Hello Conceal Coalition family Austin Davis, your national director of training. I am glad to be joining you this month for this month's webinar. Hopefully you're excited about this topic. It's something near and dear to my heart. I know us say every time we do a webinar, this excited to me, but this is also one of those topics that's really exciting to me and it is about making your range trip more effective and safer and not being that person at the range. And if you don't know what I'm talking about with that person at the range, you're at the range. Or was someone who's behaving badly, dangerously or inappropriate or not following the rules? Well, if you've never seen that at the range, that person may be you. We want to make sure it's not only just you, but it's also the people you bring to the range with you.
Now, if we're going to be working in a minute over my checklist, I have a laminated checklist, then every concealed coalition instructor in the system that you go to should have a copy of this as well. I have a theory whether it's worthwhile or not. I've been doing this range work for about 35 years and when I started my little checklist was just this big. Every one of these items on here is something I had a problem with one of my civilian students or one of my police officers that I train. And hopefully today when we go through this little process, we can make you safer, more effective, and more welcome at any range you happen to go to. Before we start off on what we do with the range, let's talk about a few things. Number one, before you go, let's discuss some things before you even go to the range.
First off, what gun or guns do you want to bring? Now if you only own one gun, you can skip this section, but if you're like most of our concealed coalition family, you've got guns plural. So let's talk about this. Personally, I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make is when we go to the range is we can take 5, 10, 15, 20 guns. I'm a real big fan of two guns max when I go to range. The reason is it kind of goes back to my theory, beware of the person with one gun. It's really hard when you go to the range you're just going bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and changing out guns to actually improve with your skillset and the guns. Now if you are range is the backyard of your aunt, uncle, mother, father, or you're back 40 acres, you're shooting your private and you just want to show the plethora of guns you own.
Maybe taking all of 'em is a good idea, but I find we go to an indoor outdoor commercial range that really limbing what you take. Makes a lot of sense. So before you go try to give some thought to what you want to do, also what you want to do with that gun. Are you working on accuracy? Are you working on performance? So accuracy is just a mechanically is the gun shooting where you want to shoot? If you're working on performance, that's going to be you and the gun working together. If you're working on reliability, that may be some combination of one and two with a higher volume of ammo. What garrity you bring before you leave for the range, look through your gear bag and check to make sure of everything you need. It is not uncommon for officers to show up with the wrong ammunition, with no range bag, just a whole bunch of stuff in there.
Make sure you have your ear pro, you have your ipro. Also, before we go, make sure that you got your clothing sorted out. I was wearing this shirt on the range. There's a good chance of piece of hot brass can come down in my clothing. So I would either have to buckle this thing on up really tight or think about some other plan to close this on off. And the problem is when we have hot brass that goes in bad spots, we tend to do this stuff right here and we forget about where the guns oriented. So before you go think about what guns you're going to take, what gear you're going to take to make sure your clothing is squared away, but also any guest you take, especially if they're newbies, just let 'em know, Hey guys, there could be a problem there. Also in my range bag, I have a bunch of clippy, so if somebody does have some sort of open front, we can just clip this in.
I also carry some hairbands, so if somebody needs to get the hair out the way, not a problem. I always have a couple of ball caps in my range bag. I'm a firm believer of making sure that we have a ball cap on the range and the reason is is if we get hot brass between our ipro and that can be a real problem and I find a ball cap really works to keeping us a lot safer. Also, before you go have a plan. Now when you think about planning going the range going Austin, Austin, Sydney, you're being a little pedantic here, we're just going to have fun and going to have fun is okay, but just make sure you understand we're going to have fun, but you can also make sure that there's a reason why you're going ammos pretty expensive range time is pretty expensive and for some people you're not getting to the range as often as you would like.
And this may be a once a year experience, once every two year experience, once every six month experience and you may think, well, I'm going to work on precision. I'm going to work on performance and I'm going to just burn up a bunch of range Admiral and make some noise. And those are okay If you really want to improve your range experience and you're shooting overall, I have a very expensive gadget that you can buy and invest in. Just call the spiral notebook, buy one, put it in your bag before you go write out what you're going to do. How many rounds do you have? Let's say you're going to burn off 200 rounds of pistol ammunition. Maybe we donate and say delegate some range and say, you know what? I haven't been shot with my dominant hand alone for a long time. Maybe I'm going to work on my one handed skills and spend 20 rounds on it.
