Ex-sniper with 33 confirmed kills reveals the dark side of being a sniper – Ty

 

As a sniper like being able to see something and the intent behind it was more personal every sniper kill that i had felt different some people say oh you get used to it i never felt that are you at a point right now where you can live your normal life and it doesn’t haunt you anymore i would say i am now who’s the greatest sniper of all time carlos hathcock a marine sniper that was my idol and i think that to this day that he is the best sniper godlike figure to me when he went in to go take out the vietcong commander surrounded by

Himself was basically a suicide mission when he attached the universal scope to the mod dude’s 50 cal machine gun and sniped and took out a vietnamese commander it was like 1.2 miles away and that was where we get the barrett sniper rifle from to this day the semi-automatic first confirmed versus the last confirmed was there a meaning behind the last one not my last kill my last mission i lost my friend benjamin cobb i almost lost my life my reconnaissance team pinned down by an enemy sniper and surrounded and watching

The guy come in to save our life and watching him die like five minutes after that that was my determining factor i was not going to re-enlist or anything [music] my guest today is nicholas irving aka the reaper who is a sniper and not only any sniper he was the first black sniper in army’s third ranger battalion that was deployed in combat i believe he has 33 confirmed kills in a matter of four months and a tour to afghanistan and he he had a nickname for his well i just let him tell you when we get right into it so nicholas having said that

Thank you so much for being a guest on hey thank you for having me on so first of all thank you for your service you know for somebody to get in and and then you know you go from fort benning you go to afghanistan you got your 33 kills and you’re putting yourself on the line and there’s a lot of risk on that but uh what what made a person like you say i want to be a sniper how does that happen to be honest it was well i would say charlie sheen but that stems from the movie navy seals but it derives from my dad both of my parents were

Um in the army uh that’s where my parents met that’s where i was born i was born in augsburg germany um while they were both uh in the military and seeing my dad at a young age i had to be maybe four years old and i watched him raise the flag one day um at his building and he was wearing the army green uniform and i thought that was the coolest thing ever and it kind of intrigued me ever since then i wanted to be like my dad so wearing his military uniform and asking questions and watching movies about the military and reading books it it started

As a very very very young kid and my mom and my dad wow what was your dad’s own wes they were both uh they both had the same mos they were counterintelligent so uh geez i don’t know exactly maybe at 90 something i honestly have no idea what the uh mos was but they were counter intelligence during the cold war so they like did morse code and stuff like that so so they’re they i mean you have to score very high on the asvab to get any kind of military intelligence so your parents are very well i couldn’t do it yeah i was not there i didn’t fall about

It have that yeah i remember when i went and took my test and they came back with the score they said yeah you got two options i said what is it infantry or hummer mechanic i said you know what i will play with hummers a little bit so i took homeroom so that’s a good choice so so sniper so walk me through what i what i don’t know of is so you you go in you know you got boot camp you know i don’t know if it’s nine weeks 12 weeks they keep changing it so whatever the timeline is then you have ait advanced individual training and you

Have any kind of secondary you know schools that you take what is the process of becoming a sniper if you can walk us through it um for my i have a special operation so the the pipeline or the cycle was a little bit extended so i did the you’re right i think it was 14 weeks with the army basic training plus the ait uh they changed it to where the basic training and ait’s all combined now and they they call it osit when i went in it was one station unit training i believe it was 14 weeks and right after that uh was airborne school

Uh that five weeks of you know getting used to heights which i’m you know terrified of and learning how to jump out of planes and uh you should have five jumps uh out of right out of airborne school after airborne school i went to a selection course for rangers which was called ranger indoctrination program are ripped for short and that was about a that was a month-long course of just a physical beatdown and we had 85 85 plus guys or candidates that uh tried out for this selection and we graduated seven uh six

Of the original class and i was one of the six from that original class and everybody else quit or could not make the standards and from there i went on to my unit third ranger battalion and stayed there for six months did my first deployment to iraq two deployments after that we would deploy every six months so we would deploy for uh three months four months and come back and train up for six and keep that rotation up and i did three deployments to iraq before i went to uh sniper school after that then i officially well i had a few jobs

