Gunsite Academy

A better family vacation spot
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The famed Raven over the front gate at Gunsite Academy. Aside from
teaching students from around the world, some people have even gotten
married here! Photo: Brent T. Wheat

Gunsite is huge — encompassing 26 ranges from contact distance out
to 2,000 yards, along with multiple “shoot” houses and outdoor simulators.
Photo: Brent T. Wheat

I used to take my then-young children shooting and hunting but firearms never really took with any of them. However, time, the Chinese Communist Party’s little joke on the world, “mostly peaceful” rioting in cities near them and various recent unnerving personal encounters have prompted three out of four of my children to call me, asking advice about guns, shooting and most important of all — training. My fourth, my oldest daughter, is married to a man who keeps guns and was raised with them so she’s less concerned.

When it comes to training, the top of my list is Gunsite.

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All instruction at Gunsite starts at the classroom building before
students disperse to their assigned ranges. Photo: Brent T. Wheat

Better Than A Mouse

A friend of mine calls the Gunsite Academy in Paulden, Ariz., “The happiest place on earth,” — D******land be damned — and for shooters this is indubitably true. It’s also one of the most intensive and grueling shooting schools I have ever encountered. When my oldest son and I decided to take their basic introductory 250 Pistol class, the natural stress, both physical — five days of nine-hour-a-day training, plus a night shoot on Thursday — and psychological, was compounded by an unprecedented heatwave. Temperatures over the five days ranged between 101- to 108-degrees and in case you think Mother Nature doesn’t have a distorted sense of humor, the heatwave broke immediately after.

The two most famous examples of oxymora are “military intelligence” and “family vacation,” but Gunsite manages to give the lie to the latter. Out of 15 students in our class, there were three father-son combinations and two married couples yet other than gunfire, the most frequently heard sound was laughter. Any school where students can enjoy themselves in spite of pressure to perform and 100+ temperatures is doing something very right.

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The Gunsite 250 Pistol class — “basic” in name only — builds marksmanship
fundamentals but also teaches positional shooting, basic room clearing and
other techniques. Photo: Brent T. Wheat

Mano-a-Mano — Jameson and his son get a little competitive on the
firing line at Gunsite during their “family vacation” at the world-famous academy.

Background

Much has been written about Gunsite’s founder, the late Jeff Cooper, and the development of the modern pistol technique. Other men contributed to the modern pistol technique (notably a deputy-sheriff named Jack Weaver) as popularized by Col. Cooper, and it has continued to evolve ever since. However, no one did more than the colonel to methodically study the mechanics of shooting and to popularize it as both sport and — primarily — for practical defensive use. Nor had anyone ever before seriously codified the teaching and offered it to civilians as well as law enforcement and military. Prior to Gunsite — originally called The American Pistol Institute — civilian men and women and even legends such as Annie Oakley, Captain Adam Bogardus and Adolph Toepperwein taught themselves based on personal and sometimes painful experience. Police departments and the military taught their officers and soldiers techniques based primarily on what earlier generations had done, and both law enforcement and the military are famously resistant to any kind of innovation.

There were a few exceptions, notably a pair of British law enforcement officers in Shanghai between the World Wars named W.E. Fairbairn and E.A. Sykes, who were fortunate enough to have lived through many close-quarters shooting incidents and who wrote about what worked and what didn’t in his book Shooting to Live. But as late as the mid-1970s, major metropolitan police departments were still using revolvers and teaching their officers to step out to the right in a crouch shoot instinctively, without the sights, one-handed. Jeff Cooper and his Gunsite Academy transformed all that. I very much doubt there is a law enforcement agency or military anywhere in the world today not teaching at least some variation of what Colonel Cooper taught, and many agencies from around the world have sent their elite team members to study at the academy.

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The author’s son James and instructor Verlin Rector practice
live-fire room-clearing techniques on the square range.

