Social media advertisements in the gun world are often for Chinese rip-offs of American products. They’re mostly near-useless or even sometimes dangerous junk. And then there’s the occasional gem.
I found one of those gems recently in the form of a company called PTS Barricade. Their InstaFaceSpace profile swung across my feed and caught my eye. Barricade training and use of cover training are highly valuable. In a gunfight, the goal is to put bullets in the bad guy without getting bullets in yourself.
My years of research has conclusively determined that the fewer bullets in your body, the better. It’s important to train using cover, and barricade training helps accomplish that goal. PTS Barricade provides training barricades with a bit of a twist. They make them in a wide variety of sizes, and they try their hardest to make them lightweight and portable.
PTS Barricade – Light and Small
The model that caught my eye was the PTSB Lite. It’s the smallest and most affordable model. It’s compact, has an integral stand, folds downwards, and can be stored in a nice-sized range bag. The folding action is a simple hinge system with a tab to lock it into the up position.
The PTSB Lite from PTS Barricade uweighs a mere 2.7 pounds. It’s 30 inches tall and 16 inches wide. It’s very simple and offers you a rectangle port, a triangular port, and two circle ports. Each port is at weird locations that challenge you to shoot at weird angles, bending and kneeling, as you try to remain behind cover while engaging a threat.
At 30 inches tall, you need a table to make use of the PTSB Lite. I use an old work stand that raises it enough to use while standing. For kneeling training, you can use anything from a cinder block or chunk of wood to make the PTS Barricade stand tall enough to use as cover.
Because it’s so small and compact, it’s easy to use at an indoor range and can be seated on the shelf in your booth. In my situation, I use it outdoors. You might ask, what about wind? Well, yeah, wind can knock it down, but I found the sandbags I use for zeroing rifles work perfectly to keep it upright.
Ports and Sides
Shooting through the ports, over, or around the cover gives you a wide variety of different positions to find yourself in. You can train with rifles, pistols, and shotguns with relative ease. I messed around with changing the height of the barrier to get a realistic feeling of what the cover might look like in the real world.
It’s not always going to be the perfect height to stand or kneel behind, regardless of what the ‘Die Hard’ movies have taught me. Changing the height from standing to a low crouch has convinced me to begin some Yoga training because my flexibility sucks.
I’m a product of my generation and I tend to get bored quickly, even at the range. Being able to mix up barrier training has made it a lot of fun. I’ve built a big wood barrier, but I rarely use it beyond pistol range. It’s huge and a hassle to move around. The PTS Barricade allows me to move the barricade near and far with ease.
I can bring the barrier back to 25, 50, and 100 yards with ease. I can work rifle shooting behind barriers and flesh out my handgun training easily. It’s super convenient.
Also, the small size makes it easy to bring indoors and practice my dry fire training. I can get better at positioning myself behind barriers while watching Banshee. It’s a little more entertaining than the same old same old aim at the light switch and practices my fundamentals. The small PTS Barricade is super convenient, tucks away into my Range Backpack with ease, and can be used nearly anywhere.
Safety First
The barrier is made of corrugated plastic, so if it takes a shot, there’s no danger of debris or ricochet. If I put a round through the PTS Barricade, it’s not a big deal by any means. The target is still usable and the hole can be duct-taped over. If you shoot it up too much, you can replace the corrugated plastic version.
At only 60-ish bucks, the barricade costs about the same as a box of 9mm. (At least in 2021, it does.) So if you break it, it’s not a big deal and doesn’t require you to buy lumber to make a repair. PTS Barricade makes a few different sizes, but the PTSB Lite made the most sense to me and offered the most versatility for indoor/outdoor ranges.
The larger sizes still fold, and some could even fit in a car trunk, and the weight is still low. If you have a dedicated outdoor range, the larger models might work best for you. You can even have one custom-made to your specifications.
It’s a sweet setup, easy to use, and cheap. You can’t beat that. I like to see goodies from small American companies show some innovation, especially when it is affordable. Check ’em out here.
Specifications: PTS Barricade PTSB Lite
Height – 30 inches
Width – 16 inches
Weight – 2.7 LBS
Price – $61.99
Ratings (out of five stars):
Ergonomics * * * * *
The PTS Barricade is lightweight and compact. It squeezes in my old Blackhawk range bag nicely.
Ease of Use * * * * *
It’s super easy to set up and takes no time at all to set up and take down. The PTS Barricade is also safe to use and easy to use at indoor ranges.
Overall * * * * *
You can’t beat an affordable piece of gear that’s versatile and American-made.
A trip to HomeDepot for a quarter sheet of 3/8 cabinet plywood would work too. More satisfying and customized. Cheaper too.
or a for free 99 cardboard washing machine box……………….
Definitely cool, but at $60 it feels like a solution looking for a problem. As mentioned above, a $20 trip to home depot and a jigsaw gives me one of my own design.
I may just do it for shits and giggles, in fact.
Have you priced plywood of late?
All prices are up including 4×8 crap grade. I have no idea why this is.
I was thinking the same thing. Plywood prices are outrageous.
Items like this are certainly useful and training is important. But these types of things are not within reach of the average person.
Really? $60 is out of reach??
It isn’t about dollars, cents, yen, rubles, credit, or even quatloo’s. It isn’t even about access to the materials or the tools to make these things.
There are more gun stores, gun ranges, and gun smiths within 50 miles of me than many people in this world have in their entire country. If I walked into ANY one of them with something like this in hand I would likely get asked to leave. Very few ranges will even let you draw from a holster at the firing line. Things such as these would only be part of paid training courses that not everyone can do. Sure, for those with enough land, this can be setup in the back yard. But in most subdivisions in this country, firing in the back yard will get the cops and probably SWAT to your home. There just are no places for these to be of much actual use for most people. A huge number of apartment dwellers just go to a single indoor range and that’s it. It’s just like steel plates. Oh yeah, that will go over well with the neighbors.
I’m sure it’s not much different for the bulk of the US population. Most people never get the chance to visit Cody.
I’ve used this at several indoor ranges in the New York City area. Once range officers understand what it is and see it used, they become curious and want one of their own. Another neat part of this barricade is that you can do dry-fire practice (believe me it is more challenging than it seems) anywhere in my home or anywhere else that is convenience because the darn thing is so light, foldable and easy to take around!
Cardboard box
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