I am honored today to be able to bring you an interview with Christian Prouteau, the founder and original leader of GIGN. This is France’s premier elite counter-terrorism force, who have been at the forefront of developing modern special operations techniques and standards. Prouteau led more than 60 operation during his tenure leading the unit, including the hostage rescue simultaneous shot at Loyada.
Today, we are speaking specifically about the Manurhin MR-73 revolver, which was developed specifically for GIGN at Prouteau’s direction. The use of a six-shot revolver seems quite out of place in special operations units, but there were a couple very specific reasons behind the choice. Most interesting to me is Prouteau’s philosophy of training and shooting skill, and his interpretation of a intervention unit’s core mission.
00:00 – Introduction
00:45 – Why a revolver instead of a semiautomatic pistol?
03:40 – Did GIGN consider cartridges other than .357 Magnum?
06:25 – Was GIGN involved in development of the MR-73?
11:14 – What range did GIGN practice revolver shooting at?
12:55 – Reactions times and training habits
17:34 – The “Confidence Shot”
19:06 – How often was the revolver actually used in field operations?
21:51 – So not just a ceremonial sidearm? Prouteau’s revolver philosophy
22:23 – The scoped sniper MR-73 revolvers
24:59 – Why didn’t more agencies use something like the sniper revolver?
27:18 – The goal is the minimum of shooting – elite unit training
29:13 – Revolver ammunition
30:53 – Conclusions
* Cartridge energy note: Prouteau referenced cartridge power in kilograms, and I’m not sure exactly what measurement he meant. I have substituted muzzle energy in Joules, as he was making a point about relative power between cartridges and barrel lengths and the specific unit were not really important to his comments.
Many thanks do my anonymous friend who arranged this interview and acted as live translator, and to my friend Edouard for providing the translated captions! Any error in their timing and details are my own fault.
About the cartridge energy thing, it’s quite simple : up to the ’80s, at least, in the French gun culture, we used to calculate the muzzle energy by using (erroneously) the m*V^2/2 formula where m was the weight in kilograms, and the result was expressed (erroneously, again) in “kilogrammes-mètres” and colloquially abbreviated as “kilos”. So, by that time, we were all referring to muzzle energies as weights, it was, though wrong (a figure 9.81 too low), an easy way to “picture” relative powers. And I guess some people, like Mr Prouteau, have stayed on this old scheme. Now, everyone is using the right unit, the Joule, correctly computed.
As a side note, Christian Prouteau can be seen very often on the CNews channel as a consultant for political and society matters (saw him yesterday evening).
Great interview, thank you Ian. 😉
I do not think one can divide units of velocity or force into “right” and “wrong”. Its simply and old versus a new unit standard. In the U.S., foot pounds are still in widespread use.
Before the introduction of SI unit in the mid-1970s, kinetic energy was expressed in meter kilograms (mkg). Because the “pounds” and “kilograms” in kinetic energy are really not mass but force, after WW2 the new name meter kilopond (mkp) for mkg came into use.
The Joule (J) is nothing but another name for the kinetic energy expressed in Newton meters (Nm). As you correctly state, to convert mkg [or mkp] into Joule, multiply by 9.81. In most cases multiplication by 10 gives a good idea. The 50 mkg [or mkp] of a 9 mm Luger bullet is about 500 Joule.
The old 1 mkg [or mkp] equates to 7.2331 foot pounds.
SI units are not not since 70s. It was there lot earlier; in my country at least.
Why not to make it simple and say: on surface of Earth 1 kilogram (of mass) is equivalent of 10 pond (of force). Pond is rarely used, only in physics.
Kinetic energy is product of mass x velocity to square power. The unit is Joule. Therefor the Joule is kilogram x meter/sec-squared. Why such basics are not self-evident? There is nothing to confuse here.
The “pound-foot” for energy (foot-pond is for torque) is a confusing and archaic. Better avoid it.
“(…)The unit is Joule. Therefor the Joule is kilogram x meter/sec-squared. (…)”
Now I am extremely confused. Always though Joule is Watt * second.
