I recently attended the Fundamentals of Defensive Pistol course taught by 360 Tactical Training at the Memorial Shooting Center. I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to improve their handgun skills.

First, I have to admit I went in somewhat skeptical because I had been to the (old) Memorial Shooting Center facility a few times years ago and was not impressed at all.  In fact, I found a new indoor range and stopped going to MSC. I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled in early Saturday morning and was directed to park around the back of the building. Wow, the place is all new and greatly improved.

After a quick introduction we headed to the indoor range.  For the record, I was shooting a new Beretta PX4 9mm with a Silent Thunder IDPA Champion holster.  We were told to bring 400 – 600 rounds which sounded promising – lots of trigger time!

The class started off at a steady pace as we went through a few drills.  Obviously this is partly designed to give the instructor some visible feedback as to our level of competency with a handgun before getting into the more advanced drills.  We practiced steady fire, accuracy, and finding the reset on our weapon.  Good stuff but I was ready for more.

The class progressed quickly.  There is no substitute for practicing how to draw and present your weapon with live fire, quickly squeezing off several rounds.

We spent quite a bit of time on different drills where the instructor would bark a number and we would draw, fire 2-4 rounds at the appropriate target, holster.  Draw, present, fire, holster.  Good practice on quickly identifying the target, acquiring sight, and rapid fire.  The targets were of different colors and shapes to add to the confusion.

We then repeated the drills with movement.  At first, everyone would all move the same direction in sync.  Then, we had the freedom to move either left or right.  This caused you to occasionally bang into the man next to you while firing.

By the end of the course we were really cooking – movement, selecting different targets on call, banging into the next man, forced reloads, different distances, all great fun!  I shot about 500 rounds.

The final activity was a turn in the shoothouse which was entertaining.

I’m looking forward to taking my next class with these guys.

by Mike Coker

 

 

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Publisher of Tactical Gun Review and Texas Outdoors Network. I love hunting for Texas whitetail deer, wild hogs, and high-volume Argentina dove. When not hunting you can find me fishing along the Texas Coast or on a wild Colorado river.

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