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View Full Version : AAR: PSC Protective Carbine 2 - October 25/26



Jay Cunningham
10-30-2014, 08:04 PM
AAR: Protective Shooting Concepts Protective Carbine 2
October 25/26, 2014
The Beaver Valley Rifle & Pistol Club
Beaver Falls, PA

six shooters
three instructors


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Protective Carbine 2 students on the firing line.


day one

Protective Carbine 2 is our course of instruction highlighting realistic applications of the semi-automatic rifle in a civilian context; we think that there is also strong overlap with lone LEOs deploying patrol rifles.

Protective Carbine 2 is not for beginners. All students had previous experience including LE, military, competition, and private professional instruction.

The weather was absolutely perfect - sunny, mild, and no rain either day.

Day One started with introductions, as well as our safety and emergency medical briefings.

Everyone was expected to arrive with a zeroed carbine. One student had to replace a deadlined optic with another quality optic (Aimpoint Micro) that, while new, would not adjust in any direction. The entire AR-15 upper receiver assembly was swapped out with an instructor's (wearing an Aimpoint Comp M4) and the student drove on.

Our first drill was a skills assessment that involved position shooting and manipulations (both with and without par times) from 50 yards to 5 yards.


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Royce D. shooting his patrol rifle from the prone position. Royce is an LEO who made serious performance gains over two days of training.


This skills assessment was the first trigger pull of the class by design, and it gave the shooters and instructing staff a clear picture of what each individual could deliver in that moment in time.

Expectations were covered for situational awareness (both gun and surroundings), targeting human anatomy, and maintaining a generally aggressive posture.

Malfunction clearance was then extensively reviewed: tap (or push-pull) /rack, was actually employed several times for real and was successful when encountering a live trigger but no bang.

"Mortaring" was required on one gun during the empty case malfunction drills. Bobby M. (a highly skilled competition shooter) made the comment “I’m glad I learned that here, I never would have known what to do.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent learning to "flow the gun" and to operate and maneuver it from the support side, one-handed, and in tight quarters.


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A lineup of focused aggression: Bill L., Joe A., Bobby M., and Matt G. are pictured shooting from their support sides. Bobby is an experienced competition shooter and Matt is beginning his learning curve - but proved to be a very quick study.


As the sun slipped below the horizon, the low light block of instruction started. PSC does our best to take advantage of low light and not simply have it become a line of students activating a WML while shooting paper targets.

As Ashton ran the bulk of the students through various live fire exercises, Dan and Jay conducted a one-man house clearing simulation in a nearby structure with individual students. Safety protocols were strictly enforced - students were issued a blue "AR-15" training gun equipped with a real optical sight and real WML.

This gave shooters a chance to maneuver realistically indoors with a long gun and also to employ a WML against a live "threat" - and to exercise some shoot/no shoot discretion.


day 2

Day Two began with a re-run of the Day One skills assessment. Results were dramatically better, mostly due to shooters better understanding their zeros.


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These guys almost look like twins!


It was quickly time to strap on the pistols and get a little warmup. After some dry runs on the transition drawstroke, we switched the carbine ammo out to frangible and broke out the shot timer to compare carbine reload time-on-target versus pistol transition time-on-target. Everybody got a feel for where their own individual performance point at transitions broke down compared to to carbine reloads.

We ran the 1-5 Drill to get a handle on precisely controlling the long guns during lateral target transitions. Our scoring emphasized accurate shot placement ahead of pure speed, which was changing gears for some.

Our next topic was shooting on the move. We have an opinion on the topic as it's usually presented in the rest of the industry, but instead of talking at the students we got them to develop some of their own opinions.

We started with "traditional" SOTM, where we demanded a # of hits per target while traversing a distance.

Then we tried "accelerated" SOTM where we demanded more aggressive movement but no set number of shots - we just demanded hits.

Finally we switched to move-plant-shoot and compared results for all methods. We then worked all three methods moving from position of cover to position of cover.

On a break, our resident lawyer buddy showed up to cover use of force and some case law involving long guns and NFA items.

During the lecture the instructors set up our "running dogs" to allow shooters an opportunity to track small, fast-moving targets. In addition to four legged pest control being a realistic use of a long gun, this gives shooters some additional data points to consider regarding their own movement speed while SOTM and whether or not it really makes them harder to hit.


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Hodge L. working the under the cover from brokeback prone. Hodge is a wealth of knowledge and experience, and a damn fine shooter to boot.


The last big drill of the day was a scrambler with various type of cover, demanding students aggressively move and shoot and utilize support side and specialized positions to get rounds on target while protecting themselves. Most students needed to be reminded to keep breathing.

For the final exercise we rolled a fairly typical sedan out and looked at it critically for best use of it as a common piece of cover. Everybody agreed that best part (if you can get it) is behind the front wheel and engine. Brokeback prone works exceptionally well here. We practiced lining up on each other with blue guns to get both good guy and bad guy perspectives.


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Joe A. working with the blue gun against a live downrange threat. Good use of concealment, but understanding the tendency of bullets to skip off of car hoods tempered some of the enthusiasm as cover.


some additional thoughts:


Some students did not intuitively know the zero for known distances on their carbines. After covering the whys, students did dramatically improve as the day went on after coaching.

The student using the borrowed upper had to account for a different sight picture (cowitness) due to different rear sight and optic mount height as well as different holdover due to a different zero. Kudos to Joe A. for stepping up and exhibiting badassery in getting his hits with different gear.

Weak side shooting was unfamiliar to some, but big gains were made with coaching and repetitions.

Too many guns too damn dry.

Manipulations and reloads: getting the gun captured and into the work space improves success and speed.

LEDs don’t cut haze or smoke well at all, a weak-assed half dead incan G2 was in some ways more effective.

Big lights are better, but even big-assed lights don’t stretch out the identification distance very much farther - it appears to be diminishing returns.




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Everybody likes a pic of the hardware.

Jay Cunningham
10-30-2014, 08:30 PM
Added some pics.