Defensive Skill Development Principles and First Drills

Here's another video from the Personal Defense Network. Understanding the best way to spend a day at the range is very important. Everyone's time and budget is limited. We only get so much time to be out on the range either by ourselves or with our training partners to prepare ourselves for efficient firearms handling and firearms use. We're going to concentrate not just on our shooting skills, but also on our reloads, our malfunction drills.

We're going to talk a little about multiple targets. We're going to look at a lot of different ways to use a simple range set up, the kind you can find anywhere. The kind we have here at the C2 Shooting Center here in Virginia Beach, Virginia to help you and your training partners to become more efficient and better prepared for defensive firearms use. [Upbeat Music] I've been joined by Kent Mote, the president of C2 Shooting Center, and we're going to be training partners today. We're going to go ahead get ready to shoot a drill.

When I first get to the range, of course we want to go over the safety rules, make sure that we remind each other what it is we want to do, what we need to do in terms of safety. Of course our general safety rules always are that we're going to keep our finger off the trigger until we're ready to shoot, we're going to make sure we keep the firearms pointed in a generally safe direction at all times, means that if the gun were to go off, no one is likely to get hurt, and of course we're going to keep the big picture in mind, we're going to remember that there are firearms out here, that we will be in control of firearms, and if they're used negligently or maliciously, they can hurt or kill us or someone else out here on the range. We have our eye protection on, we have ear protection, of course we got a first aid kit, we've made sure that people know we're out here on the range getting ready to shoot. The C2 Shooting Center is set up with a bunch of different dirt berms, a bunch of different great places to shoot, and we're back here on one of the ranges we have to ourself, we're going to be joined by some other shooters later. One of the first things I like to do when I come out to the range is just test myself, just come out and shoot a general drill with a generally good combat accurate target area that we have set up on this target down range, and Kent's going to shoot the first drill, I'm going to be his training partner, of course if Kent, you're out here by yourself, you know how to use one of these, you'd have a simple shot timer with a random start, we'd let this be the command, this would become the training partner if we were out here by ourselves, but it's always good to train with somebody else.

You get more out of it, you have someone that can help you, refine your technique, see where you're making problems, where you can be more efficient, help you to be more creative with you drills, so we're going to be training partners today. I'm going to go ahead and give Kent some commands, he's going to stand on the line, use some good, efficient shooting techniques to just kind of see where he was, what if something happened on the way out to the range, what if something happened yesterday, where are we with our shooting skill to give us a place to start, a place to determine the way we're going to use our skill development sessions throughout the day. So if you'll take your position. We're gonna go on the left target. 'Kay?

Good combat accurate area, somewhere in that 9 zone, maybe the 8 zone, good efficient stuff, standby, your command to fire will be "up", when I give your command to fire, fire 2 to 3 rounds into the center of that target area. Up! [Gun Firing 3 Shots] Good, and we'll go back to the holster. Now of course, if Kent wasn't experienced, if he wasn't an experienced shooter working from this holster, maybe if this were a new holster today or if we were out here trying out some new firearms, we'd go from the ready position, there's nothing wrong with that, starting from the ready position. Quite often in a personal defense situation, you're gonna have to prepare for the worst, prepare for getting caught off-guard, prepare for getting caught from that holster, from concealment.

But there's no reason that you might not be able to envision a situation where you would have had some warning, that you might need to defend yourself, and that firearm would be in the position. Let's try it from the ready position. Up! [Gun Firing 3 Shots] Up! [Gun Firing 3 Shots] 'Kay once you've worked together with your training partner, you can start to be able to be more creative with your commands.

So whether someone's standing by in a ready position, maybe they're assessing the environment, maybe they're on the way back, the holster, maybe they were turned around a little bit from the target. But once everyone understands the dynamic of the range, and there's the target, if I were to call a command right now, of course Kent realizes he needs to orient towards the threat, and then he's going to draw and present his firearm. So we're done with that drill. Real simple drill, it's a way to come out and test yourself, get yourself through some repetitions of coming from the holster, from the ready position, get your finger on the trigger, get some rounds down range, we take a look at the target, we can see all good combat accurate hits. Then the next thing we're going to do is now we're going to step it up a little bit, we're gonna integrate lateral movement.

Of course we're familiar with the concept of lateral movement. When we recognize the threat, there's a time delay before we actually can get to the firearm and get the firearm into a shooting position. During that time delay, we're gonna move off line, we're going to move laterally left to right, relative to the threat so that if that person were shooting at us or if that person were charging at us with a sharp object or a blunt object, we make it harder for them to hurt us. The idea of combat efficiency, everything we do we want to significantly affect that target, and before we can shoot we want to get off line a little bit. So on the "Up" command, which will be the command of recognition, Kent's gonna move left or right, doesn't matter which way, at least one body width as he presents the firearm.

So it's not two separate moves, remember it's as you present. It's not going to be moving and then presenting, that wouldn't really help us. We want to move while we're presenting, settle when we get into that shooting position, go ahead and put some combat accurate hits on the target. Up! [Gun Firing 3 Shots] Up!

[Gun Firing 1 Shot] [Gun Being Reloaded] [Gun Firing 4 Shots] And of course we're going to move that lateral movement on the reload also. So if we reach live lock, we're gonna go ahead and move. And that's why the training partner is here, the training partner is here to remind you of little things like that. So we can say okay, you know what, shooting looks great, handling all the weapons looks great, but we want to make sure we do our lateral movement also when we reach live lock, that's a bad situation. We're in the middle of a shooting moment, we're in the middle of have to address a threat, slide locks back, we need to get off line.

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