The Utah Polite Society

Low Light Force on Force with Randy Harris

2010-10-09T19:03:00.001-06:00

Last weekend I attended Randy Harris’ Low Light Force on Force class. This is one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. In fact, I’d kind of been badgering Randy to teach it ever since he mentioned the possibility of doing a low light class about a year ago. I’ve had a little experience shooting in low light conditions at the Utah Polite Society night shoots, and it was enough to convince me that this was a subject demanding further training. While this was primarily a force-on-force class, we also did a bit of live fire shooting to explore issues like muzzle flash when shooting in low light that you can’t really examine with airsoft guns.

The class had six students. Two were Suarez International Staff Instructors (Alex Nieuwland and myself). I knew two of the students from previous SI classes in the southeast, but the other two were new to me. Five of the students had previously been to other SI classes, but one had only taken a class from that school in Pahrump. Most of the class was held in a warehouse in Chattanooga, with a trip to a local range for low light live-fire on Saturday night.

I used my G17 airsoft guns for the force-on-force and my Glock 21 for the live fire portion of the class. I also brought my Nok training knives, which saw quite a bit of use. For flashlights I used a Surefire 6P and a Firstlight Tomahawk (a small L-shaped light that allows you to hold both gun and light in something close to a normal two-handed grip.

Friday Night
The class began at six o’clock Friday. This evening session was largely a brief introduction to the SI force-on-force curriculum to get everyone on the same page before going into the low light stuff, though we did step outside for a bit of low-light work towards the end. Everyone introduced themselves and we signed the usual waivers. Randy started off with both the standard gun safety lecture and a force-on-force safety lecture.

As usual for a Suarez International FoF class, we began with the suicide drill, also known as the Matt Dillon drill. Two students set up facing each other at 5-7 yards and tried to draw and shoot the other without getting shot in return. At seven yards, sometimes one student or the other missed, but at five yards stand and deliver was pretty much mutual suicide (hence, the name of the drill).

The solution to this is to move without leaving a forwarding address before the bullet arrives. If you’re not where the assailant expects, he’s going to have to take a second or so to figure out what’s going on before he can shoot you. Randy explained the basic idea behind getting off the X, then volunteered me to talk a bit about the Pekiti takeoff. The Pekiti takeoff is a footwork technique we’ve adopted from Filipino martial arts for rapid, explosive movement that does a great job of getting you off the X in a hurry. Randy also talked about the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop, developed by John Boyd to explain how people process information, and how getting off the X requires the bad guy to go through his OODA loop again before he can shoot you.

We moved outside to the parking lot. Randy pointed out that despite it being well after sundown, it was by no means dark. There was a streetlight across the street that provided some illumination for the parking lot. Some folks, particularly those selling tactical flashlights, make a big deal out of the percentage of gunfights that take place “during hours of darkness”. What they neglect to mention is that all this means is an incident occurred between 6pm and 6am. Very few of these gunfights actually take place in complete darkness. Indeed, it would be hard to find many totally dark spots in an urban area other than windowless interior rooms. Unless you live out in the boonies somewhere or you carry a badge and search darkened warehouses as part of your job, we’re really talking about low light, rather than complete darkness.

We did some get off the X drills and in these lighting conditions (probably pretty typical for an urban area at night) nobody had any trouble seeing and recognizing the other guy going for his gun. I noticed that most of the other students were getting off the X directly to the right or left. I remarked on this to Randy and he talked a bit about the different directions we can use for getting off the X and why the forward angles (1 and 11 o’clock) are usually better against an opponent armed with a gun.

Randy gave his PESTS lecture. PESTS is an acronym that stands for Pay attention, Evade or escape, Stop their encroachment, Tell them to back off, and Step to 3 or 9. Pay attention is simply remaining alert. The first step towards dealing with any potential problem is to notice it and the earlier you can do this the better it is. Evade or escape means moving away to avoid the approaching BG. Stop there encroachment refers to taking measures to keep them from closing the distance on you. In daylight, the preferred method for doing this is the fence: hands up at chest height, palms out. This is not only a universal gesture for stop, it also gets your arms up where they can block or parry an incoming strike. This isn’t as effective as a stop signal in darkness though. This is where a flashlight comes in handy: illuminating someone is a good way to signal them not to come any closer. It can be very effective, particularly since the criminal element may assume that someone carrying a light is probably a cop, or at least not someone to mess with. There are two ways to approach this. The less aggressive way is to aim the light at their feet. This gets the message across without being provocative. Flashing them in the eyes is much more aggressive, and may end up provoking a fight, but it sends a stronger message and provides a greater tactical advantage by screwing with their vision a bit. Tell them to back off is pretty self-explanatory. Stepping to 3 or 9 is a way to check for an accomplice approaching from behind you without taking your eyes off the first guy.

We worked some more get off the X drills, including some using the flashlight. Randy talked about the flashbang technique. The flash part is briefly hitting them in the eyes with the beam of your light. The bang is following that up with your pistol. Of course, this assumes that you already have the light in hand. Trying to quick draw the light before or at the same time you draw your pistol just isn’t realistic. Getting hit in the eyes with the light was annoying, but in these conditions and at these distances the blinding power of a tactical light was somewhat overrated.

With this, we wrapped things up and adjourned until the next morning.

Saturday

After a relatively late night, Randy was nice enough to let us sleep a bit late, so we reconvened at 10 o’clock. We began with a brief review of the previous night’s festivities.

One of the difficulties with this class is that the warehouse where we were working had some skylights, and didn’t really get all that dark during the day, even with the lights off. There was a smaller room that got pretty dark with the windows covered up and we did most of our dark work in there.

Randy put us in the room and had us observe how visible he was coming through the door using a flashlight to floodlight the room. He contrasted this with using a brief flash of light to illuminate the room for a moment. Each of us gave the room a brief flash as we went by the door. As this went on, Randy had some people start making silly gestures to see how well people were really seeing what was inside the room. Even with really brief flashes they did pretty well. When I did it, instead of shining my light directly into the room, I bounced the beam off the room’s white ceiling. Randy picked up on this and we talked a bit about how this technique provides a more consistent illumination than having the bright spot at the center of the beam blowing out the less well illuminated portions of the room.

Since some of this material involved basically doing and entry on this room, we segued briefly into some discussion of CQB, mostly along the lines of “this is why doing room entries is really dangerous and you should avoid it if at all possible.”

We regrouped in the main warehouse and Randy talked about flashlights and flashlight techniques. There are two main roles for the flashlight: target acquisition and target identification. As we talked about the previous night, gunfights seldom take place in absolute darkness. Target acquisition can often be accomplished without using the light. In many circumstances, target identification doesn’t require the light either. Outside at night we didn’t have much trouble picking up on the drawstroke as a hostile action without using a light. There are circumstances where a flashlight is needed for target ID, and occasionally even for target acquisition, but they aren’t anywhere near as prevalent as the flashlight vendors would have you believe.

Randy divided tactical flashlights into three generations. Generation 1 lights are your traditional Maglights and similar brands. They are big and heavy, making them cumbersome to use with a weapon (but also making them excellent impact weapons). Generation 2 lights are your large rechargeable lights. These are popular with police officers because they use their lights enough for the cost of batteries (particularly expensive ones like CR123s) to be a concern. Generation 3 technology was originally developed for weapon lights, but it eventually migrated into small, powerful, hand-held lights like the Surefire 6P.

Moving on to flashlight techniques, we started with the FBI technique. The light is held at arm’s length, away from the body. The idea is that the enemy will shoot at the light, rather than at you. This seems to be a technique predicated on using the light as a floodlight. If used appropriately, in very short flashes, moving after each flash, the light shouldn’t be on long enough for the opponent to draw a bead on you. It can also make it hard to keep the light and gun coordinated. Nevertheless, it can be useful for things like shooting around cover.

We moved on to the Rogers technique, more commonly known as the Chapman technique. This is primarily a technique for big Gen 1 or 2 lights with side mounted switches, like a Maglight. The light is held in the support hand in a sword grip (like you might hold a fencing blade), up against the gun and gun hand, with the support side thumb on the switch and the smaller fingers wrapped around the gun’s grip as much as possible. This worked much better with a C-Cell Maglight than it did with a larger diameter D-Cell light. An alternative is the Ayoob method, which also brings the gun and a large flashlight together, but doesn’t try to wrap any support hand fingers around the grip of the gun. Another variant called the USMC method is useful for lights with very large bezels. It basically hooks the bezel on the knuckles of the primary hand.

The over/under technique, sometimes called the NYPD technique, puts the light under the butt of the gun.

The Hargreaves technique is for lights with tailcap switches. You hold the light in front of your pistol’s grip (or the magazine or magwell of a long gun) and pull it back to press the switch against your hand/magazine to illuminate. This works well with rifles that have straight magazines or magwells, but not so much with curved magazines like an AK.

The Harries technique is another method for Gen 3 lights with tailcap switches. The light is held in the support hand in an icepick grip. That hand is tucked under the primary hand and the two hands are held back to back. Randy emphasized that this technique was developed for use with the Weaver stance, maintaining it in an isosceles stance can be tiring. It may be easier to keep up for long periods if you relax the hands into more of an X, rather than holding them tightly back to back. For lights with switches near the bezel, the Van Keller technique is similar, but with the palm up and the light in a sword grip.

The Puckett method is intended for large Gen 1 and 2 lights with switches near the bezel. Grab the light by the bezel with your finger on the switch and rest the tail end of the light on your shoulder. This position not only supports the light, it also chambers it for use as in impact weapon.

The neck index is similar to the Puckett method, but intended for small Gen 3 lights with tailcaps. Hold the light in an icepick grip and hold it up against the base of the jaw. This keeps the light aligned where you’re looking and in a good position for use as an impact weapon. Along with the Puckett method, it is not a weapon focused technique, making it suitable for pre-fight uses of the flashlight as well as during the fight.

The last technique Randy talked about was the syringe or Surefire technique (also called the Rogers technique, just to make things confusing). This involves clamping the light between the fingers of your support hand as you grip your pistol in both hands. You pull the light back against the base of your thumb to activate it. Surefire makes a rubber ring that goes around a light and makes this easier, but it can be done with an unmodified light as well.

We tried out the different light positions using our own tube lights and the Maglights Randy brought. If I were using a big light, I would probably go with the Puckett method. With a small tube light, neck index seemed to work well, though Harries had advantages also. Syringe was useful, but fiddly to get set up. Randy also had me show off my Firstlight Tomahawk and how it could be used in conjunction with a two-handed firing grip on the gun.

We took a break for lunch. After eating we did some getting off the X. Because the skylights didn’t leave us with a lot of real darkness, Randy had us put our sunglasses on under our masks to simulate darkness. This was better than nothing, but not as good as really doing it in the dark. We worked gun against gun at first, then Randy introduced a knife wielding assailant into the equation. When I went up against the knife, I used my usual technique of bolting away from the guy and not worrying about the draw until I’d built up a bit of speed. This led to some more discussion about what directions to use when getting off the X, and how the response to a knife wielding assailant may differ from a gun wielding one.

After a while we moved into the dark room and did a bit of getting off the X there. The size of the room limited movement to a couple of steps, but it gave a much better feel for how this sort of thing would work in the dark, particularly from the bad guy’s perspective. After several repetitions, we started throwing in the flashbang technique. At this distance, roughly 4 yards, the blinding power of flashlights was definitely overrated. Throwing in the flash probably gave up as much in extra time to get off the X as it gained you by disrupting the opponent. I tried using the strobe function on my Firstlight Tomahawk as well. According to the students playing my adversaries, the strobe was no more effective than the solid beam.

We moved back out of the dark room and Randy talked about jamming the bad guy’s draw. Basically, if you’re within two arms’ reach of the guy and you see him going for his gun, you’re usually better off going hand to hand and trying to keep the gun in the holster than just getting off the X. Randy explained how to do this, then get to the guy’s flank where you can get your gun out and go to work on him without too much interference. We practiced this for a while, then wrapped up our force on force training for the day.

We broke for dinner. I had a nice meal with Randy, Alex, and one of the students from the class.

Saturday Evening – Live Fire

At 6 o’clock we rendezvoused at a local gun range for the live fire portion of the class. This was an indoor range, so we were kind of limited in what we could do compared to some SI classes, but it was sufficient for the purpose.

First off, Randy had us shoot a five shot group using our sights, just to establish a baseline. Everyone in the class shot pretty well. Next, he had us to go to full extension, acquire a good sight picture, then close our eyes and fire. We shot a five shot group this way, closing our eyes for each shot. The groups were a bit bigger than the ones with the eyes open, but not a whole lot.

Of course, this only really tests your ability to hold the gun steady without visual input, it doesn’t say as much about your ability to point the gun. Randy had us shoot another five rounds, closing our eyes as we went from the #3 position of the drawstroke to #4 (full extension). This established our pointing abilities. Again, groups widened a bit, but not by much. We followed this up by shooting rapid fire pairs and triples with our eyes closed, testing the ability to return to a proper point after recoil without any visual input. This also worked pretty well, with handspan sized groups for most students.

At this point, we’d pretty well established that we didn’t need to see our sights or even our gun in order to get good hits at 3 yards. Randy turned off the range lights and brought out a couple of lamps. We fired with the targets backlit first. This makes it pretty obvious where the target is, but doesn’t give you much visual input on your gun. Again, shots were definitely combat effective even with the limited visibility. We moved on to shooting with the light behind us, so we were backlit. This would have been a really sucky situation if the targets were shooting back, but against paper, this is actually easier than shooting with the targets backlit.

Randy reduced the light even further so that the targets were barely visible. We practiced using the brief illumination of the muzzle flash to adjust our subsequent shots. Interestingly, if you have everything really well lined up, you actually get a split second view of your sight alignment at the moment of discharge in the muzzle flash.

We brought the flashlight to bear, using the flashbang technique. In really dark conditions like this the reflected flash of your light can actually screw with your own vision a little bit. Next Randy had us floodlight the target with our lights, as if we were working form a solid piece of cover and shoot using the light. We worked this using the neck index and Harries techniques. I also tried it using both by tube light and my Firstlight Tomahawk. I had a jam during one of these drills, which I fixed using non-diagnostic malfunction clearance (no way to see what the problem was in the dark). However, I ended up dropping my light during the clearing process, while trying to rack the slide. It either requires more practice or tucking the light under my arm before doing malfunction clearance.

Our last drill of the night involved imagining the two sides of the booths as different pieces of cover and moving between them. I used my Kriss Super-V magazine (a 30 round Glock .45 magazine) for these drills. I intend to use it as my nightstand magazine and I wanted to see how it worked with a flashlight, particularly with the Harries technique (it works pretty well, as it turns out).

We finished up for the night at around 8 o’clock.

Sunday

At 9 o’clock the next morning we reconvened back at the warehouse. We began with a review of Saturday’s material. Randy gave a brief lecture on basic hand to hand, then segued into knife defense. He kept it mostly to very simple techniques: block or parry the attack with one hand and palm strike the guy in the face with the other as you pushed him off and moved away. We worked these in the light until everyone was comfortable with them, then moved to the dark room.

The hard part of doing knife defense in the dark is figuring out where the incoming strike is coming from well enough to block it. Even if you know what you’re doing, poor or incomplete blocks are going to be par for the course. The flip side of this is that the low light affects the assailant’s targeting as well. What is intended as a slash to the throat may end up anywhere between the ear and the shoulder. We worked the defensive techniques against high and low line attacks for a while, then introduced the flashlight.

Yesterday, the effects of a tactical light at about four yards weren’t that impressive. Inside arms reach is a different story. At this range, a quick flash from a typical tactical light will not only take out your low light vision for a second or so, it will also do a good job resetting your OODA loop. This is how well it works when you know it is coming, I can only imagine that it would be even more effective against someone unprepared. As long as the good guy got the assailant directly in the eyes with the brightest part of the flashlight beam, they almost always got past the assailant and out of the room without the attacker even taking a swing at them. In contrast to the flashbang technique we talked about earlier, Randy called this streaking, because first you flash them, then you run.

Giving them a good solid shot in the eyes does take some work though. Just like with a pistol, accurately point shooting with your flashlight requires practice. It’s also important to flash your light briefly, then move, rather than leaving the light on as you move. Dragging the light while it’s on gives the bad guy a pretty good idea which way you’re going. Out in the open this would matter less, but in a confined space like this it can be deadly. Alex dragged the light when I was the BG. Knowing which way he was going I was able to reach out, clothesline him, wrap him up in an one armed bear hug, and go to work on his kidney with a training knife.

The need to flash the light briefly, then douse it immediately makes clicky tailcaps undesirable. These switches allow momentary illumination with gentle pressure on the switch, but click on and stay that way if you press too far. This sort of carefully calibrated pressure is a tall order under stress. Even under just the stress of force-on-force, folks with the clicky tailcaps had difficulty. Several locked their lights on when they intended just a brief flash. On a tactical light I want a pure momentary switch that I can mash down as hard as I want that will still go off as soon as I let up.

After a short lunch break we did some work against multiple attackers at very close range. This is a really lousy situation to be in, and there are no really good answers. The strategy Randy recommended was to jam one attacker’s draw and use him as uncooperative cover against the other. This takes quite a bit of aggressive action to pull off, and whether it works or not largely depends on how long it takes the second guy to spin through is OODA loop and start coming after you.

As usual, after doing this in the light for a while we moved into the dark room. With two assailants in there, the small size of the room really came into play. Lots of folks ended up either running themselves (bad) or their opponents (good) into the walls. I ran Alex into the doorjam spine first (sorry about that Alex). We also brought the flashlight into play, flashing one opponent in the eyes and jamming the other. Given the limited space and proximity to the door, getting out of the room rather than engaging in a gunfight inside often produced the best results. My best performance was probably the one where I just went between the two assailants, planted a hand on each of their chests and shoved them into opposite walls on my way out the door (being 6’5” has some advantages).

This was our last exercise. Randy handed out the certificates and asked for some feedback about the class. Everyone seemed thoroughly satisfied with the class.

Final Thoughts

This was quite an illuminating class (pun intended). Randy did an excellent job, as always, and he had a really good group of students to work with.

The best thing about this class was that it was focused on techniques, rather than gear. A lot of folks get caught up in the hardware aspect of low light shooting: flashlights, night sights, etc. In contrast, this class was very fight focused.

If there’s one thing this class will do, it will change a lot of students’ minds about how to utilize a flashlight. In most circumstances, there is enough ambient light to acquire a target without flooding the area with light. Often there is enough to identify a target without using the light even briefly. I was already most of the way down this road, but I think it was an eye opener for many of the students.

One of the biggest things I got out of this class was how to use the flashlight effectively to impede your opponent. The blinding effect of a tactical light has definitely been oversold. I don’t think any light you can reasonably carry on a daily basis is going to be an effective blinding tool at five yards. At one yard, however, it can be startlingly effective. Not only does it impair vision, it resets the OODA loop, giving a second or so of lag time even in an opponent that knows it’s coming. Getting a solid, center of the beam hit on the opponent’s eyes is important though; this is a technique that requires practice to use effectively.

While this class made some of the limitations of the flashlight clear, I still think it’s an important piece of carry gear. Not only is it an effective close range distraction tool, it’s also an important element of pre-fight maneuvering in low light when the BG may not be able to see you put your hands out to stop his encroachment. I also use a flashlight for more mundane tasks than any other piece of carry gear. As far as which flashlight is best, one thing this class definitely established is that come on momentarily when you press lightly and click into constant-on mode when you press harder, are a bad idea on tactical lights. The key to using a flashlight in a fight is to use it only in brief flashes. The idea that in the middle of a fight you will be able to calibrate your pressore on the switch so that it’s hard enough to activate the light but gently enough not to click the switch just doesn’t hold up in force on force.

This class has also persuaded me to switch from my Firstlight Tomahawk back to my Surefire 6P for daily carry. A tube light like the 6P seems to be easier to aim directly at the eyes because you can use it from the neck index and it makes a better impact weapon. For the moment, I’m forced to go with the 6P whether I want to or not. When I got home, I realized that my Tomahawk must have taken an airsoft round in the lens and it was cracked pretty badly. I called up the folks and Firstlight and they said to send it back and they would get if fixed at no charge. Excellent customer service.

The other oft-discussed piece of night fighting hardware is night sights. I don’t have any on my airsoft gun, but the Glock 21 has a set of Warren Tactical Sevigny Carry night sights. These have the tritium vials in the straight 8 configuration (one vial in the front sight, one at the bottom center of the rear sights, so you line them up by putting the front vial directly on top of the rear one. I didn’t absolutely need night sights for any of the live-fire shooting we did, but they did provide a reference point when it was really dark and I couldn’t see the gun itself. I think this does help for hand eye coordination. I do think I like the straight-8 configuration better than a three-dot setup though. I would say that night sights fall into the “nice to have” category, but they’re not absolutely vital.

This was really a great class. A lot of confrontations take place in low light and developing some familiarity with these conditions before the fight is very important. A lot of the low light material out there is very flashlight centric, this class really did a good job putting the light into perspective and teaching where and how it’s useful and where it’s not. I would highly recommend this class to anyone who carries a firearm for personal protection.

Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting with Gabe Suarez

2010-09-20T11:04:00.003-06:00

Last weekend I took Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting from Gabe Suarez in Florence, SC. This is the second time I’ve taken this class in the past three months. I’d signed up to take it out in Prescott as part of the Red June block of classes before the class in Florence was announced. Despite this, I decided to sign up for the class in Florence, primarily because I knew a bunch of my friends would be signed up as well. Gabe was nice enough to let me take advantage of the 25% discount for returning students despite the fact that I hadn’t actually taken the class the first time at the time I signed up.

This class included an even larger proportion of Suarez International Staff Instructors than the 0-5 foot class, including Randy Harris, Alex Nieuwland, Scott Vandiver, Michael Swisher, and myself. The class was around 20 people, so a good quarter of the students were SI instructors.

I shot the class with my SGL-31. I used this rather than my usual Arsenal SLR-107F because I the SGL-31 didn’t have an optic on it at the moment and I wanted to shoot the class using iron sights. The majority of the class were using AKs of one description or another, varying from Fuller built guns down to WASRs or Maadis. Despite being an AK class, there was a substantial minority using ARs of various types, along with one XCR (in 7.62x39mm) and one Mini-14.

Because I just took this course so recently, this review isn’t going to have my usual level of blow by blow detail. If you’re interested in the content of the Advanced AK class, see the writeup I did back in June. What I’m going to do instead is concentrate on differences from the Prescott class and whatever points that I found particularly interesting.

Saturday

This class was held on September 11th-12th, 2010. Gabe opened the class with a prayer for those lost 9 years ago. He explained that he makes a special effort to teach a tactical class on September 11th. Next year he’s going to be teaching a counter-terrorism course with Sonny Puzikas. The date really puts these skills, and the reason most of us are learning them, in perspective.

We started with some discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the AK. This was sort of interesting given how many people taking the class were using other sorts of rifles. Gabe made his usual case for the AK, which I think is quite good (after all, it convinced me to switch to the AK). Gabe explained why retaining empty mags is a good idea. Then we did some dry magazine changes, first stationary, then on the move.

Moving on to shoulder transfers, we did some work stationary, then did the slalom drill. In Prescott, the slalom drill was part of the AK Force on Force class. There we slalomed down a line of students, but because this range had a set of tall wooden posts every other lane at the 25 yard line, we slalomed through them instead. Basically, you treat each post as a left or right hand corner, switching shoulders as appropriate. This is really an excellent drill for getting people used to transferring from shoulder to shoulder, particularly for taking corners and shooting around cover. Our last drills of the morning were dry practicing 360 degree position shooting.

After lunch, Gabe ran through the ready positions, and we practice mounting the rifle and taking a dry shot from each position. After everyone was comfortable with the different positions, we went live. We moved on to snap shooting from the ready, then did some live shoulder transfers. With these fundamentals in place, we went through the basic get off the X drills in the six major directions. The range wasn’t really the best for practicing getting off the X. It was a gravel surface, with concrete sidewalks in front of each target running straight up and down range. Thus lateral movement involved stepping from sidewalk to gravel to sidewalk, with the attendant possibilities for tripping or loosing footing. This wrapped up the first day.

Sunday

We started out the second day doing transitions from rifle to pistol. Gabe demonstrated our method and talked about why we prefer a simple two-point sling. We did some dry transitions, then did it live, but stationary, and finally did it on the move. Next we moved on to after action drills. Gabe explained the process, then we put it into practice, first dry, then live. We practiced addressing targets to the sides or rear while getting off the X both dry and live. Wrapping up the morning, Gabe talked a bit about hitting people with rifles. In Prescott this was part of the force on force class, but here he incorporated it into Advanced AK.

After lunch, we moved on to the team tactics unit. Gabe gave a basic explanation of fire and movement and how two people or units can keep fire on a target as they maneuver. We did some dry practice with muzzle aversion and trigger finger discipline to ensure everyone could do this sort of thing safely. Next Gabe lined up the students in two parallel lines and had each student fire a burst at the target, then file back to the rear of the line, reloading on the way, all the while keeping their muzzle safely straight up in the air. I stepped out on this one and helped Gabe keep an eye on the students as they did the drill.

Moving on to the usual 2-man bounding drill, the students moved down the line of targets in two man teams keeping a constant fire going all the way down. Randy and I sat this one out to help keep an eye on the students as they did the drill. The students in this class did pretty well. Only one pair managed to get both guns empty a the same time so that I had to shoulder my rifle to provide some supporting fire.

While the perpendicular sidewalks down every lane made things more difficult for the bounding drill, Gabe found a way to use them (and the fact that he had some rifle qualified instructors) to give students a chance to do some drills they wouldn’t normally see unless they took the High Risk Operator Team Tactics class. We started out doing the same 2-man bounding drill moving towards and away from the targets. The sidewalks ensured that students would stay in their own lane and not get in front of the other and we had three instructors to keep an eye on two students. Everyone did the drill dry, together, then we did it live one 20man team at a time. Moving forward and back revealed an interesting tradeoff that wasn’t evident with the lateral bounding drill. The further the students moved on each bound, the quicker they covered the distance, but the harder it was to communicate.

Finally, Gabe capped off the class doing an Australian Peel. This is a reaction to contact drill for a small unit that wants to retreat from contact with a larger (or better dug in) opponent. The unit starts out in a line, with alternating students covering the right and left sides. When the lead man yells “Contact front” (or just opens fire) the line splits, with alternating students moving right or left as appropriate. This leaves the team in two parallel lines, with the team leader in the center at the front. The team leader than the first man in each line fire at the enemy. When the team leader is ready to move, he turns around and heads up the middle to the back of one of the lines. The front of the right hand line fires until he’s ready to move, then turns and heads up the middle to the back of his line. The front man of the left hand line does the same. This keeps at least two guns on the enemy at all times and by alternating movement from the head of each line the entire unit moves further from the enemy. When the team leader comes to the head of the line and feels they’ve broken contact sufficiently to withdraw, he orders the unit to head for the rally point.

This is normally a pretty advanced drill, but the sidewalks made it possible to keep everyone lined up and Gabe had Randy and I to help watch the lines and ensure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. He split the class up into two squads and ran the drill a couple of times each. They did pretty well, for having only half a day of team training. I would really love to see this in action from a squad of really well trained troops with fully automatic weapons.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed this class. I have to admit being a little dubious about how much I would get out of it taking it again so soon, but I wound up very satisfied. As a student, shooting it with iron sights provided a different experience from doing the class with a red dot. I was pretty gratified by my ability to execute these drills. The previous class, and the practice since, really paid off. As an instructor, I got a lot out of watching Gabe adapt the class to the students and the facility. It covered the same fundamental skills as the class in Prescott, but it definitely wasn’t exactly the same class.

This was a great class with a great bunch of guys and a great instructor. I would highly recommend it.

Chris Upchurch
Suarez International Staff Instructor
integratedpersonaldefense.com

0-5 Feet Gunfighting with Gabe Suarez

2010-09-20T10:59:00.004-06:00

Last weekend I had a chance to take 0-5 feet gunfighting from Gabe in Florence, SC. This class focuses on very close range confrontations, within arm’s reach. We spent the first day and a half doing force on force, then finished up with half a day of live fire.

This was a fairly large class with around 24 people. It included quite a few people I've shot with before on various occasions, including several SI instructors: Alex Nieuwland, Scott Vandiver, and myself. SI instructor Randy Harris joined us for the second day.

For the force-on-force portion of the class, I used a pair of airsoft Glock 17s. I decided to experiment with carrying a gun on each hip (for similar reasons to the dual AIWB rigs some folks are working with lately). However, my strong side drawstroke is so ingrained I ended up going for that gun 95% of the time. The only times I really used the support side Glock was in some of the hands on drills where someone could foul your draw and I wanted to test going in the unexpected direction. I shot the live fire portion of the class using my usual Glock 21. I also carried a Glock 30 on the support side, but it saw little use.

Day One

We began the class signing waivers and promising on video not to sue anyone. There was a fairly standard safety briefing covering the four rules. This was followed by a force-on-force safety briefing. The most important point is ensuring that no live weapons of any kind make their way into the FoF training environment. FoF is a cooperative effort, most drills require the participation of one, or more, students playing the role of the bad guy. These students need to fulfill their roles in the drill rather than departing from the script in an attempt to 'get' the other student. Since these are cooperative drills, it is important to provide the right level of resistance or force. You want to provide your partner with real opposition, so he can see what doing it against a live opponent will be like, but you don't want to break your training partner. This class had quite a few more seasoned warriors and Gabe wanted to make sure everyone went home in one piece. Finally, stop really means stop. Anytime Gabe or someone else yells stop, you need to stop immediately, not get in one more hit, then stop.

Gabe led a nice discussion of the difference between a proactive gunfight, one where you are ready and the one initiating the action, and a reactive gunfight, where the gunfight is unexpected and your adversary is the one initiating the action. Gabe had a particularly nice turn of phrase to describe this. He said "A reactive gunfight is one for days when you're the subject of a country song." Your dog died, your girl left you, and your car was stolen so you have other things on your mind than staying in condition yellow all the time. Proactive and reactive gunfights unfold very differently and they require different tactics and techniques. This class was going to be dedicated to the techniques required to win a reactive gunfight at very close ranges: the eponymous 0-5 feet.

We started off with a drill where one student pushed or shoved the other, either on the chest or on a shoulder. Rather than resisting, the second student was to relax, let him move you, then come back to the same position. This was sort of a Systema-ish way to get everybody loosened up. After a bit of pushing and shoving, Gabe had the shoved student start trying to get to the shover's flank, rather than stepping back into the same position. The idea of seeking the flank (or preventing the opponent from seeking yours) was a running theme throughout the class.

There is an old gunfighting adage that, "Distance is your friend." The reality is that this isn't always true. Distance is good for a proactive gunfight, but often in a reactive gunfight, closing with the enemy can be the best choice.

We started out with the Matt Dillion drill, also known as the suicide drill. Two students face off at about four yards and each try to shoot the other before getting shot in return. The shots were generally almost simultaneous. Given handgun rounds poor terminal effects, getting the first shot in by a few tenths of a second probably isn't going to prevent you from getting shot.

The solution to this dilemma is getting off the X. If you aren't where the bad guy expects you to be, this will require him to reorient himself before being able to shoot you. That second or so is enough for you to draw and shoot him a couple times before he has a chance to shoot you. Gabe explained about the options for the different angles you can get off the X towards, and how moving to the forward diagonals makes it most difficult for the bad guy to track you with his gun. The idea of getting to the opponent's flanks like this is one that would come up again and again in the class.

To put this into action Suarez International has developed techniques for moving off the X quickly. Gabe described and demonstrated the Pekiti takeoff, which we've borrowed from Filipino martial arts. This involves dropping to a lower base, and using that drop to reposition the feet and orienting the hips the direction you want to go. Combined with dropping the shoulder and ducking the head in your direction of travel, this can produce some truly amazing results.

We started out working against a gun pointed directly at the head. With a properly executed Pekiti takeoff, you can be out of the opponent's sights before he has a chance to pull the trigger, courtesy of the shoulder drop and head duck. For the first round of takeoffs, we concentrated on moving, just getting out of the way without attempting to draw the gun. One thing I noticed several students doing was trying to keep their eyes on their opponent. If you do this right, you're not going to be able to keep staring the opponent in the eye. You can see his lower body in your peripheral vision and that's enough to keep yourself aware of his location until you come back up with the gun.

Once everyone had enough repetitions of the takeoff without drawing the gun, Gabe added the drawstroke to the mix. Students had to get off the X and draw. Giving them something else to think about at the same time ended up screwing up a lot of people's takeoffs. If they concentrated too much on the draw, they failed to get out of the way of the incoming round. After everyone was up to speed with the draw, Gabe had the students getting off the X start shooting as well.

At this point, Gabe explained the principles of metal on meat point shooting. This is the simples type of point shooting we teach and at the ranges we were shooting, it was more than sufficient to get reasonably accurate hits.

Instead of just a single shot each, we ramped up to three shots. The bad guy fired one at the student's original position, then tracked him with the next two, while the student got off the X and fired three shots. I didn't bring a long sleeved shirt for the FoF, so I took some pretty good shots to the arm during these drills.

After lunch Gabe gave the attitude and alertness discussion. Basically, he talked about how to avoid getting into the sorts of situations he was training us to fight our way out of. While it's certainly possible to fight and win at these close ranges, most of us don't want to go there intentionally. If possible, you would like to fail the "interview" process the bad guy uses to select his victims, either by your attitude and appearance or your actions, including verbal disengagement. An important part of this is recognizing what's coming, preferably as early as possible. If you can't avoid the fight, you can also use this process to start the fight in the best position.

We began the real up close and personal stuff with a simple drill where one student grabbed the other by the collar and the other had to break his grip and get to the flank. This helped acclimate students who hadn't done any hands on stuff before and reinforced the idea of trying to find the flanks.

Moving on to ground fighting, we entered a realm where I don't really have much experience. This was one of the reasons I really want to take this class, and go to Tom Sotis' seminar that includes the anti-groundfighting module in Chattanooga in November. We began by just trying to fend off the opponent with your feet. If he's armed with a contact weapon and you keep him out of reach like that, there's not a lot he can do to you until he gets by your legs. The trick is keeping your legs pointed at him as he moves.

It's possible that a good swift kick to the right spot may take him out of the fight, but this isn't allways that easy. Instead we just want to push him off hard enough that we have the time to draw our gun and shoot him. For this class, we simulated this, since kicking full force to get that sort of effect would probably result in some messed up knees and ankles.

