A Not-Random At All Public Apology to Black Center Tactical

I recently fucked up. Seriously. Not an unusual event in my life, but here’s the backstory offered as context — not as an excuse.

This blog attracts an eclectic demographic: international best selling authors to world-class cognitive neuroscientists to quiet armed professionals from many countries to (reportedly) some higher-end bad people as well. There’s significant representation from those in the profession of arms — both military and law enforcement — out protecting us from the bad people, and many many world-class trainers (as well as those who aspire to be). There are a lot of Americans who exercise their 2d Amendment rights, as well as international folks who for various reasons carry and conceal weapons. And I get much broader play than even I suspect sometimes – just this past week I was honored (and greatly surprised) by the deeply respected Ol’ Remus of THE WOODPILE REPORT with his inclusion of my random thoughts here: http://www.woodpilereport.com

While I’m just an old researcher and writer these days, I did spend a few years going in harm’s way with the requirement to carry and conceal various types of weapons. I count amongst the people I was fortunate enough to have equip me my late friend Bruce Nelson, Milt Sparks (Tony Kanaly’s first holster build after he was hired at Milt Sparks was a classic Summer Special for me, to house one of the first Sig P-220 Americans, as the magazine release version of the European Sig was called), Andy Arratoonian, Ken Null, Greg Kramer, and so on. If you don’t know who those people are or were, you’re either young, not in the biz, or don’t care about the history of concealed carry. That’s all cool. Stick around and hit the links below.

Back in the day (80s through early 2000s) you could find my byline or pen name in COMBAT HANDGUNS, SWAT, GUNS AND WEAPONS FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT, and some of the other various gun rags. While my area of expertise was training and training research, I did gear reviews as well. At one point (in the 90s) I was probably one of the most prolific gear review editors in travel, outdoor, and the tacti-cool community – focused on hard and soft goods EXCEPT actual guns.

I’ve been (many times) in the last 30 or so years asked (either formally under contract or informally as a favor to friends) to advise on gear selection for various units and individuals. This ranges from pointing procurement officials at little known niche makers to doing my independent evaluation of name gear, and in some instances just purchasing (with Other People’s Money!!) X in X quantity for X people.

Like a Ronin S-4 (because I may ambush you with a cup of coffee if you piss me off), I run a heck of a supply room when I get going.

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who works at a high level in the counter-terror business. He works in plain clothes and while conversant in the latest and greatest, often humors this old man by asking my opinion about various things.

My friend in deep cover, in a Non-Permissive Environment, armed with a locally procured knife

What he asked: “If you were equipping men who must work in plain clothes in a hot and non-permissive environment, who would you recommend they look at for deep concealment holsters and pouches?”

My answer: “I’d tell them Black Center Tactical for the IWB rig he makes, but with the addition of an extra-long Incog strut. Clean, simple and to the point. Elegant design, just what you need and nothing more. You don’t have to be an engineer to figure out how to put it on and adjust it. Easy on and off, in case you have to ditch or stow the weapons and holsters. Excellent retention and quite suitable for deep concealment.”

He said: “I thought you didn’t like their gear?”

I said: “What? Only stuff I’d use, were I the type to carry weapons.”

He said: “You wrote this blog post and said you didn’t like it.”

I went and looked and just about had my fifth heart attack, or my second stroke, or my second near-death-experience. I had, in fact, said in print that I wasn’t really impressed by the BCT IWB rig.

I’m going in and put a correction to link to this post, so it won’t be there by the time you look.  If you must look, search for Random Thoughts On Cool Guy Gun Gear.

Here’s the truth with no excuses: I must have in some way mixed up my notes from the project I was working because what I wrote WAS NOT my experience (or that of my testers) with the Black Center Tactical rig. In point of fact, our experience(s) were THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what I wrote.

I could go into a long rambling excuse about old age, decrepit cognitive function, short term memory loss, carelessness with notes and in being in too much of a hurry to get something done.

But I’m not going to add insult to injury.

