In early September I took an Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class taught by Randy Harris. This class followed right on the heels of the Snub Nose Seminar/Pistol Tune Up held on Friday.
I brought my usual Glock 21, carried in a Comp-Tac C-T.A.C. IWB holster at 3:30. For the airsoft portions of the class, I had a Glock 17 airsoft gun, which fits pretty well in the G21 holster. I also brought along my USP Compact airsoft as a loaner.
There were a total of seven people in the class, including me. Most of them were shooting Glocks, while two students carried SIGs (one of the SIG shooters also had a Makarov). An AIWB holster with a closed front concealment garment was the most common carry method. One fellow carried on a load bearing vest Saturday morning, but he switched over to a belt rig for the afternoon.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows and a braying donkey in the next field.
Saturday Morning
The sky was overcast again Saturday, and it sprinkled off an on throughout the day. Thankfully, it never really poured and we were able to keep shooting the entire day.
We started out with five rounds of slow fire to give Randy some idea of our marksmanship capabilities. Everyone in the class was able to produce a fairly tight group in these circumstances. Shooting the Glock, with a big sight radius and relatively light trigger was a positive luxury compared with all the snubby work we did on Friday.
After divesting ourselves of guns, knives, OC, impact weapons and other dangerous implements, we switched over to airsoft gear. First up was a regular feature of SI force-on-force classes: the suicide drill, also knows as the Matt Dillon drill. Pairs of students quick drew at seven yards and blazed away at each other with airsoft guns. Hits were generally almost simultaneous. At seven yards, there were some misses, but when we moved the distance in to five yards, the hit percentage rose by quite a bit.
Mutually Assured Destruction might work with nuclear weapons, but it isn't really effective on the streets. The solution is to move. To get off the X and not be there when the assailant's bullet comes calling. Randy had us try out getting off the X on our own a few times before introducing the Pekiti takeoff. The Pekiti takeoff was actually one of my motivations for taking this course. I took Close Range Gunfighting and Interactive Gunfighting from Gabe Suarez two years ago, just a month or so before he made the Pekiti takeoff a standard part of the curriculum. The descriptions of it online were enough to pique my interest, but not really enough to teach me the technique. It is definitely in the category of "easy to demonstrate but difficult to describe". The PTO really helps you accelerate off the X (even for a big guy like me), particularly when combined with a bit of a ducking motion in the direction of travel. We worked the Pekiti takeoff by itself for a while, then threw in the drawstroke, moving off the X and getting the gun on target as quickly as possible.
We swapped from airsoft back to live weapons and did a bit of retention shooting. Randy prefers shooing downward from close retention, towards the pelvis rather than horizontally into the chest. If you're shooting from retention, you're probably fending off the opponent with your support hand, and aiming downward makes it less likely that you'll put a bullet into it. After trying out the close retention stuff, we took a step back and shot some from the #3 (merge) position of the drawstroke. In this position, the gun is well below the line of sight, so it definitely still requires the use point shooting skills. However, with a bit of practice it's possible to direct the gun fairly well, at least at the kind of range where you'd be shooting from retention. In addition to drilling the close retention and partial extension positions, we shot a few drills that combined them, starting with a close retention shot, then stepping back to shoot at partial and full extension.
We move on to some GOTX work with live guns, practicing explosive movement to the 2 and 10, 3 and 9, and 5 and 7 o'clock directions. Using live guns you can't really go at full speed the way you can with airsoft, particularly when lined up with several other guys, but I think doing it live is pretty important for both acquiring confidence and learning how to manage recoil on the move.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch we spent some time on the pacing drill, moving off the X to one side, then turning around and walking back the other way, passing the gun from one hand to the other. This provides some practice on shooting while moving, as well as transferring the gun from one hand to the other. One of the things that becomes evident in force on force drills is how often hands and arms get hit. Being able to transition to the other hand, and being able to shoot well with both hands, is an important skill.
Our last live fire drill of the day involved giving the target some dental work. With three rounds in the gun, you got off the X to the forward diagonals (2 and 10). When the gun ran dry, it became an an impact weapon (a straight punch with the muzzle into the target's mouth). This was our first significant introduction to one of the big themes for this class: using firearms, contact weapons (including the firearm as a contact weapon) and empty hand together in a fight.
With that, we put our guns, knives, etc. back on the table and switched back to airsoft. Randy gave a quick introduction to defending against knife attacks, focusing on low line stabs. A shot to the gut like this is is probably the most common sort of knife attack on the streets. The lesson was basically a one-hour introduction to Tom Sotis' class that Randy hosted last summer, using the alternate X to block and clear the attacker's knife. During the course of the lesson, he brought out a pretty impressive collection of small, fixed blade knives, with a blunt trainer for every one. I always carry a folder or two, but my experience in this class has impressed on me how difficult it would be to access them in the middle of a hand to hand fight. This has me thinking about getting a fixed blade for carry, particularly for circumstances where I can't carry a pistol.
After we were done playing with knives, we finished up the day with a quick demonstration of the Inquartana in the confined space between two cars. This is another technique that I'd heard about on WT, but hadn't really been able to grasp until I was able to see it and try it for myself. We only had a couple of chances each at this. As we were on the verge of loosing daylight, we wrapped things up for the evening.
Sunday
In an effort to get the class done a little early today, we started at 8am instead of 9. We gained one student, who hadn't been able to make it to the first day, but lost another who's sunburn from Friday was beginning to blister. The weather was much sunnier today, and quite a bit hotter. I sucked down four bottles of gatorade and a couple of sodas and still probably wasn't drinking enough.
We started out with some retention work, basically what to do when an assailant manages to grab your gun. Randy demonstrated both stripping their hands of the gun using your elbow, and shaking them loose using a circular motion. I got some fairly good results using a technique I learned from Farnam, shoving the gun towards the assailant then jerking it back. This worked quite well, but it requires you to start out in something less than full extension (another good reason not to extend your gun out all the way).
During the disarm drills, one of the pairs of students ended up on the ground, so Randy segued into a ground fighting lesson. He had the same pair of students try to take each other down and the guy with the gun ended up on top, so we used that as our starting point. The disarming student started on his back with the armed student's gun arm tied up in his armpit. The first time I was the armed student, after trying to pry my arm loose I ended up just letting go of the gun and reached down and retrieved it with my left hand. Randy pointed out that, especially with my size advantage, a good choice might be to just get my legs underneath me and stand up, leaving the disarmer to try to support himself by hanging on to my gun arm, which worked pretty well. We moved on to accessing another weapon (a training knife in this case) and using that to cut your way to the gun. This seemed to work well with accessible fixed blades, but with a folder it would leave you trying to hold on to your gun one-handed for quite a while.
After we finished rolling around on the ground, we ran some 3 on 1 multiple assailant drills. Based on my experience in Gabe's force on force class, I knew 3 on 1 really sucked, at least if you were the 1, and these drills bore out that experience. Randy introduced the element of using one of the assailants as uncooperative cover. Getting to that point was difficult, but if the defender managed to pull it off, it made a really big difference. Turning a 3 on 1 fight with no cover into a 2 on 1 fight with cover turns a really bad situation into a much better one.
Around this time, Randy realized that when we got off into ground fighting, we hadn't covered the disarming part of the retention and disarming segment, so we doubled back and worked those. I've learned a couple different methods of disarming from different instructors and the ones Randy demonstrated where definitely on the simple and brutal end of the spectrum, rather than some of the elegant, but more complicated maneuvers. Wrist goes one way, gun goes the other, and suddenly it's yours. One thing that differed a bit from previous disarm lessons was the context. Most disarm instruction assumes that you're being held at gunpoint by a mugger or robber. Randy pointed out that the disarm is a natural follow-up after you fail at a retention problem. The first thing to do when you loose a gun to someone is to take it back. He also emphasized following up the disarm with some sort of continued fighting action, rather than just standing there with the gun, or handing it back to restart the drill. He underlined this point by telling the story of a LA cop who, upon successfully disarming a suspect, handed the thug his gun back! That was what he was used to doing after performing a disarm in training. He promptly disarmed the suspect again, so no harm, no foul in this case, but definitely not something I want to emulate.
Disarming flowed naturally into defending sul, which was our next lesson. I learned defending sul from Gabe in CRG two years ago, but Randy introduced some new elements to it. One is the "Dracula Sul" position, which has to be the best name ever for a gunfighting technique. This is basically a one handed sul, with the support hand in a horizontal blocking position to keep an assailant off your gun (for the name, think Bella Lugosi holding a long black cape across his face). We practiced defending sul from assaults from both sides and the rear. Randy also emphasized continuing the fight beyond firing a couple of shots into the assailant from dracula sul, since one or two rounds, perhaps poorly placed since you're shooting from close retention, probably won't be a fight stopper. You need to get them turned around and start shooting them in the back or the back of the head.
Randy gave us an anti-carjacking lecture. In part, this was intended to get us ready for the vehicle shooting later this afternoon. However, it went quite a bit beyond just how to shoot from a car into things like general anti-carjacking techniques and strategies to avoid being ambushed in a parking lot.
At this point we were finished with airsoft and blue gun drills for the class, so we geared back up with live weapons and brought out some camp chairs and practiced shooting while seated. When you're shooting on the line, while seated, there's no way to draw without covering yourself or someone else (unless you're the guy way down at the end of the line). In the spirit of being responsible for one's own mistakes, Randy instructed us not to cover other students when drawing. As far as not shooting ourselves, well, these drills really underlined the importance of good trigger discipline. We shot targets to our left, then turned around and shot to the right. Aside from potential excitement during the drawstroke, these angles are relatively easy. Shooting to the rear while seated, on the other hand, is a bit more of a challenge. In most circumstances, it would probably be better to get out of the chair and shoot from kneeling or standing, but if you're in a car, or trapped in a booth at a restaurant, that might not be an option. We practiced both torquing ourselves around to shoot, and getting to a kneeling position from the chair and firing.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that always comes up during force on force drills is how common it is to get hit in the hands or arms (I have two bloody welts on my forearm from getting shot during the 3 on 1 drills that attest to this). Thus, it may be necessary to shoot one handed, perhaps with the off hand. Obviously the best way to do this would be to pass the gun from the injured arm to the working one as we did on Saturday, but the obvious reaction to getting shot in the hand or arm would probably be to drop what you are holding, so Randy had us practice grabbing our guns from the deck with your support hand and firing. He also demonstrated a one handed reload and had us practice that during our after action drills.
At this point we moved the camp chairs out of the way and did a few final reps of getting off the X, first against paper targets, then against Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell.
We adjourned to our cars for some dry fire practice drawing and aiming at threats in various directions. Aiming directly out the drivers side and passenger side windows is fairly easy, as is aiming at targets diagonally ahead of the car on the driver's side. Targets closer to straight ahead are more difficult, as are targets to the rear passenger side. Targets on the driver's side to the rear are much more difficult really requiring you to twist around in the seat and shoot from an uncomfortable position. It seemed like this was a bit easier for the guys with roomier trucks, as opposed to my sedan. One way to get around this is to pop the door open and lean out and shoot, but if the door is locked this may take too long.
While Randy recommended leaving your seatbelt unbuckled until you're actually moving, to provide easier access, if you're carjacked at a stoplight, your belt may be buckled anyway. I found that the belt itself wasn't really an obstacle to getting to my gun, but when the belt was holding the cover garment in place that made things difficult. Ripping the cover garment out from under the belt with the support hand seemed to be the best way to provide access.
