19 Mar 19
“Polite Society” Tactical Conference, 2017, Little Rock, AR
Tom Givens’ now-famous annual “Polite Society” Tactical Conference just concluded. This year, it was in Little Rock, AR at a little-known, but expansive, military training facility I didn’t even know was there!
Over 350 attendees this year, nearly all experienced Operators looking to expand, advance, and refine our tactical skill and knowledge repertoire.
Many live-fire and lecture Classes. I do my best to attend all of them! Also a standard live-fire handgun shooting-skills test in which we all participated. Vicki took first place in the Women’s Division!
On the premises was the largest shoot-house I’ve ever seen! My colleagues, John Holschen and Gary Greco, conducted a popular hostage-rescue exercise there (Airsoft), and many tested their tactical skills therein, including me! Watching from above, I for one, was amazed and discouraged by the way so many aspiring Operators sloppily blundered their way through the exercise, consistently making poor use of cover and getting ambushed time after time! Tactical movement inside buildings, combined with skillful use of cover, is something upon which we all need to brush-up!
My friends, Manny Kapelsohn, Andy Branca (author of the immensely popular book, “The Law of Self-Defense,” which I recommend to everyone), Skip Gochenour, Bill Aprill, Tom Givens, and John Murphy all presented wonderful lectures on the Art of dealing successfully with what we all laughingly call our “criminal-justice system,” while simultaneously living through toxic contacts with VCAs, which we all do our best to avoid. This information is critically important, and I learned a great deal from every one of them.
I hesitate to even mention Instructors, for fear of not mentioning all of them, but all have valuable information to share.
This annual event is one which should be attended by all aspiring Operators! Who naively think we know something about this Art, will quickly, humbly discover there is much left to learn! For one, I do, every time I’ve attended!
Next year’s event will be around the same time, and likely in the same place.
Not to be missed! I recommend attendance to all my students and Instructors.
Get hold of Tom Givens at rangemaster.tom@gmail.com
/John
