She Draws Him Like a Gun…

Rangemaster Level III Tactical Handgun

January 7 & 8, 2009

Memphis, TN.  2 days, four hours per night, 6-10 p.m.

 

Instructor:  Tom Givens and 3 assistants. Givens’ cv is found:                               

http://www.rangemaster.com/rm_staff.html

 

Price:  $165 paid in advance.

 

Rounds:  400 per course information.  Approx. 450 fired by me.

 

Range:  Rangemaster, www.rangemaster.com in Memphis, TN.  An indoor facility, with pro shop, professional class room, air rifle range, dressing room, and pistol bays.  This is really a dream facility for teaching.  The range itself is well-ventilated, though it could use more lights.  Movable target carriers, reinforced dividers between shooting stations.  The classroom is a classroom…i.e. designed to teach.  It has projector and computer connection, video/dvd.  Extensive blue guns, holsters and demo items.  Most important of all…a coffee pot with coffee during class.  A first class place.

 

Day 1- Wednesday, January 7, 2009

 

Givens’ classes are a progression; you take 1 then 2 then 3 etc…  He assumes you know what you have been taught before and you better.  You are required to come to class for Levels 2 and above carrying, loaded, ready to shoot, it is required.  My unofficial Givens Rule #1 is Carry Your F#$%% Gun!  He knows you to be a safe gun handler, if you aren’t you are gone, no questions asked.  Givens maintains a record on computer of his students.  Once you have completed Level 2 Pistol you are allowed to rapid fire and present from concealment on his range.  I cannot applaud this enough.  It is the best of both worlds, know it all’s who show up cannot go on his range and play cowboy, yet his students at the proper level of training are treated like qualified armed citizens who need to practice the skills they learned from him.

 

Intro discussion- there is no safety lecture etc… see above.  Major points of this discussion:  Pistols are ineffective, not death rays. Get the death ray mentality out of your head. This isn’t the movies where one shot from a snub puts the bad guy down immediately.  Discussion of gunshot survival, wounds and trauma care.  Memphis is a great town to get shot in, both because it is ridiculously violent and because the trauma care at the Med is world class, where they save most of the shooting victims who come in.  This reinforces the warning that pistols are largely ineffective.  Don’t intentionally carry a pistol to a fight; if you know it is a fight, you need a long gun.  Be prepared to shoot multiple times, be prepared to fight after being shot.  The object is to punch multiple holes to try and hit something important (circulatory, central nervous). Be prepared to be shot in your gun hand.  The goal is to make the bad guy stop shooting you, if you give up you are done.  Most people, 93%, survive an accidental shooting, about 80% survive an intentional one.  Brief discussion of the trauma care at the Med in Memphis.  Very high survival rate.

Covered the Newhall Massacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newhall_Massacre and

 

http://www.officer.com/web/online/On-the-Street/April-6–1970/21$36902

 

because of its demonstration of the relationship between training/practice and real life. You will respond how you practice.  Practice with some full loads, low light, etc… 4 CHP officers killed by two goblins, led to a revolution in LEO training.  Poor shooting, poor tactics and 4 dead officers.

 

Lengthy discussion of the Miami FBI Shootout. This incident essentially led to the next revolution in police tactics and equipment.  Watched the FBI official re-enactment video.  The video explains the vehicle positioning which never made sense (they always seemed to have been facing the wrong way), and also includes the actual radio calls from Grogan as they follow the Monte Carlo.  Discussed the equipment used, the ammo, the distances, and the accuracy. Shots ranged from 6-8 feet (McNeil, missed 5 of 6 over the hood of Manauzzi’s car) the one hit was to Matix’s cheekbone where it shattered and was not a penetrating wound.  Focusing on the need to stay on the front sight!! 

