In the past I’ve written about Col. Rex Applegate, whose “Kill or Be Killed” shooting book was perhaps the most influential handgun book of the 1940’s. I recently shared an article from the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine that provided details about his “House of Horrors” shoothouse.
Applegate’s techniques were adopted by the U.S. Army, and you can see them explained and demonstrated in this classic Army training film.
World War 2 was the largest firearms training program in US history. Most able-bodied men, and many women were trained to shoot pistols, using these techniques and traditional one handed bullseye techniques. This influenced conventional wisdom about “proper handgun technique” from the end of WW2 until the mid 1960’s.
In 1944, Applegate summarized his pistol training program in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine.
The common response of the modern shooter, when introduced to Applegate’s techniques, is to consider them outdated and wrong. But to give his material an honest evaluation, start by looking at the tiny sights that were issued on the military grade 1911.
Even the modern “mil spec” 1911’s that claim to be an exact replica of the WW2 guns have taller sights, as shown in the pictures in this article.
Learning to use the slide itself as a giant sight was also taught by Fairbairn, and later in the 1980’s Jim Cirillo taught the concept as well. For distances 5 yards and closer, that type of rough aiming can be good enough to get acceptable hits, but success using that technique at longer distances requires a lot of work. Variants of that approach I’ve seen and/or tried includes taping over the rear sight so that the front sight sticks up over the rear sight, and in more recent times, turning off or taping over the rear window of a slide mounted red dot optic (the end closest to the shooter) learning to use either the frame of the optic or the view through the tube (with dot off) as a very coarse sighting system. If you haven’t ever tried these alternative methods, putting a B8 target or 8.5×11 sheet of paper at 5 yards and running some drills can be interesting and fun. If you have a good initial index of the gun to the target, and a good trigger press that isn’t corrupted by moving the gun offline as you fire (by unnecessary movement of any or all of the other 9 fingers), a skilled shooter can get decent results. Those that can’t shoot well with the dot or high visibility irons should not waste range time learning how to aim less. That time should be spent fixing trigger press errors until a 1-2″ group can be shot at the 5 yard line using modern aiming techniques.
If the range you use will allow it, give the techniques shown in Applegate’s article a try, and compare them to more modern techniques using aimed fire. Another way to experiment with these historical techniques is to use a SIRT pistol or any other laser-firing training tool.
Prior to Applegate and Fairbairn, the only two methods commonly used were hipshooting, which worked great for Jelly Bryce and poorly for everyone else, and one handed slow fire bullseye, which had limited value in typical pistol fights. Their work eventually led to the big breakthroughs by Cooper and Weaver, specifically running a pistol with higher visibility target sights up to the eye target line, seeing a flash sight picture that provided better alignment of the gun than slide-aiming techniques did.
Patrick McNamara (PatMac) is one of a group of trainers that came from the Special Operations community in the 2000’s and used youTube and social media to market their courses. His youtube channel is here
This video on pistol fundamentals is listed as his most popular video
I have to admit that I watch very few gun related videos on youTube or social media. I can read faster than I can listen or watch so I prefer blogs and books to podcasts and videos. This puts me out of sync with a younger generation of gun owners who only consume gun-related content that is audio or video. And I’ve never had any interest in classes where I needed a chest rig, battle belt, plate carrier or other milSim/SWAT cosplay gear. That means I didn’t know much about PatMac when I read his book.
The review on Primer Peak is more typical of perspective of a shooter who was influenced by the Operator Trainers. In the review he notes that it was the “first firearms training book I read”, likely after years of watching videos online.
Much like our own Strategies and Standards for Defensive Pistol Skills book, it’s a collection of thoughts on gun- and training-related topics. The ideal audience for this book is someone at the intermediate level that will benefit from the advice in the book….if they put that advice into action in their own training. It will have maximum value to a military person in charge of running training for their team or unit. The assumption is that the reader is mostly carrying a rifle, with a pistol as their ‘secondary’, which means it’s most relevant to military and SWAT personnel, and has appeal to recreational gun owners who enjoy practical rifle training. The book has limited value to a person mostly interested in concealed carry defensive pistol.
Highlights
His discussion of the four safety rules (or is it three? or two?) is blunt and clear. No excuses, no exceptions, pay attention all the time with great discipline in your gun handling.
His background as a pistol shooter includes both bullseye (50 yard one handed B8 shooting) and USPSA. The Operator Trainers brought the B8 and 25/50 yard shooting back into common use in the defensive pistol curriculum, but in more relevant context than classic NRA bullseye.
He does include a copy of the dreaded pie chart target, credited to the Army Marksmanship Unit. This is the first time I’ve seen any instructor actually recommend it as a source of good information. The history of the pie chart target is here.
Quite a bit of his commentary is about how others run training, good and bad, including examples of bad information presented in classes. In the book he describes himself more as a coach than an instructor – and there is a difference. A coach spends more time paying attention to each student, given them specific guidance. An instructor can be someone running a firing line of dozens of people, simply calling out drills and blowing a whistle. The drills may progress in difficulty or work different skills, and students can learn from that type of course — but they won’t get as much from that as they would from actual coaching. Lone trainers running large classes make a lot of money, but may not be providing best value for the student’s investment of time, ammo and tuition.
The second half of the book is a collection of drills, mostly rifle-oriented, presented in different formats. Some are drawn up like USPSA stages, others are text instructions. Many of the drills involve a lot of set up, with walls, barricades, and steel targets – the sort of resources a special operations team or SWAT team or 3-gun competition club would have. Some are simpler drills that would still require a dedicated bay where the shooter can move. Very few are simple exercises that could be shot in a lane at an indoor range.
At my range I set up and ran two drills from his book that required minimal props and a dedicated bay. The instagram video below shows my runs.
Overall I found myself agreeing with most of his commentary on training philosophy. If I had a group of people that could assist with setting up the more complex drills, and more interest in rifle, those sections of the book would be very useful in rifle skill development.
The book is still available from Amazon although I couldn’t find a way to order a copy direct from his website.
After learning about this book from a Greg Ellifritz post about books written about or by real old West gunfighters, I found a rare first edition copy signed by the author.
