Carbine Fundamentals
The AR series carbine has twice as many manipulations to master as your average pistol, yet most of us spend far more of our time training with our handguns. Pistols are more likely to be our constant companions, but carbines are not just tools for the zombie apocalypse. It’s true that Korean shop owners used carbines to keep their businesses from being burned to the ground during the Rodney King riots, but carbines are used more often to respond to less spectacular home invasions. You don’t see or hear about that much, because generally, the media chooses to report on such incidents only locally (if at all).
Clint Smith said that a pistol is what we use to fight our way back to our carbine. An AR carries more bullets, delivers more energy to the target (meaning you don’t have to send as many bullets flying through your neighborhood before the bad guy goes down), and can keep bad guys at bay much more precisely, much farther out, than your pistol.
If you own a carbine, proficiency is a must. If your domestic or professional partner has one, you should know your way around it–that means knowing, not hunting and pecking and pulling on the wrong lever while you are ducking for cover.
For example, look at the photo of the “Hostage Taker” target behind the “No-Shoot / Hostage” that got hit in the head. What happened there?
Most armed encounters–even with rifles–occur at relatively close range. Inside a room, one must “hold over” to account for the difference between the bore line and the sight line between the muzzle and the “initial intersection” (usually at 25 or 50 meters). On those rare occasions when we practice with our carbines up close, our first couple of shots usually go low, until we remember about holdover. In training, even those who are consciously competent (they can do it right when they have the mental bandwidth to devote to thinking about how to do it right) often revert to “point of aim = point of intended impact” after anything else–like a stoppage they need to clear, or if they do any physical exercise as part of the drill–sucks up their mental bandwidth instead. We need to train holdover with enough “reps” to make it an automatic reflex (unconscious competence).
It sounds far fetched (only because it is), but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you could be hiding from an active shooter behind a planter at the mall when a cop gets hit and drops a carbine at your feet. Stranger things have happened. Or you might wrestle a carbine away from an active shooter (like James Shaw Jr did in that Waffle House in Nashville). It behooves us all to be familiar with the two most prolific rifle systems in the world.
Running around with a gun you took off an active shooter is a great way to get shot by the cops. But in the short term, during a coordinated attack (multiple bad guys, such as San Bernardino), it may be the only way for you to survive. We can teach you how to “kill” the other guy’s rifle quickly (that’s actually ridiculously easy), how to take it away, and how to beat him with it. Then we’ll teach you how to clear the stoppage you just created so you can get it running against his cohorts in crime. We’ll also teach you how to KEEP your long gun should somebody try to take yours away.
If you want to schedule private instruction, please call or contact us to schedule some trigger time.
