John Constantine is retired US Secret Service and author of Hallways and Stairwells. This is a long-form conversation that moves from presidential protection to personal identity and back again. John spent roughly 23 years in the service, 15 of them on the Counter Assault Team, the guys in the black BDUs running motorcades and stacking up for the worst day that hopefully never comes. That particular mission, always training, always ready, almost never firing a round operationally, turns out t...

This one's with the full Guild Solutions Group crew, including founder Shane Foster, Director of Training Jason "Jabo" Long, lead instructors Matt Petaki and Jeremy Nash, and Pryme Infil CEO Jarred Pereira. The conversation goes everywhere it should. You will hear how Jarred Pereira built Pryme Infil out of a 65-page PowerPoint written at 2 a.m. on FMLA leave after surviving a federal deposition he was never prepared for, and why documentation is now the front line of officer protection. You...

You don't have to wear a badge to fight for the people who do. Kim Pastore, founder of the Jorge Pastore Foundation, lost her husband Jorge, an Austin PD SWAT officer, in the line of duty in 2023. What she built in the aftermath, in a remarkably short amount of time and entirely from the outside looking in, is one of the most honest, boots-on-the-ground efforts to close the training gap facing law enforcement in this country. This conversation is long overdue, and it goes deep. Kim and I tra...

I sat down with Sean Bonilla, founder of Ready and Able Defense and a law enforcement officer who came up through the fight world, and we dig into a question that doesn't get asked enough: are you even cleaning up your house before you try to fix it? Sean lays out a framework that cuts through the noise, starting with the one thing competitive fighting taught him that most cops never get: frequency of consequence. When you fight, you feel the cost of skipping training. In law enforcement, yo...

Ryan Nichols doesn't talk about what his team used to do. He talks about what they're doing right now, why they do it that way, and exactly how they got there. That's rare. I sat down with the Austin PD SWAT team leader after months of back channel conversations, TTPOA matches, and a long overdue calendar alignment, and the result is one of the best practitioner conversations yet. You'll hear how a 21-officer full-time team turned a reserves program into a defined developmental pipeline, bui...

This time I sit down with Zack Harrison, founder of Ascension Training and Consulting, and the conversation goes exactly where you'd hope: deep, honest, and unfiltered. Zack's name had been popping up for years across ranges and in conversations with law enforcement officers, always attached to the same kind of feedback. This guy cares. He slows down and makes sure you understand the why. Zack walks through the whole arc: growing up, the call of service after 9/11, navigating the 18 X-ray pi...

Join the waitlist: https://thecapablestandard.com/waitlist I sat down with four veteran tactical professionals at the National Tactical Officers Association Conference in Nashville to have the conversation that needed to happen two days after that 2022 NTOA position paper on no-knock warrant service dropped. At the table: Steve Mescan, Director of Training and Education for the NTOA and a 27-year Pittsburgh Bureau of Police SWAT veteran. Chris Eklund, NTOA senior instructor and retired trai...

Join the waitlist: https://thecapablestandard.com/waitlist Jabo Long is a 25-year law enforcement veteran, Director of Training at Guild Solutions Group, and one of the most honest voices in law enforcement. The conversation kicks off right after the Guild team wraps a breaching course in Sacramento, and the energy from the classroom and range is still in the room. If you've ever wondered what it costs a cop to show up, stay sharp, and keep their humanity through a career that was never desi...

Join the waitlist: https://thecapablestandard.com/waitlist Live on the floor of the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association conference in Round Rock, Texas, April 2026, we've got another full crew around the table: Chris Kuras of Good Dude Concepts, his partner Franco, Kevin Selent from Rogue Targets, and Tom Marchitto of Sub Second. Before a single product gets mentioned, the conversation lands exactly where Iron Sights always does: the people solving problems that their agencies were ne...

Live from the 2026 TTPOA conference with the TTPOA Podcast hosts and Anthony, a nine-year law enforcement veteran, SWAT officer in the Houston area, and founder of In The Black. From getting washed out of combat controller selection at basic training, to walking mail routes, to finding his lane in USPSA competition and eventually building a coffee and tea brand out of his garage, Anthony's brutally honest story is proof that the American dream is still very much alive for guys willing to do t...