So I did take "fighting Pistol" with Tactical response on April 19-20. I give the class a 7 out of 10. They didn't blow my mind on too many things in their class. I was pretty up to date with what they teach through much of Yeager's videos. That being said, the class took what I understood and added more confidence and clarity to it. There were a handful of things I had zero knowledge of prior to the class though. Taking the class in California left nothing out from what I gathered. One of the first things we did on the first morning was put our hand up and promise to never utter the words "Is that legal?". At that range was the first time in CA where I knew I was around nothing but understanding people in terms of the necessity to carry and I had no concern for judging eyes in any regard. The first day I ran an OWB holster with flashlight. On the second day I ran IWB without a flashlight. I pulled all spare mags from my jean pocket for maximum realism.
They can be a little abrasive IF you show up with an ego. For example, I kept catching hot brass on day one. One time hot brass from my neighbor landed INSIDE my eyewear right under my eye. Naturally I did an epileptic shaking of my eyewear to get it out. After that round one of the instructors announced(not singling me out) that we need to buck up and deal with the short term pain if brass lands in unfortunate places for realism purposes. If we get shot we aren't going to stop fighting so hot brass shouldn't be a problem. My ego was a little bruised so it was a great reminder to not have an ego and to take as much impartial knowledge as possible from the class. I was actually looking forward to more hot brass after that but it never came to test me again.
The instructors were not safety whores unless you ignored their commands, which is obviously understandable. They felt perfectly comfortable with everyone standing next to their targets as they demo'd the next drill. The students were also setup only a couple feet apart and in some case would be shooting beyond one another if they got behind in a moving drill when regressing from or progressing toward a target. Key here is to fix malfunctions on the move so you don't end up with a guy 20 feet behind you, shooting at the target 2 feet to your left. It avoids the "Fucking move" command from the instructors also.
Another thing I liked about the class was the emphasis on keeping your pistol loaded. They didn't like to see guys with empty guns after a drill so it was first priority to load the weapon back up. This meant going through a full repetition of the correct draw stroke(yell "stop", move, draw pistol, reload gun, reluctantly reholster).
There was more I liked about the class, one of which being the homework after day one and a few other things I shall not mention. I'd recommend the class to anyone interested in improving their ability to fight with a pistol. One thing I should mention is, at least in my class, there weren't any really bad shooters. I feel like I'm an average shooter but in reality compared to the average shooter I'm much better, but here I was just one of the guys. I was among all the other guys like myself that have trained hard on their own for a few years or more and came here to sharpen their skills. We were all that "go-to" guy among their friends that everyone comes to for gun related questions.
The instructors kept it humorous when they could. They constantly took shots at one another over age, height, ethnicity etc.
Anyways, sorry it probably reads like rambling, because I am.