 

I now know what happened to Manauzzi, it was never clear from any other source.  Problems, body armor was available and not worn.  Long guns were available and not fully employed.  McNeil had a shotgun in a case on the backseat.  He chose to carry a .38 +P snubbie.  Dove and Grogan’s shots were maybe 20-30 feet, Risner and Orrantia were shooting from approximately 100 feet and unable to cross the street. 

 

Platt continued to fight for approximately 4 more minutes after sustaining a fatal wound, filling his right lung with 1300 ml of blood. (shot by Dove w/ 9mm-great shot).  In that 4 minutes he managed to kill Grogan, Dove, wound and cripple Hanlon and shoot McNeil in the neck.  Will to fight?  Never give up?  Not only do you need to have it, you opponent may have it too.  He fired 3 off hand shots at Mireles from point blank range and missed them all, (the “why” we train off hand and one hand) after a wound to his right forearm from Risner (likely). 

 

Discussion of the problem Hanlon had reloading (he couldn’t) after a shot to his hand and forearm.  McNeil also could not reload after taking a shot to his right hand.  Carry a semi-auto? (they were not SWAT qualified and by FBI regs at that time couldn’t carry a semi-auto.)  Other problems, unsecured handguns (Manauzzi-no BUG, and Hanlon who had a back up Chief’s special), McNeil’s lost glasses.  Manauzzi apparently had his gun fall out an open door during the stop and Hanlon’s issue revolver was lying on the seat of his car in a holster (unsecured) and was lost in the collisions. 

 

Discussion of the physiological effects of stress in a gun fight, biological reason for tunnel vision, auditory cut off etc.. the effects of racing heart rate. (Risner was screaming at Dove, Grogan and Hanlon to alert them that Platt was flanking them but they did not hear him).  Hanlon lost situational awareness during a revolver reload (without speed loader) at the rear of Grogan/Dove’s car and did not maintain cover when he was struck by Platt’s .223.  Apparently neither Grogan nor Dove saw Platt approaching from their right, though Hanlon saw an individual approaching (Nike running shoes) from under the edge of the car (it was Platt) and Hanlon was then shot in the groin by Platt.  Finally, in Mireles final charge on Grogan’s car, he described his field of vision as narrowing (hole in black wall) the biological reaction.

 

Also mentions that Mattix removed the stock from his shotgun and replaced it with a pistol grip, largely rendering it ineffective, thankfully.  Why we don’t do stupid uber tactical things like removing stocks from shotguns…unless breaching…which we aren’t.

One other interesting note is Platt and Mattix’s theft of the Monte Carlo and shooting of Collazo in the Everglades on the Tamiami highway.  Collazo was shot in the face with a .357 by Mattix and the bullet skidded around his skull and exited.  (Ineffective handguns?)  Collazo, crawled over 3 miles to the highway, through terrain rough to walk in much less crawl, bleeding from wounds before being found.   A trucker drove him to the hospital in Miami, they believed he was dead, yet worked on him anyway.  Within 4 hours he was providing a statement to FBI.

 

The lessons?  1) Don’t fuck with Mr. Collazo; 2) Will to live (if he died in the lake where he fell, he thought to himself that his family would never know what happened to him because he would never be found.  Tie in to your will to live in a fight and the reason you keep fighting (make the other guy stop shooting you!!)

 

Brief discussion of the Bank of America shootout in North Hollywood, CA. The ineffectiveness of “spray and pray”.  Bad guys fired over 1300 rounds.  Givens says had the rifles been semi auto and had they been aimed rounds, they could have killed people “in buckets”.  As it was, there were no casualties (not counting the two bad guys) and only 13 wounded.  1 wounded person per 100 rounds.  Also a defense of the LAPD, the bad guys had body armor over body armor. Essentially leaving police with long range head shots.   How skilled are we with long distance head shots?

