Tweet
I thought I leave a review of a home defense course I took yesterday, in case anyone new to guns would be interested or those that are experienced but looking for a more formal education setting.
Yesterday, my girl and I finally got to use her birthday gift, a home defense handgun course and I'll try to recap as best as I can how the class went. First off i really learned a lot from it and my girl even so, no more tea cup for her
The class consisted of a single father, a police officer of 17 years and his wife then my girl and I. Guns used were my Glock 17, the single fathers 19, the officer used an HK VP9 and a S&W shield and my girls S&W service revolver from the late 1940's. The instructors firearms were a Glock 19, 34 along with a Beretta 92FS, browning Hi-power and a Ruger 22 although those three were not fired during the exercises.
We started the day going over what he described as "bio-mechanics" and in a high stress situations how the body acts and reacts. He explained certain terms and stances such as the weaver and, what we used for this training, the isosceles stances. That as well as the basics in terms of grip keeping things high and tight to the center of your chest leading to extension of the arms and ultimately firing your weapon.
Our initial drills started with just hitting center mass, 1 shot two shots then he changed it up. He had us ignore the sights. This was a shock to me and the officer who had shown or instructed to aim using your sights how his logic made sense to us. Focusing on your sights you lose focus on your target, in a high stress situation your more then likely going to focus on your target and not the sight so we did just that and while initially our groupings grew wider then eventually focused as our body adapted.
We had a few breaks in between especially as it grew hotter and we moved on to more precision drills. Around our Silhouettes were colored circles 1-6. Depending on his command he'd mix up colors, numbers or enter mass shots. Center mass shots were now 3-5 round bursts where number/colored shots were meant to be as slow as need to make a precise shot with no misses. After another break we went in to some more home set up and theory situations. we drew layouts of our bedrooms and he explained the what would happen and how our current living set up is or isn't as ideal for defense as we thought. My bedroom set up was okay but moving my bed a different direction yielding a better result from a defense stand point. The officer was similar in his weapon placement in the bedroom and how to orientate certain pieces of furniture more efficiently in a worst case scenario.
That lead in to some more drills as above but he added in some reloading and manipulation of the slide techniques which I appreciated as it was a lot more intuitive to load the magazine pivot my hand over the slide then rack it instead of loading the magazine moving my hand completely off making an arch to rack the slide. Small simple detail that speed up my reloads considerably. At the end of it all some more conversation regarding what do it what to say in the event of a defense scenario going over the "5 rules" (Evade, Arm/Barricade, Contact, Respond) then a final drill where we ran to a table in front of three targets armed ourselves by loading a magazine in to his Glock 19 with an unknown amount of ammunition call 911 then if given have a chat of varied length with him as the 911 operator before responding to a target he would call out with as many rounds as we felt was necessary.
My girl went up first and I was extremely proud of how well she did. Ran up, loaded the 19 with ease, called 911, put the phone down saying she was on speaker while describing things using key phrases like " I fear for my life" and engaged her target with 4 center mass shots. It apparently surprised the instructor as none of the students he has had in the multiple years of running this course has even put the phone down on speak in order to use both hands to steady her aim. It was exactly what I was thinking in my head as I waited for my turn. Which ultimately came last and off course he had a surprise for me by loading one magazine with a single round and another magazine with about 6 or so. I went up and did a similar drill as my girl putting the phone down on speaker engaged my target with a "pow click" dropped the magazine and reloaded pivoting my hand then fired another 4 shots all center mass.
With the class over most people left but my girl and I stayed a bit, chatted with the instructor and his wife who were really pleasurable people and he actually pulled out her AR for a bit of fun which was nice because he was able to give us a few extra details regarding dynamic movement. He even taught some stuff on AR manipulation, ammo uses for home defense, etc. All in all an amazing experience for a newbie shooter or even an experience shooter as we found out. We're both looking forward to take his advance pistol course given how well he ran this one and how much we gained from it I am confident that one would be another valuable learning experience. There were video's taken by his wife but I did try to snap photo's when possible.