The book was published in the UK by Robert Hale. Hale’s company published Westerns in the UK from 1936 to 2020. Many of those titles are still available as e-books on Amazon.
The book is a lot like Charles Askins’ autobiography “Unrepentant Sinner“, in that Ganzhorn was in a lot of gunfights, and freely admits that he “thrilled to the buck of a sixshooter in my fist”.
From the NY Times 1959 review of this book, back from the days when Westerns were at their peak popularity, and reading (and reviewing) books about “gun violence” meant something different than it does today.
In this story of his life of violence the late Jack Ganzhorn (he died in 1956, age 78) permits the reader to witness some forty of his killings. These he calls “six-shooter killings.” and they do not include men who fell before his deadly guns when he was a soldier in the Philippine insurrection. He piled up some fifteen victims in a single wild night during that conflict.
I’ve Killed Men, an autobiography of one of the fast-draw men of the Western frontier, has as many accounts of killings and brawls as the title suggests. Mr. Ganzhorn was undoubtedly a remarkable man right up until his death in 1956 at the age of 78. The book is remarkable if you consider that the author was practically illiterate until maturity. Along with his own feuding and fighting, there is a dramatic description of a forest fire in Minnesota where hundreds died- and he escaped, and of the San Francisco earthquake and fire which he too survived. A book for men who have outgrown the straight western.
Another summary: Memoirs of the “fastest man on the draw”, who grew up in Tombstone, knew Wyatt Earp, worked as a gambler, scouted for General Funston in the Phillippine Insurrection, acted in Hollywood, and worked undercover for Remington Arms.
A sample of Ganzhorn’s writing from the 1910 book:
Of all of his films, the only one that appears to have survived is the 1929 edit of the Hawk of the Hills serial, trimmed down from 3+ hours to a one hour short feature. You can watch the colorized version on youTube.
Jack Ganzhorn in Hawk of the Hills (1929 edit, colorized)
He also wrote for Western pulp magazines at various times between the 20’s and 50’s.
Publications
I’ve Killed Men, by Jack Ganzhorn, Robert Hale Limited, 1910
Damnation Ranch, by Jack Ganzhorn, The Golden West Magazine, September 1929
Gamblers Guns, by Jack Ganzhorn, Super Western, December 1937
Leaden Justice, by Jack Ganzhorn, Wild West Stories Magazine, November 1935
The Worm, by Jack Ganzhorn, Real Western Stories, February 1956
Lone Star Western, by Jack Ganzhorn, (Australia) #12, 1950s
As a collector of Western pulp magazines from the 20’s-50’s, I checked all my usual sources to see if any of these issues were available for sale. I was able to find a copy of Super Western from December 1937. Ganzhorn’s story in that issue is a real life account of yet another of his gunfights. The complete story is reprinted below.
Ganzhorn’s writing style is similar to the pulp authors of that era. While he’s not as well known as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, he lived a similar life, including giving up the “gunfighter life” transitioning into a movie and writing career later in his later years.
From my historical handgun research team, a 1968 Shooting Times article from Texan Skeeter Skelton on point shooting with a revolver. By 1965, Jeff Cooper had already started the revolution, advocating two handed, aimed fire, but the mainstream writers working for the mass market gun publications were still talking about the old ways. Note that the gathering of handgunners for this particular event included legendary shooters Bill Jordan, Harlon Carter and Charles Askins.
Back in 1968 the only way to try out these point shooting techniques was either to dryfire at a full length mirror (a technique advocated by Jelly Bryce), or find a safe place (such as a large Texas ranch) where stray unaimed rounds were unlikely to leave the property or harm people. The hip shooters of cowboy fast draw use wax bullets propelled by primers fired at large steel targets. Typically these are handloaded by the shooter, which requires reloading equipment.
In the current era, laser cartridges and laser-firing training guns, such as the SIRT pistol, or Airsoft guns, can be used by the curious gunslinger to try their hand at these vintage techniques. Developing some skill at point shooting can be fun, but bringing the gun to the eye target line and using the sights produces much better and consistent results.
We have added more classes to the schedule but are still finalizing Sept-Dec class plans. Waiting for a particular class? Let us know and we’ll try to find a date for it in our remaining open dates!
THINGS ARE HEATING UP
Temperatures are up. Gas and ammo prices are up. It’s an election year, with great potential for unrest and street violence before, during and after the November election. Elections often lead to mass buying panics and price increases. Most of our remaining summer classes are morning short courses. Make July the month you get tuned up and trained up and ready for whatever the fall may bring.
Paul Martin, Caleb Causey and I are going to offer a 2 day training block Jan 4-5, 2025 for Paul’s 11th annual preparedness training conference. The training will include live fire, medical, night vision and lecture material assessing the situation after the 2024 election dust has settled. Space in that training will be limited and it will be not available in a virtual or recorded format post-event.
We are offering multiple weekday and weekend courses specific to church and school security. These are mainly intended for church security team members and armed school staff trained under the Guardian program, but they are open to anyone that wants to learn skills appropriate for an individual defender dealing with an active shooter or other violent threat. The weekend courses, taught by Doug Greig, are part of the Palisades Training Group’s Church Security program. The weekday classes, taught by Karl Rehn, are Guardian program classes.
Doug Greig continues our popular series of rifle/carbine courses with Armed Citizen Defensive Carbine Essentials (a basic/intermediate class) on July 21, and his new Skill Builder Rifle Diagnostics course on July 28. That small group class will feature video analysis of each student’s shooting for detailed, in depth coaching to maximize performance.
Home Defense Shooting Skills / Basic Pistol 1 & 2 – July 6
July 6 offers multiple classes suitable for beginners, new gun owners, people needing to complete the range part of their License to Carry permit training, and those mainly concerned with in-home defensive skills.
Basic Pistol 1 and Basic Pistol 2 will run in parallel in the morning, and our basic level Home Defense Shooting Skills class applies those fundamentals to the common tasks of home defense: accessing a gun from a table or locked box quickly, moving to cover, verbal challenges, shooting under stress. The Home Defense class can be taken with a pistol, carbine, rifle or shotgun or multiple guns can be used during the course. Graduates of Basic 1 and Basic 2 are both eligible and encouraged to attend the Home Defense Shooting Skills course, which can be taken with pistol, rifle, or shotgun.