“(…)Why such basics are not self-evident?(…)”
Maybe, but if everycountry want to have own-best system of measurement it might lead to http://country-balls.com/the-metric-system/
“(…)Before the introduction of SI unit in the mid-1970s, kinetic energy was expressed in meter kilograms (mkg). Because the “pounds” and “kilograms” in kinetic energy are really not mass but force, after WW2 the new name meter kilopond (mkp) for mkg came into use.(…)”
To enhance confusion there exist alias for kilopond namely kilogram-force or in short kgf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopond
note table placed at DDR-made machinery, stating
2 000 kp
(20 000 N)
This unites itself spawns kgf/cm² unit of pressure. Speaking of pressures… now there is a lot of different unit.
It’s fascinating to hear Mr. Prouteau’s mentioning the philosophy/morality behind his ideas about the use of lethal force, as we would phrase it here in the US. I hear echoes of the Israeli concept of “Purity of Arms”, where they discuss the importance of proper actions to take in combat under the idea that you’re arrogating some of God’s power over life and death, and must be fully cognizant of that fact, even when dealing with the worst people in the world.
Which makes me wonder how much cross-fertilization there has been, between the French school of thought on this issue, and the Israeli one. We don’t often talk about such things here in the US, particularly in the military context, and that is one reason that I think we’ve got more and somewhat different issues with things like PTSD than they do in Israel and France.
Whether you like it or not, the philosophic/spiritual component to what you do with a weapon has got just as much importance as what you do with it in terms of pure mechanical manipulation. You pull the trigger and take a life? That’s a far, far different thing you’re doing than when you pull a trigger and put a hole in a target or ring a gong downrange. The latter is a simple game; you’re exerting your will on the inanimate. The former? You’re playing at the decisions which are those of whatever higher power you might acknowledge, and they’re irrevocable. You can’t call the bullet back, after putting it through someone’s heart or brain. Even if you manage to “shoot to wound”, you’re likely going to have crippled them for life.
These aren’t trivial things, and it would behoove professional trainers in the military and law enforcement/self-defense context to at least discuss them with the people they are training. Every single person I’ve ever taught to shoot with self-defense in mind, I’ve always, always emphasized the seriousness of what they’re undertaking. Some have backed off, once they realize that the weapon is not a magic wand to ward off evil, and that they’re going to have to take responsibility for what they do with one.
It is refreshing to see that Mr. Prouteau incorporated this into his training methodologies, and that he lives up to his (literally…) Christian name. Which is a terrible pun, in English…
Good thought; I am impressed!
In addition consider: you cannot discuss/ dispute/ exchange with or possibly even enrich yourself with a dead man. By killing him you took out that precious opportunity, forever. Under different circumstance/ mindset it can be your friend. If you want example, look at the country where you were assigned as a serviceman.
To temporarily disable your opponent should be far preferred option.
“I wasa friend of Jamis.”
The scale of training required to achieve such a high standard in practice is staggering. I’ve noticed, in reports of the more shocking police shootings in the U.S.A., that officers frequently emptied their large-capacity automatics at ill-defined targets. In one instance (if I remember correctly) 3 cops fired 42 rounds into a darkened doorway.
Would this have been prevented by training like CIGN’s, or by a clearer ‘philosophy’ of deadly force?
Budget & management also count when it comes to training.
With limited budget, it might be desirable to have more agents to cope with daily volume than a limited amount of available agent (yep, more training means less availability)
Police training in the United States is so widely spread out and diffused that it’s nearly impossible to discuss it as some theoretical “block” thing, where it’s all uniform and regulated in some way. Unlike, say, in France where I understand that nearly all training is at the national level with the Gendarmerie or other agencies.
From observation and discussion with serving police officers, in the US? Most of their training in this focuses on three things: Officer survival, officer liability, and “going home at the end of their shift”. That’s it. There’s jack and s**t about morality or any form of spiritual guidance–They don’t even teach Peel’s Principles as much of anything besides a bit of history, in most police academies. Most of the cops I’ve talked to are trained on a purely mechanistic level, which I think is a failing with regards to their training and acculturation. It tends to encourage an “us and them” mentality, with the cops universally being seen as the “good guys” whose judgments and needs are to trump every other citizen’s rights and needs. If this weren’t the case, you would hardly see all the cases you do where the cops automatically shoot someone for simply preparing to defend themselves, like Atatiana Jefferson down in Fort Worth, Texas.