After dry firing, we loaded up our pistols and lined up the cars for live fire from inside our vehicles. It was just like a drive through, we pulled up, shot Ted on Randy's command, and drove to the back of the line. Each person got at least two runs at each position (passenger side, driver's side, forward, and rear). Randy described a short scenario for each string of fire (my favorite was the chainsaw wielding guy in a gimp suit). He also included one scenario where shooting wasn't an appropriate response, to emphasize that in your car the accelerator pedal is often a better tool for resolving a dangerous situation than a firearm. I managed not to shoot my car, but I think I'll probably spend a while picking brass out of odd places inside of my car.
Conclusions
This was really a great class. In particular, Randy did an excellent job integrating gun focused fighting skills with knife and empty hand skills. I've had a fair bit of pistol training and a little bit of experience with more combative stuff, but this is the first training experience I've had that really integrates them. This wasn't just a pistol course and a combative course mashed together, the integrated, fight focused nature really pervaded the entire course.
I've felt that hand to hand and knife skills have been a hole in my skillset ever since I took CRG and force on force from Gabe two years ago. After taking this class and Tom Sotis' class earlier this summer I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the non-firearm stuff. I definitely want to continue with Sotis' classes as well as taking the 0-5 foot class from Gabe Suarez when he comes to South Carolina a year from now.
As I said in my AAR for the snubby seminar on Friday, these were the first SI classes I've taken from an instructor other than Gabe. Gabe is obviously the headliner when it comes to Suarez International instructors, but Randy did a great job teaching this class. I would not hesitate to take another class from him in the future.
I would definitely recommend both the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting course and anything taught by Randy Harris!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Suarez International Snub Nose Seminar/Pistol Tune Up
In early September I attended a one-day snub nose seminar and pistol tune up class taught by Randy Harris. This was my first Suarez International class taught by someone other than Gabe Suarez. I had a chance to meet Randy back in June when he hosted a class Tom Sotis, but I hadn't previously taken a class from him. However, I'd heard good things from others who had.
As the dual title implies, this class had two, somewhat distinct purposes. One was to focus on using snubby revolvers for self-defense, the other was to serve as a one-day introduction/refresher for the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum for folks who wanted to take the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class the following day. I had CRG in Salt Lake two years ago, and practice my skills regularly, so I was primarily interested in the snub nose portion of the class.
The class was fairly small, with a total of four people, including me (there were some fairly last minute cancellations). All of the attendees had some previous defensive shooting experience, though two had not previously taken Close Range Gunfighting.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows in the next field.
I used my Smith and Wesson 642 for the class. This gun is stock, save for a set of Crimson Trace laser grips. I did a little bit of work out of a Fist kydex pocket holster that I usually use to carry this as a backup gun, but I spent most of the time using a plastic Fobus belt holster, largely because it was most convenient (and got a little "Barney Miller" ribbing for doing that). Most of the other revolvers in the class were Smith and Wesson j-frames of one description or another, though there was one Ruger. One student shot the class using his Sig and Makarov autoloaders, using a borrowed j-frame only for a few revolver specific stuff reloading drills.
Morning
After the standard safety lecture, Randy started by talking about the history of pocket revolvers, from efforts to cut down cap and ball Colts to the Ruger LCR. One thing he noted was the tendency of some people to carry j-frames as a pacifier, seemingly hoping that it's mere presence would bring them peace (or at least peace of mind). In reality, being able to effectively win a fight using a j-frame probably takes more training and practice than using an autoloader.
He also spent a bit of time passing around various revolvers, noting different features, including hammerless or shrouded hammer models, ejector rod length, and differing frame materials (with the stainless steel Ruger weighing in at twice what an Airweight j-frame did). Several of the guns had XSSights front dots on them, one standard dot (a S&W M&P model) and one big dot.
We also discussed ammunition choices. Randy is not a big fan of the .357 out of a snub nose. In his opinion, the extra kick and muzzle flash are not worth it when weighted against the relatively modest increase in velocity the magnum round gives out of such a short barrel. His carry load (and mine) is the +P Cor-Bon DPX round.
The range portion of the class started out with some drawstroke work. Randy emphasized a fairly simple drawstroke based on bringing the gun up to the pectoral muscle and punching it straight out towards the target. We started out doing the punching motion with our fist, then moved on to some dry practice. Once everyone had the basic drawstroke down, Randy had us start incorporation movement. He gave a brief explanation on the virtues of getting off the X for the benefit to the folks who were new to the SI method, then we did some dry fire drills.
Moving on to live fire, we started out with some slow fire accuracy work from about four yards. Small revolvers are difficult to shoot well, and given their limited ammo supply, it is particularly important to put each round where it will be effective. Given how little I've actually shot my j-frame I thought I did pretty well here. Aside from one shot that I jerked, I had a fairly tight group, eating one ragged hole in the cardboard.
After a few strings of fire, we started working with different reloading methods. Randy had us compare speedloaders to speed strips, and doing a full reload from a speed strip to loading two rounds only. We also traded guns around, to give each shooter a chance to try drawing a second gun rather than reloading. This was one of the few times during the day I actually worked out of my pocket holster on the left side. Even from a pocket holster, drawing a second gun is definitely quickest, about on a par with reloading a semi-automatic. If possible, the New York reload is definitely the way to go.
Randy also introduced after action drills. Most of it was the usual SI stuff (assess the target, look for other bad guys down range, sul scan, reload, check for injury). One interesting variation he described was using the #2 position in the drawstroke (with the gun held in the primary hand only, up against the pectoral muscle, pointed about 45 degrees downward) instead of sul. This allows you to keep the off hand free to block with in case you turn around to find a fist or knife coming at you. This does seem to have it's merits, but between previous SI classes and shooting with the Utah Polite Society, sul is pretty ingrained for me so that's what I used for most of the class.
We broke for a late lunch and everyone drove over to a local eatery for some food.
Afternoon
After lunch, we got to the meat of a CRG type course, getting off the X, live fire, in every direction. We started out working the forward diagonals, to the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock directions. I've done this before, so I didn't have much trouble with the moving and shooting. However, Randy wanted us to follow each burst of 2-4 rounds to the body with a round or two to the head. I really struggled with the headshots, particularly when going to the left and shooting one handed. I hadn't been using my laser for most of the day, but I turned it back on now. It helped a little bit (the day was cloudy enough to make it visible) but most of my trouble seemed to be trigger pull related. I definitely need some more practice with this gun.
Once everyone was comfortable with moving to 2 and 10, we worked the other directions, starting with 3 and 9 o'clock, then the rear diagonals, 5 and 7 o'clock. The 3 and 9 weren't too difficult, but I found moving to the 5 and 7 while firing the snubby considerably harder than doing the same thing with a Glock. The combination of a smaller gun and heavier trigger pull makes it much more challenging. To finish up the GOTX portion of the class, we did a bit of movement directly away from the target, to the 6 o'clock.
We also did some work with multiple attackers. Moving off to the right, we practiced transitioning from the closer attacker to another. This is where the j-frame's limited ammo capacity becomes an obvious shortcoming. Given how badly pistol bullets suck, five rounds to distribute among two attackers just isn't that confidence inspiring. We didn't even try to do anything with three targets.
Next Randy demonstrated how to reload a revolver one-handed. This is quite an exercise, starting with squirming your hand around to simultaneously slide the cylinder release forward and push the cylinder out (the fellow shooting the Ruger noted that this is an area where the pushbutton cylinder release is an advantage). If the chambers are fairly clean (which they weren't by this part of the class) the empty cases can be ejected by raising the muzzle, jerking the gun back, and bringing it to a sudden stop. If this doesn't work, it's time for some more finger squirming to get your hand far enough forward to hit the ejector and pound the butt of the gun into your leg. This will generally free all but the most recalcitrant case. Shove the barrel inside your waistband (a bit of a trick with the short barrel of the snub nose) retrieve a speedloader and load the gun, then close the cylinder against your body. This tortuous process generally seemed to take at least thirty seconds, not something you want to be doing in the middle of a gunfight. Of course, then Randy had us do this only using the left hand.
After we managed to get our guns back into action with only one hand, Randy brought out Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell. We got off the X at about five yards and tried to knock Ted down. This proved a bit challenging, because once you got far enough off the X the angle became oblique enough that even a solid hit would not necessarily knock the target down. Either a hit very early, or multiple hits in rapid succession were required. Some folks got off to one side or the other and shot more than ten rounds at it, including several hits, without knocking it down.
We moved back to about fifteen yards and did some long range shooting (fifteen yards definitely qualifies as "long range" with tiny, double action revolvers). At this distance, Ted was pretty difficult to knock down. I managed to get only one or two hits on the steel from each cylinder of ammo, but I'm pretty sure even my non-steel hits were probably hitting the plastic body of the target.
Conclusions
I probably fired more rounds through my j-frame in this class than I have since I bought it. I feel quite a bit more comfortable with it now, though some additional practice will definitely be required. In particular, I need to work on sooting it one-handed. Two handed, I could be relatively accurate, but with one hand my accuracy went completely to hell.
In hindsight, I kind of regret using the belt holster so much. Since I only carry this gun as a BUG in my left pocket, I really should have gone hardcore and shot the whole class left handed from the pocket holster.
From what work I did from the pocket, and watching others draw from there, it seemed like you could draw fairly quickly and effectively, even when getting off the X, if you started out with the hand on the gun. If you had to reach into the pocket and acquire a firing grip, it about doubled the time required and make it difficult to get off the X at the same time. Being able to have your hand on the gun without alerting others is an advantage to pocket carry, but it's also practically a necessity to deploy the gun quickly from the pocket.
Reloads are challenging with speedloaders, painfully slow with speed strips, and downright tortuous one-handed. On the other hand, the New York reload rocks! I am happy carrying my Glock, but if I were to go with just a j-frame, two of them are definitely the way to go.
This was a good class overall, I definitely got a lot out of it. If it had a shortcoming, it was probably the effort to serve both as a snubby class, and as an intro to the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum at the same time. The trigger time, even on the most basic CRG type drills was welcome, but some of the explanations of why to do these things were a bit redundant for me. I don't really need to be convinced of the virtues of getting off the X. Looking at it from the other side, those who hadn't had CRG before, I have to wonder if these explanations kind of got short shrift amid all the snubnose specific stuff. I think they probably got a solid intro to the basic CRG skills, but they probably could have used some more repetitions and more explanation of the whys and wherefores of getting off the X and after action drills in lieu of the snubby specific stuff. That being said, I can see why these two elements were combined. This was a very small class as it was, cutting out either element would have made the class even smaller (I probably wouldn't have come without the snubby stuff, for instance).
I think a snub nose specific class is a great idea for anyone who regularly carries a small revolver, whether as a primary gun, backup, or both. A snubby's characteristics are different enough from a medium to large autoloader that some gun-specific instruction is very useful. Randy Harris did an good job presenting the material and coaching students. I left this class wanting to train with him again, which was good because I was registered for the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class starting the next day!
As the dual title implies, this class had two, somewhat distinct purposes. One was to focus on using snubby revolvers for self-defense, the other was to serve as a one-day introduction/refresher for the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum for folks who wanted to take the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class the following day. I had CRG in Salt Lake two years ago, and practice my skills regularly, so I was primarily interested in the snub nose portion of the class.
The class was fairly small, with a total of four people, including me (there were some fairly last minute cancellations). All of the attendees had some previous defensive shooting experience, though two had not previously taken Close Range Gunfighting.
The class was held on the back 40 of a farm just outside Florala, Alabama. We used some large, cylindrical hay bales as a backstop and shot to the accompaniment of mooing cows in the next field.
