2021 PDN Training Tour Recap

Hey everybody. Welcome to September 21, Personal Defense Network live broadcast. And this time what we're gonna be doing is talking about the 2021 Personal Defense Network Training Tour. I am Rob Pincus, the Executive Director of Personal Defense Network, and 2021's Training Tour was very much like 2019's, after taking 2020 off. Obviously because of the pandemic, because we weren't sure at all in March of 2020 whether we'd be able to host courses, where we'd be able to host courses, whether people would wanna come outta their house to go to courses.

There were a lot of questions being asked. So we did take 2020 off officially, as a Personal Defense Network Training Tour, but we did not take the teaching of personal defense off of our schedule or our agendas. Every single one of the instructors that has participated in the past, every one of the instructors that participated in 2021, we were all out teaching on the ranges all over the country, coast to coast, just like always. But we did not have the structure of the tour around us. So we were really excited to get back into the touring in-person classes business at Personal Defense Network here in 2021.

And we had a great time, honestly, you know, you're a little bit skeptical sometimes when you have great momentum. I mean, for about a decade, we ran the tour eight years under the Personal Defense Network brand, and about seven years, I think six or seven years, with other instructors participating as well. And whenever you take a pause with something like that, rebuilding it is always gonna be a challenge. And getting it back to sort of where it was. I am proud to say that in terms of the number of classes, the number of students, we reached our goals, we matched what we did in 2019.

So no problems picking the ball up from where we put it down and moving forward, and again, moving forward into 2022. So if you attended a class, thank you very much. If you're affiliated with one of the sponsors or one of the instructor groups that trained with us, one of the venues that hosted us especially, thank you very much. Because the tour really is just an extension of what many of us do anyway, right? I'm gonna talk about some of the other instructors that helped out with the tour this year and why they're so important.

But what you should realize is that all of us would be out teaching anyway. And we have been out teaching anyway, right? The tour concept really started as, as a little bit of a joke. It started as a T-shirt in 2008. Somebody said that, you know, me traveling around the country, you know, traveling around Europe, traveling around the world, teaching combat focus shooting was kind of like a music tour.

I should do a tour T-shirt, and we did. So 2008 was the first time we did a tour T-shirt. And by 2010, we were so busy and our group of instructors was so busy that it made sense to not just randomly fly from point to point or drive from point to point, but really to set it up as a tour and give it some structure. And by 2012, the Personal Defense Network brand was the title sponsor of that event. And again, around 2014, we started bringing in other instructors.

So, it's been a really exciting decade's worth of touring officially, which really is just the second half of the last 20 years I've spent full-time in personal defense education. So, thank you everybody who made it possible and who participated, especially our contributing instructors. So one of the things I want to do here is, I'm certainly gonna talk about our sponsors. I'm gonna talk about our venues, I'm gonna talk about the classes. But the heart of the Training Tour is the instructors.

Now, I have been teaching, again, full-time, I left law enforcement, full-time law enforcement work in July of 2021. So just over 20 years I've had to focus on education and teaching classes, teaching defensive shooting skills primarily. And now obviously a lot of other aspects of armed defense and personal defense, whether it be through video, television, books, articles, but especially teaching out on the ranges. And it's something that I just can't even imagine not doing as I said, even last year when we had to put the brakes on and pause, I was back out on the ranges again as early as April and running classes for students all over the country in May and June, and all through last year and continuing to teach. Some of the classes have been a little different.

Some of the classes have been shorter duration, fewer students, especially on indoor ranges at first. But we've made it happen. The other people on the tour that have made it happen are incredibly important. As I get busier with running Personal Defense Network, working on other projects, a lot of the gun rights advocacy, the things that we do on that side, it just means less time to be on the range. So, whereas I might have been 60, 70, 80 classes a year for a few years, I'm down to about 50 classes a year.

So the only way we can get our over 100 classes, and I think it was about a 120 classes we had this year under the Personal Defense Network training banner. The only way we can get that in is with the help of some other incredible educators. Now, a couple of them are very specifically known to you. I'm keeping an eye on the chat room here. I see we have a whole bunch of people in there and I know we have a couple of feeds going.

We've got the live feed at personaldefensenetwork.com. We've got the YouTube feed, which I'm not able to monitor, but I'm sure someone in the control room here will let me know if there's an important question there I need to answer. And then I've got our chat through directly through PDN. That's what I'm looking at. So if you have a question or a comment, throw it in there.

Especially if you trained with one of these other instructors. Obviously, if I'm trusting them to be part of the PDN brand, you know that I like 'em. Some of them I've worked with for many, many years. Some of them are relatively new to the PDN team, the PDN family. But if you have a personal question about these instructors or a personal experience you wanna share, throw that into one of the chats or the comments, that would be great.

The first two I'm gonna talk about are very well known to anybody who follows Personal Defense Network, Barrett Kendrick and Deryck Poole. They have both been lead instructors inside of the Combat Focus shooting world, the IC training world, and most recently, for the last few years inside of the USCCA world, teaching the defensive firearms... The Defensive Shooting Fundamentals class, the DSF class. And we have a lot of acronyms floating around. So the Defensive Shooting Fundamentals class levels one and two, they are really the lead instructors.

They've been the guys doing most of the instructor development all across the country. Barrett just got done with a class in California. Deryck just just got done with a class down in Florida. But outside of the instructor development work that they do, they also spend a lot of time teaching the end user courses. And then that's primarily what the Personal Defense Network Training Tour is all about.

It's about taking the information that you get from PDN, including the information that they put out as the co-hosts of Personal Defense Network's, live show training talk, and taking it to the ranges or to the classrooms all around the country. So Deryck and Barrett have been with the tour for a long time and with PDN for a long time. Some other people that you know from Personal Defense Network and the tour in previous years, extended contributions they've made inside of our community. Klint Macro, Trigger Pressers Union, Don Edwards of Greenline Tactical and Kevin Dixie of No Other Choice. And he also joined us along with Don and Barrett and Deryck on our product showcase.

The LIVE Product Showcase that we did, I believe that was actually, I'm trying to get my months right, I think that was all the way back in May. So we're gonna see some clips from that live product showcase because we involved a lot of our tour sponsors in that event, and that was a lot of fun. We're gonna be doing another one of those, by the way, in less than a month, so mark your calendars, October 14th, we're gonna be doing a live event and some of these same instructors will be involved, including one of our newest editions to the PDN family, who was just out on doing some video with me about a month ago. You're gonna see her first video with Personal Defense Network later in this live broadcast. We're gonna slip that was Jerah Hutchins.

Jerah Hutchins was with Clearing the Chamber training down in Texas and she did some travel classes, she did some tour classes this year, as well as becoming a much more prominent instructor, I think on the national radar. She's got a great bunch of social media content out there. She has joined the PDN family and joined us on the tour. She will be part of that LIVE Product Showcase as well. And Aquil Bey.

Aquil Bey is someone that I met just a couple years ago. I've seen him grow in terms of his influence in the training community. He's a former Special Operations guy. He works in the medical community now, and providing emergency medical services. But he runs classes under the Tailored Defense Group all around the country.

