Cruel Hand Luke

One difference is the Wilson or Nighthawk that shoots well and is reliable is not anything out of the ordinary...it is expected. The Taurus that does well is something no one really expects.....The Nighthawk or Wilson that does not work is an anomoly...the Taurus or Kimber that does not work 100% is unfortunatley more common than it should be. The 1911 is a 100 year old design that was created when labor was cheap and machinery was expensive. So hand fitting was part of the manufacturing process. 1911 pattern guns really need hand fitting. But that adds too much to cost since now machining is cheap and labor is expensive. You simply cannot turn out a $500 1911 and have much if any fitting done. It is all CNC machined and put together with no fitting done. Some guns work great some do not. My Wilson 1911 has performed 100% and has yet to have a malfunction.Why? Hand fitting by folks who know what they are doing. Of course I keep it clean and lubed. But my 1920 era 1911 also works 100%...but back then they hand fitted those too........

I work in the industry and I can GARAUNTEE you that there is PLENTY of ammo in the United States right now. It is all in people's living rooms, closets, garages and workshops. Since NOV 4 our phones have not stopped ringing. Even now. This time of year we normally get about 500 phone calls per day. Last Monday we got 1200. And there is NO sign of it slowing down. Think of this current shortage in terms of gasoline. How many gallons of gas do you typically get when you go to the gas station? Ten? Twelve? Well since Nov 4,about 40% of the people in america have been buying 200 gallons everytime they go to the gas station. If THAT happened there would not be a drop of gasoline in the ground at half the gas stations in the US. And the only gas available would be what the refineries could pump out each week....THAT is where we are with ammo...... People have been buying ammo, reloading components,bullets and brass so far out of the norm that the normal "system" cannot bear the weight. How long does it take to make a million primers? We sold 1 MILLION primers (1000 boxes) in 3 hours Wednesday. People are buying it faster than the manufacturers can make it. THAT is what is happening, NOT any kind of government conspiracy crap. The fact is that the panic buying is causing the "crisis". Not the government. Besides, where exactly are they going to get the troops to go door to door and collect the guns? Bring 'em ALL home from Korea,Germany,Japan, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan? Import them from Mongolia? Enlist reptilian aliens to help? Zombies? The UN? The UN can't pacify Nigeria much less the US if something like that were to take place. Come on people let's use some damn common sense.

Guys,the intent was to cause thought and discussion, but if there is interest in a class so be it. In fact we can run a FOF class pretty much anywhere with enough room to move around since there is no live fire in that class. In fact if someone here has a place and wants to host the class shoot me a PM. I will be offering a FOF class here in the Chatt area in next couple of months.

