Trauma Management/Injured Shooter Pistol Course – After Action Report
11-3-14
Council Bluffs, IA
LHGK, Inc. Rob Schoening
We began the day with discussing basics concepts of firearms, safety, shooting fundamentals and shooting principles. We first shot a diagnostics drill of 5 shots in 5 seconds at five yards, we did this cold to get a feel of where we were at. We worked on sights and trigger and I appreciated the attention to detail of focusing on the fundamentals. One of the things I really liked about this block of instruction was the amount of time we spent drawing our firearm and not pulling the trigger. We talked about how not every situation is a shooting situation and we need to be aware of the changing dynamics of a situation before we always just shoot.
Prepping the trigger was encouraged and we discussed how once we’ve made the decision to fire we can being prepping the trigger so that when we are ready to shoot, we’ve already eliminated unnecessary trigger travel. We then began some accuracy drills and worked on “trusting our sights.” We shot our pistols at 25 yards, then backed up to 50 yards and shot the same target. Once we hit that we backed up to 75 yards and even shot the same target at 100 yards. The 100 yards we did from the prone position but it was comforting to know my pistol is capable of hitting a vital zone at that distance.
From there we began some of the injured shooter concepts. We did strong hand only, drawing shooting, reloading and malfunction clearing. Then we did weak hand only drawing, shooting, reloading and malfunction clearing (Weak hand, support hand, other shooting hand, left hand, whatever you want to call it). Reaching around with my left hand to safety and securely draw my firearm from my right side was quite a challenge but I’ve figured out how to do it. I enjoyed these courses of fire as they challenged me to reach and stretch in difficult positions while solving problems under time.
Over lunch we discussed Rob’s HAS system of managing trauma. The acronym HAS is easy to remember because I want to know what HAS to be done. H – Hemorrhage. A – Airway. S – Shock. We were taught ways to treat penetrating wounds of different kinds, pressure, wrap, wrap and pack, occlusive dressings and even tourniquets. After that we went over one and two-man drags and different ways to safely move conscious and unconscious bodies.
Next, we did a module where we learned how to safely deal with a moving vehicle if the driver becomes unconscious or unable to safely operate the vehicle. We went over some simple techniques to take control of the steering wheel and pedals as well as moving the unconscious body to the back while still maintaining control of the vehicle. I was surprised at how difficult it was to move around the front seat of a car and get to the other side. It was a good exercise.
Then we moved on to scenarios. We put all of these skills to use in three-man scenarios where we had to make decisions, eliminate threats, fix wounds and move bodies. We did these a number of times and after each scenario we were left with a sense of wanting to try it again to fix our mistakes. The debrief time after each scenario was helpful to recall what we did and why. I found these scenarios the most beneficial part of the day. Each one of us learned something and we left excited and wanting more
