I dont remember which SEAL team it was, or even if I was ever told (remember this was back in 92).
If my buddy and I would have shot side by side with that team, we would have held our own.
First off, SeAL Teams don't run around telling people they are SeAL Teams, that's kind of protocol. If an instructor mentioned it, it
could have been true, it also could have been a line of BS.
Regards, I find blanket statements like "They were pretty good, but not better than me or my buddy" to be seriously stretching the Internet Fabric.
What is it about your SEAL team friend that makes him so "hardcore"?
First off,
former SeAL - clearly listed. I listed some of his credentials ( double distinguished rifleman ), Held a couple of state records himself, but what I think makes him hardcore is his ability to pick up any small arm and put rounds on target. Not just "his" weapons, they can be yours, that guys, or some piece of crap that "just doesn't shoot right" some clown brought to the range. The guy can make anything run, and shoot straight, not some specially tuned, custom built, competition pistol.
Here is a bio about Rob Leatham, who used to be someone I would watch back in the day....
I know all about Rob Leatham. You think you are the only guy who used to watch him compete?
Rob can shoot, there is no question, but he is a competition shooter. Granted, he may be one of the best ever at doing so, and kudos to him. He is disciplined and he is very good at what he does.
HOWEVER, he isn't a breacher, he isn't a sniper and he isn't a member of a tac-team. He is one guy with a hell of a talent - but are you telling me that you are going to bring Rob Leatham in and have him teach a SWAT team to breach a hostage situation?
You asked about opening a school to train police and like minded units. You can read books all day about tactics, but that doesn't mean you know the little i
diosyncrasies that only someone who has done the job, in real life, would be able to point out.
Is your SEAL team buddy better than Rob?
And, irrelevant to this conversation. No, Rob is a better shooter. But Rob is a shooter. He isn't an Operator. Big difference.
Are you saying there is little chance of anyone being better than a SEAL?
No, what I am saying is that I don't believe that you and your buddy showed up at a training site and were just as good, or better, than an undisclosed SeAL Team, sometime back in 1992.
There were former military team unit members on response to the North Hollywood Bank Robbery, but those two idiots ( I won't name them & continue to give them their 15 minutes ) were obviously better trained
at what they were doing ( keeping the police at bay and trying to get away with the cash ) who proved that "amateurs" can play on the big field and more than hold their own.
Would either of those two clowns be able to beat
ANY two man team from a SWAT unit from, oh, I don't know, middle of nowhere Kansas/Arkansas/etc at the SWAT trials?
Absolutely not - but that is not the point here.
Also, are all SEAL members created equally with regards to smallarms? Are some more passionate about it than others?
Get outside the SeAL train of thought here. This has nothing to do with them other than you said you and your buddy could hang with them, if they were even SeAL's, which you stepped back from on the initial statement.
People tend to make these blanket statements and assumptions, but reality can be much different.
People also tend to make claims, especially concerning history, that is easy to brush over with statements like this:
proof? Well I have no idea how I can provide proof for an event that occurred nearly 20 years ago
You may be one hell of a pistol shooter. You might be one of the best out there not currently named Rob Leatham. You may be one of the top at the discipline that you have chosen to devote your time too.
HOWEVER
That doesn't mean that given a check list of attributes that go into being a member of a real unit, trained for specific purpose(s), you are going to stack up apples to apples favorably.
And with THAT in mind, a statement like this:
However, when I went to gunsite there was a SEAL team there training. They were pretty good, but not better than me or my buddy. And from what I understood these guys did a LOT of shooting.
Demands proof, or a retraction/clarification. Perhaps the unit in question was running off hand drills. Perhaps the unit in question was at the end of their training session and "just goofing off". Perhaps the unit in question weren't SeALs at all, but 4 or 8 like minded guys who came there for some training and the instructors told everyone they were SeALs because it was better for the reputation of the business at hand. "Look at us, we have SeALs training here". Perhaps it was a bunch of guys getting ready to go to BUDs and WANTED to be SeALs.
The other important thing to factor in is this - IF they were really SeALs, or DELTA, or Marine Force Recon, or any ELITE unit, those guys are trained to put bullets on target when EVERYTHING around them is going to hell in a hand basket. They don't freeze up, and they don't jerk their triggers. True Operators, the real ones, probably wouldn't have been taking the "training" at the site with the same wide eyed, taking in everything that is being said because a lot of it was what they were already doing. They were probably watching the clock and looking forward to getting their time in, over with and getting on with their off time. No lives were on the line at Gunsite. No Mission Critical performance was required. Big difference.
That would be like having a free throw shooting contest with Michael Jordan at a playground.
JD