WE ARE NO LONGER PUBLISHING HERE NOR RESPONDING TO COMMENTS - OUR WORK HAS MOVED TO THIS PLATFORM gabesuarez.com Continue reading

There is a difference and the two applications are not the same at all. Some perspective is in order. If your goal is gunsport, then enjoy yourself, but understand that it is not gunfighting. Some sportsmen may feel upset at me saying that, but they should not. Just as Olympic fencing is not knife fighting, and NASCAR is not PSD driving, one has to honest with himself. The problem is that when one tries to interject the weapons intended for sport, or the methods intended for sport into a real world application, those likely to fail with the expected results. So an essay in images - These guys are on their way to kill bad guys. This guy is on his way to find a duck. This soldier is shooting a terrorist. This guy is shooting a clay This man is protecting his store from looters. They are different pursuits with different tools. There may be some slight parallels, but just as these gunfighters would not prevail in a gun game with rules and special guns organized to give a... Continue reading

Some of you will know the feeling. You have been gone from your old hometown, your parent's house, or an old car you used to drive. You return, ten, maybe twenty years later and there is a definite familiarity to it. The shotgun, specifically the Remington 870, is that way for me. It is the main long gun I carried into battle working night watch, and later the Gang Unit. I got into many shootings with issued 870s, and when I heft one it has that familiarity I mentioned. We have said that situation will determine you tactics and those will select the weapon for you best suited for the task. That selection must be an emotionless and analytical one based on reason and not feelings. For many years, the weapon that I kept by the bed was a rifle. I lived in a crowded house filled with old people and children, and often other staff members staying with during training courses. The concerns over surgical accuracy and the avoidance of over-penetration were forefront of the mind. But today it... Continue reading

Here is a crazy video. It illustrates what men are capable of doing, and that sometimes one should reconsider their course of action. This happened in Costa Rica. A woman arrived complaining that the bread she bought was old and dried out. She later returned with her husband, who had likely been worked up by the wife. He was clearly quite angry. The man began yelling insults at the baker. At one point the baker’s son steps up to defend his father. At a certain point you will see in the video, the man leaves the argument to go to his car. He immediately returns with a shotgun. The shotgun is one we saw a great deal in Central America, a pistol gripped shotgun of some sort. Likely a Mossberg or Winchester. I didn't quite catch the audio, but the son appears to taunt the armed man to shoot him. Well...sometimes you get your request granted. Learning points - 1). Sometimes it is impossible to calm down a situation. It is importnat to have the escalation switch at hand and... Continue reading

In my The Truth About The Gen 5 Glock article I wrote about the new Gen 5 barrel. I told a story about a gunfight I got to participate in involving a couple of armed robbers and a team of guys armed with polygonal barreled pistols. The bad guys ended up as large slabs of ballistic gelatin on legs, but the CSI guys were not able to determine whose rounds hit which bad guy due to the inability of the polygonal bores to mark the bullets sufficiently for a match. I got this from a correspondent who is in the CSI biz: "I just read your blog post about the new Gen 5 Glocks. Some info on the CSI front. You are correct that previously, nearly any bullet fired from a Glock would not be identified to a specific pistol. However some time ago Glock started marketing barrels that were designed so the bullets could be matched back to a specific weapon. The guns that had these barrels were not very common. Glock continued to work on developing barrels that... Continue reading

We received two of them yesterday, not from Glock but from our usual distributor. And for over a month now we have been deluged with ostensibly objective articles all over the gun media singing the virtues of the Gen 5 Glocks...almost to a messianic level. I suspect that Glock didn't send these early samples out to people who were not in the pocket of the company, promised to give a favorable review, or at least "of the faithful". But now we have them. In short...it is a Gen 4 Glock without finger grooves. That's it. Yes, it has some new additions such as 1). Ambidextrous slide releases: I can't comment of the game shooters or the Youtube gun jugglers but most modern combat-centric training today involves operating the slide manually over the top during a reload. The slide release is actually a superfluous item that often gets in the way of the most solid grip. Now it will get in the way for both right handers and left handers. If I ever run one of these, I may well simply... Continue reading

