April 11, 2011

What Happens in Vegas... (goes on my blog)

It's been a busy few weeks. Fox and I went up to Vegas the night of March 17th and spent a couple days doing promo photos for Crusader Weaponry, Nightforce Optics, Viridian Green Laser, and Battle Comp. Then we headed to Front Sight for their Four Day Defensive Handgun course.

A good friend from Tennessee, Oleg Volk (a frickin' photographic genius), met us there and did all the photography, and attended the course with us. The pics came out great, as expected. Here's one of me:



Here's Fox:

And those rifles are Broadswords from Crusader Weaponry.

Oleg's been a friend of mine for a long time, but I'd never met him in person before, so that was cool. We also met two other people I'd only known online before, and a woman who's only been shooting for a few weeks who reminded us how cool it is when it's new. She was working all night and shooting all day, and loving it so much she never lost her sunny disposition.

As for Front Sight, here's my review of it, copied and pasted from another site:

The course we took is called "Four-Day Defensive Handgun" and that's what it is. The emphasis is heavily on timed shots from a concealed holster. There's a lot packed into the course, and no breaks other than lunch.

The course is designed in such a way that beginning shooters and old hands can all get a lot of benefit out of it. Each technique is taught, then demonstrated, then practiced dry, then practiced live. Nothing tacticool here, just how to get the gun out and shoot it.

One of my favorite points about this school is what they don't do. As with any training, I have minor disagreements about a few small details of the things they teach. So where I have my own reasons for doing something a little different, I do it my way. At other training facilities I've been constantly "corrected" on this, to the point of harassment, and even belittled for having a different opinion. Here, they continued to correct me on things that actually mattered, but recognized the things I was doing my way on purpose and left me alone on those things.

The instructors were good-natured throughout, and never set themselves up to be anything more than competent instructors. This is another major contrast to other places, where every instructor is a super-duper-high-speed-low-drag-ninja-sniper-recon-blah-blah-frickin'-blah. Egos don't get in the way at Front Sight.

My nitpicks are few. For one, because they pack so much into the time, there's very little opportunity for more experienced shooters to help the less experienced (or less able for whatever reason). Not a big deal. There are a few others not even worth mentioning.

All in all, a very good course for any level of competence. (Just don't pay list price, which is $2000. There are plenty of people selling certificates.) I highly recommend it.
All in all, we had a great time and got some great training from it. I'll add a few more pics from the shoot.

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