Whew! Coming back from the Mas_certRogers Shooting School Intermediate/Advanced Course in Ellijay, GA  the Evil Princess and I agreed that it was the most fun week we’ve spent together so far this year. We both met our goals…and we both had to work like hell for it.

When it was over, we had each put thousands of rounds of spent brass on the ground. We had also picked them up at the end of each day: this ain’t tennis camp, and you clean up your stuff and leave the place as you found it, just like in the woods.

There are lots of AARs (After Action Reports by students) to be found on the Internet for any shooting school, including Rogers’.  The classic one is the series by the late, great Todd Green, eulogized in these pages last month.  In one class of heavy hitters I read about, only one shooter actually earned Advanced rank in the demanding 125-target high-speed test.  In ours, about a third of the 18 students made Advanced.  Bill and his staff told us that was an unusually high percentage.

Gail and I are used to running with the big dogs. In this class, some of those big dogs were more like a wolf pack. The pressure was ON!

In the decades that the Rogers School has been a beacon for SEALs and other high-speed, low drag professional trigger-pullers, you can count on your fingers the world-class shooters who’ve shot a perfect score. Bill Rogers himself, of course, and guys like Manny Bragg, Rob Leatham, and Gabe White. (Google will tell you who those folks are.) No perfect scores were shot last week, but we all watched Rogers himself demonstrate the test and shoot a score in the 120s out of 125 possible, with a Gen4 Glock 17 with duty trigger pull weight and hot NATO 9mm ammunition. Witnessing Bill’s performance was almost worth the price of admission by itself.

Top shot in the class was an 18-year-old kid whose name I can’t use, but it’s a name I expect you’ll be seeing on the match-winners’ lists in International Practical Shooting Confederation championships in years to come.

Yeah, I made Advanced, but by the skin of my teeth and I had to work for it.  There are lessons in that, and I’ll discuss those in some detail in the next entry in this blog.  In the meantime, feel free to order on DVD Bill’s training vid on what he teaches and why.  And, here’s one of my runs on the course caught on smart-phone vid by one of Bill’s masterful instructors, Kyle Armstrong. The drill was draw when the first target comes up and shoot it and its six accomplices in turn as they briefly expose themselves, dominant hand only. Then a pause to reload and go to ready position, and do the same non-dominant hand only. The pistol I’m using is a Springfield Armory XDM 5.25, with Blazer 147 grain 9mm plated bullets, and holster is a Comp-Tac.

or Click Here for video.

8 COMMENTS

  1. Admittedly, the names Manny and Gabe were new to me, but what follower of this blog isn’t aware of “TGO”

    Incidentally, I don”t believe you have mentioned it as yet, Springfield Armory XDM 5.25, 19+1 rounds of 9mm;-)

  4. Ok ok maybe a speed reload with weak hand only isn’t mutually exclusive. I suppose a person could practice that with snap caps. Holding the piece between your knees with the muzzle pointed backward, well, imagine explaining that AD at the ER. ( that is a joke)

  5. Certainly the 19+1 capacity of the XDM is much better for a rapid-fire, target-rich training environment compared with the 13+1 capacity of the Wilson Beretta Compact that was used on your first day. No doubt, the longer sight radius and high-viz sights of the XDM made hits easier too.

    However, I would guess that the Beretta is a far more practical sidearm for concealed carry than a range gun like the XDM.

    Isn’t the progression funny? At one time, capacities of 6 to 8 rounds was considered quite adequate for both police work and war (ex: revolvers, 1911’s, Luger, etc.).

    Then the P-35 High-power pushed capacity to 13+1.

    The M9 stepped it up to 15+1 for military and police use.

    Now, people think you are practically unarmed unless you carry something with 17+1 or 19+1 rounds. For some of the newer pistols (ex: FN five-seven, glocks) there are even 30+1 or 33+1 magazines available.

    Wonder how long we are going to chase this dog’s tail? Is the 50 round magazine capacity of the FH P-90 the wave of the future?

    I have a suggestion. Why don’t we just shortcut this whole process and go straight to belt-fed? Then we can all just mow down the bad guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Commando!

  6. TN_MAN,

    I like your idea of the belt-fed pistol. Let’s see, I’m going to want someone to carry an extra long belt in an ammo can, and be at my left-hand side at all times to feed my pistol. Then, I will probably get to the point where I have a problem with my barrel overheating, and possibly melting. To solve that problem I’ll just get a water-cooled pistol on a tripod, and I’ll put wheels on the tripod so I can move it around.

    I’ve already seen double-barreled pistols. Another solution may be if someone masters accurately firing two pistols at the same time. After all, we do have two hands.

    At the other extreme, I could see some Luddite like myself carrying around a flintlock pistol with one round lead ball inside it. As long as I only met one assailant, and placed that one shot correctly, that would be all I need. One shot, one kill at close range.

    I guess it is human nature to want more. Blackbeard the pirate carried six single-shot pistols in a sash so he didn’t have to reload. I remember watching a TV episode of “Daniel Boone” from the 1960s. His wife Rebecca would hand him a loaded Kentucky (or PA) rifle, then he would shoot it, and put it aside as she handed him another.

    While we are on the subject of firepower, why is a modern Gatling gun called a “mini-gun.” I would think a Derringer would be called a “mini-gun.” I would call the modern Gatling gun a “maxi-gun” or maybe a “dragon,” or maybe an “ultra-gun,” or a “super-gun.”

  7. @ Roger Willco:

    No doubt somebody is already working on the first belt-fed concealed carry handgun (Perhaps it is Kel-Tec ;-). They like to think “outside of the box”!

    As to your other question, the mini-gun’s elder brother was the M61 Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon. This was “scaled down” to the 7.62X51MM NATO round to create the mini-gun. So, in comparison to its big brother, it truly is a miniature (i.e. mini-) gun.

    It’s all a matter of perspective. Uncle Sam thinks big. To be a “maxi-gun” in his eyes, it would need to be a 155MM rotary cannon!

  8. Thanks a lot, TN_MAN. It is a matter of perspective. On the modern battlefield, “small arms” are really tiny, or minute arms. I’m glad Uncle Sam, and the military-industrial complex, and the great engineers [and the captured Martian scientists who have been helping us in the arms race since they crash-landed at Roswell ;)] are on our side. I hope they will always be on our side.

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