Tactical Handgun
This was one hell of a weekend. I just spent three days in Tactical Handgun 101 training with instructor, Randy Cain, who is a Gunsite instructor. This was a pretty intense course. My prior training consisted of nothing but a weak NRA Basic Safety course (I don’t mean that the NRA course is weak, just that the instructor who taught my course seemed willing to slide by with the bare minimum) and limited range time. This Tactical Handgun course taught me all the basics that I’d read about, but had no practical experience putting into practice.
I am much more confident in my gun-handling skills now, although I also realize that I have much more to learn. What I do know is that I feel like I’ve taken a big step towards being a responsible gun owner and CCW license holder. I strongly encourage any new (and all experienced) shooters out there to take a course like Randy’s whenever they can. I was the only inexperienced shooter at this course. The other students included police officers, constables and people who’d been shooting for years and had taken many courses prior to Randy’s. They all believed in what Randy was saying: you have to continually train the basics. In a real encounter, you’ll fall back to your level of training, and it’s the basics that fulfill the purpose of shooting: to hit the target. All the complex drills that we were performing by the second and third days were nothing more than basics layered upon basics.
My range time will be much more productive now, I believe. Thanks to Northeast Shooters for organizing and hosting the event. I’m going to have to save the cash and take more courses.
I took the course with my second-generation Glock 23 and 600 rounds of Winchester white box range ammunition. I ended up using almost all of the Winchester ammo and over 150 rounds of miscellaneous .40 S&W ammo that a fellow classmate was nice enough to bring along for me. So I ended up putting close to 800 rounds of ammo through my Glock with a mixture of Federal, Winchester. Speer and CCI Blazer ammunition. Not one jam (that wasn’t forced for training purposes) or failure. I’m very happy with my Glock’s performance, especially because I only have one semi-auto handgun and would have had to borrow another student’s backup gun in order to continue the course.