FORCE ON FORCE CONTRAVERSY? Randy Harris - Suarez International Staff Instructor The subject of Force on Force training is one that we should all consider. After all, what are we actually training for? Do we train to avoid getting mugged by a flat piece of cardboard that does not think move or try to hurt you or are we training to deal with living breathing thinking adversaries? The obvious answer is live adversaries. So if your training regimen does not or has never included any Force on Force component then how do you know whether what you are practicing REALLY works or not? Maybe you train with some "guru" who has been in many fights and never lost. All that really tells you is HE has a grasp of his material and was successful. It does not tell you how well you would fair using that in a real confrontation. So how do we know? We have to test it. Some may say "well what I do works in my IDPA matches". Great. You are thoroughly ready to proactively face a 3 foot tall piece unarmed of cardboard after being told to get ready in advance . Again, not terribly realistic. There really is no reason to not avail oneself of FOF training today. Years ago it was only really available to military and police. But now however , with the wide availability of non lethal airsoft guns. The technology is there so that the average guy can spend $150 or so and be equipped to take a force on force class. Of course there are also Simunitions guns if you prefer to use marking cartridges, but the availability and price of the guns and ammo is somewhat prohibitive. This brings us to our first controversy. Is the Airsoft gun really adequate for FOF training? There are some that make the argument that there needs to be a "pain penalty" for screwing up in FOF scenarios. I agree. What we are really doing is to some degree hardwiring the ability to make good decisions at a very fast subconscious level. In a real encounter we will not have long to make a decision. If we just stand and dither over whether it is "really happening to me?" or "what do I do now?" then we will likely have waited to long to do anything useful. Getting shot with non lethal yet painful projectiles reinforces that if we do not be decisive and act quickly then bad things will happen. This is where our subconscious starts compiling data for positive vs negative outcomes where action is concerned. Now, do Sims rounds hurt more than airsoft? Absolutely. And we need that pain to get the message across to our brain that we are doing things that are giving an adverse outcome to what we would like. So in that respect airsoft is not as good for FOF as simunitions. But part of the problem is that students often show up for FOF classes looking like they are armored up for medieval combat. If you are so padded up that you cannot feel the BBs then you are really not getting the most out of the exercises. This is why I recommend that during scenario work you wear virtually no protective gear at all. Just head protection and maybe gloves.. Taking rounds in the hands , especially the knuckles, almost always causes bleeding. This way you know where you got hit, but still protect hands and face.I have seen people hit in the hands with airsoft pellets drop their pistols. I have also debriefed many participants and most all agree that it feels like a bee sting when hit. I'd have to agree. And depending on the distance, it sometimes hurts worse than other times. So yes if we limit the amount of padding we wear then Airsoft is perfectly adequate. In drill work I recommend a LITTLE more padding, maybe a long sleeve shirt, because when you are getting in maybe 50 fights or more per day there is only so much impact you are going to take before you get tired and sore and lose concentration. So for the drills I say pad up a little but run the scenarios with as little as possible. The next controversy is whether you are better doing scenario work or drills. I mentioned scenario work earlier. That is full blown scenarios with role players who stick to a script of what they are going to do if the student does certain things. Often the instructions might be " Go panhandle the student, ask for money. You are not robbing him, just asking, but if he insults you or gets physical then you amp up the situation and get in his face, but if he just tells you he can't help you , then let him pass unmolested " . The point is that the scenario is not just wide open, the role players are playing a realistic defined part, not just running wild. The scenario based FOF is more in line with real world situations sometimes involving witnesses , maybe even the Police. It is essentially a test of your ability to negotiate whatever the situation is and successfully "survive" the encounter. Often -just like in real life- this can be done without getting into a fight at all. The other type of FOF work is FOF drills. Gabe Suarez refers to the drill work as light sparring with a partner.The drills are little fights. There is no real decision making left on pre fight matters. In the drill the fight is unavoidable and usually begins with the bad guy initiating some sort of attack.The purpose is to give the students a lot of repetitions on the core skills need in a real confrontation. Those are seeing and reacting to the attack, get off the X if possible, access your weapon if you are armed , deploy that weapon from concealment and if it is a pistol, get hits on the target. These may sound simple, but many students who have never really ingrained these skills often have trouble at first doing all of these things at the same time under stress. After all some ranges do not even allow drawing a loaded pistol from a holster. So unless the student takes the time to work that skill on their own they likely will be a little behind the curve if we just drop them into scenario work from the start. And I really do not understand why some people have such an issue with drills. We do drills in every other athletic endeavor we might pursue. I played basketball in high school and you'd better believe we did more than just scrimmage. We did drills every practice to build skill. The drills build the skills that you will then employ in the game. The same is true in unarmed self defense. I doubt many martial arts or combative instructors just have the students spar without first building the individual offensive and defensive skills through skill building drills. Even in IDPA and IPSC shooting , no one just practices by only shooting matches. They build their shooting, reloading and malfunction clearing ability through drills set up to build repetition in those areas. The match is then a validation (or invalidation) of their training regimen. So for me the answer is simply this. Self defense, be it with empty hands or armed is an athletic endeavor. It does not mean you have to be an Olympian to survive. It simply means that the more athletic you are the more you will be able to do. There really is no way around that. Many of the skills that might be required in a violent encounter are able to be performed by everyday folks- IF they have been exposed to those skills. The problem is the majority of people have never found themselves in a violent confrontation, much less enough of them to draw any real statistical data from. Hence the need for FOF drills. The drills build the skills and allow you to use them in real time against an uncooperative real life opponent, not just a stationary human shaped form. It allows you to get many repetitions in being the victim of an assault and get a better perspective of just how little time there is to act and how much time and distance effect the dynamics of the confrontation. Now just like in basketball or boxing or whatever, the drills will only take you so far. There comes a time to spar or scrimmage. That is where the skills we built in the drills is tested in the mock game. We wouldn't just work drills and then schedule a real boxing match. Just like no sane coach would keep his team from scrimmaging leading up to a game. To have a real idea of how everyone moves and acts and reacts you have to have the scenario work too. The scenario work is where you are able to work the whole package of skills from avoidance and deescalation to getting off the X, accessing pistol, marksmanship, 360 degree scan and even preparing witnesses and talking to the police. The first time you ever do these things does not need to be at 3 AM on a cold rainy night when it is for real! Now a couple of other minor controversies. Some argue that FOF is not real because there is no ballistic effect- especially with airsoft. I agree . No one said it was REAL. But it is about as close as we can get without having a serious reworking of the liability waiver and a trauma unit on standby. That is why I recommend the least clothing you can get by with for the FOF iterations.In fact at the National Tactical Invitational I wore cargo shorts a T shirt and a light summer weight button down shirt as a cover garment. No padding or layers other than the face mask and neck protection they issued. Another controversy is that the shooting while moving we teach leads to wild errant shooting and will get bystanders killed. Therefore we should stand still to shoot. I'm Ok with standing still as long as you are behind cover or you are farther than 10 yards distant form your pistol armed adversary. The problem is that if you are in a true initiative deficient situation where your first clue that the fight was on was seeing the guy reach in his waistband, then standing there trying to out draw him is not likely to have a long future to it. We really need to look at the context of the common criminal assault. It will likely be so close that you simply cannot make enough distance to keep from getting shot. This is one of those things that we find out rather quickly in those drills. If you cannot back up fast enough to avoid getting punched then how do you honestly expect to back up far enough, fast enough to keep from being shot? This is where guys that have only worked against motionless targets that do not shoot back (or shoot first) have an unrealistic view of the dynamics involved. So if we concede that we cannot always make enough space quickly enough to just "make space and shoot" , then we will likely be in very close proximity to the target/bad guy when we shoot. Logical? So when we are shooting and moving this is often done at less than 3 yards. I submit that most anyone with skill at acquiring their pistol with good grip and a modicum of trigger control can make rapid multiple hits on targets at that distance. We are not talking about firing haphazardly over our shoulder as we sprint 20 yards away from the target. We are talking about drawing quickly as we explode laterally off the X and firing a burst at the target often with the muzzle 20 INCHES from the target. Not exactly haphazard reckless shooting by a long shot. Also what are we looking to learn in drills? The point of the drills are to see what gets you shot less and gets the bad guy shot more. Not who can hit whom the most or who can run the farthest. The drill realistically is only useful for the first 3 to 5 seconds- the time frame of most actual fights. Anything past that is superfluous. And that 5 second and after time frame is where all the misses happen. The drills typically go like this. The bad guy attacks, the good guy gets off the X, shots are exchanged and they move farther apart. As they move apart they keep shooting and that is where the missing begins. But again, we are not looking at the last 3 seconds for data we are looking at the first 3 seconds. In fact I limit them to 3 to 5 rounds per fight when the drills are 1 on 1. This keeps the students focused on getting accurate hits not on hosing down the other guy as you run as fast as he can in the other direction. That is little more than a playground water gun fight. The last controversy is how is your FOF class set up. Again, there are those who argue that only scenario work is realistic and that is all that should be done. Ok , fine. That is an opinion, but I do not agree. I have had students come through my FOF class (Suarez International's Interactive Gunfighting FOF) who had been to other schools that offered Force on Force classes. The other schools had done ONLY scenarios. The students said that they felt they got a better understanding of the dynamics of the confrontation and were now better prepared by doing the drills too. Now when they got into fights in the scenarios they were able to access the "solutions" they had been working all weekend and run those skill sets and prevail, whereas before they had a lot of decision making to do armed with only the skill sets they already had before they showed up. Now, let me repeat scenario work is crucial too.You need to test your total package of skills. And not only that, but scenario work that tests decision making, not just draw speed and marksmanship. A FOF scenario that is a glorified "shoot house burglar hunt" is frankly of little value. The students need to be confronted with real life moral dilemmas and have to decide in real time what to do. There needs to be a lot of interaction verbally between the students and role players and there needs to be a level of multi tasking going on. That is why I like to use scenarios that have the student going through everyday life errands like going to the convenience store carrying bags or coming out of the mall talking on the cell phone and things like that where the student is engaged in more than just waiting to draw their gun. But again, I believe best results in the scenarios are obtained by those who have drilled the fundamentals to the point that their "fight skills" run on auto pilot and because of that they are freed up mentally to make decisions without worrying about what to do if the fight is on. So whether you are an experienced gunman or a novice there is only one training environment that tests your total skill package and that is Force on Force.

