My First Experience at “Tactical Training Tuesday.”

I used to shoot a lot when I was younger, but hadn’t shot much at all until this past June when I attended the Jaeger-LeCoultre Navy SEALs mini SEAL Week in Coronado, CA.  After that event, I my interest in shooting was rekindled.  Fellow WATCH TALK FORUMS member and friend John Rigano turned me on to a local firearm training facility and gun range called Sim-Trainer – they do a lot of training for both civilians and law enforcement personnel – the facility is owned by a City of Kettering Police Detective.  John and I learned that every Tuesday night, they have “Tactical Training Tuesdays” – a league of serious shooters who get together to practice different scenarios which more accurately simulates the conditions you might face in an actual encounter where you would use your firearm than simply standing comfortably in a range stall shooting at a target.

Here’s the first course we did.  You take three steps, turn around, draw your gun from a holster, and fire three shots one-handed at the targets in the order they pop up, then fire three shots two handed at the targets (keep in mind you MUST keep walking backwards while doing this exercise).   Then you must go behind cover, do a magazine change, and fire three head shots at the targets.  Did I mention all of this is being timed???

Here’s John Rigano’s run – he has had much more training and experience at this sort of thing then I have and did much better.  Video captured with my iPhone 4:

Here’s my not so great (slow) run.  I got a score of 95 compared to John’s 85, but John’s run was better than what the score reflects:

Here’s the video from the 2nd course of the evening.  In this exercise, you walk forward firing at four different targets in specific order (distance from the shooter) then you pull the string at the “window” and fire through the window three times at the “swinger” (bad guy) while not hitting the white “good guys” on either side of the swinger.  Then you walk backward firing again at the four targets in reverse order from the approach.  This was also timed.  Again, John Rigano did much better here than I and had a faster time.  We both got a score of 60, but John lost 55 points because he hit the “good guys” – otherwise he would have had a much better score than I did:

Even though I didn’t do as well as I would have liked, I had a TON of fun, and learned a lot!  I can’t wait for next week!!