TGO David

That sounds perfect. Let's just count on that and consider you as being the grill meister for the day. Do we need to bring charcoal or is it gas?

By the way... If you were in the class this weekend with me, drop me a private message later if you don't mind. I am still trying to put screen names with faces. I think I know who a few of you were but apparently there were more of us TGO people there than I realized at the start of things on Sunday.

What: Defensive Pistol Class Who: Critical Incident Strategies Defensive Pistol This 2 day course starts with a lecture on firearm safety, legalities of deadly force, proper mindset, shooting fundamentals, loading / unloading / reloading, malfunction clearance, shooting while moving, shooting from unusual positions, use of cover, and dealing with multiple threats. Defensive Pistol continues with live-fire range drills that reinforce the topics covered in the classroom. Prerequisites: Handgun carry permit class, NRA "First Steps," police / military training, or equivalent. Overview: I took the Defensive Pistol class with CIS this past weekend. We started at 7:30am on Saturday with an approximate 3hr lecture in classroom setting, broke for 1hr to eat an early lunch and then followed it with 4hrs on the range working on fundamental defensive handgun concepts. Sunday we started again at 7:30am but worked the firing range for the entire 8hr day. Total round count for me this weekend was a hair under 900 rounds of the 1,000 rounds that I brought. In retrospect I firmly believe that you do not want to shoot a 2-day defensive skills class that expend less than 900-1000 rounds. Anything less and you're doing too much talking and not enough shooting. The cost of ammunition cannot be compared to the value of trigger time. Lots of trigger time. Thoughts: The preliminary lecture was necessary and informative. I like to think that I am fairly well informed on the basics of carrying a handgun for self defense, yet I still left the lecture with quite a bit of new information filed away between my ears. The lecture and multimedia presentation was eye opening to say the least. It was designed to wake you up and make you see that there are evil people in this world who do really evil sh*t to people every day, randomly and with extreme prejudice. This is why we choose to go armed rather than fade quietly into the night. DAY ONE Day one on the firing range introduced us to necessary skills like combat reloading, dealing with weapons malfunctions and forcing ourselves to do several things at once automatically and reflexively. Round count for this day was only about 200 rds for me. Some may have shot more, some may have shot less. I found myself making silly mistakes on Day One and letting the stress get to me. The biggest challenge for me on Day One was winning the mental fight against myself when crap went wrong. Overall I don't think I did poorly on Day One but it definitely made me retreat to a firing range later that night to flush the bugs out of my process. I also learned a lot about my gear on Day One. We started out in the rain and mud but ended up in hot, muggy, humid, nastiness. My Glock 19 ate everything I fed it, including mud caked magazines that had been dropped top-first into the muck. It never failed. Not once. What did fail me was the Ameriglo "Operator" rear sight. I need a rear sight that has white dots. Blank rear sights may be good for some people but not for me when the precision of a hard sight picture was required. As long as I was shooting with a soft sight picture, they rocked. When I had to really focus, they became a hinderance. I'll be swapping them out soon. DAY TWO Day two was much more shooting intensive. If you weren't shooting, you were reloading. The only times we weren't doing one of those was when we were taking a break to fill magazines, seek shade and suck down water. Lots of sun, lots of heat and lots of dirt in dropped magazines. I changed out for my Springfield XD Tactical 9mm for Day Two because of some problems I was having with my magazine carrier and Glock mags. I debated this long and hard the night before but I finally concluded that trying to use ill-matched equipment on Day Two would have been more detrimental to my training than using a gun that I won't necessarily carry very often. The XD didn't fail but the magazines did a few times after ingesting a lot less dirt than the Glock mags did. Rinsing them out with water from a spigot was all that I needed to put it back into action. The Glock clearly wins out in that area. But the XD itself ran fine and I ran it hard all day long. From an educational perspective, Day Two built heavily on the basics that we learned on Day One. The instructors introduced more complexities into the scenarios as we moved through the day. There was plenty of no-BS assessment of our progress from the instructors but it lacked the sort of silly yelling and screaming that I've seen depicted in videos and photos of other schools. They didn't go easy on us. You knew when you screwed up. But they didn't get in your face and destroy your self confidence either. You were constantly admonished to "stay in the fight" and not give up. It wasn't common to be told that you're not dead until you decide that you're dead, so keep fighting... fix your equipment, deal with the problems and keep fighting! By the end of Day Two we were working drills that most civilians who have never taken a defensive handgun class have never been exposed to. Barring military or police experience, many of us -- even those of us who have shot competitively in USPSA or IDPA events -- have ever shot the sort of moving drills that we shot this weekend. We shot individually, we shot in two man teams, we shot head-to-head to bring the stress level up, we shot on command, we shot on surprise. We shot, we shot and we shot. And we reloaded. A lot. All the time. God bless whomever invented magazine loaders like the UPLULA. FINAL THOUGHTS? I hesitate to call these my final thoughts. There was so much information packed into these two days that I am still digesting and processing it all. These thoughts surely won't be my final ones. The class was WELL worth the time and expense. Anyone who carries a handgun for self defense needs to take a class like this from SOMEONE. Yes, 1000 rounds of ammo is expensive but you really can't and shouldn't put a price tag on the sort of knowledge that you will take away from a good defensive skills class. Equipment isn't everything but it can make or break you in some areas. I'm really glad that I opted for the Glock 19 as my every day carry but would be equally comfortable with an XD. I wouldn't want less than 15 rds per magazine in my primary weapon, however. I don't see myself carrying my 1911 anymore for that reason alone. My Glock will be getting a better rear sight and a slightly extended magazine release subsequent to things I learned. A slightly reduced recoil spring is also very likely. There is strong evidence to support that Glock will be producing a new model 19 with ambidextrious magazine release. When that happens, I will probably upgrade. Todd and Dustin at CIS know their stuff. Their teaching style fit me perfectly. They talk frankly and candidly but there isn't a lot of trash talking like some instructors feel is necessary to make them more "tactical" or battle hard. I'd let my wife, teenage daughter or mom take a class from these guys and not feel like they were going to be cussed into embarassment. I thought I was prepared to fight before I took this class. Eh... I give my self circa Saturday 6:00am a C+ in hindsight. Today I'd give myself a solid B. I'm better prepared now and know where some of my weaknesses are, both physically and mentally. There is a lot of room to improve so I'm going to invest time into working on those areas, fixing them and forcing myself to be better. I thoroughly enjoyed the class and look forward to taking more training as I am able to invest into it. Both from CIS and, as they recommend, from other quality, professional training organizations. If you can at all afford to, you should definitely do it as well. You owe it to yourself and to anyone that you ever intend to protect should you be called upon to do so. PHOTOS Select photos have been posted in this thread here, here and here.

