A Girl and a Gun 2019 Conference AAR – part 2

Team KR Training is back from the 2019 A Girl and a Gun National Conference, held at Reveille Peak Ranch in Burnet, Texas, April 2019.

Saturday morning started off OK, but by 11 am, all the sessions were stopped and the “seek shelter” message went out over the radio. We stayed at our bay as heavy rains came, turning the range into a soggy mess. Temperatures dropped 20-30 degrees. Elsewhere in Texas, a tornado was hitting the small town of Franklin.

The roads down to our bays were difficult for many vehicles to traverse (the picture looks better than actual conditions), and our Saturday afternoon session only drew about half the registered participants. Tracy taught a bonus session of Kubotan under the shelter of the main pavilion Saturday afternoon, and others taught make up sessions in nearby hotel lobbies and conference rooms, where many attendees had retreated to get dry and warm.

The sun came back out, and Saturday night’s instructor dinner was well attended.

Sunday morning included one final session, in sunny weather, to an overflow group that included some that had missed out on our Saturday sessions.

Observations

Every year the conference gets better and better. This year over 425 women attended, with trainers from all over the country. Dozens of events running in parallel, spanning the entire spectrum of shooting and self-defense topics. The scale and scope of the event is as big as most major national shooting championships, supported by a much smaller, very hard working staff. The 2019 conference faced difficult challenges on Saturday, with hazardous weather and muddy, rough roads to the shooting bays.

Each year I see fewer and fewer problems with participants attending with problematic gear. We had no major holster issues with any students this year – everyone had quality holsters, and almost all had them set up at angles and positions that needed no adjustment. I brought both of my new Glock 48 handguns, and my S&W EZ380 to have on hand as loaner guns. We did encounter 2-3 students in each session that discovered that the skinnier single stack guns fit their hands better than the double-stack guns they had brought, but in most cases the gun fit of the guns they had was decent aside from some frame-dragging. (This article by Tom Givens explains that aspect of gun fit.) On average, though, we had fewer problems with gear than we see in a typical Defensive Pistol Skills 1 class.

The instructor invitations to teach at the 2020 conference, planned for Grand Junction, Colorado, April 30-May 4, 2020, have not been issued yet. Hopefully I and others on the KR Training team will be a part of that event – the first AG&AG conference held outside Texas.

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  1. Pingback: KR Training April 2019 Newsletter – Notes from KR

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