AAR ITTS Problem Solving Class May 17-18, 2008

[tdogg]

This is an AAR of ITTS’s (Scott Reitz) Problem Solving Class on May 17-18, 2008.

TD1:

We started off with Uncle Scotty’s safety briefing. He has a perfect safety record and he leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind that it will be maintained. After listening to the briefing I am determined that if I ever shoot myself to just “walk it off” and limp my dumbass home without saying a word. On a serious note his safety briefing is very good and really keeps everyone “switched on” the whole time your out training.

This class was entitled “Problem Solving” and so Uncle Scotty gave us some insight into problems that officers had run into in past times. We had a glimpse of the OIS’s that he would later detail in depth at the start of day two, but it got our minds “right” to start training with a proper mindset.

We got out onto the range and started off with a cold drill from around 15 yards, maybe 20. The drill consisted off a single shot to the 10 ring (center most scoring spot on the upper torso). A couple of us learned a lesson in being able to shoot accurately when not warmed up.

We then walked forward for a push back drill. Uncle Scotty’s push back drill consisted of 1, 2, or 3 called head or torso shots from a given distance. We started around 3 yards and pushed back to around 25 yards.

Next up was a shot on steel at 118 yards distance. Most of us had previously trained with Uncle Scotty and have shot to 300 yards+ with our handguns, so it took 1-3 shots each to hit our mark.

We then proceeded to setup steel poppers and hostage targets. We set them at various angles and distances and then broke into 4 shooting positions. Each shooter had a chance to fire from each position and was given a sector of targets that he was responsible for. Some of the poppers would not go down easily and thus made the shooter think about possibly hitting the upper “head” portion or possibly choosing to pound one shot after another into it. Eventually the mighty 9mm’s would get them down and the 45 guys would talk their stuff.

This warm up portion of the day was mainly used for Uncle Scotty to gauge his class. We had a good group of shooters and many of us knew we were in for a fast paced class. We continued with some of Uncle Scotty’s excellent mindset lectures (I call them this because he always gets my mindset in the right place to view our training as getting prepared to Win a Gunfight).

We then came back out and worked our steel problems “blind”. Blind being that the 4 shooters would have to turn their backs on those who were moving their steel targets to new positions. The setup crew would come back behind the line and then the shooter would have to turn and react to his new threats appropriately. This was a lot of fun for all of us as we quickly learned why we would need to look around intently for additional targets… I know the setup crews had fun making the targets difficult to find. We then worked on kneeling and roll over prone shooting on the same targets.

We would shoot most all other problems “blind” so as to keep us solving the problems while shooting.

We followed this by working from cars. Uncle Scotty briefed us on how to shoot from within a vehicle. He taught us how to exit vehicles and use doors for safety. We learned how to quickly exit a vehicle and shoot to the rear (he noted that there would be times where one would simply shoot through the windows depending on the situation). We then practiced all these various shooting problems and positions on paper and steel targets.

TD2:

We practiced pulling up cars in tandem to address various steel targets positioned in and around a vehicle. We were shooting from behind the vehicle doors from standing, kneeling, and prone positions. Our targets were close and/or distant, fully exposed and/or partially exposed. Slowing down to shoot accurately was extremely important. The guys who raced their guns fired a LOT of shots here. Oh, and the 9mm guys like myself fired a lot of shots just to knock things over too.

We worked a shoot house in 4 man teams. We had shoot/no shoot targets in various rooms. He is very good at keeping everyone safe around one another.

As night time fell we practiced the same things with the vehicles. We also ran the shoot house the same as daytime.

We had a great time and were issued our certificates of completion at the close of class. I would highly recommend this class to anyone who has attended an advanced level pistol course from any of the highly accredited instructors. You do not have time to learn how to handle your pistol in this class. It is assumed that you are coming with necessary pistol handling and safety skills in place. Brett (Uncle Scotty’s wife) did a good job at vetting guys into this class.

[flyingm]

Wow that sounds like a very exciting class. Definitely some advanced techniques.