GORUCK FAD Handgun AAR

Update 2016-05-13: If you’re interested in GORUCK Firearms Gear and missed out on the latest pre-order, my brother’s put together a quick tutorial about upgrading a regular rucksack into a Shooter-style Ruck:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Goruck/comments/4ipyk9/homemade_ruckshooter_ruck_upgrade/

Note – I wrote this up for my own reference from my scrawled notes the week after the FAD, and then I went back and formatted and edited it to put up here years later. If anything ended up misremembered or flat-out wrong, that’s on me.

Introduction:

We started off ranked up and the cadre went over the basics – range rules, cold and hot, what the medevac vehicle was, all of the basics. Lots of jokings, (“We have several Delta medics here, but you’re all civilians, so if you’re injured, they’ll just sit and watch.” [Bert points and laughs.] “And remember, you signed a death waiver.” And, “We’ll throw you in the back of the car and drive you to the nearest hospital. Which is six hours away.”) but it was still all professional and squared away.

Then we all circled up around Tyler as he went over the basics. We all had to recite after him the Four Rules and he also clarified that, while the First Rule is that all guns are loaded, that said – know what condition your gun is in at all times. Then he went over the details of loading, unloading, manipulating, checking, and handling of the gun.

“When you have your gun out of the holster, it makes us nervous. We might say, ‘No, don’t do that’, but inside we’re thinking ‘Holy fuck no, don’t fucking do that!’“
– Cadre Garrett

Someone asked a question about the slide being locked back, and one of the guys in the advanced group said how there’s a notch on the slide that gets caught, and Garrett spoke up – “We’ve got half a dozen cadre here. If he [Tyler] misses anything, we’ll help him out.” Translation – shut the fuck up, guy. Adults are talking. Very calm and no-nonsense.

Throughout, Tyler stressed how shooting was a science. Math, physics, ballistics in between, all of it science. Do A, then B. How stance helps with balance, and how a lot of that is common sense (i.e., put someone on a moving platform and see how they naturally stand).

Cadre Tyler: Stance

• Weaver, Isoceles – BAH!
• Imagine standing on a subway or a bus, not holding onto any of the straps or bars. How would you stand?
• Slide the strong-side leg back about shoulder width. Toes can turn out a little bit.
• Bend the front knee a bit more than the back knee.
• Don’t turtle up, but get your head down a touch. Be aggressive into the recoil.
• Roll the shoulders up and forward – make a piston system to absorb the recoil, which should go straight through the arms and back into the shoulders without disturbing your aim.

Cadre Tyler: Grip

• Strong hand holds the grip as high up as possible. You want the bore to be in line with your arm; the higher above the line of your arm it is, the more it will rise off target – it’s fucking physics.
• Weak hand covers up as much of the remaining grip as possible. (Demo with blue gun.) Wraps around to grab your knuckles.
• One way is to place weak hand along grip fingers up and then rotate forward into position.
• Like golf, you want to end up with both thumbs in line (slightly stacked) and pointing forward.
• Index finger of weak hand can possibly wrap around the front of the trigger guard, but should be with the other fingers wrapped arount the strong hand.
• Don’t hold it too strongly. “Book” answer is [IIRC] 70% weak hand, 30% strong hand, or something. He said hard with the weak, light with the strong [I think].
• Squeeze with the tip of the finger – maximal dexterity for a straight-rearward pull.

Cadre Tyler: Three Rules for Hitting Shit

1. Align the sights and your eye. Front sight lined up vertically (easy) and centered horizontally (difficult; tiny gaps) in front of your eyes.
2. Align the sights and your eye with the target. The top of the sights crosses dead center of the middle of your target. (Center-of-mass shooting ~25m.)
3. Squeeze the trigger without disturbing either of the above.

If you miss, you fucked up one of the three. 9.999 times out of 10, the trigger pull.

Cadre Tyler: Loading

• First way of doing it: Lock the slide to the rear, or have the gun with the slide locked to the rear. Insert a magazine. Use the slide release.
• Second way of doing it: Insert a magazine with the slide down. Rack the slide.