Before that i was a machine gunner a machine gun team leader so i had my own little machine gun team and designated marksman the step or the process or the designator right before sniper you’re not officially a sniper you haven’t gone to the schooling yet but you have a scoped weapon and you’re you score expert a lot um held that for a little for one deployment before i officially went on to sniper school which was eight weeks long and uh before that i had like our units special operations we had courses we would get sent to so uh

Private courses um i went through uh two sniper schools that were not through the military they’re a private civilian run from guys who are really really good at shooting and we’re like outsourced to whatnot that’s why i learned how to shoot you know i think the best when it came to precision shooting nicholas was that was that out of the country oh here’s stateside and coincidentally it was here in texas where i ended up moving to um where i got my first case i guess for texas i had never seen land that flat

Before and it wasn’t i don’t know it was beautiful and that’s why i like texas initially and uh yeah went through two sniper schools in texas one in california a little high angle precision shooting course that was privately run and then to the eight week sniper course um so yeah it’s a long long long fight that’s pretty intense so so you got your one uh station unit training airborne school you have to jump five times and you go selection then you go four months ranger school out of 85 seven you were one of the six

Third battalion then afghanistan and you deployed three times to iraq then in that process of sniper school i forgot yeah there was a rangers you totally i blocked this purposely out of my mind terrible school it’s brutal uh ranger school so after you know you serve in the range of battalion then we go to the 70 or 62 day ranger school and that’s just uh you know they starve you for you know however 62 days i lost 35 pounds in that school and i didn’t sleep much so i got sick and it was a bad bad experience you’d normally lose a lot of

Weight about 20 pounds but i lost 35 and had to deploy after that so i purposely forget about that school so after that then was sniper school then it was nicer so so sniper school you know is is it you know how you’re going like what i didn’t know is you and i can join the navy and while we’re signing up to go into the navy we can say we want to go to be a navy seal i don’t know you could do that right off the bat right i thought it’s kind of like you go in and then you say hey i want to be an 18 billion time

Go become i’m part of the fifth group or third group of whatever yeah so is sniper something you requested from day one or was it something that came later on it came later on um got it so yeah like when i first had my contract i wanted to ask that but there was no way they had no idea you know if i could shoot no way of knowing if i could shoot well or anything like that a team player if i would even make it so it was not even an option i wish it was i wish it were but at the time is there automatic elimination that okay listen

We like you you’re great but here’s five things that automatically eliminates you from being in sniper school you know how back in the days they would say if you’re colorblind if you’re flat-footed if you have asthma you know all these things that would say was there any automatic disqualification of sniper school oh yeah i had my first run in uh being colorblind when i wanted my before i wanted to join the army i wanted to be a navy seal like everybody else does and you know i went into i did the whole process i was talking to the navy

Recruiter i went to a navy seat cadet corps my mom put me through or you know i asked her to be in and i went through this a little program called baby seals and they put you through like a little uh mock navy seal course and you you know get scuba qualified and all this like 15 and i thought that was pretty neat and i went into the navy recruiter and i took the color vision test and it turned out that i was 100 not 100 but i was red green colorblind and completely disqualified me so i went to the army thinking that i could fool them and

Somehow cheat this color vision test um not not with the intention of wanting to join the army but retaking this television test and failed it again but this army nurse was there and she kind of like i was crying a lot you know it was a dream that i had of one to join the military and i was crying in the office or the little station where you uh take your physical let and she saw me crying and she brought me into her office and asked what the problem was and found out that i was red green colorblind so she pulled

Out this booklet and she traced with her finger all the numbers that i couldn’t see and i called them out and she scored me 100 that’s how i got into the army i had no idea what a ranger was until i remember watching black hawk down but it didn’t stand out to me i didn’t find out what rangers were and you know pretty much until i you know signed the contract and was going in so so neither ranger or neither sniper was negotiated up front no oh just ranger ranger was negotiated i asked for i wanted something that was

Going to be the closest to navy seals as possible they said rangers was in except for rangers they don’t swim and i was like well perfect i’ll take that and that’s how i became a ranger got it yeah i mean ranger is uh it’s you know i i i know rangers and they tell me the story and it’s not a not easy no no no not i mean seven on eighty five eighty five goals seventy seven come out that’s uh those are the numbers for you so sniper school were there any automatic disqualifications or no yes um i don’t have 20 20 vision and

