Paladin Training, Inc.

I have a couple of personal guns for sale:

1.  S&W Model 10 .38 Special revolver.  4″ heavy barrel, blue finish in excellent condition:  $325

2.  S&W Model 64 .38 Special revolver.  4″ heavy barrel, stainless steel, also in excellent condition:  $350

Contact me if you’re interested in seeing them.   Either gun would make a fine house or car gun.  You must provide proof of SC residency to purchase.

Last personal note:  We’ll be at the Mike Kent gunshow on 22 & 23 SEP.  Also, I’ll be speaking at the Tea Party rally upstairs at the Civic Center on 22 SEP.  Hope to see you there!

Situational awareness, efficient presentation, movement, use of cover… all here.  We’ll be using this video in future classes as an example of the right way to do it.

The police officer commenting on the Security Officer’s performance mentions his mindset.  Good!  Had he not had the correct mindset, he wouldn’t have been  maintaining his situational awareness.  Had he not had the correct mindset, he wouldn’t have taken the fight to the BG’s.  Had he not had the right mindset, he wouldn’t have trained up to his obvious skill level.  Mindset is the foundation our skills rest on.

We stress movement and incorporate it into a large percentage of our drills.  Even our entry level defensive handgun course (BDH) has students moving off the ‘X’ and engaging Threats to the rear by mid-afternoon of Day 1.  Unless a covert presentation is called for or you’re behind cover, explosive movement during the drawstroke should be the default.

I’ve been hearing recently from a lot of students who are spending more time ‘shooting’. A word of caution…

Be careful spending too much time shooting your defensive handgun when you should be practicing or training on it.  By that I mean, are you simply going through the mechanical motions, or are you consciously working on improving your skills?  We all have limited time on the range and we should make the most of it.  Also, you should be serious on the gun because you can actually degrade your skills through careless application of the fundamentals.

We practice to maintain a skill.  We train to achieve greater skill or add another skill.

Avoid ‘plinking’ or casual shooting. Every casual round sent downrange has, at best, a neutral effect on your skill. In other words, you’re not gaining any ground. In reality, casual shooting often has a negative effect. For best effect, every training and practice round should be fired thoughtfully and with a purpose.

Incorporate movement into your presentation. Realize that every presentation made standing still is a rehearsal to do it that way in real life. Don’t practice getting killed.

Accept the truth that marksmanship skills often play a minor part in deciding who wins, coming behind tactics and mindset.

Decide now: Did you buy that gun to play with or are you preparing for the future, as in ensuring you have one? So, is it a toy or a tool? We don’t call it ‘working’ on the fundamentals for nothing!

Read Hebrews 5:12 – 14. Sometimes I feel like the writer. When a student comes back to me I can quickly tell whether or not they’ve been working on their skills or just playing with the gun. Unfortunately, discouragingly, most are still drinking milk. A very few have become meat eaters. Which are you?

Assuming a quality firearm and ammunition, most guns are capable of greater accuracy than their owners.  Seldom do we see a student who can shoot to his / her gun’s potential.  We demonstrate this in every class when an instructor takes a student’s handgun — which in almost all instances he’s never touched before, much less fired — and shoots better with it than the owner / student can.

Neither the CWP or BDH classes delve into the finer points of the marksmanship for a reason:  It’s not necessary and there are other important things we need to be spending our limited time on.  It doesn’t take a master class marksman to defeat the most common Threat.  Your most likely target is a hand sized area about five feet to contact distance away.  You don’t have to be Wild Bill Hickok or Annie Oakley to hit that.  Students who have attended our BDH know we spend far more  time on gun handling, tactics, and developing the proper mindset than we do on acccuracy skills.

But, for that tactical problem that falls outside the most likely scenario, or for that person that’s just not satisfied with being able to shoot ‘good enough’ in most situations, we’re now offering a class that’s totally devoted to shooting a defensive handgun as accurately as possible:  Defensive Handgun Accuracy (DHA).

Of course, our baseline is always combat shooting so we won’t be spending time on those subjects that apply only to target shooting.  An example:  ‘Natural point of aim’ is a very important concept to a target shooter and an understanding of it is essential to shooting the best score, but since it has no relevance to combat hand-gunning, we won’t waste a second on it.

What we will spend most of our time on in this clinic is developing the ability to properly control the trigger so as to properly send the shot where you want and also  get ready for the next shot efficiently.  Trigger control is by far the most important marksmanship fundamental, and the lack of it is the usual culprit behind a shot not going where intended.  We’ll cover all seven fundamentals, but expect to spend most of your time working on your trigger control skills.

We’ll also spend some time on developing good dry practice habits.

I’m still working on a few details of the curriculum and trying to find a place for it in the calendar, but expect DHA to be around four hours in length, about half class-room, half range, require no more than 100 rounds and cost around $100.

Steve,

I would like to share a personal experience that you, whether you know it or not, were a big part of.  I became interested in handguns for personal defense about a year and a half ago.  I bought one or two and began teaching myself how to shoot.

As I began to research the techniques of shooting, I also became interested in the practical shooting sports, ie. IDPA and USPSA.  IDPA really caught my attention because of the self defense similarities and the relative ease to understand the equipment rules, etc.

As my journey continued I knew I needed some professional instruction and that’s when I researched locally and found Paladin Training.  Having known you through my business, I felt comfortable stepping into a prefessional training atmosphere, although I must admit I was quite nervous.

After taking your class last October, I felt I was ready to jump into competition.  I picked IDPA and set goals for myself.  In IDPA you shoot in your skill range based on a classification that is attained either through a standard-ized classifier match or a placement in a nationally sanctioned match that “bumps” you up in classification. From low to high, classifications are Novice, Marksman, Sharpshooter, Expert, and Master.  My goal was to make Marksman as my initial classification.

My first IDPA match was a classifier in November of last year.  I made Sharpshooter.  Immediately, I set my next goal to make Expert in a year.  I began shooting local IDPA matches in Columbia, Charleston, Rock Hill.  With each match I improved until I was winning my divisions and placing in the top 5 in the whole match.

In June of this year I shot my first sanctioned match at the SC IDPA Championship. 160 plus shooters, 11 stages, a big deal for me.  I placed 7th out of 34 in Sharpshooter.

This past weekend I shot the NC IDPA State Champion-ship.  Another 160 plus shooters, 10 stages, etc. I placed 2nd in my division classification, beating more than 20 others in both my classification and the classification above me.  I got bumped to Expert thus reaching my goal in 9 months.

There’s not a training session I go through, whether it be live fire or dry fire, that I don’t use the things you taught me in that first Basic Defensive Handgun class.  Not only do I use them, but I think about the 2 days I took that class, how you were able to start with the basics of safety, trigger control, group shooting, reloads, movement and then tying them all together in self defense scenarios.  Thanks to you I have the confidence to handle a firearm safely, defend myself and family, and be competitive in the shooting sports. It all started with you and Paladin Training!