I apologize to Black Center Tactical and the owner John Bonnett publicly for my mistake. I screwed up. That’s all there is to it.

My personal choice in a rig: Black Center Tactical (it has replaced PHLster in my ranking for #1 in concealment Kydex).

My recommendation to elite operators who go in harm’s way? Black Center Tactical.

My recommendation to anyone looking for extremely high quality custom kydex work with a REASONABLE wait time (2-4 weeks) and REASONABLE prices for that work? Black Center Tactical.

My friend the Invisible Man has occasion to be armed in high-risk environments. Here is he is, off duty:

Here’s his extreme concealment high-threat load out (in Invisible Mode), built on Black Center Tactical gear:

From left:
• In pocket, Spyderco Assist with integral glass breaker http://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=634
• Belt: Boxer Tactical 1.75 inch http://www.boxertactical.com
• Holster: Black Center Tactical IWB for G19 worn appendix in line with inguinal fold. Modded with an extra length Incog strut (available as an option) to seat the pistol deep into the belt line.

NOTE: I can already hear the tacti-cool amongst you screaming “Must have full firing grip! Must have full firing grip!” I’m gonna digress here for a minute and share a little bit I’ve learned from people much more experienced and smarter than me over the last 40 years of being in and around this here bidness:

IWB concealment runs on a spectrum from deep in the waistband like this (much better concealment, slower presentation) to high in the waistband so you can get your full firing grip on the pistol in the holster (faster presentation, poorer concealment).

This guy sets his pistol up for this level of deep concealment because

a. He can hide ALL that gear under a light T-shirt at close quarters with people (and does so, regularly)

and

b. With his experience and skill set he can get that Karl Sokol http://www.chestnutmountainsports.com customized G-19 (grip reduction, beavertail, trigger job, innards polished, Trijicon HD sights, and the black stuff on the handle – truck bed liner. Don’t laugh, youngsters…works great when wet, much cheaper than other fancy finishes and you can touch it up yourself if needed with a $5 can from the local auto store) out of the holster and on to work with a clean Mozambique (at 10 yards instead of 7) from deep concealment in an average 2.0 seconds, though he has been known to go faster when frightened.

So back to the line up:

• Similarly modded mag pouch (Incog long strut) which contains a Dawson Precision +5 baseplate https://dawsonprecision.com/basepad-hicap-for-glock-extended-tool-less-design-by-dawson-precision/and spring on a Glock 17-rd magazine. This gives his back up magazine 22 rounds. So with 16 rounds in his G19 his daily EDC is at minimum 38 rounds of 9mm. He can pop an identical magazine and pouch rig right next to that one. Extensive testing of this magazine extension set up leaves him confident enough to run it daily. The Dawson baseplate includes a special spring as well as a baseplate which keeps it extremely reliable.

• A Boker Trigonaut http://www.amazon.ca/Boker-02BO280-Plus-Trigonaut-Knife/dp/B0037EZ0TC worn horizontally, rig modded with Raven Concealment 1.75 inch belt loops, and a Ranger Band http://www.gearward.com as an extra retention device should one find oneself engaging in fisticuffs with miscreants. Extremely fast access with either hand, the Ranger band protects it during scuffles or being brushed out of the sheath at close quarters by accident. The Trigon is much less expensive than a lot of the fancier knives, is a legal length in many jurisdictions (check your own local laws if you decide to emulate) and a fine working tool for EDC carry.

NOTE TO THE KNIFE PEOPLE: While my friend carries this knife as a daily work tool, if one were so unfortunate as to have to resort to it as a defensive means, it’s inexpensive enough where you won’t miss it (much) when it goes into evidence in the property room. Or in the river. Unlike some of the more expensive albeit nice custom knives built for the whole “mid-line access” role. YMMV.

Here’s a pic of the rig on the Invisible Man when he turned off his invisibility cloak:

So that’s an overview of a working professional’s rig for deep concealment in a dangerous environment. Notice it’s built around Black Center Tactical’s extremely high quality work.

