Utah Permits no longer valid in Nevada

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

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.

Germany to ban paintball in wake of high school shooting

The German government is to ban paintball in response to the school shooting in which 16 people were killed in March.

Experts from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have agreed to outlaw all games in which players shoot at each other with pellets.

The governing parties say paintball trivialises violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.

Infringements to the new rules, which the cabinet hopes to pass before a general election in September, could incur fines of up to 5,000 euros (£4,400).

A 17-year-old shot dead 15 people in the southwestern town of Winnenden, before killing himself in March, stunning many Germans and leading politicians to call for tighter gun rules.

The teenager shot many of his victims in the head with his father's legally registered pistol. His father, a member of a shooting club, had 15 guns at home – fourteen were locked in a gun closet as required by law but the pistol was in the bedroom.

Germany toughened its gun laws in 2002 after Robert Steinhauser, 19, shot dead 16 people before turning the gun on himself at a high school in the eastern German city of Erfurt.

The changes raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 from 18 and required gun buyers under 25 to present a certificate of medical and psychological health. Gun laws already required applicants to pass rigorous exams that can take up to a year.

The new rules would also grant authorities more rights in conducting checks with people owning guns, the sources said.

Sources in the SPD said the parties were also moving towards on agreement on the creation of a nationwide weapons register and were considering setting up biometric security locks for weapons' stores.

Hendrickson Lake

Shooting Zombies in the Rain.

Super Dell in the news again.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah - Dell Schanze, often referred to as 'Super Dell,' was in court Friday to set a trial date after an off-duty motor vehicle enforcement police officer pulled him over for reckless driving and for carrying a firearm with an expired concealed weapons permit. Schanze said the case is a "total fraud" and claims that the police are targetting him unjustly. Prosecutors tried to offer Shanze a plea deal, but he rejected it. Schanze's trial date is expected to be set later Friday afternoon.

Here

SRW inc.

Check out these training opportunities from Randy Watt at SRW inc.

HERE

May 2nd Monthly Event

There will be a Utah Polite Society event Saturday, May 2 at Hendrickson Range.

8am set-up
8:30 registration and new shooter orientation
9am event start


There will be 4 stages; two standard drills and two simulated defensive encounters.

Bring:

Handgun
Holster worn on the strong-side hip
50-100 rounds
Extra magazines (if you have them)
Magazine pouch (if you have one)
Eye protection
Ear protection

Monday Night at the Range Review

This review of Monday nights event is from Utah Concealed Carry Forum.

Just an update on the Utah Polite Society. I was able to attend the training at the range up Parleys canyon. We arrived at the range at around 5:15 and were greeted by the great people from the UPS and they gave us a quick rundown of what we would be doing for the night. There were about 8 people there with experience ranging from lifetime shooters to a husband and wife with their son that had never shot pistol before.

The people were very professional and had a tremendous amount of combined experience to lend to the evening. We began with proper grip for shooting, this was the beginning pistol class, and proceeded onto proper drawing techniques. Safety was always at the forefront and they kept things safe, all those instructing were NRA rangemaster certified. We did proper reloading and then close quarter shooting techniques, an arms length from the target. I have to say that when we started that I was a bit nervous but with the excellent instruction and guidance they had us all shooting, and hitting, the targets with a lot more confidence than we started with.

We finished up the evening shooting using the Teuller drill. A target mounted on a wheeled sled and set at 21' from the shooter and then the target being pulled, at a run, toward the shooter. We started out shooting from the ready position and then from a holstered stance. This definitely put a twist and added a lot of stress on the situation.

Overall I came away with the knowledge that I don't have enough knowledge and made me realize that if I am going to carry a gun I had better be [darn] sure I know how to use it and use it in a manner that will produce the desired result, I am going to go home to my family. Someone rushing at you with a knife from 21 feet will most likely result in you being stabbed unless you have prepared yourself mentally and physically, muscle memory, to handle the situation. The folks at UPS have really gone out of their way to make sure I am ready for that possibility, yes hopefully that never happens.

I am almost hesitant to post this review because it was great having just 8 of us there and getting all the great training at almost a 1:1 ratio with the instructors, yea I know it's 2:1 but that's how they make it feel. I will definitely return again and attend the Saturday classes that go into much more technical training and be back on Mondays to practice the basics they taught me. Thanks guys.

Thanks guys. I had a blast on Monday.

RH

Monday Night at the Range Training

We are having an training event Monday, April 13th at Hendrickson range.

The training we offer is focused on the gun-handling skills, shooting

skills, and tactics needed by folks who carry a sidearm for personal

defense.

We try to tailor what we teach to the skill levels and interests of the

folks in the group we happen to be teaching at the time. We typically

start by briefly discussing the equipment needed for concealed carry, and

then move on to basic skill sets like presentation, grip, stance, sighting

techniques, and trigger control. If the group progresses fast enough, we

cover reloading techniques, malfunction clearance techniques, shooting on

the move, use of cover, incorporating turns into the presentation,

one-handed gun manipulation and other topics of interest to the group.

You’re welcome to come back and work on your skills sets with us on

subsequent Monday evenings, if you’d like us to cover more than we have

time for in just one evening.

We try to keep the atmosphere fairly informal and the group size fairly

small. Those of us running the class are not professional trainers.

