This past weekend I took the Low Light Pistol Skills class with Justified Defensive Concepts, a firearms training company located in Viginia, and the class was held at Echo Valley Training Center in West Virginia. JDC offers this class once a year, in November, and I wanted to attend it last year, but I was in the midst of significant back problems (story of my life) at the time and simply was not up to the drive plus a full night of shooting in the cold. Well, this year I made it, and the class proved well worth the drive and the cold weather.
JDC is led by Brett Harnish and Tim Chandler, both excellent instructors who are well respected in the training circuit. I was inclined to attend this class based on rave reviews of it from other people I know and respect, and they were certainly on point with their recommendation. This class kicked off at 3pm in the afternoon and went to about 10pm at night. With the current time change this gave about 2.5 hours of daylight to work the techniques before spending the majority of the time training in the dark. This is how night shooting classes are typically run, or certainly should be run, as it gives the instructors the opportunity to vet participant skills in daylight and to address safety concerns. But further, it allows for learning and refining techniques in daylight before applying them in the dark.
While I have taken other low light classes before, what separates this one from the rest is the focus on the actual shooting techniques, and the shooting performance is taken to a much higher level in this class. Other low light classes I have done worked entirely on humanoid, full-size, targets. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but in order to really engrain marksmanship skill in complete darkness with the use of a handheld light, JDC took us far beyond.
This class spends the daylight hours teaching and honing several different single-hand and double-handed gun+flashlight techniques. Weapon mounted light skills are also briefly covered, but the bulk of the curriculum focuses on handheld lights, as any class that is oriented to the concealed carrier should. Another aspect of this class that I particularly liked was the barricade work, as shooting from cover with white light changes things quite dramatically, and this skillset was very well demonstrated and practiced. There was also a good bit of knowledge drop on lumens, candella, and all that other science related to what makes lights do what they do, and what to look for in a good light, as you would expect.
Bottom line, this is the best low light class I have taken as it pertains to honing the shooting techniques. We burned about 300 rounds, which is a lot of shooting for a low light class. This was a small class and there were as many instructors as students, which is quite ideal for such subject material and a training environment that can prove dangerous if not appropriately managed. Fun fact, I was the only dinosaur using iron sights, but as it turns out, they still work after all these hundreds of years!
One of the benefits of this kind of class is the opportunity to vet your techniques as they apply to the gear you use. As an example, I did my best shooting single-handed with a “temple index” as has always been my preferred low light shooting method, and part of the reason for that being my preference is that it works very effectively with iron sights. I did, however, gain a greater appreciation for the tried-and-true Harris technique as well as some other two-handed variations as the instruction on these was excellent.
Overall, I think other low light classes certainly offer a lot in terms of light theory and use in deadly environments, as this course also does, but if you want to really learn to shoot well with the use of a light, this class has no equal. I highly recommend it.
You can see what JDC has to offer here:
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