He actually taught a course on the tour this year out in Colorado, about a day before I got to the location. And I saw some of his stickers and his marking left there on the range. But we'll talk more about specifically his classes, which are the LiteFighter 365 classes, which were really interesting and cool. Definitely expanded the content on this year's Training Tour. Talk more about them in a little while.

That was our instructor group this year. So it's one of the bigger instructor groups that we've had and one of the most diverse, in terms of experience, on both background experience and teaching experience, as well as the classes that were offered. So when you look at this group of people, you've got a couple of people who have been, you know, civilians all their lives. They never were an armed professional. They weren't in the military, they weren't law enforcement officers.

You know, Barrett and and Jerah are great examples of people who come to firearms as civilians, who teach civilians. Barrett has done a lot of work teaching law enforcement as well, since he's been involved in our program over the many, many years that he's been teaching. And Jerah now serves with the Texas Guard and she does a lot of instruction there as well. LTC training that she's involved in in Texas, of course, is no longer necessary, but she still does provide that training and she's gonna be providing that LTC training license to carry training to first responders who now can carry while on duty under certain circumstances. And I'm talking about non-law enforcement first responders, medical, fire personnel, things like that.

So she's doing that as well. So I really do like celebrating when instructors become very accomplished and very well-known for their craft as far as teaching and educating others to use pistols or rifles defensively, when they don't have that military or law enforcement background. Because I think it's one of the biggest questions that people have when they don't have that background and they come into wanting to get into an instructor development course, whether it's through IC training company or directly through the USCCA. They go, "You know, but I don't have that background," or "I don't have that resume." You don't need any magic background, you don't need any magic resume. And sometimes I can assure you, it gets in the way.

Then you look at guys like Deryck, you look at, and sorry, I should also go for Klint Macro too, right? Klint was not law enforcement or military and he's obviously one of our very accomplished instructors. He now works directly with the USCCA as well. He was one of the first people that didn't come from the IC training company certification background that made the master instructor level, or training counselor level in that DSF program over at USCCA. But he's another one that doesn't have that armed professional background.

On the other side of the equation, you've got Don Edwards and Aquil, these guys both were in the Special Forces, US Army Special Forces, and Deryck, who served in the Marine Corps. And all of them have deployed overseas. All of them did a lot of work, you know, real world work with firearms in hand, defending our country, defending liberty and working with other people in other countries doing the same thing. And now they're taking what they learned and with some translation, applying what is appropriate, teaching what is appropriate, and themselves evolving to understand that life is different when you're not an armed professional. And certainly, the use of defensive force and the use of firearms, and the training to use those firearms is very different as well.

And that's why this is the Personal Defense Network and not the Professional Defense Network. Remember that. So it's great to have that mix, that diversity of experience. People based all over the country. They've lived all over the country, they've traveled all over the world, and I'm just incredibly proud to have them as part of the PDN family, part of the tour this year, 2021.

And Kevin Dixie is also another one who, like me, has some law enforcement background, but also has focused almost exclusively now in the training world, on the civilian population, right? So he's a guy who, again, didn't spend time overseas, didn't spend a lot of time in uniform, worked in law enforcement in a corrections capacity in Missouri. I worked in law enforcement in Tennessee and in Virginia, and then served as a reserve training officer for a couple of different agencies in Colorado. But again, neither one of us claim a law enforcement career. We do have that experience and we have provided training to armed professionals, but really focus on the personal side.

So again, just seeing that width, breadth and depth of experience and trust me, I call on these people regularly. In fact, one of the last classes I took, I just was looking at the certificate on the wall at my office down in Florida. One of the last formal classes that I enrolled in, took and completed all the coursework, got the certificate for, was a class with Don Edwards, who now teaches a transition class for law enforcement. He's one of the very few officers approved for a large agency down in Florida to teach a transition class for red dot sight use. Of course, our sponsor Holosun makes that one, we're gonna talk more about them, the 509 Enclosed Optic down there for the pistol.

But he teaches a class and I actually shot one of those types of optics in his class and was really proud to have finished that, and have learned a lot from him. And he does a lot of instructor development work with our leadership group to make sure that they are able to accommodate students. And he's helped me accommodate students who are using red dots on their pistols as well. So we don't just teach you guys, we teach each other and rely on each other for quite a lot inside of, I think, the instructor community at PDN. We're gonna get into a couple of sponsored videos.

So I'm gonna interrupt this live broadcast, I'm seeing that some of you are are asking some questions, and making some comments. I'm gonna get to them after we go and talk about our first organization. It's Primary Arms. And of course Primary Arms does make optics. They make red dot sights.

They do magnified optics, variable powered optics. But what they do for us, is support what we're into, which is having all the equipment that we need for personal defense and being able to find it easily and get it delivered quickly and efficiently at a fair price. And that's why the Primary Arms Online Store was a Personal Defense Network tour sponsor this year for 2021. And during that live showcase, Deryck Poole talked about Primary Arms Online and what he likes about it and how maybe they could be the greatest source for you online, when it comes to getting your equipment. Let's take a look at his video from that live showcase earlier during the tour year.

Hey, Deryck Poole here. Hopefully you guys tuned in today and watched our LIVE Product Showcase that we were had, we were doing out here in Anson City. We talked about one of our 2021 PDN Training Tour sponsors, the Primary Arms Online website. And I wanna take a little time here to go through this website because if you were watching, you know, that, you know, once I got outta the military, I went and got my degree. I work, do a lot of work in the IT world.

And this website is really intuitive. It's actually really easy to use. And I just wanted to go through it with you guys for a little bit and let you get some more insight in how you can use it and what they have available out here at Primary Arms, primaryarms.com website, all right? If you look at it, they got a, you know, it's everything's broken down really well. You can go straight for All Products, or if you know what brands you're looking for, you can go straight to Brands, right?

Remember, today, let's start out with Brands. Today we had Steiner as one of the products that we were showing you guys. So let's see, do they carry Steiner? Hit that S, bring it down, alphabetically. Right there, Steiner Optics, right?

So if you were watching today, saw some products that you were interested in from the Steiner lineup, they have the full lineup of what Steiner has available for you. As you know, if you've been out looking for handguns, accessories, ammunition, things of that nature, a lot of it's not in stock. Well, click on Handguns. Let's go to Semi-automatic Pistols. They have everything broken down really nice in these different categories.

So you can really narrow down your search, what you're looking for, right? Right now in stock, they have some Polymer80s, some Smith and Wessons. Let's see, keep going. We got a lot of in-stock firearms. So if you're out there and still looking for that home defense handgun, Primary Arms Online is a good place to shop right now.

In stock, right? Let's find something that's not in stock, right? Here we go. So here we've got out stock. Let's look at the Springfield Armory Hellcat.

Click on it to check out the details. It's out of stock, right? But say this is the gun that you really want. A nice feature that Primary Arms has is they give you the ability to email you when it's in stock. Put in your email address, hit send, and you're put on the list so that you'll get notified right away when that firearm becomes available to you.

So that's a nice feature. Let's go back and check out a firearm that is in stock, right? We know that we can buy firearms online, but it does require an FFL transfer. Well, the nice thing about Primary Arms, they have it set up so that you can enter your FFL information on checkout. Now what if you don't know what FFL local dealer that you're gonna use?

