Pat Rogers Carbine Operators Course Review

Training.

Training is something that everybody needs to do, but very few actually do it. Honestly, I'm of the mind that buying 1 or 2 less guns a year and using that money for a training class is money well spent. After all, how many guns can you use at once?

With that said, I would like to give my thoughts on the Carbine Operators Course from EAG Tactical. EAG Tactical is Pat Roger's training company and through it, he offers fighting courses. Pat is very adamant about not teaching 'shooting' courses since in his opinion, shooting isn't what we are doing, but FIGHTING. (Actually Pat uses colorful language to state this, but I'm trying to keep this blog rated PG)

Pat is a shooting master, as defined by Jeff Cooper. Any history I could attempt to give of Col Cooper would be woefully inadequate and lack the amount of gravity that this is owed. To make it short and sweet, he is the father of modern pistolcraft and probably has done more for the handgun shooting community than has been done by all others since the dawn of the pistol.

I say this so that you can hopefully understand a little about Pat's background; if you read his official biography anyplace, you can find out he had a life as a Marine, a NYPD officer/detective, and other sundry fun things.

Now, a short description of the class:
The class is drill based; that is that Pat and his adjunct instructor (Mike for the class I attended) will discuss and demonstrate the drill that will then by done by the students. During the introduction period of the class; Pat gives some definitions of components that he uses and then he hits them again as you progress into more complicated pieces.

Day 1 starts with a classroom session; Pat gives his safety briefing and then lectures about his take on how this sort of thing builds together; he discusses mindset, tactics and gear.

We started the drills with a 50 Yard zero; I myself hadn't had a chance to properly sight the AR15 that I used in; so it took me more time than it should have to get dialed in. (Lesson Learned #1, have your stuff together and working)

After that, we started with the basic shooting positions - standing, kneeling (and it's mutations, including position monica) and prone.

Once the positions were done, different strings of fire were tried: controlled pairs, hammer pairs, failure drills, etc. and then combinations were done.

We then were taught how to turn. This was then used to illustrate the NSR; which is a non standard response.

We shot a modified Navy style qualification each day; and I had some drama with my rifle with the fact that my selector wasn't going to fire without a boatload of pressure. Mike was able to provide some gunsmithing type help and got my rifle back to running.

Other drills that we covered were running with the weapon; how to stand safely, multiple targets and transitions from primary to secondary.

The third day featured some stuff that is, I feel, ignored by most - one hand only shooting, optics that go bad or are occluded. Pat did stress that you have to be mentally prepared to not give up.

Most of the attendees were Law Enforcement with some Military sprinkled in and just a few of us lonely civilians. I think this fact shows that Pat is respected and that he provides good training. I'd suggest that any student of gunfighting take Pat's class.

Watch http://www.eagtactical.com for a class near you and don't forget to watch the training forums on all the gun boards as well.