WARRIOR TALK NEWS

Rifle Carry Modes

First I want to define the difference between a Carry method from a Ready method.  A Ready can be expanded to a Ready To Shoot Position.  These are used immediately before and during the fight and share one common attribute - that they either already have the muzzle on target, or allow the quick movement of the muzzle to a target once it has been identified. 

These are what the bulk of the tactical shooting community are familiar with since they comprise the starting point for all the drills commonly done in a rifle class.  But they require a focus and intensity that is short lived.  For example, one cannot maintain a modern Contact ready, nor a traditional Low Ready for a five hour hike up a mountain.

Different in scope from a Ready To Shoot Position are Carry Methods (one cannot really call them
"positions" as one is usually on the move).  Carry methods allow for moving the rifle from one point to another.  In a military/tactical context, they are used for moving towards the general area of
where the fight might be.  Notice I said "might be" and not "to the fight". 

There is a subtle difference in anticipation, and apprehension.  If I needed to cover five miles and I knew that at any moment, from any unspecified point, I may encounter an enemy, I would be using a much more "ready to shoot" method over a Carry Method, but it would be exhausting. 

The Carry Method allows you to carry the rifle in the field, in situations where aggression is not
specifically expected.  They allow for faster and freer movement that any sort of Ready To Shoot Positions.

First we have sling carry.  I do not favor the so-called "American Sling Carry".  That would be muzzle up on the primary shoulder.  Common in the "sporting world" this interferes with the sidearm, and does not lend itself to a directional dismount sling-present to target.  A relic of bygone times, we do not use it.  

Instead we favor the African Sling Carry which involves muzzle down support side carry.  This is very convenient in the field and allows for a quick dismount should it be required.  If both hands are needed to climb the preferred sling carry is simply to sling across the back.  This allows you to climb up a rock face, a building or anything you might need to do with both hands without needing to constantly manage a slipping sling and rifle.  If wearing a ruck, the sling can simply be made longer.

If sling carry is not desirable, there are other options.  These other options are rarely seen outside progressive schools as they usually do not have a reason to exist on the "traditional rifle range".  But since we do a great deal of work in the AZ back country, we have found them to be quite useful.

First is Carry at the Balance.  Simply find the balance of the rifle and grab it there.  This works well
for running and for moving short distances in haste.   The Elmer Fudd types will go apoplectic that the muzzle is not pointed to the ground.  Well, I seriously do not care what they think.  Carry at the balance can be seen anywhere light equipped men need to cover ground quickly.  Reminiscent of carrying a spear, it is both natural and easy.

Second is Tucked Carry.  The more the arm swings with the rifle, the more energy is expended.  Bring the rifle up under the arm, tucking it in, and the march or hike will be a bit easier.

Third is Cradle Carry.  Just like carrying a baby, cradle carry brings the rifle across your body close in, held by the arm against the body.      

Every rifleman will have a preference, so try them all out and determine which one suits you, your
topography and your personal equipment best.

WWW.ONESOURCETACTICAL.COM

Guerrilla Sniper with Gabe Suarez in Kingman, AZ

I recently attended the Guerrilla Sniper class that Gabe Suarez taught in Kingman, Arizona. This is not a new class for me, I’ve attended the with Eric Pfleger in Ohio, and with Scott Vandiver in Georgia, along with Gabe’s Guerrilla Sniper II class last fall here in Kingman.  However, it's always one of may favorites.

Gear

My main rifle for this class was my PTR–91GI. Last fall I sent this rifle over to Investment Grade Firearms to have them install a picatinny rail on top of the receiver for mounting optics (they also added a paddle mag release). Gabe was kind enough to loan me a TA33 ACOG with a .308 reticle. While this is a very high quality piece of glass, a fixed three power optic with a BDC isn’t necessarily the optimum optic for the GS role. It’s more of a Universal Rifle or DMR optic. That said, I figured it would be a good choice for testing out the rifle at distance. I added the wide HK forend and an HK bipod to help stabilize the rifle. For this class, I wanted the best cheekweld possible, so I put on my Magpul PRS stock and adjusted it to put my eye right in line with the ACOG. The ACOG is a bit higher than I’d like, with a lower optic I could probably dispense with the adjustable stock and use the regular HK stock instead.

For close up work, I brought some 147 grain M80 ball, as well as some Hornady 155 grain Steel Match and Prvi Partizan 175 grain match that I wanted to get rid of. For the longer range stuff, I brought a quantity of my usual Hornady 168 grain AMAX.

I also brought along my Savage Model 10FP bolt action. This is the rifle I’ve used in previous GS classes, and it has served me well. At the first GS class I took from Eric Pfleger, I had some issues with the stock and eye relief. After the class I replaced the stock with a nice Bell and Carlson model, custom made for a longer length of pull. It’s topped by a Leupold Mark 4 LR/T 3.5–10 FF TMR M5, which is a great piece of glass.

Previously, I shot this rifle mostly with 168 grain AMAX, but this time I brought along some Hornady 178 grain Superperformance Match. I had some trouble out near 1000 yards in previous classes, which may have had something to do with the bullets destabilizing as they entered the transonic zone out at that distance. The heavier bullet, and the fact that it is loaded to a higher velocity mean that this ammo should stay well above the speed of sound out to 1000 yards.

The other students in the class brought a variety of firearms, with a slight majority being semi-autos. Most of the semi-automatics were AR–10 designs from top tier manufacturers, but there were also a pair of M1As, a SCAR 17 and a TSD VEPR. The bolt guns were a mixture of Remmington 700s and CZs. The only non-.308 rifle in the class was the SIG 556 DMR shot by Gabe’s son, Eric. Four of the students brought suppressors for their rifles.

