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Posts Tagged ‘Frank Proctor’

Proctor Y Notch Pistol Sights

Tuesday, February 17th, 2015

Proctor Y notch

The Proctor Y Notch Pistol Sights were designed to give shooters maximum speed and accuracy in one sight. Most pistol sights are set up with either wide rear sights and narrow front sights for fast but not so accurate shooting or narrow rear sights and and a wider front for more precise shooting. I designed these sights to offer both Speed and Accuracy. The top of the Y is .140 wide and the bottom of the Y is .100. The front sight is .117 wide with a .040 fiber optic insert. The front sight is .180 tall and the sight set is designed for point of aim = point of impact. For most of your pistol shooting you will only need to see the red dot inside the top portion of the notch, if you need more precise sight alignment it is easy to see by looking at the relationship of the lower portion of the front sight with the lower portion of the rear notch.

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This set is designed to work on Glock, 17/19/22/23/26/27/34/35

I have been working on this sight design for about 3 years and working on getting it into production. The main reason I was pushing for what I think is a better sight design is the amount of sight mis-alignment that is possible with most modern pistol sight designs. If you go shopping for pistol sights you will hear things like, for fast shooting you need a wide rear and a narrow front or for old eyes you need a wide rear sight. The problem with having a big difference in the width of the rear sight and the front is there is more room for error. That error is not always noticeable with real loose sights, but it can very easily be enough to cause big misses on smaller targets or further targets. In regards to the old eyes need wide rear notches, I have tested this theory with shooters who told me going into courses that they had bad eyes or old eyes etc. I had them shoot my sights without telling them what they were and they all loved them and kept going on about how much they liked the sight picture, then I told them about the difference in size the front and rear. They were suprised that it worked because conventional wisdom says it has to be loose for old eyes, etc. Back around the year 1400 everyone thought the world was flat because “they” said so. Turns out its not flat after all right!

www.wayofthegun.us/proctor-y-notch-pistol-sight-set-for-glock-pistols

Gunfighter Moment – Frank Proctor

Saturday, February 14th, 2015

PISTOL SIGHTS (plural)

What’s up shooters! If you have spent any time at all pursuing the goal of being a better pistol shooter you have heard a lot of things about the sights on a pistol. Many times you hear something like; focus on the front sight or the front sight should be sharp and clear and everything else should be blurry. I don’t subscribe to that theory for a few reasons. One reason is that pistol have front and rear sights, their relationship to each other and to the target are important things for shooters to factor in order to shoot accurately and in order to read the gun and know where the shot went. Another reason is it takes time for your eyes to truly focus on one out of 3 things. I don’t think that for any practical application of a pistol you have that kind of time. What I believe in and what I teach is to see the things that matter in the order that they appear when shooting; rear sight – front sight – target. What I suggest and have found that is very easy for shooters to do is to SEE all 3 and their relationship to each other. The next time you are shooting just put the gun in front of your eyes and SEE rear sight – front sight – target. Don’t over think it or TRY to focus on all 3 just let your eyes do what they are capable of and see all 3.

Another thing I talk about in courses and we explore as shooters is how much sight alignment you need. For most practical pistol shooting 15 yards and in ( I use 8.5” x 11” copy paper as targets) you don’t need perfect sight alignment. For the most part If can see your front sight through your rear sight and it’s on the target you will hit an 8.5” x 11” target 15 yards away. There are a couple factors that can effect this though. One of course is trigger manipulation. The core of marksmanship is to put sights on the target and press the trigger without moving the gun off the target. For most dedicated shooters that isn’t a problem. The other factor is the amount off possible error in sight alignment due to the size of the sights. Many pistol sights these days have really wide rear notches and some even have wide rear notches with a narrow front. These combinations allow for more possible error. Inside 15 yards misaligned sights that are placed in the middle of the target will hit. This is not the case as the target gets smaller or further away and therefore smaller. A couple issues I see with many pistol sights are as follows, a wide front sight say .125 or .135 (most night sights are in this range) the wide front will cover a lot of what you need to shoot at distance. With a wide rear to “ let in more light and make it easy to see fast and work with old eyes etc” you have more opportunity for slight misalignment that will cause big misses at distance. A combination of a wide rear and a narrow front creates a lot of opportunity for sight misalignment that can matter within reasonable pistol shooting distances ( I consider 50 yards and in reasonable). Also added into the equation is sight height. After a lot of experimenting with sights I’m not a fan of tall sights because of what I see as a very sloppy sight picture.

