Episode 189-Nappen Interviews Head Sniper of the IDF
Also Available OnPodcast TranscriptGun Lawyer Episode 189

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

gun, israel, accidental discharges, idf, galil, handgun, targets, shooting, gaza, new jersey, check, mikey, m4, sniper, called, israeli, magazine, israeli army, people, august 9th

SPEAKERS

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman, Speaker 3, Evan Nappen

EvanNappen 00:00

Hi I’m Evan Nappen, and welcome to Gun Lawyer. I am really excited because I have a fantastic guest today on the show. Today’s guest was the head sniper of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) who rewrote their whole shooting doctrine which trained over a half a million soldiers, including Americans. And that man is Mikey Hartman. {LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman} Mikey, welcome to Gun Lawyer.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 00:54

I’m honored to be here, buddy. Thank you for having me.

EvanNappen 00:57

Well, I am really excited, and I have so much respect for you. You have had and still are involved in an amazing career. I just want to mention to my audience that I’m also looking at a really cool cover of Soldier of Fortune (June 2013) in which you were on the cover of that magazine? How did that happen?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 01:29

That was a few years ago. Firstly, to be clear, I’m retired now. So, I’m not the head Sniper of anybody anymore. I was the previous head Sniper of Israel, and I wrote the Israeli doctrine on how to shoot a gun. But I’ve been retired almost 15 years. So, I’m an old man. The cover of Soldier of Fortune. Do you know the editor of that magazine?

EvanNappen 01:45

Yes, wasn’t that Robert K. Brown. Right?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 01:49

He is an ex-sniper from Vietnam. He came to my booth at Shot Show many years ago, and we had this like, I guess, connection and stuff. Then they interviewed me, and they did like a six-page article about me. And they were very cool. They put me on the cover. And it was kind of cool. So, it was a sniper to sniper kind of thing. He’s a great guy. But to be honest with you, they stopped printing those magazines and they went full internet, probably about four or five magazines after me.

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EvanNappen 02:24 That’s funny.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 02:24 Maybe I was the cause.

EvanNappen 02:26

No, I don’t think so. But, you know, I have original SOF magazines when they had the red border, Torino and all that, way back.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 02:35

I was the first. I was the first Israeli. I think the only Israeli Jew to ever be put on the cover. So, for me, it was like, it was pretty cool. You know? And we went one.

EvanNappen 02:45 You broke a new barrier.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 02:46

It was kind of cool. Right when it came out, I was doing something, and I went in to Mexico. I don’t know if it was Mexico, or Brazil. I can’t remember. I had a whole bunch of those magazines, and all the police guys that would do autographs. I was signing, and it was like really, really cool. So, it was my one day of stardom.

EvanNappen 03:06

So, you originally though were from Memphis, Tennessee?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 03:10

Yeah, I was born in Memphis. I lived there a very few years, about seven. Then we moved to Israel, and then we came back to LA. I grew up in LA and went to high school out in LA. I was the president of my high school. Then I had this reoccurring dream in high school that I was a sniper in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. And how many Nazis can I kill before they get me? It was like, you know, I had this dream to become a ַצ ָלף , which means sniper in Hebrew. After I finished high school, a lot of us from LA and all over America would go to Israel for a year, like a sabbatical, getting away from the parents before you go into college. Some guys went to a kibbutz. Some guys went to a yeshiva, and some guys went to university. I wanted to be a lawyer. That was my thing. I was going to sell ice to Eskimos, that was my. Since I was a little kid, they put the word lawyer on my forehead, and my mom made me sign a contract.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 03:51 Somehow I can relate to that.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 04:05

You definitely can, but you’re in a different level. So, in any case, she made me sign a contract that she’ll send me to Israel, to Bar-Ilan (BIU), a university on this one year program. But I had to write and

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guarantee that I’m coming back to study in college here, and I won’t join the army because I always had that little, you know, thing in my stomach that I wanted to join the Israeli army, you know, to protect the people of Israel, and everyone’s against us. Now even more so than back then. So, I went to Israel, and I was studying there in university. I saw soldiers walking around with a Galil on their backs, you know, the soldiers. And I said, I gotta do this, man. I gotta do this. So, I had to call my mom and tell her that I’m breaking the contract. I said, Mom, you know, I’m joining the army. She says, No, you’re not. And I said, Yes, I am. She says, No, you’re not. I said, Yes, I am. She says, No, you’re not. She said, You’re gonna do it by yourself. I said, Who cares? Who need you? I don’t need you. We hung up the phone, and that was the last time I spoke to her for like, five, six years after that, and went into join the army. And you know, when you volunteer for a foreign army, I don’t know if you know this, in our passport, you can actually lose your American citizenship if you volunteer to a foreign army.

EvanNappen 05:16

Even the Israelis that have like, you can have dual citizenship, can’t you?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 05:19

Well, I wasn’t a dual citizen then. That’s the exact point. So, you have to become an Israeli first. Then you have this dual citizenship, and then they can enlist you. So, I became an Israeli, and then the next day I went into the army.

EvanNappen 05:36 Wow.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 05:37

Lucky for me. Because, well, if I didn’t have an American citizenship, my wife wouldn’t have married me. The only reason my wife married me in Israel was because I had an American passport and that was the only thing I had. Yeah.

EvanNappen 05:49

Well, so you spent how many years living in Israel?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 05:53

About 30. Maybe 31. Yeah, I was in the military for 21, almost 22 years. So, from ’88 to 2010, I was in the military, Infantry. I grew as a sniper in the Infantry. Then, in ’93, I became the Head of Shooting for Israel, and I did that for about 17 years.

