AAR: Sentinel Concepts Critical Handgun Employment II 4/27-28/14, Hedgesville WV

[hogarth]

I took a class with Sentinel Concepts called Critical Handgun Employment II at the Tango Down Range in Hedgesville, WV. I am not affiliated with Sentinel Concepts in any way, except as a paying customer.

A little about me. I am relatively new to shooting, something I was always interested in but didn't begin until about 9 years ago (I am 42). I took a few firearms classes beginning a year ago with some local outfits, but really wanted to take an entry level handgun course with someone of some solid, nationwide reputation as a prerequisite for other classes I might want to take with a variety of trainers in the future. I was in the process of choosing Magpul when I was informed that Steve Fisher was leaving the company to start his own venture, Sentinel Concepts. I originally signed up for his Essential Handgun I class. However, a few weeks before the class I received word that the class had to be cancelled. I was mightily disappointed, but the next time I contacted Steve he told me I could join his Critical Handgun Employment II class, which he planned to run as a combo I and II class due to the cancellation of the other class.

I was a little nervous when I arrived at the range around 8:10 on Sunday morning. Nervous because I didn't want to hold the class back. The class had about 15 students (a few came and went over the 2 days) and almost all of them knew Steve from prior classes with him through Magpul the year before. Four of the students were actually product development people from Beretta. The class included 4 women. No one was dressed in tacticool garb, mostly just jeans and such with a smattering of 5.11, Vertx, and Arc'tyrex stuff (I wore cabelas trailhiker pants and a Wrangler shirt from Wal-Mart, with a 5.11 belt, Blade Tech AIWB holster, and a Blade Tech double mag pouch.) The Beretta people each had his or her own Beretta (various, including a 92SF compact Inox, a PX 4, a Ninety Two or 92A1, and a special single action 92), and then there were several 1911s, at least one M&P, and then mostly Glocks, including several custom ones. Steve was liberal about lending stuff/guns out to the students, either for people to sample different sights, grips, etc., or in some cases to replace guns that became dysfunctional over the course of the two days. Steve mostly shot his custom Nighthawk 1911 in 9mm and with RMR on top. Very nice. Not my cup of tea, but I could appreciate it. I brought my Glock 19 and my Glock 26, both of which are mostly stock except for Glock 17 smooth faced triggers, Vickers slide lock/releases, and night sights.

Fisher is a guy who seems to base his teaching not on the latest fad, but on fundamentals that work. In short, that means front sight, front sight, front sight, and trigger control. He freely admitted all of about three hours into day one that we now had everything we needed to succeed (the sarcastic part of me wondered why I was to spend two days there?!). Day one actually started not at some nice cozy distance, but shooting at an 8 inch circle at 25 yards. Coming a month after a close range gunfighting class where we never shot out past about 10 yards, and not having shot a handgun at all since a carbine I class I took 3 weeks earlier, I was nervous. My shots sucked. Thankfully for me, almost everyone sucked about as badly!

Fisher believes in shooting 25 yards cold every time he goes to the range and for all of the classes he teaches. Why? We all look like marksmen at 7 yards. Shorter distances can mask real issues that people are having. Also, if we could be successful at 25 yards, the up close stuff is easy. Plus, he pointed out many times that there are numerous places where we may be forced to take that 25 yard shot (a grocery store aisle, for example), and in real life we don't get practice shots, warm up time, etc. It made a lot of sense. We would visit the 25 yard line a lot over the 2 days.

Day one was all about the fundamentals and giving us the tools we needed to self diagnose. My biggest issues were mashing the trigger, holding the gun in a death grip, and not trusting the sights and peeking at the target. I wanted to blame my sights, but when Fisher took my gun and dumped a mag from 10 yards into a two inch circle, that was off the table (he did the same with other people as well). At one point he stood facing me, put his finger on top of my trigger finger, and told me to hold the sights on target. He helped me press the trigger, and the shots were dead center. He did this not as a trick, but to show me how I need to press that trigger. I was impressed.

We did drills where we partnered up and fiddled with our partner's gun (basically, round in chamber or not) so we could check for anticipatory flinches. I snatched a few but did okay overall with that exercise. We also spent some time on the various types of reloads one might perform.