If he gets past your legs, you may end up fending him off with leg pressure, rather than kicks. He may just get past one of your feet, leaving one of your feet on his hip or leg and the other around one side of his body. If he gets by both feet, you'll be fending him off with your knees, with your feet on either side of his body. Finally, if he gets by your knees, you'll have him in full guard, with your legs wrapped around his waist. In all of these cases, he's in a position where he can really get to you, whether he's barehanded or armed with a contact weapon. On the other hand, if you've got your legs on either side of him, you don't have to worry about him reaching your flank. The priority is getting the pistol out without him fouling your draw (which can be a problem in full guard) and shooting him as quickly as possible. One difficulty in this situation is that it can be difficult to bring your elbow far enough back to draw when you're flat on the ground, particularly with strong side hip carry. The solution is to raise your hips by levering yourself against the opponent. This should provide enough room to draw, as well as making it more difficult for him to foul your draw.

While we want to be able to fight on the ground if we have to, it's not someplace we want to stay. Gabe showed us a technique for getting up while keeping the gun on target based on a kettlebell exercise called the Turkish Get-up. This gets you up using both legs and one arm, leaving the other arm free to keep shooting the bad guy. I'd done a bit of this in Roger Phillips's Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class, as well as quite a few Turkish get-ups, but it was definitely pretty new to some of the other students.

We worked a drill where one student started off on the ground versus two knife armed attackers. Needless to say, this is a pretty sucky position if you're the guy on the ground. Generally trying to get up took too long, the best bet was to fend off one attacker with the legs while shooting the other.

To cap off the day, we worked the same sort of drill starting off standing, rather than lying down. This was basically a variant of the classic Tueller drill, except that you faced two opponents and started off at 12 feet, rather than 21. If you concentrated on getting off the X away from the knife wielding assailants, then drawing and firing once you were up to speed, this drill is actually pretty easy. We did the same at 9 feet, which is still quite doable, and at 6 feet, which gets rather iffy. At 6 feet, the odds of getting stabbed go way up. These sorts of distances really require some empty hand skills as a solution to the initial attack. This would be our first order of business tomorrow.

During the day, some questions about CQB had come up, so after the 0-5 foot instructional material was done for the day, Gabe gave a quick overview of some of the SI CQB techniques. Since I took this class just last month, I was able to help out a bit with this.

Day Two

At the end of the first day, we looked at how to defeat a knife attack at less than half the standard Tueller drill distance by getting off the X away from the attacker. This morning we looked at how to deal with knife attacks where the assailant is too close to get off the X without getting stabbed. The solution in this realm is to use empty hand combatives to fend off the initial attack and create enough time and distance to bring the gun into play.

I had some experience with this from AMOK! but it was clearly new to other folks. We primarily concentrated on blocking with one hand and hitting with the other as you got off the X to his flank. In real life the hit would be delivered to the face, but we didn't want to break our training partners, so instead we delivered it to the shoulder or chest. The idea is to push him off (or push yourself off) to gain enough time and distance to deploy the gun.

One way this sort of response may fail is if that striking hand gets tangled up or the assailant manages to grab it. In that case, the first thing to do is to get to his flank to minimize his ability to get at you and bring the gun into play from there. This may involve drawing with the support hand. Gabe showed us what Randy calls the "Australian Homie" shooting position: with the gun upside down working the trigger with the little finger. Since I had both an airsoft gun and a training knife on the support side, I worked with those a bit.

Moving on to opponents with firearms, we worked on fouling the opponent's draw and jamming the gun in his holster. This works particularly well if you can get to his flanks. Gabe showed one way of accomplishing this fairly easily. When you're jamming the gun into the holster you're already exerting a pushing force on his strong side hip. If you pull forward on the support side shoulder, you can spin him around. Once you're behind his support side arm, there's not much he can do. You've got an opportunity to draw your own weapon and shoot him in the back.

While tying up his gun in the holster is obviously desirable, we may have to confront the drawn gun at very close range. In these circumstances, the best option is the disarm. I've been taught disarms by a couple of different instructors, including Gabe. They can all work, but Gabe's are particularly simple and forceful. Most of them operate on the same principles. First, get the gun pointed somewhere other than at you, through a combination of knocking the gun away and moving your body out of the line of fire. Grab the wrist with one hand and the gun with the other, wrist goes one way, gun goes the other and you've got the gun and the BG will probably end up with a broken finger (or may even shoot himself). Gabe taught slightly different variants for guns pointed at the head or upper chest, and guns pointed at the lower chest or abdomen, but the only real difference was whether you grab the gun fingers up or fingers down.

Regardless, Gabe emphasized following up the gun grab with immediate additional attacks: palm strikes, elbows, knees, hitting the guy with the gun you just took away, and driving the guy with your body weight. The idea is to tenderize him enough that you can break contact and turn this into a gunfight, either using your own weapon or the one you just took away from him.

Disarming an opponent from the front is easiest, because you have access with both hands, but we also worked disarms from the side and back as well. From the side, you either wanted to move the gun forward and the body back, or vice versa, depending on where the gun was pointing (ahead or behind the ear if it was pointed at your head or ahead or behind the arm if it was lower down). If the gun went forward, you could grab the wrist and finish with a conventional disarm. If it went backward, it was generally easier to lock his gun arm up either in your armpit or the crook of your elbow, then continue the assault with your other hand.

From the rear, it's just a matter of turning to one side or the other and ‘rolling off the gun’ so to speak. If the opponent's gun is biased to one side, turning away from it is generally the best choice. If he's got a hand on your shoulder pushing or pulling you, go with that movement and use it for your turn rather than resisting. If he's right in the middle of your back and not pushing or puling, pick a direction and go with it.

Wrapping up disarms, we broke for lunch and got ready for the live fire portion of the course. Mindful of the potential safety issues with going from a day and a half of force on force to working with real guns, Gabe had Randy recap the standard safety rules.

We started off with some basic get off the X drills to the 1 and 11 o’clock directions.

Next, we moved on to a series of drills involving support hand draws. Gabe demonstrated a method for drawing the pistol upside-down from an appendix rig with the support hand and rolling it on the chest to get it right-side up. Something similar can work with strong side hip carry, but I prefer going around the back, grabbing the grip of the gun and drawing, then regripping the gun once you have it out. I also threw in a couple of draws from my support side Glock 30, which was definitely much easier.

Next, we worked with the Australian Homie from the ready position. Again, this involves holding the gun upside down and working the trigger with your pinky. This can make for a very fast support side draw from an appendix holster and a passable one from a strong side hip holster. The trick is shooting from this position. Working the trigger is actually relatively easy. The difficult part is acquiring a grip that avoids having the slide recoil into your hand or arm, potentially tearing them up a bit and probably malfunctioning the gun. We did a few shots starting with the gun in hand, which went relatively well for me. Doing the same from the holster, on the other hand, was a bit more dicey. We drew, fired a few shots, then transferred the gun to the strong side hand and fired a few more. I got a couple of shots off every time, but endured some slide action on my arm and eventually failed to cycle the gun. This was relatively easy to fix once I transferred hands, but still a less than optimal situation. It’s quite difficult to acquire the right grip grabbing the gun out of the holster, even when on the range. This is good to know how to do, but I think I’ll stick with reaching behind the back as my primary method of support side access. Carrying a second gun on the support side is looking better and better.

Next up was shooting from the ground. We started out with our feet facing the target. After drawing and firing between our knees, we had to get up while continuing to fire on the target. I’ve this with feet towards the target in the Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class, but we moved on to other directions. Due to the danger to other people on the line involved in drawing with your feet pointed directly to the right or left, we had them pointed towards the 2 and 10 o’clock positions instead. The key thing here was to make sure you didn’t shoot yourself when coming across your legs in the 2 o’clock position (for right handed shooters). Our last drill of this series had us on our backs with our heads towards the target, drawing and firing directly with the gun upside-down. I’ve done this before, but only with the gun already laying on the ground and pointed downrange. Doing this from the draw obviously means that the guns are going to be pointed uprange as you draw. To ensure nobody got shot, Gabe had everyone not shooting get off to the left side of the range and emphasized the need to bring the gun directly up and over, not straying to the right or left. As always, shooting upside-down was a lot of fun.

Moving on, we did a series of drills on how to defend the Sul position against an attacker at close range. Gabe gave a short lecture about what Sul is and why we use it for the benefit of those without previous experience in an S.I. class. For threats to the front and sides, defending Sul involves rotating the body and shooting from something like a retention position, possibly throwing in a strike with the support side hand if necessary to get it out of the way. For threats from the rear, you can either twist, or, if the opponent has you in a bear hug, just reach down with your gun and fire a few rounds into his leg.

One potential difficulty with engaging someone with a semi-auto at these sorts of very close ranges is the possibility of pushing the gun out of battery before you fire, giving you a dead trigger. The best way to handle this would be just to pull back a bit, or just avoid pushing the gun into the opponent that hard in the first place. In a hand to hand struggle over a gun this may not be possible. Gabe demonstrated some different techniques for holding the slide in battery: grabbing the slide as if you were reloading, pushing on the back of the slide with your support hand, or using your body to hold the slide in battery (we used our upper arm, but in a real fight your chest may be more likely). In all cases, pushing the slide forward will prevent it from cycling, so you will have to clear the malfunction before shooting again. Nevertheless, these techniques could make it possible to get off an all-important shot that could win the fight. Using these techniques isn’t what I call pleasant, but they work and don’t do you any permanent damage.

Our last shooting of the class was the t-shirt drill. When drawing from underneath a cover garment, one ever-present danger is the garment fouling your draw. Particularly with a closed front cover garment, this can result in your gun being tangled up under the shirt when you need it most. In this drill we all put on old/cheap t-shirts that we didn’t mind putting some holes into and deliberately covered our guns with the shirts. The first shot fired from underneath the t-shirt will make a hole, which we enlarged by shoving the gun through it while firing follow up shots. Once we got the gun completely through, we transferred it to the other hand and continued to shoot while we pulled our primary hand back through the hole and resumed a two handed grip.

This concluded the shooting portion of the class. Gabe handed out the certificates and we broke for the day. The majority of the class would be back the following day for Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting.

Final Thoughts

This is really an excellent class. It’s the kind of thing I think a lot more people need to learn. Realistically speaking, the 0-5 foot realm is where citizens are most likely to get into a fight. I’ve never heard of a mugger or armed robber plying his trade from seven yards away. They’re going to be up close and personal and anyone who carries for self-defense needs to know how to handle threats at these distances.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many places to go to learn this sort of thing. Most gun schools either ignore these distances entirely, or rely exclusively on gun focused retention shooting solutions. You can learn how to defend against these sorts of attacks at some fight-focused martial arts schools, but these often teach pure hand to hand solutions. If I’ve got a gun, or even a knife, I’m going to want to get that into play as soon as I can rather than engage in a fistfight with this guy. Very few places really integrate hand to hand and handguns the way this class does. The skills taught in 0-5 feet are vital for prevailing in a real world confrontation. I really believe everyone who carries a handgun for self-defense should take this class.

Chris Upchurch
Suarez International Staff Instructor
integratedpersonaldefense.com

Getting the Most Out of a Suarez International Class

2010-08-27T11:11:00.001-06:00

Suarez International classes are one of the best investments you can make when it comes to self defense. Weve got a really great curriculum and our instructors are top notch (if I do say so myself). As with many things in life, however, how much you get out of it depends on how much you put into it. A bit of preparation beforehand and some regular follow-up afterwards can dramatically increase the amount you learn and how much your skills increase. Based on my experience in quite a few SI classes, both before and after I became an instructor, here are some things that I think you can do to help you get as much out of the class as possible.

Before Class

The starting point for getting the most out of an SI class is to choose an appropriate class to begin with. If you don’t have the fundamental skills to do well in more advanced classes, you’re not going to get as much out of them. Suarez International classifies its classes into three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced. Knowing whether you’re ready for an advanced class is pretty simple: if you’ve taken an intermediate level SI pistol class and can perform the material, you’re good to go for advanced pistol classes. The same goes for rifle classes.

Deciding between a basic or intermediate class requires a bit more judgment. The intermediate level classes don’t have a hard and fast prerequisite, but they do carry a disclaimer that says “THIS COURSE IS NOT FOR THE NOVICE SHOOTER”. We’re not really talking about accuracy here, we're talking about gunhandling. Our intermediate level classes are very dynamic, and you need good muzzle and trigger finger discipline to safely participate. To really get the most out of these classes your basic gunhandling skills, particularly the drawstroke, need to be ingrained to the point where they are almost automatic. These courses all involve dynamic movement, in order to learn this effectively, you can’t be thinking your way through each step of the draw. For long gun classes, the equivalent would be mounting the rifle or shotgun. If you have any questions about whether a particularly class is appropriate for your level of skill and experience, either call SI and ask, or post a question on Warriortalk. There are plenty of experienced folks in both places who can help you find the best class for you.

We throw a lot of information at you in SI classes, to the point where it can be a bit daunting at times. It helps a lot if you've had some exposure to it beforehand. Infidel Media Group publishes books and DVDs by Gabe and other SI trainers. They’re no substitute for coming to a class in person, but watching them it advance can make it easier to process all the new material you’ll see in a class. Most SI classes have a DVD equivalent. In many cases the class and the DVD have the same name, but there are some exceptions (for instance the DVD equivalent of the Defensive Pistol Skills class is called Combative Pistol Marksmanship). Again, if you have any questions ask on Warriortalk or call SI. The situation with books is a little different. Not all SI classes have a direct book equivalent, sometimes material from one class is distributed over several different volumes of Gabe’s writings. I find all of Gabe’s books that I’ve read worthwhile, but it’s a bit more difficult to say, “if you are taking this class you need to read that book”. One exception is Roger Phillips’ Point Shooting Progressions book. I can absolutely say that if you are taking an SI Point Shooting Class you will get a lot out of reading Roger’s book ahead of time.

While I recommend watching the DVD, I would advise against trying to practice material from the DVD beforehand. One of the big advantages of coming to a class, rather than just buying a DVD is that in class you have an instructor to watch your performance on the drills, critique what you’re doing, and generally make sure you’re learning this the right way. Practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent. If you practice a technique you’ve only seen on a DVD, you run the risk of doing it incorrectly and having to unlearn it in class. Instead, practice what you’ve learned in previous classes to make sure you’ve really got that material down before coming to a more advanced class. As I mentioned earlier, to get the most out of intermediate and advanced classes your drawstroke (or long gun mount) needs to be really solid. Practice these until they’re utterly ingrained.

Finally, bring the right equiptment to class. Every class comes with a list of required equipment and other stuff you need to bring. Make sure you bring everything on these lists. The listed number of magazines is a minimum. More magazines are always better. Load your magazines before class (classes often include dry drills, so it’s good to leave leave one or two empty for that purpose. Similarly, stated ammunition counts are minimums, bring more if you’ve got it. If you have a second gun, or spare parts and the knowledge to install them, bring them.

Test your gear before coming to class. Don’t bring a gun you’ve never shot, or a holster you’ve never drawn from. Some folks say that an SI class is a great way to test your equipment. It’s certainly true, anything you bring to an SI course will get run hard, but this does not absolve you of the responsibility to test your gear beforehand. I have seen students come to class with equipment problems that fifteen minutes on the range, or even fifteen minutes of dry practice, would have uncovered. Some of them had to struggle against their gear through an entire class.

If you’re coming to a rifle class, zero your rifle ahead of time. For intermediate and advanced rifle classes, generally the shooting exercise in the course is shooting from prone to verify everyone’s zero. We can do some corrections, but there isn't time to zero everyone’s rifle from scratch. If you come with an unzeroed rifle, you’re going to be shooting a poorly zeroed rifle for the class. In basic level rifle classes we understand that not everybody knows how to zero their rifle, that’s one of the things we teach in the class, after all. If you do know how to zero your rifle, however, it’s still a good idea to do it ahead of time. That way you can spend more of the class working on your marksmanship, rather than your gun.

SI classes are usually held on outdoor ranges and training will continue even in inclement weather. Make sure you have appropriate clothing, rain gear, headgear, sunscreen, and plenty of water. Temperature can vary throughout the day, so wearing layers can make it easier to adjust as the day goes on. Bring more layers than you think you'll need. Many ranges where we teach don’t have seating available, so a camp chair is a good addition to your gear.

During Class

As mentioned earlier, we throw a lot of information at you in SI classes, enough that most folks won’t remember it all. Taking some notes will help you retain more of the information we cover in class. This is where having watched the DVD or read the book really comes in handy in cutting down on the amount of note taking. If you remember something from the DVD or book, you may not need to take notes on it because you already have a reference for that information. I find it helpful to take really terse notes that will be just enough to help me remember things until that evening, when I can flesh them out a bit more.

After Class

After class start out by going back and watching the DVD or reading the book again. After you’ve seen these techniques in action and done them under a watchful eye of an instructor you can pick up on some subtleties you may have missed the first time out. It’s also easier to place some things in the proper context once you’ve got some actual experience with them. Go over your notes to review any material from the class that wasn’t in the book or DVD.

At SI, we teach more in one of our two-day classes than some other schools teach in four or five. This is one of the things that make SI classes such a bargain. One of the ways we accomplish this is not to do as many repetitions of each drill. We still think you need these repetitions, but we assume you’re an adult and you don’t need an instructor standing over your shoulder for every one of them. There’s an old saying, “Amateurs practice until they can get it right, professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.” In class, we’ll give you enough practice to get it right. It’s your responsibility to go home and practice what you learned in class until you can’t get it wrong.

In the intermediate and advanced classes, SI teaches lots of things like dynamic movement and shooting from unusual positions that will make many more traditionally minded folks, including many range operators, freak out. This can make it difficult to practice skills from SI classes in a live-fire environment. If you’ve got access range where you can shoot during dynamic movement, definitely take advantage of it. If you don’t, however, you can still practice almost everything we teach using dry fire or an airsoft gun.

Finally, we hope that you sign up for another class. One of the great things about SI is the variety and depth of the courses we offer. There’s always more to learn.

Thanks to my fellow SI instructors for feedback on this piece and additional ideas for getting the most out of a class.

CQB class with Gabe Suarez

2010-08-27T11:08:00.001-06:00

Earlier this month I took the Suarez International Close Quarters Battle (CQB) class from Gabe Suarez in Prescott. This class is a rather unusual: a course on how to defend yourself with a firearm that involves absolutely no shooting. Not even airsoft guns for force-on-force. As Gabe put it, this class is more like chess than UFC. Unlike most of the more advanced SI classes there is no rolling around on the ground with a rifle or wrestling with another guy while you try to get your pistol into play, this class has a much more intellectual bent. There is certainly a physical component, but it involves how to move into a position where you can shoot, rather than how to hit or shoot someone. The goal of this class is to give students the skills they need to maneuver into a position where any gunfight will be as one-sided as possible.

The class had ten students in it, including three SI Instructors: Richard Coplin, Jon Payne, and myself. One of the students was a LEO, while another was in the Executive Protection business, but the rest of us were common citizens. One student could only attend the first day, so we dropped to nine on Sunday (which worked quite well with three man teams).

Friday Evening

Unlike most SI classes, this one began on Friday evening rather than Saturday morning. The topic involves quite a bit of theory and explanation that Gabe wanted to go through before we got to taking corners and going through doors. If he hadn’t, the next two days would have been filled with interruptions for questions about the lecture material.

We began by talking about defining your mission. A citizen defending his home has a very different mission than a police officer searching a structure. The citizen who lives alone or who has gathered all his family members in one room has a very different mission than one who hears screams from the children’s room. The mission will affect the tempo of movement, willingness to use deadly force, and the amount of target identification required before shooting.

While there are many possible variations, Gabe grouped them into four missions: setting up an ambush, search and clear, locate and kill, and traverse and escape. If you’re home alone and hear intruders, it’s much better to bunker up and call 911. While it’s politically incorrect to say so, in this circumstance you’re effectively setting up an ambush set up an ambush and letting the intruders come to you instead of playing hunt the burglar.

Although staying put and calling for help is sometimes the wisest course, you may not always have enough information to do so. When you are woken by a crash from downstairs, you may not know whether it was a burglar knocking over a lamp or a picture falling from the wall. There are circumstances where a sound is suspicious enough you don’t want to roll over and go back to sleep, but doesn’t provide enough information for you to call 911. These are circumstances where a civilian may want to search and clear a structure. For a police officer, circumstances requiring searching a structure are far more common. Burglar alarms, open door calls, and 911 calls from citizens reporting an intruder in their house may all require searching a structure.

Searching and clearing is a slow and deliberate process, but sometimes circumstances call for more speed. If you’re fairly certain there are intruders in the home and you need to retrieve your children from their rooms, you may not have time to clear the house in a slow and deliberate manner. If you start hearing screams from your daughter’s room, deliberation is probably going out the window. Nevertheless, rushing heedlessly through the house could get you killed before you get a chance to help your daughter. It is possible to trade safety for speed without entirely giving up the former. This is locate and kill. The police equivalent is hostage rescue or warrant service. Time is of the essence, requiring the sacrifice of some of the safety afforded by a slow and deliberate search.

Traverse and escape occurs at a similar tempo to locate and kill, but the goal is to elude the opponent, rather than find him. If you and your family are in a public place in the middle of an active shooter or terrorist incident, the immediate objective is to get those whose lives you are entrusted to protect out of there as quickly and safely as possible. Bodyguards have similar obligations to their protectees. Of course, police officers, and perhaps citizens without protective obligations (as their conscience dictates) in the same situation may find themselves in a locate and kill mission rather than traverse and escape.

After the discussion of missions, Gabe moved on to six tactical principles. #1, keep your mission in mind. #2, look ahead and have a backup plan. Don’t just get fixated on the immediate problem you’re trying to solve, think ahead to the next problem and have an alternative ready for when things go wrong. #3, understand distance. More is generally better, but more is not always available, especially in a CQB environment. #4, know the tradeoff between benefit and liability of different courses of action. #5, risk is the currency of tactics. As Gabe put it, “Hunting an armed human being inside a structure is not safe.” Almost anything you try to accomplish is going to have some element of risk. Understand what risks you are taking and what you are accomplishing by taking them. #6, every movement should put your eye and gun muzzle on a potential threat.

We moved on to a discussion of architecture. Gabe asked us to name architectural elements that could be obstacles during CQB, and we came up with more than a dozen. Most of this bewildering variety, however, can be viewed as combinations of corners. The corner is the fundamental building block of CQB. If you have the skills to take a corner, applying those to T-intersections, doorways, windows, stairs, balconies, even furniture is not much of a leap.

Step 1 when approaching a corner is to recognize that you have a corner, preferably as far in advance of it as you can. Step 2 is to identify it as right or left handed. Right and left hand corner terminology can be a bit confusing. In CQB it doesn’t refer to which way the corner turns, but which hand it’s easier to use to negotiate it. Thus, when a hallway bends 90 degrees to the left, it’s a right handed corner, because you can lead with your right hand when rounding it. Step 3 is to identify the apex, the point of the corner that’s going to be your pivot point.

Once you’ve identified all the characteristics of a corner, it’s time to start slicing the pie: moving carefully in a circle that pivots on the apex and examining the area beyond the corner one small slice at a time. The goal is to locate a possible opponent before he is aware of you. Once you’ve located him, you have a decision to make: take the corner or pull back. This is where keeping your mission in mind is important. If you are investigating the crash from downstairs in the middle of the night and you see a stranger going through your silverware drawer, that pretty much answers any question about what the noise was. You may decide this would be a good time to withdraw t a protected position and dial 911. On the other hand, if your kids are in a room somewhere beyond the burglar, withdrawal may be out of the question.

If you are going to take the corner, Gabe recommends moving out decisively and shooting the opponent on the move, rather than rolling out and risk having him see you. The overall effect is much like getting off the X in a reactive gunfight.

With the cornerstone laid, we moved on to talking about more complex situations, starting with a T-intersection at the end of a hallway. A T-intersection is basically two corners you have to work at the same time. Since we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads, you need to work one side up to the point of decision, then turn around and work the other side. If you aren’t able to identify a specific threat without exposing yourself, you have to make a decision about which side you think is more dangerous (or if they’re equally dangerous, just go with your strong side). Move decisively out into the intersection and glance for a target in the direction you’re going. If there is one, engage. If not, immediately look behind you (with your gun following your eyes as quickly as possible) for a threat in that direction. Having to divide your attention like this is obviously a lot more dangerous than working a single corner.

A doorway is a lot like a T-intersection. Unlike the intersection, you may not be confined to a narrow hallway. On the other hand, if the door is closed, you may have to negotiate opening it as well, which can be a challenge. If a door is closed, consider your mission and think about whether you can bypass it. Perhaps you can put something in front of the door that will alert you if an opponent opens it behind you. When approaching a closed door, look for the knob and hinges to get an idea of which way it swings. If you can see the hinges, it opens towards you, otherwise it opens away from you. Be on the lookout for a self-closing mechanism. These make it much more difficult to deal with a door (to the point where if you have to deal with one, consider other entry possibilities). If possible, approach the door from the knob side. Turn the knob quietly and swing it open, then back away to give yourself a little distance. Once the door is open, treat it much like a T-intersection.

When entering the room, you need to triage possible threats. Check the hard corners (the corners on either side of the door) first. If the door opens inward, check behind it next. Then check behind furniture, then under furniture and inside closets. The logic behind this order is that not only are the hard corners the most dangerous spots, they’re also where someone determined to do you harm is most likely to hide (the interior of a wardrobe is a lousy place to ambush someone). Someone hiding under the bed is probably more concerned with escaping detection than doing you harm.

Finally, we spent some time talking about stairs. These can be tricky to clear, combining horizontal and vertical corners. The military prefers to clear down stairs rather than up, largely because they have grenades, which work better going down. For those of us without access to handheld explosives, clearing up is generally easier, because you can lead with your weapon, rather than your feet. However, you often won’t have much choice in the matter: if you start out in an upstairs bedroom, you’ll end up clearing down whether you want too or not.

We wrapped up the evening with a discussion of gear. This isn’t really an equipment focused class, but we talked about lights (both weapon mounted and handheld), night vision goggles, weapons, armor, a trauma kit, and a cellphone. This last item is one of the most important, because it allows you to decline the role of burglar hunter and call in the professionals.

This concluded the Friday night braindump. Tomorrow we would start putting this into practice.

Saturday

We spent most of Saturday in the upper level of SI Headquarters in Prescott. This is a large open area with reception desk, lined with offices on one side and a conference room and two bathrooms on the other. There were lots of corners and opportunities to practice clearing rooms.

We began by working on some simple corner exercises. Gabe pointed out that it’s important to scan both at eye level and down to the floor as you take each slice of the pie. This is partially because the opponent may be crouching down for concealment, but more because the feet are often the first thing to become visible. As usual, Gabe emphasized moving naturally, with your toes pointing the direction you’re moving as you slice the pie, rather than side stepping with your toes pointed at the apex. Keeping your toes pointed in the direction you’re going allows a smoother gait and a more natural stance, as well as making it easier for you to bolt forward or pull backwards as the situation requires.

If the student clearing the corner did a good job leading with their eye and gun they almost always saw some sign of their opponent before the opponent saw them. Usually a bit of foot, pants, or shirt gave the opponent away. The problem lies in determining if this was enough to justify shooting. Again, this depends on your mission. A homeowner who knows everyone who lives in the house is safely behind him may be able to make that determination simply based on the presence of someone who should not be there. A police officer, or a citizen doing traverse and escape from a public place is probably going to require more information. It’s possible to continue slicing the pie to get a better look at the opponent, but at some point he’s going to see you and then it’s a much more even fight. We don’t really want to give him a sporting chance. One option is to get lower. Most adults tend to only notice things at eye level. If you crouch down or drop into Spetsnaz prone you can roll out further with less chance of being noticed, but this is still risky. Gabes preferred solution is to adapt getting off the X to clearing corners. If you come around the corner at a good clip, you have a little bit of time before the opponent can cycle through his observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop and adjust to hit you. During that half second or so, you can see if he has a gun, how he’s acting, and generally whether he presents a threat. If he does, you can still get a few shots off before he manages to get his gun around and shoot you.

Gabe had a couple of long guns available, both short barreled rifles: an Uzi, and a Suchka AK. I did a bit of work with the Suchka to see how it worked taking corners. Gabe suggested arresting the sling (grabbing the middle of the sling with your support hand and clasping it to the forend) to prevent it from possible swinging wide and revealing your location to the fellow around the corner. His other suggestion was to cant the gun outward about 30-45 degrees. This not only helps you expose less of your shoulder and head, it also keeps the elbow tucked in tight, rather than sticking out. Rolling the gun out can also be helpful with a pistol, though the advantages aren’t quite so pronounced.

One thing of absolute importance whether you’re using a long gun or a pistol is to be able to use it ambidextrously. Switching to the left side for a left-hand corner allows you to expose so much less of yourself it is an enormous advantage. Gabe demonstrated a couple of techniques for using a pistol on opposite side corners and while they’re better than nothing, they don’t even come close to the advantages of ambidexterity.

After we were fairly comfortable doing corners, we moved on to doors. If the door is closed, you need to deal with that first. We discovered that there’s a bit of an art to shoving a door so it swings open and stays there. Too soft, and it will stop half open. Too hard and it will bounce off the wall, making noise and swinging back in your way. As we talked about the previous night, doors are essentially two corners. You need to pie them both, looking deep into the room, then decide how you’re going to enter. The fundamental decision is which of the hard corners (those on either side of the door) you’re going to head for first. Sometimes the geometry of the layout will make this decision for you, sometimes you will perceive more danger on one side of the room or the other. When you go through the door, it’s important to do it at an angle where the opening is wide enough to get through easily. When you’re through, you’ve got a fraction of a second to scan the hard corner in front of you for threats and either address them, or conclude it’s empty. If there are no threats, you need to immediately look behind you and check the other corner.

This is where the advantages of a team really come into focus. One guy can do a great job taking a single corner. As soon as you get to something like a door, however, one solo guy is really trying to do the work of two or three. While the team tactics were reserved for Saturday, Gabe gave us a quick preview to show how much easier this sort of thing is with two guys.

Gabe also showed us how to deal with self closing doors using one of the building’s exterior doors. The short answer is it can be done, but it really sucks. You’ve got to stay in physical contact with the door, which keeps you up near the fatal funnel and makes you a much better target.

We took a break for lunch. Mark Swain came in and opened up the One Source Tactical warehouse for business. I bought a couple of the new US PALM AK battlegrips to equip my AKs before the AK class next month.

After lunch, Gabe showed some pictures of a house he looked at in Scottsdale. It had some of the most difficult sets of features imaginable. Combinations of doors, stairways, and windows presented some very complicated clearing problems. Even with just half a day and an evening of this under our belts we were able to do a pretty good job identifying (if not solving) the danger areas.

Gabe brought up a couple of discussion points based on what he’d seen during the morning. One was that if you need to make a big change in orientation (like addressing the hard corner behind you after you go through a door) it’s better to bring your gun back close to the body and drive it out in the new direction than to swing it at arms length. It’s both quicker and less prone to overswinging past the target. The other thing he mentioned is the need to move smoothly and quietly, or as he put it, “Move more like a cat and less like a dog.”

We moved on to talking about low light tactics. There was quite a bit of discussion on how to use lights properly. When doing this kind of thing, Gabe advocates having both a handheld light and a weapon light. The weapon light makes it a lot easier to switch hands and operate the gun and the light at the same time. The handheld light allows you to use a floating light to illuminate from a different angle (over the top of an obstacle while you look around the side, for instance) or to set a light down illuminating an area while you move away and do something else (this is a pretty good way to cover your back while you address another danger area, since an opponent probably won’t want to move into a brightly illuminated area).

Rather than using a constant beam, Gabe advocates quick, irregular flashes from the light. This makes it harder for the opponent to pin down your location and is much less of a bullet magnet than a constantly illuminated light. Another technique he talked about is bouncing the light off a wall or ceiling to illuminate a room. This is particularly good with more than one guy, where one can illuminate from a relatively safe position while the other is essentially invisible as long as he stays out of the beam itself so he can move around and get a good angle. Another trick Gabe showed us was using the flashlight briefly when moving through the door from a brightly illuminated area to a dark one to keep yourself from being silhouetted.

After working in low light for a bit, we moved on to complex problems. Boy was this one a doozie. Each student was asked to clear the upper floor of SI HQ by themselves. This is a large open area surrounded by offices, bathrooms, and a conference room with almost a dozen doors opening on to it. Gabe was usually nice and declared some of these safe, but it was still a tremendously challenging area to try and clear single-handed. Each student got a different starting point, so there was some variety in the problem. After each student cleared the area, Gabe and the peanut gallery had a chance to critique his performance. As we went along, Gabe started spicing things up by asking other students to hide in some of the rooms to provide a challenge for the student searching. There were some mistakes that were common to several students. Most commonly, students were rather noisy, especially when they got near critical points. Clearing, particularly single handed, really depends on stealth. Noisy footsteps can mean the difference between sneaking up on a bad guy and walking into an ambush. Many students became fixated on a particular problem and didn’t pay any attention to uncleared areas behind them. Sometimes clearing by yourself means turning your back on potential threats, but you still need to glance back there occasionally. Some extended their gun through doors before committing to the space, giving away their position. Others lingered in doorways or exposed themselves too long.

Sunday

Gabe brought in a suppressor for his Suchka to give us a feel for how adding one changed the weight and balance of the weapon. He also showed off his red dot equipped Glock in a CQB configuration with a Streamlight light/laser combo and a happy stick. This lead to a bit of discussion of lasers and how they compare to a red dot. Gabe likes lasers for some very specialized applications, but generally finds a red dot far more useful.

After playing with the cool gear, we moved into a lecture on team tactics. While a team of highly trained operators is obviously the best case, that level of support probably isn’t very likely for most of us. More realistically, we may have access to someone with some weapons training, but without the sort of tactical skills like the ones taught in this class. This doesn’t make them useless in a CQB environment, however. A big part of the danger in clearing a structure alone is having to turn your back on other danger areas while you try to clear a particular room or corner. Even relatively inexperienced shooters can help mitigate this provided they can do four things: hold, point, press the trigger, and follow orders. You can plant them in a particular spot, pointed in at a danger area, tell them to shoot anyone who comes out that door, and rely on them to keep doing that, until you tell them otherwise. This last part is the difficult bit, since they need to keep covering their assigned danger area even if you get into a gunfight while taking the corner behind them. If they turn around and pay attention to what you’re doing, you could both end up dead from a second opponent coming from the danger area to investigate the sounds of gunfire.

Compared to team tactics in rural environments, team members in CQB operate in far closer proximity. Out in the boonies, elements of a team may spread out 40 yards apart or more. Inside, you want to be in visual, if not physical, contact at all times. This kind of close coordination is necessary to keep everyone on the same page and keep it functioning as a team rather than a gaggle of individuals.

We talked about various formations. While the arrangement of team members can vary, they’re all built on the same basic fundamentals. Each team member has a given sector that it’s their job to cover as you move. Different formations can emphasize forward coverage, or coverage to the sides or rear.

