AAR-Virginia Tactical "Survival Handgun" 29-31 May, Culpeper VA

I attended Virginia Tactical's inaugural "Survival Handgun" class this past weekend. (Announcement here: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=53816. ) The course was definitely "as advertised". (DISCLAIMER: I have known Noel for five years, and he started working for me part time last year.)

I won't dig too far into the details...Noel's course description lays out the course curriculum. The highlights for me were:

1. First order of business every day was to shoot the qualification course that Noel has put together from the literally dozens of schools that he attended. Time and accuracy standards were announced, demonstrated, and then enforced. This unveiled the full extent of my sucktitude. I've spent far too much time training and teaching CCW "fast and close", and my basics have atrophied. The introduction of time standards and increased distance really knocked me out of my box.

2. It is obvious when you watch Noel and his assistant, Aaron, present their program of instruction that they have worked together extensively in the past. Their delivery was smooth, professional and presented in a matter of fact manner that reflects confidence in their skills and what they're teaching.

3. There is a good reason for everything they teach. They ask that you compare their techniques with what you're doing now and then put you into a crucrible to see what holds up. You can then decide for yourself what works for best you. I walked away with a few tidbits, and left others on the table.

4. Every day ends with a "shooting review" of the skills you were taught. TD-3 ended with relevant and realistic scenarios that allow you to fully exercise what you've learned, and reveal what you didn't aborb. These scenarios are critiqued from the, "What were you thinking here?" perspective, rather than the "Why didn't you do this?" approach.

In summary, this course represents an excellent opportunity to challenge yourself and test your equipment. Highly recommended.

Noel's website is still under construction, the URL is http://www.virginia-tactical.com/

John Murphy

Nice write-up. (Also, classy of you to help out a peer with a good review, at 'your' range. . .)

See 'ya in July.

Over the Memorial Day weekend I had the opportunity to attend the inaugural Survival Handgun class held by Virginia Tactical.

The instructors, Noel and Aaron, both served as instructors in the USMC High Risk Personnel program. For those who don’t know, the HRP program was designed for those who were posted in high risk areas where criminal violence, terrorism, and kidnapping are prevalent day to day threats. When not on duty guarding embassies, Marines and others still have to function in these sorts of places day to day. The HRP program was designed to teach personal security skills appropriate for that context, including concealed carry and proficiency with the handgun. The HRP program expanded past training Marines and also trained personnel from just about every alphabet soup government agency imaginable, and individuals of every conceivable skill level from advanced shooters to people who have never touched a firearm before. Given what I’ve learned about HRP over the years and the reputation of HRP instructors (Ernie Langdon was an HRP instructor) I was eager to see what Virginia Tactical would present.

Each day began with a qualification drill used to assess the individual student’s skill level. The course of fire consisted of a number of small drills done on a timer, things like 1 shot to the A zone of the target from the draw, completing an immediate action drill, clearing a double-feed on the clock, etc. If you completed the drill with the requisite hits on target within the given time standard, you got a “point”. Each drill was run two times by every shooter. At the end your points are totaled to come up with your score. On the first run of the qual I earned 14 points, hardly a stellar performance. I generally managed to beat the time standards…sometimes by quite a bit…but thanks to big doses of anticipation and not paying attention to my sights, I managed to inexcusably miss a lot of shots. Little did I know that this would be my best run of the weekend.

After the qual the instructors would take us through individual blocks of instruction, each focused on a particular skill or aspect of improving speed/efficiency/effectiveness with the handgun. The instructors would discuss the teaching points (generally with Aaron demonstrating while Noel broke the mechanics down to explain it step by step) and then the students were put through repetitions of the drills. As the students ran through the drill, the instructors spent time watching each student, diagnosing their performance and offering suggestions to help them improve. This may not sound like a revolutionary approach, but as someone who has been through a few training courses over the years I can tell you that it’s not as common as you might think. Often classes are simply too large to allow instructors to spend much time really critically examining what students are doing and figuring out how to help them improve. Noel and Aaron view this as a critical aspect of training and have limited class sizes to ensure that the students get that sort of input from them. It makes less money for the instructors, but it offers a better quality training experience for the students.

Accuracy was stressed heavily in the course. The phrase “you can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight” was used multiple times. One of the great accuracy tools used in the course was a photorealistic target that kind of looked like a younger, uglier, Bruce Willis. The “Bruce Willis” targets had faintly outlined vital structures on the body like the heart, lungs, spinal cord, pelvis, etc. The outlines weren’t really visible unless you were within a few feet of the target, meaning that when actually running drills you only saw Bruce and couldn’t really see his heart as an aiming point…which is exactly how it works in real life. (Unless you are lucky enough to have a bad guy who is wearing one of those skeleton T-shirts) The instructors’ emphasis on accuracy was reinforced by going up to “Bruce” after a drill and seeing that your shots were only marginally acceptable. There’s something about seeing that you barely nicked a dude’s lung to make you rethink the way you approached that shot. Speaking personally, something about seeing the guy’s heart outlined on the target really made me want to keep my shots there. The overwhelming majority of the time when we were shooting at “Bruce” I ended up putting the majority of my shots tightly clustered right around the heart/aorta area. I also spent time shooting at the T box of the “Bruce” target, as I found something about shooting “Bruce” in the face to be enormously satisfying.

The effect of the “Bruce” target was to take a USPSA target and to shrink the acceptable hit zones to some VERY small targets that translated immediately into visual feedback about what accuracy means in a gunfight. Failing to do what was necessary on the trigger resulted in what the student could see was an easily survivable hit on the target. It was the difference between placing a shot in the bad guy’s CNS or piercing his ear, between a round in the guy’s heart or barely nicking his lung, etc. It helped the student to clearly understand what “good enough” actually is on a human target and brought to light some of the wisdom behind the phrase “speed is fine, accuracy is final.”

The instruction was solidly based in practical reality without being dogmatic, the instructors themselves were personable and approachable, and the course content would be useful to those who already had some level of skill with a handgun but wanted to learn to increase their speed. On our final day after going over some vehicle ambush drills (sane ones based on the idea of a single person dealing with a threat while in a vehicle) The instructors set up a number of scenarios that the student had to work through through utilizing various skills they had hopefully picked up from the instruction, including learning that bullets can go through bad guys and hit good guys if you aren't careful.

So should you consider this course? If you have some level of training or skill with a pistol already and you're looking to increase your skill level with a handgun, you'll learn some things in this course that will help you do that. If you've never touched a handgun before it's probably not the course for you as it assumes that you already have some understanding of the fundamentals of shooting.

Thanks to the nice folks at Virginia Tactical for inviting me to come and evaluate the course. Condolences to "Bruce's" family for the number of 9mm FMJ rounds I put through his face.

Nice AARs guys.