EvanNappen 06:14

So, I have to ask, what was your immediate reaction to October 7th?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 06:21

You know, I’m sitting here in Florida, and it happened the middle of the night. So, we wake up and everyone’s calling and all hell’s breaking loose. We couldn’t believe it. Because, I retired in 2010, some 14 years ago. We knew that they can hit us here. They can hit us there. But nowhere in our radar did I think it was even possible for something like October 7 to happen. It was devastating. I lost so many

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friends, and my friends lost their sons as well, because it’s a next generation. There’s so many heroes stories that we’re going to hear about and movies are going to be done. Jumping on grenades, and father’s running into the fire, getting their kids out. Crazy. There’s so many crazy stories. But for me, I felt very frustrated that I’m here, and I’m not helping. So, I got on a plane, and I got re enlisted, even though I’m an old man at 54. I went and joined the army again in in October. I left Florida. I left the family and got into uniform and went down south and did what I can do. I’m too old to really help too much. But the stuff that I do know how to do, I did. We will eventually win, even though the whole world is against us, other than maybe the Republican Party in America. I think that’s the only people that’s not against us. Thank God for Trump and thank God for the Republican Party. I’m friends with his son, and hopefully, he’s going to take over in November and the situation will be a lot better.

EvanNappen 07:58

Yeah. Tell me when you’re talking about the Israelis, the citizens and civilians defending themselves, what is the situation in Israel regarding firearms and possession of firearms ? How is that different? Or maybe it’s the same as in America?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 08:17

That’s a great question. You know, there’s a lot of misconceptions around guns in Israel period. I think the Americans think that the situation is very different than it actually is. So, let’s break it down. You cannot go into a gun store in Israel, and there’s very few of those, by the way. You cannot go into a gun store and buy an AR or an AK. There is no ability to buy to purchase a long gun in Israel, period.

EvanNappen 08:47

Not even a semi-automatic?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 08:49

Nothing. It has nothing to do with automatic. You cannot get a long gun. You can get a handgun but you have to go through some licensing to get that as well. It was harder before October 7. Now, they made it much easier. But another point that may surprise people is we don’t have sport shooting, very little. There’s some but very little. We have no hunting. There’s no gaming. So, the first time you ever see a rifle is when you mandatory enlist at the age of 18. All men and women enlist when they’re 18. Guys do three years and girls do two years. So, the first time they see a gun is either their father was in reserves, because everyone has to do reserves until they’re like 50, or when they join the army at 18. By the way, 99% of all the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces, doesn’t have a handgun. We don’t have a secondary. The American military is extremely different than the IDF. So, the handgun, you’re not issued a handgun as an IDF soldier. We have very few units, special forces, that are inside the territories that are issued handguns, but they are less than 1% of the entire military.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 09:10

So, for Israeli citizens that get a handgun, what’s the most popular handgun in Israel for an Israeli?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 10:06

I think the Glock 43X and the P365 of Sig Sauer. Those are the two. They are slim guns. They are concealed carry guns. Those are the two most popular in Israel as of now.

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EvanNappen 10:19

Do they carry a permit system as welll? First, you have to get licensed?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 10:23

Yeah, you gotta get a license to be able to carry. It used to be much harder. But not now. By the way, your question was such a good one, because what happened when 4,000 terrorists entered Israel on the seventh of October? It was like thirty 911s for us, per capita. The kolache was fighting against Israelis who had handguns. They didn’t have rifles to defend themselves. One of the biggest reasons that everyone should own a long gun, an M4 or an AK, whatever people like, is because of what happened on the seventh of October. Now we have an Interior Minister in Israel, that after the seventh of October, is trying to make it easier for more people to have long guns. So, they’re trying to build these like little security forces at each kibbutz and yeshuvi of each little town. They’ll have guys with long guns. Because the problem was, it was a handgun against an AK. And that’s the people who had handguns. Less than 10% of Israelis have handguns. So, the vast majority of the people don’t even have anything to defend themselves.

EvanNappen 11:31

You know, what’s interesting is I have a collection of various Israeli weapons from the war in the late 40s, and they were actually Nazi Mausers that are Israeli marked. Some of the receivers even were made by FN and Haganah marked. You know, with the crest, and many were marked. I have some that are 8 mm and some that were in 308, NATO. And it’s funny, because I always thought those guns were plentiful in Israel. These were surplus, you know, even from after the wars when they had used, ironically, the arms of the Nazis to fight for their state.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 12:28

Yeah, back then, you know, even now, where did where did the M4s come from? A lot of people don’t know that. They hear that America gives money to this country and gives to that country, and there are people out there that are kind of upset. Why is America giving money to to foreign nations when there’s homeless people living here on the streets, which is a valid, valid point. One thing to know, at least about the Israeli aid, is that the money that is given to Israel has to be used, I think it’s 85%, has to be used back in America, meaning we’re getting like a coupon. This coupon can only be used inside of the U.S. For example, we had M4s, we had M16s, we had long M16s, and we had the M4s. We had the M4s even before you guys were using the M4s. Do you know how much the Israeli military paid for each M4? I’m talking 25 years ago.

EvanNappen 13:26 I have now clue.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 13:29

$1,400. We paid $1400 for every M4. Now, you see that’s fucking insane. How are you paying $1,400? So, we can’t complain, because we got the coupons. Right? It’s for free?

