AAR: FPF Training - Concealed Carry: Street Encounter Skills and Tactics 03/06-07/21

Location: Red Hill Range, Martin, GA (which is an excellent facility)
Dates: 06-07 March 2021
Course: Concealed Carry: Street Encounter Skills and Tactics
Instructors: This course was taught by John Murphy of FPF Training, assisted by Lee Weems of First Person Safety.

Introductory Materials: Murphy sends each student an approximately four hour series of videos detailing his thoughts on what the paradigm is for the civilian defensive gun user. The goal for much of it is to prime the student with pattern recognition for pre-assault behavior - the student sees a particular robbery or assault tactic and now recognizes that (and hopefully can articulate what it is later) and is thus better prepared to act. I won’t spoil it as it’s good material that is obviously the product of some significant effort on his part, but the video series itself is well worth the watch. This helps save time with the lecture portion. For me, this manner of delivery is new - I’ve seen some instructors begin with a classroom portion, but never to this level.

TD1

No live rounds were fired on this day. Murphy explicitly states is not a shooting course. I don’t consider that a negative, but it’s something that ought to be noted for those who expect to show up, load some mags, and start shooting drills after a short safety brief.

I would term TD1 as “life skills for the concealed carrier.” We began with some introductory lecture and follow up on the video series, with particular attention paid to pre-assault behavior. Once again, valuable material and this instruction alone is well worth the price of admission. We then went into some medical instruction, with students taught hands-on to apply tourniquets and pressure dressings. Students were issued ankle IFAKs because, as we would soon find out, Murphy would randomly call an injury throughout the class and require students to address it. Think IFAK dry fire and you’ll have the idea. Students were then instructed on the use of pepper spray by video, which was followed by a lunch break.

After lunch, pre-assault behavior was shown in person. Students were taught to move and verbalize, a la Craig Douglas’s Managing Unknown Contacts material, and students were given an opportunity to use that on an encroaching Murphy. Certain behaviors, such as fanning, were demonstrated for students. We then used our POM pepper spray trainers, learning how to draw them, how they fired, how to aim them, and their effective range. We were given a chance to spray Murphy.

This material was followed by various dry fire range work. Of note, Murphy teaches four ready positions: relaxed (hands at sides), bodyguard (arms crossed), the thinker (arm crossed, other hand at chin), and “he don’t look right” (the fence). Students were required to draw from each of these things, a departure from the typical gun range ready. Murphy teaches movement while drawing and advocates the side step within 5 yards or so. Students dry fired these movements, as well as retention shooting and some ripped-from-video scenario shots involving defending third parties.

TD2

Owing to the current ammunition shortage, the round count was billed at 250 rounds for the course. I fired approximately 185 for the day.

The live fire was very good. After some additional dry fire, students were timed for draws from each of the ready positions. Murphy notes that you may have a 1.3 second window with a 1.5 second draw solution, requiring the student to move, deflect, or otherwise create opportunity for a draw. The times served as a baseline so students knew their limitations and abilities. The program is very crawl-walk-run - additional complexities are added with each evolution. Students moved, drew and fired. Particularly enjoyable was the verbalization before firing - several students repeatedly fell into the trap of talking with (and not at) the bad guy, and that additional cognitive load demonstratively delayed draw times.

New to me was Murphy’s aptly named “Novel Stimulus Block.” Force science apparently tells us that we add about a quarter of a second to our reaction times reacting to a visual stimulus. So, Murphy brought in visual stimuli in the form of red and green lasers. Students were timed reacting to the “go” laser and once again had to verbalize with Murphy while waiting on the “go.” He also added a “stop,” and students then had to react and stop shooting. At a comfortable .4-.5s pace, this isn’t difficult - validating Bolke/Dobbs’s “assessment speed” shooting. We shot failure drills with the laser indicating which direction the head went (the targets had three), demonstrating that in real life, people who need failure drills often react to the first rounds fired and move around. We shot using other students’ movements in our peripheral vision as our stimulus to “go.” This involved shoot-offs between students, with one student calling the ready positions and being the initiator (to even things up, we’d shoot four runs, with lateral movement to the left being required for two and movement to the right being required for the other two). Other drills were included, and all in all these drills were highly beneficial to me as I’ve really only reacted to timers previously.

The culmination exercises were equally helpful. After shooting at a 3D target and having the opportunity to see where the vitals actually are at different angles, the 3D target began moving. We would have to verbalize with Murphy and depending on how that verbalization went, the target would react. Some scenarios called for pepper spray and others for shooting and still others required no force at all. Some involved escalation, others did not. In addition to having training value, these were just plain fun. We went back to paper targets and did work with the lasers, with one indicating shooting and the other pepper spray; sometimes the situation would escalate, sometimes it would require no force at all, and sometimes it would stay at pepper spray. Throughout the way, we’d of course have to verbalize with Murphy.

The class gives you a few different screwdrivers to use in addition to a hammer, as not every problem is a nail. Murphy describes the class as like asparagus - something people need, but may not necessarily want to do. That’s accurate, and unfortunately makes this a harder sell to somebody who just wants to have fun doing a pistol class. I think it’s highly beneficial to anybody who carries a gun, and would term it as an advanced level class. Anybody who wants to learn skills beyond the gun would be well served here.