Point shooting was the innovation of William Fairbairn (Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife). A shooting technique he instructed the
fledgling OSS training in Canada just before WWII.
Fairbairn didn't innovate point shooting. It's been done since spears, darts, and primitive archery. It was certainly practiced with guns before sights were invented. Fairbairn & Sykes did promote point shooting skills because they understood that in many gunfights, a person could be prevented from any opportunity to use the sights. This remains sound advice to this day, and will continue to be sound for the foreseeable future. They never promoted the idea of forbidding the use of sights, but that idea did come about later as an indirect result of their influence.
It is not clear from Shoot to Live how much of the handgun techniques were sourced from Fairbairn and how much from Sykes. William Fairbairn held a superior rank in the police force (he was the chief), while Eric Sykes was a civilian, volunteer and then part-time reserve. Fairbairn was the student of Jiu Jitsu and Judo -- actually, boxing, wrestling, savate, Shin no Shinto ryu jujutsu and Kodokan judo. He also invented his own martial art "Defendu." I believe he was the source of most of the hand-to-hand and knife techniques, and that Eric Sykes was actually the source of most of the firearm techniques. Whatever Fairbairn taught about firearms, he probably learned from Eric Sykes.
Eric Sykes primarily worked for "import/export" trading companies in Shanghai, where he met Fairbairn. Fairbairn involved him as an instructor, and SWAT team leader. He was the leader of the Shanghai Muni Police sniper squad, and between the two, he was definitely the firearms expert. He did most of his work as a civilian, unpaid volunteer or part-time and so he never competed with Fairbairn for rank, nor did he have a reason to consider himself inferior -- but that's exactly how Fairbairn treated him. It's been written that this is ultimately what split them after "Shooting to Live" was published. I suspect that Fairbairn was the one who had the kind of influence that could get books published and ideas promoted as authoritative, and Sykes was just "used" as a source, but that with respect to firearms, he was the source.
Sykes was a hunter, and expert with a rifle and pistol. His father had worked as a cotton trader in Manchester, and Eric had come to Shanghai working for Reiss & Co., a Manchester-based cotton goods trader that had offices in Canton and Shanghai. He later joined the China & Japan Trading Co., the Colt and Remington importer for China, and then worked for S J David & Co., a Bombay-based trader and pioneer of the mill industry in India. Manchester and Bombay certainly had cotton mills and industries that exported to China, but India had more exports to China than just cotton. Perhaps that's what kept the Shanghai Muni PD so busy.
Eric Sykes worked for S J David & Co. from 1929 until he left China 1940. I found that this company was active in the opium trade besides Indian yarns.
When Shooting to Live was published in 1942, the US was in need of doctrine for handgun methodology. The US had no authority or subject matter expert on this topic. Their British allies did, having sourced them from the Shanghai International Settlement's municipal police. Shanghai had been a hotbed for combat with the Chinese criminal underworld and its drug and arms trades. The US, on the other hand, had no such "sandbox" in which to prove hand-to-hand, handgun, and knife combat techniques. They had gone through Prohibition, but without a central institution (like the FBI that would come later) to congeal the learned knowledge into any kind of doctrine. What the US did have, was an excellent handgun, the 1911 Government model (which Fairbairn & Sykes were big promoters of).
Contrary to the Lucky Gunner video, Fairbairn and Sykes never promoted double-action revolvers. They described and illustrated the "Fitz Special" in their book for plainclothes (undercover) detectives for use as what others would describe as a "belly gun," but they very strongly promoted the semi-automatic pistol as superior for all other practical purposes. Their reasons were exactly the ones that have resulted in semi-automatic pistols prevailing in law enforcement today. Fairbairn and Sykes mentioned the Americans' affinity for revolvers and considered it inexplicable and indefensible.
