. CSAT, LLC JULY 2009 INFORMATION LETTER/UPDATE: CALENDAR CHANGES: 2010 additions ***I have added a Tactical Team Leader course at my facility in Nacogdoches 28-30 October for those of you interested. Basic Swat 1-6 November I am working with an agency in Louisiana who is going to put a block of students in a Basic Swat at my facility in Nacogdoches, Texas 1-6 November. I will be opening up the course to other interested agencies/students. E-mail me for a course flyer. GENERAL INFORMATION: I spent two and a half (cool) weeks in the N. Chicago area this month. Great training and weather and just returned home to the heat. I delivered a seminar in Oakbrook, Illinois to over 300 officers and it was a pleasure to interact with that group. 2010 I am going to try and run several courses 2x a year at my facility to include: -Tactical Rifle Instructor, -Tactical Pistol Instructor -Tactical Team Leader -Urban Marksman -Advanced Urban Marksman Operations -Patrol Tactics Instructor One goal is to stay off the road a bit more, but the other is to use all the various ranges at my facility to the fullest extent. While travelling to host agencies makes courses more convenient for them, sometimes I do not have all the ranges needed to perform required drills. I can modify the drills and conduct them with paint marking............................
Page 2 weapons, but I feel the student does not get the same effect as if they were run with live ammunition. I have started posting classes as we speak. MONTHLY RANT.. Safety. I surf the forums and read posts from time to time to see what people are saying about training and to check on new equipment that is being tested and R & D. I recently viewed the video where the cameraman was filming downrange of students while they were live firing on targets next to him. The students of this class, instructor/discipline are emotional and passionate about protecting their instructor s reputation as is the lead instructor in his YouTube response. I do not wish to crush the instructor or his school, but do have a few safety points to address. Further, I have plenty of business and do not wish to take any from this school. I just want to see all the good guys/gals go home at the end of the day and not die because of fratricide. In his rebuttal to the avalanche of hate mail, he goes on the air and states that safety is unattainable and that true safety does not exist. He also states that firearms are inherently dangerous. I have to disagree. I train 90% law enforcement and 10% civilians. I added a few safety rules to the basic four. I added these the day I started my training business and they come from my experience in field and the training arena. I have about 3 years experience in the LE arena, 20 in the military (10 special ops) and 9 in the private sector. As for putting a cameraman downrange, better solutions could have been found. Use the camera remote. Or at least have cameraman wear body armor and a ballistic helmet. I think it was a poor decision to put someone s live in jeopardy over action guy photos. Watching the students who were firing, the skills were nowhere near where they needed to be for my comfort zone. Not that I go downrange, but have witnessed the same type training in my career. Many of the school s instructors/students feel this builds confidence. I have no problem with this type thinking, only you need to first have skills to do it safely and have control valves in place. I will try and elaborate on the safety rules below: UNIVERSAL SAFETY RULES PLUS 1) All guns are always loaded. Know how to properly load and unload your weapon and do it in a safe direction. 2) Finger off the trigger until sights are on target.
Page 3 Know the trigger control for the shot required. 3) Never let your muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. This includes slinging your primary weapon. 4) Know your targets foreground and background. You as the shooter are required to make a safe shot leading to the target and are responsible should the bullet leave the target. You can slide right/left or up or down to make this happen. 5) Weapon is kept on safe with straight trigger finger in a low or high ready until a target is identified. Low ready Rifle, High Ready or a Depressed Ready with pistol. 6) Once a target is engaged, the sector may be swept with the weapon on fire and trigger finger straight. This applies to room CQB and multiple targets. I teach students to remove their finger from the trigger when transitioning targets on a flat range so they will not ride a trigger across a hostage under high stress. Sympathetic discharges have occurred when riding the trigger. 7) The safety will be engaged prior to any movement or once clear is given. Soldiers and officers will fall, trip, stumble during operations. Shithole houses and real buildings which they assault are not clean and sterile like flat ranges. 8) Shooter to front has priority of fire. This is where I see many problems that other instructors do not. I routinely see shooters shooting over the top of their teammates or fellow students from several feet back, both in training and short combat video clips. This is dangerous. Four out of five times you will get away with it, the fifth you will shoot the guy in front of you. You see, you have a hard focus on the target and the guy downrange/in front of you may decide to move left/right up or down to get out of the line of fire or make a more effective shot. When he does, he will move into the path of your bullets. There are tactical ways to fix this, but it would take too much time to address it here. I will leave you with this. I have seen one department violate this rule twice in two years, each time shooting and crippling an officer to the front. I see many instructors in live fire video and in still pictures, violating this rule with their students. They are lucky for the moment.
