Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight
in Black Belt Magazine

The Martial Advantage

Are you a black belt who is interested in safe firearms handling but worried about what amounts to donning a white belt again to join a shooting school? Well, you can relax. Your martial arts training will put you miles ahead of the average student. As an experienced practitioner of the self-defense arts, you will have the advantage of:

• Improved balance while kneeling and squatting
• Superior flexibility in the various firing positions
• More efficient tactical movement during house-clearing exercises
• Better hand-eye coordination while manipulating your weapon
• Heightened awareness of your body, your opponents and the environment.

-RWY

Front Sight's handgun training takes place at distances as close as three yards and as far away as 25.

When making those statements, Ignatius Piazza, founder and director of Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Pahrump, Nevada, was actually referring to America's 65 million gun owners, but his points apply just as succinctly to anyone interested in self-defense. That's why he founded his school in Bakersfield, California, in 1996. To help more civilians learn how to use deadly force responsibly, the following year he purchased the real estate that would become his expanded Nevada base of operations. Now he's forging ahead with his plan to offer the public intensive training in contact weapons (knife and stick) and empty-hand defense.

The Academy

Piazza's current facility sits on a 550-acre chunk of land located some 30 minutes from Pahrump, Nevada, and one hour from Las Vegas. A freshly paved 4-mile-long driveway leads to a compound that's a virtual paradise for students of self-defense.

The four-day defensive-handgun course culminates in a friendly speed and accuracy competition.

The Real Equalizer

The older we get, the more necessary it becomes to level the disparity of force between us and a younger, bigger, stronger, faster opponent. Your natural weapons should be your first line of defense when deadly force is unnecessary or when you are ambushed and need time to deploy deadly-force weapons. But when your life is on the line, a firearm may be the only thing that will equal the odds.

-Kevan Matthews
jeet kune do instructor

Students check their targets after a session of close-range defensive firing.

Most Front Sight students agree. "There's a great need for women in this country to learn all aspects of self-defense," says Donna Glidewell, a Victor, Montana, resident who recently attended Front Sight's four-day defensive-handgun course. "I trained in hapkido for about five years. I'm here now because I decided I wanted to learn how to use a gun safely-for times when the size and weight of a man are too much to overcome."

But for occasions when you're unarmed, Piazza says, it is essential to possess skill in emptyhand fighting and contact weapons.

"Obviously you will not always have a gun with you, but you will always have your hands and feet," says Gary Hibbard, a part-time Front Sight shooting instructor who also owns a tang soo do school in Dover, Arkansas. "You have to be prepared for anything."

At Front Sight, being prepared for anything means learning the proper skills from a qualified instructor, then practicing them regularly so they don't atrophy. "In a real fight, you will be only half as good as you were on your best training day," Piazza says, noting the effects of stress and adrenaline. "Therefore, you have to train twice as much as you thought you had to."

A target designed to simulate a criminal shielding himself with a hostage enables students to hone their sharpshooting skills.

No Gun Nuts Need-or Can Afford to-Apply!

The Front Sight student body includes doctors, housewives, truck drivers, journalists, lawyers and pilots (who train for free post-9/11). Gun-toting rednecks and government-haters simply can't afford the fees, which range from $600 for a two-day seminar to $1,600 for a fourday course. Ask the designers of any planned community about the best way to keep out the riffraff, and they will tell you that high prices are a better barrier than high walls. Still, Front Sight's prices are not artificially high, Ignatius Piazza says. "They reflect the value of the facilities, the curriculum and the personal attention provided."

-RWY