WHAT: 21st Century Gunfighter, Carbine 1
WHEN: 14 OCT 12
WHERE: Jacobs Plain Gun Club, Greenville, TX
WHO: Stephen Pineau
I decided to take this class after I took Stephen’s Handgun 1 course a month prior. I consider myself a fairly experienced shooter, and Handgun 1, despite being a beginner level course, taught me a lot. This being said, I decided to take the plunge and take this carbine course.
To give you a baseline, I am an Infantry Captian in the Army, with a deployment to Iraq as a PL with about 6 years of service and another deployment anticipated sometime in the upcoming years. In addition, I also do competitive shooting, including 3 gun and IDPA.
I say this to say if you’re just getting into shooting or you’re looking to get back to the basics, Stephen’s Carbine 1 is a terrific plug n play course, especially if time and money for training is limited.
Enter 21st Century Gunfighter Carbine 1. It was a 1 day, ~500 round course. Like all classes, I recommend bringing at least 200 rounds more than the prescribed round count.
The course began at 8am. Through piss poor planning of my own, I didn’t find the location as early as I would have hoped. When I pulled up, I began the final prep of my equipment.
Let me take a pause here to say that you should come early and ready to learn as soon as you get out of the car. Your mags are loaded, gun belt already on, gun zeroed/lubed, optic with fresh batteries, Cambelbak/Gatorade ready, and a notepad with pens in your pocket ready to take notes. You’re paying good money and valuable time to learn how to shoot under a quality instructor. Do EVERYTHING you can to be ready when you arrive to maximize your cost/material learned ratio. Most instructors will wedge in a little more information than what was planned if the class is ready to learn from the get-go and get ahead of schedule. But if you’re waiting on other students and trying to load up all your mags (which takes a while if you’re running 6 mags on your rig and 1 in the gun), you might not learn as much as you would have hopped. We had a student or two arrive a little later than we would have hoped, and one student arrived with a gun that apparently was non mission capable due to a flaw straight from the factory. (many instructors recommend bringing a 2nd gun in case the primary goes down for good—this proved crucial for a student)
Back to my arrival. After I pulled up, I laid my kit out on the table and began chatting with Stephen and his RSO/Medic, John Thompson. The conversation quickly gravitated to low-light, both in TTPs and equipment selection. I had an old Surefire 6P on a Daniel Defense mount at the 2 o’clock on my rifle. It’s a very solid mount and a reliable light, but not my optimal choice. I asked Stephen about his thoughts on light options. His response was the Mossie Midnight Mount from Battlecomp. The light was made for LE officers who weren’t able to modify their weapons. The mount allows the user to put a pistol style light at the 12 o’clock position, over the bore. Stephen’s rationale was it allows you to still get a full firing grip (thumb over the bore) with either hand and still operate a light. Additionally, if you’re shooting around barricades, your light position may hamper your ability to illuminate your target. For example, shooting around a right side barricade, a 9 o’clock position may be problematic. “If you can see it, you can light it, if you can light it, you can sight it, and if you can sight it, you can shoot it”, was the mantra. Stephen also brought up the TTP of some military/LE shooters in a dynamic scenario. At certain distances, some shooters use the brightest part of the center of the light’s beam as crude aiming method. I strongly recommend you get a solid low-light course under a quality instructor before you try this—Stephen recommended Brian Bishop of ODG. There you have it. Get there early and ready to learn and you might learn some extra material. The same may hold true for staying a little late.
After everyone arrived, Stephen began his intro brief which included a reality check. This class isn’t about political terms like stopping the threat, or defending your team mates or loved ones—this course was about killing another human being with a gun. It about bringing your sights up and visualizing another human being, intent on ending your life, and pulling the trigger multiple times, driving his ass to the ground. Stephen also brought up a shorter, more condensed version of the 4 firearm safety rules. The big four rules may not apply 100% of the time in every situation. A perfect example would be finger off the trigger until you’re on your sights—does this apply when you’re fighting in the clinch, at bad breath distance with a guy right on top of you?
Stephen also brought up what some call the big 3 or the “Combat Triad”. These are marksmanship, manipulation and mindset.
–Marksmanship is simply getting rounds from point A to point B. Can you as a shooter put the round EXACTLY where you want it to go? Sounds simple enough, but in a dynamic environment, can you compartmentalize everything, and apply your holdover due to a varying distance and a height over bore with your optic to pull off a brain stem shot on some scumbag? You, as a responsible shooter and a Sheepdog, should know that your margin for error in an event like that is zero and you are responsible for every round.
–Manipulation is the safe and efficient handling of a weapon on an unconscious level, cold and on demand. A classic example of this would be in a Denny’s when some scumbag walks in with a sawed off shotgun. You automatically have to process on a subconscious level numerous variables, draw and fire with no heads up or warning beforehand. All while being consciously thinking of your surroundings, your line of fire and potential pass-thru shots. All of these things are going to occupy your mind at this moment which is exactly why the mechanics of shooting has to be subconscious so your mind can focus on the more important issues.