I think there’s a bit of a disconnect in much of the training and conditioning we provide for law enforcement here in the US, and I blame not only the institutions of law enforcement, but the public at large. In many respects, nobody respects law enforcement when they show up on scene, and the fact that so many idiots are willing to fight the cops is indicative of that lack of respect. Which flows back into the police forces, because when they’re not respected, they then automatically turn that around into “Well, if they’re not gonna respect me, then I’m not gonna respect them…”.
In Europe, when I was there in the mid-1980s? There was a discernable difference in mentality, back then: If the cops showed up, then everyone deferred to them and was polite. If they weren’t? Then they got their asses beaten in, and all the bystanders stood around saying “Yeah, got what they deserved…”. So long as you were polite to the Polizei, they’d be polite with you, even if they were arresting your ass for being a dumbass. It was a different scene than I was used to, in the US–In Germany of that time, the police might not have been liked, but everyone knew what was going to happen if they showed up and you didn’t act right; arrival of the cops was like Mom showing up at a fight between siblings. You stopped what you were doing, did as you were told, and God help anyone who didn’t, because the Polizei weren’t going to. The cops here in the US? It felt a lot more like having a slightly older sibling show up at a fight between younger ones–There wasn’t an automatic sense that something bigger and unquestionable had shown up, and you were obligated to defer to that. It’s a lot easier to punch your slightly older big brother than to punch Mom–That was the difference in “feel” you had with the encounters I observed.
There’s just a different approach to the whole thing, when you observed the reactions to the police. Americans are a lot less likely to view the cops as being “above” them in any way; there’s limited deference, limited respect, and Americans are entirely too willing to argue with the cops on-scene, even to the extent of using lethal force. In European practice, the cops would show up and instead of being generally ignored by the brawling idiots (as I often observed ’em doing, here in the US…), everyone pretty much went “Oh, fsck… This is serious now, the cops are here… Stop what you’re doing… Be polite…”.
I don’t know whether that’s down to a difference in underlying culture, police training (which is waaaaay more uniform across European countries than the US…), or what, but there is most definitely a different “feel” to the whole thing. An Austrian cop of my acquaintance that I met while he was doing an exchange tour here in the US commented that here in the US, cops were way more casual drawing their weapons, but used them less once drawn. In Austria, if a pistol came out of a police holster, someone was pretty much getting their asses shot. Period. And, if a gun was even drawn during an encounter with the public, there’d be an investigation as though someone had been shot.
At least, as he described it to me. It’s a second-hand observation, from a participant, so YMMV.
Insofar as “lethal force” training goes, I think it is something that the US military does a horrible job at. Nobody really even wants to discuss the issues surrounding killing in a forthright manner, which leaves the discussion open to idiots like Grossman, whose “contributions” to things have been so damaging as to drive SOCOM to banning his silly ass from providing his “training” on the issue. Personally, I think that the military “Code of Conduct”, which really only addresses what the serviceman ought to do when captured, should be revamped and be made to address a far broader set of questions and situations than it does at the present, and in a far more emphatic and clear manner than it does. It’s my personal belief that an awful lot of our PTSD issues start from the fact that we don’t forthrightly tell people about the issues involved in combat, nor do we emphatically tell them that they’re going to be making life and death decisions over the lives of others in very ambiguous circumstances that they’re just going to have to muddle through as best they can. Then, we don’t provide any after-the-fact support, except informally and on a very sporadic basis. We also don’t train leaders when or how to address issues that create combat stress, like when the idiots in charge issue ambiguous orders or Rules of Engagement. They leave all that to the troops to work out for themselves, and then work through on their own. Is it any wonder we have a lot of psychological casualties…?
I’m not a huge believer in much of anything, but I do know this: There’s a clear spiritual and moral side to every question of lethal force, and if you don’t address those questions and at least try to work out acceptable answers before the fact, you’re going to suffer in the aftermath. There’s a reason I’ve emphasized “Are you willing to kill in defense of self…?” with everyone I’ve ever taught defensive shooting to, and I’m actually prouder of the fact that I’ve dissuaded more than a few from ever picking up a weapon in the first damn place than I am that I’ve taught others how to kill someone efficiently and effectively.
Even if you’re essentially something of a sociopath, morality and spiritual issues are important–Because, you’re going to have to justify what you did to other people who are moral and spiritual, and you may be answering to them in a court, before a jury. Too many people taking up arms forget this fact.
There is a change in culture & mentality within the population & institutions in Europe too (with country differences, of course).