Your mom was in bed with you guys?

I spent Father's Day in the hot sun, getting sweaty and nasty, running and gunning, sending about 800 rounds downrange in a defensive handgun class. Best Father's Day evAr.

Stay on I-40. There is an exit for the Airport right off of it. I hate to distill the instructions to that level, but it really is that simple.

Really can't think of words to describe my reaction to this. Appalled doesn't seem to cut it.

Thanks for volunteering, folks. Give me a little time this morning to see what's been offered and I will update the first post in the thread.

For the curious... The class I took was the Defensive Handgun class from Todd & Dustin at Critical Incident Strategies. It was taught yesterday and today at the National Guard range in Smyrna, TN and was money very well spent. I will post a more inclusive after action report later tonight or tomorrow. It being Father's Day, I need to rush out and do the family thing here in a few moments. I've literally only been home long enough to unload and stow my gear, take a quick shower and get dressed for family time. A few hours to digest and process what I learned over the past two days would probably be beneficial anyway. Suffice it to say that I went into this class with an open mind and left with it running over. It was eye opening and mentality altering to say the least. I know that we all get tired of hearing the word "mindset" thrown around but it has a real meaning and it doesn't have to just be a buzz word. If the training is good, it transcends "geek speak" and takes on relevance and has meat to it. This training was good. I can't speak highly enough about Todd and Dustin's expertise and professionalism. It was a very fairly taught class that packed a ton of information into a short period of time but did so in such a way that you immediately went into live fire exercises to pound it into your brain. Awesome job, guys. I'll be back!

Thanks guys. What we really need right now is a volunteer to bring a grill of some sort. Either gas or charcoal. Anyone?

Well... so they are showing up in stores now. How much was it? If you don't mind me asking.

And you should be thankful that there are people you can still make fun of for being short. Like 6 year olds. You can make fun of them because they are (usually) shorter than you. Now quick ****ing up my wife's thread.