Cadre Tyler: Clearing

• First, remove the source of feed. Biggest way people get shot ‘cleaning guns’ is to rack the slide to remove the round and then removing the magazine, forgetting that they chambered a replacement round when they racked the slide.
• Second, lock the slide to the rear, visually confirming that the round is stripped out of the chamber.
• Three point safety inspection – verify that the chamber is empty, nothing is stuck to the bolt face, and the magazine well is empty.
• Release the slide.
• Point in a safe direction and dry fire.

Cadre Tyler: Racking

• If you need more strength out in front, you can use a sorta reverse grip (weak-side thumb towards your strong-side shoulder).
• Normally use slingshot-ish grip out down / in front, reverse grip when raised.
• Bringing it in closer to your chest allows you to get a lot more of your arm and chest strength into it – especially important for women, who tend to be weaker in the upper body.

After the introduction was over, we split into the two groups – the advanced group headed over to the targets for their initial slowfire strings. We stayed at the base of the range and worked on basic loading, unloading, and manipulation.

With Cadre Garrett, we started off in two firing lines at the side berm. The first line stepped up and after being drilled on keeping the gun in a safe direction (ground, berm, or sky) he went through the commands for loading and making ready. Removing the gun and locking the slide back, reholstering. Drawing, loading a magazine, releasing the slide, and reholstering.

Then, to clear, drawing the gun, removing the magazine, locking back the slide and inspecting, then dropping the slide and dry firing before reholstering. We did all of this by the calls and then switched firing lines, so the second group of 12 went through it. The three cadre walked up and down the line, helping people out and pouncing on safety violations. Nobody ND’d, though.

Next, the cadre walked down the line one at a time, watching each of us do the whole process individually. When we had demonstrated it for them, we stepped back. After everyone had demonstrated this, we topped up magazines if we’d missed picking up a round from the ground, and headed over to the first drill on the hot end of the range.

Drill: (7 and 25 Meter) Slow Fire

Taking as much time as you need, shoot as well (as accurately) as you can. One string of 10 rounds, or one full mag. (Or any other particular, specific number.)

Drill: (7 Meter) Rhythym Shooting

(Varies with number of rounds per string and distance from the target.) The goal of this drill is to practice a rhythym of fire. It doesn’t have to be rapid, and the further away, the slower it should be. (The guideline here was to go as fast as you could while keeping the rounds in the black.) The shots in each string should be spaced out evenly – either bang-bang-bang-bang, bang… bang… bang… or so on. Just not bang-bang… bang, bang.

Round count per string can range anywhere from 3 (2 rounds doesn’t really admit a rhythym) to a full magazine.

Drill: (7 Meter) Failure Drill

From a ‘fighting’ position (basically a shooting stance with your dukes up and gun holstered) draw and engage the target with X rounds center of mass. Then put one round into the head of the silhouette. (Thus a 2+1, 3+1, etc. failure drill.)

Cadre Garrett: Walking and Shooting

• Roll your feet as you walk, heel-toe. You want to avoid be-bopping up and down.
• When shooting to the sides, think like a tank turret – your feet keep you walking forward and your upper body swivels to engage to the sides.

Drill: (25-7 Meter) Walkup

Starting from the 25 meter line, walk towards the target firing only as fast as you can engage accurately, while keeping moving. The rhythm of the shots should increase as you get closer and closer and can thus fire faster while keeping it in the black. Total expenditure should be one magazine – i.e., you shouldn’t have to reload if you’re using a standard 15-round gun, but if you have to reload, reload without stopping.

Stop once you reach the 7 meter line in front of the targets.

Cadre Dakota: Magazine Positioning

• You can have your magazines pointing forwards, backwards, any which way, but base up with the bullets pointing forward is the correct way.
• Just like you can touch your nose, chin, belly button with your pointer finger with your eyes closed, take advantage of proprioception.
• Hand goes to belt and removes magazine, index finger along the spine.
• As the arm comes up it rolls inward (supination) – natural movement.
• In an actual ‘real’ situation, fine motor skills and dexterity go – rely on more natural movements.
• Natural supination aligns the magazine properly with the magazine well, ready to go.

Cadre Garrett: Walking and Shooting 2

• Again, most especially when strafing – pivot the upper body like a tank turret.
• Keep the feet pointing forward. Strong side has a slight tendency to drift towards the target line. Avoid it and keep moving forward.
• Never shoot to the rear. Stay in your front quadrant. You might have teammates clearing behind you – if you miss something, they’ve got it.