Well, the nice thing about Primary Arms is you can actually go through the whole checkout process, click the box that you'll provide your FFL information at a later date, and secure your purchase. That way you don't have to worry about in this time right now, that you want the gun, but you don't know your FFL. Then by the time you figure out who your FFL is, the gun is no longer in stock. So that is another nice feature that they have here at Primary Arms. Let's look at a couple other things that they have here at Primary Arms, that you might not think they would have, right?

Maybe you're a builder, or you're looking to build your own handgun from a 80% lower, or maybe print one of your own handguns using 3D printing technology. Well, they have you covered here, right? We can go in here, click on Firearms, right? We can dig a little bit further. Are you gonna work on a pistol build or a rifle build, right?

Let's go here, let's click on this Builder's Kit and see what comes up. Boom. If you're working on a rifle, right? And you want to complete your rifle build, well, they have a section just for you in the Builder's Kit section, right? Same as before, right?

This is a really popular thing to do right now, given the times we're in. So things are outta stock. But as I showed you before, you have the ability to actually get notified when that product is back in stock. They actually carry gear, right? It's sort of your one-stop-shop, firearms, accessories, as well as your shooting gear, right?

Backpacks, gun cases, range bags, shooting mats, slings, sling mounts, hearing protection, right? Anything you could possibly need for that trip to the range or your first time out going to the range. Or maybe you just need to replace some gear, right? Optics, we already hit on the Steiner stuff, right? Well, they carry other brands as well, right?

Check out some red dot optics. What are they carrying there, right? So as you can see, the Primary Arms website really is set up as a one-stop-shop for you to be able to find what you want, find it easily, and if it's not in stock, a way to get notified when it is back in stock. So as you guys can see, there's a lot to be found at the primaryarms.com website. Hopefully if you're in the market for something, go out, give them a look.

They really are a one-stop-shop for everything you could be looking for to go out on the range to train or just to have some fun. That's primaryarms.com, a Training Tour sponsor for our 2021 tour. Now, if you're familiar with Primary Arms as an optics company only, which I'll admit, up to about, probably about a year ago, that's how I thought of them. They also have a very extensive and I think easy to use online store. So Primary Arms Online, what's your experience been with the Primary Arms Online Store?

And I know we have some parts out here that we're gonna talk about, but what about the store itself? Well, like you said, I have a computer science degree and I did a lot of web work, so intuitive website is a big deal to me. Like I, especially on phones, right? I got big hands, my eyes aren't that great. So my first test for anything is I grab my phone and say, "What does the website look like when I'm using my phone?" And the first thing right off the bat is it's set up that it works fine on a phone, works great on a laptop, and, you know, like the little, you don't have any incessant scrolling.

It's very easy to navigate by brand. Somebody did a lot of work on putting things into categories, making things really easy to find. So that's one of the things I've noticed. Some of the stores that I've used are set up, it's very, very hard. If you put like a brand that...

Let's say, I want parts, right? So I'm doing a lot of gun building now, if I want parts for a certain thing, you sort of kind of, it's very hard to narrow it down. I found Primary Arms Online really did intuitively understand what I was looking for and point me in the right direction. Oh yeah, they got a builder's category, right? So you just say, "I'm building an AR." boom, hit it.

And then they have that broken down into you can get rails, barrels, everything all in one kit or you can individually pick and choose. And so this rifle that Don and I were just shooting actually has a Geissele rail on here and it has a... This does not have the CMC Trigger in it. We've got another rifle over here we're gonna talk about with a CMC 2-Stage Trigger as well. But the barrel in this is a Primary Arms branded barrel that is actually manufactured by FN, which obviously FN's one of the best barrel-making companies out there.

So this is an example of some of the parts. We got Don Edwards, that was just on with me, actually put this together, and like I said, we have another one of the CMC Drop-in Triggers. I know that I've shot a lot of the CMC Triggers and I like 'em. Have you had a good experience with those? Yeah, I've tried their Glock Drop-in as well as their ARs.

You know, they're high-quality trigger. And this is the 2-Stage, like I said, this particular rail. Here's the thing, when it comes to building an AR, when it comes to picking your barrel length, picking your rail, picking the style of rail, the trigger, single-stage, 2-stage, whether it's flat or curved, the options are there. And as we know, it's been very, very hard to find exactly what it is you want in terms of things being in stock. So for example, this particular one, this 2-stage trigger that we have here as a sample, this is now out of stock and the fact that it's out of stock means that, well, you're gonna have to get a single-stage trigger or maybe a flat 2-stage trigger instead of this curved 2-stage trigger.

But the good news is with CMC and Primary Arms Online working together, maybe by the time you're watching this video or this evening, it's back in stock. But just keep an eye on that. And they have a real simple way to get updates too, right? Yeah. So for sales, have you signed up for the newsletter?

Have you been looking at that? Yep. Is it spammy? No, not at all, nope. And the other thing is you sign up and when you initially sign up, you get a coupon code for $12 off your first order.

So there you go, great overview I thought, by Deryck and he does have a really strong background when it comes to website design and all things IT, and he can be pretty critical. He was really impressed with the site when we first looked at having them on board with PDN and in fact, Primary Arms Online has sponsored some of the "Training Talk" television episodes, or I should say video direct streaming episodes that we do through PDN as well. So he really has paid a lot of attention to that website. You know, one of the things I wanted to do with this recap, we've got some great content out there and we've gone into some great detail on a lot of these products. Now if you're watching this, you could maybe be a member of PDN, maybe not, maybe you're not familiar with Personal Defense Network at all, but you came to a tour class, maybe you were familiar with the tour because one of the venues that you train at, or shop at, hosted a class.

Maybe you know one of the other instructors, you saw a link, or you're a customer of one of our sponsors. So one of the things I'd like you to do today is become more familiar with what Personal Defense Network is all about. The tour is just one aspect of what we do. Obviously we started as content creators, educational content for people who were interested, primarily in armed defense, but really any aspect of self-defense or security. So we're gonna go to another video and this again, is one of those from that beautiful weather, sunny day that we had last spring.

A day like we have today in Minneapolis outside of the studio. And this time Barrett Kendrick is gonna talk to you about another one of our sponsors. And this is Weber Tactical. This is a first-time sponsor for us. And I will tell you that my personal experience with their holsters, not only am I satisfied with the holsters, I'm impressed with the holsters.

And for those people who are looking for a Kydex, good, durable, fairly priced holster, this may be the one for you. And Barrett's gonna talk a little bit specifically about their TRIFECTA holster in this clip. I'm Barrett Kendrick with Bearco Training. We just finished up the first ever LIVE Product Review Showcase for Personal Defense Network. I hope you had a chance to watch that, but if not, here's a video that we did on the Weber Tactical holsters and you can see exactly what we covered during that Product Showcase.

What we need to do is have a good, secure way to carry our firearm. Now this is a company, this could be relatively new maybe, to some of you because it honestly is a relatively young company. It's one that I've only become familiar with, maybe within the last six months. And it's Weber Tactical. Now Weber, has a mindset to come to holsters from outside of the holster community and say, "Let me look at it this way." Which immediately resonates with me.

