BSR Carbine Class

I am taking the 3 day Carbine class at BSR, Summit Point race track.

http://www.bsr-inc.com/training-courses/training-coursesfirearms-training/

They also have handgun classes. They offer 1, 2 and 3 day classes. The 1 day class is the first day of the 3 day class. The 2 day is the first two days.

Now, a disclaimer, I am describing MY class, which is a bit odd as I am the only student. So it will be 3 days of one on one training. Advertised round count is 1200 round carbine, 300 pistol. They can supply all or part of the equipment needed - the carbine, handgun, battle belt, and ammo.

Class moves at the pace of the students. With larger classes, they have multiple instructors, so they can move at different paces. But the basic assumption is, you have no knowledge when you start. If you do, so much the better. Be advised, you may be shooting with some people who do this for a living, as in military or certain agencies. As well as other civilians.

Day 1

Started with meeting the instructor and talking about our backgrounds in shooting.

We followed with about an hour of handling drills, with dummy rounds. Reloads, immediate action drills, and remedial action drills. Not overly done, just to get a basic understanding, and that they would be seen later.

I will outline the various drills I shot, but they may not have been in the order I mention. There was a lot of shooting and learning today.

Then to the range. Started with a check of zero for the sights at 25 yards. Then to basic drills. Started with low ready to 2 rounds fired. Later added failure drills, two to the body, one to head or pelvic girdle. Went on to movement, 90 degree turn and fire, both left and right, and then 180 degree turn and fire. Also walking and shooting, both forwards and backwards. And multiple targets, 2 and 3 today.

Some transition drills, start with carbine, and when it stops, switch to pistol. Immediate action drills, where the instructor loads the mags with the occasional dummy round. So Tap, Rack, Bang drill. I got into Remedial Action drills, as some of the dummy rounds needed the rifle mortared to get them out. And a couple of times, a cleaning rod and hammer were needed.

Some position shooting - squatting, high kneeling, supported kneeling, prone, and roll over prone.

Some speed drills, 3 target, 2 rounds per target, reload, 2 rounds per target. This was against the timer to add pressure.

These drills ranged from 25 yards down to 5 yards.

We then moved out to 50 yards and repeated many of the drills.

Everything is taught from a tactical point of view. So after firing the drill, you would move, and scan the area. Very good feedback from the instructor, many times more coaching than teaching.

And they do not teach "this way is the way to do it." Most everything is presented as this is A way to do it, or these are ways to do it, and you are free to use the method that works best for you. Such as, due to my background in shooting USPSA, I oriented my rifle mags to put my index finger along the front edge to index them. This works for pistol mags, but the longer rifle mags wave around. So we discussed other ways, and I tried beer can style (reverse mags in holder and grab them like a beer can). At first it was awkward. But it was presented as try this, and pick which you prefer. After a few drills, I decided I liked the beer can style.

Since they are supplying the ammo, the instructor and I are shooting from the same pot, but between us, we fired over 800 rounds of carbine ammo today. I probably fired 600 or more of those. And about 100 rounds of pistol ammo.

Overall a LOT of shooting, and a lot of various drills. And a lot of learning. I am tired.

Based on today, I can recommend the 1 day carbine class.

I will follow up the next two days with updates.

Looking for a carbine course myself.

I'd like to do a 1 or 2 day course. Looking forward to the rest of your review, I've never heard of these folks.

That is great. I wouldn't have been able to make it this weekend, but I would like to do it sometime. I know several instructors up there that I imagine you will run in to. Looking forward to hearing the rest of the review.

OK, another day.

As before, this is MY experience in a class of just me. It is not necessarily what you might do in a larger class with various levels of experience.

Also, I forgot to mention, they do NOT use PC targets. They use targets that at a minimum are humanoid shaped, and some are flat out human images. No bullseyes or paper plates here.

Day 2

Day 2 started with wounded shooter drills. This is dealing with reloading, immediate action, and remedial action, all one handed. Not helping hand, no cheat, just one hand. And for handgun, this included drawing weak hand only. Try that with a retention holster.