DISCOUNT CODES
I have collected up all the discount codes we have set up with vendors we recommend. Alumni of KR Training classes will find them in the monthly e-news email. You’ll have to open the email and scroll to the bottom to find them. It’s a reward for actually opening and reading the email!
PRIVATE LESSONS
I am available for private weekday training. Doug Greig is also available for private weekday and some weekend sessions. Contact us for details.
REFRESHER DEALS
Re-take any class you’ve taken before for half price! Contact me to get the alumni discount code. Firearms skills deteriorate without practice. Most ranges don’t allow drawing from a holster, shooting quickly, moving or shooting from cover. If you don’t practice the skills you learned in class, they won’t be there when you need them.
BLOG O RAMA
Many bloggers that are part of the KR Training family have been writing a lot recently.
Midnight Express performed a big show at the Palace Theater in downtown Bryan in June. Our 11 piece band covers rock and R&B songs from the 60’s to the current era, featuring a 5 piece horn section and multiple vocalists. Here’s a sampler of fan-shot video from that show, enhanced with soundboard pro quality audio.
In late May 2024 I attended a 3 day Professional Pistolcraft Instructor course taught by Tom Givens of Rangemaster. This was Tom’s 4th level instructor course, intended for those that had passed his Master Instructor class in the past. After 50 years as a trainer, and a student of the history of handgun instruction, Tom has a lot of knowledge to pass down – thus his development of this 4th level class.
He provided each student copies of these 3 books. The “Complete Book of Shooting” is noteworthy because the entire pistol section was written by Jeff Cooper in 1965. It represents the first in depth discussion of what became known as the Modern Technique: gripping the pistol with two hands, using the sights with the pistol at the eye-target line. 5 years earlier, Cooper and everyone else in the pistol shooting community only thought in terms of one handed bullseye shooting at 25 and 50 yards, and what was essentially cowboy fast draw hip shooting even if it was done with more modern handguns.
Half the class was range work, with the other half dedicated to a variety of topics, mostly taught by Tom. The final block on day 3 was discussion of “Tactical Anatomy”, taught by two ER doctors and high level shooting instructors (Andy Anderson and Troy Miller). The focus of that material was on educating firearms trainers to really understand the size and placement of internal organs from all possible threat orientations. Most shooting drills are done using targets that have scoring zones based on the size and geometry of vital organs of a threat facing the shooter head on. That sometimes misleads shooters into thinking that accuracy within an 8″ circle (IDPA) or 6″x10″ box (USPSA) or worse, the scoring rings of an FBI Q target or B-27, is acceptable. In reality the vital zones of a target turned sideways, or moving, or both, may be a much smaller area.
Those are just a sample of the pics and drawings that were used in that block, which was material rarely covered in other courses, aside from the Tactical Anatomy classes offered by Dr. Williams and more recently by other trainers with medical backgrounds.
For those that want more details about the entire class, KR Training assistant instructor Uncle Zo did a long article about the course:
In this follow up article, Zo uses the formulas from our Strategies and Standards book to estimate the drill difficulty of the Professional Pistolcraft Instructor test.
While his analysis is correct for the formulas we presented in the book, my experience shooting the test was that it seemed more difficult than what the numbers indicated. Part of that was that we were drawing from concealment (not the typical USPSA gamer rig our numbers were based on), it was boiling hot on the range (sweaty clothes make drawing from concealment harder) and there was the added psychological pressure of being on the line with a lot of great shooters with Tom watching and scoring.
Professional Pistolcraft Instructor Qualification (original Rangemaster version)
5 yards: Draw and fire 3 rounds with both hands, 3 rounds dominant hand only, and 3 rounds non-dominant hand only all in 9 seconds.
5 yards: repeat as above
5 yards: Draw and fire 3 rounds to the body and 1 to the head, all in 4 seconds, 4x
7 yards: start gun in hand, loaded with 4 rounds only. On signal, fire 4 rounds, reload, and fire 4 more rounds, all in 8 seconds.
15 yards: draw and fire 2 rounds in 5 seconds. From ready, 3 rounds in 5 seconds
25 yards: draw and fire 3 rounds in 8 seconds
50 rounds total, 100 points possible, 95+ to pass
I did have a bunch of great runs during class, managing to eke out the Top Gun award by a tiny margin, with 3 others tied for 2nd place 1 point behind me.
After reading Zo’s article I decided to take advantage of all the M/GM level shooters that come to my summer weekday USPSA matches at the A-Zone. I made a modified version of Tom’s test using USPSA targets (some with hard cover to simulate the higher scoring accuracy required for his test), eliminated the multiple strings to get the test down to 25 rounds, and ran it as a Comstock scored stage in the match, so shooters could go as fast as they wanted.
RANGEMASTER PROFESSIONAL PISTOLCRAFT STANDARDS (MODIFIED FOR USPSA)
T1 has D zone as hard cover, T2, T3 have C/D zone as hard cover, T4 is full target
Shoot on T1 — 5 yards
STRING 1: Draw and fire 3 rounds with both hands, then 3 rounds dominant hand only, transfer and fire 3 rounds non-dominant hand only. Shoot on T2 – 7 yards
STRING 2: Draw and fire 3 to the “body”, 1 to the “head”
Shoot on T3 – 10 yards
STRING 3: Draw and fire 3, mandatory reload, fire 3 more
Shoot on T4 – 15 yards
STRING 4: Draw and fire 3 body shots
STRING 5: Draw and fire 3 head shots
Here is video (shot the morning after the match) of me shooting the test using my USPSA Carry Optics setup. The gun is the same one I used for the Rangemaster class, but instead of drawing from concealment, I’m using the gear I used for the match: a outside waistband holster with no concealment. This was to get a better calibration of the par times. I’m not really shooting “Grand Master” speeds in the video, but those times are probably respectable low Master runs, as I was being careful to shoot as clean as I did during the class.