Barrett, you are I think, when I look at the whole array, we've had probably 30 different contributors at Personal Defense Network. You're the every guy, right? You're a family guy, you're active in your community, you're an entrepreneur, you've had real jobs, you go out with the kids, you go out with your wife, you get dressed up, you sometimes you don't wear shoes 'cause you're from Louisiana. You kind of run the whole gamut. And you have provided a great deal of very, very practical advice and training in Bearco Training and at Personal Defense Network for a lot of different types of people.

So I know you have a practical mind to this. Talk to me about your impression, all right, talk to everybody else about your impression of the Weber products. Certainly, I've got, and I'm actually wearing one, Rob was wearing one. In fact, I think all of the guys are currently wearing the TRIFECTA, from Weber Tactical. Now the TRIFECTA is designed to give you an option to where you could carry the same holster inside waistband or outside waistband, on the front of their body, on the side of your body, whatever your preference is.

That's the TRIFECTA portion of that. Now we've seen different holster manufacturers that have, you know, tried to also do this design previously. And a lot of times what ends up happening is, they don't really do everything extremely well, right? They kind of just do a poor job at each of those inside waistband or outside waistband. And I think Weber Tactical really paid attention to how to increase the really, the holster and make it better for just those positions.

And so the TRIFECTA holster, we've got it sitting out here. Like I said, I am carrying it currently outside waistband, but it comes with your different options where you have the mod clips, that if you want to carry it inside waistband, where it has a mod wing that is on there, to where the... And I've got 'em all apart right now, but with that mod wing, it allows us to be able to carry it inside waistband and as your belt is applying pressure to it, what it ends up doing is twisting and turning the gun, you know, to where it falls closer towards the body. You know, on inside waistband, they've got the discrete carry clips that you're gonna have that they're gonna be able to come with. A discrete carry clip, the way that it sits on there, it really locks into the belt extremely well.

As we're sitting there working with that, it has a single point of holding there. So what that allows really, is when you have a single point, as you sit there and change and sit down, it provides a little bit of freedom. And for some people, they're gonna find that it's gonna be more comfortable when we're working with that single clip, as opposed to two separate clips where it really positions that well. So we've got the different options that come with that. You know, on the outside waistband system, the way that it accomplishes that, is it's got another shell that comes onto the outside and it snaps all of this, screwing it together.

And of course we've got the belt loops that drop on there as well. And the belt loops and the way that that sits and the way that I have this sitting on me now, with the belt loops and the way that they sit with the wider platform, with that shell that's going over the top of it, what that does is really pulls the gun in closer. And this is where I've seen several other designs that didn't do a very good job of keeping the gun coming close to you. So that really allows for that, that more of that pancake feature. Now the holster itself is made from a Boltaron, I believe is what they call that.

Very similar in appearance to traditional Kydex holsters. Now I've been wearing Kydex holsters probably going back, you know, 12, 13, 15 years. You know, over the years of that, we've definitely seen some evolution that's come through. But Kydex itself has always struggled with the brittleness, you know, where it actually ends up can crack if it ends up flexing a good bit. So this material is not Kydex, it is designed to be more durable to where you're gonna have less of those types of issues coming into play.

The holster is designed, you can see currently I am carrying, you know, with a red dot optic on the top of it, so that this holster is red dot ready. And that's true with all of their designs. You know, where they're all cut for that red dot. And they're also cut for suppressor sights. You know, being in that sight channel is gonna be deep enough.

I've got suppressor height sights on this one now, and whether it's inside waistband or outside waistband. So there you go. We've got the information there on the TRIFECTA holster and really just Weber Tactical holsters in general. One of the things that I really want you to get out of that is that the TRIFECTA holster is probably the first holster I've seen that has done a really good job of trying to almost be everything for everyone in terms of its adjustability. As you saw, Barrett was there wearing it outside the waistband.

I had several students wear the holster outside the waistband as a loaner holster during the tour in my classes this year. None of them had any problems with it. It holds the gun high and close, easy to get on and off the belt, depending on which clip you're using, whether you have to take the belt, you know, open your belt up to do that or not. But it was very, very well-suited towards the training environment. Now, personally, I wore it set up with a single clip in the appendix position quite a bit when I was evaluating it, testing it out, and including some of the demos days during the Personal Defense Network Training Tour, 2021.

So that versatility isn't something you see. I mean, people who've watched PDN know for years that I've used a CrossBreed Holster, appendix carry, as my primary carry method because I enjoy the comfort that it gives me. But that holster is a dedicated appendix carry holster. It's not something I'm gonna use outside the waistband. It's not something I can move over to the three or the four o'clock.

It's a one-use holster and it does that one thing really, really, really well. The TRIFECTA holster is something that's a little more versatile, and from an instructor's standpoint, having those out on the range makes it easy for me to accommodate what students need in the moment. And if you are new to firearms and you aren't even sure yet where you're gonna carry the gun or inside the waistband, outside the waistband, this and that, it can be expensive to try to buy a bunch of different holsters and figure out what's going on. The Weber Tactical solution might be the right solution for you, especially just as you're getting started and you may find something more specialized as you move forward. Someone asked in the chat here about 2022, I am gonna talk a little bit about the plans for 2022 coming up towards the end of this broadcast.

Right now I want to talk about a little bit more about what we did in 2021. And one of the great things about the tour is that it gets us into every part of the country. Now, while I personally may not go to every part of the country, I try to hit as much of the map as possible. So generally I'll go up the East Coast and then I'll kind of zigzag through the middle of the country, through the Midwest, across the Plains into the Rocky Mountains and then I'll head south again and get down into California or Nevada, and then turn back up the West Coast and end in Washington State. That's been my traditional path.

This year, again, because of the interruption, my path was a lot more like 2009 before the tour was more organized than it was 2019. And it really was a zigzag. I mean it was, the schedule was a mess, but it was fun and it was great to be back out and I realized that in some states there were restrictions, in some parts of the country, there was more apprehension about going out and training in groups, indoor ranges versus outdoor ranges. All of these things play a factor in the planning. So what we did this year for me, for my personal tour schedule is I just started plugging things in as they came.

And I always say like when I was first getting started, and certainly after Valhalla shut down and I started traveling again, if somebody was willing to host, the answer was yes. And we figured out how to do it. And that was very much how the 2021 tour came together for me. There were several weeks where I was in multiple time zones, back and forth, zigzagging across the country. Probably the most exciting week of that had me teaching in, where was I?

Washington State, New Jersey, and Tennessee, all within five days. And what I actually did was I drove from Colorado to Tennessee, staged the vehicle and gear there, flew out to Washington State, taught a class with Mike Hughes, which was a great class, Next Level Training and developers of the SIRT pistol. Mike Hughes and I taught kind of a prototype class, which I'll talk a little bit more about, or the pilot class, I guess you would call it. I'll talk about that towards the end of the show, what we did exactly, but we had great fun doing that. Normally, traditionally, for many years, I would end the tour because he's about 30 feet from Canada, from the border in Washington there, I'd normally end the tour there.

