AAR: Defensive Concepts NC Home Defense/Indoor Tactics course 5-6 Nov Carthage NC

Watrdawg · November 7, 2011, 3:32pm

Here’s my attempt at an AAR for this course. I’m sure it will not do the course justice.

First the basics. This was a 2 days course that started Sat. and Sunday mornings at 8am and ended at 5pm. Weather was great but a little chilly the first morning. Other than that perfect weekend. The class was held at Trigger Time in Carthage. They have a 4 room basic shoot house there that we did most of our work in. When I say basic I mean the rooms are just 2x4 frames covered with vinyl siding on three side with doorsin and throughout the rooms. The house is situation up against a dirt and shredded tire berm. So the back wall of There were 3 students in class, 1 LEO
9
Jamie) and 2(myself and a guy names Bret) Civvies. Both Jamie and Bret were great people and we all worked well together. Jamie had previously taken this course and was going through as a refresher. He had also taken multiple classes with NC Defensive Concepts and knew all the instructors pretty well. This class was unusual in that we had 3 instructors, Chris (NCPatrol), Paul and Steve, so it was basically 1 to 1 instruction. I don’t know if Paul and Steve are here on M4C.

Saturday morning started off with a quick 10 shot 10yard 10 second diagnostic shoot into IPSC targets so the instructors could get an idea of what little shooting skills we all had. Seriously though we all put them into the A zone and relatively decent groups. Especially since it was a cold shoot. After the diagnostic shoot we put up our weapons and went to plastic training weapons. Actually most of the class was ran with plastic training weapons. We did live fire but that was after working through each major block of instruction to puts all things together. From there we went into the 2 basic clearing techniques, Quick Peak and slicing the Pie. We started with a demonstration of Quick Peak and then the 3 of us did multiple reps. Chris explained the principle, its advantages and limitations. We then went to “Slicing the Pie”. Chris demonstrated and gave a great explanation of its use and advantages and disadvantages. We then did multiple reps on that technique. This covered most of the first morning. We all went to lunch and then started back up about 12:45. After lunch Chris then demonstrated 2 entry techniques. An Angled entry and the Button Hook entry. As you can tell everything we were taught all built upon the previous lessons. Chris Chris would demonstrate 1 entry method and we would take our reps with each. Chris and the other instructors would critique us as we went through each method. After we all became relatively comfortable with both clearing and entry techniques we then went to clearing various types of rooms. For example and center fed or corner fed room with an open or closed door. During this phase as with previous phases all 3 instructors were able to see how we put together everything we had been taught. The critiques from all 3 were very beneficial. All 3 of them were able to see us from different angles and provide different feedback. Now we come towards the end of the day and the instructors are now intruducing bad guys and good guys into the rooms. We are having to now identify friend or foe. We are still using the training guns. So now we have gone through clearing techniques, entry techniques, clearing multiple rooms and various door fed rooms, identifying friend or foe and multiple people in a room. The three of us run through these scenarios until we all feel comfortable. Now we put on our armor and we are going to run through the scenarios with live fire. So we are adding this stress factor to what we have learned so far. Up to this point we had all seen only a couple of photostatic targets. Of course we go through this course of fire one at a time. While one of the students is going through the rooms the other 2 of us are sitting under the cover. So Bret is first and Jamie and I were sitting at the tables waiting our turns. Chris told us he wanted 3 rounds on each target. By the way Chris and the other instructors really stressed accuracy througout the whole course. Our cirtiques invloved accuracy issues as much as the techniques we used clearing rooms. They even discussed shot placement on targets depending upon if there was a hostage situation or not. So back to Bret working his setup. He clears and enters each room. The last room he enters we hear 9 shots. All goes quiet and you hear the instructors critiques. We are far enough away that all we hear are voice but no clearly so we do not really know what they are saying. Of of a sudden Bret comes out of the door running with his hands waving above his head shouting " Help me Help me I’m all fucked up!" He says that multiple times as he’s working his way back to us. It was hilarious. Now it’s Jamie’s turn. He goes through his rooms and as he clears and enters the last room we hear 6 shots. Same thing he come out of the room saying “Help me Help me I’m all fucked up!” I’m thinking that both of them have shot a good guy. Now its my turn. I clear and enter the first 2 rooms and start on the 3rd. As I open the door and step back to clear a corner I see nothing. I start slicing the pie and as I am square with the door frame I still see nothing. So I’ve pretty much cleared half the room and know the bad GUYS are to the left side of the room. I button hook into the room and see the first bad guy! I put 3 round into his upper chest and right next to him is the 2nd bad guy. He has a 1911 point right at me. These are photo targets just incase I didn’t say that earlier. However I have never seen this photo before. All I see is a big .45 hole facing me. I put 3 rounds into the center of his neck. I’m instructed to holster my weapon and we go over what I did. Clearing and entries were good. Chris asks me why I shot the first bad guy. He had a gun pointed at me and was a definite bad guy. " WHY did you shoot this guy"? He also had a gun pointed at me and was a bad guy. Chris then points down to the guys waist at a badge! I completely missed the badge being down on his waist. I was so focused on the weapon pointed at me that I reacted before determing if he was friend or foe. So of course I had to do the “Help me Help I’m all fucked up run”.