Maybe I'm going to work on my nondominant hand in case my hand's ever injured or I have to switch or something happens. Maybe I need to spend 10 rounds on my nondominant hand alone. Maybe I'm going to work on changing my grip and see how that's going to affect whether my end result. Pardon me, I'm getting ready to snee. I live in a swamp and sinuses. But maybe you'll donate some of that. If you're at a range that allows drawing, maybe you'll say, I'm going to work on my draw to first shot time. Personally, I hope if you are going to work on some performance issue that you've done it all dry fire safely, well before we ever get to the range you don't want, anytime you're doing a performance activity with a firearm, make sure you work on the basics. That's mechanics first that you're doing things safely.
If the fingers out of the trigger guard that the gun is coming up on target without pointing at something that's not to point at, once you get mechanics down, then go for consistency, then go for intensity. The problem is there's a thing that's role called HEBs law and that's any behavior that's wired together, fires together and the first time you wire behavior and fire together, it becomes really locked in a hard to overwrite way. So if part of your range preparation, get ready to go the range to have a safe productive experience, make sure you have any active performance skills worked out in dry fire well before you get there. And so then you might want to go, I'm just going to spend 50 rounds just burning off. But I find if we have a plan for that ammo, we tend to shoot less ammo, we get better results.
And you also always on every range trip, might want to think about working on something that you don't do well. We all like going there and shooting the one inch square 21 inches and making sure we don't hit any of the lines. I'm down with that, but maybe we want to say I'm going to work on distance today, so instead of 21 feet, seven yards, I'm going to work in the 15. Maybe you got some metallic targets and you say, I'm going to see if I can push this pistol and if you have a red dot, this is easily done up to 25 50. One of the police departments that I train with regularly, we shoot out to 75 yards of man sized steel. And what's interesting is a lot of people think, why would I ever want to use my handgun 75 yards? I mean all guns within three feet, three seconds and three rounds fired.
Well that's great average, but that's not the reality of it. Have you ever been in a Walmart, a hospital, a grocery store and measured stepped off? How far that is In my local grocery store it's 130 yards on the backside of the store where my mom lives in assisted living. It's 125 yards down the end of a hallway. So if you're ever in a situation where you depend on your gun for defense, maybe you want to make some of your plan for this safe and productive range day is to go ahead and stretch out the limit. But problem is a lot of times we don't like to look bad on the range. We want to shoot these nice old tight groups. The only problem with that is if we only practice what we are good at, we never get better. It's kind of like working out.
We always need to put a little more weight, go a little farther. And what I like doing in my performance planning up the range is I like shooting at a place I'm really comfortable with and then either speeding up, moving it out or adding a performance cost into that which the group starts blowing up and I start trying to bring it back down. So proper planning on your ammo and then again, if you start making notes every time you go back you can look back at what you did last time, put some notes in there. My weak weekended shooting really wasn't that great or I really couldn't work the controls on that and you may want to put that in for your notes now, ready to go to the range. You got everything all packed up and you're ready to go. Let's think about a few things.
First off, if it's a commercial range, you're going to not. Aunt Sally's back pasture, nothing wrong with shooting a back pasture. So my best shooting of a family has always been in somebody's farm or ranch. Think about how you're going to leave the car and how you're going to access the car. A lot of times if we're at a range and you leave anything out that looks like it could have a gun in it or gun related, you may run that greater than average chance of having your car broken into and something stolen even. You don't have the gun in there, but there's a presence of an empty gun case or something. So think about how we're going to keep that out of sight in the trunk or a tonal cover of the vehicle underneath the seat, throw a blanket over whatever when we get there.
Make sure we do not play with our guns in the parking lot. One of the things that makes me very nervous is a firearms professional. When I show up and I see someone fiddling and futsing with their gun out of the back of a trunk or the back of a pickup truck, have that set up and all ready to go. Whatever condition you need to transport that fire to the range and then when you get there, don't fiddle with guns in the parking lot and please, please, please, please, please do not fiddle with it in the ante room before you go on or out to the outdoor range. Always make sure to you handle your guns at home when you get there. Don't worry about manipulating any firearm until you put it on a bench. Just point in a safe direction. Also, be very careful now that you're aware of this for other people around you fiddling and futzing around.
