Guns

Combative Pistol 2 – Shooting things

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Shooting Things

What do you do? Do you shoot at things? or do you shoot things?

Stop shooting at things. It’s the wrong mindset.

I don’t punch at the guy, I punch the guy. You don’t throw the football at the receiver, you throw to the receiver. You don’t shoot the basketball at the basket, you shoot the basket.

Shoot things.

Combative Pistol 2 – Training to Averages

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

3 Shots, 3 Feet, 3 Seconds

The phrase goes something like that, that on average a gunfight is 3 shots, within 3 feet, and lasts 3 seconds.

Is there truth to that? To a degree, and of course it makes for a catchy mantra.

But here’s the problem with that.

It’s an average.

If I have two incidents, one with 1 shot, one with 5 shots, that averages out to 3. Another two incidents, one with 0 shots and one with 6, that averages to 3. If I have three incidents, 1, 4, 4, that averages to 3. You get the idea. Three may be the average, but that doesn’t mean it will be what it will be.

I touched on this in my previous article, “Jenny’s Got a Gun“. She read a web comment saying:

who really needs a 20-round magazine when you’re defending against a stalker? “Six or seven bullets will do you just fine”

She should have Googled further to see if 6 or 7 would be just fine (answer: maybe, but it’s your life… play with it as you wish. I carry 15+1 and a spare mag).

Tom Givens recounted to us a story of a man in prison. He had nothing better to do with his day and had access to a law library. So he worked up a case to sue the police claiming they used excessive force against him.

Why?

Because they shot him 62 times (I believe that was the number).

Let that sink in a moment. Because you see, that he was working up a counter lawsuit? That means he got shot 62 times and lived. Apparently gunfire from both handguns and rifles.

Yeah.. those 6 or 7 bullets may not be just fine. The human body is pretty resilient, and your pistol rounds suck. Of course, 62 times also means he wasn’t shot in any vital area, but that’s another topic. (BTW, his case was thrown out because protocol is to keep shooting until the threat stopped… on shot 62 he stopped, the police stopped, case thrown out).

Another story from Givens. One of his students was sitting in a chair on the lawn with his mother, little children playing in the yard around him. Some teenage boy came up, student told the boy to leave. Boy leaves, goes home, retrieves a gun and starts shooting it across the street at them. Student gets up, moves behind cover (car), returns fire and hits the dude in the chest ending the confrontation.

It was a 22 yard shot.

The student recounted that he never thought that he was the statistical anomaly, just that he had to take care of business.

Another story of a husband getting attacked in the driveway of his home. Wife retrieves the gun, goes to the second story window of their house and shoots the attacker from 15 yards away.

Go measure your house. Pace off various distances within your home. I bet some of those are beyond average (be it 3 feet, or the 0-5 yards often quoted for self-defense shooting). Now picture your spouse or child being held across that room. Make that shot, you have only one shot, one chance.

Averages tell us something and we can certainly learn from them and should not ignore them. But we must keep in mind they are averages and that means there are some on one side of the average, some on the other, and some at the extremes. Don’t get caught in training just to the averages.

Perceptions of people who carry guns

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Ask your average person on the street about the ability of people to carry a gun.

Generally speaking, they will believe that a person whose job it is to carry a gun, like a police officer, will be highly proficient with their gun. They will generally believe that a private citizen will be of lesser skill or has no business carrying a gun because they’ll only be a danger to themselves and others.

The reality? One’s profession or lack thereof has no bearing on one’s ability or fitness to carry and/or utilize a gun.

Police departments require their officers to qualify with their guns. How often? Depends on the department. Some may only require them to qualify once a year. That qualification test will consist of 50 rounds. While yes there are some officers that will train to a higher level, a lot of those officers will never shoot beyond their required qualification: thus, 50 rounds per year, visiting the range once.

Think about that.

Could Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France by pedaling around his neighborhood block once a year?

Could Michael Phelps win 16 Olympic medals by just dangling his feet in the kiddie pool on a single hot summer day?

So what makes you think someone who begrudgingly visits the gun range once a year, shoots 50 rounds in a required course of fire, then never touches their gun again will be able to perform under pressure when YOUR life is on the line (let alone their own life)?

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say all cops are inept at gun handling, but the public shouldn’t be under the blind illusion that just because they’re a cop that they’re some sort of super badass.

