Hey guys,
Back from the OPS Snubby Summit in Titusville. It was held at the Police Hall of Fame, which has an excellent classroom facility and the best indoor range I have ever seen.
OPS put together an incredible case of characters – some legendary, some becoming legends. Mas Ayoob, Jim Cirillo, Ed Lovette, Michael “BoBo” DeBethancourt, SouthNarc – just to name a few.
The training was very impressive. A lot of it was “overviews” or somewhat fast-paced – to get it all done in two days. It was seminar style with one class and two range sessions going on all the time – so you had to make some choices.
I did “shooting through clothing” with Ayoob which included shooting through jackets as well as the draw from the pocket and from a jacket. I heard Cirillo speak on snubby ammo, including his own patented bullet (a slotted head wad cutter) that seems very interesting. The guys from Crimson Trace (good trainers of their own right) did a class in shooting from awkward positions, and discussed the pros and cons of various carry methods. I also shot a snubby specific course of live fire with various drills.
And all that was Day 1…
On Day 2 I spend several hours with DeBethancourt learning his entirely different manual of arms for the revolver – with weak hand loading and keeping the gun in the strong hand. I gotta say – I am sold on it. Also spent half the day with Southnarc learning extreme close quarters combat – from 0 to 3 feet. It included awareness training, learning how to keep distance, pre-emptive open hand strikes, defensive postures, and how to plug in the gun at contact distances. This last part involved simunitions and I have five nasty welts to commemorate my bad guy role-playing failures…
Perhaps the best part was having dinner with Jimmy Cirillo. If you don’t know him or haven’t read his book, he is an NYPD legend. A member of the NYPD stake-out squad for its entire existence, he won 17 gunfights. The unit experienced 252 shootings over its history, before it was disbanded. If you think the stories in the book are entertaining, you should hear them from the source. Nice guy and a great storyteller. Worth the price of admission to have dinner with a hero and hear all the unpublished stories.
I have a few photos I will post later. Others are sharing their photos with me so I will try to post them.
Also, I will work on my thoughts about the snubby in comparison to the R-9 (based on any new perspective I have now) and give you some thoughts on that too.
If you guys have specific questions let me know and I will field those too if I can.