This was both pistol and carbine. Think about it, for remedial action, how to you lock the slide back with one hand? How about a carbine??? BTW, all this was with dummy rounds, as you WILL sweep yourself when doing these one handed.

The rest of the morning, we went and played. I will make a separate post in this thread. But it was cold, cloudy, and blowing like crazy, so we opted for some indoor play time, as 1 on 1, we had PLENTY of time for the regular stuff.

After lunch the sun came out and wind died down so back to carbine stuff.

On the range, started with the same drills as the day before to warm up. The good thing was seeing myself do these more quickly and more smoothly. Things were getting better. We did basic 2 round drills, multiple target, failure drills, turning (90 and 180 degrees).

One drill I forgot to mention from Day 1 was reload drills. For this, you take 3 mags, load 1 round into one, 2 rounds into another, and 3 rounds into the third. Mix them up, and put two on the belt, and one in the rifle. Then you start shooting, when you run dry, you reload, shoot until dry, reload again and shoot until dry. Did a few of these again as warm up.

Then ran the Half drill. You start with 3 mags of 10 rounds each. You start at 20 yards and shoot 10 rounds in 10 seconds, working on all A zone hits on a standard USPSA target. Then move to 10 yards and shoot 10 rounds in 5 seconds, again working for all A zone hits. Then 5 yards, and yes, you guessed it, 10 rounds in 2.5 seconds, with all A zone hits. First run, I did not get all the rounds fired at 20 and 10 yards. Second run, made it, and made the hits.

Next drill comes from Viking Tactics (I run one of their Brokos belts and Cobra rigger belt). It uses this target - http://www.vikingtactics.com/product-p/vtac-dstt-10.htm

The drill is, from 7 yards, you face 3 targets. On the start signal, you shoot 3 rounds into the middle scoring area of the middle target, then 1 round to each of the head and pelvic region, then move to either of the other two, repeat the 3-1-1, and then the final target. This was run against a timer, with a 1 second per shot outside the appropriate scoring area. I actually beat the instructor at this one. He shot it a bit faster, but had several "misses." But I was VERY happy with a 8.88 second clean run.

Next drill was Chaos. This is work on multiple targets and moving the rifle side to side, with speed and control. You have 5 targets up, numbers from 1 to 5, left to right. There is a circular ring at the upper center chest. Upon the start, you fire one round into each target in this sequence. 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. Yes, that is why it is called Chaos. First run I got all confused and shot several extra shots. Second run was nice, fast, and clean.

One thing on the close drills, you normally zero your sights at 25 years. With the high sight line of an AR, in close, the Point of Impact is significantly low of the Point of Aim when you are close in. With my Strike Eagle in a PEPR mount, it is about the bottom of the circle (if there was a bottom) at 7 yards.

We finished up the normal stuff with running some of the drills with pistol only. There may have been a couple of other things we ran, but I was not taking notes.

All the drills are run tactically. If you get a misfire, you do your immediate action drill and keep going. If you run out of mags for your carbine, you transition to your pistol and finish the exercise.

Today was magazine day for me. I must have failed to seat the magazine 6 - 7 times. NEVER had that problem before. But it gave me some great immediate action practice. And reload/rack practice.

Because we had accomplished so much on Day 1, and the weather for Day 3 is supposed to be much better, that was about it.

Total rounds count (instructor and me) was about 300 rounds carbine and 75 rounds pistol (pistol is me only). Again, we shot a LOT on Day 1, and expect to shoot more on Day 3.

EXTRA CREDIT

The following MAY be included in your carbine course, if possible. And this was COOL.

Shooting from a car. No, not hanging out the window and shooting, but shooting THROUGH the windshield.

IF they have a car available from another class, where they shoot at the cars, they will include this in the carbine class. If no car is available from another class, you do not get this. This is because the other class pays for the car, it is already headed to scrap, so it can be shot up more. Before we played with the car, the instructor went over what they do in the car shoot class, and what the results are. The car shoot is about why you do NOT stay in the car. And why Hollywood is WRONG with people hiding behind a car door. Did you realize that a 9mm will shoot right through BOTH doors and the passenger compartment?

We discussed the issues with shooting through the windshield (deflection) and what techniques to use.

