My Defensive AR Course with GAPPNJ

“Oh man,” I thought as I forced myself out of bet this Sun­day morn­ing, I feel like I was hit by a small truck.  Wip­ing the sleep from my eyes, and pri­or to my first cup of cof­fee (as I write this it’s almost noon, and still need a first cup of cof­fee) I felt my lats, del­toids, neck, shoul­ders, and pec­torals in a lit­tle pain.  I made my way to the bath­room, looked in the mir­ror, and focused in on the mir­ror, and thought, “Are those a cou­ple of black and blue marks on my left pec­toral from the day’s “defen­sive car­bine” class,” with Cameron Green own­er of Green Acad­e­my of Per­son­al Pro­tec­tion.  Fur­ther inspec­tion, ver­i­fied.  Black and blue, and sen­si­tive to the touch.

After slow­ly accli­mat­ing myself to the new morn­ing and a show­er, I began to reflect on the pre­vi­ous days events.  Admit­ted­ly, I am a novice when it comes to tak­ing a defen­sive pos­ture with a car­bine.  Much if any train­ing out­side of the school of life is at a range with a rifle pok­ing holes in a tar­get.  Give me a good old fash­ioned bolt action rifle, or my SKS, and I am fine, but an AR, which I used yes­ter­day, has a lot of mov­ing parts by com­par­i­son.  I was­n’t as famil­iar as I should have been going into the class… While not nec­es­sar­i­ly rock­et sci­ence, it’s a process I am not too famil­iar with, with the excep­tion of yes­ter­day’s course.

A quick descrip­tion of the course is that it was a “Defen­sive Car­bine” course.  So, tech­ni­cal­ly, an AR was not required, just a car­bine.  That said, the descrip­tion of the Defen­sive Car­bine course from GAPPNJ is this:

Defen­sive car­bine is designed to teach our stu­dents the basics of defen­sive skills with an AR, AK, Ruger Mini, or SKS… but it is far from basic.  This is not a begin­ners course… it is essen­tial that each stu­dent have a knowl­edge of their rifles nomen­cla­ture, have it prop­er­ly zeroed, and be capa­ble of 100 yard accu­rate shots.   (basic prof­i­cen­cy means you will ben­e­fit more from the class).  Empha­sis in this 8 hour course is on firearm safe­ty, the fun­da­men­tals of defen­sive marks­man­ship, and shoot­ing from a sta­t­ic loca­tion or on the move.

Let’s pick the descrip­tion apart and see if I can add a lit­tle col­or to it; As the descrip­tion above is cor­rect, I would add the course is a Defen­sive Car­bine course show­ing your the fun­da­men­tals of defend­ing your home, fam­i­ly, and/or friends from a much worse harm­ful sit­u­a­tion than it could be if you did­n’t have the skills to defend your­self.

It was far from a “plink­ing” ses­sion at the range as well.  Cam took you through a process to help you under­stand the fun­da­men­tals of prop­er­ly hold­ing your car­bine in sev­er­al defen­sive pos­tures, dis­cussed aim, and how the tra­jec­to­ry of your expired rounds fly so you could com­pen­sate for dis­tance as well.  Defen­sive Marks­man­ship was also core to the top­ic of the day.  Hell, it’s the result you are look­ing for.  We spent the day at var­i­ous dis­tances from 50+ yards down to five yards in var­i­ous pos­tures (prone, kneel­ing, and stand­ing) tak­ing aim at Cam’s com­mand at the tar­gets in ques­tion, get­ting famil­iar with uncom­fort­able posi­tions fir­ing your car­bine at the tar­get.  What was inter­est­ing about it, is that there were a cou­ple posi­tions where you think that it actu­al­ly might be impos­si­ble to aim, and tar­get your rifle on the tar­get and fire, until you actu­al­ly do it and hit the tar­get in ques­tion.  Enlight­en­ing to say the least.

In addi­tion to posi­tions, Cam had us run through accel­er­at­ed shots as well as shoot­ing from cov­er in three dif­fer­ent posi­tions, engag­ing in mul­ti­ple tar­gets, and acquir­ing and shoot­ing tar­gets while mov­ing from side to side.  Cou­ple that with the high humid­i­ty and heat yes­ter­day, and you not only got an edu­ca­tion and had fun, but you got quite a work­out as well.

In all it was a great day.  It was an eight hour course, which made it a pret­ty long day, but time lit­er­al­ly flew by.  Lunch (which each indi­vid­ual brought) was about 30 — 45 min­utes of down time, and that was the most down­time we had from the time we fired our first round.

In hind­sight, it was a GREAT day with a lot of con­tent packed into it.  In addi­tion, how often do you get to fire off 500 rounds and learn a valu­able skill at the same time.  I high­ly rec­om­mend, Cam’s cours­es as I have been through a cou­ple of them.  With his expe­ri­ence as an edu­ca­tor as well as his expe­ri­ence on the range and many hours invest­ed in his own train­ing, I would­n’t hes­i­tate to take anoth­er one of his cours­es.  In fact, I told him I want­ed to take this course again myself because I want­ed more rep­e­ti­tion in each posi­tion we were shoot­ing in to become more pro­fi­cient.

Oh, and as a side note, at the end of the class, Cam had us take the same test that a patrol­man would have to pass in NJ in order to use an AR.  With the skills learned in this class we all passed or would have passed the offi­cial test.  I walked away with a sense of accom­plish­ment, as I know sev­er­al oth­ers in the class did as well.

If you live in the NJ, NY/NYC, and PA areas and you are inter­est­ed in any GAPPNJ cours­es you should con­tact Cameron here.