This past weekend, I took Insights General Defensive Rifle at West Coast Armory in Bellevue, wa. This was the second time I’d been through the course and I decided to try running the course with a SCAR 17S. This proved a little more challenging to me than I’d anticipated but allowed me to see what aspects of the techniques I’ve developed running an AR15 needed to change–even if just so slightly (Here is a related post) I only had 500 rounds of 308 so for the final few hour of class I ended up switching to my SR15. Total round count for two days was probably around 600-700.
The primary instructor was Jeff Mau. Here is his bio from the Insights website:
Jeff Mau currently works as a patrol officer for a municipal police department. In addition to his primary assignment as a patrol officer, Jeff holds collateral duties as a member of a multi-agency SWAT team and as a CJTC certified Defensive Tactics Instructor. Jeff is an instructor for General Defensive Handgun and Basic Handgun. Additionally, he is a coach for all other firearms, combatives, and tactics courses. He is a factory certified Glock Armorer. In addition to Insights, Jeff has taken courses from EAG Tactical, Trident Concepts, International Tactical Training Seminars, and HSS International.
We started in the classroom discussing the motivation for Insights approach to the rifle and shooting in general. Jeff feels it differs from most other schools in that it is ‘a realistic approach to dealing with a violent confrontation as a civilian’ not an opportunity to ‘play Army’. Fundamentally, it is about ‘problem solving under stress’. He reiterated a number of times that the course is about ‘having the answer before the problem occurs’. Much of this, he said, is mental preparation and confidence so you do not have the bearing of a victim. One should train until the point that the physical aspects of shooting require no thought. This is so that during a real fight there are other things you need to be paying attention to, for example where your family is or where to find cover.
We then moved on to the four universal firearms handling rules. Insights version is:
[ol]
[li]All guns are always loaded.[/li][li]Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to shoot.[/li][li]Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.[/li][li]Be sure of your target and what is behdin and beyond your target.[/li][/ol]
Insights spends more time on these rules than any other school I’ve seen via video or in person. Jeff stated that these rules are ‘written in blood’, people had to die to come up with them, so they can never be taken lightly. If you take nothing else away from the course but these rules, he said, it would be a successful weekend. While some see the rules are at cross-purposes with efficient gun handling, Jeff said, in many cases they can actually enhance technique. One example he gave was one handed manipulation. Often, folks are taught to by rack the slide of the gun downward against a belt, which may inadvertently cause you to point hte weapon at your own body. Instead, what if in adherence to the rules, you rack horizontally toward your target. It actually enhances what you’re doing.
We then moved on to a discussion of zeroing of the rifle and the relative trade-offs of various zeros for the rifle. Jeff has created his own zeroing target for a 50/200 zero which I think is great and not quite like any other I’ve seen. It is a single target with circles of various diameters and placement to be used at 25, 50, or 100 yards. For each you aim at the center and depending on distance use the appropriately marked circle depending on the distance at which you’re shooting. It makes the whole procedure very easy and I pretty much always use it when zeroing an AR15 now.
We then made our way to the range and zero at 25 yards from a prone position. After zeroing, we moved on to some basic dot drills from the 10 yard line, mostly for basic accuracy. After doing this, we cleared our weapons and practiced tactical and speed reloads. I was fairly familiar with both, but found myself struggling with the larger than normal mags of the SCAR 17S. I kind of fumbled my way through things, ultimately landing on using a slightly modified version of the C-clamping techinque I use for the AR. I also was reminded that not all magazines are like PMAGS. My SCAR mags had 20 rounds in them and when performing reloads, they would not seat in the weapon. For the rest of the class, I downloaded all my magazines to 18 rounds. Additionally, I found that when I dropped a fully or partially loaded magazine on the concrete floor, the floor plate would usually slide off a bit. This typically was not a problem with an empty mag however.
After some live fire practice incorporating reloads, we discuss movement/pivoting with the rifle. The general procedure was look, step, pivot with the idea that you start and end in stance. After practicing pivots in unison with unloaded rifles for 10-15 minutes, we then counted off and did them in unison with live fire.
