Great class, it was great meeting and shooting with all of you!
Here are my (now edited) notes…
AK Specific Knowledge:
If your primary weapon is not an AK…then keep your AK basic…no fancy sights or slings or even new safety lever. Reason being is that if you pick up an AK somewhere, odds are that it will not be tricked out with a tac light and optic. it will probably not even have a tac-sling, just a carrying strap. If the AK IS your primary weapon, then have at it…but exercise some common sense. Remember that when you make an AK in to an AR you bring AR problems to your AK.
Leave sights zeroed for 100 Yards POA/POI once a zero is achieved. AK is a 200 yard weapon…no need to mess with sights. AK is 50% as accurate as an AR…good for head shots to 50 meters and body shots to 200…real world practical use.
Check all your AK mags to make sure they seat and lock in properly.
Malfunctions are easy to fix on the AK.
- Ensure mag is seated properly with support hand
- Trap buttstock in ‘third hand’ of armpit and retract bolt to rear and hold
- Feel and look in to the ejection port
- drop the old mag
- shake the weapon to possibly remove any brass
- rack the bolt three times
- reload and get back in to the fight
The AK is a great rifle for “joe average” It is pretty hard to break, does not require extensive special treatment.
The safety on an AK is a copy of a Remington model 8. It is not exactly ergonomic, but with some practice it is definitely not a problem. Find a technique that works for you and practice it.
The AK is, as a rule of thumb, about half as accurate as an AR…the gun, ammo, shooter, sights combination should be able to deliver headshots at 50 yards. That being said…you can fight with it up to 200 yards with it no problem.
General Combat Shooting Knowledge:
If you are shooting in your comfort zone, you are wasting your time.
If there are two things you must practice every single time you go to the range it is some kind of accuracy/bullseye drills/trigger control and shooting on the move.
ALL shooting skill is built from handgun trigger control…there are many difficult aspects to shooting a pistol, the most difficult of which is trigger control. If a shooter can master handgun trigger control, then he can master trigger control on any weapon.
When shooting prone put your magazine on ground, make a tripod of elbow elbow and magazine.
Sitting, Kneeling, Standing: sitting is not very useful in the real world, it is just used as a middle ground between standing and prone…stability in our world equals contact with the ground…no bone on bone contact…we did drills where we had about a minute to fire ten rounds, then 45 sec, then 30 etc , losing time as we moved forward and gained stability in our positions.
When shooting on the move, you must absorb the shock with your lower body…your body should be like a tank, with the legs acting as the undercarriage and the upper body steady like the turret. You must alter the way you walk when shooting and moving…just walking like you have for your whole life is not as accurate.
The engagement sequence is the same for all weapons…you ID the threat and make the decision to shoot…as you mount the weapon you disengage any mechanical safeties, once you acquire your sight picture you continue to press the trigger until the threat is eliminated…you are always prepared to make the next shot…once the threat is eliminated you lower the weapon out of your field of view in order to break your focus or “mental field of view” on the threat and scan and assess looking for more threats…think of the engagement sequence like a traffic light…you go from red to green quickly (engagement) but there is a yellow between the green and red…you disengage slowly. The flat range is not a perfect simulation of the real world, so shooters must keep that in mind and treat each drill as engaging a real lethal threat…if you are one of those guys who is so obsessed with range safety that you immediately slap the safety back on after every drill and point your muzzle at the dirt in order to be safe, you are creating bad habits that are anything but safe in the real world…don’t be “so safe you are unsafe”
Trigger control, specifically handgun trigger control is the foundation for all shooting. A pistol is the most difficult firearm to shoot accurately for several reasons…the most difficult one to overcome is trigger control. If you can control the trigger on your pistol, shooting other guns should be easier. The most difficult thing to overcome on the pistol is ‘El Snatcho’ virus…or snatching the trigger. Once you have purged El Snatcho from your earthly soul…you are on your way to mastering trigger control. Also, a shooter has to be able to go from rifle trigger control to pistol trigger control when transitioning…
If you are left eye dominant…then try shooting left handed rifle and right handed pistol. There are some advantages to this when transitioning (though I don’t remember what they are specifically…someone remind me please)
Your armpit is your ‘third hand’ that you can use to capture the buttstock of your rifle when changing magazines or correcting malfunctions.
“fast” can be a dirty word…smoothness and efficiency are far more important than raw speed…if you are smooth and efficient, you will be fast
We did handgun drills because “I can not in good conscience have you shooting your handgun in my class if you have the trigger jerk from hell.” Or something like that
Accuracy Drills emphasizing threat engagement sequence. Larry talked about how it is human nature to want to immediately put the safety on and lower the weapon to severly depressed position (like my soldiers LOVE to do) on a flat range because it is safer. However, that is so safe it is unsafe….it is safer on the range, but definitely more dangerous in the real world to train like that. The flat range can not ever completely replicate the real world, it is an artificial environment…we must be cogniscent of how we train on the flat range…not letting safety practices on the flat range create practices in us that could get us killed in the real world. You must follow through, then search and assess.
Transitions: always induce malfunctions or empty mags when doing transition training….there is no need to attempt to put the weapon on safe if you train this way. Support hand moves the rifle to the support side, strong hand goes immediately to the pistol. Priority one is getting the handgun up and in to the fight. Transition 25m and in…25 to 50 is the grey area…there are other factors…ie when moving to a building with no cover, then transition….when standing behind some cover, get your primary weapon back in to the fight.
Drills:
“one shot and follow through for a second….two shots and follow through for a third…three shots and follow through for a fourth….five shots and follow through for a sixth.”
Walkback Drill 50, 75 and 100 yards, you get two chances to hit the steel plate…each shot must be from the low ready and the shooter must manipulate the safety…
Empty Case on front sight trigger control dry fire drill for handgun. Just like military dime/washer drill…while shooting pretend there is a case on your front sight. If the case drops, then the shooter must do 5 remedial perfect dry presses.
Buddy ball and dummy drill. Again, if the shooter succumbs to “el snatcho” and slaps the trigger, he owes 5 perfect presses dry before continuing. This opens the psychological pathways that el snatcho has inhabited…only through appeasing the darkest parts of the geico caveman brain can we vanquish el snatcho.
200 yard steel from standing, kneeling and prone
Hackathorn box drill and el presidente with transition are great evaluations / skill builders.
Turns: turns are a building block to turning while moving
Moving turns: We lined up on the side of the range in a single file parallel to the berm. Larry said “walk” and we walked across the range in a patrol walk, on the beep or gunfire, we stopped and turned and engaged the target.
Again, great class…thanks to all who made it happen!
