Using The Mantis System To Maximize Real World Defense Scenario Training
There’s one opinion on this planet that proves to be so true that it becomes representative of fact. This opinion-turned-fact is simply that shooting guns is fun. We all know this, but it doesn’t mean that guns are toys and should be treated as such. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
The vast majority of gun owners are willing to use their firearms to defend their family, neighbors and themselves if a situation arises, regardless of if they carry outside of the home or not. For this reason, firearms should be treated first and foremost as a defense tool meant to save the life of you or a loved one if you find yourself in such circumstances.
At Mantis, we know first hand that dry fire training makes you a better real world shooter. Having the additional tools you need (in order to learn from your mistakes) in the palm of your hand gives you additional vital information for improving your shooting accuracy and keeping your decayable skills sharp.
The reality is, dangerous situations happen all over the world on a daily basis, and the best way you can prepare yourself for a possible altercation is to train for it as often and effectively as possible. Throughout this article, we’ll be discussing how you can use our MantisX line of products to maximize your real world defense scenario training, both with dry fire training and live firing on the range.
Why Real World Training Is Important
Firearms and motor vehicles are quite similar in many ways. Both are tools in the right hands, and both are dangerous in the wrong hands. Both can be used to achieve a goal, and both can be utilized in a hobby-only fashion. Both can be deadly on accident, and both can be deadly with intention. If mishandled, both vehicles and firearms are fully capable of being fatal. Consuming drugs or alcohol while handling a firearm or a motor vehicle is never a good idea. I can go on and on, but I do have a point with all of this.
Real world training is imperative if you expect to be able to respond to outside factors while both driving a vehicle or protecting yourself in a self-defense situation. If you’re the kind of person who is accustomed to only driving on empty roads going 20 miles per hour, then driving during rush hour on something like a Southern California freeway may be too overwhelming for you.
Likewise, if you’re only accustomed to firing your handguns at the shooting range, with no stress or urgency involved, then you likely won’t perform as needed if a self-defense scenario finds itself knocking on your door. Keep in mind, at the shooting range, you have all the time you need to load up your firearm, chamber a round, gain a proper stance, sight alignment and sight picture, and then pull the trigger and shoot your intended target. Apart from a lethargic animal slowly approaching you from yards away, this type of self-defense preparation isn’t likely to occur.
So, as my long-winded point implies, practicing real world scenarios in a variety of situations is highly recommended. If, heaven forbid, you find yourself in a defensive situation, you’ll revert back to your most basic level of training and hopefully, you’ll be able to eliminate the threat to you and your loved ones without causing undue harm to unintended bystanders.
Now that we know why real world training is important, how can we go about practicing these scenarios while gaining valuable feedback from the Mantis platform.
Using A Non-Lethal Laser Cartridge At Home
Some may find the title of this section a bit redundant by using “non-lethal” in front of “laser cartridge.” However, just to clarify for people who may be new to the world of dry fire training aids, these laser cartridges are non-lethal and able to be used in the comfort of your home. Snap caps are another great way to train at your home discreetly, but obviously won’t give you any sort of feedback.
A laser cartridge functions by activating a split second visible laser when you pull the trigger and requires you to reset the firing pin in your handgun before engaging in another shot. For you AR owners out there, our Blackbeard Auto-Resetting System replaces your bolt and does not require you to reset the firing pin between shots.
The one caveat to add here is that due to these being real lasers, you should never look into or aim the laser at somebody’s eyes. Practicing one of the basic fundamental firearm safety rules of not aiming your gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy will help you avoid unintentionally aiming a laser cartridge at somebody’s eyes.
Now that we’ve clarified the aforementioned caveat, let’s talk about using a laser cartridge for training in the comfort of your home.
The entire line of MantisX models are capable of dry fire practice. However, the feedback devices don’t contain any visual reference tools such as a built-in laser. Don’t worry though, our Pink Rhino laser cartridge pairs wonderfully with our Mantis product line and our Laser Academy (more on this later).
While our Blackbeard AR dry fire training system does in fact reset the trigger, our Pink Rhino is currently incapable of resetting your trigger. For this reason, you’ll need to rack your slide with each new trigger pull. However, in a self defense situation, the most important moment is the initial holster draw and first trigger pull.
Going through the motions of drawing your firearm from your holster, bag or even safe, and then obtaining your sight alignment and sight picture before your initial trigger pull will be the best training you can do for real world practice.
