By Scott Smith
If you have been in law enforcement at any level; military, federal, state, local, you know training is one thing that takes a hit in the budget. When interviewed heads of agencies always talk about their officers, deputies, agents, etc. are the best trained. If you look deeper what that means is they are trained to pass mandatory qualifications and various governing body standards.
Training to meet mandated standards is not training; it is passing qualifications to cover the agency in case of a use of force investigation or civil suit by defendants. While this time does give the officers some hands on skills, it rarely improves their skills. In this day and age of violent drug gangs, drug induced rage by perpetrators, attacks by extremist groups; officers need serious hands on training. If there is serious training it is limited and with the ever growing/evolving threats, you never get enough training.
The reason for limited training always comes down to the budget and time. Realistically any training is expensive with little demonstrable value; unlike a new cruiser, digital identification system, etc. We only see the value in training or lack of, when things go south and officers either save the day or an officer is maimed or killed.
So how do we overcome the lack of agency provided training? The obvious answer is search out and go take training from places like Sig Academy, Gunsite, or any other reputable agency approved establishment. For officers this like the agency has personal budget and time constraints. In my travels working in the industry and as an officer, I have met many fellow LEOs who do seek outside training. They know one day it could save their life or the life of the lives of a fellow officer or innocents.
Sadly our profession has many who do not see things this way and have to be drug to the range, your open hands training area, or even the classroom. These folks see this as nothing but a job, not a calling; a dangerous calling. It is this group we have to make training “real” and “fun”.
How do we get the computer geek who would rather surf social media to the range or other skill enhancing training? We need to eliminate excuses like it costs too much, I don’t want to travel or the class takes forever; blah blah blah. The answer is training that comes to you that is free. Free training, no way; who does that?
The answer is Khyber Training and their Lights, Sights and Lasers Tour. Now that is a catchy name; Lights Sights and Lasers Tour; sounds like a band. As crazy as it may sound that is how the “tour” came about. It came out of a brain storming meeting at the 2012 SHOT Show between the head honcho of Khyber Training, Wes Doss PhD and the owners of XS Sights and representatives of a few other companies. The name was catchy and it energized several of those techno-geeks of the millennial generation that were in the meeting.
After a good bit of discussion it was decided that Khyber would do the curriculum, teaching and all of the logistics of the events. In this case the test event was with Ft Worth PD in August. The object was to take the highlights of forty hours of training and condense it into eight hours. Obviously a lot of extraneous material was cut out and it was this is the real meat and potatoes of the event.
Now four years later dozens of classes across the fifty states and hundreds of students Lights, Sights and Lasers is a resounding success. LSL comes to you or near you. This year LSL has twenty-two, two day sessions in twenty different states. Each day is the same class, allowing for more LEOs to attend. The big thing that appeals to agencies and the troops alike is the cost: free. Not only is it free, but the sponsors of LSL have a nice bunch of swag for each attendee.
Over the last twenty years I have been fortunate to attend most of the big name shooting academies and take classes from a number of the biggest names in the industry. When taking a week long or course that runs for a few days, you do many repetitions of the same drills after a while it seems you are just shooting to fill time.
What I found in LSL is you hit the ground running. Wes gives a brief rundown of his bona fids ranging from his military and civilian law enforcement careers to his having a PhD in Psychology; no, he will not analyze you like Dr. Phil. Then it was into the basics of seeing at night. Yes it was basics of seeing at night, since none of us is an ophthalmic specialist; going into all the details of the eye is pointless. The important point of the discussion was knowing your light’s output, knowing the limitations of the human eye and that human eyesight is massively degraded in the dark. Even when using the latest light saber aka tactical light your sight and perception are limited.
What you find is that in true low light while you can navigate you literally can only see as far as the end of your nose. Translated, to make out colors shapes, etc without a light your perception is arm’s length. With today’s high output lights your visual acuity is limited to the center of the beam. Once you turn on that light saber your night vision is again destroyed for twenty minutes or more.
Another topic was weapons mounted lights versus handheld. Even with a weapon light, you need a hand held light otherwise you are pointing your handgun at folks for no reason on a traffic stop. A quick search of the web will bring up negligent discharges when using a handgun mounted light.
The class portion also covers the concepts of using technology to avoid hands on confrontation. No matter how great the new whiz bang it is; pepper spray, OC, tasers, batons can all fail to stop a suspect. There comes a time you will have to go hands on. Unfortunately today’s generation rarely gets into physical confrontations, so they do not know how to take or deliver a punch. Officers need to learn this concept: failure to be able to get physical could get you killed. Basic combatives need to be part of the agency and academy training; reinforcing the no pain, no gain concept.
Class time moves quickly and ends with discussion of the rules of firearms safety and range safety. Then it was off to the range. Unfortunately taking a class in the middle of June made it hard to work with lights and lasers; we did not plan to be on the range at midnight. However we did discuss using your lights both on and off a weapon and that long gun lasers should be “zeroed” basically for across the room encounters. While they work at fifteen yards and more, because of the dispersion of the beam accuracy is greatly diminished.
Range time consisted of a lot of compressed time drills at close ranges. Most duty confrontations occur at contact to five yards-ish. Therefore you need to be able to deliver fast accurate fire. To do that the drills worked on shooting with your peripheral vision, aka flash sight picture. Realistically you should be able to make a first shot hit from DUTY gear at three yards in less than two seconds. If you have to go to your handgun/long gun in a true lethal force confrontation it is going to happen now and you will be behind the power curve. If the event occurs with your long gun at this distance, you must be aware that the bad guy is going to be attempting to gain control of the muzzle…do not let him. Things will go downhill from there if he does, especially if you are wearing a sling.
In the time we were on the range first shot times quickly dropped whether it was with a handgun or carbine. Another stress introduced was using a chair. I have seen a simple chair used to simulate a car, diner, or any other form of seat over the years but not a stressor. Wes has students shoot with one leg on the chair behind you or out to the side, it is used as cover, and a shooting box. We shot seated, standing, kneeling behind, standing behind, leg up on the chair all while the positions were called out. These drills did two things, made you listen to direction and because they were continuous strings, raised your heart and respiration rate. This is something that will happen in a confrontation and is rarely encountered on most square range sessions. Remember we are armed professionals we have to have know how our bodies react when stressed.
The range session ended shooting a modified El Pres. Shooters start facing up range, turn draw and engage three targets with two rounds each, reload and reengage. Sounds simple, the caveat is your fellow students are yelling, tossing brass at you, shaking/squirting you with water; they just cannot touch you. This adds stress rarely seen on a training range. It is mild compared to the stress of being on a two way range fighting for your life.
All of the information presented in the LSL Tour is designed to improve your skills, give you, the armed professional new ideas, and incorporate those ideas into your agency or personal training. Wes also makes it clear that he is available to the class to give them other information regarding unit training policies, the structure of training and other questions. After spending his adult life as an armed professional he has many contacts that are willing to share their knowledge. You also have the opportunity to network with your classmates, many of whom will be from your area. Your fellow LEOs are invaluable resources, do not overlook them.
A major feature of LSL is that it is an ever evolving course, with new information each year. Many courses change very little if any; this means techniques and information becomes old, outdated and if you attend the course more than once; boring. Wes is a dynamic instructor who strives to keep his courses and information current and up to date. If Lights, Sights and Lasers is near you, it is a class that I highly recommend. It is eight hours of information that will make you a better shooter, broaden your thoughts on employment of lights and enhance your skill set. If you do not learn something in a LSL class, you slept through it. Check out the website; LSLUSTOUR.com, all the course will cost you is ammunition and a day.
