of small and mid-sized enterprises are beginning to sense that conventional mechanisms like law enforcement, the judicial system and business insurance coverage will not cope with these increasing dangers, and will no longer provide the level of security that business owners have come to expect.
Fifth, in almost 35 years as a wicked-snot capitalist running businesses in some pretty tough industries I have never had the pleasure of dealing with union thugs dressed in mom jeans and wearing sweaters with snowmen.
Last, we absolutely and unequivocally believe in the right of a man to defend his property.
Thanks again Robert for the post and for all of your comments.
Mike Smock
Thank you for commenting on this post Mr. Smock.
If you want regular access to our 860k monthly uniques, please consider generating content for us in the form of tactical advise. Link backs cheerfully provided. (Yes, I’m a content whore.)
But be warned: our Armed Intelligentsia ain’t stupid. Ipso facto.
PS I’m an OODA loop guy too.
Pulse 02DA: Aren’t they upstart firearms instructors in IL? Apparently looking for a new niche.
Personally, I think a bigger threat to business owners and their employees alike is common thug criminals and MAYBE terrorists.
I’ll give them credit for some creative verbiage in their promotion.
John
Sounds like a good idea and I hope they do well but they’ve got a lot of entrenched resistance to overcome. I suspect most companies large enough to have an HR department have some form of “executive protection” and I know most of them explicitly prohibit employees from even locking a personal firearm in their personal vehicle on company business and on company property because the “little people” are expendable and the company wants no part in taking responsibility for their actions.
I did a review on their book. Check out the link below Thanks
This is a solution in search of a problem. A problem that doesn’t exist on the horizon much less the immediate future. Good luck convincing a CEO or Board to be that proactive for a perceived scenario that may occur 5 to 10 years down the road. It’s an unbelievably bad idea from a business point of view. Even if we get to the point that this group says we are headed, you are still better off hiring a dedicated security team to defend your property. By the time we arrive at the scenarios they predict, you’ll have measurably increased your security posture as the situation deteriorates. Access control, perimeter fencing and barriers, CCTVs, and finally guards with and without weapons. They would be much better off getting into the consulting business and offering phased security upgrades, billing themselves as a one stop shop for all security related issues. Tailoring the countermeasures to be inline with the threats.
I won’t even touch on the liability of sending rounds down range in an office building. It won’t matter who started it but when the lawyers get through with interpreting the blame, I can guarantee you several crushing lawsuits as they pick through the training logs and qualifications of your “operators”. Assuming you can even get insurance to cover this activity, it won’t be enough.
Training a “select few” of your employees to act as a coordinated team is plain wishful thinking and coming from professionals such as the ones offering this course, I am surprised they even think this would work. Assuming you’d find a dedicated team of warrior minded office workers who would in and of themselves be a force to be reckoned with is farcical. What happens when one of those team members becomes the very person you are trying to defend against? Wouldn’t anyone trying to do harm eventually find out who the high speed team members are and then take steps to neutralize them in advance? I would if I was bent on seeking revenge. Try keeping secrets in an office. Go ahead, try it. It doesn’t take very long to find out who’s sleeping with who, let alone something like this. What happens when you are not at your desk or even in the office during the “attack”? How do you assemble the team during a crisis when one is out sick, another on leave, yet another on an early lunch, one in the sh1tter and finally the last one in a meeting?
Good initiative, bad judgment. Creative verbiage is not going to be enough to sell this concept.
Hello Brad,
Thanks for your frank input, I can appreciate your skepticism, and asking questions (or even doubting) is perfectly acceptable, heck, we don’t even have to agree on problems or their solutions to get along amicably.
You had mentioned that “This is a solution in search of a problem. A problem that doesn’t exist on the horizon much less the immediate future.”
I am not sure what you are disagreeing with, are you saying that you disagree as to the size of the problem, the timetable of our predictions? While we may be off (a bit) on our predictions, the FBI and DHS seem to think that this is a problem that is here to stay, and they freely admit those caught in the crossfire will remain victims in waiting until the “authorities” arrive to “rescue” whomever hasn’t been killed already.
Ours is a simple and very American concept. Our answer is one that many people shy from today (but took on as a personal responsibility many years ago); the solution of fixing your own problems by claiming 100% responsibility for yourself, your actions, and in this case, your business. And while many people (I am not attempting to put words in your mouth Brad, I am just on a soap-box now) may feel personal responsibility is archaic, we believe that it is the root of personal liberty. And if we want more liberty and security, we will need many more people claiming personal responsibility, we can’t simply give our responsibilities to the authorities, because as Franklin had mentioned, we can’t have liberty if we are too afraid to claim the responsibility.
You had also said “Good luck convincing a CEO or Board to be that proactive for a perceived scenario that may occur 5 to 10 years down the road.”
The way we see it Brad, is we don’t need to convince anybody. After the last election cycle (and the previous 4 years) many owners/founders/CEO’s of small to medium-sized businesses have realized that at least 50% of this country view them as a target to enrich themselves via what Bastiat referred to as “legalized plunder.”