Then I climbed into the car and shoot a close and a farther target with pistol. Then with the carbine. If you start with the carbine muzzle down, muzzle on the floor, even getting it into action is interested. As is the draw, without sweeping yourself with a pistol.

This was a very interesting exercise.

Overall, I am still thinking that is a very worthwhile course.

Tomorrow we move out to longer ranges.

PLAY TIME

Play Time

As I mentioned in the post on Day 2, we spent part of the morning in play time due to the weather.

THIS IS NOT NORMALLY PART OF THE CARBINE COURSE.

But, with my shooting background, things were going well and quickly, plus the weather was miserable, we went to play.

Play time was room/house clearing.

This is done with UTM rounds. These are similar to Simunitions, which can be used for force on force training. That is, you are shooting at live people and they are shooting at you. For this, I had to use one of their Glocks, as they use a specially made pistol for this use. For the AR, you just replace your bolt/BCG. We were not relying on the paint marking (we were not shooting at each other, but at targets with human images), but it was an overall safety thing as you have two people (for us) running around with loaded guns and shooting.

They have a warehouse, that they have built 3 setups in. The setups include multiple rooms, different corridor layouts, and various props (desks, chairs, tables, even a vending machine). The targets are shoot and no shoot. Shoot ones have a gun pointed at you, the no shoot have something else in their hands.

So we discussed room clearing techniques, and teamwork, and ESPECIALLY communicating. And walked through a couple of runs. Then we went live.

The instructor set up several shoot and no shoot targets. Doors can be open or closed or marked to make like there is no door. In two the setups, there are sliding walls, so you can have different corridor setups. So even though you know the basic layout, it can be varied quite a bit.

So away we went. We started with the instructor as the lead person, then we started switching off. We started with pistol only, and ran two of the setups. Then switched to carbine. And run the second and third setup.

Carbine is interesting. The lead person starts with the firearm up and ready. Think, you are waiting to enter, when a bad guy opens the door to walk out. Now, the lead guy has to open the door. Try holding your carbine at the full ready position, and reach out and open a door.

Overall, we probably ran 7 or 8 setups, maybe more, I was having too much fun to be counting.

VERY good time.

I am happy to say, I did not get caught by any of the "traps" set to teach a point.

I pointed out, that they could do a course of just this, and I am sure people would pay to do it. I would pay to do it again. I would like to try a 4 man entry team. And mixed carbine and pistol.

I will have to ask, even if they do not do a formal course, could we set up an MDS one day room clearing class/shoot. Anybody in for this?

The rounds are expensive, but you don't really shoot that many. 2 - 3 targets per run per person. And 2 shots each target.

Day 3

Day 3

As mentioned before, my experience may not be the same as other classes.

The first part of the day is another instance of something that is not in the normal class. Due to my international travel, Larry (the instructor) figured if I were somewhere when the SHTF, I might be able to arm myself with an AK. So I should be familiar with one. So we started with AK familiarization. Basic operation, field stripping, and basic manipulation drills.

We moved to the range and did the same basic drills as with the AR. Shoot single target, shoot multiple targets, reloads, turn and engage. Started at 15 yards, then moved back to 100 yards. I put about 120 rounds through the AK.

My impression of the AK? It is a POS. But it works, they are all over the place, and one should know how to use one. But I am very glad, I did not spend my money to buy one.

Then back to the AR. We moved back to 100 yards and shot some basic drills. Emphasizing slowing down and making the hits. You cannot shoot as quickly from 100 yards as 7 yards.

Then on to cover. The range was set up with 3 pieces of cover in a line. The left most was standing cover, the middle was kneeling (think Jersey wall), and the right most was a car. Yes, a real car. So we discussed techniques of using cover and moving from cover to cover. Also communication with other team members. Then shot it. The car cover was shot over AND UNDER the car (roll over prone).

Ran this a few times, then changed it up be moving the various pieces off line. So the middle cover was moved forward about 20 feet, and the car another 20 feet downrange. And then discussed how to move in this setup, in both directions (left to right moving forward and right to left moving backwards). Then shot this setup.

