To say that I qualified at all 3 distances for my concealed weapons permit. I was a little worried, because I had never had to do a quick draw and hip stance at close quarters before, but it was way cool.

The other thing I learned is that I really need to take some tactical classes. It's great getting your basic patch and all, but a big part of the day was spent having to go through different scenarios, and deciding if lethal force was justifiable or not. Our instructors talked a lot about the "totality of circumstance", meaning that you had to instantaneously take EVERYTHING into consideration, and then make a decision that could be life altering if you choose wrong (ie shoot the high school kid who was just drunk and trying to get into a house he THOUGHT was his) or life saving if you choose right (It was really Derrick Todd Lee posing as a drunk high school kid).

I also learned that the average human being can cover 20 feet in less than 1/2 second. This was graphically demonstrated to us by having to draw a dummy weapon (obviously) and acquire one of our instructors before they could cover 20 feet and kill us with an edged weapon. I had my gun out of the holster and was trying to adopt a "traditional" stance when I got my throat cut. Hence the need to learn some alternative stances and abilities.

It took me a long time to decide that I wanted to get a CCW license. The main thing I learned today is that it is time to get serious about learning how to use this weapon. I re-upped my range membership, and signed up for some tactical shooting courses taught by our instructors.

Oh, AK - I went to the range last week, and put 500 rounds through the Kimber Ultracarry. At the end of the day, I was shooting a TIGHT cluster, center mass. That is the pistol I used to qualify with, and she didn't let me down.