What I prefer and believe make things much easier is less difference between the size of the front and rear sight and nothing taller than .180 on the front. For my style of shooting I want to see through the rear to the front to the target and It be good enough from 10 yards to 50 yards. For the smaller/further targets I don’t want to have to take time to ensure that the sights are good enough by visually centering them. A few years ago I started working on what I call performance grouping at 50 yards. What I wanted to be able to do was deliver 5 hits on a 12” steel target at 50 yards as quickly as possible with accountability. What I found frustrating was misses when what I saw though the gun should have been good enough. The issue was the difference in the width of the rear sight notch and the front sight. I had to take more time between shots to visually center the sights that I felt necessary. Here is a great exercise to demonstrate the issue with small sight mis-alignment due to wide rear notches. If you have or know someone who has a pistol with a red dot and iron sights, this is a great tool! Put the red dot on a target at 25 yards or greater distance, now look down at the irons. Next mis-align the irons even slightly and see where the red dot goes. It’s an eye opener to see what the slight mis-alignment of sights will do at distance even though what you are looking at in the irons should be good enough, the dot tells a different story. Now here’s another experiment to see if it if sight alignment or your trigger manipulation is a bigger issue for smaller targets. Put the red dot on target and run the trigger in dry fire 5 shots in a row, run the trigger at different speeds even. If you are using a Glock use a zip tie to keep the gun out of battery so you can manipulate the trigger. What I have found is that most shooters can run the triggers fast at 50 yards and not move the dot off target. My conclusion after a lot of work and experiments with sights is that most modern pistol sights have a much looser sight picture than I prefer and more than I believe is necessary. If you go shopping for pistol sights you may read things like “ for old eyes or bad eyes or for fast shooting you NEED wide rear notches and or narrow front sights” I did some experimenting with sight sizes. I had a 5” pistol with a .125 wide front sight and installed a .115 wide rear sight on it. Now all the books would say this won’t work. What I discovered for myself was that it did work for all my shooting. I’m a big fan of fast and accurate shooting and this sight combination didn’t slow me down a bit running USPSA stages and when I went to 50 or 100 yards there was still a bit more air on either side of the sight picture than I wanted. But it was much easier to make 50 and 100 yard hits with this rear sight than with the .140 wide rear notch that was on the pistol. Now I do have decent vision at 40 years old so I had to test this theory with some “old eyes” I was training with a fella in his 50s that had never shot fiber optic front sights, so I let him shoot the gun I was just talking about. I should mention that this guy told me at the beginning of the day that he had “old eyes”. I didn’t tell him anything about the size of the rear compared to the front, we just shot. Through the day he performed very well across the board from super fast target transition work to smaller targets at distance. When we were done for the day I told him about the sights, he was surprised that it worked. I let several other shooters shoot that gun with similar results. I think they wouldn’t have tried it or would have said they had issues if I had told them about the sight specs before they shot. It would have all been mental limitations they imposed upon themselves based on theory that they read or heard without exploring for themselves. If you recall it was once believed that the world was flat…..

So after all my experimenting with sights and not being able to buy what I thought would work very well I decided to pursue having some made different. I was very fortunate and ran into a dude willing to build me something different. What I wanted was a set of sights that made it very easy to see what you need for fast and accurate pistol shooting from the muzzle to 50 yards. I now have my own sight design in production and you can check them out on my website www.wayofthegun.us.

Well that’s all the typing I can do for a day, I definitely have more info on this stuff to share come out to the range sometime and let’s explore! Thanks Y’all!