So if you have television and 20 20 vision um if they cannot be corrected that automatically disqualifies you um i don’t think there was anything else as far as being flat-footed got it uh but basically eyesight was the the number one thing that would immediately disqualify you did they recruit you to become a sniper or did you make the ask i had to i had to ask my my platoon my first my team leader then it went up the chain of command before i could actually become or put in the paperwork you have to put in this packet

Um that’s signed off by your chain of command you’re worthy of going they trust that you’ll go and represent well and you’re a team player or you know all these you know uh little pre-qualifications in this packet that you have to have submitted to sniper school they look at it they only accept so many uh per year and that’s when the courses start five weeks eight weeks long and uh yeah day one it’s you know the first day i want to take that back the first day you can get cut pretty easily where they shoot in it’s called a

Shoot in process where they give you a standard ar m4 rifle iron sights no scope on it and you have to be able to shoot a a grouping like five inch grouping and i forget how far 25 meters or something like that um and if you can’t that immediately disqualifies you day one it’s you know your bags are not even unpacked and that can get you disqualified right off the bat day one oh yeah that happened we had like two guys our class who went in and literally bags still packed as soon as we got there an hour or two as soon as

Uh class initially started they were already back home yeah so it’s pretty quick it’s not like so they’re immediately getting it’s not like they’re getting rid of 50 but they’re getting rid of the bottom five percent bottom ten percent oh yeah there you go yeah exactly so so then what was it like i mean if you go is it i’m assuming i’m assuming sniper school has to be very different than ranger or iran like there’s no screaming because it’s more poise you have to stay calm i’m assuming it’s a different angle they

Took different direction they take with sniper school 100 it was a i want to say laid a little bit more laid back there was rarely anybody that yelled no none of the instructors or anything it was like a personal uh it was not like what you expect when you turn on and look at like drill sergeants are getting yelled at and stuff like that it was a really uh gentleman’s course if you want to call it that uh uh you’re your own you have your own responsibilities and you know you’re a sniper you have to get used to working as one man or two man

Very small small teams and have a lot of responsibilities so we had a lot of you know leeway when it came to that not a lot of yelling or fussing the i guess the the hard portion of sniper school that you know really stands out is the attention to detail there there’s a lot of attention to detail that is you know uh incorporated with sniper school it’s not all shooting i would i would honestly say the shooting portion maybe makes up 20 30 of all cyber school everything else is learning there’s eight hour 12 hour days

Of sitting in a classroom staying awake watching hours of powerpoint or going out to the field and learning you know how to read the wind are looking for you know a toothpick or toothbrush in the woods with the binoculars and stuff like that a lot of attention to detail not much shooting that was the hard part not what i expected so finding a toothpick or a toothbrush in the woods like you you have to find it so you’re literally sitting there and you have to find the toothbrush yep so there’s a portion called target

Detection and they place out small objects uh in the in the field you know 100 yards a couple hundred yards or however far away in front of you and you use your naked eyes binoculars and your spotting scope to find these ten small objects it might be a bullet um a string a military shoelace toothbrush small small stuff like that a clear protractor was one i distinctly remember a clear protractor taped to the side of a building and what made it stand out were the numbers like the little tick marks that are not normally on the side of a

Building so attention to detail looking for really small things that don’t fit that was really really you know harp donuts cyber school nicholas when you go to when when i meet a ranger or a special forces or delta these are all gung-ho guys like you look at them you’re like i’m respect you know you see a studs you scut up studies right when you see i know that look oh yeah yeah yeah so you you you know but you can see like this makes sense right you get this when when you went to sniper school did you see a commonality amongst the

Soldiers like was it extremely technical was it quieter was it more shy reserved was it a lot of loners was it a lot of you know i’m not a you know i’m more like like sports you know some kids do better at tennis because it’s a one-man game or golf or boxing versus team 20 30 40 50 people what what expense did you notice about this microphone you know i never really thought about it that but now looking back at it that’s a really good question and i would say it’s a really wow the commonality would be i would say the loner aspect everyone

