AAR S.I. Terrorist/Active Shooter Interdiction w/ Randy Harris 20,21AUG2016

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  • cedartop

    Grandmaster
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    Apr 25, 2010
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    North of Notre Dame.
    [h=1]HRO-5: Terrorist / Active Shooter Interdiction[/h] This specialized class deals with solutions to the Active Shooter or the Armed Terrorist on a suicide mission. Originally designed as a class to deal solely with the armed terrorist, in answer to student's requests, we have expanded it to also include the active shooter situation as well.
    On the terrorism issue, government and local law enforcement are training for the inevitable wave of terror attacks. Historically the terrorists have not relied solely on explosives, and may just as likely utilize the tactic of an active shooter. Such situations have already occurred here in the USA as seen by the Beltway Snipers, and the shootings in Mumbai.
    These events, whether begun by a terrorist, or a deranged criminal bent on killing innocents call for new tactics and a new mindset. In the Terrorism/Active Shooter Interdiction Course© you will learn extremely aggressive CQB Interdiction Techniques utilized successfully against terrorists by armed citizens overseas. You will study the possible role of the CCW Armed Citizen in stopping such an event in its tracks. You will learn to use whatever you have at your disposal (pistol, knives, impact weapons and even your bare hands) to deanimate and neutralize a terrorist, or active shooter and stop him from killing innocents.


    The above is the description of the class from the Suarez website. Below will be my review of the class. My apologies to Randy for the delay.:(

    TD1 consisted of a lot of rain. This was the first time I actually had problems with my RMR not working well due to weather. I have used it in rain before, but not the kind of rain where you are standing there with your gun out while it is pouring on you. Something to think about. As regards to that rain, Randy tried to work around it and juggle things to keep us out of it, but there wasn't a whole lot of wiggle room in the very full schedule. We will come back to that very full schedule thing.

    The day started of course with a safety briefing as well as some talk about the basics of what we would be covering for the next couple of days, and what made this different from defending ones self against regular "street" crime. Hint, this class was largely about proactive shooting, not reactive. We also talked about Instrumental violence and Expressive violence and how those fit into what we were studying. Other classroom material on day one involved Randy's Lecture on American active shooters, as well as the first half of the guest lecturers presentation on Terrorism. Randy's lecture was very good, and I don't mean to downplay that at all when I say, the Terrorism study was excellent! It was not only highly informative, but very thought provoking. Randy brings a friend of his, "Trey" in to lecture this part. It is what Trey has done as a career for quite some time, and he definitely knows his stuff. It became evident a number of times that we also had an ex military officer in the class who was well versed in the subject, as well as an amatuer historian who also added quite a bit to the format without being annoying. There is just way too much information in Trey's lecture for me to share here, but it was wide ranging and consistent with others I have heard, with the added benefit of being interesting and easy to follow. (Some I have attended were quite dry).

    Back to the rain. The shooting on day one consisted of quite a bit of what some would call "pistol sniping". We were shooting very small targets from 3 to 15 yards. Sometimes as small as shooting the cord on the simulated explosives. (right Randy?) No, we weren't taught that as an answer to a specific problem, it was just a fun and somewhat relevant challenge. You will have to bear with me for my first gripe of the class, but one you have heard me mention before. There were no pre reqs for this class, and it showed. The skill level varied WIDELY. Knowing Randy as I do, it was easy to see this was killing him. He hated to see some of the less skilled people struggling, but could only give them so much remedial help without turning the class into something that it wasn't intended to be. This would be the first time that whole bunch of stuff to learn thing would show up. When you have a class that covers a lot of things, and an instructor who is capable of teaching a lot of things in depth, it can be overwhelming. For people like me and some of the others in the class who have done a lot of training before, not a big deal. For relative newbies? Well I think we get back to that whole enforceable prerequisites thing. No, by the way, I don' have an answer.

    TD2 started a little drier. It also started with a review of the previous day, which given the amount of information we covered, I think was a good idea. We then went into a type of Combatives/H2H block of instruction. Once again a lot was covered, including but not limited to, rifle disarms, pistol disarms, and a variety of combatives. Some similar to what you would see in our Managing Confrontations class, and some not. (e.g. we don't teach headbutts) This section once again reminded me that Randy's 10% power is no where near the same as my definition of 10% power.:) As we state in our class, learning all of this is good, but for the most part, it will all require practice to implement if used for real. There are no easy buttons when it comes to training to be prepared to defend your life or your loved ones.

    Back to the range. Another safety brief. (Good thing) TD2's live fire was slightly more tactics and scenario driven than the previous day's. We did a number of drills that would be relevant considering the subject matter. To include the Istanbul drill, and an AK vs. pistol drill. We also did some 25 yard shooting on low probability targets which included side, rear, and head view of terrorists. I have to mention something in regards to the Istanbul drill. (Randy will probably explain the drill in detail for you.) People who have trained with "reality based" outfits before whether it be Suarez or one of the others will invariably get off the X and start shooting while moving with this type of drill. That is fine, except for the fact that most people don't hit the broad side of a barn when they do that. You have to know what you are capable of. If you want to run and gun, fine, but you have to train it with some type of accountability for hits and misses. /rant off/

    Back to the classroom for a foreign weapons familiarization segment and a review on chokes. After that it was on to the second part of Trey's lecture. Once again it was great material. I really wish more people could see this.

