So this weekend I was at the range for FAS-5, an advanced tactical handgun class from the Firearms Academy of Seattle. Despite the name, FAS is located in beautiful rural Lewis County, roughly halfway between Seattle and Portland just off the I-5 corridor. In all, the class was exhausting, educational, and stressful. It was also serious fun.
FAS classes are of two types: pure shooting skills, and tactical skills. Pure shooting skills, of course, are just that. You learn how to safely handle your firearm in a manner appropriate for self-defense -- how to hit what you're aiming at and (more importantly) how not to hit what you don't want to hit. Tactical skills are a bit different and a bit more exciting to learn. In tactical classes, you experience what it is like to use your gun in a defensive situation. That's the kind of class I took this weekend. So what was it like?
Saturday morning, the class commenced with a short classroom lecture introducing the basics of team house-clearing tactics and providing an overview of the weekend ahead. Marty, the lead instructor, also introduced his assistants: Dean, Heath, Art, and Larry. There were eight students in the class.
Upon adjourning to the range, we worked on left-handed skills (actually, "weak-handed" -- but everyone in the class was a right-handed shooter). For some of us, this was the first intensive left-handed shooting we'd done. After getting us up to speed, including reloads and malfunction clearances, Marty had us shoot the FAS-2 qualifier entirely left-handed. I was pleased with my performance here; though I could have done better, my left-handed score was better than my original right-handed score when I first took FAS-2 as a beginning shooter three years ago.
After the left-handed shooting, we ran through a couple of 360-bay exercises, both of which were fairly high intensity. The 360 bay has berms surrounding it, so it is safe to shoot in all directions. It has barrels simulating cover scattered at random intervals, and barrels with scattered breaks in a rough rectangle around the outer edges. I entered the bay with my vision blocked by a piece of cardboard for the first exercise. Heath placed me in front of several cartoon targets, each of which had a number spray-painted upon it. He then yelled out a number while dropping the vision block. For the purposes of the exercise, targets with the wrong number upon them were deemed to be no-shoots. Since this was a 360-degree exercise, the targets could be anywhere within the bay, including behind me. Also, the standard 2-second rule applied: if I was exposed to a target for more than 2 seconds, and did not neutralize it within that time, I lost. I'm not sure how many targets there were, total, but we repeated the exercise three times with different numbers (and thus different no-shoots).
Although we were roped up for safety during the 360 exercises, the instructors also wore their vests -- and with good reason. At one point, I found myself spinning around so fast that I was face to face with Heath.
"I just swept you!" I said frantically.
Heath smiled calmly. "No, you didn't." He almost looked amused.
"I didn't? Are you sure? I really didn't??"
"Nope," Heath said patiently. "I was watching you. I'd have stopped you if it was a problem. You knew I was back there. You pointed at the ground on your way past." Heath gets an award in my book for aplomb under stress -- and Marty gets a bigger one for getting me to the point where the safety training is so ingrained that it is no longer conscious.
The next 360-bay exercise was similar to the first, but with steel plates, and colors rather than numbers as the identifier. This time, Marty ran me through -- and he had a handheld shocker with him. Every time I exposed myself to a target, he gave me a jolt with the shocker and yelled, "They're shooting at you! Get 'em!" Yeowch. Talk about stressful...
During lunch, the class watched a video about confronting multiple attackers.
After lunch, the class met down near the combat alley. Combat alley is a (50 yard?) course with steel poppers set in various positions on either side of it, a total of 10 targets to be knocked over from 5 different shooting positions. We were going to run the course and see how well we did. One little addenda: before running the course, each student would be 'beat up' for a full 30 seconds by four other people who were armed with training bats and big pads that looked like oversize pillows. The purpose of this was to get the students' heart rates up around 180 or so, so that we could see that it was possible to manipulate the gun and get good hits even under extreme stress. For the most part, we did so -- or even better. My usual abyssmal score on combat alley was better than it had ever been before, and one of the other students managed to break the all time record on the course.
