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As a reminder, UPS hosts a monthly shoot the first Saturday of every month. Our next event will be on January 2, 2010. We'll be there regardless of rain, shine, sleet, snow, wind or football bowl games. For the past couple of months we have experienced an increase in participants, even for the December event which was probably the coldest one on record. We meet at the Hendriksen-PMAA Range at exit 134 on I-80; registration begins at 8:30, and there is a $12.00 range fee.
All events start with a safety briefing, and then we move on to some sort of skills exercise(s). We then set up defensive shooting scenarios that build upon the skills drills. Actual trigger time is only part of coming to a UPS event. As you move through a scenario, the peanut gallery of observers may involve themselves by presenting a training weapon while you scan of additional threats, and you can count on a constructive critique after wards that will further help you develop your defensive skills.
These events are a good venue to try out new gear or to see what others employ, especially if you are new to using a firearm in self defense, or considering a firearm for self defense. All the drills and scenarios are taken at your own speed, and safety is always the top priority. If you would like to be put on the UPS emailing list, send a request to utahps@thebluezone.net
Utah's Personal Protection Laboratory
Friday, December 11, 2009
Training Schedule for 2010
As noted in an earlier blog (see Point Shooting Progressions, October 8) we are happy to announce additional Suarez International Training Classes being held at the Hendriksen-PMAA Range. These courses are all being taught by Doug Little, Suarez International Staff Instructor.
April 10-11 Suarez Fighting Rifle: This two day course introduces you to rifle fighting fundamentals and is suitable for beginners or as a refresher course for more seasoned shooters. Through a carefully designed and detailed no BS curriculum the instructor is able to bring you up to a level of skill in a short two day class that previously would take over 4 or 5 days to achieve at other schools. You will learn a complete presentation of the combative technique of the rifle which will put you in good standing for any defensive situations you may encounter in the real world.
May 1-2 Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting: Referred to as the flagship Suarez course, it goes as far as you can safely go on a square range with live-fire pistols. The dynamic curriculum surpasses the traditional handgun methods commonly taught in most institutions and focuses of the use of the pistol in aggressive close range applications likely in individual civilian street encounters.
The class begins with a tune-up of the fundamentals, then we progress quickly to new skills such as Proactive and Reactive Manipulations, Shooting While Moving Off The X, Reality-Based Multiple Hostiles Engagement, 360 degree CQB Movement, Danger-Close Fighting, Bilateral Shooting, 360 degree After Action Assessment Methods, and Integrating the Flashlight and Other Tools into the Firing Platform. This is the life-saving material that is often ignored in many other programs. In two days, you will receive more information than most armed professionals ever get! Suitable for BOTH civilian defenders and professional operators.
Please note that this is not a class for first time beginners. If you have had training in basic self defense pistol handling, this class will take you to the next level. Those of you who spent last summer with us at the Monday Night classes will benefit from the course.
September 18-19 Suarez Kalashnikov Rifle Gun Fighting: The AK-47/74 series of rifle is one of the most prolific and useful weapons on earth. Close to 100 million have been made in various parts of the world and anyone's chances of encountering these weapons is high. This special course will take a close look at the Kalashnikov Rifle System and teach you to fight with it in both the standard "urban rifle" engagement as well as in the Close Range Gunfighting matrix. This material will have you appreciating the AK platform like no other rifle. It is too simple to be "tactical".
October 16-17 Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting: A repeat of the May class. This offering will be perfect for those of you that shoot with us through the upcoming summer months. Spend several Monday evenings with UPS developing and honing your basic skills and then take this course.
You can register for all these classes at the Suarez International website.
We are also looking at a 1 or 2 day edged weapons course. This will be held inside, so the dates will be sometime in the winter months.
April 10-11 Suarez Fighting Rifle: This two day course introduces you to rifle fighting fundamentals and is suitable for beginners or as a refresher course for more seasoned shooters. Through a carefully designed and detailed no BS curriculum the instructor is able to bring you up to a level of skill in a short two day class that previously would take over 4 or 5 days to achieve at other schools. You will learn a complete presentation of the combative technique of the rifle which will put you in good standing for any defensive situations you may encounter in the real world.
May 1-2 Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting: Referred to as the flagship Suarez course, it goes as far as you can safely go on a square range with live-fire pistols. The dynamic curriculum surpasses the traditional handgun methods commonly taught in most institutions and focuses of the use of the pistol in aggressive close range applications likely in individual civilian street encounters.
The class begins with a tune-up of the fundamentals, then we progress quickly to new skills such as Proactive and Reactive Manipulations, Shooting While Moving Off The X, Reality-Based Multiple Hostiles Engagement, 360 degree CQB Movement, Danger-Close Fighting, Bilateral Shooting, 360 degree After Action Assessment Methods, and Integrating the Flashlight and Other Tools into the Firing Platform. This is the life-saving material that is often ignored in many other programs. In two days, you will receive more information than most armed professionals ever get! Suitable for BOTH civilian defenders and professional operators.
Please note that this is not a class for first time beginners. If you have had training in basic self defense pistol handling, this class will take you to the next level. Those of you who spent last summer with us at the Monday Night classes will benefit from the course.
September 18-19 Suarez Kalashnikov Rifle Gun Fighting: The AK-47/74 series of rifle is one of the most prolific and useful weapons on earth. Close to 100 million have been made in various parts of the world and anyone's chances of encountering these weapons is high. This special course will take a close look at the Kalashnikov Rifle System and teach you to fight with it in both the standard "urban rifle" engagement as well as in the Close Range Gunfighting matrix. This material will have you appreciating the AK platform like no other rifle. It is too simple to be "tactical".
October 16-17 Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting: A repeat of the May class. This offering will be perfect for those of you that shoot with us through the upcoming summer months. Spend several Monday evenings with UPS developing and honing your basic skills and then take this course.
You can register for all these classes at the Suarez International website.
We are also looking at a 1 or 2 day edged weapons course. This will be held inside, so the dates will be sometime in the winter months.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
John Farnam's Scenario Based Defensive Handgun Course
In late October I had an opportunity to assist John Farnam with a class in Columbia, South Carolina. The class was itself the same format as the one he taught here last year: one day of live fire and one day of scenario based force on force training. One difference this year was that was that John’s wife Vicki Farnam was here as well, teaching a Women’s Defensive Handgun course.
Last May, I took John’s instructor course. One of the perks of taking the instructor course is the opportunity to act as an assistant instructor at John’s classes. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to avail myself of that opportunity. This writeup is going to be a bit different than my usual class review, focusing more on instructor stuff and some of the issues the students had in the class.
In addition to myself, there were three other fellows assisting with the class. We had eight students, so the student instructor ratio was pretty impressive. For many of the students, this was their first time in one of John’s classes, but others had taken some classes from him before. Every student who was in the class last year was back again as either an instructor or a student. Vicki had five ladies in her class, most of whom were the wives or girlfriends of students.
Usually, at this point in one of my class write-ups I describe the gear I used to shoot the class. In this case, I didn’t end up firing a single shot all weekend. Nevertheless, I carried my usual Glock 21 in a Comp-Tac C-T.A.C IWB holster and a S&W 442 in a pocket holster. All of the instructors were carrying Glocks of one variety or another, except for John, who carried a SIG P250. Five students carried Glocks as well, with one SIG 228, one Springfield XD and one 9mm 1911.
Friday Night Lecture
The class met on Friday night in a meeting room at the local hotel where John and many of the other students were staying. We started off with a round of introductions and a bit of lecture from John. As happened several times in this course, both John and Vicki’s classes came together for the lecture. Comparing this to last year’s Friday night talk, it’s quite evident that John is speaking extemporaneously, rather than delivering a canned lecture. He hits the same major points, but it comes in a different order, and a lot of the ancillary stuff was different. In part, this was because he’s very responsive to student questions and he can launch into a discussion of pretty much any self-defense related topic someone raises.
Saturday Morning
After breakfast at Denny’s, most of the class convoyed to the range together. John delivered the range safety lecture and we geared up and got to work.
We started out with some loading and unloading drills. John runs a hot range, where students are expected to have their pistols loaded at all times (as he puts it, empty guns make him nervous). However, there are occasions when we want unloaded weapons, such as doing a dry fire drill. John ran everyone through the process of administrative unloading, loading, and chamber checks, then got everyone unloaded for some dry fire.
Unlike a lot of training, where the drill begins with a command to draw and fire and ends as soon as the shooters are done firing, John incorporates some pre and post fight actions in almost every drill. Students start out in the interview stance, moving, looking behind them, and practicing verbal disengagement in response to queries from John.
I noticed some of the students didn’t quite get the point of the tape loop concept. “Tape loop” is John’s term for short bit of pre-rehearsed dialogue. Attempting to verbally disengage from a potential threat is a lousy time to extemporize. For one thing, it makes your response more likely to come out garbled or confused when you most need to be clear. More importantly, when a potential assailant asks for the time, or directions, or help finding his lost puppy, he’s trying to distract you. Coming up with a dismissive response to his question (“my watch is broken”) can do the job of distracting you just as well as looking at your watch. “Sorry, I can’t help you” is a quick, all-purpose response to anyone who approaches you on the street. It doesn’t require any specific thought about their question, leaving you free to concentrate on maneuvering, glancing behind you for the potential assailant’s partner, etc.
After a bit of verbal disengagement, John gave the command to move and draw. We had a couple of the students with a tendency to sweep their support hands during the drawstroke, and the instructors had to keep an eye out for this. John teaches that if you’re not shooting to bring the gun back to a compressed high ready with the pistol brought back just beneath the chin and rotated to the support side. This gives better disarm resistance, greater visibility, and unlike low ready, it keeps the gun pointed at the target so that you just have to drive the gun straight out to the target, rather than swinging up and potentially overshooting and having to bring it back down. Some students had a tendancy to forget the compressed ready position and leave the gun out at full extension. As the class progressed, others started drawing to the compressed ready, rather than drawing to full extension and then bringing the pistol back to compressed ready. Drawing to full extension every time keeps the drawstroke consistent, rather than having to decide between two different drawstrokes depending on the situation.
After a few moments with the gun in compressed ready, moving and checking behind them, John announced that the target was threatening you with a weapon, prompting the students to open fire. Since this first drill was done dry, the half of the class that wasn’t shooting manually reciprocated the shooting students’ slides after each shot to reset the trigger. After firing four shots, the students moved and fired another four. John announced that the target was down and out of the fight, prompting students to move again, scan in front, then turn around and do a sul scan. Once everyone has done this, John called for students to holster.
This was some students’ first exposure to these kinds of pre and post fight drills, so we ran through it dry a couple of times to get everyone on the same page.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch, we did the same drill live fire. This was some students’ first exposure to the “zipper” technique John teaches. Rather than aiming exclusively at the upper torso or center of mass, you fire your first shot at the navel area and move up the midline of the body to the upper chest. Starting at belt level prevents the gun from obscuring the target’s hands, and ensures you won’t lose sight of the assailant if he ducks. The area a few inches on either side of the body’s midline is filled with major arteries and organs, making it a good all the way up. This is rather different from the way most students had been taught previously, and many of them tended to fire one shot into the belly and the rest into the upper torso rather than working their way up.
