Basic & Intermediate Defensive Handgun

[TRB]

Defense Training International, Inc./Pittsburgh Area
Coordinator Ray Schuerger (DTI-PGH)
4211 Steubenville Pike
Pittsburgh PA 15205
412-921-1474
skraut@ix.netcom.com

Dear Friends and Fellow Shooters: This is our 2007 training schedule. All courses will be held at the Forest Grove Sportsmen’s Association, Inc. in Coraopolis, PA
Please include a deposit of $200 upon registration for each course, with the remainder of the tuition due prior to the start of the course. Please endorse your checks to "DTI, Inc." and mail them to the address above. Please register early to avoid disappointment, as space is limited. We hope that you will mark your calendars and that we will be able to train together. The best way to contact us is via e-mail at skraut@ix.netcom.com. USPS correspondence may be directed to the address above.

Basic & Intermediate Defensive Handgun. John Farnam Sat/Sun. May 26-27, 2007 Tuition $485.00 600 rounds of jacketed factory ammunition.

This is a Basic and Intermediate level course for the serious student of defensive
handgunning. More than just a course on the defensive deployment of a handgun, it covers the basis of the Farnam Philosophy of the Warrior: Capturing your Warrior Heritage, situational awareness, legal justification and ramifications concerning the use of deadly force, administrative and tactical manipulation of the handgun, weapon and load selection, movement, cover and low-light shooting are but a portion of the curriculum.

Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds. Doc Gunn / John Farnam. Memorial Day Monday, May 28, 2007. Tuition $275.00 300 rounds of ammunition.

Our course, designed by an Emergency Physician with over 20 years of trauma experience, is based upon Tactical Medicine principles but where TacMed is designed for military/police tactical entry team members with specialized medical training, our course is for non-entry, non-medical personnel. This is a shooting course combined with what to do immediately afterwards to increase survivability. We will deal with Threat Elimination and the Identification of the Seven Life-Threatening Injuries as well as Control of Hemorrhage. Emergency Range Response, Accessing EMS Services and Maintaining an Emergency GSW Response Kit will be covered. It is primarily for firearm instructors, home owners/defenders and police officers any of who may suddenly
find themselves in the position of providing initial care and stabilization of a gunshot wound victim. (B/IDHG is a pre-requisite to this course.)
Willingness is a state of mind. READINESS is a statement of fact!


Who is John Farnam?
John Farnam is a weapons and tactics instructor who will urge you, based on your own beliefs, to make up your mind in advance as to what you would do when faced with an imminent and unlawful lethal threat. He will guide you in deciding what preparations you should make in advance, if any. Defense Training International wants to make sure that their students fully understand the physical, legal, psychological, and societal consequences of their actions or inactions.

John has written articles about defensive shooting and defensive tactics for several magazines, including Police Marksman, American Handgunner, Combat Handguns, Guns and Ammo, Soldier of Fortune.

He has also written three books: The Street-Smart Gun Book, The Farnam Method of Defensive Handgunning, and The Farnam Method of Defensive Shotgun and Rifle Shooting.

The thrust of his training programs is the encouragement of safe, responsible, and effective use of modern firearms in self-defense. John Farnam was awarded the prestigious "Tactical Advocate of the Year" title by the American Tactical Shooting Association (ATSA) in June, 1996. The presentation was
made at the conclusion of the Sixth Annual National Invitational held at the Gunsite Training Center in Paulden, Arizona.

Certificates Held NRA Certified Police Firearms Instructor; Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor, International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors; Distinguished Expert, National Forensic Center; Individual voluntary Practical Pistol Instructor; Certified Instructor, certified User, Special Purpose Low-Lethality Anti-Terrorist Munitions (SPLLATM-ASI; Manodnock PR-24 Instructor; Glock Pistol Armorer; Colorado State Board Private Occupational Credential for Security Services.

Why take a John Farnam course?

Lots of instructors teach shooting.
Some instructors teach “combat” shooting.
John Farnam teaches combative shooting.
John Farnam teaches how to avoid confrontations.
John Farnam teaches how to win confrontations.
John Farnam teaches what to do after confrontations.
John Farnam will help you to be a warrior.

You can learn more at the Defense Training International website

http://www.defense-training.com

Willingness is a state of mind. READINESS is a statement of fact!

[TRB]

This course is Memorial Day weekend. Most folks have these days off. Top flight training from one of the top trainers in the USA. This is a great time to take your training to the next level.

[Thekatar]

I will be in attendance - looking very much forward to it!

[TRB]

Farnam is one of the great teachers. He will challenge you and you will learn. Bring everything on the list and plan to sleep fast on Saturday night.

[TRB]

Last call. Don't miss the only opportunity to train with John Farnam in Pittsburgh this year.

