The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery. Massad Ayoob

may be more expensive, but they are generally worth it. If a cadre of instructors has been in business for 15 or 20 years, it tells you that there aren’t too many dissatisfied customers. Particularly in the time of the Internet, word gets around. The various gun chat rooms on the ‘Net are also a good source of customer feedback. The best, however, is advice from someone you know and can trust who has already been to the school in question.

      Once you get there, be a student. Soak up all you can, paying particular attention to the explanation of why the instructor recommends that a certain thing be done a certain way. Litmus test: If he says, “We do it that way because it is The Doctrine,” add more than a grain of salt to whatever you’re being asked to swallow. Try it the instructor’s way; you’re there to learn what he or she has to teach. You wouldn’t throw karate kicks at a judo dojo; don’t shoot from the Isosceles stance if the instructor is asking you to shoot from the Weaver.

      Don’t be afraid to ask for a personal assessment or a little extra help. Any instructor worth his or her title will take it as a compliment that you asked, not as an imposition.

       Self-defense training goes beyond shooting. Do you know self-treatment for a gunshot injury if you’re alone and wounded? Paramedic and LFI Staff Instructor Bob Smith demonstrates for a class.

       Journeyman Level

      You have progressed. You’re into this stuff now. You want to get better. Yes!

      Remember at this stage that revelatory, life-changing experiences tend to come one to a customer. After you’ve become a reasonably good shot, further improvement will probably be incremental. In your first few schools in a discipline, you’re trying to absorb it all and wondering if you’re a bad person because you might have missed some small point. As time progresses and you get more courses under your belt, some of what you hear at successive schools will sound familiar. That’s OK. It never hurts to reinforce and validate something positive that you’ve already learned. You’ll be all the more appreciative when you do pick up something new, and all the more insightful when you put that new knowledge to use.

      The instructor can’t do it all for you. Skill maintenance is the individual practitioner’s job. Martial artists and physiologists tell us that it takes 3,000 to 7,000 repetitions to create enough-long term muscle memory that you can perform a complex psycho-motor skill, such as drawing and firing a pistol, in the “automatic pilot” mode that trainers call Unconscious Competence. One intense week a year at the gym, and 51 weeks as a couch potato, won’t keep your body in shape. That kind of regimen won’t keep your combat handgun skills in shape, either.

       Learn to draw from compromised positions. This officer clears an issue DAO Beretta Model 8040 from a Safariland 070 security holster while seated in vehicle.

      By now you should have found at least one gun/holster combination that works well for you. Stay with it for a while. Don’t try to buy skill at the gunshop. Buy ammo or reloading components there instead, to better reinforce and enhance the skills you already have.

       Sometimes intense training can hurt. Allan Brummer takes a full power hit of OC pepper foam…

      This is a good time to be thinking about some sort of practical shooting/action shooting/combat shooting competition. Doing well gives us motivation to get better. Being exposed to others who’ve been to different schools and shoot with different styles will broaden your horizons and give you new ideas you can put to good use. Sometimes even more importantly, this will introduce you to a new circle of friends and acquaintances who have the same self-defense values as you. Even if the thrill of the competition wears off, the pleasure and value of the friendships you make there will stay with you.

      Remember as a journeyman that safety still has to come first. You’re shooting enough now to be a high profile potential victim of the “familiarity breeds contempt” syndrome. Avoid that at all costs. The carpenter is more skilled with a hammer than the home craftsman, but he can still hit his thumb. The reason is that he uses it more, and is that much more exposed to that danger. So it is with us. Remember…eternal vigilance.

       Here the author rinses out his teenage daughter’s eyes after she has taken a hit of pepper spray.

       …and proves he can “fight through it,” drawing a dummy gun and issuing commands while carrying out tactical movement.

       In The Land Of The Experts

      When you get really deep into this, and really good at it, improvement comes even more slowly. When Mike Plaxco was the man to beat in combat competition, he told me, “I get slumps just like everybody else. When I do, I change something in my shooting style. It makes me focus again, makes things fresh again, and makes me work at it again.” Good point.

       Can you draw weak handed if your dominant hand is taken out? Here the author clears a Glock 22 from Uncle Mike’s duty rig.

       Wearing protective gear and using Code Eagle modifications of S&W revolvers that fire only paint pellets, these students act out a car-jacking scenario.

      We’re not going to preach here, but there are a great many people in this country who need to know these things, and not all of them can afford to travel to shooting schools to learn them. There comes a time when giving back is almost a moral obligation, like courtesy on the road. Consider teaching. Helping at a course at your local club, or volunteering to help someone who has once trained you, is a good place to start.

       Have you learned how to return fire from disadvantaged positions if wounded? Here, LFI-II students go through one of several such drills.

       Ambush waiting! The Beamhit system uses guns modified to non-lethal function and vests to carry the sensors which register only stopping hits.

      When you teach something, it forces you to see the forest for the trees. I can remember taking classes in things I didn’t care about, but needed the course credit for. It was as if my mind was a tape recorder that held the information long enough to play it back on the final exam, and then erased the tape once the chore was done. That wasn’t “life learning,” and I regret it now. There were times when I took a class just for myself, saw something I liked, kept it, but didn’t really get into the details of why I did it that way. If we don’t understand why we’re doing what we’re doing, even if it works for us, we don’t truly command the skill. I regret those learning experiences now, too.

      I learned