"Like a monkey with a screwdriver..."

So, let's talk about knives. Once upon a time, I used to look at a tactical folder as though it were a weapon which, when one thinks about it, is sort of odd.

Unless you live in the rare jurisdiction that bans pepper spray and firearms but is hunky dory with you carrying some one-hand opening, locking folder with a big ol' meat-eating blade, it's hard to imagine the scenario where you're going to put it into use. 

I suppose you could theoretically pull it out and wave it around as some sort of deterrent? But there's a lot of fantasy stuff out there where people are imagining squaring off with some attacker in a scenario reminiscent of West Side Story meets a "Teach Yourself Escrima at Home" DVD from Paladin Press.

The one really legitimate use for a knife is to defend against a gun grab or otherwise force an attacker off you that has grabbed you by surprise from behind.

And frankly a folding knife clipped to your strong-side pocket just isn't all that hot for that use. For starters, it assumes that your strong side arm is free and doesn't have 180 pounds of assailant wrapped around it.

Further, even if you do get the knife out of the pocket and into your hand, there's still the problem of deploying the blade. Sure, there are thumb studs and Spyder holes and flippers and assisted openers and even straight-up automatic ones with pushbutton releases. The problem with all those is that you have to get one grip on the knife to get it out of your pocket, shift your grip on the knife to get your thumb or forefinger into place to deploy the blade, and then shift your grip again to get the knife positioned in your hand to go to work with it.

And you have to perform all that hand jive while rolling around with Sumdood who's trying to yank your arm out of the socket and conk your head on the pavement. Don't drop it!

About the only folders that mostly evade this handicap are ones with the Emerson Wave or a facsimile thereof, which mostly open reliably and automatically as they're being yanked out of the pocket. Mostly. Under ideal conditions I'd say I probably get it right about 95+% of the time. Rolling around with Sumdood is pretty far from ideal conditions, though.

Hence the popularity of the small centerline fixed-blade knife. Carried in whatever way makes it best accessible to either hand...behind the belt buckle, IWB, even in some circumstances as a neck knife...the idea is that it can be reached with either hand and yanked out ready to go, already in a stabbin' grip. The purpose of these small knives isn't to square up with some other knife guy like you're Jim Bowie on a sandbar, but to do like the guy in the white shirt is doing in the above photo: Make like a monkey with a screwdriver to get the other guy to let go of your gun and/or you.

The Shivworks store has a few really excellent offerings like the classic Push Dagger or the Clinch Pick. Those are outstanding, and probably the go-to choices, but if you're on a budget, the TDI knives from Ka-Bar work great and are available from BezosMart with free Prime delivery.

(Also, get yourself to ECQC.)

Hey, Look!

Always be learning!

The first few times at the range with a handgun are a real big deal for most folks, and you’re likely to imprint pretty strongly on the first pistols you tried, the words of wisdom from your dad/cop friend/whoever took you to the range that first time and the coaching from the instructor at your first concealed-carry class.

For most people, that’s about as far as it goes. Shooting isn’t a hobby, nor are guns a lifestyle for most firearm owners. They’ll get to the range a couple times a year, maybe, and 20 years from now they’ll still be shooting the same way they were when they started out. They may retain some of the basics, or they may not.

The fact that you’re reading my column in this magazine indicates that you’re probably a little more into shooting than the statistically most common handgun owner. Like the music enthusiast who seeks out new bands to listen to, you’re probably more open to broadening your shooting horizons than Joe and Suzy Average. Perhaps you seek out coaching from different instructors in order to learn new techniques. I know I do.

Happy Place

At Range Ready... (a first class facility) ...this morning.

Tab Clearing...

• The Connoisseur's Glock.


• The pitfalls of using blanks in scenario training.


• Marko is giving away ten signed copies of Descent. (Or you could preorder a regular old un-signed copy here.)

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Tab Clearing...

• Wingo: The short-lived indoor shotgun wingshooting game.


• Training Terminology: Flash Sight Picture, Hammer, and Controlled Pair.


• Hipster Tactical reviews the Daewoo DP51.

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Totin' trends...

It's been interesting noticing the trends at TacCon now that I've been there for seven years.

The first one I attended, at DARC in Arkansas back in 2017, was largely after the "Caliber Wars" were over. I'm sure there were a few .40s and .45s in attendance, but 9mm was the overwhelmingly most common chambering and it wasn't even close.

I obviously didn't get pictures of everybody shooting in every class, but I'd feel pretty comfortable stating that probably half everybody was shooting a Glock of one variant or another, with M&Ps being the second most common, and the remainder a mishmash of Sig Sauers, HKs, and Berettas, mostly. I only got pictures of one guy using a red dot; an RMR mounted on an 9mm M&P.