We’re just ordinary folks who’ve attended a few classes from schools like

Gunsite and Front Sight, as well as some locally held classes. For

instance, several of us attended a Glock gunfighting class at the Swanson

Tactical Training Center in Ogden just last week. We know how expensive

professional training can be, so we’re offering to share our knowledge for

just the $10 it costs us for range time and consumables (targets, props

and the like).

If you’re interested, you’ll need a handgun (preferably a semi-auto), a

holster worn on your dominant side (right side if you are right handed),

at least two magazines, a magazine pouch that can be worn on your belt, 50

rounds of ammunition (100 rounds will allow you to have more trigger

time), eye protection (prescription glasses or sunglasses work fine), and

ear protection (plugs or muffs). Also, you’ll need to let us know which

Monday evening you’d like to spend with us (we’re at the range on the

second and fourth Monday of each month).

We’d like folks to RSVP so we can make sure we keep the groups to ten

people or less. Let us know if you’re interested.

Utahps@thebluezone.net

Don't mess with old people.

An old prospector shuffled into town
leading an old tired mule. The old man headed straight for
the only saloon in town to clear his parched throat.

He walked up to the saloon and tied his old mule to the
hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from
his face and clothes, a young gunslinger stepped out of the
saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the
other.

The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed,
saying, 'Hey old man, have you ever danced?'

The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, "No,
I never did dance, -- and just never wanted to."

A crowd had gathered quickly and the gun slinger grinned
and said, 'Well, you old fool, you're gonna' dance now,' and
started shooting at the old man's feet. The old prospector
in order to not get a toe blow off or his boots perforated
was soon hopping around like a flea on a hot skillet and
everybody was laughing fit to be tied.

When the last bullet had been fired the young gunslinger,
still laughing, holstered his gun and turned around to go
back into the saloon. The old man turned to his pack mule,
pulled out a double barreled shotgun, and cocked both
hammers back. The loud, audible double click's carried
clearly through the desert air. The crowd stopped laughing
immediately. The young gunslinger heard the sounds, too, and
he turned around very slowly. The quiet was almost
deafening. The crowd watched as the young gunman stared at
the old timer and the large gaping holes of those twin
barrels. He found it hard to swallow. The barrels of the
shotgun never wavered in the old man's hands.

The old man said, "Son, did you ever kiss a mule's ass?"

The boy bully swallowed hard and said,
"No. But I've always wanted to."

There are two lessons for us all here:

1. Don't waste ammunition.

2. Don't mess with old people.

I just love a story with a happy ending.

don't you?

Cooper on Surprise Break

Leadership

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS:

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan

Mr. Obama, be very careful about the message that you send. In this interview you discuss negotiating with the enemy. Fine, I think negotiating peace is wise. Don't begin the negotiations by telling them that we are "not winning the war."

News flash for all the Al Qaeda goons hiding in their caves.
"Hold on boy's, We're almost there. Victory against the Great Satan is near."

News flash for all US soldiers putting their lives on the line.
"You have failed."

Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”

If you are in a fistfight with a goon, do you announce out loud in the middle that you are losing? (if things are going your way or not)

Bluff, damn it.

7.62 x 39 ammo

Check out the back-order date from my last ammo purchase.

November!!

April Classes

Beginning in April, UPS will be providing basic defensive handgun training for $10 per class every other Monday evening.

Email Utahps@thebluezone.net for details

March 7th event

There’s a Utah Polite Society Event at Hendricksen Range in Parleys Canyon
east of Salt Lake City (I-80 exit #134) on Saturday, March 7.

At this month’s Utah Polite Society event, we plan to have four handgun
exercises.

The first exercise is a skills drill that requires you to get off the ‘X’
and employ rapid movement while engaging a threat. This exercise consists
of four strings incorporating movement in four different directions.

The second exercise is a simulated defensive encounter that takes place as
you exit an elevator in a parking garage. Each of the targets involved in
the simulation will be designated by a number, and the RO will conduct
this as an interactive exercise by telling you what actions the different
targets are taking and which, if any, present threats.

The third exercise is another skills drill that uses four targets placed
at 4 and 6 yards and requires all shooting and gun manipulation to be
performed with only one hand as you move laterally to the targets.
Transitioning the gun from hand to hand as you reverse direction is also
required.

The fourth exercise is another simulated defensive encounter that takes
place at an ATM. Again, the targets will be numbered and the RO will call
out threats as the simulation progresses.

If there is enough interest, we will hold a three-hour defensive shooting
class concurrent with the event. This class is intended for those new to
defensive shooting and is included in the event fee.

Set up starts at 8:00 a.m.

Registration starts at 8:25 a.m.

New shooter orientation starts at 8:30 a.m.

Handgun shooting exercises start at 9:00 a.m.

Event fee is $12.00.

Please bring the gun, holster, magazine carriers and any other equipment
you use for concealed carry as well as 100 rounds of ammunition. For
range safety reasons we ask that any holsters used in our events allow
drawing your handgun without muzzle sweeping yourself or bystanders. This
typically precludes use of shoulder holsters and many cross-draw holsters.

Utah delegation balks at Obama's push for assault-weapons ban

Salt Lake Tribune

Washington » Utah congressmen are taking issue with the Obama administration's call for a new assault-weapons ban, saying it interferes with the public's right to bear arms and won't reduce crime.

The ban expired in 2004 after being in place for 10 years. In a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder said: "As President [Barack] Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons."

Holder believes the ban would help curb the flow of guns into Mexico, which is seeing increased drug-cartel-related violence.

