Real-World Defense

The course combines tactical theory with live-fire exercises. The Saturday range session began with a safety lecture in which John described basic gun-handling techniques. John runs a hot range. Every gun that is not stored in a carrying case is loaded and must be carried in a safe manner. In addition, all guns that are carried on the range must be maintained in a fully loaded condition at all times, because that’s the way they are carried on the street.

After the briefing, John and his instructors worked with the participants to be sure that their skills would be equal to those needed for the live-fire scenarios that would be presented on Day Two. Individual attention is given to each participant. After lunch, the afternoon was occupied with a series of move- and-shoot and cover drills. Participants practiced moving, shooting and reloading while engaging hostile targets that were partially obscured by no-shoot targets. John emphasized several important defensive techniques here, including keeping your eyes on the threat and scanning for additional targets, transitioning from pistol to rifle while on the move, reloading on the move and never appearing from cover in the same location.

At dusk on Day One, we began two hours of low-light shooting. Participants turned on their tactical gun lights, employed their lasers and individually ran a set of drills that involved identifying threats and engaging multiple hostile targets while on the move in the dark. To make things more difficult, the instructors used their own tactical lights to illuminate portions of the area downrange. At times the instructors’ lights were set on strobe mode. This made it harder to tell hostiles from innocent bystanders. John’s philosophy of training is to challenge the existing skills of the participant to promote skill development, and this clearly was a challenging exercise.

Saving Lives

Day Two was spent engaging a variety of targets in active-shooter scenarios. Targets representing different types of threats, like guns, RPGs and explosives, were set up downrange along with no-shoot targets representing innocent bystanders. The participants had to determine which threats must immediately be neutralized, which ones did not need immediate action and shoot the immediate threats without jeopardizing bystanders. Periodically, the targets and the large drums used to represent cover were moved to different locations. In addition, John randomly selected starting points at various places on the firing line for each run of the various drills.