Next year TacCon was at DARC again. Glocks were still the most common gun, but probably only a plurality at this point. Sig P320s were already vying with M&Ps as the second most commonly seen pistol. There were a handful of people using red dot optics in 2018, and John Johnston made it into the man-on-man shootoff with one.

At 2019, down in Louisiana at NOLATAC, there were more red dots, and Rick Remington won the shootoff with an RMR atop a 9mm Wilson. Glock alternatives continued to grow in popularity.

After a one-year hiatus during the Plague Year of 2020, TacCon was held at Dallas Pistol Club in 2021.

That's when I first started seeing significant numbers of the smaller pistols, like Glock 48s and Sig P365s. Red dots were commonly spotted in every class and were no longer limited to hardcore dot proponents who'd had pistol slides custom milled for RMRs.

2022 was back at DPC again. Red dots and smaller pistols were everywhere, even in the shootoffs.

2023? More of the same.

For 2024, the biggest difference I noticed was that there was a greater number of people who were willing to talk openly about living "the snubby lifestyle" à la Darryl Bolke. I spent the weekend at the the range, catching rides back to the hotel in the evenings; I'd get dinner and socialize in the lobby a bit and then head to my room to process photos. There weren't many potential scenarios I could visualize there that I didn't feel reasonably comfortable solving with a 3" .38 Special revolver, especially since I was surrounded most of the time by switched-on, like-minded individuals. 

Gear-wise, dots had become downright prevalent. Walthers had become more common. I don't know how Walther's doing in terms of overall market share, but they've certainly penetrated the serious training hobbyist demographic. The majority of optics were now Holosuns. Enclosed emitter optics were trending. If you added 365s and 320s and the few die-hards still shooting the hammer-fired classics together, there may have been as many Sigs as Glocks, if not actually more.

Pew! Pew! Pew!

The man-on-man shootoff against reactive targets at TacCon is always something worth watching.

Gun Nerd Solstice

Wrapping up TacCon today and heading home. It's a busman's holiday for me, in that rather than going to gun school myself, I'm just wandering around taking photos of people attending the training event of the year.

People will ask me the polite "Hey, how you doing?" thing by way of conversation, and it's so uncommon to be able to answer "There is literally no place I'd rather be and nothing I'd rather be doing."

LOL you loser

I’m sorry, I just can’t take a grown-ass man running around calling himself “IcyReaper” seriously.

Go stuff yourself in a locker, dork.

Eye Roll John Winger GIFfrom Eye Roll GIFs

...until it is.

So on the Bookface the other day, several of the self-identified "Old Timers" got ahold of the phrase "It's bullet placement" as though it were some ideal rebuttal to everything from the importance of projectile design to the necessity of fast and accurate shooting.

I really hate the way that aphorisms replace thinking when it comes to personal protection. It's like the term "combat mindset". I've heard dudes at the local range talking about how they'll be fine should they ever have to yank out a handgun because they have some special mindset, when I know for a fact that they couldn't hit a barn from the inside with the door closed if you gave them all day to do it because I've seen them shoot. 

Just saying "it's bullet placement" doesn't actually, you know, place the bullet.

Further, using statements like "it's bullet placement" when used to pooh-pooh thoughtfulness in ammunition selection completely ignores the fact that bullet placement is three-dimensional. To take it to the reductio ad absurdum, it doesn't do you any good to place a bullet right in the dude's snotbox if it only penetrates a half inch.

John Hearne explaining that bullet placement is three dimensional

Marty Hayes, a well-known retired firearms trainer, mentioned that he had hosted the famous Jim Cirillo, victor of numerous gunfights, and that Cirillo's mantra was "use of cover and shot placement". That is true, as far as it goes! Yet in Cirillo's own book, Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights, he spent twenty-five pages... roughly a quarter of the book ...nerding out over bullet design and the various projectiles he'd helped develop to reduce the likelihood of round-nosed lead and FMJ bullets skidding off the curved bone structure of ribs and skulls.

Resist the urge to think about this stuff like it came out of a Chinese fortune cookie, that there's one magic concept, such as "combat mindset", "bullet placement", a "fast draw", or whatever, that's going to save the day.

No single aspect of this stuff is important by itself... until it is.

I love .44 Special... unless it's a 165gr FTX hollow point that only penetrates 8" or so.

Always a Student

Yesterday afternoon Bobbi had to run an errand, so I rode along and while we were out, her car swung into the parking lot of Half Price Books as though on autopilot. 

I picked up copies of Humans of New York and Peace, Love and Pepper Spray to add to my small collection of photo books. Also, I picked up Getting Your Shot: Stunning Photos, How-to Tips, and Endless Inspiration From the Pros and Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People.

While I'm not what you'd call a professional photographer, I have been paid for a picture or two at this point, and I've learned along the way. Mostly what I've learned is how much more there is to learn. That's the flip side of Dunning-Kruger: once you fall off the other side of Mount Stupid, you have an endlessly long slog up the Slope of Knowledge out of the Valley of Despair.

