Michael Agnew Harries

Michael Agnew Harries (May 30, 1938 – November 25, 2000) was a United States Marine, a musician, a teacher, an author, and the inventor of the Harries Flashlight Technique. 
== Career ==
Michael Harries began his career at Alexander Hamilton High School (Los Angeles), where he played in the school band and was featured in the band's drum line during football games. Upon graduating from Hamilton High School, Michael joined the United States Marine Corps, in which he served in the 3rd Marine Division’s Fleet Marine Force, from 1957 through 1961. 
Michael successfully auditioned as a drummer, first for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego Band, and then for the 3rd Marine Division Band. More important for his career, however, was his performance on the rifle range, which earned him an Expert Rifleman marksmanship badge. Impelled by that success, he then made it his business to learn the practical and tactical uses of all of the Marine Corps’s infantry weapons.
Upon leaving the Marine Corps, and having read Jeff Cooper’s writings, Michael sought out and met Colonel Cooper, and participated in his advanced, experimental, “Mountain Man” program at California’s Big Bear Lake.
Harries joined Cooper’s Southwest Pistol League (SWPL) in 1969. By 1974, he was the SWPL’s A-class champion shooter, the league’s highest honor at the time. He then began coaching others in shooting skills, helping them to achieve their own championships.
At about this time, Michael Harries and his friend Michael Horne invented the first practical, heat-formed, Kydex plastic pistol holster, which they named "The Snick" because of the sound it made as the pistol was presented from it. Harries demonstrated the new holster, and also used it in competition, which resulted in acceptance and popularity. Harries took the orders, and Horne built the holsters.
In 1976, Harries was a founding member of the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC), into which the SWPL was immediately incorporated. For the first few years, Michael and holster maker Bruce Nelson acted as IPSC’s holster committee. Michael also served on IPSC’s governing board.
Starting in the mid-1970s, Michael taught pistol, rifle, and shotgun technique to private students, both for competition and for self-defense purposes, and also to operatives of certain covert U.S. Government agencies. He attributed his teaching success to his analytical skills, and to his memory of the needs of specific students.
Michael provided survivalist author Mel Tappan with technical information for his Seminars-on-Survival series, and was the model in the photographs in Tappan’s book Survival Guns. From 1982 through 1992, Michael was on staff at Jeff Cooper’s American Pistol Institute (API, or Gunsite), teaching the arts of shooting pistols, rifles, shotguns, and the automatic weapons used by various police agencies.
In 1981, Michael joined in founding, and became the leader of, the Southern California Tactical Combat program (SCTC), a strictly practical replacement for the no-longer-practical IPSC program. To date, the SCTC still holds twice-monthly experimental shooting exercises dedicated to exploring real-world self-defense and “street tactics.” Michael wrote a monthly column in COMBAT!, the SCTC’s monthly publication, as well as several articles for Combat Handguns and a few survivalist publications. He was the private-section liaison for the Military Marksmanship Education Foundation (MMEF), dedicated to making improvements in Army and Marine Corps marksmanship in these days of budget cuts, and also taught for the Martial Marksmanship Institute (MMI), the teaching arm of the MMEF.
== The Harries Flashlight Technique ==
Michael invented the Harries Flashlight Technique, a method of safely and effectively manipulating both a flashlight and a handgun simultaneously. His technique is taught at API and other shooting schools, and is also used by both law enforcement and the military. Michael Harries and his flashlight technique are briefly mentioned in Wikipedia articles about the Modern Technique of the Pistol and Jeff Cooper's Gunsite Academy.
The Harries Flashlight Technique requires that the user grasp the pistol in a strong firing grip in the master hand, while holding the flashlight independently in the support hand. The flashlight is grasped with its light at the heel (pinky-end) of the support hand, while that hand's thumb manipulates the flashlight's on/off switch. As the master hand presents the pistol, the support hand rises to meet it, passing behind and under the weapon, finally to press strongly against the back of the master hand. In this position, both the flashlight and the pistol are pointing at the same place, and the support hand is providing strong reinforcement to the master hand and its pistol. Now, the support-hand thumb may switch the flashlight on or off at will.
As well as the strong support provided to the master hand and weapon, the advantages of the Harries Flashlight Technique also include that, as is frequently necessary, the flashlight and pistol may be instantly separated and then rejoined, and that there is no possibility that any manipulation of the flashlight could lead to a bilaterally symmetrical movement which might cause an unwanted press on the pistol's trigger and an unsafe discharge.
Thus, the Harries Flashlight Technique is particularly effective, practical, and safe.
== Death ==
Michael Harries died of a heart attack while lunching with friends, immediately following a shooting exercise. After a well-attended memorial service, his ashes were scattered at the shooting range at which he taught.
Category:American people
Category:American musicians
Category:1938 births