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EvanNappen 13:40

Well, I’ll tell you what. I personally will take any of those coupons the Government wants to give me. How’s that?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 13:45 Me, too.

EvanNappen 13:46

Right. Well, you know, a friend of mine and a listener. He listens all the time, and I did mention to him that we were so excited to have you on the show. He actually had a question. His name is Mark, and I think this is a great question. I really want to ask you about this, based on your experience with the IDF, and given the threat to civilians on a daily basis that exists in Israel. My friend would be interested to know and so would I. What advice would you give to American civilians, given the fact that Biden has turned America essentially into a ticking time bomb with the infiltration through the open borders policy? It seems like it’s just something waiting to happen. What would you have to say about that?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 14:34

Well, I agree, firstly, with your friend. There is no doubt in my mind that at this moment there are terrorist cells, sleeping cells, across America, from people that came in through the open borders in the south. There’s no question. So, what do you have to do? You have to be vigilant. You have to, as we say, keep your head on a swivel. You have to be armed. It doesn’t matter if it’s a handgun, if it’s a long gun, if it’s a knife or if it’s a stick. I don’t really care. You have to train your family what to do. We say in Hebrew פעולה ותגובה, action and reaction. What do you do if something like this happens? What is your action? How do you react to that? Where do you go? Where’s the phone? Who do you call? What’s your emergency numbers? You know, you’re locking up the doors, putting on the alarms, being careful when you’re going out to a gas station. My daughter is 17, and she fills up gas at the gas station. You have to keep your eyes open. There’s no other choice. We’re not living in Switzerland. We’re living in a place where there’s some bad people in our country. I just think that people need to be armed, and they need to be trained.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 15:49

When they made me the Head of Shooting in ’93, you know, I grew up as a sniper. I didn’t know anything about teaching how to shoot. I didn’t know I was going to be the Head Sniper of Israel. I didn’t know I was going to write the doctrine. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I was in Lebanon, and I was zeroing my sniper rifle. Back in ’88 and ’89, our Sniper rifles in Israel were the end M14s. Now, this is an old Vietnam gun. I love it. It’s a .762, and I love the gun. But we didn’t have an adapter for a nightscope, and our ambushes were 24 to 36 hours. So, they were day to night, night to day. It was crazy. I had a Galil, which was my issued weapon. I had an M14 as my sniper weapon with a telescope we called nimrota, magnified by six. And I had to take a long M16A1 with the nightscope called varo. It was 1.72 kilo of shit. It was better to take it off the gun and throw it at the enemy and hope it hits them in the head, rather than shoot through that thing. It was nasty stuff.

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LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 16:53

I remember I zeroed my M14. After I zeroed it, my friend who was shooting the Galil, because you’re supposed to zero your weapon before you go into ambush, he wasn’t doing a good grouping. So, I went to him as a friend, he’s a buddy of mine, and I just told him what made sense to me. You know, we didn’t have shooting instructors back then. This is over 35 years ago. So, my platoon officer saw me teaching this guy, and he said, what did you tell him? I said, I don’t know. He said, well go tell him, the next guy on the line. And I went down the line. I was like the first shooting instructor, basically, of the IDF. And who knew that five, six years afterwards, I was going to be the head of all shooting of Israel. It was a crazy thing. So, to your friend’s point, I think you have to be armed somehow, and you always have to be in a ready position. Your frame of mind needs to be, where can I get hit from? Where can it come from? This is not an easy thing to readjust your brain to. Because all you wanted to do was go to Publix and get some milk. You’re not thinking hey, where can they hit me from? So, it is what it is, you know. In certain states like Florida, I can conceal carry. I can carry wherever I want to, and no one says anything to you. I think in New Jersey they have much tougher laws.

EvanNappen 18:13

Well now with the Bruen decision, as we’ve discussed on the show many times, even New Jerseyans can get their permit to carry a handgun. We are limited at the moment to 10 rounds in the handgun. And of course, every concerned citizen should have a handgun. In addition to a handgun, I’m sure you would suggest a long arm. Is there any particular long arms you think that would be good for a civilian in preparation for what might come?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 18:48

Shooting with a long gun, with a rifle, is substantially easier than a handgun. It has nothing to do with the caliber. It doesn’t matter if it’s a .556, you guys call it .223, or if it’s a nine. That has nothing to do with the reason you pick a long weapon. With the long weapon, you have more points of contact. We call it five points of contact. I did these videos online where we teach people how to shoot with a rifle. The fact is that you have five points of contact: shoulder, feet, your right hand on the pistol grip, your left arm against the magazine, and your left arm on the forward guard. As opposed to a handgun, where only your wrist is holding the handgun. The accuracy in the long gun is not just because the length of the barrel is longer, which adds speeds to the round and makes the bullet go farther. But the reason is the points of contact. So, I love the M4. Yes, we have the Tavor in the IDF, and I can talk about that on another show. Why did we got the Tavor? What are the advantages/disadvantages of a Bullpup in the army? But I love the M4 platform. You know I grew up with guns. I was always shooting. What’s great about being the head of shooting of Israel? You get the first gun. You get the new toy. So, yeah, it was really cool to be honest. In Hebrew, there’s a thing called wasa. It’s like walking around with a new toy. Everyone’s looking at you and thinking you’re cool as shit.

EvanNappen 20:17

It’s called the Hebrew hammer, isn’t it?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 20:24 By the way, yeah, it’s a cool weapon.

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EvanNappen 20:27 X95. I think, it’s the X95.

