Written by: Greg Ellifritz I was at the range shooting yesterday and I realized I was using two really useful products to improve my practice sessions. I thought you all might benefit from knowing about them. I’ve written before about the books I use to create the best handgun practice routine. I use […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I originally posted this article in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. I had received an email from a reader who suggested that I put together a list of shooting drills that don’t involve firing too many rounds. I thought it was an excellent suggestion and wrote the […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz My friend Dave Spaulding recently wrote an article about the standard drills he uses to evaluate his students at the beginning of a training class. The drills themselves serve as a great practice session if you work them for multiple repetitions. Check out the article at the link below: […]
I’ll be honest with you all. I haven’t been shooting as much as I should. For the last 20+ years, I have consistently practiced by shooting at least 500 rounds a month. Last year I only fired about 3,000 total rounds. It was the fewest number of rounds I’ve fired in a […]
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of my writing this story. I still regularly talk to folks who thank me for writing it. In honor of the story’s anniversary, I’m re-posting it today. Enjoy. -Greg I posted this little anecdote to my Facebook page on Saturday night when I got home from the shooting range, […]
This is a guest post from Caleb Causey, owner of Lone Star Medics. Caleb is an experienced Army medic who provides top notch trauma medical training to law enforcement agencies and armed citizens alike. Caleb intended this article to be a list of potential medical training scenarios for police roll-call training sessions. These drills […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Way back in 2013, I began noticing a trend. School shootings were starting to happen outside of classrooms and outside the normal operating hours of the school. To avoid lockdowns, killers were attacking large public areas that couldn’t be easily defended during lunch breaks, before school and after dismissal. […]
A couple weeks ago, I drove to Camden, Tennessee to teach at Andy Stanford’s Surgical Speed Shooting Summit (SSSS). It was without a doubt one of the most unique training conferences I’ve ever participated in. A lot of newer gun folks don’t know Andy Stanford. Andy was a military analyst who came to some […]
This is my analysis of the Texas tragedy designed to explain the pertinent issues to those who don’t have a background on the topic of active killer response. Additionally it should provide police agencies and school staff with some best practice guidelines to prevent such a disaster in the future. This article is based […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I like shooting drills that are timed and scored. Shooting drills that have standards allow shooters to track performance over time. A structured training program with performance tracking is the difference between training and “plinking.” I generally start out each of my handgun range sessions with a standard drill. That […]
Last week in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio police officers had to shoot an armed patient in a local hospital. Officers recorded the entirety of the close range shooting with their body cameras. The shooting was unusual both by happening in a hospital and requiring a close quarters empty hand response to a lethal threat. […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I first shot this drill in a speed shooting class I took with Rob Leatham. Rob thought it was a fun drill and a very good test of trigger control. I agree. It’s one of my favorite drills to shoot, being both fun and frustrating at the same time. Master […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz As the nation continues to cry out for police reform and the creation of a kinder/gentler law enforcement presence, school safety drills are being increasingly criticized and abandoned. After Columbine and several other high visibility school shootings, the public clamored for more cops in schools. They demanded emergency preparation drills. Now […]
I found this drill in the “Skills and Drills” section of The Firearms Rack Website. John Johnston from Citizens Defense Research came up with the drill. It requires either a Langdon LTT-1 Target, or two B8 Targets separated by two more one inch square targets. According to the link above, the drill is run as […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz The Casino Drill was devised by Rangemaster’s Tom Givens as an exercise designed to evaluate/train multiple skill sets in the context of defensive handgun shooting. Tom provides a description of this drill in his September 2017 Rangemaster news letter (opens to PDF). If you are a video person, watch […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Have you ever trained to draw and fire your pistol from any position other than standing? Most recreational shooters haven’t. Fights are messy. Sometimes the unexpected happens. Take a look at this story. A man was fleeing armed robbers and slipped on the ice, causing him to fall. […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Early in 2017, I published an article titled “When Do School Shootings Occur.” I studied every American active killer school shooting over a three year time period from 2013 until the end of 2016. Interestingly enough, I determined that 43% of the school shootings I studied occurred outside of official […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Details are starting to come out about last Friday’s shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. If you haven’t seen any of the details, you can read a brief summary here. This was a school shooting that would be categorized as pretty “typical.” There was nothing exceptional […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz My friend Claude Werner recently published a book titled “Shooting Your Black Rifle.” A large part of the book contains shooting drills and qualification courses for the AR-15 rifle. One of the drills Claude developed is one that he calls the “Punto Banco.” It is a rifle adaptation of Tom […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I found this pistol shooting drill in a recent Justin Dyal article in SWAT magazine called STANDOFF HANDGUN DRILLS: Accuracy at Situational Speed. From the article: The purpose of the Par 5 drill is for the shooter to gain an appreciation of the linkage between sight alignment and trigger break […]
