December 10-11, 2022, saw the first of what will hopefully be multiple iterations of Citizen Defense Research's Contextual Revolver class, taught by Caleb Giddings (@jetfire). We were hosted by @SeriousStudent and used the police range and classroom of the Dallas Pistol Club.
The TL,DR is that I really liked the class. I came away with a much better understanding of my gear and technique, and I saw my revolver shooting skills improve significantly just over those two days. I'm not a revolver guy. Yet. But, I'm working on it. My deep dive into firearms training started in 2020, and I'm just a regular civilian. I took a one-day revolver-specific class earlier this year (with Steve Shields of Cerberus Training) which gave me some information, and fortunately I have more experienced friends like @Flamingo and @RevolverRob to lean on if I have wheelgun questions. Given that this was the prototype run of the class, expect this to change as Caleb evolves the POI. With those preliminaries out of the way, let's get into it.
Day one started with Caleb giving us a bit of an overview of the wheelgun -- it's advantages and disadvantages (eg abuse vs neglect, simple operation, ammo capacity) and where it might fit in well relative to the skill level of the shooter (rank beginners, or relatively experienced shooters). We covered revolver grip (including the "you'll get your thumb blown off" thumbs forward grip -- no thumbs were blown off during the taking of this class) and trigger manipulation. Caleb also did a gear survey -- almost everyone was running 38/357 of some sort, though there were two people with Chiappa Rhinos with 9mm moon clips and there was also an LCR in .32cal. My own gear was a Wiley Clapp GP100, and a 3" MR73 out of a JM Custom Kydex AIWB holster (more on that later). Given that this was the first time the class was being offered, the rest of the CDR cadre was taking the class, and there were some other damn fine shooters taking the class as well. The presence of the other CDR staff meant that other experienced instructors could assist with monitoring for safety concerns and for providing additional context when discussions arose, and it was a very valuable part of the class. We then headed out to the range. After some familiarization shots, Caleb had us shoot Wayne and DB's revolver Super Test, so we quickly found ourselves shooting at up to 15'. Nothing like a spicy start. There were plans to revisit that Super Test towards the end of TD2, but the weather played havoc with the class schedule and we didn't have a chance to come back to it. After that, we focused on working on revolver fundamentals -- grip, and trigger. Caleb is not a fan of staging the trigger (rapidly pressing to lock-up, pausing, refining the sight picture and then completing what is effectively a SA shot) in most situations, and that was a crutch I had picked up at the previous class so I had to learn to discard that. Caleb did a good job of minding the line, providing individual corrective or positive feedback of what your hammer and/or cylinder were doing as you were pressing the trigger, and by the end of day two I definitely found myself mostly rolling through the trigger pull. We took only a short lunch, and then the rain and thunder (and the occasional tornado siren) set in, but despite everyone being soaked, we pressed on. It was especially that afternoon that the holster became somewhat of an issue for me. In my every day, I carry appendix. So, I assumed that appendix revolver would be no different. It turned out to be quite different, and I found myself apologizing to Caleb for nearly being "that guy" as I couldn't reholster safely and efficiently. The GP100 AIWB 2.0 holster from JM Custom Kydex works funny on someone a bit more rotund like me. Specifically, between the cylinder and the wing, it requires that the gun be torqued in much more than I am used to, or else it will hang up on the trigger guard. Things got better on TD2, but it was very much an eye-opening experience for me.
Day two was mercifully dry. The course material introduced reloading, especially using speed loaders, though speed strips and other techniques were briefly mentioned. Most students reloaded using moon clips or speed loaders. Having shot most of of my round nose ammo on day one, I was shooting wad cutters on day two. Boy, was that ever a mistake. Speed loaders and wad cutters do not a happy combination make. It didn't help that I shot TD1 with the GP100, for which I had multiple Safariland Comp IIIs (L Frame), but for TD2 I chose the MR73 (K Frame), for which I only had one Comp III, with a couple of Comp IIs and an HKS. The Comp IIIs worked the best, holding the wad cutters rigid. One of the other students had SL Variants that I played with, and they worked phenomenally well for round nose ammo, but were holding the ammo too loosely for wad cutters and I ran into all sorts of alignment issues. I again found myself holding up the class at times, this time with my reloads. The afternoon had us shooting the Bianchi Cup course of fire, which had us out to almost 50', and then shooting the Air Force pistol qualifier. Both of those were picked by Caleb because of his background as a competitive shooter and as an Air Force instructor, and they're different than the typical qualifiers that people shoot, so it was super interesting to take part in these. We also had a brief opportunity to check out other people's gear -- I got to shoot a Korth Mongoose, some folks shot my MR73, @SeriousStudent brought some interesting guns. I wish that part had been longer, but the schedule had been messed up by the weather. Shooting those two courses of fire ate up most of the afternoon.
There were a couple of things that stood out for me in this class. One -- revolvers are super easy to nerd out on, but Caleb resisted those urges and mostly kept us out of ratholes. We covered a lot of stuff, and it was core, relevant stuff. Two, Caleb's background meant we got to do somewhat different things. Both are big thumbs up from me.
As you can probably tell by now, I really enjoyed the class and thought I got a lot out of it. There are some classes I've taken where I felt like I was drowning. There have been others where I felt I learned relatively little. This class, at least for me, really struck the right balance between pushing me and me being able to keep up. At the end of the day, this class will not make you a revolver expert, proficient in all aspects of owning and shooting them. We didn't touch on maintenance, or loop loaders and dump pouches, for example. However, for me, this class has given me the confidence to bring a revolver to other shooting classes and attempt to run them with that instead of my EDC guns. I feel like I walked away with enough proficiency to be able to keep a revolver fed and running on the line, and I look forward to doing just that. I am also looking forward to retaking this class and seeing how the material has evolved. I expect great things.
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Originally Posted by JHC
