This is taken from the Average joe's gun Blog, I had nothing to do with it other than finding it a good reality check on guns and training that should be considered when dealing with the responsibility of owning and operating them in a self defense scenario. The weapons mentioned do not matter as much as the content. Few of us have the time to include all of them in our daily lives, but take from it what you can. A lot of it I hadn't thought about for some time.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Importance of Training
Last summer, while my family was out of town, I decided to fill my evenings by taking advantage of the training courses offered by Bill’s Gun Shop and Range in Robbinsdale, MN where I shoot. I took their three hour intermediate course followed by their 18 hour advanced course and then enrolled and have continued to take their tactical course. Along with these courses Bill’s also offers classes in hunter safety, concealed carry permit, basic handgun safety, AR15 basics, one on one instruction, home defense, retired law enforcement officer nation carry permit, and, if you really have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket you can get private instruction in fully automatic weapons.
After taking the tactical course (a number of times) it is very apparent to me that anyone who buys a handgun for self defense is doing themselves a huge disservice if they do not take advantage of the training that may be available near them. I can shoot the center out of a bullseye at 21 to 31 feet with most any handgun while standing still and using a two-handed hold. However, add shooting with the weak hand or shooting while moving and those groups open up real fast. I quickly learned that very little of what I am able to practice in the average “open to the public” range is going to help me if my life is in danger and I must put my handgun to use. Now, don’t get me wrong; the basics of sight picture, trigger pull, and breathing are extremely important in learning how to shoot. However, in a real fight you may not have enough time to acquire the perfect sight picture, you will develop tunnel vision, auditory exclusion will probably set in, the body will pull blood away from your extremities so your fine motor skills will be diminished and you are not going to have the match-perfect trigger pull concentration that you have when you are standing still and shooting at stationary targets, and more than likely you are going to hold your breath, forgetting to exhale and inhale, until you shoot your pistol dry. As bad as all of this may sound it is still possible to shoot well under these circumstances…but you must practice under those circumstances in order to do so.
The advantages of advanced levels of training are twofold:
1. It allows you to practice in a more realistic manner and practice skills that you cannot practice in most public ranges.
2. It allows you to discover what equipment works best for you.
Let’s examine this further. Most of the things that I am going to discuss in this section are not allowed to be practiced on a public range unless you are under the watchful eye of a trained instructor. There are many “World Class” training institutes around the country, but at the present time I do not have the means to pick up and head to New Hampshire (SIG Academy and Lethal Force Institute), Arizona (Gunsite and Gabe Suarez), or Oregon (Thunder Ranch) for a week. Fortunately, most public ranges offer training classes where some of the necessary skills are taught and I highly encourage you to avail yourself to the training that is offered.
Things that you cannot do at a regular public range.
1. Work from a holster
This may seem basic and many people downplay it but during the training classes I have seen people get the pistol caught on their cover garment. I have seen people yank on their pistol forgetting to release the retention strap. I have seen two people draw their weapon and somehow eject their magazine (I did not have the presence of mind to find out if they had some sort of aftermarket extended magazine release affixed to their pistol). On the humorous side I even saw one attendee wearing a paddle holster draw his pistol and point it at the target with the holster still firmly attached. While all of these things may seem funny or even a little stupid, they happen. If they happen in an actual shooting situation it could cost you your life. If they happen during training you get to learn from it and figure out how to correct it. Then should it happen in an actual shooting situation you will have experienced it before and know what to do rather than becoming flustered, stopping in your tracks, and making yourself an easy target.
2. Shoot while moving
This is an extremely important piece of surviving an armed encounter. The first goal of being in a gunfight is to not get shot. Sounds simple but it isn’t and you’ll be hard pressed to do it unless you have practiced it extensively and it becomes second nature at the first sign of an attack. Let’s breakdown everything that is going to happen when a gunfight occurs; you become cognizant of the threat, you may panic, you may go into denial, you may probably start to feel confused. As the threat escalates into an attack your mouth is going to go dry while your sweat glands kick into high gear, you may feel a bad case of diarrhea percolating in your bowels, you begin to develop tunnel vision, your blood flow and heart rate change as the fight or flight instinct kicks in, the body instinctively pulls the blood flows out of your extremities causing you to lose the fine coordination in your fingers, your hand has to find your pistol, deactivate the retention devise holding it in the holster, and then negotiate drawing your weapon out from whatever concealment garment is covering it. Now you raise your pistol, obtain your sight picture, and pull the trigger. And…you should be doing all of that while you are moving off the line of the attack and not tripping over your own two feet. Doesn’t sound quite so simple anymore, does it? The only way to get beyond all of the pitfalls is to practice while moving. You must practice, practice, and practice some more under direction of a trained instructor who can tell you what you are doing wrong and how to fix it.