We had somebody who was killed in a range gun store that was attached to a range. He came in to sell a used gun and he was trying to unload it there to show them to get the bid on what they're going to buy, pull the trigger and kill the person right next to him. Innocent bystander. So we have to be very conscious about our behavior at the range, but we also have to keep our head on a swivel situationally aware we wrote in the book and worry about the people around us handling guns and if you do see some handling guns, you have a couple of choices. One drive right out of the parking lot, call 'em on the range or just leave your stuff in the car, walk right inside and say, Hey, there's some guy scary handling a gun out in the range.
Don't ever be afraid of when you see a safety violation. If you see something, say something to the staff. Trust me that range personnel have as much invested in you having a safe experience as you, but they need help because it can't be everywhere at all times. Once you come in, if this is the first time to this commercial range, whether it's an indoor outdoor range, if you're not sure about what's expected of you, what the rules are, what the procedures are, do yourself a favor, be a professional and say, Hey, what's going on here? I've never shot this range. Can you give me a quick rundown on how to do it? A lot of people are afraid of looking like a newbie or I don't know anything. I've been doing this for 35 years at a pretty high level. If I come to New Range, I always ask them, Hey guys, this is my first time shooting here.
Can you kind of give me the rundown? Some ranges will let me draw from a holster, some won't, some ranges. Let me work on my split times and tracking my dot and getting that second round off under control. Some have time between dots. Some let you just put the action down when they call range hot and show it open. Some need chamber flags that go in there. So when it comes time to spend time in the range, it's their range. They want you to be comfortable and safe and productive there. And the way we do that is never be afraid to ask them, Hey man, first time I'm here. If you're a regular steady customer from time to time, it's not a bad idea to ask them, Hey guys, any changes in the range rules or anything I need to know about that happen here that I need to be extra careful about it?
And they may tell you, well, we had this, this, and this happened so you can start looking out for it. Once you get there and you've checked in, the next thing you want to do is you want to have a range safety debriefing. I use a laminated card if y'all want. Send us a text or an email and say we really need a concealed coalition family version of this range. Safety card Mike covers five areas. The purpose of today's event, the range layout and limits, range safety rules, hiring line commands and emergency procedures. Now I've been developing and working on this thing for 30 plus years, but you notice I still look at it when I go through this. The problem is is I wouldn't trust a pilot or a surgeon that didn't have a checklist. The reason you have a checklist is it reduces the risk in any repetitive dangerous environment like flying an airplane performing surgery.
So it's really important to lay this out. So what is a purpose? Today's event, if it's just to have fun, okay, we know what that is. What if it's, I'm not really interested in shooting you today, but I have a new shooter with me. So if that's the case, then we have to explain the person, Hey, lemme give you my new shooter, my new shooter pitch. If I'm taking somebody the range who's never shot before, whether or not they have gun anxiety or not, here's what I tell them. I'm going to tell you something you may not know about firearms shooting. Nobody including me, everybody in the range, nobody cares how well you shoot today. No, I'll say it again, you said that. I'll say it again. Nobody cares how well you shoot today. What we care about is how safe you shoot. Shooting well is a skill.
Shooting safe is a mindset, skillset and a temperament. So if you just remember two things for me today, we're going to be great. Number one, keep the pointy thing the big sound maker hole pointed towards the berm, whether that's a big pile of dirt, whether that's a metal backstop that captures the thing where it's a bunch of chewed up rubber. As long as you keep that point in a safe direction today, that's important. The reason is it's easy when you're manipulating the gun, especially a handgun to turn it in an area that is not a safe direction. Then you might move on. Look, I've never been to this range or I've never been to the lane we're shooting at. When we get up there, we'll take a look and almost any range has been around for a while. If you look right where you lay down on that little bench, you look around, you'll see bullet holes all in there.
How'd that happen? People finger on the trigger gun point in a bad direction and it happens. So if they forget nothing else, have 'em point it in there. Then why want to go ahead and comfort 'em and say, look, I said there's really something important here. What's the difference between a firearm's tragedy and embarrassment? It's direction of the muzzle when the gun goes off. If you're in my house and you decide to play with a gun that I left out because I'm stupid because remember, a gun only belongs to three places in the hand of a rational, sober, competent, trained adult attached to the body by a holster or sling, a competent, trained, sober adult or locked away from anybody who's not a competent trained adult, but you start playing around and all of a sudden you zing off around into the couch. That's embarrassment.