Off course the AR was fired outside of California naturally...
Yesterday, my girl and I finally got to use her birthday gift, a home defense handgun course and I'll try to recap as best as I can how the class went. First off i really learned a lot from it and my girl even so, no more tea cup for her
The class consisted of a single father, a police officer of 17 years and his wife then my girl and I. Guns used were my Glock 17, the single fathers 19, the officer used an HK VP9 and a S&W shield and my girls S&W service revolver from the late 1940's. The instructors firearms were a Glock 19, 34 along with a Beretta 92FS, browning Hi-power and a Ruger 22 although those three were not fired during the exercises.
We started the day going over what he described as "bio-mechanics" and in a high stress situations how the body acts and reacts. He explained certain terms and stances such as the weaver and, what we used for this training, the isosceles stances. That as well as the basics in terms of grip keeping things high and tight to the center of your chest leading to extension of the arms and ultimately firing your weapon.
Our initial drills started with just hitting center mass, 1 shot two shots then he changed it up. He had us ignore the sights. This was a shock to me and the officer who had shown or instructed to aim using your sights how his logic made sense to us. Focusing on your sights you lose focus on your target, in a high stress situation your more then likely going to focus on your target and not the sight so we did just that and while initially our groupings grew wider then eventually focused as our body adapted.
We had a few breaks in between especially as it grew hotter and we moved on to more precision drills. Around our Silhouettes were colored circles 1-6. Depending on his command he'd mix up colors, numbers or enter mass shots. Center mass shots were now 3-5 round bursts where number/colored shots were meant to be as slow as need to make a precise shot with no misses. After another break we went in to some more home set up and theory situations. we drew layouts of our bedrooms and he explained the what would happen and how our current living set up is or isn't as ideal for defense as we thought. My bedroom set up was okay but moving my bed a different direction yielding a better result from a defense stand point. The officer was similar in his weapon placement in the bedroom and how to orientate certain pieces of furniture more efficiently in a worst case scenario.
That lead in to some more drills as above but he added in some reloading and manipulation of the slide techniques which I appreciated as it was a lot more intuitive to load the magazine pivot my hand over the slide then rack it instead of loading the magazine moving my hand completely off making an arch to rack the slide. Small simple detail that speed up my reloads considerably. At the end of it all some more conversation regarding what do it what to say in the event of a defense scenario going over the "5 rules" (Evade, Arm/Barricade, Contact, Respond) then a final drill where we ran to a table in front of three targets armed ourselves by loading a magazine in to his Glock 19 with an unknown amount of ammunition call 911 then if given have a chat of varied length with him as the 911 operator before responding to a target he would call out with as many rounds as we felt was necessary.
My girl went up first and I was extremely proud of how well she did. Ran up, loaded the 19 with ease, called 911, put the phone down saying she was on speaker while describing things using key phrases like " I fear for my life" and engaged her target with 4 center mass shots. It apparently surprised the instructor as none of the students he has had in the multiple years of running this course has even put the phone down on speak in order to use both hands to steady her aim. It was exactly what I was thinking in my head as I waited for my turn. Which ultimately came last and off course he had a surprise for me by loading one magazine with a single round and another magazine with about 6 or so. I went up and did a similar drill as my girl putting the phone down on speaker engaged my target with a "pow click" dropped the magazine and reloaded pivoting my hand then fired another 4 shots all center mass.
With the class over most people left but my girl and I stayed a bit, chatted with the instructor and his wife who were really pleasurable people and he actually pulled out her AR for a bit of fun which was nice because he was able to give us a few extra details regarding dynamic movement. He even taught some stuff on AR manipulation, ammo uses for home defense, etc. All in all an amazing experience for a newbie shooter or even an experience shooter as we found out. We're both looking forward to take his advance pistol course given how well he ran this one and how much we gained from it I am confident that one would be another valuable learning experience. There were video's taken by his wife but I did try to snap photo's when possible.
Off course the AR was fired outside of California naturally...
Comment