NFOA MEMBERS FORUM
General Categories => General Firearm Discussion => Topic started by: JTH on May 22, 2013, 01:39:00 PM
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sjwsti said something interesting a little while ago in a different thread:
In the classic book “Shooting to Live” By W.E. Fairbairn three elements were required to win in a gun fight.
1.Extreme Speed in both drawing and firing
2.Instinctive as opposed to deliberate aim
3.Practice under circumstance which approximate as nearly as possible to actual gun fighting
Then later, talking about a particular type of course, sjwsti says:
"Your success or failure wont be decided by a shot timer or how many "A" zone hits you make. This is pass/fail."
(He says that meaning success or failure in that particular class, to keep this in context.)
…so I thought I'd speak to all four of those points, just for the sake of discussion.
Quick Comment First: "Winning" a gun fight means using a firearm in a lethal-force-level self-defense situation in such a way that you stop the attacker from harming you. There is an assumption (1) that you have to shoot them for this to occur.
Assumption (1): Oddly enough, most of the time you DON'T have to shoot them for this to occur. If you read reports of actual self-defense situations, in a vast majority of them no shots were fired. Instead, the attacker saw the firearm, and then took off. That was it.
This isn't meant as a comment that just having a gun will keep you safe---it was merely a comment that just because you draw the gun doesn't mean you have to shoot someone down. You should certainly be prepared to do so--but you shouldn't automatically do so.
Anyway, point being that the following discussion is based on actually having to shoot the gun at people who are trying to kill you, and succeeding in keeping yourself alive.
Moving to the actual points:
1) Extreme Speed in both drawing and firing
You have to have skill with the firearm. You have to be able to get to the gun, draw the gun, get the gun on target, and keep shots going quickly. If you can't, chances are you won't have a chance to use the gun in the first place.
How do you build skill? Practice. Standards. A timer, and using it to push yourself. Analysis of your movement, optimization of your technique. More practice. Having a reason to get better, having something to use to measure your skill level.
You'll note that for many parts of the above paragraph, "competition" is a great way to do it.
A typical local Steel Challenge match will cause you to draw, on the clock, 30 times for score. Each time you draw you will be forced to draw and shoot as fast as you can do so accurately on five steel targets. You will get your own scores, you will be compared to other people, and the target sizes, shapes, and distances will vary.
A timer, standards, having a reason to get better, and having something to use to measure your skill level? All of those things = "Building Extreme Speed in both drawing and firing."
If, in a Steel Challenge match, you can draw and hit a 12" round target at 10 yards in 1.0 seconds, and then transition to four more targets at varying distances and hit them all (off the draw) in three seconds, then you have a pretty good idea that your speed is pretty darn good.
Without said competition---how good is "good"? How fast is "fast"? If you want to get better, to get competent, you are going to need some external measurement of your skills. So, you'd better be able to find some standards to use for comparison. Otherwise, you might think you really ARE fast---but may be very, very wrong.
Now, competitions aren't practice--they are tests. So you still have to go out and practice on your own, using the equipment that you plan on using if you are ever in a gunfight. But in addition to practicing, you need to test yourself. And a Steel Challenge match is a great way to do that for point #1.
2.Instinctive as opposed to deliberate aim
It is interesting how things change over time---because we DON'T think this anymore. Back when Fairbairn was teaching with Sykes, this was how it was taught, and for the types of shooting they were doing (using a single-hand, point-shoulder technique) this was a vast improvement over their student's prior abilities.
However, these days we try to teach people to use that bump on the front of the gun for aiming purposes. It is certainly true that we want gun handling to be practiced to the point of being instinctive---but we still want people to use the sights instead of aiming by using The Force. This doesn't mean bulls-eye aiming practice, so taking "deliberate aim" to mean "bulls-eye slow fire" isn't correct. We do, however, want to deliberately use the front sight to the degree necessary for the situation.
3.Practice under circumstance which approximate as nearly as possible to actual gun fighting
While I certainly agree that this is MUCH to be desired, and will do a significantly amount to increase the ability of the student to survive a gun fight---I don't think this is required. (Which was the original statement.)
Because it isn't required. Hundreds (thousands, really) of people defend themselves each year with handguns, using weapons successfully in their own defense, without ever having had training or practice of this sort.
So---required is putting it a bit strongly.
That being said, it is certainly true that stress training, force-on-force training, and scenario training (which can incorporate versions of the prior two) will make a huge difference in a person's ability to effectively act in their own defense. (Assuming said training is actually valid, appropriate, and relevant.)
Under stress, most people act differently. Physically, mentally, and emotionally, stress makes a difference in your efficacy level. And since most people have never actually been in a self-defense situation, training that simulates what really happens gives people information and understanding that will make a difference. (Many people freeze when confronted with something outside of their experience. As such, self-defense is one of those areas where tough training WILL make a huge difference in your ability to act.)
I fully agree that everyone interested in self-defense should take classes that include stress inoculation, force-on-force, and scenario training. It can be an eye-opening experience. (And brief advertisement: several of us around here hold classes that include these things.)
Lastly, regarding a force-on-force class:
4) Your success or failure won't be decided by a shot timer or how many "A" zone hits you make. This is pass/fail.
The phrasing here interests me, because it is discussing how in that realistic class, "realism" seems to mean something different than getting shots on target quickly and accurately.
Either that, or it is just something to say that is meaningless, because if getting shots on target quickly and accurately is still important, then it just means they are using different things to measure the speed and accuracy. The students still need to be fast and accurate, they just aren't using a timer to measure speed, or a defined spot on a cardboard target to measure accuracy.
Why make a distinction, unless you are trying to disparage something else?
For example, several years ago I took a class at the Bullet Hole, where the instructor was very proud (and justly so) in having passed the standards for the various levels of the Strategos courses. As part of that particular class, we were told of one particular standard---which was about shooting an index card a certain number of times within a certain time limit.
Now, there were other parts to the standard, which included some remedial action and a reload--but the operative measured parts were getting hits on a small target in a certain amount of time.
In other words---hitting a defined A-zone (however you want to define "A") while on a timer. And yet---I hear comments about how that sort of thing (for example, in USPSA Action Pistol shooting) somehow decreases your ability to defend yourself.
It is certainly true that in most force-on-force classes, there is no timer and you don't draw little A-zones on people with a Sharpie. However, this doesn't change the fact that the class still requires hits on specific targets at speed---they just happening to be using different scales to measure success.
But they are still measuring the same things. As such, disparaging practicing speed and accuracy using a timer and defined "acceptable hit" zones seems odd. After all, the point of practice is to get faster and more accurate, yes? As such, we need defined spots and a timer to measure our speed and accuracy.
In a force-on-force situation, the "timer" is the reactions of your assailant. The "A-zone" is the vital zones of the assailant, into which you need to put multiple rounds.
What are my overall points?
1) Speed and accuracy is incredibly important. There are a lot of ways to practice speed and accuracy, and testing yourself (or at least measuring your ability compared to some external standard) is important if you are actually trying to get better.
2) Stress/Force-on-Force/Scenario training can make a huge difference in your ability to handle self-defense situations. While saying it is "required" is factually incorrect, it is certainly true that people interested in learning self-defense should indeed participate in relevant, realistic scenario training.
3) There are a lot of ways to practice gun handling skills, shooting skills, tactical skills, and self-defense skills. Those four areas are not identical, though there is significant overlap in parts. People interested in actually being able to defend themselves should train all areas, and as such, find ways to make such training, practicing, and tests interesting for themselves.
4) In the end, the shooting part of the skills tests will come down to speed and accuracy. And there are a lot of ways to measure and test your level for those two skills.
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I don't have a clue how you could do this other than ATTEMPT a long-term RETROSPECTIVE study....but in light of all the tactical training, schools of gun fight theory, how to shoot, books, opinions, etc etc ad nauseum.....it would be interesting to know how many of the self defense gun fight survivors (not including LEOs/military) have never participated, read or otherwise been 'indoctrinated" by the information out there being espoused. An example I think of is the "Armed Citizen" column in the NRA magazine. I dare say a majority of those individuals have NO background in all of this "theory" or are familiar with "Dynamic Critical Incidents"/"Combat Focus Training". This would be compared to those who are (or think they are) as student of the gun.
Now to qualify my thoughts I am STRONG promoter, student and participant in training.
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I don't have a clue how you could do this other than ATTEMPT a long-term RETROSPECTIVE study....but in light of all the tactical training, schools of gun fight theory, how to shoot, books, opinions, etc etc ad nauseum.....it would be interesting to know how many of the self defense gun fight survivors (not including LEOs/military) have never participated, read or otherwise been 'indoctrinated" by the information out there being espoused. An example I think of is the "Armed Citizen" column in the NRA magazine. I dare say a majority of those individuals have NO background in all of this "theory" or are familiar with "Dynamic Critical Incidents"/"Combat Focus Training". This would be compared to those who are (or think they are) as student of the gun.
Now to qualify my thoughts I am STRONG promoter, student and participant in training.
Not that I can prove anything one way or the other, but I'm thinking the fact that those who have received GOOD self-defense training are less likely to ever use a weapon. Situational awareness has always been stressed in every good course I've attended. Therefore, the average permit holder is more aware of their surroundings than the average Joe.
Then too, permit holders, i.e., "trained folk" make up a very small percentage of the US population.
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Someone on this forum once said that to say anything bad regarding gun games that you either "had not done it", "weren't any good at it" or "hadn't really thought about it". Well I did it, was pretty successful at it and I have put a lot of thought into it. And when I came to a point were I realized that my time and money could be better spent elsewere I wasn't so emotionally involved that I couldn't walk away.
Competition shooting is fun and is a great way to learn fundamentals. But it isn't self defense training. And if you regularly carry a gun, once you have learned those fundamentals, your time and money can be put to better use if you want to increase your chances of living through a violent encounter.
I will attempt to address what I feel are the important points as simply as possible.
1) Extreme Speed in both drawing and firing
"How do you build skill? Practice. Standards. A timer"
- Practice? Agreed. Standards? Who`s standards? And what does meeting them really mean? Show me the evidence that a person who can "draw and hit a 12" round target at 10 yards in 1.0 second" has an increased chance of winning a fight than someone who can only do it in 3. I simply tell my students to be as fast as they can. That is something that can be practiced at home and I agree that a timer is helpful in that it will help you track your own progress.
"A typical local Steel Challenge match will cause you to draw, on the clock, 30 times for score."
- Thats great practice for the next steel challenge match. How many shooters shoot with their EDC gear, gun and from concealment? IMO those 30 reps would be better spent at home with your EDC gear and that timer.
2.Instinctive as opposed to deliberate aim
This exact subject came up recently on another forum, and since my fingers are already getting tired, I will let my good buddy Trevor address this one. To see the original go to the High Threat Systems Facebook page. (Emphasis added is mine)
4 KEY PREMISES FOR POLICE SHOOTINGS
In response to numerous comments about reality-stress-behavior based marksmanship on linkedin.com (firearms instructors group), many of which promote a nearly marksmanship only method of training and evaluation:
Have you read any of the material (Applegate, Siddle) concerning survival stress and shooting? And, if you have read it, do you ...
a. chose to simply ignore it
b. disagree with it
c. disbelieve it is important
I totally agree that hitting the bad guy is important and should be a major focus of training, and I equally believe that it is only one piece of the puzzle.
I am well aware of the opinions of various instructors and organizations. Some of the instructors are incredibly talented operators with near heroic histories. This does not automatically mean they know what is best in the context of your most likely encounters. Tier One operators who train people based on tier one principles, when those people do not have tier one resources or abilities, frequently do a disservice to those operators.
I have the opportunity to frequently train and operate with the best under a variety of conditions. I did not start out with the beliefs I now have and I assure you I have a solid grasp of what is traditionally taught. I have come to the conclusion that most firearms training is simply wasted range based marksmanship without consideration for the effects of stress or use of context for when the skills can be accessed.
