Class postponed until April 12/13th.  This class is gonna have 10-12 people in it anyways, so I'd much rather it be ARFCOM guys.....


Full info in the KS forum.

Course Name: Defensive Pistol  
Class Length: Two Days

Description: DVC’s Defensive Pistol Course is for the shooter who has had some basic experience with handguns or the experienced shooter looking for defensive pistol skills. This two-day course will familiarize you with the handgun you are using and under professional instruction give you a working knowledge of Defensive pistol skills.

This course was developed for individuals who regularly carry a firearm for self-defense and to overcome the short comings of a basic Concealed Carry Class. The skills and drills taught at this course are not all inclusive, but you will leave this course with a broad base of knowledge of defensive Pistol tactics and Techniques.

Topics Addressed: Defensive Marksmanship
Pistol Safety
Mechanics of the Draw
Loading and Unloading
Tactical and Emergency Reloads
Malfunction Drills
Various Shooting Positions
Shooting on the Move and Turn Drills
Buddy Team Movements
Introduction to Night Shooting

Packing List: Centerfire Handgun (9mm/.38 Special Minimum)
Minimum 500 Rounds of Factory Ammunition
Flashlight (Spare Batteries and bulbs are a Good Idea)
Strong Side Hip Holster
Quality Belt and Magazine Pouch
Minimum Three Magazines or Speedloaders
Eye Protection
Ear Protection (Electronic Preferred)
Sunscreen
Rain Gear (We Train Rain or Shine)
Hat with Visor
Course Cost: $80.00


Anyone else interested in attending?  Bret (SUB-MG), Mike (Duke Nukem) and myself are going.  I'm not sure how many slots are left or of the speed of this class, but I need to shake the rust off from the winter.  And for 80.00, you get 2 days of shooting/instruction , plus a night shoot.

scottMO

Location?

Richmond Kansas, about 15 miles south of Ottawa Kansas.

9am start on Sat and will go until approx 11p w/the night shoot.
10a start on Sun until...... ?

I will make for a long day w/ the 1.5hrs drive or so each way, but I'm looking forward to it.  

Anywhere to camp out on site?  That would make it easier.

Hmm...that sounds pretty interesting...

my wife will be out of town that weekend for work hmmm....

BTT...

Damn, that sounds awesome.

With teh ammo, it'll be a bit much for me, but post AAR for the rest of us!

Will it be done again?

Quoted: Location?

Ask Rsteinb, there are still craters and spllinters from our last KDSC shoot. He surely livened things up with his little tannerite display.

Seriously though, I have alerted deadaim5001 to this thread, or you can send him an IM for more info. This should be a good course, they will also be hosting Larry Vickers later this year for another tactical carbine course

DVC website

Camping on site is no problem.  Obviously, no alcohol on site due to the nature of the course, and no shooting after the class ends Sat night, but those would be the only two stipulations to camping.  

The location of the March 15-16 class is just outside of Richmond Kansas, if anyone wants an electronic map I can send a link.

As far as having the course again?  We will schedule another mostly likely in Late June time frame, it depends on how much interest we have.  

There are still some openings for the March course.  We are going to keep it to around 10 students, to keep the instructor student ratio managable.  

If anyone has any questions IM me or send me an E-mail [email protected]

Email sent deadaim.

BTT w/new dates....

Class update:

Each shooter fired 500-700rds depending on the shooter and mag capacity.  I went into this class expecting to possibly learn a thing or 2, but mainly wanted to have someone take me out of my comfort zone and force me to do things that I dont do on my own at the range.  I can honestly say that I left this class today as a better shooter, with better tactics/tactical awareness, better recognition, better movement (in all 4 directions).  

I urge anyone that is interested in becoming a better shooter to schedule a weekend w/the DVC crew.....

Where else can you get 1.5 days of instruction, including night shooting....

scottMO      

Sounds great. I may have to attend this summer.

Did you guys take any pics?