This was the end of our first day. We went over quickly what we learned the first day and then packed up and headed out. I really learned a lot and had a ton of good infor for the next day. The 2nd day we were going to go over hardening our houses against break-ins and making them more of a deterrant to break-ins we also were going to discuss safe rooms and police interaction once they arrived. We were going go work multiple rooms and hallways with T-intersections along with working multiple rooms and multiple threats.

I will do the 2nd day in a couple of hours. I’m at work right now.

zacbol · November 7, 2011, 4:45pm

Nice write up. Sounds like it was a good class. I’ve practiced pieing in a few different courses and room entry in one course (a street & vehicle tactics course). It’s definitely very illuminating to realize that if you do it right you can see someone or at least their toe or elbow or ear before they even know you’re there. I like that you spent much of the time with blue guns from the sounds of it. The little wrinkle they threw in was also quite clever and a real possibility obviously.

Insights Training, with whom I generally train, does a home defense course, but it hasn’t been offered for the last two years. I’m hoping it’ll be on the schedule this year.

Watrdawg · November 7, 2011, 6:58pm

Your right about picking out a foot, toe, elbow etc. That was also stressed to us when doing a quick peak. Making sure no parts of our body we showing in the threshhold. The BG could see us before we see him/her.

2nd day/Sunday

We started out this day doing a home invasion drill. More of a fun/warmup drill. We had 5/6 steel targets setup against the berm. About 10yards back a bench was placed for us to simualte sitting in a chair or couch. The steel targets were painted black or white. Actually we had 5 white and 1 black. The black steel was the good guy. So we placed our weapons on the bench facing the berm/steel targets. We then turned around and faced the opposite direction. While doing this we had our eyes closed and the instructors arranged the steel targets in whatever formation. Basically they were all very close to and overlapping each other. We had to be precise with our shots to either hit a bad guy or keep from hitting the good guy. When told we turned around, keeping our eyes closed, and straddled the bench facing the steel. When the buzzer on a timer went off we were to pen our eyes, grab our weapons and place 3 shots on each piece of steel making sure not to hit the bad guy. Jamie and Bret went first. They all hit their setups and did not hit the good guy. The steel was so close to each other that you only had head shots on some of the targets. It is my turn and I start to engage my targets. My weapon, we all shot M&P’s by the way, mine was a 45 Midsize and they shot 9’s. Well my weapon has a FTE, this was the second time. It did it the day before and I forgot to mention it earlier. This was ammunition related. I was shooting a box of Hornady Steel Match ammo. It is steel cased and the bullets were hollow points. I attempt to clear and cannot pull back the slide at all. I was going to place the slid, muzzledown on the edge of the bench and push down on the fram to make the slide come back but did not want to for safety reasons. I thought it would be better to have one of the instructors do it. Normally I would have done it myself and it was not big deal but better safe than sorry at that point. After I finished we each did another round on the steel. I changed ammuniton before my turn and no problems. I also ran different type of hollow point and no problems. Chris asked if he could shoot some of the Hornady through his 1911. Of course I said yes. He shot a couple of mags clean and I starated to wonder if it was my weapon. The 3rd mag he had the same type of malfunction. The Hornady is steel cased and I think that was the problem. The rest of the day I had no malf’s at all. So if you are looking at shooting the Hornady Steel Match ammo in .45 ACP you might have some problems also.