Hmmmm lets see. 1. an "ampitheater" with only one way in or out.... how would this be different if the architecture was different or there were more exits? 2. an armed citizen in the middle of the room...how would things go differently if he (or she ) were in the back of the room and not "victim #2". 3. the armed student had a "draw proof" retention holster carried concealed. I SERIOUSLY doubt they spent ANY time on how to draw from that rig...........How would things have been if they were drawing from an open top appendix carried rig? 4. Notice they had all of the scenarios where the student was in extreme initiative deficiency mode, right in front of the shooter. How would things have been if the scenario started when you hear shooting DOWN THE HALL and you had time to get gun out and get behind cover and ambush him as he enters THIS room? 5. Notice they had 2 shooters in the "best trained" guy's scenario. I guess if a truly well trained individual ran it they'd have to hedge their bet with EVERYONE else in the room an accomplice to the shooter.... I sent a reponse to ABC asking why they didn't mention the WV college shooting stopped by armed students or the Pearl MS highschol shooting stopped by the armed vice principle. I also outlined why their "test" was flawed and a recipe for failure even for trained individuals. Notice they didn't have the cops run it as "victims". They would have failed the test too if it were set up the same. The test was designed for failure. Make no mistake about it this is the opening salvo in the Obama administrations assault on the 2nd ammendment. Get ready.