-Frank Proctor

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Frank Proctor has served over 18 years in the military, the last 11 of those in US Army Special Forces. During his multiple combat tours in Afghanistan & Iraq he had the privilege to serve with and learn from many seasoned veteran Special Forces Operators so their combined years of knowledge and experience has helped him to become a better operator & instructor. While serving as an instructor at the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course he was drawn to competitive shooting. He has since earned the USPSA Grand Master ranking in the Limited Division and Master ranking in the IDPA Stock Service Pistol division. He learned a great deal from shooting in competition and this has helped him to become to become a better tactical shooter. Frank is one of the few individuals able to bring the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces, Competitive Shooting, and veteran Instructor to every class.

All this experience combines to make Frank Proctor a well-rounded shooter and instructor capable of helping you to achieve your goal of becoming a better shooter.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

New AR Accessories Coming from Frank Proctor

Saturday, January 31st, 2015

Frank Proctor released some photos and details of his latest rifle. In those specs are a couple of surprises including a new light mount, bolt release and muzzle device made by Troy Industries, he’ll be releasing soon

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Here are some pics of my new blaster at the range. I put this rifle together as a do everything rifle. I wanted fast and accurate from the muzzle to as far as I could work with the ammo and wind. ( I’ve shot to 900 with a set up similar to this)

I needed it to do EVERYTHING well but be as light as possible. This one weighs in at 7 pounds 3 ounces as pictured (minus ammo) Also worth mentioning this is on one of my rifle ranges. the big berm in the back is 300 yards and the paper target is at 10 yards. I zeroed this rifle at yards using my technique of getting a 200 yard zero at 10 yards. I wasn’t sure how well this would work with a 6x optic due to parallax but it worked like a champ. After I zeroed in about 6 rounds ( brand new scope, mount and rifle) I shot everything on this range including 6” plates at 300 from this rock. My Way of the Gun rear bag did help the stability a bit!

Here’s the components list on this rifle.
-BCM upper with 12.5” stainless midwest bbl and 10” KMR rail, BCM mod 4 -Gunfighter charging handle
-Tennessee Arms Polymer Lower
-BCM Gunfighter Stock
-BCM Gunfighter mod 2 pistol grip
-Geissele SSA trigger
-Vortex Razor HD Gen 2 – 1x-6x
-Aeroprecision light weight mount
-Troy Battle mag (only ones I’ve used since 2012)
-Proctor Sling
-WOTG rear bag
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-Prototypes of my Muzzle device that will be produced by Troy Industries as well as a Prototype of my Bolt release that will be produced by Troy Industries
-Prototype of my light mount

(light mount, bolt release and muzzle device will be available on my website in the coming weeks!)

www.wayofthegun.us

Gunfighter Moment – Frank Proctor

Saturday, November 22nd, 2014

Exercises vs Drills

In my classes one of the first thing I talk about is the fact that I use exercises during training and not drills. Here’s why. Most times when folks go to the range and shoot drills they do the same thing over and over again at the same pace and may or may not reach and end state that they want. For example a shooter goes out and does some Bill Drills from the holster. 50 times they draw the gun and shoot is 6 times in 2 seconds. They miss shots all the way to runs numbers 47-50. Does this mean they trained themselves to get a pistol out of the holster and get 6 hits in 2 seconds or that they trained themselves to fail for 46 attempts? I have done a whole lot of range sessions where I worked this sort of method and what I think I did was train myself to fail then eventually get it right. For example when I was training a lot for USPSA I would set up and run stages. I would bomb the stage a few times then start making magic happen. Guess what happened in matches? Most times I would bomb the first couple stages them settle down and do well. It’s hard to win against strong competition that way.

So here’s my exercise analogy. If you had a goal of benching 400 pounds would you walk into a gym,put 400 pounds on the bar and start doing 400 pound bench press drills? Not for long! My thoughts now are invest your training time, be very analytical about what’s happening when you shoot and identify then attack the things you need to work on to be the shooter you want to be.