We somewhat agree with your point: “Even if we get to the point that this group says we are headed, you are still better off hiring a dedicated security team to defend your property.”
However, if you can afford it and are certain of the qualifications and expertise of the team you are hiring. BUT within our target market of businesses with 50 – 500 employees the cost of hiring this training force is not affordable. Plus, we believe, as many CEO’s are beginning to realize, that developing this competency internally allows them to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on law enforcement that may or may not get there in time, or on a security team that may or may not be qualified to handle the threat.
Next you stated that “I won’t even touch on the liability of sending rounds down range in an office building. It won’t matter who started it but when the lawyers get through with interpreting the blame, I can guarantee you several crushing lawsuits as they pick through the training logs and qualifications of your ‘operators’. Assuming you can even get insurance to cover this activity, it won’t be enough.”
Both the training group and the client face significant liability and legal issues resulting from this kind of training. Whether we are training individuals or groups, this sort of liability/legal risk goes with the territory. For some business owners/founders/CEO’s the concern about defending his life, the lives of his employees and their livelihoods will outweigh the fear of their insurance being canceled, lawyers suing, DA’s charging, etc. More importantly, if the fear of being sued or charged shapes one’s conduct when it comes to defense, then I think it demonstrates a fundamental difference in how we view freedom and our rights as Americans. This is a discussion I am willing to have.
In my past 25+ years of training everything from Navy SEALs to civilians and everything in between for the DOD, DOE, DHS, DOS, and private firearms schools, combined with my experience leading and training the same, I can assure you that weather civilian, military, or cop, the individual will perform the way they have been trained. No more, no less.
Is this to say that some people are predisposed to be less aggressive than others? Yes, but this is a topic that the military has solved by identifying the Killing Enabling Factors and adjusting their training to ensure little private Schmuckatellie can kill when he needs to. This is true for anyone who wants to learn to protect themselves and their loved ones, regardless of origins (after all, we all start out as civilians).
Thanks for the post Robert, it is a lively forum you have here and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to chat it up here.
The notion that this will not work is exactly why it has and will continue to work. There are a lot of assumptions made on how a program like this is implemented and over the years these assumptions have served well to show how to better tailor a training program and implement the countermeasure for long term viability.
As Ron has stated above, those unwilling to be proactive to save life because of a fear of litigation and/or financial loss would never be interested in this. But those who have either lived through a scenario or watched by close proxy as one of these situations unfolded, know well the opportunities that were missed for early intervention that would have saved a life or prevented escalation. A couple of assignments I had back in the late 90’s resulted in similar training. One, the Detroit News strike, was a long term labor dispute that resulted in a lock-in situation. We had to bring in supplies and personnel via helicopter. The union employees threw Molotov’s, overturned and set fire to incoming cars, threw acid on our tactical officers, etc. Not the sweat-pants clad “union thug” vision mentioned above. Temp employees bunked in the office spaces that were turned into berthing areas. Another was a situation in Bay City, Michigan where a disgruntled former GM employee was terrorizing management to the point of shooting out windows in houses of exec’s. GM had the cash to hire our firm as a large executive protection team, but after the capture of the perp the exec team there opted for a long term in-house countermeasure to serve as early warning. We did not arm up and train employees in those situations. We either trained the existing executive staff (VP and higher) or coupled that executive training with an embedded ,long term, employee(s) within the organization.
I can tell you that in Evansville, IN there is a small mfg plant that has four members of the executive staff well trained in active shooter countermeasures and a highly trained and experienced “janitorial” employee that was embedded in their organization to serve as an on-the-floor countermeasure. Needless to say he makes significantly more than your average janitor, though his in-house pay records reflect a normal rate of pay because the rest of his pay is delivered via the firm that embedded him. The mfg pays them a monthly consulting fee for this service. When he is ready to move on, another “retiree” looking to augment their retirement income by working as a “janitor” will replace him as an imbed.
It’s been happening for years, but has been largely out of reach to smaller firms because of the cost. And it works, but never gets the light of day because of media bias and the fact that the rate of occurrences has been minimal in the past.
Many organizations already quietly allow armed individuals within the workplace and just have never had the opportunity to bring them together in a tactical manner through training.
The church I attend has several designated shooters in the congregation. We live in an area with a high drug problem and high homeless population and welcome them in to get help. Many of the designee’s are retired military/law enforcement and they are rotated each week.
There are many churches that do this already, and have every legal right to do so, but haven’t gotten their people into any formal training. They are already running the risk of the legal aftermath. Training would only improve their current status, not further increase their legal challenges after the fact because the training shows they were being responsible.
As Ron said above, people perform according to their training. It’s also the training that comes under scrutiny in the court room, as I know first hand. A properly trained group will survive legal scrutiny far better than an untrained or inadequately trained group. And it’s nothing new to insurance company’s as they have been insuring armed security firms from bank guards to armored cars to power plants where 75% of a firms entire workforce is armed on a daily basis as part of their job. If you have training, you can get insured. If the training is state of the art, you’ll pay less for your policy.