Here’s an after-action review of the Advanced Tactical Pistol class held by Ernest Langdon in 2015. It was excellent, and I would take it again and again if I could.


Academic Ideas

The stated purpose of the class is to train for performance under stress. Three things were important for this. Awareness is the continual maintainance of the proper condition in the classic Cooper color code. It is the general awareness that It Could Happen To Me. The Warrior Mentality is the acceptance of and preparedness for death and killing. Bullets are expected. The bullet that gets me doesn’t have my name on it, but rather “To Whom It May Concern.” We can’t win a checkers game without getting jumped. We do what it takes to win and never give up. The killer often walks calmly up to the man who has gone fetal and executes him. Having Subconscious Ability is to shoot like we tie shoes or drive. Multitasking is fake! People get hurt when the mind is not in the single task at hand. Combat experience doesn’t magically give this ability, but it does act as a bullshit filter.

There are three levels of learning. Basic Learning focuses on the basics. It is often good to return to this to break down more complex things. Focused Learning concentrates on one thing. If we’re good at our grip, stance, and looking on the front sight automatically, we can stop thinking about that and work on something else, say, trigger control. Training should occur at this level. Subconscious Performance is achieved when shooting becomes automatic like tying shoes. Our mind is on the fight at hand instead of the mechanics of shooting. Come to think of it, only subconscious performance is possible in an exciting gunfight. We just want to have our subconscious performance at a high level.

Competition is a great tool to introduce stressors in training. Jim Cirillo, veteran of many gunfights, described shaking like a leaf at the Bianchi Cup shooting line. Man-on-man contests are fun, and require one to fuck up just a little less than the other guy. Simulations are like video games with real people. Force-on-force exercises are an excellent tool. But, the simulated bullets have to hurt! The role players need to be good educators too, not people who are there to show the student how much they suck. The scenarios should not be un-winnable.

All modern, major brand guns are good. But, they all break sometimes. They are also all bad, gun companies being the cost-cutting businesses they are. If a few guns go out with a 5000 round problem, it often takes years to get the information back to the manufacturer.


Shooting

Stance is the modern isosceles. It is an “athletic” position. Feet are slightly staggered. Fast moving is allowed without drop step. The lighter one is, the more aggressive the stance may have to be. There is a little “shrug” to the shoulders that occurs naturally while startled. Head is ahead of shoulders, shoulders are in front of hip. Not too much butt sticking out! This may be a little slower from the head-up IPSC stance, but may be much more natural. Elbows are bent. The left arm may be straighter due to the asymmetry of hand placement on the gun.

There are three aspects of grip, which allow for control of gun and its movements: Leverage is optimized with the gun as low as possible in the hand. Maximize surface contact on the grip as much as possible. Pressure on the grip should be “as hard as holding a hammer.” The more skilled the carpenter/shooter, the harder he grips. Grip as hard as possible without gun shake. The support hand needs to have a forward cant for strength. Even the classic Weaver position featured the canted wrist. Support index finger on the trigger guard is a no-go. Isolating the index finger drastically reduces grip strength of the rest of the hand. The support thumb is not as important for the grip. The support hand is weaker—more effort is needed to have the same grip. “70%” grip from the left hand turns out to be the proper 50%. Ernest advocates a small amount of push-pull to prevent gun hands from separating with recoil.

The double action shot can be mastered. The “now” syndrome can be pronounced and needs to be overcome. Finger placement can be aggressive—perhaps different from the classic finger pad position. We can get on the trigger very aggressively during the draw stroke, and be ready to break the shot at the end of the draw stroke. This may look slower, but is actually much faster than fast, jerky movements of getting the gun on target and then pulling the trigger through. After that, the shots are nice and easy single action.

There are four phases of trigger management. Pretravel is as the slack is taken up. Breaking the trigger fires the gun. Overtravel completes the stroke. Reset brings the trigger back. Only #2 is important! Overtravel—and even “followthrough”—is less important, as the bullet is long gone. A modern idea of sloooowly resetting the trigger is particularly bad. Ernest is very against “pinning” the trigger to the frame.