I used my Smith and Wesson 642 for the class. This gun is stock, save for a set of Crimson Trace laser grips. I did a little bit of work out of a Fist kydex pocket holster that I usually use to carry this as a backup gun, but I spent most of the time using a plastic Fobus belt holster, largely because it was most convenient (and got a little "Barney Miller" ribbing for doing that). Most of the other revolvers in the class were Smith and Wesson j-frames of one description or another, though there was one Ruger. One student shot the class using his Sig and Makarov autoloaders, using a borrowed j-frame only for a few revolver specific stuff reloading drills.
Morning
After the standard safety lecture, Randy started by talking about the history of pocket revolvers, from efforts to cut down cap and ball Colts to the Ruger LCR. One thing he noted was the tendency of some people to carry j-frames as a pacifier, seemingly hoping that it's mere presence would bring them peace (or at least peace of mind). In reality, being able to effectively win a fight using a j-frame probably takes more training and practice than using an autoloader.
He also spent a bit of time passing around various revolvers, noting different features, including hammerless or shrouded hammer models, ejector rod length, and differing frame materials (with the stainless steel Ruger weighing in at twice what an Airweight j-frame did). Several of the guns had XSSights front dots on them, one standard dot (a S&W M&P model) and one big dot.
We also discussed ammunition choices. Randy is not a big fan of the .357 out of a snub nose. In his opinion, the extra kick and muzzle flash are not worth it when weighted against the relatively modest increase in velocity the magnum round gives out of such a short barrel. His carry load (and mine) is the +P Cor-Bon DPX round.
The range portion of the class started out with some drawstroke work. Randy emphasized a fairly simple drawstroke based on bringing the gun up to the pectoral muscle and punching it straight out towards the target. We started out doing the punching motion with our fist, then moved on to some dry practice. Once everyone had the basic drawstroke down, Randy had us start incorporation movement. He gave a brief explanation on the virtues of getting off the X for the benefit to the folks who were new to the SI method, then we did some dry fire drills.
Moving on to live fire, we started out with some slow fire accuracy work from about four yards. Small revolvers are difficult to shoot well, and given their limited ammo supply, it is particularly important to put each round where it will be effective. Given how little I've actually shot my j-frame I thought I did pretty well here. Aside from one shot that I jerked, I had a fairly tight group, eating one ragged hole in the cardboard.
After a few strings of fire, we started working with different reloading methods. Randy had us compare speedloaders to speed strips, and doing a full reload from a speed strip to loading two rounds only. We also traded guns around, to give each shooter a chance to try drawing a second gun rather than reloading. This was one of the few times during the day I actually worked out of my pocket holster on the left side. Even from a pocket holster, drawing a second gun is definitely quickest, about on a par with reloading a semi-automatic. If possible, the New York reload is definitely the way to go.
Randy also introduced after action drills. Most of it was the usual SI stuff (assess the target, look for other bad guys down range, sul scan, reload, check for injury). One interesting variation he described was using the #2 position in the drawstroke (with the gun held in the primary hand only, up against the pectoral muscle, pointed about 45 degrees downward) instead of sul. This allows you to keep the off hand free to block with in case you turn around to find a fist or knife coming at you. This does seem to have it's merits, but between previous SI classes and shooting with the Utah Polite Society, sul is pretty ingrained for me so that's what I used for most of the class.
We broke for a late lunch and everyone drove over to a local eatery for some food.
Afternoon
After lunch, we got to the meat of a CRG type course, getting off the X, live fire, in every direction. We started out working the forward diagonals, to the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock directions. I've done this before, so I didn't have much trouble with the moving and shooting. However, Randy wanted us to follow each burst of 2-4 rounds to the body with a round or two to the head. I really struggled with the headshots, particularly when going to the left and shooting one handed. I hadn't been using my laser for most of the day, but I turned it back on now. It helped a little bit (the day was cloudy enough to make it visible) but most of my trouble seemed to be trigger pull related. I definitely need some more practice with this gun.
Once everyone was comfortable with moving to 2 and 10, we worked the other directions, starting with 3 and 9 o'clock, then the rear diagonals, 5 and 7 o'clock. The 3 and 9 weren't too difficult, but I found moving to the 5 and 7 while firing the snubby considerably harder than doing the same thing with a Glock. The combination of a smaller gun and heavier trigger pull makes it much more challenging. To finish up the GOTX portion of the class, we did a bit of movement directly away from the target, to the 6 o'clock.
We also did some work with multiple attackers. Moving off to the right, we practiced transitioning from the closer attacker to another. This is where the j-frame's limited ammo capacity becomes an obvious shortcoming. Given how badly pistol bullets suck, five rounds to distribute among two attackers just isn't that confidence inspiring. We didn't even try to do anything with three targets.
Next Randy demonstrated how to reload a revolver one-handed. This is quite an exercise, starting with squirming your hand around to simultaneously slide the cylinder release forward and push the cylinder out (the fellow shooting the Ruger noted that this is an area where the pushbutton cylinder release is an advantage). If the chambers are fairly clean (which they weren't by this part of the class) the empty cases can be ejected by raising the muzzle, jerking the gun back, and bringing it to a sudden stop. If this doesn't work, it's time for some more finger squirming to get your hand far enough forward to hit the ejector and pound the butt of the gun into your leg. This will generally free all but the most recalcitrant case. Shove the barrel inside your waistband (a bit of a trick with the short barrel of the snub nose) retrieve a speedloader and load the gun, then close the cylinder against your body. This tortuous process generally seemed to take at least thirty seconds, not something you want to be doing in the middle of a gunfight. Of course, then Randy had us do this only using the left hand.
After we managed to get our guns back into action with only one hand, Randy brought out Ted, a falling steel target with plates representing the vitals in the chest and head underneath a person-shaped plastic shell. We got off the X at about five yards and tried to knock Ted down. This proved a bit challenging, because once you got far enough off the X the angle became oblique enough that even a solid hit would not necessarily knock the target down. Either a hit very early, or multiple hits in rapid succession were required. Some folks got off to one side or the other and shot more than ten rounds at it, including several hits, without knocking it down.
We moved back to about fifteen yards and did some long range shooting (fifteen yards definitely qualifies as "long range" with tiny, double action revolvers). At this distance, Ted was pretty difficult to knock down. I managed to get only one or two hits on the steel from each cylinder of ammo, but I'm pretty sure even my non-steel hits were probably hitting the plastic body of the target.
Conclusions
I probably fired more rounds through my j-frame in this class than I have since I bought it. I feel quite a bit more comfortable with it now, though some additional practice will definitely be required. In particular, I need to work on sooting it one-handed. Two handed, I could be relatively accurate, but with one hand my accuracy went completely to hell.
In hindsight, I kind of regret using the belt holster so much. Since I only carry this gun as a BUG in my left pocket, I really should have gone hardcore and shot the whole class left handed from the pocket holster.
From what work I did from the pocket, and watching others draw from there, it seemed like you could draw fairly quickly and effectively, even when getting off the X, if you started out with the hand on the gun. If you had to reach into the pocket and acquire a firing grip, it about doubled the time required and make it difficult to get off the X at the same time. Being able to have your hand on the gun without alerting others is an advantage to pocket carry, but it's also practically a necessity to deploy the gun quickly from the pocket.
Reloads are challenging with speedloaders, painfully slow with speed strips, and downright tortuous one-handed. On the other hand, the New York reload rocks! I am happy carrying my Glock, but if I were to go with just a j-frame, two of them are definitely the way to go.
This was a good class overall, I definitely got a lot out of it. If it had a shortcoming, it was probably the effort to serve both as a snubby class, and as an intro to the Suarez Close Range Gunfighting curriculum at the same time. The trigger time, even on the most basic CRG type drills was welcome, but some of the explanations of why to do these things were a bit redundant for me. I don't really need to be convinced of the virtues of getting off the X. Looking at it from the other side, those who hadn't had CRG before, I have to wonder if these explanations kind of got short shrift amid all the snubnose specific stuff. I think they probably got a solid intro to the basic CRG skills, but they probably could have used some more repetitions and more explanation of the whys and wherefores of getting off the X and after action drills in lieu of the snubby specific stuff. That being said, I can see why these two elements were combined. This was a very small class as it was, cutting out either element would have made the class even smaller (I probably wouldn't have come without the snubby stuff, for instance).
I think a snub nose specific class is a great idea for anyone who regularly carries a small revolver, whether as a primary gun, backup, or both. A snubby's characteristics are different enough from a medium to large autoloader that some gun-specific instruction is very useful. Randy Harris did an good job presenting the material and coaching students. I left this class wanting to train with him again, which was good because I was registered for the Extreme Close Range Gunfighting class starting the next day!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
One Strange Adventure
From the Perry City News:
Somewhere on a Perry Mountainside
Saturday 11-07-08 5:45PM
Perry Police and Box Elder County law enforcement responded
to a call of suspicious activity Saturday evening on the bench
above Perry and Willard.Perhaps a group of terrorist were training
in the area? Perry Police arrived at the base of Perry canyon
and set up a road block just as darkness fell.
Officers manning the road block must have become concerned
when half dozen trucks and SUVs crawled down the mountain
in the dark toward them. At some point more back up must
have been called. Fortunately for all concerned, a single
individual on a quad was 5 minutes ahead of the convoy of
suspect vehicles.
When officers stopped this armed individual the officers learned
that the group was conducting an advanced concealed weapons
class and was hosted by a local licensed concealed firearms
permit (CFP) instructor. The name of the group was the
“Utah Polite Society”. This must have been great relief to
the officers.
By the time the convoy reached the road block the officers were
all smiles, friendly and very cordial. As the back up officers
arrived the first officers were more involved in bringing up the
newly arriving law enforcement than worrying about 20 heavily
armed men in the trucks.
A female Box Elder Sheriff Officer took over as spokes person
for the law enforcement group and explained the call that had
come into dispatch. She apologized for the inconvenience and
explained that the group had done nothing wrong. She recorded
the CFP instructors name and released the group.
She recommended that if the group was to do this again, that
someone call into Sheriff’s dispatch to let them know what
going on and avoid suspicion. Some of the officers commented
that the group lived up to the name “Utah Polite Society”.
All officers conducted themselves in a professional,
courteous and proper manner.
The CFP instructor feels this was a very positive encounter for
all parties involved and a great wrap up for the day. The instructor
feels that to avoid being mistaken as a terrorist cell this activity
should be done at a range.
This is another example why it is necessary for the Box Elder County
Commissioners to take some steps to establish a practice firing range
for its citizens.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Point Shooting Progressions Class Scheduled
Working with Suarez International and directly with SI Staff Instructor, Roger Phillips, we are pleased to announce four days of Point Shooting Progressions Training in June 2010. Two classes are offered back to back: Point Shooting Progressions (PSP) June 10-11 followed by Advanced Point Shooting Progressions (APSP) June 12-13.
The Suarez website describes Roger Phillips and PSP this way:
Both classes will be held at the typical UPS venue, Hendriksen PMMA Range at exit 134 I-80, east of Salt Lake.
As mentioned in a previous post, more training from Suarez International is on the horizon; we will keep you posted as the details are finalized.
The Suarez website describes Roger Phillips and PSP this way:
Roger began his journey in pistolcraft, as many of us did, in the world of the Modern Technique. But early on, he learned the lessons taught in the crucible of force on force. Specifically with the issues of movement while shooting. Roger continued his study of movement, but also looked deeply into the “secret science” of point shooting.
He sought out and trained with just about every living notable proponent of point shooting. But unlike many others who consider themselves “point shooters” Roger realized, partly from his Modern Technique background with proactive shooting, and partly from his exposure to force on force, that it was not an "all or nothing" situation. He realized that at times one needed to point shoot while looking directly at the adversary. Other times, nothing but a perfectly sighted shot would suffice. He developed a very eclectic system that incorporates both systems, sighted fire and point shooting, to accomplish the mission, which simply put is “shoot without being shot”.