(If you would like to learn more about the physiological and psychological effects of being in a gun fight I would highly recommend “The Bulletproof Mind” by Lt. Col. David Grossman and “Training at the Speed of Life” by Kenneth R. Murray.)
3. Shoot multiple targets (and shoot them while moving)
The threat to your life may not only come from the random robber, carjacker, or “crazed lone gunman”; you may also be faced with some sick bunch of Columbine copy cats bent on mass murder or you may encounter the active shooter scenario with multiple terrorists willing to martyr themselves by killing a great many of the infidels as occurred in Mumbai, India a few months ago. Here is yet another skill to acquire. Your peripheral vision will be decreased so you will have to practice a 360 degree scan of your environment unless you are in an area of your own home where no one could enter behind you. Movement skills such as getting off the line of the attack, taking cover, reloading, and scanning for additional threats have to be practiced over and over and over so that they become engrained in your muscle memory allowing your body to perform them as if you are on autopilot. You need the autopilot function to kick-in when the denial, panic, and confusion sets in.
4. Shoot from concealment
Do you know the difference between concealment and cover? Do you know how far back from your concealment/cover you need to be so that the gasses from your shot and particles from the wall do not blow back in your face causing injury or temporary blindness? Do you know how to present the least amount of exposure when you take the shot from behind cover/concealment? Do you know how to “work your position” so that you do not show yourself in the same spot when you fire multiple times from concealment/cover? Unless you can answer “yes” to all of these questions you need training.
5. Shoot at targets that partially concealed
This is difficult. It takes concentration and breath control to get hits in tight situations, especially when your target is partially concealed by innocent parties. You might be able to make these shots consistently in a no-stress, stationary shooting position, but add all of the physiological and psychological stress factors mentioned numerous time above and your abilities diminish unless you have repeatedly practiced these scenarios and have mastered the not only the concept of breath control but have mastered it’s application in a stress shooting situation.
6. Night shooting
This isn’t “High Noon” and you aren’t Gary Cooper going to meet the outlaws at the train station in the middle of the day. Statistics tell us that more than likely your deadly encounter will occur at night. So…have you practiced shooting in low light? Have you practiced in complete darkness? Do you know how to shoot and work a flashlight at the same time? Do you know how to scan with a flashlight so that you are not providing a “perfect target” for the assailant that is hiding in a darkened corner? And here’s a tough one: you have your pistol in one hand, your flashlight in the other, and you have to reload. Do you know how to accomplish this when both hands are full? Do you holster the pistol and keep your flashlight up so that you can see what is happening around you while you get a fresh magazine to recharge your pistol?
The correct answer is you turnoff and stow the flashlight while you are moving to concealment/cover and reload. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? Well here’s what I have seen in training. People get flustered and stand still for a few seconds, apparently waiting to get shot. People drop their flashlights and stand still apparently waiting to get shot. People put their flashlights in their pockets with the light still on thereby making them a perfectly illuminated silhouette for their adversary. Practice, practice, practice, practice until it becomes an automatic reaction.
7. Shooting multiple times and shooting rapid fire
Depending upon which magazine article or book I am reading by whichever expert has written it I find information saying that the assailant will go down with one well placed shot (with the author’s particular favorite caliber) or that you will need multiple shots of any caliber between .22 Long Rifle and .44 Magnum. So let’s split the difference and realize that:
1. You may miss with your first shot (or second, or third, etc.)
2. You may get a hit in your adversary’s extremity that does not stop them.
3. You may get a hit in center mass that that does not cease the hostilities.
All of which means you may have to shoot multiple times. (There are many clever sayings that the gun scribes and trainers have come up with such as “fire ‘till the felon falls” or “shoot them to the ground”. To me they are a little too cute for the circumstances, but if those little sayings engrain themselves into your brain then they have served their purpose very well.)
Most people I see at the public range fire one shot and then lower the handgun slightly to see where the bullet struck the target. I’ll admit that I do this too; I want the instant gratification of seeing what a skilled marksman I am. However, shooting one shot, pausing, and losing your sight picture can cost you a valuable second or two during which time your adversary can shoot and put you down.
