That was a home defense scenario, versus the scenario where I have a team of guys with me on entering a building for CQB.

When you’re by yourself, you just want to pie off the room in little slivers of a pie at a time and there’s no rush.

Do it correctly, do it safely, and once you’ve cleared the majority of the room, if you do need a reason to go into the room, then you just need to clear what you haven’t cleared, or the dead space.

Now I am going to walk you through this scenario with a safe and empty Colt Combat Unit Pistol. The first thing is we need is to open the door.

We need to open the door safely, without flagging our own body and we are not entering, so we want to swing the door open. We can do this one of two ways, with our hand or our foot.  I like to use my foot.

Once it’s open, I back away from the door casing, to give myself room, and I start pie-ing off.

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The first thing I am seeing is this corner right here, I can see 99 percent of this corner. I pie it off and I have a threat. I eliminate the threat. 

I am still pie-ing off and, as I eliminate this threat, I have cleared 90 percent of this room.

Now, if I have to go into this room for whatever reason, I would take care of the dead space, which at this time is right behind this door.

Again from the opposite side, once I start the door open with my hand then I finish it by kicking it open so I can get my other hand back on my gun for ease of shooting.

I also want to give myself more space, so I have full presentation as I am pie-ing off this room.  I am giving myself space from the door jam so I am at full presentation and behind my sights when I do see my threat and I am ready for engagement.

The principles stay the same when you are using a carbine. Given the choice of a carbine versus the pistol, I am choosing the carbine, simply because of shot placement.

Train hard. Train safe and we’ll see you on the range.