Utah Reps. Jim Matheson, a Democrat, and Rob Bishop, a Republican, are part of a 10-member task force on gun rights in the House that almost immediately promised to stand in the way of any attempts at a new ban.

"It looks as though with this announcement we've been handed our first big fight," Matheson said.

"I hope this administration doesn't feel a need to resurrect every bad idea," Bishop said. "Bringing this useless ban back is a terrible idea, and we will vigorously oppose it with bipartisan backing."

Harold Green, among others, was invited to meet with staffers from several Utah representative's offices. I'll try to persuade him to post about it.

Get your pens ready. We need to rev up the letter writing campaign.
More to follow.



RH

John Farnam's Defensive Urban Rifle class

I recently attended one of John Farnam's rifle classes in Camden, Tennessee and hosted by James Yeager's Tactical Response.  As is my habit, I thought I'd post a detailed description along with some of the lessons I took away from the class.

I have long known that, in theory, a rifle is a much better defensive tool than a handgun in most situations.  As Clint Smith famously said, "The only purpose for a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you never should have laid down."  Rifles are more powerful, longer ranged, carry more ammunition and easier to shoot accurately than a pistol is.  The pistol's only real advantages are its smaller size and weight, making it more concealable and handier in tight quarters.

Despite these theoretical advantages, several experiences have led to my pistol remaining my go-to gun for self defense, even when a rifle is available.  The first came when I was shooting an El Presidente with my newly purchased rifle two years ago.  My first sequence of shots went well, but I completely botched the reload.  Later that year, I created a scenario for one of our Utah Polite Society events involving a terrorist attack where the shooter must pick up an unfamiliar rifle and operate it.  Again, shooting was generally excellent, but reloading and other gunhandling skills abysmal, even among accomplished pistol shooters.  These experiences led me to the conclusion, perhaps obvious, that pistol skills don't translate to the rifle.

Whatever the advantages of the rifle, in a self-defense situation I felt I would be better served by a pistol I had the skills and experience to use and the confidence that I could fight with it even under adverse conditions.  However, I have also been looking for any opportunity to get some good rifle training and remedy this deficiency.  The Utah Polite Society did some rifle drills last summer, but I was only able to attend a few before I move to South Carolina.  We did about an hour worth of rifle work in John Farnam's Fighting With a Handgun class last October, but this was only enough to whet my appetite.  Given my positive experience with John, I decided to register for this class and come to Tennessee and hopefully fill this gap in my repertoire of fighting skills.

Equipment

One of the great things about this class was that it gave me a chance to put all my rifle gear to a fairly stressful test, letting me learn what works and what doesn't.  I shot the class with my Robinson Armament XCR.  I recently replaced the EOTech I had on top of it with an Aimpoint Micro on a Larue mount, mounted as far forward on the full length rail as possible.  I carried it on a Vickers Combat Applications Sling.  A coaxial Streamlight and a vertical foregrip round out the rifle.  I brought half a dozen MagPul PMags, and carried them in a Sneakybag.  Based on earlier experience, I clipped the Sneakybag to a carabiner on my belt to keep it from swinging around too much.  I've found that without some method of securing it, it tends to end up underneath me when going prone.  My Glock 21 spent the class in a Comp-Tac C-TAC holster, just as it does for EDC.

Since the XCR can digest steel cased ammo without a hiccup, I bought a case of 62 grain Wolf FMJ to shoot for the class.  Before coming to the class I put all 1000 rounds on stripper clips.  This was a lot of work (it occupied my hands for most of the Super Bowl), but in combination with a Strip LULA loader it let me charge magazines in under thirty seconds.  This let me spend a lot less time charging magazines than the other folks in the class.  The one flaw in my planning was I didn't bring any loose ammo.  Whenever I needed to top off a magazine with less than a full stripper clip of ten rounds, I had to pull individual rounds off a clip.  Next time, I'll leave a hundred rounds or so off the strippers for topping off magazines.

One of the other students had an XCR and one shot an AR.  The other half dozen students shot AKs.  About half of them were using loaner guns from Tactical Response, while the others had their own, considerably nicer, rifles.  John used his XCR in 7.62x39mm (got to get me one of those), while Frank used his AR and a FAL.  There were a couple of other Aimpoint Micros in addition to mine, a pair of EOTechs, and one no-name red dot.  The loaner guns all had iron sights.  Except for the loaners, all the guns had coaxial flashlights of one sort or another.  The vast majority of the class carried Glocks, with only one SIG and one HK bucking the trend.

Many of the students had chest rigs or tactical vests of one sort or another, though as the class went on some of these disappeared in favor of stuffing mags into a cargo pocket. 

First Morning

The class met at Tactical Response's gear store for some classroom work before heading off to the range.  In addition to John Farnam himself, Frank Sharpe, one of his instructors, helped run the class and coach students.  We had eight students in the class, many of whom had just finished John's DTI Instructor course the previous two days.

John began by explaining the range safety rules.  He not only runs a hot range, he's very strict about it.  In this class, carrying a pistol or rifle without a full magazine inserted and a round in the chamber will get you a chiding.  As John puts it, "empty guns make me nervous". 

Manual safeties are engaged whenever the rifle is slung, but they come off as soon as you mount the rifle.  Once a rifle is in your hands, a manual safety is just an impediment to getting it into action as soon as possible.  This makes trigger finger discipline extremely important.  The trigger finger needs to be in register except when actually shooting.  Trying to carry the rifle around with the manual safety off and a finger on the trigger is an invitation to an ND.

