I meant to write an AAR up last week about this class. On Monday of last week, I was the recipient of a private course from Brad with Kinetic Concepts Group. Brad and his assistant are both active law enforcement officers in the Houston area and they came out to the school I do security for to give me active shooter response / one man CQB training. Normally with CQB you would be relying on a team or at least a partner when clearing rooms and hunting would-be killers - but I am *it* as for security at my school for now, so if a would-be killer targets my kids or teachers, its up to me to respond immediately and try to end the threat before law enforcement shows up. Big responsibility but one I willingly bear. My kid goes there. A number of my kid's friend's go there. I've made friends with parents and staff there. Someone has to protect them, and even though its a Christian school - we're not so foolish as to think that God will somehow magically shield us from the evil that walks the earth - after all "God helps those who help themselves," right? Nashville, White Settlement, Sutherland Springs, and numerous other shootings have shown us that schools, churches, and church-schools are not immune to evil acts.
This was an eight hour course - it began with a class room portion where we covered some historical data regarding active shooters / mass shooting incidents, then went into the concepts of close quarters combat and room clearing, equipment selection for the job (which I'm limited because of Texas' archaic law prohibiting rifles for security) as well as the realities that you cannot stop people from dying until you stop the killer from killing.
After about 3 hours of class room and discussion, we began to work scenarios. The assistant for the course was the designated bad guy. We utilized Glock simunitions guns and some blank firing guns during this portion of the class. The blank firing guns to me actually sold the reality of the scenarios and the gravity of a real world encounter - as they provided the muzzle flash and report of a real firearm. I cannot stress how unnerving it is to be standing in a school / church, and hearing gun fire coming from a place it should not be. It accomplished the mission of inducing stress response, elevating my heart rate and providing visual and auditory feedback during scenarios.
We worked a number of scenarios which went from the very simple to more complex. I "won" a few, and I "lost" a bunch. The experience was definitely eye opening, and gives a much better look at why law enforcement tends to have a 30% hitrate on average. I discovered in about the 2nd or 3rd scenario how hard it really is under realistic stressful conditions not to default to emotional gunfire. Even after making clear that we wanted 2-3 controlled (sighted fire) shots on the bad guy - getting the body to do it didn't always work.
In one scenario early on, I was working toward where the gun fire had come from, come upon an open classroom door that was dark, and had to clear it before continuing on. At this point I'm running a sim Glock with a 509 ACSS, and a TLR-1 with a remote grip activated switch. As I am clearing the room and get to the point where I have to cross the open door way to continue my search, right as the edge of my weapon light's beam touches the side of the bad guy - who was standing in the middle part of the room against the far wall from the door, I'm met with muzzle flash and the boom of a gunshot in my direction. Aimed careful fire wasn't what I did in response, even though its what we were aiming for. I mag dumped and shot, IIRC 10 rounds. I connected with three from a distance of about 15-20 feet - shooting the bad guy in IIRC the leg, the dick, and the arm. None would've been immediate fight stoppers, unless they were mental fight stoppers (maybe getting your dick shot off would be enough to cause you to disengage?)
I've been in a lot of physical altercations, I've had someone at gunpoint before, I dealt with very stressful situations daily as a hospital security guard, I've been a martial artist for 33 years and have extensive training in those areas but none of that prepared me psycologically for having a gun go off in my direction from 15 feet away. Seeing the muzzle flash, hearing the blast, and even feeling a little concussive force from the expanding air really jacks the heart rate up and hits primal switches in the brain. Brad was also video recording the scenarios for review - and I found that going in, I was too high in my stance, and physological response to the gunfire was to rock backward away from it (trying to avoid being shot) while trying to return fire. After that he gave some advise to stay lower in a more aggressive stance while moving, which would counteract the unconscious physiological responses to an extent (much harder to rock back / away from the blast when you're low and leaning in a bit).
We ran more exercises, including one with a "victim" (since we didn't have the luxury of other class members or staff to roleplay with us, he used a target laid on the ground to represent victims) visible in a hallway. During the scenario I was met with decisions on where to go - the open class room to one side, a closet with the door slightly ajar on the other, or bypass both and go toward the downed victim. My decision was clearing the classroom first - as it was large and with a lot of potential hiding spots. Second I moved to clear the closet - as we'd discussed that when conducting a search you were looking for anything out of the ordinary as a clue to a killer's whereabouts if you didn't have other information to go on (continual gun fire, screaming, people fleeing, etc) - so that closet door ajar was bugging me. That door should never be open - its the server room and supply closet.