Oh, and the Invisible Man assures me that the Black Center Rig is absolutely invisible — under a burqua.

Find Black Center Tactical on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/BlackCenterTactical/
Website with contact info here: http://store.blackcentertactical.com/Default.asp

Buy some rigs from Mr. John Bonnett and tell him I sent you. With my apologies.

The Invisible Man at work…..(wink)

Random Thoughts on Crowds and Attacks

Crowds frighten me.

There was a time, a long time ago, when I enjoyed the excitement of a crowd: concerts, packed movies, huge parties (my 18th birthday party had over 400 participants, a band, and enough drugs and alcohol to fund a mid-size cartel….) and even the odd political event before I grew disillusioned.

But not any more.

It was actually a concert that broke my enjoyment. Back in the 70s, I attended a benefit concert in San Jose CA for Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Union. It was a great concert: Santana, Taj Mahal, a ton of minor acts. And because it was a political fund-raiser, no police for security. Only the Brown Berets of La Familia providing volunteer security. This was the era of Altamont, where the Hells Angels provided security for the Rolling Stones, and there was violence there; there was violence here, too.

I was about three bleacher rows away from the first major fight. It was hot, people had been drinking and getting high all day in the sun, and several La Familia security were called over to intervene in an argument between a huge unaffiliated biker and a patch-holder from one of the smaller CA MCs. When it kicked off, it kicked off big.

I remember watching the fight flow like a ripple in a pond, getting bigger and bigger till it was a tidal wave: first two guys fighting, then four or five, then knives and chain belts (outlaw bikers used to wear the drive chains of bikes for belts as they made handy flails in melee combat along with the obligatory Buck Folding Hunters and fixed blades) and then easily one third of the bleachers that held over 45,000 people erupted into violence. Gun shots, knife fights, fist fights, people screaming…and the crowd and the fight nosing one way and then the next like a gigantic animal.

Me and my buddy couldn’t fight our way through and down, so we turned and did the opposite – we fought our way up the bleachers, and then climbed over the safety rail and made a precarious descent down the support structure behind and beneath the bleachers, and then climbed a high barbed wire topped fence to escape.

As I recall there were several hundred hospitalized after the mass riot, and the police couldn’t even get into the stadium.

I will never forget how fast the violence grew, how fast it turned, and how fast people got ate up in it. I’ve seen similar violence elsewhere since then, but that first impression has never left me.

So I avoid crowds.

But sometimes you can’t.

I am no longer an instructor. I’m a coach for instructors and a designer of training programs. I do get asked from time to time to lend my experience and opinion to problems. Like the problem in this video, posed by a woman who is a fine martial arts instructor who asked: “What can I possibly teach or say that would have helped this woman?”

Ugly. Raped and beaten so savagely she required surgery. Easy enough to say, don’t be there, or don’t dress a certain way if you’re going to be in a place like that. But sometimes we don’t get to choose, as Lara Logan, who was similarly attacked while doing her job, describes in this interview:

Some of the hard men who go in harm’s way talk about the shooting solution. While there are times that may be the solution, even the best trained and reasonably armed can be overcome and killed by the fast moving crowd. In this video, notice what happens when the shots go off…and what happens when the fire is ineffective and doesn’t continue…and when the shooter has the gun beaten out of his hands….

Other skilled people talk about driving away or through. Great in principle but sometimes fails in practice, as Reginald Denny can testify:

And sometimes the crowd isn’t spontaneous, but planned:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dc4_1450747201

What might an instructor want to convey to a woman (or a man) who might have to consider a mass attack like these? I don’t have any hard and fast answers. I have some general principles. The crowd is a dangerous beast, and the crowd mass attack is the most dangerous beast of all.