On the other hand, just because someone doesn’t wear a badge doesn’t mean they have no ability with a gun. Look at the number of competition pistol shooters out there. Most of them are just private citizens and are extremely skilled. In the past Combative Pistol 2 weekend, there were 9 students in the class. I don’t know the full skinny on the scores, but at one point Tom Givens remarked how the class average on one of the qualification courses was 99%. That’s 9 very proficient shooters… from computer engineers to veterinarians. We don’t wear a badge, but it doesn’t mean we’re inept with guns.

Skill is not bestowed by your profession. It comes from your desire to learn, your desire to improve, your desire to excel.

Combative Pistol 2 – Practice

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Ballistic Masturbation

That’s what a lot of people do, and call it “practice”. You’ve seen it, and you’ve probably done it too. You go to the range, throw some lead downrange with no particular goal or purpose. You might feel good afterwards, but you’ve accomplished nothing.

When you go to the range, you need to practice with a goal and purpose. One drill we did in the CP2 weekend involved a target with 3 sections: 8″ circle, 6″ circle, business-card-sized rectangle. The intent of the drill? To teach cadence. When the target is smaller you have to shoot slower, but cadence should still be good. This target taught us transitions and changing up cadence. For instance, start on the 8″ circle and fire 2 shots, move to the rectangle and fire 2 shots, move to the 6″ circle and fire 2 shots. Those first two shots should be fast, the second two slow, and the third two in between.

The final drill of the class involved 9 rounds. Actually 8 live rounds and 1 dummy. It had a par time of 15 seconds. It’s a fairly simple drill:

  • Setup: Take 5 live rounds and 1 dummy and put them into a magazine, with the dummy mixed in somewhere (not the top round, not the bottom round). Have one reload on your belt, at least 3 rounds in it. Target is whatever you want, but we used a typical “man-like silhouette” target (you could use something like an IPSC or IDPA target) and I believe we were at 7 or 10 yards… I honestly can’t recall right now.
  • Draw and shoot the target. Eventually you’ll hit the dummy, so fix the malfunction and resume shooting. Once you hit slide-lock, reload, shoot 3 more.

That’s all there is to it. It’s a very simple drill. Once you can clean it consistently in 15 seconds (or if you establish your own par average), then try to do it faster. The first time I ran the drill I had one shot just outside the target zone (went too fast) and had to run it a second time. On that second time I did it in 10.7 seconds (Givens did it in about 8.5). So I need to get it down to a consistent 10.0, then 9.5, and so on. The thing is, to accomplish that drill correctly requires a great many number of things, and was the culmination of all we learned that weekend:

  • Draw
  • Present
  • Grip
  • Trigger
  • Sights
  • Movement
  • Malfunction clearing
  • Reloading
  • Not blowing the first shot (because you have 3 first shots in this drill)
  • Accuracy
  • Speed

So much, packed into one little drill. Really only 8 rounds. Take a box of 50, you can practice this drill 6 times, and it’ll probably take you 5 minutes to run it those 6 times including setup time. So in 5 minutes you’ll get more done than going to the range for an hour and casually throwing lead downrange. Which is more worth your time?

When something unexpected occurs during practice, roll with it. A great example was in the CP2 class, Tom was demonstrating a weak-hand-only shooting drill. He didn’t know how many rounds were in his gun so he got one shot off, slide locked back, and he immediately performed a one-handed weak-hand reload and got back into action. That the demo didn’t go off as planned was fine, because it presented an opportunity to demonstrate an important mental skill: being aware of what’s going on and immediately addressing it.

Do you have magazines that hold a lot of ammo? Instead of loading your mags all the way full, load them somewhere less than full and to random amounts. You do that, you’ll get a lot more practice on your reloads.

Do you have something you hate? Something you suck at (e.g. weak-hand-only shooting)? Spend an entire session working on it. So what if the guy in the stall next to you looks at your target and thinks you suck. What does his opinion matter? Work on what you hate until you love it… that when other people would groan about shooting WHO, you grin and revel in it.

When you go to the range to practice, have a goal in mind. Have a purpose. Have skills and drills to work on. Don’t just waste time and money throwing lead downrange. Work with a purpose, always improve.

