Inaugural DPS3

Today KR Training held the first Defensive Pistol Skills 3 class. It’s a new class aimed at pushing you further, putting you in new and interesting positions, and rounding out skills and situations that are possible in defensive shooting situations.

Overall the class ran smooth. Good group of students. Karl deviated from the set curriculum slightly, but they were good changes that I think will lead towards refinement of the curriculum.

Here’s a few take-homes for the students:

* Keep moving.

When you draw, move. When you reload, move. When you’re dealing with a malfunction, move. Generally speaking, if you’re not shooting, you should be moving. Consider this is a defensive setup, so that means there’s someone(s) attacking you. If there’s incoming gunfire well… it’s more important to not get shot than it is to shoot. One way to help yourself towards not getting shot is to move off the line of incoming fire. Standing still is a good way for the attacker to get a bead on you, and you don’t want that to happen.

* Dry work

Lots of trigger yanking today. Dry work will help. Furthermore, many of the skills taught just cannot be performed at the public ranges in the area. What can you do? Practice them dry. No it’s not 100% the same, but it’s sure better than nothing.

* Consider a backup gun

There were a lot of malfunctions today: failures to feed, double-feeds, things just didn’t go right for a number of guns. Sure, some of them were PEBKAC or simple equipment issues. But regardless of the reason, often fixing the malfunction was way too time consuming. If in a gunfight seconds count, does taking 5-10 seconds to fiddle-fart with a non-functioning gun make sense? What works faster? Drop the gun on the ground and draw your backup.

We have no problem with you doing this in class. Carry a backup. If in the middle of a drill something goes wrong and you draw your backup and keep yourself in the fight, awesome! Going for your backup is a lot faster than struggling to get your gun running again. It’s a fight for your life, so keep fighting.