My regular readers know I’m a bit of a gun nut (understatement of all time right there) and that I like to take at least two or three different classes every year to keep learning and improving. Over the last few years I’ve had multiple instructors and shooters I respect make the same recommendation to take Gabe White’s class.

I knew of Gabe from watching a few videos of him on Youtube and trying for the drill standards from his class. The man is clearly an incredible shooter. My friend Rick Remington (who teaches pistol classes in Burlington WA) told me he was hosting Gabe, so I made the 13 hour drive up there and spent the last couple of days shooting guns and learning. It turns out that in addition to being a really good shooter, Gabe is also a fantastic teacher.

This particular class is for pistol shooters who are already fairly experienced and competent in their gun handling. You’re expected to have your ducks in a row, know your gear, and there is a ton of work from the holster at high speed right out the gate, and then there’s drawing and shooting on the move, and cover and barricade work. If you’re already competent and you want to take it to the next level, I highly recommend this one.

Gabe’s fast. And I don’t just mean shooting fast, he also talks fast. I’m not a slouch when it comes to giving energetic lectures, but he’s a firehose of information, constantly active, constantly dispensing wisdom kind of guy. He knows his material extremely well. He makes me look downright narcoleptic in comparison.

One thing I really enjoyed was the four increasingly complicated man on man exercises we did over the two days, which were set up as a sort of mirror gun fight with two uneven challenges. Usually one person in a static position of cover having to hit some kind of difficult target representing the other shooter, who was having to run to a different position or shoot on the move to hit the target set up to represent the first guy. And then you cycle through to the next position, and end up shooting it against every other student in the class, over and over. It is good pressure testing, and since every student in this class was solid, every single match up could go either way.

Gabe is probably best known for this Turbo Pin standards. This is four different well known drills, each one run twice for score after a long block of instruction and practice runs on the specific parts of each one. These are drills that have been shot by pretty much every serious shooter in the world at some point (Bill Drill, Failure to Stop, Immediate Incap, Split Bill) so the time standards are super well known and can be compared objectively to other shooters’ scores.

If you hit Gabe’s standards at the end of class you get a pin. There’s three levels, Dark Pin (which means you are a pretty damned good shooter and most regular pistol shooters don’t come anywhere near this) Light Pin (which means you’re really friggin good to excellent) and Turbo Pin (which is fucking baller rock superstar master class performance).

On my home range, with zero outside pressure, warmed up, but nice and comfortable and fresh, I can *sometimes* hit Turbo levels on 3 of the drills (I’ve never hit a 2 second clean Bill drill in my life yet), but I could usually get Light level scores. That gets a whole harder after shooting a thousand rounds in two tiring days, with Gabe and a dozen really good shooters eyeballing you, then you need to do it on demand. No pressure.

I am happy to say that I earned a Light Pin. I put in a lot of work to get to that level and I’m proud of it. That said, I’m looking forward to incorporating the stuff Gabe taught and working on it so I can take a run at that Turbo.

This was an abnormally qualified group of shooters too, and even though Gabe’s been teaching this class for like 7 years now, this was only the third one he’d ever had where every single student qualified for at least a Dark Pin. There were two Turbo Pins awarded (the 35th one ever, way to go Jeff, and my friend Mirko who got his SECOND one) and one Light (Rick) who narrowly missed Turbo by a heartbreaking amount.

To put into perspective just how challenging Turbo level is, when Gabe was putting together the goal times, he looked up the average scores of the literal best pistol shooters on Earth and used those. Those times are based on what grandmaster champions like Bob Vogel and Ben Stoeger can do on demand. For you non shooters, that’s like handing you a basketball and saying Michael Jordan can do this, let’s see if you can move like that right now. GO!

Gabe hit Turbo on 7 out of 8 of the drills he demoed for us. There’s that whole thing about those who can’t do, teach… Yeah, that don’t apply here. If he’s going to coach you on how to do something, it’s because he knows what he’s talking about.

I highly recommend taking this class if you get the opportunity.