Description

Gabe Suarez’s The Tactical Advantage: The Video is based on his best-selling book of the same title. Its focus is on teaching you vital handgun tactics. The tactics presented in this video hone in on armed movement through buildings with chapter on taking corners, T-intersections, opening doors, clearing rooms, traversing up and down stairways, hostile contact procedures, and putting it all together, including team tactics.Right off the bat, Suarez covers eight important elements when thinking about or applying handgun tactics. These include;1. Know your mission;2. There are no guarantees;3. Situational awareness: Be alert;4. Be stealthy;5. Do not assume;6. Control the distance;7. Move and act deliberately; and 8. Remember the basics of contact.The short description of each of these elements along with the comments Suarez makes start this video out with excellent advice.The first tactical situation Suarez covers is taking corners. He starts with cornering basics and the viewer quickly learns that going around a corner is not like you see it in the movies. Suarez teaches why you don’t want to go up next to a corner, stick your head out, and peek around like you see so many times on film. Rather, he teaches how to slice the pie or angular search and how to carry your weapon so the muzzle faces your threat and minimizes the chances of it giving you away. Before going to other situations, he covers cornering at close range, team cornering, and off-side corners. One lesson Suarez teaches that reminds me of his teaching in other resources such as Close-Range Gunfighting: Reality-Based Firearms Training for Realistic Situations is his emphasis on moving. He states that the more dynamic you move the safer you are. This makes perfect sense, you don’t want to be standing still if a bad guy is trying to do you harm.The next situation Suarez walks you through is going through T-intersections such as going through a door. This is where you could have a threat in either direction. Again he stresses that movement will save you. Suarez also emphasizes that this is very dangerous and the tactics and techniques he teaches only minimize the risk. It is still extremely dangerous! He also covers two bad guys, one on each side of the door.The next chapter of the dvd covers opening doors and clearing rooms. Here he covers door and room basics, room clearing with adversaries, and spring-loaded doors before moving to the next chapter on stairways. During the stairway chapter, Suarez covers going both up and down stairways. It is in this chapter that Suarez teaches tactics that may be controversial in some circles. The controversial teachings include an assessment of shoot/no-shoot decisions and the suggestion that you have your finger on the trigger when you break the plane of a stairwell when traversing up in a tactical situation. While some may think this controversial and not sound, I feel it makes a lot of sense if you face the worst possible scenario on that day when someone is waiting for you with a gun and the intent to kill you.Suarez then covers hostile contact procedures in which you are uncertain about the situation. Should you shoot or not? He gives a good demonstration of how to command the bad guy to do what you instruct and reminds the viewer that you do not have to be polite to a bad guy. He also demonstrates the difference between action and reaction and why he teaches to shoot in certain situations where the bad guy has a gun.The dvd finishes with a section on putting it all together and team tactics. In this section Suarez walks through the various situations of armed movement through buildings with two others doing the clearing and him talking us and them through it. A short conclusion follows.