Following the discussion after action alley, we headed up to the low-light range for some night shooting. We ran through one-handed low-light skills at various distances and tempos. With a proper default stance, I was pleased with how my skills were coming along -- and even earned a 'well done' from Marty, a compliment much to be cherished for its rarity.
We concluded the day by watching a 90-minute, very interesting (and somewhat disturbing) video on hostage negotiation skills.
Sunday morning dawned cool and cloudy, perfect weather considering that we had all been warned to wear long sleeves for the Code Eagle exercises. Code Eagle is a brand name for what amounts to a glorified paint gun. They use genuine revolvers, but the revolvers are modified so that they will only accept safe training ammunition which is basically a paint ball. This way, the guns appear realistic and are handled much the same way as genuine guns, but with proper safety gear, they are as safe as a paintball marker.
About the scenarios themselves, I can say little since I would not want to spoil the surprises for others who may want to take this class. Generally speaking, the scenarios allowed us to practice interacting with real people in realistic situations -- such as encountering panhandlers in a parking lot, defending from a carjacking, negotiating a hostage release, and dealing with a bank robbery gone bad. Each of these exercises had its own learning points and stressors -- and the lesson was often one that we did not expect it to be. One scenario may have provided students with an opportunity to assess their own personal boundaries -- but the lesson might equally well have been that it's not good to draw your gun unless you know for sure what is going on. You never knew, going into a scenario, what the lesson was going to be nor how you would cope with the situation until it played out in front of you.
With the Code Eagle guns, we also practiced searching and clearing houses both in full light and in low light situations. Against real human beings acting the way real human beings act in such circumstances, this was definitely a high stress activity!
By practicing scenarios like this you go way beyond the basic theory of how to use a gun. You find out just how good you are, how good your training is, and how well your reflexes will support you in real life.
Toward the end of the day, we put the Code Eagle guns away and got out our own firearms for a few exercises in shooting and moving, and in shooting and moving while the targets were also moving. This was almost encouraging for me, since it turns out that I am finally getting good enough to sometimes hit a moving target. Considering where I came from three short years ago, I was pretty pleased with myself as I walked off the range.
pax
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FAS classes are of two types: pure shooting skills, and tactical skills. Pure shooting skills, of course, are just that. You learn how to safely handle your firearm in a manner appropriate for self-defense -- how to hit what you're aiming at and (more importantly) how not to hit what you don't want to hit. Tactical skills are a bit different and a bit more exciting to learn. In tactical classes, you experience what it is like to use your gun in a defensive situation. That's the kind of class I took this weekend. So what was it like?
Saturday morning, the class commenced with a short classroom lecture introducing the basics of team house-clearing tactics and providing an overview of the weekend ahead. Marty, the lead instructor, also introduced his assistants: Dean, Heath, Art, and Larry. There were eight students in the class.
Upon adjourning to the range, we worked on left-handed skills (actually, "weak-handed" -- but everyone in the class was a right-handed shooter). For some of us, this was the first intensive left-handed shooting we'd done. After getting us up to speed, including reloads and malfunction clearances, Marty had us shoot the FAS-2 qualifier entirely left-handed. I was pleased with my performance here; though I could have done better, my left-handed score was better than my original right-handed score when I first took FAS-2 as a beginning shooter three years ago.
After the left-handed shooting, we ran through a couple of 360-bay exercises, both of which were fairly high intensity. The 360 bay has berms surrounding it, so it is safe to shoot in all directions. It has barrels simulating cover scattered at random intervals, and barrels with scattered breaks in a rough rectangle around the outer edges. I entered the bay with my vision blocked by a piece of cardboard for the first exercise. Heath placed me in front of several cartoon targets, each of which had a number spray-painted upon it. He then yelled out a number while dropping the vision block. For the purposes of the exercise, targets with the wrong number upon them were deemed to be no-shoots. Since this was a 360-degree exercise, the targets could be anywhere within the bay, including behind me. Also, the standard 2-second rule applied: if I was exposed to a target for more than 2 seconds, and did not neutralize it within that time, I lost. I'm not sure how many targets there were, total, but we repeated the exercise three times with different numbers (and thus different no-shoots).
