2024 Defensive Revolver Class Debrief

I taught the 2024 LMS Defense Defensive Revolver course on the 26^th of October in Northern California, and thought I’d share a few observations for the RevolverGuy crowd.

THE COURSE

The objective of the course is to provide students with a solid foundation for training with the defensive revolver. It’s not reasonable to expect students to train to proficiency within the framework of an eight-hour course, but I do want to teach them safe, efficient, and tactically-sound ways to operate their revolver, so they can use those newly-acquired skills and techniques as the basis for further practice and training. I want them to walk away knowing what to practice, and how to do it properly.

The coursework emphasizes safety protocols and proper handling procedures, because we’re going to handle and manipulate these guns a lot more than we’re going to shoot them in the real world. People who own revolvers for protection will load, unload, draw, holster, don, doff, transport, carry, conceal, store, clean, inspect, and maintain their revolvers much more than they will shoot them, and it’s vital that they understand and engrain the proper safety habits to avoid preventable tragedies. Your attacker is the one who’s supposed to be in jeopardy of getting hurt by your revolver, not you, your family, your friends, and the innocents that live around you! So, proper safe handling procedures are the foundation we build our house on.

It’s not sexy, but it is important.

PRIORITIES

Longtime readers will know that I’m fond of Massad Ayoob’s Priorities of Survival model, which emphasizes (in abbreviated form) Mindset, Tactics, Skills, and Equipment, in descending order. As such, my Defensive Revolver class is built around that hierarchy, and I try to deliver instruction in each of those categories to my students.

I obviously work hard to teach and develop the skills necessary to shoot the revolver and keep it running, but I don’t limit my instruction to the mechanics. I strive to integrate mental awareness and preparedness, tactics, and tactical considerations into the course as much as I can, because a student’s attention to those elements is even more important than their raw skill, and certainly much more important than the gear they carry.

THE STUDENTS

Just like last year, this year’s crop of students was diverse in their experience as shooters, and as revolver shooters, in particular. We had shooters from military and law enforcement backgrounds, competition shooting disciplines, and some “Normal Earth People,” as Pat Rogers was fond of saying. A great mix, from my point of view, and all of them were a pleasure to work with.

With a few exceptions, most didn’t have any formal training with the revolver. We did have two returning students from last year’s class that I was honored to have back, and one student who had taken Greg Ellifritz’s excellent snubby revolver class–that was going to be a tough act to follow, but the student didn’t look bored, so I think I did OK. Maybe he was busy calculating how many thin “Mike’s” Greg could bench press?  ; ^ )

I want to assure everyone that you don’t have to be a revolver expert to come to a class like this one—that’s the whole idea, we want to teach you things that you don’t already know! Don’t let your inexperience stop you from going to classes like this, because they’re the perfect place to learn what you need. As you can see, even our most experienced and capable shooters didn’t have much, if any, formal revolver training in their resumes. That’s part of the fun in a class like this, so if you’ve been thinking about taking a revolver class from Ellifritz, Haggard, Burch, Dobbs, Bolke and Eastridge, Werner, or any number of outstanding instructors that I haven’t mentioned, you can rest assured that your fellow students will look a lot like you.

FOR YOU GEARHEADS

Readers are always interested in the gear that shows up at these classes, and I have to admit I’m guilty of not taking very good notes but I’ll do my best to remember.

We had a couple shooters using pre-lock, K-Frame .38 Specials (one 3” and one 4” that I recall), and a few shooting lock-equipped Model 686s. One shooter was training with a .45 ACP N-frame with moon clips.

Ruger was represented as well, with one shooter trading off between a GP100 and a SP101, and two students shooting LCRs in less common chamberings—one 9mm, and one .327 Fed Mag (that was fed with .32 Longs all day—some RN and some WC). There may have even been a special edition .357 Magnum GP100 in the mix.

Holsters ran the gamut, with a few drop-leg rigs, an IWB or two, and some OWB scabbards. Our N-frame shooter used a Sam Browne duty rig with a Jordan-style holster that pegged my nostalgia meter and made me smile. There were two shooters using appendix IWB rigs.

We had a mix of loading devices. Obviously, a few of the shooters were using moon clips. I saw some Safariland Comp IIs, some Zeta6 K-Clips, and plenty of strip loaders. There was also a K-frame SpeedBeez floating around. I don’t specifically recall any HKS loaders, outside of my own, but that could just be my faulty memory. No 5-Star loaders, either, this time, although they’re usually present.

What’s more interesting to me are the things that I don’t see at these classes. I don’t see any Kimber or Colt revolvers, even though they’re making some really good ones that would be dandy carry guns. The Taurus guns were also conspicuously absent, given the metric tons of Model 856s that are being sold these days–they’re easily one of the top two or three, by volume. Solid values, and I’m surprised they don’t show up more often in class. Maybe folks bring their fancy guns to school, and leave their utility guns at home?