More M&P blarg

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Continuing from my previous blarg on the S&W M&P…

Earlier this afternoon I started a dry fire session. While doing so I noticed along the side of my trigger finger a callus. There’s only one way the skin in that area could be callused: it’s rubbing the frame. I hypothesized it, and I think the callus is pretty good supporting evidence. So yes, if the M&P gives me enough clearance for my fingers, good sign.

I looked at the S&W website a bit. One thing I have mixed emotions on? The magazine release button. It’s reversible, but technically only one-sided. Sure, 99% of my work is my right thumb pressing the left-side button on my XD. Due to the way my fingers wrap around the gun? My left index finger can come in contact with the right-side button… and I have dropped mags. So in a way, to lose the ambi-release is good. But it’s also bad in case I might need it, say in one-handed reloading situations. So, mixed emotions here, but I think the loss will generally be an improvement.

I’m just thinking more and more about switching to the M&P. It’s just fine details at this point. I intend to shoot an M&P again soon to look further into these things.

Combative Pistol 2 – The Ready

/ hsoi

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Previously I wrote about The Grip. This is relevant to…

The Ready

There’s a position called the “Ready Position.” It doesn’t matter what you’re doing: playing tennis, throwing a ball, shooting a gun. There’s a ready position. What is a Ready Position? That position you’re in so you are ready to do whatever you need to do. If you’re playing tennis, it’s the position you’re in so you are ready to return a serve or volley or hit a groundstroke. If you’re shooting a gun, it’s the position you’re in so if you need to shoot, you are ready to do so.

There are many types of ready positions in shooting. One had the gun extended at arms length but pointed low, say at the target’s belt-line. Another has the gun pulled back, in draw position #3, and may call this a “compressed ready”. Other shooting disciplines can have their own variants. But the bottom line remains: it’s the position where you are totally ready to go.

Why does grip enter into this?

Is your grip ready to go when you are in the ready? Be honest. Mine always wasn’t. What would happen? I’d be in the ready, then when it was time to shoot I’d bring the gun up/out and tighten my grip at the same time, which would cause the sights to shift, and if you look at the correction chart you’ll see how that grip tightening will cause you to not hit your target.

Your grip must be all the grip you need to have from the get go. There is no time nor chance to correct it. When you go to draw your gun, you get all the grip you need on the gun before you remove it from the holster. Do not remove the gun from the holster until the grip is solid and correct. Get the other hand on the gun, grip it fully, then proceed.

But it’s even more than grip, it’s mindset.

All through the CP2 weekend you hear Tom Givens say “DRAW TO READY!” and he means that. But it’s not just “move your gun into the arms out, pointed down position”; in fact, that’s really the least of the concerns. It means you need to move yourself into a Ready Position and everything that means. It means the gun is out in the proper place. It means your grip is solid. It means your eyes are looking in the right place. But most of all? It means that your mind is ready to do the job. You need to draw like you mean it, draw like your life depends upon it because it does. You need to have the mental focus and readiness to handle the situation. If that means to assess, assess. If that means communicate, communicate. If that means move, move. If that means shoot, shoot and shoot well.

The Ready Position is far more than just placement of arms and gun. It’s a whole mind and body state of preparedness to tackle the job before you.

Who is not in touch with reality?

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

The Dallas Morning News has an article discussing cautious optimism at getting concealed carry on Texas college campuses passed in the 2011 legislative session.

What stood out to me in the article was this:

 

But Colin Goddard, assistant director for federal legislation for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who survived the massacre at Virginia Tech, says allowing guns on campus is a bad idea.

“If there’s someone coming in to shoot a bunch of people in a classroom, you’re already lost,” said Goddard, who was shot four times. “To think you can react and effectively shoot the target … These people have seen too many movies. They’re not in touch with reality.”

 

 

I wonder how many movies Mr. Goddard has seen.

Tom Givens of Rangemaster has had nearly 60 students survive self-defense incidents because they were carrying concealed.

They were able to react and effectively shoot the target.

They were very in touch with reality — that’s why they carried their guns. That’s why they lived.

 

The Smith & Wesson M&P

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Back when I was first deciding on a carry gun, it came down to two choices: Springfield XD, Smith & Wesson M&P.

By all accounts, I liked the M&P, and I bet I would have gone with it. But why didn’t I? It was brand new to the market. It was unproven. S&W had their whole Sigma fiasco, and was this going to be another Sigma? I was buying a gun to bet my life on, so I felt it was better to choose the proven model. Thus I went with the XD.