Mindset: Is your mind in condition yellow as you’re going about your daily activities? Are you aware of your surroundings, or are you suffering from task fixation because you’re typing on your smart phone or looking for your keys? An armed mind and an empty holster is better than an empty mind and a full holster when you leave the house.
We also covered reality, and training how you would fight. Do you train with a minimalist rig designed to complete some range drills, or do you run a run a plate carrier? If you’re Joe Average Citizen, you will most likely use this rifle in a home invasion scenario, where you’re in nothing more than your underwear—therefore a minimalist rig may be ideal. Since I’m an 11 series in the Army, I ran a plate carrier complete with an M9, spare ammo for my rifle/handgun, water, medical kit and a signals kit—if the Army let me, I’d also be carrying NODs, pyro and my MBITR.
The other thing that Stephen mentioned throughout the course was Big Boy Rules. Don’t stick to dogma. Don’t go through needless motions. If you clear a double feed on the first rack, you don’t need to rack it two more times. Do what you got to do to get your gun back in the fight. Just fucking fix it. Additionally, if you’re in the middle of a drill and you deviate from the way something is “SUPPOSED” to be done, finish the drill. Finish the fight. Learn from it afterward.
Stephen got us into zeroing. Stephen gave us a great zero formula that can allow a shooter to shoot out to 400 meters with a 4 MOA Aimpoint optic using common ammo such as the 55 grain and a 50 yard zero. With this style of zero, you have a very flat trajectory, with the round never being more and two inches above or below the point of aim out to 250 meters, and 16 inches low at 400 meters using the 4 MOA dot as a sort of BDC for distance shooting. This concept blew my mind, because I always thought of optics like the Aimpoint Micro as an optic that can only be used for CQB, and up to medium carbine ranges. Stephen brought up the excellent point that most people tend to use the carbine as sort of a big pistol, using it only for close distance work. He did a great job of ensuring the students had a rifle that capable of very accurate fire all the way out to the max effective range of our gun using 55 grain ammo and our close quarter optics. I found it interesting that calculating formulas, trajectories and MOA is something normally used for long range precision shooters—but Stephen was able to apply this skill to the carbine world.
After we zeroed, Stephen brought us in close to fire a number of strings at center mass. After a couple of strings, Stephen had us check our targets, to illustrate our height over bore. If I’m less than 25 yards, I will aim roughly 2 inches high. Stephen mentioned that the best shooters are the best “see’ers”. The best shooters manage to take small mental snapshots as the red dot dances around the target during rapid strings of fire, constantly making minor corrections, keeping the dot on target. This concept along with the C style grip on the fore end of the gun were crucial once we started getting into BSA drills.
Stephen soon had us running a number of iterations, through the various ready positions, including the ready position (what I like to call the patrolling posture), the low ready (stock in shoulder, muzzle down), the high ready (straight line from eyes, to muzzle to target), and the contact ready (eyes just over your optic, looking for “work” after just shooting someone)
As the class progressed, Stephen introduced us to the concept taught by many instructors called F.A.S.T. --something that Stephen likes to call actions after contact.
F stands for fight, A stands for assessing if you need to fight anymore or fight anyone else, S stands for Search/assess and T stands for topping off your gun. Other things to accomplish include taking cover (is current cover adequate?), talking to others (team mates, family members, 911) and Treat any wounds you may have sustained. These may not necessarily happen in the same order. Stephen continuously emphasized ending the fight on a second sight picture, following the dirt bag to the ground with trigger prepped, and finally searching assessing that there aren’t any more threats.
Before long, Stephen introduced us to reloads, both emergency and tactical reloads. Tac reloads require both time an opportunity—whether it’s a lull in the fight, a good piece of cover or anything else that would allow you to top off your gun without getting shot. Stephen was big on emphasizing on each shooter having a sort of “loading system”. Which way do your bullets face in the pouch? Which way do you grip your mags? Where do you index for an emergency reload vs. a tac reload? Each shooter should have a system. My rear most mag was a mag that sat behind my medical kit at about my 9 o’clock.
We then moved into emergency reloads. These reloads are simply that, used in an emergency. Your bolt locked back on an empty mag, and you need to feed it and get back into the fight ASAP. I am a big believer in the speed reload, and it has its place, despite my past military experience saying that I should make every effort to retain empty mags—weapons dogma at its finest.
It was around this time when we should have broken for lunch. However there were some ammo and weapon related issues which kept rearing their ugly heads early in the course, eating up some time. Stephen was very flexible and asked the class if they wanted to push through lunch and keep shooting. I was happy that we continued to shoot.
The next portion of the course was positional shooting. This was shooting at relative distance (we only had about 85-90 meters). We sat and kneeled in modified positions, using the sling wrapped around the support arm in order to stabilize the gun. These positions were not dynamic by any means. It took time to sit/kneel just right and apply the proper amount of tension on your sling to get a steady sight picture—this especially is true if you were wearing equipment. But the stability that these positions offered could not be argued. These were a very specialized methods used to get a solid sight picture if normal positions like prone supported weren’t feasible. If you spent some time on the Marine Corps Shooting Team, you may not have been wowed by these techniques, but being an Army slave to the 300 meter pop up range and very little experience on longer distance shoots, these methods were great tools for the proverbial toolbox. Almost all of my shots in these positions were right on the heart. I will say however that having the right sling and mounting hardware was crucial to this style of shooting. The Magpul MS3 slings with their mounts were excellent for this, when it was set up just right. Stephen preferred the VTAC sling for this kind of shooting, but I still think the MS3 was best due to its flexibility over the widest range of circumstances.