This year I was there in August and I flew back to Tennessee, was at the sort of kickoff event at the Protect 1 Training site from MJ's Firearms. They are starting a new training facility outside of Knoxville. So we did an event there and then I went up to New Jersey and did a class at the new Recoil Range, indoor range there. I do classes on indoor ranges, I do classes, outdoor ranges. I even did a few classes this year on the tour that were classroom-only events without any live fire that then went into scenario rooms.

We did that at Cape Gun Works. We're gonna be doing a great gun makers match event in November at Cape Gun Works in Hyannis, Massachusetts. But we did a couple of courses this year on the tour up there that didn't get us on a live fire range at all. So, you know, we're always trying to find ways to bring information to you that you're interested in. My classes did take me to about 22, 23 states this year.

We actually hit over 30 states on the tour as a whole. One of the states, for example, that I did not teach in on the tour, was Texas, believe it or not. I've been down in Texas, I've done some events in Texas, but I did not teach in Texas during the tour this year, but Jerah Hutchins did, and I think Kevin Dixie did as well, and Barrett or Deryck, one of the two of them did a class down in Houston as well recently. So we had a lot of good representation for the PDN Tour in that state, but I was not there. We also had classes go on in Utah, which I did not participate in.

I think one of the states that several of us taught in was Florida. Another state that several of us taught in was Colorado. I think at least three of us, if not four of the instructors taught in Colorado this year. I know that I taught there, Aquil taught there, Don Edwards taught there. Barrett Kendrick actually taught there as well.

So there we're up to four of us. It's really amazing when you look at the map and you see just how much area we cover in a period of five months. The tour this year kicked off at the end of March and went all the way through the first day of September, we officially ended the tour on September 1st this year. People ask why we don't do the tour year-round, right? I mean, I could have added some other classes I did in Massachusetts right after Labor Day weekend, to the tour.

Well, that's one more venue, you know, another visit to that state. Why not just kind of keep it going the whole year? Well, it's important for me and I think for the sponsors, for Personal Defense Network, the whole family, that it is an event, that it's seen as something that, you know, it has a start, it has an end, there's something to talk about kind of every day or at least every week, all the way through. And this gives us the opportunity also to recap, you know, to put a mark and say, "Okay, the tour is over. The tour was a great success." As I said, we approached 1,000 students.

If you go across all the classes, all the instructors and all the venues, we reached about 30 states. And, you know, in the past years, we've done international classes as part of the tour as well. And certainly we could see that coming back now that international travel is opening back up. So that may be one of the things. I may have prematurely done a little bit of teasing there for the 2022 tour.

Let's get back in to our sponsors because, again, without the sponsors, the tour is really just the disparate collection of instructors saying, "Okay, we're all sort of collaborating." But under the Personal Defense Network banner, PDN being the title sponsor of the tour, we do have these other companies that support us. And one of the companies that came back for the tour this year that I was really proud to work with and I always have been proud to work with and impressed with is Holosun. You know, why does Holosun have a special place for me? Holosun is one of those companies, where I saw their products in students' hands. I heard about their products, I read about their products, and I just went out and purchased one of their products.

I wanted to try it out myself. So before I knew anybody at the company, before we had any professional interaction, I don't even think I so much as had gone into their booths at the SHOT Show, or anything like that. I just went ahead and ordered one of their products and I got it in my hands, started using it, started passing it out to students because as those of you who follow me or followed past tours know, for me, a big, big part of the product isn't whether I like it or it's useful for me, but whether or not the students, those of you in the audience who come to classes, find the products valuable, if they're available to you, if they're fairly priced for you, things like that. So Holosun's certainly incredible value, very rugged and durable, survives me, survives the way I sort of abuse my gear, especially the loaner gear that I abuse, the students abuse. And it just sort of lives, bouncing around in a truck or a box somewhere between classes.

And that being, I was so impressed with the Holosun product, that I started talking about it. They saw me talking about it, they reached out and now we've had a great relationship for many years, including their sponsorship of the tour. One of their latest and greatest things. Now on my carry gun, I have, if you follow Personal Defense Network, you know that just this year I made a video sort of saying, "Okay, You know what, I've changed my mind on this. I've evolved my thinking on red dot sights on pistols." And it's not that, you know, there was always a sort of a balancing act with them, right?

They enhance your ability to predict where the bullet's gonna go, control deviation under a very narrow set of circumstances that aren't the most likely set of circumstances for personal defense. On the other hand, they came with some negative factors. Well, I already mentioned Holosun really did a lot to reduce one of those negative factors, which was cost. One of the other things that reduced the cost impact is the fact that just about every major firearms manufacturer now offers their most common and appropriate defensive pistols already cut for a red dot sight. And that is a huge win as well.

So you've dramatically reduced cost. Obviously we talked about Don Edwards, you know, the training cycle, the learning curve on red dots. Guys like him have really cut the learning curve down, helping instructors and students understand how to use these products well. A team-up between Primary Arms and Holosun, the Vulcan reticle with its corrective 65 MOA dot. We've done some videos on that you can find that on social media.

That's another amazing product. But the one product that I wanna feature right now is something that a lot of people were curious about on the tour this year. And it's this optic right there. It's the 509 fully enclosed red dot sight. And I also think that's a game changer and a leap forward in terms of viability on a defensive pistol.

So let's take a look at it, a quick video where I talk about some of the features of this 509. This is the Holosun, HE509T, and it's a titanium housed, closed reticle red dot sight for competition or defensive pistols. Now it has a proprietary mount, it has a side access battery tray, which means you don't have to take it out of the mount to change the battery. And of course the trademark of Holosun, it also has a solar capable powering system as well. It's adjustable for a reticle that is a dot, or a circle dot.

And in fact, that's something a lot of people are looking for because a lot of people new to red dots are considering, not only whether or not they want an open or a closed design, but also which reticle they want to use. Now this one has 10 daylight and two night vision settings. So you can compare it to other models from other manufacturers, when you consider the value and the quality that you can get from Holosun. So take a good look at the 509T. Again, it's a rugged titanium closed housing red dot sight.

That may be a perfect choice for you when it comes to a defensive carry or staged pistol. Like I said, that was a quick video. But I do really think this enclosed emitter is another big leap forward because it takes away one of the potential, or a couple of the potential failure points of the open system, the reflex-type reticles that we're used to, the reflex-type sights that we're used to. So yes, these are a little bit pricier, but they're a lot more rugged and, again, a lot easier I think to solve some of the problems you might have from dirt, or water or blood or whatever's gonna get on the one of those surfaces. Just a much quicker, easier wipe without the risk of the actual emitter being blocked by any kind of debris or dirt that gets in there, or damaged potentially as well.

So, a big leap forward, the 507K is the one that I'm using on my single stack, Glock 48 that I carry for my personal defense or my MDC, most day carry. If I'm not on a plane or in Europe, or somewhere else where I'm not carrying, or doing something where I'm not carrying. But that 509, from a duty perspective, or for a full-size gun home defense gun, if you carry a full-size gun, that is the way to go. We're gonna get one more sponsor in before I get into sort of the classes and the tease for 2022, some more information there. And this next sponsor is Winchester Ammunition.