Now, I’m not unhappy with the choice, but having shot multiple thousands of rounds through it, held it in my hands for a long time, well… I can see how it’s not a 100% perfect choice for me. The main thing? It’s one-size-fits… someone. Now that interchangeable backstraps are all the rage, I can feel how the XD doesn’t quite fit my hand right. The backstraps were a big reason I wanted the M&P. And I have said that if I was buying an XD now I’d buy the XD(m) because of its changeable backstraps.

Over the Combative Pistol 2 weekend, I got to try out an M&P with a trigger kit job by Apex Tactical Specialities. I’m not sure I like it, but I can see the difference. There’s a lot of “springy” takeup, but the distance between that break and reset? Wow. I can see how this can be a fast gun with that trigger. I’d have to shoot such a gun for a while to get used to it, and apparently you can change different parts in the kit to get different feels. So… much playing would have to be done.

As well, Lynn Givens was carrying an M&P. I noticed she had a light texturing job done to her backstrap. I liked it. One thing I don’t like about my XD is the grip isn’t very grippy. But getting something like a stipple job from Springer Precision? even his mildest is too aggressive for a gun carried IWB against the skin. The XD(m)’s grip is better. The job Lynn had? I liked.

Lynn also pointed out something critical. One problem I have (and it was evident all weekend long in CP2) is I shoot slightly left. I know the problem. It’s how my trigger finger enters the trigger guard. It’s the angle of how everything meets, my physiology, my finger enters the guard angled slightly downward angle, and so my finger rides slightly on the frame and pushes it left. But on her M&P? I had no problems. There was no contact. I’d need to do more shooting with the M&P to verify that, but gosh… ain’t that a plus?

Now that the M&P has been on the market for a while, it’s being picked up as the duty gun in many police departments (Austin PD is now standardizing on the M&P in .40 S&W), Team S&W is winning lots of pistol competitions with almost stock M&P’s (might just have better sights and better trigger, but that’s all), it’s got a lot behind it. So, the one reason I didn’t want the gun? no longer an issue.

All I need now is the money fairy. 🙂

Combative Pistol 2 – The Grip

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Grip

Tom Givens said something in class that made the light bulb in my head turn on.

You see, I’ve struggled with grip. It’s due in part to the shape of the gun grip, the size of my hands, and then everyone and their mother having a theory on grip. Todd Jarrett and his “grip 20% harder” kung-fu grip. Bill Rogers and gripping hard and being solid like a 2×4. Then Brian Enos and his neutral gripping just enough for consistent recoil. And the list can go on. I’ve been trying them all with varying levels of success.

Now I will say, while everyone has a different flavor on it, they all are striving for the same thing: consistency. You want the gun to behave in a consistent manner, where it goes bang, the gun moves due to recoil, then comes right back to where you started, then bang and recoil follows the same path as before, then comes right back to where you started, and so on. There’s no need to hunt for the front sight because your eyes never left that focus point and the gun comes right back. So, the “right grip” is one that’s consistent.

But there was something about the way Tom described it that just gelled for me.

Look at the shape of a gun grip, especially if you have a plastic-framed double-stack gun (Glock, XD, M&P, Sig, etc.). The shape is like a rectangle with the corners rounded off. It’s not a circle. Now, how do you grip a baseball bat? The bat is circular and when you grip it your grip pressure is evenly spread all around the bat… it’s a circular grip. Now, how do you grip pliers? Your hand works more like a clamp, exerting just a “front to back” pressure. It’s a little hard to describe, but try it. The pressure your hand exerts holding a baseball bat vs. holding pliers are two different things.

Grip the gun like pliers. Your strong hand (right hand, for me) should clamp the gun’s grip like pliers, exerting that front-to-back pressure. Not a “round” pressure like a bat.

Now your weak/support hand (left hand, for me). The tendons in your hand are joined, thus when you move your trigger finger, your other fingers move as well. Due to that, moving the trigger causes your other fingers to move thus cause your gun to move in unwanted ways. This is where a good trigger job that minimizes pull weight and travel distance makes a big difference. Setting that aside, what your support hand can do to help reduce this? When your support-hand fingers wrap around your strong hand, depress those support fingers atop your strong-hand fingers and tendons (on the back of the hand) like those support-fingers were pressing guitar strings. Just clamp down on them. That helps minimize the sympathetic movement.

