Mar 13 min read

Recap and Gallery: February CCL/Driver Security

We had a full house of great students for our Illinois Concealed Carry class with Driver Security curriculum at the Kane County Sheriff's office Tactical Training Center in St Charles in February. We were able to run three "shifts" in the range so that students who needed extra time to get comfortable to qualify were able to get time shooting with Tracy before qualification. All students qualified easily. Some lessons learned on the range.... Here are some patterns we are seeing with students on the range. These experiences may be helpful to you if you are preparing for a CCL class. Firearm reliability Unlike 20-30 years ago, concealable handguns available today are generally very reliable and ready-to-run out of the box. We have seen two consistent failure patterns with students coming in to qualify: 1) Taurus and Ruger pistols are having more failures than other polymer, striker-fired pistols. According to Dan at Barton Guns in Elgin, he finds both these makers to be producing pistols that are more sensitive to different ammo than others, but they can run well if you feed them ammo they like. While we always emphasize thorough testing of defensive ammo, if you're running a Taurus or Ruger, make sure to test your range ammo, too, and run what works reliably. 2) 1911s are still 1911s. John Browning's revolutionary design sort of changed everything - over 100 years ago. The 1911/2011 platform is still a world-leading platform for competition shooting as well as duty carry for "gun guys" in law enforcement. But, they are still made of shaped metal, require a higher degree of gunmaker input to be perfect and are absolutely dependent on ammo and magazines to run right. If you are using one of these pistols as a defensive weapon - particularly if it is a mass-produced, budget model - make sure you take the time to run your preferred ammo, test each of your magazines, and practice so much that operation of the safeties is natural and reflexive.

Recoil anticipation Several students started their warmup shooting low. Some very low. Some even "my pistol must be broken" low. In each case the firearms were running fine and it was simply "Recoil anticipation" where shooters begin counteracting the recoil impulse of the firearm before recoil occurs - with the trigger break actually happening with a slightly dipped muzzle thereby sending shots low. Recoil anticipation definitely seems to be worse for less-experienced shooters with bigger-caliber handguns (.40 and .45) and also with very-compact 9mms. The good news is that it's a well-known issue with solid techniques to overcome it - particularly if you recognize it early and fix it to keep it from being baked into your technique. Here's a good primer on recoil anticipation with some techniques to work it out of your system.