TacCon21 (part 3)

The KR Training team taught, competed and attended sessions at the 2021 Rangemaster Tactical Conference, held in Dallas at the Dallas Pistol Club (DPC) facility. In part 1 of this series I wrote about the KR Training team’s participation as trainers, staff and competitors. Part 2 covered the sessions I attended. This part shares four video compilations from the event.

Women’s Shootoff

Men’s Shootoff (partial)

Vision and Reloading

Here’s a short clip from one of my Correcting Common Shooting Errors sessions. I was discussing what you need to see during a reload, specifically the myth that looking at your gun during a reload is a Tactical Sin that will get you Killed On the Street. Those that promote that idea often assume that person reloading gets tunnel vision on the gun for the entire duration of the reload. In reality, there’s only a small part of the reload where looking really does make a difference – the time when the new magazine needs to get into the empty gun. Those that are really good at quick reloads likely see even less than what I recommend in the video, but the demonstration conveys the general idea.

The Support Hand Only Grip

During my Saturday session I did a demo I hadn’t done in a long time – gripping the pistol with only my support hand grip and firing it. Not traditional “support hand only”, which is a standard one handed grip. What I demonstrated was the support hand gripping the gun with no fingers and no support around the backside of the frame, the way that it’s used in a two handed grip. The point of the demo was in relation to grip strength and grip pressure with the support hand. That hand should be gripping the gun hard enough to be able to hang onto the pistol in recoil. For many carry permit level shooters (or lower skill), their support hand isn’t gripping the pistol that hard.

DISCLAIMER: if you attempt to duplicate what I’m doing in the video, try it first with a .22, with no magazine in the gun, and only one round in the chamber. If that goes OK, try it with more powerful calibers, but NEVER do it with more than one round in the gun. That way if you are unable to retain your grip on the gun when it recoils, the worst that will happen is an empty gun falls to the ground. (I also recommend NOT doing this at any facility where you are standing on concrete or gravel. Soft grassy ground like we had at DPC is ideal.) Even more ideal is to have enough confidence in your grip that you know you can hang onto it. If you don’t have at least 80-100 pounds of grip strength in your support hand, I wouldn’t try it at all. “Experienced professional on a closed course”, “don’t try this at home”, and I am NOT responsible for any damage to your gun, you, or anyone else that might be injured if you choose to imitate this demo.

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