Students scopes were uniformly high quality, including Nightforce, Leupold, and Schmidt and Bender. Almost everyone had graduated reticle, either mildots or MOA. There were a couple with BDC reticles, similar to my ACOG.

Friday

When we assembled out at the range on Friday morning a fairly strong wind was blowing. If this kept up, it would make things pretty challenging.

Gabe started out with the usual administrative stuff: liability waivers, etc. He talked about some of the environmental hazards of shooting in Arizona in May, including dehydration. Keeping well hydrated is absolutely critical, especially when you’re going to be out there for three days. He also mentioned that this was the season when snakes start getting more active, so it was important to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes.

Moving on to the content of the course, Gabe talked a bit about the context of a class like this. While Gabe served as a SWAT sniper, this is not SWAT school, nor is it a military sniper course. This is a sniper course for the private citizen, drawing on lessons from conflicts like Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Northern Ireland.

He talked a bit about sniper gear. Here the foremost thing is not the rifle, it’s the optics. There are really three main types of optics: the spotting scope, binoculars, and a rifle scope. A spotting scope is really more of a range tool than a field optic. Binoculars are useful for searching for targets, but the riflescope is by far the most important optic. Second only to the riflescope is a good laser rangefinder. There are other methods of range estimation, and they’re good to know, but a laser rangefinder really is the easy button in this regard.

Since we want to cheat as much as possible, some sort of external method of stabilizing the rifle is a must. On the front end you can use a bipod or rest the forend of the rifle on a rucksack. At the rear, some sort of rear bag makes it a lot easier to hold the rifle steady. The traditional method was a sock filled with sand, but these days a bag filled with something like airsoft BBs is lighter and easier to manange.

We drove down to the 130 yard line to start out the live fire portion. Gabe gave the safety brief and then partnered up. After a lecture on the prone position, we began confirming our zeroes. Most folks scopes were well zeroed, but there were a few that needed some work.

Once everybody was dialed in, Gabe demonstrated the sitting position. After folks had a chance to shoot from the classical sitting position, Gabe brought out a ruck and showed how to shoot off of a support. The more support we can get the better. If a ruck isn’t available, you can use your partner (this is a topic we’d revisit later in the class.

Next up was kneeling. After Gabe demonstrated, everyone shot from the kneeling position. Then we moved back to 200 yards..

We started out doing some toro shots on the steel, which was fairly easy. However, one student, Dr. Brian Brzowski, one of our medical instructors, was consistently hitting to the left and couldn’t get it dialed in. He asked Gabe to shoot his rifle, with the same result. Gabe moved the windage adjustment 48 clicks, until it bottomed out. This should have moved the impact a couple of feet, but there was no visible change in the point of impact. This is a classic sign of a broken scope. What makes this a bit unusual is that the scope in question was a Nightforce. It just goes to show that anything manmade can break, even Tier 1 gear.

Gabe had a spare Leupold 4–14, which he loaned to Brian. To speed things up, Brian asked Gabe to do the zeroing. Gabe managed to get on target and fairly well centered in just three shots.

Our performance standard for the Guerrilla sniper is 600 yard body shots and 200 yard headshots. Since we were at 200, Gabe had everyone engage some smaller steels that approximated head sized targets. Everyone was able to get on target fairly easily.

By this time the wind had died down, so we continued moving back, shooting while the air was fairly calm. In short order we shot at 300, 400, and 500 yards. As we got back to 500, I noticed that my shots were consistently to the right, despite winds being fairly calm. I dialed in a couple of clicks of adjustment on my scope. My zero was a bit of a rush job, so I wasn’t surprised that some inconsistencies appeared at longer ranges.

We moved back to 600 yards, the other element of our Guerrilla Sniper minimum. Everyone was able to get on target that this range, though some had a bit of difficulty. I got my hits, although the stadia line of the BDC was thick enough at this distance that it covered most of the target. At this point I ran out of BDC and magnification. I think the PTR could go a good bit further with a different optic. I’ve got a Browe on order, and once it’s here I’d like to put it on the PTR and bring it out to this range. The Browe has 4x magnification, rather than the 3x on the ACOG I was using, as well as BDC lines out to 900 yards.

Until I get the Browe, it was time to switch to a different rifle and optic. I pulled out by Savage with the Leupold 3.5–10 on it. As I went to dial in my elevation, I found that I only had about 3 mils of adjustment before it bottomed out. I knew this wasn’t right, so I concluded that I hadn’t moved the dial all the way back to zero last time I used it. This meant it was a full revolution of the turret off. I dialed it back to what I thought was the real zero and then adjusted for the range. My first shot was dead on in elevation. Failing to return the scope to zero was a stupid mistake, and if I hadn’t been shooting this far out I wouldn’t have caught it before I shot.

With the scope issues out of the way, I got on target fairly easily, with a couple of shots for windage.

One of the unappreciated reasons most sniper shots are taken at just a few hundred yards is that people are actually really hard to see at further distances. Gabe talked a bit about camouflage, then sent a couple of us out to demonstrate. One fellow had on multicam, another just had on muted tans and browns, what we call Hippy EarthTone (HEAT) camouflage. He also sent out one student in a black shirt, to show the visibility of someone who was not at all camouflaged.

We walked out to 100, 200, and 300 yards and at each distance we stepped off the range and stood, kneeled, and went prone. Out at 300, even standing those of us in camo or more muted colors were hard to see as long as we were still. Kneeling and prone we were pretty much invisible to the naked eye.

