Normal people run or hide when they hear gunfire.

That’s what every instinct in your body tells you to do. Get away. Don’t get harmed. Preserve life.

We don’t. We charge the ambush, run towards the gunfire, return aggression with aggression.

One of my best friends, now an elite operator, put it better than I have ever heard it put after his first trip to Afghanistan in 2001:

“When the enemy starts firing from their ambush positions, they expect you to run, they expect you to cower, and they expect you to die. They do not expect 210 pounds of assaulter running straight at them firing precisely, alongside three equally physical specimens, looking like the four horsemen of the f*cking apocalypse, with a ton more guys right behind them. The message we send is simple: You want to kill me bro? You want to kill my boys? You’re gonna have to f*cking earn it. Cause we sure as shit aren’t backing down.”

If you look closely at the news you see it every day: the Iraq vet that charges the guy with the pistol in the airport. The Afghanistan vet who disarms a knife attacker. It isn’t that the American Soldier isn’t afraid. It isn’t that he doesn’t value his life or that he is brainwashed. It’s that he understand the reality of the world.

There are only two options in life. Fight or flight.

Most people run. Almost all people run. But not us.

The difference between us and everyone else is that we run towards the gunfire.

And that makes all the difference.