Gunsite 250 Defensive Pistol Class

Last week, I attended the 250 Defensive Pistol class at Gunsite. After attending the Night Vision Pistol/Carbine and Night Vision Pistol Carbine II courses earlier this year, I was pretty enthused about getting more training at Gunsite. I figured the classic “Gunsite experience” of the 250 class would be a good place to start.

Gear

My primary pistol for this course was my carry gun, a Glock G45 with a red dot sight, weaponlight, compensator, light, and aftermarket trigger and slide stop lever. I’d intended to bring a second, identically kitted-out G45 as a backup, but I found the battery on the red dot was dead, and I managed to round out one of the screws trying to get it out. I carried it in a kydex holster from Dale Fricke, along with several mag pouches.

Glocks were by far the most common pistols in the class, with a smattering of other pistols, like the M&P and the XD. Half the class had red dot optics on their guns.

As with my previous trip to Gunsite, I brought my Escapod teardrop trailer for lodging. This week would be warm, so it would be the first time I used the Escapod’s air conditioning.

One new bit of kit I brought along was my newly arrived Starlink Mini terminal. This takes up much less room in the truck than the full-size Starlink, so I hoped it would meet my connectivity needs just as well as the larger version.

Before the class

I headed out in the late morning and enjoyed the scenic drive across the Arizona Strip. I stopped at the Jacob Lake Inn for some cookies before continuing to Marble Canyon and across the Navajo Reservation to Flagstaff. My only freeway driving on the trip was down the hill from Flag to Ash Fork before turning off on Arizona Highway 89 to Paulden. I pulled into the Gunsite campground around 5:30.

Day 1

We convened in the classroom building and started with the usual paperwork. The class proper began with a welcome by Gunsite CEO Ken Campbell, followed by introductions by our instructors. This was a fairly big class, 27 people, so we had four staff members to help keep an eye on everyone: Paul Garcia, Lew Gosnell, Ken Tuttle, and Jim Owens.

The safety brief covered both the four rules of gun safety (in their very traditional form, given that they were codified here at Gunsite) as well as range safety. Since it would be a warm week, they also emphasized hydration.

Down at the south range, we began with some lectures on the basics of trigger control and grip, followed by live fire drills to put these principles into practice.

We broke for lunch. After eating, I stopped by the pro shop for some frangible ammo (I’d left my stash at home). I also dropped off the slide from my backup gun at the on-site gunsmith. I asked them to extract the rounded-out screw holding the red dot on it. Back at the range, the gunsmith called back, saying they’d gotten my screw out before we even shot the first drill—very fast service.

Leading off the afternoon were sight alignment and stance, with some lecture followed by live fire. Next, we worked on the drawstroke. For this, we did lots of dry practice before going live. Our last live fire event of the day focused on going beyond just single rounds to controlled pairs.

Back in the classroom, the gunsmith (from whom I’d just picked up my slide) talked about cleaning our pistols before we wrapped up for the day.

I headed back to the campground for a shower, which felt fantastic. I made some tasty tacos for dinner and cleaned my Glock (which is not something I usually do during a class, but the lecture shamed me into it).

Day 2

Today, we proceeded directly to the range. Reviewing the previous day’s instruction, we did some dry work to ingrain it further.

When we were talking about the draw, Lew made a point that I don’t think I’d heard in any of my previous training: if you’ve presented the pistol and can’t see the dot, it’s better to move your head slightly than to move the pistol. If you move the gun, it’s easy to overcorrect and blow past the dot entirely.

Moving on to new material, they covered the mechanical offset of red dot pistol optics and applied that info to making effective headshots. We practiced emergency reloads, both slide forward and slide lock. Finishing up the morning’s instruction, we worked on hammer pairs at various ranges.

After lunch, we did some accuracy drills at fifteen yards, then spent most of the afternoon working on malfunctions. During these drills, Ken Campbell came out with a cooler full of Otter Pops to provide a bit of relief on a hot afternoon. We finished the day by combining the hammer pair and headshot instruction into some failure-to-stop drills.

That wrapped things up for the day. Back at the Gunsite campground, I enjoyed a nice dinner and cleaned my Glock.

Day 3

Once again, we rendezvoused down at the range. Again, we began the day with some dry practice.

Our live fire for the day started with shooting most of the Gunsite school drill. They didn’t time us, instead offering as long as we needed for each string of fire.

The instructors covered kneeling positions, and we shot a couple of familiarization drills before shooting the kneeling portion of the school drill.

Next, the instructors covered footwork for doing angular searches around cover (“slicing the pie”). Getting back to shooting, we practiced doing 180° turns. The big emphasis here was getting turned all the way around before drawing your handgun.

Our last drill before lunch was the Non-Standard Response. Named in contrast to the two-round “standard response,” the NSR involves shooting additional rounds until either the threat stops or you decide that you need to switch to an alternative solution, like headshots.

After lunch, we put the footwork we’d learned this morning to use, practicing shooting around cover.

At this point, the class split, with one group going to the shoot house while the rest of us practiced the El Presidente drill (engage three targets, reload, and engage the three targets again). Midway through the afternoon, we swapped.

At the shoot house, we put those cover skills to use in a more complex environment. We had a chance to do a dry run through a couple of rooms and to observe others doing their runs, either following the instructor behind them or from up on the catwalk.