Gabe also talked about something I’ve never heard mentioned positively in an SI class before: walking backwards. In most cases, Gabe is not a fan of backpedaling. It’s slower than pointing your toes in the direction you want to go and it makes it too easy to loose your balance and go over backward. Everything has a place, however. If you’re the tailgunner on a formation and your job is to cover the rear, or if your formation needs to withdraw, backpedaling is going to be an effective solution.

There are several methods for taking a corner with two people. One os to use the second team member to cover another danger area while the first takes the corner solo. If you don’t have another danger area to contend with, one team member can crouch or drop down to Spetsnaz prone and roll out below the line of sight while the other moves dynamically, putting two guns on the target from separated positions. The third method is to have both team members move dynamically around the corner in formation. This is the most difficult, as it requires very closely synchronized movement from the two shooters.

While two team members don’t really offer huge advantages over one when taking a simple corner, the advantages of a team really become evident when taking doors. The ability to address both hard corners almost simultaneously is huge. Gabe’s favored method for doing this is the criss-cross. You start with the #1 guy and the #2 guy on either side of the door. The #1 guy crouches down and goes through the door towards the opposite hard corner (if he’s on the right side of the door, he goes toward the hard corner on the left). The #2 guy moves just and instant later. He goes high, using his support hand to push down on the #1 guys back ensuring he remains out of the line of fire if necessary. This results in both shooters entering the room almost simultaneously. Executed well, it’s really incredibly slick. Even if the opponent initially sees the #1 guy’s back, before he gets a chance to fire the #2 guy is going to be in there t take him out.

Sometimes circumstances may not allow the criss-cross. For instance, if both shooters are on the same side of the door and you don’t have the ability or time to set up one in either side, The #1 shooter can enter at a crossing angle as if it were a criss cross while the #2 shooter buttonhooks around to address the other hard corner. This doesn’t get a gun on that second corner as fast as the criss cross, but it’s still pretty good. An alternative is for both shooters to enter on the same diagonal line as a criss cross, but one directs his attention to the rear to address the other corner (much like getting off the X on a 7 o’clock line).

Gabe also talked about an alternative to the buttonhook. Rather than swinging around the corner in a tight arc, you basically come into the door at an angle, then plant your foot on the floor up against the door jam on the opposite side and push off it to change direction. This is faster than a buttonhook and it results in your entering the room at an angle, rather than running right down the wall. Running the walls is a widely used tactic in the SWAT world, but it’s not one that Gabe really approves of. If there’s someone in the hard corner, coming in parallel to the wall is just like taking the 12 o’clock line and charging right towards the opponent when getting off the X: there’s no relative movement at all, making it easy for the opponent to hit you.

The other major situation that might prevent a criss-cross entry when taking a door is a room with only one hard corner. If the door is near the corner, rather than the middle of a wall, there’s no place for one of the guys doing a cross cross to go. In this case, the second guy can buttonhook in behind the first.

Another possibility that Gabe mentioned, but didn’t really approve of was a ‘guns only’ entry. In this case, team members remain outside the room and just lean in, weapon in hand, to get a view of the hard corners. Gabe doesn’t really like this because if there’s someone there, you’re pretty much locked into a stationary position trading gunfire with the guy. This sort of thing is favored by some, including the Israelis, for very quick clearing in an active-killer type situation. In that kind of situation, where it’s obvious from the sound of gunfire where the killing is going on, Gabe favors simply bypassing rooms on the way, treating each as a danger area as you go by.

This lead to some discussion of CQB equivalents of the Australian Peel (for rearward movement under fire) and bounding overwatch (for forward movement under fire).

We also had a nice discussion about how to use these techniques with family members. This segued into a more general discussion of preparing your wife and kids for how to act in a high risk situation. This sort of family readiness is a really important area that often gets ignored, even by folks who dedicate a lot of time and effort to increasing their own level of readiness.

Gabe wrapped up the lecture and discussion and we split up into two-man elements. We started out working some corners, trying the different methods described earlier. After we had a chance to work with corners we moved on to doors. To me, the criss-cross entry method really proved its mettle. It sounds a little complicated at first, but even relative beginners like the folks in the class were able to get it to work reliably. It is incredibly effective on getting guns to bear at both corners as fast as possible.

With some experience working in two man teams on single corners or doors, we moved on to three man groups and more complex problems. Each team had to clear about half of the second floor of SI HQ, either the conference room and bathrooms, or four offices. Compared to what we did yesterday, clearing similar areas solo, doing it with three was far easier. Not only could you conduct two man entries, the third guy could cover danger areas not yet searched so the other two could concentrate on one problem at a time.

With that, we broke for lunch. During the break, the topic of conversation turned to knife fighting. Gabe talked a bit about his ideas on knife use, and showed off some of the techniques he was working on (somehow Jon always seemed to end up as the demonstration dummy). They’re really some interesting ideas, oriented heavily towards the use of the knife as a defensive weapon in a non-permissive environment where you can’t carry a gun. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m really interested in seeing how this goes.

After lunch we resumed work in three man teams. This time, one team had to clear the entire second floor while the rest of the class watched. This is a fairly big problem, with lots of different danger areas to keep track of. Generally, one team member covered the unsearched areas while the other two worked on the problem at hand. We ran each team through it once, then switched team leaders and did it again. The second time through, when I was team leader, Gabe made us do it without speaking. This added an element of difficulty. It also slowed things down and made us take our time a little more, which was his objective. I think I did a pretty good job. I took a slightly different path than other folks did, one that allowed us to use all three of us to clear the trickiest pair of offices in the corner, rather than just two.

After each three man team had a chance to clear the upper floor twice, we moved downstairs. The lower level of SI HQ is more of a warehouse type space. This is where One Source Tactical does it’s business. There was a loading dock area and a couple of computer workstations in the front, and a back room with couple of rows of shelving filled with tactical gear. A small bathroom provided a place to hide. The more devious hiding spot was ‘the cave’. This is basically a full height crawlspace underneath part of the upper level with bare dirt and rock for the floor and cinderblock walls. It’s also pitch black, providing a good chance to use our low-light skills. Many of the students had been down here, but we hadn’t done any tactical work downstairs yet, so this was a new challenge. As Jon Payne put it, “This is going to suck, but it’s going to be a good kind of suck.”

We started with three man teams, while three other students hid in various spots. Our job was to spot them before they spotted us. My team was the second through and we suffered some communication problems. One team member saw the door to the cave and told the team leader “door”. The leader said “okay”, intending it to mean, “yes, I see the door”. The team member interpreted it as, “ok, take the door” and yanked it open and entered, leaving the team leader playing catch up and me standing there all by my lonesome covering unsearched areas. The student hiding in the cave would have been able to get both of them without being seen. The other difficulty we encountered was when the two team members searched the bathroom using their flashlights. As I pointed out later, there was plenty of ambient light in the room to search without using a light to telegraph your position. A light is vital in some places, like the cave, but they should be a last resort, not a first resort.

After every team of three had a chance to run it, we moved up to teams of five. While not quite as dramatic as going from one guy to three, a team of five offered a lot of advantages. Each team member has a smaller responsibility, allowing him to devote more attention to it. This allowed us to move faster and still search more thoroughly. We divided up our five man team into two, 2-man elements and a team leader (though the two man elements kind of got mixed up later on). Richard Coplin had a unique solution to the cave: he opened the door and reached around to the light switch and turned it on, turning it into a very different sort of problem.

After running everybody through in a five man team Gabe brought out his night-vision monocular and gave us a chance to go into the cave and try it out. He had a blue gun with Trijicon night sights and had us clap the monocular over our left eye while we held the pistol in our right hand and superimposed the three dots of the night sights (seen through the right eye) on the target (seen through the left eye and night vision monocular). It was pretty neat. Just as we were finishing up the batteries gave out (one of the potential disadvantages of this kind of technology). I was surprised to learn that it ran off AAAs. I was expecting some sort of more exotic battery.

We adjourned upstairs for the final debriefing. This was only the second time he taught the class and it’s still evolving, so he was really interested in our feedback. We talked quite a bit about the class, and what other, complementary classes we’d like to see. After some good discussion he handed out the certificates and we left.

Final Thoughts

This was really a great class. It was rather different from other firearms classes I’ve taken, much more about movement and the mind than it is about direct confrontation. As Gabe said on Friday night, it’s more like chess than UFC.

Despite this course’s name, and it’s placement in the High Risk Operator series of classes (which are otherwise oriented more towards light infantry tactics) this class was definitely oriented more towards citizens who want to defend their homes and loved ones than SWAT team members or military servicemen. Gabe is a former SWAT guy, but he clearly recognizes that you can’t just scale down SWAT tactics to one guy and have them work for the individual operator. When you can throw a flashbang and six guys in armor with automatic weapons at a problem, you can use tactics that just aren’t going to work for one guy sneaking around with a pistol.

Even the team tactics work we did on Sunday recognized that your team probably won’t be six highly trained guys who work together on a daily basis. It’s likely to include folks who can shoot, but don’t necessarily have tactical training like this class.

While I emphasized the civilian aspects of this, it seems to me that this class would also be really useful for an ordinary patrol officer. Indeed, it seems like the class drew on Gabe’s experience on patrol as much as it did on his SWAT experience. He talked quite a bit about working solo, with a partner, or with pick-up teams where not all members have the same training or level of experience.

This class really gave me a greater appreciation for the pistol as a CQB weapon. I can just imagine trying to do some of these things using a full length rifle in some of the tighter spaces of my house. Short barreled shoulder weapons like the Suchka and Uzi Gabe had available during class help, but even they can’t match the flexibility provided by a pistol. There’s definitely a balancing act between the added firepower of a long gun and the added length. I don’t think I’ll be giving up on my AK as a home defense weapon, but it may stay in the bedroom (or slung across my back) if I need to move around the house. I’ll also be looking pretty hard at acquiring a short barreled rifle or pistol caliber carbine to try to fill the intermediate role between a full length rifle and a pistol.

One of the thing that makes a pistol so flexible is the ability to move it in and out from a retention position to full extension as the available space dictates. Even though this was a non-shooting class, I was still struck by how useful the things I learned from Roger Phillips in Point Shooting Progressions and Advanced Point Shooting Progressions. Being able to effectively use all points on the retention continuum is a great asset in confined spaces. The non-horizontal shooting exercises we did in APSP blend nicely with “the muzzle follows the eye” principle of addressing danger areas. I was really glad to have taken his classes before taking this one and I think the skills mesh very nicely.

Although this class had some coverage of low light techniques, it was of necessity fairly brief, as just one element in a much broader program. However, it does leave me very much looking forward to Randy Harris’ low light force on force class in October. I’ve done a bit of low light work before this, but it’s an area that merits going into in a lot more depth.

One of the things Gabe emphasized is the need to learn this stuff slow before kicking up the speed. You really need to master doing things at the search and clear speed before you can move up to the locate and kill or traverse and escape speed. Moving faster will still be more risky, but if you know how to do it slow, you can still be reasonably safe at higher speeds. Gabe says this problem even affects some SWAT teams. They’re so eager to get to the high-speed hostage rescue stuff they don’t really master the fundamentals. I’ve certainly got a lot of practice ahead of me in both the physical aspects of taking corners and doors and the mental aspects of planning and thinking my way through the tactical problems presented by different environments before I’m really good at this.

Overall, this was an excellent class and I learn an enormous amount. I would encourage people not to let the name of the class or the subject matter intimidate them. If you intend to defend your home or carry a pistol into public places that might attract an active shooter or terrorist, this class provides fundamental knowledge that you really need. The ability to win a head to head fight is certainly vital, but if I can, I would much rather maneuver and use the environment to my advantage to make any fight as lopsided as possible. The knowledge from this class is a big step enabling me to do that.

Kalashnikov Classes with Gabe Suarez

2010-08-27T11:02:00.002-06:00

Earlier this summer I had a chance to take five days of AK classes with Gabe Suarez in Prescott. The five days were divided up into three classes: Kalashnikov Rifle Marksmanship, Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting, and Kalashnikov Rifle Force on Force. This was a really great set of classes and they increased my comfort level with the AK tremendously.

In addition to Gabe, we also had the services of SI Instructors Dale Hunter (for the entire class), Doug Little, Uli Gebhard, and Richard Coplin (for several days each).

I shot these classes using my Arsenal SLR-107F in 7.62x39mm. Everyone in the classes were using an AK pattern rifle, with a mix of Arsenals, nice Fuller builds, and various other rifles. 7.62 rifles were the most common, with a minority in 5.45mm. My rifle was set up with a forward mounted Aimpoint Micro on an Ultimak rail. There were lots of other folks in the class with optics, with Ultimak mounted Aimpoints being the most common. One fellow had a Russian optic, while another brought out a rifle with a scout scope on it later in the day. While there were a lot of optics, many rifles had only iron sights. I fed my rifle out of a sneaky bag, as did many in the class. The majority of shooters were using more tactical gear of some sort or another, including plate carriers, tactical vests, chest rigs, and other similar equipment. This class included some work with pistol transitions. I recently bought a Glock 17 and I figured this would be a good opportunity to put some more rounds through it, so I carried it instead of my usual Glock 21. Glocks of various types were by far the most common pistol, with a substantial number of XDs and a few other models.

Kalashnikov Rifle Marksmanship

This was a basic course, intended both as an introduction for some, and a refresher for more experienced folks before the Advanced and Force on Force classes.

We started off with the safety lecture. In addition to the standard gun safety stuff, Gabe also discussed how to avoid some of the unique hazards of training in Arizona: the heat, the altitude, venomous insects, and snakes. This was followed by a discussion of the AK system. Gabe discussed the basic features of the rifle and did some compare and contrast with other systems, particularly the AR. In addition to the weapon itself, he also talked a bit about support gear, like slings, sneaky bags, and chest rigs.

Before going hot, we did some dry practice, working the AK safety, magazine, bolt, and trigger. This was followed by some dry fire in the different shooting positions. We paired up and had one partner work the charging handle while the other worked the trigger. Since I’ve become an instructor, I started looking at some of these things a bit differently. In this case, I noticed that while the announced purpose of the drill was to get us a chance to work the different shooting positions, everyone also got a bunch of practice on the trigger reset. We did the drill in prone, sitting, kneeling, squatting, and standing.

Finally, we went hot and did our first shooting, firing a three round group from prone at about 25 yards. As with all of the shooting in today’s class, this was slow fire, marksmanship oriented shooting. One of the goals for this particular exercise was to get a decent zero on everybody’s rifle. I was dead on with both my optic and irons, but many in the class needed some adjustment. This was also an opportunity for Gabe to show off the new sight adjustment tool that OST is selling. We all fired a second three round burst to allow anyone who made an adjustment to confirm the results.

We broke for lunch, with everyone eating at the range as there were no restaurants within any sort of reasonable drive.

After lunch, we picked up with the position shooting, shooting three round groups from sitting, kneeling, squatting, and standing. During this sequence, one of the students had some real trouble. Gabe did a great job working with her, isolating the problem, and helping her overcome it. As a new instructor, watching that alone was worth the price of admission for this class.

We also had one gun malfunction during these drills, and Gabe seized the opportunity to talk about malfunction clearance (given the AK’s legendary reliability, you need to seize these teaching moments when they come up). He went throughout eh SI non-diagnostic malfunction drill for the AK (reload, if that doesn’t work, unload, run the bolt, then reload).

Dale gave a lecture on how to field strip and reassemble the AK. He offered us a chance to take our guns apart (I declined, figuring I’ve stripped my AKs enough already).

We finished up the day by doing some longer ranged shooting on steel. We shot at about 35, 75 and 100 yards, shooting from prone, some intermediate position (sitting, squatting, kneeling) and standing at each range. At the closer ranges this was pretty easy in all positions. As the distance increased, the benefit of the more supported positions became apparent to everyone. However, some subtle features of the range made some of the disadvantages of prone apparent. The range was not perfectly flat, it sloped downhill, with a slight bulge in the middle. The bulge was barely apparent when standing, or even kneeling. When prone, however, it made it impossible to hit the two steel targets placed directly on the ground and made it more difficult to hit the ones placed a bit higher on the berm. These sorts of micro-terrain features can create obstacles to shooting from prone.

This was a very worthwhile class. It was quite basic, focusing on the fundamentals of marksmanship and shooting positions. It was a good introduction to the AK platform for some folks who were new to it and attending the more advanced classes the next four days. For those with previous experience, it was a good refresher. This was my first time seeing Gabe run a basic class, my previous experience with him has been in intermediate level classes. I think seeing how he handled this class is going to be quite useful to me as an instructor. This class was an excellent introduction to to five days of AK training.

Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting - Day 1

The class began with some dry drills. Gabe had us all get in a big circle around him and practice reloading. We began by working it stationary, both right and left handed. Then we started walking in a circle and reloading on the move, then did the same at a light jog. We combined reloading with a get off the X drill. We walked in a circle until Gabe signaled a threat by lighting off a round into the berm. At that moment, we had to get off the X and move to cover or drop prone while performing a reload.

Next, Gabe demonstrated 360 degree position shooting. Almost everyone is familiar with the standard rifle shooting positions: kneeling, squatting, sittingand prone. While these positions are more stable and offer a somewhat lower profile, they limit your mobility. It’s important to be able to address threats to your sides or rear from these positions. It’s also important to be able to do so without standing up to face your adversary. There’s probably a reason you dropped down to a lower position, and it likely involved incoming fire. Raising your profile could be hazardous to your health. From the kneeling position, this involved turning to your right and left, with the occasional shoulder transfer or Spetsnaz prone thrown in. From squatting, you either go to kneeling, or spin around into a seated position. Sitting, you either twist left or right, or come up to kneeling. From prone, you have to roll over onto your back and address targets to your sides or rear from there.

After static dry practice, we put these skills to practice by going back into the circle drill. When Gabe shot into the berm, we immediately dropped to a lower position, then kept our rifles trained on him as he walked around. Then Doug or Dale would put one into the berm and we had to reorient on the new threat.

We had a brief discussion on why you would want to get off the X and the dynamics of the OODA loop, then broke for lunch.

Gabe announced that we would be going live after lunch, so during the break I went to load up my Glock. I inserted the mag and went to rack the slide only to find it quite immobile. After I dumped the mag and applied a bit more force, I managed to get it loose, but it was very gritty. I disassembled the gun and poured out about a teaspoon of dirt and sand from the frame and slide. Because we were working dry, I had been rolling around in the dirt without a magazine in the gun. This provided an entry point for all kinds of crap. What I should have done was empty out a mag and used it to plug the magwell, rather than leaving it open.

After lunch we loaded up our rifles and went hot. We started out working the ‘Caveman EOTech’. This is the rifle equivalent of metal on meat point shooting. You look over the rear sights and put the front sight assembly on the target. As long as the target is bigger than the front sight tower, you’re probably going to hit. This isn’t a precision shot, but it will put bullets pretty much where you want them at CQB distances. For those of us with red dot scopes, Gabe asked us to turn the dots off and just shoot through the tube (at least with my setup, you can actually do both: put the front sight tower in the center of the Aimpoint tube.

With the caveman EOTech down, we moved on to position shooting. We started working with contact ready, with the rifle in the shoulder and just lowered an inch or so until we can see the target’s hands over the gun. This gives us a good view and lets us pop the rifle up to a shooting position very quickly. For closer quarters, close contact ready places the butt stock in the armpit, rather than on the shoulder, but serves the same purpose. We fired several bursts starting in each position using the caveman EOTech.

Next were the movement readies. Sul is perhaps better known as a pistol ready position, but it was originally developed for long guns. It’s quite good for moving through confined spaces or crowds of noncombatants. For moving quickly, Gabe showed port arms and the high noon ready (a much more dignified sounding term than the ‘rifle Sabrina’). This is also useful for rapid movement. The vertical orientation makes it less likely that you will cover anyone and leaves one hand free for other purposes (to catch yourself if you trip and fall flat on your face, for instance).

After a few bursts from those positions, we moved on to the last ready position. Patrol ready, sometimes known as Rhodesian ready (though Gabe confided that when he taught in South Africa he met several Rhodesians and they had no idea what heck he was talking about when he mentioned the Rhodesian ready). This is an important one just because if you spend any substantial amount of time with a rifle in your hands, either on the march or just standing around, you’re eventually going to end up in a relaxed ready position about like this. We let loose a few bursts starting in patrol ready to finish up the ready position section.

The next subject was shoulder transfers. One of the big emphases of the SI rifle program is being able to run the gun ambidextrously. Effective use of movement and cover really requires the ability to shoot from both shoulders. A vital part of this skill set is the ability to move the gun from one shoulder to the other. Gabe teaches the ability to shoot from the partial transfer: moving the buttstock to the other shoulder but keeping your primary hand on the pistol grip and your support hand on the forearm or magazine. From there, you can switch hand positions and shoot from a mirror image of your standard shooting position. For right handers, one thing to remember when shooting an AK is the charging handle. Taking the reciprocating charging handle on the thumb hurts (I can say this from painful previous experience). On stamped receiver AKs, there is a pair of rivets right there that make a good index point. Milled receiver guns have a depression cut into the receiver there that can serve the same purpose. We shot a transfer drill that involves firing one shot from the primary shoulder, transferring the support side shoulder and firing a shot, swapping hand positions and firing a shot, transferring back to the primary shoulder and firing again, then switching the hands and repeating from the beginning. This isn’t something you’d do in a fight, of course, but it really isolates the shoulder transfer skills and lets you work them intensively (it also looks really bitchin’ on the DVD trailer).

To apply these shoulder transfer skills, we worked the pacing drill. You basically walk three steps to the left, then three steps to the right, transferring the gun to shoot from the shoulder in the direction you’re going. This gets you used to doing the transfers on the move.

To finish up the day, Gabe provided an application for these skills. He went through the theory of how, why, and in what direction to get off the X. Then we went back out to the range and practiced getting off the X to the 1 o’clock and 11 o’clock directions, shooting on the move and doing shoulder transfers as appropriate.

At this point, class was finished for the day, but the fun was not. One of the students in the class (gunplumber) brought out his pair of PKM machineguns and offered the rest of us a chance to shoot them if we paid for the ammo. I happily ponied up and ran a 100 round belt through the gun. Mounted on the tripod, I found it very easy to control. It was quite accurate, and easy to get short, controlled bursts. I was even able to get down to single shots if I was quick in manipulating the trigger. I’ve shot full auto before, but never a belt fed gun. It was a real blast. I want to thank gunplumber for giving us the opportunity.

Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting - Day 2

Gabe opened up the second day with some discussion of various AK accessories and modifications. He showed his ‘pimp daddy AK’, equipped with a front sight gas block, flash suppressor/muzzle brake, and full Ultimak handguard system. We talked about various optic and stock options, and what modifications were useful in what context. He also teased us about all the cool stuff that was coming from U.S. Palm that he couldn’t tell us about because he had signed a NDA.

As an introduction to the day’s first drills, he recapped the get off the X discussion and talked about the various lines. He demonstrated how to get off the X to the rear obliques, the 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock directions. These angles make it difficult to keep the gun in a conventional shoulder mount or achieve a traditional cheekweld as you torque yourself around to shoot to the rear. It may be necessary to angle the gun either inboard or outboard, or even float the butt off the shoulder entirely.

We ran the 1 and 11 o’clock lines again, repeating yesterday’s last drill, then moved on to the 3 and 9 o’clock directions. As promised, the 5 and 7 o’clock lines came with some more issues. I tried canting the gun both inboard and outboard. I’m running a Surefire G2 in a VLTOR mount on my Ultimak gas tube, which puts the light above and to the left of my handguard. I found that when I canted the gun outboard on my right shoulder, I could use the caveman EOTech technique with the flashlight instead of the front sight tower. On the left shoulder, it seemed easier to cant the gun outboard and just point shoot along the barrel.

We moved on to after action drills. Just because you shot, or even hit, an assailant doesn’t mean the fight is over. Your hits on the target may not have had the desired effect, or he may have friends around. The after action procedure is a structured way to deal with such possibilities. The sequence goes like this:

Did I hit him? Did it work? (drop the rifle to contact ready and take a good look at the guy you just shot to make sure he isn’t a threat any longer)

Does he have any friends? (scan to the right and left looking for additional threats)

Does he have any friends behind me? (do a Sul scan to the rear to make sure there isn’t anyone sneaking up on you)

How is my gun? (reload if appropriate)

How am I? (look down and check yourself for injuries).

In between each of these steps, you return your attention to the target to make sure that his status hasn’t changed. We went through the drill dry a couple of times, then did it live, getting off the X to the 3 and 9 o’clock and running through the full after action checklist.

The next subject was transitions to pistol. Gabe talked about when and why you would want to transition to pistol instead of reloading or clearing a malfunction. He went through various alternatives, including keeping the rifle in hand and running a sling that attaches you to the rifle. He made the case for his favored transition, which involves shoving your support side arm though the sling, raising the rifle over your head, and dropping it so it hangs diagonally across your back. When you get good at this, it becomes more of a ‘toss the rifle over your head’ movement rather than specific steps. As your hands leave the rifle, they drop into a normal draw stroke and produce the pistol.

We worked transitions dry first, starting slowly and increasing the speed. After several repetitions, we went live. Gabe had us insert a single round in the rifle magazine and chamber it. He asked us to pull the trigger three times. The first time would fire the round, the second would get a click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber, and the third would be a dead trigger. Under the stress of a fight, this is probably what you will end up doing, rather than immediately recognizing the click. Upon feeling the dead trigger, we performed the transition and put a burst into the target.

At this point we broke for lunch. After lunch, we did the transition drill on the move. We loaded 3-7 rounds in our rifles and started out down on one end of the line of targets. As we ran down the line we put a round or two into each one until we got a click, then transitioned to our pistols on the move. While everyone had done pretty well on the static transition drills, doing it on the move messed a lot of people up. One AK ended up in the dirt, and a lot ended up hanging either around the neck or on one arm, rather than diagonally across the back, which inhibited both movement and the use of the pistol. Some pistols clearly weren’t in a good position to draw on the move, mainly on guys who were carrying in more tactical rigs like thigh holsters or vests, rather than CCW type belt rigs.

We ran the drill twice moving from left to right (putting the targets on our left side), meaning right handers could shoot the rifle on their strong side and the pistol two handed. Then we did it once moving from across the range from right to left (putting the targets on our right side), forcing most students to shoot their rifle on the support side and their pistol one handed. The weak side transition is a bit more complicated than the strong side one and even more students had trouble with it. I bobbled it a little bit, but at least I managed to get the rifle hanging crosswise on my back. You could tell that some students probably hadn’t taken any of the SI Close Range Gunfighting classes, because when they transitioned with the targets to their right (for right handed shooters) they still tried to shoot two handed. This generally resulted in them ending up sidestepping or walking backwards, rather than keeping their toes pointed in the direction they were going. Guys with SI pistol experience just shot one-handed.

Gabe gave a brief explanation of the basics of fire and movement, where two guys work as a team and one lays down suppressive fire while the other moves up. He illustrated this using some empty shell casings on the ground. Given that this was an AK class, the good guys were a pair of 7.62x39mm casings while the bad guy was a .223.

Before we tried any of the team tactics stuff, Gabe had us do a muzzle aversion drill. We lined up and pointed our rifles towards the targets, then had to either drop them to Sul or pop them up to high noon ready when one of the instructors or a fellow student walked in front of us. Confident that we could keep from muzzling anyone, we lined up into parallel lines, perpendicular to the targets. The front person of each line fired a burst at the target in front of them, the raised their rifle to high noon ready and peeled off to the left or right to file to the back of the line. Everyone had a chance to go through the line and shoot a couple of times, and everyone kept their muzzles pointed safely towards the sky, even when reloading.

These exercises led up to the two-man team drill. We paired up and each pair started down at one end of the line of targets. One shooter would put rounds into the target, while the other moved behind him and took aim at the next target in line. We leapfrogged down the firing line this way until we reached the end.

The shooting part of this really isn’t very challenging. The challenge is to communicate with your partner to make sure at least one of you is putting fire on the targets at all times. You call out “Moving!” to indicate you’re ready to move up. The partner calls out “Covering!” to indicate that he has responsibility to maintain fire while the other moves. The first shooter moves up to the next position (perhaps reloading on the way). When he reaches the firing point, he resumes shooting and calls out “Set!” The process then repeats with the roles reversed. If it’s your responsibility to provide fire and you run out of ammo, you yell out “Checking!” indicating that you’re unable to provide continuing fire and that your partner needs to take up the slack (without explicitly saying that you’re out of ammo).

This seemingly simple procedure proved surprisingly difficult for many of us to execute in practice. Shooters often forgot to yell commands when it was their turn, ran out of ammo, fumbled reloads, etc. My partner and I managed to run out of ammo at the same time, but probably had a smoother run than some other folks. Doing this sort of thing well clearly takes a lot of practice.

Our last exercise was the Columbian Special Forces drill. There were five steel plates set up down at the bottom of the 100 yard range. You started out at the 100 yard line and dropped prone, firing on one of the plates until you got four hits. From there you moved to each of four barrels representing pieces of cover from about the 75 to 25 yard lines, dropping prone and firing until you hit four times form each of these positions. The magazine in your rifle was loaded with just 24 rounds, meaning that if you missed more than four times, you would have to do a reload. Dale set up the cover so that you could only see some of the plates from each position. Dealing with these micro-terrain obstacles and figuring out which plates to shoot from each position was really half the battle. I helped him position the barrels, and made my own subtle contribution by positioning the barrels on the right hand side of the range so it would be more difficult to shoot around the right side of the cover so that students would be encouraged to shoot from both shoulders. It seemed fitting, given SI’s embrace of ambidextrous use of the rifle.

Only two students managed to get through the course without any misses. Some had a lot more. I went towards the end of the class. Many of the previous students ended up leaving pieces of gear, especially magazines, on the range as they went down to or got up from prone. I wanted to avoid this, so I snapped the flap of my sneaky bag shut. This made it less likely that I would leave gear strewn all over the range, but it meant a reload would be a long and painful process. I gambled on my ability to shoot accurately. I was doing quite well at first, making eight straight hits at the first two firing positions. At the third position, however, I missed three times in a row. This is usually the way these things go. You miss once, and you get flustered, causing you to miss again, making you even more frustrated and degrading your performance even more. After the third miss, I told myself to calm down, took a deep breath, reestablished my sight picture and made the hit. After that I went through the rest of the course without another miss, leaving one round left in the gun. Made it through with no reload!

Advanced Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting - Final Thoughts

This was a great class. Gabe did an excellent job teaching, ably assisted by Dale, Doug, and Uli. We had a very squared away group of students. In particular, I want to call out the performance of gunplumber’s fourteen year old daughter, who did a great job in the class. Everyone had solid, safe gunhandling skills and was able to deal with the physical demands of the class. Gabe says that the rifle is a physical weapon. It’s much bigger and heavier than a pistol and if you want to use it to it’s maximum potential you have to master getting into and out of shooting positions. This is Arizona, and it was dry, on the warm side (though not as hot as it could have been) and at an altitude of about 5000 feet. These can combine to really kick your butt physically but everyone handled it well. I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn how to use the AK to it’s maximum potential or who wants an excellent education in the combat use of the rifle.

This class really left me looking forward to the AK Force on Force class!

Kalashnikov Rifle Force on Force - Day 1

This class is run with a mixture of dry rifles and pistols, and airsoft guns. Airsoft AKs are expensive and (as we found out) fragile, so Gabe didn’t expect everyone to bring one. Usually, in a Force on Force class the rule is no live weapons on the range. In this case, because we were working with empty rifles, the rule was no live ammo or any weapons other than empty firearms. We divested ourselves of all knives, blunt weapons, and ammunition and had a partner search us to ensure that nothing dangerous would be introduced into the FoF environment.

We started out doing some stretching. FoF classes are very physical and we don’t want anyone getting hurt. After everyone was loosened up, Gabe had us form two lines, about with about two arm widths between each student. The front student in each line would turn around and slalom through the line, treating each student in line as a corner he has to maneuver around. When he gets to the end of the line, he takes his place there and the next student moves back through the line. Since this is SI class, you are expected to switch shoulders with every corner, always keeping the gun on the outside of the corner you’re working. In the beginning, a lot of people were very tense and hesitant in their movements, but after a couple of runs, they smoothed out quite a bit.

Once we were comfortable running the slalom with rifles, Gabe started out calling for a transition to pistol. Some interior spaces are tight enough that you may be better off negotiating them with a pistol than a rifle. Unlike the reactive transitions we were working on in the Advanced AK class, where you ran out of ammo and needed to get the pistol out as quickly as possible, this was a proactive transition. The number one difference is that for a proactive transition, rather than an inoperative (empty or jammed) rifle, you would have a live round in the chamber, making it necessary to engage the safety before transitioning. Also, rather than the priority being to get the pistol out as quickly as possible, the priority is to have a weapon up and ready to fire at all times. Rather than throwing the gun on your back and drawing your pistol, draw the pistol then sling the rifle. Conversely, when going from pistol back to rifle, get the rifle out, then holster the pistol. Slinging and unslinging the rifle one-handed isn’t something I’ve really practiced, and it showed. This is definitely going to get added to my dry practice regimen.

When we had pistol transitions under control, we added knives to the mix. Gabe illustrated how to use a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other to increase retention when working in close quarters. You hold the gun in a standard retention position and the knife in a reverse grip in your support hand at about neck level. If anyone comes around the corner you’re working and try to grab for your gun, he gets the knife first, then you shoot him off your knife with the pistol. We ran the slalom drill switching between rifle, pistol and both pistol and knife a couple of times.

At this point, there was a discussion of hitting people with guns, including a rather vivid discussion of an occasion when Gabe dealt with a hostage holding bad guy using the muzzle of his pistol. We also talked a bit about contact shots as well.

Back to the slalom drill, we introduced vertical displacements. Most folks tend to see things about eye level, not paying much attention to what’s above or below. Gabe hasn’t quite worked out that combat levitation thing, but getting below eye level is pretty easy. We did the drill again, crouching down or going to Spetsnaz prone as we worked the corners. This finished up the slalom drill.

Gabe discussed the basics of the Pekiti takeoff: unweighting your feet, orienting the feet and hips, loading up the drive leg, and ducking the shoulder. This process helps you get off the X much quicker than simply stepping stepping off. In addition, dropping as you unweight the feet and ducking the shoulder provides vertical displacement, which gets you out of the opponent’s sights faster. Especially against a rifle, you literally drop out of the sight picture in an instant. Though he didn’t refer to it as such, the takeoff that Gabe taught was what those of us who have been around a while know as the enhanced Pekiti, rather than the classic Pekiti that we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. I talked with Gabe after class and he said that he feels the enhanced Pekiti is superior enough that he’s moved to teaching it as the default.

We worked the Pekiti takeoff against the rifle, first with empty hands, then drawing the pistol as we stepped off. We were training for the absolute worst case scenario, being held at gunpoint with the finger on the tripper. The student doing the takeoff initiated the drill while his partner holding him at gunpoint tried to shoot as soon as he saw movement. Generally, the fellow doing the takeoff could get out of the way before the guy with the rifle could drop the hammer. After running the takeoff for a while we broke for lunch.