If my wife is sitting on the couch and you zing a round off and my wife's sitting the couch, that's a tragedy. So try to explain to 'em that, hey, we want to keep the sink pointed down range. Second thing is keep our finger off the trigger unless the sight's on the target and we decide to shoot and then make sure you counsel 'em on where finger off the trigger is. See, a lot of people have their finger right here and they think it's off the trigger. If we have a startle response, they strip the gun's going to go off. We want this on a high register. When we look through the gun from the side, we should not see any finger at all. We see a finger that's not really out of the trigger guard and you might want to finally, as you're kind of prepping them for this first shooting experience, you're not going to tell 'em the real secret about gun handling.
It doesn't matter if I've got a cell phone or a pin, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter where I point my fork. Doesn't matter where I point my TV remote control, but there is one item that we have to have a part of our brain that says, wow, every time I pick this thing up, it's literally a life and death decision and I need to have a whole procedure that is in a special part of my brain that says, gun. This stuff activates. The real problem with new shooters is it's usually not so much when they shift, it's a minute they get through, they're excited, they're in a place under almost amygdala hijack. They just had a bunch of explosions go off in their hand and that's when they come back in with their finger on the trigger and they want to turn around and talk to you.
So make sure you explain to 'em that these rules that specify your brain every time I pick up a gun or making a life decision and that works until we set it down and the gun is unloaded and shown clear. Let's say we're coming to the range for a state mandated license to carry class. What I would tell my class then is, guys, before we start, if you have any questions, that's great. Once this certification work, my police qualifications, once qualification starts, I'm not a coach anymore, I'm just a machine that's going to grade the performance of what happens here and looking for safety. If it's a couple of guys looking to do competition, we may want to just go ahead and go, look, I've been doing this a while, you've been doing this a while. Let's just run through real quick. Where's our go?
No go. We move from this stage to this stage. We're going to make sure we point the finger down range and while you're on the range, I'm going to keep an eye on you and you on me and we're going to coach each other to make sure we're not that shooter. Once we get there, and you've explained to 'em that really it doesn't matter how well you shoot as long as you shoot safe that we're looking for good judgment. The next thing you want to do is you want to give a quick description of the course of fire. Today we brought 200 rounds of ammo and we're going to shoot them up and have fun, but what we're going to do is we're going to start off with just shooting singles and then maybe we're going to switch guns later on. Just give 'em a flow of what's going to happen today.
And even though I'm doing this by myself, I kind of think about what I'm doing because when I show up to the range for me on a personal time with my carry gun, I think I'm going to go shoot all my, I don't say duty ammo, but my street defensive ammo that's in my gun. I want to make sure the thing I've been carrying for the last 30 days or six weeks since I've been in the range that I'm in depending on to save my life and others that it shoots the point of any point in impact that I expect that the recoil from the defensive ammo is not a novelty to my brain. Sometimes you'll find, and if you don't believe me, I've try this once, load a couple rounds of range ammo, a couple rounds of defensive ammo, range ammo and just sort of random force and then shoot it, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
You might go, wow, my street ammo is just a lot more FY FY like that than my duty ammo, but what I like is if I shoot my duty ammo up, yeah, it's kind of expensive to run through a full MAGA of this, but it lets me know that hey, my ammo iss sorted out and it's okay. This is especially important if you're one of those people who likes to load and unload the gun and you've been loading those top two rounds more and more because every time you loaded two things happen. It was not designed to be loaded and unloaded. So every time the nose of the bullet hits the feed ramp, it puts pressure on the seating depth of the case. This can raise the pressure of the round. It can also change the chambering characteristics because all bolus are built to think called Sammy standards, which is this sort of universal thing that says all nine millimeters will be a minimum maximum of this of so much pressure and so much dimensions of measurement.