I began clearing the closet - but instead of kicking the door further open right away - I moved to see what I could see through the open crack - which happened to be my bad guy. The weapon light I used disoriented him and I was able to put two good shots on target before I decided to kick the door open and "End ex" was called. Even tho I "won" that scenario - the bad guy even said he wasn't sure which way I was going or facing before getting lit up and shot - we discussed the potentiality of other driving forces or maybe bypassing certain clues in order to move toward a more likely search area. I think honestly he was trying to set me up to be ambushed - hoping / figuring I would bypass the closet and move toward the victim, and wasn't expecting me to do what I did.
In another scenario, making my way down a corridor, I encountered the bad guy pop his head and gun around the corner and taking a shot as I'm approaching an open door, and again - the emotional gunfire took over for a second. I shot at them but missed. Knowing a direction I pressed on and encountered the bad guy hiding in a different closet. That one didn't end great, but I did wind up getting rounds on the bad guy. I probably would've died twice if it was for real though, despite getting shots into the bad guy at the finish line.
We continued to debrief after every scenario about what went well, what didn't go well, and what to think about doing and try incorporating the next time.
We had about 4.5 hours of actual working time to run through scenarios which was a good foundation, but by no means will you be an expert, or even what I'd call proficient at the skill with just one class if you're new to actually doing that work, but it WILL give you some good information and some things to practice. And its a class I intend to take again - the classroom portion isn't necessary (per the instructor) so it would be a class focused all on scenario training.
Big take aways -- how you THINK you will react in a situation is not necessarily how you WILL react. All the mental exercise in the world isn't enough, but it can be a start.You need to do the work, under stress. You can train yourself to respond differently but it takes practice. Emotional gunfire (non sighted, rounds downrange as an instinctual response) happens and it shouldn't, but it can be trained out of you with practice. Brad stresses accountability and accuracy and will coach you toward improvement, he's down to earth, a no bullshit kind of guy and he will give you things to think about.
I'm far from the world's best pistol shot - I can pass the state qualifier no problem but almost anyone can. I've been trying to hold myself to a higher standard and will continue toward that. To that end I created a spread sheet for a set of range drills / exercises to work on every time I go to the range now - pushing to increase accuracy from 5 yards out to 25 yards, including timed components with both time and accuracy goals. Yesterday I hit the range up and shot this set and while I was overall pleased with my results there was still a good amount of work to be done - two different drills I failed on by not getting all my shots into the A-zone or 9 ring (depending on target) and had some shots go into the 7 or 8 rings. I'm planning on weekly range trips (gotta make the most of our range membership) and will be putting each scoring sheet (dated and initialed) in a binder to track my progress. Once I start getting consistently very good on these, I'm going to tighten up the goals more, decrease par times, and push my own standards even higher.
If you're LE or armed security I would definitely say reach out to Kinetic Concepts and get on a class roster. This certainly won't be the only class I take from him. I'm not sure if he's opened his classes up to non-LE or non-security yet, but its always worth an email to find out.
This was an eight hour course - it began with a class room portion where we covered some historical data regarding active shooters / mass shooting incidents, then went into the concepts of close quarters combat and room clearing, equipment selection for the job (which I'm limited because of Texas' archaic law prohibiting rifles for security) as well as the realities that you cannot stop people from dying until you stop the killer from killing.
After about 3 hours of class room and discussion, we began to work scenarios. The assistant for the course was the designated bad guy. We utilized Glock simunitions guns and some blank firing guns during this portion of the class. The blank firing guns to me actually sold the reality of the scenarios and the gravity of a real world encounter - as they provided the muzzle flash and report of a real firearm. I cannot stress how unnerving it is to be standing in a school / church, and hearing gun fire coming from a place it should not be. It accomplished the mission of inducing stress response, elevating my heart rate and providing visual and auditory feedback during scenarios.
We worked a number of scenarios which went from the very simple to more complex. I "won" a few, and I "lost" a bunch. The experience was definitely eye opening, and gives a much better look at why law enforcement tends to have a 30% hitrate on average. I discovered in about the 2nd or 3rd scenario how hard it really is under realistic stressful conditions not to default to emotional gunfire. Even after making clear that we wanted 2-3 controlled (sighted fire) shots on the bad guy - getting the body to do it didn't always work.
In one scenario early on, I was working toward where the gun fire had come from, come upon an open classroom door that was dark, and had to clear it before continuing on. At this point I'm running a sim Glock with a 509 ACSS, and a TLR-1 with a remote grip activated switch. As I am clearing the room and get to the point where I have to cross the open door way to continue my search, right as the edge of my weapon light's beam touches the side of the bad guy - who was standing in the middle part of the room against the far wall from the door, I'm met with muzzle flash and the boom of a gunshot in my direction. Aimed careful fire wasn't what I did in response, even though its what we were aiming for. I mag dumped and shot, IIRC 10 rounds. I connected with three from a distance of about 15-20 feet - shooting the bad guy in IIRC the leg, the dick, and the arm. None would've been immediate fight stoppers, unless they were mental fight stoppers (maybe getting your dick shot off would be enough to cause you to disengage?)