Rifles were to be kept muzzle down at all times, unless on the line shooting.  This includes not only muzzle down carry and keeping the muzzle down when passing the rifle, but also keeping the muzzle pointed down whenever setting the rifle down or putting it in a rack.  Keeping it muzzle down at all times, rather than transitioning from muzzle down carry to a muzzle up rack is one of those, "why the hell didn't I think of that," things.  These are not precision rifles with crowns that have to be babied.  Every gun has a muzzle brake or flash hider of some sort that isn't going to be hurt by being rested on the ground or set on the floor. 

Eye and ear protection were required, of course, and John also required the students to wear baseball caps to provide additional protection against flying brass.  I seemed to spend most of the class to the right of other people's ejection ports, so I was glad of the protection it provided.

The students and instructors generally had excellent safety habits.  For the most part, I saw excellent muzzle and trigger finger discipline for the entire class.  One student, however, seemed to have some problems keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction when his weapon was slung.  John and Frank were quite good at jumping on these violations and getting his gun pointed back where it belonged.

We were required to have our rifles with us at all times, even when using the port-a-potty, or grabbing a snack.  Part of this class is learning how to live with a rifle all the time.  If the SHTF and things are bad enough that you need a rifle, that should not be the first time you've tried to carry one all day.

We went through field stripping and cleaning procedures in some detail for the AR and AK rifles, and briefly for the XCR and FAL.  The differences were quite instructive.  The innards of the AK and XCR field strip down to 3-4 parts, all fairly substantial.  The FAL has somewhat more parts, particularly since this one was a para model with the double coil buffer spring, but again, all are fairly large.  The AR on the other hand, stripped down into many more parts, including two tiny pins.  I know which rifles I'd want if I had to take one apart in a muddy ditch somewhere.

John also explained and demonstrated the flat stock technique.  I mentioned this in my writeup of his class last fall, but since I only had a little experience with it I declined to describe it, particularly since it's the sort of thing that's easy to demonstrate but hard to describe.  This time around, I'll bite the bullet and take a whack at it.  The flat stock technique replaces the standard low ready.  Rather than just keeping the stock on the shoulder and lowering the rifle, you rotate the rifle 90 degrees counterclockwise (for a right handed shooter), slide it back so the stock is lying flat on top of the shoulder, then lower the rifle 30-45 degrees to the standard low ready position. To mount the rifle, swing it up, punch it forward, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise.  For a quick close range shot you can just raise the rifle without rotating it or pushing it forward and fire from the flat stock position.  This does a couple of things that low ready doesn't.  First, the rotation makes it less likely that you'll swing up too far and overshoot when coming up on target, as often happens coming up from low ready.  Second, placing the stock on top of the shoulder shortens up the overall length and provides a bit of a compressed ready, which is an advantage in close quarters.

One thing John said that I think was particularly insightful is that "Training takes place when you fail."  As those who have read my writeups of other classes or Utah Polite Society events know, I tend to report a lot of mistakes, both mine and other people's.  This is quite intentional.  I'm not just trying to focus on the negative; every one of these was a learning experience for me.  If this course only covered things we were already good at, there wouldn't be much point in coming (aside from masturbating one's ego).  Keep this in mind when you read of my, and other students', screwups below.

First Afternoon

We stopped for a nice lunch at a local barbecue/fried chicken joint called Kody's on the way to the range.  Out at the range, we got started by zeroing our rifles.  For some of us, this was a somewhat lengthily process.  I, for instance, had a brand new Aimpoint which I'd only 'zeroed' by cowitnessing it with my iron sights.  One other student was in a similar position.  We zeroed to be dead on at 40 meters, which is around the first intersection for those of us shooting .223 rifles.  The folks with 7.62x39mm really should have zeroed closer to 30 meters, but a 40 meter zero was close enough, particularly at the ranges we would be shooting.

Some of the AK folks had a bit of trouble zeroing with the iron sights, since nobody had brought an AK sight adjustment tool.  Those who had a pretty good zero lived with it and those who were off by a bunch improvised using a hammer.

Once everyone was confident in their zero, we moved on to some dry fire practice.  This was both to get people used to the trigger reset of their rifles, but also to make any flinching problems evident.  One shooter would dry fire, while the other ran the bolt manually to reset the trigger.

Our first live fire aside from zeroing was the 100 round drill.  The goal here is to fire approximately 100 rounds (3x30 round mags or 5x20 round mags), reloading as necessary, and get a nice good grouping on the target.  All shooting was done offhand from 40 meters.  We were only allowed to fire four rounds from any one spot, then use the flat stock technique to move and glance around before firing another four rounds.  This gave us a lot of practice on the trigger reset and mounting and dismounting the gun from the flat stock position, as well as a couple of mag changes.  It was also a bit of a torture test for the gun (and shooter).  If a gun is going to break in training, it's probably going to be here.  My XCR was certainly smoking a bit during the third magazine, but it held up quite well.

This drill went fairly well for me, though I noticed that after moving to the right I had a tendency to stop in a more bladed stance than I really wanted.  My one big screwup was grabbing an empty magazine from my Sneakybag's dump pouch rather than a full one from the main compartment.  Some more reloading practice should help this, as might making sure dumped mags don't end up vertical, in the same position as the full ones.  By the end of the drill, my support arm was aching quite a bit, not simply from holding up the rifle and moving it up and down, but from the tension of trying to hold it very steady when shooting (something doing this drill at forty meters probably brought out that doing it at ten wouldn't have).  Most other folks did pretty well, though there were some accuracy problems and some magazine issues with one of the AKs.