Also, it's not a comment for people who load and download the same top two rounds to have a lot of the material from the primer come out and if you haven't shot your duty ammo in a long time, you might be surprised to find out how it is less reliable than you would have assumed. So I'm going to just put that into your thought process in this next thing is I want to identify the safety officers in this because if I have a problem with someone on the range, I want to know who's around. I can go say, Hey, this guy keeps pointing a gun where they're taking their gun to their bag, not the bag to the gun and look around. Also, I make sure I put myself in the right mindset to say I'm also a safety officer. One things I always tell my students before we start, whether it's civilians or le, because I always go, Hey, I've been a professional firearm instructor for 35 years and 35 years. I've never shot a student undergrad, a student shoot me and I've never had a student shoot anybody else. Do you find that comforting? I go, yeah, you shouldn't. My time's coming new guy had a 50 50 chance early go on, right? Statistically I'm weighted on the other side of that performance stack, so I treat every range session this potential life and death experience not only for my behavior but the people around me. So identifying the safety officers and then mentally queuing in the fact that you two are a safety officer.
The next thing is a range layout. If I'm at an indoor range and they've got the windows or the television screens that's showing this, I may take a second to look and just watch the flow of this thing. If they put me in a range and I've got other options, it's not just the only range available. I see a large group of what I consider to be a bunch of newbie instructors. I'll go back into the check-in thing and go, Hey man, number 14 is your number 13. Number 13 is making me nervous. Can you send me down to one or two? I see if they're open, have them switch me out and move me around. Foreshadowing is really a good thing. If I'm shooting in an indoor range, all indoor ranges are probably going to have this thing called an air gap. There'll be two doors before we go in to make sure that one door is closed before you open the other one because any of that sound that comes out, the people in the preliminary area, the sort of prep area, they don't have cur protection on, so you, I just want to make sure that's this.
When you walk on down and bunch your booths, make sure that the targets go in and out, that that's working and that you feel pretty comfortable in this space and the other people around you also identify the top, bottom and sides of where you're going to shoot and then determine where you're going to be able to point your gun left, right up down to make sure that we don't have an issue. Remember rule number four we'll talk about later on, be aware of the four Bs. Got that from Buddy Anthony and brother Anthony and that is the four Bs. What's the four behind, beside and beyond your target? And so a lot of times we're at the range, excuse me, when the target's really close and I'm shooting it, the bullet path may be going down and into the ground.
That's not the backstop, that's no window depending on your height and the setup of it. If it's really close and you're shooting a certain way in the target, maybe going to the berm or maybe going dangerously close to the top of the berm over the bur and hitting the backstop of the ceiling. So be sure when you're going out there to make sure you understand the range layout, that you understand how to post the targets where those constrictions are. Also understand the unique situations on a post and retrieve the targets. Sometimes our outdoor range, we will shoot for a period of time, let's say 20 minutes, then they call a ceasefire. You have to load show clear or you have to rack your gun or put a range chamber flag in there and then make sure you don't walk over to the handle of the gun.
Sometimes though, the problem with that is as I'm walking down and I look back, I'll see people loading magazines or futsing with the gun behind us and this makes me real nervous. So again, be aware, be informed of the rules. If you see someone breaking the rules, you see something, you got to say something. If it's an immediate thing, yell out, stop, drop the gun. Don't do that. If it's something a little slower, less intense, you just need to go over and find that person you've already identified as the range safety officer and say, Hey, over on four they're fussing with the gun lower. We're down range. This is making me very nervous and if you find that when you shoot at this range, those range safety officers you identified are not receptive to your problems, you might want to consider just going to another range or you might want to consider calling up the next day and saying, I need to talk to the owner.
I had an experience with a range that I'm not sure that owner understands about their staff because a lot of times these owners who don't really understand what their range safety officers are or not doing or how they are enforcing regulations and rules there at the range and then also when you look at the range, just check for any unusual circumstances for people place or process. If you're in Texas, you got a bunch of mosquitoes around, this could be a problem. A lot of outdoor ranges. If you're the first person to sit at that bench, it could be a was or some sort of problem underneath that thing. So make sure when you're there you look all around to make sure that you're not going to hit a dirt do nest or set something off. Now once you get the range, there's going to be four rules.
What I like about the four safety rules originally admitted by Jeff Cooper and NRA cut 'em down to three and so we able will do five and whatnot. What like about the four rules is they are very important in a range, but since we are making a life into decision about picking up a gun, this is a good time to lock 'em in our heads. If you don't have these four rules memorized, not only memorized but in a way that they're in a procedural memory, that they become just a part of how you handle a gun, you are that person on the range. You need to think about it. First range is treat all guns at all times are loaded. For me, a firearm is loaded if the magazine is still in it or the cylinder's not open. If I lock the slide back and I set the gun down where I can see in the chamber, it's unloaded slides back, see the chamber, no magazine.