Stephen then got us into malfunctions. Stephen walked us through the failure to feed/fire, shallow/deep stovepipe, double feed, bolt over base and charging handle impingements. The linear progression method was a great approach to fixing malfunctions. Every method we used either cleared the malfunction or help ID the style of malfunction. Everything started with the trigger press, either being a “click” or a “mush”. If it was a click, it could be fixed by a simple tap-rack-roll. A mush involved ripping out the magazine and fixing it from there. By far the worst was the charging handle impingement. After being taught how to clear malfunctions, we went into a practical exercise dubbed the “Blue Falcon”. The shooters would ground their weapons, shift left or right and install a malfunction on their buddy’s weapon. We would use this to condition our understanding the symptoms of the different type of malfunctions. After a while I got cocky, and more or less asked Stephen and John to do their worst on my weapon. It was of course a sort of triple feed which I somehow compounded. Long story short, we had to break the weapon down. I still had to finish the fight, so I finally drew my M9 and put a number of rounds into the chest/head of the target.
We were brought in for a discussion over wound physiology. Why we aim where we aim. In addition to the obvious area of high in the chest, we went into alternate target areas. We discussed how big is the desired target area for a headshot? Where do we want our rounds to go for a headshot? Just because a person takes a round in the head, doesn’t mean the threat will be stopped. The example of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was brought up. Stephen was quick to bring up his favorite example, Phineas Gage—a railroad worker who had a steel rod go through his skull during a freak accident—only to live another 12 years (with 1800 medical technology). Stephen also mentioned the pelvis as an alternate target area, citing the crucial blood vessels and critical structures that were located there.
Before long, we got into the latest version of the Balance of Speed and Accuracy Drill (BSA). Stephen used this template he developed to work in conjunction with his lectures. Each shooter would get timed in firing 6 rounds into a predetermined accurate area while getting all their hits. This area would either be the chest, head or pelvis in these drills. The size of the targets changed, as did the distance. Both of these factors (and other factors) dictated the cadence of our shooting. We used this as a method to better understanding of our personal balance of speed and accuracy. After each iteration, Stephen would bring us in and use our groupings, and shot cadence to help us diagnose if we were truly getting the balance of speed and accuracy. If our groups were little tiny rat holes, we could probably shoot faster. If we were throwing flyers outside our target zones, we should slow down. Crucial to recoil control was grip and stance. If our cadence was uneven, we were likely having a breakdown somewhere in our seven fundamental skills.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Stephen had us working various distances, working all of the skills we were taught that day—all the way from the proper stance and grip, through shooting , to our actions after contact—following the bad guy to the ground with our sights, searching/assessing for more threats, and topping off our guns when needed. We were told to vary our round counts into the target, working alternate target areas. Stephen continued to emphasize “our fight”. We shot until we felt we killed the threat. Sometimes a man doesn’t go down after only two rounds. At various distances, we noticed our cadences were changing as Stephen continuously stressed that we get our hits.
The final exercise of the class was a shooting and movement drill. Starting at roughly 3 yards, we would fire 2-6 rounds into the target, working alternative target areas. We would then scan, top off and give the command “Moving”. Stephen would give the command to “Move”, and we would turn and bound back to him, using either a muzzle up or muzzle down method. This continued to roughly 90 yards back, getting into alternate positions and prone positions. We then reversed this, bounding up to the 3 yard line. This whole exercise was a big “final exam” working every skill we were taught. It was a real smoker and it showed each shooter how much subconscious competence they really had. Following all of this, we all cleared and locked and went into the course debrief.
I for one loved the discussions between the shooting iterations going over things such as mindset, gear placement and carbine theory. These little 5 minute discussions were worth the course fee alone. I wanted to expose any training scars that I had, and also validate that my equipment setup. The method that Stephen had us use for zero was amazing. Each student came out of the course with a carbine that could effectively engage out of 400 meters with minimal holdovers. I for one don’t work the lesser known and more difficult malfunctions such as the charging handle impingement. I now sit and watch the news, doing 2 or 3 iterations with snap caps trying to clear these nasty malfunctions.
My only real complaints were the ammo and gun issues at the beginning of the course. But those were ankle biter issues and Stephen shifted on the fly to ensure we got the most training value possible. Just like his handgun 1 course, Stephen was able to fit a bunch of information into a one day course. And like his handgun 1 course, each student walked away with a handouts covering safety, zeroing, the 7 fundamentals, malfunctions (and how to ID/clear them), and a number of drills.
All in all, this was a great class, and the price to learning ratio is hard to beat. I look forward to taking another course with Stephen.
Pics to follow…