Yeah that sucks big time. I know Ronnie and he is a great guy. I was really sorry to see that in the paper today and wish him the best of luck in keeping his range open. I have actually taught a class there and I do not see how his neighbors could end up with "shrapnel" on their property. They are probably just unhappy about having to listen to gunfire.....What a bunch of crap.

Goomba, I am actually offering the Suarez Int Defensive Pistol Skills class here April 4-5. Check your PM.

I'd love to. If you have the place to shoot we'd be happy to schedule a class.

If you can roll with a commie gun we are offering the Kalashnikov Rifle Gunfighting class Feb 28-March 1 in Chattanooga.....http://www.suarezinternationalstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=669

Even better, I teach the Suarez International "Interactive Gunfighting Force on Force" class a couple of times a year in the Chattanooga area. Shoot and no shoot on paper is better than nothing, but it still just paper, and large sheets of paper do not normally attack people.....

Sorry I did not see this before now. Yes the class is this weekend. There actually is room for another 1 or 2 people in class if anyone is interested. We will TRY to offer this again later, but no promises, due to the sensitive and unpredictable nature of the guest instructor's day job and the availability of a place big enough and rural enough to do this class.

Just a quick mini review here of the Rangemaster Advanced Instructor Course I attended Dec 13-14. The class was essentially an "invitation only" class that was open to previous graduates of the Rangemaster 3 day instructor class taught by Tom Givens. This class would expand upon that material, test the students teaching and shooting ability, cover course design and target design, and delve into mindset and even cover treating accidental (negligent) discharge gunshot wounds and cover some disarm material. As with every class I have attended with Tom the shooting was challenging. We shot the Model Law Enforcement course of fire which includes not only up close and fast shooting, but position shooting at 25 yards. We shot both the LAPD SWAT Qualification course and the FBI SWAT Qualification Course, and the Rangemaster Level 5 qualifier. Time limits were tight and the accuracy expected was high. The courses were all shot for score and an aggregate score was given to each shooter for the course. The shooting was challenging, but there was no rest for the weary as while you were not shooting you were coaching your partner trying to help him improve his score. So there really was no downtime in the class. You were either shooting or coaching. You and your partner also had to design a drill and turn it in. The lecture portions were handled by Tom ( who covered course and target design and bullet placement and why not all hits are equal) , John Hearne (who did his FBI statistics on Criminal offenders lecture and his Newhall Massacre presentation), a medical briefing by Gerald Foon EMT(who had some very innovative props),and William Aprill covered retention and disarms. After the final results were tallied the scores were pretty impressive by any one's standards. The LOWEST score in the class was a 90% aggregate total on all 5 courses we were scored on. The highest score was 99.6%. If I remember correctly 8 people shot a 100% on the FBI SWAT Qualification and several shot 100% on the LAPD SWAT qualification and unlike them, none of us used $2000 1911s to do it. Great course and gives me some things to mull over as far as my own presentations in class. Other than the long drive home it was a great weekend. Thanks Tom!

Hey Chuck! Thanks for the kind words . I really enjoy teaching this class. It is the perfect mix of FOF, square range and vehicle work. You get to see just how big a deal movement is and how much you get shot standing still trying to outdraw folks ...especially when you are dealing with multiples. You also get to see immediately how the range work and the moving and shooting applies when facing live thinking adversaries and not just cardboard. You also get to work a little on weapon retention in the "Defending SUL" module. That seems to be the one thing that I constantly hear from students is that they want MORE work on retention after they are exposed to people trying to disarm them. When they realize just how quickly they can end up in a wrestling match over their gun the "I don't need to know this, I'll just draw and shoot" nonsense goes right out the window. You have to seek doinant position before injecting the ballistic solution. And the vehicle gunfighting module is something few people ever get to do. When was the last time most folks shot from inside their vehicles ? Glad you enjoyed the class. I'll probably be offering it again sometime in 2009. By the way Chuck, we are doing a "Small Unit Tactics" class in Februaury if you can make it. Later!

