Real-world tactical training to be found at Las Vegas Gunfights

The shorthand description of Las Vegas Gunfights, 3068 S. Highland Drive, is that it’s paintball with real guns.

The longer description is more complex.

Owner and creator Nephi Oliva hopes to make something that is simultaneously a real world tactical training ground, a sport rivaling mixed martial arts and something tourists and locals can do for fun.

“It’s a way to practice for combat and tactical situations with guns that is much closer to the real world than other training,” Oliva said. “It’s the difference between running on a treadmill and running down a beach in Santa Monica. It’s how your state of mind influences your willingness to accept new information.”

While the guns are real, the ammunition is only mostly real. The gun barrels have been modified to a narrower caliber so they can only fire Simunition, non-lethal training ammo that uses standard magazines filled with shells — with charges in them — that shoot marking cartridges composed with a water soluble compound instead of lead. The marking cartridges travel at around 600 feet per second.

Nearly anyone can participate in combat with a trainer or a friend in the operation’s 30-feet-by-50-feet arena. The room has a sand-covered floor, oil drums and other obstacles to hide behind and limited lighting. It also has one plexiglass wall so about 50 observers can watch the three-minute matches. The company is looking into how to film and project the images on screens, perhaps using night vision cameras. The matches start off with someone, usually Oliva, firing a mounted faux machine gun that belches fire and makes a loud retort.

“A lot of the arena is designed to create chaos and disorient the participants,” Oliva said. “We play loud music; we have smoke effects. I fire off the machine gun at random times during the match, and every time I do, the guys duck behind cover, even though they know it isn’t really firing anything. It’s a natural reaction.”

Tourists or locals involved in the leagues Oliva hopes will form are required to suit up in safety gear: helmets, full face protection, throat and groin protection and other body armor.

The venue has a room to suit up in and several lounges and seating areas between the front desk and the arena.

“We have a full hookah bar called The ATF Lounge,” said Las Vegas Gunfights general manager James Miranda. It can be rented for private parties or used as a waiting area if there are larger groups.”

The arena is intentionally small so that it encourages interaction among participants. Oliva sees this as one way to introduce people to firearms and firearm safety.

“You still have to manipulate it like a real firearm,” Miranda said. “It shoots and handles like a gun because it is a gun. They each get four magazines with 10 rounds in each magazine. You have to engage, or you’re going to lose.”

It’s a concept Oliva and his team call “entertrainment.”

It differs greatly from traditional paintball. It’s a more tactical situation with guns because they are real and have limited ammunition. In paintball, large capacity guns allow players to fire a barrage of paintballs haphazardly.

“Paintballs are less accurate, and they are slower, so you can actually see them coming at you,” Miranda said. “The guns aren’t even fired with the trigger finger like a real gun.”

Oliva said that the impetus for the idea came from a desire by General Dynamics, the company that purchased Simunition, to find more venues to sell the training ammunition.

Oliva believes he’s found a real solution to shortages he sees in firearm training particularly for law enforcement and military training.

“Shooting paper targets in a range isn’t training you for the real world,” Oliva said. “When we have people out in the arena, I’ll ask them why they have their gun pointed straight down between shots. Because of safety protocols, you learn a lot of bad habits at a range. In a tactical situation with a gun, it should be right on target or just a little below target most of the time.”

At an exhibition match before the operation opened to the public, several SWAT members went head to head in two-on-two matches. Oliva said that they reported that they felt the adrenaline rush that they hadn’t felt in a long time during the gunfight.

“We want to keep all the elements within the game parallel to real world situations,” Oliva said. “With the SWAT event, we threw in four guys and gave three of them pistols and one of them an AR-15. I told the crowd, ‘If you think that’s unfair, that’s life. Adapt and overcome.’ You aren’t guaranteed to go up against an opponent that is equally armed in the game or in the real world.”

For the training sessions,police and military and for the professional head-to-head combat sport, Oliva said the combat wouldn’t just be a gunfight; it also include grappling and martial arts.

“If you’re a gun guy, and you don’t know anything about physical defense, that’s bad for society because you’re always going to go for your gun,” Oliva said. “If you’re a martial arts guy who doesn’t have any training with guns, all it takes to end your career is a guy with a gun.”

What Oliva believes Las Vegas Gunfights has done is to create the ability to spar with guns.

The venue opened to the public in mid-October, and Oliva hopes that it will be the center of what he believes will become the valley’s gun district, with multiple firearm-related businesses clustered in a relatively small area. He said there is room for growth, with 7.5 acres of land available for development behind the operation.

“We’re near the Strip, and we’re centrally located,” Oliva said. “I described this to a friend, and he said this could be bigger than mixed martial arts. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think we’re looking at the start of something really big here.”

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor, email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.