Rather than taping every shot after each string of fire, John has the students tape only the misses (those not within a six inch strip running up the middle of the target). Not only does this save time for most shooters, it also emphasizes that absolute precision is not the goal, just getting rounds within the target area.
After a few repetitions of the drill, John threw in a reload, followed by an additional burst. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several of John’s students were working in New Orleans, and found that jettisoning the magazine into the murky depths during each reload quickly depleted their supply of available mags. Since then, John has moved to teaching students to retain magazines as the default, rather than dropping them.
When everyone was comfortable with the reload, we moved back and doubled the distance to fifteen yards. Despite the longer range most students were able to maintain the standard of accuracy. We then moved up to three yards and shot the drill one last time. At this range, the drill was pretty easy, and most students were able to increase their rate of fire and still get good hits. John’s philosophy on accuracy is that if you’re missing the six inch wide target zone with more than 10% of your shots, you’re probably shooting too fast. On the other hand, if you’re not missing about one shot in ten, you’re probably shooting too slow. The goal is a balance between speed and accuracy.
Remaining at 3 yards, we switched over to what John likes to call the “mother in law” drill. This is a hostage rescue scenario where the student has to put a shot through the nose of the target into the brainstem. This is the only part of the body that will produce an instantaneous stop. If someone has a hostage, holding a gun to their head or a knife to their throat, this is the kind of shot you need to make. However, the brain stem is a very small target (about the size of your thumb) buried deep within the skull. Particularly from the front, the skull is heavy enough to deflect pistol bullets away from a relatively small internal target like the brainstem. Given these difficulties, it’s very difficult to hit the brainstem of an active, moving target. To help cope with these difficulties, John recommends asking the hostage taker, “What do you want?” and waiting about two seconds for him to start considering the question. When he starts thinking, he’s probably going to stop moving and look at you, giving you a chance to take the brain stem shot.
To set this up as a drill, we drew some cartoony faces on the heads of cardboard targets. Students made the verbal challenge from a range of 3 yards, raised their pistols, and fired two shots at the nose. At this range, most students who were able to keep their shots inside the nose area if they took their time. Bad shots were generally a result of rushing and taking the shot too quickly. Some students also rushed to raise their pistol. Asking, “What do you want?” only works if you give the hostage taker a second or two to start thinking about it. Shooting immediately defeats the purpose.
After the hostage drill, we brought out the table and had the students lay their weapons out on it and shoot each weapon in turn. The prevalence of Glocks made this a bit less interesting than it might have otherwise been, but the SIG, XD, and 1911 lent some variety to the proceedings. This was also the first drill of the day we shot on the steel rotator targets rather than cardboard.
It was around this time that one of our students had to leave. His wife, over in Vicki’s class, wasn’t doing too well and he needed to take her to the hospital. She and her husband both rejoined us the next day after getting some IV fluids at the hospital. They couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong with her, but the most likely issues were dehydration and lack of food. Keeping fed and especially keeping hydrated are critical when training, even in the relatively cool South Carolina fall.
Once each student had shot all the other weapons, John had the instructors set up malfunctions in each of the pistols on the table. We set up empty chambers, stovepipes, and failures to extract. One of the things John emphasizes is clearing malfunctions without looking at or trying to diagnose them. Tap rack bang, and if that doesn’t work, lock, eject, rack, rack, rack, and reload.
Up until this point, all our drills had been exclusively handgun oriented, and at a distance of at least three yards. Since everyone had demonstrated fairly good gunhandling skills, John set up a more complex scenario involving close range shooting and alternative force. The student started off making a shot from retention at a cardboard target within arms length, then fired bursts at a more distant rotator target until he expended all the rounds in the magazine. With an empty gun, he was then confronted with another close range cardboard target. He used his pistol as an impact weapon, ramming its muzzle into the target’s head, then transitioned to his knife and stabbed the target in the stomach.
The students did fairly well on the shooting portion of his drill, but for most of them it was obviously their first experience with using the gun as an impact weapon, or deploying their knife in a defensive scenario. Every single student was carrying their knife on their strong side, requiring them to swap the pistol into their support side hand before beginning to draw the knife. Combined with the fact that they were all carrying folders, and were generally none too quick about deploying them) there was usually a substantial wait between the muzzle strike and the stabbing, more than enough time for the assailant to recover and start doing bad stuff to them. Having an alternative weapon on the support side, either a knife or back-up gun (or both) is a much better choice than having both on the strong side. If you’re going to carry a knife as a back-up weapon, practice deploying it, just like you practice drawing the handgun. If you need it, you’ll need it in a hurry.
One other thing I noticed during this drill was the limited amount of movement by most of the students. When we’re lined up shooting in relays, there are some obvious limits to the amount of movement each student can do; one or two steps to either side at most. In a drill like this, where only one student shoots at a time, there are much fewer restrictions, yet students were still only taking one or two steps in each direction when moving between strings. In order for movement to be useful, it needs to be rapid and dynamic, not a couple of lazy sidesteps. I think this may be an instance where range restrictions are translating into some bad training habits.
With the end of this drill, the light was fading and we moved on to our night shoot. John demonstrated the Harries technique and a modified version of the neck index that places the flashlight higher on the head. We started out shooting without flashlights, just using ambient light and the light from the “takedown mode” on John’s FirstLight Tomahawk (flashes the red and blue LEDs and strobes the main light in sequence). We had two rotators set up and students fired a burst at each of them, with movement in between. Then we broke out the lights and the students had a chance to try both methods before going through and shooting it a third time using the method of their choice. The biggest problem I noted was that some students had a hard time keeping the light on target. These lights are bright enough that you can usually see enough to shoot even if the brightest part of the beam isn’t pointed directly at the target, but that eliminates a lot of the light’s blinding potential. Lights are bullet magnets, so they should be used sparingly, but when they’re on, they needed to be pointed directly at the assailant’s face, to inhibit his ability to direct fire your way as much as possible.
Once everyone had shot with the flashlights, John broke out a couple of road flares to illuminate the targets and we set up the malfunction drills again. This time, it was downright impossible to diagnose the malfunctions by looking at them, demonstrating one of the reasons why John teaches clearing jams without trying to figure out what they are first.
This finished up the night shoot, so we packed up our gear and adjourned to a late dinner at an Italian restaurant near John’s hotel.
Sunday Morning
After another breakfast at Denny’s we all headed down to the range. This morning we got started with another iteration of the dry fire drill. After yesterday, most of the students had this down pat.
Following this, we all divested ourselves of any firearms, knives, OC, saps, or any other weapons for our force on force drills. Obviously, we don’t want anyone confusing a live gun for an airsoft, but it’s important to remove other weapons as well. After everyone laid their weapons out on the table, we did a pat-down of each person just to make sure nobody was carrying any dangerous implements.
For the first set of drills, rather than airsoft, the students were using fake blue guns. A few students had their own, and from John’s rather sizable collection we were able to get most students a pretty similar replica of their carry weapon. The only fellow that had to make do with a different make was the one shooting the SIG.
Once everyone had joined the rubber gun squad, we began some simple disengagement drills. John described some of the tactics potential assailants use to get you to stop and distract you: asking for directions or the time, or for help finding their child or pet. Sometimes they’ll run through a whole string of opening lines to see what catches your attention, then pick up on that subject for further conversations. The students paired up and one played a panhandler while the other tried to avoid engaging with them to give them a chance to practice their disengagement skills in a more free form environment. We started out with fairly passive panhandlers and simple verbal disengagement, “Sorry, I can’t help you.” One of the more interesting techniques John recommends is pointing down at the ground on one side of the panhandler and saying “uh-oh”, then bolting past him on the opposite side when he looks down to see what you’re pointing at. While this seems to be one level above “your shoelace is untied,” it can evidently be quite effective.
In the next drill, we had the panhandlers be a bit more persistent, prompting the other student to escalate their verbal disengagement, “Back off!” John recommends pointing at the potential assailant when you do this, so that any witnesses whose attention you attract are more likely to realize it’s you telling the panhandler to back off, rather than vice versa. He also recommends pointing with two fingers rather than just one to avoid giving the impression that you’ve just flipped him the bird.
Finally, we had the panhandler escalate the point of pulling a knife, prompting the student to draw. One of the things John discussed at this point were some strategies for engaging an assailant at close ranges like this: getting off the X at a forward angle (45 degrees to the right or left of the assailant) to create a lot of apparent motion and get on the assailant’s flank while drawing and shooting him. This is the kind of tactic I’ve learned before from Gabe Suarez and Randy Harris, but it seems to be spreading. The art progresses, and one of the ways you can tell the good trainers is they’re moving forward with it.
Sunday Afternoon
After lunch, we moved on to some more complex scenarios. In these drills, rather than pairing the students up, John’s assistant instructors served as the actors in the scenarios and we ran the students through one at a time. I have to say, this was a lot of fun. Enough fun that I didn’t really mind getting pelted with quite a few airsoft pellets over the course of the afternoon. However, one thing I always tried to keep the in mind that the objective was to help the students learn, rather than to show off my own skills.
Our first scenario was a straightforward application of the disengagement skills the students practiced during the morning. This time, however, the students faced three aggressive assailants instead of one. We tried to box the student in, trapping them. As we closed in, we got more aggressive, escalating our verbal interactions, and eventually flashing (but not drawing) a weapon. This scenario had some interesting lessons. At what point are you justified in shooting? Does it require seeing a gun, or is this group being sufficiently menacing to justify shooting them before the gun is seen. Who do you shoot first? The closest one? The one who showed a weapon? Different students took different approaches, with varying degrees of success. The most notable difference was that sduents who moved quickly and decisively to avoid being boxed in were the only ones who were able to prevent the situation from escalating.
One of the most interesting scenarios we did took place at a family reunion and had one instructor playing a suicidal distant relative, while the other two of us tried to talk him out of killing himself. As the scenario progressed, the suicidal became more and more agitated pointing the blue gun at the student and the other two relatives in addition to himself. Important to the setup was the idea that these folks were your relatives, but they weren’t close enough to automatically be people you’d risk your life or limb for. Students’ reactions ran the gamut from leaving the area and calling 911 to shooting the suicidal relative when he begins to point the gun at other people. The most effective reactions tended to be those that were the most decisive, whether it was leaving immediately, dragging the non-suicidal relatives away, or shooting the suicidal relative. One student performed a very nice covert draw before approaching, then raised the gun and shot the suicidal relative in the head at lightning speed the moment he started to point the gun at someone else. The students who dithered tended to be much less effective. Those who approached, but didn’t act or tried to talk to the suicidal relative, or who weren’t forceful in trying to move the other relatives to safety tended to end up looking down the muzzle of the blue gun before they were able to shoot. The difference between suicide and homicide can be as little as a flick of the wrist.
We also did a scenario that replicated the hostage shot from live fire yesterday. One instructor took another hostage in the classic, gun to the head pose, while the third instructor (me) ran around like a blithering idiot trying to distract the student and generally getting in the way. Some of the students ran into trouble with this one, either they never did the “What do you want?” bit and tried to take the shot as the hostage taker was moving. Others asked the question, but didn’t leave time for the hostage taker to think about it before firing, which kind of defeats the purpose. On the other hand, waiting too long for a shot could be just as bad, giving the hostage taker a chance to shoot you before you get him.