Yes and no. If it is NOT registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record then 18" is the legal minimum length with a 26" overall length. If it IS NFA registered as a Short Barreled Shotgun (SBS) then it can be any length under 18" and the 26" length no longer applies. Also if it is a pistol gripped Any Other Weapon (AOW) registered gun it can have any barrel length under 18" but cannot have a shoulder stock , only a pistol grip. So YES you can LEGALLY have a barrel shorter than 18" in Tennessee as long as it is NFA registered and the appropriate tax ($200 for SBS and $5 for AOW) is paid. If not NFA registered as an SBS or AOW then 18" barrel and 26" overall is the minimum you can legally have.

Welcome from Chattanooga. Come out and shoot with us the 2nd Sunday each month at the practical pistol matches at the Chattanooga Rifle club. I'm normally there unless I'm teaching a class. It is real laid back and casual. Come give it a try.

On the other hand the tighter pattern makes a clean miss more likely due to the small pattern size.... besides if one needs tight patterns there are rifles that throw .224" or .308" patterns... Largely comes down to why one would choose the shotgun. If tight patterns are the ideal, then why not just use slugs? Why even bother with buck at all? On the other hand if one expects a chaotic quick moving gunfight at pistol fight range (less than 15 yards) possibly in less than ideal lighting conditions I'd rather opt for a shotgun loaded with something that will give me decent target coverage while increasing the odds of me hitting those erraticly moving targets that are trying to kill me back.......

The new Federal low recoil stuff is super tight even at 25 yards.The shot sits in the cup until it leaves the barrel so it gets less pellet deformation from barrel contact. Since the pellets end up being more concentric (less deformed) they fly in a tighter pattern. I had a LE guy in class last month that was using it in a cylinder bore 18" 870 and getting FIST sized patterns at 25 yards. Frankly that is a bit too tight for my taste, but if ALL you have is buckshot and you might reasonably use it at 20+ yards then I guess it makes more sense. But still, it is interesting how many people still think that shotguns throw a "wall of lead". I am one of those that come down on the side of bigger patterns to insure hits on moving targets and to get multiple organ perforation with each shot. But then again I view the shotgun as a 15 yards and less weapon and if I need to shoot farther I probably would have been better served with a rifle. But to each his own. I've got an advanced shotgun class here Nov 8 and 9 and I'll try to get some pattern size data with different guns and loads and report back here after.

I actually carried to the interviews of the last 3 jobs I've had. That is going all the way back to 1995. Obviously I was not applying for anywhere that had metal detectors.....

I'm not a FAM but I do know one. For what it is worth,last I talked to him they were carrying Sig 229s .357 sig in traditional DA/SA , not the DAK trigger, and loading it with CCI Gold Dot 125 gr. As far as a good cheap (relatively speaking) pistol for CCW, the Sig P6(German police version of Sig 225) that is being imported by CAI is about as good a deal as there is. It is light, compact, and fits most people's hands well. Yes it is ONLY 9mm:rolleyes:, but then again there are graveyards full of guys killed with 9mm. Bullet placement is FAR more important than bullet size. And with HP ammo available today (like CorBon DPX and CCI Gold Dot), it is a much better stopper than it gets credit for.

I do not know any professional trainer that is training pulling the trigger again as a conditioned response to the gun not going bang. Except for with a revolver... (edited: ooops... apparently Dano and I were posting at same time with same thought on revolvers..) The conditioned response that pretty much everyone (at least everyone I am familiar with ) advocates is the Tap/Rack. Gun goes click, immediately Tap/RAck and try again. Pulling the trigger will only fix a hard primer problem and those are pretty low on the probability scale. You are likely just wasting precious time. If it does not go bang after the Tap/Rack, then you have more serious issues (likely a failure to extract) and runing away is gonna be plan A unless you are within arms reach and then plan A might be use the gun as an impact weapon and beat them into the deck with it. BUt honestly, if you have a quality pistol, keep it well maintained and acquire a proper grip on it when you draw it, the odds of a malfunction occurring are very small unless it goes off in contact with your body (slide hits you while it is reciprocating) or theirs (they grab onto it). And in either of those cases simply pulling the trigger again will do nothing for you (unless it is a revolver). Some argue that the military wants pistols with second strike capabilty when they put out bids for new pistols. Look at the context of that....military primers are harder, and the average soldier shoots a pistol VERY little in basic and then probably never touches one again. So if he ends up with one he is simply not going to have Tap/Rack ingrained as a conditioned response to the gun going click and the military is not terribly interested in investing time into turning them into "pistol fighters" when the odds of them ever even having to use a pistol (unless they are in an SMU) are slim to none.....it is all about context.