You have to teach something and have some basic premises and conclusions based on more than words and anecdotes. What do you base your beliefs on? Where is the evidence that would pass basic scrutiny. If it is not available, why is that? It should be easily reproducible. The results should be seen on video.
Trying to out-train human nature is nearly impossible with the limited training even expert police officers and most operators have available. Human nature often makes a lot of sense and can be used to increase survivability. There is a time to push past instincts and drill intuition or deliberate actions, but the grey area between those situations is very rarely taught.
Here are some of my basic premises from 20+ years of being in harms way as a street cop, SWAT cop, and combat veteran and member of the United States Army Special Forces. Also someone who has lost several co-workers including my police partner who was murdered on duty by gunfire. I will put my enthusiasm and concern against anyone's. It sickens me as well when instructors focus on their dogmatic beliefs and cults of personality without being able to provide concrete evidence for what they do. I am not saying that specifically about you; but for other instructors, if the shoe fits...
Here are some core police shooting premises:
1. Most self defense shootings are reactionary, close range, high stress, and often complex events
2. During these (reactionary, close range, high stress) events, officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training
3. During these events, officers will have a gun pointed at them or firing on them first. In this case, they almost always resort to defensive measures as a survival response first
4. Given sufficient training, officers and. operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat- most often when the suspect is not oriented on or shooting at them first, or when they have already located a threat and have made a deliberate decision to engage the threat with aimed gunfireThis is significantly more rare than the previously discussed situations.
Studies and resources for the above points:
Point 1: Google"
"What Applegate Said"
"Shooting Distance and Survival"
"NYPD SOP 9 Shooting Data"
Point 2:
"Why its difficult to use sights under duress"
Scientific and Test Data to Support Point Shooting
Point 3:
Force Science Reaction Time Study
Watch any large number of police shootings
Point 4:
watch use of force videos and search for the above articles
If you disagree, show me the money. (video, study, reproducible evidence gathered during realistic stress based training)
My challenge has been clear for years and can be found in several posts. Not one anti-point shooting person has ever been able to provide a meaningful, documented account of what they believe. Show me the study, show me the science, show me the clear video results that are based on real world situations and not range based gymnastics. Don't provide a few anecdotes or examples based on what somebody said. Reproduce it and produce it with certainty.
I can repeatedly and consistently get even the most avid and competitive aimed fire shooters to point shoot under specific situations. Is there anyone who can repeatedly train large numbers of people to shoot with sights under close range, reactive, high stress situations?
Empiricism not dogma.
3.Practice under circumstance which approximate as nearly as possible to actual gun fighting
So you say its a good idea, but not really mandatory for success? I cant argue that it should be mandatory but there is actual evidence that proves it increases success, unlike shooting steel plates.
Lets wrap this up.
Want to become a better fighter?
- Build a solid foundation in the fundamentals of sighted and unsighted shooting
- Practice basic combatives
- Range drills. Starting at a very easy level and progressing to very complex.
- Reality based training. Participate in properly run force on force drills, putting it all together in context, working all the physical and mental skills in real time.
- Shawn
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Interesting discussion!
Until this spring I hadn't shot a firearm since the last half of the 1970s. Before that I shot both rifles, shotguns and handguns ... a lot. Interestingly, I began shooting with a Daisy BB gun and shot thousands and thousands of rounds through it. It was like part of my body. I just read some Applegate references and realized that I had taught myself instinctive shooting with that BB gun. I "pointed" the rifle with my index finger and pulled the trigger with my 2nd finger. I'm sad to say so today, but back then I shot an unknown number of sparrows and other birds, most of them with headshots, some out of the air. When I upgraded to my Sheridan Bluestreak I continued shooting that way but also mastered precision target shooting, which I found to be a lot of fun and am looking forward to picking that sport up again using a .22 rifle.
During the qualifying shooting for my CHP I fired 150 rounds at a man-size target at 1, 5, 7 and 21 yards. I was nervous and stressed, but at my age I've found that I have a slight hand shake, stressed or not. The first couple of rounds I tried to hold a sight picture but I wasn't quick or steady enough and I'd shake away from the center of mass before I squeezed off the round. Old habits kicked in and I subconsciously started using instinctive shooting, but using the index finger instead of the 2nd finger to pull the trigger. I stopped thinking about a sight picture or squeezing the trigger and just focused on the center of mass instead, and snapped the trigger. I never realized that I hadn't been using the sights until all the shooting was over.
All 150 shots hit the man-target. All but one were inside the perimeter line and half of them in that center-of-mass circle. The one outside the line, which was my first shot, was in the right brachial complex, which happened to be a fatal wound in a swat team shooting I was asked to investigate. What made my grouping tighter was a tighter grip on my Nano, which lined up the second shot more quickly. The tighter grip also brought the FTE's to an end.
One of the links sited above gave statistics on officers killed in the line of duty. It turns out that 86-90% were killed at or under 20 feet! Seven yards. That explains why the CHP training focused on shooting between face-to-face and 21 yards.
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Not that I can prove anything one way or the other, but I'm thinking the fact that those who have received GOOD self-defense training are less likely to ever use a weapon. Situational awareness has always been stressed in every good course I've attended. Therefore, the average permit holder is more aware of their surroundings than the average Joe.
I absolutely think you are spot on there....
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Someone on this forum once said that to say anything bad regarding gun games that you either "had not done it", "weren't any good at it" or "hadn't really thought about it".
Actually, that was a quote from an article that was posted on this forum.
Well I did it, was pretty successful at it and I have put a lot of thought into it. And when I came to a point were I realized that my time and money could be better spent elsewere I wasn't so emotionally involved that I couldn't walk away.
You've said this a number of times, and I've let it go, but since you keep saying it as support for your commentary about competition, I'm going to go ahead and respond.
I'm curious as to where your contention comes from that you were "pretty good at it." In USPSA records, you have only 10 classifier scores, 8 of which came from only two matches, and one of which came from a single major match back in 2001.
That's odd, because ENGC offers a classifier stage just about every other month, plus a special classifier match (with between 4 and 6 classifier stages) every year. Plus, almost every major match also counts as a classifier, AND often includes a classifier stage---which means that if you were shooting many local matches, or pretty much any other major match, you'd have many more classifier scores. As a comparison, in 2009 through 2011 (a three year period), I added 40 classifier scores to my records, and that was from going to one local match per month at most (I missed several each year) plus a couple of major matches each year. You have 10 total, from a similar three-year period.
I note that you were only a member of USPSA for three years, from 4/13/01 to 4/30/05.
Your classifier history shows that in 2001, you shot a special classifier match one month in Open division and made B-class with a 68% (B class goes from 60 to 75 percent). Looking at the match data from 2004 and 2005 in ENGC, I can't find any record that you shot any of the local official club matches. And you participated in one major match in Open, in 2001, in which you got 45th out of 103 shooters, with 66% of the winner's score in that division.
There is no record of you participating in any other major match. So, I'm curious as to what part of that makes you think you were "pretty successful" from a competition standpoint? Were you shooting non-club local matches and beating local guys? Because B-class, while perfectly good, isn't "successful" from a competition standpoint, and you have no major match finishes that are either. At the Area 5 competition in 2001, you weren't even in the top three for your class, much less toward the top of your division.
Your only other classifier records come from 2004, in which you switched to Production division (the stock pistol division, which is the one most likely to be similar to carry/duty firearms) and shot another special classifier match, in which you barely made C-class with a 40.3% for that match. (The line between D class and C class is 40%.) Since you had one Production classifier from 2001, your ending classification percentage was 45% or so, but your match performance in 2004 was barely C-class.
There is nothing at all wrong with shooting C-class. Or D-class. Or any particular class. Nor is there anything wrong with shooting local matches and no major matches. However, if someone's contention is that they were successful at competition shooting, but their match record doesn't show anything like it, it makes me wonder.
Did you also shoot IDPA or something? I don't recall there being any official IDPA matches around here, though.
So: You contend that your knowledge of competition shooting was sufficient to have a solid grasp and understanding of the sport, and that your success was such that your knowledge is indeed valid.
Where were you successful in the sport? And since you apparently only shot Open for most of your time in USPSA, how does that give you any information about shooting regular guns such as are used in Production division?
(Classifier scores are a matter of easily-searched public record, as are match results from both major matches, and reported local matches, by the way. Anyone can check my scores, for example---which is why I certainly don't say that I'm anything resembling a national contender.)
Competition shooting is fun and is a great way to learn fundamentals. But it isn't self defense training. And if you regularly carry a gun, once you have learned those fundamentals, your time and money can be put to better use if you want to increase your chances of living through a violent encounter.
Of course competition isn't self-defense training. And that has never been any sort of contention, so using it in an argument is a strawman, at best.
I don't actually agree that competition shooting is a "great way to learn fundamentals." Shooting competition matches is not practice. However, shooting competition matches is a great way to test shooting skills (which of course include fundamentals).
You say that "once you have learned those fundamentals" ---and yet, the one thing that we know is that most people have NOT learned their fundamentals. Matter of fact, don't you say that in your advanced pistol class? That the main problem most people have is that they can't hit what they are aiming at in the first place?
In other words, that most people don't have good fundamentals?
I also note that many people, once they think they have "good fundamentals," then start practicing what they think are "advanced techniques" and ignore their fundamentals, which is a bad thing. The best shooters in the world continually go back and work on the basic fundamentals.
So---if people don't normally have good fundamentals, and good shooters tend to revisit the fundamentals often, and competition is a good way to test fundamentals: where, exactly, is it a bad thing to do competition shooting?
You said also: ...your time and money can be put to better use if you want to increase your chances of living through a violent encounter
This assumes a number of things.
1) That people will actually practice on their own without any specific given goal or reward. Research shows that most people simply won't do this.
2) That people actually KNOW what they should be practicing. Any competitor watching new shooters, and any instructor in a shooting skills class, knows that most people DON'T know what they are bad at--and tend to have over-inflated views of their skill level.
3a) That people have such a limited amount of time and money that they can't practice on their own, take classes occasionally, and still participate in a shooting competition every once in awhile. OR
3b) That people have enough money to actually take serious classes frequently, instead of simply paying $15 for a match once in awhile, in addition to practicing.
...and neither of those cases make much logical sense.
It also assumes that the only reason people work with a firearm is to increase their chances of living through a violent encounter. Handy thing about shooting competitions---it tests your shooting skills, gives you feedback on what you need to work on, gives you a bit of stress that you can't get elsewhere, has you try things that you probably wouldn't think of on your own, costs only about $20 at most, AND is a lot of fun.
Seems to be a lot of things about it that are useful.
I will attempt to address what I feel are the important points as simply as possible.
1) Extreme Speed in both drawing and firing
"How do you build skill? Practice. Standards. A timer"
- Practice? Agreed. Standards? Who`s standards? And what does meeting them really mean? Show me the evidence that a person who can "draw and hit a 12" round target at 10 yards in 1.0 second" has an increased chance of winning a fight than someone who can only do it in 3. I simply tell my students to be as fast as they can. That is something that can be practiced at home and I agree that a timer is helpful in that it will help you track your own progress.
Whose standards? Larry Vickers? Jack Leuba? Frank Proctor? Mike Seeklander? Kyle Defoors? The internet is full of standards, and you don't have to believe them all to still use them to work on specifics.
Or if you don't like those, how about the standards assumed by KS, NE, IA, etc, for police officers for their yearly firearms qualifications? Those basic, really simple standards that nonetheless some people have trouble passing?