The next scenario was a bit more conventional: the student walks in on a robbery in progress and has to decide what to do about the situation. One instructor played the clerk getting held up, while the other two were robbers armed with a knife and gun respectively. Some students elected to simply walk away, deciding that whatever was going on here was none of their business. Those who elected to intervene had to decide on their tactical priorities, since the robber with the knife was closer, but still out of contact range. One ended up shooting both robbers and the clerk!
The last scenario was probably the most fun from the roleplaying perspective. The student needs to exit a narrow alley to go assist their wife or girlfriend with an automotive problem, but it is blocked by two brothers having a raging argument, who ignore any of the student’s requests to get by, while a third brother attempts to calm down the other two. If the student elects not to take action for a while one of the brothers eventually draws a knife and stabs the other.
In contrast to the other scenarios, the student wasn’t really in any direct jeopardy unless they injected themselves into the situation. The brothers are directing all their attention toward each other, totally ignoring the student. There’s no immediate danger, but there’s also no justification for using force to solve the problem. Some students elected to wait it out, perhaps calling the police. Others intervened after one brother stabbed the other. Some drew their weapon, perhaps on somewhat shaky legal ground. A few tried to rush past, one of them after drawing his weapon, which resulted in an attempted gun grab (which in turn led to him shooting all three brothers).
In all of the scenarios, John emphasized that there was no “School Solution” to any of these situations. Some courses of action may be more successful than others this time around, but that’s no guarantee that the same will hold true in the real world. The common threads were that decisive action almost always led to better results than dithering or tentative action. Sometimes the best course of action is to do nothing, or choose not to get involved, but that should be a deliberate choice, not the result of an inability to make up your mind.
The assistant instructors gave our assessment of the class and John gave his observations and provided a final wrap up. With that we packed up and many of us went out for a nice steak dinner before going our separate ways.
Overall, I think this was a great course. I’d definitely like to do some more firearms and self defense instruction in the future. As always, the best way to learn something is to teach it, and I think I may have gotten more out of this class than the students. I think the students got a lot out of the course to. Force on force training is a real eye opener, and scenario based training like this can make you think about stuff you may not have considered before. I really enjoyed assisting with the instruction and playing the opposing force during the scenarios. While none of them were complete novices coming in, I still saw lot of progress from some of them over the course of the class. If I have any regret about this class, it's that I wasn't able to spend much time with Vicki, since she was mostly busy with the ladies class. She's an excellent instructor and one I think I could learn a lot from both as a student, and as a fellow instructor. Hopefully, I’ll be able to assist again when John comes around next year. I would highly recommend this class, and indeed any of John and Vicki Farnam’s classes.
Last May, I took John’s instructor course. One of the perks of taking the instructor course is the opportunity to act as an assistant instructor at John’s classes. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to avail myself of that opportunity. This writeup is going to be a bit different than my usual class review, focusing more on instructor stuff and some of the issues the students had in the class.
In addition to myself, there were three other fellows assisting with the class. We had eight students, so the student instructor ratio was pretty impressive. For many of the students, this was their first time in one of John’s classes, but others had taken some classes from him before. Every student who was in the class last year was back again as either an instructor or a student. Vicki had five ladies in her class, most of whom were the wives or girlfriends of students.
Usually, at this point in one of my class write-ups I describe the gear I used to shoot the class. In this case, I didn’t end up firing a single shot all weekend. Nevertheless, I carried my usual Glock 21 in a Comp-Tac C-T.A.C IWB holster and a S&W 442 in a pocket holster. All of the instructors were carrying Glocks of one variety or another, except for John, who carried a SIG P250. Five students carried Glocks as well, with one SIG 228, one Springfield XD and one 9mm 1911.
Friday Night Lecture
The class met on Friday night in a meeting room at the local hotel where John and many of the other students were staying. We started off with a round of introductions and a bit of lecture from John. As happened several times in this course, both John and Vicki’s classes came together for the lecture. Comparing this to last year’s Friday night talk, it’s quite evident that John is speaking extemporaneously, rather than delivering a canned lecture. He hits the same major points, but it comes in a different order, and a lot of the ancillary stuff was different. In part, this was because he’s very responsive to student questions and he can launch into a discussion of pretty much any self-defense related topic someone raises.
Saturday Morning
After breakfast at Denny’s, most of the class convoyed to the range together. John delivered the range safety lecture and we geared up and got to work.
We started out with some loading and unloading drills. John runs a hot range, where students are expected to have their pistols loaded at all times (as he puts it, empty guns make him nervous). However, there are occasions when we want unloaded weapons, such as doing a dry fire drill. John ran everyone through the process of administrative unloading, loading, and chamber checks, then got everyone unloaded for some dry fire.
Unlike a lot of training, where the drill begins with a command to draw and fire and ends as soon as the shooters are done firing, John incorporates some pre and post fight actions in almost every drill. Students start out in the interview stance, moving, looking behind them, and practicing verbal disengagement in response to queries from John.
I noticed some of the students didn’t quite get the point of the tape loop concept. “Tape loop” is John’s term for short bit of pre-rehearsed dialogue. Attempting to verbally disengage from a potential threat is a lousy time to extemporize. For one thing, it makes your response more likely to come out garbled or confused when you most need to be clear. More importantly, when a potential assailant asks for the time, or directions, or help finding his lost puppy, he’s trying to distract you. Coming up with a dismissive response to his question (“my watch is broken”) can do the job of distracting you just as well as looking at your watch. “Sorry, I can’t help you” is a quick, all-purpose response to anyone who approaches you on the street. It doesn’t require any specific thought about their question, leaving you free to concentrate on maneuvering, glancing behind you for the potential assailant’s partner, etc.
After a bit of verbal disengagement, John gave the command to move and draw. We had a couple of the students with a tendency to sweep their support hands during the drawstroke, and the instructors had to keep an eye out for this. John teaches that if you’re not shooting to bring the gun back to a compressed high ready with the pistol brought back just beneath the chin and rotated to the support side. This gives better disarm resistance, greater visibility, and unlike low ready, it keeps the gun pointed at the target so that you just have to drive the gun straight out to the target, rather than swinging up and potentially overshooting and having to bring it back down. Some students had a tendancy to forget the compressed ready position and leave the gun out at full extension. As the class progressed, others started drawing to the compressed ready, rather than drawing to full extension and then bringing the pistol back to compressed ready. Drawing to full extension every time keeps the drawstroke consistent, rather than having to decide between two different drawstrokes depending on the situation.
After a few moments with the gun in compressed ready, moving and checking behind them, John announced that the target was threatening you with a weapon, prompting the students to open fire. Since this first drill was done dry, the half of the class that wasn’t shooting manually reciprocated the shooting students’ slides after each shot to reset the trigger. After firing four shots, the students moved and fired another four. John announced that the target was down and out of the fight, prompting students to move again, scan in front, then turn around and do a sul scan. Once everyone has done this, John called for students to holster.
This was some students’ first exposure to these kinds of pre and post fight drills, so we ran through it dry a couple of times to get everyone on the same page.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch, we did the same drill live fire. This was some students’ first exposure to the “zipper” technique John teaches. Rather than aiming exclusively at the upper torso or center of mass, you fire your first shot at the navel area and move up the midline of the body to the upper chest. Starting at belt level prevents the gun from obscuring the target’s hands, and ensures you won’t lose sight of the assailant if he ducks. The area a few inches on either side of the body’s midline is filled with major arteries and organs, making it a good all the way up. This is rather different from the way most students had been taught previously, and many of them tended to fire one shot into the belly and the rest into the upper torso rather than working their way up.
Rather than taping every shot after each string of fire, John has the students tape only the misses (those not within a six inch strip running up the middle of the target). Not only does this save time for most shooters, it also emphasizes that absolute precision is not the goal, just getting rounds within the target area.
After a few repetitions of the drill, John threw in a reload, followed by an additional burst. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several of John’s students were working in New Orleans, and found that jettisoning the magazine into the murky depths during each reload quickly depleted their supply of available mags. Since then, John has moved to teaching students to retain magazines as the default, rather than dropping them.
When everyone was comfortable with the reload, we moved back and doubled the distance to fifteen yards. Despite the longer range most students were able to maintain the standard of accuracy. We then moved up to three yards and shot the drill one last time. At this range, the drill was pretty easy, and most students were able to increase their rate of fire and still get good hits. John’s philosophy on accuracy is that if you’re missing the six inch wide target zone with more than 10% of your shots, you’re probably shooting too fast. On the other hand, if you’re not missing about one shot in ten, you’re probably shooting too slow. The goal is a balance between speed and accuracy.
Remaining at 3 yards, we switched over to what John likes to call the “mother in law” drill. This is a hostage rescue scenario where the student has to put a shot through the nose of the target into the brainstem. This is the only part of the body that will produce an instantaneous stop. If someone has a hostage, holding a gun to their head or a knife to their throat, this is the kind of shot you need to make. However, the brain stem is a very small target (about the size of your thumb) buried deep within the skull. Particularly from the front, the skull is heavy enough to deflect pistol bullets away from a relatively small internal target like the brainstem. Given these difficulties, it’s very difficult to hit the brainstem of an active, moving target. To help cope with these difficulties, John recommends asking the hostage taker, “What do you want?” and waiting about two seconds for him to start considering the question. When he starts thinking, he’s probably going to stop moving and look at you, giving you a chance to take the brain stem shot.
To set this up as a drill, we drew some cartoony faces on the heads of cardboard targets. Students made the verbal challenge from a range of 3 yards, raised their pistols, and fired two shots at the nose. At this range, most students who were able to keep their shots inside the nose area if they took their time. Bad shots were generally a result of rushing and taking the shot too quickly. Some students also rushed to raise their pistol. Asking, “What do you want?” only works if you give the hostage taker a second or two to start thinking about it. Shooting immediately defeats the purpose.
After the hostage drill, we brought out the table and had the students lay their weapons out on it and shoot each weapon in turn. The prevalence of Glocks made this a bit less interesting than it might have otherwise been, but the SIG, XD, and 1911 lent some variety to the proceedings. This was also the first drill of the day we shot on the steel rotator targets rather than cardboard.
It was around this time that one of our students had to leave. His wife, over in Vicki’s class, wasn’t doing too well and he needed to take her to the hospital. She and her husband both rejoined us the next day after getting some IV fluids at the hospital. They couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong with her, but the most likely issues were dehydration and lack of food. Keeping fed and especially keeping hydrated are critical when training, even in the relatively cool South Carolina fall.
Once each student had shot all the other weapons, John had the instructors set up malfunctions in each of the pistols on the table. We set up empty chambers, stovepipes, and failures to extract. One of the things John emphasizes is clearing malfunctions without looking at or trying to diagnose them. Tap rack bang, and if that doesn’t work, lock, eject, rack, rack, rack, and reload.
Up until this point, all our drills had been exclusively handgun oriented, and at a distance of at least three yards. Since everyone had demonstrated fairly good gunhandling skills, John set up a more complex scenario involving close range shooting and alternative force. The student started off making a shot from retention at a cardboard target within arms length, then fired bursts at a more distant rotator target until he expended all the rounds in the magazine. With an empty gun, he was then confronted with another close range cardboard target. He used his pistol as an impact weapon, ramming its muzzle into the target’s head, then transitioned to his knife and stabbed the target in the stomach.