Drill: (7 Meter) Strong-Side Strafe

Begin on the 10 meter line facing towards the targets in a ready position. Walk straight towards the targets to the 7 meter line and then turn to present your weak side to the targets. Continue walking across the targets like that. On the call of ‘Threat’ or ‘Engage’, open fire on the targets in sequence.

Two rounds per target is a baseline – may be one, or more. Do not turn to engage targets behind you – if one is skipped, that’s okay. Reloading is done on the move if necessary. Stop at the end of the line, reholster, and immediately clear the line.

Cadre Joe: Reloading

• It’s fine to look at the gun if you need to when you’re reloading. Bring it up into your workspace and look at it if you need to to get it reloaded.

Cadre Garrett: Walking and Shooting 3

• The weak side strafe is way way harder and feels completely wrong.
• You’ll really feel it in your obliques, like, man, phew, when it’s done.
• Try and keep both feet pointed in the direction of travel still.
• The tendency to drift towards the target line is much stronger here than strong-side.

Cadre Joe: Walking and Shooting

• You can have the close-side foot pointed towards the targets so long as your far-side/outside foot is pointed in the direction of travel still. (Garrett said that both pointing in the direction of travel was the better option, but still an option.)

Drill: (7 Meter) Weak-Side Strafe

Exactly the same as the strong-side drill, but turning to present the strong side to the targets, thereby shooting from your weak side.

Cadre Garrett: Shooting Steel

• Shooting steel is awesome. Amazing. But humbling.
• Lead core essentially vaporizes, drops, etc.
• Copper jacket turns into frag.
• Perpendicular to the steel is worst for frag city. Anything from 0-45 degrees off of the line of the steel is at risk for shrapnel.
• Never shoot closer than 10 meters.

We had three stations set up for shooting steel, each one with a Cadre running it. At the first, with Joe, you had a standard plate rack with six pie plates. Each one was maybe the size of, well, a pie plate – 8″ across, I think abouts. (All of these were at 20 meters, I think.) You had one magazine total to try and knock down all six plates.

The second station with Garrett was six knock-off plates on top of rebar stalks and then a large torso and a smaller lower torso. (Almost like a parent and kid, I thought but didn’t say.) Shoot until the small plates are knocked off, and if you have anything left in your magazine then, one round to each of the torso targets. (A piece of bullet frag hit me in the left knee here. Nothing really major, just like a slingshot pellet it felt like, but I’m gonna say that’s what caused me to miss my last shot on the small silhouette.)

The last station with Dakota was three bowling-pin poppers on the ground and an elevated torso target. The drill here was three shots to the torso and then one each to the poppers on the ground. (When hit, you could see them rock back, and then a spring popped them upright again.) Of course, right when I got here, Dakota called Bert over and told him about this guy’s wife, who’d never shot before, coming up and just bang-bang-bang, bang, bang, bang going six for six.

Thankfully, I managed to do that also.

Cadre Dakota: Positions

1. Pistol is drawn from the holster, but still at your side.
2. Pistol is in the center of your chest, both hands on in a firing grip, pointed down.
3. Pistol has shifted to point forward.
4. Pistol is extended into the firing position.

Cadre Garrett: Kneeling Shooting, Option 1

• Sitting on your strong-side foot folded underneath, top of the foot flat on the ground.
• Weight on the strong-side, not pushing up off the ground.
• Weak-side tricep – not elbow – on the weak-side knee.
• Regular grip with the strong-side arm extended.
• Tuck in against your strong-side bicep to get your sight picture, like a buttstock.

Cadre Garrett: Kneeling Shooting, Option 2

• Fold both feet underneath, toes back.
• Lean back as far as you can without falling backwards. Way back.
• Regular grip, arms both straight out in front.

We wouldn’t have time to get into barricade shooting, but Cadre Garrett went over the kneeling and prone positions as offering better accuracy than standing, while being a bit quicker to assume than prone. For the practice shooting, we’d draw and make ready our guns and then slowly kneel and assume the firing position. Kneeling and prone were both at 20 yards.