 

On the range we did a brief review of Level 2 presentation, dry and live fire.  Review of tactical reload and emergency reload.  Focus on sight picture.  For Level 3 the speeds were increased, the distances were increased.  As the distances increased the shots spread out.  TG then added a time factor to heighten the pressure and drills were done by the whistle.  TG diagnosed a problem with the indexing of my trigger finger (and explained the “Glocks shoot left” myth) and its positioning on the frame which hopefully with repetition can cure some of my “lefts” at longer range.  I was completely unaware…the value of good instruction.  Finally we were advised that we would be timed for score to determine if we “pass”, further heightening some of the tension.  The scored target was from 3 distances, I kept the majority of my shots were in the box, but I know I wasn’t the best shooter or likely even close.  We did a couple of drills which included head shots, but not many.  Multiple shots were anywhere from 2 to 6.

Looking forward to Day 2.

 

Day 2- Thursday January 8, 2009

 

Began in the classroom.  TG was generally pleased with the class and by % we were slightly ahead of the norm.  We started with more discussion of mindset and preparedness, in addition to more facts about crime and culture.

 

We watched a DEA training video, good in parts, comically bad in others.  Apparently in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s (when it was made) the DEA felt it was justified and safe among other things to shoot a non-threatening target through a sheet rock wall without regard to the consequences or knowledge of the target.  We discussed the good and bad of each scenario in addition to the features on DEA agents who survived shootings in various situations.  We further watched a video from Gunsite on various shooting techniques to watch correct drills and procedures after watching the wrong on the previous video.  The value of heading to the range with proper mental pictures, not wrong ones. 

 

We then went to the range and fired a CoF that was more difficult than the one on Day 1, with no warm up.  (Tom explained this at the end of the night-we didn’t know it at the time).  All shooting on Day 2 was from concealment.  It seemed very similar at the time.  I had dry practiced earlier in the day to work on the indexing issue from Day 1 and shot better early on in being more consistent and not creeping left as much.  My shots were pretty solid, one trigger slap to the left resulting in a complete miss other than that not bad.  Head shots were all ocular cavity except one which was a throat shot.  The first CoF was on the same generic LEO target from Day 1. 

 

The second was a “photo target” of a bad guy with a gun.  The key being much more faint scoring rings that were much less visible at all distances except the closest.  We shot a complete CoF on this target with the time requirements getting tighter and tighter.  1 emergency reload was performed in each. Numerous speed reloads and no tacticals. Shot groups varied from 2 to 6 at 4 different distances.  Shot cadence was emphasized as the target range increased.  Draw quickly, shoot quickly close, shoot carefully medium, shoot precisely at distance.  Bad cadence is bad shooting.  It was generally noted that the class was doing common yet bad problems with trigger control, milking/regripping, resulting in persistent mistakes.  Continued reminders about the front sight continued.

 

The range was then set for “gunfights”, one on one mirrored shooting against another class member.  I did not shoot well at the distant, steel falling target.  On three of my 5 rounds it took two or three rounds to down the target resulting in losses.  The front sight issue was then reminded as many in class lost focus on the distant target.  A verbal que from TG was often enough to put the next shot on target….it’s all about focus and concentration.  Fighting the tendency to shoot faster after a miss at distance was also discussed as well as the need to do the opposite, slow down, focus front sight.  My presentation time was generally good, (the stage involved knocking a box off the shooting bench prior to presentation) and I had no misses on the close range target.  We needed 9 “points” to kill him, 2 center mass or other combinations.  On one stage I couldn’t see 1 of my 2 shots and took a 3rd.  It turned out that was more lost time as all 3 shots were good.  In reality not a problem, but in the match there wasn’t time for extra shots or misses.  Best line of the night from student to Givens…”boss my shots are all good, it is the target that is out of position”.

 

The one class member who never “died” was the winner.  The drill was good fun and contained yet more good lessons.  That concluded the class, looking forward to Level 4.  The only negatives I can point to for this class was perhaps the 2nd day videos, maybe too long.  I’d frankly rather listen to Givens talk than watch parts of them.

 

Bottom Line:  go and train.