A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Piggly Wiggly
I noticed this morning that there’s a rather huge gap in the firearms training world.
- As an armed citizen, I can take room clearing and home defense and CQB classes from any number of sources. Which is fine, but most home defense training for armed civilians is (rightfully) centered around holing up inside a safe room and waiting for the police to arrive.
- Most (if not all) classes about fighting in and around a vehicle are either restricted to law enforcement or have content that is heavily centered around traffic stops.
- Tom Givens (and others) have said that for the armed citizen, there is no such thing as “street crime,” there is only parking lot crime.
Why, then, is it so hard to find a “reality based” firearms training program which acknowledges that bad things tend to happen in parking lots?
There are exceptions to this rule. Citizen’s Defense Research has their excellent Armed Parent/Guardian class, which covers this scenario, but other than that, I’m drawing a blank.
Which is silly. We talk at length about the need to be extra careful when walking out of our local big box discount store, and then we neglect teaching our students how to deal with what might happen to you as you walk to and get into your vehicle.
What would such a class look like? Well, it should have some of the maintaining safe distances / response triggers from a Shivworks Managing Unknown Contacts class, and some of the retention shooting technique from an ECQC class. It should cover how to vehicles to create space during the contact phase, and how to use them as cover and concealment when things go ballistic. It should cover common responses to a carjacking, and how to draw and shoot from a seated position.
Is this sort of class a priority for the average armed citizen? Probably. Should it be more of a priority than (yet another) Advanced Tactical Carbine class? Most definitely.