Once everyone had their chance in the house, we rendezvoused back at the range and headed to the classroom. There, we watched a video of Jeff Cooper giving his mindset talk, including the classic Cooper color code.

I returned to the Gunsite campground for a well-deserved shower and some tacos.

Day 4

No dry fire this morning. Instead, we split up, with a quarter of the class heading to the indoor and outdoor simulators while the rest of us remained on the range and worked on the Gunsite school drill. We did the complete drill and then concentrated on individual elements. As people came back from the simulators, another group rotated out.

I was in the last group to shoot the simulators. We did the outdoor simulator before lunch but didn’t get a chance to run the shoot house until afterward. The outdoor simulator is a dry wash, with targets placed to the left and right in little side channels that have been widened into alcoves. You have to work your way down the wash, trying to spot targets and determine whether they are shoot targets or no-shoots without overexposing yourself. I did OK on this, but there was one target that I could have spotted earlier.

After lunch, I had my chance to go in the Fun House, one of three shoot houses at Gunsite. I did better here, getting some compliments from the instructor.

Back at the range, we split up again, with half the class going to an adjacent bay to shoot the Dozier drill. We had to engage five steel targets with one hit each on the clock. After running it a couple of times, they had us switch first to one-handed shooting, then to one-handed with our support hand.

The two halves of the class swapped. On the main range, we practiced the El Presidente drill on steel. We managed to get quite a few reps in, and by the end, I was shooting it clean at around 10 seconds, which is the par time.

We left the range at about the usual time, but rather than being done for the day, it was merely a break before our night shoot.

Night shoot

When we reconvened that evening, the instructors gave a brief lecture on flashlight techniques. They talked about the FBI method (holding the light up and to the side to get it away from your body in case someone shoots at the light) and the Harries technique (holding the light in your support hand, wrapped under the gun with the back of your hand pressed against the back of your shooting hand.

Before too long, it was dark enough to put those techniques to use. We shot several drills using the FBI and Harries techniques. We also did some shooting with no illumination, just using the outline of the target and our red dots (or iron sights illuminated by muzzle flashes for those without dots).

Finally, we shot a modified Gunsite school drill: pairs to the body at 7, 5, and 3 yards and headshots at 3, all using our preferred flashlight technique.

Day 5

We started the day by shooting the Gunsite school drill for score. After one practice run, we did it twice for real, keeping the better of the two scores. I had a good run. Not quite perfect, but close.

As soon as we finished that, I was part of a group sent out to do our final evaluations in the indoor and outdoor simulators. I did pretty well here, getting compliments for my long-range shooting on the outdoor simulator. Today, we cleared the Playhouse, so we had a new problem from the previous day. I got good marks for my marksmanship, movement, and decisionmaking.

Back at the range, we shot the El Presidente drill for score. Again, we got two attempts. Here, however, I didn’t do so well. I blew the reload on my first attempt. The second time around, I did better, but my accuracy wasn’t so great.

We waited for other people to complete the simulators, then broke for lunch. After eating, I hit the Pro Shop and bought the Glock Gunsite Service Pistol: a G45 with a milled mount for a Holosun optic and the Gunsite logo engraved on the slide.

After lunch, we did a little shooting competition: Each shooter had to make two hits on steel, reload, and then one more hit before their opponent could do the same. I won four of six on this one. One of my losses was entirely my fault: I missed the reload and lost by default.

While it had been warm all week, this was the first time I really felt it badly. After standing around in the sun for an hour in the steel pit, I felt a heat-related headache coming on.

With that, we adjourned to the classroom to fill out course evaluations and get our certificates.

Afterward, we had the chance to tour the Sconce, Jeff Cooper’s house on the Gunsite grounds. It’s got a neat design, with great views of the surrounding countryside and some interesting security features.

I adjourned to the campground for a very welcome shower and a nice dinner.

After the class

I was up early the next morning. After a bit of breakfast, I got packed up and headed out, retracing my route to Flagstaff, Marble Canyon, Jacob Lake (where I stopped for lunch), and home.

Conclusions

Gunsite’s 250 class has to do double duty. It’s intended as an introductory course for relatively new shooters, but it also attracts some very experienced folks. The students in this class reflected this. Some were brand new, not having shot before doing the “Day 0” class that Gunsite offers on Sunday before the class. A few were very accomplished shooters. A majority seemed to be somewhere in the middle. They’d been shooting for a while but had not necessarily had the benefit of much professional instruction.

The instructors did a good job serving all these groups. They provided lots of support for the newer shooters, helped some of the longer-time shooters cure their bad habits, and offered meaningful feedback even to the most experienced. Some of this feedback was new things to think about for me; other parts were things I already knew but wasn’t always executing correctly.

As someone who came in with a good grasp of the fundamentals, the first two days did seem a bit slow at times. However, things really picked up starting on day 3, when they started using the turning targets, brought out the steel, and got us in the shoot house.

One of the special things about Gunsite is the facility. They offer lots of things that the average range doesn’t, and the class takes advantage of that. Running timed drills on turning targets definitely applies some pressure. For me, though, the real stars of the show are the live-fire shoot houses. I’m looking forward to future classes that spend even more time in the simulators.

On that note, I’m already signed up for the 350 Intermediate Pistol Class next year.

Whether you’re new to shooting and want a solid foundation or a more experienced shooter looking to check off an entry on your bucket list, I’d recommend the 250 class at Gunsite.