That goes for any skill. Greg Ellifritz is a widely respected trainer in the world of firearms and personal protection, and he writes:

"I think it is the job of a professional instructor to remain up to date in their fields of endeavor. I won’t stop taking classes as long as I am teaching these skill sets. I vow to never become one of those instructors whose peak instructional training is a weekend NRA class.

I think I owe it to my students to show them that I am continuing to do the work."

One of the meta-instructive things at a group event like TacCon or the old Paul-E-Palooza was you got to see which instructors were out there taking classes from other presenters in their free time. When someone decides they're too cool to learn anything new, it makes me question the value of their teaching.

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We can make you better, faster, stronger...

"Who among us doesn’t want their blaster to shoot faster and more accurately?

There’s a whole industry of aftermarket parts to support this communal urge, but it’s important to understand the code phrases that pop up in the advertising for these aftermarket goodies: “No Gunsmithing Required” means that either some fitting will be required, or that the part is so undersize that it can be truly “Dropped In”—from clean across the room. “Some Fitting May Be Needed” translates to a gunsmith will be needed. “Gunsmith Fitting Recommended”—and bring money.

Fortunately, there are ways to improve the speed and accuracy of your pistol that require the addition of not one single part..."

Dress For Success

There's a great piece here by Erick Gelhaus on matching your gear in a class with the realities of your life and the aim of the class.

Erick, dressed for success.

In my journey through the firearms training universe, I've interacted with two broad groups. One was kinda centered around Tom Givens and the Rangemaster crew, as well as Craig Douglas and his Shivworks collective. There was a fairly strong emphasis on CCW-oriented skills. You'd find those folks at Pistol-Forum, the old TPI board, and the like.

The other largely orbited Pat Rogers, and they posted at Primary & Secondary, M4carbine, Arfcom, and was very .mil/LE-centric. Even the private citizens who showed up at these classes would have war belts and tactical gear, and things were very carbine-heavy. 

At one of the old Friends of Pat events, I remember mentioning to one of these dudes that I'd never attended a class where I didn't shoot my day-to-day carry gun from concealment. He thought I was joking.

I don't own a "classtume" and, of the sixty-some classes I've taken, only four even involved using a carbine. (And the first one, Carbine & Pistol with Louis Awerbuck, I was using the back pocket on my jeans as a mag pouch. I joked that if I wanted to be really authentic in the class, I'd have taken it in pyjamas and a bathrobe, since that's almost certainly how I'd be dressed should I ever have to use a carbine for realsies).

In shoothouse classes, armor is a necessity. If you're LE or .mil. it might make sense to take a class in rifle plates. But if you're just the typical private citizen and you're taking ten carbine classes to every pistol one, and that one pistol class is run with a Safariland SLS on a war belt instead of your daily IWB rig, you're probably not allocating your training budget in the most efficient way possible.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's a free country and you can take all the entertrainment classes you want, but at least be honest with yourself about what it is.

Not my actual pyjamas.

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Training B.S. Detector Checklist...

It's weird to run across something I wrote syndicated online someplace when I was searching for something unrelated, but here's a piece I did a few years back on separating the wheat from the chaff when seeking handgun training beyond the basic "here's where the bullet comes out" sort:

"There’s lots of good training available, many different schools of “gun-fu” if you will, and the trick is to not get taken in by the bad stuff. Peter Barrett, another gun writer and friend of mine, once came up with a handy checklist for spotting the charlatans out there. I’ve used it for years, and this column is something of an expansion of that list.

First, give his (or her) social media presence, if any, a critical look-over. Are comments disabled on his YouTube videos? Is the only place to interact with him inside of his own forum where any skepticism or doubtful questions get deleted or flooded by hostile comments from his acolytes? That’s a danger sign.

When looking at his résumé — he does have something like a résumé up, right? — is it just a vague list of who he’s trained, with no mention of who he trained under? The best instructors I know are always out attending classes and trying to learn something new or maybe just looking for new tips or tricks for teaching. I don’t care who an instructor has trained. I want to know who trained him.

Does every technique in the school or class come from within the school or class? Did it all spring straight from the guru’s head? The not-invented-here syndrome can turn an instructor into a self-licking ice cream cone in a hurry. Again, the best instructors I know are constantly and cheerfully stealing good ideas from each other..."

Go RTWT.

A Jog Around the Blogs...

• Counting coup on a Malibu coupe.


• Changes are coming to Professor Yamane's blog.


• Practicing the smooth press.

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TactiCoaching

Great podcast on coaching at Tactical Tangents:

"Do you know what every great slugger in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown had in common? They all had hitting coaches. Today we have an abundance of riches in the form of internet videos to teach almost any skill, but at some point most everyone will benefit from the feedback of a skilled coach. In this episode Mike and Jim explore the value of coaching in skill building and team leadership."