Ok Mars, exactly which parts of the article did you have issues with? Which part was "fantasyland"? I'm sure you are intimately aware that there has been a movement for a while in top tier SF units to bring in top ranked competition shooters (like Benny Cooley) and employ their training methodology in gunhandling and marksmanship into the SF training doctrine. Why? Because the best shooters are the best shooters PERIOD and running a gun efficiently and accurately is an obvious benefit in either a match or in the real world. The article was the culmination of discussions between folks in the "training world" the "gun game " world and the SF world (yeah I know some of them too) some of whom have feet in all three pools . There seems to be an undercurrent of thought that makes light of the skill built through competitive shooting even though everyone from Askins and Jordan to Cirillo and even Larry Vickers and Kyle Lamb all agree that competition shooting is not a hinderence to performing well under stress, but actually improves performance under stress and those that argue that it "will get you killed" just do not know the depth of their own ignorance. Of course if the ONLY training someone gets is IDPA, then they are going to be way behind the curve and have trouble discerning contextual differences, but that is an article for anotyer time. And I do not know anyone who seriously suggests that match shooting is all you need..... That is what the article is about. It is not directed at steely eyed gunmen like yourself. It is directed at folks who have no real background in anything and are looking at maybe participating in "gun games" to augment their own personal defense training regimen but have heard from the local gunshop commandos that it will "get them killed". I wrote the article to maybe get them to at least get out and give it a try. And I posted it here simply to give some of the less seasoned guys something to think about.