If I put the same gun with the slide locked back the magazine out this way, I can't see in the chamber. So we want to make sure we define what an unloaded gun is. The next thing is we have an unloaded gun. The next thing is don't point the gun and you're not trying to kill or destroy it. We're going to talk to our students and ourselves about that. Again, to be very conscious of where we point this gun. This is doubly true with a handgun versus a long gun, but the long gun, it's a little easier to keep track where I'm pointing it. The problem with the handgun is because of the wrist mobility and flexibility we got, it's very easy when you're going to lock the gun back to take it from the safe direction and do one of these numbers right here.
If you need to do this to lock the gun back, no problem. Keep the gun point in a safe direction, turn your body sideways and then do that exact same motion. For some of you have problems handling the slide, bringing this thing into your workspace and doing this to lock the slide back is really the most mechanically efficient way to do it. The problem is is the gun will point in the wrong spot. So finger high index, turn your so the GS naturally pointed in a safe direction. Now lock it back, drop the bag, lock it back, put it down. We can see inside the chamber, keep your finger off the trigger unless your sight are on the target ready to shoot and get the finger off the trigger. The minute your sights are off the target and you're ready to shoot, I find the finger trigger thing again, when they're coming back from shooting, that's when the real problems happen and the four Bs through aware of what's before beyond, beside and beyond your target eyes and ears, always all of 'em are out there.
Also counsel 'em if your eyes start fogging, don't take your glasses off, secure your gun, unload it, put flag in, bench it. Whatever you got to do, walk to place of safety, clean the fogging or whatever issues you got. Make sure you and your people understand that they can't hear you. Don't pull the thing away, just go, Hey, I can't hear you, and if brass gets out the clothing, make sure that they understand that finger off the trigger point the gun out and then just keep this out here in a knife safe direction while you deal with wherever that brass came in. Hopefully we'll have brass coming down in the clothing because we secured that part before we went on the range to plan with good clothing. One of the big concerns I have is we always want to bring the bag to the gun.
We don't want to take the gun offline back to the bag. So always keep the thing pointed when you put your bag down, if the gun's turned facing in a direction that's not safe, turn the whole gun in the bag to the safe direction. Don't pull it out, don't pull it out and then switch it. Move the bag around to work with you. Also, if we drop any gear, if you drop any gear, make sure you put the gun down or holster the gun. Then han pick it up. I find dropping gear is a real problem because we start moving the gun in a direction that it's not safe. Also, if you tend to drop a firearm, it can happen. We're humans. These things happen. My motto is this, in a commercial kitchen, a falling knife has no handle. The reason is because you go to grab it, you probably end up cutting yourself.
If this gun starts falling and you go to grab it, you can have a sympathetic response and then zing around off in someplace that we are not going to be accountable for. So if it falls, just jump back quick feet or happy feet, let it hit. Look around. I meant to do that. Pick the gun out, careful index, always point in the right direction and then work from there. Firing line commands. If I'm shooting with other people, we just need to have some standard of firing commands. So if I'm working with somebody on a timer or help 'em get through a course of fire or a student or a new shooter, it's real simple. Unload and show clear. That's where they drop the magazine, unload the gun show it's clear, put it down with the action, open or top, the gun off, holster up when it's time to get ready to shoot.
If I'm working off the timer or some sort of skillset, it's I'll explain the course of fire three rounds from the holster of four seconds. I repeat it three rounds from the holster, four seconds sometimes because I'm behind the students, students in front of me and the firm is down there, I find it easy to stick my out and I'm talking right into their earphone. So I go three rounds, four seconds from the holster, three rounds, four seconds from the holster. Then I go, does the shooter understand the course of fire? And if the shooter does, they don't go, yes, I can't hear them. They're faced that way. Guns are going off. Have them nod their head either at a positive or negative affirmative type motion shooter ready if they are neither in affirmative or non affirmative motion, stand by for the beat or standby and then say threat or go or start or orange, banana, bicycle, whatever commands you have.