As always, the shooting was tactical. If you ran dry, you used your cover and reloaded and fully engaged the targets.

Next up with shoot through ports. They have this set made - http://www.vikingtactics.com/v/vspfiles/pdf/vtacBarricade.pdf

It was oriented with the stair step side to the left. The idea was to shoot 1 round at a target (about 100 yards) from each hole. This range had big rocks as a base, so we had a pad for prone, but the pad was thick and did not allow shooting through the 3 holes along the bottom.

The slots require that you tilt the rifle to use the sights. Also the upper most hole is high enough for me to be on tip toes. And the lower ones require some contorted positions. We shot this a few times, some with 1 hit per target, some with 2 or more hits. The targets were steel, so you could tell when you hat a hit (at least with electronic ear protection).

Then for fun, we ran some pistol work at 100 yards. And yes, you CAN hit things with a pistol at 100 yards. Not every shot. But it was an interesting break.

Next up was a standards drill for rifle then pistol. These were developed to have a baseline to see who people are doing. Originally they were for executive protection training. The drill requires a specific loadout, with one dummy round. You fire a series of short drills, all on a timer. At the end, all the times are added up. And misses are +1 second each. The drills include single target, multiple target, reloads, immediate action, and for rifle, position changes and for pistol, strong hand only. In some courses, these are fired every day to both gauge the student progress and for the students to see they are progressing.

Then on to vehicle egress. That is getting out of a car while under threat or under fire. The car was oriented nose to the threat. We discussed and walked through from removing the seatbelt (yes, Larry believes in EVERYONE wearing a seatbelt), getting out, to whether to fire and move to the rear of the car or just move. The we would move to another cover and engage a second target.

First few runs were pistol only. Both from front passenger seat and drivers seat. Then came the fun part, doing it with a carbine. You do not realize how long a carbine is, until you start messing with it inside a car. For safety, this is run with the carbine in Condition 3, bolt closed, no round chambered, but full mag in place. Upon exiting the car, you rack the bolt and chamber a round. From the passenger seat, this is interesting. First run, my sling hung up on the seat adjuster. So I decided to wrap the sling around the scope. Now think about being the driver and dealing with a carbine. Where do you put it? How do you get out with it? And the steering wheel makes this even more interesting.

And we finished off with support hand shooting. That is left handed for right handed shooters. This would be used if you were behind cover with open side on your support side.

And then some play as I had some loaded mags left. I shot the port drill above, and then just range steel at 100 yards.

As for previous days, we may have done some other things, but I forgot.

Today was about 250 rounds 5.56, and 120 7.62x39, and about 100 rounds of pistol. The pistol was mixed .45 and 9mm due to some of the drill requirements.

Overall for the 3 days, I shot some 1200+ rounds of carbine, 220 rounds of .45, and maybe 100 rounds of 9mm.

A VERY good time, and a LOT of good learning.

Some Considerations

Who should take this course? If you have good pistol skills and want to work primarily on carbine, this is a great course. If your pistols skills are not that great, they have a combined Pistol/Carbine class. 1.5 days on each. A lot of the things are better learned with a pistol, then transition the skill to carbine.

What level is good enough? If you have shoot some IDPA or USPSA and no longer embarrass yourself, you are good enough to just do carbine class. If you have taken other pistol classes *beyond a basic NRA or HQL type course) and did OK, you are good enough. If you just know basically how to fire a pistol, you are probably better off doing a pistol course first, or the combined course.

My impression of the setup. They have some GREAT ranges. The 50 yard range we worked on for the first two days has a fantastic rock dust base. It looks paved, but it is somewhat soft. The 100 yard range is more typical larger rocks, but they are working at converting the ranges. They have very nice classrooms for that portion and the drill with dummy rounds. They supply water and pretty much have coffee available all day. And clean restrooms. Pretty much a class act.

On some days, Chez Summit is open and food is available on site. Not great food, but not bad. But not too far away is a very good place to eat. Or you could bring your own lunch.

I have the impression, that if there is anything specific you want to see, try, or be trained on, ask. They will see about making it happen. Not saying with will be able to, but that they will try.