The most fun I had on day one was probably the malfunction drill. After explaining his simple way of dealing with different malfunctions, he had us load our mags with a mix of real rounds and spent casings, which was a lot more of a realistic training tool than deliberately setting up each type of malfunction and then practicing it. I got an assortment of stovepipes and doublefeeds during this drill, but it was great because there was no way to predict which one you would get. The day ended with us each taking a turn talking about our takeaways from the day. There were, in fact, several of these reflective opportunities each day, not just at the end. We finished around 6:30 PM.

Day two started at 8:30 am and we started again at 25 yards. On the recommendation of a fellow student, I decided to shoot my Glock 26 on day two. She was one of the best shooters in the class and said I should shoot what I carry the most. We all again sucked at 25, which left Steve shaking his head. I did improve from the day before and told him I had switched guns.

We went from that straight into his standards. That same 8 inch circle. 40 rounds, 10 each from 25, 15, 10, and 5 yards, all on the timer. The timing was generous, though. Here I shined, and this would be the theme for the rest of the day for me (when moving or on the clock, I shot better). I landed two shots just outside the circle at 25; all the rest were in the black. The only photo I took was of that circle!

We spent the rest of the day on failure drills, multiple adversaries, some situational awareness and combat mindset stuff, and some shooting while moving. Every now and then we would revisit the 25 yard mark, and also shot the standards a few more times. Near the end, we started to put it all together. Moving and shooting with reloading, moving and shooting with those dreaded shell casings in our mags, etc. Just as the rain started to fall, we shot the standards again, had our roundtable takeaways discussion, and called it quits around 5 pm.

What I liked about Fisher was that he didn't claim ownership of anything. He borrows from here and there and applies logic. For example, he admits that the moving while shooting and fixing malfunctions isn't realistic. Who would continue to advance on someone while fixing a doublefeed? Rather, such drills are designed to show how to deal with multiple issues at a time. Likewise, he doesn't get caught up in dogma on tactical reloads and such. He showed us several ways to skin a cat. He gave us his own list of other trainers who are excellent (no surprises on who he recommended), but he pointed out that there is always local talent in any area and to seek it out. The final thing I should mention is that, though billed as his level II class, and despite the fact that he had a bunch of former students in this class, he met us where we were, back to basics. No "we must cover the curriculum" stuff; if we weren't ready, we weren't ready.

I shot 332 rounds out of my G19 on day one with zero malfunctions. I shot 397 rounds out of my g26 on day two with one stovepipe during the first standard shooting of the day. I also shot a few rounds through the Beretta compact, just to check it out (before we broke the safety lever/decocker on it!), and about 20 rounds through a g19 with RMR installed on it (awesome and will be my next purchase....shot a 3 inch group at 25 yards with it), for a total of 750 rounds over two days.

I would definitely recommend Steve Fisher and his company, Sentinel Concepts. At this point he offers classes in handgun, carbine, and shotgun, and will be back in Hedgesville for shotgun in July. I guess the best endorsement I can give is that I would definitely take a class--or three--with him again.

[Steve]

Thanks for the AAR, i wouldn't call it call it combat mindset since i never been in combat, but i would say a good dose of mental gut check at times

[hogarth]

Thanks for the AAR, i wouldn't call it call it combat mindset since i never been in combat, but i would say a good dose of mental gut check at times

Fair enough. I guess I was recalling some of the will to fight/survive discussion, which Barry also contributed to. You even talked about it from the bad guy perspective, too. So I lumped those things into "combat mindset", which I guess is a bit of a misnomer in this case.

One thing I wanted to add is that, as a teacher by trade, I, in turn, appreciate good teaching. And you are a good teacher. Lots of constructive feedback and lots of praise. A fistbump, a thumbs up, a few words; it all adds up. There was some ribbing, too, but all in good spirit, and as you said, if people aren't having fun and are just listening to an instructor drone on and on, then the students will switch off and not do much learning. Believe me, as a teacher, I have seen this far too often. There are, I suppose, many good shooters out there, but I don't know that they can all impart their wisdom to their students. In the end, I improved in my shooting and manipulations, and I was given the tools to diagnose my own errors, which I am sure will help me with my own practice in the future.

[JSantoro]

One of my favorite-est people happened to be one of the ladies taking the class, and she was kind enough to let me tag along....