The class moved back up to the 400 yard line to do a bit more shooting to wrap up the day. After being out at 700, everyone agreed that 400 seemed relatively easy.

Saturday

Starting out the day we worked on some closer range reactive shooting drills. The whole idea of a sniper is to be proactive, to hit the other guy while he’s totally oblivious to your presence. As much as we might try, we can’t guarantee that we’ll always be able to do this. Sometimes it’s necessary to shoot reactively with a sniper rifle. Some sniper rifles are not very well suited to this; they are too heavy or poorly balanced. However, the biggest obstacle to reactive shooting with a sniper rifle is often the optic. A high power scope is great for those proactive shots at long range, but up close it makes things very difficult. A variable power scope is better than a fixed optic in this regard, and the lower the bottom end of the magnification range is, the better. Variable optics should have a low end magnification of 3–4 power at most, any higher and reactive shooting will be difficult. The corollary to this is to keep the power level turned down to the minimum whenever you’re not actively using a higher magnification. If you need to make a 600 yard shot you will probably have time to turn up the magnification. If you need to make a 50 yard shot you probably won’t.

We started out at about 100 yards and worked on quickly dropping into kneeling and breaking the shot. After watching people do this, Gabe took the opportunity to talk about how to work the bolt on a bolt action rifle. Next up was dropping into prone and quickly pressing off a shot. This is a situation where the ability to shoot without using the bipod or a ruck is definitely desirable, but some sniper rifles are so long and heavy that unsupported shooting is really difficult. With guns like my PTR, which has much more of a battle rifle heritage, these sorts of drills are a lot easier.

Next we moved up to 50 yards and did some snap shooting from standing. This was actually a nice demonstration of why offhand shooting skills are necessary, even with a sniper rifle, because at this distance an intermediate berm blocked the view of the targets if you were kneeling or prone. This sort of micro terrain is just the sort of thing that can interfere with the lower positions in the real world.

Gabe had hoped that the wind would die down a bit while we were doing these closer ranged drills, but it was still blowing pretty good. However, it was blowing almost directly downrange (from about the 5 o’clock direction) which would limit its effect on our longer ranged shooting. We went back to the 700 yard line, where we’d left off yesterday. This gave everyone a chance to get back into the long range shooting groove at a distance where they already had some experience.

After everyone was back on target at 700, we moved back to 800. At this distance Eric was starting to have some trouble hitting with the SIG 556. Even though the wind direction meant the crosswind component wasn’t as strong as it could have been if it were full value, it was still blowing the .223 bullets around. The 75 grain match ammo he was using helps with this, but there’s only so much you can do with such a small caliber.

We stepped back again to 900 yards. One of the students had a .308 VEPR with a Texas Weapon Systems top cover on it. He was having some real trouble getting on target, culminating with a round hitting the dirt about 75 yards from the line. I took a close look at his rifle during the next shot and saw that his scope moved oddly during recoil. Gabe noticed this too and took a close look at the mount. The two bolts that hold the top cover to the hinge had come loose and fallen off. This meant that the front end of the top cover was just sitting there, rather than being anchored to the rifle. We were able to find one of the two screws. The student headed off to Home Depot to see if they had a screw there that would work as a replacement for the other.

Next up, 1000 yards. I was able to drill the target with a first round hit (a feat of which I am immensely proud) and went 3 for 4. Compared to my 1000 yard performance at the last GS class (2 hits in 30 rounds) this was an immense improvement. I have to give a lot of credit to the heavier, faster ammo Hornady Superperformance ammo I was using. Unlike the stuff I was shooting in previous classes, it stays supersonic out well beyond 1000 yards meaning it won’t destabilize as it drops though transonic speeds.

Some of the other students using lighter bullets and shorter barrels were clearly struggling a bit with ammo going subsonic before hitting the target. Despite shooting very accurate rifles they were seeing quite a bit of randomness in their bullet impacts. We’re clearly pushing the effective limits of the .308 cartridge.

We moved back up to 400 yards. As one student remarked, “This seems so close now.” Gabe talked about coordinated fire. When engaging with multiple snipers, you want the shots to be as close to simultaneous as possible so that the targets don’t have a chance to seek cover or react to the gunshots before all the shots arrive.

There are two main ways to do this. One involves a controller who coordinates fire. He provides a brief count, “one and two and” with everyone firing on count three. This works great when you have someone who isn’t shooting to coordinate. However, it’s really difficult for a shooter to do this and get off a maximally accurate shot. For situations where you don’t have an extra person to be the controller (a two-man team, for instance) there is another method. One shooter calls out “on target”, “on trigger”, and “on me”, pausing after each for the other shooter(s) to acknowledge by repeating back to him. All the shooters load up their triggers just short of firing a shot. The controlling shooter breaks his shot, with the remaining shooters following as quickly as possible (ideally within a quarter of a second). We broke up into teams and practiced both methods.

Two shooters, two pieces of brass in the air at once.

Sometimes, you need to take a shot from a higher position than prone, and there isn’t any object available to use for support. One alternative to shooting unsupported in this sort of situation is to use your shooting partner for support. If terrain allows you to shoot from a sitting position, both the shooter and spotter can sit, with the rifle resting on the spotter’s shoulder. This can be a bit unpleasant for shorter weapons and especially those with muzzle breaks, but it’s doable. The shooters need to synchronize their breathing, entering the respiratory pause at the same time to break the shot.

This can also be done standing. Here it helps if the two shooters are approximately the same height. Gabe had the students try the sitting method at 400 yards and the standing one at 200. In both cases most pairs were able to get good hits.