The students did fairly well on the shooting portion of his drill, but for most of them it was obviously their first experience with using the gun as an impact weapon, or deploying their knife in a defensive scenario. Every single student was carrying their knife on their strong side, requiring them to swap the pistol into their support side hand before beginning to draw the knife. Combined with the fact that they were all carrying folders, and were generally none too quick about deploying them) there was usually a substantial wait between the muzzle strike and the stabbing, more than enough time for the assailant to recover and start doing bad stuff to them. Having an alternative weapon on the support side, either a knife or back-up gun (or both) is a much better choice than having both on the strong side. If you’re going to carry a knife as a back-up weapon, practice deploying it, just like you practice drawing the handgun. If you need it, you’ll need it in a hurry.
One other thing I noticed during this drill was the limited amount of movement by most of the students. When we’re lined up shooting in relays, there are some obvious limits to the amount of movement each student can do; one or two steps to either side at most. In a drill like this, where only one student shoots at a time, there are much fewer restrictions, yet students were still only taking one or two steps in each direction when moving between strings. In order for movement to be useful, it needs to be rapid and dynamic, not a couple of lazy sidesteps. I think this may be an instance where range restrictions are translating into some bad training habits.
With the end of this drill, the light was fading and we moved on to our night shoot. John demonstrated the Harries technique and a modified version of the neck index that places the flashlight higher on the head. We started out shooting without flashlights, just using ambient light and the light from the “takedown mode” on John’s FirstLight Tomahawk (flashes the red and blue LEDs and strobes the main light in sequence). We had two rotators set up and students fired a burst at each of them, with movement in between. Then we broke out the lights and the students had a chance to try both methods before going through and shooting it a third time using the method of their choice. The biggest problem I noted was that some students had a hard time keeping the light on target. These lights are bright enough that you can usually see enough to shoot even if the brightest part of the beam isn’t pointed directly at the target, but that eliminates a lot of the light’s blinding potential. Lights are bullet magnets, so they should be used sparingly, but when they’re on, they needed to be pointed directly at the assailant’s face, to inhibit his ability to direct fire your way as much as possible.
Once everyone had shot with the flashlights, John broke out a couple of road flares to illuminate the targets and we set up the malfunction drills again. This time, it was downright impossible to diagnose the malfunctions by looking at them, demonstrating one of the reasons why John teaches clearing jams without trying to figure out what they are first.
This finished up the night shoot, so we packed up our gear and adjourned to a late dinner at an Italian restaurant near John’s hotel.
Sunday Morning
After another breakfast at Denny’s we all headed down to the range. This morning we got started with another iteration of the dry fire drill. After yesterday, most of the students had this down pat.
Following this, we all divested ourselves of any firearms, knives, OC, saps, or any other weapons for our force on force drills. Obviously, we don’t want anyone confusing a live gun for an airsoft, but it’s important to remove other weapons as well. After everyone laid their weapons out on the table, we did a pat-down of each person just to make sure nobody was carrying any dangerous implements.
For the first set of drills, rather than airsoft, the students were using fake blue guns. A few students had their own, and from John’s rather sizable collection we were able to get most students a pretty similar replica of their carry weapon. The only fellow that had to make do with a different make was the one shooting the SIG.
Once everyone had joined the rubber gun squad, we began some simple disengagement drills. John described some of the tactics potential assailants use to get you to stop and distract you: asking for directions or the time, or for help finding their child or pet. Sometimes they’ll run through a whole string of opening lines to see what catches your attention, then pick up on that subject for further conversations. The students paired up and one played a panhandler while the other tried to avoid engaging with them to give them a chance to practice their disengagement skills in a more free form environment. We started out with fairly passive panhandlers and simple verbal disengagement, “Sorry, I can’t help you.” One of the more interesting techniques John recommends is pointing down at the ground on one side of the panhandler and saying “uh-oh”, then bolting past him on the opposite side when he looks down to see what you’re pointing at. While this seems to be one level above “your shoelace is untied,” it can evidently be quite effective.
In the next drill, we had the panhandlers be a bit more persistent, prompting the other student to escalate their verbal disengagement, “Back off!” John recommends pointing at the potential assailant when you do this, so that any witnesses whose attention you attract are more likely to realize it’s you telling the panhandler to back off, rather than vice versa. He also recommends pointing with two fingers rather than just one to avoid giving the impression that you’ve just flipped him the bird.
Finally, we had the panhandler escalate the point of pulling a knife, prompting the student to draw. One of the things John discussed at this point were some strategies for engaging an assailant at close ranges like this: getting off the X at a forward angle (45 degrees to the right or left of the assailant) to create a lot of apparent motion and get on the assailant’s flank while drawing and shooting him. This is the kind of tactic I’ve learned before from Gabe Suarez and Randy Harris, but it seems to be spreading. The art progresses, and one of the ways you can tell the good trainers is they’re moving forward with it.
Sunday Afternoon
After lunch, we moved on to some more complex scenarios. In these drills, rather than pairing the students up, John’s assistant instructors served as the actors in the scenarios and we ran the students through one at a time. I have to say, this was a lot of fun. Enough fun that I didn’t really mind getting pelted with quite a few airsoft pellets over the course of the afternoon. However, one thing I always tried to keep the in mind that the objective was to help the students learn, rather than to show off my own skills.
Our first scenario was a straightforward application of the disengagement skills the students practiced during the morning. This time, however, the students faced three aggressive assailants instead of one. We tried to box the student in, trapping them. As we closed in, we got more aggressive, escalating our verbal interactions, and eventually flashing (but not drawing) a weapon. This scenario had some interesting lessons. At what point are you justified in shooting? Does it require seeing a gun, or is this group being sufficiently menacing to justify shooting them before the gun is seen. Who do you shoot first? The closest one? The one who showed a weapon? Different students took different approaches, with varying degrees of success. The most notable difference was that sduents who moved quickly and decisively to avoid being boxed in were the only ones who were able to prevent the situation from escalating.
One of the most interesting scenarios we did took place at a family reunion and had one instructor playing a suicidal distant relative, while the other two of us tried to talk him out of killing himself. As the scenario progressed, the suicidal became more and more agitated pointing the blue gun at the student and the other two relatives in addition to himself. Important to the setup was the idea that these folks were your relatives, but they weren’t close enough to automatically be people you’d risk your life or limb for. Students’ reactions ran the gamut from leaving the area and calling 911 to shooting the suicidal relative when he begins to point the gun at other people. The most effective reactions tended to be those that were the most decisive, whether it was leaving immediately, dragging the non-suicidal relatives away, or shooting the suicidal relative. One student performed a very nice covert draw before approaching, then raised the gun and shot the suicidal relative in the head at lightning speed the moment he started to point the gun at someone else. The students who dithered tended to be much less effective. Those who approached, but didn’t act or tried to talk to the suicidal relative, or who weren’t forceful in trying to move the other relatives to safety tended to end up looking down the muzzle of the blue gun before they were able to shoot. The difference between suicide and homicide can be as little as a flick of the wrist.
We also did a scenario that replicated the hostage shot from live fire yesterday. One instructor took another hostage in the classic, gun to the head pose, while the third instructor (me) ran around like a blithering idiot trying to distract the student and generally getting in the way. Some of the students ran into trouble with this one, either they never did the “What do you want?” bit and tried to take the shot as the hostage taker was moving. Others asked the question, but didn’t leave time for the hostage taker to think about it before firing, which kind of defeats the purpose. On the other hand, waiting too long for a shot could be just as bad, giving the hostage taker a chance to shoot you before you get him.
The next scenario was a bit more conventional: the student walks in on a robbery in progress and has to decide what to do about the situation. One instructor played the clerk getting held up, while the other two were robbers armed with a knife and gun respectively. Some students elected to simply walk away, deciding that whatever was going on here was none of their business. Those who elected to intervene had to decide on their tactical priorities, since the robber with the knife was closer, but still out of contact range. One ended up shooting both robbers and the clerk!
The last scenario was probably the most fun from the roleplaying perspective. The student needs to exit a narrow alley to go assist their wife or girlfriend with an automotive problem, but it is blocked by two brothers having a raging argument, who ignore any of the student’s requests to get by, while a third brother attempts to calm down the other two. If the student elects not to take action for a while one of the brothers eventually draws a knife and stabs the other.
In contrast to the other scenarios, the student wasn’t really in any direct jeopardy unless they injected themselves into the situation. The brothers are directing all their attention toward each other, totally ignoring the student. There’s no immediate danger, but there’s also no justification for using force to solve the problem. Some students elected to wait it out, perhaps calling the police. Others intervened after one brother stabbed the other. Some drew their weapon, perhaps on somewhat shaky legal ground. A few tried to rush past, one of them after drawing his weapon, which resulted in an attempted gun grab (which in turn led to him shooting all three brothers).
In all of the scenarios, John emphasized that there was no “School Solution” to any of these situations. Some courses of action may be more successful than others this time around, but that’s no guarantee that the same will hold true in the real world. The common threads were that decisive action almost always led to better results than dithering or tentative action. Sometimes the best course of action is to do nothing, or choose not to get involved, but that should be a deliberate choice, not the result of an inability to make up your mind.
The assistant instructors gave our assessment of the class and John gave his observations and provided a final wrap up. With that we packed up and many of us went out for a nice steak dinner before going our separate ways.
Overall, I think this was a great course. I’d definitely like to do some more firearms and self defense instruction in the future. As always, the best way to learn something is to teach it, and I think I may have gotten more out of this class than the students. I think the students got a lot out of the course to. Force on force training is a real eye opener, and scenario based training like this can make you think about stuff you may not have considered before. I really enjoyed assisting with the instruction and playing the opposing force during the scenarios. While none of them were complete novices coming in, I still saw lot of progress from some of them over the course of the class. If I have any regret about this class, it's that I wasn't able to spend much time with Vicki, since she was mostly busy with the ladies class. She's an excellent instructor and one I think I could learn a lot from both as a student, and as a fellow instructor. Hopefully, I’ll be able to assist again when John comes around next year. I would highly recommend this class, and indeed any of John and Vicki Farnam’s classes.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Suarez International Extreme Close Range Gunfighting
In early September I took an Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class taught by Randy Harris. This class followed right on the heels of the Snub Nose Seminar/Pistol Tune Up held on Friday.
I brought my usual Glock 21, carried in a Comp-Tac C-T.A.C. IWB holster at 3:30. For the airsoft portions of the class, I had a Glock 17 airsoft gun, which fits pretty well in the G21 holster. I also brought along my USP Compact airsoft as a loaner.
There were a total of seven people in the class, including me. Most of them were shooting Glocks, while two students carried SIGs (one of the SIG shooters also had a Makarov). An AIWB holster with a closed front concealment garment was the most common carry method. One fellow carried on a load bearing vest Saturday morning, but he switched over to a belt rig for the afternoon.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows and a braying donkey in the next field.
Saturday Morning
The sky was overcast again Saturday, and it sprinkled off an on throughout the day. Thankfully, it never really poured and we were able to keep shooting the entire day.
We started out with five rounds of slow fire to give Randy some idea of our marksmanship capabilities. Everyone in the class was able to produce a fairly tight group in these circumstances. Shooting the Glock, with a big sight radius and relatively light trigger was a positive luxury compared with all the snubby work we did on Friday.