I also don’t see many lock-equipped Smith & Wessons—it seems that most folks still prefer to shoot the older guns, if they can get them. We had a few lock-equipped L-frames, as I mentioned, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lock-equipped K-frame at any of the revolver schools or classes I’ve attended as student or instructor. There’s probably an important message buried in there.

SOME TRAINING PHILOSOPHY

I won’t dive deep into the specifics of the syllabus, but do want to say that I design the course so that each block builds on the next, and the demand on the student builds throughout the day, as they integrate all the skills into a single performance.

We do some drills and exercises at the end of the day which require the students to do some problem solving and make some decisions with the gun in hand, and they get more complex as we go along, to increase the cognitive load.  We use some timed team competitions to achieve the same effect, because they’re a fun way to introduce some additional training stress.

When you get right down to it, most armed citizen gunfights don’t require extraordinary shooting skills to solve the problem, but they do require some really good awareness, thinking, and decision making, so I think our training should reflect these realities.

We could bang away at paper or steel all day and turn a lot of money into noise, but what would we achieve? If training for a lethal encounter is the goal, it’s far better to exercise your thinking skills as much as your shooting skills, in my opinion. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of your hard skills, but your soft skills need a workout too, and we don’t often see that in training programs.

A NUGGET

Before I wrap up this wandering non-debrief, I want to share a conversation that I had with one of the students after class, because I think it’s important.

We were talking about the topic of reloading the revolver, and comparing the method I preferred to some of the other methods that we discussed and observed in the class. I’d taught all the students how to perform the Stressfire Reload with a round body speedloader during the class, and encouraged them to practice it in class and at home, and give it a fair evaluation. I admitted there were other methods that might be faster, but I felt the Stressfire was superior because it was more robust and reliable.

This is a hard thing for many shooters to accept, because they’ve been trained to think that faster equals “better,” largely as a result of competitive shooting sports that place a priority on the clock. In some of the sports, time is such a critical measure, that a shooter can even override the effect of a missed shot if he shoots quickly enough.

A gunfight is certainly no place to dawdle, and we need to work as efficiently as we can to solve our problem in the least possible time, but I don’t think we should be slaves to the clock in our defensive training. There actually ARE some things that are more important than speed, like accuracy, for example–you can’t miss quickly enough to win in the real world, even if it will make you a victor in some of the games.

Reliability is another one of those things that’s more important than speed. When it comes to training for emergencies, I wouldn’t trade a reliable technique for one that is marginally faster, but more prone to interruption, error, or failure.

In the case of emergency reloading, for example, I wouldn’t favor a technique that keeps the gun in the primary hand, and parallel to the deck, when the empty cases are ejected. The gun can be emptied very quickly that way, but it also greatly increases the risk of powder fouling or a spent case getting trapped behind the extractor star. Either of those conditions could make your revolver stop revolving, most riki-tik.

That would be a bad thing in a fight, for those of you keeping score. A very bad thing.

Instead, I prefer unloading techniques that orient the muzzle straight up towards the Heavens, encourage powder residue to stay inside the cases (instead of dribbling out and polluting the gun), and allow those cases to take advantage of gravity, instead of fighting it. An emergency reloading technique that is marginally slower, but more likely to result in a clean, positive ejection of spent cases, is a winner when your life is at stake, by my calculus.

There may be faster options, but they’re not better options. At least not for combat. For competition maybe, but not for combat. Now, I don’t expect most gunfights would even afford an opportunity to reload in the middle of hostilities, but if you ever have to, your technique had better work right the first time.

I guess that’s all a roundabout way to emphasize the importance of context in your training. If you’re training for the games, it will lead you down one path, but if you’re training to protect innocent life, that path will often diverge from the other. Make sure you choose the right one for your mission.

WRAP UP

I’ve used up all the soap in my soapbox for now, so I’ll close with my thanks to LMS Defense for being such excellent hosts for this class. They are always a pleasure to work with, and I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with them on these classes. I’d encourage readers to have a look at the variety of training courses they offer and their busy calendar. I can vouch that you’ll get quality training from them.

I would also like to thank all the students who showed up for the class. It was an honor to work with you gents, and I enjoyed it very much. I wish you all the best and hope you’ll be safe out there. Please make yourselves at home here at RevolverGuy and stay a while.

If you missed out on this class and would be interested in attending a future version, please keep an eye on the LMS Defense website. We’re already talking about plans for 2025, which may include a multi-day format, if there’s sufficient demand for it.

Until then, train hard, train smart, and be safe out there!