While your spotter can serve as a support, something a bit more solid is better. Gabe showed how to use a handy post as a vertical support.

At this point we wrapped things up for the day. We reconvened at a local restaurant that evening for a nice dinner and some great fellowship with like minded people.

Sunday

When I arrived on Sunday morning, I found one student working on his LaRue OBR upper. He’d taken it apart to clean it the previous night, and after reassembly the bolt carrier would only move about 3/4 of an inch. I looked at it and found that the bolt seemed to be rotating and completely unlocking the lugs, but as soon as it did, something arrested the bolt carrier’s progress. When the student mentioned that he had left out the firing pin when he reassembled the rifle, a hypothesis occurred to me:

Without the firing pin in place the cam pin could rotate freely. The top of the cam pin was longer in one direction than the other, so if it was oriented incorrectly it might not be able to slide down the slot in the top of the receiver where the charging handle rides. This would arrest the motion of the bolt carrier as soon as the bolt unlocked. If so, this could be a big problem since there is absolutely no outside access to the cam pin as long as the bolt carrier was in the rifle. I looked down though the bolt carrier while shining a light in the barrel and didn’t see any light, confirming that the cam pin wasn’t lined up the way it would be if the firing pin were installed.

Pondering for a bit, I tried moving the bolt carrier up and down the 3/4" that we could move it, hoping that this would rotate the cam pin until it happened to line up with the slot. After about fifteen seconds, the bolt carrier came loose. The student got the bolt carrier out of there and reassembled it with the firing pin. The rifle ran fine for the remainder of class.

We started out with an exertion drill. The students ran from the 300 yard line up to 200, then had to do a simultaneous shot on one of the steel targets. The idea is to get your heart rate up and your breathing going a bit and show what it’s like to shoot in these conditions.

Next up we did a bit of position shooting, going back over the fundamentals of shooting from standing, kneeling, and prone. The students practiced getting into and out of these positions quickly and smoothly.

Now it was time for one of my favorite parts of the class: target identification drills. Gabe put up some targets covered with pictures of various terrorists at about 150 yards. Each two-man team was given a terrorist’s face to find among the various faces and had to make a coordinated headshot on the target. Doing this quickly and smoothly requires good communication and good teamwork.

After everyone had a chance to shoot their terrorist, we moved up and took a look at the results. Some were really good, but others needed some improvement (not only did we have some misses, we also had some hits on the wrong targets). Compared to a lot of the shooting in the class this was relatively easy, but once you add on more tasks besides just shooting, everything gets a lot more complicated. We pulled back to the line and ran the drill a couple more times. The second and third times through everyone communicated a lot better and we saw better results on the shooting end.

After lunch Gabe divided the class in half and dispatched the students to set up some hasty hides on either side of the range. These are not full fledged dug in sniper hides, meticulously camouflaged and where you are expected to carefully hide for days. This is about what you can do in a matter of minutes to make yourself less visible. We saw a lot of folks using vegetation and sniper veils to break up their outline. One of the challenges was that even though the shots were relatively close, vegetation and terrain made it difficult to find a spot to shoot from prone. Many students ended up shooting from sitting or kneeling.

One of the features of this range is a bermed area off to the right side of the range next to the targets. Gabe took advantage of this by having the students congregate there, protected by the berm, while he fired past them. This allowed them to hear the supersonic crack of the bullet passing by, followed by the bang of the shot itself. Gabe started back at 600 yards, where there is a substantial delay between the crack and the bang. As he moved up at 100 yard intervals the delay became shorter and shorter until at 100 yards the crack and the bang were almost indistinguishable. You can use this technique as a rough ranging tool if someone is shooting at you.

Our final exercise in the class was vehicle hides. Taking sniper shots from vehicles has a long history, employed in Northern Ireland, Iraq, and even by the beltway snipers. It can be extremely effective. Gabe gave the students the overall mission, but he told them to use their creativity in creating a good shooting position from their particular vehicles. As you can see from the pictures, they came up with quite a variety of solutions.

This finished up the class. Gabe handed out the certificates and we all headed for home.

Conclusions

This was really a great class. Guerrilla Sniper is always one of my favorite classes. In part this is because of the excellent instructors we have teaching these classes like Gabe, Scott Vandiver, and Eric Pfleger. It’s also because this is a really good curriculum, one that includes a lot of things most of us don’t get to do on a daily basis.

We had a good batch of students in this class. Everyone brought good gear, so we didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time fighting equipment issues. The students also brought good fundamentals and good gunhandling skills, so we were able to go quite far, quite quickly.

The PTR–91GI did really well. It was dead on out to 600 yards, and I felt that the rifle could have easily gone out further if the optic and BDC reticle had been able to accommodate it. Once I get a Browe for it I need to come back out and see how it does at 700 and 800. The Magpul PRS stock worked well for getting a good cheek weld and the HK bipod provided a solid shooting platform. The one area that was a bit iffy was the rear bag. The HK bipod holds the rifle fairly high, so I had to stand the TAB gear rear bag on end to get the rifle on target. A bigger bag might have helped steady things a bit more.

I was also happy with my Savage bolt gun. The Hornady Superperformance 178 grain was just spectacular at the longer ranges. It definitely solved the issues I’d had out at 900–1000 yards at the class in Blakely. This is going to be my standard long range ammo out of this gun. The Leupold 3.5–10 scope was just a workhorse, as always.