I really wish I could have made it, but I was invited to the Masters golf tournament.  I wouldn't have missed that for the world.

METALMAN attended and took pics, I was too busy shooting and loading mags.  I don't have the energy for a full review right now but really badly want to post one.  I will say this:

I am completely exhausted.  I haven't been this tired in a long, long time.  When I was young, I had sex with a high school girl from 9:30pm until the sun came up the next day, and I think I'm actually more tired than that right now.  Ok maybe not, but its comparable at least.  No joke.  I fired about 450 rounds of .45acp through my Operator, about 100 rounds through my P226, and about 100 rounds through ScottMO's Glock 17L.  Last night I had a difficult time getting to sleep because my arms hurt so badly.  By the end of the class I was so fatigued that I was having difficulty racking the slide on my 1911.  Why?  Well here's just one of many reasons:  At the beginning of the class we paired into "buddy teams" and you would load mags for your shooting buddy and sneak at least one, but usually two or three and sometimes as many as five dummy rounds into each mag randomly, to force your buddy to do malfunction clearances during the drills.  Sometimes we would be a bastard and put in 3 dummy rounds in a row, forcing 3 failure drills before the gun found a live round.  Then if the shooting buddy flinched after doing all that and the shot went wide, we would call them on it and tell the instructors.  We continued doing this through the entire weekend.

So, lets do some quick math.  I was using 8 round Wilson mags in the MC Operator.  Lets say SUB_MG, my shooting buddy, slips in an average of 2 dummy rounds per mag, leaving me with an average of 6 rounds per mag.  If I shot 450 rounds through the 1911, 450 divided by 5 live rounds per mag equals exactly 75 mag changes, assuming I emptied each mag and was doing emergency mag changes only.  In reality we had alot more mag changes because we were employing tactical mag changes as well, so lets call it 100 mag changes.  If I went through 75 magazines and there were an average of two dummies in each mag, that's 150 malfunction clearance drills accomplished due to the dummy rounds.  There were also real malfunctions to contend with, sometimes nasty ones.  I'd say I also did at least 50 holster draws including the really difficult "your primary arm has been shot and is useless, so draw, fire and reload with your weak hand only" drills, which yes, we did completely live fire and using retention type holsters.  Pretty cool to see the guys with SERPA drop-leg holsters having to use their left hand only to draw their pistols.  Those numbers are just estimating off the time spent with my 1911, that doesn't include the other 200 rounds fired by the two 9mms and all their failure drills and holster work and such.

I want to write a frigging book about night shooting.  Right now all I will say is, I've been one of the people who bought into the Surefire propaganda about temporarily blinding an opponent with a light.  Well, they taped a cheap tac light to the head of an IPSC target, turned it on, and on command I had to turn around, open my eyes, draw and double tap the target in the center of its chest at a range of only 5 yards or so.  If what Surefire puts in their magazines is true there should have been no way I could safely even do the drill, but in reality I was able to centerpunch the target in a fraction of a second.  I no longer believe that the flashlight gives you more than a fraction of a second tactical advantage, and I do believe it will give away your position unless you move and fire after you find your target.  This means very briefly shining the light to identify your target, then moving to a new location and firing at your target with the light turned OFF in just a fraction of a second.  A very difficult technique, but amazingly, even in near total darkness our shot groups only opened up a little bit.  The tac light is just a tool and MUST be used properly to gain an advantage.  And Surefire is FOS.

By the end of the second day of shooting, the pistols were muddy, fouled with powder everywhere, and totally devoid of oil.  Pretty much every gun there failed, geniunely as opposed to with dummy rounds, by the time we got to the final evolutions this afternoon.  The G17L experienced multiple double-feed failures with LIVE ammo requiring the "rip drill" to clear (which is totally second nature by now!!! Yay!!!), and my beloved Springfield MC Operator has totally ceased to lock the slide back on the last round.  The slide stop has worn a ramp into the slide itself and the slide just will not lock back even if you manually push the slide stop up with your thumb.  I'm going to call Springfield customer service about it first thing tomorrow.