Getting Started

Don’t think of the introductory 250 pistol class as intended exclusively for beginners. In our class there was a couple from California, neither of whom had ever fired a handgun before and they deserve credit for jumping right into serious training before purchasing one. At the other end of the spectrum were two USPSA members, one of whom was a Grand Master while the rest of us wallowed around somewhere in-between. What is emphasized and taught carefully in the 250 class, in addition to the four golden rules of safety, are the basics — the five steps of drawing; proper grip; presenting the gun in a straight line without bowling or poleaxing; focusing on the front sights; trigger press and reset; followed by administrative, tactical, and emergency reloading; clearing stoppages; and again and always, the four golden rules of safety.

But after that, those basics are gradually incorporated into increasingly difficult drills and scenarios culminating with Col. Cooper’s own “El Presidente” drill — turning and firing controlled pairs into multiple targets, reloading, and firing again, all of it against the clock. This is followed by clearing a house of multiple threats and innocent bystanders, and fighting through a rocky wash with hidden targets, some of which are threats, some of which are “no shoot.” All of it requires quick decision-making and precise shooting.

Such things might be regarded as basics for beginners at Gunsite but at most schools they would be the final test for experienced shooters. It is fun, stressful, exhilarating and extremely educational. You can understand why law enforcement agencies from around the world send their people there. In this era of “defunding the police,” the opposite approach should be taken — law enforcement agencies should receive extra funds to send their officers to Gunsite.

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Gunsite Instructor Verlin Rector works with students on
the line in the Gunsite 250 Pistol Class.

Thrill Ride

After the intense adrenaline rush of clearing the “Fun House” of inanimate paper targets instead of real people with real guns, if it doesn’t convince you police aren’t paid nearly enough, you aren’t paying attention. For the record, I was “killed” on my attempt. To my delight, my son was warier and survived.

One of the most diabolical — excuse me; I meant demanding — exercises is a speed drill with rotating targets. It begins at three yards with targets turned sideways to the shooters. When the targets are first rotated to face the students, each shooter has to draw from the holster and make a perfect head shot. When the target is rotated the second time, each shooter must draw again and perfectly place a hammer-pair into the upper chest cavity. The targets remain facing the shooters for three-and-a-half seconds, then rotate away. No sweat.

But then you move out to five yards, then seven, then 10, then 15, and it gets a little trickier. Then you go back to the three-yard line and do it all over again, but this time the speed is reduced to two seconds. On the third round, the speed drops to one-and-a-half seconds, at which time there were notably fewer holes in each target with the exception of the two USPSA shooters, both of whom had the speed of snakes — irritable snakes with bad intentions.

All of these drills are done multiple times over the five days, to teach the students and allow a little practice before being conducted for a final evaluation. In the intense temperatures of the unusual heat wave, the drills took a lot out of the students and instructors both. The instructors deserve a lot of credit for keeping their sense of humor and the students’ spirits up.

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Using a plastic blue gun, Instructor Gary Smith demonstrates clearing
a room in the Gunsite Fun House, one of two indoor simulators on the sprawling facility.

Takeaway

Five days at Gunsite are expensive. However, driving with my son on our way to and from the range, I thought about it and I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t see how they manage to stay in business. It’s a 3,000-acre facility. Each class has three instructors, each of whom must be paid, housed and fed. The ranges — 26 of them, from handgun to three long-distant ranges out to 2,000 yards — must be maintained. The mechanical targets must be maintained. The roads to each of the ranges must be maintained and, if a monsoon strikes or a heavy snowfall comes, repaired. There are office buildings and office personnel. There are classrooms, restrooms and ancillary buildings to maintain. There is a pro-shop with two full-time staff members. There is a full-time gunsmith, a graduate of the prestigious Yavapai College gunsmithing program. There is a campground. All of those cost money.

Fortunately, the recent immense increase in first-time gun-buyers has resulted in a correspondingly substantial increase in the number of civilian students who are the academy’s bread-and-butter, which speaks well of America’s gun owners.

This was the first time my son and I had shot together in over 30 years, and to say we had fun is to understate it considerably. We’re already making plans for another family vacation when we return to the happiest place on earth sometime later this year. When it’s cooler. A lot cooler. We’re thinking about winter, with fond hopes for a blizzard.

Gunsite.com

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