That system was discussed, developed and worked on at our internet forum Warrior Talk. Eventually it morphed into the series of classes that Roger teaches via Suarez International.
From Rogers' website, APSP is described as:
This course picks up where the original Point Shooting Progressions course left off. This course will require one of the handgun PSP course as a prerequisite (PSP, PSP/FAN, PSP/FOF.) This will give us a student base that does not require any of the point shooting fundamentals. We will pick up the skills that you already own and push them as far as we can go. Speed, draw stroke, movement, and accuracy will be the main focus. Same building block approach, drill after drill pushing the limitations as far as we can possibly push them. Think PSP on steroids!
These classes can be taken together or separately, but please note for APSP you'll need to have taken PSP prior to it. You can register for PSP at the Suarez website as well as APSP. If you bundle the two together, Suarez provides a $100.00 price break.
Both classes will be held at the typical UPS venue, Hendriksen PMMA Range at exit 134 I-80, east of Salt Lake.
As mentioned in a previous post, more training from Suarez International is on the horizon; we will keep you posted as the details are finalized.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Less Than Optimal
I was listening to the podcast Michael Bane posted last week, and he touched on a topic that intrigued me. He talked about how most of our training and almost all of our match shooting is done in near optimal conditions, but that most self defense situations happen in much less than optimal – for us – situations.
He started off by talking about an Olympic runner he had interviewed years ago who had just come off a long distance training run. She wasn’t feeling well because it was her time of month, but she had trained anyway. When Michael asked her why, she replied they wouldn’t put the Olympics on hold because she wasn’t at the top of her game. She commented that she would need to be ready to compete regardless of how she felt that day, so she needed to train to be able to perform at the top of her game, even when she wasn’t feeling her best. In other words, when conditions were less than optimal for her.
Similarly, if we find ourselves in a circumstance where we have to defend ourselves or our loved ones, we won’t have the option of saying, “not now, I’m not feeling all that well today.” An attacker isn’t going to put his attack on hold just because you’re not feeling as up to defending yourself as you would like to be. On the contrary, he’ll probably be more than happy that you're not as up to the task as you could be. In fact, he’ll probably do everything he can to gain advantage for himself and ensure your circumstances are as far from optimal as he can manage. He'll try to make things optimal for him while making them less than optimal for you.
To make this even worse, many of us may not equip ourselves as well as we should and, as Michael said, most of us do most of our training in near optimal conditions…if we train at all.
If we train at all. Think about this statement for a bit. The extent to which most CCW holders train is to punch a few holes in a bull’s-eye targets at the local indoor range or bounce a few tin cans around when they’re out in the boonies. This isn’t very practical training for self defense because it doesn’t put them under stress or exercise most of the skills they’ll need in a real defensive situation. And many don't even do this minimal amount of training.
Even those of us who do engage in “practical” training, usually do it on bright, sunshiny days when we're not feeling like something the dog dragged in, when we know exactly what the “start signal” is, know exactly what we’re supposed to do, and know how we're going to be scored or evaluated. We’re also geared up with just the right gun, holster, magazine pouch, spare magazines, and other gear needed for the training drill. In other words, we’re primed and ready to go. Pretty much as close to optimal as you’re going to get outside a video game.
Contrast this with a trip to the local Seven-Eleven to get a jug of milk when you’re dressed in shorts and flip flops, and you’re drowsy because your wife just woke you up from dozing in front of the TV. It’s dark outside because you put off going to the store until just before it’s time to go to bed, and your only armament is the five-shot .38 revolver you dropped in your pocket before running out the door. Are you in the best circumstance to fend off an attack? Probably not.
In addition to not being physically at your best, you’ve also put yourself at a distinct disadvantage because of how you’re equipped. How often do you train while wearing flop flops and carrying only a five-shot revolver with no reloads? Did you remember to bring that wiz-bang tactical flashlight you train with, or is it sitting at home in your range bag? Have you equipped yourself “optimally” to meet an attack? Probably not.
So, what can you do to help remedy this situation? Well, first off, you could probably equip yourself a little bit better before leaving the house. I’m not really going to get into that here, because that’s fodder for another article (stay tuned). However, you can train with what you actually do equip yourself with for these kinds of situations. If you carry that little five-shot revolver, train with it.
Ok, so let’s talk about training. It would seem to me the first thing we need to do is identify the situations you may find yourself in that may be less than optimal. In training, we may not be able to simulate feeling physically ill very well, but we can do things like train from awkward positions, train while our dominant arm is disabled, train without prescription glasses (for those of us who wear them), train with the dominant eye covered, train in low light situations, train while simulating equipment malfunctions, and a number of other variations that could put us in less than optimal circumstances.
So, specifically what actions do we need to be able to perform in less than optimal circumstances? In Michael Bane’s podcast he talks about this in the context of cave diving. He talks about identifying the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in any circumstances in order to survive. In the context of a deadly force encounter, it’s very much the same thing. So, what is the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in a self defense situation? If we’re going to employ a gun as a major part of our self defense system, we should be able to deploy it from wherever it’s carried in an expeditious fashion. We should be able to bring it to bear on the threat and accurately place multiple shots where we want them very quickly. We should be able to do both of these things from awkward positions, with either hand, using either eye, and without corrective lenses, we should be able to do this both in daylight and when it’s dark. Is this all we need to be able to do? No! What if the gun malfunctions or if you cannot use it at all. Do you have plan B? Do you have the things with you you’ll need in order to execute plan B? Do you have the skill sets you’ll need to make plan B work? Have you practiced plan B to see if it will work?
Do I have the answers to all the questions this issue brings to mind? No, I don’t even know what all the questions should be at this point, but I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit since listening to Michael’s podcast last week. If you carry a gun for self defense, you probably should be thinking about it too. We’re going to be addressing some of this at the Utah Polite Society events over the next few months. If you’d like to help with this, come join us. Our events are held the first Saturday of each month and start at 8:30 in the morning at Hendricksen Range in Parleys Canyon east of Salt Lake City.
He started off by talking about an Olympic runner he had interviewed years ago who had just come off a long distance training run. She wasn’t feeling well because it was her time of month, but she had trained anyway. When Michael asked her why, she replied they wouldn’t put the Olympics on hold because she wasn’t at the top of her game. She commented that she would need to be ready to compete regardless of how she felt that day, so she needed to train to be able to perform at the top of her game, even when she wasn’t feeling her best. In other words, when conditions were less than optimal for her.
Similarly, if we find ourselves in a circumstance where we have to defend ourselves or our loved ones, we won’t have the option of saying, “not now, I’m not feeling all that well today.” An attacker isn’t going to put his attack on hold just because you’re not feeling as up to defending yourself as you would like to be. On the contrary, he’ll probably be more than happy that you're not as up to the task as you could be. In fact, he’ll probably do everything he can to gain advantage for himself and ensure your circumstances are as far from optimal as he can manage. He'll try to make things optimal for him while making them less than optimal for you.
To make this even worse, many of us may not equip ourselves as well as we should and, as Michael said, most of us do most of our training in near optimal conditions…if we train at all.
If we train at all. Think about this statement for a bit. The extent to which most CCW holders train is to punch a few holes in a bull’s-eye targets at the local indoor range or bounce a few tin cans around when they’re out in the boonies. This isn’t very practical training for self defense because it doesn’t put them under stress or exercise most of the skills they’ll need in a real defensive situation. And many don't even do this minimal amount of training.
Even those of us who do engage in “practical” training, usually do it on bright, sunshiny days when we're not feeling like something the dog dragged in, when we know exactly what the “start signal” is, know exactly what we’re supposed to do, and know how we're going to be scored or evaluated. We’re also geared up with just the right gun, holster, magazine pouch, spare magazines, and other gear needed for the training drill. In other words, we’re primed and ready to go. Pretty much as close to optimal as you’re going to get outside a video game.
Contrast this with a trip to the local Seven-Eleven to get a jug of milk when you’re dressed in shorts and flip flops, and you’re drowsy because your wife just woke you up from dozing in front of the TV. It’s dark outside because you put off going to the store until just before it’s time to go to bed, and your only armament is the five-shot .38 revolver you dropped in your pocket before running out the door. Are you in the best circumstance to fend off an attack? Probably not.
In addition to not being physically at your best, you’ve also put yourself at a distinct disadvantage because of how you’re equipped. How often do you train while wearing flop flops and carrying only a five-shot revolver with no reloads? Did you remember to bring that wiz-bang tactical flashlight you train with, or is it sitting at home in your range bag? Have you equipped yourself “optimally” to meet an attack? Probably not.
So, what can you do to help remedy this situation? Well, first off, you could probably equip yourself a little bit better before leaving the house. I’m not really going to get into that here, because that’s fodder for another article (stay tuned). However, you can train with what you actually do equip yourself with for these kinds of situations. If you carry that little five-shot revolver, train with it.
Ok, so let’s talk about training. It would seem to me the first thing we need to do is identify the situations you may find yourself in that may be less than optimal. In training, we may not be able to simulate feeling physically ill very well, but we can do things like train from awkward positions, train while our dominant arm is disabled, train without prescription glasses (for those of us who wear them), train with the dominant eye covered, train in low light situations, train while simulating equipment malfunctions, and a number of other variations that could put us in less than optimal circumstances.
So, specifically what actions do we need to be able to perform in less than optimal circumstances? In Michael Bane’s podcast he talks about this in the context of cave diving. He talks about identifying the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in any circumstances in order to survive. In the context of a deadly force encounter, it’s very much the same thing. So, what is the core set of actions we need to be able to perform in a self defense situation? If we’re going to employ a gun as a major part of our self defense system, we should be able to deploy it from wherever it’s carried in an expeditious fashion. We should be able to bring it to bear on the threat and accurately place multiple shots where we want them very quickly. We should be able to do both of these things from awkward positions, with either hand, using either eye, and without corrective lenses, we should be able to do this both in daylight and when it’s dark. Is this all we need to be able to do? No! What if the gun malfunctions or if you cannot use it at all. Do you have plan B? Do you have the things with you you’ll need in order to execute plan B? Do you have the skill sets you’ll need to make plan B work? Have you practiced plan B to see if it will work?
Do I have the answers to all the questions this issue brings to mind? No, I don’t even know what all the questions should be at this point, but I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit since listening to Michael’s podcast last week. If you carry a gun for self defense, you probably should be thinking about it too. We’re going to be addressing some of this at the Utah Polite Society events over the next few months. If you’d like to help with this, come join us. Our events are held the first Saturday of each month and start at 8:30 in the morning at Hendricksen Range in Parleys Canyon east of Salt Lake City.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Upcoming Training
Over the summer UPS has provided Monday Evening training sessions that have proved to be quite popular. The curriculum covered basic stance, draw stroke, reloads, trigger control and sight picture. As folks returned week after week, additional, more advance topics were covered like shooting on the move and multiple threats.
As described in an earlier blog post by Blackeagle, UPS sponsored a Close Range Rifle class with Gabe Suarez of Suarez International . In addition to the rifle class, UPS hosted a Force on Force class where participants used air soft pistols in a variety of settings exchanging shots as both good guys and not-so-good guys. The scars on my arms are now finally beginning to fade...
These two classes were very well attended, and UPS has been working closely with Gabe and a few of his staff instructors on scheduling more classes for 2010. At this time things are still in the works, but we are trying to get a Suarez class for each quarter of the year. Topics discussed so far run the full gambit of the Suarez course catalog including an edged weapon class and the specialty course called Point Shooting Progressions (PSP) .
