Hopefully this is useful, just trying to give back whatever I can to the forum, given how much benefit I’ve received.
I attended the International Tactical Training Seminars (ITTS) Handgun 3 class on 4/26 – 4/27/2014.
This is the second class I attended from this organization; I took their “Handgun 2” class in January.
ITTS is run by Scotty Reitz, a 30 year LAPD veteran. He was the primary firearms and tactics instructor for Metro division including ‘D’ platoon (SWAT) for a good number of years. I believe the cadre is all active LAPD SWAT. The cadre member that I was introduced to with the least amount of experience was a 20-year SWAT veteran.
Link for the course:
http://www.internationaltactical.com/handgun_3.html
There were 19 students in this class. Every student had been in at least “handgun 2” previously. Class was a little over 1/4 LEO or military, and the rest civilians. This was a busy weekend at their range; they had 3 classes going on simultaneously (they have 4 different range bays). About half the time we had 3 instructors for the 19 students; the other half the time we had two instructors. In addition they had 2 support technicians / armorers for the 3 classes. Their private range is just past a large public range- the Angeles Shooting Range. (more on this later)
Day 1
Day 1 started at 2pm, and went to 10pm to give us about 2.5 hours of low light shooting. Both days start with an absolutely riveting safety lecture that explores the “whys” behind firearms safety in general and each of the four safety rules, including multiple examples of failures to follow each rule (well, obviously usually combinations of rule violations) that resulted in negligent discharges. One of the concepts they stress is everyone is an RSO, not just the instructors. If you can catch Scotty doing any even slightly unsafe action you win a case of beer; brand of your choice.
Day 1 then dived right in to walkback drills from 5 back to 30 yards. We did various combinations of single shots, doubles, single head shots, and failure drills. The instructors pointed out one reason for all the single hand focus was to make sure the low-light shooting later in the day would be as productive as possible. There was virtually no theory to start this other than a blazing-fast reminder of what we had learned in handgun 2. All the theory this day was covered in response to what the instructors were seeing us struggle with. Of course, by the time we had reached the end of the day they covered all the basics; it was just virtually all in problem-solving mode. They also instructed us to go as slow as we needed to in order to establish clean lines, but to press the pace throughout class until we started to either lose the smoothness and clean lines or lose our hits. First we did two-hand, then strong hand, then weak hand. Weak hand started from a low ready position; everything else was from the holster. The class was definitely faster-paced with higher expectations than handgun 2.
Next, we went through reloading drills, covering in-battery emergency reloads, out-of-battery emergency reloads, and tactical reloads. Typical drills were 1R2 or something similar for the emergency reloads. Once we covered tactical reloads, we were required to do a tactical reload after every course of fire before reholstering, for the remainder of the course. About a quarter of the class had pretty weak reloads; we went through these in depth. The ITTS procedure for tac reloads involves placing the partial mag between your pinky and ring fingers. I gave this a good effort all of the first day, but it doesn’t work as well for me as the technique of placing the partial mag between my thumb and forefinger. At the beginning of the second day a discussed this briefly with one of the instructors, then switched back to my “normal” technique.
After reloads we did malfunction drills, covering all three types. By then it was dinner time.
After dinner we switched over to low light shooting. This began with a review of the index and Harries techniques. Then we went through a couple hours of shooting. We started on paper targets but did most of our shooting on black-painted poppers; I think at 8 and 12 yards. Everyone made a few passes with each technique. We also did some shooting without lights, before it got completely dark. A few people didn’t have night sights, that section was a real struggle for them. Next we added reloads into the exercises. Then we worked through man-on-man drills. The guy next to me in one of those drills actually managed to incur a type 3 malfunction. Watching him diagnose and clear that in the dark was “enlightening”, so to speak. After a fair amount of work we were allowed to explore whatever we wanted: using weapon-mounted lights, more no-light shooting, or any other technique of our choice.
Day 1 weirdness: in the middle of our weak hand shooting walkbacks, a pickup truck suddenly appeared, driving across the landscape about 200 yards away, between us and our ultimate backstop. Good thing nobody was launching rounds over the berm. I think that dirt road has a gate and about 20 different signs warning people not to go back there, and I think you have to get into the main part of the public shooting range before you can get to the road. None of the instructors had seen that happen before. We took a break while someone called the public range and got a range worker to go grab the idiots.
Day 2
Day 2 went from 9am-5pm. After the safety lecture, we split into 2 groups. Half went into shooting at moving targets. ITTS has built a contraption that moves at 90 degrees to the shooter, where you have maybe 10 yards worth of travel that you are allowed to shoot at. The speed can be set at various levels. For our class it was generally set at 9mph. Scotty gave us a lecture on how to do this sort of shooting in theory and in practice, and then demonstrated the theory with a single cold shot at the moving target that was within maybe a half-inch of bullseye. We did a bunch of runs on that from the ready, then from the holster, from somewhere between 7 and 10 yards. Then we went up to 5-7 yards, and did head shots. Those head shots on moving targets were kittening hard for me, I had to stay with the “from the ready” position to get any hits.
The other half of the class practiced 3 different kneeling techniques, and prone shooting. Then after a bit over an hour we switched places. My beat-up knees and shoulders didn’t do so well with some of the kneeling and prone stuff, but I managed to get through it without falling apart. They suggest you bring knee pads to the class; I was super-glad I did.
