South Carolina Concealed Weapons Permit SC CWP


Home Defense

"Paladin's Home Defense class is superb! Their training for situational awareness, mindset, and how to properly set up your house are high points." — P.W. (Firearms Industry Professional)

Class Length: 8 hours (one day)
Class Description
Optional NRA Certification
Class Schedule
How to Apply


Home Defense is based on the NRA Personal Protection In The Home class but we enhance it to prepare you for the specific realities of home invasion in South Carolina and our part of the country. In this class we take you far beyond your CWP class and handgun basics to prepare you through real world scenarios and techniques. As always we tailor the class to our students'  needs and capabilities.

The elements of self defense in South Carolina and other states.South Carolina is among those states with different laws affecting personal protection inside the home and outside it.

It's therefore important for you to know and understand that you have different legal rights and responsibilities depending on where you are at the time of an attack. This class focuses on personal protection inside your home. We explain the common law concept of the Castle Doctrine generally and the statutory laws in South Carolina specifically.

So here's where you learn to protect yourself and your family against home invasion and life-threatening intrusions inside and around your home and workplace in South Carolina and neighboring states. 

The practical goal of our Home Defense class is to develop your knowledge, skills, and attitude essential to the safe and efficient use of a firearm for protection of yourself and your family in your home—and to provide you with knowledge of your rights and responsibilities for self-defense as a law-abiding citizen at home.  

"Thank you for empowering me to protect myself."Our Home Defense class is complete in one day. We hold this class at our facility in greater Columbia, South Carolina, but you don't have to be a South Carolina resident to take this class or any of our other classes. We welcome residents of every state. Email us now to attend a Home Defense class.


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Class Description

Then we coach and guide you through drills and exercises so you always know how to do it."Avoid. Evade. Prevail." Our Home Defense class focuses on how you can avoid the likelihood of home invasions, how you can evade their deadly consequences, and how you can win deadly force confrontations in your home or office within the context of South Carolina law.

Our goal is for you to avoid, evade, and prevail inside your home or office without being destroyed by either the criminal or the criminal justice system. 

We start in the classroom with a review of gun safety and spend the morning on vital considerations such as:

  1. how you prepare for potential deadly force confrontations: mindset, skillset, and toolset
  2. how you avoid and prepare for violent intrusions including home invasion
  3. how you survive the psychological, emotional, moral, and legal contexts of deadly force confrontations
  4. how you use the conditions of readiness to avoid, evade, and prevail
  5. how you use cover and concealment in your home and workplace
  6. how you balance speed and accuracy: distance, shooting positions, and combat accuracy
  7. how you remain a responsible ciitizen within the law: the judicious use of deadly force

We orient you at every stage of Personal Protection In The Home so you always know what you're doing.In our classroom during the morning you'll experience "shoot/no shoot" video scenarios inside the home. We'll explain how to choose, equip, and use a "safe room" in your own home. We'll provide an example home invasion plan that can guide your family's quick response to a sudden home invasion.

We'll explain how to avoid the problems you might face when you make a 911 call under the stress of a violent intrusion. We'll show you how to make an effective 911 call. We'll also show you how to prepare and use a "House Guide" that can get first responders to your aid faster while you're making the 911 call. We'll explain how to talk to the police who arrive in response to your 911 call. 

"I'm grateful to learn the strategy and the preparation I need to survive a home invasion."We'll present the common law Castle Doctrine and explain South Carolina's Protection of Persons and Property Act, which gives you expanded legal protection under the Castle Doctrine when you defend your home in South Carolina and other states with similar laws.

We'll teach you the crucial differences between cover and concealment and we'll teach you how to use cover and concealment within your home. We'll also teach you how to identify the "fatal funnel" that can get you killed in your own home and how to avoid it. And we'll introduce you to the OODA loop that lets you take the fight away from your attacker and prevail.

So in our classroom we teach you how to do what can save your life and your family and your home in the real world.

We engage you in the Tueller Drill so you get a feeling for how close is too close.After lunch we spend the entire afternoon on the shooting range. As always we start with gun safety. Then we do a shooting warmup to get you started the right way. We apply the techniques we introduced in the classroom and we explore specific needs as real situations unfold. 

Bring plenty of ammunition. You'll learn the most important shooting techniques you need to protect yourself at home and in your office and workplace. You get real-world applications.

Among the advanced techniques you'll learn are the Tueller Drill and "How close is too close?" We teach you to use a flash sight picture, one- and two-handed shooting, dominant- and support-handed shooting, malfunction drills, and Chuck Taylor's speed rock.

Point shooting and the speed rock can save your life at arm's length.We'll teach you the speed rock as Chuck Taylor himself taught it to us. You'll shoot from behind cover and concealment, and you'll learn what a bad guy can see of you when you think you're shooting while hidden. But we never push you to do what you can't do or don't want to do.  

Our Home Defense training class has six major parts. We enhance that class for civilians who want to live responsibly while protecting themselves and their family inside their home. And we adjust according to the circumstances and enrollment in each class. Here's the core:

1. Defensive Shooting
2. Basic Defensive Pistol Skills
3. Firearms and the Law: Possession, Ownership, and the Use of Deadly Force
4. Strategies for Home Safety and Responding to a Violent Confrontation
5. The Home Defense Handgun
6. Shooting Activities

We enhance that core as appropriate to the individual students in every class.

We take you as you are and teach you to win. Our Personal Protection In The Home classes are relatively small. We provide individual instruction and give individual attention within the context of that small class. But it's not just a weapons manipulation class. You don't need to be an athlete or an expert shooter or a marksman to take this class. We work with real people in real situations and avoid fantasies. You can take this class more than once if you want.

On completion of our Home Defense class you receive our signed and sealed Certificate of Instruction that attests to your participation in the Tueller Drill. It could be one of the most important training documents in your records if you need to explain why you had to resort to the use of a firearm to defend yourself—inside or outside your home.

Optional NRA Certification

As an option you may choose to extend the Home Defense class so you also earn NRA Personal Protection In The Home certification after passing an in-class written examination and meeting NRA standards for the class. The optional NRA certification is a prerequisite for NRA certified Basic Pistol Instructors to attend an NRA Personal Protection In The Home Instructor course.

NRA Personal Protection In The Home is a student-level Firearms Training class, not an Instructor Training class. The student-level Personal Protection In The Home class is the pre course qualification required for NRA certified Basic Pistol Instructors to attend an NRA Personal Protection In The Home Instructor training class.

Of course students who do not intend to become instructors may also earn the optional NRA certification in this class, but of course that optional certification does not qualify them as instructors.

Email us now to attend a Home Defense class.

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Class Schedule

Here are the currently scheduled Home Defense classes. We schedule Home Defense classes in the greater Columbia, SC, area several times a year. Email us if you want to take a Home Defense class even if you prefer a class not yet on our schedule. We add classes from time to time as circumstances permit. 

How to Apply

Email us now to attend a Home Defense class. Please be sure to include your telephone number(s) so we can call to prequalify you for the class, determine your needs, and answer your questions. We want you to succeed.


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