20:30

X95 is the short one. We call that the Micro-Tavor. So, we have the Tavor, and then the Micro-Tavor. The Tavor was just a little bit longer, and the Micro-Tavor, which is the X95, was more compact. It also has a different trigger guard and stuff like that. But overall, the Bullpup is interesting. I had more issues with it. I didn’t like the gas in the face. But as an Israeli, we had the Galil. We only went to the M16 and then the M4s as a temporary fill in until the Israeli gun industry created another gun, because the Galil, which was kind of like a copy of the AK-47, was very, very heavy. The magazines were very, very heavy, and the dust cover would move from left to right. And the rear sight was on the dust cover. It’s different than the AK-47. The distance between the sights is much larger on the Galil than it is on the AK.

EvanNappen 21:26

Did you ever shoot the heavy barrel FN FAL as well?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 21:32 No.

EvanNappen 21:33

I think they got rid of them by that point.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 21:35

Yeah, I got rid of the Uzis. We had a whole bunch of Uzis in the military and that was a dangerous ass gun. When you drop an Uzi on the ground, you can actually misfire. You can have one on those accidental discharges.

EvanNappen 21:47

Because it fires from open bolt.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 21:49

Yep, yep, yep. The paradox was that, who did the IDF give the Uzi to? They gave it to the girls that were the most non- fighters in the Israeli army. They were secretaries in our headquarters, and they would have to be issued a gun when they do guard duty or something like that. They would get the Uzi to them. So, we gave the most dangerous gun to the person that was trained the least. I got rid of that gun, I think, in probably the late ’90s, early 2000s.

EvanNappen 22:20

Wow. After the atrocity of October 7, you were able to go back and see what happened. Is there anything you’d like to tell listeners about that, what you observed.

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LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 22:36

Yeah, it was extremely tough. I got on the plane, and I got there. I went from the airport to enlist. I was in uniform, probably two hours after I landed, and I went to the south. The first thing was we had not yet gone into Gaza by the time I got there because it took a while to move the forces inside. They were on the outside, training. So, I did a lot of the training and getting the guys ready to go in. But I went through the kibbutzim. You know, you go into the kibbutz, and you go into these houses, my friend. I cannot tell you how tough it was to see the damage. You see the most. Your brain can’t even register. I don’t know if you know this, but because of these shelters, many more Israelis were killed. Why? When they were doing that party, the music party, they were in an open field. And I went to that scene. And everything was still on the floor. By the way, you see terrorists still lying on the streets. We would see them. By the time I got there, they were still there. The cars burned. You see baby carriages tilt over.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 23:54

But when there’s an open field, there’s something called migunit. It’s basically a little house that Israel puts in open areas that if you’re in an open area when a siren goes off, you run to this migunit. I don’t know. I’m sorry about my English. It’s like a little room that’s cemented, and it’s safe against those bombs coming from the top of you. It’s like a little bunker. But it’s open, right? There’s no door, and you run in there. What happened? There were sirens going off. A lot of the people from the party, the young men and women, 18, 19, just having fun at the music party ran into these migunits. Then when the terrorists came, they went straight to those migunits, and they just threw a grenade in there. They killed them all. So, they had pockets of Israelis, and we were much easier targets. None of those guys have weapons on them. So, they can’t fight.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 24:56

There is a scene, my friend, that maybe I can share are with you, and somehow get it to your listeners. There were maybe 50 people in one of those little rooms. And you see the terrorists, by video from the gas station across the street, throw a grenade in there. The guy takes the grenade, one of the guys inside, and throws it back out. They throw another grenade, and he throws it back out. They throw another grenade – seven times. Then finally they killed them, unfortunately, killed them all. But there were so many. It was just, it was just insanity. So, I hope that shits not coming here. But you never know. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hit us, you know.

EvanNappen 25:34

So, speaking of here, what is your reaction when you see the anti-semitic hatred on college campuses? What are your thoughts on that?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 25:44

Firstly, I’d love to deport all of them. Secondly, I would love them to go to Gaza, if possible, and sit in Gaza for a while. This whole LBGTQ lesbian label, whatever they call for Palestine, Queers for Palestine, or whatever they call themselves, fucking idiots. You know, if you’re gay in Gaza, you’re either thrown off the roof, or put in jail. You cannot be gay in Gaza. That’s one of these paradoxes. Now, these anti-semitic people, you have to understand that universities are funded by oil nations, Arab oil nations like Qatar. They’re giving them billions of dollars. Now these guys are getting scholarships, and they’re being paid for by these Arabs. Now, not all Muslims are bad, but there’s some

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serious ones that are bad. The open hate against Jews is insanity. Now I walk around with the Star of David on my neck. I never did that before. Outside of my house, there’s an American flag, and there’s an Israeli flag, outside of my house here in Florida. They’re not going to scare me. With that being said, they’re a very loud minority. I truly believe that the vast amount of Americans see these people as crazies, and it’s the same people that were doing the BLM marches back in Trump days. The same people doing that. It’s the same exact people. They put masks on their face because they’re pussies. They don’t even know what the river to the sea means. They don’t know what river? They don’t know what sea. It’s just pure hate. They hate us. They blame Jews. You know, there’s never been been a Jewish president. There’s been a black president. There’s never been a Jewish President. I guess everyone needs someone to blame for their thing in life. And I guess the Jews are an easy target, because the Jews, the vast majority

EvanNappen 27:39

Well, that’s been going on for a long time, hasn’t it?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 27:42

