Herk

Hello? Beuller?

What I've always disliked about the "sheepdog" allusion is that, in the case of the armed Citizen, it is often forgotten or ignored that a big part of the sheepdog's job is terrifying the sheep into "staying in the herd". This aspect is at least as big a part of what defines a sheepdog's job as protecting the herd from wolves. I guess that this is what makes the "sheepdog" allusion work so well for Grossman's target audience (LEOs) but rather imperfect for someone like me: a guy who desires to be left alone not only by "wolves", but also by "sheep" and "sheepdogs". That's how I feel anyway; let the flaming begin.

Still nothing? :(

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Hey Jgun, I guess that it all depends on what you're trying to set your rifle up for. It sounds like you're setting yours up for either 3gun-style competition, a battle rifle, or the classic, "do everything" setup that all of us pursue but never quite achieve. Depending on what you're looking at the weight of the 6x ACOG might or might not be an issue. I personally plan on carrying mine around on the ranch during calving season to plug any coyotes who might be so careless as to let themselves be seen by me. For that reason alone I want to have a lighter setup. My friend has bought a Leupold 2.5-8x pistol scope and he's going to see if it will work as a makeshift magnifier. If so then I think it will be a pretty decent "do all" setup. As for me, I think that I will mount a Shepherd P210 scope that I have lying around and see how it performs on my Fulton when it gets here. If that proves unsatisfactory then I'll be getting a Burris 1.5-6x scope, perhaps? I won't know what works for me until I've tried it. I'll probably back up whatever magnified optic I settle on with Deuck Defense 45 degree sights. Regardless of what we decide works for us we'll be sure to share our results with everyone here.

My experience with the extended eye relief scopes is that, as a rule, they give you not only greater (i.e.: longer) eye relief but also a greater range of eye relief (e.g.: 8-12", 4" range, for the Leupold 4x scout vs. 3.8"-4.3", 0.5" range, for the Leupold 1.5-5x Mark AR). You are probably correct that some FOV would be lost when going from true 1x (unmagnified RDS) to any magnification greater than 1x but I think that this would be the case regardless of whether the magnification was achieved via a magnified RDS or a 'cranked up' conventional variable magnification optic, though perhaps for different reasons. I realize that by adding magnification into the mix I am sacrificing many of the advantages of a RDS but in the process I would be gaining most of the advantages of a magnified optic. By using a QD scout magnifier I believe that I could minimize the disadvantages while retaining most of the advantages. It's a theory that I want to test anyway.

Thanks for your reply. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that you are not familiar with the "Scout" optic concept? It is an intermediate/long eye relief scope that was developed to be placed in front of the action of a bolt action rifle to give the shooter a greater field of view. This is somewhat similar to handgun scopes. The very reason that the "Scout" style magnifier is desirable to us for this purpose is exactly what you mentioned: conventional magnifiers lack the eye relief to be mounted in front and even when they are mounted in the conventional position they have very poor eye relief when you consider what a low-powered optic they are. Here's a link where you can learn more about the "Scout" rifle concept and the optic that has come to be synonymous with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_rifle

The XPS is what my friend is rocking and here are some issues with the conventional magnifier: 1) Very poor eye relief, especially for such a low-powered optic. 2) Incompatible with NVDs, partially due to the eye relief issue. 3) Magnification of the RDS's reticule. Yes, I know, the rest of the image is magnified too so I know that it "doesn't matter" but the whole purpose of a magnifier is to make longer-ranged shots more precisely. A smaller dot in relation to the magnified image would help this. I am almost reluctant to even bring this point up since people tend to fixate on it and ignore the rest of the theory. 4) Receiver real estate is in low supply due to the magnifier's length and low mount. The BUIS on this rifle was actually mounted IN FRONT of the XPS 3 due to the lack of real estate and clearance issues. If feasible, a "scout"-style magnifier would eliminate or at least minimize all of the above downsides. On a different board a poster hypothesized that parallax would be an issue with this type of setup but we've not yet heard from anyone who has first-hand experience with it. We're still waiting to hear more.