My video time for 3 with both hands, 3 with dominant hand and 3 with non dominant hand was 4.22 seconds, roughly 50% of Tom’s 9 second par time. Zo’s estimate using my formulas was 4.53 seconds.
For the 5 yards 3 body, 1 head string, my time was 2.13 and Tom’s par was 4 seconds. Zo’s estimate was 1.88 seconds.
For the 3rd string, which we shot at 10 yards vs. Tom’s version at 7, mainly to increase the accuracy requirement, my run was 5.11 seconds, and Tom’s par was 8 seconds. Zo’s estimate was 3.92 seconds.
For the 15 yard string, my time was 2.08 seconds, vs Tom’s part of 5 seconds, and Zo’s estimate of 1.9 seconds. The 3 rounds from ready at 15 yards from the original test was not included in the USPSA version, and to simulate the 25 yard body shots, I substituted 15 yard head shots to work within the limitations of the bay that stage was being run on.
My time for the 3 head shots was 4.05, Tom’s par was 8 seconds, and Zo’s estimate was 2.8 seconds. As several shooters at the match pointed out, the 15 yard head shots were actually harder (more accuracy required) than 25 yard body shots, particularly since we were using USPSA targets with the small A zone in the head.
Using Tom’s par times, the total par would be 34 seconds, and my total time was 17.59 seconds, or roughly 52%.
Most of the M/GM shooters ran total times between 19-21 seconds on match day, with 22-division GM Cory K running it in 12.07 with his pistol caliber carbine. Adding another 0.5 seconds for each draw, adjusting for concealment vs gamer rig moves those times to 21-23 seconds, 23 being 67% of Tom’s original 34 second par time. Just based on the way it felt to me shooting both the official version in class and the USPSA version during and after the match, a 65-70% difficulty rating for the Professional Pistolcraft Instructor course of fire seems more correct.
As the researchers always say, more data and investigation is needed to refine the formulas from the Strategies and Standards book to align them with real world performance.
From Bob Hanna of my historical handgun research team, a 1978-79 era document from Gunsite & Jeff Cooper listing his three rules for gun safety. Three? Conventional wisdom within the firearms training community is that Cooper’s “Four Rules” Shall Not Be Questioned, as I did in an older post about reducing his Four Rules and the NRA’s Three Rules down to two.
This early version of Cooper’s rules doesn’t address attention to the trigger finger at all, which seems like a glaring error to me. (My reduced safety rules are to pay attention to muzzle direction and trigger finger placement, in that order.) Granted, if someone pays attention to Cooper’s three rules, the worst that can happen is a negligent discharge in an acceptably safe direction. Inattention to trigger finger can absolutely result in a “mishap” with a gun. Attention to trigger finger does appear in the document, down at #6 in the Gunsite Ground Rules.
According to Bob, the addition of the trigger finger rule to the official safety rules occurred sometime in the early 1980’s.
From my historical handgun research team: a 1945 NRA article written by Lt. Col. Rex Applegate describing the floorplan and training conducted in his shoot house. The shoot house included multiple scenarios with 3D targets, props, blank firing guns simulating return fire, audio cues and other elements to provide a realistic simulation.
Advocates of Applegate’s point shooting techniques should note that out of 24 rounds fired in the shoot house, Applegate was pleased to point out that his training improved their hit ratio from 4 out of 24 to 8 out of 24 – a hit ratio of 33% on targets closer than 10 feet. The students in his training were all shooters who scored Marksman or Expert with the .45 pistol — but that shooting was done on a 24″ wide bullseye target at 15, 25 and 50 yards. Applegate’s data doesn’t really show the success of his technique as much as the failure of traditional one handed bullseye to develop skills for close range combat shooting…and the failure of his unaimed/unsighted fire techniques to elevate performance even to the 50% hit ratio level.
The gun used in the shoot house, according to Applegate, was the Colt Service Ace .22. More info about that gun in the video below.
Back in 2017 I posted a review of Himmelwright’s “Pistol and Revolver Shooting” book (1930 revision). In going through my archives I found that one of my historical handgun research team had scanned pages from the 1930 edition, mostly pages related to target design, and shared with me. The original book review is here.
From the reviews cited in the 1930 edition, this book was apparently one of the more popular books on shooting in the 1920’s.
The scanned pages are below
The American Standard Target, shown in the image above, was the most widely used target design for many years, probably until the 1950’s. It was designed for 50 yard shooting. The NRA B-8, probably the most popular bullseye style target in use today, is a modified version of the American Standard, but commonly used at closer distances than 50 yards. For shooting at closer ranges in the 1920’s, scaled down targets were used. This practice survives in the form of 1″, 2″ and 3″ dot targets used today.
The post World War 1 / 1920’s era was the start of most of the shooting drills and targets we use today. Other than the influence of Jelly Bryce-style hip shooting on FBI training, the standards and targets developed in the 20’s (not just the American Standard Target but also the Colt Silhouette Target) were the foundation of handgun training until the post World War 2 / 1950’s era.
My historical handgun research team sent me this article from a 1945 issue of the American Rifleman. Credited to J. Edgar Hoover, it gives an overview of all the guns and shooting drills the FBI was using in that era. In the article, Hoover shares the qualification courses for the .38 special revolver, Thompson submachine gun and 12 gauge shotgun, and also explains how the FBI uses the .357 magnum revolver and .30 caliber rifle as special purpose weapons. Most of these drills were shot on the old Fitzgerald target designed in the 1920’s, also known as the Colt Silhouette target or the NRA B-21. I wrote about the history of that target in this older blog post.
I’ve written a lot about the FBI’s Practical Pistol course, which became the course of fire for PPC (Practical Pistol Combat) competition. Several of those articles are linked below.
March and April were very busy with more than a dozen classes, a road trip to teach 3 classes in Ohio, an Austin church security conference that brought more than 30 shooters to the A-Zone for a range session, and a feature article in the Austin Chronicle. This newsletter includes information on classes we’ve added to the schedule for April through August. Waiting for a particular class? Let us know and we’ll try to find a date for it in our remaining open dates!