Yeah. I think some of this stuff is really tough. My daughter is 17, and she’s going into 12th grade. She wants to go to an Ivy League, and I said, well, you’re definitely not going to Columbia. You’re definitely not going to Harvard, if you would ever get into Harvard. She’s a pretty bright girl. She’s like her mom. I’m not even sure she’s mine, to be honest. But I started coming out. I just don’t know how she went in. But the way we’re going to be sending our daughter to school, we’re not going to be sending her to a place where they hate Jews and they act like this. Do people need to be? How can this be in this country, that you’re afraid to show that you’re Jewish? You have to take your kippah, your yarmulke off, your beanie off, because you’re afraid that someone’s going to come at you? Can you imagine in America, we have to fear what religion we are? It’s insanity. It’s wrong. And G_d willing, G_d willing. Now Biden is, I’m sorry, I don’t want to be political too much. But he’s a pussy. Biden. Because he needs Minnesota or he needs Michigan or needs these places where they have a large muslim population,

EvanNappen 28:45 Wisconsin.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 28:46

you know, the swing states that they call them, and they have large Muslim populations there. He’s trying to walk between in the rain without getting wet. And trying to play to these people.

EvanNappen 28:57

Well, that’s easy. Just go between the raindrops.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 28:59 Yep. Yep. We need Trump.

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EvanNappen 29:02

Oh, that’s for sure. Now, in terms of your training of IDF and your vast experience in what you taught and teach, what do you have to share along those lines?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 29:19

Well, a few things. There are a few things that I can tell you about how we do things and why we do things. I’ll tell you a quick story about the Hamas and how that initiated how we trained and what we do. We used to live or serve inside of Gaza. I don’t know if all your listeners know this. But the Gaza Strip, where the war is going on now, used to have many, many small villages of Israelis living inside of Gaza. Because of that, we had little bases inside of Gaza that would protect these little villages, these little cities. It’s like a little island inside, but you are inside of Gaza. So, you had many of these, I don’t know the number, all throughout, eight or nine, but I don’t know the exact number. That’s where I did most of my service. So, you’re on a roof. You’re in a window. Head, knee, head, that’s a sniper. That’s what I did most of my service. I remember once, seeing a guy holding an AK, and he put around him, he’s standing in a circle, and around him, he has like 6, 7, or 8 year old kids. They’re completely surrounding him like a clock, okay, and he’s standing in the middle of the circle. He has kids around him because they know that we are the most ethical army in the world.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 30:36

You know, they’re saying genocide. If we wanted to wipe out Gaza, if we wanted to kill everybody, let’s say we just want to commit the genocide that they’re telling that we’re doing. I promise you, brother, it would take 24 hours, and they’re all dead. We just bomb them. We’re frigging texting them that we’re about to come in. We’re sending leaflets from the sky. We actually give them electricity, water and food. We arm our enemy. It’s like the most insane scenario. No one understands that the southern border of Gaza is with Egypt. It’s with another Muslim country. There’s no prison there. We’re not surrounding Gaza. So, once we understood that you have these situations where you’re going to have to shoot between people, when I built the shooting doctrine, which was kind of cool, because I didn’t have anybody above me. So, when I built the way to train, every time we fought, and in Israel, every day you’re fighting, every day. So, it’s a fighting army. It’s not, you know, Europe. So, every time something would happen, we would learn from what happened. Then we would implement it into our doctrine. So, it was a moving doctrine. In America, you guys are much more disciplined, and everything has to go through a whole chain of command, checks and balances. We didn’t have any of that shit. We just improvised, and we went.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 31:54

I built this job in ’97, called a sharpshooter, which you guys call the designated marksman, and I sat with you guys a lot on this, your military. In the beginning, I put six, and then nine, then 12, and up to 18 in every company in the IDF, has either an M4, a Tavor with an ACOG, Trijicon 4×32, and a nightscope that we have in Israel. And that helped us because we didn’t have anyone between the grunt and the sniper. We didn’t have any mid-level accuracy. Those sharpshooters were responsible for about 80% of all our kill shots. So, what we would do in our scenario is we would train, and what I would tell people to do is, when you’re training on the range, wherever you are inside range, outside range, whether you’re shooting a handgun or a rifle, it doesn’t matter. Make sure that you use simple things. You can use numbers. You can choose different colored balloons. You can use multiple targets, but be with a friend.

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A lot of times you go to the range with your son, with your friend, with your buddy, whatever. Go to a target and put four numbers on there. Divide the target into four squares, like Tic Tac Toe kind of thing, and write 1, 2, 3, and four on them like a square. Have your buddy say to you, two or one. When he says that number, you only hit that specific square. So, you’re training your brain to understand that I have to hit something small inside of the groups. There’s another area that I’m not allowed to hit, that’s off limits. It’s like shooting behind hostages. You know, we would have two different targets in Israel, and one would be behind the other. You would have to shoot one and not the other. Similar to hitting that guy in the middle of the circle that’s standing in front of all these kids. You have to hit him and not hit the kids. So, the surprise factor that you don’t know where you’re going to be shooting before you shoot, and that you have to hit something and not something else. It’s something very important to train the brain.

EvanNappen 33:53

That’s really cool, Mikey. That is great advice. I want to know, how can I get you to come to New Jersey? I want you to come here. Listen, you know, my good friends at WeShoot, who is also one of our beloved sponsors of our show. I know that you could come here, August 9. Are you available August 9, man, so that you could come and speak and folks can meet you in person? What do you say? Can I put you on the spot here and get you to come to New Jersey on August 9th?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 34:33 Firstly, I’m an old man and I don’t . . .