So no integral trigger guards on these lowers, right? Where I'm living I'd pretty much need a larger-sized trigger guard at minimum, if not the ability to fold the trigger guard out of the way to use with mittens.

I've not played around with red-dot sights much at all but I can certainly see the utility of them. I have always liked having magnification for target ID and longer shots and the only way to get this with a RDS is to have a magnifier behind the RDS. What I've been wondering is if it would be possible to get a long eye relief scope (i.e.: "Scout"-style) and mount it in FRONT of the RDS and get the same magnification benefits as with a normal magnifier without magnifying the RDS reticule too. To test this concept I've placed a spare scope that was lying around in front of a friend's Eotech and looked through both optics. The magnified scope was not attached to the upper but it gave me a vague idea of how this concept might work. I didn't actually do any shooting like this but it made me think that this concept is just so crazy that it might work! I have difficulty believing that nobody else has thought of this before and yet I've never seen anyone else do this. Can anyone tell me why this concept would NOT work? I suppose that the two reticules might interfere with one another or that they might be confusing under stress but if one could get his hands on an appropriate scope with no reticule at all then that would take care of that problem. Of course, the magnified optic would need to be in a QD or "flip"-style mount so, just as with a conventional magnifier but that shouldn't be too difficult. Since the RDS would be used as the sighting system even when magnified the zeroing of the magnifier would be a non-issue. Again, ideally the scout scope in this scenario wouldn't even HAVE a reticule! So tell me: would this work? If not then why?

I did some martial arts as a kid. Some was practical some...not so much. I fell out of it in my mid teens but got into boxing in my late teens. That wasn't so much good fight training as it was a kick-ass workout! I lost 45lbs in a very short amount of time while I was boxing. Lately an Army Ranger vet was living in my AO who had been a combatives instructor for Ranger Batt. He and his wife (who was pretty good at H2H in her own right) would come over to visit and my room mates and I would get a free H2H lesson! He was a great teacher and the only reason that we stopped is because the guy moved several hours away. I'm in kind of a remote place right now so I'm struggling to find any H2H teachers.

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Thanks for taking the time to read it! <thumbsup>

I forgot to mention the Teuller drill: one guy stands on the target line, far enough down from the shooter to be out of danger, while the shooter stands on the firing line 21' away. A signal is given to the runner that the shooter cannot see so the shooter must react to the runner when he moves. The shooter has to make a hit to the target's heart box before the runner makes it 21'. I can't recall if anyone pulled this off but the lesson that I took away from this was that it is foolish to stand your ground and attempt to draw your pistol faster than a runner can cover 21'. We redid the drill with our guns already drawn and saw everyone's accuracy improve and every shooter got his hit faster than the runner could cover 21'.

