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The most important, life-saving advice I learned during my Intermediate Pistol Class at Agape Tactical

The most important, life-saving advice I learned during my Intermediate Pistol Class at Agape Tactical

Last updated on: January 22, 2019 at 3:54 pm by Nancy French

The most important, life-saving advice I learned during my Intermediate Pistol Class at Agape Tactical 2019-01-22T15:54:09-05:00 Nancy French

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It was raining as I drove the hour from my house to the indoor gun range “Everything Weapons,” but I was slightly less nervous than I’d been before my other classes. A good sign.

If you only judged the gear required to take the class, this seemed to be more serious than the previous classes. We were to bring:

Pistol and three magazines

Proper eye and ear protection

Strong belt

Strong (dominant) side holster (inside the waistband is acceptable)

Magazine pouch

150 – 200 rounds of ammo

Close-toed shoes

Well, I’d already bought my Glock 43 and I borrowed eye and ear protection from Everything Weapons. But what is a “strong belt?” I didn’t know if that was something to buy, or if I could use the leather one I wear with jeans. Though I felt like an idiot asking what she meant by a “belt,” Warrior Woman instructor Dawn Bradley answered my questions somehow without making me feel dumb.

When I arrived, I learned it was best to use a lightweight, durable tactical polyester belt… the one I borrowed was black. Also, I didn’t have a holster (since I don’t live in the Wild West), so the founder of Agape Tactical – Ken Alexandrow – kindly let me borrow his holster, magazines, and magazine carriers. (Having the right gear, I learned, really matters – buy what Ken uses from Fury Carry Solutions.)

In all of my time so far with Agape, I’d not actually seen Ken. He was like a unicorn, about whom people tell stories but I’ve not yet seen with my two eyes. The other instructors I’d met through Agape always spoke of him with a deep reverence. My husband David French had taken his carry permit class from him years ago and has used his Ken impersonation to regularly regale people at church. David told me Ken’s politically incorrect wisdom deserved it’s own reality TV show… except that America no longer has the stomach to hear his kind of truth. Ken’s four hours of instruction possibly had more of an effect on David than all of his professors at Harvard Law School combined (sorry, Alan Dershowitz), and I couldn’t wait to meet him.

That night, he dropped into Intermediate Pistol to give us a pep talk.

When you put a holster on for the first time in your life, you gotta wear boots. #agapetactical #everythingweapons

A photo posted by Nancy French (@nancyjanefrench) on Aug 20, 2016 at 8:30pm PDT

We needed it. This 4-hour class aimed to continue to teach women shooters gun skills, but it seemed that most of the women in the class were there to gain confidence with their firearm. There was a lady who worked in the headmaster’s office at a small Christian school in the middle Tennessee area, a mother of three who was worried about how to carry a gun safely, an HR rep, a doctor, and me.

We began as we always do — with prayer, then a classroom time reviewing basic gun safety and mechanics. By now, I felt pretty familiar with all of the basics that she covered. The goal of this class was to learn various dry-fire practice techniques that we can do at home, how to draw from a holster, and what to do when your gun malfunctions. Every class, something Dawn says jumps out at me anew. This time, she compared the action that your finger makes as it pulls the trigger to the trash compactor at the dump:

The compactor goes at one, steady speed. It doesn’t change course, it just does the same amount of pressure every time.

For some reason, that resonated with me. My shots had been going off course, because I flinched when I pulled the trigger:

Practicing gun control #agapetactical

A photo posted by Nancy French (@nancyjanefrench) on Aug 6, 2016 at 7:29am PDT

I hit the bullseye on the very first shot using that imagery.

When we went onto the range, I felt so much more comfortable, even though we were on the other side of the “shooting benches.” We didn’t have any divisions between the shooters and I had to acclimate to guns going off right beside me. The lesson was geared mainly toward learning to properly draw from a holster, shoot, scan the area for other threats, and put the gun back into the holster without looking at the holster. Also, we did numerous drills where we only had two shots, which meant we had to reload during the simulated encounter. It went something like this:

Draw your weapon (This was actually a three part process which Dawn taught us.)

2. Bam! Bam! (body shot) When we shot our paper target man in the body, we were trying to hit him in the one zone, which was right in the heart area.

3. Now you’re out of ammunition.

4. Pull out the empty cartridge, get the magazine out of your holster, and reload in one quick motion.

5. Bam! (head shot) When we did this, we were to shoot at a T-shaped area from the outside of the paper man’s eye sockets and extending down the bridge of the nose. When the bullet enters the T-zone, it strikes the medulla oblongata causing instant paralysis. I, at best, gave my paper man a tracheotomy.

6. Scan left and right (to look for other possible problems)

7. Put the gun back into the holster

When it was time to reload, my magazine didn’t fit neatly like it normally did. An instructor at Everything Weapons ran over to me and said, “you have the wrong size ammunition and you loaded it backwards.” By this time, I’d had three classes. A mistake like that? I just couldn’t believe it.

“I have the wrong mag!” a woman beside me said. She had grabbed mine; I had grabbed hers. (Magazines, as you might imagine, look the same but we had different sized guns.) I had not loaded it backwards, but I did have the wrong magazine. It threw me off balance, and I didn’t shoot as well afterwards.

It’s disconcerting to think about how well I might shoot if I ever found myself in duress… when the consequences of a mistake are more gave. If my life depended on it, wouldn’t I be more nervous than when I was at the indoor range of “Everything Weapons” under the watchful eyes of helpful instructors?

Ken addressed this very issue during his short session of encouragement.

Click CONTINUE to read Ken’s critical, potentially life-saving advice.

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Agape Tactical - Woman Warrior

Intermediate Pistol Class

Ken Alexandrow

National Rifle Association

Warrior Woman

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