Has that i guess they were the nerds or maybe didn’t have that many friends in school not because of it was just they chose to maybe um quieter more reserved people who like to think a lot are people who think more than they talk you know i would say that was one of the biggest characteristics of you could tell a sniper if you put them in the crowd of people you would be able to tell who the sniper is they don’t look like the chiseled you know you know guy you see on the poster or anything like that they were just like

Your average really really average average average guy nothing stand out nothing standoutish very average guy some guys i looked at and i was just like i don’t know what you’re doing here you know but there was one guy on my team and i’m not like uh we all made fun of him but he was very um he wasn’t he caught he knew he was not attractive to the eye you know and he was just a very average very below maybe a little bit below average looking guy maybe and but he was the best shot and he outshot everybody on the team the best shot to this day if

I had to go up against this guy i would lose the best pure talent best shot i’ve ever seen in my life but as far as looks you would not be able to tell he was really really heavy in the like wwf or wwe he was into wrestling as a grown man so it was uh that’s how average it was very interesting so you know did you did you guys i’m assuming there’s a level of camaraderie built is there follow-up till today where you guys keep contact with each other is there some kind of a you know community of snipers being friends together

Big time big time it’s a huge unity i i talked to my spotter to this day to uh uh not spotter my original spotter i talked to and i have a friend that was not my spotter but we were in the same sniper platoon together we still we i mean hung out for years after we got out the military we shot at this little facility helped instruct different military units at a facility that we went to go shoot at one point in our careers and keep in contact we’ve been in business together um and this my old team leader who got shot on a

Mission that i was in uh he’s in i think he’s a preacher now i want to say he’s a preacher but uh we keep in contact here and there on on instagram and facebook and stuff like that but yeah i don’t think that there’s not one guy or one sniper that i don’t have contact with or at least you know six degrees of separation somewhere on social media you know i bet that makes sense because i mean how many are there it’s not like it’s a community of 300 or 600 000 small communities so and and to do that you have to be part

Of a very elite community to decide to do that i mean it’s not easy i remember going out there even just trying to shoot something that was you know 200 meters away from you 100 meters away from 300 meters long and then you’re looking at numbers you got to be how do you even do that to go you know that far with some of the things you know you guys do so now let’s let’s go to the other side is the mindset of would you consider yourself a superstitious person or no superstitious i you know yes would you say that’s common amongst

Your peers or no i would i would say so i think that oh yeah oh yeah especially like on the last deployment there’s a big super i was big into it everybody is that you’re gonna die it’s it’s you’re gonna get shot you’re gonna get wounded or you’re gonna die it’s gonna be a worse deployment and for me it legitly it legitimately was my worst scariest deployment and it i noticed that amongst everybody who i saw get out either they got shot and it was just this thing that happened and if things would not go right um

Before a mission or something was out of place or something didn’t happen as normal oh yeah there’s a big superstition amongst that on friday the 13th or was one for me i didn’t like doing things on holidays um you know what we kind of weird me out a little bit doing missions on the holiday i i can see that because you know there is there’s so many attention like stuff that has to do with details like look everything’s got to be good for me to feel comfortable to make this so what is that you know what so fast forward to you going on your tours

And uh it’s 33 confirmed in four months uh what is the difference between your first confirmed versus your 33rd come from what was the difference between nicholas on his first versus the 33rd the my first one in my career ever i was 18. I was a machine gunner with my first ever and my first as a sniper well i killed 33 as a sniper as a machine gunner i legitimately have no idea it was a few i would maybe as much as uh a sniper maybe a little bit less but it was a it was a bit and the first one is a 18 year old kid

I had a dream about it for many many years and as a sniper it was a separation i think of how close it was like being able to see something and the intent behind it was more personal so i had the sniper kills set everything apart from any other kill and every sniper kill that i had was all weird not weird but they all felt different yeah they all felt different i never there was nothing that feeling that some people say oh you get used to it i never felt that i never felt used to killing anything i would have this weird

Set of emotions that i would go through and the motto for our sniper community is uh without warning without remorse without warning part nine times out of ten is what happened but the remorse part for me personally was every single time i felt some weird way about it i’m not sure if it you know derives from coming from a religious background and you know growing up in church and stuff like that but i was it was weird it was a weird experience for me to after the fact really weird you’re the first person that i’ve heard