Caleb Causey of Lone Star Medics will teach a one day general first aid class on Saturday May 11. This class is suitable for students of all levels. It teaches essential skills needed to keep yourself or another person alive before more trained medical personnel can arrive on scene. I have taken more than 3000 hours of pistol training, but I have used the medical skills learned in Caleb’s classes more times in real life than any gun skill. This is one of the most valuable courses we offer and I highly recommend it.
Caleb is also offering a private 2 hour Family Medical Readiness course to anyone in the Austin/Elgin/Giddings area, available on Friday May 10. Contact Caleb at the link below to schedule it.
Intro to Competition Pistol May 18 & Summer Matches
Doug Greig and Greg Howard will teach a 6 hour intro to competition pistol class at the A-Zone on May 18. This will be great for those interested in coming out to shoot our summer matches, which will be on Wednesday evenings in June and July (click for dates and registration).
Doug Greig continues our popular series of rifle/carbine courses with Beyond Basics Rifle May 19 for those past the beginner level.
Beyond Basics Handgun & Top 10 Drills – June 1
I’ve paired Beyond Basics Handgun and Top 10 Drills on June 1. Beyond Basics Handgun is for anyone at the carry permit level or higher. It’s a required course for those pursuing our 40 hour challenge coin completion. Top 10 Drills can be taken as a stand alone or back to back with Beyond Basics Handgun to provide a 2 hour block of focused practice and evaluation.
Home Defense Shooting Skills / Basic Pistol 1 – June 9
June 9 is an all-basics day suitable for new gun owners, family members or anyone that wants basic instruction in shooting fundamentals and safe gun handling. Basic Pistol 1 is in the morning, and our basic level Home Defense Shooting Skills class applies those fundamentals to the common tasks of home defense: accessing a gun from a table or locked box quickly, moving to cover, verbal challenges, shooting under stress. The Home Defense class can be taken with a pistol, carbine, rifle or shotgun or multiple guns can be used during the course.
DISCOUNT CODES
I have collected up all the discount codes we have set up with vendors we recommend. Alumni of KR Training classes will find them in the monthly e-news email. You’ll have to open the email and scroll to the bottom to find them. It’s a reward for actually opening and reading the email!
PRIVATE LESSONS
I am available for private weekday training. Doug Greig is also available for private weekday and some weekend sessions. Contact us for details.
REFRESHER DEALS
Re-take any class you’ve taken before for half price! Contact me to get the alumni discount code. Firearms skills deteriorate without practice. Most ranges don’t allow drawing from a holster, shooting quickly, moving or shooting from cover. If you don’t practice the skills you learned in class, they won’t be there when you need them.
San Antonio-based professional shooter Ted Bonnet passed away last month after a long illness. Ted was one of my first shooting coaches, back in the early 1990’s. He won the IPSC World Championship in the Limited division the first year the field was split into Limited (iron sights) and Open (compensated optic guns). That match was held at the Bisley range in England, back when UK gun laws were better than they are now. He practiced for that match by going to the range on every cold, rainy day South Texas got, preparing himself for the typical English weather expected at the match. That hard work paid off with a major match win. He was the first US shooter sponsored by CZ and shot major matches for them for most of the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
He taught classes for decades, and started his own shooting competition format – American Action Shooting – running its national championship in San Antonio each year. Up until the very end, he was running matches and getting out on the range every week. Ted was also a staunch 2nd amendment advocate. The last time I saw him in person was when we were both at the Texas Legislature lobbying for permitless carry. He made great contributions to the shooting community in Central and South Texas, and he will be missed. I was told that anyone wanting to donate to a gun rights group in his memory should give to the Firearms Policy Coalition – a group that has done tremendous work fighting for gun rights in the courts.
SONG OF THE MONTH
In March the Black Cat Choir played a lot of shows in Round Top as part of the biannual Antique Week festival. It brings thousands of people and dealers to Central Texas to buy and sell. Round Top is right down the road from La Grange, and we play that ZZ Top classic at every show. This fan shot video (he came up onstage with us) includes me playing a synthesizer solo using my best ZZ Top guitar-ish sound.
Their facility is much like the KR Training A-Zone Range – a medium sized classroom and range on the back end of their home property. They have a lot of local students and attract some traveling students from nearby cities and states.
Here are some pictures from the classes. Most of the pics are from the classroom lectures (FOF instructor and the first block of Advanced Handgun). The FOF instructor & scenario classes were small and we needed everyone in every scenario. With a small class we got through 24 scenarios in that course, though, including 4 scenarios the instructor trainees wrote during the instructor course and ran as the exercise coordinator/director during the Saturday class.
Wesley (Korey & James’ dog) and Thor (a german shepherd that came with one of the students that attended all 3 days) also attended the FOF instructor class, and I spent a lot of time playing with Wesley after class each night.
They have a 9 person golf cart that was used to transport people from the parking area to the range.
I also got to play with their Ace shooting gadget that works with the Occulus VR headset. Here’s a video capture of me playing with it, with some still pics of me using it.
During the Trainer’s Dinner, Tom asked me if I could remember how many TacCon’s I’ve attended/taught at. I think the number is 23. I missed the very first one, but traveled to Memphis as an attendee for the second Polite Society Conference, back when the event had that name and it was held at the Rangemaster “mother ship” facility in Memphis. I hosted Tom and Jim Higginbotham at my range several times, and he graciously invited me to start teaching (mostly running Force on Force scenarios) in 2004.
If you want a sample of that era, here are some videos of an episode of Shooting Gallery from 2005, featuring Tom, Michael Bane, John Farnam, William Aprill and me.
Tom and I figured out that Farnam, me and John Hearne had been to the most events. Since I missed two of them for work conflicts, I’m probably 3rd on the list behind the other two.
2024 Tactical Conference
This year’s event was held at the Dallas Pistol Club, a convenient 3 hour drive from Bryan. More than 40 trainers presented 69 different blocks of instruction, plus the pistol match and shootoff. It sold out in 30 minutes after registration opened spring 2023. I taught 4 blocks (8 hours) in 2 days, that included two lecture blocks of new material and two live fire sessions of the Top 10 Drills program taken from our Strategies and Standards for Defensive Pistol book. John Daub was supposed to co-teach with me but a family trip come up, so I taught all 4 sessions solo. I had a rock and roll gig to play with the Black Cat Choir Thursday night, so my original plan was to drive up Friday morning, attend sessions Friday afternoon and teach Saturday and Sunday.