So you need to master the art of continuous shooting without losing your sight picture. Rapid firing should be practiced as well (many public ranges do not allow this) if only so that you become cognizant of your limitations. You need to know how fast you can accurately shoot under a stressful situation.
8. Reloading
This seems almost too basic to even discuss, but under stress I have seen people drop magazines while reloading. Just a few weeks ago I jammed a magazine into the rim of the magazine well with such force that I became momentarily confused because the reload didn’t go right. I recovered quickly by dropping the magazine (I wasn’t quite sure why the magazine did not go into the well so fearing some sort of problem with the magazine I let it go) and grabbing another one. I was pleased that I recovered quickly and kept moving but was disappointed that I had discarded a fully loaded magazine.
In most public ranges you cannot practice a tactical reload as the range won’t let you work from your belt (either holster or magazine pouch). In all public ranges skills like reloading while on the move and getting to cover just cannot be accommodated.
There are also some things that you can practice on a public range but you don’t; things like shooting one handed and shooting weak handed. We don’t like to do things that we are not good at, but a training instructor is going to force you to do these things. You may have to deal with the occasional malfunction while on the pubic range but I bet you haven’t practiced the malfunctions drills enough to where you can do them instinctively in 1 second or less and I know you cannot practice moving to cover while you clear your weapon. All of these things are key skills that the range is not going to let you practice on your own, but probably will under and instructor’s supervision.
9. Stress Inoculation
Stress inoculation is an extremely important factor. The more you practice under a stressful environment the better prepared you will be, both physically, mentally, and emotionally, to operate in and survive an actual gunfight.
This is where the “World Class” training institutes really shine. They provide you the most realistic training environment. Most employ “force on force” type training where the students shoot at each other with simunitions (a gunpowder based cartridge that fires a colored marking capsule). Simunitions is much like paintball shooting except that the guns used are real, they operate the same way they do with live ammunition, and they go bang. It also hurts when you get hit with one. This creates a very stressful and realistic training scenario that is key to the inoculation process.
Less sophisticated training operations that I am aware of induce stress by the use of whistles blowing or other auditory distractions during the exercise, strobe light disorientation, or aerobic exercise prior to the shooting drill in order to get the heart rate up over the 200 beats per minute range, the same heart beat range that occurs during combat.
More of this article including types of equiptment, ammo, etc., are on average joe's web site if you would like to see what he thinks take a look at his reviews on just about every popular handgun on the blog.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Importance of Training
Last summer, while my family was out of town, I decided to fill my evenings by taking advantage of the training courses offered by Bill’s Gun Shop and Range in Robbinsdale, MN where I shoot. I took their three hour intermediate course followed by their 18 hour advanced course and then enrolled and have continued to take their tactical course. Along with these courses Bill’s also offers classes in hunter safety, concealed carry permit, basic handgun safety, AR15 basics, one on one instruction, home defense, retired law enforcement officer nation carry permit, and, if you really have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket you can get private instruction in fully automatic weapons.
After taking the tactical course (a number of times) it is very apparent to me that anyone who buys a handgun for self defense is doing themselves a huge disservice if they do not take advantage of the training that may be available near them. I can shoot the center out of a bullseye at 21 to 31 feet with most any handgun while standing still and using a two-handed hold. However, add shooting with the weak hand or shooting while moving and those groups open up real fast. I quickly learned that very little of what I am able to practice in the average “open to the public” range is going to help me if my life is in danger and I must put my handgun to use. Now, don’t get me wrong; the basics of sight picture, trigger pull, and breathing are extremely important in learning how to shoot. However, in a real fight you may not have enough time to acquire the perfect sight picture, you will develop tunnel vision, auditory exclusion will probably set in, the body will pull blood away from your extremities so your fine motor skills will be diminished and you are not going to have the match-perfect trigger pull concentration that you have when you are standing still and shooting at stationary targets, and more than likely you are going to hold your breath, forgetting to exhale and inhale, until you shoot your pistol dry. As bad as all of this may sound it is still possible to shoot well under these circumstances…but you must practice under those circumstances in order to do so.
The advantages of advanced levels of training are twofold:
1. It allows you to practice in a more realistic manner and practice skills that you cannot practice in most public ranges.