-Frank Proctor

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Frank Proctor has served over 18 years in the military, the last 11 of those in US Army Special Forces. During his multiple combat tours in Afghanistan & Iraq he had the privilege to serve with and learn from many seasoned veteran Special Forces Operators so their combined years of knowledge and experience has helped him to become a better operator & instructor. While serving as an instructor at the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course he was drawn to competitive shooting. He has since earned the USPSA Grand Master ranking in the Limited Division and Master ranking in the IDPA Stock Service Pistol division. He learned a great deal from shooting in competition and this has helped him to become to become a better tactical shooter. Frank is one of the few individuals able to bring the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces, Competitive Shooting, and veteran Instructor to every class.

All this experience combines to make Frank Proctor a well-rounded shooter and instructor capable of helping you to achieve your goal of becoming a better shooter.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Frank Proctor

Saturday, September 20th, 2014

GOOD WEAPONS HANDLING SKILLS IN REGARDS TO BOLT LOCK RELOADS WITH THE AR-15

I live by 2 very easy to follow gun handling rules: #1 keep the pointy end of the death machine in a safe direction. #2 if you’re eyes are not connected to the sights then the trigger finger is connected to the frame of the gun. For the AR-15 I add rule 2a if the eyes are not connected to the sights the rifle is on safe and some positive pressure up on the selector lever. These rules have served me very well in every situation.

When this segment on reloads went on Trigger Time TVs youtube channel It got a lot of push back in regards to putting the rifle on safe during a bolt lock reload, as well as when I posted it to my company Facebook page.

Here is my detailed response to why I believe in doing it:

I’m more than happy to explain everything I do. Everything I do and believe in has a reason behind it. I’m also very open minded to new ideas and thoughts on how to do things better. I was a Green Beret for 8 years before I changed to my current rifle reload procedure. I was taught that it was OK to keep the rifle on fire during a bolt lock reload and when I was the Primary Instructor for the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course I also taught it that way. It never felt right to me when one of my guys would ask me “do we keep the rifle on fire during the reload?” and I would say yes. I justified it in my mind by saying it’s OK because at that point we are still in the engagement. Through my entire Army career since I was 18 years old it has been programed into me to keep the rifle on safe when not shooting.

When I was going through the Special Forces Qualification course I developed another habit with the M-4. I put my thumb under the selector lever and push up against the selector lever as an extra measure of safe gun handling. I think it was some sort of subconscious thing that happened to prevent my gear or all the brush I was walking through from effecting the selector lever and firing the gun. I also press my trigger finger into the frame of the rifle when my eyes are not connected to the gun. These extra safety measures have never cost me even a tenth of a second getting the gun into operation and getting an accurate hit.

So I was watching some YouTube one day in 2012 and saw Pat McNamara talking about how he does rifle reloads. Pat puts the rifle on safe during the bolt lock reloads. Pat retired from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (D) and was the marksmanship instructor for his unit for awhile. After hearing pretty legit dude like Pat talk about it I decided to try it. It took me about 20 deliberate reps to program getting the gun on safe into my bolt lock reload. Since that day in October 2012 I haven’t lost even a tenth of a second on a bolt lock reload due to putting the rifle on safe during the reload. In my courses I will start the reload session with a competition. I have the guys set up for a bolt lock, 1 round in the gun and an empty mag. I compete against the whole class 1 shooter at a time. I let the other guy start, he shoots first and starts his reload to another shot. After his first shot I shoot, get bolt lock put the gun on safe and work my reload to another shot. I’m around 98% on getting 1 shot reload 1 shot on target before the other who had about a 1 second head start and they aren’t putting their gun on safe. I’m not saying that I’m magic, I’m a fan of proven reliable mechanics and very efficient mechanics at that. I do it this way to make a point that what I’m saying works and that getting the gun on safe won’t cost anything.