I was very impressed with how well Eric did with the SIG 556 DMR. He’s definitely got the shooting fundamentals down and knows how to apply them well. The SIG shot very well. Between this and what I saw at John Chambers’ Designated Marksman class, I have developed quite a bit of respect for the 5.56x45mm as a long range cartridge. Even with 75 grain ammo it’s not a .308, but it does quite well out to 700 yards or so in the right hands. I may have to bring out a good 5.56 rifle (probably an AR) to the Guerrilla Sniper 2 class in November. Given that GS2 involves a lot of shooting from positions other than prone and moving on foot to different areas of the range, the light, handy nature of an AR (compared to most .308 sniper rifles) a good 5.56mm AR would be just about ideal for that class.

Guerrilla Sniper is a great class, one of the really unique ones that Suarez International offers. I would highly recommend it to anyone who really wants to break the mold of conventional rifle training.

Discuss this class on Warriortalk.

Find more Suarez International Guerrilla Sniper classes at suarezinternationalstore.com

The M4 "Pistol"

We have been working with this weapon some time now and I think it is a vastly under-rated system.  To recap.  I bought a 10.5" LMT Upper unit from one of our staff instructors.  It came as pictured less the Micro Aimpoint.  I had a number of M4 lowers in stock so I grabbed one and transferred to myself it as a pistol.  This would eliminate any possible concerns over the "constructive possession" issues. I added a pistol buffer tube and began working with it. More on the pistol buffer tube matter later.

We have had "pistol" discussions before, mostly relating to the AK series of stcokless SBR rifles.  These have zero utility and should be avoided.  That is what I have said from the beginning.  The M4 however, due to the design need of having a receiver extension (aka "Buffer Tube"), allows it to be used exactly as a rifle...almost.

We used two different systems to use the M4 pistol (I almost want to call it a "stockless rifle" since that is in effect what we have).  One we obtained from our friends in the Czech Special Forces.  They have a way to shoot the diminutive Skorpion VZ-61 Machine Pistol using three points of contact.  They place the buttstock on their cheek and ignore the shoulder.  Being a 32ACP, only Justin Beiber would find the recoil objectionable. This is best used for CQB, or close range problems where a center of mass (or center of face) shot is required.  The rifle...err, ah..pistol, is brought up to the face, and fired as soon as you have alignment, seeing what you need to see. Quite fast actually and reminiscent of the old SAS MP5 techniques. 

Invariably someone will try to use some sort of sling to "enhance" this.  I advise against it as it is simply unnecessary and return nothing for the effort.  Just bring it up, get that visual index, and press.

But this system is not solely for CQB.  We have shot this out to 300 yards and hit IPSC steels repeatedly.  When greater accuracy is needed for longer shots, or for extremely precise close shots, it is a simple matter to obtain that fourth point of contact by bringing the end of the buffer tube back into the shoulder.

It is also a simple matter to reach out with the weapon (we have taken it to 300 yards, but 200 is probably more reasonable ballistically) in any of the usual supported rifle firing positions.  You may need to modify them slightly, as you would when working with a short stocked rifle, but the results speak for themselves.

Several students in the recent rifle course noted that while an SBR may not be legal in all states, this M4 Pistol will not only be legal anyplace a handgun is legal, but also legally carried with any CCW permit.  Interesting option for those living in left-leaning regions of the country.

We have also found the M4 Pistol to be an excellent vehicle weapon, being extremely light and handy and capable of maneuvering in the close confines of a Tahoe, Jeep, BMW, or similar sized automobile. 

Invariably there will be those on the internet that will tell you that you could put on a rifle buffer tube and bring up documents and letter from the ATF.  Look guys...a pistol buffer tube is about fifty bucks.  Do you really want to kick over the ATF anthill for fifty bucks?  I do not.  I have friends that work for that agency and I called them to ask.  The unanimous reply was to not be a cheapskate and try to find some loophole to avoid spending fifty bucks.  I agree.

Try the concept out, I think you will be amazed at what you can do with the M4 Pistol. Oh, by the way...since i live in AZ, I did submit my Form 1 and send in $200 to make it a bonafide SBR, but for the guys that cannot do that, this is a very viable option.

 

Regarding the dealing with those who kidnap children...such as the Ohio group currently in the news.

I have looked directly into the face of evil...several times. I know it when I see it. It is not a good feeling to know that, but I would not trade that perspective for all the gold on earth.

What people need to realize is that evil cannot be prayed for, or forgiven, or "loved" (in the Christian sense), nor does the tired "love the sinner hate the sin" work with evil. And to bestow rights upon evil is as stupid as feeling bad for the devil.

There is only one thing...one solution to evil, and that is to terminate its presence among you in a most permanent way. That may, or may not be socially acceptable, but it is the only way.

Trauma Medicine for the CCW Operator with Keith Seto

Recently I attended the Trauma Care for the CCW Operator in Las Vegas, Nevada, taught by Dr. Keith Seto and Roger Phillips. This is the fourth time I’ve attended the TMCO class, but it's the first with any instructor other than Dr. John Meade, our Director of Tactical Medicine.

For the force on force portion of the class, I brought a pair of airsoft G17s. However, the only use I got out of them was loaning them out to various students when their airsoft guns went down. Most students brought Umarex airsoft pistols, with a few green gas powered airsoft guns.

On the live fire side of things I brought my usual pair of G17s, one a TSD gun, the other iron sighted. These didn’t get any use at all. Interestingly, the entire class (and all the instructors) brought Glock pistols. Close to half of them were TSD guns. This is not entirely unexpected. Many of them are Roger’s regular students and I suspect that he has influenced their choices somewhat.

