This time, we didn’t go to FrontSight, as the clock finally ran out on the owner’s Ponzi scheme, and it is now in bankruptcy.*

As some of you may recall, I got Mrs. Dean an IWI Tavor X95 Tavor X95 – 5.56 NATO 16.5″ Barrel | IWI US, Inc. bullpup, as she is a lefty and it is about the only true left-handed 5.56 semi-auto out there.

Not that kind of bullpup.  This kind of bullpup:

I liked it so much I got one of my own.  As is our custom, hers is black and mine is FDE, to avoid confusion.

You will note that I have a cover on my suppressor.  These are usually sold as something you need for long-range shooting, to get rid of the heat waves from the suppressor messing up your sight picture.  I got one after my first trip to the range with it.  Those things get extremely hot, really fast.  As in, too hot to handle and easily hot enough to leave a nasty burn, so mine is more of a safety thing.

Now, bullpups are a little different animal than conventional rifles, so I was interested to see that IWI offers classes in how to run an X95.  Their affiliate for this is Tactical Fitness Austin Home – Tactical Fitness Austin  (which is, oddly, in Austin), but they do put on classes in, among other places, Salt Lake City.  Which is a longish but not completely unreasonable drive for us.

The class was held at the Big Salty Range Big Salty Range on the edge of Salt Lake City.  This range is almost all set up for cowboy action shooting, but has one small plain-jane 100 yard range that we used.  There were 10 people in our class, which is about all the range could really hold for a class like this anyway.

Our instructor was the owner of Tactical Fitness Austin, Ron Grobman, who was an Israeli special forces sniper (no, he never missed a shot during class, and he shot a fair amount).  The Tavor bullpup is standard issue for the IDF, and I suspect he got the contract to teach IWI’s classes in America because, after his stint in the IDF, he knew people.  At one point he mentioned that he had shot out the barrel on his X95 at around 10,000 rounds, so he was quite familiar with it.

It was a two-day class.  The first morning was familiarizing us with the rifle, including field-stripping it (which requires literally no tools other than a 5.56 round, although he recommends using a small punch) and zeroing.  His point that the rifle is designed for 18 year old draftees to maintain was well taken.  Part of field-stripping involves pulling an operating rod partway out.  Until your gun is well broken in, it doesn’t want to come out, and I had been reluctant to crank on it hard enough to get it out far enough.  He just grabbed it with a pair of pliers and yanked on it.  When one of the other shooter’s operating rod came all the way out after a good yanking, he got it back in by pounding it on the table.  Hard.  The gun was fine.  These are not rifles you need to baby.

I was able to assist the first morning by giving a personal demonstration of why you should set up your scope to shoot from prone.  I set mine up while standing, didn’t leave enough eye relief for prone shooting, and sported a nice scope bite for the rest of the class.

The first afternoon was basics –stance, trigger pull, loading and mag swaps (a little different on a bullpup), clearing malfunctions, and recoil control to set up a steady (and hopefully rapid) cadence of follow-up shots.

One neat trick on loading – double stack AR mags have the top round on either the right or the left.  Check which side its on, insert into the mag well, release the bolt, then drop the mag and see if the top round is on the other side (which it will be if the first round chambered), and reinsert.  This is especially handy on the X95 because the bullpup design makes chamber checking with your finger nearly impossible, and even a visual chamber check is awkward.

The second day was drills on what we learned the first day, plus a look at how to shoot from movement.  Drills included shooting from 50 – 100 yards at steel, and from shorter ranges on paper for speed and shot placement (head, torso, pelvis).  One thing the instructor would do to get us to check our environment after we shot was hold some fingers up to his body where he wanted follow-up shots.  Since he was standing behind us (of course), this was fun and effective.  Total round count for two days was around 600.

I had about 80 rounds through my rifle before we went to class; enough to be sure it worked and to zero it, but not enough to develop bad habits.  Or so I thought.  My problem with shooting it was that I would get really, really tense (and very shaky) when aiming it.  I have no idea why.  As the instructor said “You are supposed to fight with your rifle, not fight with your rifle”.  The good news is, I made a lot of progress during class, and I can drill on this at home.  Weirdly, as soon as there was anything else in the mix (multiple shots, movement), my shakes mostly went away and I did better.  I settled on the “Tavor kneel” for my kneeling position – after struggling with the traditional kneel (support arm elbow on left knee), I switched to putting the magazine on my right knee and was much more stable.

Mrs. Dean was probably the most accurate shooter there (other than Mr. Grobman, of course), but she was slooow on the multiple shot drills.  We were shooting steel targets at 75 yards at one point, and the instructor pointed out that she appeared to be trying to shoot out the bolt holding the target onto the stand.  From off-hand, she had probably 7 of the ten shots in a four or five inch group.  I’m thinking she may be more of a precision shooter than a tactical shooter, so on our next trip to the range here in Tucson I will be taking my .300 Win Mag (which is a true MOA (or less) gun) to see what she thinks of long-range precision shooting.

There are two knocks on bullpups.  First, they require a long attachment piece from the trigger to the firing assembly, which is basically in front of your shoulder.  This supposedly affects accuracy.  Nobody was putting up 1 MOA groups, but you’re not going to do that with an off-the-shelf AR, either (unless you spend a considerable sum of money on it); I think accuracy is comparable to an AR.

The other is reliability.  I believe this comes mostly from the different manual-of-arms that a bullpup needs, which people may not follow consistently.  I had one failure to feed (quickly resolved with a tap-rack, followed by a fist-pump when it worked), but for the most part the minor malfunctions that the class experienced were from not following instructions (quoth the instructor: “Go ahead.  Do it every way except the way I told you.”), or were within the normal statistical range when a group is putting 6,000 rounds downrange.

All told, good class (nobody got shot, which is my baseline for a good day at the range).  Once zeroed, the emphasis was very much on practical shooting and getting rounds on the designated target quickly.  The other shooters were your typically good-natured and helpful gun people, the instructor was an expert with the weapon and a good teacher.  You could tell that everyone in the class was improved by the end.

Mrs. Dean is pondering the Tavor Operator II class (this time, with handguns!  And running!  And one-handed shooting!  And “wrong-side” shooting!) in Houston, but the scheduling is looking difficult.  As for me, I will work on my stance and my steadiness at home, and get my recoil control and cadence sorted out at the range.  I’ll be keeping the shotgun handy for my home-defense weapon, though – I think I’m more of a natural shotgunner than rifleman.

*FrontSight was funded almost entirely on one-time membership fees, rather than per-class fees.  Mrs. Dean and I bought one of the lowest-level memberships, rather than one of the more expensive ones.  Unlike many people who bought up to “higher level” memberships, I think we got value for our money before it went tits-up.  The owner, Dr. Ignatius Piazza, appears via his frenzied wall-o-text emails to be somewhat unhinged.  It looks like he will remain in control after the bankruptcy, unfortunately.  We might go back, as we enjoyed our classes there, but we are in wait-and-see mode.  The good news for us is that the Gunsite Academy (Gunsite Academy – Teaching responsible, safe and effective use of small arms in self defense) facility is actually closer, its fees are reasonable enough, and of course it has an impeccable reputation.  We’re looking at some of their classes, probably next spring.