AAR: Vickers Tactical Adv. Handgun Instructor- January 5-7, 2011-Ft. Lauderdale, FL
http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/a...AVLowLight.jpg
Training Days 1 & 2 complete- AAR to follow... :cool:
http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/a...ORangeSign.jpg
Apologies for the delay- got back from the class and have been busy ever since. Flight delay gives me some time to update the AAR, albeit without the benefit of the notes I took during the class :mad:
This was my second time training with Larry Vickers, prior to the class I had been doing a consistent dry fire routine knowing that I would be held to a more demanding accuracy standard. I worked strong hand and other strong hand only dry fire as well. I was glad I did but it still wasn't enough as I would learn over the course of 3 days.
Course was hosted at the Broward Sheriff's Office Range which is part of the Markham Park Complex. Facilities are nice, with running water and fixed restrooms rather than the Porta-Johns you normally find at ranges. The BSO folks were great hosts and hard shooters. Students were a mix of BSO, other local LE, Feds and a few random folks from as far away as Illinois and North Carolina. As the student from NC commented, its nice to be in a class of armed professionals...
Most of the students in the class had previous training from other well known industry folks (Pat Rogers, Magpul Dynamics, Insights Training) but only a few had taken a course with LAV before.
LAV started with his "Real World Range Rules." I've seen some misinterpretations of this on the internet from others who use it as an excuse to pick and choose which safety rules they choose to abide by. My take-away from it is that in the "Real World" you won't have 20 foot berms, a 1 way square range or somebody looking over your shoulder to tell you when you're doing something wrong so you'd better instill safe gun handling practices in your training so that you minimize those violations once the stress of the "Real World" kicks in.
Rule 1: Treat all guns as though they are loaded. From LAV's experience this is the most commonly violated safety rule as people will do all sorts of things with an "unloaded" gun that they would never do with a "loaded" gun.
Rule 2: Finger straight until sights on target or ready to shoot. Used to be more commonly violated but significant improvements due to better training.
Rule 3: Never point your gun at anything you don't intend to kill or destroy. The one most likely to be violated once off the square range, in LAV's experience- it will be violated simply because of the nature of what we do. Once you're moving around other people, in and out of vehicles it is inevitable that you will unintentionally sweep somebody with your muzzle. In a room clearing type scenario where you will be running a weapon mounted light on a carbine- you will end up sweeping people before you can determine if they need to be shot (or not). We need to be aware of when it happens and do our best to minimize it.
Rule 4: Be aware of what's in front of and behind the target. The one we train the least in due to nature of square range training. It is also one of the things most likely to happen in real world as your target(s) may be moving and other no-shoots can be moving in and out of your field of fire, both in front of and behind the target.
Note: Firing drills may be out of sequence as I am relying strictly on memory right now.
LAV discussed his view of common pistol shooting doctrine and the importance (or lack of importance) given to trigger control. Take a list of things that is commonly attributed to shooting a pistol well, e.g. sight picture, sight alignment, grip, stance, breathing, etc. and trigger control is usually somewhere near the bottom. LAV believes that trigger control is probably the #1 thing that determines how well you can shoot a pistol. Dry fire can help with this but since a shooter will "know" that the gun is unloaded they can do perfect dry fire but still have problems once they transition to live fire.
***Photo Removed Temporarily***
We started with some ball and dummy drills to work on this.
The classic ball and dummy has students separated in to two relays with one student on the gun and the other student either loading a live round in to the shooter's gun or leaving the chamber empty. Shooter should present and fire with perfect trigger control regardless of condition of weapon. Any trigger jerks (el Snatcho) requires the student to do 5 remedial dry fire reps as a corrective action.
One of the pitfalls of this drill is that shooters will take as long as they can ("a fiscal year"- LAV) to complete the drill. Once they move on to presentations from the holster or are placed under the stress of a timer they will rush the shot and most likely jerk the trigger. To ameliorate this LAV has 2 other variations of the ball and dummy drill using a timer to force the student to speed up everything except the trigger press. 1 involves giving the student a set amount of time to break the shot and the second has a par-time for the student to come out of the holster and make the shot.
There was an eclectic mix of guns in the class; Glocks, M&P's, HK's, Sigs and a lone Beretta. Throughout the class, LAV answered questions and offered opinions on the different types of pistols.
Glock: Gen 3 9mm with the right ammo is probably best choice for those that "treat their guns like their lawnmower"
HK: Best built, HK45 is just a combination of features that HK already had spread out across several pistol platforms consolidated in to one. Best service grade .45 ACP ever made.
S&W: M&P is a great design with potential to be heir to the 1911A1- failed due to Smith & Wesson's obsession with cutting costs. In LAV's words "it's got fleas..." due to problems with QA. Out of a normal class of 20 students he may see 2 or 3 on the line.