After lunch, Dale showed how to disarm someone holding a rifle. You grab the gun at the forend and stock and twist the rifle around, either pushing (if you’re on his primary side) or pulling (if you’re on his support side). The comb of the stock gets driven into his neck and he’s either going to let go of the rifle, end up on the ground, or get choked out by the pressure of the stock against the arteries in his neck. There are some tricks to getting the leverage right, but the technique is simple, effective, and usable by a smaller person against a larger one.

He also went through a method for using the AK as an impact weapon. The normal firing grip on a rifle isn’t very natural for using it as an impact weapon. You certainly wouldn’t try to work with a Kali stick that way, for example. From the normal firing grip, you rotate your hands so that the primary hand is grasping the stock from below, just behind the receiver and your support hand is grasping the forend from below. The rifle is held at about shoulder height, muzzle forward.

To employ the rifle as an impact weapon, you follow a simple sequence Dale calls ‘paddling’. Jab the opponent with the muzzle, swing the rifle down and bash him with the stock, jab him with the butt, then swing the rifle up and slash him with the front sight tower. Repeat as necessary. To integrate the footwork with it, you shuffle forward on the jabs and take a step forward on the swings. The overall motion ends up being a lot like paddling a canoe.

Gabe pointed out that when attached to the rifle, a ComBloc bayonet has the sharp edge on the upper edge of the blade. This sort of attack illustrates why. When you do the second swing with a bayonet attached, rather than hitting them with the sight tower, you’re performing a slashing attack with the bayonet. When Gabe started talking about the bayonet, he asked if anyone in the class had one with them. One student, named Ivan, went to get one from his car. On the way back, rather than walking around the long way, he came over the berm. Only at an SI AK class do you really have Ivan coming over the berm with a bayonet!

We talked a bit about what to do if someone tries to disarm you, using either this or some other technique. The standard solution is to let go of the rifle and shoot them with your pistol. You should be able to draw and shoot them long before they get the rifle turned around to shoot you. The flip side of this is that if you disarm someone of their rifle it’s important to immediately turn it into an impact weapon, rather than trying to shoot them with it right away.

One of the things we discovered working the disarms is that if they manage to get the stock out of the shoulder, it becomes much more difficult to get the rifle away from them. Instead, Gabe recommend immediately giving up on the disarm, stepping behind them, and going for the choke. One student pointed out that from the support side you could actually us the rifle to choke them out, turning their efforts to hang on to the rifle against them.

Gabe brought out the airsoft rifles and we resumed work on the Pekiti takeoff and getting off the X. Since we only had three airsoft guns, we split up into three groups. One student in each group tried to get off the X and get his dry rifle on target while another pointed in with the airsoft gun launched a round at the spot where he was standing as soon as he saw movement. I found myself getting hit quite a bit on this drill, much more than I had in previous pistol focused FoF classes. I couldn’t figure this out until Dale pointed out that I was telegraphing the takeoff by dipping my shoulder before I started my drop. I’m used to the regular Pekiti, so when I was trying to do the enhanced Pekiti, I was thinking about the shoulder drop to the point that I started it before the rest of the move. After he pointed this out I had somewhat more success, but I definitely need to practice the enhanced Pekiti, preferably on video or in front of a mirror so I can see if I’m telegraphing.

As we were doing this, it started raining pretty hard. After running the drill a few times, Gabe had us start tracking the student getting off the X and trying to hit him with follow up shots, rather than just launching one round at the X. This emphasized the need for continued movement, and gave students an idea of how long the takeoff gave them to get rounds on target before the opponent’s muzzle will catch up with them.

Around the time the rain let up, we began our last drill of the day. This time both students involved were armed both students with airsoft rifles. Rather than holding the other at gunpoint, the bad guy student initiated the drill by coming up from low ready while the good guy tried to get off the X and shoot the bad guy before he got shot himself. Several students fell, one of them on the stock of one of the airsoft rifles, snapping it. Dale managed to get it back up using copious quantities of duct tape, but the airsoft AKs definitely aren’t as durable as the real thing. We ran through the once each, then wrapped up for the day.

That evening, we were all invited for dinner together at SI headquarters. This was an excellent chance to talk with other students, SI instructors, and staff (including Gabe’s junior staff). It was also a chance to go through the One Source Tactical warehouse and buy stuff directly. They probably more than covered the cost of the food with the profit from the stuff that students bought. I saw lots of AK accessories go out the door.

Kalashnikov Rifle Force on Force - Day 2

In a surprising move for a rifle class, we began the second day with some kettlebell exercises. As Gabe said many times during the class, the rifle is a physical weapon. Compared to a pistol where you usually stand there and shoot (or move and shoot if you’re in an SI class), with a rifle you’re getting down into lower, more stable positions and getting back up, moving around hefting a heavy, somewhat awkward object, and even hitting people with it. All this requires a certain level of physical fitness if you want to get the most out of the weapon. Gabe really likes the kettlebell as an exercise tool, and many kettlebell exercises work muscles that are useful in combat rifle shooting. He and Dale demonstrated kettlebell swings, D.A.R.C. swings, the sumo lift, the high pull, snatches and the Turkish getup. Everyone had an opportunity to try each exercise. I’ve got a kettle bell, and I’ve done some training with it. I was really glad of the opportunity to do some of these exercises with some experienced guidance. Some kettlebell exercises, like the snatch, really rely on good form and if you do them incorrectly, you can seriously mess yourself up. Gabe also talked about integrating the kettlebell into rifle training, doing a set of snatches, then working with the rifle in dry fire. Or you can take the kettlebell out to the range and see how your live fire skills hold up after some vigorous exercise.

Getting back to firearms, we looked at options for being held at rifle point. When we worked rifle disarms yesterday, it was in the context of moving in from 5-10 feet away. Today, we started out at contact distance, with the rifle armed individual jabbing you in the back with his muzzle. Generally, you want to turn away from the muzzle and get yourself out of the line of fire as quickly as possible, then turn into the opponent and go for the disarm (if the muzzle is in the middle of the back, just pick a direction). If the fellow with the rifle is pushing or pulling you with his hand in addition to jabbing you in the back with the rifle, go with the direction of the push or pull. The hardest situation is when the muzzle is up against the back of your head. Gabe suggests flinching down and to the side to get out of the way of the barrel, then completing your turn and going after the gun.

While this wasn’t a pistol class, we also worked some pistol disarms, in part to illustrate how some of the same concepts work across categories. Pistols can be harder to disarm than a rifle, because they offer far less to grab on to. On the other hand, handguns expose much more of their operating mechanism, and by grabbing them in the right places you can either prevent them from firing (by preventing the cylinder of a revolver from rotating, preventing the hammer from going back on a double action gun or going forward on a single action gun) or make sure they only fire once (prevent the slide from cycling on a semi-auto). Gabe demonstrated a couple of simple disarms and had us work them a few times.

Our next subject was the AK versus contact weapons. We did most of this versus sticks, but it could apply to an opponent armed with a machete, tomahawk, knife, club, or even using his rifle as an impact weapon. The method we studied was to catch the incoming weapon in the crook between the magazine and the forend. For those who have seen the Die Less Often DVDs, this is like a premade dogcatcher, with the advantage that since it’s not made of your arms, you can catch blades in it as well. If you work it right, you can actually use the crook to strip the other guy’s weapon. This worked particularly well against the tomahawk, but if you twisted the rifle the right way, it also worked against the stick.

After a short lunch break, we did some AK versus knife work. This time, rather than starting at contact distances like we did with the stick, we gave the AK guy some standoff distance. We started out a 7 yards, representing the standard “21 foot rule”. With the rifle in patrol ready and getting off the X promptly, this was ridiculously easy, so we moved it in to 5, 4, and then 3 yards. As the distance closed, it became harder, and you needed to get a good takeoff to avoid the guy with the knife. In particular, the ability to move to the 5 and 7 o’clock lines while still getting the rifle on target becomes quite important. Guys who could do that well had a big advantage.

Gabe broke out the airsoft and we practiced versus the knife. Again, if you got off the X promptly and used the rear oblique lines the guy with the AK could get a few hits on the one with the knife before the blade got within range.

We switched back to airsoft AK versus airsoft AK and did a bit more GOTX practice. After duplicating what we’d done yesterday a couple of times each, Gabe talked about taking corners with a rifle. I’d learned the classic way of dealing with corners: pie the corner until you see your opponent, then roll out and shoot him. Gabe pointed out that if you can get a good, solid center of mass shot on the target, he can probably see you. Alternatively, if you work the corner well, you can get a look at his elbow or knee before he can see you and shoot him peripherally. This may be a good strategy if the corner you’re working is cover rather than concealment. If the corner is just concealment, the target’s reaction to being shot in the foot may be to empty his magazine into the wall where you’re hiding, which would really ruin your day.

Instead, Gabe suggested applying the same basic principles of getting off the X to working a corner. Pie the corner until you see some sign of the opponent, but he can’t see you. That’s the line of decision. Rather than peering gingerly across it, move explosively across that line and shoot the target on the move. When we ran this with airsoft the guy who was set up watching the corner almost always shot behind the guy who came around it.

As we were talking about corners, Gabe talked a bit about the basic principles of room clearing and how to handle it with one or two people. This was a bit of the preview of the CQB class coming up in August, and it has me looking forward to it even more.

We wrapped up the class with some discussion of the things we’d learned, not just in this class, but the previous five days. We talked about the need to shoot ambidextrously, getting off the X, point shooting the rifle, and the need to be physically fit to take full advantage of the rifle.

Kalashnikov Rifle Force on Force - Final Thoughts

This was a really great class. It flowed well from the Advanced AK class we did the previous two days, but it pushed things much further. I was really glad to get some zero to five foot stuff with the rifle. The rifle disarms and using it as an impact weapons are things that many people don’t pay enough attention to. I’ve been exposed to the get off the X stuff and the Pekiti takeoff before, but it’s always good to get it again. In particular, it was good to learn I was telegraphing the shoulder dip on the Enhanced Pekiti. The stuff on how to work a corner was really great, and has me chomping at the bit for the CQB class in August.

Kalashnikov Rifle Force on Force is an excellent class. It’s really the capstone of the Suarez International AK curriculum.

Fairbairn on gunfighting

2010-06-30T10:16:00.000-06:00

"The course consists of practical war methods of shooting with the one-hand gun, in which any man of average intelligence can be taught to draw, load fire and hit his opponent within a second."

"This is not a new fangled idea, but a proven method which has been in use in the far-east since 1919, against some of the most desperate criminals in the world - men who were, (in most cases), known killers, who preferred always to shoot it out, rather than being captured and finishing up in front of a firing squad, etc....."

"All affrays were on the run - up and down stairways, over roofs, down cobbled alleyways, or in very crowded streets. Ninety percent of the shooting was in the dark and the majority of hits were within four yards. Some of the police were killed by being shot in the back at a matter of inches distance only."

"Students should be informed that the average shooting with the one-hand gun is over, so far as they will be concerned, in a very few seconds. There will no time to reload. If there first shot takes longer than a third of a second to fire, they will not be the one to tell the newspaper about it. It is literally a matter of the quick and the dead - so they can take their choice."

2010 National Tactical Invitational

2010-06-08T22:41:00.002-06:00

Last week, I attended the 2010 National Tactical Invitational. NTI isn't really a training event, you're not going to learn any new skills while you're there. Instead, it's a testing ground where you can take your existing skills and put them to a test in a mix of live fire and force on force scenarios.

The whole event runs from Tuesday night through Saturday. You do one day of shooting on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. The other days you can attend lectures by various trainers and others. On Saturday morning, there is a partners force on force exercise. I'm here with a few guys from South Carolina, Bill, John, and Richard (Tactical Trainer on this board). I was squaded up with them for todays shooting.

ATSA Village

NTI is composed of ten stages, four force-on-force scenarios, and six live fire stages (five scenarios and a skills test). We started out in the force-on-force stages, the ATSA village (the American Tactical Shooting Association sponsors NTI). Of course, we had to divest ourselves of all live weapons and be searched before being allowed into force-on-force. Once in the village, we were issued j-frame revolvers loaded with Code Eagle sims rounds. These are plastic cased rounds a plastic bullet filled with paint. There isn't any powder, just a primer. The rounds don't generate enough recoil to cycle the slide of a semi-auto (hence the revolvers). They don't require all of the safety gear that Simunitions do, though they do smart a bit more than airsoft. Safety gear includes a plastic face shield and foam collar around the neck to protect the vulnerable bits.

We were introduced to the denizens of the village, including a bride and groom who were getting married that day. Several of the scenarios were wedding related. The law in the village was represented by Vicki Farnam, who played the village Sheriff. All together, this was a fairly major setup, including around fifteen role-players and quite a bit of scenery. We were led through a series of scenarios by a judge, who observed what we did and was responsible for calling a halt to the scenario after it played out.

My first scenario was a visit to the IRS office. Evidently there was a problem with my return, and I had to discuss this with the agent there. During our discussion, her ex came in and started yelling at her. She pulled a gun out of her desk and pointed it at him, prompting him to leave. I didn't want to insert myself into somebody else's domestic situation so I didn't intervene. A few minutes later he comes back. This time when she goes for the gun, he disarms her and I'm within a hair of drawing my gun, but rather than pointing it at her, or me, he pockets it and continues arguing. She eventually crawls over the desk and takes shelter behind my chair. At this point, I still don't want to get in a fight with this guy (especially for a woman who's giving me an audit), but since I'm between him and her, and he's starting to think that I'm the she cheated on him with, I have to do something. I deny the affair and converse with him a bit and he storms off. This was a situation where I could have escalated it to a fight pretty easily, but I didn't want to get into a situation like that where it really wasn't my problem to begin with.

The second scenario took me to a store, where I was to pick up a wedding present, and some other stuff my wife wanted me to get. Just as my hands are full of all of this junk, two guys (one of whom had been loitering suspiciously outside the store earlier) burst in to rob the place. I immediately ditched the stuff, but at this point their attention seemed to be focused on the shop owners and getting the money out of the register, so I didn't want to turn this into a gunfight. One guy behind the counter tried to draw his own gun, but fumbled it uselessly. After they'd gotten the contents of the register, they turned their attention to me, demanding first my money (they passed out fake bills for us to use in scenarios, which I handed over) then my watch. At this point the nearer thug started grabbing for the suspicious bulge under my shirt. In this case was the flashlight on my left hip. It was fairly obvious that my gun was next. I certainly wasn't about to go down that road, so I decided to act. I grabbed the arm that was reaching for my flashlight and yanked that robber towards me as I drew, put two rounds into him, then launched one round at the other robber, grazing his arm. Unfortunately, I didn't do quite a good enough job manhandling the nearer robber, and despite my hold on him, he was able to reach under and pop a round into my chest right as was shooting at the second robber. At this point the judge called a halt. Afterwards, the Sheriff arrived and I was given an opportunity to incriminate myself (I declined).

One of the difficulties here is that there are limits to the amount of physical force you can use with the roleplayers. You can push and shove and grab, but you're supposed to mime and verbally call out any harder strikes or disarms. If I could have manhandled this guy with more force, I might have been able to pull off what I was trying, but given those limitations I probably would have been better off getting off the X rather than going hands on.

The third scenario required walking down a long narrow alley. To justify this to the folks who say "I would never go down an alley like that", you're told that you have to cut through this alley, or you'll be late to your job and get fired. As I reached the first bend in the alley, there was a guy standing there. I gave him a nod but he didn't respond and as soon as I was passed, he yelled out, "yo!" At this point, I'm figuring that he just alerted someone up ahead. I turn the next corner to see two guys conducting what looks like a drug deal. The customer wanders off down the alley while the dealer starts offering me some of his product. As I say no thanks he steps to block me. I'm still conscious of the guy behind me and I don't want to get blocked in between them. I use the wedding present I'm carrying from the last scenario to put something between us, as I step left and shove by him. At that point I boogie out of there. During the debrief on Saturday afternoon, Vicki mentioned that someone navigated the alley by buying the drugs off the dealer, then going to the Sheriff and confessing to the crime.

The last scenario involved all four of the shooters on our squad, and all the 'village people' as they call the role-players. We come together for the long awaited wedding. As we waited around between the earlier scenarios we were throated to scenes of the bride being harassed by an old flame, so we all had the feeling that something would happen. A few minutes into the scenario the lights went out and there was a loud pop and some smoke, which caused to of the participants to bolt for the door, but the preacher explained that it was just electrical problems. After the I dos, the guests were asked to line up in a receiving line. As we did so, the ex-boyfriend came walking in with an explosive vest on. I immediately drew and lit him up. My instinct was to take the headshot, but we'd been asked not to shoot for the head for safety reasons, even with the face shields, so I aimed for the chest above the bomb vest. Bill did the same from another angle and so we peppered him pretty good before he had a chance to do anything with the vest.

This finished up our time in the village, and doing force-on-force, so we turned in our sims revolvers and got our gear back on.

ATSA Meditation Retreat

During the brief for this scenario, they explained that I was going to meet a friend at a construction site and that he was wearing a purple-pinkish shirt and had a really bad haircut (all of your friends/relatives that you're supposed to save in the live fire scenarios had made really bad fashion choices). I was led in with my head turned down so I didn't see the setup until the start signal. The signal was a really big bang (something along the lines of an artillery simulator) followed up by speakers playing sounds of automatic weapons fire and guys shouting 'allahu akbar' (though I didn't appreciate that detail until I heard the tape being played for the next guy to shoot the scenario). I didn't see any targets from my starting position, so I moved forward to my poorly dressed friend and shot two close range targets behind a low wall. These are NTI's standard falling targets. 3d rubber mannequins with a central core that you have to hit to knock over. I pied out from cover and engaged three targets about 50 yards away. These were steel targets, and I managed to ding each of them with the first or second shot. Pieing out further I shot another, nearer one. I really like the Warren Tactical sights I've got on my Glock 21. I think they made it considerably easier to hit those three far targets than it would have been with my old three dot sights. As with most of the live fire stages, this was videotaped, and they ran the tape back to review my performance. They also give you a copy to take home so I have the chance to replay all of my mistakes again and again.

ATSA Mall

This was my first 360 degree stage. On these stages, the range has a berm in all directions and rather than going through it with a range office behind you, you go in on your own, with the RO and judge monitoring via video cameras (you also get a copy of the tape). From their spot safely behind the berm, they can move some targets, open doors, and speak to you over a PA system. Despite being only static targets, this is a very interactive environment.

As the name might suggest, this stage was meant to represent a mall. The setup described during the stage briefing (the 'Bedtime story' as skip Gochenour refers to it) is that you were shopping with your wife or girlfriend and you had gone to the restroom. They mentioned that the start signal would be 'unmistakable'. To cap it off, they put your support hand in a sling, preventing you from using it for anything.

You start off the stage in a small room, simulating a restroom (though without the accoutrements of one). Again, the start signal is a really big bang (they seem to love that around here). I drew my pistol, opened up the door to the rest of the stage, and took a look around. The shoot house was set up with an open central area, with several columns for cover. The sides had a bunch of nooks and closets that could (and did) conceal various targets. At this point, I had an opportunity to see my 'wife' being held hostage in a dark closet in the far corner. It was very easy to miss, and I missed it. The hostage taker also had a good field of fire all the way down the center of the room, an area that I would cross three or four times in the course of the scenario. He could have easily shot me without me even seeing him. I moved into the room and saw a hanging target (one that uses a balloon inside and falls when you pop it). It was intended as a mover, but it hadn't started moving yet. I dispatched it with one round, then immediately realized that I hadn't seen a gun on it before shooting. It would turn out that there was a threat indicator on there that I hadn't seen, but until the debrief afterwards I was certain that I had just shot a no-shoot.

As I moved further into the room, I spotted a target to the right and engaged him. While I was doing that, they opened a door behind me and exposed another target. After I turned and dealt him I spotted another target in an Army uniform further down the mall and saw that he had a pistol. I yelled for him to drop his gun, but he refused, claiming he was a good guy. I didn't want to shoot him, but I didn't want to expose myself to him either, so I moved back to a side hallway where I would be out of sight.

At around this point, they activated a device that dropped a fake bomb (half a dozen sticks of simulated dynamite taped together). I totally missed this, but before the bomb went off (another big bang) I had already moved off to the side hallway. The wall between the hallway and the main part of the stage was only concealment, rather than cover (it's all wood, but some panels are painted with a brick pattern indicating they're hard cover) so it wouldn't necessarily have protected me from the blast.

I did a one handed tactical reload in the hallway, then called out to the fellow in uniform that I was just looking for my wife and not to shoot me. In return for a less confrontational approach, he clued me in to a hostile target around the corner to my right, which I promptly dispatched. Finally, the only part of the stage left unsearched was that dark closet in the corner. When I finally got close and looked inside, I saw my wife (the only target in the stage wearing a wig) in front of an armed hostile. I put a few rounds into his head and told the wife to come with me, ending the scenario.

ATSA Courthouse

Like the mall this stage was on a 360 degree range, overseen by video cameras. As with the previous stage, your support hand was in a sling and out of action. Again, you start out inside and are tasked with rescuing a friend or relative. These two features run through most of the live fire scenarios. The NTI is designed to me occupationally neutral, suited for police officers and the private citizen alike. Unlike police officers, citizens do not have a duty to enter buildings full of armed men, and the best course of action will often realistically be to call 911 and let the professionals handle it. This wouldn't provide you with much training, so the NTI places a friend or relative in most scenarios like the cheese at the end of the maze to incentivize the private citizen to fight their way through a building full of people who want to kill them. They also usually start you inside the building, so you don't actually make the decision to enter, instead you're already there.

The shoot house for this stage was roughly L-shaped. I entered at one end of the L and had a clear view up the length of this leg of the L to a very confusing target. The target had a wig and was wearing a dress. Now in the previous two stages, the only target with the wig was the friend or relative you were trying to rescue. The briefing for this stage did not include a description of the friend or relative that I was going in after. As I was trying to figure this out, a plank with a pair of foam pipes attached to it swiveled up. This was supposed to be a double barreled shotgun the woman was wielding, but because of where it was placed, kind of low and off to the side, it didn't really register that was what it was supposed to be. Based on the position, it looked like the gun was being wielded by someone crouching down behind her, but there wasn't anyone there. After pondering this for a while, I fired some rounds at her, but the angle was hard for a right hander shooting one-handed, and I missed. I figured this wasn't a falling target and moved on, checking the rest of the room she was in.

Hidden to the left of the door was a target wearing cammo with a badge, representing courthouse security. I told him not to shoot me and moved past him into the room. There were two parallel hallways leading off to the right, one of which held another security guard. At this point I missed a target standing outside a window down the right hand hall. I moved over next to the woman and gave her a bit of a shove, knocking her over, then moved down the left hand hall. There was an armed target outside a window on the left. Further on, I saw a target in a small nook to the left, but I didn't see any weapon. I also noticed the gun of the target that I'd missed earlier. The foam rubber gun was attached to the window frame with a screw, in front of the target, but I couldn't see the target itself from this angle and I wasn't about to stick my head in front of that gun to see out the window. I moved by the target in the nook I'd identified earlier and saw that he had a gun, which had been out of view earlier, so I shot him. In the final room were two targets, one of which was armed and one was not. I shot the armed one and correctly assumed the other was my friend I was supposed to save.

ATSA Skills Test

The next stage I shot was the ATSA skills drill. Rather than being a scenario, this involves shooting a series of predefined exercises against cardboard targets. There were two strings of three shots from retention, moving to cover while shooting two rounds on each of three targets, a ball and dummy drill, and a few similar exercises.

Church of the Holy Reload

This was this year's mystery gun stage. The setup is that you are about to enter your niece's wedding carrying your wedding gift: a 12 gauge coach gun (for which you just happened to bring ten rounds of birdshot). Since the point of the mystery gun stage is to force you to fight without your usual gear, you are supposed to be wearing a tuxedo which doesn't have room for any of your normal carry gear. Rather than have every shooter take off all the crap we carry (and because no tuxedo was available) we put on a hospital gown over our clothes. This not only prevents us from getting to our gear, it also deprives us of any pockets.

Before the stage started, I spent a minute handling the coach gun. I wanted to make sure I knew which direction the safety and the lever to open up the action were supposed to go. Unfortunately, I missed the other salient feature of the gun: that the hammers have to be cocked manually. My very brief previous exposure to coach guns has been with models that didn't have external hammers. The gift box I was carrying the shotgun and ammo in also included the worlds worst flashlight. It was dim and activated by a knob (which also focused the beam). Rather than being a tube light, it was about four inches in diameter with a swiveling handle, making it very cumbersome to use in conjunction with a long gun. Of course, this was a dark stage, meaning we would need the flashlight for target identification.

At the start signal (the RO yelling that there was shooting inside the church, rather than an explosion this time) I set down the box and got the shotgun loaded. In my left hand, I grabbed as many shells as I could manage and the light. As I entered the church, I realized that the beam was way too diffuse. I managed to readjust the light and saw two figures with guns off to the right. I tried to fire, but got nothing. It was at this point that I realized I needed to cock the gun manually. After pulling the hammers back, I let them have one barrel each. Somebody yelled out that there was a guy with a knife up in front of the church. I hurriedly reloaded and rechecked the gun, used the light to identify the armed target, and blasted him. A bystander informed me that the bride and groom had gone out the back.

I had no idea which barrel I had just fired, so I reloaded both with my last two shells, dropped the flashlight and pied the corner as I stepped out the back door. I spotted one armed BG at the corner of the church and dropped him. With one round left, I pied around a short wall segment and spotted an unarmed target with an armed one just behind him. I was in the process of pulling the trigger when I spotted the badge on his chest. I know I saw the before the gun went off, but I wasn't able to stop in time and ended up giving the deputy my last round.

Overall, this stage was a series of blunders for me. In addition to my trouble with the hammers and shooting the cop, I also stood rooted in the doorway for at least half a minute while I messed with the light and shotgun rather than stepping back outside and seeking cover. As they explained during the debrief on Saturday, they don't do the mystery gun stage because they think you should know how to operate every weapon on the planet. The do it because forcing you to use an unfamiliar weapon (and a crappy flashlight) rather than your regular gear induces stress that can reveal weaknesses. It's interesting what degrades and what doesn't. I failed to seek cover and had an obvious problem with target discrimination. On the other hand, I shot well. I point shot the gun from the shoulder and every target went down with one shot. I also think I did a good job pieing the two corners, even doing a smooth shoulder transition to pie around the left side of the wall (right before I blew away the deputy).

ATSA Medical Clinic

The final stage I shot used mostly pneumatically activated targets, rather than the falling targets that characterized the earlier scenarios. This allows them to reveal and retract the targets as you move through the stage, but they don't go down with quite the same satisfying finality as the dropping targets. Again, you are tasked with rescuing a relative from a medical clinic after you her shots coming from inside.

I entered, moved down a hallway, and pied a corner to the right. I spotted a target that was facing away from me. The target whirled around just after I spotted it, revealing a pistol. I shot it. A moment later, a pneumatic target popped up out a window to my left. I put several rounds into it before it disappeared. Another target popped out further down the hall. I shot it until it retracted, then rounded another corner to my right, revealing another target. Putting several rounds into this target left me at slide lock, prompting me to reload. I rounded a left hand corner, revealing a long empty hallway with a door at the end. Opening the door revealed my relative out the back door of the clinic, but to reach him I had to move past a hallway to my left. As I pied out I saw another turning target, which I gunned down (almost hitting a no-shoot behind it) and another pneumatic target out the window. I moved past the hallway and spotted yet another pneumatic target in a nook to my right. Shooting it ended the stage.

This was the only scenario I came close to running out of ammunition on. Despite shooting fairly generously, I only used one magazine on the Meditation and Courthouse stages. During the Mall stage, I did a tactical reload and shot slightly more than one magazine of ammunition. On the this stage, I ran one magazine dry and had only 3 rounds left in the second at the end of the stage. I think this can largely be attributed to the fact that the pneumatic targets don't retract anywhere near as fast as the falling targets| drop to the ground.

This finished up my day of shooting on Thursday. NTI was not yet over, however. In addition to a day of lectures and discussions on Friday, there was also a set of partners scenarios on Saturday.

Partners Scenarios

The partners scenarios are run force on force, using the same revolvers loaded with sims as the ATSA village. One partner is armed, but the other is not, and represents the friend or family member to be rescued. I was partnered with John, one of my friends from South Carolina.

For the first scenario, I was unarmed. It was a fairly faithful recreation of the ATSA Mall live fire stage, using the same shot house with role-players in about the same locations as the live fire targets. As the cheese at the end of the maze, I was placed in a small closet to the rear. As John came in the front, I yelled that I was in the back and decided to take a peek out to see if I could see anything to help him. The door swung open further than I'd intended and for my troubles I was shot immediately. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor at this point, I moved back further into the closet and waited for John to come to me.

John ended up taking a round in fairly short order, after he spotted an armed criminal and attempted to shoot him, but was unable to get the revolver to fire. After a moment, the criminal shot him. Before the scenario, John opened the cylinder of the revolver to check that it was loaded (NTI has been known to give people unloaded guns in Force on Force, particularly if it is taken from you by the Sheriff during a scenario and returned). Unfortunately, he didn't completely close the cylinder, resulting in an unifireable gun.

The second partners scenario took place in the Courthouse shoot house, but the scenario was somewhat different than the live fire scenario yesterday. The unarmed partner entered the courthouse to pay a traffic ticket and is thrown in a cell by two criminals attempting to escape. Of course, I did not know this at the time, I'm just waiting outside for my friend when I hear gunfire. I entered and encountered a man holding a cellphone. I manage to identify the contents of his hand correctly and don't shoot him. After he assumes I'm a bad guy (since I have a gun) I tell him to get out of there, then think better of it and ask him to call 911.

As I moved further into the shoot house, I hear the two escaping convicts. They're down a pair of parallel hallways to the right. Rather than trying to dig them out, I initially set up behind some cover and wait for them. My position isn't a great one, since I have to either overexpose myself to one hallway in order to see the other. When one of them yells out where I am to the other, I decided to move. I swung over to the wall next to the to hallways, where they will have to pie the corner in order to see me. They don't seem to be too keen to come out, so I formulate a new plan. The nearer hallway ends in an open door that swings out into the room I'm in. I swung that door shut, eliminating one hallway and, for the moment at least, one convict from the situation. He tries to shoot me through the crack of the door as I swing it shut, but the paint bullet disintegrates on the door. With him out of the way, I rolled out around the corner of the second hallway and shoot the convict at almost the same moment he shoots me. My aim is better and I hit him pretty good while he gets a grazing hit on my cover garment.

At this moment Sheriff Vicki comes in (the fruit of my request to the fellow with the cellphone to call 911). I pulled back from the corner and drop the gun on the Sheriff's order. They called a halt to the scenario.

Major Mistakes

To paraphrase something I said during the debrief on Saturday afternoon, if you don't consider the mistakes you made at NTI, you're not getting your money's worth. In that vein, here are what I consider to be my biggest mistakes.

During the robbery scenario in the village, I got shot. After some consideration, I think I was on the right track, going hands on with the closer robber as I shot him, then the second robber. However, just grabbing his arm and shooting from retention didn't work so well. In real life, getting shot in the leg might have reset the robbers OODA loop enough that he wouldn't have the presence of mind to shoot me, but that's not something I want to chance. In hindsight, I would have been better off going for the quick kill, rather than the retention shot. Plant the first round in the near robber's head to eliminate him as a threat, then shoot the second robber. Alternatively, rather than grabbing his arm, I could have hit him in the brachial plexus with my left arm and driven him back (or just run him over) relying on that pressure to keep him from shooting me while I dealt with his friend. While I think both of those are good real life options, neither is really available in the ATSA village, due to safety limits on headshots and hard strikes.

I missed chances to see some less obvious threats. During the mall stage, I failed to see my wife being held hostage in the dark closet in the far corder of the room, and at the courthouse, I didn't see one of the targets standing outside the window. This is more than just the NTI organizers being sneaky. Both locations were really good choices to lay up for an ambush, just the kind of thing someone might use in real life. I need to work on recognizing such things.

Finally, I shot twice when I shouldn't have. I shot the first target in the mall before I saw the threat indicator and I let the poor deputy have a load of birdshot in the mystery gun stage. The thing that both of these have in common is that they were times when I was pretty highly stressed. As designed, the mystery gun stage induces a lot of stress as you try to run that coach gun. The Mall target came at the beginning of my first 360 stage, my first real shoot house experience, and my first full on NTI scenario (the Meditation Retreat stage I shot before this one was more of a hybrid skills drill and scenario than a full scenario). After shooting that first target, I calmed down a bit and went on with the stage. Obviously, this kind of stress can induce mistakes, and it's a good thing to be cognizant of. Further experience may solve this problem at NTI, but when I find myself in a real gunfight, it's liable to be pretty stressful.

These were the three big ones. There were some others. I failed to recognize the woman with the shotgun as a threat in the Courthouse stage, but that's really a problem in interpreting what NTI is trying to say with their setups, rather than a problem that might crop up in a real gunfight. I'm confident if a woman wielding a shotgun tried to kill me in real life, I would recognize it as a threat. I'm pretty good at working corners, but most of my experience is with single pieces of cover. A full 360 shoot house (particularly the NTI ones with lots of nooks and crannies) is a more difficult problem. I need to learn more about how to clear complete rooms, rather than just single corners.

Interestingly, two of the areas I decided need some work (0-5 feet and CQB) are the primary subjects of two classes I'm scheduled to take from Gabe Suarez later this year. In a way, my NTI experience provided some additional evidence for what I already knew.

What Worked

Point shooting worked. I was really glad to have taken Roger Phillips' Point Shooting Progressions and Advanced Point Shooting Progressions classes before the NTI. They really raised my point shooting skills to a new level. NTI provided a chance to put those skills to use. I only had a full sight picture on three targets during the NTI scenarios: the three 50 yard targets in the ATSA Meditation Retreat stage. I shot every other target using some variant of point shooting. The Mall and Courthouse stages involved a lot of point shoulder, since I only had one hand available. The Courthouse also required some half him shooting where the quarters were a bit closer. During the other stages, I shot mostly from isosceles, with the gun just below my line of sight. My shooting was pretty accurate, with every target going down in one burst or less. I point shot the shotgun during the mystery gun stage too, and every target went down with only one shot.

With the exception of the mystery gun stage and the very start of the ATSA mall, I was pretty calm throughout the exercise. Some participants talked a lot about how stressed they were during their first NTI, but I didn't experience too much of that. This may have a lot to do with my previous experience. I spent a year and a half doing two live fire scenarios a month, so I'm familiar with that aspect. NTI's scenarios are grander in scope and use a lot more scenery, but the basic need to run through your OODA loop and make quick decisions remains the same. I also had quite a bit of force on force experience coming in, including several classes with Farnam and Suarez International, so that wasn't new to me either.

