AAR: Fighting Pistol with James Yeager, 2-Day 5-22/5-23

[Chuteur]

Just FYI on Instructor Zero: He spent a year as a conscript in an Italian Para unit. He has no SOF or operational experience but in fairness I don't know that he has claimed either. I think people simply make a lot of assumptions.

Below is from a source in Italy in a position to know:



Ben Steoger was an Arby's Manager, it doesn't mean he can't teach me anything about shooting. Zero seems like a fun dude to spend a day at the range with, if he stays in his lane and can teach me something I have nothing against him.

As for Yeager - I have no comment.

Thanks for that, live and learn. I had been told he was para/sf, nothing about ops experience. He seems to get a lot of work though.

I also worked weekends behind the bar in a Sicilian run trattoria (in the UK) before joining the army, I'm still a crap shot though.

[Chuteur]

Yeah, pretty sure the Arby's manager thing was a joke.

Casey Ryback was a cook.


Sorry, I'll go do 50 push ups.

[Ed L]

Yeah, pretty sure the Arby's manager thing was a joke.

I believe Stoeger used his pistol instruction background to wrangle a part time gig at some PD as a pistol instructor:

https://www.manta.com/c/mm66h0p/arby-s

https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2i62is/ben-stoeger

LL, considering how Stoeger trolled this forum and said nasty things about Todd on his own forum . . . nevermind.

[Ed L]

A carousel of Tactical Response fuckery:

photographer downrange video:



Photographer downrange with student:



Guys going into shoot house while guy on right with weapon circled in yellow is muzzling people across from him and people going in door. This was from a Tac Response video. They obviously did not notice it or care about it since it was included in video. I could swear a certain lady from this forum did the video capture for this.



It came from this video which has an enormous amount of unsafe practices in the shoot house, like the instructor downrange in the room: -I believe it was at the 1:19 mark where the guy muzzles the people across from him and going in the door.



I am far from a shoot house expert. Pointing out all of the problems with this video would be a part time job, would require me to do it frame by frame. So my list is far from inclusive.

First, not everyone is wearing body armor or helmets capable of stopping rifle rounds. This is standard safety procedures for a shoot house.

Second, they have way too many people going into the shoot house at one time. People who don't know what they are doing judging from their movement.

If you have too many people in the room, combined with people moving improperly and not going where they should, it is dangerously easy for someone to step in front of someone else's line of fire. Now add the lack of body armor and you have a set up for a tragedy.

I would like to see someone set that video to the music from the song "It's Raining Men," but then again I saw the movie Magic Mike more times than any other heterosexual male in the US.

Below is a picture where the class is doing shooting on the move and there is a guy in a wheel chair who can't keep up for obvious reasons. So once every gets done and is standing by their targets, one of the instructor pushes the guy in the wheelchair, allowing him to shoot while everyone else is standing downrange from him. This is especially dangerous because the ground was splattered with empty cases and rocks, so the wheelchair could have gone over something disrupting the shooter's balance, having him put a round off the target into one of the people downrange.

[Jay Cunningham]

I wanted to note (after seeing it referred to above) that I've been through multiple live fire shoot house iterations with 5.56mm carbines and I never once had hard plates or a helmet. This was with Larry Vickers and Ken Hackathorn.

Was this the right thing? Was this unsafe? Would I do it again now?

I don't know, but I wanted to mention that two "big name" highly respected instructors did not observe this protocol either.

[octagon]

I'm curious as I don't know the answer but is there commonly used helmets that are rifle rated? I am aware of the body armor rated for rifles but I thought most helmets were not intended to defeat rifle rounds but used for impact and shrapnel or rounds deflected.

[Lester Polfus]

I'm not aware of any helmets that are rifle rated, but my info is at least 10 years out of date.

I think in agencies where rifle plates are issued/available, policy that says when you are doing team evolutions in a shoot house, everyone will wear plates make sense. If you are teaching non-.gov employees, requiring that they show up for class with rifle plates may cut into your enrollment.

I'm not an expert on shoot houses either, nor was I ever a special operator operating specially in special operations, but I did receive shoot house training with a team. The first two days were with blue guns, starting at a very slow pace. If you muzzled another guy with your blue gun you were corrected immediately. If you argued that you didn't really muzzle the guy, your assignment to the course was re-evaluated. Repeated violations meant you got to pack your shit and leave.

From there we moved to sim guns. Muzzling another guy at this point caused your your assignment to the course to be re-evaluated. Shooting a team member with a sim gun meant you packed your shit and went somewhere else. Once we moved to live ammo (again starting at a very slow pace) we were told that muzzling another guy would mean you had to pack your shit and leave, but by then they'd weeded out the people that didn't get it.

I have essentially no need to re-visit team tactics in a shoot house at this point in my life, but if I did, and it wasn't being taught the way I outlined above, I would not want to play.

[Wayne Dobbs]

I recall that Pat Rogers required plates and bucket for all attendees of his shoot house courses. Nothing against Ken or Larry, whom I hold in the highest of regards, but I think it's a good idea to require such equipment. Plus, the majority of students who seek out such training will likely already have that gear.

[Lester Polfus]

So I thought a little more about this....

Teaching room clearing/CQB/tire house stuff to anybody off the street who wants to sign up is an interesting problem. If you are providing the training to an employee, you can order them out of the pool. Plus you've probably selected people based on past observations of their skills and ability to learn.

If you are providing this to the general public, the only real barrier is a credit card with a enough room for the tuition and toys. You can shuffle pretty much anybody with normal hand eye coordination and a willingness to follow instructions through a handgun 101 course, but that breaks down moving through a narrow hallway and engaging targets with four other people around you.

Plus, people who take these courses are looking for entertaining, exciting experience, which is at odds with the correct way to teach this stuff. Moving at a slow walk through a tire house with a plastic M9, for the twentieth time between morning briefing and lunch is boring as fuck, but the right way to build the reps you need to go faster. Based on the videos I've seen, and what I've heard from folks who have attended, what Yeager is providing is more like a training montage from an action movie.

So yeah, people should have access to this kind of training because freedom and 'Merica, but I'd give it a real hard look before participating.

[Joe in PNG]

Think of it as Real Gun fantasy camp. You get to make beleive at being an operator, but without the boring stuff.