Cruel Hand Luke

This class has been moved from April 4-5 to May 2-3 . Hope to see you there!

A LOT of counties and cities have most likely overstepped their legal authority in some of their recent "mandates" .

OK guys and gals, it looks like we are going to postpone this one . I will let you know as soon as we have a new date locked in. Sorry for any inconvenience.

On Saturday APRIL 18 we will hold our next meeting for the TN/GA/AL Regional Training Group for 2020 ! Subject : Getting shot sucks...get off the X !!! This is a repeat of the February training day material since it was so well received and since so many regular attendees missed it. So if you missed it here it is again ! Instructor: Tier 1 Suarez Int Staff Instructor Randy Harris Location: The Regular place - 763 CR 332 Pisgah Al 35765 Time: 9AM CENTRAL time - 3PM CENTRAL time Price: $80 - pay at class cash or check. What you need to bring: Pistol, pistol magazines and at least 150-200 rounds of ammo. Revolvers are welcome if you want to party like it is 1899. We will work on our pistol skills specifically getting off the X in reactive situations, retaking the initiative and counter attacking. If your skills you learned in Close Range Gunfighting have gotten a little rusty this is the tune up you need! We will also run some "man on man" drills to test skills and add a little motivation. Most ranges don't allow you to just show up and shoot while moving so don't miss out on this opportunity ! Looking forward to seeing you there!

REMINDER ! This one is just a couple of weeks away !

Just a week to go on this one. If you have a red dot pistol and want to take your skills (no matter what level) to the NEXT level then this is the class for you. Don't miss this chance to get this class east of the Mississippi.

One of the first classes I taught for Suarez Int back in like 2006 I had a guy who came to class at the recommendation of one of his friends. He told me at the beginning of class that he had shot his whole life (in his 40s at the time) and was not very good and that he didn't really expect to be able to get much better and he was pretty well resigned to that fate. But his friend said he should really come to this class so he did. I thought that just sounded kind of sad but I told him I'd do everything in my power to help him. I asked if he knew which was his dominant eye and he said he did not know exactly what I was referring to. I explained it and gave everyone in class the "eye test" and we determined that he was in fact right handed and left eye dominant and that is from where his problems stemmed . Once we determined that and had him get the gun in front of his dominant eye he was able to vastly improve his shooting. He had been aiming all these years with his non dominant eye and that is why up until then he was not a good shooter . At the end of class I thought he was going to cry for joy because he didn't expect it to happen but we had "fixed" his shooting and now he was shooting the way he should have been all these years. THAT is what makes an instructor's day. But it was all about what he was seeing .... not how he was applying the mechanics of shooting.

I'll second that! We just need a classroom and a range..... Have Power Point and Guns, Will Travel.

This one is just around the corner ! How often do you get to shoot in the dark? How often do you get to experience what criminal assault looks like in the dark? How often do you get to practice using a flashlight as a less lethal/distraction device? How often do you get to practice shooting in conjunction with using a flashlight? All these things and more are what you will experience in this class. So stop saying " I really need to get some training in low light" and come on out and get some training in low light !

This one is getting closer.......

Reminder !!!! This one is coming up in just over a month! If over half of defensive gun uses are in reduced lighting and you have not trained in those conditions you might want to consider taking this class.

+1 . I'd argue that fending off a guy who is armed with a knife while you are seated in the passenger seat of a car is pretty stressful yet once I got the gun out and created some space I saw the sights clearly because I LOOKED for the sights. I also took the time (less than a second) to scan the back ground for what was beyond the target in case of a shoot through or a miss. So when people try to tell me it CAN'T be done that just does not match my own experience. Incidentally I had that discussion about the incident and the scanning the background with a student one time. I told him about how fast things can be processed in your mind and it can look like other things and people are in slow motion. I related that I had the time to look at the back ground as I got the gun up and on the sights and that I still had enough dexterity to take up the slack on the trigger AND then let off the trigger without firing the gun once the threat decided that he really didn't want to get shot. I was able to do this without any spastic accidental jerking of the trigger. And that was with a 1911(So much for NEEDING a DA trigger to prevent ADs) And your hands do not ALWAYS turn to flippers during the incident. (Afterward the adrenaline dump did make my hands shake but not until after it was over). So now fast forward about 8 months and that same student who works as a bail bondsman gets into a gunfight while trying to take a bail jumper into custody. He told me that IN THE MOMENT he remembered what I had said and he actually LOOKED at the background (an urban parking lot feeding into a city street) as the gun was coming up out of his holster and BEFORE he pressed off the first shot. He said "It was just like you said" . He shot and hit the guy twice, the bad guy ran off and his lawyer negotiated his surrender to the police a couple of months later. Apparently one round hit the bad guy's gun and one hit him in the leather belt he was wearing and deflected off leaving 2 superficial arm and torso wounds (so much for pistols knocking people down) . Point is that we don't all experience exactly the same phenomena and we don't all react the same to it. You tend to do what you have practiced and planned for...