Final Thoughts

Overall, NTI was a great experience. It really allowed me to put my skills to the test. I didn't walk out with any new skills, but I learned a lot about the skills I've got, and the skills I need to work on. Despite some shortcomings, I was pretty satisfied with my level of performance. It validated a lot of what I'd learned in previous classes and has given me confidence in my fundamental skills. At the same time, it provided a roadmap for some future skill development. If you're willing to be humbled a bit, NTI is a great experience for any skilled shooter. I definitely plan on being back next year.

Roger Phillips' Advanced Point Shooting Progressions

2010-05-15T18:23:00.006-06:00

Note: The Utah Polite Society will host Roger Phillips' Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class on June 12-13, immediately the Point Shooting Progressions class. I recently had the chance to take the advanced class, so for those of you who are signed up for it, this is a bit of a preview. If any of you are still on the fence, get off it and sign up! This is a great class!

Earlier this month, I took Roger Phillips' Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class in Blairsville, Georgia. This class came only a month after I took Point Shooting Progressions, so I didn't have time to practice these skills much, but I didn't have time to forget much either.

I shot the class with my usual Glock 21. Since PSP I put a set of Warren Tactical sights on it, which I really like (and actually used a little bit in this class). We also did some work with backup guns, mine was my Smith and Wesson 442 hammerless j-frame. Most of the rest of the students in the class shot Glocks, generally of the 9mm variety. There were also a few XDs and one 1911. Backups were more varied and included j-frames, smaller Glocks, Kahrs and several other models.

This class was on the large side: 16 students. All of them were quite squared away and everyone had a solid grasp of the point shooting and dynamic movement skillsets. The students in the class included four Suarez International instructors: myself, Dan Robison, John Meade, and Rick Klopp (also our host). This was my first class since officially being announced as an instructor. I think the number of instructors speaks volumes about the skills that Roger brings to the table. I've trained with 12 of the 16 guys in the class before, either at the PSP class last month, previous SI classes, or AMOK! seminars. It seems I'm getting to know a lot of the SI training junkies in the southeast.

Saturday Morning

Roger gave a brief introduction to what we would be doing in the class, then went through the usual safety lecture. We signed the usual waivers and promised on video not to sue anybody no way, nohow, for any reason.

One of the elements that distinguishes this class from PSP is the inclusion of back-up guns. Roger talked a bit about BUGs, and the different roles they play in addition to being back-ups: as primary guns in an NPE, as a gun you can discretely have your hand on in the pocket, and as a gun that can be moved around to the appropriate spot as conditions change (pants pocket, jacket pocket, etc.)

We started off working the transition to the BUG in some dry drills. We didn't do any other BUG specific drills, but Roger asked us not to do any reactive reloads this morning and instead to switch to the BUG any time we ran dry.

Other than the addition of the BUG, most of this morning's drills were refreshers of the PSP material. Our first shooting drill was drawing and shooting from two-handed half extension starting at two yards. After each string, we reholstered and backed up a yard. Roger had us take the half-extension out to about 5-6 yards, then let us go out to 3/4 extension. One problem several people had when transitioning to the BUG as they ran dry was extending it out too far. We're used to paying attention to retention with the primary, but those habits aren't as ingrained with the BUG. We ran the same drills one handed, shooting from half hip out to 5-6 yards, then moving to 3/4 hip.

We moved on to some focal point transition drills, firing at the pelvis, then taking the headshot. Making the headshot at 4-5 yards from half-hip is a challenge, but one that most of the shooters in the class were up to.

Our last review drill was the drawstroke zipper: firing as soon as you have the gun horizontal and stitching the target up the centerline as you bring the gun up to eye level.

The first drill that was not a repeat from PSP was the reverse zipper. Rather than stitching the opponent up the body, the goal here is to keep all the bullets in the same spot as you bring the gun up. This has some real-life applications (if only a small part of the opponent's body is exposed from behind cover, you want to be able to hit that part). In addition, it helps to move the student beyond the basic 'gun parallel to the ground' point shooting skill set to the more advanced eye-hand coordination skill set. These more advanced skills would be vital to some of the exercises later in the class.

We moved on to some of the center axis relock drills. These drills were old hat for those of us who took PSP last month, but they're a relatively recent addition and some folks had taken PSP before all of these had made it onto the syllabus. We practiced shooting from the low and high CAR positions, then moved on to the CAR zipper, shooting as you bring the gun up to eye level.

The last drill before lunch was one John Meade dubbed the "One Shot Squat". This was our introduction to some of the vertical displacement work we would be doing this afternoon. You simply start shooting in point shoulder and continue shooting as you drop down to a squatting position, then stand back up. The trick is adjusting your point of aim as you move vertically so that you get a nice tight group. This seems simple but the first time through a lot of folks ended up with vertical stringing, because they kept their shoulder locked. We're used to tracking targets as we move laterally, but not as we move vertically. This drill will cure you of that.

Saturday Afternoon

After a brief lunch, we picked up with the ambidextrous zipper. This is a variation on a drill that Gabe does, firing alternating between one handed with the right hand, two handed, two handed with the gun in the left hand, then one handed on the left, and so on. Rather than having us do it at full extension as Gabe does, we did it as we moved out the drawstroke, passing the gun back and forth at half, 3/4, and full extension. This got us shooting at every major point in the drawstroke with each hand, both one and two handed.

Transferring the gun from one hand to the other is a useful skill set, but if you get shot in the hand or arm, the gun is probably going to end up on the ground rather than remaining in the hand for a transfer. For our next drill we put the gun on the ground, then had to scoop it up with the support hand and fire as we rose to standing. This is pretty easy if the gun lands on it's right side, pointed a little to the right, but if it doesn't, it's going to require some adjustment in your grip as you bring it up.

Finally, consider what happens if your gun hand is injured before you get a chance to draw. The next drill called on us to draw our primary gun with the support hand. Roger demonstrated a couple of techniques (for both folks carrying appendix and those using strong side hip carry). I carry strong side hip, and prefer reaching around behind the back. This is something I've done before with the Utah Polite Society, but you could tell it was new for a lot of folks. There are lots of opportunities to sweep yourself or other people, but drawing with the support side hand is an absolutely vital skill set to develop.

We move back to 25 yards and did some shooting from behind cover. Roger is known as a point shooting guy, but he's not averse to using sights when they're necessary and appropriate. At 25 yards and behind cover, they're definitely both. We shot from both sides of the barricade, both standing and kneeling paying close attention to extending as little as possible beyond cover, yet not shooting the barricades. I found my new Warren tactical sights quite good for this sort of shooting (yes, we did do sighted fire in Advanced Point Shooting Progressions).

The barricade also had some slots in it down near the bottom, so we practiced dropping down and shooting through these, to simulate firing under a piece of cover like a car. We started with some seated fire through a slot about 18 inches high. Being 6'5" I found this a bit difficult, and actually ended up shooting it more from supine than seated. We then did some shots from Spetsnaz prone on both the right and left sides, through a 12" slot. I'd learned about Spetsnaz prone in the rifle context and hadn't really considered it with a pistol. It works quite well though. Some folks had quite a bit of trouble with this, since it requires a lot of flexibility. Many of these folks ended up doing it in urban prone rather than Spetsnaz, but I actually found it easier than the seated shooting.

Roger set out four of large appliance boxes for cover, laid out in an semicircle about 5-7 yards from a pair of targets. We started out right up at a pair of targets. On the start signal, we moved to our five o'clock to the first piece of cover, shot from both sides, moved to the second piece of cover, shot from both sides, and so on around the arc until the fourth piece of cover. After shooting from either side of it, we charged the targets ending the drill about where we started. The two targets were numbered and as we moved, Roger yelled out which one we should direct our fire at. The first two pieces of cover were reasonably high, good for kneeling and standing fire respectively. The last two were really short, especially for guys my size. You could really only work these from some sort of prone. I ran through my last mag easily accessible from prone behind the fourth piece of cover, so I switched to my j-frame for the final charge. Roger, of course, immediately saw me drawing my five shot snubby and yelled out "one and two, one and two" telling me both targets were threats. As I emptied the j-frame into target #1 I was already reaching for my knife (a nice big Cold Steel Voyager X2) and buried it in the second target. This drew quite a laugh.

Our next drill was the Sul Slalom. A series of four barricades were set up one behind the other in front of a target. This drill tests the ability to automatically go to Sul as you pass in front of an innocent bystander, then extend back out when the target becomes visible again. We slalomed back and forth between the barricades as we moved up to the target, extending and retracting as appropriate.

In PSP, Roger had us shoot a drill where we stood facing uprange and drew and shot targets behind us without moving our feet. For APSP he took this one step further and had us do the same drill on our knees. This adds considerably to the difficulty, because it eliminates the 60 degrees or so of rotation you can get from your legs. Form the knees you really had to crank yourself around hard to get to get the gun to bear on target. We'll rarely be called on to shoot behind us from kneeling in the real world, but developing this degree of rotation is is important to being able to shoot behind you as you move away from an adversary.

The next drill followed up the one shot squat, instead of just dropping down to a squatting position, we went all the way down to lying on our backs then got all the way back up, all the while maintaining a continuos cadence of fire. Being knocked down during a fight is pretty likely and the ability to fight your way back to your feet is immensely important. This requires a really well developed point shooting index and good one handed shooting skills. It also requires some thought about how you will get down and up without kicking up your feet into the line of fire. We managed to get through this with some pretty good accuracy and without anyone putting a hole in their foot.

If you're going to get knocked down during a fight, the most likely time for it to happen is probably at the outset. The last drill of the day was drawing and shooting from the ground, both on your back and on your belly. Just to make it a bit more interesting, we didn't do it with our legs pointed directly towards the target. Instead our feet were pointed towards the 10:30 the first time we did the drill and 1:30 the second time, meaning at least one of those times we had to go across the body (whether we were right or left handed).

This wrapped things up for the day. It had been sprinkling a few times throughout the day and it really started pouring just as we finished packing up. Very good timing.

We got together for dinner at a local eatery. As usual, there was some great fellowship between shooters. I had a good meal with some great company.

Sunday Morning

The next morning we started up at 8:00, rather than 9:00, to make it a bit easier for Roger to make his flight.

Roger started off with some lecture and demonstration of the different takeoff methods. Everyone in the class was familiar with the Pekiti takeoff and the 'lean and push' method (basically the same way you would start walking). He also covered the Systema takeoff, pioneered by Sonny Puzikas. It's an interesting technique, and I can see some situations where it would have some advantages over the PTO. I don't know that I have enough experience with it to really judge it at this point though. I really need to put it to the test in FoF (both trying it myself and having people try it on me).

Roger went through his own enhanced pekiti takeoff. This variant of the PTO trades gives up some horizontal displacement and speed of access to your gun in return for a lot more vertical displacement. Again, I need more experience with it, but I can see some applications.

We led off with the first shot drill. This drill involves doing a takeoff and firing your first shot on your second step. The key to getting a good hit is to hold the shot until just after your foot hits the ground, so the footfall doesn't jar the gun and throw off your aim. We ran the drill a second time using the enhanced pekiti. This is a bit more of a challenge because the extreme amount of upper body movement tends to delay the start of your drawstroke.

Next, Roger set up a simple zig-zag drill. We started at seven yards and closed on a target using diagonal movement and several direction changes. We did something similar in PSP, but this time Roger emphasized keeping up our shooting during direction changes. Keeping shots on target while cutting back the other direction is certainly challenging. During this drill, John Meade took a bit of a tumble. He lost his footing and basically did a cartwheel (across his shoulders rather than his hands) ending up on his knees after doing a full 360 of rotation. Despite this fairly radical spill, he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction and didn't let loose any shots as he went around. If he'd meant to do that it really would have been quite impressive.

For our next drill, we charged aggressively straight towards the target. This isn't something you usually do in an SI class, but it can be appropriate in situations where you have the initiative in a proactive gunfight and can dominate the adversary through aggressive action. After charging straight in the first time we ran it again. This time we simulated the situation changing during our attack. Perhaps the adversary brought a weapon into action or put got a hit on us and the we went from a proactive, dominant position to one where we need are behind the curve and need to react. In response halfway through our charge, we took off at a diagonal and turned our response from a proactive one to a reactive one.

The following drill continued the theme of moving at the opponent, only instead of charging directly at him, we moved to the side and attacked parallel to the initial line of force. This makes you a bit harder to hit and makes it less likely to end up in a hand to hand fight with him if you haven't put him down by the time you get there (instead allowing you to pass by and potentially circle around behind him and continue to shoot). We launched into this parallel track using the enhanced pekiti takeoff, which is very well suited for this sort of sideward displacement followed by a forward advance.

Our last drill before lunch involved a Systema takeoff to the forward diagonal followed by an elliptical path that curved back toward the target. Even in drills that call for straight line movement, some folks tend to curve, particularly for diagonal movement. Roger decided to throw in a drill that actually called for elliptical movement for these folks (which, of course, led to jokes that they would end up going in a straight line).

Sunday Afternoon

After a brief break for lunch, we picked up with the confined space in quartata. This is a technique that Gabe came up with for getting off the X in a narrow space, like a hallway or between two parked cars. First, you throw yourself sideways against one wall, then drop down to a crouch, then return to standing as you move to the other side of the hall. The combination of these three displacements in rapid succession can give you a chance to get some rounds on target without getting shot yourself.

We started working some of the rear oblique angles, taking off to the 5:00 and 7:00, then changing direction to circle around to the opponent's flanks. This simulates the process of turing a reactive gunfight into a proactive one by getting around behind the opponent. This drill led to quite a bit of excitement. One student hit one of the metal supports holding up the target frame and his round ricocheted off and fragmented. A bit of the jacket hit Rick Klopp in the scalp. The cut was pretty small, but it bled quite freely (typical for head wounds). Dr. John Meade was right there and we Rick sitting with a bandage on his head inside of a minute. Despite a roll of gauze infused with a hemostatic agent it still took quite a while to get the bleeding stopped. Eventually, John was able to slap a band-aid on it and Rick went and put on a hat. No serious harm done. Nonetheless, this is a reminder of the dangers of this sort of training. If the jacket fragment had struck, say, an unprotected eye, it could have done serious and permanent damage. Wear proper safety gear!

Next, we worked on the triangle drill. This involves getting off the X to the 5 o'clock, moving out five or more yards while shooting using CAR, then changing direction and moving laterally across the range, followed by another direction change to close directly in on the target, completing the triangle. Again, this simulates the changing tempo of the fight as we move along the reactionary curve, from getting off the X in a reactive gunfight, to A lot of folks (including me) managed to run out of ammo just as we were coming up on the target at the end of the drill. I took the opportunity to exercise the 'empty gun as an impact weapon' skillset and jabbed the target in the face with the muzzle of my pistol. We ran the drill again using the in quartata technique to get off the X rather than CAR. This time I took it out further, to about 8-9 yards and included a reload as I moved before charging back in, so I didn't run out of ammo.

Our penultimate exercise was the S-drill. This drill had a single student moving back and forth in front of a line of six targets in an "S" pattern. Walking parallel to the targets at a distance of five yards, turning back and walking the other way three yards from the targets, then walking right along one yard from the targets, then move back out to five yards and repeating. Just to make things interesting, there were three target stands set out at 2 and 4 yards representing bystanders. As we walked along the line, Roger would announce where we were on the reactionary continuum (ahead of the curve, even, behind the curve, or way behind the curve). Then he called out a target number or numbers and we had to react appropriately, given the distance and where we are on the reaction curve. If you're at five yards and ahead of the curve, stand and deliver may be appropriate. If you're at one yard and behind the curve, it's time to get off the X. Depending on how you shoot, he might call for follow up shots or additional threats. Once you've dealt with the targets he called, reholster and continue walking. He generally gave each shooter 3-4 setups, giving them a chance to experience different points on the curve and different distances.

When I ran the drill, the first setup he called had me way behind the curve, at one yard, against a single opponent. I hit the target with my support hand, drew to the full retention position and put 5-6 rounds in the target's pelvis, then got off the X to the 5 o'clock as I brought the gun out to full extension and zippered him up to a headshot. As far as I saw, I was the only student to simulate going hands on with any of the targets during this drill.

The final exercise of the class was defending Sul. We practiced starting in Sul and shooting from retention against targets only a few feet way. We did this from all angles: facing the targets, facing right and left, and facing away.

Final Thoughts

This wrapped up two long and intense days of very high level shooting. For me, PSP was really about taking my point shooting and dynamic movement skills beyond the level I thought I could achieve. Advanced PSP started with these skills and taking them into realms I didn't really think were possible, such as continuous fire through vertical displacement. The class also integrated these individual skills into sequences that flowed smoothly together. I had a tendency to see these skills as discrete actions that happen in series, rather than a seamless series of events. After this class it's much easier to see how they blend seamlessly together as you shift form one to another. As John Farnam puts it, "We die in the gaps"; even if our individual techniques are highly effective, the need to switch from one to the other can leave us vulnerable unless we can flow between them without pause.

As always, Roger's material is top flight and he did an excellent job presenting it. It's hard to believe that this is only the second time he's taught this class. Aside from relying on a written course outline more than he did for PSP, there was no sign of this being a brand new curriculum.

In addition to Roger, I think a big part of what made this class so great was the caliber of the shooters (pun intended). Often, a class includes that one guy you want to keep an eye on, because you know that if someone is going to do something stupid, it will be him. That guy wasn't in this class. Everyone was very squared away, very safe, and very skilled. There wasn't anyone slowing the class down and we ripped through this material. I hope to see a lot of these folks at future classes (including Warrior Skills Camp!). Given that this is the second (or third, or fourth) time I've seen many of them, the odds are pretty good.

I should also thank Rick Klopp for doing a great job hosting the class. Not many would maintain such good humor after taking (part of) a bullet to the head.

In summary, this was a great class. I would highly recommend any of Roger's classes, and this really is the apex of what he teaches. If you interested civilian oreinted gunfight training at the very highest level, this is the class.

Roger Phillips' Point Shooting Progressions class

2010-03-29T18:07:00.004-06:00

Note: The Utah Polite Society will host Roger Phillips' Point Shooting Progressions class on June 10-11, followed immediately by the Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class. I had the chance to take it last weekend, so for those of you who are signed up for it, this is a bit of a preview. If any of you are still on the fence, get off it and sign up! This is a great class!

This weekend I finally had a chance to take the Point Shooting Progressions class from Roger Phillips. I've been wanting to take this class for a long time now. When I lived in Salt Lake, I was close enough to have fairly easy access to his classes in Las Vegas, but I was a poor graduate student without any money. When I got a job in South Carolina, I finally had some money, but I Roger's classes were a lot less convenient. Then I made an abortive attempt to host a class in South Carolina, but it didn't work out. Money and accessibility finally intersected when Roger scheduled a class in Montgomery, Alabama, well within a days driving distance.

I came into this class with a fairly solid grasp of the basics of point shooting. Gabe introduced me to PS in Close Range Gunfighting several years ago and I got some more instruction from Randy Harris at the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class last year. I've kept up my skills reasonably well and spent some time at the range polishing them a bit before this class.

I shot this class with my usual carry gun, a Glock 21. I also brought a .22 conversion kit for it from Advantage Arms. Most of the rest of the students had Glocks of various descriptions, mainly in 9mm, though a few students had .40s and one shot a few of the drills with one .357 SIG. There were a few XDs in evidence, including both classic models and the XDm. One student brought a 1911 (the only other fellow in the class shooting .45), one shot an HK and one had a Taurus semi-auto. One fellow shot the first day with a Walther P22. There were a good number of appendix inside the waistband holsters in evidence (including many Dale Frike models), with the other half of the class was shooting from the classic hip position. Many folks used closed front cover. I was one of the few with an open front cover garment (an unbuttoned short sleeve shirt). Some shot the class without any cover garment, which I think deprived them of a bit of the learning experience. I had to fumble through a few miffed draws, but I think working from under a cover garment made the drills much more applicable and realistic.

I got to Montgomery Friday afternoon a few folks who were taking the class got together for dinner. These included Dr. John Meade, Don Robison, and a couple fo students from the class, including one of the hosts. We got together at Texas Roadhouse for some food and good fellowship.

Bright and early the next morning I drove out to the range for class. Most shooting classes I've been involved with tend to start around 9:00, but Roger set the start time for this class at 8:00. He also asked us to try to be there around 7:30 to get the usual paperwork out of the way before the formal start time (given the amount of material he crammed into this class, now I can see why he wanted to get a jump on things). In any case, I was very glad we were on central time.

For this class we not only had Roger to teach us, we were also graced by the presence of two other instructors. Dr. John Meade, Suarez International's new director of tactical medicine was with us for the first day. For both days we also had Don Robison, a new SI instructor. Both of them had taken PSP before and helped Roger out on the line and coached students. The class was also populated with folks I met at previous SI or Amok classes, and folks I was acquainted with online.

We filled out the usual liability waivers and promised on video not to sue anyone for any reason, nowhere, nohow. As Roger wanted, we had all that out of the way and the main event kicked off right at 8:00. He gave the usual safety briefing. In addition, he also handed out roles to various people in the event of an injury: treat the patient, call 911, go out to the road to guide the ambulance in to the bay where we were shooting, deal with the person's gun. Two people were appointed to each role, just in case one of them was the one who got shot.

With the formalities out of the way, we got started shooting. Roger started us off with sighted fire, asking us to put five rounds into as small a group as possible. We did a bit of dry fire to diagnose any flinching or trigger control problems, then another 5 rounds of live fire. There was some variation in the size of the groups, but it was clear that everyone had a fairly solid grasp of basic sighted fire skills going in.

We started out by progressing down the sighting continuum to less visual input on the gun. Roger had us fire a pair of bursts into a target using a flash sight picture. I actually found this one of the more difficult things in the class. Later on Roger said that I was once a "Modern Technique" shooter, but that isn't exactly true. My initial training came from folks who were MT shooters, but I never really had a comprehensive course of MT instruction. I learned point shooting early enough in my shooting career that I never really mastered the flash sight picture at the level the MT demands, and I haven't really kept up the level of skill with it I was able to achieve. The first burst I put into the target drifted from the flash sight picture towards more point shooting and ended up distressingly large. The second drifted more towards hard focus on the front sight and was much smaller, but slower. This is definitely a hole in my skill set. Yes folks, I went to a point shooting class and learned I need to work on my sighted fire.

At this point Roger gave a brief lecture on the focal point. Where you focus on the adversary is where bullets are going to tend to go. One of the reasons there are a lot of hits on weapons and weapon hands during gunfights (and force on force training) is that there's a natural tendency for people to focus on the dangerous thing in the assailant's hand, rather than places that may be easier to hit and more effective from a terminal ballistics standpoint.

Moving towards less visual input from the gun, we did some shooting with a Type II Focus. This is something that I don't think Gabe covered in the Close Range Gunfighting class. I'd read about it (mostly from Roger) but hadn't really grasped it. In class, he explained that it was still using your sights, but unlike a traditional sight picture, where the front sight is in sharp focus and the target is fuzzy, you focus on the target and align the now fuzzy sights with it. Less precise, but it allows you to focus on the target (which is more natural in a fight or flight situation).

Reducing the focus on the gun further, we lowered it just below the line of sight, using the top of the slight to align it with our target. This provides a lot of feedback on horizontal alignment, but not so much on vertical alignment. This is a technique that I learned from Gabe in the CRG class, but I didn't really take to it at the time. Recently, I developed a renewed appreciation for it while I was doing some point shooting to prepare for this class.

Our next technique was one of my favorites from CRG: metal on meat. Just bring the gun up and superimpose the entire thing on the target. As long as you're close enough that the target's torso is bigger than the gun, you're probably going to hit.

Finally we just drove the gun to the target without paying attention to the visual feedback at all. This is quite quick, but has some real limitations as far as accuracy is concerned.

After we had worked all the different full extension shooting techniques, Roger put them together in one drill. We started out at 2 yards and put a burst into the target, then stepped back a yard and did it again. As we moved further from the targets we transitioned from driving the gun, to metal on meat, to looking over the top of the slide, to type II focus, to using our sights.

At this point, most of our targets looked more like they were the victims of several rounds of particularly large buckshot, rather than the nice tight groups you might see with sighted shooting. Roger launched into an explanation of terminal ballistics, with the assistance of Dr. Meade. Roger went through all of the really good stuff you can hit outside of the classic hit zones in the heart and cranio-ocular cavity. Hits to these areas might not be optimal, but they can still cause fatal blood loss, incapacitating central nervous system damage, and may reset the bad guys OODA loop which may keep him from hitting you.

Previously, we did the align along the top of the slide just below the line of sight, about an inch below eye level. The next drills took this a little further, incrementally reducing the amount of visual input each time. We started out at five yards and held the gun just far enough below the line of sight that we could see the bottom of the cardboard target (equivalent to the waistband on a live assailant). This but the gun at about chin level. After firing a burst we stepped forward and lowered the gun a bit more and shot again. We keep this up down two to yards, which put the gun quite a ways below the line of sight.

Before we moved on to partial extension shooting Roger did an exercise to establish our visual centerline. Almost everyone there knew whether they were right or left eye dominant, but this isn't a binary thing. There are varying degrees of dominance, from entirely right or left eyed, to a blend of the two. Roger stood back a couple of yards, had us focus on his right eye with both of our eyes open, and bring our thumb up into our line of sight at arms length. He looked where it lined up on our face. That is our visual centerline, where we should align the gun for below line of sight point shooting.

With our centerline established we practiced shooting from the midpoint of the drawstroke. This puts your elbows against your ribcage and the gun about a foot from your chest. After we were comfortable shooting at the center of the target's chest from this position (approximately horizontal) we did some focal point drills. One square of colored tape was placed at belt level, and another in the upper chest and we moved our focus back and forth between these, using alternating shots at first, then moving on to bursts.

At this point, I decided to switch to my .22 conversion kit for my Glock, to help keep my ammo costs down. I deliberately didn't start with the .22 because I wanted to get some experience doing the below line of sight shooting where you have to get behind the gun and control the recoil with muscle rather than body structure. Now that we'd done that (and because Roger recommended shooting full power ammo for the drills on the second day) I figured this would be a good time to start saving some money.

Our last drills before lunch introduced the drawstroke zipper. Essentially, you start shooting during the draw as soon as the gun is horizontal and pointed at the target and keep shooting as you drive it up to full extension, resulting in a string of hits running up the center of the body and hopefully tearing up all sorts of good stuff, including the liver, major arteries, the heart, and the central nervous system. If the assailant is still standing, it's traditional to cap it off with a headshot. As part of this, John showed us the level at which you could hit the spinal cord and paralyze the hands, which is fairly low, about halfway between the armpits and the shoulders. The zipper basically works as an extension of the focal point drill, only instead of two discrete points you move up the centerline of the body.

On this note we broke for lunch. Our local hosts provided some sandwiches and chips as refreshments, because the range isn't really convenient to any eateries. This also gave us the opportunity to hear a brief lecture on trauma kits from John. He had invited students to bring their trauma kits to class for use as examples, which I and one other student did. Going through our kits he talked a bit about the different items. He generally seemed to approve of mine, though I did get razzed a bit for bringing it in a ziploc bag (the nice Maxpedition first aid pouch I ordered hasn't arrived yet). John's clearly got a lot of knowledge about the subject, and I look forward to the opportunity to take a tactical medicine class from him.

After lunch, we switched from two-handed to one-handed shooting. Roger started by talking about the combat crouch. The old school combat crouch has taken some abuse from Modern Technique shooters. It does look a bit silly in the pictures, but the pictures don't really do it justice. The combat crouch isn't a stance, the way Weaver and Isosceles are, it's a movement platform. It takes advantage of the natural tendency to crouch down during a fight or flight response, gives you a lower base for movement, thrusts one arm forward to shoot and the other back as a counterbalance. When you start thinking about, and more importantly, trying and using it, in this context, it starts to make a lot of sense.

Part and parcel of the combat crouch is the point shoulder technique of one handed full extension shooting. He had a very good analogy for it, particularly for wing shooters. It's like shooting a shotgun with a 32 inch barrel, and the front sight is your bead. We worked point shoulder in the combat crouch from 3 yards out to 7.

Now somewhat comfortable with one handed shooting, Roger got us uncomfortable again by having us address targets at odd angles. We stood facing uprange with the target to our right rear, then our left rear. Addressing a right rear (7:30) target wasn't that hard (for right handers, anyway). The left rear target (4:30) was much more of a challenge, particularly in drawing and getting the gun across your body to the target without sweeping yourself or the next guy down the line. Roger had us demonstrate both of these using our 'finger guns' to ensure that we could do them safely before shooting it live.

Moving on to a more comfortable position, we did a bit at 3/4 hip. This is a one handed shooting position below the line of sight, with the elbow bent and the forearm horizontal. It's very nice if you need a bit of retention and it's an intermediate point along the one-handed drawstroke zipper. In addition to facing the target, we did this at 4:30 and 7:30 as well.

Completing our one-handed below line of sight curriculum we covered the half hip shooting position. This is also known as elbow-up elbow-down when you do it from the draw (elbow up to get the gun out of the holster and elbow down to drive the gun to the target). The elbow is bent 90 degrees and planted against your side and the gun is in the bottom of your peripheral vision.

After shooting the half hip, Roger introduced the central axis relock (CAR) technique. This is actually one of the newest additions to the PSP curriculum. The low CAR position places the pistol at chest height, with the web of the support hand pressed up against the front of the grip (imagine sul, then rotate the weapon 90 degrees to point straight to your support side). High CAR brings the gun up in front of your face, canted at a 45 degree angle, with the support side arm supporting it from below. It was developed by a fellow who teaches an entire shooting system based on this style, which seems a bit inflexible to me. However, as a situational tool it really shines for shooting to the weak side rear, out the driver's side window of a car (or passenger side if you're a lefty), etc. Both positions work really well with point shooting skills, using the body index for low CAR and aligning off the slide for high CAR (particularly with a Glock or other blocky pistol that has a nice edge along the upper corner of the slide to use for alignment). We practiced shooting from both low and high CAR.

Finally, we put it all together and redid the focal point and zipper drills using one handed shooting.

This would normally be the end of the first day, but because Roger's flight was a bit tight after the class on Sunday, we stayed a bit later and started on the Day 2 curriculum so that he could get out of here a bit earlier.

The 'Day 2' stuff is essentially taking the building blocks we'd learned so far on day 1 and using them during dynamic movement. We started out with some work on the Pekiti takeoff. The Pekiti is one of those things that are much harder to explain in writing than to do, but it essentially involves using the body's natural fight or flight drop into a crouch to reposition your feet where they can drive you into movement in the desired direction. As an alternative for those who weren't so physically agile, Roger also covered 'lean and push', which is essentially taking a normal step rather than doing fancy footwork. This is a little slower, but easier for the less nimble and more suited to surfaces with dodgy footing

We worked this a bit in dry practice, then moved on to the first shot drill. The goal is to use the Pekiti takeoff or lean and push to get off the X and fire one good shot as you start the second step. The key is to hold the shot until just after the jolt from your first foot hitting the ground. If you fire as the foot hits, it will tend to drop your shot low, but holding for a fraction of a second produces much better results.

This wrapped up the first day. We headed back to our homes or hotels to clean up, then most of the class rendezvoused at Jim and Nicks, a local barbecue joint. They had some truly excellent food and the fellowship of a lot of like minded folks made it a really great meal.

The next day, we gathered again at 8:00. Unlike the warm sun of day 1, it rained off and on all morning. As Roger put it "the weather will be perfect". The clouds cleared off by the afternoon though, so we were able to wrap up in some really nice weather.

Today Roger led off with a bit of discussion of criminals' mindset. His day job has led him into contact with some . . . interesting people, and this has given him a lot of insight into how they think. His description of it was quite illuminating.

Getting back to movement, Roger talked about the importance of stretching before practicing this sort of dynamic movement. Particularly stretching out the Achilles tendon, which gets a lot of stress during the takeoff. The only serious injury I've seen in an SI class was a fellow who popped his Achilles during a force on force class last summer in Salt Lake. Roger also described the, "significant other takeoff". Basically this involves giving the person you are defending a shove in one direction why you get off the X going the other way. This gives you some separation, hopefully with the assailant's attention focused on you rather than your spouse or child. It also gets them started on getting the hell out of there.

Our first drill involved taking a sidestep then attacking along a route parallel to the original line of force. This allows you to rapidly close with the opponent, but gets you off the X and doesn't put you on a course that would bring you directly into a hand to hand conflict with the opponent if you fail to shoot him to the ground before you get to him. We did these, and almost all of the drills today, two at a time. The two students were placed quite a ways apart and moved towards each other, but kept shooting at the targets that were in front of them when they started, meaning that their shots were angled safely away from each other. Doing the drills two at a time this way takes a bit longer, but it allows much more dynamic movement than doing them with everybody lined up like in the CRG class. We did this drill starting at 12 yards, which meant most people were firing their first shot at about 9 yards. This was certainly a bit further than I would have felt comfortable point shooting before this class, let alone doing it from fairly rapid movement. Nevertheless, I, and most other folks in the class, shot this quite well, putting the hits on the target and generally in fairly good spots.

We had an injury during this drill. One shooter did something to his ankle while taking that first forward step and fell. I don't know exactly what he did (unfortunately John wasn't with us on the second day, otherwise he probably could have told us), but it wasn't good. As Roger had emphasized, he kept the pistol pointed in a safe direction with his finger off the trigger during the fall, so it wasn't compounded by an ND. He was on the ground there in pain for a while eventually got up and sat down in a chair for a while. After a while he shot a few more drills, but he was limping pretty bad for the rest of the day. I'm afraid he probably did something pretty serious.

With him sitting out, we finished up the parallel line drills and moved on to the forward obliques (1:00 and 11:00). These lines do a great job of getting you angular displacement, making it harder for the opponent to track you. For a right handed shooter, moving to the left this means shooting one-handed. Moving to the right, you can keep two hands on the gun. These are some that I was fairly good at from CRG, but in this class we took them out to a considerably longer distance.

After working the forward obliques, Roger threw in a variation. Generally, getting off the X is a good solution when you're behind the reactionary curve (and have enough distance that it's not a hand to hand problem). However, if you are effectively putting rounds on target, you'll eventually gain the initiative as the opponent takes hits and his capabilities degrade. Now you're at a different point on the reactionary curve and you can use some different tactics. To allow us to practice this, Roger had us get off the X to the 1:00 and 11:00 and put a few shots into the target before changing direction and boring directly in and shooting him to the ground.

One of the things Roger emphasized in this context is cadence. At a longer distance, you have to take more time between shots, but you shouldn't let that lull you into a fixed rhythm. As you close in, you can pick up the pace and still get your hits, so in a drill like this that has you closing on the target, the pace should pick up as you get closer. Conversely, in some of the later drills where you get further from the target, your cadence should slow down as the distance increases.

