After a last-minute opportunity sprung up, I found myself fortunate to attend Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions course. (Very glad I impulse-bought that extra 115-grain target ammo on sale during last year’s Black Friday, too).
This rendition of Pistol Shooting Solutions took place at Coyote Arms Shooting Range, a prominent shooting facility in south Texas where CDR Instructor K.A. Clark hosted Mr. White.
(K.A. Clark himself is also a notable defensive pistolcraft practitioner, competitor, and trainer; he walked away with two additional turbo pins that weekend, as a matter of fact.)
Pistol Shooting Solutions Course Overview
Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions is a 2-day defensive handgun course primarily structured around White’s Technical Skills Testing, also known as the Gabe White Standards.
Beyond training around that core battery of drills bundled into Technical Skills Testing: the Bill Drill, Failure To Stop, Immediate Incapacitation, and Split Bill Drill, Pistol Shooting Solutions also touches on other aspects of defensive pistolcraft, tactics, and mindset. White’s lectures are jam-packed with information to the extent that he sends every student home with a convenient bundle of lecture notes.
Furthermore, PSS ventures beyond what I mentioned above by providing students ample opportunities to shoot steel targets from concealment, on-the-move, and behind cover. Keeping in mind that PSS isn’t a competition skills class but that White allots time for these types of exercises during the course brings forth great value; shooting on the move seems to be neglected in many defensive pistol classes.
Bring 1000 rounds to class. I think I fired approximately 800 or so.
Gear Requirements
Aside from that case of training ammo, Pistol Shooting Solutions is fairly gun or gear-agnostic. Most students are well-served by bringing a modern semi-automatic centerfire pistol and a properly designed holster in good condition. Bringing magazine carriers to hold spare magazines while being on the line isn’t a bad idea either. Using spare pockets for this task is fine, too.
Gun-wise, anything touted for either duty or self-defense will suffice. Those who shoot micro-compacts with capacities of fewer than ten rounds need to be proactive about their ammunition management. Revolvers can also be made to work, and we actually had one on the firing line during the first day of class. Revolver shooters need to take heed though, for they will be working the cylinder latch and ejector rod far more than they’ll be shooting.
I think that Pistol Shooting Solutions is best navigated by shooting from concealment with one’s actual carry gun. Besides getting a 0.25-second time discount when shooting for Gabe’s pins, PSS was created to bring the best value to the civilian defensive shooter. Both days of class will afford numerous chances to do reps drawing from one’s actual carry gear. But not shooting from concealment won’t invalidate the curriculum, either.
Besides the student with the revolver, there was someone else who shot the class from his law enforcement duty belt and Safariland 6300 “bucket” holster. Another shot his Canik Rival-S from a competition rig. If one’s handgun is reasonable and fires a standard service caliber, it will work fine in Pistol Shooting Solutions.
Walther Crashes The Class
After completing my original manuscript for my formal Walther PDP Pro-X PMM Comp review at the end of October, I took a handgun break for the next few months. During November, I didn’t shoot much. During December, I spent a great deal of time focusing on rifles, and with SHOT Show and other affairs in January, pistol splits were the last thing on my mind.
It wasn’t until I attended this course, which took place during the second week of February, that I had a chance to “reset” my applied handgun skills for 2025. Deciding to continue where I had left off, I holstered up with Walther PDP Pro-X PMM and kept shooting it.
The gun’s configuration hasn’t changed. It wears a LOK Grips brass backstrap that adds three extra ounces to the rear. Even though I experimented with one of my ZR Tactical aftermarket spring and guide-rod combinations, I swapped back to the OEM RSA. (The ZR Tactical parts are great, but I just find that I like the balance of a spring heavier than 15 lbs with the PDP Pro-X PMM’s specific slide, which is shorter and has less mass.
Running the Aimpoint ACRO P-2
Shooting the better part of 800 rounds that weekend not only afforded me another chance to run this specific PDP variant and its Parker Mountain unit hard, but more importantly, it gave me a chance to put the mounted Aimpoint ACRO P-2 through its paces, too. Given the ACRO P-2’s position in the market as one of the leading top-tier enclosed-emitter units, it was important for me to continue burning reps and rounds with it in class.
And it’s not because I want to prove or disprove the P-2’s ruggedness. There are people who’ve put more rounds through a single ACRO than I’ve fired since I started writing about guns. My interest is more in the “performance” aspect of shooting with the ACRO P-2, given its smaller window size.
(I’m not quite ready to write that article yet, but the question I want to answer that’s on the back of my mind is: how much does window size really matter?)
Continued in Part 2…
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