Now Winchester Ammunition is a company that I have worked with for a long time, probably over a decade. I've done a lot of work with them. Run their pistol ranges at SHOT Show, at the demo range. I've done some development work with them, done some testing with them, and really tried to share with people, you know, what it is that makes Winchester just that much different and I think that much better when it comes to personal defense ammunition. Now, as Winchester knows, everybody knows, if their ammo doesn't work in your gun, it doesn't matter how good the bullets perform when they strike the bad guy, if they're not reliable, they're not reliable.

But what I find is that the like vast majority, very, very, very rarely have I encountered any student that legitimately has a problem running their defensive ammo. They've got several different lines of ammo. The Defender ammo is their standby, it's the go-to, it used to be known as the PDX line. The Silvertip is their older line, and their newest line is the USA Defender. The USA Defender round is an evolved design that is quite different than anything else they've offered.

And one of our newest instructors was recently out on the range and did a demo, a gel shot demo, where she's gonna talk about this. You're gonna see what the bullet actually is supposed to do and did do during this demo. One of our newest instructors with one of our newest sponsors on the tour, because this is actually their first year sponsoring the Personal Defense Network Training Tour, even though though I've worked with them for a number of years. So a new bullet, a new instructor, from our newest tour sponsor, Winchester Ammunition. Hello, my name is Jerah Hutchins.

I am a PDN Network Instructor and I own Clearing the Chamber, which is a training company out of Texas that focuses on women and youth. When I teach women, I get a lot of questions about ammunition. And we're gonna answer some of those today. So we're going to be looking at the USA Ready defensive ammunition from Winchester. This is a 124 grain round and we're gonna be testing it through an FBI standard 10% gel block.

Now, some things about this round that you need to know. Not a bonded bullet. And that's one of the reasons why we wanna test it today is 'cause we wanna look at uniform distribution and we wanna look at penetration, okay? So we wanna look for our standard sort of 12 to 15 inches, maybe 15 to 18 inches depending, through this gel block. We also wanna look at sort of the technology that Winchester's come out with regarding this round.

So they've got this Hex-Vent technology and you can see it right here through the hollow point. So they've got this rigid insert. And what that does, is it protects the hollow point from obstruction while kind of channeling forces in there for a more uniform expansion. So why do we need to know this? A lot of people have a lot of different ideas about what kind of ammunition they should use in their carry gun.

And to answer the question, we don't know who we're shooting. We don't know if it's the 90-pound meth addict, we don't know if it's the 300-pound gym rat. And from an anatomy perspective, all the good stuff is kind of way in there, right? We've got a ribcage and a sternum kind of protecting the most vital organs that we kind of wanna hit in defensive situations. So we're gonna test this round today.

We're gonna look at that penetration through the gel block. We're gonna look for that uniform expansion, and we're gonna see what it's made of. So as you can see, we have our gel-block set up back here. It is the FBI standard 10%. That's important because that is the standard in the industry for ballistic testing.

We also have some fabric over the front of it for two really important reasons. Number one, your assailant probably isn't going to be naked. And number two, the Hex-Vent technology that Winchester boasts, claims that it keeps there from being any clogging there in the projectile area. So we're gonna test that for accuracy. All right, so let's take a look at the evidence.

The first thing that we wanna look at is the measurement, how deep of the penetration did we get? So this is a 16 inch block, and you can see that we are right at 15 and a half inches, which is really, really, really what we wanted. 12 to 15 inches or really 15 to 18 inches is what we want. So we got that. So check mark there.

We also have the trajectory here, so you can see that it's just a little bit upward, okay? And that was because I was at a low angle shooting it, but the linear penetration is really near perfect, and that's exactly what we wanted. All right, so we're gonna take it from front to back. And, ladies and gentlemen, this is a crash course in ballistics education. And a lot of people don't pay attention to these things when they look at, "What do I really want out of a defensive round?" So, here's what you want.

You want this perfect, near perfect, sort of linear penetration, right? So it's not veering this way or veering this way. It's just coming straight back. And then you can see the widest expanse right about here, okay? Where this wound area, this is the widest area, and this kind of shows you where the projectile started to expand, okay?

And then the projectile kind of moves back exactly how far we want it to go, right? 15 and a half inches is perfect. So we have this little debris area here where part of the jacket fell off, which is natural. We've got the Hex-Vent right here, and that's just kind of forward of center. So that means it did its job.

So the Hex-Vent is good. And then we have the projectile ending right at the back part of the 16 inch block, around 15 and a half inches. And we're gonna extract this and kind of take a look at it for ourselves. But from what we can see through this clear ballistic gel block, we have pretty much, from what I can see, a perfectly uniform expansion. This is exactly what we wanted out of this round.

All right, so there you have it. The USA Ready Defense. Now, USA Ready is a training and competition ammunition line that Winchester's had out for a while, and they supplied a bunch of that to our instructors this year to let our students utilize it on the range. And again, checking for that reliability, making sure that it works the way it's supposed to. And that's a great line for training ammo.

But now they've added the USA Ready Defense bullet, and again, it's a bullet that will be tested over time. We'll do a lot more testing with it. We actually have another video that'll be coming out from Personal Defense Network within a couple of weeks, and that'll show you multiple rounds compared to some of the older technology rounds also that do what they're expected to do pretty reliably, the Silvertip round from Winchester. So that'll be coming out. We're probably gonna be doing some gel testing also with this Defender Shotshell 12 gauge Shotshell as well, that you'll be able to see possibly as soon as our live broadcast.

I'm trying to set it up where we're actually gonna go ahead and do a gel-shot live, which we've never done through PDN before. And then let you see what happens right there during that product showcase. So the last thing I wanna talk about, and I am keeping an eye on the chat room, so again, if you have any questions about the tour, or the sponsors, or anything you've seen so far, I've mentioned so far, throw 'em out and ask. One of the questions was what was my favorite part of the 2021 tour? And it kind of, as I said before, for me, the excitement was just that we got the tour back.

And I'm really proud that we kind of pulled it off. It was a little bit more haphazard than it had been, let's say, you know, 2015, 16, 17, 18, 19, more of a well-oiled machine. This year was a little bit more of putting it together anyway we could. But for me, that's part of the excitement, right? So I think a week like the week where I was teaching in Washington, teaching in Tennessee, and then teaching in New Jersey, that was probably my favorite week of the tour, believe it or not.

You know, after the launch of the tour, things were kind of steady and just kind of run of the mill, you know, great classes, lots of different venues, some new classes. But doing that class with Mike, it was really, it was an adventure. So what we did was, if you're familiar with our Unorthodox Shooting Positions Blocks that we do in our advanced pistol handling. You've seen some of this material through PDN if you've watched for years. If not, you can go ahead and when this is over, search unorthodox shooting positions at PDN in the search bar, search it anywhere on the internet with my name on it.

You're probably gonna get linked to a PDN video. Things like laying on your back, seated in a car, on your stomach, laying on your side, kneeling, things like this. So, shooting in unorthodox positions on a live fire range, relatively easy to do some of the positions, you know, kind of your standard, standing, kneeling, seated, seated in a chair, pretty easy. When you start presenting it from the holster however, as soon as you get out of that upright position, you have a lot more potential for covering your own legs, especially in that seated position from the hip when you bring the gun past your leg up towards the shooting position or into the ready position. Certainly if you're in a vehicle and you gotta think about getting the gun up and crossing, pointing it out the window without covering yourself, which I see so many people do in all of their training.