Next up were the rear obliques. The biggest problem here is avoiding backpedaling. Moving backwards is an instinctive response, from the days when we used contact weapons that required you to face your enemy to use them. Now, we can use firearms, which allow us to prioritize movement (and not getting hit) by pointing our toes in the direction we want to go and still swivel our upper bodies and arms around to get hits on the assailant. Backpedalling is going to be much slower than a charging assailant, and runs the risk of falling and going head over heels. The key to not backpedaling is to get the hips pointed in the right direction during your initial takeoff. Backpedaling is a particularly big problem for right-handed shooters moving to the 5:00 (and for lefties moving to 7:00) where they have to shoot behind their support side shoulder. The further you move, the more extreme the angle gets and the more tension there is. The natural inclination is to relive this tension by turning your body, which leads to backpedaling. This is the application of the CAR technique we learned yesterday, but there are other methods for this as well. We worked drills on both obliques, then broke for lunch.

During lunch, Roger gave us the pitch for the Advanced Point Shooting Progressions class in Blairsville, Georgia next month. He made a really good pitch, but in a sense he was preaching to the converted, more than half the folks in this class were already signed up for APSP either in Blairsville or in Salt Lake City in June.

After lunch we worked on the gun in quartata, also known as the "tactical pirouette". In quartata is a fencing term referring to a maneuver where you turn the body sideways to avoid an incoming strike. The gun in quartata does much the same thing, turning the body sideways to avoid potential incoming fire. It has applications in spaces that are too confined for traditional methods of getting off the X, like a narrow hallway. In this case, however, we are using it as an alternative to shooting over the shoulder with CAR when getting off the X to the 5:00 (for a right handed shooter). Instead of moving directly to the right rear and shooting over the left shoulder, you step to the right, pivot on your right foot to turn your body to the left and move to your right rear while shooting behind your right shoulder using the point shoulder technique. You can also do the reverse, stepping to the left and using CAR to get off the X to your left rear. Lefties, of course, do all of this backwards.

In addition to practicing the alternative methods of getting off the X, Roger also encouraged us to try to take our point shooting out to longer distances. I managed to take point shoulder out to about 11 yards on the move, whereas before this course I rarely point shot beyond 6 yards, and that was generally while stationary.

The two remaining get off the X directions at this point were directly left and right (the 3:00 and 9:00). For these drills Roger had us do something a bit different. One at a time we got off the X and moved down the entire line of targets and fired one shot at each. Now, this doesn't have much direct practical application, unless we get attacked by the Rockettes, but it did give us a chance to practice getting off the X to the 3:00 and 9:00, and focal transitions between targets, which isn't something we'd done so far.

At this point, Roger covered getting off the X to the 5:00 and 7:00 by passing the gun to the other hand. Rather than shooting CAR, or doing the gun in quartata and using footwork to deal with the problem, this just lets you use a left-handed point shoulder (or right handed if you are a left handed shooter). Learning to reliably transfer the pistol takes some work and most of us aren't as good shooting with the support hand. However, support side shooting skills are important in a lot of contexts, including a wounded gun hand, so these are skills we need to develop anyway.

The last method for getting off the X to the rear obliques is just to change your direction. When you find that tension is making it difficult to keep going the way you're going, pivot and cut back the other direction. To practice this Roger used the zig zag drill. You start out getting off the X to the right rear, then after a few steps you reverse directions and head to the left rear, going from CAR to point shoulder. After a few more steps, reverse again and go to CAR. Repeat as many times as necessary. We had about ten yards of distance to safely play around in and Roger pointed out that if you move shallowly, concentrating on lateral movement instead of moving away from the adversary, you could really stretch it out and do a lot of shooting. I managed to burn through three magazines before I got to ten yards, and was able to keep getting good hits in both point shoulder and CAR all the way out.

For our last drill, Roger lined us all up and had us do the confined space gun in quartata, shooting from half-hip. This involves the same turning of the body as we did with the in quartata before, but with a smaller step. Instead of getting off the X you draw to half hip and zipper the target.

That wrapped up the class. Roger handed out the certificates and we all packed up. Roger wasn't able to hang around and chat much, but most of the rest of us stuck around and helped push one student's van out of the mud. He was really in there pretty good, the front wheels were probably sunk in a good six inches. We ended up having to both hitch the van up to one guys truck and push it from the front, as neither pushing nor just pulling with the truck could move it. With that everyone was able to get safely on their way.

A few observations: At most of the shooting classes I've taken, the round count is an overestimate. I usually end up shooting anywhere from half to 2/3 of the recommended number. In this class you'd have to husband your rounds pretty carefully to make it in under the 700 round count. I husbanded my rounds pretty carefully on the first day, both because I didn't want to shoot a huge amount of .45, and because I only had four 10 round magazines for my .22 conversion kit. I was more generous on the second day. Despite not shooting as much as I could have on day 1, I still shot about 450 rounds of .22 and 450 rounds of .45. Several people shot well over 1000 rounds. When Roger says, "Bring more if you want to shoot more", he means it. I'd bring at least 1000 rounds to this class.

Bring lots of magazines! As mentioned earlier, I only had four magazines for my .22 conversion kit, and that wasn't really enough. Twice that number would have been appropriate. If you're not trying to conserve ammo, you can easily go through 8-10 rounds on some of these drills, and you'll run 5-8 drills before Roger calls an ammo break. When I was shooting full caliber, I used nine magazines (one in the gun, two on the belt, three in each hip pocket). That was enough to reload after every drill so I could start each one with a fresh mag.

Several of the people in the class shooting .40 S&W commented on how it got a lot more difficult when we moved to the one-handed stuff. One fellow shot his .357 SIG for a few drills, and noted how much bigger his groups were with it and how much smaller his groups got when he switched back to the 9mm. This is the reason a lot of the Suarez International guys have moved to 9mm instead of .40. For those of you who say, "I can shoot my .40 just as well as a 9mm", does that also apply one-handed? Of course, I was the oddball shooting a .45 Glock, but the .45 is a soft shooting, relatively low velocity round. It's not a 9mm, but it's still pretty easy to handle even with one hand. The more punishing nature of the .40 affected some people as well. We shot a lot of ammo in this class, especially the first day, and the .40 beat some people's hands up.

Before I close, I really ought to thank our hosts for doing a great job setting up the class. Also to John Meade and Don Robison for their part in the instruction. Don did a good job helping run the line and providing shooters a lot of feedback. John did the same during the first day and provided some nice medical insights on terminal ballistics and trauma care.

Overall, this was an excellent class. I drank the point shooting Kool Aid some time ago, so it wasn't as revelatory for me as it was for some other folks (you could see the light bulb coming on for some of them). I entered with a decent point shooting skill set, but Roger really increased my range and accuracy, and my confidence in both. He's taught this class many times, and you can really tell that he's refined his curriculum and presentation based on this experience. Roger is a great instructor and I would highly recommend taking Point Shooting Progressions. I was already signed up for Advanced Point Shooting Progressions next month, but now I'm REALLY looking forward to it.

Upcoming Training Events

2010-02-23T17:21:00.002-07:00

Spring time is just around the corner and with it the training season is upon us.

In March, Doug Little from Armed Personal Defense is offering three days of NRA instructor training in Salt Lake City. The classes include the NRA Instructors Workshop, Basic Pistol Instructor, and Personal Protection in the Home Instructor. Dates are March 19,20,21; visit the Armed Personal Defense website for more specifics.

If you've spent more than about 30 seconds on this blog, you know that the UPS is steeped in the Gabe Suarez school of combat pistol and rifle techniques. This spring and summer the following Suarez International classes are slated for the PMAA/Hendriksen Range:

April 10-11: Suarez Fighting Rifle
May 1-2: Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting
June 10-11: Point Shooting Progressions
June 12-13: Advanced Point Shooting Progressions
September 18-19: Suarez Kalashnikov Rifle Fighting
October 16-17: Suarez Close Range Gun Fighting
November 13-14: Suarez Defensive Knife (Location TBA)

These classes are taught by Suarez International Trainers, Doug Little and Roger Phillips and will take your shooting skills to new level. Check out Suarez International for registration and pricing.

Gabe Suarez's Combat Pistol Instructor School

2010-02-17T18:14:00.004-07:00

Earlier this month I attended Gabe's Combat Pistol Instructor School in Houston. This class was pretty neat for me in a couple of ways. Two of my friends from the Utah Polite Society who I'd only seen once since I moved to South Carolina were also signed up for the class, and we had a chance to hang out quite a bit. I was also surprised to find a fellow I knew from local matches in Columbia was attending the class (odd to fly a thousand miles and run in to someone I know from home). I also had the chance to make the acquaintance of some folks I'd only known online at Warriortalk.

For the first two days of the class, Gabe taught his Defensive Pistol Skills class. Defensive Pistol Skills class is intended as an introductory course that will take someone who has no experience with defensive shooting and give them the solid base of sighted shooting skills that they need for more advanced instruction. Gabe went through the entire class, giving both the course material, and a lot of advice on how to teach that material to students. We did all the drills (though generally with fewer reps than a student would get). All the shooting was done in pairs, with one student coaching while the other one shoots. On the third day, Gabe talked about administrative details involved in running a firearms company, talked about how Suarez International works, and extended an invitation to apply to be an SI instructor.

I shot the class with my normal carry rig: a Glock 21 in an IWB hip holster. Glocks were by far the most prevalent gun in the class, with about 2/3 of the class carrying them. The 9mm models were the most popular, followed by the .40s (I was carrying the only .45 Glock). Three students were armed with XDs, and one each with a Kimber and a Sig (several of these folks had Glocks with them as well). Gabe made the point that instructors should generally carry common pistols in plain jane configurations. When you're demonstrating something, you don't want students paying attention to your cool gun rather than what you're trying to demonstrate.

Day One

At the beginning of class, Gabe handed out an outline for the Defensive Pistol Skills class, and a copy of his Combative Pistol Marksmanship DVD, which generally covers the same material. Gabe suggested that those of us with access to a laptop or DVD player watch the DVD before the second day. I'd actually brought along my copy of the Combative Pistol Marksmanship DVD and my friends from Utah and I had watched it the night before. I thought having seen it before the first day was really helpful. One suggestion I made to Gabe is to send out the DVD to folks enrolled in the class beforehand, so everyone can have a chance to watch it ahead of time.

Gabe discussed a bit about the SI training philosophy generally, and the DPS class in particular. One particularly interesting point was why he doesn't use timers. He feels that they tend to discourage students who may be doing as well as they can, given age or medical limitations, but who aren't the fastest. The pressure to go faster than you really have the skill for also has a tendency to lead to accidents. The philosophy of the DPS class is focused on the idea that sighted shooting is easy, if you follow the right recipe. "If you can drive a car in traffic, you can shoot a pistol."

We went through the safety briefing, both from the perspective of not shooting anyone in this class, and from a teaching perspective. Gabe explained the reasons behind some of his deviations from the wording of the 4 rules of gun safety as Cooper laid them down. Most of these changes have to do with the fact that students will end up violating a more strict interpretation of the traditional rules especially in more advanced classes. There's really no way to draw from a hip holster without covering your leg at least a little bit, for example. He also introduced the concept of a "Grasshopper" (a la the old Kung Fu TV series); a student who asks a lot of questions, especially when the instructor seems to contradict himself.

There was some discussion of what to tell students about terminal ballistics. Gabe gave his take, that all pistol calibers are roughly the same and it's all about shot placement and volume. He went through his story about the fellow down in Argentina who was involved in 47 gunfights and acquitted himself quite well using 9mm ball (and invited us to use it).

We talked a bit about making sure that students have good gear that can be used safely in class. Holsters and belts need particular attention from an instructor to ensure that they will safely carry a gun. Some pistols can be problematic; competition guns in particular may need some extra attention from an instructor.

This segued a bit into a discussion of student-instructor ratio. Obviously, the skill of an instructor plays into this some, but the skill level of the students is important also. A low student-instructor ratio is particularly important in introductory classes where students need more supervision and are more likely to do something stupid and unsafe.

We moved out onto the range and started in on the fundamentals of shooting. Gabe divides the fundamentals into grip, stance, sight alignment, sight picture, breathing, trigger press, and trigger reset. We went through each of these in turn, with Gabe both explaining them, and talking about how to best explain them to the students.

During this process, we also went through loading, unloading, and chamber checks. Gabe emphasizes that all loading and unloading procedures should begin and end with a chamber check. I was a bit skeptical, since this seemed like an awful lot of chamber checking when we have a pretty good idea of the status of the gun. However, Gabe's reasons for it were pretty interesting. Checking the chamber may be useful for inexperienced students who are more likely to make mistakes during the loading or unloading process (failing to seat a magazine when loading, running the slide before ejecting the mag when unloading, etc.). They also give students a bit more experience manipulating their guns, helping to familiarize them with their weapons.

He introduced an interesting drill for getting very new shooters to experience a surprise break. The shooter points in and the instructor caps his sights (putting a mag on top of the rear sight and asking if they see the front sight with the same amount of light on either side). Then the student stays pointed in with their finger in register while the instructor pulls the trigger to the rear with his own finger. Obviously, the moment of firing is going to come as a surprise to the student. Then the student puts their finger on the trigger and relaxes while the instructor pulls the trigger and trigger finger backward until the gun fires, then lets the trigger and finger forward until the trigger resets. For this part of the drill, it's very important to grip the shooter's hand so that the instructor's hand stays in contact with the gun during recoil, otherwise you're likely to double as the student recovers from recoil. Finally, have the student work the trigger on his own, gradually applying more and more pressure while telling them to try not to fire the gun. I think a drill like this would have been very useful when I was a new shooter. I developed a bit of a flinching problem when I was starting out, and it was quite a while before I experienced a real surprise break (it came shooting a S&W revolver that an instructor had lightened the spring on a bit too much so that it only lit off about one round in three; when it went "click" three or four times, the eventual "boom" really did come as a surprise).

After this drill, we broke for lunch. Gabe showed off his Glock with the Trijicon RMR red dot mounted on the slide. This seems like a pretty slick setup, though it would definitely take a lot of practice to get the red dot lined up with your eye every time. Definitely worth further investigation. I also got a chance to look at the Warren Tactical Sights on Gabe's other Glock. They produce a pretty sharp sight picture, and I think a pair will end up on my Glock pretty soon.

After lunch, we did some drills involving shooting from the ready position. The only ready position Gabe usually teaches in the DPS class is the compressed ready (count 3 on a 4 count drawstroke). Unlike low ready, this keeps the gun pointed at the target, and it integrates nicely into the drawstroke. More complex readies like Sul are left for more advanced classes.

We started with single shots from ready, then moved on to strings of multiple shots to practice trigger reset. During these drills, Gabe also talked about how to watch students shoot. He recommended standing on the strong side, just behind the tip of the muzzle in compressed ready. This affords a much greater view than standing behind them, and gives you the ability to physically grab their gun or arm if they are going to muzzle you or other people on the line.

After the basic shooting drills, we went through proactive and reactive gun manipulation. A proactive reload is what some folks call the tactical reload. Gabe made the point that for most new shooters, the terms "speed reload", and "tactical reload" are pretty meaningless ("Aren't all reloads in a gunfight tactical reloads?"). Proactive and reactive are more descriptive.

One interesting point Gabe made about demonstrating reloads is that it may be useful to strip the slide from the frame of your pistol (particularly easily done with a Glock) and demonstrate a reload using the frame. Reloads really can't be demonstrated using a blue gun, since you need to be able to insert and remove the magazine. Using the frame allows this, without needing to worry about muzzling someone.

Gabe teaches the simple, "make a hole, fill a hole" proactive reload. Remove the old magazine, pocket it, draw the new one and inset it into the gun. He discussed the pros and cons of racking the slide afterwards: making sure you have a round in the chamber at the potential cost of one round of capacity (a small sacrifice on a high cap gun, a larger one on a single stack).

We talked a bit about reloading the revolver. In the course of the demonstration he made one interesting and pithy observation about the j-frame: "it's simple for the first five shots".

For reactive gun manipulation, Gabe is a big advocate of non-diagnostic malfunction clearance. Rather than spend time trying to figure out what time of malfunction you have, just use clearance techniques that will work on any malfunction. We went through two procedures that will cure almost any malfunction or running out of ammo. A tap-rack will clear a failure to fire or failure to eject, and ripping out the magazine and reloading the gun will clear a failure to extract or an empty gun. They are simple, easy to teach and learn, and performed in order will allow you to fix anything that's fixable without disassembling your gun. We practiced both proactive and reactive manipulations.

At this point, we wrapped up our first day at the range. I enjoyed a nice dinner with some friends from Utah and South Carolina, then retired to start work on this writeup.

Day Two

We started out the morning of the second day with a review of Day 1's activities. Gabe went over the fundamentals of shooting and we had a discussion of why he teaches the compressed contact ready in the introductory classes and how it fits into the ready positions taught in more advanced classes.

With the review out of the way we moved on to teaching the drawstroke. Gabe emphasized that teaching a new shooter to draw a loaded gun is probably one of the most dangerous things we do (followed up in second place by teaching a new shooter to holster a loaded gun). Go very slow, teach one count at a time, and do lots of dry repetitions before going live.

He teaches a somewhat different 5 count drawstroke than more traditional gunfighting schools. The five counts are Grip, Clear, Clap (where the hands merge), Point, and Sights. This omits the "Rotate" count a lot of schools use in teaching the drawstroke. There "Rotate" count is included because it matches the close contact shooting position that these schools teach. SI teaches some rather different concepts that are much more combative focused than the usual close contact/retention/speed rock type shot, so there isn't really much reason to have a separate rotate count.

As the student learns the drawstroke, you can start removing some of the steps and have them all blend together. Omit clear and make it Grip, Clap, Point, Sights. In a point shooting class, you take away Sights and make it Grip, Clap, Point. Eventually, you can even take away Point and do half hip type shooting.

In order to practice drawing loaded guns from a holster, you need to first holster a loaded gun. This has it's own pitfalls. Many NDs at gun schools occur when shooters are holstering under stress, indeed, my friends from Utah recently told me of just such an occurrence at one of their monthly shoots (without any injury, thankfully). While we need to learn how to draw fast, there's really no need to learn a speed reholstering technique. No one ever won a gunfight by getting his gun back in the holster quicker. Tell students to do it slowly, and pull it out if they feel any resistance. Again, do a lot of dry practice before having the students do it live. Gabe suggested allowing (indeed, encouraging) students to look at the holster when they are first starting out. You obviously don't want them doing this forever, but the first couple of times it can be a great help.

At this point, Gabe discusses what a student should do if he drops a gun: just let if fall. If they try to grab it, there's a chance that their finger will end up in the trigger guard, and according to Murphy's Law, the gun will probably be pointed at something important when it goes off, like your head. Gabe recounted the story of a female police officer who was being trained on the fat gripped Glock 21. She fumbled the gun, tried to grab it as it fell, and skipped a round off her forehead. She survived, but it could have easily been fatal. Phil, the range owner mentioned that a few weeks ago a shooter in a class on another local range had done something similar and put a round through his femoral artery. He bled out. If a student looses their grip on a gun, they should just let it drop. No matter how nice their gun is, a scuff mark isn't worth someone's life

Gabe suggested that after students shoot their first drill from the holster (single shots from a fairly close range), that you leave the students guns loaded and transition to a hot range at this point. Of course, this depends on how squared away the students are and how confident you are of them at this point. Some classes you may not want to use a hot range at all. If you have one student you're worried about, Gabe had a fairly clever suggestion: call that student up to the front and have him unload and use him as an example of reholstering, then just leave him dry until the start of the next drill.

We moved from the classroom out to the range and went through the fundamentals again. This time, Gabe called on various students to get up and teach the safety rules and the fundamentals, then critiqued their lesson. As part of this, I explained the trigger press, surprise break, and breathing. During this process, Gabe reiterated his suggestion about stripping the slide off a Glock and using the frame as a demonstration tool. Since I'd left my blue gun in the car (not having gotten any use out of it yesterday), I used this technique for my short lesson. He also suggested using the Glock slide, sans frame, as a tool to demonstrate sight alignment.

We went through a few dry drills, then moved on to firing single shots. Before shooting, Gabe demonstrated the exercise. He also had some suggestions for doing demonstrations in class. It's important that you don't embarrass yourself in a demonstration, so do the demonstration close to the target. Don't go at full speed, 80% of what you can do will seem plenty fast to the students. Also, get the students to stand to your left and right so they can watch what you're doing, rather than standing behind you and watching the back of your head. Finally, always do a chamber check before shooting a demonstration (either live or dry fire). There's nothing that will make you look a fool faster than going up for a live fire demonstration and getting a click or doing a dry fire demonstration and getting a bang. Instructors are even more vulnerable than students for this because they are constantly unloading and loading their firearms to do live and dry demos and it's easy to forget the status of your gun. Always check!

Gabe also gave us a good trick for getting people lined up evenly. Have everyone face to the left, then line up directly behind the person in front of them, then face downrange and they should be an even distance from the targets. Simple, but it works.

After lunch, we discussed the After Action Review process. Introductory students aren't going to be doing Sul scans, but you can have them check the threat, look left and right, reload, and do a self check to see if they were hit.

Much like the chamber checks before and after administratively loading or unloading, Gabe suggested having the students do a preemptive reload after every drill. This builds in a lot of repetitions over the course of the class in a much more interesting way than just going up and having them do twenty preemptive reloads in a row.

Once the students are comfortable with shooting from the holster, they can move on to a simple multiple adversary drill. Three targets, one shot on each. The instructor calls out an order and the students have to change their point of aim between targets. Of course, this is a lot less dynamic than the multiple adversary stuff in Close Range Gunfighting or Force on Force, but it gives them an introduction to the idea.

Gabe also suggested moving to more realistic targets at this point (he happens to like of the photorealistic targets). Prior to this part of the class, his suggestion for a target is an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper with a dot in the middle.

Moving to more realistic targets also allows introducing the failure to stop drill. The students fire three shots to the torso then come up for one or more headshots.

We went out to the range and started shooting multiple adversary drills. We shot this drill many times, enough for each student to have a chance running the line and calling out the range commands. After some students turn up on the line, Gabe called us together to critique and give some suggestions.

He also took the opportunity during one of these sessions to talk about teaching concealment. Drawing from concealment is not formally part of the curriculum for this class, but if the students are squared away and you think they can handle it, you might introduce it sometime on the second day. If you're having the class in cold or rainy weather, it may be appropriate to teach getting the gun from concealment on the first day, since every student is going to end up wearing some sort of overgarment anyway. On the other hand, if you're teaching on a hot, humid day, you may not want to go for concealment at all.

After everyone had their turn up on the line, we broke for the day. I had another fine dinner with friends old and new.

Day Three

Sunday morning, the class began with Gabe calling us up to the line for a test of our shooting skills. He had us fire ten prevision rounds at the little guy in the upper left of a B-27 silhouette target, then 90 rounds freestyle at main portion of the target.

After that was out of the way, we moved on to talking about the administrative end of being a firearms instructor. Gabe listed four requirements to be a successful firearms trainer:

Finding and Arranging Venues
Development and Delivery of Classes
Advertising and Marketing
Accepting Phone Calls and Payments

An interesting part of this discussion was Gabe's description of how the training business has evolved since the early '80s. There are really a lot of options, particularly in the advertising and marketing areas, that really weren't available twenty or thirty years ago. On the other hand, students expect more than they did thirty years ago. Not having a good website and not being able to accept credit card payments online are really going to limit how successful you can be.

Gabe pointed out some of the pitfalls in dealing with venues. Once you've advertised a class and had students sign up, the range kind of has you over a barrel if they want to be underhanded and jack up their rate. Memorialize these discussions in an email so there's a 'paper' trail later in the event of a dispute.

We also discussed insurance. It's required by many venues, but it can be difficult to get (or keep) it if you're teaching some of the more advanced stuff. Gabe talked about who SI has insurance with and how he manages that relationship.

While insurance is required to train at many venues, it may not really provide much protection in the event of a lawsuit. Gabe strongly recommended organizing a firearms training business as an LLC or corporation to help isolate it from your personal assets. He also talked a bit about the importance of a good attorney (or attorneys, specializing in different areas).

This led into a discussion of the sort of things that can lead you to need your insurance or a good attorney, and I took the opportunity to push one of my pet peeves: how few shooters take trauma care classes. Instructors strive to prevent accidents, but if one happens, you need to be able to deal with it and keep them alive until you can get them to medical help. Gabe described an incident where a student shot himself in a class several years ago. Phil, the range owner, described two accidental gunshot wounds, both of which severed the femoral artery. One occurred on his range, and he had tourniquets at the ready and the skill to use them. One occurred on another local range and did not have the instructor did not have the skill or equipment to deal with the situation and the injured shooter bled out (this was the same dropped gun incident I described earlier). An instructor has an obligation to be prepared for an accident, that means having the right skills and the right tools to deal with the situation.

The remainder of the class was dedicated to Gabe pitching the idea of signing up as a Suarez International Staff Instructor. This really gets into some internal SI business, like how his instructors are categorized and compensated that would not be appropriate for me to repeat in a public forum. I will say that the arrangement seems eminently fair to both SI, and the staff instructors.

Concluding Thoughts

This was an excellent class. I picked up quite a few neat tricks, both for teaching in general, and especially for instructing an introductory pistol class. The discussion on the third day also taught me a lot about the administrative elements of running a firearms training business, an area I knew very little about. Unlike other SI classes I've taken, this class didn't really make me any more badass, but I think it improved my ability to teach other people to be more badass.

This is normally the part of a review where, if I liked a class, I encourage people to sign up for it. I did like this class, and I think it would benefit a lot of people, but signing up for it may not be possible. Gabe is teaching this class three more times this year, one of them as I write this. All three classes are completely full. He's also teaching a Combat Rifle Instructor School in June; that's completely full as well. All of them filled up very quickly after being put on the schedule, some within a few hours of when they were opened for registration. I have no idea if he will be teaching these classes in the future, but if you are interested in teaching people how to shoot and you see this class on the SI schedule, jump on it quick, because you may not get another chance.

I'd like to thank Gabe for putting on an excellent class, as usual. I also want to thank my fellow students, who provided some very interesting conversations over the course of the class. One of the highlights of these classes for me is a chance for some fellowship with like minded folks.

Suarez International Trauma Care for Shooters class

2010-02-17T18:08:00.005-07:00

Back in November I took Suarez International Trauma Care for Shooters taught by Karl Johnson in Blairsville, Georgia. Tactical trauma care was an area I'd identified as a hole in my skill set quite a while ago, and I'm not alone. We all love to train to do cool, fun stuff like shoot and stab people, but learning how to patch up the holes after a fight never seems to be a priority. This was the first opportunity I'd had to take a class like this and wanted to jump on it.

The class was fairly small, just seven students. Quite a few of them had been to Karl's one day tactical trauma seminar during Warrior Skills Camp last July, and the fact that they showed up for the two day version this speaks well of his teaching skills. This also was my first opportunity to meet Rick Klopp, who was hosting the class. I'd had an online acquaintance with Rick on Warrior Talk for a while now, but this was the first time I'd met him in person. It was also a chance to renew my acquaintance with a couple from South Carolina who I'd met at Tom Sotis' knife class back in June.

The venue for the class was, Camp Jabez, a small summer camp type facility in Blairsville, Georgia. For those who opted to stay at the camp, we got bunks in a bunkhouse and all of our meals for less than the cost of a room at a local hotel. It's a really nice facility, and has everything you could want except a shooting range. For the live fire portion of the class we relocated to a range about fifteen minutes away. Most of the class met for dinner at Camp Jabez on Friday night and enjoyed some good conversation over a nice meal before adjourning upstairs to watch a Systema DVD.

Saturday

The first day was mostly classroom lecture, with the hands on portion of the class on the second day. Karl began with his bio, which is pretty impressive. He's been a police officer, SWAT team member and medic, a contractor in Iraq as a medic and team leader on a personal security detail, and is currently an ICU nurse. He is extremely qualified to teach about tactical trauma care, with a wealth of hands on experience.

He began by talking about what we would learn in the class. The Army talks about Tactical Casualty Combat Care (TCCC) in terms of 3 phases: care under fire, tactical field care, and casualty evacuation. This class was primarily focused on the civilian context, where we can usually rely on an ambulance to show up and take care of the evacuation phase (there are exceptions of course, if you're way out on the boonies, or in the middle of a big disaster like Hurricane Katrina evacuation may be a long time coming). So we spent most of our dime talking about care under fire, and tactical field care.

Karl emphasized that nothing we were learning in this class was intended as a permanent fix. The goal is to keep someone's condition from getting worse, or slow down the rate they are getting worse, long enough for help to arrive and get them to a hospital.

There is a difference between tactical trauma care and first aid. Tactical trauma care is much narrower and more focused. Its pretty much confined to treating wounds from firearms, knives, and blunt objects. Even within these categories, we're only really concerned with wounds that we can do something about. Some injuries just aren't survivable, even if they occurred in an operating room with a trauma surgeon standing by. This class concentrates on wounds that where what we do can make a difference. Unlike first aid, it's usually pretty obvious what the problem is, allowing us to dispense with a lot of the diagnostics associated with normal first aid. If you find someone lying on the ground outside your office, it could be anything from a heart attack to a drunk sleeping it off. In contrast, if a someone goes down during a gunfight, we can make a pretty good guess as to what happened.

Another difference Karl really stressed is that "Scene safety" has a very different meaning in tactical trauma care than it does in first aid. Rather than being concerned with primarily environmental problems like downed power lines, we are concerned with someone who is actively trying to kill us. As long as the fight is still going on, putting your head down and working on a wound could leave us very vulnerable. This means that sometimes the best thing we can do is to ignore a wounded comrade and finish the fight before turning our attention to them. This is really the distinction between the care under fire and tactical field care phases.

Karl explained the biggest threat from the kind of penetrating or blunt trauma we expect in a fight is blood loss. There are some other secondary things to worry about, but blood loss is what kills quickly.

When I was a Boy Scout earning my First Aid merit badge (circa 1990) I was taught that a tourniquet should be a last result, and would almost always result in the loss of a limb. Karl explained that this was probably correct if you used something like a bootlace that applied pressure to a very narrow area. However, a proper tourniquet, at least one inch wide after application, wouldn't result in any permanent harm. Tourniquets are being widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan and are generally the first line of defense against bleeding extremities.

Karl talked a bit about hemostatic agents (such as QuickClot). These have grown increasingly popular in recent years, so much so that some folks seem to think some sort of hemostatic agent is all you need or should be the first choice for every wound. Karl's view, on the other hand, is that hemostatic agents are useful, but more as a last resort, for wounds that aren't in a position where a tourniquet is useful and can't be controlled with direct pressure. He said he doesn't carry any sort of hemostatic agent in his car trauma kit.

While most techniques for dealing with blood loss are aimed at stopping any more blood from being lost, IV fluid replacement can actually increase volume and raise an injured person's blood pressure back towards normal levels. However, while IV fluids can help with dangerously low blood pressure, they don't carry oxygen or clot (in fact, they can make clotting slower and more difficult). Several years ago, the Army emphasized IV fluid replacement in it's Combat Lifesaver classes and employed it aggressively in the field, to the point that some soldiers were coming into hospitals "bleeding pink". In recent years, they've moved away from this and are placing much more emphasis on preventing blood loss through tourniquets and hemostatic agents.

With discussion of some of the more high speed low drag techniques out of the way, Karl moved on to the most basic procedures for stopping bleeding: direct pressure. One of the things he really emphasized that I hadn't appreciated before this was that direct pressure involves more than just shoving down on the wound. It's a three dimensional concept. If you've got a linear, v-shaped wound, you need to exert pressure directly onto the exposed flesh on both sides of the wound. If you've got a big crater, you need to provide pressure in all directions. The way to do this is to pack the wound with gauze, then apply a tight pressure dressing to provide that pressure and keep everything in place.

Blood loss is the most immediate threat, but Karl also went over some longer term consequences of violent trauma that could develop if help takes a while to arrive. A tension pneumothorax is a condition where a puncture allows air to collect inside the chest but outside of the lung. This prevents the lung from inflating properly, making it difficult to breathe. This is the classic "sucking chest wound". A hemothorax is similar, but involves blood instead of air. The accumulation of air can actually start shoving the heart over so it impinges on the other lung, eventually resulting in death.

As immortalized in the movie Three Kings, the treatment is to jab a needle into the chest and let the air out. Karl explained where and how to do this, but he didn't recommend trying it in most circumstances. He doesn't carry a needle for doing this around on a regular basis because the condition takes tens of minutes or hours to develop, by which time the ambulance has probably arrived. You can bandage a chest wound using an occlusive dressing (a fancy way of saying tape something airtight over the wound) to keep any more air from getting in, though this won't help with any air that's already there. Most useful is to be able to describe the symptoms to the paramedics so they can recognize and treat the problem quickly. Besides the bubbling chest wound itself, the main sign of a pneumothorax is difficulty breathing after some sort of trauma to the chest that gets progressively worse.

The other longer term problem we discussed is shock. This doesn't refer to the psychological shock someone might experience after a gunfight, but hypovolemic shock. Essentially, shock is the body's reaction to loosing too much blood. Obviously, the best way to prevent this is to minimize blood loss in the first place. However, we also talked about treatment for shock if it occurs, which basically involves keeping the victim lying down with the feet elevated (unless they have a wound to the torso or chest).

So how does Karl apply these techniques apply in the TCCC care under fire and tactical field care phases mentioned earlier? During the care under fire phase, when the fight is still going on, there isn't really time for packing wounds and applying a pressure dressing. Tourniquets are quick to apply and can prevent someone with a wounded extremity from bleeding out. If you're wounded but still capable of putting on a tourniquet and applying direct pressure, it's time for some self aid. Depending on the severity of the wound, it may be possible to get back in the fight, or at least move to cover and be ready to defend yourself as best you can. If someone is wounded and unconscious, there may be time to slap on a tourniquet and drag them out of the line of fire, but not much else. Finishing the fight and keeping the BG(s) from wounding or killing more people takes priority.

After the fight immediate fight is over, either because all the opponents are down, the cavalry has arrived and secured the area, or active combat has just moved to a different area, it's time for some tactical field care. Pack wounds and apply pressure dressings. As time passes, watch for signs of shock or a pneumothorax.

To round out the lecture portion of the class, Karl broke out a bunch of different tourniquets and pressure dressings from his bag of tricks and opined a bit on the merits and drawbacks of each. The different brands of pressure dressings pretty much follow the same pattern: a stretchy, ace bandage like wrap with an absorbent pad, some method of applying pressure to the wound, and some way to secure the end. While they're generally similar, Karl particularly likes the OALES bandage, because it includes 3 yards of gauze (one less package to open) and has little velcro strips at intervals along the bandage to keep the end from completely unrolling (dealing with the tail as you try to wrap can be a pain). We also went through some of the different tourniquets, but I'll save discussion of those for the Sunday part of the writeup when I was using them to cut off circulation in my extremities.

