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Thread: Karl Rehn - Tactical Scenarios 10/27/2019

  1. #1

    Karl Rehn - Tactical Scenarios 10/27/2019

    I lucked into an opportunity to attend Karl Rehn's Tactical Scenarios course on Sunday due to an unexpected vacancy (thanks for hooking me up, @jlw and Karl). It was a great class. It's light on lecture: you learn through seeing/doing and then immediately debriefing. I really appreciated that Karl put us into inspired-by-the-news scenarios rather than allowing the class to devolve into grabassery with guns: people had roles, they were expected to play them. It wasn't a gunfighting class so much as it was a decisionmaking class. We had what I felt was a great group of students who all played their roles well. As for me, this was the first time I had been placed into a situation dealing with real people in unknown situations with a gun in my hand; I previously had some experience with a video simulator and that was really it. I was happy that, when acting as a defender, I made no decision which I felt would have been ripe for CNN coverage or otherwise imparted negative legal consequences. Likewise, when I did fire shots as a defender, they hit their intended target -- and not anybody else (I was advised to act untrained when playing the violent felon, so I employed some "alternative shooting techniques" there -- in one case I simply held my pistol around a door and blind-fired into a room, miraculously striking my opponent in the knee).

    All in all, I had a great time and learned a lot. I would highly recommend both the instructor and the class.

    Some lessons I learned:

    • There are people you pay to do things for you. Sometimes it's best to let them do that job.

      Karl employed a scenario involving a suspicious person at the door. It was easily solvable with a 911 call; indeed, the alternative course of action proved disastrous for the student. Likewise, chasing after the shoplifter was easily recognized as the wrong thing to do.

    • Often, the best response is to walk away.

      Scenario after scenario, people listened to or saw what was happening around them and chose to walk away before things got worse. Heated argument occurring in the side room? Not their circus, not their monkeys. When you have a carry permit, the purpose of that permit is to assist you in getting home safely tonight and should not be construed as taking an oath to save the day in every bit of trouble you come across. While this should not be substituted for a moral discussion of when one must intervene, the point is that inserting oneself into trouble that's not yours can prove troublesome.

    • Planting oneself behind cover, waiting your turn, and delivering well-aimed fire is very effective.

      To my observation, no student who took up a covered position and performed some sort of counter-ambush was struck by gunfire. There’s no other way to say it: it works.

      In one scenario, I and other customers were forced into a back room by a pair of robbers. I felt there was nothing good that could come of this and thus took up a corner and pointed my gun at the door. When I saw a muzzle followed by a robber, I shot him. He and I exchanged several rounds, and I scored a few hits on him. He did not hit me during this exchange and backpedaled to the cover he’d left to move to my room.

      Where I went wrong was leaving that corner as we were exchanging fire – though he was backpedaling, I felt that standing there trading shots with him would inevitably result in me getting shot and so I introduced some movement into the situation. This allowed his partner to get an angle on me, and I had to exchange fire with him from the open. I was struck in my non-dominant shoulder as a consequence. What would have likely worked better was to maintain my corner position and make them come to me – or better yet, leave.

      Likewise, it is difficult as the aggressor to deal with somebody so situated. During my turns as a polite and friendly house guest and a polite and friendly convenience store patron, I found it quite difficult to exchange fire with somebody whom I only see a sliver of who seemed to have no trouble shooting at me.

    • It's pretty difficult to give a coherent and correct statement immediately after facing (simulated) violence

      In one scenario, the person I exchanged gunfire with had a very different memory than I did of what happened and how the gunfight initiated. Without devolving into a how-to-talk-to-the-police lesson, I'd simply advise caution here.

    • It's really difficult to rob or harm people outside of conversational distance.

      Somewhat self-explanatory. One of the benefits of playing the bad guy was learning that -- outside of targeted violence -- many of the bad things we seek to respond to with our firearms must, as a practical matter, occur at very close range. Rehn cross-referenced the Shivworks Managing Unknown Contacts material.

    • For a private citizen, holding somebody at gunpoint is fraught with peril – from both a tactical and, potentially, legal perspective.

      In my “home defender” scenario, the circumstances forced me to leave my bedroom to go to a family member. Along the way, I encountered a two-man burglary team. The first one I encountered was holding a laptop; in a “polite and professional tone,” I told him it would be best to leave. He did so immediately and without question. Upon encountering his partner, I observed him holding something – but could not see everything. I ordered him to “drop what’s in [his] hands.” Like his partner, he did so immediately; he too was told to run, and he did so. My scenario thus ended without shots being fired.

      Could I have ordered them both to the ground? Yes, but that would have meant controlling both of them – and I later learned that both were armed. When role-playing a friendly, polite, and well-spoken convenience store robber later in the day, I learned that it’s quite difficult to divide one’s attention between various people and maintain control of the situation. In this scenario, allowing the burglars to leave to burgle another day avoided that mess.

      Contrast this with another scenario: I role-played as a mentally disturbed homeless man causing a scene in the convenience store. Rehn had another role player play an inexperienced and over-eager carry permit holder, who spent about three minutes holding me at gunpoint. I splashed the contents of my cup at him, engaged in an educated discussion of our Constitutional rights, later threw the cup at him, questioned what he planned to do with the gun in a polite and respectful manner, and so on and so forth – in sum, he had no control over me and I got away with whatever I wanted to do while giving him no lawful reason to shoot at me. While the point of this scenario was to demonstrate the gun is not the answer to every problem, to me it also served to reinforce the difficulties of holding somebody at gunpoint.

    • Before issuing commands, think about what those commands may create.

      When dealing with an unknown person who had her hands in her pockets, a student ordered: “show me your hands.” She showed him her hands – and promptly shot him with the .38 revolver one of those hands contained. While this dovetails nicely with the previous point, it seemed quite perilous to order somebody to take their hands out of their pockets from a distance.

      In the home defender scenario I described above (where I gave both intruders the option to leave), both of the intruders responded during the debrief portion that they left because they felt they were able to. Contrasting this with another scenario (with admittedly much higher stakes than mine), a student repeatedly issued commands at gunpoint; Rehn, playing the aggressor, stated he felt this student gave him no out; in other words, the commands boxed him in. Of course, this is a sample size of three decent people pretending to be people who weren't that and cannot account for the determined, violent aggressor, but it seemed that somebody motivated solely by property stands to receive the benefit of the "drop my stuff and leave" bargain. It's obviously not the answer to every problem: I issued the commands because, while both of my intruders were "may" shoots (and arguably "should" shoots), they were not yet "must" shoots because neither presented the combination of a weapon and the ability to use it (I later learned both had concealed firearms) or some other pressing need to get shot in the face. Nevertheless, it was something which stuck out to me.

    • Verbal aggressiveness works.

      Somewhat self-explanatory.

  2. #2
    Karl did a very good job with this class. To those of you who host classes: host this one.

    I was pleased to see how well my "regulars" did in the class.
    I had an ER nurse in a class. I noticed she kept taking all head shots. Her response when asked why, "'I've seen too many people who have been shot in the chest putting up a fight in the ER." Point taken.

  3. #3
    Site Supporter SeriousStudent's Avatar
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    Mar 2012
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    Texas
    Thank you for the lessons learned.

  4. #4
    Site Supporter
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    Sep 2017
    Location
    South Louisiana
    Well done AAR!

    I've been through this class at Karl's range in TX and the lessons were very similar. It gave me lots to think about on the drive home.

  5. #5
    Member
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    Mar 2019
    Location
    Western US
    Nice AAR.

    I just took this class last month and posted my AAR. Sounds like Karl has some regular scenarios and mixes a few things things up as well. Glad to hear it went well.

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