Freehand Shooting: The strong arm isn’t in a straight line with the gun. There is some asymmetry in the isosceles stance just because of the asymmetry of the grip on the gun. The weak hand is somewhat cocked. When drawing, grip is not finalized at the ready position—it needs to adjust to the final grip as the gun is extended.

One-Hand Shooting: Square off to target. Extending the arm too much disengages the chest muscles and weakens the stance. The increased distance changes the sight picture as well. The squared off stance is better

Shooting from Cover: Don’t crowd cover! Staying back from cover increases field of view, decreases exposure, decreases danger from fragments. A previous motorcycle safety instructor says the same things to riders to stay away from obstructions and corners in a similar way—to increase view. When standing, lead with exposed side foot. When kneeling, put down the exposed side knee. Ernest favors lace-down kneeling, to reduce patella pressure.

When reloading, I bet it is faster to use the magazines-pass-in-the-air technique than my weak-hand-pulls-gun-to-hit-mag-release technique. It also has the advantage of determining I have an extra mag before dumping the one in the gun. Must practice.


Drills

Dot torture
“NOW” drill with prepped trigger
Cadence: 1, 0.3, 0.25 second splits
Snap eyes to next target
6-6-6 Free/SHO/WHO
2-reload-2-reload-2
Target moves, I move, both move


Equipment

One purpose for me in this class was to explore my DA/SA gun as well as appendix carry. Ernest Langdon is an advocate of both.

The JM Custom Kydex AIWB holster was excellent. The Supertuck feature is essential for comfort. To this point it is the only possible IWB holster I can possibly use in real life. It is quite comfortable, and I can carry even a full sized gun with comfort and concealment.

I don’t usually carry IWB, but when I do, I carry AIWB.

However, I have some doubts about appendix carry as a concept, at least for single-action (or essentially single action) guns and the casual shooter. Ernest makes a point that re-holstering AIWB is like handling a live nuclear weapon. But, a few members of the class had highly customized striker-fired guns with presumably light triggers. They all had t-shirts which floated into the holsters juuuust a little bit. They simply did not re-holster with the proper gravitas. There are already numerous butts and legs with Glocky holes in this world. AIWB is a niche technique for now with very few practitioners, but it is only a matter of time until someone puts a bullet in his groin instead of the buttock. Perhaps the Gadget will be a requirement for the Glock. One student had a rare H&K LEM gun with a thumb safety. Ernest seemed to think that was crazy, but I think it was crazy like a fox! That would be a great appendix gun.


Disagreements

Ernest has some differences with Bill Rogers. Ernest hates the idea of slowly riding the trigger to reset and quickly mashing the next shot. This is indeed bad, and think everyone can agree on that. Earnest’s technique is to very quickly reset and prep the trigger during recoil as to get ready to break another shot. “The sights are the gas pedal, not the reset.” As a result, he is very much against pinning the trigger back on the frame. This is a difference with Bill Roger’s flip-and-press technique, which allows for the pinning. There is still no slow reset. Indeed, the “flip” gets the finger off the trigger so hard it can whack the front of the trigger guard. I’ll have to try practicing Ernest’s technique consciously. Certainly, I’m quite used to pinning the trigger in slow fire, and, possibly damnably, in dry fire. Ernest makes a good point, but I’m not sure I should abandon the flip-and-press.

Ernest makes a good point of “proximity negates skill.” Any shmoe can shoot at an arm’s length. He stresses not shooting from retention but simply make effort to move and separate. This is a good idea. This is a little different from Craig Douglas who has constructed an entire curriculum on clinched shooting.


Tidbits

Strobe on a flashlight is great for disorienting assailant.
Bill Wilson personally owns hundreds of Berettas and really likes them.
Adults can’t learn more than 3 steps or so in any sequence.
A full can of 3M adhesive is good for about 100 targets.


Stay safe!