It doesn't really matter what range commands you use as long as we're all using the same range commands. So find the range commands at work and then work on it. Really important. Now, safety violations. If I'm working with a first time friend shooter, if I'm working with a civilian or law enforcement, I tell 'em all the time, there are two types of safety violations. One's a major, one's a minor, it's a minor violation to where I find that every time you come back with the gun, the fingers and the trigger and I keep telling you finger off the trigger, they'll come back like this and you read a holster with it in there. Maybe that's a minor, maybe that's a major. If I think it was just a minor violation, that's probably going to be something I counsel 'em once, but I tell 'em if I see it again, we're done for the day.
A lot of times when we're around guns, we tend to lose our ability to think. We get overwhelmed by events. All the gunshots going off, all the explosion responsibility. We lose neurologically speaking our prefrontal cortex and we start working off the primitive parts of our brain. So we start losing these fine skills. If they're not permanently eng grade, you just got through a really active set of shooting, it's very easy to make some stupid mistakes. Now if you take that gun and go, wow, I shot really well and turn around and pointed it at me, we're done, we're done, done, done. Non discussion, no discussion, you're gone now maybe I take 'em outside, counsel 'em, let 'em get a drink of water, cool off, get their head back, may bring 'em back. Maybe they're done for the day. Last year I had a police officer who's the end of a range of officers I had who got through shooting and he turned around to me with a gun in his hand.
I started to go for my gun because my brain said, we're in a gunfight. Some dude's pointing a gun at me. He saw this and he lowered the gun quickly and we terminated his employment from our police department the next day. And some people in the department were very rank and file are very upset about that. I can't believe you fired blank just because he pointed a gun at you. And I'm going, look, if he cannot handle dealing with a firearm responsible for saving citizens and other officers and not shooting himself in a controlled, well-lit environment, we cannot trust him on the street with that same firearm. He's got to go. So write my letter to the chief, write my letter to the state and I said, this is why we took him off the rage. He is unsafe for the firearm. Done. This was all explained to them.
I think if you use a gun for defense and you can't handle a gun in a post shooting event in a safe way on a range and controlled environment without the stress of a life or death decision, a stress of making sure that you're not shooting innocent people and you're getting the bad guy, the lawsuit that's going to come, the social price that you're going to pay for using that gun, we can't do that on a range. We can't carry one in the street. So for me, this is like a performance polygraph. Now that may sound harsh, but the problem is is firearms are legal right to own them. Training responsibility and competent handling is our responsibility. So we have a right to own these firearms. We have a responsibility to handle 'em well and if you carry one to protect yourself or some other people, that is very different than this thing that lives in your nightstand.
So you need to hold yourself and the other people around you to higher standards. Maybe that's too harsh. If so, put it down there. But if that's too harsh, you're probably one of those people that I'm watching doubly carefully on the range and if you understand this, I probably won't see a hallelujah in the comments because you're going, I get it. And if I seem a little upset, it's because I see so much unsafe gun handling. And again, if you're not the best shooter, that's okay. Once you figure out what your wobble zone is, what you can hit under pressure without a doubt in a certain distance, that's great. We can always extend that with understanding the physics of handling a gun, which is leverage and fiction, friction handling the trigger and how you're using your visual acuity to cite the target. But if you don't have that part in your head that says safe gun handling, whether you're under stress and under stress, tired, sleepy, whatever, we got a problem and this is where we diagnose that problem. Now, emergency procedures.
If you haven't seen my webinar and dealing with gunshot wounds, please go back and watch that if you think we need to do it again, that's okay. I am not a paramedic, I'm not a doctor. I'm an EMT, but I am a first responder medical instructor for alert, which is advanced law enforcement rapid response training. I'm also a civilian rapid response instructor for alert as well. I'm a national stop the Bleeding instructor. We're going to arrange with a thing that puts holes with bit. We need to fix the hole. The mechanisms is going to kill you from that. Gunshot wound is going to be blood loss. So if you don't have a way to stop that, which is direct pressure, which is always handy, it's right, I'm on you a tourn and not on a pack a wound. If you don't how to sweep using like a bath protocol or marsh protocol to find that injury, you don't have some sort of treatment protocol that tells you which one to look for.
If you don't have evacuation plan already figured out, you are way, way behind the curve. So I really recommend that if you go to range, at the very least when you're checking in, ask them if something does go wrong here, do you guys have a gunshot kit and where is it? The problem is without you going and looking through it, you don't know if it's a soft tee or a SWAT or it's some sort of weird tourniquet you've never seen if it's still on the plastic. So have gear that you know how to use and you've practiced with on your person. And if you don't know why it's important, take your thumb and put it down next to your leg. That's about the size of femoral artery. Lower limb shots in firearms are very common, especially if they're self-inflicted because you shot yourself. That's 16,000.