I've been in a lot of physical altercations, I've had someone at gunpoint before, I dealt with very stressful situations daily as a hospital security guard, I've been a martial artist for 33 years and have extensive training in those areas but none of that prepared me psycologically for having a gun go off in my direction from 15 feet away. Seeing the muzzle flash, hearing the blast, and even feeling a little concussive force from the expanding air really jacks the heart rate up and hits primal switches in the brain. Brad was also video recording the scenarios for review - and I found that going in, I was too high in my stance, and physological response to the gunfire was to rock backward away from it (trying to avoid being shot) while trying to return fire. After that he gave some advise to stay lower in a more aggressive stance while moving, which would counteract the unconscious physiological responses to an extent (much harder to rock back / away from the blast when you're low and leaning in a bit).
We ran more exercises, including one with a "victim" (since we didn't have the luxury of other class members or staff to roleplay with us, he used a target laid on the ground to represent victims) visible in a hallway. During the scenario I was met with decisions on where to go - the open class room to one side, a closet with the door slightly ajar on the other, or bypass both and go toward the downed victim. My decision was clearing the classroom first - as it was large and with a lot of potential hiding spots. Second I moved to clear the closet - as we'd discussed that when conducting a search you were looking for anything out of the ordinary as a clue to a killer's whereabouts if you didn't have other information to go on (continual gun fire, screaming, people fleeing, etc) - so that closet door ajar was bugging me. That door should never be open - its the server room and supply closet.
I began clearing the closet - but instead of kicking the door further open right away - I moved to see what I could see through the open crack - which happened to be my bad guy. The weapon light I used disoriented him and I was able to put two good shots on target before I decided to kick the door open and "End ex" was called. Even tho I "won" that scenario - the bad guy even said he wasn't sure which way I was going or facing before getting lit up and shot - we discussed the potentiality of other driving forces or maybe bypassing certain clues in order to move toward a more likely search area. I think honestly he was trying to set me up to be ambushed - hoping / figuring I would bypass the closet and move toward the victim, and wasn't expecting me to do what I did.
In another scenario, making my way down a corridor, I encountered the bad guy pop his head and gun around the corner and taking a shot as I'm approaching an open door, and again - the emotional gunfire took over for a second. I shot at them but missed. Knowing a direction I pressed on and encountered the bad guy hiding in a different closet. That one didn't end great, but I did wind up getting rounds on the bad guy. I probably would've died twice if it was for real though, despite getting shots into the bad guy at the finish line.
We continued to debrief after every scenario about what went well, what didn't go well, and what to think about doing and try incorporating the next time.
We had about 4.5 hours of actual working time to run through scenarios which was a good foundation, but by no means will you be an expert, or even what I'd call proficient at the skill with just one class if you're new to actually doing that work, but it WILL give you some good information and some things to practice. And its a class I intend to take again - the classroom portion isn't necessary (per the instructor) so it would be a class focused all on scenario training.
Big take aways -- how you THINK you will react in a situation is not necessarily how you WILL react. All the mental exercise in the world isn't enough, but it can be a start.You need to do the work, under stress. You can train yourself to respond differently but it takes practice. Emotional gunfire (non sighted, rounds downrange as an instinctual response) happens and it shouldn't, but it can be trained out of you with practice. Brad stresses accountability and accuracy and will coach you toward improvement, he's down to earth, a no bullshit kind of guy and he will give you things to think about.
I'm far from the world's best pistol shot - I can pass the state qualifier no problem but almost anyone can. I've been trying to hold myself to a higher standard and will continue toward that. To that end I created a spread sheet for a set of range drills / exercises to work on every time I go to the range now - pushing to increase accuracy from 5 yards out to 25 yards, including timed components with both time and accuracy goals. Yesterday I hit the range up and shot this set and while I was overall pleased with my results there was still a good amount of work to be done - two different drills I failed on by not getting all my shots into the A-zone or 9 ring (depending on target) and had some shots go into the 7 or 8 rings. I'm planning on weekly range trips (gotta make the most of our range membership) and will be putting each scoring sheet (dated and initialed) in a binder to track my progress. Once I start getting consistently very good on these, I'm going to tighten up the goals more, decrease par times, and push my own standards even higher.
If you're LE or armed security I would definitely say reach out to Kinetic Concepts and get on a class roster. This certainly won't be the only class I take from him. I'm not sure if he's opened his classes up to non-LE or non-security yet, but its always worth an email to find out.
