This past Saturday was an especially good one for me. KR Training was holding two classes: Defensive Long Gun Essentials and Skill Builder. But it was a slightly different day for me.
I was Dad, in addition to assisting.
Oldest was a student in the DLG-E class. You see, all this summer, Oldest has been “chore boy” at the KR Training ranch, mostly doing a lot of the lawn mowing (it’s a lot of acreage to mow). Karl gave him a slot in the DLG-E class as a bonus for all his hard work this summer (thanx, Karl!). Oldest is just starting down the road of formal firearms education. Sure I’ve showed him things and we go shooting when we can, but I firmly believe in the benefits of formal education and schooling. Plus, sometimes kids listen to others better, or at least differently, than their parents.
How’d he do? Fine. There’s certainly things for him to work on, but it seems he did well in the class. He certainly had a lot of fun and got to experience new things. One of which was going through the shoot house.
I did run the shoot house, and we did something different: we had verbal interactions. Instead of just using visual cues for target discernment, students were encouraged to interact with the photorealistic targets: “Stop!” “Show me your hands!” or whatever command they wanted to try. Then I would react in whatever way was appropriate, to help the student learn about the importance of making decisions.
What came out of this? While “bang bang” is fun, it’s just one — and arguable a minor — skill to master compared to others, such as threat management, or as SouthNarc calls it “Managing Unknown Contacts”.
As coincidence has it, Claude Werner was just on Ballistic Radio talking about this very thing. As I write this, I haven’t listened to that episode yet, but given the write-up, it seems quite relevant.
The other thing I recommend folks look at is anything from Craig “SouthNarc” Douglas regarding the topic of “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC). If you don’t get a chance to study with Craig, see if you can find a copy of his “Practical Unarmed Combat” DVD as it covers some basics of MUC. And yes, SouthNarc is coming to KR Training in March 2015 for his ECQC course.
Side note: one student in class (my friend Rog) was running a pump shotgun. He was shooting some Winchester PDX, both their buck and slugs. He had an extremely difficult failure to extract with a slug (probably a combination of a hot slug and dirty chamber — I put the muscles to good use and was able to eventually clear the chamber). The buck claims to have tighter patterns, and it is tighter than cheap buckshot, but it just cannot compete with Federal Premium FLITECONTROL buckshot. I wish Federal was paying me (or giving me free ammo) for all the promotion of their product, but alas they are not — we just have witnessed the performance and nothing can come close. Said it before, say it again: Federal Premium 12 gauge FLITECONTROL 00 buckshot, low recoil (1145 fps, vs 1325 fps) if you can find it, and 8 (vs. 9) pellet if you can find it.
The weather was great! Things are getting unstable here in Texas, with some rain finally coming down, but the predictions for more changing every hour. The morning looked like it might come down, but it just got better as the day wore on. Couldn’t have asked for a finer day, weather wise.
Plus I got to spend more quality time with my son. He’s not just Oldest, but certainly getting older. Time is precious.
Alas, I didn’t get to stay for the Skill Builder class as Oldest had somewhere to be. But hey… I couldn’t ask for a better day. :-)
Filed under: Guns, Kids, Me Tagged: Guns, Kids, Me