Right now, its 9:50pm and I'm going to BED.  Safe in the knowledge that I am VERY capable of repeatedly center punching three 10 inch square targets while constantly moving in a figure 8 pattern around 4 folding chairs spaced 10 yards away from those targets, while reloading and clearing weapon malfunctions and never ever losing my balance or stopping my feet.  

Well, tomorrow I'm sure I'll be capable of all that again.  Right now I can hardly lift my arms.

Good write up Duke, sorry to hear about the Operator  Id like to think that my sidearm of choice may have made it, but who knows, most likely not.  Was it a part of the course to not clean it overnight or anytime during the day?  Sounds like the course may have been a bit above my skill level.  

Yeah the light thing is totally overblown, the light does several things but "Incapacitation" aint one of them!

It helps YOU identify the target.

It CAN be used as a distraction but only for a second...
In total darkness you blast your target then turn off the light and MOVE... haven't I mentioned this before?

It also helps you see hopefully better than your opponent.
The light attached to the target, was it on and left on? or was it a blast of light then leaving you in darkness? Would have been nice to attend this class...

Awesome write up fellas. I look forward to seeing the pics.

Out of curiosity was anyone shooting a revolver?

Quoted: The light attached to the target, was it on and left on? or was it a blast of light then leaving you in darkness? Would have been nice to attend this class...

Yeah it was turned on and left on, there was no way to remotely activate it and everyone had to be behind me when I did it.  They taped it to the target, positioned me in front of the target, turned me around to face 180 degrees away from it, then had me close my eyes.  An instructor turned on the light, then got behind me and slapped me on the shoulder and said "Go!" or some command like that.  I turned 180 degrees (we had drilled turning 90 or 180 degrees while drawing earlier, so I'd had many repetitions of the movement) and then opened my eyes.  The light was very bright and I was quite uncomfortable, and I did see spots, but the point was to see if I could fight through it.  I knew where the light was located (and was instructed not to shoot at it!), so I just shot about 6 inches low of the light source.  Was able to see my sights immediately, and doubletapped the center of the target under complete control.  Yes it was uncomfortable, yes it added a further level of difficulty, but no it did not disorient me to the point where I was ineffective.  

Lesson learned.  

Hellion--there were no revolvers.  Hi caps were a distinct advantage in drills where we had multiple targets or where we were instructed to put a certain number of rounds into each target.  The lone woman student (another lawyer and a real trooper) was shooting a Kahr 9mm that only held 6+1 and was at a real disadvantage.  Her and I were usually the last ones to finish drills with specific round counts, unless someone was having a nasty time clearing a malfunction.  I was one of only two .45 shooters in the class (the other .45 was a Glock 30) and my 8 round mags weren't too bad, but led to alot of reloads compared to, say SUB-MG who had 20 round mags for his Sig 226.  

It would have been cool to have a revolver shooter during the night fighting drills where you have to do reloading with a handheld light--I think maybe the only way to actually do that would be to have the light on a lanyard around your wrist and just drop it while you reload the wheelgun.

I just woke up an hour ago.  I'm not too sore except for my elbows.  Its not actually my elbows that hurt, its the tendons that go from that area to my forearms, triceps and biceps.  Also my left latissimus dorsi is sore from being really really stretched while I was using my left hand to reach over to the holster on my right side during the "wounded arm" drills.  Other than that I'm bouncing back nicely.

Great write up.  Sounds like a quality learning experience.

I can totally believe the revolver being a disadvantage as far as capacity goes.
But man it would be fun as hell to go at it with a wheel gun!

M.O.V.E.



Motionless Operators Ventilate Easily!

Goes Double with white light at night!

METALMAN has posted pics in the KS Hometown forums.  Yay!

www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=8&f=44&t=305765

Sounds like an awesome course.  I may have to try to attend the next one.  We'll see how ammo prices are by then....although maybe 9mm won't be too bad, definitely sounds like a job for a wundernine!

