You know there is a gap between how your team trains and how your team performs. You've felt it. Gabe Rivera felt it too, and instead of talking about it, he built a system to close it. Full-time SWAT officer, Lead Faucet Tactical instructor, and founder of Mindset Tactical Solutions, Gabe sits down with Scott at the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association Conference in Round Rock, Texas to walk through eighteen years of hard lessons: how to vet instructors without getting burned by theory masquerading as experience, how competition shooting exposed gaps that thousands of hours of tactical courses never revealed, and how a small group of motivated cops turned a text thread into a sold-out law enforcement shooting match movement spreading from Southern California to Tennessee to TTPOA.
This isn't a conversation about chasing classifications or social media clout. Gabe is relentlessly mission-focused: make the people around you better, lead by example, and build a culture where your weakest link is not weak for long. He breaks down how his agency went from a one-time thirty-two-hour active shooter block to annual refreshers, quarterly reps, and academy-level integration, and how the same forward-thinking philosophy is now driving a USPSA club, an intro-to-competition course for cops, and an intra-team quarterly competition with a plaque and serious bragging rights on the line.
If you are a SWAT officer, a range sergeant, a team leader, or any cop who has ever wondered whether competition shooting is worth your time, this episode gives you the full picture, from Gabe's first humbling match experience alongside JJ Racaza to the stage-design lessons learned from rain-soaked stages at TTPOA this week. The roadmap is here. The people willing to help are already lined up. The only thing left is for you to start.
Scott and Gabe also get into what it actually takes to put on a law enforcement match from scratch: finding a USPSA club willing to partner, building walls out of nothing, managing squad flow so nobody is standing around for eight hours, and leaning on sponsors like Howitzer Clothing to make the economics work. Whether you want to attend one of these matches or host one in your region, you'll leave this episode knowing exactly where to begin.
In this episode:
• Vetting instructors on tactics means prioritizing people whose techniques have been stress-tested for real, not just proven effective in Sims houses: one-off experiences are worth learning from, but not worth re-engineering your entire SOP around
• Gabe's agency moved from a single thirty-two-hour active shooter block to academy-level integration plus annual refresher training plus quarterly reps after a post-incident debrief trip to Dallas surfaced the gap between their readiness and what actually-trained agencies were doing
• Competition shooting exposed performance gaps that thousands of hours of tactical classes and certificates never did: the move to 'one match a month' then 'every match I can shoot' followed directly from realizing that class environments reward relative performance, while matches reveal absolute performance
• The intra-team competition format Gabe built scores each team's top three shooters PLUS its bottom two, forcing accountability at the weakest link rather than letting high performers mask squad-wide deficiencies
• The Southeast law enforcement match in Tennessee was the proof-of-concept Gabe and his crew replicated in the Southwest: copy the model, learn from their stage-flow lessons (including a full-service staff-reset format), and let the virus spread region by region
• A USPSA section chair approved Gabe's agency-affiliated club to run official classifiers inside law enforcement courses, meaning cops can get their USPSA member number and classification within a course environment specifically designed around duty gear and relevant skill sets
• Intro-to-competition classes for cops specifically address the three barriers Scott hears most: fear of DQ, not understanding stage planning, and not knowing how to sign up, and Gabe's model walks officers through a live match with coaching squad support their first time out
• Sponsors like Howitzer Clothing (Eric Foss, Project Blue Lion) are funding JJ Racaza team courses and law enforcement match infrastructure outright, and USPSA clubs with materials and range facilities are the key first partnership to secure when replicating this model anywhere in the country
Chapters:
0:39 Iron Sights intro and show mission
1:09 Welcoming Gabe Rivera and Scott's personal history with him
5:56 Gabe's background: 18 years in LEO and full-time SWAT
6:27 Origin of Mindset Tactical Solutions and active shooter training 8:15 Lead Faucet Tactical and the instructor vetting process
9:38 Dallas debrief, annual training evolution, and closing the readiness gap
24:26 What 'vet your instructors' actually means in practice
29:47 First exposure to competition shooting and Ben Stoeger's course
31:37 Training with JJ Racaza and the decision to go all-in on competition
44:03 Building a competition culture inside the agency
51:03 Launching the Southwest LEO match and learning from Tennessee
1:24:13 USPSA classification inside LEO courses and what is next
Mentioned:
Gabe Rivera — Owner and instructor of Mindset Tactical Solutions, full-time SWAT officer with eighteen years in Southern California law enforcement, and Lead Faucet Tactical instructor; primary guest of this episode. Dan Brokos — Founder of Lead Faucet Tactical; mentioned as someone Gabe assists as an instructor and who was teaching in Southern California during the week of the TTPOA conference.
Ben Stoeger — World-class competition shooter whose Los Angeles-area private course required a USPSA B classification for entry, giving Gabe his first serious exposure to high-level practical shooting in 2015. JJ Racaza — World-class competition shooter who invited Gabe to shoot a match after training together, and who later ran private performance shooting courses for Gabe's SWAT team, funded in part by Howitzer Clothing.
Cody — Referenced as a helpful contact associated with the Southeast law enforcement shooting match in Tennessee whose team provided guidance and support to the Southwest match organizers.
Sean Griffith — Described as a top-ten shooter in the world who helped design stages for the TTPOA match and is cited as an example of elite-level competitors willing to invest time in helping law enforcement get into competition.
Eric Foss — Associated with Howitzer Clothing and Project Blue Lion; credited with sponsoring JJ Racaza's private course for Gabe's team at no cost to the agency and with funding law enforcement match infrastructure.
Anthony Coley — Mentioned as a recent Iron Sights guest whose attitude of asking for help openly was cited as a model for the law enforcement match-building community.
Dustin Mowry — Named as a previous Iron Sights guest and one of the people involved in the TTPOA match effort whom Gabe has known since approximately 2015.
Chancey Pogue — Named as a previous Iron Sights guest involved in the TTPOA match collaboration alongside Gabe.
Bryan Williams — Named alongside Dustin Mowry and Chancey Pogue as a previous Iron Sights guest involved in the TTPOA match effort.
