AAR: TLG LE Pstol (AFHF/ SOM) OCT 8-10, 2012
I have been following Pistol-Training for a couple of years as well as Pistol-Forum. I attended Aim Fast Hit Fast in College Station TX earlier this year and was very impressed with Todd’s techniques, methods of instruction, and reasoning for the above.
I am the lead firearms instructor at my agency and try to keep our program as relevant as possible. We have been teaching the press out to our entire agency this year. I felt that it would be worthwhile to have Todd come in and teach Aim Fast Hit Fast to the core group of firearms instructors and we added in 4 narcotics officers who routinely carry concealed on duty. I wanted to follow AFHF with more time spent on shooting on the move and specific discussion on instructional techniques and department policy for the instructors only.
Todd is the first to tell you he is not a cop and does not teach tactics. He does teach shooting and he does teach agencies all over the nation, so that gives him insight into what a broad range of agencies are doing. His techniques are relevant to what you see in gunfights on dash cams all over the country. Many agencies do things the way they have always been done because it has worked fine so far. Todd is an unbiased person looking at it from the outside. That perspective is very valuable. It allows you to concentrate on what is important to the problem at hand.
Todd and I discussed my agency’s needs and he quoted a very good rate for 3 days of training. We were ready to go.
I won’t recite the play by play of AFHF. Anyone reading this board can find a better review than I could do anyway. Essentially it was AFHF with cops. That means there was some good shooting, lots of bad shooting, offensive language, friendly(?) banter, and bruised egos.
My agency has a very liberal firearms policy at this time, so the mix of guns was interesting. There were several Glock 17s, 19s, and 34s. There was an HK45, 45C, and a P30. There was a Sig P229 and four 1911s. Two of the 1911s were full size and had only a couple of malfunctions each while the 2 sub 5 inch 1911s were of the tap rack, disassemble, reassemble variety. I had to loan 1 of those guys one of my 5 inch 10911s so he could get through the course. About half the class ran concealed and half from duty gear. The gun issues are a big problem here and I was hoping to get some outsider influence to help make some changes.
This being my second time through AFHF, I only took a page of notes during the lecture. It nicely dovetailed with the page of notes from the last class. I didn’t write anything down twice.
Todd does a very good job of explaining his techniques. His method is simple and effective. An example is when you do a reload, grab the spare magazine and immediately index your elbow into your ribs to get the mag in place for insertion into the gun. A very simple explanation of a task that should be simple, but often isn’t.
Oh, you want to know about the shooting? As I said it was AFHF with cops, but after class we broke out the steel and a dueling tree. There were lots of sad faces on the line and lots of laughing behind the line.
We did a walk back drill drawing to an MGM B/C target with a 2.5 second par. Todd won that at 60 yards. The next day we were short on time so we lowered the par to 2 seconds and I think we finished that up at 35 yards. That half second is sort of a big deal.
We did the action reaction drill man on man. While we know that the “gunfights” of the old west didn’t happen like they did on “Gunsmoke”. Law enforcement officers often see furtive movements on traffic stops and other situations. That fast draw upon seeing the furtive movement can often stop the suspect from doing something silly. Having the confidence that you can draw fast enough to defend yourself gives you the ability to look and assess just what the fool is yanking out of his pocket before you shoot him. Both prevent shootings. Since we know that the gun isn’t some magic talisman that wards off evil, the fast, efficient draw also works if you have to shoot someone.
We also worked the dueling tree two handed, strong hand only, and weak hand only. That is humbling. It’s interesting how that can drive my stress levels up enough to forget about the bumpy things on top of the gun even though I haven’t had that issue in real gunfights or force on force scenarios here or abroad in at least the last 7 years. Subtle differences in stress can be huge. Just because you did well in one gunfight doesn’t mean it will be the same next time.
The third day started with Todd leading a discussion about several things specific to our agency, including the firearms policy. We also talked about how to encourage officers to shoot better, both the top shooters and the lower end of the scale. Todd had excellent recommendations and was very helpful.
We did some shooting on the move and more man on man drills on the third day. We also shot some hostages. Well we tried to shoot the hostage taker, but sometimes we were slow and the hostages died. Sometimes we were inaccurate and our shots didn’t neutralize the bad guy and he killed the hostage. Sometimes we accidentally shot the hostage. Having made the shot on an actual hostage rescue, I especially enjoyed the drill because I think the time pressure added to the very small target recreates the stress level nicely. The signed dead hostage targets will be displayed in my office. It’s a good reminder to work harder on precision at speed.
Everyone saw great improvement in their shooting. Most all of the FAST scores were noticeably better. I had 2 instructors shoot in the 5’s and another in the 6’s.
I shot a 7.03 at the last class and was able to better that this time. I can shoot in the 6 second range clean and the low 5 second range with a body miss. My clean scores dropped by almost a half second through the 3 days and my runs with misses were far faster than I have been capable of with any regularity up to this time. Luckily that gives me lots of room for continued improvement.
Todd easily met all of my goals for the class. My instructors are better and are already passing on some of the things Todd uses to teach the techniques. The narcotics guys are better as well.
In addition, the guys who had small 1911s have been Glock shopping, one guy traded an HK45C for a lighter recoiling P30, and several guys are looking for better holsters.
We learned a lot and in turn it should improve our entire agency. I already have requests from guys in the class to bring Todd back.
Great job, Todd!