I won’t take the importation of “US ghetto culture” to the youth as the only factor (I am part of that generation and I see it growing within the youger). There is also a generation gap between cops from the 80s-90s and the current generation, as well as how they are managed (KPI & statistics to “show results”), doctrine evolution (“militarization” of equipment, US style tackle/takedown, etc…), workforce reduction to “save public money”…
A long topic.
I don’t think it is so much the taking up of “US ghetto culture” as it is that the Europeans are finally discovering the same thing that the US did, the hard way–Namely, that culture matters and that there is, indeed, something to the ideas of heritable behavioral traits that we stereotype as being caused by “race”.
You’ll note that when you break things down by ethnicities, there are great similarities between European and American statistics on criminality and anti-social behaviors. I’d imagine that the issues you see in Europe right now aren’t so much due to the “take-up” of American culture, but the fact that the demographics are becoming more American-like with regards to the numbers of non-European ethnicities.
And, it ain’t like there aren’t similarities of behavior between Europeans, European-Americans, and modern ethnic minorities, either–Go back in time, and you’ll find similar historic rates of criminal behavior between the populations of many supposedly “civilized” modern European nations and those of today’s much-decried “ethnics”.
I think the essential difference is that there were severe culls and highly negative cultural inputs for the criminal behavior for long enough in those formerly-negative European cultures that they largely managed to cull the behavior out of the general population. We largely weeded whatever it was that led to those behaviors out of the general population, and now what we’re dealing with would be that old pattern of behavior being demonstrated by the newcomers. The sort of thing we see today in these demographic groups wouldn’t be that noticeable among the European and European-American population groupings even as recently as the 19th Century–You go looking at the rate of violence found in some parts of “The Old West” or slumland London, and you’d pretty much find many of the same things we decry today.
Question really is, how did we change the behaviors of the varying European and European-American ethnicities, and why aren’t those mechanisms at work today, reducing the anti-social and criminal behaviors of the newly-arrived demographic groups?
It’s not the supposed outward signs of “ghetto culture” like the clothes and the music so much as it is what the actual cultural values, mores, and all the rest are in these recently arrived groups. Blaming the music and the accompanying BS is blaming the symptom–You want to go after the underlying cause, which is the fertile ground those things fell into. It’s like treating the cough, not the actual underlying tuberculosis…
At least, that’s my opinion.
The 1927 book “Gangs of New York”, though too gossipy to be regarded as accurate scholarship, was revealing of the attitudes of its time when the author said at the very end that after 100 years NYC’s gigantic youth gang problem was solved around the turn of the century by better conditions; i.e. education and wages. It exemplified the public consensus of Progress. Certainly one can draw parallels between the policies and politics of 19th century America and 1980-present America. Both were defined by “greed is good”, both were defined by growing economic inequality, both eras had big immigrant inflows (but different in race), both eras viewed young males of said ethnicities as existential threats to the “White” race as defined at the moment. One can play with those variables to come to any conclusion one pleases. I tend to look at stagnation of wages as a parallel, and with modern Europe as well, but that’s my bias.
It is interesting that that book claims in one year in the early 1800s, Philadelphia reported only three murders, and NYC, then home to the truly nightmarish Five Points slum, pretty much had more bodies than it could count. Yet both cities had Irish famine refugees flooding into them at the time, inducing severe hostility. I wonder what was different about how each city dealt with that.
“In Austria, if a pistol came out of a police holster, someone was pretty much getting their asses shot. Period. And, if a gun was even drawn during an encounter with the public, there’d be an investigation as though someone had been shot.”
Speaking from German police procedure and knowing it to be very similar to the Austrians’ in most aspects:
A German policeman can only threaten to shoot if the prerequisites for actually shooting are met – and many judges see drawing the gun as an implicit threat of shooting, especially as the prospective target is quite often clear even if the gun is not pointed in yet.
The effect is as described: If a German (or Austrian, I suppose) policeman draws his gun, he is 100% convinced he can justify the possibly following shot(s) in court and while not everyone might know the law around it, they can certainly tell from the demeanor.
If the gun comes out, everyone knows it’s serious because the policeman drawing the gun surely is serious at this point and not just going “let me draw my gun and see if it does any good”.