She happens to live adjacent to NYC, is a new grandma, and can be best described as "wee." About 5 years ago, she asked to go shooting with me, for a lark. What started as her having taken a casual shine to handguns has turned into having had her eyes opened a bit more to the day-to-day potential hazards that exist, and prompted her to take a more focused interest in not just how to shoot, but in as much of the stem-to-stern aspects of being self-sufficient with the usage and operation of handguns within her home (i.e., the asinine levels of co-dependence that NY state and local laws place upon it's citizens) in the event of one of those .001% chances that she'd need one to defend herself and her loved ones.

So, she also became a student of mine, and was taught on the same basis of just about everybody else I teach: that what was being done was meant to provide a certain level of baseline safety awareness and technical competence for the purposes of getting the best possible return on investment from future training that I heartily encourage they attend....from more professional instructors, possessed of a far broader/deeper firearms and instructional background than my own.

Blah yadda blah....we've now attended two of Steve's classes together, the first being the Magpul Handgun 1 class taught in August of last year, at the same facility. I was looking for something fairly close to where I live, in an area I'm very familiar with, where we'd both get challenged, from an instructor that doesn't spend time marveling at the smell of his own farts.

(For those in the DC Metro area....keep an eye out on the Tango Down Range, Peacemaker National Training Center, and Echo Valley Training Center websites; these facilities are hosting a LOT of top-notch training opportunities from which to choose. Used to be that about the only thing we'd be able to find within a 4hr one-way drive was some PMC fantasy-camp BS.... Not the case, any more.)

Having taken the class under the Magpul umberella, and both of us having benefited enormously from it, it was natural to sign on for a "level 2" class under Steve's Sentinel Concepts banner. When we got word of the classes being blended, it was actually pretty good news; I've often taken courses twice over, on the presumption that I might successfully absorb as much as 40% to any reasonable degree. Take it twice, maybe get to 80% (especially before moving on to something more strenuous or type-specific). Point being, Henchwoman, having shot a whopping two times since August (new grandma, remember...?), would get a chance for a worthwhile review, AND a challenging yet manageable learning curve into any new material, with a low risk of possibly being overwhelmed. From my end...I had no question that I'd be challenged, not the least of which because Steve's a stickler for accuracy. There's plenty of holes in my swing, but everything starts with putting that little wad of metal where you want it to go, and I benefit from the work.

************

Warbelts were notable.....by being largely absent. Muy bueno. Solid indicator that the class was made up of folks that had, somewhere in the midst of their lives, gotten a grip.

The guy shooting to my right, Mike, had the kind of economy of motion and consistency that I'm frankly jealous of.

When shooting off-hand/weak-hand/other-strong-hand, or whatever the flavor-of-the-week buzzword is at the moment for "with my left hand," I get better results by turning my chin in toward my left shoulder instead of canting the gun to the right to get my dominant eye behind the sights.

Malfunction clearance methods for the most common ones are actually even simpler than the ones we've traditionally been taught.

Adjunct to the above: If I'd have listened properly to the entire brief about how simple malfunction clearance methods can be when I first heard it back in August, feeling as stupid as I did this past weekend, when my initial lack of attention to detail became clear, could have been prevented.

Continuance to the above: ...but traditional/diagnostic methods may still be necessary because Murphy is an optimist, like when the open mouth of an empty case smears itself across the base of the feed ramp of the guy shooting to my left's M&P9, clogging the whole thing up badly enough that the slide stop couldn't function to hold the slide open. Had to push that sucker out with a knife.

Adjunct to the immediate above: Carrying a small-ish, utilitarian knife can come in handy for more than just cutting stuff.

I swiped Steve's Nighthawk, and replaced it with a fully-functional replica made of recycled beer cans, edge-black, and the bottom of an original glass Coke bottle to mimic the RMR lens. I think I can make it to *distant country redacted* before he finds out. Wish me luck!

I've commonly utilized drills that focus upon speed as my "cold" drills, on the basis that, handguns being poor man-killers, "punches in bunches" may be what I'll more likely need if something goes pear-shaped enough that I need to use my gun. While I've never shied away from shooting to 25yd (or more), and while I've done it more often for the last solid year, doing more of it in general and doing it cold in particular can only help me out. I shot better, pound-for-pound, than I did in August...though slightly less well @25, comparatively.

790 rounds expended; I made make-up shots if I felt the slightest hinkiness in the break of a shot, much less if I actually managed to SEE a miss for real...unless a particular drill called for a specific round-count.