Show you information that 3 seconds is too long, and that a draw of 1 second will be better? Well, other than the logic based on knowing 1) most self-defense situations occur extremely quickly and 2) most self-defense situations occur at close range, and so taking three times as long to get the gun out is a bad thing, how about:
Bill Rogers, who defines time in a gunfight in terms of how many shots the bad guys can get off, based on the average of .25 seconds per shot--so that giving the bad guy time to get off 8 extra shots probably is bad;
Or maybe we can discuss it with Jack Tueller, knowing that on average, a human being can cover 21 feet in 1.5 seconds, so that means that a normal human being can cover almost 15 yards in 3 seconds, which means that since most self-defense situations occur at close range, if your draw is 3 seconds you'd better not try drawing and instead should learn some empty-hand self-defense;
Or perhaps we can again just take a look at the KS law enforcement standards in which the basic expectation is that a LEO, from a standard retention holster, can draw and fire three rounds on target in 3 seconds. (That is the par time for the first two strings of fire of their qualification.);
Or a whole host of other people. If someone has a concealed draw of 3 seconds in one of my CCW or defensive tactics class, as an instructor, I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I didn't tell them that 1) they needed to cut their draw time down significantly because there just isn't that much TIME in most self-defense situations, and 2) until their draw time is cut down, they need to know how to make other defensive choices and when to make them because if their hands are tied up trying to draw, they aren't going to be very good at stopping offensive techniques from an attacker.
I know that if you have two people with the same accuracy level, but one has a draw time 1/3 of the other, in the same self-defense situation the one with the faster draw is going to have a greater chance of keeping themselves safe.
Does that mean everyone needs to have a 1-second draw? No. It does mean that very slow draws are a self-defense weakness. And it means that people need to know their draw speed under stress (with or without surprise) so that they can make the decisions applicable to the situation at hand.
"A typical local Steel Challenge match will cause you to draw, on the clock, 30 times for score."
- Thats great practice for the next steel challenge match. How many shooters shoot with their EDC gear, gun and from concealment? IMO those 30 reps would be better spent at home with your EDC gear and that timer.
Really? So, when you are at home with your EDC gear and a timer, you put the same amount of stress on yourself as in a match? That practicing reps on your own has the same stress level as knowing you have only one shot at doing it right, that people are watching, that your competitors are seeing how you are doing?
Again, you seem to think that shooting matches equates with practice, and it doesn't. A match is a test. You shoot a match every once in awhile, to give yourself some stress and something different to do, to take yourself out of your comfortable practice zone, to force yourself to do it the one time it counts.
You should ALSO practice with your EDC at home. But you should also do a match every once in awhile, or you'll think that your practice equates to reality under stress. Matches aren't like someone trying to kill you---but there is some stress there, and that makes it a more effective test than simply giving yourself a goal at home and running through some reps.
Oh---if you think that a match is good practice for another match, then we have a very different concept of "practice." And there isn't anything stopping people from shooting with their EDC gear, though Steel Challenge doesn't allow concealment.
And you can't argue that Steel Challenge teaches you bad habits---because the entire thing tests the shooting fundamentals of draw, trigger control and sight picture, and transitions.
2.Instinctive as opposed to deliberate aim
This exact subject came up recently on another forum, and since my fingers are already getting tired, I will let my good buddy Trevor address this one.
Is this the guy who said he is fine with the government instituting mandatory training for people who want to own a gun? I'll still read it, but someone who thinks that way probably has a significantly different decision-making process than I do.
To see the original go to the High Threat Systems Facebook page. (Emphasis added is mine)
[snip this, because it is long and anyone can read it in the post above]
Looking at it, basically (tell me if I'm wrong here), his contention is based on Applegate and NYPD data, Force Science studies, and lots of cop videos and reports, yes?
So:
1) We don't teach the mechanics of shooting the way Applegate did---we know more about effective shooting, so we don't even hold the gun the same way. As such, saying that "because Applegate said it" is a reason doesn't hold up. This isn't to say that everything Applegate says is wrong---quite the contrary, many of his insights into violence are excellent. However, since we know that Applegate wasn't right about everything "because Applegate said it" is not logical support.
2) NYPD data is interesting, because it, along with a lot of dashcam videos and reports, DOES indeed tell us that many police officers don't remember using their sights, and we can see large amounts of wild, unsighted one-handed fire in dashcam videos. The data also tells us that in general, police officers have dismal hit rates. As such, the idea that "you will use unsighted fire" does not logically lead to "we should teach unsighted fire because that's what cops do under stress". Quite the contrary, given dismal hit rates, the data tells us that A) LEOs should be taught differently (which has occurred slowly over time) and B) unsighted fire generally gives very poor results.
3) Your contention of #4, above, that "operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with..." certain conditions met, actually doesn't logically follow the from the earlier parts. Just because people trained poorly don't use sights when startled doesn't mean that they can't. Just because people start with defensive empty-hand moves doesn't mean that sights can't be used, either. There is a logical difference between "don't" and "can't."
Here's the thing: If you teach unsighted, reactive instinctive aim, you enable people to make basic shots on large targets at close range. And nothing else. Anything farther, anything requiring precision, anything outside of that not only can't be done, but the shooter might try anyway, with potentially tragic results.
If you teach body mechanics, understanding of sights (and sight movement, and how that affects point of aim) and sight variation in terms of distance, the person knows how much of the sights to use (for example, at 3 yards, the silhouette of the top of your gun is sufficient for full-width targets at speed, while at 10 yards with a headshot required means using the sights and having a solid front sight focus), and under stress will be perfectly able to make in-close "instinctive" shots using appropriate sight pictures while STILL being able to make more difficult shots because they know how to use sights.
Yes, it takes longer, and more practice to use the sights in that fashion. However, it doesn't take any longer for those people to still be able to shoot at close-range, open targets.
Trevor's entire contention is just like many other point-shooting arguments I've read, in which people say lots of things that boil down to:
1) self defense shootings are reactionary, close range, high stress ---agreed. (I'll note that this is different from police shootings in several significant ways)
2) officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training ----agree that many (though not necessarily most, would have to see actual data on that, particularly because this discussion is not about cops or "operators" but instead about people in self-defense situations) don't use sights; highly disagree with "despite any type and level of training" and I would very much like to see the data you believe supports this.
I'm thinking that from an operator perspective, Bill Rogers (who has taught more operators than pretty much any other single person in the U.S.) would strongly disagree with you, as would the many graduates of his shooting school, which includes many governmental groups and agencies such as SEAL teams, various special forces groups, and Delta.
I would agree that most LEO firearms training does not (or at least, in the past has not) lent itself to anything resembling firearms proficiency.
3) In self-defense situations, the defender is attacked first --- no argument there. However, that simply gives the range of the engagement, which tells the defender the sight picture necessary for effective shooting ---and doesn't at all support that instinctive fire is what should be taught to people.
4) The fourth point listed above is a non-logical conclusion based on suppositions not supported by evidence. It phrases as an absolute something which is merely a possibility, and simply isn't supported by data for people in self-defense situations.
If you disagree, that's fine---but I'll ask you to supply data backing up your contention.
I note that police encounters have significantly different ROEs, duty requirements, tactical requirements (for example, many altercations with LEOs begin when the LEO closes with the bad guy to cuff them, and resistance ensues, which ensures that the situation is close range and starts with defensive empty-hand techniques---which has no bearing on standard self-defense situations for non-LEOs), ----and overall the idea that a bunch of people whose national hit average for shooting is about 20% should tell us what technique is optimal is----ridiculous.
To put it mildly.
So, just to make it formal, I'd like to see the data backing his contention that:
1) "officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
and
2) "operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat"
...and I note that using contact-range data for this is useless, because of course you don't use sights from a retention position, which in no way supports any contention that you can't use sights under stress.
In other words---he says a lot of things that I don't think the data supports. Show me the data, please.
3.Practice under circumstance which approximate as nearly as possible to actual gun fighting
So you say its a good idea, but not really mandatory for success? I cant argue that it should be mandatory but there is actual evidence that proves it increases success, unlike shooting steel plates.
Yes, because I can tell the difference between "required" and "useful." (I note I used the word "required," not "mandatory," but given the beliefs espoused by 88 Tactical on radio and TV, I'm not surprised at your usage of it.)
I believe I said that scenario training increases the likelihood of success. (Which, I'll note, is not quite the same thing as saying "proves it increases success.")
Specifically, I said: While I certainly agree that this is MUCH to be desired, and will do a significantly amount to increase the ability of the student to survive a gun fight---I don't think this is required. (Which was the original statement.)
Because it isn't required. Hundreds (thousands, really) of people defend themselves each year with handguns, using weapons successfully in their own defense, without ever having had training or practice of this sort.
So obviously, it isn't required or mandatory. Still a good idea, obviously.
Lets wrap this up.
Want to become a better fighter?
Hm. There may be part of the issue, here. Training someone to be a fighter really is different from training someone to be effective at self-defense. If I am training a student for a MMA match, that is going to be very different from teaching a student in a self-defense class.
Similarly for weapons-work. Teaching LEO-oriented techniques is different from teaching military techniques is different from teaching civilian self-defense techniques. While the fundamentals of shooting are the same, the circumstances, the laws, and the rules of engagement aren't, so that the equipment choices, tactics, and situations that occur most for each group are very different.
- Build a solid foundation in the fundamentals of sighted and unsighted shooting
Agreed. However, if you understand sighted shooting, learning unsighted shooting takes about 5 minutes of training, and then you can just drill it whenever you like.
- Practice basic combatives
A good idea, and many more people should do this. They should, of course, get training from a qualified instructor who not only understands empty-hand techniques, but understands self-defense laws, situations, and how to integrate empty-hand techniques with weapons techniques in the appropriate context. "Basic combatives" should mean something different for the three categories of 1) military, 2) LEO, and 3) normal folks who want to learn self-defense.
(In particular, military combatives are VERY different from self-defense combatives.)
- Range drills. Starting at a very easy level and progressing to very complex.
Agreed. Preferably with a solid regimen of dryfire practice, for the most gain.
- Reality based training. Participate in properly run force on force drills, putting it all together in context, working all the physical and mental skills in real time.
Agreed. Noting that stress training, force-on-force training, and scenario training can be three different things, or scenario training can include aspects of the other two (just as force-on-force can include stress training), ---indeed, putting it all together can make a huge difference to your ability to defend yourself.
And yeah---do a competition match every once in awhile, too. You'll have fun, you'll get your shooting skills tested, and you'll spend time (and network with, if you are interested in that sort of thing) with other shooters.
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Gonna have to give you an epic fail on your research into my competition background. Try again. Cant believe you made me dust off one of these old boxes (BTW the tarnished silver plate was given to me by Bill Wilson at the `99 IDPA National Championships after I won the Expert division. That got me moved to Master) So yeah, I did okay, and am qualified to talk about it. Any class competitor is qualified to comment on the sport as far as Im concerned. But I am a firm believer in that you are only as good as what you can do today, right now, so back in the dusty box and to the basement they go.
(http://i635.photobucket.com/albums/uu72/shawnngina/P1000666_zps52c53ec3.jpg) (http://s635.photobucket.com/user/shawnngina/media/P1000666_zps52c53ec3.jpg.html)
Here is a more recent one if it makes you feel better. My partner and I will be two time defending champs this year.
(http://i635.photobucket.com/albums/uu72/shawnngina/P1000669_zpsbfce87fb.jpg) (http://s635.photobucket.com/user/shawnngina/media/P1000669_zpsbfce87fb.jpg.html)
I used to think just like you regarding the use of sights under stress. Personal experience, participating in hundreds of high stress scenarios, and listening to the lessons of men who have been there done that, changed it.
Trevor has it exactly right. You cant compare the experiences of Tier One Operators under fire and apply that to LEOs or civilians. Those former Spec Ops guys that teach sighted fire under all conditions are doing their students a disservice. None of us will ever train to the level of intensity or frequency they do. Our natural instinct will still be to focus on the threat if it is reactionary, close range and immediate. No amount of wishfull thinking will change that. (FWIW a good friend of mine who is a former combat decorated Force Recon Marine took a Larry Vickers class and said it was the worst class he had ever been to, a complete waste of time)
You say police training is poor, that is why their hit percentages are so bad. How do you think they train? Ive been there, and it mostly sighted fire marksmanship, standards based. Should they just raise the standard? Make the target smaller?
