AAR: 3 Rivers Tactical Training - 3 Gun Workshop - August 3rd, 2014

**John A Brown** · August 5th, 2014, 09:41 PM

3 Rivers Tactical Training Solutions conducted a 3 Gun Workshop on Sunday, August 3rd 2014.

This is the first of these classes we've held but certainly won't be the last. It was a great success and a really fun time.

While 3 Gun is mostly associated with competition events, I wanted to gauge the students in the class and see exactly what they were looking to get out of this class. As it turned out, none of the students were competition shooters, and all were interested in learning about and building their skills in the self defense arena, so that's the direction the class went.

We had 6 students in the class. We originally had 12. This class was originally scheduled for Saturday, August 2nd, but unfortunately a scheduling issue arose which forced this class to be moved to Sunday August 3rd. When the class was moved 6 of the shooters who had signed up couldn't make it. I'm doing another one of these 3 Gun Workshops on October 5th and those who couldn't make this past class will be in that one.

WEATHER

The weather the entire day typified the saying "If you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes. It will change." The weather seemed to change 15 times throughout the day. We saw light rain, bright sunshine, heavy rain, wind, clouds, sun - you name it. I swear it seemed like the rain changed every 20 minutes all day long. We pressed on and didn't let it affect the course. Luckily the heaviest rain occurred during and just after the lunch hour, which means it didn't disrupt us at all.

After introductions we moved into the safety and emergency medical briefings. I conduct the same safety and emergency medical briefings at the start of every course. This generally takes the better part of an hour. I makes no apologies for this, and in many ways it's the most important part of the day. It's not a 5 or 10 minute process, nor should it be.

One of the things I stressed to the students is that in my opinion, shooting stance should change very little between the pistol, shotgun, and carbine. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to use multiple stances. Sure - there will always be slight variations, but using completely different shooting stances when switching weapons is a mistake in my opinion.

SHOTGUN

We started the day on shotgun. I absolutely love teaching shotgun classes and don't do as many as I like. Everyone in the class had either a Remington 870 or a Mossberg 12 gauge pump action shotgun. The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that there were no semi-auto shotguns in the course.

Most people think the only think they need to know about running a shotgun in a tactical / self defense situation is running the fore end after firing a round and causing the weapon to make the distinctive sound we are all familiar with. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most people have never been trained on the shotgun from a tactical / self defense perspective, and their experience with the weapon comes from hunting. While there is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, it becomes apparent pretty soon that hunting with a shotgun and using a shotgun in a self defense role are two very, very different things.

We spent some time talking about mounting the shotgun and getting the butt stock off the shoulder joint and more to the center line of the shooters chest. This dramatically helps with recoil mitigation and makes for a more enjoyable experience when firing a lot of shotgun rounds.

We also talked about load configurations for the self defense shotgun - 00 bucks shot and slugs, and the use of the side saddle. In my opinion a received mounted side saddle is a requirement on a self defense shotgun.

Below, Casey running his Mossberg. He had a stock mounted side saddle and you'll also not the shell caddy on his belt.

Below is Gary, again running a Mossberg. This is Gary's 2nd class with me. Note the SureFire light mounted on the shotgun. I am a very strong believer in weapon mounted lights on all self defense weapons.

We spent a fair amount of time on what are known as either "Slug Changeovers" or "Select-A-Slug" drills. (Same drills, two different names for it.) This is the act of having a round of buck shot in the chamber of your shotgun, but you either have to make a distance (beyond 25 yards is a good rule of thumb) or a precision shot. You'll want to do that with a slug, not buck shot. In this situation, you need to get the buck shot out of the gun, and a slug into the chamber.

While this is not rocket surgery, there is a bit more to it than meets the eye. This is also a process that varies depending on the make and manufacturer of your shotgun - and it's a VERY different process for pump action and semi-auto shotguns. This drill was probably one of if not the biggest take aways for the students.

Below is Bill conducting a slug changeover and then engaging steel at 50 yards. Not the shotgun is rotated with the ejection port pointed towards the ground to allow the live round on the elevator to fall from the gun.

Unfortunately, I didn't get as many pictures during the shotgun portion of the course as I would have liked. I got many more during pistol and carbine.

