“If at the end of the next three days of pistol training, you’ve learned one or two good take-aways, I will have done my job.” Dan Brokos began his Training Day 1 brief with this humble statement. He didn’t promise any magic and honestly shared with us the evolution of fighting with a firearm based
This year in the White Mountains of Arizona, a 43-year-old woman was killed by a 14-year-old boy. The boy had broken into the woman’s home. She confronted him with her pistol and proceeded to call her lawyer husband, who was 200 miles away, on her phone. While he listened helplessly, his wife attempted to talk
We’ve all seen Internet videos of someone trying a high-powered gun for the first time. Often it ends with an incident of “scope-eye,” a bruised shoulder, dropped weapon, or busted lip. These incidents are supposed to be funny examples of shooting novices grabbing a tiger by the tail. Regardless of spilled blood or damaged limbs,
In January 2018, I was contacted by a police officer in Alaska. He asked if I was available to teach a 40-hour firearms instructor class the first week of May. I was, so we discussed the details. As it happened, the class was to be held in an Alaska town I never got to visit—Utqiagvik
I’ve tried quite a few optical sights available for the AR-15 platform, and found many of them durable and effective. In fact, I have one AR-15 with a top rail that I use just to test optical sights. I have two other AR-15s for which I have optical sights that stay mounted and zeroed because
I became a fan of the Steyr SSG rifle almost 40 years ago when I got my SSG 69 rifle. At the time, it was generally rated the best sniping rifle in the world, though soon Accuracy International would challenge Steyr for that honor. U.S. Remington and Winchester sniping rifles tuned by military armorers were
From the earliest days of the handgun, the weapon was primarily fired with a single hand. In retrospect, it is downright curious how little emphasis was placed on two-handed shooting as anything other than a last-resort contingency if the target were galloping away over the next ridgeline. Training manuals from as late as the muscle-car
I’m just back from a marvelous month-long vacation in Paris, France. Despite the increased security across the board, the intrusions were reasonable, the crowds cooperative, and the sites wonderful. But as part of my pre-trip planning, I did a risk assessment and performed risk mitigation. Here is how it goes in a place where wits
An adult human body contains roughly five liters of blood—five liters that can escape through an artery in less than a minute, affording most bystanders merely the opportunity to watch a person bleed to death. Not me. In January 2018, I attended the XSA International Emergency Life Saver course, where students learn how to perform
Many heroes grace the pages of S.W.A.T. Magazine. Sometimes they teach classes. Other times they stand side-by-side with us in classes—often with us none the wiser. I was fortunate enough to attend a class taught by two heroes: Kris “Tanto” Paronto and Dave “Boone” Benton. Both men were part of the CIA Annex security team
