AAR: Defensive Pistol 1-4 Marksmanship Matters, Fairfield, UT
Having caught the podcast episode by @jlw about Marksmanship Matters, I decided to make an attempt at training under the eye of Larry Mudgett. The stars, a hall pass from my wife, and my vacation time aligned to let me take Larry's Defensive Pistol 1-4 course April 20-23, 2022. Larry has an illustrious background as a SWAT cop and head of firearms training for the LAPD, and his introduction to the pistol certainly takes a bit of a different turn than other courses of that ilk that I have had a chance to take. For one, it takes four days. Shooters don't even fire a live round until day 3. Larry places a lot of emphasis on dry manipulation of the handgun -- he has very specific, very well substantiated opinions about how exactly to rack the slide (tuck the gun in, overhand the slide, slap your shoulder with the support hand while driving the gun forward with the strong hand, then return to the grip), how to grip the gun (thumbs down), and many other nuances of running the gun. He is also a very firm believer in the use of skip loading (ball and dummy), and much of what students do in days 3 and 4 is running the gun with mags loaded with 2 live and 10 dummies, 4 live and 10 dummies, etc, where the emphasis is on always achieving the perfect trigger press that does not disturb the sights. Driving the gun forward in anticipation has the shooter doing remedial trigger presses as well as dialing back the live to dummy ratio. We had 10 students in the class, running the gamut from very experienced instructors like Andy Stanford (another @jlw episode) and Tim Reedy (also a @jlw episode) and his AI Steve Baine, to a couple of LEOs from outside Chicago, to completely new shooters who had never fired a gun in their life. With Larry and four AIs we had an excellent instructor to student ratio, and we all got a lot of 1:1 attention. Most of the shooting was on 12" steel at 12 yards, so there was a good amount of emphasis on relatively precise shots. Some of the drills were at 7 yards, and we got the opportunity to practice at close contact distances towards the end of day 4.
Day 1 was at a Hyatt conference room, spent talking about the legal and moral aspects of shooting, Cooper's Combat Triad, the principles of marksmanship, and practical tips on being more aware in transitional spaces like parking lots, etc. Day 2 was all dry manipulations at The Farm at one of their outdoor training bays. Day 3 starts out with Larry shooting every student's gun from a rest at 12 yards to establish a POI, which will be referred to often over the remainder of the course. Day 3 also has students do drills that not only let them see but also feel the actions that Larry is talking about (like Massad Ayoob's exemplar drills), as well as a fair amount of skip loading. Day 4 has students trying some more rapid fire, much more skip loading, and close contact shooting. Students are expected to recite the four universal firearms rules verbatim every morning, and each day also starts with a volunteer-led prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. During breaks and at lunch, Larry tells stories of his 35 years (and tens of thousands of recruits) in LAPD, which often drive home the point of why it is that he insists students do what they do exactly how he teaches it.
To me, it was most interesting that Larry was able to take four days to run a basic firearms class. I often find that even relatively introductory classes quickly proceed from "here's the end that the bullets come out of" to shooting moving targets, and so seeing an instructor take their time and have enough students to devote four days to the full experience was welcome. There is also a very well structured progression of drills that helps Larry and his AIs separate and diagnose whether a student is having problems because of grip, the sights, or trigger manipulation, so that they can most effectively work with the student on a particular issue. During the skip loading portions of the class (days 3 and 4), the students got the opportunity to coach their peers, which was also very informative. For me, it is these skip loading drills that are my major takeaway from this class. It helps to give me a structured progression for practicing.