It appears that Col. Rex Applegate of the US Army undertook an effort to promote sidearm and hand-to-hand combat methods for the US. He became a disciple of Fairbairn and Sykes doctrine because at the time (WWII), the British were the best available source of such. It is not clear that Rex Applegate ever met William Fairbairn or Eric Sykes, but he certainly adopted an interpretation of practically all their published doctrine. Applegate popularized his version of the doctrine in the US where the FBI later adopted it and promoted in the fashion that was typical of the age: as an engraved-in-stone, righteous gospel, enshrined by your superiors that must never be questioned. This was the folly of "point shooting" as it came to be known, and not the actual practice of instinctive shooting with proprioception. I have heard from police officers trained in the 1970's who described being battered by their range officers if they dared to use the sights on their revolvers. We've already seen the videos of FBI training where the sights are inexplicably ignored, and nobody ever shoots with more than one hand. The whole thing was obviously taken to the point of foolish extreme. I am sure Eric Sykes, who was a hunter, marksman, and sniper, never intended the use of sights to be prohibited, and he certainly taught using both hands.
In Shooting to Live, Fairbairn and Sykes explicitly describe how to improve the sights on a handgun:
"...for long-range, such as we have been describing, sights offer a distinct advantage. We have little faith, however, in those usually furnished. Good as some of them are for use against a white target and a black bull’s eye, there are very few that can be picked up against a dark background, and this difficulty is increased to the point of being insuperable if the light is bad. To overcome this, the authors' personal pistols are fitted with foresights of silver, of exactly the shape of the ordinary shotgun bead and about the same size. If kept bright, these sights collect any light there is from any angle and can be seen instantly in all circumstances except pitch-darkness. They stand up very well to rough work and can be easily replaced if damaged. We see no reason against the adoption of this type for service issue if some suitable white metal allow were used instead of silver. Though not claimed as suitable for target work, these sights answer their purpose admirably where speed is the prime consideration.
The best rear-sight for use in conjunction with the silver bead is a wide and shallow V. The rear sight should be affixed with a distinct slope to the rear, and once the gun is sighted in, it should be kept in place with a small set screw. It will not shoot loose then and will be less liable to displacement or loss by accident or ill-usage."
The above should be read in consideration of what the Colt factory sights were like in the 1930's.
Two-handed shooting was promoted by Fairbairn and Sykes, but it is another aspect that seems to have been neglected in the bastardized Applegate and FBI versions of "Point Shooting."
The (low) Ready Position from Shooting to Live, 1942
Fairbairn and Sykes described and illustrated the low ready position which is still taught in many handgun classes today. It has a purpose for training beginners prior to holster work. That method is described in Shooting to Live. The Low Ready should be done away with as soon as a holster is introduced. The Low Ready position is not advisable in combat or on the street, but many modern schools fail to communicate this effectively and instead drill it incessantly even after students are drawing from the holster. The Low Ready is not part of the draw stroke from the holster, and it is a poor method to hold the handgun when the muzzle is not on target. If the muzzle is no longer required on target, the #2 or #3 position with the muzzle down is better.
If the muzzle no longer needs to be on target, Low Ready does not point it in a sufficiently safe direction. It still presents a threat to non-combatants downrange such as those who might be rendering aid to other victims or the perpetrator once the threat has been stopped. It even gives the appearance of a continuing, on-going threat to anyone, even law enforcement, coming upon the scene. They see someone with a gun drawn and pointed toward people.
With the gun in the #3 position with the muzzle down, we have better control and retention of the gun, the muzzle is pointed at the ground immediately in front of us instead of a ten-foot radius in front of us, and we're in a position that is part of the draw stroke we practice. We can either return it to holster, or turn the bore parallel with the ground and extend (punch) out toward the target. From the low-ready, we would have to "bowl" up to reacquire the target.
The Low Ready position is another way in which Fairbairn and Sykes teaching is misconstrued to result in bad practice even by those schools which have foresworn "point shooting" and espouse the "modern method" or some derivative thereof.
When I look at surveillance camera videos of SD shootings, rarely do I see the aggressor being anchored to a given position / approach - they're always ducking and weaving and generally moving to concealment (if not cover) once the combat begins. If I presume this to be the predominant SD dynamic, then instinctive snap shooting at elusive targets while also moving would seem (to the voices in my head) to have some value.