And it's a cringe moment every time it happens. But I think most people don't even think about the idea that it's gonna be different because your legs are, you know, if my legs are here, I've gotta bring the gun up and over before I turn and drive it out. I don't wanna come outta the holster and cover my legs. So unorthodox shooting position training always has a higher level of risk. And one of the things we talk about incessantly with instructor development, is balancing risk and benefit.

You know, accepting a certain level of risk and then putting rules and procedures in place and our observation and our instructions in place to mitigate those risks down to a reasonable level. I would say like, instructors fill the gap between, you know, what the students should already be able to do, right? If I tell students, you know, "Load and make ready," and they're advanced students, I don't need to teach them that. It's load and make ready, okay. They're doing that on their own as I'm, you know, adjusting my glasses or whatever and getting ready to call a command.

Well, the command, what I have them do, maybe I don't think they can do that safely on their own. That's the reason I'm teaching them. That's the gap that gets filled by the instructor until this, you know, thing they've learned is now down here where they can do it on their own. Well, I'm gonna come up with another thing that's gonna be a little more risky that I have to be involved in. So what we did with Mike was, we got a bunch of SIRT pistols out there and we had students that, you know, we had a relatively small class, but a huge diversity in physical capability.

Everything from, you know, guy who works out, you know, hours, maybe hours every day. One of the guys there, very fit guy, very clearly, you look at him, "Okay, this guy's athletic, he knows what doing." Another guy, maybe he doesn't work out quite as much, but was definitely, you know, very athletic and fast, kind of a scrawnier guy, more like me. And then you had another guy there who was a bigger guy, carried a lot more mass on him and didn't move quite as fluidly as the skinnier guy. And then we had a woman there who was mobility challenged, who actually was on a cane. And then we also had a bunch of people that were kind of in the middle of all that.

So a lot of different challenges for getting into and out of the positions. And one of the other things that happened was we had people in the appendix carry position, we had people in the hip carry position, and we would let them practice and learn the presentation from the holster with the SIRT pistols. We'd lay 'em down on the ground, and put the targets out there, and all of them at once. Because normally when I would do this, let's imagine you got a bunch of students laying on the ground on their side. I have to either have one at a time on the ground or angle them all kind of in a very choreographed specific way, to minimize the risk that someone's gonna pull a gun out and flag everyone.

You can imagine if this is down range, let's just go to a seated position. If this is the down range area and I've got a row of students here right in front of me and behind me, well I can't draw a live gun, go across my legs and flag everybody that's in front of me and I wouldn't want to be flagged by everybody who's behind me. But with a SIRT pistol, it doesn't matter. So now imagine we have, okay, we put a little table or a barrel or whatever out here, I can now learn to present the gun from the holster with the SIRT pistol and get that first shot. You know, see the photons, get a bunch of practice reps there without worrying about covering anybody.

And then from this position, right, I can, as I'm going out to shoot, I just pause, put the SIRT pistol down, pick up the live fire pistol, drive out, and now I can practice shooting in this unorthodox position, which you can see this arm isn't fully extended. My head really isn't inside of the triangle. My body is sort of, the shoulder's kind of engaged, but this is a much harder position to manage recoil than this is, right? My traditional fully extended shooting position with my head inside of the triangle. So if I'm trying to manage recoil like this, it's gonna be different.

So live fire is incredibly important. We wouldn't wanna do all the training with SIRT pistol, but we also want to maximize our value and our time and minimize the risk with the presentation from the holster part. So, kind of morphing together a SIRT class for the higher level risk presentation, and a live fire class for the importance of deviation control, recoil management, making sure that we're actually managing real recoil and that we're getting the stimulus of malfunctions that might be induced by the unsupported platform, or slide-lock and the real stimulus of slide-lock and then reloading in that unorthodox position. All of those things become really important. So that was probably the most fun class that I was able to run this year.

And that was just kicking the week off, you know, and while I was out there, when I travel, I like to adventure around a little bit. So we got on some dirt bikes and rode around some of the beautiful mountain scenery right behind his range out there in Northern Washington. That was great. Got on a plane and met up with a bunch of great people out at MJ's Firearm Protect 1. That was the next stop during that week.

Had a blast with them. Did a session with everybody out there on the range, really working on non-diagnostic malfunction response and non-visually referenced gun handling, which is not a skill that everybody learns when they're learning defensive shooting. A lot of schools still teach people to look at their gun. We know you don't need to. I think it's an antiquated approach.

And there were a bunch of people there with a diverse training backgrounds that didn't include a lot of work with me. So we worked on that. Then I got in the truck and drove up to New Jersey, which, of course, is where I'm from. So saw a lot of friends and family that week as well. But also taught at a brand new range.

Recoil New Jersey, Recoil New Jersey, I think it's called in Monroe Township. So a first-time venue there. So, you know, a debut event at a venue that isn't even open in Tennessee. An event at an old standby range that was a new class with people that I've known and worked with for years. And then back with friends and family in New Jersey at another new range, coast to coast in five days.

That was my favorite week of the tour. So thanks for asking that question, Mason. The last thing I wanna talk about and that gets us right into it, talking about that class, is the diversity of classes that we had on the tour. The tour is a lot more than just making bang, bang sounds. Obviously I talked about the really great group of instructors that we had, I've talked about how we were all over the country, all different kinds of ranges and private land, public land, wherever we could get the opportunity to teach, classrooms, urban environments, rural environments, middle of nowhere environments, all that kind of stuff.

But the classes themselves also cover a wide variety of territories. Certainly handgun classes, just about everybody on that list teaches handgun classes. Just about everybody on our instructor list teaches a rifle class, or a long gun defense class of some kind. But really specific stuff. You know, Jerah mentioned in her introduction in that Winchester video, she really focuses on women shooters and youth.

A lot of families take classes with her. So those types of classes, familiarization, entry level firearms classes, all of us do a lot of that work. Kevin Dixie does a lot of that work as well. People who are really brand new to firearms, whereas a guy like Don Edwards probably spends, you know, very little time with brand new firearms owners. He's really working at the other end of the spectrum.

In fact, one of his specialty courses under Green Line Tactical is low light, no light classes. So the night fighter classes where he focuses on shooting with white light assistance, weapon mounted lights or handheld lights, or under night vision devices. So shooting with NODs, shooting rifles with thermal imaging as well. So he does a lot of really cool stuff with low light, no light. And I get it, a lot of people say, "Well what's that have to do with the, you know, the average person's personal defense?" Well, as night vision devices become more and more available, more accessible, less expensive, more and more capable, at a value, at a price that makes sense, I think we'll see an evolution much like we did with the red dots on pistols.

Where, is it top of the list? No. Is it top three of the things you need for home defense? Absolutely not. But will more and more people have night vision devices and and thermal imaging devices on defensive guns in the future?

Yep, you bet they will. And Don is one of the guys in the country who is really on the cutting edge of developing curricula for people, both armed professionals, certainly, and people that are interested in applying enhanced vision, night fighting skills, even just again, white light assisted fighting skills into their defensive preparation, and into their repertoire. So Don's doing that kind of work. I mentioned earlier the LiteFighter 365, a class that Aquil does through Tailored Defense Group. Just an amazing class from everyone I've talked to.