Before standing up, the weapon had to be holstered. If you were shooting another course of fire afterwards, you could reload; otherwise, make clear. This part (hell, every part) was fun.

Cadre Garrett: Prone Shooting

• Body as flat on the ground as possible, as much contact as you can get. Toes out, heels down on the ground.
• You can pull one leg up, Olympic style, but it really doesn’t work, and has a tendency to push your body up and to the side out of ground contact.
• Arms out in the normal shooting position, again with as much ground contact as possible. The bottoms of both hands should be down flat on the ground.
• If you have an extended magazine, it may push you up a bit.
• Strong-side cheek on the strong-side bicep, again using that arm like a bit of a buttstock.

From a kneeling position with the gun drawn (see above for assuming this position), we got down in a very slow, controlled manner. First, place the weak hand on the ground. Then, extend the weak-side leg back as you lower yourself towards the ground with your strong hand still holding the gun pointed downrange. The gun shouldn’t move in any other direction than straight down for this. Finally, extend both legs back and resume gripping the handgun with both hands.

I ran into some difficulty with the getting a good cheek-weld on my arm, even with my hat turned backwards. My right ear was so bulky it kept my cheek away from my arm unless I shifted up so that I was using my lower cheek, which put my eyes so far up I had to tilt my head forward and look up over my glasses. Still, the improved stability made for better accuracy even with that.

Getting up, you can go up to a kneel as the reverse of the above, holster, and then move to a standing position.

Cadre Garrett: One-Handed Shooting

• Keep off hand engaged. Often pulled into chest.
• Stand sideways to target, looking over extended arm.
• Slight cant of the pistol inwards to align recoil forces with elbow.
• When shooting weak-handed, can use the hook of the trigger finger instead of the pad. Seems weird, and pretty much the only time that you do it, but it can give you better control / smoother press.

Cadre Dakota: One-Handed Shooting

• Generally stand completely side-on to the target (feet forward as you look over the weak-side shoulder).

After Cadre Garrett went over the rules for the beer shoot, he showed us one-handed shooting, since it would be part of the beer shoot. Cadre Dakota stressed that if anybody felt unsure or unsafe firing one-handed, let them know and they could adjust things accordingly. After he demonstrated a string of rounds both strong- and weak-handed, we had the opportunity to shoot in groups again.

Once I get the squeeze/press instead of pull/jerk down, the one-handed stuff isn’t so bad. I was getting in/around the head on the silhouette target pretty consistently, so hooyah! I had the urge to turn my front foot towards the target – I don’t know if that makes much of a difference or not. Cadre Dakota’s answer didn’t make it seem like it was a huge deal.

Cadre Dakota: Malfunction Clearance

• If it’s a normal or simple malfunction, such as a stovepipe, failure to fire, etc., slap-rack. Slap the bottom of the magazine to make sure it’s seated, then rack the slide to chamber another round.
• If it’s a trickier malfunction like a double feed, or if the above doesn’t work, then strip-rack3-slap-rack. Strip the magazine out of the gun, rack the slide 3 times fully, then slap the magazine back in and rack the slide again. [I’ve sometimes heard that you should lock the slide to the rear to relieve pressure on the double-feed, but he never mentioned that.]
• Do it with a fucking purpose. Of course be safe, and yes we’re on a range, but the seconds when you are not actively engaging the enemy with fire are called dead seconds, because each one of them rapidly increases your chances of ending up fucking dead. Fix the malfunction

Walk-Back Beer Shoot:

In flights of six, we started at the 10 yard line in front of the pie plates. Each person had an assigned plate. You fired one shot two-handed. If you missed that, you transitioned to strong hand. If you missed that, weak hand. If all three shots missed, you were out.

If more than one person hit, you walked back 5 yards and began again. (Resetting to start two-handed.) If all of the remaining shooters missed, you walked forward 5 yards and began again. (Moving back out if more than one made it, etc. Possible to bounce in and out.)

When there was only one left, they headed off to the winners’ circle for the final flight, which started at 25 yards. Losers saw Cadre Mike to clear their weapons. On occasion had more than six in a flight – broke groups into alternating subflights, or had one shoot after and then hop into a vacated place.

Finalists’ flight started at the 25 yard line.