We have penciled in four days of instruction for PSP; the first two days will be the standard PSP course, followed by the Advanced PSP. The first class is a prerequisite for the second. You can expect a lot of trigger time, movement, and dynamic fighting scenarios in this class. It is not a beginning firearms class by any stretch of the imagination. We are very excited to have Roger Phillips come to the Salt Lake area for this class.
As classes and dates become finalized, we will keep you updated.
As described in an earlier blog post by Blackeagle, UPS sponsored a Close Range Rifle class with Gabe Suarez of Suarez International . In addition to the rifle class, UPS hosted a Force on Force class where participants used air soft pistols in a variety of settings exchanging shots as both good guys and not-so-good guys. The scars on my arms are now finally beginning to fade...
These two classes were very well attended, and UPS has been working closely with Gabe and a few of his staff instructors on scheduling more classes for 2010. At this time things are still in the works, but we are trying to get a Suarez class for each quarter of the year. Topics discussed so far run the full gambit of the Suarez course catalog including an edged weapon class and the specialty course called Point Shooting Progressions (PSP) .
We have penciled in four days of instruction for PSP; the first two days will be the standard PSP course, followed by the Advanced PSP. The first class is a prerequisite for the second. You can expect a lot of trigger time, movement, and dynamic fighting scenarios in this class. It is not a beginning firearms class by any stretch of the imagination. We are very excited to have Roger Phillips come to the Salt Lake area for this class.
As classes and dates become finalized, we will keep you updated.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Gabe Suarez's Close Range Rifle Gunfighting Class
At the beginning of August, the Utah Polite Society hosted a Close Range Rifle Gunfighting class from Gabe Suarez in Salt Lake City. Up until a year ago I lived in Salt Lake, so getting back to Utah and seeing by shooting buddies again turned this class into kind of an Old Home Week for me.
I took my first formal rifle class from John Farnam earlier this year. While it was a good class, and did a nice job teaching my how to run my rifle, it emphasized shooting from what I'd call medium range. The most common shooting distance was around the 40 yard line. For the situations where I might use a rifle for self-defense, it would quite likely be at a closer distance than that. A big part of the reason I decided to sign up for this class was to add to my bag of tricks at closer ranges.
Gabe hasn't taught many rifle classes under this name recently, instead concentrating on his Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting class. The AK class has generally the same content, but it obviously includes more AK specific stuff. Since then, ammo costs and availability problems have led Gabe to invite any sort of rifle to his AK classes. However, we still may have had a big more variety in arms than usual thanks to this class being advertised under the different name.
We'd last had Gabe out in Utah two years ago, in early May. That time around, it actually snowed on us during the class. This year, the weather was rather different. Highs were around 90 both days, though it was very dry, so sweat evaporated pretty quickly. Gabe told us a story about a student in one of his classes down in Prescott who didn't drink enough and ended up getting very dehydrated. It was one of those "funny only because nobody got seriously hurt" kind of things. Thankfully, everyone stayed pretty well hydrated in this class. Gabe was very good about giving fairly frequent breaks for people to drink and stuff mags. The first day, we went through two five gallon coolers of water and the second, we emptied the coolers, refilled them, then almost emptied them again. With a little over 20 guys in the class, that works out between half a gallon and a gallon of water per person per day (not to mention whatever water or sports drinks people brought on their own). Given the heat, this was not an unreasonable amount of water.
Equipment
I shot the class with my Robinson Armament XCR, along with my usual Glock 21. I also carried a j-frame in a pocket holster as a BUG, but I was just carrying it on general principles, rather than for use during the class (I didn't even bother to swap it over to practice ammo). Because I had to fly across the country to this class, I didn't bring along a second rifle or service pistol.
I've been playing around with the configuration of my XCR. I've got it set up with an Aimpoint Micro, a flashlight, and a forward vertical grip. The grip has been slowly migrating backwards as I've switched from a "broomhandle" grip on it to mainly grabbing the rifle's fore end and just wrapping my last 1 or 2 fingers around it. As part of these changes, I switched from a Streamlight mount that held the flashlight quite far to the side to a Surefire G2 in a Viking Tactics mount that put it much close in at about 11 o'clock. Unfortunately, after the first string of fire in the class I found this wasn't working very well for me. The flashlight mount was right near where I wanted my thumb to be. During the next break I stripped it off the side rail and reinstalled it on the bottom rail, putting the light at about 8 o'clock. This also involved moving the vertical grip back half an inch and relocating the sling mount. This worked far better from a shooting perspective, though I haven't had a chance to try out the light at night. The other change since my last rifle class was to exchange the flip-up front sight for a fixed one. I'd been running the front sight up all the time, so it made sense to use a more rugged fixed unit. As usual, I ran PMAGs in my rifle and carried them in a sneakybag.
The majority of the 20 guys in the class were running AKs of some description, but there was a substantial minority of ARs and a few oddballs. Two folks with big ammo budgets were shooting an M1A and a FAL SBR. One fellow from California was using a Kel-Tec SU-16. Most of the rifles were iron sighted, but a fair number had sights of some sort. Most of these were zero magnification red dots (with the Aimpoint Micro being by far the most common), but there was also an ACOG and a conventional 1-4 variable scope. The class seemed to be split about half and half between sneakybags of one description or another and more tactical gear (chest rigs, subloads).
Day 1
When the class started on Saturday, the first thing we did was cover reloading. Gabe teaches muzzle up reloading. This gets the rifle up in front of your face, minimizing the tendency to take your eyes off the battlefield while looking down at your gun. It also provides a better angle for getting the magazine into the weapon, particularly for the folks with with an AK, M1A, or FAL where the magazine rocks into place. Gabe teaches a simple 'tactical' reload (always retaining the magazine). He disagrees with using a speed reload for rifles, both because you may need those magazines later (particularly during a situation like the LA riots or Katrina) and because with a rifle, transitioning to pistol (at close range) or seeking cover to reload behind (at longer ranges) is probably a more appropriate response to an empty gun than even the fastest of reloads.
Gabe also talked to us about ready positions. He really doesn't have much use for the traditional "low ready" position, regarding it as more of a range technique than something that's really useful in a fight. It leaves the rifle with quite a ways to move to bring it to bear on an opponent, yet it lacks the advantages (compactness, relaxation, rapid movement) of the other ready positions that leave the rifle far from bearing on the opponent. Instead he teaches a set of five positions: contact ready, close contact ready, sul, port arms, and patrol ready.
Contact ready is simply an offhand shooting position, with the rifle lowered just slightly (only a few inches, versus the 45 degrees or so of traditional low ready) to give a good view over the sights. Contact ready is for confronting assailants, taking corners, or any other situation where you have an identifiable danger you want to be able to shoot very quickly. Close contact ready, also known as underarm assault, has the rifle pointed at the assailant with the butt tucked under the armpit. This can be a firing position or a ready position. It fills the same role as contact ready in tighter quarters. Sul positions the rifle in front of the chest and stomach, pointed straight down. It can be used in very close quarters, in crowds of non-threats, and for scanning behind you at the conclusion of a fight. Port arms, with the rifle held toward the support side, pointed up at a 45 degree angle, is useful for rapid movement, when getting to the destination is more important than shooting, such as getting out of dodge, or moving to a moderately distant piece of cover. An alternative is to hold the rifle in one hand by the pistol grip pointed straight up. Patrol ready, also known as Rhodesian ready, has the rifle held across the body pointed down at a 45 degree angle. This is one of the more difficult position to bring the rifle to bear from, but it's also the most relaxed. If you are going to spend a long time with a rifle in your hands, sooner or later it will probably end up in some variation of patrol ready. Gabe mentioned that because of this, he does most of his practice bringing the rifle into action from patrol ready.
In addition to ready positions, Gabe also covered various administrative carry positions, such as carrying at the balance (usually just in front of the magazine on most rifles) and cradling the rifle in the crook of the arm. For sling carry, he likes a simple support side, muzzle down or "African carry". This keeps the rifle from hanging up on your pistol and allows it to be brought into action fairly quickly. Almost everyone in the class was using a 2-point sling. Gabe is not a big fan of the three point sling, and only likes one point slings in certain specialized situations. He really doesn't like slings that tie you to the rifle. To illustrate why, he told a pretty memorable story involving a huge muscular drug dealer grabbing a MP5 attached to a SWAT team member by a three point sling and throwing him around like a rag doll.
Gabe laid out the four common rifles being used by students in the class, the FAL, M1A, AR, and AK. We had a fairly extensive discussion about the pros and cons of each. Gabe's love for the AK is well known, but he gave a fairly balanced appraisal of each rifle. As he put it, the AK is not as inaccurate as its reputation, and the AR is not as unreliable as its reputation.
The next exercise was to confirm the zero on our rifles. We didn't go through the full zeroing process, since that can be quite time consuming for a large group. In any case, this class is called "Close Range Rifle Gunfighting" for a reason. We didn't take a single shot beyond 25 yards (though some of the 25 yard shots were headshots). A perfect bench rest zero wasn't really required for any of the shooting we did, so we just confirmed the rifles were generally shooting where we wanted them. My Aimpoint and LaRue mount combo held up well, and shot where I wanted them too despite the tender loving care displayed by the airport baggage handlers.
We took a break for lunch, which was catered by the range manager's wife and her sister. They dealt out a fine array of burgers, chicken sandwiches, and other assorted fare.
After lunch, we started in ernest with the shooting exercises, beginning with some snap shooting practice. Gabe distinguished snap shooting, which involves mounting the rifle and getting a sight picture, from some of the CQB techniques introduced later that don't involve getting a traditional sight picture. The amount of time to make a snap shot varies depending on the distance and size of the target. After a demonstration from Gabe, we did some snap shooting at 15 and 25 yards.
Next we moved up to CQB distances for the first time and shot at about 5 yards. At this distance, you don't need even a rough sight picture to get good hits. Gabe explained the "Caveman EOTech" technique, shouldering the rifle and superimposing the front sight on the target without using the rear sight. This can provide very fast torso hits out to 7-10 yards. It works particularly well for rifles with tall front sight towers like the AK and AR. However, it is not particularly well suited for a rifle like mine. I have my Aimpoint mounted as far forward as it will go, just behind the front sight. The LaRue mount blocks my view of the front sight tower, except for the sight itself, which sticks up in the bottom portion of the scope. This is great for getting the sight out of my face and providing visibility, but not so good for the Caveman EOTech. Instead, Gabe advised me to turn off the red dot and just shoot through the tube. I did this and found my group was significantly off to the left. This was a bit odd, since I'd tried shooting Caveman EOTech with my new AK and was able to place all the rounds right around the center of the target. After thinking about it a bit, I decided that it was probably because while I wasn't looking through the rear sight of my AK, it was still in my peripheral vision for me to use for reference centering my eye on the stock. On my XCR, on the other hand, I had been running my rear BUIS flipped down, leaving me without a reference. Sure enough, I flipped up the rear sight and looked over it for the next exercise and the group moved over to the center of the target. This has me thinking about going with a fixed rear BUIS instead of the flip up one.