Saturday

As usual for Roger’s classes, we got off to an early start, at 8am. Roger handled the administrative stuff and did the safety briefing, then he introduced Dr. Keith Seto. Keith is a trauma surgeon, and he did his residency at a Level 1 trauma center, so he’s got lots of experience dealing with penetrating injuries. He put this experience to good use during the class, often talking about examples of particular injuries he’s seen during the instruction or in response to student questions.

After introducing himself, Keith asked the students to go around and introduce themselves, including why they were taking this class. Quite a high proportion were concerned not just about themselves being injured in a gunfight, but about a family member potentially getting shot.

He talked a bit about the history of trauma care in this country, and the evolution of our current practices. He also talked about the context of tactical trauma care, dividing it up into three phases: the Care Under Fire phase, the Tactical Field Care phase, and the Definitive Care phase. In this class we are concerned with the first two, which involve care during and immediately after the fight. During the care under fire phase, which takes place as the fight is still going on, highest priority is to prevent yourself from getting shot, second is to return fire, and only third, to care for injuries. Finishing the fight often has to take priority over treating injuries.

Traditionally, first aid classes teach the acronym ABC for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation as the basic order of treatment. In a tactical trauma situation, this is incorrect. Studies of battlefield injuries have shown that of people who died from treatable injuries, 60% died due to blood loss. Preventing blood loss is our highest priority when treating these types of injuries. Accordingly, instead of ABC, SI teaches the acronym MARCH: Massive hemorrhage, Airway, Respiration, Circulation, and Hypothermia/Head injury.

Our first line of defense in dealing with massive hemorrhage are tourniquets. There’s quite a bit of misinformation about tourniquets out there, withe people claiming they make amputation inevitable. As long as you get to the hospital where they can provide definitive care in a few hours, the tourniquet will have no permanent negative effects.

On the flip side, there is nothing better for stopping massive bleeding on the extremity. Even better, from a tactical perspective, once applied a tourniquet is effectively hands free and doesn’t require continued attention, allowing the rescuer, and perhaps even the injured person, to get back into the fight.

Keith brought four different kinds of tourniquets: the Cav Arms Slick Tourniquet, the Combat Applications Tourniquet (CAT), and the SOF Tactical Toruniquet (SOFTT, the improved SOFT-Wide). He demonstrated how each of these work and passed them around so everybody could have a look at them.

Tourniquets should be applied as high on the wounded extremity as possible. Not only does it ensure that the tourniquet is above the injury, it also makes it easier to block off the blood flow. The upper arm and leg have only one bone and one major artery, making it relatively easy to pinch the artery against the bone and stop blood flow. The lower arm and leg have two bones and two blood vessels, making it more difficult to stop the blood flow.

While tourniquets are generally our first choice, there are wounds where they aren’t an option. If a tourniquet isn’t applicable or available, the old standby is direct pressure. Stick something absorbent in the wound and press, hard. The problem with this in a tactical situation is it takes the injured person, and possibly the person treating them, out of the fight.

One way to get around this is pressure dressings. These are essentially an absorbent pad on an elastic bandage that will put some pressure on the wound. Keith showed off a couple of different brands and passed them around for people to play with.

We can increase the effectiveness of direct pressure and pressure dressings by using a hemostatic agent. These originally came in various forms, but the current versions generally come in the form of gauze treated with a substance that accelerates clotting. It’s important to note that these are not a panacea. They do help with clotting, but they are an adjunct to direct pressure or a pressure dressing, not a substitute.

With the basics of the medical side of things out of the way, changed gears to the Force on Force segment. Roger talked about our force on force safety procedures, mostly dedicated to ensuring there are no live weapons in the training environment. Obviously, we needed to make sure everyone switched over from their live pistol to an airsoft gun. We also wanted to make sure nobody brought in any knives or other secondary weapons. He also talked about the role of the student playing the ‘bad guy’ in the scenarios. The goal is not to win, but to provide the appropriate opposition to your training partner for the scenario in question.

We started out with what we call the Matt Dillon drill or the suicide drill. This is to demonstrate what happens if you try to just outdraw your opponent. Unless one guy flubs the draw, it almost always results in both guys getting shot.

Our preferred solution to this is to get off the X. By moving from our starting position the bad guy has to cycle through his Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop in order to adjust to our sudden movement. This gives us a chance to get our gun out and on target before he can shoot us.

After Roger went over the basic concepts, he had everyone practice this against a live opponent. The student playing the bad guy draws and puts one round into the good guy’s starting position. If the good guy does it right, he won’t be there and the round will miss.

After everyone had the basics down, Roger started allowing the bad guy to take follow up shots, with these tracking the good guy’s movement. The object now is not just to get off the X initially, it’s to draw and shoot on the move, getting rounds onto the opponent before he can track you and get a hit on you.

Because one of the focuses of this class is on treating an injured friend or family member, this brings up the question of how noncombatant family members fit in our GOTX skill set. Roger presented two options. The first is to bring the family member with you as you bust off the X (preferably on the side opposite the bad guy, not using them for cover). This gets them off the X as well, but can slow down your movement and make both of you more of a target. Another alternative is the “significant other takeoff”. Essentially you shove the family member one way as you get off the X in the opposite direction. This requires some knowledge and cooperation from the family member, but it gets both of you off the X.

After we ran the 1 on 2 with a noncombatant, doing the significant other takeoff, Roger invited me to talk about awareness, alertness, and pre-fight maneuvering. As usual for this subject I thoroughly ripped off Randy Harris’ “Dealing With Pests” lecture, which he as turned into an epic thread on Warriortalk. I used this framework to talk about awareness and alertness, and a bit about pre-fight maneuvering.