Oops.

Because part of my job involves reviewing various firearms training classes, I tend to wind up going to way more training classes than are necessary. If you take one good class and engage in a moderate practice regimen (more on that in a later post) you'll be way ahead of the curve.

Personally, I try to get to one handgun class a year just to get some outside coaching. I know I benefit from occasionally getting another set of eyes watching what I'm doing and calling out any bad habits that I've allowed to creep in. Some people do great with self-coaching or using video of themselves to diagnose errors, but I don't have that sort of discipline. 

If you're engaged in a good practice regimen or shooting competition regularly, I'd spend that one class/year on something like medical, hands-on, legal, force-on-force, or whatever; something other than yet another generic pistol shooting class. Also, unless your job entails wearing a helmet and vest with rifle plates and you're taking multiple carbine classes and never taking a class running your CCW pistol from concealment, I'm giving you some side-eye.

Unpacking from the weekend, I shelved the notebooks we got from John in with my other class notes, filed the certificate away in my "I Love Me" folder, and went to note the class in my records. I should have realized I hadn’t been to gun school in a while when I couldn’t remember the name of my spreadsheet yesterday morning so I could update it.

This is the sort of thing that only happens when training has itself become a hobby (or a job). A two-day weekend class, unless it's happening in easy commuting distance from your house, is effectively a three or four day commitment. Tuition, ammunition, hotel, gas... it adds up. It's as much of a hobby as having a touring motorcycle or a bass boat. 

Plus normal people like to do normal people things with their vacation time. For the average Working Joe who has to decide how to spend that week of vacation, at Gunsite getting sunburned, or in Orlando getting sunburned with the wife and kids, normal family activities are going to win out.

It's why I find programs like the one at Indy Arms Co. so interesting. They've got classes broken into two- and four-hour chunks that can be done in the evenings or on weekend afternoons without eating up a whole weekend. Another handy training tool are smorgasbords like TacCon, where you can combine 2- and 4-hour classes on more esoteric subjects and also audit firearms instructors with whom you'd like to take full classes in the future.

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"Because they don't make a 46."

The average level of training and experience in this past weekend's class was higher than that of any open enrollment class I've ever attended. Over a third of the class were current or former cops and probably half the class had been to Gunsite, including one Gunsite Rangemaster*.

As a result, the number of 1911 pattern pistols in .45ACP was higher than in any class I've seen, to include that Awerbuck class back in '09.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were no janky off-brand Government Model clones among the bunch. There were a couple Gunsite pistols and the rest were Wilsons. Three students were shooting Glocks (including me) and there was one Sig Sauer P320 X-Five and a Heckler & Koch HK45. Both of the other Glocks had dots, and I was using Ameriglo TCAPs on my Glock 37, which I was running from concealment out of a Raven Phantom carried strong side IWB. 

Yes, I scattered a bunch of .45GAP brass amongst all that once-fired .45ACP. Some brass hound at Riley Conservation Club probably hates me now.

The class started with some dry practice and as souvenirs we got a couple of the handy little Tap Rack dry fire safety training aids from Rogers. If you've never used those, they're handy little gizmos that keep the magazine follower depressed so you can function the slide to reset the action without it locking back. Yes, the .45ACP size works in Glock .45GAP magazines.

*What do I keep saying about good instructors being eternal students?

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Whupped

The round count yesterday wasn't high. I've been in classes with trainers like Todd Green and Scott Jedlinski where we burned up ammo at a 500rd/day clip. I don't think I busted two hundred caps yesterday.

The weather wasn't awful, either, for a summertime class in Indiana. Louis Awerbuck would show up in Boone County in August, and I remember it was miserably sticky. By contrast, temps only hit the low eighties yesterday and the humidity was unusually low for July in the Wabash valley.

But there was a lot of thinking, and that can get exhausting.

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Only hits count, but not all hits are the same...

There are plenty of frequently used pistol targets out there that have some...er, problems with real-world applicability.

For instance, there's the classic B27, which is laid out as though it's intended to condition shooters to pop people in the belly button. Then there's the USPSA target, which has a lower A-zone that is, well, "generous" is putting it gently.

The classroom portion of the Tactical Anatomy class from John Hearne goes into detail on the actual target areas that matter in defensive shooting.

Further, the class covers the three dimensional aspects of targeting, and how it can change aim points depending on the angle from which the target is engaged.

Notice that the shot that looked low from the front would have been a bad day for dude when you look at the other side of the target.

The juicy target areas are a lot narrower than most qualification or game targets allow for, but there's also more vertical slop in that narrow window. If you're gonna miss, keep your misses tight along that vertical axis.

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