The better you can shoot.... the better you can shoot. Period. Even under stress. And it seems that those who start out at a high level seem to do just fine. If you start out at the top of the mountain and tumble down 25% of the way you are still pretty high up that mountain. If you start out only 25% of the way up the mountain and you fall 25% of the way down under stress then you are now in a heap at the bottom. If you can draw and shoot a 3 shot 4" group at 7 yards in 2 seconds and you suffer a 25% reduction in ability due to stress then that is now a 5" group in 2.5 seconds. If you can only do it in 4 seconds that is now a 5" group in 5 seconds. (This is not directed at any individual in this thread) What annoys me is when people who can't shoot well by virtually any metric work in the training industry and take money from people and tell them that as long as they hit the target (generally the size of a king size bed sheet) any where then that is good for you and bad for them. And they use that as a justification for sloppy marksmanship. And they refer to vague "pearls of wisdom" like "you won't be able to see your sights in a gunfight" that was wisdom from a time when sights on "combat pistols" were largely tiny little nubs compared to the sights we have today. Look at the sights on a 1911 built in 1920 or even a 1911A1 made in 1943 vs a modern one made by Springfield or Wilson or virtually any other manufacturer. But the "instructor" is still telling people that you won't be able to see them and therefore they damn the student to not using their sights under stress for lack of even trying to look for them. Self fulfilling prophecy. Garbage in garbage out. Unfortunately there are too many people hanging up a shingle and calling themselves instructors that don't have a good enough contextual and historical body of knowledge to know that what they are saying might not apply today or WHY it might not apply. And frankly too many of them don't shoot at a level to have any idea of what actually is possible and what is not. On the other hand there are plenty of folks (Cirillo and Bill Allard, Charles Askins,Wyatt Earp,John Wesley Hardin etc etc) who saw sights and used them and won a bunch of gunfights. Why? Because they LOOKED for them. The interesting thing is that all those guys could shoot well....hmm...maybe there is a cause and effect relationship ? Now I'm not saying you will ALWAYS have to see sights to hit a human in the upper chest . In fact I am a big proponent building a drawstroke and grip that drives the gun to where it needs to be whether you look at the sights or not and then using just enough visual verification to guarantee the hit and no more . Some shots are so easy that you can make them without focusing hard on the sights. Think about a shot on an aggressor 3 yards away. That is not a technically difficult shot to make and most people can make it from less than full extension. But If you spend all of your time on shooting fast garbage can lid sized groups at 3 yards and you are then confronted with a guy 10 yards away in a parking lot filled with a bunch of "organic backstop " (people) down range then suddenly things just got really dangerous for EVERYONE. AJ mentions the 4" group as fast as you can deliver it. (and the key here is to do it FAST). That is something to strive for in training and we understand that we might still end up with a 6" group at speed under stress. I personally want to keep it all in a 3" circle and work toward that (as fast as I can) so that if it is 4 or 5 under stress that is still adequate to hit them somewhere very close to the spot I was actually trying to hit. And we are trying to hit a SPOT. We are not just trying to hit the guy "somewhere...more times than not....most of the time". If your "acceptable standards" are high in training then your "stress degraded performance" is probably still higher than most people's "best case scenario performance" . (That last comment was an understatement ...there is a reason that the average police hit ratio is 25% and certain specialized units like LAPD SWAT and SIS (Special Investigation Service) is more like 95%. And it does not have anything to do with the gun in their holster. It has to do with their level of training and the standards they accept as "good enough". ) In the end we just do not know what the problem we face will be. It will PROBABLY be 3 or 4 yards but it could be 34 yards. Andy Brown shot Dean Mellberg from 75 yards away with a Beretta 92 to stop the Fairchild Air Force base shooting in 1994. He hit Mellberg in the head and right shoulder. Vic Stacy shot Charles Ronald Conner from 50 yards away with a revolver while Conner was trying to kill officer Steven Means in Early,Texas in 2012. He hit him 4 times. I'm guessing Brown and Stacy probably both saw their sights.......

Come out to the TN/GA/AL Training day on FEB 22 and you will get a full day of it .......

At that distance YOU may not be the immediate object of the attacker's attention. You might be engaging them to save someone else.