I've talked to people who've taken the class with a lot of different backgrounds. Some military, some not, some law enforcement, some not, and people who've hosted the course as well. I was talking to him about his own course directly. It's one of those courses that I really would love to take, right? When my schedule has an opening and he has an opening in his classes, I'm gonna get into this class.

It's a class that combines what we would call field craft, survival, hiking, patrolling, even just knowing what to pack, what to have on your body, moving, covering long distances with a firearm at the ready for defensive purposes. Whether it's defense from bears or defense from something else in a kind of worst case scenario. Civilization collapses, you gotta move from one place to another, you know, in the wilderness kind of situation. Or maybe it's just a survival situation. Camping trip gone bad, out off-roading, cross-country driving, you know, you've got a problem and now you've got your gear and you gotta get yourself and your family, you gotta find shelter, or you gotta find food out in the wilderness, or make the most of what you have.

And then you combine that with some military patrolling or small unit tactics concepts as well. And then you wrap into it on the application of shooting skills under situations that aren't what we would normally think. Not home defense, not around our car, not in the convenience store. So that LiteFighter 365 class is one of the most unique classes that we added to the program this year. And one of the other things we do in addition to again the stuff that that Klint, Deryck, Barrett and Kevin and I do all the time, Jerah and Aquil does, this idea of just teaching people how to be better prepared to use a gun to defend themselves or others when they need to.

We also then get more specific into some of the tactics and the scenarios in which we would apply those shooting skills. So home defense tactics, two-person armed defense classes is one of my favorite things to teach, where people have to start considering that not everybody out there in the world that has a gun is a bad guy or a cop. There's plenty of other people like us who just carry a gun for personal defense. And in the immediate aftermath of a defensive use of force, we had to pull the gun out and use it. When we look to the left and see somebody with a gun, they might not be an obvious threat, they might not be a threat at all and they might not be a cop.

And I don't think we do enough to train for those scenarios where, whether it's one of our friends or family members who is also armed, or a stranger who is armed and doesn't pose a threat to us. We want them to know that we don't pose a threat to them, and de-escalate that situation and maybe even get into a cooperative or collaborative scenario with them. Especially in an active shooter, you know, multiple threats, or unknown location of the threats in a public space, kind of a scenario. An incident that's going to involve multiple good guys who've never worked together. If you take our two-person armed defense class, you'll have a much better idea of how to be a leader in that moment.

How to, you know, de-escalate, de-conflict, would probably be the right word to use. You know, two good guys with guns that didn't know they were both gonna be there. We need to make sure there's not a conflict. We de-conflict that and then we work together to be as efficient as possible. So that's another one of those advanced classes we do.

The Armed Defense Around Vehicles class, we did one of those this year out in Nevada that was hosted by Homeland Protection. And those guys up... A private company, Homeland Protection is run by Ken and Maggie. They are both people who've been affiliated with Personal Defense Network. Maggie started the Women's Defense Network several years ago and Ken is one of our ICE certified instructors as well.

They hosted an Armed Defense Around Vehicles class, and I would say that's more of a science experiment than it is a shooting class, right? We very surgically and and very specifically look at what happens when bullets come into contact with parts of cars. I'm talking about skip, talking about penetration, talking about deflection, what the glass does, what you can expect is gonna happen when you shoot through a door or you shoot through one of the side panels, or you skip a bullet off the hood. And where are the best places to hide around a vehicle? And where are the places that you may or may not expect to have zero efficacy from a handgun, if you have a bad guy on the other side of it shooting at you.

When do you have to maneuver instead of trying to push bullets through the car? So all of these questions get answered in a very visceral, you know, one-on-one way. You can watch the videos here at PDN and other places, but going through that class and really experiencing it with your carry ammo, with your guns and watching everybody else shoot a diverse group of ammunition. And we also get into some shotgun stuff, some rifle stuff. And so that's a fun class as well.

That's another one that's offered during the tour. So really just a huge amount of diversity there. And that's what you can expect again in 2022. I do expect to put some international dates back on the tour again next year. I've already had a few instructors who still took this spring off, who have been involved with the tour previously, or were anticipating being part of the tour in 2020, reach out to me and say, "Hey, I'm sorry I missed 2021, I'm sorry we all missed 2020.

We wanna be back on the tour in 2022." And that's great. So we're gonna be expanding the number of instructors. That obviously means we'll also be expanding the number of venues, as we're all around the country. And probably adding a couple of other unique courses. And you can expect that Integrated Unorthodox Shooting Position course to be something that's offered more often.

Not just by me, but by several of the instructors under the ICE Training Company and Personal Defense Network umbrella. Because it's just a great way to get people into those positions efficiently for a high level, a high number of reps, very high level of realism for the presentation without the risk. And that's the thing, again, balancing risk and benefit, incredibly important. Question from David on YouTube. "Never participated in PDN Training Tour.

Where's the calendar and are we coming to Dallas?" Well, I personally, am gonna be down in Dallas Fort Worth area. I'll be speaking Saturday at the USCCA Expo, so I'll be down there, Barrett Kendrick will be down there. I think that Kevin Dixie will be down there. Jerah Hutchins will probably be there because she lives in Dallas. So I last taught in Dallas, the Dallas Fort Worth area at Defender Outdoors, which is an indoor range, but the store is called Defender Outdoors.

And then that was a great class there. They also do a lot of USCCA programs there as well. And as I said, Jerah is based down there. I would expect that you're gonna see some classes on the tour next year in Dallas. I may be down there this winter outside of the tour season.

But again, if you're in that region, David, come on by the USCC Expo. There's gonna be a lot of Personal Defense Network instructors and our sponsors' companies will be there. And it'll be a good time. So I'll be speaking, I think, Saturday afternoon on the demo-stage as far as that goes. So I appreciate everybody who tuned in to the live, whether you did it here at personaldefensenetwork.com, or out there in YouTube, or through one of the social media links that's out there.

And remember, if you're watching this as a recorded video, which I know the vast majority of the people who see this, will be watching as a recorded video, feel free to throw your questions in the comments for me or any of the other instructors. It may not get to 'em, you know, as quickly as we would if they were asked while we were live, but we will try to address them. If you are interested in hosting an event or attending an event next year, reach out to me, PDNTrainingTour.com. Another part of David's question, that is where the calendar lives. Obviously all of the individual instructors, we all have our own websites as well and our own social media, but PDNTrainingTour.com is the place to go for all the information about previous years, the sponsors, the calendar, and probably in February, we'll start updating that with the courses for 2022.

So thank you to everyone who participated, everyone who supported, everybody who watched, everybody who hosted, everybody who sponsored, and in any way at all empowered us to put on the 2021 Personal Defense Network Training Tour. It was a lot of fun. I believe it made a lot of impact. It influenced a lot of people and that's really what we're all about. We're an educational group and we're really passionate about bringing you as much information as we can.

That's why we do it through video. That's why we do it through PDN. We can reach a lot more people this way than we can standing on the range. But if you can stand on the range or sit in a classroom with us next year, we hope to see you there. Thank you.