by Chris Upchurch, Suarez International Staff Instructor
A student made a very insightful comment at one of our Close Range Gunfighting classes. This student had gone through the progression of basic classes with S.I. He started with Defensive Pistol Skills, then took Point Shooting Gunfight Skills, and was following that up with CRG. He remarked that “When I started I thought CRG was the ultimate class. Now I realize that it’s just the beginning.”
I like to refer to Suarez International’s lower level classes as “foundational” rather than “basic”. When you refer to them as basic you get some folks who don’t want to do the basics, they want to do only high speed low drag stuff. This is like building a house without a foundation. As soon as you put some stress on it it’s going to collapse. Others think, “I live in a safe neighborhood, I only need the basics.” Building a foundation is great, but a foundation alone is not going to keep the rain off your head.
In Close Range Gunfighting we assume you’ve got those foundational skills and we start building on that foundation. The fundamental CRG skill is the ability to get off the X and shoot while moving dynamically. GOTX is not a universal response, but it works for many of the situations a citizen will find themselves in. We also cover some attitude and alertness, caveman style gunhandling, and the full after action assessment process, and give very brief introductions to shooting from cover, low light gunfighting, and ambidextrous shooting. We’ve added some walls and a roof to your foundation. They’ll do a decent job of keeping the rain out, but they are by no means the ultimate. After all, if we could make you a complete badass in two days, we would charge a lot more money.
If CRG isn’t the ultimate class, what is it? As Winston Churchill said in a very different context, “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The best way to describe CRG is as the gateway to a much wider array of classes and skills.
After taking CRG, the next step should be one of our force on force classes. In CRG we talk a lot about the dynamics of a fight and why we do certain things, but no matter how good the instructor is, there’s no substitute for experiencing it for yourself. You are much better off if the first time someone pulls a gun or a knife on you it’s an airsoft gun or NOK trainer. In a class like CRG, or any of our live-fire classes, there’s a limit to how fast and dynamic we can get using live weapons. In a FoF class we can go much further, because airsoft don’t carry the same safety concerns that real guns do.
The other real must-have course is 0-5 Feet Pistol Gunfighting. This covers the real up-close and personal, bad breath distance confrontations. Between this and the GOTX skillset we teach in other classes, you’ve got virtually all of the confrontations a citizen is likely to experience covered.
Once you’ve got your bases covered, what next? You can take those skills to the next level with our Advanced Close Range Gunfighting, Point Shooting Progressions and Advanced Point Shooting Progressions classes. You can also expand your skillset with classes that focus on specific skills like CQB: Fighting in Structures, Trauma Medicine for CCW, Active Shooter/Terrorist Interdiction, and low light classes. Finally, you can incorporate new tools into your self-defense repertoire. SI offers classes in defensive knife, shotgun, and a selection of rifle classes so extensive it would take an entire article to describe them all. There is no ultimate class because there’s no limit on how far you can take your skills. Nomatter how many classes you take, there's always something out there that can improve your potential as a warrior.
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