I'll try to upload some more!!!! Class was really intense. I have a lot to practice.
Muscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memory

Quoted: 9mm, hell.  I need to buy more .22 mags.

I have a Kadet kit for my CZ75B.  

I am starting to realize how bad it's getting.  Reloading for 9mm is significantly cheaper than .45.  And, reloading for me used to be a side hobby, but now I am having to reset my mindset that I NEED to reload to continue to shoot at the rates I do.  And that is turning it into work, or a chore, rather than a fun timewaster....sigh.

Thanks for the pictures Metalman!

Good writeup Duke and ScottMO.

I'm still writing down things I learned from the class that I need to work on to improve my pistol shooting.  We received a lot of one on one time from the instructors as they worked their way through the shooters watching them perform the drills and making suggestions, and then they watched us try it out again to see how we improved.

This was the first time I shot with night sights at night and I was shocked at how well you could group your shots with night sights in low light (moon light).  Shooting and moving with a hand held light or gun mounted light was great also.  Another first for me.  I will be working on these all the time now, along with many other drills I learned during the class.

They are talking about an AK-47/74 class this fall.  Can't wait...I will be there and it sounds like Duke and ScottMO will be going too.  We may pick another hotel next time...I'll save that story for another time.

Did I mention that it was cold, w/a 10-20mph wind all weekend)    (and snowing on sunday)

I threw Tacti-cool out the window and was dressed like a bear all weekend...

scottMO

Quoted: Class postponed until April 12/13th.  This class is gonna have 10-12 people in it anyways, so I'd much rather it be ARFCOM guys..... Full info in the KS forum. Course Name: Defensive Pistol   Class Length: Two Days Description: DVC’s Defensive Pistol Course is for the shooter who has had some basic experience with handguns or the experienced shooter looking for defensive pistol skills. This two-day course will familiarize you with the handgun you are using and under professional instruction give you a working knowledge of Defensive pistol skills. This course was developed for individuals who regularly carry a firearm for self-defense and to overcome the short comings of a basic Concealed Carry Class. The skills and drills taught at this course are not all inclusive, but you will leave this course with a broad base of knowledge of defensive Pistol tactics and Techniques. Topics Addressed: Defensive Marksmanship Pistol Safety Mechanics of the Draw Loading and Unloading Tactical and Emergency Reloads Malfunction Drills Various Shooting Positions Shooting on the Move and Turn Drills Buddy Team Movements Introduction to Night Shooting Packing List: Centerfire Handgun (9mm/.38 Special Minimum) Minimum 500 Rounds of Factory Ammunition Flashlight (Spare Batteries and bulbs are a Good Idea) Strong Side Hip Holster Quality Belt and Magazine Pouch Minimum Three Magazines or Speedloaders Eye Protection Ear Protection (Electronic Preferred) Sunscreen Rain Gear (We Train Rain or Shine) Hat with Visor Course Cost: $80.00 Anyone else interested in attending?  Bret (SUB-MG), Mike (Duke Nukem) and myself are going.  I'm not sure how many slots are left or of the speed of this class, but I need to shake the rust off from the winter.  And for 80.00, you get 2 days of shooting/instruction , plus a night shoot. scottMO

I talked to Lonnie with DVC today and they will be offering this class again in May.  Sure would have been nice to take this class then when it is warm rather than being decked out in multi-layers of winter wear.

This is a great class which I would highly recommend.  The two days of training was excellent but the night shooting with night sights and tactical lights is a great bonus.

Let me know if you need more information.

www.vickerstactical.com/Tips/whiteLight.htm

From a man who KNOWS things... The proper use of White light tactically...

The military is requiring my presence in Texas for the entire month of June so DVC is going to hold another Defensive Pistol Course on May 17th and 18th.  It will, essentially be the same course we put on last weekend.  I would venture to say the weather will be nicer, but I'm not going to bet on that this year.