After this we talked about hardening the home against break-ins etc. Basic common sense info. Still good info though. After that we reviewed what we did the day before and then went into not only clearing and entering a room and multiple rooms we cleared our way back out of rooms and down halls and T intersections. We also did more Friend/Foe exercises. We also had BG/GG’s in different positions within rooms. One thing I kept missing were people laying down on the ground. I missed 3 out of the 4 people I had on the ground. It’s amazing how cue’d in on standing targets you get when you are shooting at them and they are point weapons at you. I had no problems identifying them as friend or foe it was the people on the ground that I completely missed most of the time. It took a lot for me to remember to look down. Most of Sunday was working with the blue guns again and honing what we learned the day before but with more difficult scenarios. We also split up and worked with the instructors 1 on 1. This was very good because it gave you time to discuss various scenarios with each instructor and get different points of view. Working 1 on 1 also gave each instructor time to really critique what we were or were not doing properly. So the day ended with us starting at one room clearing, entering into then out ddown the hall, in and out of another room, identifying BG’s or GG’s, up to and past a T halway intersection, taking care of any BG’s(bad guys) along the way down the hall untill we completed a 4 room and hallway scenario. This was putting it all together. There was steel targets, photo targets and of course both BG’s/GG’s and in any positions.

I was the first person to make this run. It get to the instructors and to start things off I had to grab a box of targets, not really that heavy, and make about a 70 yard round trip run to get my heart beat going. then it was time to start the work. First room was a corner fed room with the door closed. I move to the first room and the door knob to the door is on the far side of the door. I reach up high and over the knob so that I won’t seep my muzzle with my arm. I turn the knop and push open the door. AS the door is opening I take 3-4 steps back and out of the way. I am paralle with the wall and can see in the door toward the corner of the room. No one there. I work back to the door and start to slice the pie. When I in front of the threshhold I make sure not to cross into the “Fatal Frontal Area!” and do a quick peak into the room. No one in front . So in this case I do an angled entry into the room towards the blind hard corner. Room is clear and no one in there at all. I clear my way out and back into the hall. I work toward the 2nd room and this is a center fed door to the room. I’m against the far side of the hall working my way down the hall. I come to the door and this time the knob is on my side of the frame. I open the door the say way as previously and start to “pie” this room to clear it. I completely pie the door way and see no one. Of course I have the hard corners to deal with. I button hook into the room, making sure to check the far hard corner as I’m turning into the room. No one in either corner and room is completely empty. Time to work my way back into the hall. We were told to assume that the hallway behind us that we have already cleared is and will stay cleared. I work back into the hall and before the 3rd room i have to deal with a hallway with a T intersection coming perpendicular into my hallway. I work down the hall and as I’m getting closer to the intersection I’m up against the far wall of the hallway keeping distance between me and the intersection. I “Pie” the entrance to the intersection but do not cross the entrance to the hallway. As I come to the opening I do a quick peak and see a piece of white steel(bad guy). I then change my elevation and do another quick peak and see 2 more BG’s I pop as little of my upper body into the hallway and put 3 rounds on each of the steel targets. Shooting a M&P 45 I only have 1 round left and I am getting ready to enter and clear a 3rd room. I reload and leave my mag with 1 round in it on the ground, (1st mistake). Intersection is cleared and I start for the 3rd room. I open the door and start to pie the threshold. When even with the threshold I see a black piece of steel up againt the wall. I tell