I’ve been presenting at and attending the Rangemaster Tactical Conferences since the early 2000’s. The only folks I know of that have been at, or presented at, more TacCons than me are Tom Givens, Massad Ayoob and John Farnam.
Friday
Due to performing a show with one of the bands I’m in on Thursday night before TacCon started, I drove up Friday morning, missing all the Friday am sessions.
The first session I attended was Don Redl’s talk on “Pathway to Violence and Criminal Trends”. Don is a longtime private security & executive protection expert. He’s presented at several of the recent TacCons and has been a part of the private sector training industry for a long time, going back to his involvement with the National Tactical Invitational events in the 1990’s.
His first slide explains the different levels of escalation. It’s also a great guideline for those designing force on force scenarios, as each step describes different criminal behavior that may require different actions in response.
This slide sums up the essential information everyone should know about vehicle tactics. The typical untrained / carry permit only level armed citizen (or at least the ones that comment on some of the forums and groups I read) thinks that they need to be able to gunfight while sitting in the driver’s seat. This incorrect understanding of appropriate vehicle defense tactics drives the sales and interest in car holsters and kinds of bad ideas involving “carrying” in glove boxes, consoles, and everywhere but in a holster on the body.
Don talked about the “bump before the bite” which can be a wide variety of probing or pre-fight assessment behaviors that occur before the full attack begins.
Following Don’s talk, Steve Moses went deep into key concepts related to running a church security team. Steve is one of the very few trainers that gives a serious professional perspective on the mission and tasks and function of a church security team. Most programs focus on building live fire skills, medical and active shooter response, all of which are important elements, but Steve’s presentation focused on threat assessment, personnel assignments, and many elements not considered by many informally run church security teams.
Anyone involved with church security, at any level, would benefit from the Palisades Training Group’s church security team training programs.
Friday wrapped up with the traditional KR Training dinner at 12 Cuts, a great Brazilian steakhouse not far from the event hotel and range.
Saturday
I taught two sessions of my Hand and the Handgun/ Handgun Ergonomics talk Saturday morning. I’ve shared much of the content of my talk in other blog posts.
Saturday afternoon I shot the pistol match. I shot clean (200/200) on Phase 1, but on Phase 2, run with hit factor scoring, I knew that a fast time was going to be important to move into the top 10. Unfortunately I pushed a little too hard for speed, dropped too many points on the small circles that were worth 10 points (or zero if you didn’t hit them), and did not make the shoot off. I shot my M&P Shield X from a strong side inside waistband holster for the match, and it performed well.
I was able to attend the “Remediating Marksmanship Errors” session taught by instructors from Carrollton PD (Carmichael and Stuart). It focused mostly on “slapping the trigger” techniques, teaching shooters how to react quickly to stimulus (starting aimed with finger on trigger), pressing the trigger quickly, with a goal of hitting a 4″ square at 5-7 yards in less than 0.30 from the start of the beep. I’ve seen and participated in this type of training before, but I don’t use it in my own program. My main takeaway from the session was that the term “slapping the trigger” may not be conveying to the student what the instructors intend. Often it’s easier to explain a trigger control topic using the classic Mudgett methods of putting your finger on top of the student’s finger or having them press the trigger by putting their finger on top of yours than to use words. When I just shot the way I normally do, I could achieve the results they wanted, but trying to “slap” the fairly long striker-fired-gun trigger with more of a “slap” motion mostly caused the gun to move as I did it. I’m going to spend some range time diving into this concept, though, as I think it relates to the ergonomics topics I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
The Trainer’s Dinner is always the highlight of TacCon. It’s the private banquet where all the presenters and staff dress up and socialize. This year we were celebrating Tiffany Johnson’s graduation from her PhD program, and, as we do every year, Lynn’s birthday, complete with birthday cake.
Sunday
Because I was checking out Sunday morning and had to teach two live fire sessions Sunday afternoon, I took my time getting up, packing up and checking out, arriving on the range in time to attend Scott Cronin’s live fire course. Cronin is part of the GunSet team, and this was his first year to present at TacCon. He covered the GunSet philosophy for training standards and cold performance, focusing on their 555 drill: 5 shots, 5 seconds, 5 yards into a playing card. We shot several other standards drills from their program, along with some training drills. I earned a GunSet sticker for passing the 555 drill and one other standard during the session.
Sunday afternoon was spent running two sessions of my “Hardest State Quals” block. Doug Greig and I have been compiling all the state carry permit standards for an upcoming revision of the KR Training drills ebook that John Daub published several years ago. I chose the Maryland, New Jersey and Kauai standards, along with a bonus course drawn from the Texas First Responder training course developed by Texas DPS (state police) certification program that allows some fire/EMS personnel to carry on duty. The first session did not get to shoot the bonus course because we had two relays, but the final session of the day, with one relay, got to shoot all 4 of the courses.
We are working hard to finalize the updated drills e-book, which will be something we post for sale on Amazon, with spiral bound print copies probably offered via Lulu since Amazon does not do spiral bound print on demand. The updated book will include the original drills from Daub’s book, supplemented with carry permit qualification courses from the states that have shooting tests, an updated version of the Top 10 Drills material in our previous “Strategies and Standards” book, an archive of all the “historical handgun” drills I’ve written about on this blog in the past, standard widely used drills, and shooting tests from many well known national and regional programs (Gunsite, Rangemaster, Firearms Academy of Seattle, Gabe White, Matt Little, KR Training and many others). We’ll announce it when it’s ready.
After TacCon26, I was a panelist on the That Weems Guy podcast, with Cecil Burch and Tim Reedy, discussing our live fire blocks and the unique challenges of teaching a 2 hour live fire block to a large group of students with unknown backgrounds and abilities.
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