My random thoughts on principles:

• Don’t be there if at all possible. Avoid crowds, especially crowds of young men, and especially of young drunken men.
• If you’re in a crowd by choice, pay attention to your intuition and your feelings (the atmospherics or situational awareness) of the energy/mood of the crowd. When I was young and getting my first professional fighting chops as a doorman, I could literally feel the energy in the bar shift when things were about to go bad. Everyone feels it; and most can recall it after the fact if they survive. This presupposes, of course, that you are sober enough to notice.
• If you’re in a crowd by choice, have a partner or several friends. Don’t be alone and don’t allow yourself to be isolated in the crowd, especially as a woman surrounded by men. Look for other women or men who will stand with you or stand up for you and ask for help.
• If the crowd gets ugly, get out as fast as you can. The earlier you sense the change and the faster you move, the less likely you are to get caught up in it.
• If you become a target, keep moving. Move away, don’t stop and don’t let yourself be stopped.
• If you are grabbed, you must have previously made a decision about what to do and act instantly on it. A fast decisive attack may dissuade, distract, or delay others for you to get away…or it may incite even more violence. If you are fighting bare handed against a mob focused on beating and or raping you, it’s like fighting a tidal wave. Look at those videos above.
* The greatest challenge(s) are:
a. Knowing the spectrum of violence and recognizing when attention turns into the intention to harm you – the earlier you sense that the more effective any pre-emptive action (escape or preemptive strikes) will be.
b. Being violent enough early enough to stop the first key individuals moving on you to create space to escape.
c. Being able to ride out the panic of being overwhelmed by a crowd bent on hurting you, which is one of the most terrifying experiences any human can feel, and work a plan or improvise one. Which presupposes that you have a plan for such an event, which presupposes you’ve thought about it, and that you can improvise a different plan if your first one fails contact.

For the shooters in the crowd, notice what happens in the IRA mob killing video. The initial shots scatter the crowd…except for a few key individuals who continue their attack focused on disarming the operators. Then the crowd returns. Shots fired, most of the crowd retreats…except for the hard core. Have you thought about what you might do in such a circumstance? Would you fire warning shots and hope to scatter the crowd? Would you shoot to kill the main players in the mob?

As for driving away or through, notice what happens both in the IRA video…what happens when you stop? Even you stop and are blocked in, you are faced with the decision to either run over or through a crowd – have you thought that through and decided in advance about what you might do in that instance? Reginald Denny stopped…

In the Lara Logan interview, pay attention to what she says about the change and the escalation in the language and atmospherics in the crowd. Can you pick up on a point where she might have left? Can you see it or feel it?

The only hard and fast solution to this problem is not to be there. The principle of staying away from crowds works (unless you’re hunted by one, as in the gloating trophy video) but dealing solo with a mob attack gone violent is like swimming with a hungry great white shark. The mob usually wins.

Random Thoughts On Civilian Training Considerations (14 Jan edit)

There are many more qualified voices (than me) out in the wilderness of the Error-Net on what constitutes “good” (whatever that means, specifically) training for the civilian gun-toter (and even more for police specific training).

Some especially good ones are:

• Greg Ellifritz, Active Response Training: http://www.activeresponsetraining.net
• Claude Werner, The Tactical Professor: https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com
• Ralph Mroz, The Street Standards: https://thestreetstandards.wordpress.com
* Massad Ayoob, Massad Ayoob On Guns: http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/

There are thousands of blogs and forums where the tacti-cool Error-Net Community can weigh in and pundit-ize from their keyboards (not withstanding that there are some EXTRAORDINARY voices out there; they just tend to get drowned out in the background noise, which is why I no longer participate in forums and the vast majority of blogs etc. except as a mostly passive consumer of good information).

One topic that’s getting a lot of digital ink is how, dadgummit, should us civilians be prepared to fight terrorists in the streets of our home cities?

It’s an interesting question for a bemused observer on the sidelines, which is me most days. I had an interesting series of dialogues in recent weeks with several of my mentors and some other colleagues. One of them, my long time friend and mentor Ed Lovette, now (unfortunately) retired from active training, said this: “You know, there’s really nobody that’s out there that is doing a good job of preparing the average civilian (responsible) gun owner for dealing with the significantly higher threat of aggravated assault, armed robbery, mass attacks (whether criminal or terror motivated) and terrorism that we’re seeing now.”