With that, we adjourned to the chow hall for a nice dinner. Tonights after dinner DVD: Big Folder Fighting Skills by Gabe Suarez (though we spent as much time watching Rick's impromptu knife defense lesson as we did watching the DVD).

Sunday

After a hearty breakfast, we dove right in to the hands on portion of the class. After a bit of review of material from yesterday, we spent the morning trying out various kinds of tourniquet. We applied the tourniquet to our arms and legs, both our own limbs (self aid) and other people's. Once the tourniquet was applied, we (or rather, people in the class who were better at it than I am) felt for a pulse to see if it was tight enough to actually stop bleeding. For these exercises, figuring out how much pressure was enough to do the job was kind of difficult. Of course, in real life, the spurting bleed from an artery will make it pretty evident if you haven't cranked the tourniquet down hard enough. Repeated tourniquet application did not lead to any lost limbs, but they do a pretty good job of simulating a limb disabling injury when they're cranked down (if you can still use the limb normally while the tourniquet is applied, it's probably not tight enough.

First up was the classic tourniquet improvised from a triangular bandage and a stick for a windlass. We tried this both using another bandage to hold the windlass and using the small ring off the top of a soda bottle. This method was the most difficult, took longest to apply, and the hardest to effectively stop blood flow with. Applying it one handed is effectively impossible. If you have two hands available, it can be made to work, but it's definitely not the best option.

Our next tourniquet was the TK-4. This is basically a length of 2" wide elastic with hooks at either end (think of a wide, flat bungee cord). It can be applied one or two handed. It's effective, can get it really tight, but you have to make sure to really crank on it, particularly the first few turns around the limb. On the plus side, it's very small and light, easy to slip into a pocket. At $7 a piece, it's also easy to have a bunch stashed in different places so there's always one available.

The last two tourniquets we looked at were the Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT) and the SOF Tactical Tourniquet (SOFTT). The CAT is, the current U.S military issue, while the SOFTT is currently in use with various special operations forces. The two tourniquets are quite similar. Both can easily be applied one handed and have a built in windlass allowing them to be cranked down hard quite easily. The CAT is a bit more compact, but it relies on velcro and is set up slightly differently for one handed vs. two handed use. The SOFTT has a metal buckle rather than velcro, but it's a bit more difficult to secure the windlass, especially one handed. I like the CAT a bit better, but they're both quality pieces of kit that are very easy to use and effective. The only downside is they're about $30, which makes it more difficult to stash a bunch.

Karl also had an odd tourniquet with a plastic ratcheting design, but it was worn out enough it didn't really work right so I can't really give a good evaluation (I never even wrote down the name of that one).

After a fun morning of tourniqueting each other, we enjoyed a nice lunch courtesy of Camp Jabez and packed up. A few of the students had to depart early, so we were down to four for the afternoon's activities. After giving one of the other student's motorcycle a jump start, we headed out to the range about fifteen minutes away. The range is one used by the local Sheriff's Department. It's in the middle of some fields so we did our training to the mooing of cows (much nicer than the donkey in the next field during Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class).

For the live fire part of the class, Karl handed out folded three by five cards with an injury written on them (something like "Left Leg Heavy Bleeding", for example). If he called out that we were injured, we were to safe or holster our weapons, fall down, and read the card and respond appropriately.

The first scenario he ran us through had a pair of shooters walking through the mall when terrorists open fire. On command, we started shooting the targets and had to keep fire on them (the start signal was often Karl letting loose a few rounds from his AK into the berm). Karl called out a number, indicating which shooter was wounded and that student had to holster, drop, read his injury, apply a tourniquet if appropriate, and drag himself to cover if possible. As this was still the care under fire phase, the other student's job was to move aggressively to finish the fight by putting more rounds into the BGs. After Karl called out that there were no visible bad guys, the other student could come over and start helping with treatment by packing the wound and applying a pressure dressing. We ran the drill several times, so each shooter had the chance to be both the injured and non-injured member. When Rick was the injured student Karl called out that they bad guys were coming back during the tactical field care phase, so Rick was lying there leaning out of cover laying down fire with his Glock while the other student tried to finish bandaging his leg.

After the two man drills, we moved on to a three man exercise. The premise this drew on Karl's time in Iraq: we were were part of a PSD pushed out to provide security and came under attack from insurgents. Karl called out one member to be wounded, and had to provide self aid and find cover while the other two continued to fight. Once the immediate fight was over, one got to work bandaging up the wounded member while the other provided security.

We were generally all pretty good at finishing the fight if we were not one wounded. In all of these drills, communication was key. That said, more communication wasn't necessarily better. If you were hit, calling this out to your partner may just be a distraction to him. On the other hand, once the immediate threat ends, communicating who's injured and how is important.

A three man team really helps. It provides twice as much firepower after someone's been hit and it makes it possible for one person to be dedicated to security while another attends to the wounded during the tactical field care phase. On the other hand, having three people makes communication even more critical. While we were all fairly good shooters and safe gunhandlers, I'm pretty sure Rick was the only one with any real team tactics experience. This kind of limited what we could do as far as being a team goes, both because of lack of knowledge and safety concerns. I could see some of this stuff going really well integrated into a team tactics class.

Since we were all fairly experienced when it came to the firearms end of things, the live fire exercises went a bit faster than Karl planned and we wrapped up about 4:00. We spent some time talking, and each of us had a chance to put some rounds through a student's Suchka. It's really a nice little rifle, but I think we established that it needs to booster on the muzzle rather than a slotted flash hider to function properly, and the LaRue medium height Aimpoint mount is a bit too high for a good cheek weld.

Conclusions

This was truly an excellent class. Karl has a lot of experience and he's quite good at conveying it to students effectively. He does a good job of explaining the context of what he's instructing us to do and helping the students understand why we're doing these things, not just what to do. The first day of the class is a bit of an infodump, but there's a lot to cover and Karl is thankfully an engaging and effective lecturer. Something to take notes on is an absolute must! I think I took more notes in this one day than I have in any other tactical class I've taken. The hands on stuff was really great, and I think Karl does as good a job as can be done without some actual trauma to patch up (which, thankfully, we didn't have).

I would highly recommend Karl's trauma classes to anyone. More than that, this class has only reinforced my belief that some sort of trauma class is an absolutely vital piece of education for anyone who intends to use a firearm for self defense. Many of us spend a lot of time taking fun classes; high speed low drag stuff where we get to shoot a lot and do all sorts of cool stuff. More pedestrian classes like trauma care tend to fall by the wayside. If you are in a gunfight, no matter how good you are, there's a decent chance than you, or a loved one, will get shot. Even if you aren't in a gunfight, every one of those cool classes, every match or practice session at the range is an opportunity for a nasty accident. We try to minimize the risk, but we still need to be prepared to deal with it if it happens. In my opinion, everyone who's serious about shooting and firearms self defense really needs to take a class like this.

NRA Instructors Course In SLC

2010-02-11T17:36:00.002-07:00

Doug Little is holding a three day NRA instructors course that will qualify participants to teach the NRA Basic Pistol Course and Personal Protection in the Home. The dates are Mach 19, 20, & 21.

You can contact Doug directly or go to the NRA training website and search for the two courses for more information and registration.

Instructor Course in Texas

2010-02-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Training Dates are fixed

2010-01-07T19:14:00.001-07:00

All dates are correct at the Suarez website schedule for the Salt Lake City classes being offered in 2010.

Suarez Rifle Fight Skills Class

2010-01-03T09:04:00.002-07:00

As of 1-3-10, the April 10-11 Suarez Fighting Rifle Skills class listed on the Suarez Schedule Page shows Phoenix Arizona as the venue. This is incorrect! Is should read Salt Lake City, Ut. Suarez International is aware of the problem and the web master there should have it fixed before long. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

UPS Saturday Events

2009-12-11T08:41:00.008-07:00

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

Training Schedule for 2010

2009-12-11T08:03:00.004-07:00

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.

John Farnam's Scenario Based Defensive Handgun Course

2009-11-18T21:56:00.001-07:00

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.

Suarez International Extreme Close Range Gunfighting

2009-10-26T17:10:00.001-06:00

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!

Suarez International Snub Nose Seminar/Pistol Tune Up

2009-10-26T17:08:00.002-06:00

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!

Something scary to read.

2009-10-18T21:11:00.000-06:00

SCARY STORIES!

One Strange Adventure

2009-10-13T23:20:00.005-06:00

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.

Point Shooting Progressions Class Scheduled

2009-10-08T08:17:00.003-06:00

Working with Suarez International and directly with SI Staff Instructor, Roger Phillips, we are pleased to announce four days of Point Shooting Progressions Training in June 2010. Two classes are offered back to back: Point Shooting Progressions (PSP) June 10-11 followed by Advanced Point Shooting Progressions (APSP) June 12-13.

The Suarez website describes Roger Phillips and PSP this way:

Roger began his journey in pistolcraft, as many of us did, in the world of the Modern Technique. But early on, he learned the lessons taught in the crucible of force on force. Specifically with the issues of movement while shooting. Roger continued his study of movement, but also looked deeply into the “secret science” of point shooting.

He sought out and trained with just about every living notable proponent of point shooting. But unlike many others who consider themselves “point shooters” Roger realized, partly from his Modern Technique background with proactive shooting, and partly from his exposure to force on force, that it was not an "all or nothing" situation. He realized that at times one needed to point shoot while looking directly at the adversary. Other times, nothing but a perfectly sighted shot would suffice. He developed a very eclectic system that incorporates both systems, sighted fire and point shooting, to accomplish the mission, which simply put is “shoot without being shot”.

That system was discussed, developed and worked on at our internet forum Warrior Talk. Eventually it morphed into the series of classes that Roger teaches via Suarez International.

From Rogers' website, APSP is described as:

This course picks up where the original Point Shooting Progressions course left off. This course will require one of the handgun PSP course as a prerequisite (PSP, PSP/FAN, PSP/FOF.) This will give us a student base that does not require any of the point shooting fundamentals. We will pick up the skills that you already own and push them as far as we can go. Speed, draw stroke, movement, and accuracy will be the main focus. Same building block approach, drill after drill pushing the limitations as far as we can possibly push them. Think PSP on steroids!

These classes can be taken together or separately, but please note for APSP you'll need to have taken PSP prior to it. You can register for PSP at the Suarez website as well as APSP. If you bundle the two together, Suarez provides a $100.00 price break.

Both classes will be held at the typical UPS venue, Hendriksen PMMA Range at exit 134 I-80, east of Salt Lake.

As mentioned in a previous post, more training from Suarez International is on the horizon; we will keep you posted as the details are finalized.

Less Than Optimal

2009-09-24T21:16:00.002-06:00

I was listening to the podcast Michael Bane posted last week, and he touched on a topic that intrigued me. He talked about how most of our training and almost all of our match shooting is done in near optimal conditions, but that most self defense situations happen in much less than optimal – for us – situations.

He started off by talking about an Olympic runner he had interviewed years ago who had just come off a long distance training run. She wasn’t feeling well because it was her time of month, but she had trained anyway. When Michael asked her why, she replied they wouldn’t put the Olympics on hold because she wasn’t at the top of her game. She commented that she would need to be ready to compete regardless of how she felt that day, so she needed to train to be able to perform at the top of her game, even when she wasn’t feeling her best. In other words, when conditions were less than optimal for her.

Similarly, if we find ourselves in a circumstance where we have to defend ourselves or our loved ones, we won’t have the option of saying, “not now, I’m not feeling all that well today.” An attacker isn’t going to put his attack on hold just because you’re not feeling as up to defending yourself as you would like to be. On the contrary, he’ll probably be more than happy that you're not as up to the task as you could be. In fact, he’ll probably do everything he can to gain advantage for himself and ensure your circumstances are as far from optimal as he can manage. He'll try to make things optimal for him while making them less than optimal for you.

To make this even worse, many of us may not equip ourselves as well as we should and, as Michael said, most of us do most of our training in near optimal conditions…if we train at all.

If we train at all. Think about this statement for a bit. The extent to which most CCW holders train is to punch a few holes in a bull’s-eye targets at the local indoor range or bounce a few tin cans around when they’re out in the boonies. This isn’t very practical training for self defense because it doesn’t put them under stress or exercise most of the skills they’ll need in a real defensive situation. And many don't even do this minimal amount of training.

Even those of us who do engage in “practical” training, usually do it on bright, sunshiny days when we're not feeling like something the dog dragged in, when we know exactly what the “start signal” is, know exactly what we’re supposed to do, and know how we're going to be scored or evaluated. We’re also geared up with just the right gun, holster, magazine pouch, spare magazines, and other gear needed for the training drill. In other words, we’re primed and ready to go. Pretty much as close to optimal as you’re going to get outside a video game.

Contrast this with a trip to the local Seven-Eleven to get a jug of milk when you’re dressed in shorts and flip flops, and you’re drowsy because your wife just woke you up from dozing in front of the TV. It’s dark outside because you put off going to the store until just before it’s time to go to bed, and your only armament is the five-shot .38 revolver you dropped in your pocket before running out the door. Are you in the best circumstance to fend off an attack? Probably not.

In addition to not being physically at your best, you’ve also put yourself at a distinct disadvantage because of how you’re equipped. How often do you train while wearing flop flops and carrying only a five-shot revolver with no reloads? Did you remember to bring that wiz-bang tactical flashlight you train with, or is it sitting at home in your range bag? Have you equipped yourself “optimally” to meet an attack? Probably not.

So, what can you do to help remedy this situation? Well, first off, you could probably equip yourself a little bit better before leaving the house. I’m not really going to get into that here, because that’s fodder for another article (stay tuned). However, you can train with what you actually do equip yourself with for these kinds of situations. If you carry that little five-shot revolver, train with it.

Ok, so let’s talk about training. It would seem to me the first thing we need to do is identify the situations you may find yourself in that may be less than optimal. In training, we may not be able to simulate feeling physically ill very well, but we can do things like train from awkward positions, train while our dominant arm is disabled, train without prescription glasses (for those of us who wear them), train with the dominant eye covered, train in low light situations, train while simulating equipment malfunctions, and a number of other variations that could put us in less than optimal circumstances.

So, specifically what actions do we need to be able to perform in less than optimal circumstances? In Michael Bane’s podcast he talks about this in the context of cave diving. He talks about identifying the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in any circumstances in order to survive. In the context of a deadly force encounter, it’s very much the same thing. So, what is the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in a self defense situation? If we’re going to employ a gun as a major part of our self defense system, we should be able to deploy it from wherever it’s carried in an expeditious fashion. We should be able to bring it to bear on the threat and accurately place multiple shots where we want them very quickly. We should be able to do both of these things from awkward positions, with either hand, using either eye, and without corrective lenses, we should be able to do this both in daylight and when it’s dark. Is this all we need to be able to do? No! What if the gun malfunctions or if you cannot use it at all. Do you have plan B? Do you have the things with you you’ll need in order to execute plan B? Do you have the skill sets you’ll need to make plan B work? Have you practiced plan B to see if it will work?

Do I have the answers to all the questions this issue brings to mind? No, I don’t even know what all the questions should be at this point, but I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit since listening to Michael’s podcast last week. If you carry a gun for self defense, you probably should be thinking about it too. We’re going to be addressing some of this at the Utah Polite Society events over the next few months. If you’d like to help with this, come join us. Our events are held the first Saturday of each month and start at 8:30 in the morning at Hendricksen Range in Parleys Canyon east of Salt Lake City.

Upcoming Training

2009-09-23T10:15:00.002-06:00

Over the summer UPS has provided Monday Evening training sessions that have proved to be quite popular. The curriculum covered basic stance, draw stroke, reloads, trigger control and sight picture. As folks returned week after week, additional, more advance topics were covered like shooting on the move and multiple threats.

As described in an earlier blog post by Blackeagle, UPS sponsored a Close Range Rifle class with Gabe Suarez of Suarez International . In addition to the rifle class, UPS hosted a Force on Force class where participants used air soft pistols in a variety of settings exchanging shots as both good guys and not-so-good guys. The scars on my arms are now finally beginning to fade...

These two classes were very well attended, and UPS has been working closely with Gabe and a few of his staff instructors on scheduling more classes for 2010. At this time things are still in the works, but we are trying to get a Suarez class for each quarter of the year. Topics discussed so far run the full gambit of the Suarez course catalog including an edged weapon class and the specialty course called Point Shooting Progressions (PSP) .

We have penciled in four days of instruction for PSP; the first two days will be the standard PSP course, followed by the Advanced PSP. The first class is a prerequisite for the second. You can expect a lot of trigger time, movement, and dynamic fighting scenarios in this class. It is not a beginning firearms class by any stretch of the imagination. We are very excited to have Roger Phillips come to the Salt Lake area for this class.

As classes and dates become finalized, we will keep you updated.

Gabe Suarez's Close Range Rifle Gunfighting Class

2009-09-21T08:25:00.002-06:00

At the beginning of August, the Utah Polite Society hosted a Close Range Rifle Gunfighting class from Gabe Suarez in Salt Lake City. Up until a year ago I lived in Salt Lake, so getting back to Utah and seeing by shooting buddies again turned this class into kind of an Old Home Week for me.

I took my first formal rifle class from John Farnam earlier this year. While it was a good class, and did a nice job teaching my how to run my rifle, it emphasized shooting from what I'd call medium range. The most common shooting distance was around the 40 yard line. For the situations where I might use a rifle for self-defense, it would quite likely be at a closer distance than that. A big part of the reason I decided to sign up for this class was to add to my bag of tricks at closer ranges.

Gabe hasn't taught many rifle classes under this name recently, instead concentrating on his Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting class. The AK class has generally the same content, but it obviously includes more AK specific stuff. Since then, ammo costs and availability problems have led Gabe to invite any sort of rifle to his AK classes. However, we still may have had a big more variety in arms than usual thanks to this class being advertised under the different name.

We'd last had Gabe out in Utah two years ago, in early May. That time around, it actually snowed on us during the class. This year, the weather was rather different. Highs were around 90 both days, though it was very dry, so sweat evaporated pretty quickly. Gabe told us a story about a student in one of his classes down in Prescott who didn't drink enough and ended up getting very dehydrated. It was one of those "funny only because nobody got seriously hurt" kind of things. Thankfully, everyone stayed pretty well hydrated in this class. Gabe was very good about giving fairly frequent breaks for people to drink and stuff mags. The first day, we went through two five gallon coolers of water and the second, we emptied the coolers, refilled them, then almost emptied them again. With a little over 20 guys in the class, that works out between half a gallon and a gallon of water per person per day (not to mention whatever water or sports drinks people brought on their own). Given the heat, this was not an unreasonable amount of water.

Equipment

I shot the class with my Robinson Armament XCR, along with my usual Glock 21. I also carried a j-frame in a pocket holster as a BUG, but I was just carrying it on general principles, rather than for use during the class (I didn't even bother to swap it over to practice ammo). Because I had to fly across the country to this class, I didn't bring along a second rifle or service pistol.

I've been playing around with the configuration of my XCR. I've got it set up with an Aimpoint Micro, a flashlight, and a forward vertical grip. The grip has been slowly migrating backwards as I've switched from a "broomhandle" grip on it to mainly grabbing the rifle's fore end and just wrapping my last 1 or 2 fingers around it. As part of these changes, I switched from a Streamlight mount that held the flashlight quite far to the side to a Surefire G2 in a Viking Tactics mount that put it much close in at about 11 o'clock. Unfortunately, after the first string of fire in the class I found this wasn't working very well for me. The flashlight mount was right near where I wanted my thumb to be. During the next break I stripped it off the side rail and reinstalled it on the bottom rail, putting the light at about 8 o'clock. This also involved moving the vertical grip back half an inch and relocating the sling mount. This worked far better from a shooting perspective, though I haven't had a chance to try out the light at night. The other change since my last rifle class was to exchange the flip-up front sight for a fixed one. I'd been running the front sight up all the time, so it made sense to use a more rugged fixed unit. As usual, I ran PMAGs in my rifle and carried them in a sneakybag.

The majority of the 20 guys in the class were running AKs of some description, but there was a substantial minority of ARs and a few oddballs. Two folks with big ammo budgets were shooting an M1A and a FAL SBR. One fellow from California was using a Kel-Tec SU-16. Most of the rifles were iron sighted, but a fair number had sights of some sort. Most of these were zero magnification red dots (with the Aimpoint Micro being by far the most common), but there was also an ACOG and a conventional 1-4 variable scope. The class seemed to be split about half and half between sneakybags of one description or another and more tactical gear (chest rigs, subloads).

Day 1

When the class started on Saturday, the first thing we did was cover reloading. Gabe teaches muzzle up reloading. This gets the rifle up in front of your face, minimizing the tendency to take your eyes off the battlefield while looking down at your gun. It also provides a better angle for getting the magazine into the weapon, particularly for the folks with with an AK, M1A, or FAL where the magazine rocks into place. Gabe teaches a simple 'tactical' reload (always retaining the magazine). He disagrees with using a speed reload for rifles, both because you may need those magazines later (particularly during a situation like the LA riots or Katrina) and because with a rifle, transitioning to pistol (at close range) or seeking cover to reload behind (at longer ranges) is probably a more appropriate response to an empty gun than even the fastest of reloads.

Gabe also talked to us about ready positions. He really doesn't have much use for the traditional "low ready" position, regarding it as more of a range technique than something that's really useful in a fight. It leaves the rifle with quite a ways to move to bring it to bear on an opponent, yet it lacks the advantages (compactness, relaxation, rapid movement) of the other ready positions that leave the rifle far from bearing on the opponent. Instead he teaches a set of five positions: contact ready, close contact ready, sul, port arms, and patrol ready.

Contact ready is simply an offhand shooting position, with the rifle lowered just slightly (only a few inches, versus the 45 degrees or so of traditional low ready) to give a good view over the sights. Contact ready is for confronting assailants, taking corners, or any other situation where you have an identifiable danger you want to be able to shoot very quickly. Close contact ready, also known as underarm assault, has the rifle pointed at the assailant with the butt tucked under the armpit. This can be a firing position or a ready position. It fills the same role as contact ready in tighter quarters. Sul positions the rifle in front of the chest and stomach, pointed straight down. It can be used in very close quarters, in crowds of non-threats, and for scanning behind you at the conclusion of a fight. Port arms, with the rifle held toward the support side, pointed up at a 45 degree angle, is useful for rapid movement, when getting to the destination is more important than shooting, such as getting out of dodge, or moving to a moderately distant piece of cover. An alternative is to hold the rifle in one hand by the pistol grip pointed straight up. Patrol ready, also known as Rhodesian ready, has the rifle held across the body pointed down at a 45 degree angle. This is one of the more difficult position to bring the rifle to bear from, but it's also the most relaxed. If you are going to spend a long time with a rifle in your hands, sooner or later it will probably end up in some variation of patrol ready. Gabe mentioned that because of this, he does most of his practice bringing the rifle into action from patrol ready.

In addition to ready positions, Gabe also covered various administrative carry positions, such as carrying at the balance (usually just in front of the magazine on most rifles) and cradling the rifle in the crook of the arm. For sling carry, he likes a simple support side, muzzle down or "African carry". This keeps the rifle from hanging up on your pistol and allows it to be brought into action fairly quickly. Almost everyone in the class was using a 2-point sling. Gabe is not a big fan of the three point sling, and only likes one point slings in certain specialized situations. He really doesn't like slings that tie you to the rifle. To illustrate why, he told a pretty memorable story involving a huge muscular drug dealer grabbing a MP5 attached to a SWAT team member by a three point sling and throwing him around like a rag doll.

Gabe laid out the four common rifles being used by students in the class, the FAL, M1A, AR, and AK. We had a fairly extensive discussion about the pros and cons of each. Gabe's love for the AK is well known, but he gave a fairly balanced appraisal of each rifle. As he put it, the AK is not as inaccurate as its reputation, and the AR is not as unreliable as its reputation.

The next exercise was to confirm the zero on our rifles. We didn't go through the full zeroing process, since that can be quite time consuming for a large group. In any case, this class is called "Close Range Rifle Gunfighting" for a reason. We didn't take a single shot beyond 25 yards (though some of the 25 yard shots were headshots). A perfect bench rest zero wasn't really required for any of the shooting we did, so we just confirmed the rifles were generally shooting where we wanted them. My Aimpoint and LaRue mount combo held up well, and shot where I wanted them too despite the tender loving care displayed by the airport baggage handlers.

We took a break for lunch, which was catered by the range manager's wife and her sister. They dealt out a fine array of burgers, chicken sandwiches, and other assorted fare.

After lunch, we started in ernest with the shooting exercises, beginning with some snap shooting practice. Gabe distinguished snap shooting, which involves mounting the rifle and getting a sight picture, from some of the CQB techniques introduced later that don't involve getting a traditional sight picture. The amount of time to make a snap shot varies depending on the distance and size of the target. After a demonstration from Gabe, we did some snap shooting at 15 and 25 yards.

Next we moved up to CQB distances for the first time and shot at about 5 yards. At this distance, you don't need even a rough sight picture to get good hits. Gabe explained the "Caveman EOTech" technique, shouldering the rifle and superimposing the front sight on the target without using the rear sight. This can provide very fast torso hits out to 7-10 yards. It works particularly well for rifles with tall front sight towers like the AK and AR. However, it is not particularly well suited for a rifle like mine. I have my Aimpoint mounted as far forward as it will go, just behind the front sight. The LaRue mount blocks my view of the front sight tower, except for the sight itself, which sticks up in the bottom portion of the scope. This is great for getting the sight out of my face and providing visibility, but not so good for the Caveman EOTech. Instead, Gabe advised me to turn off the red dot and just shoot through the tube. I did this and found my group was significantly off to the left. This was a bit odd, since I'd tried shooting Caveman EOTech with my new AK and was able to place all the rounds right around the center of the target. After thinking about it a bit, I decided that it was probably because while I wasn't looking through the rear sight of my AK, it was still in my peripheral vision for me to use for reference centering my eye on the stock. On my XCR, on the other hand, I had been running my rear BUIS flipped down, leaving me without a reference. Sure enough, I flipped up the rear sight and looked over it for the next exercise and the group moved over to the center of the target. This has me thinking about going with a fixed rear BUIS instead of the flip up one.

Once everyone had a chance to get comfortable with the Caveman EOTech, we moved on to shoulder transfers. As Gabe pointed out, the world is not right handed and we may need to shoot while moving to the left or around the left side of a piece of cover. Lefties, in turn, need to be able to shoot right handed. This means we need to not only be able to shoot from the opposite shoulder, but to transfer the rifle back and forth. The technique Gabe taught involves bringing the hand back to the magazine (if it isn't already there) moving the rifle to the opposite shoulder, then switching the primary hand to the forend and the support hand to the pistol grip. If necessary, the rifle can be fired halfway through the process, with the stock on the opposite shoulder, but before the hands have switched position (a partial transfer). Gabe demonstrated this, then gave us a chance to try it dry before doing it live. We ran a continuous drill, starting with a shot from the primary shoulder, a partial transfer followed by another shot, switching hands for a full transfer and firing again, then doing a partial transfer back to the primary shoulder and firing again. Switching hands back to a conventional strong side firing position finishes the cycle. It's basically the same as the introduction to the Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighitng DVD, though none of use were as smooth or fast as Gabe is there. I'd practiced shoulder transfers quite a bit before the class, so I did pretty well, but I noticed some folks fumbling around a bit trying to move the rifle back and forth.

After giving everyone a chance to try out the shoulder transfers, we started applying them with the pacing drill. This was our introduction to getting off the X with a rifle. We started out in front of our targets, faced to the right, and took three steps forward shooting from the right shoulder. We then turned around, transferring the rifle to the left shoulder as we did so to keep it pointed downrange, and took three steps to the left, firing from the left shoulder. After turning around and transferring, we started the cycle over again. After a few iterations of this Gabe asked us to switch to firing bursts of 3-5 rounds from our rifles and following up with a headshot. Most fighting rifles have big mags, so there's not much reason to be stingy with ammunition.

With the basic pacing drill down, we added in some post-fight drills. First, asses the target, "Did I hit him? Did it work?" This is followed up by a side to side scan. One neat trick Gabe showed is that if you lower your chin a bit but keep your eyes level, you can increase your peripheral vision by quite a bit. This is followed up by turning around and scanning to the rear in position Sul. One thing Gabe mentioned is the importance of not simply swinging around 180 degrees, but turning a bit more slowly, and keeping the gun from view until you have some idea what's behind you. If there is, say, a police officer coming to investigate the gunfire, this may keep you from getting shot. If you do see a police officer, it's time to drop the rifle and show your hands (one more reason not to use a sling that ties you to the rifle). Once you're sure there are no immediate threats, it's time to reload the rifle. The last post-fight step is to asses yourself for any injuries, since adrenaline can keep you from realizing that you got shot.

During these last drills we had one rifle go down with trigger problems. Gabe mentioned that match triggers tend to be a lot more finicky and less reliable than the standard triggers in military rifles.

Day 2

We started out the second day with pistol transitions. When following Gabe's advice not to tie yourself to the rifle with your sling, you need a method for quickly slinging the rifle when it's time to get the pistol into action. Gabe's preferred method is basically to toss the rifle over the head and shoulder so it can drop and hang diagonally across the back. As a teaching method, he had us start buy thrusting our support hand out under the forend, sliding the rifle down the arm, then dropping it once it cleared the head. With more practice, this can become a single, fluid tossing motion. We practiced this dry for a fair bit, first while standing still, then on the move. This method works well when the rifle is on the primary shoulder, but when shooting from the support side shoulder, doing this kind of transition tends to drop the rifle so the sling falls right across a pistol on your hip (the reverse is true for people who usually shoot pistol and rifle on opposite sides, as many who are cross dominant do). In this case, the primary hand moves from the forend to the bottom of the magazine and rotates the rifle so that the muzzle is pointing towards the support side. Form this position the support arm can be thrust through the sling and the rest of the transition accomplished as normal.

After working the pistol transitions for a while, we worked on getting off the X when faced with threats at the 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions. When faced with threats to the support side (or behind you when you turn to the support side), this is fairly simple, just mount the gun and move. Threats on the primary side require mounting the gun to the opposite shoulder, which is a bit more difficult. Gabe demonstrated a "golf swing" technique for doing this. From patrol ready or Sul, you swing the rifle up towards the threat while switching hands. I had shoulder transitions while facing the target down pretty well before coming, but this one messed me up a bit. It's a bit tricky to swap hands as the rifle is coming up like this, and I fumbled around some when I was doing it. This one is definitely going to take some dry practice to get comfortable with.

This exercise also saw our only ND of the class. One of the students fired his rifle as it was coming up, blowing a half-dollar sized divot in the concrete about a yard from his feet. The rifle involved was another one with a light match trigger on it, and this might not have happened with a standard military trigger.

We moved on to some position shooting, starting with kneeling. Gabe demonstrated and talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the position. He also demonstrated how to address threats from the sides and rear when in a kneeling position. We did some dry practice in getting into and out of kneeling positions, switching shoulders while kneeling, as well as adjusting our position and hold on the rifle to engage higher or lower targets. We did some shooting from kneeling, including shooting from both shoulders. For kneeling, and all the supported shooting positions, Gabe asked us to do headshots at 25 yards (which frankly isn't all that difficult against static targets from a supported position). He also had us reload while in position between strings of fire, to get us used to realoading in some of these other positions.

While shooting kneeling, I managed to crack one of my PMAGs. I'd loaded it with 31 rounds instead of 30, and was trying to seat it in my rifle. I pounded on it pretty good before realizing the problem and stripping out a round and seating it. Later I found out I'd cracked the back of the mag for about an inch up near the top. It still fed fine in the rifle for the rest of the drill though.

Before moving on to the other shooting positions we broke for lunch. Today the range manager's wife and sister-in-law prepared pulled pork for everybody, which was really quite delicious.

After lunch, we moved on to the squatting position. Again, Gabe demonstrated it before we practiced getting into and out of it dry. We shot it from both shoulders, with reloads in between. I didn't find squatting as comfortable as kneeling, but it is very quick to get in and out of.

The next position was sitting. As Gabe explained, this is more of a long term position. It's very comfortable, even for relatively long periods of time, but takes longer to get into or out of. He demonstrated cross-legged sitting (indian style), sitting with the legs crossed out in front, and sitting with the legs splayed out. He also showed us a neat trick when sitting cross legged. When he was a SWAT sniper, he used to stick something (extra magazines, small sandbags) between the thighs and feet to make the position a bit more comfortable when sitting for a long while. When we were shooting, I found that in addition to being very steady, the rifle also tended to drop right back on target, permitting more rapid fire. In the previous positions or shooting offhand, there was more of a need to drive the sights back to the target, instead of them dropping back on their own. This tendency to drop back onto the target was also true of prone.

Our final shooting position was prone. This was a bit interesting, since the ground had grown pretty hot by this time of day. I had long pants and elbow pads on, so I didn't actually have any bare skin in contact with the ground, but even through clothing it was pretty warm. Gabe demonstrated both a conventional prone, and using the magazine as a monopod. He also mentioned a neat trick for those of us carrying our ammo in Sneakybags. When going prone, it's possible to swing the bag out ahead so that it's within easy reach for reloading while we're there on the ground. While shooting this exercise I suffered a pretty badly stuck case, no amount of racking would dislodge it. I got off the line and borrowed a friend's cleaning rod to pound the case out. A bit of pounding eventually dislodged it enough to get it under the extractor, but now I couldn't pull the charging handle back. Finally I ended up applying a boot to the charging handle which sent the case flying right out. I'd shot quite a bit of Wolf ammo in the gun since last doing a good cleaning with a chamber brush, and I think that's what prompted this: a hot, gunky chamber latching onto a case.

The last two exercises of the day involved some team tactics work. Gabe has an entire class on this, so these exercises were only an introduction. Gabe talked a bit about team tactics and bounding drills in general, as well as the importance of communication:

"Moving" - I'm about to move, could you give me some cover fire?
"Covering" - I'm giving you cover fire, go ahead and move.
"Set" - I'm done moving and providing fire.
"Checking" - Something's wrong with my gun (malfunction, out of ammo, etc.) please provide cover fire.

He also stressed the importance of redundant communication paths, based not just on what each person is saying, but also by what they're doing and what you're seeing.

The first team drill involved the class forming up into two lines. The front person in each line was to fire at the target, then roll to the outside and move to the back of the line. The whole line steps up and the next person in line starts firing. This isn't a very realistic drill, but it gets people used to safely handling weapons and shooting in close proximity to other people. We did the drill with all rifles pointed straight up unless we were firing, so as not to muzzle sweep anyone. Gabe had us do it dry quite a few times before trying it live fire. We did the drill live twice.