Pat’s term is “Always an enabler, never a disabler” in regards to the selector lever, and I completely agree and dig it the most. I’m not a fan of scenarios and “what ifs”. I am a fan of solid fundamentals and programing them to a point where you instantly apply those fundamentals to any situation you find in order to solve problems without overthinking. There are however some what ifs that can make it make sense when I say that the world could change in the amount of time it takes to reload a rifle. Let’s look at one of many scenarios that support putting the rifle on safe when the eyes are not connected to the sights. If I were deployed with my team and during a bolt lock reload I didn’t put the rifle on safe, I get the mag in then the bolt forward then get shot in the head and fall down and a rock or something fires the gun and my rifle shoots our only 18D in the head. That’s a pretty sad face day right there for a whole ODA that could have been avoided by a very easy mechanical function. As I said you can what if stuff to death but at then end of the day, it’s too easy to put the gun on safe during a reload and I’m gonna keep on doing it because I believe in it and based on my experience it works.

-Frank Proctor

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Frank Proctor has served over 18 years in the military, the last 11 of those in US Army Special Forces. During his multiple combat tours in Afghanistan & Iraq he had the privilege to serve with and learn from many seasoned veteran Special Forces Operators so their combined years of knowledge and experience has helped him to become a better operator & instructor. While serving as an instructor at the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course he was drawn to competitive shooting. He has since earned the USPSA Grand Master ranking in the Limited Division and Master ranking in the IDPA Stock Service Pistol division. He learned a great deal from shooting in competition and this has helped him to become to become a better tactical shooter. Frank is one of the few individuals able to bring the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces, Competitive Shooting, and veteran Instructor to every class.

All this experience combines to make Frank Proctor a well-rounded shooter and instructor capable of helping you to achieve your goal of becoming a better shooter.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Sneak Peak – BCM Stock

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014

SS_FrankProctor

SS_Haley

What are we looking at here exactly? Why, it’s a brand-new stock from BCM. The first glimpse came from a couple of images showing Frank Proctor and Travis Haley running it on their rifles.

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Most recently, Larry Vickers posted a few up close photos of the new stock on his Facebook fan page.

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We look forward to seeing this stock on the market in the next few weeks.

www.bravocompanymfg.com

Gunfighter Moment – Frank Proctor

Saturday, August 16th, 2014

Why 9mm?

Back in April I received my Wilson Combat 1911 chambered in 9mm. I did a YouTube video with the gun and got lots of comments on it. Here’s the video if you’d like to check it out:

One of the comments I got was “Why would you set up a Wilson Combat 1911 in 9mm?” I replied to it and thought to myself here’s my next article for Gunfighter Moment. So here we go, my thoughts on 9mm.

I like to shoot and I like to train and see improvement and chase that dream of being as good as I want to be! 9mm training ammo is considerably less expensive than .40 or .45 allowing me to train way more, I dig that! Now let’s talk about the tactical application of the cartridge. I carry a 9mm pistol everyday for concealed carry and I carried a 9mm as a secondary weapon in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don’t now and never have felt under gunned with a 9mm.

For concealed carry I use a Glock 19 or S&W M&P 9. In both cases I have a concealable, very shootable (capable of delivering multiple hits quickly on a practical sized target from the muzzle out to 50 yards) and controllable pistol with 15-17 rounds of potent ammunition. I feel good about those capabilities. When talking terminal performance a couple critical things come to mind: shot placement and ammunition selection.

A .45 hole in a lung will produce the same effect as a 9mm hole in a lung, that effect is not instant incapacitation. However, if you research there has been a whole lot of stuff instantly incapacitated by a well placed .22 long rifle cartridge including some pretty large game animals. Without going into that subject anymore let’s talk about ammunition selection.

Not all ammo is created equal, ball ammo can be very lethal with good shot placement, but I think it would be much wiser to select carry or duty ammo that will offer better terminal performance. I have some first hand knowledge on Hornady Critical Defense 135g 9mm ammo. I watched it run through the FBI protocol and was amazed at the performance. It outperformed .40 and .45 duty ammo from other manufacturers. The FBI protocol test and evaluates the ammunitions, expansion, weight retention and penetration, preferably without over penetration.