After the pivot drills, we again cleared our rifles and talked about equipment. Much of what Jeff spoke about was the bread and butter of m4carbine, namely that not all rifles are created equal. He said he’d be comfortable with a Colt, Daniel Defense, BCM, LMT, and one or two others. He is not a fan of piston guns, feeling they add weight and diminish the reliability of the system. He also said he thinks it great that people are experimenting with all sorts of new things for ARs but that he has no interest in being anyone’s guinea pig. His primary rifle was a 16" BCM upper with a 13 inch TRX rail. He also said if you get an optic either go Aimpoint or EoTech for an RDS, don’t bother with anything cheaper. Personally he prefers the Aimpoint. As for slings, he prefers a two-point setup. One point slings have their place, particularly if you have a lot of gear and/or are on a SWAT team for example where you’re not going to spend a lot of time with your weapon slung, but in his opinion they are less useful for other purposes. He was running a VTAC himself.
We then did a bit more shooting and Jeff’s description of shoting was that the support hand should be as far forward as possible and projecting forward, while the dominant hand should be pulling the rifle in, almost as if you are “stretching” the rifle. One should have an aggressive forward stance almost as if he is holding a fire hose. Day one also included some practice in transitioning to pistol. Jeff emphasized that for most civilians, however, it doesn’t make sense to practice this over much. If you are using your rifle for self-defense as a civilian, it’s most likely you are at home at night and will not have a sidearm.
On day two, we started with more dot drills from the seven yard line going back through what we’d done the first day. Then we moved on to discussion of malfunction clearance. Insights approach is a non-diagnostic one. In the worst case, you can devolve to diagnosis, but generally if you get a click when expecting a bang, it’s push, pull, rack, bang. If that doesn’t work, rip, lock the bolt back using the support hand to hold the bolt release open, pull the charging handle with your dominant hand, sweep the magwell, work the charging handle three times, insert a new magazine (push then pull), then rack a new round, and bang. We then went to the 25 yard line and simulated basic malfunctions using dummy rounds and double-feeds by dropping a round in the chamber (while holding the barrel upright) and gently releasing the charging handle.
After this we practiced different shooting positions, including standing, squat, kneeling, supported kneeling, prone, fast prone, supine, and urban prone. We first did this dry, then practiced using live fire. We then moved on to a discussion of Insights approach to pieing and room clearing. Jeff stated that in most cases as a civilian if you need to clear a house, your best bet is to call the people who are paid and trained to do so, but if that’s not a possibility you need to know how yourself. We then paired off and practied pieing on the range using wooden barricades. After this, we did live fire drills by pieing around the barricades.
After this we moved on to some man-on-man shooting competitions. Surprisingly even with the disadvantage of the 308, I was able to win one repition. The key to winning seemed to be going slowly enough to make sure every shot was a hit. Those who lost frequently were faster than their opponent as a result missed one or two shots (I made this mistake myself the first time around).
We then moved back to the classroom for an hour or so to discuss ballistics, including handguns vs rifles, various rounds, (misguided) concerns about overpenetration of the 5.56 round, and what effect various length barrels have on things. After this we headed back out to the range and tried shooting with our optics off (for those of us with them). If you normally ran with BUIS down, we were to shoot this way, i.e. using the optic as almost a ghost ring and tried it from various distances to see at which point we were no longer able to get combat effective hits.
Finally, the lights were dimmed and we were asked to incorporate verbal commands. Insights espouse having a rehearsed set of statements that you don’t need to think about ('accessing a prerecorded tape loop") to use while engaging in the fight, specifically:
[ul]
[li]“Police! Drop the weapon”[/li][li]“Police, call the police!”[/li][li]“Stay away from him, he’s still dangerous!”[/li][li]“Look around, did he hurt anyone else.”[/li][/ul]
This is in part to ensure any bystanders know who is the good person and help influence events after the fact. (Side note: The call of ‘Police!’ is meant to be calling for the police, not implying you are them. There are a number of law enforcement officers who are on the staff of Insights and they have no problem with this, nor could it be construed to be ‘impersonating an officer’.)
I am terrible with the verbalizations even though I’ve done them in a number of classes now. I tend to either shoot or verbalize, but really have difficulty doing both simultaneously. This can be clearly seen in the video I took of one drill here which is a bit embarrasing but at least gives you a sense of what I’m talking about:
http://youtu.be/84BJZ84dMKo
After that, Jeff gave some concluding remarks and the class was over. Though I’ve been through the course previously, I still felt it was very worthwhile. What I particularly like is the depth of explanation Insights does into. It’s not just about doing drills, but rather they very actively work on building a cohesive set of skills, one by one. This combined with their focus on mindset and the usage of these skills as a civilian (such as incorporation of verbal commands) really differentiates them from many other schools.
Thanks to Jeff, the other Insights staff, and all the other students for a fun, productive, and safe weekend.