[Thekatar]

The following are some of my impressions and take-aways from the training:


TD1:
Start time 0700 to complete and confirm payment and registration, etc. Serious lecture by John started at 0930 and lasted until the lunch break at 1230. John covered his range rules and commands (wait for the command to reholster, never assume the end of an exercise) and emphasized muzzle consciousness and on target/on trigger, off target/off trigger. John made it clear that "there is no right way to do a wrong thing." He advised us that handguns are only to be held in the "master grip" and no other way, and that if your finger was on the trigger then the trigger should be in motion. John advised to forget about dropped shots or anything else that may divide our attention and to not dwell on the past. Nothing can reach out and bring back that bullet so there is no point in worrying about it; only the next shot matters. JF also talked about legal ramifications of a justified shoot and the idea of "necessity" which roughly means the number of rounds that you put on the threat after the choice to shoot has been made. He emphasized 4 shot "bursts" starting at the navel and ending at the neck, then moving and reassessing. He made very clear that entry wounds in a threat's back would be hard to justify in most circumstances.

We hit the range at 1330 and began with instructor inspection of our handguns. There were 11 students, JF as the primary and 6 assistant instructors - easily the highest instructor/student ratio of any class that I've attended. Began with "de-selection" exercises, where we paired up with another student and practiced verbalizations and the "interview stance" sometimes called the guard stance. This escalated to eventual incorporation of the drawstroke and a move - shoot - move mindset. John emphasized using the "military" reload a.k.a. reload with retention, esp. in light of some associates experiences during Hurricane Katrina.

360 degree scan/assess patterns were emphasized and incorporated into every drill. All drills were performed from a concealed draw. AI's stood behind the students and held up random numbers of fingers to force the student to actually "see" what they were scanning for. Shooting continued until dinner at 1830 and we resumed at 1930. We continued the daylight drills into the failing light and then finally into complete darkness. It was previously arranged to have a local LEO drive down with his patrol car and right up behind us onto the range where he hit his overhead lights. It was a tremendous opportunity to get to shoot at night in high humidity (lots of water vapor) with multicolored strobes as illumination - this is rare and valuable training. We employed the Harries and the Good (top/side of head index) techniques to good effect. Continued were the verbalizations and movement from the daylight drills. In all, a 14 hour day with 8 solid hours of range time.

TD2:
Began at 0900 with a representative from Cor-Bon performing a ballistic gelatin/chrono demonstration. Cor-Bon's featured DPX pistol rounds functioned as advertised, consistently defeating 4 layers of denim and expanding with impressive penetration without overpenetration. I am not sold on the .223 DPX as a superior anti-personnel round versus the standard military fragmentation-kill mechanism. I can say that .223 DPX in the 62 gr. flavor looks to be a superior barrier penetrator, however.

We began the range time with stoppage clearance procedures, your typical "Tap/Rack/Resume." JF then had all of the students place their pistols and spare magazines on tables at the firing line and all students got to cycle through operation and malfunction clearance on every gun! This was a wonderful evolution that emphasized Farnam's methods working across a broad spectrum.

Testing:
I suspect I could have been the first to qualify had I not kept dropping a shot or two during the testing. I will not give the entire procedure away, suffice to say it took the broadest possible spectrum of what we had been taught and then demanded that we do it in a defined amount of time with no errors. I eventually performed the test in less than 22 seconds, earning a red achievement pin from John.

My Equipment:
I used a 3rd gen Glock 19 modified with a Glockmeister grip plug and Heine SlantPro rear and tritium front sights. I used a Sidearmor IWB holster and mag carrier and a Surefire G2 Nitrolon light with a Blackhawk carbon fiber carrier. The excellent Woolrich Elite Lightweight vest rounded out the important aspects of my gear. I shot Speer Gold Dot 124 gr. +P JHP ammunition exclusively. My pistol perfomed with no issues (approx 3000 rounds to date) and the sight combination is a real winner for me. The G2 Nitrolon continues to prove itself to me to be 85% of the light that most of the $150 lights are. I reached a new level of aggravation with my Peltor Tac 6S earpro- lucky for me one of the students was a representative from MSA who recently acquired Sordin and loaned me a set of their earpro to try - needless to say the Peltors found a new home because I immediately dropped the cash on the MSA/Sordins. They are four times the price of the Peltors but worth every penny AFAIC.

My personal take-aways:
This was not a HSLD course- it was a course to teach the average armed citizen or LEO to prevail as an independent operator against a lethal threat. I adjusted my grip from a "thumbs-forward" to a "thumbs-high" and moved my support hand back slightly to ensure 100% coverage of the grip surface. I had been performing speed reloads by bringing the gun up to my face and looking at the threat through the trigger guard while reloading. It was demonstrated to me how this method leaves the gun vulnerable to being grabbed and controlled. I now perform my reloads from a "compressed ready" position which seems just as fast and gives me more options against a gun grab. I need to practice my one-handed shooting such as when employing a light. I re-learned the same lesson from John's wife Vicki (one of the AI's) that I learned from Larry Vickers, which was to slow it down a little when I engage, because only hits count.

I found this training course to have been the most relevant to me (civilian CCW holder) to date. This is a course for normal "Earth People" and how to win against a potentially lethal threat.