Laser Academy And Targets
Non-lethal laser cartridges are great for training at home, or in any place where you can’t discharge a live firearm, but there’s a way to make them better and more effective than they are when they simply arrive at your door.
Additional digital training aids, such as our Mantis Laser Academy App, will help you receive accurate and digestible feedback with no added cost required on your end.
Now, for those of you who don’t have the equipment to aim your smartphone at a newly printed target, or simply want a full, ready-to-go kit that contains everything from the tripod for your phone to the actual caliber specific laser cartridge, our Laser Academy Training Kit is perfect for you. You can check out everything this all-in-one training kit has to offer by clicking here.
Another great addition to your laser cartridge training aid, which helps tremendously in an at-home defense scenario training, is laser targets. While our Laser Academy is superior for valuable feedback, laser training targets can be tremendously useful for positioning potential targets in multiple areas and practice dynamic situations where you aren’t stationary.
You’ll find a variety of laser targets online, and when it comes to training for a defensive scenario at your home or office, being able to place multiple these standalone targets at different locations adds an additional set of factors to prepare for.
Utilizing these targets will help maintain your reaction time while moving or clearing an area and help you create muscle memory in a variety of scenarios. Of course, with this route you’ll increase your training cost initially, but it’s an investment that pays off when it comes to cost savings over the long term.
The best part about using our Laser Academy and/or physical laser targets is it could be a fun time for family and friends. If you’re wanting to prepare your loved ones for safely handling a firearm and becoming proficient with it, laser training aids are a fun and engaging (not to mention cost effective) way to go about doing so.
Of course, always maintain the highest safety standard and treat every firearm as if it were loaded and chambered while working with others.
Holster Draws And Body Position
Many people choose to carry a firearm, be it concealed or visibly, in public every day. Or you may prefer carrying a firearm on your private property but not in public. If you’re either one of these individuals, the next two sections are important. If you’re not planning on carrying a firearm on your person… ever… then you may want to skip ahead.
Ok, those of you who are still here with me, let’s talk about drawing from a holster as well as your firearm’s position on your person. This is one topic of discussion where utilizing our Mantis systems, whether you’re live firing on the range or using our Laser Academy paired with one of our laser training kits, is going to help you become a more accurate and proficient shooter.
When it comes to real world defensive scenarios, the initial holster draw and initial trigger pull are going to be the absolute most important moments. Using the Mantis system will offer valuable feedback throughout the entire process, from the moment your hand meets the grip of your gun, all the way through to follow-up shots.
Not only will our tools pick up live movements and track recoil management, but our Laser Academy App also works with live rounds through targets at the range. So in most cases, it doesn’t matter if you’re live or dry fire training, our line of training aids will definitely help you improve your overall holster draw and shooting.
Drawing from different body positions means different initial shot timings, stability and handling of your firearm. For instance, drawing from your hip while open carrying is much different than drawing from an ankle holster while at a formal event. Likewise, drawing from a concealed appendix holster could prove much more effective than drawing from a bag or purse. Not to mention the access you may have to reach for your firearm, depending on where it’s located.
Using the Mantis system to set up a target and practice drawing your firearm from realistic areas that it may be worn will help you decrease your initial shot time. It will also help you maintain a muscle memory that prepares you for effectively defending yourself.
If you’re an avid hiker who plans on carrying a firearm in a tactical fanny pack, then practice drawing from that pack.
If you’re going to find yourself in a situation where you need to carry a gun in an ankle holster under formalwear, practice drawing from that ankle holster.
If you’re going to be utilizing a belly band holster under workout attire, then practice this scenario as well.
You get the idea... but let’s talk a bit more about what you actually wear, and how it could greatly affect your ability to quickly and safely draw and deploy your firearm in a defensive scenario.
Concealed Carry Clothing And Bags
If you either plan on (or already are) carrying a concealed firearm, in any area public or private, then you better become familiar with drawing your firearm in each and every possible option you may find yourself doing so. If you’ve never practiced drawing a gun and pulling the trigger from a purse or fanny pack, then how can you expect to do so if you need to in a heightened stress scenario?
Perhaps you’ll be attending a formal event in the near future, and you’ve purchased a holster specifically to conceal your gun in a more strategic location. The best thing you can do is practice as much as possible before this event. That means you wear the actual (or similar) attire that you’ll be in, get the new holster, and work on accessing and deploying your firearm before you actually get put in that situation.
