My friend and I were playing the other night and he was arguing that because it says, "perform a free barrel roll action," on the expert handling card then that means he should get to perform another action first and then take his free barrel roll. That didn't seem right to me, but I couldn't figure out how to refute him either. Can anyone point to where it says you can't do that? Or is he right?

He has to take Expert Handling as his action. - That is his assigned action for the term, this is because it starts with the Action: header.

As part of that action, he is entitled to perform a free barrel roll action, and then do the other things listed on the card.

Any card with the "Action:" header 'consumes' an action in order to use it... even if it latter grants additional, free actions. In other words, you pay the 'cost' of one 'action' if you want to do/use whatever is written on the card.

In the case of Expert Handling, your whole action is used to perform a free Barrel Roll action and shed a red Target Lock token from your ship. The barrel roll being free is irrelevant in this case, since you already spent your action in order to activate Expert Handling.

Ah. That makes sense. Thank you, very much.