EvanNappen 34:37

I think you’re dangerous, but that’s okay.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 34:39

If you ask my wife, I don’t think that’s the word she uses. She has a whole bunch of adjectives, and I don’t think dangerous is one of them. I’ll ask her, and I’ll see what I can do. I would love to meet you in person and meet the guys. I love sharing my knowledge. It’s the only thing I got. So if I can.

EvanNappen 34:57

Well, WeShoot, you know, is a range in Lakewood, and they are just a fantastic facility. I got my certification for my carry license there. They do that kind of training, a great pro shop. They treat everyone like family, and they have tremendous outreach to the Jewish community, and they are welcoming to everybody and anybody. It’s just a fantastic place, and my listeners know that. But I know August 9th is a good date, and we can make those arrangements. Do you think you could come there to WeShoot?

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 35:38

I will do my very best. I have to get the okay from the boss in the house, and it’s definitely not me. I will do my best. I would love to meet you, and I would love to help. Maybe when I come there, I can clear up some misconceptions about class three and the way people carry in the IDF. And do they carry in the IDF? And do we have a round in the chamber or don’t have? Maybe talk a little bit about what the women do in our military? I’ll do my very, very best. This is recorded, right? So, we have the option of

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getting back in and letting you know. I’ll get back to you within 24 hours with that answer. And I promise you, I will do my very best. To be honest, it would be an honor to meet you and to talk to the guys in New Jersey.

EvanNappen 36:18

I’m confident that we can make this work. It would be so exciting to have you in New Jersey and for folks to meet you and talk with you. As a matter of fact, you’re working on and have created an elite marksman program. Right? Tell us about elitemarksman.com Tell us about that.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 36:39

I appreciate that. I retired about six months ago. I got kind of fortunate in business here and lived the American dream. My product that I was selling, a conversion kit, went viral, and it took off. So, I was lucky enough to retire.

EvanNappen 36:54

What was that kit? A lot of folks know about it.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 36:58

We used to call it the Roni, and now it was called the MCK. I got lucky. I built it with my hand. We molded my hand and that was the forward grip of the MCK, that micro conversion kit. I retired in January. So, it was about five, six months ago. I said to myself that like before I die, because when you get to our age, you start thinking about the end more than the beginning. I wanted to have something that all this knowledge that I had in my head, the way I built the idea of shooting doctrine that I could put it down in an Internet course. I could take the seven laws of shooting – ballistics, zeroing, night shooting, moving targets, dealing with stoppages, you know, every type of stuff that has to do with shooting with rifles. This production company filmed me, and it’s about nine hours of material. We built this website called elitemarksman.com, and there is a place that you can basically download the course. I developed all the idea of targets, specifically all the zeroing targets. So, when you buy the course from us, you get idea of cool targets. There’s like shoulder targets and head targets and zoom targets. It’s kind of cool stuff. You’ll never see those anywhere else. That’s part of the course. Normally, the course goes for $399, and because my guys knew I was coming on this podcast with you and because you are like the man of the man in the Second Amendment, you know, lawyer guys, you’re the top of the apex, when you look up, they see you. So, “Gun Lawyer” is going to be our code. If you use the code “Gun Lawyer” and you put that into the website, you get $100 discount. Instead of it being $399, it becomes $299, and you still get the targets. They’re sent to you free of charge. Maybe when we come out to New Jersey, if I can get out there, we can do something like that and get the guys the course and stuff like that. We’ll find something to do.

EvanNappen 39:08

So, go to elitemarksman.com. EliteMarksman.com That’s where Mikey’s course is. His complete video training and special targets. Normally, it’s $399, but if my listeners use the special coupon code, that I’m honored you called “Gun Lawyer”, they can get $100 off. Get the program designed by the head sniper of the IDF. Now that is pretty damn cool, and that is a special thing for Gun Lawyer listeners.

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LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 39:51

There’s one other thing. When they download it, they get actual IDF shooting scenarios. The same scenarios that every Infantry Special Forces guy does in bootcamp. Then when they download the course, they can get what size target, what range, how many bullets, and going over which position you’re shooting in. So, they actually get the scenarios as well. It’s not just me standing in front of a classroom teaching. Not only are we giving them the targets, we’re also giving them “how to train and what to train”, how many rounds, required score, time, restrictions and all.

EvanNappen 40:28

Wow! Given the potential threat that even faces Americans and how we have so many long guns in America, we’re fortunate that we have the Second Amendment and even though we’re in a fight to maintain our rights, this is something that even New Jerseyans can do. And that is really cool. And you know, because we have the Second Amendment rights, of course, another sponsor of our show that I’m very proud of is the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol clubs. ANJRPC.org. They’re the group in New Jersey that fights for our rights. They are the group litigating in federal court, as we speak, to defeat the so-called assault firearm ban, that looks to limit the very firearms that we need. That the Isralies could have used to great effect. We need to get that declared unconstitutional. We’re getting there. We’re so close. They also are challenging the so-called large capacity magazine ban that New Jersey limits mags to 10 rounds. And that, too, is being fought by the Association along with the Carry Killer bill. That was the law that came into effect after Bruen. Even though we can get carry licenses, the Democrats tried to limit the utilitarian value, where you can carry, and create all these restrictions. So, the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs is fighting that, too. Every one of my listeners needs to be a member of the Association. Be part of the solution.

