KR Training April 2026 Newsletter

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2026 OVERVIEW

Greg Ellifritz will be teaching two classes in April (Close Quarter Shooting and Cane/Stick Defense), and two classes in July (Knife Skills for CCW and Tactical First Aid). Don’t miss out on these specialty courses. They are all suitable for people at the carry permit level. You don’t have to be an expert or an advanced student to attend.

Late February and March were incredibly busy and I never got a March newsletter out, so this newsletter is a big one. We have an incredibly wide variety of classes coming up in the next few months – hopefully you will find something of interest and come train with us!

NRA ANNUAL MEETING

The NRA’s Annual Meeting is coming up April 17-19 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Admission is free for NRA members, $35 for non-members. Why should you go? Every major gun maker and gun related product company will be there. The NRA Training Department will be running sessions featuring a lot of national level guest speakers. It’s like a gun show, but a professional grade one where you can see and handle (and buy) almost every product available in the whole gun industry. I’ll be there Friday as part of my duties on the NRA’s Education and Training Committee.

UPCOMING CLASSES

We have scheduled a lot of classes (and summer fun matches) for the next few months. We will be finalizing July-October class dates and getting those announced in the May newsletter.

Courses marked with *** count toward our Defensive Pistol Skills Program coin.

APRIL

These two specialty classes from nationally known trainer Greg Ellifritz each teach skills that are important in situations where the attacker is at arm’s reach: car jacking, street robbery, emotionally disturbed individual (drugs, mental illness, or anyone in a rage). The Close Quarters Shooting Class teaches shooting from retention, one handed drawing from concealment, and some weapon retention/disarm skills.

Pics and Video from Last Weekend’s ECQ Gunfighting Class

The Cane/stick/baton self defense is particularly useful for those that are older and have limited ability to fight back using unarmed skills. It’s a comfortably paced 6 hour course, suitable for all levels, including those that use a cane on a daily basis, teaching how to use a cane, an umbrella, a hiking stick, or any other medium or longer stick as a defensive tool. We offered this class in response to student requests, but registrations are still much lower than expected. It’s unlikely we will offer this class again in the next few years, so anyone with interest in this topic should make the effort to attend.

MAY

May begins with 4 classes intended for shooters with limited experience: Basic Pistol/License To Carry Completion is our entry level course helping new shooters learn fundamentals, gun selection and firing the Texas License To Carry shooting test, so they can complete their carry permit training with our online course.

KR Training’s revolver guru Tracy Thronburg will be running a 3 hour Double Action Revolver Skills, teaching how to run a double action trigger properly and methods to reload the wheelgun. This class would be an excellent choice for those that carry a snub revolver as a primary or secondary pistol, whether on body, in a pocket or in a bag, pack or purse.

Take Mom To The Range Day May 9

On May 9th we will offer two classes covering topics specific to ladies and the challenges of carrying a large gun “on body”. The Off Body Carry (Bag/Pack) seminar is a two hour classroom course teaching how to properly set up an off body carry system (using a purpose built kydex bag insert holster) and choose an appropriate bag, pack, or purse from the wide variety of products designed specifically for off body carry. The wrong (but sadly, popular) answer is to put a small revolver or semiauto (without a round chambered) loose into a bag and call that “carrying”. The right answer is to have a dedicated pouch, with a built in rigid holster that specifically fits the gun being carried, so that the gun can be carried with a round chambered and drawn as quickly as a gun carried in a belt holster.

We have many loaner guns, loaner holsters and loaner bags that students will be able to use at no charge for this course.

That afternoon we will run our traditional start-of-summer Defensive Pistol Small Gun class. The course focuses on pocket carry, carry of subcompact semiautos and revolvers, and use of non traditional belt holsters including the Enigma, belly bands, deep carry draws from tucked in shirts, and the off body bag/pack/purse skills covered in the morning session.

Small Gun Class 2022

SUMMER FUN MATCHES AND COMPETITION PISTOL TRAINING

Every summer we run Wednesday night fun matches at the A-Zone. Unlike the big matches run on a weekends, these matches run fast. We start at 6 pm, shooters can show up as late as 7 pm, and we are done by 9. To make it run fast, I set up all the stages myself during the day, and we limit attendance to 25 shooters (preregistration is required). Shooters new to competition shooting, including juniors, are always welcome. Stages can be shot with pistols and pistol caliber carbines. Our matches are unaffiliated with any national organization and typically use “hit factor” scoring similar to USPSA. Stages typically include an all steel “Steel Challenge” style stage, a plate rack stages, some kind of standards/stand and shoot paper course, and a shoothouse stage. Typical round count is 90-100 if you don’t miss. After everyone has shot the stages, they stay open until dark for practice/fun runs.

More information about the fun matches can be found here.