Strong hand gives front to back pressure, support hand gives left-right pressure. Each hand is exerting pressure along a unique axis with no overlap. You still have to have a very strong white-knuckle grip, but it’s the way/direction that grip pressure is applied.

For some reason, that explanation turned on a light bulb in my head. I tried that grip all weekend, and it made a huge difference. YMMV. That felt “right” to me. It felt awkward because I wasn’t used to it, and my forearms are pretty sore now from gripping the hell out of the gun all weekend. But there we go! I’ll be working with this grip for a while to see where it takes me. So far tho, so good.

But here’s one key thing: always perform this grip. The moment your hands come together at position 3 of the draw, you should have this grip going, including all that white-knuckle pressure. You don’t relax it until you’re putting the gun back in the holster. For me, I need to get better about this in dry fire practice. Some time ago I realized that my brain wasn’t caring about grip pressure in dry practice because my brain knew it was dry and thus no recoil and thus no reason to exert. I’ve been working to overcome this, but still would find my grip fading because I’d be thinking about whatever it was I was working on, which wasn’t grip. But now I have an explicit grip technique to focus on, so I will do my best to work on that in dry fire, in live fire, always.

Combative Pistol 2 AAR

/ hsoi / 19 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training.

It was an intensive weekend of work, and fun. I’m going to do the AAR differently than I’ve done others. In the past, I’ve done AAR’s as a big long journal entry detailing everything I could think of. I did this so as to give a good report, but also to serve as my own reminder of the event. But this time well… there are a lot of things worth discussing. This entry is going to cover a basic idea of what the course is like, but I’ll follow it in the coming days with entries that discuss one-off topics.

Note as well… this is only my recollection of the experience. I may have forgotten things, I may have experienced and perceived things differently than others. I know a good number of the other students are readers of my blog (hi guys!), so if you guys remember something differently, remember something I forgot, or just wish to add your own input to all of this, I encourage you to leave a comment! BTW, it was good to see a lot of you guys again. Always a pleasure training with you.

Basic Concept

You can read the course description, but it’s really more fundamental than that. It’s about working foundations, because really it’s all about “looking at the bumpy thing (sights) and pressing the trigger straight back”. Then it’s about giving you drills and ways to practice to work on those skills. Usually when we’re in class or practicing, we’re thinking about that thing we’ve been given. Then something new gets added, and what happens to the prior thing? It goes to crap and you typically revert back to the way you did it before (which was the wrong way). For instance, you’re working on trigger press and you get it working well, but then you add a timer which adds pressure and now your trigger press goes to crap, reverting back to the yanking you were doing before.

But you say, this is an advanced class! Why work all this fundamental stuff? Because it’s important. A handgun is hard to shoot well, especially under pressure. You need to have your mechanical skills (sights, trigger, grip, draw and present, reloading, malfunction clearing, movement, etc.) so ingrained as to be unconscious and not requiring any real effort or thought to perform. Then you need to be able to hit a very small area, especially in practice because when the fur flies your groups are going to open up. If you struggle to keep all your shots within the 8-ring of a B-27 target (i.e. the target used for Texas CHL), imagine that grouping double or tripling in size… that’s how it’ll be under pressure. So maybe you should be able to drill out that little X ring on the B-27 in a high-pressure practice/training environment, if you hope to keep ’em all within the 8-ring when the flag flies.

That’s what this class is about. Mechanical skills. Fighting skills. Mindset.

Content

Day one was filled with a lot of building block work. First thing done? Line up at 5 yards, a 1″ dot on the target, a 5-shot slow fire group. This helped Tom figure out where people were and where to go from there. There’d be work for trigger control, work for grip, work for sight picture. Many different styles of targets were used, many different drills were run, all towards helping you get foundations tightened up. Ball & Dummy drill. Draw & Present. Use of dry fire, use of live fire. Everything Tom did was progressive, starting from the most basic of starting points, building up in skills, in application, culminating in the skills necessary for a fight (e.g. movement). Oh yeah… lots of strong-hand-only and weak-hand-only shooting too.