Know what type of skills test is proven to raise hit percentages dramatically for LEOs in gunfights? Reality based FOF training. Grossmans books back that up with data from multiple depts. Unfortunately many Depts still dont do reality based training or dont do it frequently enough and shrinking training budgets have only made it harder. Its easier to send an Officer to the range, shoot a "standard qualifier" and put them back on the street.
- Shawn
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Gonna have to give you an epic fail on your research into my competition background.
Hey, you talked about USPSA and Steel Challenge like you knew what you were talking about. As such, I looked up those things, and while you had experience, your contention that you did well was not supported.
Try again. Cant believe you made me dust off one of these old boxes (BTW the tarnished silver plate was given to me by Bill Wilson at the `99 IDPA National Championships after I won the Expert division. That got me moved to Master) So yeah, I did okay, and am qualified to talk about it. Any class competitor is qualified to comment on the sport as far as Im concerned.
Oh, anyone is qualified to talk about any sport they like. Your contention was that you knew it well and did well in it. So, since you were talking about all competitions, lumping them together, and I had been talking about USPSA, Steel Challenge, and Multigun, and you continued to say that you knew them well and did well in them---it rather makes sense that I would check those, yes?
Congrats on your wins in IDPA, by the way.
Here is a more recent one if it makes you feel better. My partner and I will be two time defending champs this year.
(http://i635.photobucket.com/albums/uu72/shawnngina/P1000669_zpsbfce87fb.jpg) (http://s635.photobucket.com/user/shawnngina/media/P1000669_zpsbfce87fb.jpg.html)
So what you are really saying is that competitions are okay as long as you like them? And are the two-time defending champ? But other competitions are a waste of time and money, and you would be better off practicing on your own, and those competitions will screw up your tactical reactions?
That is what you have said, after all.
I used to think just like you regarding the use of sights under stress. Personal experience, participating in hundreds of high stress scenarios, and listening to the lessons of men who have been there done that, changed it.
Interesting. I found that participating more in high-stress scenario training enables me to better apply my fundamental techniques.
I also personally find that listening to people who have been there, done that, and learned the lessons of it and used it to make themselves better, works for me also. For example, people like Jim Cirillo and Bill Rogers. Or people who have been there and done that, and kept data on it, like Tom Givens. Or plenty of others.
Trevor has it exactly right. You cant compare the experiences of Tier One Operators under fire and apply that to LEOs or civilians. Those former Spec Ops guys that teach sighted fire under all conditions are doing their students a disservice.
That's another interesting strawman you've set up. "Under all conditions" --- I wonder who teaches that? I don't believe I've ever run into an instructor who I respect who has ever said that.
None of us will ever train to the level of intensity or frequency they do.
Hm. Eric Grauffel dryfires generally 3 hours a day, five days a week, plus tends to (live-fire) shoot about 500 rounds a day, 5-6 days a week. Olympic athletes of course train harder in terms of intensity and frequency.
So, your absolutist statement fails.
Taking it your statement and comparing it to everyday folks, your statement assumes that said training level is necessary for people to use sights under stress---which is simply factually untrue.
Example: Tom Givens (one assumes you know the name, since he was the match director for the '99 IDPA Nats you referenced above) has kept solid data on every one of his students who has ever been in a gun fight or needed to use their CCW weapon. And you know what? Plenty of them used sights.
I also note: Bill Rogers (I keep bringing him up simply because he has trained thousands, literally, of Tier 1 folks) awhile back opened up his pistol class to regular people. The same one he has used to train all of those Tier 1 folks. He gives ratings to his students based on their scores on his qualifying program, and plenty of people flat-out fail. A very small percentage receive "Advanced" ratings---and that is true even for the Tier 1 folks.
Let me say that a different way: Some Tier 1 folks make advanced ratings in his class. So do some civilians. Some Tier 1 folks don't achieve said rating---when some civilians do. As such, while it is true that most people certainly won't train at the intensity of those guys, they can (and do) match the skill level.
And you are saying these folks won't remember to use the sights in a self-defense situation? And you are serious?
Our natural instinct will still be to focus on the threat if it is reactionary, close range and immediate. No amount of wishfull thinking will change that
A completely true statement---that still creates no logical basis for your contention that teaching sighted shooting is bad, compared to teaching point-shooting.
(Actually, we tend to focus on the threat no matter what the distance.)
Having a target focus does not preclude using sights. Having a target focus doesn't mean you can't change it, either.
It is certainly true that under stress, many people turn stupid. That is the point of training, after all---reduce the stupid, and increase the effectiveness. Making an automatic assumption that "people won't be able to use sights" is just as ridiculous as-----saying that "if your heart rate goes above 140 you won't be able to see your sights."
Which IS ridiculous.
(FWIW a good friend of mine who is a former combat decorated Force Recon Marine took a Larry Vickers class and said it was the worst class he had ever been to, a complete waste of time)
Wouldn't know, myself. When he came to town I wasn't interested in the way he taught pistol, so I didn't take it. And I'd rather take a carbine class from Frank Proctor or Jack Leuba.
I'm still curious (and waiting) for data on the statements:
1) "officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
and
2) "operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat"
You say police training is poor, that is why their hit percentages are so bad. How do you think they train? Ive been there, and it mostly sighted fire marksmanship, standards based. Should they just raise the standard? Make the target smaller?
Let's see---your contention was that since police officers didn't use their sights, we should teach unsighted fire. My point was that since their hit rate was so incredibly low and they weren't using their sights, "not using sights" seems like a bad idea.
You haven't responded to that. Instead, you say that police training is bad (which in general, it certainly is) AND that it is standards-based, sighted fire marksmanship. The implication, of course, is that standards and sighted fire are bad---and yet, that doesn't logically follow.
HOW something is taught can easily have just as much effect on efficacy as WHAT is taught. If a police officer is taught sighted fire standing in one spot, slow-fire, with no time limit and no stress, and never handles a weapon except when under the direction supervision of a RO who hands him loaded magazines---and then that person fails miserably in an altercation, that doesn't tell us that sighted fire is bad. The training did not prepare him for reality.
In a similar fashion, poor standards being met and then officers failing doesn't mean that the concept of standards is bad.
So--no, your contentions don't logically hold up. It IS true that most police officers are trained in firearms very badly, in a non-realistic fashion. That has nothing to do with whether or not using the sights, or training to standards, is a good or a bad thing.
I will say that given police officer's current national hit rate, plus the fact that in a number of cases LEOs will be shooting in public, I'm thinking that teaching them non-sighted fire is probably going to result in a lot more shot bystanders.
Know what type of skills test is proven to raise hit percentages dramatically for LEOs in gunfights? Reality based FOF training. Grossmans books back that up with data from multiple depts. Unfortunately many Depts still dont do reality based training or dont do it frequently enough and shrinking training budgets have only made it harder. Its easier to send an Officer to the range, shoot a "standard qualifier" and put them back on the street.
Agree with that completely. Another major issue with most departments is that they simply don't have anyone who can run said training correctly, and that isn't something you go to a weekend seminar to learn.
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And yeah---do a competition match every once in awhile, too. You'll have fun, you'll get your shooting skills tested, and you'll spend time (and network with, if you are interested in that sort of thing) with other shooters.
I have start shooting some competitions at ENGC and love it.
Question, jthhapkido, are your fingertips bleeding yet? :laugh:
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Guys... we are running out of storage room on the server :D just kidding
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Guys... we are running out of storage room on the server :D just kidding
But it's a good discussion!
See what happens when I'm still stuck in my classroom, but don't have any kids running around to teach or grade? Actual time to type!
...TL;DR!
:)
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So what you are really saying is that competitions are okay as long as you like them? And are the two-time defending champ? But other competitions are a waste of time and money, and you would be better off practicing on your own, and those competitions will screw up your tactical reactions?
That is what you have said, after all.
Yep, thats what I said. You did read the plaque right? Its a Memorial Shoot. Its the one yearly match I participate in. 20 two person teams from various LE Agencies compete in a one day match, not for the trophy, but to remember and honor OPD Officer and SWAT Team member Jason Tye Pratt, shot in the line of duty on Sept 11 2003. So yeah, this one gets a pass.
I'm still curious (and waiting) for data on the statements:
1) "officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
and
2) "operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat"
I sent word to Trevor, cause I know you really want to hear from him, but he is currently out of the country and down range. Not sure if he will reply or not.
- Shawn
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Only Way to Settle this Puppy is...........
Mano-a-Mano, Cara-a-Cara, High Noon, @ OK Corral.
But....bring Shotguns.
sfg
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But....bring Shotguns.
Bleh!
Plus, mine spontaneously disassembled part of itself at the Man Vs Man match, and I haven't bothered to put it back together yet. :)
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Yep, thats what I said. You did read the plaque right? Its a Memorial Shoot. Its the one yearly match I participate in. 20 two person teams from various LE Agencies compete in a one day match, not for the trophy, but to remember and honor OPD Officer and SWAT Team member Jason Tye Pratt, shot in the line of duty on Sept 11 2003. So yeah, this one gets a pass.
I'm perfectly fine with it being in a good cause (which it certainly is) I'm just amused that with all your earlier comments, you'll still do a competition. Doesn't doing competitions make you a worse shooter? Couldn't these people just donate instead, instead of having all these LEO folks make themselves worse by competing? I mean, it is LEO-agency only (which is interesting, because while I knew you worked with an LEO agency, I didn't think you were one), so we are taking people who NEED those tactical skills and messing them up by having them engage in competition!
Or---perhaps instead maybe it is just a fun thing to do in a good cause that does actually measure some shooting skills?
....which is rather what I've been saying?
And while it is "not for the trophy," you certainly made immediately sure that we all knew you had won it before. :)
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And while it is "not for the trophy," you certainly made immediately sure that we all knew you had won it before. :)
Well, when you called my background into question, I kinda had to. Seems immediately after doing your weird web search on me and not finding what you wanted you couldn't wait to post about it (epic fail). I haven't, nor will I ever, exaggerate my abilities or qualifications.
....which is rather what I've been saying?
Actually what I thought you were saying was Elements to Win a Gun Fight...and how to practice.
So I will answer that again;
- Build a solid foundation in the fundamentals of sighted and unsighted shooting
- Practice basic combatives
- Range drills. Starting at a very easy level and progressing to very complex.
- Reality based training. Participate in properly run force on force drills, putting it all together in context, working all the physical and mental skills in real time.
A completely true statement---that still creates no logical basis for your contention that teaching sighted shooting is bad, compared to teaching point-shooting.
(Actually, we tend to focus on the threat no matter what the distance.)
Having a target focus does not preclude using sights. Having a target focus doesn't mean you can't change it, either.
I never said teaching sighted fire was bad. I said that we should learn both sighted and unsighted fire (see above)
It seems you agree that if the threat is reactionary, close range and immediate we will focus on the target. According to you we should still be able to access the sights, Im assuming using our peripheral vision? Explain to me then exactly how you will reduce the effects of tunnel vision (loss of peripheral vision) which is a recognized physical effect of extreme stress?
It is certainly true that under stress, many people turn stupid. That is the point of training, after all---reduce the stupid, and increase the effectiveness. Making an automatic assumption that "people won't be able to use sights" is just as ridiculous as-----saying that "if your heart rate goes above 140 you won't be able to see your sights."
Which IS ridiculous.
There you go calling people stupid again (seems you have been doing that a lot lately). Why do you think that happens? Do you think there may be a real physiological reason for it? That under duress the higher thinking parts of our brain shut down while the lower functioning, instinctive part turns on?
I'm still curious (and waiting) for data on the statements:
1) "officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
and
2) "operators will be able to fully access their sights, but only with time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat"
This is very easy to answer and the evidence can be seen on hundreds of videos of actual shootings available online. It is usually quite obvious that under duress when the attack is immediate, reactionary, and close range people will point shoot. Its not because they are stupid, its because the lower instinctive part of their brain has taken over.