2. It allows you to discover what equipment works best for you.
Let’s examine this further. Most of the things that I am going to discuss in this section are not allowed to be practiced on a public range unless you are under the watchful eye of a trained instructor. There are many “World Class” training institutes around the country, but at the present time I do not have the means to pick up and head to New Hampshire (SIG Academy and Lethal Force Institute), Arizona (Gunsite and Gabe Suarez), or Oregon (Thunder Ranch) for a week. Fortunately, most public ranges offer training classes where some of the necessary skills are taught and I highly encourage you to avail yourself to the training that is offered.
Things that you cannot do at a regular public range.
1. Work from a holster
This may seem basic and many people downplay it but during the training classes I have seen people get the pistol caught on their cover garment. I have seen people yank on their pistol forgetting to release the retention strap. I have seen two people draw their weapon and somehow eject their magazine (I did not have the presence of mind to find out if they had some sort of aftermarket extended magazine release affixed to their pistol). On the humorous side I even saw one attendee wearing a paddle holster draw his pistol and point it at the target with the holster still firmly attached. While all of these things may seem funny or even a little stupid, they happen. If they happen in an actual shooting situation it could cost you your life. If they happen during training you get to learn from it and figure out how to correct it. Then should it happen in an actual shooting situation you will have experienced it before and know what to do rather than becoming flustered, stopping in your tracks, and making yourself an easy target.
2. Shoot while moving
This is an extremely important piece of surviving an armed encounter. The first goal of being in a gunfight is to not get shot. Sounds simple but it isn’t and you’ll be hard pressed to do it unless you have practiced it extensively and it becomes second nature at the first sign of an attack. Let’s breakdown everything that is going to happen when a gunfight occurs; you become cognizant of the threat, you may panic, you may go into denial, you may probably start to feel confused. As the threat escalates into an attack your mouth is going to go dry while your sweat glands kick into high gear, you may feel a bad case of diarrhea percolating in your bowels, you begin to develop tunnel vision, your blood flow and heart rate change as the fight or flight instinct kicks in, the body instinctively pulls the blood flows out of your extremities causing you to lose the fine coordination in your fingers, your hand has to find your pistol, deactivate the retention devise holding it in the holster, and then negotiate drawing your weapon out from whatever concealment garment is covering it. Now you raise your pistol, obtain your sight picture, and pull the trigger. And…you should be doing all of that while you are moving off the line of the attack and not tripping over your own two feet. Doesn’t sound quite so simple anymore, does it? The only way to get beyond all of the pitfalls is to practice while moving. You must practice, practice, and practice some more under direction of a trained instructor who can tell you what you are doing wrong and how to fix it.
(If you would like to learn more about the physiological and psychological effects of being in a gun fight I would highly recommend “The Bulletproof Mind” by Lt. Col. David Grossman and “Training at the Speed of Life” by Kenneth R. Murray.)
3. Shoot multiple targets (and shoot them while moving)
The threat to your life may not only come from the random robber, carjacker, or “crazed lone gunman”; you may also be faced with some sick bunch of Columbine copy cats bent on mass murder or you may encounter the active shooter scenario with multiple terrorists willing to martyr themselves by killing a great many of the infidels as occurred in Mumbai, India a few months ago. Here is yet another skill to acquire. Your peripheral vision will be decreased so you will have to practice a 360 degree scan of your environment unless you are in an area of your own home where no one could enter behind you. Movement skills such as getting off the line of the attack, taking cover, reloading, and scanning for additional threats have to be practiced over and over and over so that they become engrained in your muscle memory allowing your body to perform them as if you are on autopilot. You need the autopilot function to kick-in when the denial, panic, and confusion sets in.
4. Shoot from concealment
Do you know the difference between concealment and cover? Do you know how far back from your concealment/cover you need to be so that the gasses from your shot and particles from the wall do not blow back in your face causing injury or temporary blindness? Do you know how to present the least amount of exposure when you take the shot from behind cover/concealment? Do you know how to “work your position” so that you do not show yourself in the same spot when you fire multiple times from concealment/cover? Unless you can answer “yes” to all of these questions you need training.
5. Shoot at targets that partially concealed
This is difficult. It takes concentration and breath control to get hits in tight situations, especially when your target is partially concealed by innocent parties. You might be able to make these shots consistently in a no-stress, stationary shooting position, but add all of the physiological and psychological stress factors mentioned numerous time above and your abilities diminish unless you have repeatedly practiced these scenarios and have mastered the not only the concept of breath control but have mastered it’s application in a stress shooting situation.