Although we were roped up for safety during the 360 exercises, the instructors also wore their vests -- and with good reason. At one point, I found myself spinning around so fast that I was face to face with Heath.
"I just swept you!" I said frantically.
Heath smiled calmly. "No, you didn't." He almost looked amused.
"I didn't? Are you sure? I really didn't??"
"Nope," Heath said patiently. "I was watching you. I'd have stopped you if it was a problem. You knew I was back there. You pointed at the ground on your way past." Heath gets an award in my book for aplomb under stress -- and Marty gets a bigger one for getting me to the point where the safety training is so ingrained that it is no longer conscious.
The next 360-bay exercise was similar to the first, but with steel plates, and colors rather than numbers as the identifier. This time, Marty ran me through -- and he had a handheld shocker with him. Every time I exposed myself to a target, he gave me a jolt with the shocker and yelled, "They're shooting at you! Get 'em!" Yeowch. Talk about stressful...
During lunch, the class watched a video about confronting multiple attackers.
After lunch, the class met down near the combat alley. Combat alley is a (50 yard?) course with steel poppers set in various positions on either side of it, a total of 10 targets to be knocked over from 5 different shooting positions. We were going to run the course and see how well we did. One little addenda: before running the course, each student would be 'beat up' for a full 30 seconds by four other people who were armed with training bats and big pads that looked like oversize pillows. The purpose of this was to get the students' heart rates up around 180 or so, so that we could see that it was possible to manipulate the gun and get good hits even under extreme stress. For the most part, we did so -- or even better. My usual abyssmal score on combat alley was better than it had ever been before, and one of the other students managed to break the all time record on the course.
Following the discussion after action alley, we headed up to the low-light range for some night shooting. We ran through one-handed low-light skills at various distances and tempos. With a proper default stance, I was pleased with how my skills were coming along -- and even earned a 'well done' from Marty, a compliment much to be cherished for its rarity.
We concluded the day by watching a 90-minute, very interesting (and somewhat disturbing) video on hostage negotiation skills.
Sunday morning dawned cool and cloudy, perfect weather considering that we had all been warned to wear long sleeves for the Code Eagle exercises. Code Eagle is a brand name for what amounts to a glorified paint gun. They use genuine revolvers, but the revolvers are modified so that they will only accept safe training ammunition which is basically a paint ball. This way, the guns appear realistic and are handled much the same way as genuine guns, but with proper safety gear, they are as safe as a paintball marker.
About the scenarios themselves, I can say little since I would not want to spoil the surprises for others who may want to take this class. Generally speaking, the scenarios allowed us to practice interacting with real people in realistic situations -- such as encountering panhandlers in a parking lot, defending from a carjacking, negotiating a hostage release, and dealing with a bank robbery gone bad. Each of these exercises had its own learning points and stressors -- and the lesson was often one that we did not expect it to be. One scenario may have provided students with an opportunity to assess their own personal boundaries -- but the lesson might equally well have been that it's not good to draw your gun unless you know for sure what is going on. You never knew, going into a scenario, what the lesson was going to be nor how you would cope with the situation until it played out in front of you.
With the Code Eagle guns, we also practiced searching and clearing houses both in full light and in low light situations. Against real human beings acting the way real human beings act in such circumstances, this was definitely a high stress activity!
By practicing scenarios like this you go way beyond the basic theory of how to use a gun. You find out just how good you are, how good your training is, and how well your reflexes will support you in real life.
Toward the end of the day, we put the Code Eagle guns away and got out our own firearms for a few exercises in shooting and moving, and in shooting and moving while the targets were also moving. This was almost encouraging for me, since it turns out that I am finally getting good enough to sometimes hit a moving target. Considering where I came from three short years ago, I was pretty pleased with myself as I walked off the range.
pax
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
o). He was awfully durn amused when he told me not to worry about it, anyway.