After divesting ourselves of guns, knives, OC, impact weapons and other dangerous implements, we switched over to airsoft gear. First up was a regular feature of SI force-on-force classes: the suicide drill, also knows as the Matt Dillon drill. Pairs of students quick drew at seven yards and blazed away at each other with airsoft guns. Hits were generally almost simultaneous. At seven yards, there were some misses, but when we moved the distance in to five yards, the hit percentage rose by quite a bit.
Mutually Assured Destruction might work with nuclear weapons, but it isn't really effective on the streets. The solution is to move. To get off the X and not be there when the assailant's bullet comes calling. Randy had us try out getting off the X on our own a few times before introducing the Pekiti takeoff. The Pekiti takeoff was actually one of my motivations for taking this course. I took Close Range Gunfighting and Interactive Gunfighting from Gabe Suarez two years ago, just a month or so before he made the Pekiti takeoff a standard part of the curriculum. The descriptions of it online were enough to pique my interest, but not really enough to teach me the technique. It is definitely in the category of "easy to demonstrate but difficult to describe". The PTO really helps you accelerate off the X (even for a big guy like me), particularly when combined with a bit of a ducking motion in the direction of travel. We worked the Pekiti takeoff by itself for a while, then threw in the drawstroke, moving off the X and getting the gun on target as quickly as possible.
We swapped from airsoft back to live weapons and did a bit of retention shooting. Randy prefers shooing downward from close retention, towards the pelvis rather than horizontally into the chest. If you're shooting from retention, you're probably fending off the opponent with your support hand, and aiming downward makes it less likely that you'll put a bullet into it. After trying out the close retention stuff, we took a step back and shot some from the #3 (merge) position of the drawstroke. In this position, the gun is well below the line of sight, so it definitely still requires the use point shooting skills. However, with a bit of practice it's possible to direct the gun fairly well, at least at the kind of range where you'd be shooting from retention. In addition to drilling the close retention and partial extension positions, we shot a few drills that combined them, starting with a close retention shot, then stepping back to shoot at partial and full extension.
We move on to some GOTX work with live guns, practicing explosive movement to the 2 and 10, 3 and 9, and 5 and 7 o'clock directions. Using live guns you can't really go at full speed the way you can with airsoft, particularly when lined up with several other guys, but I think doing it live is pretty important for both acquiring confidence and learning how to manage recoil on the move.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch we spent some time on the pacing drill, moving off the X to one side, then turning around and walking back the other way, passing the gun from one hand to the other. This provides some practice on shooting while moving, as well as transferring the gun from one hand to the other. One of the things that becomes evident in force on force drills is how often hands and arms get hit. Being able to transition to the other hand, and being able to shoot well with both hands, is an important skill.
Our last live fire drill of the day involved giving the target some dental work. With three rounds in the gun, you got off the X to the forward diagonals (2 and 10). When the gun ran dry, it became an an impact weapon (a straight punch with the muzzle into the target's mouth). This was our first significant introduction to one of the big themes for this class: using firearms, contact weapons (including the firearm as a contact weapon) and empty hand together in a fight.
With that, we put our guns, knives, etc. back on the table and switched back to airsoft. Randy gave a quick introduction to defending against knife attacks, focusing on low line stabs. A shot to the gut like this is is probably the most common sort of knife attack on the streets. The lesson was basically a one-hour introduction to Tom Sotis' class that Randy hosted last summer, using the alternate X to block and clear the attacker's knife. During the course of the lesson, he brought out a pretty impressive collection of small, fixed blade knives, with a blunt trainer for every one. I always carry a folder or two, but my experience in this class has impressed on me how difficult it would be to access them in the middle of a hand to hand fight. This has me thinking about getting a fixed blade for carry, particularly for circumstances where I can't carry a pistol.
After we were done playing with knives, we finished up the day with a quick demonstration of the Inquartana in the confined space between two cars. This is another technique that I'd heard about on WT, but hadn't really been able to grasp until I was able to see it and try it for myself. We only had a couple of chances each at this. As we were on the verge of loosing daylight, we wrapped things up for the evening.
Sunday
In an effort to get the class done a little early today, we started at 8am instead of 9. We gained one student, who hadn't been able to make it to the first day, but lost another who's sunburn from Friday was beginning to blister. The weather was much sunnier today, and quite a bit hotter. I sucked down four bottles of gatorade and a couple of sodas and still probably wasn't drinking enough.
We started out with some retention work, basically what to do when an assailant manages to grab your gun. Randy demonstrated both stripping their hands of the gun using your elbow, and shaking them loose using a circular motion. I got some fairly good results using a technique I learned from Farnam, shoving the gun towards the assailant then jerking it back. This worked quite well, but it requires you to start out in something less than full extension (another good reason not to extend your gun out all the way).
During the disarm drills, one of the pairs of students ended up on the ground, so Randy segued into a ground fighting lesson. He had the same pair of students try to take each other down and the guy with the gun ended up on top, so we used that as our starting point. The disarming student started on his back with the armed student's gun arm tied up in his armpit. The first time I was the armed student, after trying to pry my arm loose I ended up just letting go of the gun and reached down and retrieved it with my left hand. Randy pointed out that, especially with my size advantage, a good choice might be to just get my legs underneath me and stand up, leaving the disarmer to try to support himself by hanging on to my gun arm, which worked pretty well. We moved on to accessing another weapon (a training knife in this case) and using that to cut your way to the gun. This seemed to work well with accessible fixed blades, but with a folder it would leave you trying to hold on to your gun one-handed for quite a while.
After we finished rolling around on the ground, we ran some 3 on 1 multiple assailant drills. Based on my experience in Gabe's force on force class, I knew 3 on 1 really sucked, at least if you were the 1, and these drills bore out that experience. Randy introduced the element of using one of the assailants as uncooperative cover. Getting to that point was difficult, but if the defender managed to pull it off, it made a really big difference. Turning a 3 on 1 fight with no cover into a 2 on 1 fight with cover turns a really bad situation into a much better one.
Around this time, Randy realized that when we got off into ground fighting, we hadn't covered the disarming part of the retention and disarming segment, so we doubled back and worked those. I've learned a couple different methods of disarming from different instructors and the ones Randy demonstrated where definitely on the simple and brutal end of the spectrum, rather than some of the elegant, but more complicated maneuvers. Wrist goes one way, gun goes the other, and suddenly it's yours. One thing that differed a bit from previous disarm lessons was the context. Most disarm instruction assumes that you're being held at gunpoint by a mugger or robber. Randy pointed out that the disarm is a natural follow-up after you fail at a retention problem. The first thing to do when you loose a gun to someone is to take it back. He also emphasized following up the disarm with some sort of continued fighting action, rather than just standing there with the gun, or handing it back to restart the drill. He underlined this point by telling the story of a LA cop who, upon successfully disarming a suspect, handed the thug his gun back! That was what he was used to doing after performing a disarm in training. He promptly disarmed the suspect again, so no harm, no foul in this case, but definitely not something I want to emulate.
Disarming flowed naturally into defending sul, which was our next lesson. I learned defending sul from Gabe in CRG two years ago, but Randy introduced some new elements to it. One is the "Dracula Sul" position, which has to be the best name ever for a gunfighting technique. This is basically a one handed sul, with the support hand in a horizontal blocking position to keep an assailant off your gun (for the name, think Bella Lugosi holding a long black cape across his face). We practiced defending sul from assaults from both sides and the rear. Randy also emphasized continuing the fight beyond firing a couple of shots into the assailant from dracula sul, since one or two rounds, perhaps poorly placed since you're shooting from close retention, probably won't be a fight stopper. You need to get them turned around and start shooting them in the back or the back of the head.
Randy gave us an anti-carjacking lecture. In part, this was intended to get us ready for the vehicle shooting later this afternoon. However, it went quite a bit beyond just how to shoot from a car into things like general anti-carjacking techniques and strategies to avoid being ambushed in a parking lot.
At this point we were finished with airsoft and blue gun drills for the class, so we geared back up with live weapons and brought out some camp chairs and practiced shooting while seated. When you're shooting on the line, while seated, there's no way to draw without covering yourself or someone else (unless you're the guy way down at the end of the line). In the spirit of being responsible for one's own mistakes, Randy instructed us not to cover other students when drawing. As far as not shooting ourselves, well, these drills really underlined the importance of good trigger discipline. We shot targets to our left, then turned around and shot to the right. Aside from potential excitement during the drawstroke, these angles are relatively easy. Shooting to the rear while seated, on the other hand, is a bit more of a challenge. In most circumstances, it would probably be better to get out of the chair and shoot from kneeling or standing, but if you're in a car, or trapped in a booth at a restaurant, that might not be an option. We practiced both torquing ourselves around to shoot, and getting to a kneeling position from the chair and firing.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that always comes up during force on force drills is how common it is to get hit in the hands or arms (I have two bloody welts on my forearm from getting shot during the 3 on 1 drills that attest to this). Thus, it may be necessary to shoot one handed, perhaps with the off hand. Obviously the best way to do this would be to pass the gun from the injured arm to the working one as we did on Saturday, but the obvious reaction to getting shot in the hand or arm would probably be to drop what you are holding, so Randy had us practice grabbing our guns from the deck with your support hand and firing. He also demonstrated a one handed reload and had us practice that during our after action drills.
At this point we moved the camp chairs out of the way and did a few final reps of getting off the X, first against paper targets, then against Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell.
We adjourned to our cars for some dry fire practice drawing and aiming at threats in various directions. Aiming directly out the drivers side and passenger side windows is fairly easy, as is aiming at targets diagonally ahead of the car on the driver's side. Targets closer to straight ahead are more difficult, as are targets to the rear passenger side. Targets on the driver's side to the rear are much more difficult really requiring you to twist around in the seat and shoot from an uncomfortable position. It seemed like this was a bit easier for the guys with roomier trucks, as opposed to my sedan. One way to get around this is to pop the door open and lean out and shoot, but if the door is locked this may take too long.
While Randy recommended leaving your seatbelt unbuckled until you're actually moving, to provide easier access, if you're carjacked at a stoplight, your belt may be buckled anyway. I found that the belt itself wasn't really an obstacle to getting to my gun, but when the belt was holding the cover garment in place that made things difficult. Ripping the cover garment out from under the belt with the support hand seemed to be the best way to provide access.
After dry firing, we loaded up our pistols and lined up the cars for live fire from inside our vehicles. It was just like a drive through, we pulled up, shot Ted on Randy's command, and drove to the back of the line. Each person got at least two runs at each position (passenger side, driver's side, forward, and rear). Randy described a short scenario for each string of fire (my favorite was the chainsaw wielding guy in a gimp suit). He also included one scenario where shooting wasn't an appropriate response, to emphasize that in your car the accelerator pedal is often a better tool for resolving a dangerous situation than a firearm. I managed not to shoot my car, but I think I'll probably spend a while picking brass out of odd places inside of my car.
Conclusions
This was really a great class. In particular, Randy did an excellent job integrating gun focused fighting skills with knife and empty hand skills. I've had a fair bit of pistol training and a little bit of experience with more combative stuff, but this is the first training experience I've had that really integrates them. This wasn't just a pistol course and a combative course mashed together, the integrated, fight focused nature really pervaded the entire course.