    After that it was time for FOF with scenario role players. I heard that it went very well. I have to admit that I did not partake in this section of the class as it was already getting late and I had a 5 hour drive ahead of me with a 6:00 am start time at work the next morning. Did I mention there was a lot of material to cover and it was getting late? Hopefully someone else can come in a fill in the missing pieces on this one for us.

    Conclusion; Let me start my conclusion by saying that I did not pay for this class. I helped with the hosting duties and other sundry essentials in exchange for my seat. Saying that, I will say that I would pay for the class and consider it a bargain. (IIRC if you bought at the right time it was $350.00?) Anyway you got a lot of solid information and coaching from a great instructor (Randy), as well as some fantastic information via lecture (Trey). As you can see from my review a lot of diverse, yet tied together skill sets and information was covered. This can be a two edged sword and it is really up to the individual student on whether it is good or not. The problem of course is that it would be hard to know what to cut out, and most people wouldn't go for a 3 day class. (Well most don't go to a 2 day, but I digress.) I would be happy to answer any questions or respond to comments as I am sure that will jog my memory on things that I have forgot to include.
     

    Randy Harris

    Marksman
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    Oct 22, 2012
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    Thanks for the review Mike. This class does cover a WIDE range of material but it sort of has to. I just do a "History of mass shootings" lecture and talk about some cases where people on scene did something to end them to kick off the class and then Trey's lectures on Terrorism are really like drinking from a fire hose if you have never seen any of that info before. Add in some precise and long range proactive shooting, add to that the empty hand vs terrorist work, empty hand vs knife armed terrorist, knife vs terrorist, chokes, disarms, etc and many evolutions of FOF you have a ton of material to be covered with little spare time to cover remedial shooting issues in depth.


    The shooting is very precise and specific. I do not roll out a target the size of a king size bed sheet and say ANY hit ANY where is just as good as a hit in the eye socket.....because it just isn't. This class is about SURGICAL shooting. Unfortunately not everyone had the prior time behind the gun to get the best results when those targets started getting smaller and farther away. Head shots at 20 yards from behind cover is not easy....and vital zone thoracic hits at 50 yards made before your opponent can get his AK reloaded and fire is not easy either.....but this course is not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to help prepare you for worst case scenarios.

    Most shooters in class were fine but we did have a couple of instances where a pistol in need of zeroing and a trigger finger in need of a little more education was causing some tense moments for a couple of students. As Mike said, I not only want to get everyone swimming (and not simply just not drowning) but I truly want to get them to where they are swimming well. Unfortunately there just is not a lot of time for remedial instruction in a class like this so I have to do what I can and then it is up to each individual to "sink or swim". I wish we had an extra day to get everyone grooved in before the targets start getting smaller and farther... but as mentioned before....I fear that would limit attendance. Most people have a hard enough time budgeting 2 days out of their calendar to attend a class much less 3.


    Now....a word of clarification because Cedar Top likes to mess with me.......NO we were NOT trying to disarm the bomb by shooting the wire. We had some "bomb vest man" targets we were shooting and I casually mentioned that shooting the bomber's thumb off is probably not a good idea to try to stop him from detonating said bomb (understatement alarm!) ....so for fun I took a shot at his thumb, the detonator switch, and the wire.... Obviously we were working on surgical insertion of bullets into nose and eye socket to stop said bomber to keep him from detonating but sometimes in class you just have to try to hit the wire from 7 yards just to see if you can do it......

    As to headbutts...they work...even accidentally... at 10% speed....(Sorry about that Scott)....

    Aside from the near biblical rains slowing things down on the range , this class went well and I really enjoyed teaching this one in southern Indiana. A big thanks to Mike and Jeff for advertising, helping keep things going, acting as safety officers and helping hang targets,staple stuff, assemble targets and generally doing all the grunt work that keeps a class moving along. Thanks guys.

    I'm hoping some students from class will see this and chime in with their thoughts.
     
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    TFuller

    Plinker
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    Dec 27, 2011
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    Evansville, IN
    I may be late to the game on this AAR, but I will add this was an excellent class. I trained alongside Mike and he was an excellent inspiration and coach. Trey's lecture could have lasted 8 hours and I'd still want more. Randy did what Randy does best which is teaching well and upping everyone's skill sets.

    The scenario based Force on Force was well executed and showcased very valid and insightful learning points. Safety was well managed.

    This was my last class with Randy in 2016 and I have to say I made the most gains in 4 months with Randy than I did in 5 years of training prior.
     
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