Deciding to carry a handgun legally to defend yourself or someone you are responsible for is a huge decision. As President of Kangaroo Carry holsters? (http://www.KangarooCarry.com) and Virtual Tactical Academy (http://www.VirtualTacticalAcademy.com) in Houston, I often encounter clients and students engaging in some very unwise concealed carry habits. The most common ones are listed below: MISTAKE #1: Forgetting the First Rule of a Gun FightWhich is of course “Bring a Gun”! A handgun is like a parachute. If you don’t have one when you need it, you probably won’t ever need one again. For concealed carry to be of use it...

Since the June 2013 opening of my new advanced concealed carry training facility in Houston (VirtualTacticalAcademy.com), I am able to spend lots of time watching people react to very realistic Use of Force Scenarios. Now, after witnessing hundreds of virtual gunfights, I have learned much about the average CHL holder’s performance under stress. The Learning Environment: VTA’s Virtual Reality Room provides branching video with approximately 800 shoot/no-shoot judgment training simulations. Students talk to the screen and answer the realistic actor threats on the screen. After each scenario students practice their 911 calls (a neglected practice area), recap to instructor what...

It is Day Two and at least the 10th gun fight. The protective mask is hot, the multi room shoot-house is very dark and there is one or more people somewhere inside this labyrinth waiting to shoot me if given even the slightest chance. The task at hand is to make sure that with proper tactics my Simunition loaded Beretta will find and deal with them first. However, I increasingly finding myself asking “Why am I here?”. The “here” is Sure-Fire Institute Low LIght Instructors School in California. The same people who arguably design and manufacture the world’s finest Sure-Fire...

FACT: Fighting in low, altered or no light is a specialized skill and needs to be treated as such. Training for fighting on a well lit range shooting at a stationary piece of paper is great training for shooting a well lit stationary piece of paper and has little if any cross over to fighting at night. Defensive handgun use in low light is a highly probable event and yet we treat it like it is just shooting in daylight and seldom if ever train specifically for the unique challenges. Be honest when was the last time you shot your carry gun with carry ammo from...

"We would have to shut down our range to the public to allow those type of people to have access to our lanes, I mean there is no way they can shoot without muzzling everyone here!" "I think it is great what you are doing, but we are just not interested in providing classroom space for them. Those types of people and guns? No way. Not here." What type of people could I be teaching Texas CHL classes to and licensing to carry that would elicit such responses from range owners across Texas? My name is Lara Wagner and I...