AAR: Insights Training Center - General Defensive Handgun 5/8/2010

[Jeff_M]

http://insightstraining.com/blog/

This weekend, we conducted our two day General Defensive Handgun course. The purpose of this course is to provide students with the necessary foundation to be successful in a violent lethal force confrontation. Throughout the course we emphasize the point that a superior combat mindset is most important for a successful outcome.

To this end, GDH is not just a repackaged LE or Military combat arms course. It is built around the Priorities of Survival (Mental Conditioning, Tactics, Skill, and Equipment). While there is a ton of shooting and skill development, we spend a considerable amount of time discussing mindset, tactics, legalities, wound ballistics and scenarios in an effort to sharpen the mind and properly prepare for the stress of a violent lethal force confrontation. Our desire is to provide students with the complete package, not only physical skill development.




This course was at the new West Coast Armory Range in Bellevue, WA. This is an outstanding facility. They have an excellent range and classroom. The range staff is helpful and courteous. West Coast is a great facility to train at, and we are pleased to be partnering with them. There were 16 students in the course. Most were regular folks. However, there was one paramedic/fire/SWAT guy who had plenty of helpful and pertinent information to add to the course, and two squared away and motivated guys who will soon be proudly serving our country as officers in the military.



As in many of our general level courses, equipment was problematic. Many of the students found that they were fighting their gear rather than focusing their energy on the learning process. Equipment selection should be based on your tactics and your skills. The struggle for the new gun fighter is that they have no tactics and skills to use for evaluating equipment. The common advice of “buy the gun that feels good” does not work very well when you don’t know how to grip the gun properly and you don’t know how a gun should feel.

For some reason, the Springfield XD was very popular in this course. There were 6 or 7 of them in the class. And as expected, there were problems. From my perspective, a handgun that cannot get through 500 rounds in a two day period without a stoppage does not meet the reliability threshold for a combat handgun. The most common stoppage came from a spent shell failing to eject from the gun. Typically this resulted is a fairly involved malfunction that a tap and rack did not fix. Additionally, the useless grip safety made locking the slide to the rear difficult for some. There was one HK P7. While the P7 is very accurate, feels nice in the hand, and conceals very easily as a single stack, many operators find that the peculiar controls of the gun make gun-handling difficult. The P7 is probably best used as a collector’s gun, not a serious fighting gun (again skill drives the training, not equipment). We also had a FN 5.7 in the course. This was my first experience with one. The gun seemed to be reliable, but it is huge (certainly not appropriate for private citizen concealed carry). While it is great that manufacturers are trying new ideas, there is little use for a handgun such as this. I fail to see any benefits to the handgun with regard to terminal ballistics or anything else. Also popular were subcompacts. Students quickly figured out that subcompact guns might be great for deep concealment, but they are terrible for most formal firearms training as your typical concealed carry gun.



Overall, everyone worked hard and clearly learned a lot. There was a fire hose of information and everyone soaked it up like a sponge. I like to ensure that all of the basic gun handling and shooting skills are covered in isolation on day one. Once this is accomplished, we can spend day two layering these skills and additional tactics on top of each other creating more complexity and stress. At the end of day one most of the class was overloaded and many were struggling with their skills. However, on day two everything really came together. We spent the morning shooting a lot. We worked on numerous drills to isolate trigger control and proper aiming. This really helped the students achieve a solid accuracy standard and this showed through the rest of the course. Additionally, we incorporated speed reloads into more drills than typical. This paid off for the students as there was, overall, a high level of gun-handling by the end of the course. I appreciate the effort everyone put in, and I look forward to future training opportunities with them.

Also, a special thanks to John and Tye for their hard work, keeping me on task, and making everything run smoothly.

[Gomez]

I got into Seattle Thursday evening and almost switched travel plans to be able to stay for GDH. Unfortunately, that wasn't feasible and I flew out at 1120 Friday. I first trained with Insights when I was living in Eugene, OR in '98. Insights was one of the first schools to take a truly integrated approach to defensive training. A whole lot of places, nowadays, give lip service to the sort of thing that Greg & John started.

[Jay Cunningham]

For some reason, the Springfield XD was very popular in this course. There were 6 or 7 of them in the class. And as expected, there were problems. From my perspective, a handgun that cannot get through 500 rounds in a two day period without a stoppage does not meet the reliability threshold for a combat handgun. The most common stoppage came from a spent shell failing to eject from the gun. Typically this resulted is a fairly involved malfunction that a tap and rack did not fix. Additionally, the useless grip safety made locking the slide to the rear difficult for some.

Thanks for the info.

[Xhado]

This was my second GDH at Insights and I have to say it was well worth it. My last GDH I took over a year ago so I felt I needed a good refresher. Also, I had finally convinced a friend that training is well worth the money and he came along as well. At my first GDH with Tracy Roberts I felt that we covered more information. We were in our concealment garments after lunch on the second day and continued all drills from concealment from that point on. Also we covered multiple target engagement which was never really mentioned this time around.

Although not as much was covered, I feel it was better to take things as slow as we did. We did more exercises of breaking down grip and trigger manipulation which I felt greatly improved my performance. The classroom material, although I’ve seen most of it before in GDH and GDR, was still very informative and it was nice to see another instructors take on it.

Over the past year I’ve created some sloppy hybrid methods for weapons manipulation. Although I was able to correct them, whenever the stress was applied I immediately reverted back to the wrong way as I was pushing myself to be as fast as possible. To correct that I’ve been doing slow methodical dry fire routines. At the end of the week I’ll be at the range to try and apply what I’ve re-learned.

The second time through was also a lot easier because I had my gear pretty much straightened out. Simple things like long sleeves for the cold range, active hearing protection and plenty of magazines and pouches made life easier so I could spend more time concentrating on what the instructor was teaching. I also picked up an M&P9 since the last class retiring my Walther P99 that I used the first time around. Although the P99 never had a stoppage, the trigger design and availability of aftermarket accessories was holding me back. The M&P never let me down and although it’s not as “romantic” as the P99 it fulfilled all the needs I have for a combat handgun. I hope those who attended the class with the shotty XDs or one of the exotics got the picture as I did the first time and picks a better carry weapon. I actually saw the P7 user checking out a Glock 19 in the store so you got through to one of them.

It was a great use of a weekend and for only $350 its rather affordable compared to some other organizations. I look forward to making it out for Intermediate Rifle in the summer and my buddy and I are talking about trying to fit another class in before Uncle Sam moves us in October.

[Urabus23]

I'll be attending the GDH class next week am looking forward to running my M&P.

[Jeff_M]

Katar, I guess XDs are popular because people like the way they feel. We typically see problems with the .45 and .40 XDs and the 9mms usually run well. This was not the case this weekend. About half where 9 and the other have 40, I think I observed more malfunctions with the 9mms.

Xhado, good work this weekend. It really showed that this was your second time through. While there are skills to continue to work on, you are well on you way. The pace was a little slower than other GDH classes. The size and make up of the class often drives what material is covered. After the first day it was obvious to me that we needed to tune up our accuracy and gun handling. I think the extra skill development paid off and the students will benefit from the increased gun-handling and accuracy skill down the road. Like all handguns, the M&P 9mm has its short comings, but it is on my short list of recommended guns. It served you well this weekend and it should continue to perform.

Urabus23, you will have fun next weekend. John Holschen will be teaching, and the course should be well worth your time.

Thanks,
Jeff