We worked some scenarios with two bad guys and one good guy. To emphasize the pre-fight maneuvering Roger had everyone start with the bad guys approaching and maneuvering on the good guy rather than just drawing down on him from five yards.

To finish up the day, Roger described the after action drill. This is something we do in almost every SI class. We want to make sure the bad guy is really down, that he doesn’t have any friends we need to worry about, that our gun is reloaded and ready for the next fight, and to check to see if we’ve sustained any injuries. This last one is where this class goes further than we do in other classes, and this is something that we’d pick up again on Sunday. For today though, the students just worked through the after-action drill itself, ingraining the process.

With this we packed up and headed out to a nice dinner at the Genghis Grill, a local Mongolian restaurant. The food was good, and the fellowship excellent.

Sunday

Sunday morning, after a quick review, Keith started out talking about the “A” in MARCH: the Airway. If the patient is conscious and can manage their own airway, the best thing to do is generally to let them find the position that is most comfortable and allows them to breath the easiest.

For an unconscious person, the simplest way to help keep the airway open is to roll them onto their side into the recovery position. This keeps their tongue from falling back and blocking their airway, as well as allowing fluids and vomit to drain out of the mouth rather than getting aspirated into the lungs.

If their injuries prevent you rolling them onto their side, an alternative it the head tilt/chin lift. This repositions their head and jaw to keep the tongue from falling to the back of their throat. The disadvantage in a tactical situation is it will probably require your attention to keep the patient’s head in this position, tying you to their position.

A hands-free alternative is to use a nasopharyngeal or oral airway. The nasopharyngeal airway or NPA, is a tube that goes in the nose and down just past the back of the throat. The oral airway goes in the mouth to the back of the throat. Both of them will keep the tongue from obstructing the airway.

Next up, Keith talked about splinting injured limbs. He passed around some premade SAM splints, as well as discussing how to improvise splints from available objects.

He talked about the rest of the MARCH acronym, the ‘RCH’. For Respiration we want to make sure that once the airway is clear there’s nothing else that’s interfereing with the patient’s ability to breath, such as a pneumothorax or hemothorax caused by a sucking chest wound. This is a subject we cover in more detail in the Advanced Trauma Medecine class.

Combing to the ‘C’ in MARCH, we want to check for any additional bleeding, reassess any wounds that we treated back in the massive hemorrhage phase, and keep an eye out for hypovolemic shock. Finally, ‘H’ is for hypothermia and head injury. While we normally think of hypothermia in terms of cold climates, it’s possible for an injured person who has lost a lot of blood to become hypothermic even in temperate conditions.

We talked a bit about methods for moving an unconscious person and the students practiced some of them on each other.

Next, we brought out the airsoft guns again and had the students practice aiding another. This wasn’t done force on force, but we used the airsoft guns - sans pellets - in case the ended up covering the person they were aiding. Roger and Keith occasionally threw in some curveballs, like giving the patient multiple injuries, or having both the patient and the rescuer be injured. They also introduced some other elements, like deciding whether the current location was safe or whether it would be better to move the patient.

Once everyone had a couple of runs aiding another, we broke for lunch.

After lunch, we broke out the real guns and live ammo. The first subject was one-handed manipulations. This is in keeping with the theme of this class, which is finishing a fight and surviving even after you’ve been wounded. In force on force, we see people getting hit in the hands and arms a lot. This is because people tend to focus on their adversary’s gun, and as Roger says: the bullets go where the eyes go. Getting injured in the arm is very realistic.

Almost all of our pistol classes involve some one-handed shooting, so for this class we concentrated on one-handed gun manipulations: reloads and malfunction clearance.

We started out working the one-handed reload. Eject the old magazine, return the pistol to the holster, retrieve a new magazine, rack the slide. The one handed rack is actually something that a TSD Glock with RMR makes much easier, since you can use the RMR as a big charging handle. It can still be done with more conventional sights, however. Hook the rear sight on something: a good stiff gunbelt, holster, etc. Push the frame forward to retract the slide, then let the slide go. With the slide cycled, you’re back in the fight.

Fixing simple malfunctions, those that we would normally tap-rack, is even easier. Bang the bottom of the pistol grip on your thigh to seat the mag, then hook the RMR or rear sight to rack it. Failures to extract (sometimes called “double feeds” are more difficult. You need to lock back the slide, eject the magazine, rack it, insert a new mag, and rack it again. Locking the slide back is the tricky part. You have to hook the sight or RMR on something to pull it back, while simultaneously pushing up on the magazine release. For some folks, particularly with small hands, this can be difficult.

Given how long this procedure takes, you probably don’t want to do it standing out in the open. We didn’t have any cover available on the range, so we simulated it by kneeling down. Roger demonstrated the racking process using the heel of his shoe to hook the RMR or rear sight on to rack the slide. A few of the students with RMRs had some difficult with the empty case in the chamber not l being ejected when they racked the slide. After watching the students carefully and puzzling over this for a bit we figured out that with the RMR, the sight was getting caught on the back of the shoe, rather than slipping off, so the slide was going forward as the student lifted the gun for the next rack, not snapping forward at full speed. This meant the extractor wasn’t always riding over the rim of the case. When the students switched to racking it on their belt or holsters, where the RMR could slip off and allow the slide to go forward freely, the problem went away.

If your gun arm is injured, one likely outcome is that you might drop the pistol. We practiced retrieving the pistol from the ground with the support hand and getting it into action.