Americans have self-inflicted go wounds every year, and if you nick that thing that without treatment is probably going to be a fatal gunshot. Now, you may get lucky if it doesn't hit something vital bleeding. It's kind like stabbing your leg with an number two pencil, but if it does hit something that's a primary bleeder, the quickest and quality of reaction determine in their life. On the back of this, I also have a little chart that shows my students that if you get shot here or here, you can get a tourniquet and you get shot here or here, you're going to get at least two tourniquets. If you get shot in the sort of hip pelvis area or one of the shoulder areas or the neck, we're going to attack that wound. If you get shot here, it says you're going to get a chest seal, but in my case, you're going to get treated with diesel, gasoline or aviation fuel.
Either I'm grabbing you, I'm throwing you my evac vehicle, I'm taking the preplan route to my closest er, or I'm putting you in a box ambulance and police talk. It runs off diesel or I'm getting a life flight in my area, the medical helicopter evacuation to come land and get you out there. All this sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? I'm talking about kicking people off the range. I'm talking about gun injuries. I'm talking about putting the guns the wrong way and I'm going to hammer this home. Again, we have a right to have virus, but training and responsible handling is our responsibility. So when we go to the range, we have responsibility to do a number of things. One, to make sure we don't hurt ourselves, hurt the other people we trust around us, and to make sure we're aware of the other people around us so they don't hurt us.
And this is the place that we're actually using live fire with this firearm. And if we can't handle our behavior on the range in a well lived controlled environment, it's not going to get any better. In a Walmart parking lot or an active shooter situation, it's your house of worship or your corporation where you're protecting your home. You got to make sure that you can think with a gun in your hand. We want to build thinkers well before we build shooters. This gun handling is going to get you in more trouble than bad shooting bad shooting's still a risk, don't get me wrong, but it's a gun handling. It's going to be a real problem. Also, one final thing is you may want to think about if you can't draw from there is shooting from a compressed low ready and practicing that. And that is a skill that a lot of us don't really think about and a lot of officers really struggle with.
And that is probably going to be one of the, if you ever pull a gun and it's not time to shoot 'em, well, that means it's not time to point a gun at 'em either. So you want to be in a ready position compressed and low ready. We almost ought to do a whole webinar just ready positions because it's a confusion to somebody and it's if it's ever explained to you once and you practice it in dry fire, it's really hard to ever go back to the old habits because it just makes so much sense to really have a systematic and an intelligent approach to your ready positions because not everything is draw and few, a lot of times it's draw and assess. So we need to know difference between compressed low ready and what a stool is, and one is a ready position and one is a maneuvering not ready position.
And knowing those two could be very, very helpful. So I put a lot out there, hope you got something out of this. Please pardon some of my passion about some of these topics. But as a guy who professionally spends time on a range, I really want to make my Conceal Coalition family the standard. If you are wearing a Conceal Coalition shirt or a hat, or you're a Conceal coalition instructor or a conceal coalition family member, I want us to be the standard on the range. If people see that, they go, Hey, these people are just a little more dialed in than your average chair, and I want you to be the person who's welcome back at any range. And trust me, no matter what kind of range time you spend, at the end of the day when they reach out to shake your hand, they say, wow, I had a great time shooting with you.
What they're saying is not that, wow, you were shooting so great. I press, it's wow, you were shooting so safe. I was impressed. You don't care how well you shoot. We do care how safely you shoot. So hope to see you at a concealed coalition class. We have some big things coming up in 2025 with some around the country tours. We hope you as a fellow member showing up for that. We're rewriting the books. I've got a new book coming out. It's being published by Rogue Rabbit and it is on verbal commands for personal protection. Verbal commands used to be tied in with my last book with deescalation, but I've decided to put a whole set on just how to issue verbal commands. Hopefully that will be coming out probably in the first part of 2025. I hope you're looking forward to that. If you ever have any questions, you've got my number somewhere on the screen, you can go ahead and text me for a response. If we ever get together, I hope to meet you and shake your hand and realize just how safe you're around Guns just like to close everything off, be it Guardian, always a warrior. I'm a native.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiCtuQmYD6U
Credit: Concealed Coalition