PISTOL

After shotgun we moved right into pistol. One of the things I like to do in all of my pistol classes is go over the pistols fundamentals and then run a few drills at the beginning without doing too much marksmanship instruction. This allows me to get an idea of the skill level of each student. We did just that in this course.

Most errors people make when shooting the pistol are easily identified and fixed by experienced instructors. We went over a few secrets of the pistol shooting universe in this class and made dramatic improvements in some shooter accuracy - in about 10 minutes time and after firing exactly 6 rounds. Yes - 6 rounds.

It's amazing how quickly and measurably shooters improve when it's explained to them what they are doing wrong, and then showing them the correct technique. It's also very satisfying from an instructor standpoint to see such a dramatic transformation.

Of course, anybody can do something once or even a few times. The key is repeatable performance.

I was very happy that everyone in this class was using either a Glock or a Smith & Wesson M&P. These are BY FAR the two best lines of pistols on the market today for self defense in my opinion. The students can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure we didn't have one pistol malfunction.

Below is Jeff, in a very solid pistol shooting stance. Well done.

Below is J.W. on the right running is M&P .22 with a can, and Gary on the right. J.W.'s suppressed M&P .22 has to be shot to be believed. It's unbelievably quiet and accurate.

This is Gary's second class with me, and his pistol skills have improved tremendously.

Below is Edd. Edd has attended 5 or 6 classes of mine. I really don't know what words to use to describe how much his skill level has improved during that time.

Near to far are Bill, Toney, and Casey.

One of the things I do at every one of my pistol classes is get the students shooting from distance. Some have, but most of my students have never shot a pistol beyond 20 or 25 yards. Some flat out don't believe that anyone can hit anything with a pistol beyond that range.

Every student in this class was able to hit the steel at the 62 yard line.

Below is Gary running is Glock 19 at 50 yards.

Below is Casey at the 50 yard line, also running his Glock 19. This is a pretty cool pic - not the slide is still traveling to the rear during its cycle of operation and the brass has just been ejected.

We concluded the pistol portion of the training with a fun walk back exercise. We made it back to 100 yards and got a few hits on the steel from there.

CARBINE

We finished the day with carbine. Everyone had a .223 or a 5.56 platform AR. No AK's or variants, and no 7.62 AR's.

Also, there were no piston guns in this class. Everyone had a gas AR.

I didn't go into much with this class as far as AR slings, optics, lights, etc., etc., like I do in my full carbine classes. I just didn't have time to get into all of that stuff. There were no major issues other than a good number of the AR were significantly under lubricated. Some of the bolt carrier groups were bone dry. I see this time and time again, class after class after class. You need to have a significant amount of lubrication on your bolt and bolt carrier group. It's metal. When the gun cycles it's rubbing on metal. If it's not properly lubricated it's a matter of when, not if, you begin to have problems.

We had several malfunctions during the carbine portion of this class. I'm 99.9% sure every one of them was due to an under lubricated weapon.

We started out talking about the initial loading sequence and reloading of the AR, as those are the issues people have the most difficulty with. Many people don't pull down on the magazine to guarantee that it's been seated properly, and later learn that while they thought their weapon was loaded, in fact it's not.

Below is Bill moving between cover and engaging steel at 50 yards.

Below is Edd properly using cover - staying back from the barrels and not crowding them. Well done.

There was a pile of hay bales on the range that we took advantage of to get into some different firing positions.

Below is Casey engaging the yellow and orange steel in the background. I didn't range this, but I estimate it at about 65 yards.

I didn't tell the students what firing positions to use. I just told them to be safe and get into positions that allowed them to make accurate hits.

Below is Jeff doing the same.

Below is Edd in a sitting position around the other side of the hay bales. He was the only one to think to get into this position.

Bill, below, was the only one to lay flat on his back. It worked.

Gary below. I believe this was his first formal training on the AR, and he was using iron sights. He did great.

Below is a video of Jeff at the hay bales. Well done.

This was a fun class. We didn't do a whole lot on any one weapon system. We basically spent 3 hours on each. I found myself wishing we could have done more drills on all 3 weapons, but there are only so many hours in a day.

Great class, great group of guys, and an overall very fun day.

Our next 3 Gun Workshop class is scheduled for Sunday, October 5th. You can see the details and sign up here - http://www.3riverstraining.com/news/...3-gun-workshop

I welcome everyone's comments and observations.

John
www.3riverstraining.com