With that we moved on to the final exercise. The students were to get off the X to the 1 or 11 o’clock directions (depending on which side of the range they were standing on) shoot their target, then start the after action drill. When they got to the medical part of the after action drill, Roger or Keith would call out an injury and they would have to treat themselves (usually by applying a tourniquet).

After everyone had a couple of  chances to run the final exercise, we wrapped up the class. Keith handed out the certificates, we cleaned up the range, and everybody headed home.

Conclusions

This was a great class. Keith did an excellent job and the depth of his medical knowledge really shows. Roger did his usual top notch job teaching the FoF and live fire portions of the class. They made a very effective team

The type of students we had can often make or break a class, particularly one like this. In this case everyone attending contributed to making this a better class. All were well trained when it came to the firearms aspects and I didn’t worry that we were going to have to put these skills into action for real. Most of the students had trained extensivly with Roger in the past and he has taught them well.  We had a number of medical professionals in the class, and their comments and questions helped enrich the discussion of the medical aspects.

Dr. John Meade is going to be out in Las Vegas to teach the Advanced Trauma Medicine class August 31-September 1.  That's just one of four times the advanced class will be taught this year.  I am looking forward to it immensely.

Given the terrible events in Boston, we’ve seen just how important these sorts of skills are. Whether it’s a terrorist attack, a mugging, or an accident, the ability to treat penetrating trauma and airway injuries is huge when it comes to keeping yourself or your loved ones alive. This is a class that everyone needs to take.

You can find future Trauma Medicine for the CCW Operator classes here.

Training opportunities in these times...

Dr John Meade

Director of Tactical Medicine

Suarez International

 

Everyone in the USA is having difficulty finding ammunition in most calibers, and the ammo that is found is usually expensive. Most stores are limiting the sales to each person, as well. If you didn't stockpile prior to the recent situation, or if you are concerned about being able to resupply that stockpile, you might be reluctant to sign up for a gunfighting class.

Yet at the same time, are we not realizing that the skills we teach in Suarez International classes are incredibly important now, more than ever! We must give up the fantasy that we all live in some happy Utopia. Ladies & Gentlemen, we are living in a time and place that is essentially a combat zone. Just as those living in Israel have learned to live a happy life, but never forgetting to be on their guard, we must do the same. 

We have for many years believed nothing bad will happen to us if we stay out of "bad neighborhoods". Then we started realizing that meth labs are proliferating in the rural areas, and those folks are happy to kill you if you get in their way. We now know that various gangs are viewing the USA as their next territory to own, since they now literally govern much of Latin America. And even our local thugs are looking to follow Sutton's Law, and go make their robberies in the nicer neighborhoods, "where the money is". And what about the simple nut jobs who decide to shoot up a school or a mall, due to their own inner demons?

So if that isn't enough reason to learn proper skills, now it is becoming obvious that Anytown, USA is also a place that terrorists can easily operate. For all too long, we were worried that the Russians would launch a nuclear bomb into our big cities. Much of our national defense thinking, as well as our personal approach, was oriented toward that. The attacks of 9/11/01 made us realize that terrorism could hit us hard. However, even after 9/11, we were left primarily with fears of a more large-scale attack, involving hijacking & bombing buildings and airplanes. 

Our friends in Ireland and Israel learned long ago that small scale attacks are perhaps even more effective purveyors of terror. The two bombs set off by the Islamist terrorists in Boston this week were small, easy to make, and easy to transport. From a perspective of killing personnel, they were not very effective. These small bombs only killed 3 people, and maimed several dozen, when set off in a very crowded location. Yet from a terrorism perspective, these little improvised explosive devices were incredibly effective. 

The fear of even a tiny IED has potential to destroy your way of life. Terrorists don't have to kills thousands like they did at the World Trade Center. Striking in any way at a mall in Peoria, a kid's soccer game in Tupelo, or a church in Boise would truly be even more effective to spread terror. Even Tom Clancy published a novel with this concept years ago. Is it not obvious that the jihadists will take this approach sooner, rather than later?

So when (not if) this happens, are you prepared? Do you know how to protect yourself and your loved ones? Are you ready to attack those who wish to destroy our way of life? What are the clues to let you know something bad is about to happen? Do you know how to respond during and after such an attack? When do you move? When do you close vs create distance? When do you go hands-on vs drawing your gun or knife? What is a tourniquet, and when do you apply it? 

Suarez International instructors are very attuned to the fact that the paradox of need for training, and lack of ammo, are both legitimate concerns. We believe the skills we teach are vital today, more than ever. It just so happens that some of our most important classes are actually fairly low round count classes. Even the classes that traditionally have been higher round counts are being done in ways to reduce your ammo expenditure, if you need to conserve. The trauma/tactical medicine classes (TMCO and ATM) and Zero-5 Feet Gunfighting use less than 200 rounds, and of course knife, FoF and CQB are zero round count. The Terrorist/Active Shooter Interdiction (TASI) class is specifically designed to help you in these situations, and requires only ~250 rounds. In these classes we spend a lot of time doing Force on Force (Airsoft) and dry drills. We also spend a huge amount of time emphasizing tactical thinking. 

This is not the time to avoid training, in order to save your ammo. This is the time to get the training you need to survive in our current reality. We will help you do this in the most efficient way possible. But only you can make the commitment to get the skills. Sign up for some SI classes now.

Dr. John Meade is Director of Tactical Medicine for Suarez International , and a board-certified Emergency Physician. He is a reserve police officer on a multi-jurisdictional SWAT team, an EMS medical director and an NRA certified instructor. He may be contacted on WarriorTalk, or his website at www.statdoc.com .