Last week I had the pleasure of taking a 4-day defensive handgun course outside Pahrump, NV at Front Sight, the largest private weapons training school in the nation. It was a very intense and rewarding experience, one that I would recommend to anyone.
The object of the course is straightforward: to learn to stop bad guys with a semi-automatic handgun. More specifically, one is trained to present from a concealed holster and fire a controlled pair (two rounds) to the thoracic cavity of the attacker in less than two seconds. If that doesn't stop the bad guy, one is trained to fire a single round to the cranio-ocular cavity of the attackers's head, which if done correctly will always put an immediate end to it.
For the course, I rented a Glock 17 and all necessary accessories from the Front Sight pro shop. Here I am out on the range with my weapon holstered on my hip. Unfortunately, presenting it for the camera behind the line would have been against the range rules.
During the course run, we got a couple menacing winter storms rolling in from Death Valley that left a dusting of snow on the nearby mountains. Out on the range we had to stay bundled up most of the time. The free hot coffee was quite welcome when we got indoors. The instructors joked that the adverse weather "came at no extra charge."
The Front Sight instructors were amazingly skilled at providing training without a "drill instructor attitude," as they say. They were extremely patient with all of us, including yours truly, all the while getting us as close as possible to "perfect" in the techniques. These included safe weapons handling, "after action drills", tactical reloading, and how to clear various weapons malfunctions in the middle of a gunfight. I'll certainly never forget "brass low!!...look, move, check, lock, strip, rack-rack-rack, insert, rack, point in to the target!"
I got extremely lucky in my draw of a range partner, a guy named Chuck who turned out to be a police chaplain for the San Diego PD. He was much more skilled than I was, and was able to coach me with many excellent pointers in weapons handling and marksmanship beyond what the instructors were providing.
In addition to the range work, we attended several classroom lectures on such things as the ethics and legalities of using deadly force to stop an attack, how to determine one's personal "line in the sand," and even what to say to the police after an incident. The basic message: even if you survive unscathed and victorious, nothing good is going to happen to you after a gunfight. Even if you are declared a "hero," you still might go to prison, or get sued to oblivion, or lose your livelihood from public opprobrium. The best you can hope for is that someday you might get your normal life back.
Overall I was quite proud of myself in how much progress I made over the four days of the course. Although I didn't make the stringent cut for "distinguished graduate" (very few people do on their first time through the course), I still delivered the majority of my shots correctly on the final proficiency test, only missing at the farthest distance, and didn't screw up too badly on the malfunction clearing part.
At the end of the course, I was more than a little exhausted and sore. Upon first registering, I had purchased their standard student package of 650 9mm cartridges. After the last day, I found a single round in my back pocket, and would have put that in my magazine too if I had known it was there.
Although I only occasionally make it out to this part of the country, I am definitely looking forward to returning to Front Sight in the near future to take another course, perhaps to repeat the 4-day handgun course, or maybe to take their tactical rifle or tactical shotgun course. In the meantime, I'm treating myself to three days of (working) relaxation in a suite on the Las Vegas strip!
3 comments:
Your choice of t-shirt was very appropriate.
I wore that pretty much every day, since it was the only long-sleeve shirt I had. It was COLD!
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