This were you will see flinching, movement away from the threat and very often one handed target focus shooting. The extreme physical effects of stress will likely be present, tunnel vision, loss of hearing, time distortion are just a few. Proper training and repetition can condition good reflexive gross motor responses here. Getting a good sight picture wont likely be one of them.
Given time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat the conscious higher functioning part of the brain can be used, and thats when you "remember" to use the sights. Which you should, and is why you need to know and practice, sighted and un sighted fire.
This video is a perfect example. The first LEO is ambushed, reacts instinctively and obviously point shoots. The second LEO present, has distance and time. His reaction is noticeably different. Two hands on the gun, gun is in his line of sight, uses cover effectively and and helps end the threat with more accurate fire. Two LEOS, same agency, same training but different responses due to different parts of the brain being used.
Kansas City shootout September 6, 2009, with suspect. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsbn1MAwBEw#)
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As far as point shooting not being accurate, well this guy has something to say about that.
Surgical Point Shooting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTQ2j4hezOQ#)
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That is ONE FAT COP ......
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I enjoy these discussions, you guys are basically discussing two sides of the same coin. In the end you are trying to prepare and train for the same thing, just using two different training methods. Is one better than the other, personally I doubt it. You are both training people to be able to be effective in high stress self defense situations, one is encouraging competition shooting which does create some stress and uses fine motor skills so you make your reactions almost automatic. The other uses more force on force/close combat training to do the same thing (and encourages the use of "natural" reactions to the stressors).
The big difference is who these training methods are meant for, the compition style training methods are better for at least a segment of the civilian self defense market, it makes training fun and gives them measurables where they can see their progress (and who is not at least a little competitive). The other is directed more toward the professional operator, the guy who faces these challenges every day and needs to train in shorter spurts and does it not because it is fun but because his life depends upon it.
Personally I think everyone would benefit from some of both types of training, and as far as the major amount someone would do would need to be directed at which ever system is right for their needs.
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And just so you both know, I think we all learn a little more from each of these discussions and videos.
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As far as point shooting not being accurate, well this guy has something to say about that.
Great topic....
I guess I don't really think of this as "point shooting", but glorified "bore sighting" and this is MY OPINION so I am not really that impressed. In my training with Devin and Trevor, my take away is get the gun "towards" the target as fast as you can at almost contact or less that 7 feet distance (b/c it is all hitting the fan fast) to allow you to 1) preferably escape and/or 2) take cover and then engage with accuracy if the situation still warrants.
From a purist stand point, "point shooting" IN MY OPINION is Bob Munden.
At the end of the day, all of these methods are repackaged models of what someone else taught or espoused 25, 50, 100 years ago. Like Pincus they've been able to create a brand and "sell it" with terms like "Dynamic Critical Incident" (and there's nothing wrong with that). Ayoob was teaching the Stressfire approach 35 years ago.....
Again to mention Devin and Trevor (who I don't always agree with) they are great instructors because they advocate you consider things in light of logic, but also realize it is NOT the only way.
In my other passion ..... raising, training and showing cutting horses, the same thing exists i.e. nothing is new under the sun, just who is marketing today that is "cool and fashionable" and sells a lot of DVDs
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Well, when you called my background into question, I kinda had to. Seems immediately after doing your weird web search on me and not finding what you wanted you couldn't wait to post about it (epic fail). I haven't, nor will I ever, exaggerate my abilities or qualifications.
Yes, well, you keep bagging on competitions based on your experience and the fact that you "did well"----so since you have disparaged USPSA, Steel Challenge, and Multigun, I thought I'd simply check the USPSA site. And lo and behold, you had indeed shot a little USPSA, though your didn't match what you had claimed. There was no information that you had shot Multigun or Steel Challenge, so I thought I'd ask, in case you could actually back up your contentions. But since you can't, other than doing well in IDPA, that pretty much told me what I needed.
You see---you made a part of your argument the fact that you did well at it. You did that, not anyone else. And since you can't really back that up for the competition types that go on around here, and you can't back it up with any logical arguments either, it really means that I'll give your opinion there the respect it deserves, i.e. none.
Particularly since LEOs hold competitions, militaries hold competitions, and so does everyone else. And you know what? The only people who keep pushing that it is a bad thing are people like Pincus and you. (There are others, of course.) Pincus even admits (literally, he said this) that he doesn't want to measure or track any data on how well his students shoot, and that he doesn't care how well his instructors can shoot. You apparently don't like standards either.
I can compare that to Bill Rogers, Frank Proctor, Shannon Smith, Mike Seeklander, Jim Cirillo, Ted Puente, Bob Vogel, Jerry Barnhardt, Ron Avery, Tom Givens...and you know what? The result is pretty clear.
Actually what I thought you were saying was Elements to Win a Gun Fight...and how to practice.
Hm. If you've been paying attention, we've covered a number of other topics.
So I will answer that again;
- Build a solid foundation in the fundamentals of sighted and unsighted shooting
- Practice basic combatives
- Range drills. Starting at a very easy level and progressing to very complex.
- Reality based training. Participate in properly run force on force drills, putting it all together in context, working all the physical and mental skills in real time.
Already been discussed. Of course, you haven't actually responded to any of the points I've made, but that's fine.
I never said teaching sighted fire was bad. I said that we should learn both sighted and unsighted fire (see above)
And yet, the entire diatribe from Trevor that you posted gave a very different emphasis.
It seems you agree that if the threat is reactionary, close range and immediate we will focus on the target. According to you we should still be able to access the sights, Im assuming using our peripheral vision? Explain to me then exactly how you will reduce the effects of tunnel vision (loss of peripheral vision) which is a recognized physical effect of extreme stress?
Hm. I find that if i have a complete target focus, and bring the gun up to the eye/target line, the sights are superimposed on the target. And, if the target is that close, said sight picture is sufficient to get hits perfectly well, even very accurate hits.
Or perhaps you think that if you focus on one thing, you can see nothing else? What an odd thought. You perhaps you think that tunnel vision means that if you focus on something, you can't see anything else in between you and that object? How odd.
You do realize that your entire paragraph makes no sense, right?
There you go calling people stupid again (seems you have been doing that a lot lately). Why do you think that happens? Do you think there may be a real physiological reason for it? That under duress the higher thinking parts of our brain shut down while the lower functioning, instinctive part turns on?
I think that your understanding of the physiological and neurological effects of stress is extremely simplistic, and that either you don't understand it very well, OR you simply don't know how to argue, because what you are saying doesn't make sense.
Many people do turn stupid under stress. This is known.
This is obvious a physiological reaction to stress. This is also known.
Saying that "the higher functions of our brain shut down" is an absolute statement that is not true, however. It is more correct to say that without training or practice, complex decision-making becomes considerably more difficult. The faculties are obviously still there, and the processes can be accessed. However, it is more difficult to do.
In a similar fashion, saying that "while the lower functioning, instinctive part turns on" is a statement that is technically not true. The instinctive part of your brain is always on, but is often over-ridden on a continual basis by the higher functions. The instinctive part of your brain has a lesser capacity for abstract thought, and tends to choose from a set of fight/flight/freeze responses (that is a simplistic version of what happens, but basically true) and as such, tends to be people's base response when surprised or stressed. However, this is not an absolute, and not only can training alter people's base reactions, training can also enable people's higher functions to work.
As such---what was your point? You didn't say anything that wasn't actually known, and you didn't make any sort of point that refuted anything I said.
You said, responding to my request for data on two specific things:
This is very easy to answer and the evidence can be seen on hundreds of videos of actual shootings available online. It is usually quite obvious that under duress when the attack is immediate, reactionary, and close range people will point shoot. Its not because they are stupid, its because the lower instinctive part of their brain has taken over.
So, you DON'T have data. Why? Because your contention was;
1) "officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
And according to you, videos available online somehow show people not using their sights, in addition to giving information about the type of level of training that they had.
Oh wait, it DOESN'T.
Matter of fact, most of the videos available online are of people we KNOW are trained poorly. So why are we using these as examples?
Also---you say "It is usually quite obvious that under duress when the attack is immediate, reactionary, and close range people will point shoot." ---you say that as an absolute. And yet, there are plenty of cases where this is not true. And again, since you have no information with regard to training level, you don't actually have any data to support your contention that training type and level made no difference.
You also say: "Its not because they are stupid, its because the lower instinctive part of their brain has taken over." ---as if the instinctive part can't be trained. And yet, it can. Matter of fact, there are plenty of training systems that integrate stress responses into effective actions that can be quite complex.
You seem to think that "lower instinctive" means "low-level" -- and it doesn't have to be.
It is certainly true that people with no training or poor training will react poorly. How, however, does that even remotely support your idea that people will all types and levels of training will ALSO react in an unsighted, "lower instinctive" level, particularly when there is plenty of data showing that isn't necessarily true?
This were you will see flinching, movement away from the threat and very often one handed target focus shooting. The extreme physical effects of stress will likely be present, tunnel vision, loss of hearing, time distortion are just a few.
No arguments that these things can happen. However, most of those can (and have, in plenty of cases) been overcome by training.
Proper training and repetition can condition good reflexive gross motor responses here. Getting a good sight picture wont likely be one of them.
Simply untrue. You seem to normally set up a strawman that either a person is using unsighted fire, or someone is using a bullseye sight focus. And yet, there are many spots in between on that continuum---and again, plenty of people have had no troubles getting a perfectly sufficient sight picture for their circumstances under stress.
Or maybe Jim Cirillo's history is either unknown to you, or instead wrong? Perhaps the data from Tom Given's students is incorrect, or they were lying?
I also note that the use of the term "gross motor movement" tells me a lot, really. Considering that pulling a trigger is not a gross motor movement, nor is actuating a magazine release, nor are many other things...all things that can be trained perfectly well for stress-based action.
Given time, anticipation, and/or lower levels of threat the conscious higher functioning part of the brain can be used, and thats when you "remember" to use the sights. Which you should, and is why you need to know and practice, sighted and un sighted fire.
This video is a perfect example. The first LEO is ambushed, reacts instinctively and obviously point shoots. The second LEO present, has distance and time. His reaction is noticeably different. Two hands on the gun, gun is in his line of sight, uses cover effectively and and helps end the threat with more accurate fire. Two LEOS, same agency, same training but different responses due to different parts of the brain being used.
Hm. I'm not sure if you realize you are arguing against yourself, here. After all, you posted Trevor's response as the answer to my question, in which he said teaching sighted fire was a mistake. I realize that YOU say we should do both----so which is it?
Because if sighted fire hadn't been taught, that second cop wouldn't have been able to do that, now would he?
And again, you are taking one particular incident (from a group of people that we know aren't trained well, in particular aren't trained well for stress scenarios) and from that saying that the first officer's panic reaction tells us what we should know?
Or perhaps, shouldn't it tell us that it is a good thing that the second officer remembered his training, and too bad the training wasn't actually sufficient for the first officer to be effective? Remember here--you are the one saying that unsighted fire should be taught for things like this----when the videos we see (that you are referencing) are showing that such actions tend to be not effective.
You see, you can't have it both ways. You can either say that "under stress, people will use unsighted fire" OR "unsighted fire is effective" --- but unfortunately, the videos you are citing as evidence show that you can't say both.
AND, even better, both of those two phrases are actually factually incorrect in general. There are plenty of cases where under stress, people use sighted fire. AND, there are plenty of cases where people's unsighted fire has been effective.
It is true that untrained or poorly trained people tend to use blind, random, rapid unsighted fire under close-range stress. That doesn't mean it is the only thing that can happen.
It is true that most of the time, unsighted fire gives extremely poor results. That doesn't mean it always will, particularly at contact distances or from a retention position (given decent training in said techniques).
Let's see---research study found that in 2005, in slightly over 50% of their altercations with bad guys where they fired shots, the police missed the bad guy. Now, that isn't missing 50% of their shots---that is saying no matter how many shots were fired, in over 50% of the altercations where shots were fire, the police didn't hit the bad guy at all.
