FourMileMark and gottrees: A word about Front Sight.
The Front Sight instructors are just great. Very experienced and competent, with just the right blend of strictness and patience. People of all levels of training and all sorts of backgrounds, for instance, might come to the Four Day Defensive Handgun Course, and they accommodate everyone, with neither undue pressure on the newbies nor boring, simplified basics for those with many years in LE or the military. They run a tight and very safety conscious range without a bootcamp mentality.
People come from all walks of life and from all over the country. The first morning, check in is at 7:30 - guns and ammo people brought for the various courses are inspected, as are such accessories as holsters and slings. Anyone not wanting to bring equipment and ammo can rent it there. (Most people in our course shot semi-automatics in 9mm, .40 and .45 calibers.) Then people go to their assigned ranges. The 4 day handgun course my wife and neighbors and I attended had about 150 people, so we split up about 40 to a range. Each range had a range master and about 3 to five other instructors, so there was a lot of personal and one-on-one help.
The days went from 8AM to 6PM, with a 60-90 minute lunch break during which we received lectures on various topics, such as moral, ethical and legal issues, preparedness and combat mindset, tactics, etc. The range itself was run in two relays, with one person in each pair shooting while the other acted as a coach. The two basic areas of focus - keeping the gun running, and anatomically relevant accuracy under pressure - were presented in increasing depth, alternating instruction and demonstration with dry fire and live fire practice at increasing speed, distance, and increasing tactical demands. Safety was stringently emphasized, as well as basic gunmanship like stance, grip, presentation and firing from both concealed and non-concealed holsters, etc. Rapid, on-the-run diagnosis and correction of malfunctions, tactical and emergency reloads and such were covered and practiced extensively. Silhouette and human picture targets were used almost throughout.
The third day emphasized tactics, with the morning devoted to basic home defense considerations - both in theory and in practice on simple building structures, culminating with practice in live-fire simulator bays in which we swept through and cleared a dwelling of bad guys while sparing the friendlies. That afternoon we focused more on tactics - multiple targets, hostage takers, etc.
The fourth day we had our exam and competitions. We did a round robin one-on-one elimination competition using steel plates, and later with the same set up we were allowed "grudge matches" to go mano-a-mano with anyone we wanted. The photos below show my wife and I duking it out in our grudge match - she made it farther into the round robin than I did, so it was a source of male pride to beat her in the one-on-one competition
- and my wife being declared winner in her second round in the round robin, a photo that also shows a typical range there.