Our next drill set the basic pattern for many of the drills we did for the rest of the day.  Seven targets were set up 40 meters downrange.  We had to moving down the firing line to the right and stopping engage each target with one shot while avoiding some randomly placed bystanders between us and the targets.  At the end of the line, each student did a scan and topped off if necessary.  This drill was run one shooter at a time.  We happened to have an equal number of .22 caliber (.223 and 5.45x39mm) and .30 (7.62x39mm) shooters, and the holes two calibers make in paper are easily distinguishable, so we were able to run two shooters through the drill before going downrange to score and tape, which sped things up quite a bit.  For this first drill, one target was placed at bad breath distance, representing a threatening but unarmed adversary to be engaged with a muzzle strike before shooting the targets downrange.  The muzzle strike was interesting, with some folks engaging in a dainty little jab and others punching it more forcefully.  Using a rifle as an impact weapon seems like something that needs to be done with gusto, if it is to be done at all.

The next drill followed the same pattern, but complicated things considerably.  This time, the close up target represented a lethal threat, to be engaged with a shot from the flat stock position before starting to shoot the far targets.  In addition, we removed the magazine from the rifle before the drill, forcing a transition to pistol to engage a close up (4 yard) target after taking the first long range shot.  After dispatching the second close in target with the pistol we reloaded the rifle and engaged the remaining 40 meter targets.  I've seen targets shot up close with pistols, but the effect of rifle velocity gases on a cardboard target was pretty impressive.  Each shot blew a three inch hole in the target.  The pistol transition suffered from the same drawback that a lot of malfunction type drills do.  Since you know they're coming, there's a tendency to make only the most desultory efforts to shoot the target, rather than using good form because you know you'll get a click instead of a bang.  Randomly placed dummy rounds or randomly downloaded magazines can take longer to set up, but they provide the real surprise factor a malfunction would cause.

Up until this point, all of our drills were shot standing, from the offhand position.  That's probably the most likely scenario for police or self-defense use, but there are occasions where more steadiness would be desirable.  John had one of the instructors demonstrate double kneeling, kneeling support, opposite knee kneeling, and prone, including rolling over to the right and left while prone.  The prone that he demonstrated was quite different from the one I've used before.  Rather than splaying the legs out and aligning the body at an angle to the target, John advocated a default prone with the feet together and the body pointing directly at the target.  This is a prone designed for use behind a small, potentially narrow piece of cover, rather than a prone designed to give the maximum possible shooting support.   I think this makes a lot of sense.  If you need more support, you probably have time to splay your legs and realign the body, but if you need to shelter behind a narrow piece of cover, you may not have time to pull in your legs before you get shot if splayed legs are the default.  We also went through shoulder to shoulder transitions, and all the shooting positions using the opposite shoulder, as well as supported shooting using a rest.

After the demonstrations, we shot from all the positions.  John had us run through a series of shoulder to shoulder transitions, to get used to swapping sides with the gun, then had us run through all the positions using support side shoulder.  One thing I discovered was that with the Sneakybag carabinered to my belt, shooting rolled over on my left side was pretty uncomfortable.  It’s still doable, but maybe a somewhat more flexible attachment, like a short bit of bungee cord, might be useful.

Following this, we moved up to about four meters, to try some brain stem shots against a target with a hostage.  This followed the same pattern John used in the class I took last October.  You ask the target, "What do you want?" to get him thinking about something other than blowing the hostage's brains out, then mount the rifle and put two shots right into his nose.  Doing this with a rifle is a lot easier than doing it with a pistol, provided you remember to hold over to compensate for the high sight axis.  I totally forgot the hold-over on my first shot and put the round right into the target's jaw.  As soon as I pulled the trigger I remembered and moved the dot up onto the forehead and hit him in the nose.  We did about a dozen brain stem drills, and aside from the first shot I dropped into the jaw, I ended up with one ragged hole.

We pulled back to try headshots from forty meters.  John gave us the option to use a supported shot or steadier position to hit the head.  I tried both supported and prone.  After doing this a couple of times with our own rifles, we started passing rifles to the person on our right, until everyone got a chance to shoot each rifle.  It was about this time (right before he passed it to me, actually) that we noticed that one student's Aimpoint Comp M4 was coming loose from his Larue mount.  He'd used some loctite on the screws, but one was gone and the other was loose.  He pulled the scope off (quite easy with the Larue mount) and used iron sights for the rest of the day.  Shooting the other rifles, I found that the AR was noticeably lighter than my XCR, but otherwise shot pretty much the same.  The other XCR shot exactly like mine and even had an EOTech on it like mine used to.  The AKs with optics shot fairly similarly as well.  The iron sighted AKs, on the other hand, were a lot slower at this range.  40 meters is well within the range of an iron sighted rifle, even for headshots, but carefully lining up the sights takes time.  Red dot sights are often lauded for their speed at CQB ranges, but that close an iron sighted rifle can be shot very quickly by just superimposing the front sight on the target and ignoring the rear sight (the "caveman EOTech").  Where a red dot really seems to shine is at these somewhat longer ranges, where you need to line up the sights more carefully on an iron sighted rifle, but a red dot just has to be superimposed on the target.