I'm trying to figure out how that should be used as support for any commentary about 1) how trained people react under stress, given that we know that police training, for the general patrolman, tends to be pretty bad, and 2) whether or not unsighted fire is effective and should be taught.
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That is ONE FAT COP ......
Yeah he is, fitness standards for public safety employees can be another discussion. I was waiting for someone to say he didn't use his sights properly because he was thinking about jelly donuts.
Personally I think everyone would benefit from some of both types of training, and as far as the major amount someone would do would need to be directed at which ever system is right for their needs.
There you go, being all reasonable. Pick a side darn it!! :D
Great topic....
I guess I don't really think of this as "point shooting", but glorified "bore sighting" and this is MY OPINION so I am not really that impressed. In my training with Devin and Trevor, my take away is get the gun "towards" the target as fast as you can at almost contact or less that 7 feet distance (b/c it is all hitting the fan fast) to allow you to 1) preferably escape and/or 2) take cover and then engage with accuracy if the situation still warrants.
From a purist stand point, "point shooting" IN MY OPINION is Bob Munden.
At the end of the day, all of these methods are repackaged models of what someone else taught or espoused 25, 50, 100 years ago. Like Pincus they've been able to create a brand and "sell it" with terms like "Dynamic Critical Incident" (and there's nothing wrong with that). Ayoob was teaching the Stressfire approach 35 years ago.....
Again to mention Devin and Trevor (who I don't always agree with) they are great instructors because they advocate you consider things in light of logic, but also realize it is NOT the only way.
In my other passion ..... raising, training and showing cutting horses, the same thing exists i.e. nothing is new under the sun, just who is marketing today that is "cool and fashionable" and sells a lot of DVDs
Excellent point. Just like there are different levels of sight focus there are different levels of point shooting. I think that Middlebrooks demonstrates what is ultimately possible without sights at a very long range. He is locking out both arms and looking down the gun. I still think it impressive, at that distance, with what he is working with. Especially considering most of us would have a hard time hitting that target using the sights.
I hadn't though about Bob Munden, great example. He obviously demonstrates what is possible at close range with extraordinary hand eye coordination. Which reinforces my belief that at close range, under duress and when focused on the threat, the average CCW holder can be combat accurate without using the sights. Given that they get some basic training and put in the time to practice.
- Shawn
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I'm still stuck in my classroom
What subjects do you teach?
(An old, ex-teacher wants to know. I loved teaching, and during the 18 years I taught I never had a single day where I dreaded going to my classrooms. I just couldn't make a decent living at it.)
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Jt, it seems you are getting a little stressed yourself. You are obviously too emotionally invested in this topic to continue it in a reasonable way. It seems you are forgeting, or choosing to ignore, things I have already posted. So before you get any more personal Im going to take a break. I am fine with agreeing to disagree.
While I was typing this I recieved a reply from Trevor. JT feel free to ignore, distort or discredit the following. Everyone else try to be objective and come to your own conclusion.
Shawn,
I just had a good cup of coffee and I am all hyped up.
Here is an explanation, references, argument, and a few final comments.
The body alarm system in reactive situations at face reading distance activates the amygdalla and causes a person to instinctively or intuitively react to a threat. This involves squaring towards the threat and looking directly at and focusing on the threat. Nothing in our alarm system tells us to focus on a 1/8 wide piece of metal or plastic that has no relation to the threat. The amygdalla when "activated" is a shorter loop and interrupts deliberate thought. The deliberate or higher brain must play catch up.
With less duress and more time, the deliberate thought loop can kick in allowing a person to make a choice that is counter instinctive or counter intuitive, such as to focus on one's sights. This is why I say sighted fire is mostly a deliberate choice. The amount of time needed to switch to this loop is operator and training dependent, but it is clear under more duress with less time, it is less likely to happen.
You have 6 degrees more or less of direct vision. This is a very small (tunnel vision like) field of view for the best focus. Under duress, since clarity of the threat is of utmost importance, you will not instinctively or intuitively put any object in front of you to obstruct that line of sight unless it is done to shield you from the attack protectively. So you will not want a gun up in your face in your direct line of sight.
In theory you might be able to condition someone to use their sights intuitively, but this would require enough repetitions while in a body alarm reaction mode to overcome 1000s of years of evolution. Training without the amygdalla activated (range training) will not work as well for conditioning because it is in a different psychological context. Then on top of this, you would have to train in a fine motor skill (aligning sights) during times of high stress and rapid heat action.
There absolutely is a place for sighted fire, but I think we are wasting too much time training it under conditions when it will never be used and then not training the actual skill that will be used in those conditions.
References:
--NYPD SOP9-
http://www.virginiacops.org/articles/shooting/combat.htm (http://www.virginiacops.org/articles/shooting/combat.htm)
The shooting distances where Officers survived, remained almost the same during the SOP years (1970-1979), and for a random sampling of cases going back as far as 1929. 4,000 cases were reviewed. The shooting distance in 75% of those cases was less than 20 feet.
Contact to 10 feet --- 51%
10 feet to 20 feet --- 24%
In 70% of the cases reviewed, sight alignment was not used. Officers reported that they used instinctive or point shooting. As the distance between the Officer and his opponent increased, some type of aiming was reported in 20% of the cases. This aiming or sighting ran from using the barrel as an aiming reference to picking up the front sight and utilizing fine sight alignment. The remaining 10% could not remember whether they had aimed or pointed and fired the weapon instinctively.
--"What Applegate Said"
http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf (http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf)
"Intense focus on the threat"- outlining reactions to a deadly threat
"93% focused on thee threat" during training in "life threatening scenarios"
http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf (http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf)
--Bruce Siddle, "Sharperning The Warrior's Edge", I don't have it with me.
Effects of survival stress: "loss of near vision"
--Every single force on force high duress scenario driven training I have conducted over a period of 20 years. I have taught CQB courses to special force soldiers who only practice sighted fire and at the end of a 2 day course, they will admit they never used their sights under reactive duress for 2 days!
The default under severe reactive stress is always point shooting. I have observed this and recorded it with video and it is unchanging regardless of the level of operator. There is a gray zone where training will allow one operator to stay more calm than another and use sights, but the close range, reactive, high duress situations yield the same result.
This can easily be repeated and I have consistently observed even some of the top competitive sighted shooters, Mike Hugh's for example, resort to point shooting during scenarios unless they had the opportunity to be pro-active.
-- Review of over 200 life and death shootings caught on video
--Medical studies investigating the effects of survival stress (various sources, I don;t have time to find them all)
There is not one empirical study which has shown sighted fire as a primary means of dealing with reactive, close range, threats. If some trainer actually could get people to use sighted fire under severe duress, wouldn't they record the facts and soon become the greatest firearms trainer on earth?
I have asked for evidence from the point shooting disbelievers and they can only come up with anecdotal evidence, and we all know that stress effects your memory, or do I have to prove that too? Then they demand proof from me, and I provide study after study and they do everything they can to deny it or look for little minute ways to interpret it to their liking. With any basic rules of logic or debate, I am clearly and undeniably in the lead.
The bottom line is this, I can take any sighted shooting proponent and consistently and repeatedly get them to point shoot under realistic high duress situations and record that fact. The anti-point shooters cannot say the same.
I will say no more until the sighted shooters provide a shred of empirical evidence as the court is beyond clearly in my favor. I don't care what someone said, or what someone can do on the range or in competition, or what they think they can do. I want real empirical proof. Tactics are like a religion to people in the same way everyone used to think their martial art was the best until people started doing MMA. I'm not the kind of guy who ever stuck to one martial art, I was always looking for "the way" and have had 20+ years of experience while being trained in the widest possible fields of tactics and being operational in a variety of special operations units in a variety of environments. I now say the Army/Military and range based shooters are largely inbred with tactics and beliefs. People learn the same thing and repeat it from the same people, while never having the ability to branch out too far or empirically test it and record it.
"The ability to master a complex skill is automatically equated with the ability to effectively address real life. A huge fallacy, in my humble opinion."- Nir Maman (Israeli Special Forces)
Trevor Thrasher
Master Instructor
88 Tactical Group
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I enjoy these discussions, you guys are basically discussing two sides of the same coin. In the end you are trying to prepare and train for the same thing, just using two different training methods. Is one better than the other, personally I doubt it. You are both training people to be able to be effective in high stress self defense situations, one is encouraging competition shooting which does create some stress and uses fine motor skills so you make your reactions almost automatic. The other uses more force on force/close combat training to do the same thing (and encourages the use of "natural" reactions to the stressors).
Well, no, not really. Competition shooting doesn't use any more fine motor skills than does any other sort of shooting. The fine motor skill/gross motor skill dichotomy is actually fairly false----as a simple example, working a trigger and a magazine release are fine motor skills. As such, contentions that "fine motor skills won't work under stress" are just untrue.
In addition, my contention isn't that competition takes the place of other training. Quite the contrary, I suggest people take classes that include stress training, force-on-force training, and scenario training. (And yes, those can indeed be different things.) And that's why I teach classes that include all three of those things, depending on the class, of course--a shooting skills class includes stress but not the other two, CCW 101 include stress and scenario but not much force-on-force, CQT is full of force-on-force and stress training, etc...
I also note that pushing commentary about "natural" reactions to stress, and surprise, etc, while technically true, should be instead used to lead the discussion into how we can change those things. And more importantly, how we can use awareness and training to minimize needing a "startle reaction" or a "flinch reaction."
Tony Blauer spends a lot of time mis-characterizing stress reactions, and has made a lot of money teaching primal reactions to physical stressors in altercations to police officers. For your average police officer, his methods aren't any more effective than anything else, but seem that way because for perhaps the first time, officers actually have time in a seminar to work force-on-force to actual scenarios. The LEOs come out ahead, because the scenario/stress training makes them more effective--and Blauer's techniques get the credit, even though they aren't really any more effective than what the police officer knew before.
People can do incredibly complex things while under severe stress. It takes a lot of training, but it can be done. Will most people train that much? Of course not. As such, simplifying the actions needed will mean that most people can indeed learn to be effective in shorter periods of time.
That's not remotely the same thing as saying that people can't handle fine motor skills under stress, or that your brain will automatically be lower functioning and you can't help it, or that you must have tunnel vision and target focus and nothing can be done about it.
You can train yourself to snap out of tunnel vision, you can train yourself to change from a threat focus, you can train yourself to handle complex tasks as an automatic matter of course. Everyone here had better hope so for that last one, because drawing a gun from concealment and firing it contains a whole host of fine motor skills in a complex series.
Why is it completely possible to do, however? Because people practice it, and it becomes a single task for the brain, not a succession of tasks. And then people can do it under stress.
Regarding self-defense, both empty-hand and using weapons, training theory shows that 1) it isn't as simple as "gross motor skil vs fine motor skillsl" or anything else people would like you to believe, and 2) people's brains DO act differently under high stress levels, AND this can be trained just like everything else.
Regarding competitions:
My contention is simply that most people won't take classes, and without external reasons, won't necessarily practice much on their own. In addition, most people don't actually know what they are bad at, don't know what levels are possible, and don't understand what really is considered basic-level in terms of skills. Shooting a competition every once in awhile gives many of those things---you see other shooters of other skill levels, you get a chance to try new things that test your shooting skills so that you can see how you are deficient, and you can see how you stack up at least locally. And if you fail miserably, that tends to be impetus to go practice to get better. :)
That is separate from whether or not any specific kind of training is effective. Competitions aren't training, they are tests.
The big difference is who these training methods are meant for, the compition style training methods are better for at least a segment of the civilian self defense market, it makes training fun and gives them measurables where they can see their progress (and who is not at least a little competitive). The other is directed more toward the professional operator, the guy who faces these challenges every day and needs to train in shorter spurts and does it not because it is fun but because his life depends upon it.
