Social Issues

Eddie Silas on handling firearms during stressful situations

Prolific Arms co-owner Eddie Silas describes how experiencing physical aspects of stress and uncertainty is an important part of his approach to training gun owners to safely handle their weapons.

By Murv Seymour | Here & Now

May 6, 2025

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Eddie Silas:
As I explained to Antonia today, it is important that you put yourself in those stressful situations. So, when you walk into that room and your heart is beaten out of your chest and your breathing changes, you go from a resting heart rate to 70 for women, 80 for men, to almost double just like that to the point you can feel the blood pumping through your veins, your stomach is turning, tunnel vision sets in, right? You got to be able to keep your composure. So, it's so important that you put yourself in those type of environments in order for you to perform should it need to happen, right? And God forbid it needs to happen. But let's say you are in a grocery store and, you know, a crazy guy walks in with the rifle or whatever the case may be, and you freeze. If you don't put yourself in these situations to where you can get as close as possible to assimilate these type of events, then you won't have the muscle memory to perform in those type of situations.

Murv Seymour:
So hearing the weapon go out does all that?

Eddie Silas:
Yeah. Did you feel the adrenaline rush that you had when you walked into the place? Did your heart start pounding a little bit because she almost turned around and walked out of there. If you don't recall, when she first heard the shotgun down the way from her, she jumped and was like, "Oh, and I almost left," right? However, I grabbed her, "Hey, it's OK," right? And I put my hand on her and let her know it's OK. And then from there she was able to perform. So, what you've seen in the beginning is her shaking. If you go roll back the footage, you see her shaking, but at the end of it she's completely relaxed. Why is that? It's because she knew what it was. Her body can expect the percussion sounds that's going off, so you can expect everything that's going to happen before it happens to where now you go from jumping to just being like, "Oh, that's just them shooting down there."