I was a presenter at the 2025 Rangemaster Tactical Conference. Thanks to Tom Givens who keeps inviting me back to teach. As best I can tell I’ve been to all or part of 24 of the 27 that have been held. This year that was noted on my registration tag.
The history of TacCon can be found here https://taccon.info/about, or you can read about it by searching for all the Tactical Conference posts on this blog site. The oldest content I have online is from 2005.
The Tactical Conference is a descendant of the National Tactical Invitational, which was an event intended for students of national defensive pistol schools to meet and train together. This year 45 trainers put on sessions on 85 different topics, for 400+ attendees. Due to having to play a rock and roll gig in Round Top, Texas, that Saturday night, I only got to attend half of TacCon 25. I got to attend 4 sessions on Friday, and taught 2 sessions Saturday morning. Here’s what I learned, saw and did:
John Farnam
John Farnam is 80. Many credit him with being the “first traveling trainer”. He’s been teaching longer than any of us, and still on the road teaching courses and sharing his knowledge. A Friday morning rainstorm gave him a packed house for his 2 hour “Instructional Development For Our Art”, where he spoke without notes or slides, giving us his perspective on current trends and issues. His wife Vicki recently published a great new book on Off Body Carry that’s an excellent resource for anyone interested in that topic. Learn more about her program here https://www.flexccarrysolutions.com
Claude Werner
Claude is one of the deep thinkers in our community, and a deep data analyst. His presentation was an updated version of his “Off Duty Shootings of the LAPD” material, which looks at trends and common factors of off duty officer involved shootings, and discusses their relevance to armed citizen incidents. One takeaway from this year’s presentation was Claude’s observation that many off duty cops were bringing their guns to the fight from off-body platforms (which tied in with John & Vicki’s discussion of off body carry during the previous session.)
Don Redl
Don was a frequent attendee to the National Tactical Invitational, and he’s made a comeback of sorts teaching at the Surgical Speed Shooting Summit in 2022 and at recent TacCons.
Don’s primary areas of expertise are in corporate security and executive protection and he offers training that includes both live fire and force on force scenarios. His topic this year was “Catastrophic Force on Force Accidents”. He discussed all the safety issues related to everything from Airsoft games to complex professional multiplayer scenarios using Simunition and blanks, and presented some information on cases he’s worked as an expert witness on safe conduct of this type of training.
One issue he brought up was something we used to do ourselves using Airsoft guns but had phased out of our program: the use of Airsoft (or Simunition or UTM) guns for live fire drills and tactics training where risk are higher than normal: close quarter shooting, firing from the ground at targets simulating a person standing over you, working around vehicles, working inside real structures (as opposed to shoot houses).
I’m going to bring that aspect of our training back in a Close Quarter Shooting course this summer.
Justin Dyal
Within the Rangemaster Tactical Conference community, Justin is best known as the creator of the Five Yard Roundup Drill.
He has created many simple high-value drills, but also teaches his own Force on Force tactics course and live fire pistol classes. His topic for 2025 was “Building Skills You Can Believe In”.
The focus was on Skills in Context, which he described this way:
Skill (learn the basics)
Skill to Standard (an institutional or state standard, or a school standard)
Skill in Context (apply the skill in a realistic situation or exercise)
Skill in Context Under Pressure (apply the skill in a realistic exercise with time/physical/emotional pressure)
The vast majority of gun owners, at best, only reach the “Skill to Standard” level. Often that is based on an institutional (agency) qualification course or a state carry permit standard. The standard was usually developed with some realistic context, but also scaled down from ideal standards for a variety of political and policy reasons.
Skill in Context is what was offered in most of the live fire blocks at TacCon 2025, and what is presented in most live fire classes in the private sector that go beyond the carry permit minimum. Performance Under Pressure is introduced by competition, or by creation of a high standard that can earn the shooter a coin or patch or other award.
Texas Cop Quals
My block this year was an extension of material I’ve presented in previous years, discussing widely used course of fire and their relative difficulty level and context. In the past I’ve focused on historical qualification courses going back as far as the 1920’s. This year I ran attendees through courses of fire shot by the Austin, Houston, and Dallas police departments, and a qualification course used by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Each course was 50 rounds long, each using a different target, with different skills tested, with wildly varying time limits.
The shooters that attended my blocks were very skilled, with the lowest score shot on any qual being 93%, and most shooting 97% or higher on each of the four qual courses. In many cases the shooters were firing midsize carry guns drawn from concealment, not duty pistols worn in open carry holsters.
Each course included strings that started close at 3 yards, working back to 15 and 25 yards, incorporating timed reloads and one handed shooting. One test included two handed shooting gripping the gun with the opposite hand (so left handed using a two handed grip for a normally right handed shooter) which is a skill that’s rarely included or tested in police qualification course. The two factors that allows my students to shoot so well on the courses of fire were target size and time. Over the past 30 years the standards used by the private sector training community have increased: acceptable hit zones have shrunk, even from the 6.5″x11″ USPSA A-Zone and IDPA 8″ circular O-ring to more widely used 5.5″ B8 centers and 6″ squares. Widespread adoption of optic sights for handguns (aka “red dot sights”) have enabled shooters to fire with more accuracy. Time limits for institutional qualification courses have always been 2-3x the par time set for more reality-based programs.
These targets all scored 99% or better on one of the qual courses. Note that in the first, the shot distribution is much broader than the other two. On the second target, the group size is small, but centered in the 10 ring of the B-27’s bullseye — which is located far too low relative to the heart and lungs on a human torso. The last target was shot by someone using more modern principles: using the high chest as the aiming point, scoring the same 100% as the bullseye shooter, but applying their skill in better context.
The B-27 is a uniquely awful target still mandated for use in the Texas License to Carry, School Safety and First Responder Training courses. I wrote about its history in this older blog post
The version of the B-27 that I used for the qual we shot at TacCon25 had the FBI’s “Q” bottle superimposed over the B-27 scoring rings. It’s the best available compromise target that meets state requirements but also gives the shooter a better understanding of what should be acceptable and unacceptable hits.
Others on the KR Training Team
David Reichek served as a Range Officer for the entire weekend, finishing 13th overall in the pistol match. Scores in this year’s match were considerably higher than last year’s, showing the continuing evolution of skill. KR Training had dozens of alumni including more than a dozen challenge coin holders attend the event. I’ve already been invited by Tom to teach at the 2026 event.
If you want to attend TacCon2026, watch this site https://taccon.info/register/
The 2025 event sold out within 12 hours of registration opening. We will post the registration link on the KR Training Facebook as soon as registration opens.