Advanced Fighting Pistol: This was a new class for me. In the two days before Advanced Fighting Pistol I had taken Fighting Pistol for the second time but this was my first Advanced Fighting Pistol experience. The first day started out on the range with no classroom time before hand. We got right into shooting from some awkward positions. We'd done fighting to our feet from supine in Fighting Pistol but now we got to try the same exercises with the target oriented somewhere besides right in front of our feet. I don't think I'd ever shot at a target with my head upside-down while lying on my back before! I had taken Fighting Pistol back in 2008 and back then drawing from a dominant-side holster with the support hand was part of the curriculum. It seems that Tactical Response has decided to move this technique to the Advanced class. After making sure we could do this safely and correctly we expanded on the whole theme of losing use of an arm in a fight by doing plenty of shooting with both right- and left-hand shooting, a theme that continued throughout the rest of the class. Students were expected to fight through all one-handed drills with only one hand. If you shot with, say, your left hand only then any reloads or malfunction clearing was to be done with only the left hand. Andrew (aka: Magnum) seemed to always want to get both his hands involved in some way in a one-handed drill. This brought about another Yeagerism: "Stop using your other hand! I've never had to restrain a male student before and I don't want to start now." :bow: Precision was expected regardless of what hand was being used. Students that had problems with their eyes had to find what worked for them to get their hits. I try to do a fair amount of practice left-handed and one-handed and I didn't feel like I had to fight to make my hits. I certainly couldn't shoot as fast with only one hand but that shouldn't surprise anyone I don't think. At the start of the day I saw a pair of boxing gloves being taken out of Yeager's truck. I had the sinking feeling that those gloves were going to be used on us and I was correct. I made the mistake of standing on the far right end of the firing line so Yeager selected me to go first and got to see what he could do to make my life miserable for a minute or so before he was tired out from doing the same to other students. The drill was to shoot a mag at your target and then perform a reload while being attacked from behind with grabs and blows. I managed to get my spare mag knocked out of my hand while trying to reload and had to recover it from the ground while getting pummeled. Repeated smacks to my arm kept me from seating the mag into the gun until I finally got it on what seemed like the 100th time. This drill really made me see the hazards of being "gun focused" in a hand-to-hand melee. I've got to say though, that I've never had more fun while getting punched! Perhaps the only thing more fun was watching my fellow students getting the same treatment. Next time video! Another drill that really got me thinking was a similar drill where students were choked out from behind while trying to empty a mag into their target. I made a point of shooting as fast as I could to see if I could get to slide lock before passing out. As it turned out I did and didn't actually black out at all. Still very easy to see how easy it would be to panic in a situation where you are being attacked and can't even breathe. A similar drill was conducted with the instructor pinning the student's arms to his body, forcing him to point shoot from waist level. Not too difficult at all but something that needs to be practiced all the same. Now what to do about all of these attacks from behind at close range? Well, there's a trick for that too. Just point your pistol under your support-side armpit while covering the back of your head and neck with the support hand (just like retention position) and shoot him off your back. Well, for whatever reason I would have failures to feed when in this position. I tried with both hands and with two guns and got the same result. I had Yeager watch me while I did these drills and he couldn't see anything that I was doing wrong so we hypothesized that I was somehow not correctly supporting the frame of the pistol when holding it that way. What I'm going to take away from this is that if I do need to shoot someone off my back then I've got only one shot (well, two if I'm carrying my BUG) so I'd best make it count. I'm going to practice this drill more to see if I can get the correct technique down. After class Peter announced that his lovely wife, Elaine, had made us all dinner down at the CLETC pro shop! Another great day of training capped off with another great evening of hanging out with my fellow classmates. The only way that that could be better? With fresh salad and home-made pulled pork. I made sure to go back for seconds and would have eaten even more if there'd been any left! Thanks Elaine, that was the best meal I've eaten in a long time! Day two started out in the classroom again. James delivered another very informative lecture on vehicle, home defense, low-light, and medical issues. While there was not a low-light range component to this class I think that I have a lot to think about now just after this lecture. I took quite a bit of notes and was writing pretty much non-stop the whole time. James seems to be able to pack a lot of info into a lecture so bring your pens