The Stakeout concept is gaining ground. I shake my head at all the guys that sneered at the idea we discussed last year now getting orgasmic over the Mossberg Shockwave and the Remington Tac-14 (I wonder how many got a free weapon from Mossy or Remy?). Anyway - here are the original videos we did. Feel free to comment or discuss. Stakeout 870s are in the shop ready to be built to your specs and so much more efficient, accurate and shootable than the mass produced items you won't believe it. Continue reading

By Greg Nichols We’ve been talking a lot about shotguns, styles, models, ammunition, actions, and applicable situations of use. I want to look at the actual functioning of a shotgun during use and take you through, step by step, the method I use to run one so fast. In specific I will be addressing a pump action as it addresses the management of pump and auto, with an auto. 1) When you trigger the shotgun you use the same trigger control/staging as you do on a pistol or rifle. There really isn’t a need to tune a shotgun trigger as the marksmanship isn’t required to be as fine just based on the capabilities of the platform. The key here is to use your non-shooting or support hand to apply pressure to seat the butt tightly in the shoulder pocket. Your shooting hand only needs a light touch, and I like to put my thumb on the top of the grip rather than wrapped around it (excepting those with a pistol grip). On a PGO only shotgun the function is the... Continue reading

It never ends...I can imagine how Columbus felt at the idiocy of those around him. So again I get emails that some Youtube pundit with less experience than an average ten year old arguing about why Appendix carry should be shunned...ostensibly in favor of a leather outside the waist, hand tooled holster for their 1911...or worse, the J-frame in their pocket. Here is a video we did a while back slamming their argument to the deck like an MMA takedown. Continue reading

I cover this in more detail in Part I, but just to recap, a shotgun is best used as a short-range weapon that allows you to take some shortcuts in marksmanship through its spread pattern. The Stakeout is best suited for a hallway, a vehicle, or other short-range urban encounters. Its compact size makes it easy to maneuver inside and around my car, and its brutal payload gives me enough power to fight my way out of a BLM riot. I can also use it to skip buckshot into a mob of thugs trying to “kill whitey” or into the legs of a carjacker on the other side of my vehicle. Within its niche, it is a devastating weapon. To get the most out of your Stakeout, you need to have ammunition that maximizes its utility. Here are four more loads that I patterned at 3, 5, 7 and 10 yards. Load 5: Federal Premium Personal Defense 9 Pellet #00 Buck, 1145 FPS This round obviously had a very tight pattern. Load 6: Fiocchi Exacta Nickel Plated Buck Shot 27... Continue reading

Like him or not, Trump is a symbol as well as a President, And that symbol's election shows that the majority are not communists, socialists, or liberals. That they want and want to hold on to the dream that is America and the opportunity it represents, and not the communist utopia of Jerry Brown and Maxine Waters and Barak Obama. And the left knows what I have said, that many Americans are historically, and likely actually, illiterate and their lives and thoughts are driven by media optics rather than truth and fact. Their hope is to ensare as many "useful idiots" into their wave of indignant rhetoric that it may stifle anything the president wants to accomplish - and hold the line until 2020. The communist is eminently more dangerous to America than a mere jihadist. I doubt that even the most melting, offended, skinny jeans wearing snowflake wants to live in REAL communism...but that is what these useful idiots are pushing for...and in this country, something some of us will never allow to happen. Continue reading

I added considerable travel classes over the past two years and I must say that 2017 will be my last year doing “travel classes”. The pace of business today requires more of my time in the CEO’s chair and only classes at our home range in Prescott, AZ allow us to keep up with those demands. I will be leaving the road classes to my staff instructors. I am announcing five classes that I will be doing in Prescott next year and inviting students to enroll at a discounted price. The usual $500 has been reduced to $400 and will remain at that level for the rest of August. After the first of September, the price goes to full price of $500. These are the only classes I will be teaching in 2018. Those who have trained with me before will attest to the quality and value of this offer. Those in doubt, please read the thread on what makes our training different. I look forward to a great year of discovery and development of our gunfighters. SUAREZ PISTOL GUNFIGHTING... Continue reading

I am posting this so we can learn. There is always an antagonist view to posting things like this and we are criticized that we are unduly criticizing. But if we don't do this, mistakes, and there are always mistakes, will be repeated again and again. So lets watch this and see if we can discuss tactical things that we can learn from and do better should we find ourselves in such a situation. Continue reading