Car Troubles
Friday I stopped for early lunch in Corsicana Texas and my car didn’t start when I got in it to get back on the road. Used my AAA account to summon a tow truck and he jump started me, which got me on the road in search of a shop that could install a new battery. The battery in my car appeared to be the factory one so it had 90K miles on it. Replacing the battery on a Honda Pilot requires removing a giant plastic part the width of the hood, and removing an air duct. I bought a new battery at AutoZone and installed it in their parking lot. Battery did not solve the problem. At this point I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to get to TacCon and what to do about a car that might have to be left at a shop over the weekend for repair. I ended up calling Allstate because (on the advice of preparedness guru Paul Martin) I had purchased a 100K mile extended warranty. They gave me the names of several shops in town they had worked with and I found one (the Chevy dealer) that actually worked on Saturdays fixing cars. I was only an hour from TacCon and Tracy said she would drive down and pick me up if needed.
Call AAA for another tow truck. Tow truck driver says “let me try jumping it before we tow it” and surprisingly enough the jump worked, so I drove it to the Chevy place and they ran a bunch of tests (except testing the battery which we all believed to be good because it was new). They found no problems and sent me on my way…so I drove on up to TacCon. Car started up just fine Friday after dinner and again Saturday morning…until I stopped in the parking lot to get my nametag and check in before I had to teach at 8 a.m… and the car wouldn’t start again. KR Training alum JJ saw me trying to get the car started and handed me his GooLoo lithium battery car jumper box
This worked to get the car restarted, and I used it to jump the car multiple times until I got it home to the Honda dealer…where they found that the “new” Autozone battery was defective. Autozone in Bryan was able to pull up my purchase and give me a full refund on it and since then I’ve had no problems.
Moral to this story: if you install a new battery and it doesn’t work, don’t assume the new battery is good.
Teaching at TacCon
My first block to teach was a 2 hour lecture on Designing Scenarios. The intent was to make it applicable to finger gun, red gun, SIRT gun, Airsoft, Simunition and live fire. Attendees got a worksheet and we went through the process I use to fully design a scenario: location, equipment, desired outcome (harsh word, threat of deadly force, OC, physical, shooting), level of aggression from roleplayer, additional roleplayers (bystanders, family, friends, workers, multiple attackers), and other variables. Designing a scenario is more complex than just telling a roleplayer “go in the store and rob it”.
The second lecture was material John and I put together on our Top 10 tips for teaching Gateway Students, since a lot of our training business is bringing people with carry permits into the training universe and (hopefully) motivating them to return for additional classes. A few attendees post some pics of me teaching that block.
Top 10 Drills Live Fire
John and I put several different versions of our Top 10 Drills in the 2023 version of our book, but for TacCon we created yet another variation optimized to reduce the number of different targets, target swaps, target taping, and anything else that might take up time in our limited 2 hour block. That list of drills will be the topic of a future blog post. Those sessions were attended by many trainers, including Don Redl and Unc.
Official TacCon photographer Tamara Keel took this great pic of me during one of the Top 10 sessions.
Sessions Attended
I only got to attend two sessions, since I was teaching for 4 of the 6 time blocks that I was present for. Saturday afternoon I went to Cecil Burch’s talk on the history of combatives and firearms. He reviewed training history, observing that unarmed and armed skills were often taught together, until the Gunsite era when armed and unarmed training separated. It wasn’t until the 1990’s when many events (UFC, invention of Simunition, National Tactical Invitational) and trainers (Kelly McCann, John Holschen, John Benner, Paul Gomez, Phil Messina and many others) brought the topics back together.
Sunday morning I was able to attend Rhett Neumayer’s Deep Carry class. Because I’ve been training a lot of armed teachers in the past year, deep carry has become a topic I’m very interested in. Deep carry, for teachers in a school environment, may be the best option. Rhett provided excellent instruction in his techniques for carrying with the gun completely below the beltline, guidance for what clothing works well (and what does not), and the proper way to access and reholster when the holster is completely below the belt. He has some great videos online. Here’s one of them. Anyone that is teaching concealed carry, whether you personally choose to carry this way or not, should understand it and be able to demonstrate it to others, as deep carry may be the only practical solution for many that can’t (or refuse to) wear an untucked shirt.
For Rhett’s class I was shooting my M&P Shield from an Enigma, and used an empty coffee cup I dug out of the trash bin to hold my loose ammo. Another student in class took this pic hoping to win the TacCon photo contest.
The Match
I almost didn’t shoot the match, since I had planned to shoot it Friday. However, I found a little time window during lunch Saturday to shoot. I managed to shoot a clean score on the standards (one stray strong hand only shot came perilously close to the edge), and decided to push for speed on the tiebreaker, knowing that it was going to be scored Comstock where a hit factor was going to matter.
They told me I had a time of 1.66, with one shot of the 5 head shots about 1″ above not just the head circle but the grey target area, so 40/50 points. When the scores were published later, it said my time was 1.76. (Note to self, check the scores that are written down next year). That 0.1 second difference mattered (and of course the missed shot). I ended up 19th overall, just below the cutoff for the top 16 shoot off. Worried about my car situation and needing to get home to be ready for our A Zone Eclipse Viewing on Monday, I left at lunch and didn’t watch the shootoff or attend any afternoon sessions.
As it turned out I missed a big afternoon for Team KR Training and Dave Reichek.
Dave was 9th overall after the tie breaker, but had a flawless run of 2-0 wins in the shootoff (winning every run of every bout) right up until the very last bout of a 2-2 match for overall match winner. The match came down to the last shot, as Simon Golob got his last steel target down a fraction of second faster than Dave did. Still, Dave ended up 2nd overall – a win made even better by his daughter Rachel (who attended TacCon) being present to see him win.
That picture ended up winning the TacCon photo contest.
Greg Ellifritz also wrote about TacCon, mainly about a tragedy that occurred Thursday night at the match hotel when an event attendee had a major heart attack in the hotel lobby. Greg was one of several match trainers (including two ER docs) who responded.