Once everyone had a chance to get comfortable with the Caveman EOTech, we moved on to shoulder transfers. As Gabe pointed out, the world is not right handed and we may need to shoot while moving to the left or around the left side of a piece of cover. Lefties, in turn, need to be able to shoot right handed. This means we need to not only be able to shoot from the opposite shoulder, but to transfer the rifle back and forth. The technique Gabe taught involves bringing the hand back to the magazine (if it isn't already there) moving the rifle to the opposite shoulder, then switching the primary hand to the forend and the support hand to the pistol grip. If necessary, the rifle can be fired halfway through the process, with the stock on the opposite shoulder, but before the hands have switched position (a partial transfer). Gabe demonstrated this, then gave us a chance to try it dry before doing it live. We ran a continuous drill, starting with a shot from the primary shoulder, a partial transfer followed by another shot, switching hands for a full transfer and firing again, then doing a partial transfer back to the primary shoulder and firing again. Switching hands back to a conventional strong side firing position finishes the cycle. It's basically the same as the introduction to the Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighitng DVD, though none of use were as smooth or fast as Gabe is there. I'd practiced shoulder transfers quite a bit before the class, so I did pretty well, but I noticed some folks fumbling around a bit trying to move the rifle back and forth.
After giving everyone a chance to try out the shoulder transfers, we started applying them with the pacing drill. This was our introduction to getting off the X with a rifle. We started out in front of our targets, faced to the right, and took three steps forward shooting from the right shoulder. We then turned around, transferring the rifle to the left shoulder as we did so to keep it pointed downrange, and took three steps to the left, firing from the left shoulder. After turning around and transferring, we started the cycle over again. After a few iterations of this Gabe asked us to switch to firing bursts of 3-5 rounds from our rifles and following up with a headshot. Most fighting rifles have big mags, so there's not much reason to be stingy with ammunition.
With the basic pacing drill down, we added in some post-fight drills. First, asses the target, "Did I hit him? Did it work?" This is followed up by a side to side scan. One neat trick Gabe showed is that if you lower your chin a bit but keep your eyes level, you can increase your peripheral vision by quite a bit. This is followed up by turning around and scanning to the rear in position Sul. One thing Gabe mentioned is the importance of not simply swinging around 180 degrees, but turning a bit more slowly, and keeping the gun from view until you have some idea what's behind you. If there is, say, a police officer coming to investigate the gunfire, this may keep you from getting shot. If you do see a police officer, it's time to drop the rifle and show your hands (one more reason not to use a sling that ties you to the rifle). Once you're sure there are no immediate threats, it's time to reload the rifle. The last post-fight step is to asses yourself for any injuries, since adrenaline can keep you from realizing that you got shot.
During these last drills we had one rifle go down with trigger problems. Gabe mentioned that match triggers tend to be a lot more finicky and less reliable than the standard triggers in military rifles.
Day 2
We started out the second day with pistol transitions. When following Gabe's advice not to tie yourself to the rifle with your sling, you need a method for quickly slinging the rifle when it's time to get the pistol into action. Gabe's preferred method is basically to toss the rifle over the head and shoulder so it can drop and hang diagonally across the back. As a teaching method, he had us start buy thrusting our support hand out under the forend, sliding the rifle down the arm, then dropping it once it cleared the head. With more practice, this can become a single, fluid tossing motion. We practiced this dry for a fair bit, first while standing still, then on the move. This method works well when the rifle is on the primary shoulder, but when shooting from the support side shoulder, doing this kind of transition tends to drop the rifle so the sling falls right across a pistol on your hip (the reverse is true for people who usually shoot pistol and rifle on opposite sides, as many who are cross dominant do). In this case, the primary hand moves from the forend to the bottom of the magazine and rotates the rifle so that the muzzle is pointing towards the support side. Form this position the support arm can be thrust through the sling and the rest of the transition accomplished as normal.
After working the pistol transitions for a while, we worked on getting off the X when faced with threats at the 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions. When faced with threats to the support side (or behind you when you turn to the support side), this is fairly simple, just mount the gun and move. Threats on the primary side require mounting the gun to the opposite shoulder, which is a bit more difficult. Gabe demonstrated a "golf swing" technique for doing this. From patrol ready or Sul, you swing the rifle up towards the threat while switching hands. I had shoulder transitions while facing the target down pretty well before coming, but this one messed me up a bit. It's a bit tricky to swap hands as the rifle is coming up like this, and I fumbled around some when I was doing it. This one is definitely going to take some dry practice to get comfortable with.
This exercise also saw our only ND of the class. One of the students fired his rifle as it was coming up, blowing a half-dollar sized divot in the concrete about a yard from his feet. The rifle involved was another one with a light match trigger on it, and this might not have happened with a standard military trigger.
We moved on to some position shooting, starting with kneeling. Gabe demonstrated and talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the position. He also demonstrated how to address threats from the sides and rear when in a kneeling position. We did some dry practice in getting into and out of kneeling positions, switching shoulders while kneeling, as well as adjusting our position and hold on the rifle to engage higher or lower targets. We did some shooting from kneeling, including shooting from both shoulders. For kneeling, and all the supported shooting positions, Gabe asked us to do headshots at 25 yards (which frankly isn't all that difficult against static targets from a supported position). He also had us reload while in position between strings of fire, to get us used to realoading in some of these other positions.
While shooting kneeling, I managed to crack one of my PMAGs. I'd loaded it with 31 rounds instead of 30, and was trying to seat it in my rifle. I pounded on it pretty good before realizing the problem and stripping out a round and seating it. Later I found out I'd cracked the back of the mag for about an inch up near the top. It still fed fine in the rifle for the rest of the drill though.
Before moving on to the other shooting positions we broke for lunch. Today the range manager's wife and sister-in-law prepared pulled pork for everybody, which was really quite delicious.
After lunch, we moved on to the squatting position. Again, Gabe demonstrated it before we practiced getting into and out of it dry. We shot it from both shoulders, with reloads in between. I didn't find squatting as comfortable as kneeling, but it is very quick to get in and out of.
The next position was sitting. As Gabe explained, this is more of a long term position. It's very comfortable, even for relatively long periods of time, but takes longer to get into or out of. He demonstrated cross-legged sitting (indian style), sitting with the legs crossed out in front, and sitting with the legs splayed out. He also showed us a neat trick when sitting cross legged. When he was a SWAT sniper, he used to stick something (extra magazines, small sandbags) between the thighs and feet to make the position a bit more comfortable when sitting for a long while. When we were shooting, I found that in addition to being very steady, the rifle also tended to drop right back on target, permitting more rapid fire. In the previous positions or shooting offhand, there was more of a need to drive the sights back to the target, instead of them dropping back on their own. This tendency to drop back onto the target was also true of prone.
Our final shooting position was prone. This was a bit interesting, since the ground had grown pretty hot by this time of day. I had long pants and elbow pads on, so I didn't actually have any bare skin in contact with the ground, but even through clothing it was pretty warm. Gabe demonstrated both a conventional prone, and using the magazine as a monopod. He also mentioned a neat trick for those of us carrying our ammo in Sneakybags. When going prone, it's possible to swing the bag out ahead so that it's within easy reach for reloading while we're there on the ground. While shooting this exercise I suffered a pretty badly stuck case, no amount of racking would dislodge it. I got off the line and borrowed a friend's cleaning rod to pound the case out. A bit of pounding eventually dislodged it enough to get it under the extractor, but now I couldn't pull the charging handle back. Finally I ended up applying a boot to the charging handle which sent the case flying right out. I'd shot quite a bit of Wolf ammo in the gun since last doing a good cleaning with a chamber brush, and I think that's what prompted this: a hot, gunky chamber latching onto a case.
The last two exercises of the day involved some team tactics work. Gabe has an entire class on this, so these exercises were only an introduction. Gabe talked a bit about team tactics and bounding drills in general, as well as the importance of communication:
"Moving" - I'm about to move, could you give me some cover fire?
"Covering" - I'm giving you cover fire, go ahead and move.
"Set" - I'm done moving and providing fire.
"Checking" - Something's wrong with my gun (malfunction, out of ammo, etc.) please provide cover fire.
He also stressed the importance of redundant communication paths, based not just on what each person is saying, but also by what they're doing and what you're seeing.
The first team drill involved the class forming up into two lines. The front person in each line was to fire at the target, then roll to the outside and move to the back of the line. The whole line steps up and the next person in line starts firing. This isn't a very realistic drill, but it gets people used to safely handling weapons and shooting in close proximity to other people. We did the drill with all rifles pointed straight up unless we were firing, so as not to muzzle sweep anyone. Gabe had us do it dry quite a few times before trying it live fire. We did the drill live twice.
After shooting this drill we took a break and Gabe talked a bit about muzzle devices. He supervised the drill by standing between the two lines up at the front and looking back to make sure everyone kept their rifles pointed in a safe direction. This put him right in the best place to get hit with the sound and pressure from muzzle brakes. He said that one of the ARs with a particular muzzle brake on it was just as loud to him as the short-barreled FAL (having stood behind and to the right of the AR during previous strings of fire, I experienced this first hand). In addition to trying to deafen the trainer during this drill, muzzle brakes tend to increase the visual and auditory signature, which is generally undesirable in a fighting rifle. Gabe really feels a flash hider of some sort is a far better choice than any sort of muzzle brake on a fighting rifle.
Speaking of muzzle devices, one of the shooters switched to a suppressed AK on the second day. He had some accruacy problems earlier in the day and during the first team tactics drill some of his rounds were keyholing at under 7 yards. Afterwards, we saw that the end of his his suppressor was oddly bulged around one side of the muzzle. The suppressor was rated for .308 rounds. However, despite sharing the same metric designation, 7.62x39mm bullets are actually slightly greater in diameter than the 7.62x51 (about .310 in diameter). This minor difference may have damaged the silencer.
The last drill of the class was another team tactics exercise. This one involved pairs of shooter. The first shooter would begin putting fire on the first in a long line of targets while the other moved behind him and took up a position further down the line (using the "Moving", "Covering", "Set" commands described above). The pair leapfrogged down the line like this until they reached the end (about 3 bounds per person). The execution of this drill varied pretty widely, with some folks having a pretty good run, and others failing to communicate and ending up with both guns out of ammo at the same time. Some folks had to transition to pistols to keep fire up. I was partnered with Harold Green on this one and our first run was pretty good, though I could have used another preemptive reload in there. The second didn't work out so well. Towards the end I started having failures to fire and he ran out of ammo. Gabe mercifully called our run to an end.
I didn't figure out exactly what was wrong with my rifle until later. One of the bolts holding the ejector in had backed out and fallen down into the firing mechanism, first intermittently causing the hammer to fail to fall as it bounced around in there and eventually wedging itself into the action making it impossible to move the trigger or engage the safety. This is a known problem with XCRs, and some owners preemptively pulled the bolts out and re-loctited them. I left them alone under the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" principle. They'll both get loctited now.
This drill also so the only really bad instance of lack of muzzle discipline in the class. One shooter transitioned to pistol, but accidentally ejected his magazine on the drawstroke. He fired a round into the target and Gabe called an end to the run. As he bent down to pick up the magazine, the muzzle of his pistol swung over towards the folks waiting their turn behind the firing line. He stopped when everyone standing back there started yelling at him. At the time I didn't know whether he'd fired the round in the chamber or not, so seeing the big black hole at the end of the muzzle swinging toward me was not a good feeling. He was very apologetic about it afterwards.
Conclusions
This was really a great class. The curriculum covered the basics of rifle fighting well, with a particular emphasis on close range confrontations most likely to come up in a civilian self-defense context. Gabe does things a bit differently than some other trainers. He did a good job of not only explaining the techniques, but explaining why he preferred a given technique rather than others that are commonly taught, allowing the student to consider the merits and reasoning behind an approach.
Close Range Rifle Gunfighting was taught at a somewhat more introductory level than Close Range Gunfighting, it's pistol equivalent. However, I was still glad to have some defensive rifle training under my belt. I think that having taken Farnam's rifle class, and particularly the large amount of dry fire practice I did afterwards really helped get me ready for this class.