Intro To Competition Pistol (Saturday May 16) is for people that have had training drawing from a holster who want to learn about pistol competition by shooting a ‘practice match’ that includes coaching. Competition Pistol Level 2 (Saturday May 23) will be taught by Texas A&M Corps of Cadets Marksmanship Team assistant coach David Reichek. This class will focus on improving stage and match performance by focusing on stage strategy, target transition, movement and other skills that go beyond the basics.

RANGEMASTER & CITIZENS SAFETY ACADEMY COURSES

May 28-29, Dr. Tiffany Johnson and Aqil Qadir bring their nationally acclaimed Gateway Instructor Development course to the A-Zone. A Gateway Instructor is someone that mainly teaches entry level and carry permit level shooters – not just those teaching formal classes but also those looked to by family and friends as an informal pistol coach. If you find yourself helping or coaching others progress from the basic level to armed citizen, this class can teach you how to be better at it.

May 30-31, Tiff and Aq put on their Rangemaster Staff hats and teach the classic 2 day Rangemaster Combative Pistol course: the foundation of everything Tom Givens teaches. Tom’s material works: 71 Rangemaster students have been in shooting incidents, with a hit ratio of 96% (roughly triple the performance of officers in most law enforcement agencies). If you’ve taken KR Training’s Defensive Pistol Skills 1 or higher level classes and want a more in depth, 2 day immersive defensive pistol course, this is the class for you.

JUNE – JULY

The May newsletter will have more information about all of these June and July courses:

STAFF & ALUMNI NEWS

At the end of February Karl, Tracy and Ken Carden traveled to Sorrento, LA, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, to attend the Vicki Farnam FlexCCarry(tm) instructor certification course. More about that trip in this blog post.

Vicki Farnam FlexCCarry(tm) instructor class AAR

Eric “Clark” Victorin attended and passed the Gunsite Pistol Instructor course in April. Tracy Thronburg took a revolver class from Wayne Dobbs at the Dallas Pistol Club (sample target below).

Karl, Dave Reichek, David Tschirhart, Ed Vinyard, Ken Carden, Randy Wallen, Jeff Edwards, and Bobby Holmes all attended the RangeMaster Tactical Conference in Dallas in late March. Karl presented two lecture blocks and two live fire blocks, Dave worked as an RSO. Details about Karl’s presentation and TacCon sessions attended can be found here.

Rangemaster Tactical Conference 2026 AAR
Handgun Ergonomics
Handgun Ergonomics (Manipulations)

Doug Greig and I collaborated on a revision of our free drills ebook, compiling the carry permit qualification courses of fire from all 50 states. That material, along with a collection of historical handgun drills, and other content, will be included in the revised e-book, to be released later this year.

Drills, Qualifications, Standards, and Tests Book

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!

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

All the articles you missed if you don’t follow the KR Training Facebook page and Instagram feed.

That last article about the difference between “carry” and “capability” is important. Read it. It says that 40-60% of the AG&G members who carry don’t ever practice drawing their pistol. We see this problem in every class. Dry fire practice is free and only takes a few minutes to do 10-20 draw and dry-fire one shot drills. The longer the gap between repetitions of this critical skill, the more that skill deteriorates. Leaving the gun in the car isn’t “carrying”, and likely won’t result in you having a gun within reach when you need one. Can’t figure out how to carry on body? Come take our Bag/Off Body Carry class May 9th and learn about options that are better than leaving the gun in the car or leaving the house unarmed.

MUSIC VIDEOS OF THE MONTH

In March I played a lot of shows, mostly with the Black Cat Choir at various Antique Show events in Round Top and two nights at the Austin Rodeo. Penny and I also went to the “Croce Plays Croce” show in Houston, where A.J. Croce (a great piano player and singer) performed his own songs and the songs of his father, Jim Croce (Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Time in a Bottle). I’ve been a fan of A.J’s for a long time, and I cover his song “That’s Me in the Bar” in my solo shows. Here’s a video of me performing it at Luigi’s in March.

The AI revolution in music is here. One of my old band mates has been using AI to “reimagine” songs we wrote and recorded in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. The AI engine takes in the original recording and produces pro-grade “cover versions” of the original song. Here’s the AI generated cover version of our song “Slow Drivin’ Man” (a country song from the perspective of a slow driver who likes to get in the left land and drive the speed limit).

Here’s the original recording, for those that want to hear the difference between the AI and original version.

FOLLOW US ONLINE!

Keep up with the interesting articles, links, and stories we share in real time. Follow KR Training on Facebook, Instagram or X. Subscribe to this newsletter or follow this blog (right) for more frequent posts and information. Send me an email to schedule your private weekday training session.

We look forward to training you!
Karl, Penny and the KR Training team