I think there are, but at least from my view on the sidelines I see the endless Balkanization of “firearms” or “tactical lifestyle” or whatever: over here you can learn the latest and the greatest in pistol manipulation from open carry on the range; over here you can run deep concealment pistol; over here you can learn how to fight in the hole of 0-3 yards; over here you can learn to deploy your knife to defend your gun or sneak up on an ISIS operator and score a knife kill, blah blah blah.

Not much in the ways of an integrated carefully thought out and designed program.

Since that’s kinda sorta what we do at Accentus-Ludus, I thought I’d share some random thoughts here.

One of my dear friends and long term students Guro Diana Rathbone came to me and asked for my help in designing a “training walkabout” for her; i.e. an extended professional reboot/upgrade to take her world class martial arts skills and accomplishments and use those as a platform to launch her into the world of defensive firearms with a focus on female civilians. So here’s a break down of what we sketched out and what she’s already done and is doing.

I based this loosely on the post-Basic and In-Service training a federal agency involved in counter-terror did. After Basic Firearms and Specialized In-Service Firearms qualification, there were three “outside” schools that were considered to be finishing courses to prep operators (or whatever we were called in those days, agents/officers/ninjas, I’m old, I forget….):

Cooper-era Gunsite pistol curriculum – to refine and install the basic manipulation skills.
Massad Ayoob’s Lethal Force Institute curriculum – to get the legal piece down, so we knew when we were justified in shooting the bad people;
Bill Rogers’s Shooting School -to get manipulation, accuracy, speed, and decision making honed in the crucible of the man vs. machine set up that remains one of the best tests of combat marksmanship ability.

That’s not a bad sequence of classes, albeit expensive (but not if your Agency is paying, LOL) and follows a pretty good conceptual base: basic manipulation and known distance marksmanship and holster skills, followed by intensive legal grounding in when to shoot, followed by intensive testing at fusing those concepts together.

But things change, sometimes for the better (says an old curmudgeon) and we’ve learned an awful lot about how the brain works, how the legal landscape has evolved (especially for civilians) and especially the threat matrix for shooters. I’m going to confine my comments to the armed civilian context here, as there are better qualified folks to comment on the high end tactical piece, though I do occasionally get to consult with those type of folks, at least according to the e-mail I get here at the Old Fogey’s House.

Here’s the conceptual sequence I set up for Guro Diana Rathborne for her transition into the world of defensive firearms:

Situational Awareness, Environmental Manipulation, Pre-Violence Indicators. (The Fight Before The Fight).
• Some Old Guy In Minneapolis (perception enhancement, cognitive-neurological training to enhance situational awareness and accelerate learning of motor skills, other stuff)
• Matt Graham, Graham Combat, ARAINDROP (Environmental Manipulation/Situational Awareness)
• Greg Ellifritz and William April, UNTHINKABLE (violence pre-cursors, psychology of violent offenders)

Firearms Training Specific to the Needs of the Female Shooter:
• Louann Hamblin, LOUKA Tactical

Specific training focus on enhancing manipulation/shooting skill:
• Claude Werner (3 days private training previously, 1 1/2 days recently)
• Dave Harrington (3 days private training in pistol, 3 days on carbine)
• Rogers Shooting School, Intermediate/Advanced Pistol w/Carbine add-on

Mental Aspects and Seeking Wisdom from the Sage Elders
• Ed Lovette
• Bob Taubert

Other Training Aspects and Visit With Highly Advanced Young Guns
• A former student visiting as a guest instructor for the FBI HRT (Special Operations Command Combatives Program)

Combatives and Different Martial Arts (she set up most of this herself as she’s an in-demand instructor for advanced and beginning martial artists, a regular law enforcement trainer and presenter at IALEETA, etc. etc.
• Nick Hughes, French Foreign Legion Combatives
* Pat Tray, USA Combatives, renowned SEAL operator and instructor
• Various martial arts schools

Some training she’s scheduling right now:

• Massad Ayoob’s latest evolution of his legal material.
• Washington State Police Training
• Various classes at the Sig Sauer and Smith & Wesson Academy
• Visits with Burt Duvernay, Ralph Mroz, Karl Sokol and a few who shall remain nameless.

