AGOGE Training

Basic Defensive Pistol Course

Well my daughter Gwynne (the head of White Shadow Security), and her boyfriend Michael Barker (founder of AGOGE Training), hosted their first pistol training class right here in our hometown. Unfortunately the weather was really shitty. We had two days of rain and freezing rain leading up to the class and the morning of, the weather broke cold, foggy, and icy. We started class at 8:30 with a review of grips, stances, safety, etc. since everyone there was reasonably experienced we went out for the range portion pretty quick.

The range conditions were still in the 30s and foggy as hell. The ground was slick with ice and puddles of water everywhere. First off we practiced the proper draw and presentation of the firearm using dry-firing. I found this especially educational despite having shot pistols for over 40 years. For me, their method of drawing and acquiring the sights was a new way of running a gun. Once learned it makes for a quicker and more solid delivery of the weapon to the target. The rationale is that the quicker you get the pistol out of the holster, the more time you have to get the sights aligned and squeeze off the shot. Thus speed and accuracy both improve. All training was performed from a concealed carry.

Personally I went from barely shooting on the paper at low left, to fairly reliable head-shots and center of mass hits by the end of the day. In addition I was in better overall control of the pistol and recoil. Jason (tall guy in the photo with Michael instructing) was shooting two well aimed shots from the draw in about 2 seconds by the day’s end. His progress was very impressive! My basic skills still needed more work so rather than shooting against the clock I worked on smoothing out what I had learned with coaching from Gwynne. My Kimber 45 ACP ran fine all day despite using, what turned out to be, dirty shooting ammo from Lawman. Everyone else was shooting 9mm Glocks. I tried Gwynne's Glock and just don't even like the way it feels in my hand. We did walking and shooting, trotting and shooting, turning and shooting, multiple targets, hostage targets, moving targets on a cable, etc. It was a full 6 hours of shooting time and about 250 rounds down range for each of us. We shot from traditional prone and fetal positions in the mud and water, kneeling and of course off-hand. Most of the shooting was from 12-17 yards.

It was a terrific class despite the cold and damp. All of us had wet bottoms from the prone shooting and were pretty grimy from all of the mud and gunpowder residue. Every one of us came away satisfied that we were drawing and shooting better than we ever had before, with improved accuracy and speed. Kudos to Gwynne and Mike for all of the experience they shared with us. If you want to know more about AGOGE Training or White Shadow Security email me at ghdave2@hotmail.com