I have managed to clear the decks for 2023, and I’m glad to put 2022 in the rearview mirror!
I am pleased to announce that we have rescheduled the 2-day Shooting With Xray Vision Instructor Development Class. It will be held May 6-7 at Mead Hall Range near McCloud, OK. For full details on registration, please contact Bill Armstrong, follow the link below.
Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tactical-anatomy-instructor-development-course-tickets-497141512647
As you may know, we had to reschedule last October’s class due to my father’s death the week the class was scheduled. This was a difficult time for me and my family, but not unexpected (he was 95). I appreciate all the kind words expressed by those of you who were aware of Dad’s passing.
We are planning to go forward with all the same content and personnel as we had lined up for October. Co-instructors for the class will be David Maglio of Firearms Academy of Wisconsin, and Chuck Haggard of Agile Training and Consulting. More on those two shady characters to follow.
So, to cut to the chase, people keep asking me: “Why should I take your Shooting With Xray Vision class?” or “Why would I want to become a Tactical Anatomy Instructor?” The answer is complicated, but I’ll condense it for simplicity’s sake.
In 20+ years of law enforcement affiliation, 30 years of Emergency Medicine, and nearly 60 years of hunting (i.e., killing critters with the intent to consume them) I have learned a LOT about what makes gunshot wounds effective, and what makes them ineffective. The facts that I have gathered and systematized into the Shooting With Xray Vision (SXRV) system are the culmination of that experience.
What I have learned, and in fact the demand that compelled me to incorporate TAS and start teaching this material, is that gunshot wounds are remarkably ineffective MOST of the time! That’s right, I said it. Most of the time, bullets do not do what the user of the gun intends for them to do.
This is particularly true for handguns, which a substantial percentage of US citizens possess for self-defense. This disturbing reality is not just true for casual gun owners, either. This applies to highly skilled end-users as well, including cops and military personnel, and retirees from those fields.
As an example of this (and the full discussion and citations are in my book), the medical literature shows that fully three-quarters of the people who present to American ER’s with gunshot wounds to the heart from handguns survive their injuries. You read that right, boys and girls: 75% of cardiac GSW’s from handguns do not result in death. Many, if not most of these, do not immediately incapacitate the GSW recipient!
This means, quite simply, that you can’t count on one or two bullets from your self-defense firearm to stop someone who is attacking you or your loved ones unless you put your bullets in the critical target areas of the body that will result in rapid incapacitation (i.e., the ability to prevent them from continuing their attack).
Quite simply, SXRV training provides the student with the information and skills he or she needs to put fire downrange on a deadly threat and terminate that threat rapidly and expeditiously. It has worked for thousands of police officers whose departments have hired me to train their personnel, and it has worked for hundreds more private citizens who decided to get this life-saving training on their own dime.
One example I often cite to prove the effectiveness of the SXRV method: a major metro police department asked me to train their FTU (firearms training unit) so they could institute this training for their entire department. I held a special SXRV Instructor class for them, and then they picked up the ball and ran with it. Over the next 3 years, they trained every single officer in their force in these techniques. When we evaluated the results, comparing the 2-year period prior to the program to the 2-year period after completing it, the results were outstanding: their Hit Ratio went from 20% (which is about average for US police) to 97%. That’s right, NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT. I won’t give any further details in public, but suffice to say that in the post-training period, not a single officer received a GSW in his/her officer-involved shooting incident, and the majority of the felons shot in the study period didn’t bother the taxpaying public in any way whatsoever thereafter. I have seen similar data from other police departments that have implemented the SXRV system over the years. The results keep proving themselves, over and over again.
Tactical Anatomy has not held a SXRV Instructor class since 2014, and we have no plans to teach another one in the future (although that may change, depending on demand). The purpose of this class is to disseminate the information I have gathered over the past quarter century and put it into the hands of conscientious men and women who can pass this knowledge along. I’m getting somewhat long in the tooth, as they say, and who knows how much longer I’ll only be able to keep teaching this material. This is YOUR opportunity to become one of the people who can keep this knowledge alive, and help good citizens prepare appropriately for the possibility of a deadly threat to their lives and families.
What can you expect to learn at this class? Here’s some of the high points:
- Rationale for anatomic target acquisition in lethal force situations
- Use of deadly force: ethics, politics, and practicalities
- Fundamentals of external and terminal ballistics; practical value of ballistics testing; bullet performance and failures.
- Static and dynamic realities of Officer/Citizen-Involved Shootings
- Realities of gunshot wounds and incapacitation.
- Human anatomy zones of incapacitation
- Three-dimensional anatomic visualization: why it’s necessary, and how to do it
- Safety protocols for training students in SXRV
This class utilizes a combination of didactic classroom learning, peer-to-peer instructional training, computer simulations, force-on-force scenarios, and live fire exercises.
Participants must be certified firearms instructors (civilian, law enforcement, or military), and be able to show proof of clean criminal record.
Please contact Bill Armstrong at Mead Hall Range at the above link to register for the class.