FWIW, policemen in Germany are far more easily sued and convicted nowadays than they were in the ’80s – with the predictable effect of them being much more careful in the use of force and the mentioned sense of “The police are here, everyone *stop*” diminishing to a great degree.
And yes, “we” in the sense of Western militaries and police forces are doing a lot of quite stupid things regarding PTSD.
We do not adequately prepare people morally and spiritually, we do not have many of the “cleansing” rituals our predecessors had (while keeping a lot of completely senseless and ridiculous rituals and traditions, especially in the military) and the most common method is to basically tell people PTSD might randomly affect them and to get them rather haphazard help (including medication) when it does.
So, apart from acknowledging its existence and the need to do something about, our institutionalized methods are pretty much exactly the wrong thing to do and the real help often comes people at the ground level doing the right things intuitively.
I tend to believe that officers understand which side their bread is buttered on, and that means pleasing their masters. Who are mostly elected; police chiefs, sheriffs, judges, district attorneys and mayors. The characteristic of those elections in America is, no one shows up for them. Only a handful of unusually motivated voters decides who fills those posts.
Fear is a hell of a motivation. The guys running for mayor have to be careful exploiting fear because they might face a national backlash for their campaigns. No one cares what those other guys are spouting. If you can win an election by telling those statistically most likely to vote (& donate campaign $) that those different than them are waging a war against them and must be defeated militarily, the message will filter down to the officers and generate a stubborn tribal warrior culture.
It is probably going to take a generation to fix that unless anyone has the guts and immunity to litigation to fire their entire police force and start over. Now if you want to see some truly radical ideas about unifying the police with the citizenry, look at the Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone that was recently destroyed by Turkey’s invasion. Their plan was to give EVERYONE police training, and then disband the police force. If they hadn’t been snuffed out, I bet they would have evolved some interesting ideas about use of force.
In the end, it’s my heartfelt belief that civilization and civilized behavior have to spring from within the participant’s inner selves, if that civilization is going to have any real longevity. You can impose some of the values and mores of civilization from without, by force, but the minute you remove that force? Bang; zoom, there goes your civilization.
That being the case, you can’t effective police people that don’t want to be policed; you only do law enforcement so long as you have the consent of those you’re enforcing the law on. Lose that, and they become both unpoliceable and essentially ungovernable. This is what’s been happening in many of the cities of the West, and I have to blame the politicians more than anything else. The entire “War on (some) Drugs” has been a disaster for police relations with the public and civil liberties. The irony is, many of the things like the disparity in powder vs. crack cocaine sentencing came about precisely because “community leaders” demanded it–If you doubt me, go back and read the newspapers of the era.
What they didn’t realize was that there’d already been a plebiscite in favor of legalized drugs in their communities, and they’d lost that decision before they went to the Feds about it. Those “community leaders” were in denial about their failure and insignificance as “leaders”, and what they requested and then got did even more damage.
The whole thing is an epic mess of false ideas, self-delusion, and totally unworkable solutions that are just making select parties wealthy and more powerful, while the addicts keep right on abusing the drugs. No real solution is in sight, either.
Yes but in France we still have police officers who dont know or
or were improperly trained on how how to unload a semi automatic pistol at the end of their shifts.This is probably the reason some municiple/city police are still issued revolvers
I don’t understand his “Blow Gun” comment for revolver use.
Thank you so much for bringing this excellent interview of a great man to us.
Much respect to the GIGN !
A great interview and you are to be commended for doing it as it is a very important piece of work for our gun culture.
GREAT JOB!
Great plot.
And an interesting interview, despite the fact that it contains nothing new.
This is not surprising given the well-known “secrecy paranoia” of all French power structures.
This technique of teaching revolver shooting was practiced by the FBI back in the days of “Prohibition”.
Unsurprisingly, this was adopted by all who were American friends.
And to the question of “fire selectivity”. With regard to the Americans, everything is much simpler and more cynical than it seems. When several people hammer “In that direction” from all available at once, there is much less chance of getting a prosecution of “frivolous murder.” In any case, much less than one bullet in to the head.
Also, the reason is the fear of the cops themselves before the murder as a philosophical act. They consoled themselves in the style of “I was just throwing bullets. The theory of probability is to blame for the death of the suspect.” 😉
There is also the root of the unjustified desire to kill the target. That there was no one to say that they shot at him unreasonably.
The recipe for this is very simple.