I've felt that hand to hand and knife skills have been a hole in my skillset ever since I took CRG and force on force from Gabe two years ago. After taking this class and Tom Sotis' class earlier this summer I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the non-firearm stuff. I definitely want to continue with Sotis' classes as well as taking the 0-5 foot class from Gabe Suarez when he comes to South Carolina a year from now.
As I said in my AAR for the snubby seminar on Friday, these were the first SI classes I've taken from an instructor other than Gabe. Gabe is obviously the headliner when it comes to Suarez International instructors, but Randy did a great job teaching this class. I would not hesitate to take another class from him in the future.
I would definitely recommend both the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting course and anything taught by Randy Harris!
I brought my usual Glock 21, carried in a Comp-Tac C-T.A.C. IWB holster at 3:30. For the airsoft portions of the class, I had a Glock 17 airsoft gun, which fits pretty well in the G21 holster. I also brought along my USP Compact airsoft as a loaner.
There were a total of seven people in the class, including me. Most of them were shooting Glocks, while two students carried SIGs (one of the SIG shooters also had a Makarov). An AIWB holster with a closed front concealment garment was the most common carry method. One fellow carried on a load bearing vest Saturday morning, but he switched over to a belt rig for the afternoon.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows and a braying donkey in the next field.
Saturday Morning
The sky was overcast again Saturday, and it sprinkled off an on throughout the day. Thankfully, it never really poured and we were able to keep shooting the entire day.
We started out with five rounds of slow fire to give Randy some idea of our marksmanship capabilities. Everyone in the class was able to produce a fairly tight group in these circumstances. Shooting the Glock, with a big sight radius and relatively light trigger was a positive luxury compared with all the snubby work we did on Friday.
After divesting ourselves of guns, knives, OC, impact weapons and other dangerous implements, we switched over to airsoft gear. First up was a regular feature of SI force-on-force classes: the suicide drill, also knows as the Matt Dillon drill. Pairs of students quick drew at seven yards and blazed away at each other with airsoft guns. Hits were generally almost simultaneous. At seven yards, there were some misses, but when we moved the distance in to five yards, the hit percentage rose by quite a bit.
Mutually Assured Destruction might work with nuclear weapons, but it isn't really effective on the streets. The solution is to move. To get off the X and not be there when the assailant's bullet comes calling. Randy had us try out getting off the X on our own a few times before introducing the Pekiti takeoff. The Pekiti takeoff was actually one of my motivations for taking this course. I took Close Range Gunfighting and Interactive Gunfighting from Gabe Suarez two years ago, just a month or so before he made the Pekiti takeoff a standard part of the curriculum. The descriptions of it online were enough to pique my interest, but not really enough to teach me the technique. It is definitely in the category of "easy to demonstrate but difficult to describe". The PTO really helps you accelerate off the X (even for a big guy like me), particularly when combined with a bit of a ducking motion in the direction of travel. We worked the Pekiti takeoff by itself for a while, then threw in the drawstroke, moving off the X and getting the gun on target as quickly as possible.
We swapped from airsoft back to live weapons and did a bit of retention shooting. Randy prefers shooing downward from close retention, towards the pelvis rather than horizontally into the chest. If you're shooting from retention, you're probably fending off the opponent with your support hand, and aiming downward makes it less likely that you'll put a bullet into it. After trying out the close retention stuff, we took a step back and shot some from the #3 (merge) position of the drawstroke. In this position, the gun is well below the line of sight, so it definitely still requires the use point shooting skills. However, with a bit of practice it's possible to direct the gun fairly well, at least at the kind of range where you'd be shooting from retention. In addition to drilling the close retention and partial extension positions, we shot a few drills that combined them, starting with a close retention shot, then stepping back to shoot at partial and full extension.
We move on to some GOTX work with live guns, practicing explosive movement to the 2 and 10, 3 and 9, and 5 and 7 o'clock directions. Using live guns you can't really go at full speed the way you can with airsoft, particularly when lined up with several other guys, but I think doing it live is pretty important for both acquiring confidence and learning how to manage recoil on the move.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch we spent some time on the pacing drill, moving off the X to one side, then turning around and walking back the other way, passing the gun from one hand to the other. This provides some practice on shooting while moving, as well as transferring the gun from one hand to the other. One of the things that becomes evident in force on force drills is how often hands and arms get hit. Being able to transition to the other hand, and being able to shoot well with both hands, is an important skill.
Our last live fire drill of the day involved giving the target some dental work. With three rounds in the gun, you got off the X to the forward diagonals (2 and 10). When the gun ran dry, it became an an impact weapon (a straight punch with the muzzle into the target's mouth). This was our first significant introduction to one of the big themes for this class: using firearms, contact weapons (including the firearm as a contact weapon) and empty hand together in a fight.
With that, we put our guns, knives, etc. back on the table and switched back to airsoft. Randy gave a quick introduction to defending against knife attacks, focusing on low line stabs. A shot to the gut like this is is probably the most common sort of knife attack on the streets. The lesson was basically a one-hour introduction to Tom Sotis' class that Randy hosted last summer, using the alternate X to block and clear the attacker's knife. During the course of the lesson, he brought out a pretty impressive collection of small, fixed blade knives, with a blunt trainer for every one. I always carry a folder or two, but my experience in this class has impressed on me how difficult it would be to access them in the middle of a hand to hand fight. This has me thinking about getting a fixed blade for carry, particularly for circumstances where I can't carry a pistol.
After we were done playing with knives, we finished up the day with a quick demonstration of the Inquartana in the confined space between two cars. This is another technique that I'd heard about on WT, but hadn't really been able to grasp until I was able to see it and try it for myself. We only had a couple of chances each at this. As we were on the verge of loosing daylight, we wrapped things up for the evening.
Sunday
In an effort to get the class done a little early today, we started at 8am instead of 9. We gained one student, who hadn't been able to make it to the first day, but lost another who's sunburn from Friday was beginning to blister. The weather was much sunnier today, and quite a bit hotter. I sucked down four bottles of gatorade and a couple of sodas and still probably wasn't drinking enough.
We started out with some retention work, basically what to do when an assailant manages to grab your gun. Randy demonstrated both stripping their hands of the gun using your elbow, and shaking them loose using a circular motion. I got some fairly good results using a technique I learned from Farnam, shoving the gun towards the assailant then jerking it back. This worked quite well, but it requires you to start out in something less than full extension (another good reason not to extend your gun out all the way).
During the disarm drills, one of the pairs of students ended up on the ground, so Randy segued into a ground fighting lesson. He had the same pair of students try to take each other down and the guy with the gun ended up on top, so we used that as our starting point. The disarming student started on his back with the armed student's gun arm tied up in his armpit. The first time I was the armed student, after trying to pry my arm loose I ended up just letting go of the gun and reached down and retrieved it with my left hand. Randy pointed out that, especially with my size advantage, a good choice might be to just get my legs underneath me and stand up, leaving the disarmer to try to support himself by hanging on to my gun arm, which worked pretty well. We moved on to accessing another weapon (a training knife in this case) and using that to cut your way to the gun. This seemed to work well with accessible fixed blades, but with a folder it would leave you trying to hold on to your gun one-handed for quite a while.
After we finished rolling around on the ground, we ran some 3 on 1 multiple assailant drills. Based on my experience in Gabe's force on force class, I knew 3 on 1 really sucked, at least if you were the 1, and these drills bore out that experience. Randy introduced the element of using one of the assailants as uncooperative cover. Getting to that point was difficult, but if the defender managed to pull it off, it made a really big difference. Turning a 3 on 1 fight with no cover into a 2 on 1 fight with cover turns a really bad situation into a much better one.
Around this time, Randy realized that when we got off into ground fighting, we hadn't covered the disarming part of the retention and disarming segment, so we doubled back and worked those. I've learned a couple different methods of disarming from different instructors and the ones Randy demonstrated where definitely on the simple and brutal end of the spectrum, rather than some of the elegant, but more complicated maneuvers. Wrist goes one way, gun goes the other, and suddenly it's yours. One thing that differed a bit from previous disarm lessons was the context. Most disarm instruction assumes that you're being held at gunpoint by a mugger or robber. Randy pointed out that the disarm is a natural follow-up after you fail at a retention problem. The first thing to do when you loose a gun to someone is to take it back. He also emphasized following up the disarm with some sort of continued fighting action, rather than just standing there with the gun, or handing it back to restart the drill. He underlined this point by telling the story of a LA cop who, upon successfully disarming a suspect, handed the thug his gun back! That was what he was used to doing after performing a disarm in training. He promptly disarmed the suspect again, so no harm, no foul in this case, but definitely not something I want to emulate.
Disarming flowed naturally into defending sul, which was our next lesson. I learned defending sul from Gabe in CRG two years ago, but Randy introduced some new elements to it. One is the "Dracula Sul" position, which has to be the best name ever for a gunfighting technique. This is basically a one handed sul, with the support hand in a horizontal blocking position to keep an assailant off your gun (for the name, think Bella Lugosi holding a long black cape across his face). We practiced defending sul from assaults from both sides and the rear. Randy also emphasized continuing the fight beyond firing a couple of shots into the assailant from dracula sul, since one or two rounds, perhaps poorly placed since you're shooting from close retention, probably won't be a fight stopper. You need to get them turned around and start shooting them in the back or the back of the head.
Randy gave us an anti-carjacking lecture. In part, this was intended to get us ready for the vehicle shooting later this afternoon. However, it went quite a bit beyond just how to shoot from a car into things like general anti-carjacking techniques and strategies to avoid being ambushed in a parking lot.
At this point we were finished with airsoft and blue gun drills for the class, so we geared back up with live weapons and brought out some camp chairs and practiced shooting while seated. When you're shooting on the line, while seated, there's no way to draw without covering yourself or someone else (unless you're the guy way down at the end of the line). In the spirit of being responsible for one's own mistakes, Randy instructed us not to cover other students when drawing. As far as not shooting ourselves, well, these drills really underlined the importance of good trigger discipline. We shot targets to our left, then turned around and shot to the right. Aside from potential excitement during the drawstroke, these angles are relatively easy. Shooting to the rear while seated, on the other hand, is a bit more of a challenge. In most circumstances, it would probably be better to get out of the chair and shoot from kneeling or standing, but if you're in a car, or trapped in a booth at a restaurant, that might not be an option. We practiced both torquing ourselves around to shoot, and getting to a kneeling position from the chair and firing.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that always comes up during force on force drills is how common it is to get hit in the hands or arms (I have two bloody welts on my forearm from getting shot during the 3 on 1 drills that attest to this). Thus, it may be necessary to shoot one handed, perhaps with the off hand. Obviously the best way to do this would be to pass the gun from the injured arm to the working one as we did on Saturday, but the obvious reaction to getting shot in the hand or arm would probably be to drop what you are holding, so Randy had us practice grabbing our guns from the deck with your support hand and firing. He also demonstrated a one handed reload and had us practice that during our after action drills.
At this point we moved the camp chairs out of the way and did a few final reps of getting off the X, first against paper targets, then against Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell.