The other large part of day one was a lot of mental. Much discussion on mindset. Tom has the distinction of having nearly 60 students involved in self-defense shootings. It not only demonstrates what he teaches works in the realm of civilian self-defense, but it also provides a lot of data for us to learn from. Ten cases were discussed, which outlined good things and bad things… because yes, it’s wise for us to learn from the mistakes of others (not every student did the right/best things).

Oh, one important thing? There was a lot of testing. Day 1 had us run through 3 qualification courses, for time and score. We also ended day 1 with a shootoff. What’s the reason? Pressure. When you’re in a fight for your life, you’re going to be under pressure. Using testing will put pressure on you. Having to get out and perform in front of the class? Pressure. Having to shoot a course against someone else, last man is out? Pressure. Think inoculation. When we want to inoculate you against a disease, we give you a small dose to help your body get used to it and know how to cope with the infection. Pressure in the training hall helps to inoculate you against the pressure you’ll feel in a real fight.

Day 2 had even more testing. I believe only 3 qualification courses, but then a bunch of other competitions against each other. Oh sure, more advanced skills were worked on too, like shooting from behind cover, malfunction clearing techniques. But the stress of testing was big on day 2. Even while each qual course might be similar in basic structure, every time the course was shot with more and more stuff added to it. This time you just shot. Next time you added movement. Next time you added a dummy round to simulate a malfunction. Next time you add movement behind cover. And so on, continually building on what you did before. And of course, there was classroom time, with much discussion.

Since some people care about this, I reckon we went through 1200-1500 rounds. Not really sure as I was just scooping out of my cans of reloads. But Tom Hogel (another KR Training assistant instructor) was also shooting the class and happened to use one of my XD-9’s for the class, so I also gave him a can of 2000 of my reloads. He shot a couple hundred outside of class, and I figure 200-300 were left so… 1500 in the class? My can was already down a few hundred but I don’t know how many for sure. But the aside cool for me was shooting maybe 3000 rounds under pressure of class and my reloads ran smoothly. That was welcome. 🙂

Me

So how did I do?

I am overall pleased with my performance. I can see improvement in my skills and abilities, so to me, that’s what matters. I also was pretty consistent, so that was welcome too.

How did I score on the tests? I was torn about revealing this. I felt if I didn’t reveal it people would think I have something to hide, or that I didn’t do that well. But I also felt if I did reveal it, people would take it like I’m bragging or would think this established some sort of standard of how well I shoot. Well, I reckon it perhaps does, but to me the score doesn’t really mean much. In my book it’s not a way to compare me to you, it’s only a way for me to compare me to myself. I’m not in competition with anyone other than myself, just working to improve my skills and abilities. Across all the scored tests, 98.5%. I won some of the shootoffs, I lost some. The important thing? I see what I’m good at, I see where I need work.

One thing I was pleased at was my eyeballs being glued to the front sight. With a situation like this (high-pressure, high-ego class), you really want to know how you did. You want to know, “did I hit it?” because it matters for your score, for your ego, for how other classmates view you. Do those things matter? Maybe, depends how you value it, but if nothing else, it is putting pressure on you to perform and pressure is good for training. But the reality is, if you hit it you hit it… checking for the hole now or 5 minutes from now doesn’t matter because the hole isn’t going to change. So, follow-through properly and do everything possible to get good hits… because if you work to get good hits, then you’ll get good hits, and checking for the hole doesn’t matter… it will be a hit, the hole will be where you wanted it to be, and so you can check it a year from now.. it’ll still be good. Stay on that front sight.

A pre-class goal was to NOT shoot faster than I can get good hits. Any time I didn’t get a good hit? I shot too fast. Most of the class I shot at the right speed… perhaps even a little slower than I could have shot, but my mind wanted verification: “Yes, this will be a good hit… the sights are properly lined up on target, the trigger press will be good” THEN I let it go. I know that took a little more time, but I got good hits… and a good hit slightly slower is better than a fast miss.

As for things to work on?