That’s a pretty good curriculum to accomplish in a few months, and a significant expense in time and money. But if you figure that you’re looking to get a graduate level education in a new field in a compressed time frame, may as well as go the distance, and the total expense is significantly less than a 2-4 year degree in something else and a hell of a lot more practical.

So what’s the flow, or the big pieces that add up to at least one definition of a good education in gun-fighting?

Soft skills. The stuff that’s not sexy (or maybe it is, if you’re a neuroscience geek like me) like learning pre-violence indicators and predator behavior, tweaking your own cognition and neurology so you learn faster, retain more of what you learn, and can apply what you learn under life and death stress; manipulating your environment (including those around you) so as to enable you to move safely through chaotic situations/circumstances and events; what to do if you’re captured or a victim (including some escapeology); stress management pre-fight in-fight and post-fight, mindfulness/meditation/visualization technique to support all of the above. Generating and maintaining an attitude of humility and gratitude and service to others.

Unarmed skills. Diana’s way ahead of most, having 30 years of full time martial arts training and instructorship, and having a wall full of hard-earned certificates from every major component of the Inosanto JKD Universe and others. Basic skills to consider – me, I’m a big fan of basic military combatives like the evolution of the WW2 stuff made famous by Fairbairn and Sykes. Simple, robust, easy to retain, serves in 80-90% of the circumstances you’ll run into. Boxing is great, but any vigorous martial art is better than nothing. SPEND TIME EXPLORING HOW TO INTEGRATE THOSE SKILLS INTO ARMED SKILLS. For that I highly recommend the Filipino systems as the concept of fluidity and flow translate well to armed combat with knives as well as guns, in my experience.

Intermediate armed skills: Contact type weapons including pepper spray, knives, sticks, and improvised weapons, including environmental evaluation and use (walls, door handles, doors, bar rails, chairs, etc.)

Firearms skills: Basic safety and manipulation of handguns. Progress rapidly from that into a solid defensive oriented handgun course that addresses concealment and realistic application of the handgun. Right now it appears that the best there is in terms of track record is Mr. Tom Givens at RangeMaster, though there are a great many people out there providing quality instruction. An advanced handgun course (from guys like Paul Howe, Dave Harrington, Claude Werner, Bill Rogers, etc.)

A necessary skill set is the application of the extreme close range gunfight which includes grappling, striking and clearing a fouled weapon. Craig Douglas at ShivWorks pretty much set the bar (I found over 200 e-mails from him dating back to the early 90s when we were kicking around his concepts while recently archiving research material!) though Greg Ellifritz does an excellent job with that as well.

The legal piece gets way overlooked. Training with Massad Ayoob is a must while he’s still around. There is no one better. Period. There are good books, and a good lawyer is a must.

Scenario training: a must have. You must test your skills force on force under the supervision of a SKILLED instructor who knows how to set up scenarios and run them properly. The gold standard is the legendary Lou Chiodo of Gunfighters LTD http://www.gunfightersltd.com out in CA, whose focus on force on force firearms training revolutionized forward leaning law enforcement. Gabe Suarez also teaches and presents a significant amount of material on force on force training.

That’s a hell of a lot, isn’t it? And way out of most everybody’s investment range in both money and time unless you are a full time training professional (who can write the entire investment off).

If you’d like to contact Guro Di or follow her journey on Facebook, here’s her contact info:

Diana is on Facebook and LinkedIn
https://www.facebook.com/diana.rathborne?fref=ts
https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-rathborne-a8578010
Her direct contact info: diana.rathborne@gmail.com

So how does Joe Six-Pack and Sally Suburban, new to the world of defensive firearms, approach their training in a time and cost efficient fashion? I assume that they are serious in approaching this and are self-motivated….

