Defensive Handgun Level 1: 8 hours (one day)
Defensive Handgun Level 2: 8 hours (one day)

Class Descriptions
Optional NRA Certification
Goals, Methods, and Directions
Class Schedule
How to Apply

Defensive Handgun is two classes. They are  based on the two NRA Personal Protection Outside The Home classes but we greatly enhance and extend them for the specific realities of South Carolina.  Because your real world is infinitely more complex outside your home than inside it in this part of the country, our course is divided into two classes that develop your knowledge, skills, and attitude so you can really protect yourself and your family. You can take either Defensive Handgun class or both classes. You can take them in any order. And you can repeat them as often as you wish.

It's not that one class is "harder" than the other. In the real world our two Defensive Handgun classes flow naturally, one into the other no matter which way you go.

Like our Home Defense class, Defensive Handgun is designed and intended for ordinary, decent, people who want to go about their normal lives and live peacefully without becoming warriors. Our students do not look for trouble and they try to avoid or evade it but if trouble happens they should be well prepared to prevail in unexpected deadly force confrontations outside their homes in South Carolina..

Of course we don't want you to become a fantasy warrior or an aggressive person and that's not what we teach you in our classes.

You won't grapple, strike, or be struck by other people in our classes. We don't involve our students in hand-to-hand combat. We make effective personal protection available to people who are unable or unwilling to use physical strength, agility, and might to defend their lives—including women, the elderly or mature, businesspeople, teachers, doctors and nurses, lawyers, and other professionals. We help you learn how to protect yourself in the real world just as you are.

Email us now to attend a Defensive Handgun class. Please include your telephone number so we can call to prequalify you for the class, determine your needs, and answer your questions.

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Class Description

Our main focus in Defensive Handgun is on how you can make effective use of a concealed handgun to protect yourself and your family on the street, on the road, in malls and stores, in parking lots, and elsewhere other than in your own home.

In South Carolina and many other states the laws that apply to self defense are different on the streets than in the home. We explain and teach you to apply the concepts of opportunity, ability, jeopardy, and preclusion that you must understand and articulate if you are to know whether a potentially deadly situation on the streets justifies your use of a firearm to defend your life. We teach you how to use your mind first.

In anticipation of a potential life-threatening event we teach you a variety of concealment techniques and devices (some of which may surprise you and catch assailants unprepared), how to draw your handgun into action for immediately effective self defense, and how to seek cover and concealment outdoors.

We build on techniques we taught you in our CWP and Basic Pistol class, develop for purpose of home protection in our Home Defense class, and add many other useful techniques and skills. Nothing is lost, nothing is discarded, nothing is wasted. What we teach is essential for civilians—for ordinary people regardless of sex, age, or physical abilities. We teach you as you are.

We teach that your gun is your last resort and your last best chance to stay alive, not the first or only tool in your toolbox. We'll give you multiple tools and teach you the skills to use them. We'll help you learn  how to identify potential trouble and how to avoid or evade it. We'll show you common pre-attack indicators: what to look for and how to look for it.  We'll demonstrate what to do if you see those pre-attack indicators. We'll involve you in "shoot/no shoot" scenarios so you can begin to make responsible split-second decisions.

Of course we'll teach you how to stop an attack you couldn't avoid or evade. Our innovative version of the NRA's basic Personal Protection Outside The Home courses include presentation and movement, point shooting, instinctive shooting, low-light shooting, engaging multiple targets, and one-hand shooting. These skills and others we'll teach you in our Defensive Handgun classes will become the core shooting skills you need to counter a life-threatening attack outside your home.

We greatly enhance the entire NRA course sequence. In our enhanced classes you'll learn why you must "get off the X" and how you yourself can do it with your own physical capagilites. We'll teach you why you must interfere with your attacker's decision loop, how you can steal the initiative, and win. You'll shoot at multi dimensional targets while you're moving and learn to hit those targets effectively. We prepare you for the reality you might actually encounter outside your home.

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Defensive Handgun: Level 1

Our basic Defensive Handgun Level 1 class covers presentation from a concealed holster or purse, how to find and take cover and concealment in the streets, how to shoot from various kinds of cover and concealment (such as behind vehicles, doorways, trees, curbs, fire hydrants, and other street features), how to shoot one-handed and weak handed, and how to point shoot effectively.

Defensive Handgun: Level 2

Our advanced Defensive Handgun Level 2 class is for qualified students who can benefit from a demanding and tricky handgun training class.

Defensive Handgun Level 2 includes shooting while moving, shooting from low cover, shooting from sitting, turning, and prone positions such as from behind a curb or a car, shooting in low light, and so-called "hip-shooting" or shooting when the bad guy is within bad breath distance and close enough to touch you.

Reactive targets, moving targets, steel plates and multiple attacker problems increase complex trainong scenarios and realistic simulations. Hidden targets reveal suddenly as you move through a tree lined lane. Whatever could happen in your own real world can happen here.

Goals, Methods, and Directions

Our classes are tailored to the needs of the students each time they attend the class. These are handgun classes to take more than once so you can maintain and develop your training. The core of each class remains the same every time we offer it (because the basics always rule) but the directions, exercises, and dimensions differ depending on the needs and skills of the students in the class that day.

Together, the two parts of our Defensive Handgun course focus on major topics you'll really use if the need to defend yourself on the street arises. We explain and demonstrate them in the classroom before you experience them on the range. Among major classroom topics include:

1. Strategies for Personal Safety Outside the Home
2. Carrying a Concealed Handgun and Presenting from Concealment
3. Developing Basic Defensive Shooting Skills
4. Developing Concealed Carry Skills
5. Self-Defense and the Law

Optional NRA Certification

As an option you may choose to extend Defensive Handgun Level 1 and Defensive Handgun Level 2 so you also earn NRA Personal Protection Outside The Home (Basic) and NRA Outside The Home (Advanced) certification after passing an in-class written examination in the Basic class and meeting NRA standards for both classes.

Both optional NRA certifications are a prerequisite for NRA certified Basic Pistol Instructors who also are NRA certified Personal Protection In The Home Instructors to attend an NRA Personal Protection Outside The Home Instructor course.

The two NRA Personal Protection Outside The Home classes are student-level Firearms Training classes, not Instructor Training classes. Together these two student-level Personal Protection Outside The Home classes are the pre course qualification required for NRA certified Basic Pistol Instructors who also are NRA certified Personal Protection In The Home Instructors to attend an NRA Personal Protection Outside The Home Instructor training class.

Of course students who do not intend to become instructors may also earn the optional NRA certification in either or both classes, but of course that optional certification does not qualify them as instructors.

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Class Schedule

We schedule both Defensive Handgun classes at our training facility in the greater Columbia, SC, area.  We add classes from time to time as circumstances permit and admit students from a waiting list. Here are the currently scheduled Defensive Handgun classes.

How to Apply

Email us now to attend a Defensive Handgun class. Please include your telephone number so we can call to prequalify you for the class, determine your needs, and answer your questions.

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