The idea is:
When a lethal threat is already occurring, being capable of intervening is different from simply being armed. If an innocent person is being attacked, do you have both the ability and the psychological preparation to act?
Gabe Suarez’s Pistol Gunfighting School in November 2017 was almost over when the news broke: a gunman had opened fire in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Twenty-six people were killed. Suarez pulled his students together, told them what he knew, and said, “This study has been real for me for a long time. Hopefully it is real for you too now.”
He then pivoted the course to a hostage scenario, using targets and stands to build a mock church, with imaginary kids in the pews.
This is the last of three posts on the class I observed in November 2017 and it’s the one that gets at what Suarez’s “Tactical Clue” training was actually for.
The Mozambique Drill has been a staple of defensive pistol training since the 1970s. It’s named for an incident during Mozambique’s war of independence, when a mercenary named Mike Rousseau rounded a corner at an airport and came face to face with an enemy soldier carrying an AK-47. Rousseau put two rounds in the man’s chest — center mass, exactly as he’d been trained. The man stayed on his feet. Rousseau’s third shot, aimed at the head, hit the throat instead. That one worked.
The founding father of the civilian gun training industry, Jeff Cooper, heard the story, saw its training value, and built it into the curriculum at his Gunsite Ranch training facility. Gabe Suarez, styling himself Cooper’s heir, has his own updated version.
By David Yamane