the instructors I have a GG in the room. So this room is also a corner fed room but I’m up against the long wall on the outside. I have pied as much as possible and I have to enter to see what is inside the room. Basically 75 % of the room to the left when inside. I button hook in and room is empty except for the GG I saw earlier. Inside this 3rd room is a door leading to the last room It is center fed. So I’m up against the wall to the left of the door. Knob is on my side. I reach over and turn the knob and push open the door. I start to PIE the room and immediately see a female cop with a weapon pointed at me. I tell the instructors about the cop. I have cleared the right side of the room and as I’m still pieing I see the first bad guy. Basically this guy is straight into the room facing the threshold square on. So I know there is at least one bad guy. I know where he is and decide to button hook into the room to the left to confront anyone else hiding on that side of the room. As I do I make it through the threshold and out of it and right ther in front of me is a BG. I put 3 round sinto him. Next to his is a BG with 2 hostages on the ground before him. I attempt to put 3 rounds into his head and miss( didn’t notice the misses). Right next to him is another BG. 3more rounds. Next to the female cop is the BG I see before I enter the room. I fire once and then try to again and I’m out of ammo. Before beginning Instructors told us to have at least 2 full mags Since I had a 45 I did not have enough ammo to complete the scenario. They knew that but I didn’t. Just another factor for me to deal with. I tell them I’m out of ammo while I’m keeping focused on the BG’s trying to see who is who. Chris say no your not there is a weapon on the ground. He has put down a G19 for me as he says that. Reach down while focusing on the last BG in front of me. I put 2 rounds into him. I’m done, at least I think I am, and I let them know. I hand the weapon back to Chris. We start to go over the targets and Chris asks me if I noticed the guy on the ground right by the door frame to the left. I had no clue he was there with a weapon pointed at me. When I entered the room all I saw was BG’s everywhere going rom left to right. I focused on them and started working through them. Running out of ammo and dealing with that also made things that much more stressful. AFter showing me the guy on the ground they say I did great no shooting the other good guy in the room. I say what other guy and step to the left a bit qand ther was a good guy about 4ft behind on of the BG’s I shot. I’m only 5’5" and at my height and where I was standing the BG’s photo target completely blocked view of the GG’s target. I just happended to be at the right angle that when I shot the BG the rounds missed the GG behind him. I also only put 2 rounds into one of the BG’s and missed with the 3rd. Didn’t notice that either. So after the critque of my performance in that room I had to run back to the other guys saying “Help me Help I’m all fucked up”! That last room was a BITCH especially being worked up in the first place. The stress level changes when you go live. Both Bret and Jamie performed about the same as I did. All in all we didn’t do that bad.

Now that we have finished the last scenario we go over quickly what we learned and then discuss any pro’s and con’s of the course itself.

All I can say is that Chris, Paul and Steve do an absolutely great job!! The way they use a building block way of teaching works very well. They demonstrate and articulate each concept very well. Everything was very easy to understand and perform. As they critiqued our mistakes they also were able to give us real world example of some of the consequences of our mistakes. You will not do that much live fire but honestly I think that would have been a detriment to my learning process. Working with the blue guns relieved that little bit of extra stress that mde it easier to listen and learn. Once we had down what we neede to for that day the live fire was the culmination of the lessons we had worked on earlier in the day. I’m definitely taking this class again when it comes up. I think this would help to cement what I had learned this past weekend. When it comes up again i would definitely recommend to anyone to take it! Kudo’s to Chris, Paul and Steve at Defensive Concepts NC.