At Mission Ridge Range and Academy our “Run & Guns” are based on defensive shooting. Our designers try to simulate scenarios where you would be forced into using your gun to defend your life or others. Common stages found in matches involve you being caught in various defensive circumstances. Many scenarios are drawn from newspaper and TV reports. Others are drawn from the designer’s imagination in which worst case scenarios are encountered while performing ordinary, everyday tasks or errands.
Self-defense stages will force you to engage targets from awkward or difficult positions. You might find yourself having to engage targets from inside a barrier or from beside it, having to move from point to point while shooting, jumping up from a chair or bed during a home invasion or shooting while seated.
The possibilities change with every match. You might or might not draw from a holster. You could draw your gun from a box, a nightstand drawer, under a counter or from a bag or case. All of this combines to keep theses stages unique and challenging for each match.
You are required to demonstrate basic fundamentals of shooting such as drawing the gun, sight alignment and trigger control without the more complex decisions and movements required in an actual self-defensive encounter.
The standard stages are usually designed with minimal targets and require little or no movement. The idea is to test specific core shooting skills such as strong hand only shooting, Weak hand only shooting, simple draw and fire, accuracy at short and long distances and basic movement while shooting.
These standard exercises help the competitor gauge their skill level and identify areas that they might need to work on improvement. They become a base line for continued development of the core skills. that carry over into your daily life should you ever have to use a gun in self-defense.