The dry fire aspect brings up another point. Gabe really crams quite a bit into his classes, and to a certain extent this comes at the price of the number of repetitions. In order to really extract the maximum benefit from this class, you need to go home and practice this stuff, both dry fire and at the range. To a certain extent, this is true of all defensive firearms classes, but it is particularly so with Gabe's.
I only shot about 350 rounds of rifle ammo during the class, and not a single round of pistol ammo. This made it pretty economical from an ammo point of view (despite the cost of ammo recently). I was able to sell off the rest of the case I bought for the class to one of my friends in Salt Lake. The relatively low round count was mainly a product of Gabe's extensive incorporation of dry fire. We did almost every drill dry before shooting it live. Not only a good strategy for dealing with high ammo costs, I think getting everyone comfortable dry would be a pretty good way to go even if ammo costs weren't an issue.
I would highly recommend this class to anyone who's looking for a good, no BS introduction to the up-close and personal use of a rifle.
I took my first formal rifle class from John Farnam earlier this year. While it was a good class, and did a nice job teaching my how to run my rifle, it emphasized shooting from what I'd call medium range. The most common shooting distance was around the 40 yard line. For the situations where I might use a rifle for self-defense, it would quite likely be at a closer distance than that. A big part of the reason I decided to sign up for this class was to add to my bag of tricks at closer ranges.
Gabe hasn't taught many rifle classes under this name recently, instead concentrating on his Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting class. The AK class has generally the same content, but it obviously includes more AK specific stuff. Since then, ammo costs and availability problems have led Gabe to invite any sort of rifle to his AK classes. However, we still may have had a big more variety in arms than usual thanks to this class being advertised under the different name.
We'd last had Gabe out in Utah two years ago, in early May. That time around, it actually snowed on us during the class. This year, the weather was rather different. Highs were around 90 both days, though it was very dry, so sweat evaporated pretty quickly. Gabe told us a story about a student in one of his classes down in Prescott who didn't drink enough and ended up getting very dehydrated. It was one of those "funny only because nobody got seriously hurt" kind of things. Thankfully, everyone stayed pretty well hydrated in this class. Gabe was very good about giving fairly frequent breaks for people to drink and stuff mags. The first day, we went through two five gallon coolers of water and the second, we emptied the coolers, refilled them, then almost emptied them again. With a little over 20 guys in the class, that works out between half a gallon and a gallon of water per person per day (not to mention whatever water or sports drinks people brought on their own). Given the heat, this was not an unreasonable amount of water.
Equipment
I shot the class with my Robinson Armament XCR, along with my usual Glock 21. I also carried a j-frame in a pocket holster as a BUG, but I was just carrying it on general principles, rather than for use during the class (I didn't even bother to swap it over to practice ammo). Because I had to fly across the country to this class, I didn't bring along a second rifle or service pistol.
I've been playing around with the configuration of my XCR. I've got it set up with an Aimpoint Micro, a flashlight, and a forward vertical grip. The grip has been slowly migrating backwards as I've switched from a "broomhandle" grip on it to mainly grabbing the rifle's fore end and just wrapping my last 1 or 2 fingers around it. As part of these changes, I switched from a Streamlight mount that held the flashlight quite far to the side to a Surefire G2 in a Viking Tactics mount that put it much close in at about 11 o'clock. Unfortunately, after the first string of fire in the class I found this wasn't working very well for me. The flashlight mount was right near where I wanted my thumb to be. During the next break I stripped it off the side rail and reinstalled it on the bottom rail, putting the light at about 8 o'clock. This also involved moving the vertical grip back half an inch and relocating the sling mount. This worked far better from a shooting perspective, though I haven't had a chance to try out the light at night. The other change since my last rifle class was to exchange the flip-up front sight for a fixed one. I'd been running the front sight up all the time, so it made sense to use a more rugged fixed unit. As usual, I ran PMAGs in my rifle and carried them in a sneakybag.
The majority of the 20 guys in the class were running AKs of some description, but there was a substantial minority of ARs and a few oddballs. Two folks with big ammo budgets were shooting an M1A and a FAL SBR. One fellow from California was using a Kel-Tec SU-16. Most of the rifles were iron sighted, but a fair number had sights of some sort. Most of these were zero magnification red dots (with the Aimpoint Micro being by far the most common), but there was also an ACOG and a conventional 1-4 variable scope. The class seemed to be split about half and half between sneakybags of one description or another and more tactical gear (chest rigs, subloads).
Day 1
When the class started on Saturday, the first thing we did was cover reloading. Gabe teaches muzzle up reloading. This gets the rifle up in front of your face, minimizing the tendency to take your eyes off the battlefield while looking down at your gun. It also provides a better angle for getting the magazine into the weapon, particularly for the folks with with an AK, M1A, or FAL where the magazine rocks into place. Gabe teaches a simple 'tactical' reload (always retaining the magazine). He disagrees with using a speed reload for rifles, both because you may need those magazines later (particularly during a situation like the LA riots or Katrina) and because with a rifle, transitioning to pistol (at close range) or seeking cover to reload behind (at longer ranges) is probably a more appropriate response to an empty gun than even the fastest of reloads.
Gabe also talked to us about ready positions. He really doesn't have much use for the traditional "low ready" position, regarding it as more of a range technique than something that's really useful in a fight. It leaves the rifle with quite a ways to move to bring it to bear on an opponent, yet it lacks the advantages (compactness, relaxation, rapid movement) of the other ready positions that leave the rifle far from bearing on the opponent. Instead he teaches a set of five positions: contact ready, close contact ready, sul, port arms, and patrol ready.
Contact ready is simply an offhand shooting position, with the rifle lowered just slightly (only a few inches, versus the 45 degrees or so of traditional low ready) to give a good view over the sights. Contact ready is for confronting assailants, taking corners, or any other situation where you have an identifiable danger you want to be able to shoot very quickly. Close contact ready, also known as underarm assault, has the rifle pointed at the assailant with the butt tucked under the armpit. This can be a firing position or a ready position. It fills the same role as contact ready in tighter quarters. Sul positions the rifle in front of the chest and stomach, pointed straight down. It can be used in very close quarters, in crowds of non-threats, and for scanning behind you at the conclusion of a fight. Port arms, with the rifle held toward the support side, pointed up at a 45 degree angle, is useful for rapid movement, when getting to the destination is more important than shooting, such as getting out of dodge, or moving to a moderately distant piece of cover. An alternative is to hold the rifle in one hand by the pistol grip pointed straight up. Patrol ready, also known as Rhodesian ready, has the rifle held across the body pointed down at a 45 degree angle. This is one of the more difficult position to bring the rifle to bear from, but it's also the most relaxed. If you are going to spend a long time with a rifle in your hands, sooner or later it will probably end up in some variation of patrol ready. Gabe mentioned that because of this, he does most of his practice bringing the rifle into action from patrol ready.
In addition to ready positions, Gabe also covered various administrative carry positions, such as carrying at the balance (usually just in front of the magazine on most rifles) and cradling the rifle in the crook of the arm. For sling carry, he likes a simple support side, muzzle down or "African carry". This keeps the rifle from hanging up on your pistol and allows it to be brought into action fairly quickly. Almost everyone in the class was using a 2-point sling. Gabe is not a big fan of the three point sling, and only likes one point slings in certain specialized situations. He really doesn't like slings that tie you to the rifle. To illustrate why, he told a pretty memorable story involving a huge muscular drug dealer grabbing a MP5 attached to a SWAT team member by a three point sling and throwing him around like a rag doll.
Gabe laid out the four common rifles being used by students in the class, the FAL, M1A, AR, and AK. We had a fairly extensive discussion about the pros and cons of each. Gabe's love for the AK is well known, but he gave a fairly balanced appraisal of each rifle. As he put it, the AK is not as inaccurate as its reputation, and the AR is not as unreliable as its reputation.
The next exercise was to confirm the zero on our rifles. We didn't go through the full zeroing process, since that can be quite time consuming for a large group. In any case, this class is called "Close Range Rifle Gunfighting" for a reason. We didn't take a single shot beyond 25 yards (though some of the 25 yard shots were headshots). A perfect bench rest zero wasn't really required for any of the shooting we did, so we just confirmed the rifles were generally shooting where we wanted them. My Aimpoint and LaRue mount combo held up well, and shot where I wanted them too despite the tender loving care displayed by the airport baggage handlers.
We took a break for lunch, which was catered by the range manager's wife and her sister. They dealt out a fine array of burgers, chicken sandwiches, and other assorted fare.
After lunch, we started in ernest with the shooting exercises, beginning with some snap shooting practice. Gabe distinguished snap shooting, which involves mounting the rifle and getting a sight picture, from some of the CQB techniques introduced later that don't involve getting a traditional sight picture. The amount of time to make a snap shot varies depending on the distance and size of the target. After a demonstration from Gabe, we did some snap shooting at 15 and 25 yards.
Next we moved up to CQB distances for the first time and shot at about 5 yards. At this distance, you don't need even a rough sight picture to get good hits. Gabe explained the "Caveman EOTech" technique, shouldering the rifle and superimposing the front sight on the target without using the rear sight. This can provide very fast torso hits out to 7-10 yards. It works particularly well for rifles with tall front sight towers like the AK and AR. However, it is not particularly well suited for a rifle like mine. I have my Aimpoint mounted as far forward as it will go, just behind the front sight. The LaRue mount blocks my view of the front sight tower, except for the sight itself, which sticks up in the bottom portion of the scope. This is great for getting the sight out of my face and providing visibility, but not so good for the Caveman EOTech. Instead, Gabe advised me to turn off the red dot and just shoot through the tube. I did this and found my group was significantly off to the left. This was a bit odd, since I'd tried shooting Caveman EOTech with my new AK and was able to place all the rounds right around the center of the target. After thinking about it a bit, I decided that it was probably because while I wasn't looking through the rear sight of my AK, it was still in my peripheral vision for me to use for reference centering my eye on the stock. On my XCR, on the other hand, I had been running my rear BUIS flipped down, leaving me without a reference. Sure enough, I flipped up the rear sight and looked over it for the next exercise and the group moved over to the center of the target. This has me thinking about going with a fixed rear BUIS instead of the flip up one.
Once everyone had a chance to get comfortable with the Caveman EOTech, we moved on to shoulder transfers. As Gabe pointed out, the world is not right handed and we may need to shoot while moving to the left or around the left side of a piece of cover. Lefties, in turn, need to be able to shoot right handed. This means we need to not only be able to shoot from the opposite shoulder, but to transfer the rifle back and forth. The technique Gabe taught involves bringing the hand back to the magazine (if it isn't already there) moving the rifle to the opposite shoulder, then switching the primary hand to the forend and the support hand to the pistol grip. If necessary, the rifle can be fired halfway through the process, with the stock on the opposite shoulder, but before the hands have switched position (a partial transfer). Gabe demonstrated this, then gave us a chance to try it dry before doing it live. We ran a continuous drill, starting with a shot from the primary shoulder, a partial transfer followed by another shot, switching hands for a full transfer and firing again, then doing a partial transfer back to the primary shoulder and firing again. Switching hands back to a conventional strong side firing position finishes the cycle. It's basically the same as the introduction to the Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighitng DVD, though none of use were as smooth or fast as Gabe is there. I'd practiced shoulder transfers quite a bit before the class, so I did pretty well, but I noticed some folks fumbling around a bit trying to move the rifle back and forth.