This is a very graphic video. If you are squeemish, at work, or under 18, don't watch it. OK...disclaimer posted. This is a "Sicario" or a hitman targeting and carrying out a hit in a barber shop. Comment on the lessons learned. Continue reading

TORQUING FOR SIGHT SCREWS We tell the guys who ask to tighten "FINGER TIGHT". That means as tight as your man hands will allow. But the questions persist as well as guys leaving their sight screws looser than DC Opsec. So here we have the final word from the Dungeon. We did some testing this morning to find a proper torque for the Glock front sight screw. We measured the length of (2) different screws, brand new out of the box. Then measured the length of each screw after different torques. Here are my results: New: (1) .1172" long (2) .1172" long 5 in/lbs: (1) .1172" long (2) .1172" long 7 in/lbs. (1) .1173" long (2) .1174" long 10 in/lbs. (1) .1179" long (2) .1189" long 15 in/lbs. (1) .1205" long (2) .1210 long Note: We stripped out (2) different front sight hex drivers getting the bolts to 15 in/lbs. We recommend a torque of 5-7 in/lbs. You can achieve 5 in/lbs with only hand torque. We also recommend that you de-grease and red loctite the front sight screw when... Continue reading

When we teach Red Dot Pistol courses we tend to see some interesting things. This is still a relatively new technology, and everyday we see new attempts into the market by companies both old and new. This last weekend we taught a class to 22 students. Of the 22 the majority were running Trijicon RMRs of varying types. We had three students using Leupold Deltapoints, and one SIG RX with a Romeo optic. It rained for about a third of the time and out experiences shooting these pistols in the rain was written up in a separate piece. Here are our learning points in no particular order. 1). You can shoot very accurately in the rain with a totally wet red dot. Sure its not as accurate as it would be in a dry and accommodating environment but hitting ten inch steel plates at 25 yards proved a non-issue. 2). There are four types of visual focus with these and the educated red dot shooter will use the correct one based on his needs and the problem at hand. Most... Continue reading

Continue reading

Last night I had dinner with a great old friend. He currently lives in Germany. Our friend is fluid in several languages, one of which is German and he focused on firearms training for that community while he worked for me...among other things. He told me a story about a student of his he had trained some years ago here in the USA. The student also lives in Germany, and has sufficient gravitas to have a concealed carry permit in that nation. Germany as you know is very restrictive in these areas and even toy guns are regulated. But the student's job was a high end time piece salesman, and was allowed to carry a weapon...as I said a very rare thing in that country. In any case - he was trained in a very fast-paced and intense few sessions in the Suarez system. A few years later, when opening the store in the early morning hours, he encountered three men that had apparently broken in during the night and were waiting for him. They pointed their pistols at him... Continue reading

Continue reading

All new technology is resisted at first. The red dot pistol, or as the competition crowd calls it, "the carry optics pistol", is no different. When we first began milling dovetails for the Trijicon RMR in 2010 there was a great deal of resistance if not abject ridicule. But today we see a plethora of offerings using this concept. The resistance continues however on blogs and social media, parroting the same myth and superstitions about this weapon concept. One of those is that the red dot is not usable in the rain. Recently I was the guest of Rampart Training in Sedalia, Colorado to conduct our flagship course, Red Dot Combat Pistol. We had twenty two students, all accomplished shooters with backgrounds in police, military, concealed carry and competitive shooting sports. We conducted the same course we have conducted for the last few years, but in the middle of the second day, it began to rain. What a great opportunity to see for certain, what a red dot pistol is capable of in the real environment. The rain was constant... Continue reading

Continue reading

When I teach a class I tell the students that my job is to teach them at three levels. One is to teach the mind as they need to know why they will be doing what they are doing. I encourage questioning and there are reasons why we do what we do…and they must understand those reasons. Two is the hands, or technical mastery. And three, most importantly is the heart, or how they should feel. How they should feel? Yes, because I am not a technical instructor teaching them the intricacies of bullet golf. I am a teacher of killers. And I am teaching them how to kill evil men…and all the intricacies of that action, whether internal or external. If you carry a pistol with you daily it is in anticipation of, perhaps that very day, of killing another man, or men. Thus all men who carry a weapon are killers, or anticipating becoming killers. If that were not the case, we would even be reading this and our belt lines would be shorn of all weapons. A... Continue reading

Continue reading