TacCon 2025 will be held at the Dallas Pistol Club March 28-30, 2025. Registration has not yet opened but when it does I expect it will sell out quickly. I will be a presenter at the 2025 event.
This newsletter includes information on classes we’ve added to the schedule for April through August. Waiting for a particular class? Let us know and we’ll try to find a date for it in our remaining open dates!
PRIVATE LESSONS
I am available for private weekday training. Doug Greig is also available for private weekday and some weekend sessions. Contact us for details.
REFRESHER DEALS
Re-take any class you’ve taken before for half price! Contact me to get the alumni discount code. Firearms skills deteriorate without practice. Most ranges don’t allow drawing from a holster, shooting quickly, moving or shooting from cover. If you don’t practice the skills you learned in class, they won’t be there when you need them.
NEW COIN HOLDERS
Six students earned their Defensive Pistol Skills Program challenge coins in March, by completing 40 hours of coursework, including all the required classes, a few elective courses, and passing the written and shooting tests. We have more DPS program courses coming up in April and May. Spring is a great time to go shooting. Come see us and check off more courses toward your own challenge coin!
2024 CLASSES Upcoming Texas classes with space available:
We are hosting Palisades Training Group for 3 one day courses in mid-April. Lead instructor Steve Moses and Doug Greig (who is an assistant for PTG and KR Training) will offer these classes:
If you’ve taken our courses on these topics, they would be a great refresher from a different perspective, and of course they are suitable for those that have never taken courses in these topics before.
Defensive Pistol Skills 3 (NRA CCW) April 20
If you’ve completed DPS-1 and DPS-2 and are ready for the next course in our Defensive Pistol Skills Program sequence, DPS-3 is for you. Or if you haven’t taken DPS-1 and DPS-2 but want to see what the NRA’s national “Concealed Carry Weapon” course includes, you can still attend the DPS-3 course. It’s a 6 hour course working from concealment.
Appendix Carry Skills – April 27 morning
John Daub will teach a half day session of his Appendix Inside the Waistband carry skills course on April 27. If you are new to carrying, or want to experiment with appendix carry, this class is what you need. We have loaner AIWB holsters. Correct techniques for drawing from concealment, re holstering, and general tips on learning how to carry comfortably in the AIWB position will be discussed.
Personal Tactics Skills – April 27 afternoon
After the AIWB course John will be teaching a session of our Personal Tactics Skills course. This class is one of the most important courses in our Defensive Pistol Skills Program. It teaches what you should do in the most common personal defense situations, from the perspective of what is most legally defensible and gives the highest odds of the best outcome. This is a required class for those that want to earn their DPS Program Challenge Coin.
Church Security Podcast and April Conference
I was a guest on the Church Security podcast earlier this month. Listen to the episode here
The podcast hosts are putting on a 2 day conference in Austin in April I will be speaking at the conference and the Sunday Church Security Shooting Skills class is an optional part of the event as well.
The cost of the conference is very reasonable and they have a lot of great speakers lined up.
Church and School Safety Range Session April 28, 2p-6p
This 4 hour, Sunday afternoon session will include the range drills from the Texas DPS Guardian Program, which is the state certified course for armed teachers. This material is very relevant for church security personnel. It’s being offered as part of a multi day Church Security Conference in Austin April 26-27, but you don’t have to attend the conference to attend the range session.
Dynamic First Aid May 11
Caleb Causey of Lone Star Medics will teach a one day general first aid class on Saturday May 11. This class is suitable for students of all levels. It teaches essential skills needed to keep yourself or another person alive before more trained medical personnel can arrive on scene. I have taken more than 3000 hours of pistol training, but I have used the medical skills learned in Caleb’s classes more times in real life than any gun skill. This is one of the most valuable courses we offer and I highly recommend it.
Intro to Competition Pistol May 18
Doug Greig and Greg Howard will teach a 6 hour intro to competition pistol class at the A-Zone on May 18. This will be great for those interested in coming out to shoot our summer matches, which will be on Wednesday evenings in June and July. (Details to be announced in the May newsletter). The photo shows a dry run on a stage using the SIRT laser pistol.
DISCOUNT CODES
I have collected up all the discount codes we have set up with vendors we recommend. Alumni of KR Training classes will find them in the monthly e-news email. You’ll have to actually open the email and scroll to the bottom to find them. It’s a reward for actually opening and reading the email!
Back in November the Black Cat Choir played a Sunday afternoon show at the Vintage Hideaway near Round Top, Texas. It was our 3rd show that weekend, and the band was in great form. We recorded multitrack audio, but nobody recorded any video (sorry). I’ve been making some music visualizer videos from those tracks. This one is our cover of the Allman Brothers’ “Sweet Melissa”.
Another find from my Historical Handgun research team. This is an article from the US Revolver Association’s 1918 newsletter. It describes their concept of a defensive pistol event that includes drawing from a holster. Carrying a small revolver in pants or coat pocket was the default carry method of that era, particularly for city dwellers, but for safety reasons (read the article) drawing a larger gun from open carry was chosen for competition. This idea still survives today, as competitors in USPSA and IDPA matches tend to work from open carry style holsters using larger guns most of the time.
The target used for this was the USRA’s Standard American Target, which appears to have survived as the NRA B-8. The B-16 has smaller scoring rings than the B-8. This article from the NRA’s Shooting Sports magazine has a great explanation of the history of different bullseye targets.
The 20 yard Standard American Target dimensions are
10 ring 1.12, 9 ring 1.88, 8 ring 2.72, 7 ring 3.73, 6 ring 5.04, 5 ring 6.72, 4 ring 8.84
The modern B-16 dimensions are close to the old 20 yard standard american target from Wesson’s book and the USRA rules:
B-16
25yds
0.67
1.51
2.60
3.82
5.32
7.22
9.66
I went to the range and shot the Protection Match” using my modern Glock 48 with Holosun 507, and again with my vintage 1954 K-38 Combat Masterpiece. In reality even the 1954 revolver was too “modern” for this course of fire.