We adjourned to our cars for some dry fire practice drawing and aiming at threats in various directions. Aiming directly out the drivers side and passenger side windows is fairly easy, as is aiming at targets diagonally ahead of the car on the driver's side. Targets closer to straight ahead are more difficult, as are targets to the rear passenger side. Targets on the driver's side to the rear are much more difficult really requiring you to twist around in the seat and shoot from an uncomfortable position. It seemed like this was a bit easier for the guys with roomier trucks, as opposed to my sedan. One way to get around this is to pop the door open and lean out and shoot, but if the door is locked this may take too long.
While Randy recommended leaving your seatbelt unbuckled until you're actually moving, to provide easier access, if you're carjacked at a stoplight, your belt may be buckled anyway. I found that the belt itself wasn't really an obstacle to getting to my gun, but when the belt was holding the cover garment in place that made things difficult. Ripping the cover garment out from under the belt with the support hand seemed to be the best way to provide access.
After dry firing, we loaded up our pistols and lined up the cars for live fire from inside our vehicles. It was just like a drive through, we pulled up, shot Ted on Randy's command, and drove to the back of the line. Each person got at least two runs at each position (passenger side, driver's side, forward, and rear). Randy described a short scenario for each string of fire (my favorite was the chainsaw wielding guy in a gimp suit). He also included one scenario where shooting wasn't an appropriate response, to emphasize that in your car the accelerator pedal is often a better tool for resolving a dangerous situation than a firearm. I managed not to shoot my car, but I think I'll probably spend a while picking brass out of odd places inside of my car.
Conclusions
This was really a great class. In particular, Randy did an excellent job integrating gun focused fighting skills with knife and empty hand skills. I've had a fair bit of pistol training and a little bit of experience with more combative stuff, but this is the first training experience I've had that really integrates them. This wasn't just a pistol course and a combative course mashed together, the integrated, fight focused nature really pervaded the entire course.
I've felt that hand to hand and knife skills have been a hole in my skillset ever since I took CRG and force on force from Gabe two years ago. After taking this class and Tom Sotis' class earlier this summer I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the non-firearm stuff. I definitely want to continue with Sotis' classes as well as taking the 0-5 foot class from Gabe Suarez when he comes to South Carolina a year from now.
As I said in my AAR for the snubby seminar on Friday, these were the first SI classes I've taken from an instructor other than Gabe. Gabe is obviously the headliner when it comes to Suarez International instructors, but Randy did a great job teaching this class. I would not hesitate to take another class from him in the future.
I would definitely recommend both the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting course and anything taught by Randy Harris!
Suarez International Snub Nose Seminar/Pistol Tune Up
In early September I attended a one-day snub nose seminar and pistol tune up class taught by Randy Harris. This was my first Suarez International class taught by someone other than Gabe Suarez. I had a chance to meet Randy back in June when he hosted a class Tom Sotis, but I hadn't previously taken a class from him. However, I'd heard good things from others who had.
As the dual title implies, this class had two, somewhat distinct purposes. One was to focus on using snubby revolvers for self-defense, the other was to serve as a one-day introduction/refresher for the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum for folks who wanted to take the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class the following day. I had CRG in Salt Lake two years ago, and practice my skills regularly, so I was primarily interested in the snub nose portion of the class.
The class was fairly small, with a total of four people, including me (there were some fairly last minute cancellations). All of the attendees had some previous defensive shooting experience, though two had not previously taken Close Range Gunfighting.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows in the next field.
I used my Smith and Wesson 642 for the class. This gun is stock, save for a set of Crimson Trace laser grips. I did a little bit of work out of a Fist kydex pocket holster that I usually use to carry this as a backup gun, but I spent most of the time using a plastic Fobus belt holster, largely because it was most convenient (and got a little "Barney Miller" ribbing for doing that). Most of the other revolvers in the class were Smith and Wesson j-frames of one description or another, though there was one Ruger. One student shot the class using his Sig and Makarov autoloaders, using a borrowed j-frame only for a few revolver specific stuff reloading drills.
Morning
After the standard safety lecture, Randy started by talking about the history of pocket revolvers, from efforts to cut down cap and ball Colts to the Ruger LCR. One thing he noted was the tendency of some people to carry j-frames as a pacifier, seemingly hoping that it's mere presence would bring them peace (or at least peace of mind). In reality, being able to effectively win a fight using a j-frame probably takes more training and practice than using an autoloader.
He also spent a bit of time passing around various revolvers, noting different features, including hammerless or shrouded hammer models, ejector rod length, and differing frame materials (with the stainless steel Ruger weighing in at twice what an Airweight j-frame did). Several of the guns had XSSights front dots on them, one standard dot (a S&W M&P model) and one big dot.
We also discussed ammunition choices. Randy is not a big fan of the .357 out of a snub nose. In his opinion, the extra kick and muzzle flash are not worth it when weighted against the relatively modest increase in velocity the magnum round gives out of such a short barrel. His carry load (and mine) is the +P Cor-Bon DPX round.
The range portion of the class started out with some drawstroke work. Randy emphasized a fairly simple drawstroke based on bringing the gun up to the pectoral muscle and punching it straight out towards the target. We started out doing the punching motion with our fist, then moved on to some dry practice. Once everyone had the basic drawstroke down, Randy had us start incorporation movement. He gave a brief explanation on the virtues of getting off the X for the benefit to the folks who were new to the SI method, then we did some dry fire drills.
Moving on to live fire, we started out with some slow fire accuracy work from about four yards. Small revolvers are difficult to shoot well, and given their limited ammo supply, it is particularly important to put each round where it will be effective. Given how little I've actually shot my j-frame I thought I did pretty well here. Aside from one shot that I jerked, I had a fairly tight group, eating one ragged hole in the cardboard.
After a few strings of fire, we started working with different reloading methods. Randy had us compare speedloaders to speed strips, and doing a full reload from a speed strip to loading two rounds only. We also traded guns around, to give each shooter a chance to try drawing a second gun rather than reloading. This was one of the few times during the day I actually worked out of my pocket holster on the left side. Even from a pocket holster, drawing a second gun is definitely quickest, about on a par with reloading a semi-automatic. If possible, the New York reload is definitely the way to go.
Randy also introduced after action drills. Most of it was the usual SI stuff (assess the target, look for other bad guys down range, sul scan, reload, check for injury). One interesting variation he described was using the #2 position in the drawstroke (with the gun held in the primary hand only, up against the pectoral muscle, pointed about 45 degrees downward) instead of sul. This allows you to keep the off hand free to block with in case you turn around to find a fist or knife coming at you. This does seem to have it's merits, but between previous SI classes and shooting with the Utah Polite Society, sul is pretty ingrained for me so that's what I used for most of the class.
We broke for a late lunch and everyone drove over to a local eatery for some food.
Afternoon
After lunch, we got to the meat of a CRG type course, getting off the X, live fire, in every direction. We started out working the forward diagonals, to the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock directions. I've done this before, so I didn't have much trouble with the moving and shooting. However, Randy wanted us to follow each burst of 2-4 rounds to the body with a round or two to the head. I really struggled with the headshots, particularly when going to the left and shooting one handed. I hadn't been using my laser for most of the day, but I turned it back on now. It helped a little bit (the day was cloudy enough to make it visible) but most of my trouble seemed to be trigger pull related. I definitely need some more practice with this gun.
Once everyone was comfortable with moving to 2 and 10, we worked the other directions, starting with 3 and 9 o'clock, then the rear diagonals, 5 and 7 o'clock. The 3 and 9 weren't too difficult, but I found moving to the 5 and 7 while firing the snubby considerably harder than doing the same thing with a Glock. The combination of a smaller gun and heavier trigger pull makes it much more challenging. To finish up the GOTX portion of the class, we did a bit of movement directly away from the target, to the 6 o'clock.
We also did some work with multiple attackers. Moving off to the right, we practiced transitioning from the closer attacker to another. This is where the j-frame's limited ammo capacity becomes an obvious shortcoming. Given how badly pistol bullets suck, five rounds to distribute among two attackers just isn't that confidence inspiring. We didn't even try to do anything with three targets.
Next Randy demonstrated how to reload a revolver one-handed. This is quite an exercise, starting with squirming your hand around to simultaneously slide the cylinder release forward and push the cylinder out (the fellow shooting the Ruger noted that this is an area where the pushbutton cylinder release is an advantage). If the chambers are fairly clean (which they weren't by this part of the class) the empty cases can be ejected by raising the muzzle, jerking the gun back, and bringing it to a sudden stop. If this doesn't work, it's time for some more finger squirming to get your hand far enough forward to hit the ejector and pound the butt of the gun into your leg. This will generally free all but the most recalcitrant case. Shove the barrel inside your waistband (a bit of a trick with the short barrel of the snub nose) retrieve a speedloader and load the gun, then close the cylinder against your body. This tortuous process generally seemed to take at least thirty seconds, not something you want to be doing in the middle of a gunfight. Of course, then Randy had us do this only using the left hand.
After we managed to get our guns back into action with only one hand, Randy brought out Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell. We got off the X at about five yards and tried to knock Ted down. This proved a bit challenging, because once you got far enough off the X the angle became oblique enough that even a solid hit would not necessarily knock the target down. Either a hit very early, or multiple hits in rapid succession were required. Some folks got off to one side or the other and shot more than ten rounds at it, including several hits, without knocking it down.
We moved back to about fifteen yards and did some long range shooting (fifteen yards definitely qualifies as "long range" with tiny, double action revolvers). At this distance, Ted was pretty difficult to knock down. I managed to get only one or two hits on the steel from each cylinder of ammo, but I'm pretty sure even my non-steel hits were probably hitting the plastic body of the target.
Conclusions
I probably fired more rounds through my j-frame in this class than I have since I bought it. I feel quite a bit more comfortable with it now, though some additional practice will definitely be required. In particular, I need to work on sooting it one-handed. Two handed, I could be relatively accurate, but with one hand my accuracy went completely to hell.
In hindsight, I kind of regret using the belt holster so much. Since I only carry this gun as a BUG in my left pocket, I really should have gone hardcore and shot the whole class left handed from the pocket holster.
From what work I did from the pocket, and watching others draw from there, it seemed like you could draw fairly quickly and effectively, even when getting off the X, if you started out with the hand on the gun. If you had to reach into the pocket and acquire a firing grip, it about doubled the time required and make it difficult to get off the X at the same time. Being able to have your hand on the gun without alerting others is an advantage to pocket carry, but it's also practically a necessity to deploy the gun quickly from the pocket.
Reloads are challenging with speedloaders, painfully slow with speed strips, and downright tortuous one-handed. On the other hand, the New York reload rocks! I am happy carrying my Glock, but if I were to go with just a j-frame, two of them are definitely the way to go.
This was a good class overall, I definitely got a lot out of it. If it had a shortcoming, it was probably the effort to serve both as a snubby class, and as an intro to the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum at the same time. The trigger time, even on the most basic CRG type drills was welcome, but some of the explanations of why to do these things were a bit redundant for me. I don't really need to be convinced of the virtues of getting off the X. Looking at it from the other side, those who hadn't had CRG before, I have to wonder if these explanations kind of got short shrift amid all the snubnose specific stuff. I think they probably got a solid intro to the basic CRG skills, but they probably could have used some more repetitions and more explanation of the whys and wherefores of getting off the X and after action drills in lieu of the snubby specific stuff. That being said, I can see why these two elements were combined. This was a very small class as it was, cutting out either element would have made the class even smaller (I probably wouldn't have come without the snubby stuff, for instance).
