First things first, always review the Cardinal Rules of Firearm Safety before loading your weapon, now move on to other range safety controls, proper loading and unloading procedures and finally do a review basic marksmanship skills. Determine how fast you should perform these drills. A good rule of thumb is to base your speed on your accuracy. If you are missing the black you probably need to slow down to work on your accuracy and your fundamentals, but if you are driving every round in the center of target, then you need to speed it up. 

3” DOTS or B3 at 7 YARDS [Get our custom 3 inch dot target] 

• Low ready: one shot 4 times
• High ready: one shot 4 times
• Low ready: two shots, one target 4 times
• High ready: two shots, one target 4 times
• Low ready: two shots, one shot each on two separate targets 4 times
• High ready: two shots, one shot each on two separate targets 4 times

8” DOTS, BODY or B8 at 10 YARDS 

• Pivot left and right 90 degrees and 180 degrees: start at Low ready facing away from the target: turn (each direction), four shots, two shots each on two separate targets 2 times each direction (left and right 90 degrees and 180 degree pivot) 
• Transition drill: start with no magazine in your carbine. Click, transition to pistol, two shots or dry fire once 5 times.

8″ DOTS, BODY or B8 at 25 YARDS 

• Reload drill: from ready, one shot, Emergency reload, one shot. Recover magazine and perform Tactical reload to set up drill 4 times.
• Soft malfunction (fail to fire) drill: start with an empty chamber in your carbine, full magazine, click-tap, rack, engage with two shots 4 times.
• Standing to kneeling to prone: two shots each position 5 times.

8″ DOTS, BODY or B8 at 15 YARDS 

• Shoot on the move (box drill): Two targets, first run with 1 shot each, second with 2 shots each.

Additional tips: 

1. If unable to move at the range, do the static drills both strong and weak side or double up on strong side drills. Practice movement and manipulation at home dry.
2. While doing the 7 yard and turn drills, load multiples of 8 rounds if you wish to do more transitions.
3. Remember to utilize the workspace when performing all reloads and immediate action drills.
4. Remember at less than 25 yards/meters transition to secondary weapon to stay in the fight. At distances greater than 25 yards/meters seek cover and perform immediate action to clear carbine stoppage.

Special thanks to guest author Mark Tiedemann for contributing this series of drills. Feel free to leave Mark a comment here or look for him on m4carbine.net where he is a forum moderator. 

While the introduction to the physical handgun is very important and what most students think is the most important. The students quickly learned why they were in the course as we moved into the section mindset. This is where shooters are born or lost. We can teach the predator versus prey mentality and by using Jeff Cooper’s Color Code teach you how to not to go through life in “condition white”, but each student was there for one reason, to get training to carry a concealed firearm. With that in mind each student was posed with the question: will I use deadly force …to protect myself? …to protect my family, …to stop a violent crime? Wide eyed the students were being given a question many had never asked themselves, of course, in the classroom, in an academic setting is a much better time to mull over the question: will I, if necessary, fire a gun at another human being to protect (insert the three questions here)? than asking that question while facing one of the three situations. The lawyers learned quickly the handgun is a tool which requires a great level of commitment. you cannot carry a gun and when presented a threat think you can pull it out and wave it at the bad guy and think, oh, now he will go away. Carrying a gun is a commitment to use it, if and when it is necessary.

The class moved on to post shooting procedures which AggDefSol places in seven priorities. Priority One starts with ensuring the fight is actually over and we progressed through self assessments, First Aid, getting help, and finally, Priority Seven leads to counseling and aiding in the investigation.

As day one wound to a close a lecture on the effective placement of bullets, using the workspace, ready positions, the draw, and recovery.

Day two started by drilling the students on The Cardinal Rules of Firearm Safety and then the students got a chance to start stretching their legs as they learned the fundamentals of marksmanship. From grip to follow-through the students grasped each step and progressed until they started looking like shooters! The students ran through series after series of drills each on building on what they had learned.

They progressed from single shots to multiple shot engagements while drawing their weapon from the holster. The class spent a long day on the range and made such impressive gains that, at times, the instructors forgot this was a Basic Handgun course. In the end each student fired over 350 rounds through their respective weapon, and in turn each student passed the qualification course. They came as novices and left with a confidence and proficiency knowing they can employ the tools whenever necessary to win the fight !