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Well, I've been back from Nevada for several days now, and it's taken me this long to gather my thoughts regarding our trip to the Front Sight firearms training Academy in Pahrump, Nevada. Overall I would rate this training as absolutely superb! The quality of the facilities, instructors, and curriculum made me realize in a very short amount of time just how much I didn't know about pistols, proper handling, and defensive firearm tactics.
I'm the big guy on the left in this photo. Myself, and three of my friends went down to front sight to attend the four-day defensive handgun course. We practiced everything from proper sight alignment and sight picture, to how to handle pistol malfunctions. We dry-fired, live fired, and practiced drills every day to build our skills.
The instructors we had for the four days were some of the most professional firearms instructors I have ever encountered. Our lead instructor Dave Goodman was soft-spoken, firm, but fair, and had a great sense of humor. We had several assistant instructors over the four days who guided us, and helped us to overcome some of the mistakes that were inherent in all of us.
On day four of the training, we continued practicing the lessons we had learned over the preceding three days. At one point, the instructors set up steel targets downrange for the man on man steel challenge. Our class size was 44 people, and the instructors wrote our names down on index cards and paired us up at random to shoot at three targets. The first target was a hostage target with a small white flip plate behind the hostage head. The objective was to shoot the flip plate and not hit the hostage target. After hitting the flip plate, you had to engage two more steel targets downrange and drop them before your opponent did. I thought for sure that I was going to be eliminated from this challenge early on, however before I knew it I found myself in the final round. I was paired up against a 19-year-old girl who was an absolute crack shot. I think everybody including myself thought that she would be the one to win this challenge. However, although she was deadly accurate, she wasn't as fast as I was. I defeated her twice due to a double round-robin situation to win the challenge, and take the trophy challenge coin!
I simply cannot say enough good things about the training we received over the four days. Although I did not receive my graduate certificate (the malfunction drills killed me), I walked away in four days with more knowledge about the subject matter than I had learned in the previous 40 years. I am looking forward to taking more training at Front Sight in the years to come!
*EDIT* As usual I forgot to add in the most important thing, and that is a HUGE thank you to my friend Mr. Brian Hall, without who's generous present of a Bronze Membership to Front Sight, this whole experience would not have been possible!
I'm the big guy on the left in this photo. Myself, and three of my friends went down to front sight to attend the four-day defensive handgun course. We practiced everything from proper sight alignment and sight picture, to how to handle pistol malfunctions. We dry-fired, live fired, and practiced drills every day to build our skills.
The instructors we had for the four days were some of the most professional firearms instructors I have ever encountered. Our lead instructor Dave Goodman was soft-spoken, firm, but fair, and had a great sense of humor. We had several assistant instructors over the four days who guided us, and helped us to overcome some of the mistakes that were inherent in all of us.
On day four of the training, we continued practicing the lessons we had learned over the preceding three days. At one point, the instructors set up steel targets downrange for the man on man steel challenge. Our class size was 44 people, and the instructors wrote our names down on index cards and paired us up at random to shoot at three targets. The first target was a hostage target with a small white flip plate behind the hostage head. The objective was to shoot the flip plate and not hit the hostage target. After hitting the flip plate, you had to engage two more steel targets downrange and drop them before your opponent did. I thought for sure that I was going to be eliminated from this challenge early on, however before I knew it I found myself in the final round. I was paired up against a 19-year-old girl who was an absolute crack shot. I think everybody including myself thought that she would be the one to win this challenge. However, although she was deadly accurate, she wasn't as fast as I was. I defeated her twice due to a double round-robin situation to win the challenge, and take the trophy challenge coin!
I simply cannot say enough good things about the training we received over the four days. Although I did not receive my graduate certificate (the malfunction drills killed me), I walked away in four days with more knowledge about the subject matter than I had learned in the previous 40 years. I am looking forward to taking more training at Front Sight in the years to come!
*EDIT* As usual I forgot to add in the most important thing, and that is a HUGE thank you to my friend Mr. Brian Hall, without who's generous present of a Bronze Membership to Front Sight, this whole experience would not have been possible!