After shooting this drill we took a break and Gabe talked a bit about muzzle devices. He supervised the drill by standing between the two lines up at the front and looking back to make sure everyone kept their rifles pointed in a safe direction. This put him right in the best place to get hit with the sound and pressure from muzzle brakes. He said that one of the ARs with a particular muzzle brake on it was just as loud to him as the short-barreled FAL (having stood behind and to the right of the AR during previous strings of fire, I experienced this first hand). In addition to trying to deafen the trainer during this drill, muzzle brakes tend to increase the visual and auditory signature, which is generally undesirable in a fighting rifle. Gabe really feels a flash hider of some sort is a far better choice than any sort of muzzle brake on a fighting rifle.

Speaking of muzzle devices, one of the shooters switched to a suppressed AK on the second day. He had some accruacy problems earlier in the day and during the first team tactics drill some of his rounds were keyholing at under 7 yards. Afterwards, we saw that the end of his his suppressor was oddly bulged around one side of the muzzle. The suppressor was rated for .308 rounds. However, despite sharing the same metric designation, 7.62x39mm bullets are actually slightly greater in diameter than the 7.62x51 (about .310 in diameter). This minor difference may have damaged the silencer.

The last drill of the class was another team tactics exercise. This one involved pairs of shooter. The first shooter would begin putting fire on the first in a long line of targets while the other moved behind him and took up a position further down the line (using the "Moving", "Covering", "Set" commands described above). The pair leapfrogged down the line like this until they reached the end (about 3 bounds per person). The execution of this drill varied pretty widely, with some folks having a pretty good run, and others failing to communicate and ending up with both guns out of ammo at the same time. Some folks had to transition to pistols to keep fire up. I was partnered with Harold Green on this one and our first run was pretty good, though I could have used another preemptive reload in there. The second didn't work out so well. Towards the end I started having failures to fire and he ran out of ammo. Gabe mercifully called our run to an end.

I didn't figure out exactly what was wrong with my rifle until later. One of the bolts holding the ejector in had backed out and fallen down into the firing mechanism, first intermittently causing the hammer to fail to fall as it bounced around in there and eventually wedging itself into the action making it impossible to move the trigger or engage the safety. This is a known problem with XCRs, and some owners preemptively pulled the bolts out and re-loctited them. I left them alone under the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" principle. They'll both get loctited now.

This drill also so the only really bad instance of lack of muzzle discipline in the class. One shooter transitioned to pistol, but accidentally ejected his magazine on the drawstroke. He fired a round into the target and Gabe called an end to the run. As he bent down to pick up the magazine, the muzzle of his pistol swung over towards the folks waiting their turn behind the firing line. He stopped when everyone standing back there started yelling at him. At the time I didn't know whether he'd fired the round in the chamber or not, so seeing the big black hole at the end of the muzzle swinging toward me was not a good feeling. He was very apologetic about it afterwards.

Conclusions

This was really a great class. The curriculum covered the basics of rifle fighting well, with a particular emphasis on close range confrontations most likely to come up in a civilian self-defense context. Gabe does things a bit differently than some other trainers. He did a good job of not only explaining the techniques, but explaining why he preferred a given technique rather than others that are commonly taught, allowing the student to consider the merits and reasoning behind an approach.

Close Range Rifle Gunfighting was taught at a somewhat more introductory level than Close Range Gunfighting, it's pistol equivalent. However, I was still glad to have some defensive rifle training under my belt. I think that having taken Farnam's rifle class, and particularly the large amount of dry fire practice I did afterwards really helped get me ready for this class.

The dry fire aspect brings up another point. Gabe really crams quite a bit into his classes, and to a certain extent this comes at the price of the number of repetitions. In order to really extract the maximum benefit from this class, you need to go home and practice this stuff, both dry fire and at the range. To a certain extent, this is true of all defensive firearms classes, but it is particularly so with Gabe's.

I only shot about 350 rounds of rifle ammo during the class, and not a single round of pistol ammo. This made it pretty economical from an ammo point of view (despite the cost of ammo recently). I was able to sell off the rest of the case I bought for the class to one of my friends in Salt Lake. The relatively low round count was mainly a product of Gabe's extensive incorporation of dry fire. We did almost every drill dry before shooting it live. Not only a good strategy for dealing with high ammo costs, I think getting everyone comfortable dry would be a pretty good way to go even if ammo costs weren't an issue.

I would highly recommend this class to anyone who's looking for a good, no BS introduction to the up-close and personal use of a rifle.

Summer Training

2009-08-05T22:57:00.004-06:00

Utah Permits no longer valid in Nevada

2009-07-01T17:11:00.001-06:00

Concealed Carry in Nevada -

From the Utah Shooting Sports Council Information Alert for all members and
supporters.  6/24/09:

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR UTAH CONCEALED WEAPONS PERMIT HOLDERS- NO MORE NEVADA
CARRY!

Nevada authorities have decided that Utah Concealed Weapon Permits will NOT,
repeat NOT, be recognized in Nevada effective July 1, 2009.

Even though Nevada has recognized Utah permits for several years, they
recently reviewed permits from all states and decided that they will no
longer recognize permits from Utah or Florida.  The excuses given are that
Nevada law requires the other states permit requirements to be
"substantially similar to" those of Nevada.  However, since Utah does not
require live fire to get a permit, Nevada will no longer recognize our
permit.  Florida permits are good for seven years, but Nevada permits are
only good for five years, providing the excuse for dropping Florida.

The people involved with Nevada permits seem to include a few powerful
members of the law enforcement community who are hostile to private citizens
self defense rights.

Utah Shooting Sports Council and the National Rifle Association will
continue to pursue actions to restore recognition of Utah permits by Nevada,
but it may take several years and changes to the Nevada laws.

Meanwhile, DO NOT CARRY IN NEVADA with a Utah Concealed Weapons Permit!

John Farnam's Instructor Class

2009-05-28T18:23:00.006-06:00

When I took John Farnam's Urban Rifle class last February, most of the students in the class had just finished taking his instructor course the previous two days. What I heard from those students and the reviews of the course I read on the Tactical Response forums, spurred me to register for the instructor course on May 15-17 in Rochester, Indiana. This course is a bit different from the one John taught in February, however. In the past, the instructor course has been a two day affair, focusing on pistol skills. This was a three day class, covering pistol, revolver, rifle, and shotgun.

Equipment

This being a four gun class, I brought four different firearms: a Glock 21, a Smith and Wesson 442, a Robinson Armament XCR, and a Remington 870.

The Glock 21 is my everyday carry gun. Except for a set of Trijicon night sights it's completely stock.

For the revolver portion of the class, and as a backup gun, I brought my new Smith and Wesson 442. This is a new gun for me, I only had a chance to shoot it once before the class. The only addition to this gun was a set of Crimson Trace lasergrips. I brought some Safariland speedloaders and a few Bianchi speed strips for reloading. As a BUG, I carry it in a FIST kydex pocket holster. It's not soft, but it is nice and thin, much less bulky than the nylon ones I tried. For the revolver portion of the class I used a Fobus belt holster and an Uncle Mike's nylon carrier for the speedloaders.

I've made a couple of tweaks to my XCR since the Urban Rifle class. It still has the Aimpoint Micro on the LaRue mount. I swapped the big, bulky vertical foregrip for a short, stubby one from LaRue, and I really like the way it handles. I switched the sling from a Vickers to an S.O.E. two point bungee and moved the rear mount from the back of the stock to the back of the reciever, using a Blue Force Gear universal wire loop sling adapter. This makes shoulder transitions much easier. As with the rifle class, I carried spare (and expended) mags in my Sneakybag.

Like the S&W, my 870 is a new gun for me. I wanted to keep additions to a minimum, both in terms of cost, and the amount of junk hanging on the rifle: sling, flashlight, and night sight. I really liked the way the back of the receiver mount worked for my XCR, so I put on a Midwest Industries makes a sling mount adapter plate that fits between the receiver and the stock. A GG&G adapter that attaches between the magazine tube an the extension provided the front mount, and I used the Vickers sling that I took off my rifle. The standard for shotguns seems to be the Surefire forend light, but it costs almost as much as the shotgun did and I don't particularly like pressure pads for lights. Brownells sells a nice mount that clamps to the magazine tube extension and I used it to mount my old Surefire 6P. I put an XS Sights 24/7 Big Dot over the front bead both as a night sight, and to increase visibility during the day. I brought my old Hawkepack rifle bug out bag (which hasn't seen much rifle use since I got my Sneakybag) and velcroed three cheap 7 round shotgun shell holders inside the main pouch (two for buckshot, one for slugs).

Friday Morning

The class kicked off on Friday morning. It was held at the Sand Burr Gun Ranch. They've got five ranges and a big tin shed that provided classroom space. This was a really nice place to hold the class.

As usual, John kicked off the class with a round of introductions. Everyone had taken courses from John before, so he didn't spend much time talking about himself. Most of the class had met his wife and fellow instructor Vicki before, but I had not. In addition to John and Vicki, we had quite a group of previous graduates of the instructor course to assist him, including Frank Sharpe, who I knew from the rifle class, Steve Camp, of Safe Direction, and another John, and another Steve (confused yet?). Dennis Reichard, the owner of the Sand Burr Gun Ranch, contributed with the revolver portion of the course. Don Johnson (no, not that Don Johnson) of DSArms came on Saturday, and gave a short lecture on the FN FAL on Sunday. I also need to mention Paula, one of Johns instructors who did double duty taking care of lunch, and ensuring a steady supply of water, gatorade, and salty snacks, as well as assisting Vicki with the ladies' basic pistol course on Saturday and Sunday.

We were also introduced to 'Mabel'. What to say about Mabel? Mabel is Vicki's 'alternate personality'. Whenever a student explaining a concept or drill was unclear, skipped over things, left out something relevant, or used non-standard terminology, Mabel would pipe up with a question or ask for clarification. Some of this was tied into the concepts of her 'Teaching Women to Shoot' lecture on Saturday morning, but a lot was not gender specific. In a class of advanced students and instructors, Mabel was the representative of the beginning student who needs a clear, thorough explanation. Students lecturing the class learned to dread the distinctive wave of a hand that Mabel used to ask a question, but her contributions were really invaluable in terms of getting us to explain things clearly.

The class was quite large, sixteen students. Thanks to the large cadre of instructors, the student-instructor ratio was pretty good, but the class was still a bit unwieldy. The students came from quite a variety of backgrounds. Two were police officers, both of whom had training responsibility, and one taught courses for armed security guards, but the rest of the class were professionals in non-firearms related fields. There were two ladies in the class. The class also included Steve Camp's 17 year old son Nathan, who put some of the adults to shame both on the shooting range an in the instructional portions of the class.

The introductions at the beginning of John's classes also include each student describing the weapons they brought. While I was familiar with this, I didn't really understand the reason until this class. As John explained, if a student brought an unusual weapon that he wasn't all that familiar with (such as the Steyr one of the students brought to a pistol class the previous weekend), the introductions gave John a chance to take the student aside and get an explanation of how the gun works, so he could explain it to the rest of the students later in the class (always stay at least five minutes ahead of your students).

In this class, there was a clear majority preference in most categories of weapon. Glocks made up by far the majority of the pistols, mostly .40s and 9mms, with a few .45s. 1911s were the biggest minority, followed by one XD and one M&P each. Glocks dominated the back-up gun category too, though a couple of students each carried J-frames and Kel-Tecs. One student brought a Detonics (one of the classic ones from the 1970s, not one from the recent revival). Revolvers were dominated by Smith and Wesson, with one gun apiece from Taurus and Ruger. The S&Ws covered the complete range in size from J-frames to N-frames. The dominant rifle the AR, with many different manufacturers represented. One or two students brought AKs, FALs, Mini-14s, SIGs, M1As, M1 carbines, XCRs, and an Austrian AUG. Shotguns were pretty diverse. Remingtons were the most common (both 870s and 1187s), followed closely by Benelli. One Beretta and a pair of Mossbergs were on display, along with one Smith and Wesson pump shotgun (more on that one later).

Following the introductions, the rest of the morning was occupied by John's lecture on teaching techniques. This was filled with lots of practical advice about situations that will come up when we are teaching a class. How to deal with 'experts' who think they know more than you do, how to teach students like Mabel who need some additional explanation, how to deal with it when we say something that offends a student.

John also included a fair bit of pubic speaking advice. Some was fairly standard like eliminating "um"s and "ah"s and speaking in complete sentences. Some was more specific to teaching like using "we" and "us" instead of "you", "when" instead of "if" and "will" instead of "would", "should", or "could". One that caught a lot of students taking their turns as the instructor was, when a student asked a question, to either repeat it or make sure the whole class heard it. This makes the answer a learning point for the entire class, rather than just the student who asked. "What was the question?" practically became a running joke during the weekend.

Several students had opportunities to deliver short impromptu lectures on a certain subject (one of the four rules of gun safety, for example). There was an emphasis in brevity and clarity. As John put it, "Be focused, be sincere, be seated."

One thing that was emphasized throughout the class was to connect information with some sort of "emotional bookmark" to help students remember what you're trying to teach them. This can arise from something in class (an ND can be a powerful emotional bookmark for a point about gun safety), or it can involve using an anecdote to help drive home a point. Saying "you shouldn't do X" isn't anywhere near as powerful as saying, "This guy did X and it almost got him killed." This is something that John, drawing on both his own long experience and the experiences of his many students, does very well.

Friday Afternoon

After lunch, we got out on the range. We got some light rain, but nothing too serious. The drills in the afternoon didn't involve a huge amount of trigger time, but they did involve quite a bit of instructional time. As he usually does, John would explain a drill, then demonstrate it. Instead of shooting it immediately, 2-3 students would give the same explanation and demonstration (a bit of pressure with everyone watching, even with these fairly simple drills). The whole class then did each drill several times, while students gave the range commands. I didn't get a chance to explain any of the drills, but I did get a chance to give the range commands and got complemented on my volume (some of the students were barely audible down on the end of the line).

We shot the drills in two relays, with the non-shooting relay given the job of watching and coaching students. This, perhaps, wasn't quite the learning opportunity it should have been. Most of the students in the class were fairly good shooters and gunhandlers, meaning there weren't a lot of basic, easy to spot mistakes. A lot of the students, myself included, were kind of reluctant to correct fellow students.

The first drill we did was a dry fire drill. From the interview stance, on command start moving, move and draw, dry fire at the target, move and scan, and reholster. Constant movement and a good a visual scan, including looking behind you, were required.

For a few students, this was their first introduction to the close ready and deep ready (Position Sul) techniques. Close ready, in particular, is a fairly recent addition to John's classes. Rather than pivoting the gun downward to a low ready, the gun is brought back, just below the chin. It remains pointed downrange, but gets rotated to the left (for a right handed shooter) to relax the wrists. This puts the gun in a much more defensible position if someone tries to grab it. It also removes the tendency to overshoot when swinging the gun up from a low ready, since the gun is already pointed toward the threat you just drive it forward instead of swinging it. John teaches this as a ready position, and as a position for reloads and other manipulations. I really like the close ready position and I've made it a standard part of my repertoire since I first learned it in his class last fall.

Our first live fire drill was one of John's standards - the zipper drill. Like the previous dry drill, you start in the interview stance, seven yards from the target. You move and scan, then move and draw on command. At the fire command, you shoot a burst at the target, starting at the navel and moving up to the collarbone level. The target area is a strip about six inches wide running down the middle of the target. This covers most of the 'good parts' of the human anatomy, including the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels. For single stack pistols, the standard burst is three rounds, double stacks shoot four rounds. After firing the first burst move, fire a second burst, move and reload, then fire a third burst, then scan, reload, and reholster. Most autoloaders will hold at least two bursts, to reloading after two bursts if the opportunity arises keeps the gun topped off. All reloads involved retaining the magazine (even if empty). This is a post-Katrina modification that John and several other instructors have made to their curriculum.

When one of the students was explaining the zipper drill, Mabel asked by far the toughest question of the class. She said, "I don't want to think about shooting real people, I just want to shoot holes in paper targets so I can qualify and keep my job as a police officer." The student explaining the drill got this deer in the headlights look in his eyes and stood there in silence for about twenty seconds before John had mercy and stepped in. This is a tough question, and one that will come up when we are training people. We do our students a disservice is we don't force them to confront the idea of shooting an actual assailant. If the student is a police officer, we not only endanger them, we endanger their partner, and the public. The time for making that sort of moral choice is when you decide to carry a gun, not when someone is trying to kill you. This is a difficult subject, but one we must confront if we want to do a serious job of teaching self defense. Failing to confront this issue means failing our students.

Our second shooting drill of the day was the Mother-in-Law Drill. Basically, a criminal is holding a loved one hostage, and you have to make a very precise shot to stop the kidnapper without hitting the loved one in order to save them. The more conventional name for this would be the Hostage Drill or Brain Stem Drill, but John explained why it's called the Mother-in-Law drill. The name, and the attendant jokes ("What if we don't want to rescue her?") is actually a deliberate choice indented to limit the possible emotional reaction to this drill. Frank told the class that when he first started instructing, he was teaching one of his friends to shoot and told him to visualize his wife as a hostage. This disturbed Frank's friend so much that he completely missed the assailant and shot the hostage in the head. This, in turn, destroyed his confidence. It took Frank several weeks to talk his friend into coming back out to the range. The possibility of a similar reaction is why this is the Mother-in-Law drill, rather than the Wife drill or the Daughter drill. Frank's story is also an excellent example of an emotional bookmark, and it certainly made this point in a way I'll not soon forget.

This drill was originally part of John's advanced course, but John moved it to the basic course because of the survival statistics for kidnapped kids. A majority of children kidnapped by strangers are dead within a few hours, nearly all are killed within 24 hours. Being able to stop one of these kidnappings is a potentially critical skill, which is why John added it to the basic course.

The drill uses a standard cardboard target, with a face drawn on the target's head, representing the kidnapper, and another drawn on the target's shoulder, representing the hostage. The goal is to shoot the target in the nose, where a bullet can penetrate the skull without encountering heavy bone and hit the brain stem. Severing the brain stem instantaneously results in flaccid paralysis, preventing the kidnapper from harming the hostage even if the assailant has a gun to the hostages head or a knife to their throat. The target area is quite small, requiring a very precise shot. Even so, this isn't that hard on a stationary paper target. A real person, moving their head around, is a different story. Accordingly, John trains to ask "What do you want?" before making the shot. Asking this question and waiting about a second or two takes advantage of a human being's limited ability to multitask. While they think about a response, it will probably leave them stationary for a moment, and that's the window we need to make the shot.

After finishing up with the Mother-in-Law drill, we retired to a nice dinner at a local restaurant.

Saturday Morning

Most of the class met for breakfast at a local eatery Saturday morning. After we got to the range, Vicki gave an abbreviated version of her Teaching Women to Shoot course while John went down to one of the other ranges to give the Ladies class that was starting today his lecture on interacting with the criminal justice system.

I've read Vicki's Teaching Women to Shoot book, and the lecture covered a lot of the same ground in terms of physical and psychological differences that make teaching women different than teaching men. She actually teaches an entire class on the subject, we just got a compressed version. During the lecture, some students asked Vicki questions that were pretty transparently about their wives, rather than hypothetical shooting students. Vicki had to say, "I'm not doctor Laura" several times in an effort to keep the discussion on track.

After the lecture, Vicki took us out to the range for the practical portion of the lecture. The instructors attached sponges to the grips of our pistols to simulate the difficulties shooters with smaller hands face in operating pistols that are too large for them. She also had us hold our pistols at high ready for a few minutes before shooting, to simulate the difficulty someone with less upper body strength is going to have holding up one of these guns during extended shooting sessions. During the Teaching Women to Shoot class, she'll actually hang a bag with a couple boxes of ammo on the gun to simulate the heavier relative weight. When the time came to shoot, we had to fire a string of 8-10 shots in 5 seconds. Normally, this wouldn't be too difficult, but the oversized grips make it a challenge. I shot pretty well for my first string, so the solution was to make it more difficult for me. After moving some of the sponges around and doubling one over (effectively four layers of sponges on the gun), it was a real challenge. I definitely had to give up my normal grip and hold the gun from the side, rather than aligning it with my forearm. I found I wasn't giving up too much accuracy, but rate of fire definitely suffered. With this bad a grip, the gun has more muzzle flip and the signs don't return to the target the way they usually do. There was a lot more finding the front sight and maneuvering it onto the target than usual. Since the recoil was directed into the bone of my thumb, rather than the web of my hand, it also beat my thumb up a bit. We shot all our strings two-handed, but I'd really like to get some sponges and try it out shooting one-handed. I think it would be quite a challenge. I've been sensitive to the difficulties of a gun that's too large before, but doing this definitely reinforced the point.

Saturday Afternoon

After lunch, Dennis Reichard, owner of the Sand Burr Gun Ranch, gave us a lecture on revolvers. Dennis carried revolvers as a police officer and shot them competitively. He definitely knows his stuff when it comes to wheelguns. He gave some good advice about how to run a revolver, starting with the grip. He really emphasized the differences between a proper revolver grip and a semi-auto grip. On a semi-auto, I was taught to put the backstrap into the web of my hand and pretty much let my fingers fall where they may. With the revolver grip, he taught that placing the trigger on or just below the first joint of the trigger finger is the key. The position of the rest of the hand is based off of that finger position. With a semi, the support side hand is positioned by laying the thumb right underneath the strong side thumb. On a revolver, Dennis taught lining up the second knuckles of the fingers with the knuckles of the strong hand.

I've got big hands, and I'm shooting a fairly small revolver, so I've struggled a bit. In particular, I've had trouble with the tip of my trigger finger running into my thumbs on the left side of the weapon when I use a thumbs down revolver grip. When Dennis saw me struggling with this out on the range, he suggested wrapping the support side thumb around the back, behind the hammer (or where the hammer would be if my 442 had one). This is usually regarded as a bit old fashioned, even for a revolver technique, but I found it really helped clear space for my trigger finger. It still seems a bit unnatural to me, probably because I've shot semi-autos for so long and slide bite tends to quickly discourage wrapping the thumb around the back.

After Dennis' lecture, we went out to the range and shot for a bit. This was my first chance to shoot on the rotator targets. They're challenging. Doubly so since I was shooting a j-frame from about 8 yards, which is probably about three yards beyond my ability to reliably shoot a target the size of a rotator plate. John uses rotators are made by Safe Direction, so we had the manufacturer right there in the form of Steve Camp.

We started out with some drills involving hitting the upper and lower plates in a specific sequence. First we had to hit the upper plate twice, with the second shot coming before the rotator starts swinging back towards us. Subsequent drills added an additional shot on the bottom plate, then a fourth shot, back at the top plate again. As usual, students were called on to explain each exercise and demonstrate it for the class. Of course, I finally get called to explain and demonstrate a drill and it's while I'm shooting this snubbie that I'm still not used to. I made three of the four shots on the demo though, probably my best performance of the day with the j-frame.

We moved on to some drills trying to spin the rotator. While spinning the target was the goal, John also set an intermediate goal of getting it past horizontal after shooting 5 shots and reloading for those of us with j-frames. After working on rotating it alone (or trying to, with a j-frame) we did some work in pairs, with two people trying to spin it. Finally, we did the "Spoiler" drill, with two people trying to spin it and one in the middle trying to stop them. It was around this time that I ran out of .38 special ammo and switched back to my Glock.

John teamed us up in groups of four and we did some relay races. We had to run back around a stake and then shoot all four paddles on two rotators without missing. If you missed, you had to run again. Once one person hit all four in a row, the next person went, until everyone on the team had four hits. We did this two handed, strong hand only, and support hand only. The running doesn't make it much more difficult, but having everyone watching and your team depending on you definitely ramps up the pressure a bit. Interestingly, the most common missed shot was the third. One of the instructors explained that this was because the third shot is the one you get into a rhythm on. You shoot the first two, then your body wants to take the third shot after the same interval as the first and second, which can result in a rushed shot and a miss. One way to combat this is to break the rhythm by pausing between the second and third shots.

The next relay race involved two shooters form each team shooting at the same time. One rotator was placed directly in front of the other, and we had to rotate the back one without hitting the one in front. Hitting the front rotator meant we couldn't shoot for five seconds, which left us standing there waiting while the back rotator slowed down. The next relay had a pair of shooters trying to rotate both front and back rotators at once. A miss here could bring the other shooter's rotator to the halt while you were trying to rotate yours.

As I said, this was the first time I shot with rotators. I've decided I like them. They aren't as realistic as paper or cardboard silhouette targets, but they are useful for certain things. Their self-resetting nature means no time wasted taping targets between drills. They also give shooters a chance to shoot with a moving background while they try to hold focus on their front sight. The human eye is naturally attracted to movement and a moving target really tends to suck focus away from the sights. Finally, unlike paper targets, they force us to shoot on the target's schedule, rather than our own, which can be quite a challenge.

One nice feature of Steve Camp's rotators is that by putting the axles and paddles on a different stand, one which holds the rotating paddles horizontally rather than vertically, they can be turned into duelers. Each shooter fires at one of the paddles and the first one to get it past 90 degrees wins. We did a couple of duels, and I managed to win two out of three. It seemed like that if one shooter had a significantly slower draw than the other, or missed their first shot, the duel almost always went to the quicker, more accurate shooter. One shot wasn't enough to get the target through 90 degrees, but it was enough to make the loosing shooter's job much more difficult. If speed and accuracy of the first shot were fairly equal, victory was usually decided by the first miss. When Frank and Steve Camp were demonstrating the drill, they were going shot for shot without much movement in the paddles until Steve ran out of ammo, giving Frank the victory (the benefits of shooting a high capacity gun like the Glock).

During the afternoon, between rounds with the rotators, Frank Sharpe gave a nice lecture on his experiences teaching women to shoot. Frank has done a lot of ladies classes, so he's got a fair bit of experience in this area. One of the things he emphasized is that a significant percentage of women have experienced some sort of assault, whether it be rape, robbery, domestic abuse, or something else. They may have worked through the issues that arise from this sort of thing, but it's possible that they haven't and something in the process of teaching them self-defense will bring these feelings to the fore, and we have to be ready for that.

Saturday Night

What do you do on Saturdy night in Rochester, Indiana? Well, in John's class, we shoot stuff. We had some pizza and talked for a bit, waiting for it to get dark (around 9 o'clock this time of year). The first drill of the night shoot used just using the fading ambient light. We had to individually move down the line and put one shot into the top paddle of each of nine rotators. It was dark enough and the range long enough that the night sights really helped for this one. The next drill involved doing the same thing, but with some illumination from John's flashlight. His First-Light Tomahawk has the blue and red LEDs, and can flash them, along with strobing the main lamp, in a "takedown mode", imitating the lights of a police cruiser. We had to shoot the targets using only this for illumination.

John had the instructors break out the road flares and place them just in front of the rotators. This time rather than going down the line, we each stood in front of one rotator and tried to spin it. Then we did the same thing, but with the flares behind the rotators, backlighting them. Trying to spin the rotators at night was difficult, particularly with the flares behind them. The lack of light made it difficult to judge the position and movement of the rotator to know when to shoot.

Finally, we broke out the flashlights and moved down the line, this time putting two shots into each rotator. This meant that everyone had to manage a reload with their flashlight in hand somewhere along the line. I was standing there in the middle of the drill waiting for the next shooter to get going and when I realized I was at slide lock (I wouldn't have noticed until I tried to shoot if it hadn't been for my night sights). If we had a flashlight with a strobe feature, John asked us to use that, rather than the constant beam. This made shooting a bit more difficult, but it ought to distract the target more. This was my first time shooting in the dark with my First-Light Tomahawk. Once I got it oriented right, it worked pretty well, allowing me to maintain a pretty good two handed grip while using the light. With the finger loop it also worked pretty well allowing me to manipulate the gun and reload with the light in my hand. Definitely much better than using a tube light.

A lot of people seemed to have problems aligning the flashlight with their gun and illuminating the target directly. Most of these lights put out a lot of illumination, so there's a temptation to just throw enough light on the target to see it and call it good. The problem is, a light is a bullet magnet. When you're using it, which should be as little as possible, it makes sense to try to disrupt the enemy's ability to use it as an aiming point as much as possible. That means hitting him with the beam directly, and using a strobe if you've got it.

Finally, after a long, long day of shooting and learning, we headed back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

Sunday Morning

After another fine meal at a local diner, we got started with some basic loading and unloading drills. These were designed to get students used to giving the commands for getting new students loaded and unloaded, or to have them do a chamber or systems check on their guns. Once again, each student got to give the range commands as we loaded, checked chambers, and unloaded.

Afterwards, we had a nice discussion of must have gear for an instructor, from prop guns for demonstrations, to sunblock, to trauma and first aid kits.

A little later in the morning, John gave some quick lectures on the functioning and maintenance of AR and AK rifles. Don Johnson of DSArms gave a similar lecture on the FAL. Most of this was the same as in the rifle class I took a few months ago, so I won't repeat it here.

Sunday Afternoon

After a quick lunch, we moved down to one of the other, longer ranges for some long gun work. We didn't have a lot of time before we needed to start the test, so this section of the class was pretty brief.

Everyone laid their shotgun out on the tables, and John talked about the operation of different models, which was something I really needed, particularly the semi-autos. I don't really have any experience with anything other than an 870. There are some differences in handling techniques, particularly with the Benelli. The really odd duck was an S&W pump shotgun one student brought. As John pointed out, some of the usual handling techniques don't work on certain guns. For instance this S&W couldn't be voided in the usual way, by depressing the shell latch and removing rounds directly from the magazine. Instead, the shooter has to cycle the pump to eject each round from the magazine tube. This poses a much greater danger of a mishap than removing rounds from the magazine tube directly. Some shooters will use this technique with other guns, which don't require it. They should be discouraged.

We didn't actually shoot shotguns, which was a bit disappointing for me since I was hoping for some trigger time with my 870. We did do some handling drills, though, loading, chambering rounds and returning to transport mode, voiding the tube, etc. This is when we had our ND for the class. The student with the S&W shotgun was emptying his magazine and his finger hit the trigger instead of the slide release and let off a round. Thankfully, the gun was pointed in a safe direction and no one was hurt. However, it certainly underscored both the undesirability of this particular model of shotgun and the importance of proper unloading technique. It was a hell of an emotional bookmark.

We packed up our shotguns and brought out the rifles. John pointed out some features on certain student's guns, like flashlight mounts, foregrips, and different sling attachments. We only shot one rifle drill, moving and stopping to shoot five rifle plates at about 40 meters. I rushed it a bit on this one and missed three of the five, but finally started getting hits once I relaxed and slowed down a bit. I was also the only student to reload at the end of the drill, and one of the few to go any sort of scan and look around. As Frank and John pointed out afterwards, this is something that instructors need to guard against. It's real easy to relax after a drill and walk off thinking, "thank God that's over". This sort of thing has gotten people killed in actual gunfights, and we need to remain alert even after all the threats we can see have been taken care of. During training, we need to both make sure we do this ourselves, to set a good example for our students, and make sure our students do the same, so they develop good habits.

With the rifles out of the way, it was finally time for our test. The test starts with one in the chamber, and four live rounds and one dummy in the magazine. The dummy is loaded by someone other than the shooter, in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th positions, meaning you don't know when the malfunction will crop up. The shooter draws and moves while awaiting the start signal. On the signal, we start firing until we hit the dummy round. When the gun fails to fire, it's time to move and clear the malfunction. After doing a tap-rack, continue shooting until the gun is empty, then do a reload with retention, while moving, of course. Once the gun is reloaded, fire two more rounds. That's a total of seven shots, a malfunction drill, and a tactical reload. 100% hits are required to pass. The time limit for most of his classes is 22 seconds, but instructors have to do it in 17 seconds. This is pretty challenging. Even John had to shoot it three times before he got in under the time limit (he finally did it in fifteen seconds).

None of the students managed to get it on the first try either. Nathan Camp was among the first to pass. He can shoot really well, not just for a seventeen year old, but really well period. It took me three tries. On my first run, I was only a faction of a second over the time limit, but I missed one of my shots. My second time through I got all my hits, but I started to do a second tap-rack rather than reloading. The third time through I concentrated on getting good hits and being smooth on the malfunction drill and reload and came in with about half a second to spare.

There are two ways to fail this test, miss, or go over time. Misses can be simple failures in concentration, but they generally seem to happen from people trying to shoot too quickly, so it all boils down to time. Seventeen seconds is an eternity to fire seven shots, the real time sinks are the malfunction clearance and the reload. Being able to perform these smoothly and cleanly while moving is the key. The reload seemed to be the sticking point for a lot of people. Some folks didn't seem to have a lot of practice retaining magazines when reloading, and they were fumbling quite a bit stowing that mag.

It took a while, but eventually every student except one managed to pass the test. As each person passed, John passed out DTI Instructor hats emblazoned with the latin motto "nemo curat". This translates as, "nobody cares" (I guess he doesn't want his instructors heads swelling up too big for the caps).

Conclusion

This was really an excellent class. All the material on teaching people to shoot was really quite excellent. John has definitely put a lot of thought into how to teach people these skills. There are some people who really know their stuff when it comes to shooting and self-defense, but lack the teaching skill to pass it on to their students. John's teaching skill is something noted back when I took my first class from him, but taking this course really made clear just how much effort he's put into his presentation.

Vicki did a great job in the brief time allotted doing her teaching women to shoot curriculum. Even for someone who read her book before the class, it was pretty eye opening, particularly going out and shooting with the sponges on the grip. Her "Mabel" questions realy forced the students to explain things as clearly as possible.

The other instructors did excellent work as well, but I really have to single out Frank Sharpe. He's clearly got a lot of experience teaching students to shoot. He does a great job explaining why to do something a certain way and he's the master of the emotional bookmark. I'd really like to make sure I can come to some more of John's courses where Frank is helping out in the future.

If there is one criticism of the class, it has to be that it was too short. It was longer than John's previous instructor courses, but there still wasn't enough time. Three days just isn't enough for four different guns, plus the instructional material, plus teaching women to shoot. The shotgun and rifle definitely got short shrift. This wasn't such a big deal for me, since I'd just had John's rifle class a few months earlier, but I think some of the other students may have been a bit more disappointed. There were also some parts of John's usual pistol curriculum that we didn't get to cover, like backup guns and the battlefield pick up drill. The material could have easily filled a full week. With John and Vicki's extensive experience they could have filled several weeks without running out of things to teach about firearms instruction, but you have to cut things off at some point.

I'd like to thank John, Vicki, Frank, Steve, John, Steve, and Don and my fellow students for an excellent course. This is an experience I'll not soon forget and one that will help me tremendously in the future. Hopefully, I will soon be able to put what I learned in the class to use teaching these vital self-defense skills to others. I would highly recommend John's instructor course to anyone thinking about teaching firearms skills.