First Evening

After our own rifles got back around to us, the sun had dipped below the hills and it was getting pretty dark.  We started the night portion of the class.  We talked a bit about flashlight techniques, particularly using a hand held light with a rifle.  This was very important for the folks using loaner AKs, which didn't have coaxial flashlights.  Doubly so since they didn't have an optic or night sights, so they needed the target well illuminated to make out their sights against it.  Those of us with coaxial lights and red dots/night sights had things a lot easier. 

For our first night drill, John placed a road flare in front of the leftmost target and had us go down the line stopping and shooting each target.  We shot the first three using the light of the flare, then engage the last four using our flashlight.  Forty meters is a bit of a stretch for a handheld or weapon mounted light, but everyone had good, high power lights and were able to make their shots. 

Finally, our last drill of the night was what John called the "cruiser drill".  His flashlight, a Firstlight Tomahawk, has a neat mode where it flashes blue and red LEDs and the main lamp in sequence; producing a pattern somewhat like a police cruiser's light bar.  We had to shoot each of the seven targets using only this flashing light.  I found this pretty distracting.  In fact, I totally missed with my first two shots, firing at an empty target stand next to the first target.  After that I settled down and looked a little closer to get good hits on each target.

After the cruiser drill was done it was around 7 o'clock and we retired to a well deserved dinner at a local steakhouse.  I have to say I was pretty sore after a day of shooting, dropping down to kneeling and prone and getting up again, and running up to check targets.  My right shoulder was particularly sore, not from the modest recoil of my .223 rifle, but from having the weight of my rifle and ammo bag hanging on it all day.

Second Morning

The next morning we got things started by verifying the zero of our rifles.  I found mine was shooting about three inches to the right, but I don't know if the zero on my Aimpoint actually drifted or if my shooting improved enough that an error I had when I zeroed yesterday became visible (my zeroing groups today were about half what they were yesterday).  After initially adjusting the wrong way I got things dialed in.

Our first drill of the day involved making a 40 meter torso hit as quickly as possible and following up with a headshot.  My quick body shot was perfect, dead center, but the headshot, which I took a lot more time on, was way off.  I think I kind of psyched myself out trying to be overly precise.

All of our moving and shooting drills from yesterday involved moving from left to right.  This is the more comfortable direction for right-handed shooters (no southpaws in this class) and the easiest to keep safe, since it's easy to keep a rifle in the ready position from pointing uprange while moving.  However, in a fight you might not be lucky enough need to only move towards the right.  To make sure nobody got muzzled, we cleared everyone off from behind the line.  John gave us the option of either shooting right handed and crab stepping sideways down the line between shots or shooting off the left shoulder.  I chose to transition to the left shoulder after the first shot.  If there's one thing Gabe Suarez's classes really drilled into me it's that the only way to move quickly and safely is to point your toes in the direction you're moving.  Anything else is just too slow and has too much of a chance of stumbling over something.  I found my biggest difficulty shooting of the left shoulder was acquiring the proper cheek weld.  I've never had to hunt for the dot in the Aimpoint off the right shoulder unless I was in a weird position.  On the left shoulder I had to look around for it a bit.  I definitely need a more consistent support side cheek weld.

The first time through only one other student and I shot from the left shoulder.  John ran us through the drill again and required everyone to shoot from their support side.  One thing Frank noticed was that many of us tended not to put the left index finger into register when we should.  I know I was guilty of this; my left trigger finger just isn't as well trained as the right.  Another sign that I need to do more support side shooting.

Our next drill was perhaps the most difficult of the class.  We shot the same course, moving to the left, but could only shoot one-handed.  Our first six shots were with the primary hand and the last two with the support hand.  Keeping the rifle steady while getting a good cheek weld was exceedingly difficult.  I actually found it easier shooting one-handed with my support hand, but this may be because I'm normally a lefty, even though I shoot right handed (right eye dominant).  I'm sure that some of my right handed shots didn't even hit paper. 

The last drill involved shooting from cover.  We had to fire shots from the left and right sides of a piece of high cover (two stacked 55 gallon drums), each side of a single drum, and prone from each side of an overturned bench.  John talked about muzzle masking before the drill, but quite a few folks still had trouble.  Oddly enough, more people had trouble shooting around the barrel, where their sights were only slightly further out than their bore, than they did shooting around the bench, where the rifle was rolled over a full 90 degrees.  Perhaps they were just more aware of it shooting around the bench.

As the rifle portion of the class came to an end, it was time for our rifle test.  The test was fairly simple, five targets (approximately IDPA sized) at forty meters, in fifteen seconds.  No misses or second shots allowed; five hits in five shots were required.  Before the first shot we had to get off the X and sometime between the first and fifth shots we had to move twice more.  These subsequent moves could be a couple of steps laterally, or going from standing to kneeling or prone, or kneeling to prone (getting up doesn't count as a move).  This seems like a fairly simple test.  I suspect by this point in the class most students could just shoot the targets in under 5 seconds if that was all they needed to do.  The need to move makes the test deceptively difficult.  There's the time required to move, of course, but also the need to get back into shooting mode after a move.  Only two folks in the class passed the first time through. 