and pencils and some paper to his classes! The first aid lecture was also very worthwhile. After the Tucson shootings I put myself in the shoes of that CCW guy who got on the scene a few seconds after the shooter had been subdued. I put myself in that guy's shoes and wondered what I could have done. With the shooter already subdued and disarmed there would be no way for me to use all of my expensive firearms training to save lives. So what could I have done? I could have stood around and watched people bleed to death. Since then I have been trying to get to an Immediate Action Medical class but haven't done so yet. I think that with the knowledge that I got from even this short lecture that I could do a much better job of helping an injured person than before but I know that there is so much more that I still have to learn. There is talk of bringing Tactical Response back to CLETC to teach this class and if that is true then I will certainly be there! Back on the range we did another drill that had been in Fighting Pistol the last time I'd taken it but, apparently was now in the Advanced class: the Allen Dot drill. James explained to me that the student who would take Fighting Pistol but not Advanced Fighting Pistol was typically not a student who appreciated the Allen Dots. If you don't know, the Allen Dots are about 1.5" in diameter and are shot from the 5 yard line. If you "make" the gun shoot instead of "letting" the gun shoot then you will probably miss an Allen Dot. It takes a lot of concentration to make your hits on a target this small, time and time again! Some other pure marksmanship drills were covered. If you've watched Shooting Missology then you've probably seen some of these: holding the gun in the left hand and pressing the trigger with the right index finger (then doing it again with the finger inserted all the way up to the knuckle in the trigger guard), holding the gun upside-down and shooting with an inverted sight picture, bending over and shooting between your legs, the list goes on. What is the point of all of this "trick shooting"? To show that very good hits can be made as long as you line up the sights correctly and press the trigger correctly. You need not worry about stance, grip, what part of your trigger finger rests on the trigger, etc as long as you can get proper sight alignment and trigger press. On the subject of the sight alignment, another drill involved us deliberately getting the front sight "too high", "too low", and "too far to the sides" in the rear notch. Guess what? At typical combat distances you can still hit someone where they need to be hit with those sight pictures. That type of sight alignment is not what a shooter should strive for but nor is it something that he should get too wrapped around the axle about either. There were several movement drills that involved keeping one's feet moving while shooting with both hands and then one hand only, each hand (including gun manipulations). These drills forced the shooter to divide his attention between not crashing into obstacles while moving and making good hits on the move as well. The shooting fundamentals that had been pounded into our heads all day made concentrating on the front sight easy for me and I got most of my hits in the heart box of the target. After learning of the danger the day before of focusing on the gun too much when a hand-to-hand fight is happening, we brought out a punching bag. There is an old saying: "How long 'one minute' is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're standing". Well, we were going to find out how long thirty seconds lasted. The heavy bag was placed on the ground in front of a target on the firing line and, one by one, students would straddle the bag and rain blows down on the bag for thirty seconds. Open-hand palm strikes were stipulated over closed-fist punching as the latter can more easily result in a hand injury. Elbow strikes were also allowed and I decided that that is what I would use due to the devastating damage that they can do. After thirty seconds the student was to draw his pistol and engage the target in front of him with an entire magazine and then jump up and reload. There is an aspect of this drill that I wanted to also talk about because it relates to a couple of interesting experiences for me. While one student was actually striking the bag all of the other students plus the instructors were to yell encouragement to the student. James explained that this was because the voices of your teachers can come back to you under a stressful encounter and you want those voices to be helping you. If the student was tiring then we would yell at him to hit harder and not give up. If the student seemed to not be giving 100% then we would yell to stop rabbit punching and to hurt that son of a bitch! Now there's two reasons that I found this aspect interesting: firstly, I have never been in a lethal encounter before but there was a dream that I had where I was in some horrific-looking place (if Doom 2 had had better graphics it would have looked like this) and I was being attacked by some massive demon-like beast. I drew my 1911 (that's what I carried at the time) and shot it until it jammed. I went to fix it and, as I had the tendency to do then, I looked down at what I was doing. In the middle of this weird dream I could hear Tactical Response instructor Kyle Lynch (who was one of my instructors at Fighting Pistol in 2008) yelling clear