One other thing though that the "tactical" crowd , with all their tip toeing about and bunkering up behind cover seem to not take into account. The first gunshot goes off and the element of surprise is gone. At that point dynamic movement and accurate shooting will be more help that tip toeing up to the next doorway giving them time to get set and get behind cover. After all, they probably got a bit of a clue that you were there when you shot one of them..... And I know at least one guy in particular who has been in more than one gunfight and use of cover was not an issue in his fights because they were over very quickly and there was no cover to be used! You might know him too. His name is on the deed here! EDITORIAL NOTE( referring to Gabe Suarez as this originally appeared in the Suarez International Newsletter Sept 2008) On the reload, this is a bone of contention with some. Some in the tactical community teach an IPSC type speed load as the default reload method for real world tactical problems. They argue that it is hands down the fastest way to get a gun fully loaded again. They say that the reload with retention or tactical reload are both too slow and too cumbersome. But IDPA mandates that any reload not from slidelock must have the mag retained. Some argue this is silly. I think it really depends on the individual circumstances. There are some who wear more than one spare magazine on them so if they do lose one it is no big deal- they still have another full one. Hard to argue with that logic when the average gunfight is 3 to 5 rounds anyway.. The only issue is when the problem is not average and there is a limited number of mags and no immediate way of replenishing. Think Hurricane Katrina type situations. Or maybe military type clandestine operation in foreign lands.Here if you drop a mag it is likely gone for good. While I doubt many of us reading this fall into the latter category, I know many people went about armed after Hurricane Katrina and if they had been dropping mags in the water their mag supply would soon be depleted. Much more likely though is the "normal " guy who carries just one spare mag. If he jettisons his first and ends up having to shoot all of his second he is going to end up out of ammo fast. Especially if that is a single stack gun he carries.While this may be an unlikely scenario for the average citizen it might be a real concern for police or military guys. So I have no issues with the reload with retention. In fact the default proactive mag change that Suarez Int teaches is a reload with retention. While we do our 360 degree after action assessment we stow the mag that was in the gun and reload with a fresh mag. This gets us back up and loaded in case reinforcements for the bad guy are on their way but also retains the extra rounds in case things go from bad to worse. So if at the match you are forced to reload with retention and do not like it just imagine the scenarios are operating post Katrina and you are doing it in 2 feet of murky water and are without any support system to replenish lost gear. This might make that reload with retention more palatable. Now for the capacity concerns. I carry a hi cap pistol 99% of the time. And when I carry it I never download it to 11 rounds. I came to grips with it by considering it a malfunction and reloading and moving on. No one counts their rounds in real fights. They shoot until it goes click or shoot until there is no one left to shoot at . THEN they do a tac load of some type. But I have heard very few stories of civilian tac loads under fire. So I simply shoot the stage as written and unless there is a mandatory reload required I shoot until it is empty and reload. After it is all over I might tac load before I show "all clear" , but I realize the difference in training and the game so I honestly rarely do that. In fact there is a move in IDPA to get away from tac loads on the clock. I personally think that is a move in the right direction. The truth is that like any other shooting competition, IDPA matches are going to be won by those who shoot quickly and accurately. But then again aren't most gunfights also won by those who shoot quickly and accurately? So maybe we should worry less about doctrinal issues like cover and reloads and worry about whether we can hit what we are aiming at quickly. Remember it is a shooting match. A test of marksmanship and gunhandling under time pressure in a setting roughly replicating real world encounters. And then there are those that simply argue IDPA is not real. You know what? They are right. The bottom line though I think is not so much that the game is bad for the shooter, it is often that some shooters just do not do well at the game. Some of them argue that it was not real and use that as an excuse for poor grasp of basic defensive marksmanship and gunhandling . I am somewhat tired of hearing all the constant "IDPA is not real" and "if you try to win you'll get killed one day when you don't use cover trying to shoot the BGs fast". Of course it is not real, because the targets don't move and shoot back!!! And I darn sure don't down load my G34 to 10 rounds before I leave the house in the mornings! But I also realize IDPA is just a game. It is a game it has to have rules. To them it seems to come down to some kind of choice between being competitive or being "tactical" Look guys, if you work on your gunhandling skills (draw/presentation,trigger control, reloads,shooting from different positions) and on moving your feet rapidly when you need to move, you certainly CAN do well at the sport of IDPA and still be "tactically correct" on the street. The faster you can accurately shoot, the better, whether it is in a game or on the street. I still shoot fast and accurately and I finish high at my local matches most of the time because I don't waste time dithering over what to do, and I shoot and handle the gun QUICKLY. I honestly think a lot of people use "IDPA is not real"as an EXCUSE for not doing well or as an EXCUSE for not working harder to improve their skills! It almost becomes a justification for mediocrity.If you can "stink it up" and just throw out the tired old line "well, I did it RIGHT you guys are gaming it!" then there is no incentive to get better! What makes you think that while you barricaded yourself behind cover and took 15 seconds to shoot 6 shots at 3 targets 5 YARDS away,that in the REAL WORLD those bad guys didn't just flank your sorry butt and shoot you in the back of the head while you took FOREVER to shoot them? On the other hand if you can shoot each of them twice in 3 seconds they probably won't have that opportunity! What I was referring to about context. If the bad guys are close then you need to shoot fast, not give them an opportunity to out maneuver you. So hiding behind cover all day long is not always the correct tactical thing to do. Again, not directing this at any one individual. This is directed at the "tactical community" in general. I hear these excuses so often I begin to think it is just a crutch or excuse to justify moving and shooting like a lame turtle! Yes it is a game, but so is Ultimate Fighting Championship. Do you really think Chuck Liddell will fight on the street EXACTLY like he does in the octagon? I doubt it. If you WORK at your manipulations and gunhandling and shooting to the point it becomes second nature and you can do it "unconsciously" you WILL do well in IDPA. Will you win a National championship? Maybe not. That really depends on your ability. But you will probably do very well at your local matches and as a by product be that far ahead of the curve if it ever happens for real! You see IDPA is not real. It is not training. It is time pressured and peer pressured gunhandling and marksmanship practice on a course not of your design, so there is some thinking under pressure involved. You know, those physical and mental skills that help win real fights. And one other thing for those who do not participate due to fear of not doing well. Growth can only be achieved through risk of failure. Many are too ego invested to try new things that they may fail or have to work hard at to attain a high level of ability. If they DO something and fail,that is not a validation of their long practiced (or NOT practiced) training regimen. So to keep from damaging their ego they avoid putting themselves in a situation with the chance of failure. But at the same time they avoid the chance to polish their skills and become BETTER. No one becomes a master of anything avoiding hard work and challenges. Some of the best learning experiences are from FAILURE. But some people will never understand that. Get out and give it a try. If you don't like it then you hopefully had an educational experience and can use that to grow your practice regimen.Just don't avoid it because someone somewhere said it was not "real". To Train With Randy Harris, see our schedule