EvanNappen 42:16

Now let me just take one moment to shamelessly plug my book, New Jersey Gun Law. If you need to know and understand New Jersey gun law, that is the source. It is the Bible of Jersey gun law. You should get a copy of it. It’s over 500 pages with 120 topics all in a Question and Answer format. It’s very user friendly. If you’re not a gun owner and want to become one, this book has a whole chapter on first gun. If you are a gun owner and you want to protect yourself and not fall into the trap that the matrix lays in New Jersey for unsuspecting gun owners who don’t fully understand how convoluted Jersey’s laws are, I’ve created this book to help folks do that. To order the book, go to evannappen.com and look for the orange book.

EvanNappen 43:04

I’m just so excited to have you on the show, Mikey. We have a part at the end of the show that’s extremely popular, and it’s called the GOFU, which is the Gun Owner Fuck Up. The beauty of GOFUs is that these are actual real lessons learned by folks at a very high cost. When we talk about them, the listener gets to learn them for free. I want to take this opportunity to ask you about GOFUs that you may have encountered, particularly maybe related to accidental discharges or anything else that you think individuals can learn from. You are my spokesman for this shows GOFUs.

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LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 43:51

Wow. First, it’s an honor that you put me on this pedestal, and I don’t want to disappoint you, man. I don’t want to disappoint you. So, one thing I’m going to say before we start, one tip to all your listeners. When people ask me, Mikey, you’ve taught 500,000 soldiers to shoot. You’ve taught 1000s of Americans that were going to Afghanistan or Iraq. They would stop by Israel and do something called “lessons learned”, and I would train those guys. I’ve been in Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg, and you know, I love the guys here. I love the military here. You asked me what is the one weakness in shooters across the board? Obviously, the trigger pull is. Everyone’s really bad at that. But let’s put that aside because it’s hard for me to fix that on this show. Speed, speed, speed. Everyone wants to look cool. Everyone wants to be Rambo. Everyone wants the speed shooting. Shooting faster than your body allows you to shoot is the main reason why an IDF soldier misses the target. You have to shoot as fast as you can, as long as you’re hitting 100%. If because of speed, you now are missing the target, you have to slow down. The enemy will not be impressed by your speed. He will die because you hit him. So, if you shot so fast that you missed the target, what did you accomplish? Absolutely nothing. So, that’s one tip.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 45:24

Regarding accidental discharges, which was a major problem in the Israeli army, I have like a three minute story. Is that okay? Is that too much, Evan, or is that okay?

EvanNappen 45:33

No, it’s fine. It sounds like your GOFU is something that I think Wyatt Earp once put in in a great quote. He said, you have to learn to be slow in a hurry.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 45:48

No, I did not know that quote. Yeah, that’s very cool.

EvanNappen 45:51

Well, there’s an American western hero that I think is really saying what you’re saying about trying to be fast. In reality, you have to be slow, but in a hurry.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 46:05

Yes, smooth is fast, right? So, our problem in the Israeli army, I’m embarrassed to say this to to your listeners because everyone looks at the Israeli army as like a kick ass army, but we have our weaknesses. Our major weakness is because our fathers did not shoot with guns in sports. We don’t have guns laying around the house, and there is no safe in anyone’s house with guns. So, the first time a soldier sees a gun, it’s at 18. He does it until he’s 21. Then he does reserve duty three days a year for the next 20-30 years. So, the way the IDF, the entire Israeli army, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Navy, the Air Force, the Special Forces, infantry, tanks, artillery, engineering, it doesn’t matter. The way we checked a weapon since 1948, since Israel was created, until probably the middle of the early 2000s was that if you had a gun, whether it was a Galil, whether it was a Tavor, whether it was an M16, M4, you would cock the gun twice with the Galil, you would have to open up the safety, because the safety stops the gun from being cocked, you would cock the gun twice, open up the safety, pull the trigger and

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then close the safety. With the M4, you have to recock the gun to engage the safety. This is how every gun was checked in the IDF.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 47:20

Now, we don’t have those little thingies, those machines that you put the barrel in, and you pull the trigger like they do in the American military. Those little, I don’t know what they’re called, those little

EvanNappen 47:29 Bullet traps.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 47:30

Bullet traps. Thank you. I appreciate the help on the vocabulary and the knowledge. So, every time you go in to a base in Israel, every time you go out of a base in Israel, every time you go into the field in Israel, every time you come off the field, every time you get on one of those little buses that will take you around in the army or get off the bus, you are always checking your freaking gun. When you finish cleaning your gun, you’ve got to check your gun. It was absolute stupidity. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Now, unfortunately, I wasn’t in charge of that at that time. They have their Safety Division in the IDF that says how to check a gun. I can’t even tell you how many, hundreds, hundreds of accidental discharges. When? When we were checking the weapon. Why do you check a weapon? To make sure you’re not going to do an accidental discharge. What a paradox. What an irony. We check the gun to make sure we don’t have a bullet in the chamber. And because we’re checking the gun, we’re actually doing the accidental discharge. Insanity in every level of your brain.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 48:37

