Hanson does Blackwater USA: DAY 2

Buckeye Firearms Association Legislative Chair Ken Hanson recently attend Blackwater USA’s 5 day pistol/carbine class.

While attending class, Ken kept a blog of his experiences. Since most visitors to this site take training very seriously, we thought you would enjoy his ramblings.

Ken's five day experience will be published on this website on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of the month.

Click on 'Read More' for the second installment.

Day 2


It is 6:15 and pitch black out. I write this to the gentle lullaby of
full auto rifle fire and helicopters overhead. There is a certain unit
here this week training who we aren't allowed to take pictures of, talk
to, look at or even mention.

Beautiful day today, I am actually sunburned. We burned through about
700 rounds. The class I am taking is 5 full days, pistol/carbine.
They basically compress their 5 day pistol class and 5 day carbine class
into half and cram them together, plus do combined work between the
carbine and pistol.

Started with some slow warm up drills and revisited the spinning stuff
from yesterday. Usually 6 shot strings. We then went to
non-traditional shooting, kneeling, supported kneeling, crouching,
prone, barricade, kneeling barricade etc. I've never shot a pistol
prone before. Weird.

We then did a bunch of dominant/goofy handed stuff. The one hand stuff
was drawing, reloading, clearing etc one handed. Kind of fun goofy handed.

Moved to 8 inch steel plates. There are 6 12-plate arrays. Cleaned
them traditional, barricade, kneeling, prone etc. With 6 guys shooting
plates at once we got fragged pretty good. I've got little bee stings
everywhere from lead/jacketing hitting me.

We then did rectangular steel set right left and center all varied
distances. Started single shot, then doubles. We've got some good
double-tappers in class. Then did moving right to left, left to right etc. on steel from that high port/executive ready position. This is useful for an outdoor range, no
180. You can twist and shout and it doesn't matter.

Then after we were all good an exhausted they thought they'd be cute and
move us back to 25 yards on 8 inch paper. Some guys really threw a lot
of shots. They actually made them tape them so everyone could see the
little tape flags up and down the line for extra humiliation. I
fortunately only needed 2 out of around 50, and at that point the legend
of Ohio concealed handgun license holders began to grow, because they kept
doing precision stuff and I kept hitting it and I shrugged it off and
said I had to shoot that good to stay ahead of my students and this
wasn't all that different than what Gerard and I teach our students in
class. Most guys have state CHLs that require you to sign a piece of
paper, so they now think our CHLs are superheros. I love being ornery.

We've had some pistols go down hard, haven't gotten to carbine yet but I
imagine it will be worse. Surprisingly (to me) the Glocks are going
down the most. We had an HK go all the way down yesterday. My Sig has
been doing ok, though in the kneeling stuff I had some trouble with not
returning to battery because for some reason when I kneel I bend my
elbows and end up spaghetti arming it. Quick smack on the butt and we
are back in business. I had a few double feeds, too, so I took my
magazines apart and cleaned them tonight. This brings me to several
general observations.

First, I could have left half my crap at home. They have 4 full time
armorers here at BW. Gun goes down on the range, they radio the armory,
the truck rolls out to the range in about 2 minutes, they hand you a
loaner gun to get back in the fight and then fix your gun right there. If they can't fix it they take it back to the armory overnight and do
whatever it takes. The HK guy actually somehow broke his sear. They
took it completely down to replace the sear, and while it was totally
disassembled they put it in an ultrasonic cleaning tank and gave it back
to him better than new today. Another guy broke an extractor today. Same thing, an hour later they handed him back a fixed gun and he never
missed a shot. All of this is included in the tuition, even the cost of
replacement parts. Guys were shaking their heads thinking about the AR
rebuild kits they brought with them. No exaggeration, the armory has
something like 200 ARs on those Matrix like sliding gun racks. The
armory is gun Valhalla. You know that scene in Charlie and the
Chocolate factory where they walk into the waterfall room? Like that
only it goes bang. Several guys were physically stunned upon seeing
this room.

Second, the teaching here is pure gunfighting. The doctrine is "the
accuracy necessary for the shot required" and they don't care
about anything else. I could have brought reloaded ammo with me, unlike other schools that insist on factory ammo. They just don't care (though I will probably push that tomorrow with my polymer 223 ammo.) None of this dump pouch stuff. Empty magazines are meant to be on the ground, if you are topping off you better figure
out how to do a retained tactical reload. If you have a failure then
you are expected to dump the mag and round and move on no matter what. Conservatively there are probably 200 live rounds on the range right
now. They don't want people policing up anything. Nothing to distract
from servicing targets.

Third, all the instructors here have taught somewhere else and they
uniformly say other schools build their courses with the goal of making
students come back to complete the training. One guy is a former
XYZ Academy teacher. He said they purposefully set their courses up for
sales at that place, give them a taste but hold something back to bring
them back next year. He mentioned at XYZ the 250 class is just a preview and
sales pitch for 350 etc. He says BW has told them they are to hold
nothing back, show every dirty trick and cheat they can think of, then
bring the class together for frequent debriefs to see if anyone has a
better way to do something. They are encouraged to steal whatever they
can and make it theirs. He said the only difference in their classes is
the length of time. For instance, our 2.5 days on pistol covers the
same as the 5 day class, but on the 5 day class you just drill it harder
and longer and maybe more thorough. For instance, on the goofy handed
shooting, they would run you through each and everything goofy handed,
strong handed, two handed, kneeling etc. In the 2.5 day class you
cascade it, one drill teaches one fundamental, move to the next for
another, next another, and maybe the 4th combines them all as a recap. In the longer class each drill would cover each variation. I can't
imagine several hours of goofy handed stoppage drills. The idea is they
give you the complete package no matter what, but maybe for the 2.5 day
class you will need to go home and practice much more to make it stick compared to the 5 day class.

The range....OMG. Saa saa saa wheet. All the plates reset
automatically, all the target holders are turners, they have lateral
movers etc. and most bays are set up this way. The target stands are
backed with a kind of thin mine conveyor belt. This is a sweet target
backing material. You can imagine at the end of 700 rounds cardboard
would be replaced like 3 times if it was the target back. The mine belt
just closes back up. I've got to find some of this stuff and get it at my home range. It's like the Terminator 3 guy, shoot him and the hole heals.

Stay tuned for future installments of Ken's time at Blackwater USA, Tuesdays and Thursdays through December.