And here, I think is where people misunderstand. Because that simply is not how it is, really---or at least, not how I mean it. I keep using names like Mike Seeklander, Shannon Smith, and Bill Rogers--and the reason for that is because they are all trainers of law enforcement and military (especially Bill Rogers, whose school used to not even be open to regular folks because 1) it was always full-up with people from the military, to include SEAL, special forces, and Delta, and 2) the government specifically put in his contract that he couldn't teach these methods to anyone but them) and they simply disagree strongly with what Shawn is saying. I use names like Smith, Milionis, Puente, and Vogel, because each are (or were) LEO or military and involved with altercations, AND are competition shooters.
You see, there ISN'T a dichotomy here. This isn't a competition world vs tactical world, much as some people like to think it. The competition world tests shooting skills. And practicing for competition means practicing shooting skills. The tactical world USES shooting skills integrated into a larger skill set that includes decision-making and different situations (and equipment). As such, saying that training for competition shooting makes you bad at self-defense is like saying that rally racing makes you worse at road trips.
It's about that silly.
I will agree that citizen, military, and LEO training should be different---because the applications, rules, equipment, and goals are very different. However, the shooting skills don't change. Their applications do, and where they are focused obviously does. (For example, if you know that your job will have you wearing gloves 90% of the time, you should practice and train wearing gloves. If you will normally be wearing full gear when using a handgun, and only using that handgun because your rifle has malfunctioned, then you should train that way. That doesn't mean when you are first learning how to shoot a handgun, you need to wear full gear---but it does certainly mean that later on, you should practice transitioning from a rifle to a pistol, and work on using that pistol effectively wearing your gear.)
But fast effective shooting? Getting the gun out, getting accurate shots on target at speed? That doesn't change. Which is why it interests me that people teach techniques known to be non-optimal for shooting skills.
Personally I think everyone would benefit from some of both types of training, and as far as the major amount someone would do would need to be directed at which ever system is right for their needs.
I think---that there is less difference than you might think, and that the two "types" of training aren't that one is for competitors and citizens, and the other is for LEOs and operators.
I teach a shooting skills class. That is applicable to anyone, because it is specifically about effective handgun technique.
I also teach a CCW course which is for people specifically wanting to understand and practice techniques for concealed carry, and go through scenario training for CCW---and that class would only be useful for military and LEO folks in their regular-citizen lives, because the focus is on CCW technique and state/federal use of force laws---so military ROE are not a part of it, nor would the laws and choices part make sense for LEOs working on getting better with their backup gun. The techniques would be useful for them, but the scenarios and choices would only be relevant to their regular-citizen lives.
I also teach a CQT course which includes lots of physical drills, stress training, and force-on-force practice---which would be applicable to citizens, military, or LEOs. Military and LEO folks are welcome to wear their duty gear for parts of the class, to learn how to integrate the empty-hand work with their weapons kit.
I could go on, but I think you see the point: some classes have a focus that is applicable to certain groups, and some topics I don't teach. (For example, I don't teach any carbine or rifle classes, so anyone interested in CQB rifle gets sent to Jon Wallace.) However, many classes really ARE for everyone, and there isn't any separation between groups. It is true that most of what I teach is oriented toward regular citizens---BUT, quite frankly, most military and LEO folks need basic gun-handling skills, too.
I do think certain groups have done some really effective marketing to make people think that their students will learn Real Operator Stuff, under the assumption that Real Operator Stuff is significantly different. (You can see it with groups like HammerFour, American Defense Enterprises, and the Israeli Combat Shooting folks.)
And yet----the one thing that many real operators say is that they often got civilian specialists brought in to teach them to shoot. :) (Example: http://fastacademy.net/wp/?p=157 (http://fastacademy.net/wp/?p=157) ---and Shannon Smith also talks elsewhere about when he was in the military, and how they brought in Jerry Barnhardt to teach them how to shoot better.)
I do also like the fact that the Army Marksmanship Unit is composed to people who shoot all SORTS of competitions, teach other members of the military, and also deploy regularly. (I've shot with Travis Tomasie, Max Michel Jr, and Lee Dimaculangan, and I've seen Shane Coley, Daniel Horner and Robbie Johnson shoot---various USPSA, Multigun, and Steel Challenge matches. Horner is a beast at Multigun, by the way. And oddly enough, they never argue that their competition training makes them worse at their military actions, or at defending themselves. We hope not, because they train OTHER military folks to shoot better.)
So---I think discussions like this are useful. I also think that many people in the tactical world set up a false separation between "competition shooters" and "real tactical shooters" which just isn't true. (Many competition shooters don't help, either, so this isn't a one-sided thing.)
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Jt, it seems you are getting a little stressed yourself. You are obviously too emotionally invested in this topic to continue it in a reasonable way. It seems you are forgeting, or choosing to ignore, things I have already posted. So before you get any more personal Im going to take a break. I am fine with agreeing to disagree.
So, you can't refute what I said, and have no logical argument to make? Ok, I am fine with disagreeing.
While I was typing this I recieved a reply from Trevor. JT feel free to ignore, distort or discredit the following. Everyone else try to be objective and come to your own conclusion.
If I have distorted anything, or said anything non-factual or illogical, feel free to point it out. That is what discussion is for, after all. If, however, you simply cannot actually argue my points, don't attempt to say it is because I'm ignoring or distorting facts.
After all, you are the one who isn't answering questions, and have been continuing ignoring facts and logical arguments I've stated.
Here is an explanation, references, argument, and a few final comments.
The body alarm system in reactive situations at face reading distance activates the amygdalla and causes a person to instinctively or intuitively react to a threat. This involves squaring towards the threat and looking directly at and focusing on the threat. Nothing in our alarm system tells us to focus on a 1/8 wide piece of metal or plastic that has no relation to the threat. The amygdalla when "activated" is a shorter loop and interrupts deliberate thought. The deliberate or higher brain must play catch up.
With less duress and more time, the deliberate thought loop can kick in allowing a person to make a choice that is counter instinctive or counter intuitive, such as to focus on one's sights. This is why I say sighted fire is mostly a deliberate choice. The amount of time needed to switch to this loop is operator and training dependent, but it is clear under more duress with less time, it is less likely to happen.
You have 6 degrees more or less of direct vision. This is a very small (tunnel vision like) field of view for the best focus. Under duress, since clarity of the threat is of utmost importance, you will not instinctively or intuitively put any object in front of you to obstruct that line of sight unless it is done to shield you from the attack protectively. So you will not want a gun up in your face in your direct line of sight.
This---contains a number of facts along with a number of conclusions that are not supported by those facts. Taking them in order:
The body alarm system in reactive situations at face reading distance activates the amygdalla and causes a person to instinctively or intuitively react to a threat. This involves squaring towards the threat and looking directly at and focusing on the threat.
True, with the caveat that while that is most general the initial reaction, it is not the only reaction possible, and it isn't what has to continue happening after the initial reaction. (I also note that squaring towards the threat ignores the flinch reaction, which is also fairly common depending on the type of stressor induced.)
Nothing in our alarm system tells us to focus on a 1/8 wide piece of metal or plastic that has no relation to the threat. The amygdalla when "activated" is a shorter loop and interrupts deliberate thought. The deliberate or higher brain must play catch up.
True in that nothing in our alarm system tells us to do that---which is not the same thing as saying that we cannot do it. And even if people haven't trained in defensive reactions initially (which certainly can be done), again, the fact that the amygdala "is a shorter loop and interrupts deliberate thought" doesn't mean that after the initial reaction, higher thought (and other choices, such as focusing on a point) is impossible.
The initial reaction (which is actually more variable than the "square to them and focus on them" listed above) is just that---initial. What happens immediately after is subject to many different things.
With less duress and more time, the deliberate thought loop can kick in allowing a person to make a choice that is counter instinctive or counter intuitive, such as to focus on one's sights. This is why I say sighted fire is mostly a deliberate choice. The amount of time needed to switch to this loop is operator and training dependent, but it is clear under more duress with less time, it is less likely to happen.
I agree with the last sentence here, because obviously the more time someone has to react, and the less stress they are under, the better their reaction will be. And I won't argue that using the sights is a deliberate choice.
You have 6 degrees more or less of direct vision. This is a very small (tunnel vision like) field of view for the best focus. Under duress, since clarity of the threat is of utmost importance, you will not instinctively or intuitively put any object in front of you to obstruct that line of sight unless it is done to shield you from the attack protectively. So you will not want a gun up in your face in your direct line of sight.
Hm. You are aware that a standard flinch reaction to stress is to turn away, duck, and raise the hands between the person and the perceived attacker? As such, your contention above simply isn't true.
In addition, after the first initial reaction (and sometimes as part of the first initial reaction), many things can occur with training. For example, plenty of people have been trained to deal with sudden attacks wherein their startle reaction includes reflexive blocks which transition immediately into offensive techniques that include having their hands in front of their face.
It simply doesn't work this way. I'd be interested in seeing any research you'd like to cite that supports your contention.
In theory you might be able to condition someone to use their sights intuitively, but this would require enough repetitions while in a body alarm reaction mode to overcome 1000s of years of evolution.
Actually, in "body alarm reaction mode" (or, as most people say it, "under stress") lots of people can and have been trained to do very complex things, many of which are significantly more difficult than holding a gun high enough so that the sights are superimposed on a close target.
Evolution is a curious thing---and our reactions to stress can vary wildly. It is certainly true that most people's initial reaction to a sudden, significant stressor is strongly reflexive, and tends to occur in one of two modes (either flinch/avoid response, or a square up/hands up response) but what happens after that is significantly variable and highly influenced by training.
Training without the amygdalla activated (range training) will not work as well for conditioning because it is in a different psychological context. Then on top of this, you would have to train in a fine motor skill (aligning sights) during times of high stress and rapid heat action.
Pulling the trigger = fine motor skill. Drawing the handgun from a concealment holster = fine motor skill. Pointing your finger at someone and making sure the sights are sufficiently on target for the situation? Still a fine motor skill---and no more difficult than the rest.
I do certainly agree that training for stress situations without training IN stressful situations is significantly non-optimal. As I told Shawn, it isn't necessary, as plenty of people defend themselves with firearms each year without having ever had a stress-based course, but for people wanting to actually learn how to defend themselves, stress-based courses, force-on-force iterations, and scenario training really can make a difference.
There absolutely is a place for sighted fire, but I think we are wasting too much time training it under conditions when it will never be used and then not training the actual skill that will be used in those conditions.
I have yet to see how a failure of reaction training means that sighted fire should not be used. Meaning, poor training for effective incident reaction means a non-optimal reaction, mostly that people flail badly, yank out the gun one-handed and engage in wild, rapid, unsighted fire with poor results.
How does that mean that training shouldn't include sights?
References:
--NYPD SOP9-
http://www.virginiacops.org/articles/shooting/combat.htm (http://www.virginiacops.org/articles/shooting/combat.htm)
The shooting distances where Officers survived, remained almost the same during the SOP years (1970-1979), and for a random sampling of cases going back as far as 1929. 4,000 cases were reviewed. The shooting distance in 75% of those cases was less than 20 feet.
Contact to 10 feet --- 51%
10 feet to 20 feet --- 24%
In 70% of the cases reviewed, sight alignment was not used. Officers reported that they used instinctive or point shooting. As the distance between the Officer and his opponent increased, some type of aiming was reported in 20% of the cases. This aiming or sighting ran from using the barrel as an aiming reference to picking up the front sight and utilizing fine sight alignment. The remaining 10% could not remember whether they had aimed or pointed and fired the weapon instinctively.
I've read that initial NYPD SOP 9. Matter of fact, I've read several of their followup reports.
And I have yet to see how the fact that poor training causing officers to not use their sights, causing extremely poor hit rates, means that the sighting system was the point of failure.
Under stress, officers who were poorly trained ended up not using any of the techniques in which they had been trained. (This isn't a surprise.) As such, one-handed un-aimed fire with incredibly poor hit rates occurred.
...how is that an argument for unsighted fire?