Say the disposition that you have it’s typically the other way around which is it’s part of my job it’s part of my duty and i wanted to be you know you know you know it’s almost like a script that you hear but you’re you’re saying yeah yeah did you when you were active did you have contact with your parents like did you talk to your mom and dad could you come in so when the first time it happened as a sniper did you call your mom and dad and try to process it with them like here’s what i’m thinking how do i handle

This and what feedback is that i give you my first kill ever i i remember going to i was in iraq and i went to uh across the street to this mwr place and i forget what mwr stands for um but it’s the we had like computers and stuff in there and internet access um we could go in there and go online and make phone calls and i called my dad my first kill ever no i emailed him then called him and he told me hey don’t talk about that stuff but i was like dad i killed somebody and he’s like hey don’t talk about that and you never talked

About it after any time after but it was my very first kill ever ever in combat it was like uh just eight a little bit over 18 i was in to crit uh to crit at that point yeah my first deployment to iraq was to correct second one was to mosul and third was to baghdad so the crit was my first kill ever mwr united states army families and moral welfare welfare and recreation programs there it is i knew recreation was in there yep that’s what it was yeah yeah so and so so you call your dad and dad says listen this is not something we

Talk about so you’re kind of like okay i’m going to keep it to myself and you go back at it and you’re having 33 total and each one of them has a different feeling and emotion for it are you at a point right now where you can live your normal life and it doesn’t haunt you anymore i am now i would say i am now um i think that maybe over time i don’t think it’d ever go away because it happened like there was a point in time where i never wanted to forget any of this stuff i thought it was it was just stuck and i

Was fine with it it was who i it made me who i was at that moment but then it started to like really affect my personal life and family life and that guy did not intermingle with this world you know too well so it took some time and it honestly legitimately was the birth of my son uh four years ago four years ago was the complete 100 turn around you know from being i had to be it was just a weird weird thing i from everything i’ve ever ever experienced watching my son being born in the room was like i don’t know it was out of body

Experience maybe weird i’ve never felt that before it’s just really really intense really weird and and scary yeah scary at the same time really scared that was a different scared though but it changed me in a good way i just couldn’t be i don’t know it was like i didn’t matter so much anymore it wasn’t being like me you know what i mean i didn’t have to be me it was like i have to be cool for this guy or different for this guy it was just a weird trend it was a weird thing you know nicholas when’s your birthday what

Month’s your birthday november november 28th me and my son share the same birthday and weird weird weird thing happened my son was born well he had this heart condition his uh heart would skip every once in a while and my sis my wife’s sister just lost her baby 12 hours 12 12 hours after she was born she had a heart condition as well so i was you know already worried about it and the doctors were gonna you know induce labor the i think it was december december 8th is when they wanted to to induce it but when i first met my wife 13 years ago i

Told her i wanted to have a child no later than 30 and on my birthday is when my son was born i was like so we share the same birthday now november 28th in november 20th 1990 is when i came to america from germany no november i mean i will never forget november 28th oh you came to you know what so did i i came to america we moved from germany in 1990 but yeah november 28th is uh yeah my birthday in 1990s when we moved to uh florida in america from germany let me tell you november 28 1990 is when i left germany and i came

To america you’re kidding no i was in germany i came here i was in germany by a military camp in erlangen that had a refugee camp and we went from there november 20 1990 i came to america landed in new york ended up in glendale california wow so november 20th got a lot of meaning for both of us it’s your birthday birthday you coming here and you know for me it’s me coming to the states so you said something earlier you said when i asked you i said tell me about the first versus the last number one number you know 33 and you said you i had some that

Wasn’t even the confirmed snipers it was you know different that i had to the the i think you said the uh uh what was the weapon gunner um the machine gun the machine gun you said well you said something about the last one you said the last one was kind of emotional what do you mean by that you said something about the last one my very oh my very first one deployed was the most emotional one i had the most dreams about it was when you said the first first confirmed versus the last confirmed you said the last confirmed had meaning behind it you

It almost like the enemy was somebody that took out a friend or something was there was there a meaning behind the last one i would say we had more maybe along the lines of the mission with uh where i lost my friend benjamin cobb if that’s the one that were be not my last kill my last mission where it changed my life where i was never that was my determining factor i was not gonna you know re-enlist or anything my last mission when i almost lost my life my reconnaissance team pinned down by an enemy sniper and