Page 4 9) Engage your safety prior to working on injured personnel (hostages/downed officers), to include the manipulation of suspects. Your adrenaline will be pumping and you do not want to accidently shoot a patient you are working on or a suspect you are controlling. This has happened before. 9) Engage safety of downed officer s weapon prior to working on or moving them. We must create a safe environment to treat someone. This may mean moving them to cover first. If their weapon AD s while dragging them, it might cause injury to them or another officer/good guy. 10) Never run behind any target. Whether in a shoot house or on a field range, knock down targets prior to passing them. If you do not, someone may see and shoot the target and not see you behind or on the other side of it. I have seen this happen many times in my military career. 12) WHEN IN DOUBT, DON T PULL THE TRIGGER. All students come in with a different skill set and experience level. You must train them how you want them to react and how to look and interpret various situations and act accordingly. This takes time, patience and experience. Further, LE/Civilian tactics/training may require two skill sets. I will use the example of the High Sabrina position demonstrated by students in the video. When students take a knee to engage, have them scan behind them from the kneeling position first with their head and not a weapon. First look to ensure no one is shooting close to them. Next, the police will be arriving soon. In the civilian situation, you are an unknown standing over a body when officers arrive. You just fired several rounds and have auditory exclusion (hearing is impaired). You may not hear police officers shouting command to you. If you turn with a weapon, there is a good chance you are going to get shot. Responding officers only know what they see, an unknown person standing over a body with a gun and now that person turns toward them with a gun. When law enforcement or military guys turn, they are in a uniform and can easily be distinguished from the bad guys. Students who grow up in one discipline only know what they have been shown. Their instructors may have a limited skill set and limited experience and will not find out why something is dangerous until someone gets shot. As for some of the comments from armchair commandos, I will leave you with this. Unless you have been in special ops for a few successful years, you don t
Page 5 know fuckall about what they do or do not do. I read where individuals reference a short clip of soldiers shooting in training or combat actions and say, see, they are doing it. Yes they are and they are probably doing it wrong or in an unsafe manner, especially shooting from behind or over individuals from an unsafe distance. I see it all the time. This includes some spec ops guys. The military does not always have the best training available and when screw-ups do happen, they are mostly covered up or attributed to enemy fire. The military does a poor job of passing down lessons learned and many times spend more effort training foreigners that their own troops deploying. Further, as the current conflicts wind down, there will be more instructors coming to the U.S. scene to teach and instruct. Check out their credentials and ask them about their safety protocols. If they are weak or shallow, be suspect. I would be suspect of an instructor who was in a special operations unit for only one year and then leaves or is pushed out and decides to be a civilian instructor. Did he get kicked out for screwing up? Is this the person I want to model my training, life or profession after? Finally, if I could not train students safely, I would be out of a job. This is why teach safety as my first block of instruction in all my tactical classes and continually hammer it home during the entire class. I have a successful system that I use that has been developed over 30 years of training, refining and reviewing why accidents happen. I try and learn something each day I train and still be consistent with my safety protocols. As for the statement that safety is unattainable, this is false. This is only true if your ego is too big or your experience level too limited. OTHER NEWS: CSAT TSS (Tactical Shooting Supply) The CSAT DPMS rifle should be in any day now. I will take pictures of it and post it in the web letter. TRAINING: I have combined the Advanced Patrol Tactics Instructor Class and the High Risk Officer Instructor Class into one. There were only a few minor differences and decided to go with one class/syllabus to keep the lesson plan and video simple. I will run the first combined class in Jacksonville, Florida in August. GENERAL CSAT is proud to sponsor Hyper-Realistic Medical Training courses at our facility. These courses are the best I have seen in my career reference down and dirty emergency trauma management. See the flyer on our front page for details. If you have questions, e-mail me direct.
Page 6 Next, we have put together a comprehensive three-day Home Protection Course and will offer it on dates listed at the beginning of this news letter. We have designed it to progress students from range fire, to single home owner scenarios, both shoot and no shoot to include how to prepare for medical emergencies. Instructors will be Sgt. Butch White, of the Nacogdoches Police Department tactical team and Eric Corley. COURSE UPDATE(S): We will be updating the calendar shortly. We are now booking into 2010. RANGE UPDATE: Not much to report at this time. The one good thing about the heat is that it is slowing the growth of the grass down. Should an agency or group wish to rent the facility, feel free to contact us for rates. This includes the ranges, new property, classroom and bunkhouse. CLASSROOM/ LODGE: No changes. EQUIPMENT: ChamberSafe Inc. (Chamber Blocking Device) This is a simple and tough device made for line safety or those who prefer not to keep a loaded round in their chamber (children around), but want the ability to quickly load the weapon. Inserted into the chamber, it is easily identifiable and can be removed in an instant. It works on all types of rifles to include AK variants. The CBD allows instant inspection of the weapon ensuring that there is no round in the chamber. It is large enough to be removed with a gloved hand.
Page 7 For more information see: www.chambersafe.com HUNTING UPDATE: These are the fattest coons in the area
Page 8 The coons are stealing his chow.. READING/MISC. INFORMATION The Tactical Trainer has been sent to the publisher and should be ready anytime now. Once they tell me it is ready for sale, I will post it on the web site. It should be within 30 days. Sorry, still at the mercy of Authorhouse CLASS PAYMENTS In the future I may request payment in full by either check or Credit Card for classes as I am doing double accounting when I take deposits. IN CLOSING Thanks and we look forward to seeing you all soon. Paul R. Howe