In putting this blog post together I discovered that I should have used a B-8 at 20 yards, or a B-16 at 10 yards, instead of the B-16 at 20 yards.
The only impact of that change is to increase my score by a few points.
The other concession I made to modern times was using two hands to shoot the K-38, vs the traditional one handed techniques favored by pistol shooters of that era. According to the USRA rules from Burning Powder, all firing was to be done using one hand.
Final Thoughts
The key takeaway from the 1918 Protection Match is that the idea of using bullseye targets for higher speed defensive pistol drills that included drawing from a holster, is not a new idea. The 10 yards, 10 seconds, 10 shots B-8 shooting drill has its origins dating back to 1918 or possibly earlier.
Another article about Harry Reeves, from 1951, courtesy of my historical handgun research team. This one is from Handguns magazine. Reeves has the biases against semiauto pistols and 9mm ammunition common to gun writers and gun experts of his era. The discussion of trigger control and shooting fundamentals is great information, and I note that his acceptable standard for draw to first shot for defensive shooting, hitting a target at 5 yards, is 1.5 second — not too different from today’s acceptable performance for a moderately trained shooter. His description of the Mexican Defense Course (starting at 25 and moving to 10 yards) is more rooted in bullseye shooting than the 1960’s version I wrote about recently.
From my historical handgun research team: this article about bullseye champion Harry Reeves, who was one of the top competitors from the late 1930’s to early 1960’s and continued being active in the sport into the 1980’s.
Another find from my Historical Handgun research team: a 1964 Guns magazine article written about two self defense shooting drills. Back in that era they were likely shot using the classic Colt target (NRA B-21). Jeff Cooper wrote about both of these drills, and Bill Wilson created an IDPA-ized version of the Mexican Defense course that we shot at the Practical Pistol Reunion he hosted in 2019.
The original article is here:
Shooting the Mexican Defense Course
I put on my 1911 .45 ACP with Gordon Davis 1970’s era competition holster and set up the Mexican Defense Course, using the ShootSteel cardboard target. The ShootSteel target is my current favorite, since it has a smaller “best torso hit” zone than the IDPA or USPSA, a larger “acceptable hit zone”, and a head with an actual neck and ears. The “acceptable hit” C zone is smaller than the K5 zone in the old B21’s used back in 1964. Somehow when I made these videos I was thinking that the article was from 1961, not 1964.
The Bill Wilson IDPA variant of the Mexican Defense Course is as follows:
Mexican Defense Course (PPR)
Type: PAR time standard exercise
Targets: 6 standard IDPA silhouettes spaced 1 yard apart edge to edge, 10 yards downrange
Scoring: 5 points, 4 points and 3 points. Complete misses and/or overtime shots are -5 points each
Time limit: 6 seconds for each string of fire
Possible score: 180 points (36 rounds)
Procedure:
Each stage starts with the shooter standing with their back to T1 (left target) approximately 8 yards from the target. On the command “walk” the shooter begins walking to the 10 yard firing line, once the shooter steps across the line the timing buzzer will sound and the shooter will turn, draw and engage the targets.
String 1: Fire 6 rounds at T1 (left target) from behind the 10 yard line
String 2: Fire 1 round at each target T1 – T6 left to right from behind the 10 yard line
String 3: Fire 1 round standing behind the 10 yard line, then advance a fire 5 more shots at T1 while moving forward (shots 2-6 MUST be fired while moving)
String 4: Fire 1 round standing behind the 10 yard line, then advance and fire 1 shot each at T2 – T6 while moving forward toward T1 (shots 2-6 MUST be fired while moving)
String 5: Fire 1 round standing behind the 10 yard line, then move laterally to the right and fire 5 more shots at T1 (shots 2-6 MUST be fired while moving)
String 6: Fire 1 round standing behind the 10 yard line, then move laterally to the right and fire 1 shot each at T2 – T6 while moving to the right (shots 2-6 MUST be fired while moving)
Shooting the Yaqui Defense Course
In the 1964 article the Yaqui Defense Course was also discussed. I set that up and shot it.
The Mexican Defense Course, particularly in the Wilson-ized version, shot on an IDPA target, includes skills commonly omitted from “modern” drills that are mostly designed for convenience when running a large static firing line. Turning draws and moving cross range, engaging targets at directions other than “perfectly squared up to me in my lane” are good skills to practice, either in dry fire (if you don’t have access to a range that will allow drawing, turning draws, or cross range movement) or in live fire. IDPA competitors might find this vintage standards course, from one of the IDPA founders, useful as a stage that could be run at a local match.
When I first got started in USPSA competition, one of the local club members let me copy a bad quality copy of a video he had of PACT timer inventor and firearms trainer Ronin Colman teaching in 1988. Ronin had been an IPSC shooter since the early days, had attended some of the earliest classes at Gunsite and shot major matches in the late 70’s and early 80’s. He started teaching defensive handgun classes in Texas, mostly in the Dallas and Austin area, living with Chip McCormick for awhile in Austin.
He and Chip developed a standards course of fire to use in their own training that they called the “Texas Standards”. It was passed from them to professional shooter Jim Griggs, who shared it with me in the early 1990’s. That course of fire is available here on the KR Training site.
It’s a very demanding 125 round par time, multi string test that incorporates every skill in common use in IPSC matches of the early days: from 7 yard speed shooting to 50 yard prone shooting, turning draws, 1 handed shooting, reloads, target transitions and much more. When they developed the course of fire, there were no shooting timers the way we know them now, just a par time box that used thumbwheels to set fixed par time. I’ll set up and shoot the test for a future blog post.
Using video and audio AI tools I was able to restore the video and audio from the VHS tape good enough to share with others. It’s a great snapshot of what was commonly taught in the mid to late 1980’s, heavily influenced by Jeff Cooper & the Gunsite material of that era. I’ve broken the video up into 8 segments based on the topics being covered, and trimmed out all the video of students shooting the drills.
Opening Remarks
Reloads
Part 3
Turning Draws
Malfunctions
Mindset and Match stories
Low Light Shooting
Pacing and shooting under pressure
Ronin and the PACT timer company are still around, making timers and other products for the competitive shooting and training market.
