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Tribune Review Article

Class teaches how to beat muggers at their own game.

By Mark Houser
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

It was a quiet moment on the pistol range, but to call it peaceful would be stretching things. Instead of the crack of firearms, there was only the rustle of boots skidding on gravel and spent shell casings as 14 men took turns swinging broom handles at each other's heads and pretending to defend themselves with plastic guns. Each of the men who spent $425 for a weekend course in close-quarters combat tactics at the Greater Pittsburgh Gun Club in rural Washington County said he hoped he'd never need to remember any of it.

But it can be a dangerous world out there. With that in mind, Tony Ferrazzoli says, it's worth the money. "It's just like having homeowner's or automobile insurance. Violence in our society today is so random, so brutal and so prevalent that to me it just makes sense," says Ferrazzoli, 44, a factory technician from New Kensington. For three days, Ferrazzoli and 13 other men -- no women enrolled -- got an expert lesson in how to use their pistols in a fight. Most were from the Pittsburgh area. Only one was a cop; the rest were civilians.

Instructors Steve Tarani and Randy Cain are nationally respected experts in how to draw quickly and, if necessary, shoot to kill; how to keep an attacker from grabbing your weapon when you're wrestling on the ground; and how to deflect a knife thrust. And how to get your pistol up and ready while dodging a man swinging a broomstick at your head. Tarani's California company, Contact Defense LLC, held the workshop. He and Cain mostly make their livings teaching tactics to cops and federal agents with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and others.

But both men say they like to make time for the occasional civilian course.

"These are all productive, useful members of society -- a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer," says Tarani, nodding at the participants. "We never run into the wild-eyed, bloodshot, anarchist bomb-making terrorist types that everyone thinks we train. We're not going to teach anyone to a 'bad guy,'" he says. "They are law-abiding citizens, every one of them, who are concerned about their safety and the safety of their families."

The course's organizer, South Side attorney Peter Georgiades, says all participants have to show him proof they haven't committed a felony or violent crime before enrolling, typically with a valid concealed carry license or a letter from their local police vouching that they passed a background check. Georgiades, 52, also conducts a weekend basic carbine course at the gun club twice a year. His small firearms accessories company, Pennsylvania Firearms Development Corp., sponsors his and other shooting for self-defense courses on a break-even basis, he says, because he thinks it's important that people who buy guns for protection know how to use them.

"The whole objective is to get people when they're in an emergency situation from, 'Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening!' to 'Ah, I knew this might happen some day, and I know just what to do,'" he says. In the basic courses, Georgiades starts with a lecture on state laws on the use of deadly force. He also discusses the psychological fallout that comes with shooting somebody, even in justifiable self-defense. Any time a syllabus calls for students to bring 300 rounds of ammunition, it isn't going to be a quiet class. But the atmosphere at the course was typically composed, attentive and mutually respectful.

Tarani had a lot to do with it. At 6-foot-5 and with shoulder and neck muscles that test the fabric of his polo shirt, the former policeman doesn't appear likely to be soft-spoken. Even less so, when you consider the man has several combat knives named for him. Yet Tarani, 42, practically whispers during an interview, even as a few dozen yards away the class takes turns firing head and chest shots into silhouette targets. As a teenager growing up in Boston, Tarani first got interested in karate and other traditional martial arts. Then he learned escrima, a Filipino style he says appeals to him because of its directness.

"There's nothing arty about it," he says.

The author of several self-defense books demonstrated on class participants how easily he could slash, hobble and eviscerate them with a curved escrima blade, while their fellow students snickered nervously. The main point, Tarani says, is that a man with a knife is dangerous, and best kept at a distance.

That's what a gun is for. Enter Cain. It's Cain's job to teach the men how to draw and shoot quickly and accurately at short range. Away go the plastic guns, and out come the real ones. Pacing behind the firing line, Cain rattles off instructional maxims in his Tennessee drawl, sometimes cajoling like a drill sergeant. "Some of you look like you're waiting on a bus, with a $2,000 paper puncher," he hollers. "This is about fighting." After a while, the targets are broadly peppered with holes. That bugs Cain, who wants to see tight clusters of hits.

Too tight on the grip, he diagnoses. So he has the class try again, this time holding the guns with just their thumbs and middle fingers. As the line prepares to fire, they look a bit like wealthy dowagers daintily lifting teacups. It's not the sort of thing Cain, 48, imagined he'd be doing back when he was blowing tenor saxophone as a jazz session player just out of college. "If you imagine the life of a jazz musician and all that implies, if you'd have told me I was going to be a cop, I would've said you were out of your mind," Cain says with a grin that shows off a David Letterman-esque gap in his teeth.

But Cain also got interested in martial arts. When he got good at it, he started training others, and one time he trained some police.

They invited him to the shooting range, and he was so hooked, he said, he bought a .357 revolver that same day. Cain went on to become a patrolman, then a SWAT team leader. Eventually, he retired from the force and opened a training school, Cumberland Tactics, in Tennessee. "I have a lot of cops tell me I shouldn't be teaching this stuff to civilians," Cain says. "My response is, this stuff was invented by civilians, and they didn't have a problem with teaching the cops." Only one of the civilians in the class claims to have been mugged, but many have concealed carry permits, and all agree that a gun is essential for protection.

Colorectal surgeon Leigh Nadler, 45, of Upper St. Clair, says he carries a pistol when he goes Downtown. If any of his patients wonder how he squares his Hippocratic Oath -- "First, do no harm" -- with possession of a deadly weapon, Nadler says he's not concerned.

"Why would it be any of their business?" he asks.

Bridgeville plumber Hans Dalke, 54, says he started carrying a pistol on the job three years ago.

"I've worked in some areas in the city you'd probably rather not be in sometimes," he says.

David Lutz, 39, who flew in all the way from Minot, N.D., designs training programs for things like aerospace manufacturing. "Anybody who knows what's going on in the world and human behavior knows that things go bad sometimes. (Having a gun) is a last-ditch measure," Lutz says. Sure, things don't go bad that often in Minot, he admits. "But you go to other parts of the state, closer to the Interstate. The bad guys need to get from point A to point B, too."

Former Pittsburgher Jim Atkins, 46, living near Cincinnati as a cargo pilot, played basketball years ago at Central Catholic and Cornell University. Now he goes shooting for exercise and to improve his concentration. When he wants to break a sweat, he practices Japanese sword fighting. "To go out and run five miles, that's painful. But if I'm dressed up in bamboo armor running around swinging a sword, I'm distracted and I don't even realize I'm exercising," Atkins says.

Mark Houser can be reached at mhouser@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7995.

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