6. Night shooting
This isn’t “High Noon” and you aren’t Gary Cooper going to meet the outlaws at the train station in the middle of the day. Statistics tell us that more than likely your deadly encounter will occur at night. So…have you practiced shooting in low light? Have you practiced in complete darkness? Do you know how to shoot and work a flashlight at the same time? Do you know how to scan with a flashlight so that you are not providing a “perfect target” for the assailant that is hiding in a darkened corner? And here’s a tough one: you have your pistol in one hand, your flashlight in the other, and you have to reload. Do you know how to accomplish this when both hands are full? Do you holster the pistol and keep your flashlight up so that you can see what is happening around you while you get a fresh magazine to recharge your pistol?
The correct answer is you turnoff and stow the flashlight while you are moving to concealment/cover and reload. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? Well here’s what I have seen in training. People get flustered and stand still for a few seconds, apparently waiting to get shot. People drop their flashlights and stand still apparently waiting to get shot. People put their flashlights in their pockets with the light still on thereby making them a perfectly illuminated silhouette for their adversary. Practice, practice, practice, practice until it becomes an automatic reaction.
7. Shooting multiple times and shooting rapid fire
Depending upon which magazine article or book I am reading by whichever expert has written it I find information saying that the assailant will go down with one well placed shot (with the author’s particular favorite caliber) or that you will need multiple shots of any caliber between .22 Long Rifle and .44 Magnum. So let’s split the difference and realize that:
1. You may miss with your first shot (or second, or third, etc.)
2. You may get a hit in your adversary’s extremity that does not stop them.
3. You may get a hit in center mass that that does not cease the hostilities.
All of which means you may have to shoot multiple times. (There are many clever sayings that the gun scribes and trainers have come up with such as “fire ‘till the felon falls” or “shoot them to the ground”. To me they are a little too cute for the circumstances, but if those little sayings engrain themselves into your brain then they have served their purpose very well.)
Most people I see at the public range fire one shot and then lower the handgun slightly to see where the bullet struck the target. I’ll admit that I do this too; I want the instant gratification of seeing what a skilled marksman I am. However, shooting one shot, pausing, and losing your sight picture can cost you a valuable second or two during which time your adversary can shoot and put you down.
So you need to master the art of continuous shooting without losing your sight picture. Rapid firing should be practiced as well (many public ranges do not allow this) if only so that you become cognizant of your limitations. You need to know how fast you can accurately shoot under a stressful situation.
8. Reloading
This seems almost too basic to even discuss, but under stress I have seen people drop magazines while reloading. Just a few weeks ago I jammed a magazine into the rim of the magazine well with such force that I became momentarily confused because the reload didn’t go right. I recovered quickly by dropping the magazine (I wasn’t quite sure why the magazine did not go into the well so fearing some sort of problem with the magazine I let it go) and grabbing another one. I was pleased that I recovered quickly and kept moving but was disappointed that I had discarded a fully loaded magazine.
In most public ranges you cannot practice a tactical reload as the range won’t let you work from your belt (either holster or magazine pouch). In all public ranges skills like reloading while on the move and getting to cover just cannot be accommodated.
There are also some things that you can practice on a public range but you don’t; things like shooting one handed and shooting weak handed. We don’t like to do things that we are not good at, but a training instructor is going to force you to do these things. You may have to deal with the occasional malfunction while on the pubic range but I bet you haven’t practiced the malfunctions drills enough to where you can do them instinctively in 1 second or less and I know you cannot practice moving to cover while you clear your weapon. All of these things are key skills that the range is not going to let you practice on your own, but probably will under and instructor’s supervision.
9. Stress Inoculation
Stress inoculation is an extremely important factor. The more you practice under a stressful environment the better prepared you will be, both physically, mentally, and emotionally, to operate in and survive an actual gunfight.
This is where the “World Class” training institutes really shine. They provide you the most realistic training environment. Most employ “force on force” type training where the students shoot at each other with simunitions (a gunpowder based cartridge that fires a colored marking capsule). Simunitions is much like paintball shooting except that the guns used are real, they operate the same way they do with live ammunition, and they go bang. It also hurts when you get hit with one. This creates a very stressful and realistic training scenario that is key to the inoculation process.
Less sophisticated training operations that I am aware of induce stress by the use of whistles blowing or other auditory distractions during the exercise, strobe light disorientation, or aerobic exercise prior to the shooting drill in order to get the heart rate up over the 200 beats per minute range, the same heart beat range that occurs during combat.
More of this article including types of equiptment, ammo, etc., are on average joe's web site if you would like to see what he thinks take a look at his reviews on just about every popular handgun on the blog.