After giving everyone a chance to try out the shoulder transfers, we started applying them with the pacing drill. This was our introduction to getting off the X with a rifle. We started out in front of our targets, faced to the right, and took three steps forward shooting from the right shoulder. We then turned around, transferring the rifle to the left shoulder as we did so to keep it pointed downrange, and took three steps to the left, firing from the left shoulder. After turning around and transferring, we started the cycle over again. After a few iterations of this Gabe asked us to switch to firing bursts of 3-5 rounds from our rifles and following up with a headshot. Most fighting rifles have big mags, so there's not much reason to be stingy with ammunition.
With the basic pacing drill down, we added in some post-fight drills. First, asses the target, "Did I hit him? Did it work?" This is followed up by a side to side scan. One neat trick Gabe showed is that if you lower your chin a bit but keep your eyes level, you can increase your peripheral vision by quite a bit. This is followed up by turning around and scanning to the rear in position Sul. One thing Gabe mentioned is the importance of not simply swinging around 180 degrees, but turning a bit more slowly, and keeping the gun from view until you have some idea what's behind you. If there is, say, a police officer coming to investigate the gunfire, this may keep you from getting shot. If you do see a police officer, it's time to drop the rifle and show your hands (one more reason not to use a sling that ties you to the rifle). Once you're sure there are no immediate threats, it's time to reload the rifle. The last post-fight step is to asses yourself for any injuries, since adrenaline can keep you from realizing that you got shot.
During these last drills we had one rifle go down with trigger problems. Gabe mentioned that match triggers tend to be a lot more finicky and less reliable than the standard triggers in military rifles.
Day 2
We started out the second day with pistol transitions. When following Gabe's advice not to tie yourself to the rifle with your sling, you need a method for quickly slinging the rifle when it's time to get the pistol into action. Gabe's preferred method is basically to toss the rifle over the head and shoulder so it can drop and hang diagonally across the back. As a teaching method, he had us start buy thrusting our support hand out under the forend, sliding the rifle down the arm, then dropping it once it cleared the head. With more practice, this can become a single, fluid tossing motion. We practiced this dry for a fair bit, first while standing still, then on the move. This method works well when the rifle is on the primary shoulder, but when shooting from the support side shoulder, doing this kind of transition tends to drop the rifle so the sling falls right across a pistol on your hip (the reverse is true for people who usually shoot pistol and rifle on opposite sides, as many who are cross dominant do). In this case, the primary hand moves from the forend to the bottom of the magazine and rotates the rifle so that the muzzle is pointing towards the support side. Form this position the support arm can be thrust through the sling and the rest of the transition accomplished as normal.
After working the pistol transitions for a while, we worked on getting off the X when faced with threats at the 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions. When faced with threats to the support side (or behind you when you turn to the support side), this is fairly simple, just mount the gun and move. Threats on the primary side require mounting the gun to the opposite shoulder, which is a bit more difficult. Gabe demonstrated a "golf swing" technique for doing this. From patrol ready or Sul, you swing the rifle up towards the threat while switching hands. I had shoulder transitions while facing the target down pretty well before coming, but this one messed me up a bit. It's a bit tricky to swap hands as the rifle is coming up like this, and I fumbled around some when I was doing it. This one is definitely going to take some dry practice to get comfortable with.
This exercise also saw our only ND of the class. One of the students fired his rifle as it was coming up, blowing a half-dollar sized divot in the concrete about a yard from his feet. The rifle involved was another one with a light match trigger on it, and this might not have happened with a standard military trigger.
We moved on to some position shooting, starting with kneeling. Gabe demonstrated and talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the position. He also demonstrated how to address threats from the sides and rear when in a kneeling position. We did some dry practice in getting into and out of kneeling positions, switching shoulders while kneeling, as well as adjusting our position and hold on the rifle to engage higher or lower targets. We did some shooting from kneeling, including shooting from both shoulders. For kneeling, and all the supported shooting positions, Gabe asked us to do headshots at 25 yards (which frankly isn't all that difficult against static targets from a supported position). He also had us reload while in position between strings of fire, to get us used to realoading in some of these other positions.
While shooting kneeling, I managed to crack one of my PMAGs. I'd loaded it with 31 rounds instead of 30, and was trying to seat it in my rifle. I pounded on it pretty good before realizing the problem and stripping out a round and seating it. Later I found out I'd cracked the back of the mag for about an inch up near the top. It still fed fine in the rifle for the rest of the drill though.
Before moving on to the other shooting positions we broke for lunch. Today the range manager's wife and sister-in-law prepared pulled pork for everybody, which was really quite delicious.
After lunch, we moved on to the squatting position. Again, Gabe demonstrated it before we practiced getting into and out of it dry. We shot it from both shoulders, with reloads in between. I didn't find squatting as comfortable as kneeling, but it is very quick to get in and out of.
The next position was sitting. As Gabe explained, this is more of a long term position. It's very comfortable, even for relatively long periods of time, but takes longer to get into or out of. He demonstrated cross-legged sitting (indian style), sitting with the legs crossed out in front, and sitting with the legs splayed out. He also showed us a neat trick when sitting cross legged. When he was a SWAT sniper, he used to stick something (extra magazines, small sandbags) between the thighs and feet to make the position a bit more comfortable when sitting for a long while. When we were shooting, I found that in addition to being very steady, the rifle also tended to drop right back on target, permitting more rapid fire. In the previous positions or shooting offhand, there was more of a need to drive the sights back to the target, instead of them dropping back on their own. This tendency to drop back onto the target was also true of prone.
Our final shooting position was prone. This was a bit interesting, since the ground had grown pretty hot by this time of day. I had long pants and elbow pads on, so I didn't actually have any bare skin in contact with the ground, but even through clothing it was pretty warm. Gabe demonstrated both a conventional prone, and using the magazine as a monopod. He also mentioned a neat trick for those of us carrying our ammo in Sneakybags. When going prone, it's possible to swing the bag out ahead so that it's within easy reach for reloading while we're there on the ground. While shooting this exercise I suffered a pretty badly stuck case, no amount of racking would dislodge it. I got off the line and borrowed a friend's cleaning rod to pound the case out. A bit of pounding eventually dislodged it enough to get it under the extractor, but now I couldn't pull the charging handle back. Finally I ended up applying a boot to the charging handle which sent the case flying right out. I'd shot quite a bit of Wolf ammo in the gun since last doing a good cleaning with a chamber brush, and I think that's what prompted this: a hot, gunky chamber latching onto a case.
The last two exercises of the day involved some team tactics work. Gabe has an entire class on this, so these exercises were only an introduction. Gabe talked a bit about team tactics and bounding drills in general, as well as the importance of communication:
"Moving" - I'm about to move, could you give me some cover fire?
"Covering" - I'm giving you cover fire, go ahead and move.
"Set" - I'm done moving and providing fire.
"Checking" - Something's wrong with my gun (malfunction, out of ammo, etc.) please provide cover fire.
He also stressed the importance of redundant communication paths, based not just on what each person is saying, but also by what they're doing and what you're seeing.
The first team drill involved the class forming up into two lines. The front person in each line was to fire at the target, then roll to the outside and move to the back of the line. The whole line steps up and the next person in line starts firing. This isn't a very realistic drill, but it gets people used to safely handling weapons and shooting in close proximity to other people. We did the drill with all rifles pointed straight up unless we were firing, so as not to muzzle sweep anyone. Gabe had us do it dry quite a few times before trying it live fire. We did the drill live twice.
After shooting this drill we took a break and Gabe talked a bit about muzzle devices. He supervised the drill by standing between the two lines up at the front and looking back to make sure everyone kept their rifles pointed in a safe direction. This put him right in the best place to get hit with the sound and pressure from muzzle brakes. He said that one of the ARs with a particular muzzle brake on it was just as loud to him as the short-barreled FAL (having stood behind and to the right of the AR during previous strings of fire, I experienced this first hand). In addition to trying to deafen the trainer during this drill, muzzle brakes tend to increase the visual and auditory signature, which is generally undesirable in a fighting rifle. Gabe really feels a flash hider of some sort is a far better choice than any sort of muzzle brake on a fighting rifle.
Speaking of muzzle devices, one of the shooters switched to a suppressed AK on the second day. He had some accruacy problems earlier in the day and during the first team tactics drill some of his rounds were keyholing at under 7 yards. Afterwards, we saw that the end of his his suppressor was oddly bulged around one side of the muzzle. The suppressor was rated for .308 rounds. However, despite sharing the same metric designation, 7.62x39mm bullets are actually slightly greater in diameter than the 7.62x51 (about .310 in diameter). This minor difference may have damaged the silencer.
The last drill of the class was another team tactics exercise. This one involved pairs of shooter. The first shooter would begin putting fire on the first in a long line of targets while the other moved behind him and took up a position further down the line (using the "Moving", "Covering", "Set" commands described above). The pair leapfrogged down the line like this until they reached the end (about 3 bounds per person). The execution of this drill varied pretty widely, with some folks having a pretty good run, and others failing to communicate and ending up with both guns out of ammo at the same time. Some folks had to transition to pistols to keep fire up. I was partnered with Harold Green on this one and our first run was pretty good, though I could have used another preemptive reload in there. The second didn't work out so well. Towards the end I started having failures to fire and he ran out of ammo. Gabe mercifully called our run to an end.
I didn't figure out exactly what was wrong with my rifle until later. One of the bolts holding the ejector in had backed out and fallen down into the firing mechanism, first intermittently causing the hammer to fail to fall as it bounced around in there and eventually wedging itself into the action making it impossible to move the trigger or engage the safety. This is a known problem with XCRs, and some owners preemptively pulled the bolts out and re-loctited them. I left them alone under the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" principle. They'll both get loctited now.
This drill also so the only really bad instance of lack of muzzle discipline in the class. One shooter transitioned to pistol, but accidentally ejected his magazine on the drawstroke. He fired a round into the target and Gabe called an end to the run. As he bent down to pick up the magazine, the muzzle of his pistol swung over towards the folks waiting their turn behind the firing line. He stopped when everyone standing back there started yelling at him. At the time I didn't know whether he'd fired the round in the chamber or not, so seeing the big black hole at the end of the muzzle swinging toward me was not a good feeling. He was very apologetic about it afterwards.
Conclusions
This was really a great class. The curriculum covered the basics of rifle fighting well, with a particular emphasis on close range confrontations most likely to come up in a civilian self-defense context. Gabe does things a bit differently than some other trainers. He did a good job of not only explaining the techniques, but explaining why he preferred a given technique rather than others that are commonly taught, allowing the student to consider the merits and reasoning behind an approach.
Close Range Rifle Gunfighting was taught at a somewhat more introductory level than Close Range Gunfighting, it's pistol equivalent. However, I was still glad to have some defensive rifle training under my belt. I think that having taken Farnam's rifle class, and particularly the large amount of dry fire practice I did afterwards really helped get me ready for this class.
The dry fire aspect brings up another point. Gabe really crams quite a bit into his classes, and to a certain extent this comes at the price of the number of repetitions. In order to really extract the maximum benefit from this class, you need to go home and practice this stuff, both dry fire and at the range. To a certain extent, this is true of all defensive firearms classes, but it is particularly so with Gabe's.
I only shot about 350 rounds of rifle ammo during the class, and not a single round of pistol ammo. This made it pretty economical from an ammo point of view (despite the cost of ammo recently). I was able to sell off the rest of the case I bought for the class to one of my friends in Salt Lake. The relatively low round count was mainly a product of Gabe's extensive incorporation of dry fire. We did almost every drill dry before shooting it live. Not only a good strategy for dealing with high ammo costs, I think getting everyone comfortable dry would be a pretty good way to go even if ammo costs weren't an issue.
I would highly recommend this class to anyone who's looking for a good, no BS introduction to the up-close and personal use of a rifle.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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.
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