Date – Sunday, October 18, 2026
Cost – $200.00
Location – Old Fort Gun Club, 4999 Westville Road, Van Buren, Arkansas 72956
KNOW YOUR LIMITS: Skills-Based Decision Making for Armed Citizens
Owning a firearm doesn’t automatically make every problem solvable. Every armed citizen brings a different level of skill, experience, physical ability, and confidence to a defensive encounter. Understanding you actual capabilities – and your limitations – is a critical part of making good decisions when the stakes are high.
Know Your Limits is a highly interactive, skills-based class, designed to help students honestly evaluate what they can – and cannot – do with a handgun. Throughout the class students will assess their shooting abilities using objective standards, practical exercises, and increasingly complex problems. More importantly, we’ll explore how those results should influence the decisions you make as an armed citizen.
We’ll discuss how distance, target size, accuracy requirements, time, movement, environmental factors, and stress can change the difficulty of a defensive problem. Students will learn to recognize when a problem falls within their current capabilites – and when attempting to solve it may create more danger than it prevents.
This class is not about comparing yourself to anyone else. It isn’t about chasing someone else’s standards or proving how fast you can shoot. It’s about developing an honest understanding of your personal performance envelope and learning to make decisions based on the skills you actually possess rather than the skills you hope you have when the moment arrives.
Students will leave with a clearer understanding of their current capabilities, practical ways to expand those capabilities through training, and a decision-making framework they can apply before, during, and after a defensive encounter.
REQUIRED EQUIPMENT:
Students should arrive with:
- A reliable, serviceable handgun
- A quality holster designed specificially for that handgun that completely covers the trigger guard and allows safe, consistent reholstering
- At least 3 magazines equivalent loading devices for your firearm
- Magazine pouch or other appropriate method of carrying spare magazines
- Approximately 300 rounds of ammunition
- Eye Protection
- Hearing Protection
- Appropriate range clothing and footwear
- Brimmed baseball style hat
- Water and/or hydration
- Sunscreen, rain gear, layers, or other clothing appropriate for the expected weather
- Notebook and pen/pencil if you would like to take notes
Students should bring a handgun and equipment they would realistically use for personal defense whenever possible.
Students are expected to have a safe working knowledge of their firearm and be able to safely load, unload, and operate it. This is not a beginner handgun safety course.
Come prepared to shoot, think, make decisions, and discover where your limits actually are – because knowing your limits is the first step toward expanding them.