as a bell: "Shawn, keep your fucking head up!" Again this was only a dream but that voice was unmistakable and in that dream I managed to fix a type 3 malf while keeping my eyes on the threat! The other aspect that was interesting is that I experienced auditory exclusion. I decided that I was going to make an impression on that heavy bag and for 30 seconds I landed as many of the hardest elbow strikes that I could muster on it. In retrospect I can recall that there was yelling in the background but at the time it was just me and that heavy bag. I had heard of people experiencing auditory exclusion in gunfights and even while hunting but this was the first time that it had happened to me. We did more work with the heavy bag afterwards that was less physically intense. One drill involved straddling the bag in the same manner as before but then shooting it about 5 or 6 times from retention and then emptying the mag into the bad guy's friends (paper targets). After this we went on to pistol whip the heavy bag for a few blows until a cease fire was called. We also did some experimentation with contact shots on the heavy bag. Pushing the muzzle against the target will push the slide out of battery and not let you fire so the shooter must press the slide shut from the rear to get it into firing condition. Another neat thing we learned was that Hollywood actually wasn't making up the whole pillow-as-a-suppressor thing. After a sufficiently large hole was blasted in the heavy bag the muzzle of the pistol could be inserted and a round could be fired comfortably without ear protection! Not sure that that will ever come in handy but it was still a neat thing to learn. There was a practical medical aspect too. We were shown how to put a tourniquet and an H-bandage on ourselves, not another patient. If you are badly wounded in a gunfight then you cannot count on someone else to help you. You need to be your own medic until someone else can take over. After doing a practice tourniquetting (Is that a word? It is now!) and H-bandaging we did a drill where we had to shoot our guns dry at an attacker, put on a tourniquet, THEN reload (you have about 70 seconds before you bleed to unconsciousness from arterial bleeding), then shoot off another mag, then apply an H-bandage, THEN reload. If the tourniquet doesn't hurt then you're doing it wrong. I really should start carrying a TK4 and an H-bandage around. I'm around guns and shooting all the time and that means that I could one day have to deal with a gunshot wound. Even if I'm never around someone who's been shot, those medical items could be life-saving in a number of other instances. We finished with a drill that involved moving safely around people with a gun in your hand. The idea that we should not "break 180" when training for a fight is stupid. Shooting ranges are the only 180°, bystander-free part of the world. If you're not training to win a gunfight on the firing line of a shooting range then you shouldn't train that way! If you might have to move around others with a gun in your hand then don't make the first time you have to do the first time that you ever do it! Train like you'll fight! This drill was done in a totally safe manner and I never felt nervous the entire time. I'd been shooting with these guys for four days straight and I knew that they could put their rounds where they needed to go. This drill also demonstrated the utility of the muzzle up movement position. It prevented the muzzle from pointing at anyone's legs or toes, including the guy holding the gun. Sometimes muzzle up is the right way to go and sometimes it's muzzle down. Yet another thing that isn't worth getting into a debate over. Pick which one works and use it. There is a reason that Tactical Response's Alumni avatar includes Rodin's Thinker: there is a lot of stuff to be thinking about after the class ends and I am still rolling things around in my mind. I think that if Tactical Response were to rename some of their classes they could call Fighting Pistol "If you carry a gun you NEED this class" and they could call Advanced Fighting Pistol "Psst, hey Warrior, wanna see how fucked up things could really get for you one day? Also wanna see how to prevail when those situations arise? Then take this class". Too wordy? Perhaps but I think that that gets the point across. I guess that you could say that Fighting Pistol is a Mindset class and the Advanced Fighting Pistol is a tactics class for those who already have a fighting mindset. I was very impressed to see that Tactical Response's curriculum has evolved over the last three years. The Fight and Immediate Action Medical are very high on my list of classes to take and hopefully that will happen soon. Way Of The Pistol seems like it would be worth taking too but that will have to wait I think. To everyone at CLETC: it was a real pleasure meeting all of you and shooting with all of you. I know that I will be doing more training at your awesome facility in the future. Everyone else should go to Cor-Bon's website and check it out online. To James and Steve: thanks a ton for letting me know what I didn't know and for providing a bad-ass learning experience. See you next time you come up here or maybe even next time I come to Camden! To Rebecca & Elaine: thanks for taking all the sweet photos! I look forward to seeing more. To my fellow classmates: post your AARs, fuckers! :whip:

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