I think a snub nose specific class is a great idea for anyone who regularly carries a small revolver, whether as a primary gun, backup, or both. A snubby's characteristics are different enough from a medium to large autoloader that some gun-specific instruction is very useful. Randy Harris did an good job presenting the material and coaching students. I left this class wanting to train with him again, which was good because I was registered for the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class starting the next day!
As the dual title implies, this class had two, somewhat distinct purposes. One was to focus on using snubby revolvers for self-defense, the other was to serve as a one-day introduction/refresher for the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum for folks who wanted to take the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class the following day. I had CRG in Salt Lake two years ago, and practice my skills regularly, so I was primarily interested in the snub nose portion of the class.
The class was fairly small, with a total of four people, including me (there were some fairly last minute cancellations). All of the attendees had some previous defensive shooting experience, though two had not previously taken Close Range Gunfighting.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows in the next field.
I used my Smith and Wesson 642 for the class. This gun is stock, save for a set of Crimson Trace laser grips. I did a little bit of work out of a Fist kydex pocket holster that I usually use to carry this as a backup gun, but I spent most of the time using a plastic Fobus belt holster, largely because it was most convenient (and got a little "Barney Miller" ribbing for doing that). Most of the other revolvers in the class were Smith and Wesson j-frames of one description or another, though there was one Ruger. One student shot the class using his Sig and Makarov autoloaders, using a borrowed j-frame only for a few revolver specific stuff reloading drills.
Morning
After the standard safety lecture, Randy started by talking about the history of pocket revolvers, from efforts to cut down cap and ball Colts to the Ruger LCR. One thing he noted was the tendency of some people to carry j-frames as a pacifier, seemingly hoping that it's mere presence would bring them peace (or at least peace of mind). In reality, being able to effectively win a fight using a j-frame probably takes more training and practice than using an autoloader.
He also spent a bit of time passing around various revolvers, noting different features, including hammerless or shrouded hammer models, ejector rod length, and differing frame materials (with the stainless steel Ruger weighing in at twice what an Airweight j-frame did). Several of the guns had XSSights front dots on them, one standard dot (a S&W M&P model) and one big dot.
We also discussed ammunition choices. Randy is not a big fan of the .357 out of a snub nose. In his opinion, the extra kick and muzzle flash are not worth it when weighted against the relatively modest increase in velocity the magnum round gives out of such a short barrel. His carry load (and mine) is the +P Cor-Bon DPX round.
The range portion of the class started out with some drawstroke work. Randy emphasized a fairly simple drawstroke based on bringing the gun up to the pectoral muscle and punching it straight out towards the target. We started out doing the punching motion with our fist, then moved on to some dry practice. Once everyone had the basic drawstroke down, Randy had us start incorporation movement. He gave a brief explanation on the virtues of getting off the X for the benefit to the folks who were new to the SI method, then we did some dry fire drills.
Moving on to live fire, we started out with some slow fire accuracy work from about four yards. Small revolvers are difficult to shoot well, and given their limited ammo supply, it is particularly important to put each round where it will be effective. Given how little I've actually shot my j-frame I thought I did pretty well here. Aside from one shot that I jerked, I had a fairly tight group, eating one ragged hole in the cardboard.
After a few strings of fire, we started working with different reloading methods. Randy had us compare speedloaders to speed strips, and doing a full reload from a speed strip to loading two rounds only. We also traded guns around, to give each shooter a chance to try drawing a second gun rather than reloading. This was one of the few times during the day I actually worked out of my pocket holster on the left side. Even from a pocket holster, drawing a second gun is definitely quickest, about on a par with reloading a semi-automatic. If possible, the New York reload is definitely the way to go.
Randy also introduced after action drills. Most of it was the usual SI stuff (assess the target, look for other bad guys down range, sul scan, reload, check for injury). One interesting variation he described was using the #2 position in the drawstroke (with the gun held in the primary hand only, up against the pectoral muscle, pointed about 45 degrees downward) instead of sul. This allows you to keep the off hand free to block with in case you turn around to find a fist or knife coming at you. This does seem to have it's merits, but between previous SI classes and shooting with the Utah Polite Society, sul is pretty ingrained for me so that's what I used for most of the class.
We broke for a late lunch and everyone drove over to a local eatery for some food.
Afternoon
After lunch, we got to the meat of a CRG type course, getting off the X, live fire, in every direction. We started out working the forward diagonals, to the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock directions. I've done this before, so I didn't have much trouble with the moving and shooting. However, Randy wanted us to follow each burst of 2-4 rounds to the body with a round or two to the head. I really struggled with the headshots, particularly when going to the left and shooting one handed. I hadn't been using my laser for most of the day, but I turned it back on now. It helped a little bit (the day was cloudy enough to make it visible) but most of my trouble seemed to be trigger pull related. I definitely need some more practice with this gun.
Once everyone was comfortable with moving to 2 and 10, we worked the other directions, starting with 3 and 9 o'clock, then the rear diagonals, 5 and 7 o'clock. The 3 and 9 weren't too difficult, but I found moving to the 5 and 7 while firing the snubby considerably harder than doing the same thing with a Glock. The combination of a smaller gun and heavier trigger pull makes it much more challenging. To finish up the GOTX portion of the class, we did a bit of movement directly away from the target, to the 6 o'clock.
We also did some work with multiple attackers. Moving off to the right, we practiced transitioning from the closer attacker to another. This is where the j-frame's limited ammo capacity becomes an obvious shortcoming. Given how badly pistol bullets suck, five rounds to distribute among two attackers just isn't that confidence inspiring. We didn't even try to do anything with three targets.
Next Randy demonstrated how to reload a revolver one-handed. This is quite an exercise, starting with squirming your hand around to simultaneously slide the cylinder release forward and push the cylinder out (the fellow shooting the Ruger noted that this is an area where the pushbutton cylinder release is an advantage). If the chambers are fairly clean (which they weren't by this part of the class) the empty cases can be ejected by raising the muzzle, jerking the gun back, and bringing it to a sudden stop. If this doesn't work, it's time for some more finger squirming to get your hand far enough forward to hit the ejector and pound the butt of the gun into your leg. This will generally free all but the most recalcitrant case. Shove the barrel inside your waistband (a bit of a trick with the short barrel of the snub nose) retrieve a speedloader and load the gun, then close the cylinder against your body. This tortuous process generally seemed to take at least thirty seconds, not something you want to be doing in the middle of a gunfight. Of course, then Randy had us do this only using the left hand.
After we managed to get our guns back into action with only one hand, Randy brought out Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell. We got off the X at about five yards and tried to knock Ted down. This proved a bit challenging, because once you got far enough off the X the angle became oblique enough that even a solid hit would not necessarily knock the target down. Either a hit very early, or multiple hits in rapid succession were required. Some folks got off to one side or the other and shot more than ten rounds at it, including several hits, without knocking it down.
We moved back to about fifteen yards and did some long range shooting (fifteen yards definitely qualifies as "long range" with tiny, double action revolvers). At this distance, Ted was pretty difficult to knock down. I managed to get only one or two hits on the steel from each cylinder of ammo, but I'm pretty sure even my non-steel hits were probably hitting the plastic body of the target.
Conclusions
I probably fired more rounds through my j-frame in this class than I have since I bought it. I feel quite a bit more comfortable with it now, though some additional practice will definitely be required. In particular, I need to work on sooting it one-handed. Two handed, I could be relatively accurate, but with one hand my accuracy went completely to hell.
In hindsight, I kind of regret using the belt holster so much. Since I only carry this gun as a BUG in my left pocket, I really should have gone hardcore and shot the whole class left handed from the pocket holster.
From what work I did from the pocket, and watching others draw from there, it seemed like you could draw fairly quickly and effectively, even when getting off the X, if you started out with the hand on the gun. If you had to reach into the pocket and acquire a firing grip, it about doubled the time required and make it difficult to get off the X at the same time. Being able to have your hand on the gun without alerting others is an advantage to pocket carry, but it's also practically a necessity to deploy the gun quickly from the pocket.
Reloads are challenging with speedloaders, painfully slow with speed strips, and downright tortuous one-handed. On the other hand, the New York reload rocks! I am happy carrying my Glock, but if I were to go with just a j-frame, two of them are definitely the way to go.
This was a good class overall, I definitely got a lot out of it. If it had a shortcoming, it was probably the effort to serve both as a snubby class, and as an intro to the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum at the same time. The trigger time, even on the most basic CRG type drills was welcome, but some of the explanations of why to do these things were a bit redundant for me. I don't really need to be convinced of the virtues of getting off the X. Looking at it from the other side, those who hadn't had CRG before, I have to wonder if these explanations kind of got short shrift amid all the snubnose specific stuff. I think they probably got a solid intro to the basic CRG skills, but they probably could have used some more repetitions and more explanation of the whys and wherefores of getting off the X and after action drills in lieu of the snubby specific stuff. That being said, I can see why these two elements were combined. This was a very small class as it was, cutting out either element would have made the class even smaller (I probably wouldn't have come without the snubby stuff, for instance).
I think a snub nose specific class is a great idea for anyone who regularly carries a small revolver, whether as a primary gun, backup, or both. A snubby's characteristics are different enough from a medium to large autoloader that some gun-specific instruction is very useful. Randy Harris did an good job presenting the material and coaching students. I left this class wanting to train with him again, which was good because I was registered for the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class starting the next day!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
One Strange Adventure
From the Perry City News:
Somewhere on a Perry Mountainside
Saturday 11-07-08 5:45PM
Perry Police and Box Elder County law enforcement responded
to a call of suspicious activity Saturday evening on the bench
above Perry and Willard.Perhaps a group of terrorist were training
in the area? Perry Police arrived at the base of Perry canyon
and set up a road block just as darkness fell.
Officers manning the road block must have become concerned
when half dozen trucks and SUVs crawled down the mountain
in the dark toward them. At some point more back up must
have been called. Fortunately for all concerned, a single
individual on a quad was 5 minutes ahead of the convoy of
suspect vehicles.
When officers stopped this armed individual the officers learned
that the group was conducting an advanced concealed weapons
class and was hosted by a local licensed concealed firearms
permit (CFP) instructor. The name of the group was the
“Utah Polite Society”. This must have been great relief to
the officers.
By the time the convoy reached the road block the officers were
all smiles, friendly and very cordial. As the back up officers
arrived the first officers were more involved in bringing up the
newly arriving law enforcement than worrying about 20 heavily
armed men in the trucks.
A female Box Elder Sheriff Officer took over as spokes person
for the law enforcement group and explained the call that had
come into dispatch. She apologized for the inconvenience and
explained that the group had done nothing wrong. She recorded
the CFP instructors name and released the group.
She recommended that if the group was to do this again, that
someone call into Sheriff’s dispatch to let them know what
going on and avoid suspicion. Some of the officers commented
that the group lived up to the name “Utah Polite Society”.
All officers conducted themselves in a professional,
courteous and proper manner.
The CFP instructor feels this was a very positive encounter for
all parties involved and a great wrap up for the day. The instructor
feels that to avoid being mistaken as a terrorist cell this activity
should be done at a range.
This is another example why it is necessary for the Box Elder County
Commissioners to take some steps to establish a practice firing range
for its citizens.
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