Law Enforcement Firearms Training

Introduction:

With 25 years and counting as a certified Police Officer in Michigan, and after getting serious about pistol shooting after being exposed to action pistol competitions at a local and national level, it is evident to me that the Law Enforcement community is lacking in proper training involving the most basic and crucial aspects of pistol shooting…the fundamentals.  From the beginning of my involvement in Law Enforcement, firearms training has almost always revolved around qualifications.  Over the years it became clear to me that for the most part, Law Enforcement firearms instructors main focus is and has been to teach you how to “qualify”, not to teach you how to shoot.  Throughout my career I have not personally had an LEO firearms instructor properly teach me the fundamentals of pistol shooting.  Instead, any shooting struggles that I came up against, I was only given “band aids” at best to get me to a standard that I could qualify.  My focus with this class will be teaching Officers “how” to shoot, and not just how to qualify, and as they develop these skills, qualifications for agencies will become less of a hinderance and Officer safety and skillset will naturally increase through an advancement of Officer skillset.

Who are these classes for?:

In short…everyone!  Due to limited training times, budget constraints, ammo shortages, etc., the fundamentals of shooting are severely neglected in Law Enforcement training.  For years I have witnessed Officers at the range completely lacking the skills necessary to execute proper fundamentals which would aid in the ability to be able to fire rapidly and accurately.  They can shoot at a pace in order to qualify, but this is not typically the rate at which they would fire in an actual gunfight for their life.  As a result, there statistically is a lot of misses related to Officer involved shootings.  I became a master class shooter before I sought training form a National and World Champion shooter only to find out that my fundamentals were severely lacking and holding me back from the performance goals I was seeking to obtain.  Students should be motivated to learn and willing to continue practicing the skills that they learn beyond this class.  Students will be required to spend 8 hours on the range operating their guns, engaging in discussion, and exerting themselves physically with movement drills.  This would be a great course for your MCOLES certified firearms instructors to gain additional knowledge, diagnostic tools, and examples of how to bring these training topics back to your department.  Whether you are Law Enforcement, a competition shooter, or your just serious about learning practical skills to make you a better real-world shooter, this class will benefit you! 

 Fundamentally Fast Pistol

This course will focus on the proper fundamentals required to quickly and accurately shoot a pistol.  This will be achieved through both live fire and dry fire training during this dynamic training.  Many Officers can accurately shoot a pistol slowly with poor technique, but when you add speed or dynamic movements, those shooting events show tremendous deficiencies.  This course will focus on efficient actions with a pistol breaking down each fundamental principle into its most basic form before putting it all back together.  This course will cover the basics of managing recoil, reactive vs predictive shooting, how to fix poor target results including learning how to “read your target”, narrow and wide transitions, and an intro into basic dynamic movement principles.   Students will be taught techniques to fix shooting issues “at speed”.  Students will be expected by the end of class to be able to get acceptable center zone hits on targets ranging from 7 to 10 yards while pulling the trigger as fast as they can (.16 to .20 splits).

Dynamic Movement Fundamentals

Many times, in competition, the skill that separates a top-level shooter from a mid-level shooter, is simply learning to be efficient with the short amount of time necessary to complete a stage of fire while being competitive.  This is done through efficient gun handling skills and learning to maximize efficiency in movement.  Top level shooters aren’t shooting faster than mid level shooters, they are simply being more efficient resulting in much quicker times.  Certainly competition shooting isn’t gun fighting, but every gunfight is a competition.  The skills that top level competition shooters learn to master carry over to the tactical world as well.  After working on drills that will isolate different fundamentals of shooting, those same fundamentals will be put to use in dynamic training scenarios involving shooting on the move, shooting while breaking out of a position, shooting while entering a new position, and shooting at moving targets.  Since statistics show that the first person to effectively get rounds on target is most likely to win a gunfight, it is vital that Officers possess the skills to have the proper fundamentals and have great efficiency involving their shooting skillset in order for them to be successful should they find themselves in such an unfortunate experience.   For years I have spoken with other Officers in the LE community and frequently heard that they feel that too much emphasis is placed on qualifications, with little to no emphasis placed on actually developing better real world firearms handling skills.  This course will build off the principles learned from the Fundamentally Fast Pistol course and Officers will gain those critical skills necessary for them to dominate a deadly force on force scenario.

Cost:

Each class is limited to 8 students and it is strongly recommended that the Fundamentally Fast Pistol course is completed before attending the Dynamic Movement Fundamentals course.  Failure to comply with this may result in Officers getting less out of the movement class due to struggling with the fundamental gun handling.  Training can be scheduled for one day for just one course, or a two day training to cover both courses. To reserve all 8 seats, the cost is $2,000.00 for each training course or $250.00 per officer when the training will be within a 2-hour drive time from the Kalamazoo Michigan area.  Additional costs may apply for training hosted outside of the 2-hour driving radius.  Each student will be required to have a working pistol, suitable duty holster, at least 3 magazines with pouches, proper eye and ear protection, and 600 rounds of ammunition.  Classes can be hosted at your facility or my personal range in Southwest Michigan located near Kalamazoo.  If you are interested in hosting a class, click on the Contactu Us button below to send an email.  For more information about your instructor, click on the Instructor button.