IDPA - Will It Get You Killed? Randy Harris - Suarez International Staff Instructor There are many shooters who participate in shooting sports like IPSC or IDPA. In these sports the shooters engage a wide array of targets in little scenarios that often require drawing from a holster, movement, target discrimination, reloading, accurate shooting under time constraint and sometimes malfunction clearance. These are all good skills to work on if we also carry a gun for personal protection. Of course it is not training but it is good practice. But there are those that argue that participating in IDPA or other action shooting sports will build bad habits and can even get you killed. Let's look at that for a minute. The issues that people have are typically with use of cover, IDPA style reloads, only allowing 11 rounds in the gun in the "hi cap" categories, and the proactive nature of IDPA. The arguments ostensibly stem from people not wanting to ingrain habits that are not tactically sound. Ok fine. That is a laudable pursuit. The problem is that I think people sometimes do not look at context of the problem or the big picture or understand that there is a way to play the game and still be competitive and still work on skills that are real world useful in a real confrontation. I also honestly think some naysayers run down IDPA because they don't perform well at it. Lets look at some of the arguments. USE OF COVER: In IDPA, per the rules, you must use cover if available. And by using cover they want at least 50% of your body behind cover. The "gamesman" side of the equation stretch this to the limit exposing far more of themselves than they probably would want to in a real fight when rounds might be flying in both directions. But in IDPA the whole time you are shooting the timer is running and the winner is the one with the lowest time adjusted for score on targets. So the "gamesmen" get just enough of themselves behind cover to not be penalized and then shoot very fast. The "Tactical" side though often hunker down behind cover and engage targets VERY slowly. They argue that they expose much less of themself and thereby are doing it "right". They argue that doing it fast without getting 99% behind cover will get you killed. Maybe they have an argument, but not always a well thought out one....and not one that always applies. RELOADS: The reload argument comes from the "IDPA approved " reloads in the rule book. We have a slidelock reload, that is your gun has been shot to slidelock. We have a tactical reload . This is the classic reload during a so-called "lull in the action" where you save the rounds from the partially depleted mag by first inserting the new mag then stowing the old one. And then finally there is the reload with retention. Here you stow the old mag first and then insert the new. Any time the gun is reloaded and there are still rounds left in the old mag it must be retained. The logic is that you might need those saved rounds later on. The "gamers" and some "tactical" guys actually have some common ground here. They both disagree with the IDPA approved reloads. They argue that the IPSC style speed load is actually faster and should be encouraged instead of having to retain the partially depleted mag in the middle of a gunfight. CAPACITY: One thing I hear a lot of grumbling about is the 10 round limit. The most you can load is 10 in the mag and 1 in the chamber to start. Each subsequent mag can only contain 10. When IDPA was started we were in the midst of the ridiculous Omnibus Crime Act of 1994's ten year prohibition on new manufacture of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. We all had mags that held more than 10 but we could only load 10 because that was all that new production pistols came with. But when sanity returned and the "Assault Weapon and Magazine Ban" portions of that law expired in 2004 IDPA kept the 10 round limit in place. The logic was that several states still have state laws limiting the capacity to 10 and to be fair to them the limit would stay at 10. The argument is that those of us who carry pistols that hold more than 10 are penalized because we are forced to reload earlier than we would in real life. And I agree. But frankly I just do not think it is as big a deal as some make it. PROACTIVE NATURE: Finally comes the proactive nature of IDPA. During the course of fire you will often move from a known area into an area that may be brimming with bad guys. Generally in real life this would be suicidal by yourself. Military CQB room clearing is rarely done with less than FOUR people for that reason. The "gamers " have no problem with it. It is par for the course in IPSC. But the "tactical " crowd argues that it is not realistic..and I agree...to a point. About the only reason I could see for ever doing that would be to rescue a loved one. If your child or spouse is screaming downstairs and you hear strange angry voices I doubt that many" type A" meat eater personalities would stay put while who knows what happens to our spouse or child. In that case there is a reason for going into that situation. Otherwise we would be wise to stay put and let them come to us. But sometimes there might be overriding concerns that force us to take action we would not normally take. At this point if we decide to go extract our family members from whomever is confronting them then we are essentially in dynamic entry hostage rescue mode. If it is your house you will know the lay out better than the intruder or intruders. Here surprise and violence of action MIGHT help you survive, but any time you are trying to clear a structure , even your own, by yourself you are not on the good side of the odds. But on the positive side the proactive nature of IDPA gives some practice in dynamic movement and target discrimination. There is always a silver lining if you just look for it. So where do I (and Suarez International) come down on these arguments? On use of cover, there are times when it is just not going to be there to use and there will be times when it is there to use. Saying cover is always available is just as silly as saying it is never available. And proper use of cover does not mean setting up housekeeping behind the little plastic barricade and shooting at a snail's pace. Just because you are behind something now does not mean that the bad guys cannot quickly outmaneuver you and flank your position. So cover needs to be used wisely and then quickly move to a better piece of cover.

As soon as I have the address to address it to I'll post it here. Guys, I'm sorry if I came across a little agitated, but this battle never ends and we CAN do something about it if we make noise.....we should stick together on this stuff because it helps US. Why should someone (whether it is me or not)especially our wives, sisters or daughters, be forced to leave their gun in their car to comply with a misguided corporate policy. So we either break the law or follow a misguided policy that enhances the risk of more guns being in the hands of criminals from theft from our vehicles...brilliant. Corporate policies are easier to change than laws. Corporations respect money...if they start losing it or fear they will start losing it...they start to listen. I'll post an address as soon as I can.