Trust me, you’ll find that accessing your firearm from different areas of your body will cause variations in the timing of your initial trigger pull and stability in your overall handling. This is why our Mantis line of products are great tools to utilize in order to prepare.
With our laser training cartridges and Training Academy, you’ll be able to safely practice in the comfort of your home, without the risk of using live rounds in unfamiliar environments. You should actively practice drawing and deploying your firearm in every outfit and set up you may find yourself using in the future. Don’t expect to be as comfortable deploying your firearm while wearing an uncommon outfit and an uncommon body position as you are with your everyday carry setup and attire.
Deploying Your Firearm At Home
This may come as an obvious fact, but you should never use a live round while training in the confines of your home. Don’t worry though, using a laser training aid to maintain a safe environment while training for at-home defense scenarios is just as effective. Our laser cartridges are seeded in your barrel, so there’s no risk of a misfire when our cartridges are installed. Using the MantisX Laser Academy with a training device can help prepare you for realistic scenarios with no risk of accidental injury.
Not everybody will be running and gunning through their house in a defensive situation, but I’m willing to bet that most of us have a general idea of what situations can occur and where we may be if something does occur within the home. If you have a two story house, it’s safe to assume that you may have to deploy your firearm while aiming up or down your stairs. It would probably be more practical to practice shooting on stairs than it would be to practice shooting from the shower, although there’s no such thing as practicing too much.
The point is that we all have unique features about our homes that allow us to visualize where things may most likely occur. Set up Mantis targets and your smartphone in different areas of your house that represent each place you feel you’ll most likely have to engage your firearm. Once you run through a few training rounds in one area, move to the next. A great example of this would be to practice with targets set up at the bottom of the stairs, and then switch to the top of the stairs.
One thing to emphasize here is that you should always be practicing for a realistic scenario, and thus should retrieve your firearm from where you would need to. For instance, if you keep your firearm locked up in a safe, and you want to practice for when you may find an intruder at the bottom of your staircase in the middle of the night, begin at the spot where you would see this intruder, then go retrieve your firearm from your safe and come back to practice engaging the target. The absolute best way to take full advantage of the Mantis line of products and training tools available is to make sure you’re fully preparing by going through all of the realistic scenarios, not just the actual trigger pull from a stationary position.
Live Fire Scenario Training At The Range
Not all ranges have the same capabilities. Some ranges are outdoors on a large swath of land and allow for practicing with a larger variety of firearms in a more dynamic environment, such as moving freely. Other ranges are simply indoor lanes that abide by the strictest of standards due to the close quarters of multiple discharging firearms.
Regardless of what you’re able to do on any given range you may be visiting, any live fire training is valuable training. Our Mantis X3 and X10 Elite systems both offer live fire capabilities and help you get the most feedback possible when it comes to actual trigger pull with a live round. Being that dry firing lacks the realistic recoil and force of a real bullet, you won’t know the true extent of your recoil management until you’re cycling through live ammunition with one of our live fire systems.
If you happen to be at a range where you can draw from your holster, great, you’ll receive valuable feedback on the realistic timing and stability of your shot.
MantisX Offers More Than Just Dry And Live Fire Training Systems
There’s no shortage of ways to train for real world defense scenarios, and I could go on for ages discussing every possible scenario you could train for. No matter what what you’re training for, our line of Mantis products and laser training aids will be your absolute best friend at the range, even if you’re there with your actual best friend. Nothing against your best friend or anything, but the Mantis will give you more valuable information regarding your shooting than your friends will, simply because it knows more than the human eye can observe and offers instant feedback.
The feedback you receive with each trigger pull is so valuable that it’s difficult to quantify. It’s like having your own shooting coach with you at the range, but a coach that’s a super computer in the palm of your hand who keeps a readily available history of every shot you’ve ever taken and how it can be improved… and these coaches simply don’t exist outside of the Mantis system.
You won’t be able to beat the full line of Mantis products and software when it comes to finding a more effective and efficient way to train with budget-friendly tools. The flexibility and capabilities of our training aids are unmatched for both hobby and professional shooters who want to improve their skills and become more proficient in multiple environments.
No matter what type of shooting you want to do, be it for real world scenarios or just a day at the range, our MantisX line of products will help you become a better shooter within the first day of using them. It’s just that powerful. We know there are plenty of training aids on the market to fit nearly any budget, from living room training to full simulator level environments, but I can guarantee that if you add a Mantis system to your range bag, you won’t regret it.
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