I am looking at a product that replaces the classifieds section completely but until I decide whether it is really going to be good for the forum or not, we're stuck with post and search.

I'm laughing at you HA HA! </anime voice>

Yep... sorry, I'm covered up this evening or I'd have searched them out too. Didn't mean to come across short in my last reply.

My wife's not happy that you somehow scored the pink grips before we did... but she said to pass along that she at least will be able to legally carry hers before you can.

This has been discussed before. Search?

I am posting this thread with Eddie's blessing. Some of you may have noticed that a few of the moderators "wore" pink avatars a few weeks ago. The avatars were in honor of Misty and were worn on the day of her memorial service in tribute to her. Eddie had respectfully requested that we keep news of Misty's untimely passing out of the public areas of TGO so that he could have time to process this privately. Thus the delay in the news being posted here.

Remembering Misty Mickle (Redhead 1911) February 10, 1985 - May 23, 2008 It is with a heavy heart that I must let you all know of the untimely passing of one of our members. Misty Mickle (aka Redhead 1911) unexpectedly passed away on Thursday, May 23rd 2008. She was laid to rest Tuesday, May 27th. Many of you knew Misty as the wife of Eddie Mickle, or MolonlabeTN, the co-administrator here on TGO. Some of you may have met her at any one of the various middle Tennessee TGO get togethers. Or you may have met her just a few weeks ago at Hero Gear in Winchester, Tennessee where she had happily pitched in to help behind the counter during their big 5.11 sale. Misty's red hair, bubbly personality and brilliant sense of humor made her impossible to miss in a crowd. Talking with her was always a pleasure and she seemed to have that certain gift that made you feel as though you had known her forever within just a few minutes of meeting her. At times like this, we often find ourselves searching for the right words to express both our sadness and at the same time our love and support to those who were left behind. In this case, I've had several days now to try to think of the right things to say to Eddie and continue to come up short. I suspect many of you will be in the same predicament. Rather than stumble through an elaborate expression of sympathy, I feel it best to simply say this: Misty... you will be missed. What this world has lost, Heaven has truly gained. Eddie... you are loved, you are not alone, and we all stand behind you. You have our thoughts, our prayers and our support. We are requesting that TGO members who wish to voice their sympathies simply do so in this thread rather than contact Eddie directly at this time. Thank you. Misty's Myspace as also being turned into a memorial by Eddie: http://www.myspace.com/mistyseddie

Hope you can both make it.

Let's let sleeping golden retrievers lie... /thread

Wow... I thought the computer was a little higher off the ground than this.

I never used to believe the conspiracy theorists until McCain became the GOP's man of the hour. When that happened, I started to wonder if THEY were really right and that some secret backroom organization planted McCain as the GOP candidate to make sure that the DNC gets control of the White House in 2008. It sure would go a long way to explaining why Fred Thompson suddenly dropped out of the race before he ever even got started. I still think someone must have blackmailed him out of the race.

Hide it. Let her catch you carrying it some day.

Folks it looks like we will have the official OK from the fine folks at Owl Hollow Gun Club for us to grill burgers and hot dogs on site for the June 21st meet & shoot. I will pick up a few bulk packs of hamburgers and hot dogs from SAMS, but we will need some volunteers to bring other things. If you can help, please respond with what you can bring from this list: Burgers / Hot Dogs -- Tungsten Portable charcoal or gas grill -- TheMark712 Charcoal -- Musicman Hamburger buns -- Junglist Hotdog buns -- Junglist Lettuce, onions, and tomatoes -- EasilyObsessed Cheese Slices -- Tungsten Ketchup, Mustard -- DWRD Chips / Doritos -- Molonlabetn? Paper plates -- Tungsten Paper napkins -- Tungsten Soft drinks Bottled water -- HanSolo, Tokarev Coolers full of ice (need several of these I'm sure) -- HanSolo, Tokarev Packaged cookies / brownies / snacks -- JasonF, Tokarev I think it is only fitting that we provide lunch to any OHGC member who is on site that day as a way of saying Thank You for their generosity in allowing us to have our meet there. So if several people volunteer to bring duplicate items, that would be fine. As people volunteer, I will mark items off of the list and put names next to them. If no one has a portable grill, I will do my best to find a charcoal grill that we can use for this. Unfortunately my gas grill is anchored to our deck, so I can't bring it. Thanks in advance!