They train a lot of military, Federal agencies, and some private corporations that supply armed protection, and also other groups. The instructors have varied backgrounds, but include some people who have seriously been there and done that.

But, as I mentioned before, nothing is presented as the ONLY way to do things (except safety), everything else is presented as ONE way or the particular instructor's way, but you are free to come up with a different way, if it works better for you. And if it works that well, the instructor's may borrow it from you.

Overall, if you are looking for some good firearms training, BSR is a good choice.

Thanks for posting this. Never heard of this company before. Checked out their website, and they seem to do a lot of driving stuff. Indeed, the only shooting courses I found seemed to be part driving (?), or maybe I read something wrong.

Great write up PC....thanx.

No, they have just shooting courses. On the courses page, pick Firearms Training, and then you can see the Pistol, Carbine, and Pistol/Carbine offerings.

Use the link I have in the first post. It takes you right to the Firearms Training page. You have to click on Carbine or Pistol/Carbine to see those classes.

A couple of other things.

If you have plans on doing a battle belt, the course is a great way to test it out and see what works and does not. This is a great thread on them - http://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=44171&highlight=battle+belts

I will be adding my info to that thread, but for here, I ended up with:

Viking Tactics Brokos Belt
Viking Tactics Cobra Riggers Belt
2x ITW FastMag pouches for carbine mags
1x Tactical Tailor Magna Pouch for pistol mags
Blade Tech Level III retention holster, TekLock with Drop and Offset
1x Tactical Tailor Fight Light Dump pouch

After the first day, I reconfigured where my pistol mags were carried as the first way did not work well for me.

The course is not physically demanding, but there is physical action. And you will be standing around a lot. Going to squatting, kneeling, supported kneeling, and prone and back up can be an issue. Also the vehicle evac work is harder than you would think.

So if you are seriously out of shape, a bit of work before hand will make the course that much better. They WILL work within your physical ability and restrictions. But the better shape you are in, the more you can do.

hogarth said:

Thanks for posting this. Never heard of this company before. Checked out their website, and they seem to do a lot of driving stuff. Indeed, the only shooting courses I found seemed to be part driving (?), or maybe I read something wrong.

Click to expand...

This is my understanding, but don't hold it as gospel. Pinecone would certainly know better than I.
BSR used to do a lot of the training for the State Department, DHS, DOD, etc. About 2 or 3 years ago, the government bought some land adjacent to the race track and built a building to make this convenient for the training of .gov employees. Since then they either hired a bunch of BSR employees, or just pay them on government contract. I am not sure the security off-road, evasive driving, some other driving courses are available to civilians.

either way, this looks like the course that Pinecone took. Very reasonable, it looks to me.
http://www.bsr-inc.com/training-courses/training-coursesfirearms-training/

EDIT: PC answered before I could finish typing.

Actually you can take most of the driving courses, including EDC.

BSR still teaches a lot for all those agencies (and various military groups), even though one of them built a facility on land that is part of BSR. Not sure if the land was purchased or leased. But even that agency still uses BSR for a lot of training. Larry, my instructor, starts a class today for that agency.

They have been doing firearms training since the 80s. But only recently opened it up to civilians.

Thanks for the write up. This sounds like a course I want to take.

Did you contract for one on one training? Or did it just work out that way?

We're the fees different if so?

were the classes during the week or weekend? I am also curious on the one on one training and price as Brooklyn was talking about. thanks for the after action report it helps us out trying to find good training places

It just turned out that way. But the larger classes have multiple instructors, so various groups can progress at their own pace.

If you have a group, you can probably work out a class for just your group.

The standard classes are Fri - Sun. Fri is the 1 day course, or the first day of the 2 or 3 day class. Sat is the second day of the 2 or 3 day class.

Thanks for the write-up. It sounds like something worth trying in the next year or so.

As a teenager my dad worked for the CIA overseas. He and my mom were sent to some similar driving courses so that we could avoid being targeted overseas. I have been deeply saddened that I wasn't allowed to at the time, and though I don't see the need anymore it might be fun to do one of those as well.

BSR does those courses also.

But for most people, their 1 Day Accident Avoidance class is WELL worth it.

Thanks, I will look at that.