Surrounded and watching the guy come in to save our life and watching him die like five minutes after that was when you know i think was my determining factor i don’t think any kill actually you know different from any other kill they were all different and all emotional i had remorse for all of them i’m not going to say remorse i felt sad though it wasn’t i did feel sad it was a sadness but not like as sad as in i wanted to cry necessarily maybe it emptiness maybe like it didn’t feel good you know i don’t i don’t want to say it felt great i

Didn’t feel good about it it was just wow i don’t know it was a weird weird feeling yeah interesting um uh uh so so your your mk 11 rifle why the nickname you know you put the nickname modified version of the sr-25 sniper rifle nicknamed dirty diana why dirty diana michael jackson my first ever memory of michael jackson was sitting on my mom’s lap watching him at a concert he was performing and he rips his shirt off on stage and for some reason all that the the fireworks and stuff stuck with me and michael jackson fan

Ever since moonwalking at the age of you know five or six and i love i love michael jackson and had michael jackson on you know all my playlists but it derives from this operation we were doing in iraq and my uh this yeah we’re riding around strikers and in the striker it’s like a modified i want to say a mini if you think of a mini tank but with wheels there’s eight wheels on it 40 ton vehicle and i’m the driver there’s someone behind me who’s like in charge of looking out on top so i can drive and we call him the tc

We get into a fire fight and this song on his playlist the ipod ipad or ipod it was at the time we had plugged in into the internal speakers and he had dirty diana playing in on the internal speakers during this firefight in iraq and that was like my moment or i guess my moment where i knew that i don’t know i was gonna name something after it but at the time it wasn’t a sniper rifle it was just i love michael jackson but when i got my rifle in battalion i had to name it dirty diana just out of remembrance for you know michael jackson

I i don’t know i like the song i don’t know i like michael jackson i wasn’t gonna neighbor billy billy jean would have been i don’t know dirty diana was it though i like dirty diana i said that’s a very unique name to give you a rifle so you know let’s go to a different direction with sniper so did you did you study like where you want to study who’s the greatest sniper of all time who are the top five who the top ten you know what do they do how many confirmed kills what’s the longest distance who is this guy were you somebody that got into it

Like were you obsessed were you maniacal about it i was obsessed to the point my dad took my books my library books away oh what grade was i in i had to be seventh or eighth grade at the time i was getting in trouble in school from i would go to the library and either if i had a library card or i would steal some books and check out a few other ones but all the military books that revolved around sniping and all the vietnam uh special operation guys like sog song and the old navy seals and i learned jesse ventura was a navy seal from like

One of these books and um one of my idols at the time was carlos hathcock a marine sniper and i had video uh vhs tapes that i would come home after school and watch and was consuming up way too much of my time uh interfering with schoolwork and got in trouble for it but that was my idol and i think that to this day that he is the best hands down sniper of all time regardless of numbers but carlos has talked in my opinion is the top of the top when it comes to snipers but tell me why because i know he had 93 confirmed in vietnam

I his ingenuity and the mission that sets him apart from all and i idolized him for it even on my first uh reconnaissance mission was when he went in to go take out the uh viet cong commander he stalked in like a thousand yards on his stomach surrounded by himself it was basically a suicide mission and took out a commander a vietnamese commander uh then had to crawl back out while being chased by a whole brigade or something like that from enemy troops uh getting bit by bugs and putting grass and stuff through the back of his uh the

Slits in the back of his his uniform to essentially make a ghillie suit his ingenuity was i think would set him apart for me and uh his when he attached the united scope to the uh mahdi’s 50 cal machine gun and sniped someone off of a bike uh one was like 1.2 miles away i think and that was where we get the barrett sniper rifle from to just stay the semi-automatic he was like the person who invented or threw the theory out there to put a scope on a 50-cal rifle so i think that is why i put him up there but that’s what stood out in

His his persona about him he was just a white feather his persona and i don’t know he’s a sniper godlike figure to me yeah so i looked up a few things to see kind of what the numbers look like so craig harrison british sniper killed the taliban fighter 2475 meters away that’s a mile and a half in 2009 like and then another canadians i couldn’t find out what the name was i kept looking to see what’s they won’t release his name yeah okay i know about the first one okay yeah the second one is 3540 meters which is over two miles

That’s the world record 39 football fields and they’re not disclosing the name for whatever reason so we if you can kind of put us give us some perspective what is 2475 meters or 3540 meters my furthest shot is 2022 meters on a steel target that took the bullet a few seconds to get there let’s say so 1.