We kept the class split in two sections for most of the day. I’ll just describe the order my section did things, but you get the idea I’m sure. Next up my section did an obstacle course where you hauled around a length of big chain meant to represent a downed partner. Shots included maybe a 20-yard kneeling barricade shot, 25-yard prone shots, then some standing shots at poppers, and finishing with a hostage shot with the target being about half of a 6-inch circle of steel exposed behind a steel silhouette hostage. Lots of hits on hostages on that exercise (including one from me), what with the huffing and puffing from dragging that heavy chain everywhere.
After the obstacle course we did some long-range work, firing at a silhouette target that was 145 yards away. That really uncovered who was struggling with trigger press and follow-through. Everyone went one at a time, with the instructor acting as your spotter. I would have been hopeless without a spotter. It was generally my 3rd shot before I managed to walk my shots into the target.
Next we worked the hostage rack, which was a mechanism where the bad guy started out completely behind the hostage, then moved out to a random side so that the bad guy head was mostly or completely exposed for maybe 1 – 1.5 seconds. The instructor could juke the thing around and try to fake you out also. I did OK when shooting from low ready; I only got a shot off a third of the time when drawing from the holster, and only got a hit maybe 1/3 of that. At least I never shot the hostage.
After the hostage rack we did shooting on the move. We covered moving straight towards the target, and also moving straight forward but firing at a target that was a few feet laterally away from the point we were walking towards. This was the first time I had done any shooting on the move. It was actually considerably easier than I expected.
We ended with some more shooting from prone and shooting at speed on paper targets.
Day 2 weirdness: I was waiting my turn to do the obstacle course when suddenly I hear what sounds like a super-fast little hornet buzzing by me. I stood there for a second digesting what I heard, then yell out “hey did anyone else hear a ricochet just then?!” Just a bit later an instructor is calmly telling us to get over next to the big thick wall that separates the range bays RIGHT NOW. Holy Kitten, Scotty was not a happy camper. One of his team contacted the main range next to us to try to figure out what the kitten was going on. Turns out some independent new instructor had decided to be creative and point his shooters in a non-standard direction on one of the public range bays. I guess what I heard wasn’t a ricochet but an unobstructed round flying over my head. I don’t think it would have been possible for any round to get down to our level, but it was still not the most comforting experience in the world.
Notes about philosophies of ITTS
It’s probably pretty obvious from their cadre: ITTS is solely focused on defensive shooting. All 3 instructors in the class had personally resolved multiple shootings.
Note in their handgun I class I think ITTS teaches essentially a Weaver stance, with the strong leg positioned pretty far back and straight, and a corresponding significant front knee bend. That frankly had me a little skeptical when they discussed it at the start of their handgun 2 class. However they didn’t force us isosceles shooters over to weaver, and it generally ended up being a non-event. In handgun 3 the subject didn’t really even come up, expect for of course whenever the instructors were demoing a point you could see it. Oh, and also, all the instructors are 1911 guys. If you are a 1911 shooter you would love it.
My takeaways, final thoughts, etc.:
All the reloading practice we got did me good. I hardly ever get to practice reloading outside of dry fire, because I am stuck in an indoor range and the mags would go bouncing out where you are not allowed to venture. The first hour or two I was irritated that my reloads weren’t going quite as smoothly as in dry fire, but by the end of the weekend they were feeling good. I also made definite progress in my low light shooting compared to the last class.
Wow, if only I had access to those moving target and hostage rack setups, you’d never get me off the range. I’d be broke from all the ammo expenses. The bad news is I don’t really know how to work on anything that would help shooting at moving targets, other than working the fundamentals, and actually doing more shooting on moving targets. Hostage rack it is more obvious that improvements in fundamentals alone should directly translate to better performance.
I’ve made some fairly recent improvements to my trigger pull. I kept those improvements for part of the class and they were working, but lost them towards the end of the second day when under significant time pressure. I’m looking forward to cementing that more over the next month or so of dry fire. And in general, it looks like the thing I have to guard against is not to start bumping the trigger a little when under new / heightened stress. A lot of my targets on a new exercise started out mostly good hits, but all those hits to the left of center. If I could do that same group actually centered on the target I’d be a lot better off.
In general, this was a great class for me. It started off just at the right pace, and the 2nd day was challenging but not overwhelming. The class was good enough I would take it over in a heartbeat. I talked to the instructors about exactly that: whether I should do repeat handgun 3 or go on to the advanced class, since I was a little concerned the advanced class was a little more LEO-oriented. The instructors said to go ahead and take the advanced class next because it was a progression and only had one main exercise (shooting from a moving vehicle) that probably wouldn’t apply. Still, I’d easily get my moneys’ worth if I just did this class again. In any case, this has given me enough subject matter to work on for a few months in dry fire and shooting by myself in the indoor range I use, before I go to another class.
Reply With Quote
). To say "1911 centric" is an understatement. We used the same technique originally as I was taught with our P-220's with no issues. When we went to the USP45 F, HUGE issue. I came up with a different way to handle the tactical reload when I was shooting a P-226 (off duty and competition) that was what we went to with the HK USP45's and that is all I use and teach now. It is what most others came up with as well, using the more dextrous thumb, index and middle fingers. It works far better, especially under stress and with larger mags. I have shown it to Scotty numerous times, and I am actually surprised he is still teaching the pinky ring finger thing as the more updated technique is very much "cleaner". I have been loading the newer way in a ton of ITTS classes with no issues and nobody tried to change it. Usually, they will leave you alone on techniques IF you are performing well with it.
. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
Originally Posted by nyeti