  • One-hand shooting, especially weak-hand. Learned a little grip-trick that made a HUGE difference.
  • 8-25 yard shooting, especially 15-25 yards. I got better at the 8-15 yard shooting as the weekend progressed, but I really need to shoot more at longer distances.
  • Getting on the trigger sooner. My draw and present felt good, but then I wasn’t getting on the trigger fast enough. The ideal is from position 3 of the draw you push the gun out, finger goes on trigger, starts to press and by the time the gun is extended the shot breaks. Well, I was getting the gun out there, verifying my sights, then breaking the shot. That’s not right. It’s a good safe way to shoot, it’s the way to teach beginners, but at my level I need to be making it all one smooth motion. But I know why I did it: what I said above, not wanting to shoot faster than I could get good hits. I wanted to verify my sights were correct and the gun was properly on target before shooting. Once I get the smoothed out, my times should pick up considerably (another half second at least).
  • Never pull the trigger unless the sight picture is on target. You’ve done it… you press the gun out and we’re so conditioned to have to break a shot before the time runs out that we know the sights were bad, we called it the moment we saw it, but yet we still pressed off a shot. Why? Bad habit. It’s one I’ve been trying to break in dry practice, but I still do it. I had a few times when I did this, and the bad thing? 1. it doesn’t stop the bad guy, 2. and now where does that round go? you’re liable for it. Every shot counts.
  • Of course, work every skill from the class. Can’t forget them, must improve them. I ran the final drill in 10.7 seconds, so now I need to do it in 10 seconds, then in 9… and well, Givens ran it in 8.5 seconds so I need to be able to do it in 8.4. 😉

Conclusion

I will write more in the coming days discussing specific things from the class. This was just to provide an overview of the class content and small summary of my own performance.

In general I’m pleased with how I did. I see where I’ve improved, I see where I need work. To me, that’s the important thing. I got a lot out of the weekend. The course was different from I expected… I expected a lot of “fightin’ and shewtin'” type stuff, but it wasn’t. What it was was fundamentals but worked at a higher level, with more pressure, with greater expectation of performance. Is that a bad thing? No, it’s a great thing! Because in the end, it’s still all sight alignment and trigger control… doesn’t matter if you’re a rank beginner or your Rob Leatham, it’s all still the same fundamentals, just different context.

I’ll admit. For the past couple weeks I’ve been stressing over this class. While I strive to dry fire all I can, I haven’t been able to get to the range near enough what I need. Oddly, I think all of that really showed itself in my draw and present and then the delay in getting the trigger press… it was all pretty much like I did it in dry fire, so I need to refine that practice. But I just didn’t feel I was ready for the class. Honestly, I feel some pressure to perform because hey… if I’m going to wear a KR Training shirt and get up in front of people to say “this is how you do it” I need to be able to do it and perform. There’s expectation and I need to live up to it. Plus hey… last time Givens was here he complemented my shooting, so that means the baseline was set and I had to do better because I want him to have a good impression of me. Yes, ego at play, but I’m human… sue me. 🙂  After seeing how I performed? I feel a lot more confident about things. Oh sure, I’ve still a long ways to go, but I see I’m on a good, positively progressing road so I’ll be content with this journey. I’m setting goals, I’m meeting goals, I’m exceeding goals, I’m needing to set new goals and revisit other goals. Refine my plans, and press on.

Of course, the real treat of the weekend was seeing Lynn, Tom’s charming wife. She’s a sweetheart, and a hell of a shot with that M&P. She took a lot of pictures from the weekend, and I’m hoping to get a few from her. I’ll post ’em when I get ’em.

Combative Pistol 2 with Tom Givens was certainly well worth the time, money, and effort… at least for me, YMMV.

Updated: I’ve spent the morning writing up a bunch of those one-off topics and queuing the articles for future publication. As I wrote I started to wonder… gosh, should I be talking about this stuff? I mean, it feels like I’m giving away class material. Is that right?

Well… yes, there’s some material that’s being given away. But there’s a lot more that isn’t. There’s a lot of things you cannot get unless you attend the class. So many intangibles. Plus, the only way you can receive instruction and feedback and thus improvement on your skills is by having Tom Givens watching over you. Not to mention, lots of informative and enlightening anecdotes, and lots of good-natured razzing. 🙂  Honestly, we had a lot of fun in the class, especially because many of us have trained together before. You can’t get that sort of atmosphere, that sort of pressure, that sort of work, unless you attend class.

So yes, you get my thoughts on a few things. But I’m not sharing it all. You just have to go out and try it yourself.

Updated 2: Pictures added (courtesy of Lynn Givens). No, we didn’t have a lot of people with black dots for faces. For people that I don’t know if they want their faces out or not, I blacked out the faces. Any face not blacked out are people that I have permission from or are public enough already.

I’m the tall guy with the long hair and blue hat.