It took me until my third go-round.  The first two I tried dropping down to kneeling or supported positions, popping up and moving, then going kneeling to prone.  Not only did all this getting up and dropping down take too much time, but because I knew I was taking too much time, I rushed some of my shots and ended up missing once on each try. Despite having made similar shots offhand throughout the course, I was nervous about trying to do it when it counted and kept seeking better supported positions.  Finally the third time around I just decided that   the only way to do this under the time limit would be to stop trying to shoot everything supported, trust in my offhand shooting skills and just shoot it standing with lateral movement.  I made it with a second to spare and got good hits on all five targets, passing the test.  As other people rotated through I noticed that the successful folks either shot from standing and moved laterally, or stayed in one spot and shot standing, kneeling, prone.  Trying to do both vertical and lateral moves inevitably took too long. 

One student had a particularly bad time on one run.  He tried to shoot and got a click instead of a bang.  He did the tap-rack-bang drill and got another click.  After repeating this three or four more times, he finally listened to the people yelling at him and changed mags.  A TRB will fix many malfunctions, but if it doesn't work there's not much sense doing it twice.  It's probably either a double feed, or a magazine failure, but in either case, you need to get that mag out of the gun to fix it.  In this case it turned out to be a failed magazine spring.

After each student passed the test, John presented them with a Defense Training International rifle pin, and they got a round of applause from fellow students.  Eventually, all the students except for two had passed the test.  After a couple of go-rounds where it was just the two of them, John decided to call a halt and break for lunch.

Second Afternoon

After another fine lunch at Kody's, we went back to the range and started with shotguns.  Originally, John was going to teach a two-day shotgun class on Monday and Tuesday, but due to lack of interest, in a separate class the shotgun stuff was folded into the rifle class.  I have even less shotgun experience than rifle.  The only time I've tried to use one in any sort of tactical scenario at a Polite Society even, I managed to short stroke it twice.  So some shotgun training was definitely welcome.

Due to the relatively late addition of the shotgun curriculum, only two of the students had brought shotguns.  Both were 870s with pistol grips and separate stocks, one mounted an EOTech.  We also had a pair of Tactical Response's shotguns, both plain vanilla 870s.  I consciously chose to shoot one of the vanilla shotguns.  Four guns were enough for all the students to shoot in two relays.

John went through the manual of arms, which is somewhat more involved for a pump shotgun than they are for a box magazine fed rifle.  Because most 'Tactical' shotguns are really just black fowling pieces, they don't have drop safe manual safeties.  Instead of messing around with the trigger block safeties, John advocates carrying the shotgun with a full tube and an empty chamber, then running the slide as part of mounting the gun to the shoulder.  Of course, this leads to the question of how to get the gun back to an empty chamber when it's time to sling it. 

We did quite a bit of dry practice mounting the weapon, clearing the chamber each time before going back to slung.  Before handing it off to the next student, we practiced voiding the magazine tube.  I found I had to be very conscious of my trigger finger position with the shotgun I was using.  I'm used to shooting pistols and rifles with pistol grips, but on the shotgun, that same angle put the trigger finger right next to the trigger guard.  I had to raise it quite a bit to get it in the proper register position.

Once the dry fire was done, we fired the shotguns at eight and twenty meters to observe the size of the patterns.  At twenty, it's certainly getting big enough that the BG might not absorb all the pellets.

Our first shotgun drill was one John called 'Rolling Thunder'.  Four shooters are lined up facing four steel targets at around 8 meters.  The first shooter first at the first target, followed by shooters 2-4 firing at the same target.  After the fourth shooter hits the target, the first shooter fires at targets 1 and 2, as do shooters 2-4 in turn.  Then each shooter hits targets 1-3, and finally each fire at all four targets.  This involves a total of ten rounds, meaning that you'd better be shoving rounds into the tube as fast as you can between shots to avoid running out and having to stand there loading while everyone's waiting. 

I totally botched this drill the first time out.  I had trouble getting the slide all the way forward allowing me to load more rounds into the tube and ended up having to shoot the last four using emergency loads (dumping a shell right into the ejection port and running the slide forward to shoot).  I didn't have any trouble getting the slide forward when I needed to fire another shot, so I think the problem was probably that I was anticipating the reload and reaching for a shell before I got the slide all the way forward.  The next time through it went a lot more smoothly and I wasn't the source of delay. 

The other shotgun drill involved transitioning to slugs.  After shooting four steel targets with buckshot, we had to rack the slide back, dump out both rounds (the one from the chamber and the one ejected onto the shell lifter when the slide came back) and flip a slug into the ejection port and fire.  Then it was time to repeat the process and fire a second slug.  I messed up a bit on the first slug, and ran the slide forward a bit causing the shell lifter to pop up.  I had to shove it down to get the second shell out and get the slug in there. 

The shotgun stuff was fun and I definitely learned a lot.  I still prefer a rifle for pretty much any application, but pump action shotguns are one of the most popular guns in America and I ought to make sure I can run one if necessary.

Epilogue

After we finished with the shotguns, John and Frank made some concluding remarks and the class was officially over.  We were invited to watch as the two students who hadn't yet passed the rifle test had another try at it.   The entire class stayed around as a cheering section and source of advice.  It took a couple of tries, but both students were eventually able to pass.

After the tests were over it was time for some fun.  I got a chance to shoot a mag through one of Tactical Response's full-auto AKs, which was a real blast.  This was the first time I ever had a chance to fire a gun with a 'fun switch' and I enjoyed it immensely.

