Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/901315
While most of our readers only know B&T as a manufacturer of sup- pressors and innovative weapons, the company is so much more. Besides also manufacturing more than 1000 different gun accesso- ries like stocks, mounts, handguards in order to pimp basically every commonly type of gun used, B&T, nested in the beautiful Bernese highland and Lake Thun, is also the Swiss distributor for several well- known global brands. Aimpoint, 5.11, Blackhawk, HK, Simunition, High Speed Gear, Trijicon, Revision, Lindnerhof and many more. So when B&T holds its Police Days, about 45 of the brands they repre- sent are present with an own exhibition booth. As one can imagine, such an exhibition cannot be hold as an in-house exhibition any- more. So one could move such an event into a local exhibition center, but not B&T. They moved it to a nearby shooting range, which is by coincidence, one of the largest shooting ranges in Switzerland with more than one hundred 300 m ranges. So the visitors can not only touch and discuss guns there, they can actually shoot most of B&T and HK guns during the event. And as the news USW from B&T and the SFP9 from HK gained a lot of interest lately, for many visitors, this was the perfect opportunity to get personal firsthand experi- ence with these new and interesting weapons. THE VISITORS The B&T Police Days is not a public event. It is only open for mem- bers of the law enforcement and military community. They have to preregister for the event and show they service ID in order to gain access. What may look as a little exaggerated at first, is a very proven concept, resulting in the perfect freedom of the visitors to openly discuss current problems and challenges the service mem- bers face. One could see teams from different SWAT teams sitting together and talk about lessons learned from a recent raid on some terror suspects, while on a nearby booth a military sniper talked to a manufacturers of camouflage equipment about special needs for sniper specific camouflage clothing for the current theatres of war. As knowledgeable readers may object, that Switzerland is neutral and therefore has no soldiers in fighting missions deployed, one must know that the B&T Police days are such an international event that visitors from over 20 countries participated in the event, some as far as Singapore. This kind of networking becomes more and more important in the MIL/LE community. If an Italian procurement agent can learn from the experience a Norwegian soldier has with cold weather clothing, this is what can be called a win-win situation. Especially while it can be more than -40° C in Norway in the winter and while this discussion is held at the Carinthia booth, which is one of the world's leading companies for military cold weather clothing. THE WORKSHOPS AND LECTURES But B&T did not only offer the perfect surrounding for knowledge transfer among the visitors themselves, during the two day event from June 20 to 21st, they also organized 9 different workshops and lectures by international renown experts on current subjects. The highlight without any doubt was the car shooting workshop held by Frank Thiel. This very well-known Police trainer is the Eu- ropean authority when it comes to shooting scenarios from inside and around cars. So his workshop, even so offered 7 times during the two day event, was completely overbooked in a few hours after B&T announced the different workshops. No wonder, as given the current terrorist threats, it is a very likely scenario that a police pa- trol car, called to a terror attacked, is engaged by the terrorists when approaching the attack site. So Frank Thiel taught the participating members of police and military units, how to shoot from within the car, how to get out of the car and how to use the car as a cover. Just getting out of the car while under fire and while shooting back at the attacker is not an easy thing. Opening up the safety belt and the door while keeping you focus on the threat is just on small fraction of the points the officers has to deal with in such a situation. While getting out of the car one normally stands up, it should be obvious that is it not an option to further expose yourself if under hostile fire. So one has to slide down low from his seat, directly taking cover www.fragoutmag.com