Now, unfortunately, in the Israeli army, when you go into a base, the guy doing guard duty is not the best fighter. You’re trying to show off. So, you do this thing real quick. Do, do, do. You cock it twice, open up the safety, and you pull the trigger almost in one action. Less than a second. You do those things. Double cock, open safety, and pull trigger. The frigging idiots would forget that they have a magazine inside the gun. Because in Israel, you don’t go with a magazine in the gun. Only when you go past the green green line. There’s a certain area in Israel that once you pass it, you put a magazine in the in the gun. When you’re in the regular base, you don’t have a magazine in the gun, at least back then. So, they would forget that they have a magazine in, and they’re so used to checking the gun all the time. They would cock the gun (in the U.S., we call it racking the slide) which would put a bullet in the chamber. They would cock it again, the bullet would fly out, and a new one would go in the chamber. Then they would open up the safety and pull the trigger in such a short time that they didn’t even realize it.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 49:30

So, in the late ’90s, I started saying guys, why don’t we just cock it three times. Let’s say the idiot forgot the magazine is in and he didn’t do the check the way he was supposed to and didn’t verify that there’s no ammo physically in the magazine. Well, let’s say he screwed up, and under the thesis, a soldier will always screw up. He will always screw up. That’s what we do. So, let’s say he forgot about the magazine, and he cocked it three times. Even the moron is going to see three bullets flying out of his freaking gun. So, he does not open up the safety, and he does not pull the trigger. Worse comes to

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worse, he has a bullet in the chamber. He then says, oops. Now he takes out the magazine and gets the last bullet out. I would teach this for years. But the problem was, Evan, I wasn’t in charge of it.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 50:16

So, a real quick story because it’s life and death. There was a situation where one of the infantry units were in the territories, he cleans his gun in one of the rooms, which they are not supposed to do, by the way. He puts the magazine back in, he checks the gun, and he does the mistake. He accidentally shoots a bullet into the back of his friend. Did not kill him, but hit him with a bullet. When this happens, a Brigadier General does a little, I don’t know how to say tuck here, investigation to understand what happened, what can be learned, so we don’t fuck up again. They invite me to that. I tell the Brigadier General, you know, I’ve been talking about this for decades. We should be friggin cocking the gun three times. He says, oh my god, I love that idea. I wish I would have known it before. But he made the law and from that day forward, we did three cocks. That lasted, listen to me, two weeks because the Head of Defense heard that we changed the cocking This is showing you the discipline or the lack of discipline in Israel. He said no, you guys don’t have the authority to change the way we check a weapon. I’m not doing that. Screw you. We’re going back to the old way. I felt like an idiot because I started teaching the new way, and then we got cancelled.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 51:26

A week passes, Evan, a week, a soldier in the tank division on the Lebanese border. Same exact scenario. Inside of the room, cleans his gun, puts the magazine and checks the weapon. But this time the accidental discharge killed his friend. Killed another guy intakes. Now, when someone dies in the IDF, the investigation is done by the Chief of Staff. Well, at least it’s brought to him at the end. The Chief of Staff is the highest person in the Israeli military. There is no one higher. He’s the only guy. There’s one of them. I don’t know what you guys call a five star general, it’s our top. So, the Head of Safety, his balls are starting to shake, because he knows I’m going to be there. The Chief of Staff is going to hear that if they would have friggin listened to me, this guy would be alive.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 52:12

So, he calls me, panicking before then, and he says, Mikey, I want to see your new system that you’re talking about. I want you to show me how you take out the checkil, that’s the pin, the injection pin. Show me how this is still safe. I showed him that if it’s a live round, it will always come out because we check it 60 degrees. If it’s a shell, who gives a shit, a shell doesn’t do anything. There’s a lot. I don’t want to go into too much depth. After we did this test in the range, he said, I’m going to change the rule. We’re going to do what you want. But I’m asking you, in front of the Chief of Staff, don’t bring it up. Just shut up when he asks if you have anything to say. Mikey, you say nothing. So, I had to put my ego aside and say what’s more important to me? Being right or the future of the IDF? So, I shut the hell up. Then he changed it. When it got to my turn, the Chief of Staff said Mike, do you have anything to say, sir? No, sir, I have nothing to say.

LTC (Ret.) Michael Hartman 53:02

Now the way the Israeli army checks their weapon, whether it’s a Tavor or M4, its three checks. You cock the gun, or you rack the gun, three times. That’s it. So, all the accidental discharges are gone during checking. All the people being hit by accidental discharges is gone. It saved so many lives in

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Israel. But it was very hard conceptually, because for years and years and years, everyone wants to pull the trigger. They want to verify that there’s no bullet in the chamber.

EvanNappen 53:29

That is really great. Just think of all the people you helped by that, just that change alone. Not to mention all the training, all the experiences and everything you’ve been sharing and teaching through the years. I am just so thrilled to have had you on Gun Lawyer. Mikey, it was an absolute honor, and I want to have you come back. I just want to remind the listeners again about elitemarksman.com They’ve got a special Gun Lawyer discount of $100. You’ve heard from Mikey, and you want to get the training from this man. This is fantastic stuff. I just want to say thank you so much. And I want to remind everybody that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens.

EvanNappen 54:30

Breaking News – Evan Nappen here, and I have some breaking news. Lieutenant Colonel Mikey Hartman, who developed the shooting program for the IDF, has confirmed that he will be at WeShoot on August 9th from 9 am to 1 pm. You don’t want to miss this. Make sure you check out weshootusa.com Go to elitemarksman.com Mark your calendars for August 9th from nine to one to meet and listen to LTC. Michael “Mikey” Hartman.

Speaker 3 55:09

Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media Production The music used in his broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state.

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Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S3 E189_Transcript
About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.

Known as “America’s Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it’s no wonder he’s become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets.

Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It’s Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News.

As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists.

He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America.

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