You cannot kill out of fear or hate.
It must be a conscious action, triggered by a conscious need.
If you’re not sure, don’t even pull it out.
Normal cops who aren’t corrupt tend to freak out at the mere thought of killing someone. So, perhaps all the inaccuracy and overkill in American police pistol fire stem from a desire to scare a suspect into surrendering, which very obviously doesn’t work out well when anything gets hit (suspects, bystanders, and even the random precious sports car).
Let’s compare that to another famous American police activity, car chases. The practice that all cops must drop what they’re doing to chase a suspect as if it were a Hollywood movie is coming under criticism for obvious reasons. No force seems to be able to say what chasing suspects and causing accidents is supposed to accomplish.
I think it’s a ritual, both bonding for the officers and a display of raw power to the public.
The mayor of New Haven once accused his own officers of being “suburban adventurers.” In other words, they put on the uniform with the hope of going into the dangerous city to have some of the same experience of adventure as those who enlist in the military knowing they’ll be sent to the 3rd World. The car chase is probably a much more attractive adventure than a shootout.
You do have an issue with the fact that the recruitment, selection, and training for a lot of police officers here in the US is not what I’d term “ideal”. The job tends to attract and keep the exact wrong sort of personality, and I’d blame a whole host of contributing factors, not the least of which would be the politicians who’re supposed to be doing the “civilian oversight”. That New Haven mayor might want to do some self-examination, and ask why the hell it was that the local department had to go to the suburbs to find qualified recruits in the first damn place, and why it was that “normal” men who weren’t seeing “safari advantures” weren’t signing up to be cops. Trust me on this–If the only sort of people you can get to sign on the dotted line to be cops in your area are “adventurers”, well… It might just be that your area is a Wild West adventure zone, and that’s an indicator of your electorate. I haven’t heard a damn thing good about New Haven from anyone, so that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Can’t get or keep good men as cops? Look in the mirror, dumbass… I’d wager that the policy decisions made by that mayor over time led to a lot of good men abandoning their careers as police. Look at the damage done to both the Seattle and the Portland police departments over the last two years for examples–I guarantee you that you’re going to be hearing similar complaints about their forces in a couple more years, and it will likely be even worse.
When you go to look at it all, the police are a reflection of the community, and the community is a reflection of the police force. Bad cops? Baby, you might want to take a long, hard look at the civilian political administration of the city before you start talking about doing something really stupid like “defunding the police”. Minnesota is pretty much a Democrat-run enclave; has been for the last many generations. Who’s had civil oversight over all those “abusive cops” all these years…? Hmmmm.
I don’t think it’s a “scare a suspect into surrendering” so much as it is “the gun is magic” mentality that all too many people have. One of the more amazing things I’ve run into during my life is discovering the fact that most police officers are not what I’d term “interested in firearms”. Most of them treat their service weapons as bits of costume, because that’s what they are for about 90% of the time. When they have to use the damn things, it’s not at all a natural act.
Back in the mid-1980s, I knew a bunch of Chicago PD officers that lived where I was recruiting. Very, very few of them did more than the basic minimum to maintain their qualifications on their service pistols, and most were only going to shoot with department ammo at department ranges–Spending their own money on practice? Not happening.
One guy was different, and he’d had a “Come to Jesus” moment during a gunfight he found himself in that nearly ended his life. After that? He practiced religiously, usually shooting around 100 rounds a week, and he trained both rigorously and extensively, shooting with his off-hand, practicing loads one-handed–All sorts of things like that, because he’d had to do exactly those things after getting shot. He was unusual enough that all the other cops used to discuss him as being “weird”, because he spent his own money and his own time to do all that.
It’s like in the military–Only a tiny fraction of the combat arms own their own weapons or do any sort of off-duty shooting. I was always the “weirdo” who had most of the personally-owned weapons in the arms room, and the fact that I went out and shot for practice off-duty was seen as seriously strange. Hell, I even had a commander want me to go in for a mental health evaluation because of it…
So, no… I don’t think they do those magazine dumps because they’re trying to “scare a suspect”. It’s more like they’re scared sh*tless themselves, and like similarly frightened tyro soldiers in combat for the first time, anything that makes noise is comforting. It’s like your timid dog becoming a “fear biter” when on a leash and encountering another dog it knows it can’t get away from, because “leash”.