Here’s some ideas:

• Read through the four blogs I listed above. Read a LOT. There’s a huge amount of material archived there. Identify the themes and names those four mention as quality trainers.

• Look those people (quality trainers) up on YouTube or online and JUST READ. Generate a list of questions, but JUST READ. Don’t get sucked into the black hole that is Error-Net Gun-Dumb.

• Post your questions at one of the four blogs above. There are other good ones, but those four are extremely high value and very conscientious about answering questions.

• Read some good books. DEFENSIVE LIVING by Ed Lovette and Dave Spaulding, THE TRUTH ABOUT SELF PROTECTION by Massad Ayoob are two very excellent overviews on the whole spectrum of personal protection. Read Gavin De Becker’s THE GIFT OF FEAR and Joe Navarro’s WHAT EVERY BODY IS SAYING to get a good jump-start on soft skills. If you find that interesting, read UNMASKING THE FACE by Paul Ekman. Those five books will put you way ahead of most “gun people.”

• Consider taking a good quality self-defense program if you don’t have any martial arts background. Good quality is short, simple technique that you can validate on a padded opponent immediately. Check out martial arts schools.

• Based on “high quality” information, make a decision about what kind of firearm you’re looking for BEFORE you go to the gun store. Armed with information, go in and get your hands on one.

• If you are required to take mandatory training before you can purchase (like CCW etc.), take the cheapest/fastest/closest training – and compare what you’ve learned from your previous research with what you may be shown/exposed to in such a class. It may be wise to just keep your mouth shut and your head down and get your ticket punched. Don’t expect much.

• Once you have purchased your weapon, then look around for a local basic class. The NRA Instructor referral board is a good start. Asking around, and relying on your perception of “quality” training as formed from your due diligence on the internet with reliable sources, pick a basic class and take it. This class should cover gun safety, basic legal familiarization, holster skills, weapons manipulation, basic marksmanship in a range context.

• If you can’t afford a more advanced class after a basic introduction class, consider pooling together with like-minded potential students and hosting a class. Many top tier instructors will travel to you if you can get 6-8 students together to spread out costs. There are also some good schools regionally.

• Build a training/practice plan and a training budget. Claude Werner’s Pistol Practice Program is as good as it gets, a very reasonable investment in a DVD with a plan, targets, and MP3 timed coaching tracks. $40. Make a training budget. You need ammo and range time (and you should budget for accessories like holsters, belts, eye and ear protection etc.) A bare minimum would be one box of ammo once a month, coupled with a daily dry fire routine. A better would be twice a month, 50 rounds each time for a total of 100 rounds, coupled with a daily dry fire session of no more than 10-15 minutes. A serious high-end commitment would be once a week for 150 rounds, with a 15-30 minute daily dry fire routine that encompassed tactical movement, etc., and a once a year 3-5 day training class.

• Work on stress management, visualization and mental rehearsal. It’s cheap. Work on integrating your unarmed skills with your armed skills and test it in scenarios, classes, whatever. You can find a few other like-minded people and have a training group that is fun and beneficial. Those other people could also pool resources to bring in “name” instructors if you want to up your game without traveling.

So there’s some ideas. As always, these are my opinions based on my experience and training and my professional work as a designer of training programs. Don’t take anything I say (or anybody else) on face value till you have measured it against your own experience and needs.

EDIT FROM E-MAIL: Hey all, don’t be bashful about posting comments. It’s a way to share your insights with the significant audience out there. I do moderate comments to keep off the idiots and the Achy Man Haters https://marcuswynne.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/repost-achy-man-on-corruption-reply-to-the-haters-and-chapter-two-of-threes-wylde/, LOL, but reasonable posts and disagreement welcome.

From Evan Hill of Hill People Gear: He points out a glaring hole in the plan, i.e. TCCC or tactical medical care. Yes, treating gunshot wounds, your own and others, should be part of a comprehensive education, and first aid including trauma management should be part of any adult’s skill set. Thanks Evan!