2 miles one well 2022 meters let’s say is 1.1 1.2 miles you’re looking at flight time five six seconds uh five six seconds of flight time three four five it depends on the round you’re using um let’s say 4 000 meters right uh with the average sniper rifle 762 that would take the bullet 1.7 seconds to get there so just under 2 seconds 4 000 meters so amplify that over time to let’s say 2000 you have to factor in the fact that the bullet is slowing down now too so that one point two seconds or two seconds at a thousand meters doubled it’s like four or five seconds

Three thousand two miles that is insane i would never attempt the shot like that just because what you’re looking at in the scope you would you that’s phenomenal like you’re not really looking at anything at that point imagine looking at the crosshair and the scope aiming at a crosshair that’s what i that’s what that would look like it’s to get to that that is a lot of that’s confidence confidence and time confidence that’s confidence you’re saying confidence why because is there a little bit of assumption and luck behind it

I would say a lot of luck but confidence to even attempt to take that shot i don’t think i would have i know who i am i would have never even attempted that how far away the guy’s two miles negative why do you say never why do you say never why do you say you would never tempt that shot i’m not i’ve never even done math out to that point i’ve never shot that far i don’t even i just wouldn’t even do i’m not comfortable i know for a fact if i did hit i know it would be 100 luck i didn’t mean to hit the guy i just put it

Out there i would pull the trigger if i would take the shot but if i hit him pure luck i would never be able to do that one more time or ever again i don’t know there’s so much stuff going on the spin of the earth 2400 meters though i mean 2200 meters is not like it’s i mean when i when i earlier said 100 200 300 meters i meant to say 120 to 300 yards because there’s a big difference between but 2200 meters one mile is not that far i would say a mile shot maybe not the average per well of course not but a mile to a sniper is not

That bad that’s not that far on a human size target i take that back is pretty hard that is actually hard my further shot on a human target was half mile but on a steel target 2022 meters that is pretty hard that took two shots within three shots to get that is actually tough but two miles that is you’re looking at a crosshair through a crosshair or aiming at a crosshair with a crosshair at that point that’s very very small looking at a mile away at a human-sized target is i’m trying to make a comparison to what

That would be like looking at it’s something very if you stood across your standard size room and maybe looked at the little hole inside of the wall socket that’s probably from maybe 30 feet away that’s what that would look like yeah or maybe the the head of the nail yeah very very small i mean what your your eyes is it then more on your vision has it been more on how you set up your is it then more on your you know breathing what what what is like you know bodybuilding they say it’s diet then it’s how you lift

Weights then it’s cardio you say right what’s the top of the top of being a sniper is it what would you put at the top vision wow i would say the ability to calm no the ability to understand nature if you don’t understand when or you don’t understand the humidity how the temperature affects the bullet if you don’t have a co a a really really good grasp on that then you won’t hit anything you won’t hit anything the wind could literally you won’t you could barely feel the wind but at a mile you won’t hit anything not anything so you have to have a

Really really really good grasp at the top math math and understanding nature once you understand nature then that converts to math that math converts to the gun then that goes to the shooter after that then everything after that you just pull the trigger you just lay behind the gun a slab of meat behind the gun is what we refer refer to it as and then pull the trigger wow math is at the top oh yeah big time big time a lot of calculus and a lot of geometry a lot of geometry were you good at both algebra what’s that were you good at both

Geometry and calculus no i failed high school i graduated with the 1.7 gpa i’m completely i’m terrible at math but it was not the type of math that i had no real uh i guess real intention to even it didn’t excite me but after learning what you could do with math applied to a bullet like the pythagoras or the pythagoras theorem are the what’s another equation simple equation like a was a squared plus b squared equals c squared um that equates a lot to like high angle math um if i want to shoot off of a rooftop that’s the exact or somewhat the exact

