4-Day Advanced Tactical Scenarios

What are your General Comments?

I recently had an opportunity to attend Front Sight's Advanced Tactical Scenarios class for Handguns. This class had 10 students, who had all excelled at the Front Sight "basic" defensive handgun classes. I had seen bits and pieces of this class while attending other classes at Front Sight courses, and it looked like "tons of fun."

These classes are mostly a force on force class, where students put away their standard sidearm and use a Front Sight owned pistol. These pistols, mostly Berretta 92s, are modified to shoot "simunitions." The closest analogy would be to call these paint ball guns, but that would not be accurate. Simunitions look like typical 9mm ammo, with a brass cartridge, primer, etc. The difference between a simunition and real ammo is that the simunition has a hollow plastic bullet with some thick paint inside.

The class focuses on the instructors putting the student into a variety of situations, where the student must determine if the use of deadly force is needed. The targets are real people, who are acting out a scenario that the instructor has set up. The result is that students put on face protection and a heavy jacket, for protection from "simunitions." The simunitions can sting a bit when you are hit, but the pain wears off quickly; and you learn rapidly from your mistakes.

During my classes, we spent several hours working through a "Starbucks Coffee" robbery scenario. Each student was assigned a different role. There were students who would panic, some people were armed citizens, and there were always one or two robbers. Of course the students didn't know the roles of the others, so it was a bit of a mystery. In one scenario, I had the unfortunate luck of being assigned as an innocent bystander, and the robber took me hostage, while waving his pistol at the other students. I got dragged from the coffee counter to the door, but the students figured they would give it " the old college try" and try to shoot the bad guy behind me. I received some "friendly fire" as the students tried to get a "headshot" on the bad guy. Needless to say, the whole incident lasted a stressful 20 seconds … I was "dead," and the students learned that shooting a moving head was harder than they thought, especially in a hostage situation.

Chuck Burnett ran the class and his knowledge and expertise are amazing. Chuck is extremely well read and has extensive knowledge of a lot of different shooting techniques and philosophies. Students can benefit from taking the class more than once, since the situations the class covers change frequently.

Would you suggest this course to others?

Yes, I would.