I went on YouTube and found this video for you guys to check out. This is not the test I was at – when we did it we also ran .40 and .45 duty ammo from other manufacturers through the protocol and the results were not as impressive. Some of the ammo over penetrated and never expanded, some didn’t retain much weight through the auto glass. As seen in this video the Hornady 9mm expanded and penetrated almost exactly the same through everything.

Other thoughts on 9mm, it is a much more comfortable cartridge for a broader range of shooters to handle. That is one of the reasons many LE agencies and the FBI are switching to 9mm. I think another plus of 9mm is that if the gun is not uncomfortable to shoot and not cost prohibitive to train with more shooters will go out and train and increase or maintain their proficiency. Another thing I’m a fan of is magazine capacity. Having 15 rounds of some pretty potent and easy to shoot ammo in a concealable gun gives me a nice warm fuzzy for most anything I might encounter.

Well those are some of my thoughts on 9mm, thanks for reading and I hope to see you at a range sometime!

-Frank Proctor

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Frank Proctor has served over 18 years in the military, the last 11 of those in US Army Special Forces. During his multiple combat tours in Afghanistan & Iraq he had the privilege to serve with and learn from many seasoned veteran Special Forces Operators so their combined years of knowledge and experience has helped him to become a better operator & instructor. While serving as an instructor at the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course he was drawn to competitive shooting. He has since earned the USPSA Grand Master ranking in the Limited Division and Master ranking in the IDPA Stock Service Pistol division. He learned a great deal from shooting in competition and this has helped him to become to become a better tactical shooter. Frank is one of the few individuals able to bring the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces, Competitive Shooting, and veteran Instructor to every class.

All this experience combines to make Frank Proctor a well-rounded shooter and instructor capable of helping you to achieve your goal of becoming a better shooter.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Frank Proctor

Saturday, July 12th, 2014

Paul from Alias Training emailed me the other day and asked if I could have something put together for the Gunfighter Moment on Soldier Systems by Friday. Well, when I get those emails I usually write about what is fresh on my brain in regards to shooting at the moment. Here’s what’s on my mind right now: I want to say a lot of thanks. Thanks to all of you guys reading this that want to hear what I have to say about shooting. Thanks to all the people I have trained with that care about becoming better shooters. It is particularly refreshing for me to see the LE and Military dudes that come to open enrollment courses, most of the time they are coming on their own time and own dime because they care about being better at a very important part of their profession. I know very well that MIL and LE professionals have a ton of other duties other than being shooters, but I think all will agree that if it’s time to shoot in the line of duty, nothing is more important in that instance than being the best shooter you can be. Unfortunately there is a flip side, there are way too many people out there that carry a gun as part of their job that wouldn’t carry it if they didn’t “have” to. Those people very often don’t care about their ability to shoot well or handle their guns safely, it’s a shame. So thanks again for all those that care.

I want to thank everyone that has in anyway helped me along my path to becoming a better shooter (still walking down that path). I have learned a lot from so many people and have had a great time doing it. I’m constantly learning new stuff when I running my courses. I dig it the most when a new idea pops up on the range and a better way to train comes to life! We had several of those in my last 2 classes that were epic! All in all I feel very fortunate to be able to help people reach their goals as shooters, it has been a great ride! Thanks Y’all!

-Frank Proctor

20130823-210852.jpg

Frank Proctor has served over 18 years in the military, the last 11 of those in US Army Special Forces. During his multiple combat tours in Afghanistan & Iraq he had the privilege to serve with and learn from many seasoned veteran Special Forces Operators so their combined years of knowledge and experience has helped him to become a better operator & instructor. While serving as an instructor at the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course he was drawn to competitive shooting. He has since earned the USPSA Grand Master ranking in the Limited Division and Master ranking in the IDPA Stock Service Pistol division. He learned a great deal from shooting in competition and this has helped him to become to become a better tactical shooter. Frank is one of the few individuals able to bring the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces, Competitive Shooting, and veteran Instructor to every class.

All this experience combines to make Frank Proctor a well-rounded shooter and instructor capable of helping you to achieve your goal of becoming a better shooter.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.