Equation i would use for that after multiply by cosines and stuff but you find out a lot about how to hit a target by using math everything inside the scope is all like mill radian anyways so um to find the distance to a target you can use your scope reticle and the little dots in there represent measurements units of measurement and that’s how i would figure out how far away a target is by looking at the size of a target with these little dots in there multiplied by a number a constant number depending on the size of the target

Divided by how many dots i see in my scope and that’s how all that math comes out to be unbelievable to be thinking about how math maybe that’s another commonality amongst the guys is that you have to be somewhat good at numbers to be able to do what you guys do absolutely and i found they’re good at working stuff out in their head a lot that’s a there we go there we go maybe that’s why i think the guys are quiet the way they are a lot of stuff happens up here there’s a lot of talkative stuff but everything happens up here so

That’s what it is that’s what it is thinkers yeah there there it is yeah interesting so uh do you still uh do you still uh uh carry you know do you still uh have guns and you go shooting still is it still part of your life literally an hour and a half before i started this interview i was at the range oh yeah what do you do full time now what’s your full-time gift today write books write books i write other people’s books and i just now have enough time to where i can work on uh the stuff that i want to work on not so

Much like military but you know the things that used to excite me as a kid you know like fiction or you know uh science fiction and stuff like that and uh history and you know books that may not pertain so much towards combat you know but things that intrigued me i tell you you got an impressive resume for a guy that had a 1.

7 gpa becomes a sniper who needs to be getting map and then after leaving the army becomes an author that needs to write so whatever that one pointed out was maybe not a lot of accuracy behind it uh final question here about uh uh your four-year-old son one day comes up to you he’s 18. He says dad i want to be a sniper what do you tell him do you encourage him or discourage him or let him do whatever he wants to do i would tell him yes only under one condition it’s for the olympics you can be the precision shooters in the olympics those the the ones that that

Ski are they cross country ski then they shoot yeah he could do that i would train him uh invest all the time i ever needed if he only did that but to take another life absolutely absolutely not absolutely not so you would 100 discourage him 100 100 i’ve changed i’m telling you i’ve changed my views on a lot like there was a point in my life where i lost spirituality you know i questioned a lot a lot and been having the birth of him and getting seeing things differently and understanding things differently getting

Back into spirituality and the understanding of how things work and how much you need different things in life i just don’t i don’t see the need to want to put that if he were to take another life and how it would affect him potentially after the fact you know i was able to i feel that i’m able to or was able to recoup or recover from the the mental aspect from it and move on but for some people it’s not that easy and i just wouldn’t want that burden to be on anybody you know let alone my son so i’ve changed my view on

That i think that there’s a time like for for sport i think it’s great no issue with it and if it was a last resort defending my family but to to take life i it’s it’s weird it’s a weird experience to live through i just don’t think it’s right i think we should step away from killing for a little bit and love love everybody for you know give that a try for a second i i i think america definitely needs to work on that a little bit the next few years oh yeah see how that helps us out we need to maybe listen to a little bit

More bob marley and a little bit here we go easy or maybe get off a little bit of tupac for a couple years i don’t know we can we can hang out we can hang out come to texas well i gotta well i i know you’re a big fan of san antonio it sounds like you’re a die-hard senator lee and charles barkley oh my gosh but anyways man i really enjoyed talking to you seriously i really enjoyed talking to you uh thank you for your service thank you for just being you and transparent what an incredible story for people that are

Watching this i know you got another uh real cool uh skit that you did with inside insider where you’re talking about 11 sniper movies are they real are they not real and that’s kind of how we found you you know that popped up i’m like what a great story you know let’s get them on and kai recommended you and i’m so glad we had you on brother thank you so much thank you thank you much appreciate it take care buddy you too 33 confirmed kills wouldn’t recommend his four-year-old son to be a sniper if you wanted to be one

Every single one of the confirmed mess with his head a little bit up until the kid was born son was born four years ago just a very genuine guy that you could tell he was thinking about the right answer the most accurate answer to give during the interview i enjoyed it a lot here’s to know what you took away from it comment below and if you enjoyed this interview i think you will also enjoy the interview with taya kyle who was the wife of chris kyle the american sniper played by bradley cooper if you’ve never watched that one it’s a

Very very different angle click over here to watch that interview take care everybody bye [music]