Frank broke out his EOTech equipped FAL and took a couple of shots at a gong about 300 yards away.  He was able to ring it pretty easily.  John did the same with his XCR.  Frank let me have a try with his FAL and I was able to go two for two shooting offhand.  I'd pretty much decided to make an XCR in 7.62x39mm my next rifle, but after this I may have to get a FAL instead. 

Of the post-class activities, shooting the full auto AK was fun, but I have to say ringing the gong with the FAL was a lot more satisfying.  Any idiot can hose down a target with a full auto AK, but tagging that gong took at least a little bit of skill.

Lessons Learned

As I said earlier, one of the things I wanted to do in this class was test my gear to see if I needed to change anything in my rifle fighting setup.  I was very happy with my XCR.  It functioned flawlessly throughout the class and shot far more accurately than I did.  I really like the Aimpoint Micro.  Going in I was a bit concerned at the small diameter of the tube, but I never had any trouble picking up the dot when shooting off the right shoulder.  I'm sure I'll be able to do the same off the left shoulder as well, once I develop a more consistent cheek weld on that side.  The Vickers sling worked well, though I hardly used its quick adjust feature, just keeping it at almost the full length for the entire course, so a fairly long fixed two-point sling might have served just as well.  I liked having a vertical foregrip on my rifle.  A couple of the other students had the short foregrips on their guns, and after shooting their rifles during the pass it on drill, I think the shorter grips worked just as well while contributing a lot less bulk to the rifle.  Switching to a shorter grip will probably be the only change I make to the rifle based on my experience in this class.

The Sneakybag worked well, save for the time when I grabbed an empty from the dump pouch instead of a full mag from the main compartment.  I think this is more of a training issue than a gear issue (more reloading practice necessary).  The PMags worked flawlessly.  The windows on them were even somewhat useful whether or not they could take a full stripper clip or not, which first actual use I've gotten out of them.  I had MagPul tabs on three of them, but I've concluded that they're basically unnecessary with the Sneakybag.  Unlike a lot of mag pouches that only expose a small part of the magazine, once your hand is inside the Sneakybag compartment, about half the magazine is available to grab, allowing you to get a full grip on it.  They're probably coming off.

As I said earlier, one of the reasons I've been looking for good rifle training is because I realized that pistol skills don't transfer to a rifle.  However, I think I did a good job keeping my head up and muzzle down, looking around and doing Sul scans, etc. because that's the sort of thing I'm used to doing with a pistol.  While gunhandling and shooting skills don't transfer, many fighting skills do.

Final Assessment

Taking this class has only increased my respect for John Farnam as an instructor.  I thought quite highly of him after taking the Fighting With a Handgun class last fall.  However, that class involved four fairly advanced students to just ate up anything he could give us.  We had a couple of students in this class who really struggled, and John did a great job of bringing them along and getting them through the course without lowering his standards an inch.  The way his approach differed for each of these students was instructive as well.  One was trying hard, but just wasn't getting the right results.  John and Frank gave him a lot of coaching and helpful advice and eventually it paid off.  The other student really didn't have the best attitude the first day.  He was an AR shooter using one of Tactical Response's guns and blamed his performance on the AK sights.  John administered a bit of an attitude adjustment late on the first day and it took.  He still struggled, but by confronting the fact that it was him, rather than the rifle, who was at fault he was able to overcome his issues and pass the class.

Similarly, Frank Sharpe did an excellent job as John's co-instructor.  He did great work coaching students and had some good observations after each drill.  This class followed directly on the heels of John's DTI Instructor course, and both he and Frank periodically made some remarks about how to teach these skills to students.  This was just a little taste, but it really makes me want to take the instructor course.

As far as the content of the course goes, it definitely did a good job covering the basics: shooting, gunhandling, transitions, positions, and support side shooting.  If there was one thing I had to criticize about the class, it would be the lack of closer range shooting.  Aside from the brain stem shots, virtually all the rifle shooting was done from forty meters.  This is probably a pretty good range for teaching the basics, since it's far enough to require people to exercise the fundamentals of sight picture and trigger control and expose flaws in student's techniques without being far enough to make it difficult for students to hit paper so their problems can be diagnosed.  Nevertheless, I think that some more variety in range, particularly on the closer end, would have been helpful.  I'm planning to take Gabe Suarez's Close Range Rifle Gunfighting class later this year, which should probably satisfy my desires in this area.

Finally, I have to give kudos to Tactical Response.  They did a great job handling the logistics for the course and have some nice facilities.  I was able to talk with James Yeager a bit and he seems like a great guy to train with.  More than half the class were previous graduates of some of Tactical Response's other classes.  Not only did they have great things to say about the classes they took, they were generally excellent shooters with good gunhandling skills.  The fact that Tactical Response turns out folks like these certainly speaks well of their program.  I think they'll go on my 'must train with in the future' list.

So, am I ready to make a rifle my go-to gun for home defense?  Well, no.  While I'm a lot more comfortable with my rifle, I still can't run it with the same level of skill and confidence I do my pistol.  This class has given me a solid basis to build on, but what I need to do now is go through the same process that brought my pistol skills up to the level where they are now.  I need to do a lot of dry fire practice: mounting the gun a few thousand times, doing a few thousand reloads, dropping into a few thousand kneeling and prone positions, transitioning to pistol a few thousand times, doing a few thousand shoulder to should transitions, and then doing all these things a few thousand times from the support side shoulder.  After that I need to go to the range and shoot a thousand rounds or so.  Then I will really be ready to use a rifle when my life depends on it.