--"What Applegate Said"
http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf (http://www.hfrg.org/storage/pdf/APPLEGATE.pdf)
Um, you do realize that this article directly goes against what you are saying about not raising the gun in front of your face?
"The mechanics of instinctive pointing (Applegate method) are very simple: the eyes focus on the target, then the arm is raised until the hand breaks the line of sight...keeping the elbow and wrist lock and raising the arm like a pump handle, a very accurate and consistent alignment of the pointing hand and the line of sight can be achieved. Contrary to popular belief, Applegate did not believe that shooting was as easy as pointing your finger. He believed that the eyes, pistol and target must be in line."
So the Applegate method goes directly against your comment earlier:
Under duress, since clarity of the threat is of utmost importance, you will not instinctively or intuitively put any object in front of you to obstruct that line of sight unless it is done to shield you from the attack protectively. So you will not want a gun up in your face in your direct line of sight.
Matter of fact, I see that you quote Siddle. Here's what he said about Applegate's method:
"Applegate student and survival skills preeminent instructor Bruce Siddle, who studied extensively with the Colonel states Applegate advocated to "always" bring the weapon to eye level and use the whole weapon system as the front sight."
Matter of fact:
Applegate covered all contingencies from touching distance wherein the officer or soldier could not physically raise the pistol to techniques where more time and distance allowed bringing the pistol up to eye level, using two hands, and using the sights, "Realistic combat shooting technique therefore becomes a continuum that ranges from contact distance (so-called 'hip shooting') to two-handed, sighted fire."
"The good Colonel believed that the gun should be brought up to eye level if at all possible."
--Bruce Siddle, "Sharperning The Warrior's Edge", I don't have it with me.
Effects of survival stress: "loss of near vision"
--Every single force on force high duress scenario driven training I have conducted over a period of 20 years. I have taught CQB courses to special force soldiers who only practice sighted fire and at the end of a 2 day course, they will admit they never used their sights under reactive duress for 2 days!
The default under severe reactive stress is always point shooting. I have observed this and recorded it with video and it is unchanging regardless of the level of operator. There is a gray zone where training will allow one operator to stay more calm than another and use sights, but the close range, reactive, high duress situations yield the same result.
This can easily be repeated and I have consistently observed even some of the top competitive sighted shooters, Mike Hugh's for example, resort to point shooting during scenarios unless they had the opportunity to be pro-active.
Hm. So here's my question:
1) what ranges are you talking about?
2) When you say "unsighted fire" or "point shooting" do you mean Applegate's method, or something different?
Because it seems to me that there may be a definitional issue here, among others.
For example: at contact distance, obviously no one will be using their sights. At ranges out to 3-5 feet, someone with basic practice at sighted fire will be able to (without looking at their sights) align the pistol to easily hit an open target. At 6-10 feet, someone with practice at sighted fire (and thus experience with gun alignment) will be easily able to hit an open target using just the silhouette of the slide.
I'd consider that all point shooting. Yes?
And yet, in my opinion, the reason those folks can do that is because of practice they have made with sighted fire---understanding what pistol alignment creates good hits, having practice and gaining experience by working on understanding body alignment, grip, and pistol alignment.
For those cases where every time you say they only did point-shooting---how many of them occurred at distances where sighted fire would have actually made sense? If none of them, then of course you saw point-shooting.
I don't think anyone here is saying that at 5 feet, you have to have a strong front sight focus in a standard defensive situation. So....are you saying that people should only (or even mostly) train for 5-15 feet, and wide-open targets? Or are you saying that people who trained in sighted fire, when put into a high stress situation in which their target was at 12 yards or so, STILL only performed point-shooting?
So---the question really is, for those people you have seen all point shoot: At what ranges were they (because at 3 feet, of course you don't bother using the sights) and more importantly, would those people have been able to get the hits they did without the experience they had in sight alignment and gun alignment?
In other words, if we compared four groups of people:
1) Completely untrained
2) Trained in unsighted fire only
3) trained in sighted fire only
4) trained in sighted fire with practice at close-range shooting
...would group #2 actually do better than group #3? Is there any research on this?
My person opinion is that if group 2 and 3 both had no stress training, under actual stress conditions at worst the group's abilities would be equal, and more likely, #3 would do better. However, that's just my opinion because I haven't seen any actual research comparing groups like this.
Have you? Do you have any? If so, I'd like to see it.
-- Review of over 200 life and death shootings caught on video
Did you know the type and level of training for those shootings? The reason I ask is that Shawn's contention was that:
"officers and operators will most often not use their sights, despite any type and level of training"
...and as such, most videos I've seen of shootings don't give any training information.
--Medical studies investigating the effects of survival stress (various sources, I don;t have time to find them all)
I'd be interested in seeing them, if you could post them. Mostly because some of the statements you've made above are phrased in too absolute of a fashion for actual truth, so I'm interested in what the research you've read actually says.
There is not one empirical study which has shown sighted fire as a primary means of dealing with reactive, close range, threats. If some trainer actually could get people to use sighted fire under severe duress, wouldn't they record the facts and soon become the greatest firearms trainer on earth?
Well, some people might ask Bill Rogers or Tom Givens, as a suggestion. Of course, they merely have thousands of students as opposed to having done actual research, so you may not count that. I'll note that I don't consider their information actual empirical research, either, though the data Tom Givens is compiling is very very close to it.
And chances are you'd say "well, those weren't all close-range" or something similar. That does remind me---are you saying that high stress causes people to only use point shooting, or does it have to be high stress AND close range? Because, after all, close-range shooting on an open target means you don't NEED to use the sights much, so there is more going on than merely stress reactions.
Your contention seems to be that since no one uses their sights in reactive, close-range, high-stress threats, that people shouldn't bother teaching sighted fire, and that point shooting should be taught strictly instead.
And yet---what data do you have showing that people taught point-shooting-only 1) are accurate at close-range faster, 2) react any better under high-stress situations when compared to people who are taught sighted fire?
You say that you've taught lots of CQB, and no one used their sights, even though they were taught sighted fire only. (Which is odd, really, since I'd expect that special forces folks would have been taught shooting from retention positions and such, so I would have assumed they would have practiced unsighted fire before.) So---how'd they do?
Did they use their knowledge of body alignment, grip and gun alignment, and their experience with the gun silhouette to instinctively align the gun properly at close range? If they hadn't had that sighted-fire experience, that experience that taught them where the bullet would go given certain alignment of the gun?
Would they have done better if they had only been taught unsighted fire?
What part of this actually supports the idea that teaching unsighted fire makes you better at close-range shooting?
I have asked for evidence from the point shooting disbelievers and they can only come up with anecdotal evidence, and we all know that stress effects your memory, or do I have to prove that too? Then they demand proof from me, and I provide study after study and they do everything they can to deny it or look for little minute ways to interpret it to their liking. With any basic rules of logic or debate, I am clearly and undeniably in the lead.
I think---that isn't true. As I've mentioned above.
(I'll also note that when you say that "stress effects [sic] your memory" that also influences the responses of police officers in the SOP9 who said they couldn't remember using their sights.)
The bottom line is this, I can take any sighted shooting proponent and consistently and repeatedly get them to point shoot under realistic high duress situations and record that fact. The anti-point shooters cannot say the same.
And yet, that doesn't actually support the contention that teaching point-shooting will result in improved results.
Do you have any data that shows any comparison between training groups supporting the idea that teaching point-shooting vs teaching sighted shooting gives better results in high stress close-range situations?
I will say no more until the sighted shooters provide a shred of empirical evidence as the court is beyond clearly in my favor. I don't care what someone said, or what someone can do on the range or in competition, or what they think they can do. I want real empirical proof. Tactics are like a religion to people in the same way everyone used to think their martial art was the best until people started doing MMA. I'm not the kind of guy who ever stuck to one martial art, I was always looking for "the way" and have had 20+ years of experience while being trained in the widest possible fields of tactics and being operational in a variety of special operations units in a variety of environments. I now say the Army/Military and range based shooters are largely inbred with tactics and beliefs. People learn the same thing and repeat it from the same people, while never having the ability to branch out too far or empirically test it and record it.
So my simple question is:
What supports your contention that (for all the people you've seen successfully use point shooting in close-range, reactive situations) teaching them solely point-shooting will make them more effective?
All of your points seem to be based on the idea that people use point-shooting at close range. Okay----but it doesn't necessarily follow that only teaching point shooting is actually more effective than teaching sighted shooting, or even better, teaching sighted shooting and periodically having an evolution of close-range work.
If you've got any information comparing groups like I've listed above, I'd really like to see it.
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What subjects do you teach?
(An old, ex-teacher wants to know. I loved teaching, and during the 18 years I taught I never had a single day where I dreaded going to my classrooms. I just couldn't make a decent living at it.)
Science. Physics, Chemistry, and Scientific Logic, for the most part.
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Holy crap! With all this book writing going on are any of you guys looking for part time work? I'll work you hard enough you won't have the energy to even sign on. LOL BTW next time anyone cyber-stalks Shawn don't forget to check out his lifting video's. Quite impressive. :laugh:
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Holy crap! With all this book writing going on are any of you guys looking for part time work? I'll work you hard enough you won't have the energy to even sign on. LOL BTW next time anyone cyber-stalks Shawn don't forget to check out his lifting video's. Quite impressive. :laugh:
If I need a fourth job Chris I`ll give you a call. But knowing what you do, Im not sure I want to work that hard for a living. It seems that the only profession that has more free time than firemen are school teachers :D
- Shawn
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Science. Physics, Chemistry, and Scientific Logic, for the most part.
Ah, a brother in the arts of science!
My Masters is in Biochemistry, with major hours in Physics and Math. I held five certifications for teaching HS science (Chemistry, Physics, Math, Biology and Earth Science). Going to school to maintain them was a never ending process, which put me more than 60 hours beyond my MS reqs.
Like I wrote before, I loved teaching and never dreaded a single day of it. I just couldn't make any money doing it.
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the only profession that has more free time than firemen are school teachers
Surely you jest. :D
The NE law reads that regardless of the number of "school days" per year scheduled for a high school, the "school year" must include 1,080 instructional contact hours. In a nine month year that can average out to 30 contact hours per week. There is no stipulation as to how many hours a teacher must spend in order to create those instructional contact hours, but a good teacher will spend an hour outside of class for every hour in class.
Most teaching contracts include the phrase "and any other duties the superintendent may assign...". The end result is that during the school year your work day starts at 7AM and often ended at 10 or 10:30 PM. THEN, you had papers to grade, lesson plans to create or review, labs to setup or take down, tests to make or score, in addition to monitoring the halls, or lunch room duty. In the evenings on home game days you'd man the scoreboard clock or keep stats along the sidelines. On away games you'd ride the bus with the players and keep states at those games as well. Teaching is a 70+ hours per week job during the school year, if done right.
Show me a poor teacher, or one who is always complaining about discipline problems, and I will show you someone who puts in 40 hours a week and recycles their lesson plans every year regardless of the advances in their area of training or the abilities of their students. Or, they teach out of their text book and if it weren't for the teacher's edition of that book they wouldn't have a clue as to what to do. IOW, they don't know their own subject matter and couldn't make a living in that field even if they wanted to.
Then comes the summers. Certification renewal required 15 credit hours every three years, IIRC. Guess who picks up that tab?
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In theory you might be able to condition someone to use their sights intuitively, but this would require enough repetitions while in a body alarm reaction mode to overcome 1000s of years of evolution. Training without the amygdalla activated (range training) will not work as well for conditioning because it is in a different psychological context. Then on top of this, you would have to train in a fine motor skill (aligning sights) during times of high stress and rapid heat action.
My BS flag flew entirely too high with this one.
That along with the "surgical point shooting" vid, seriously, bolt a 2x4 as your sight and one might figure it out at that speed.
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Its easy to try to attack someone's statement's, especially when they are concise, but once again, he never provided a shred of evidence to support his belief. As usual, you have received nothing. Everything is waiting for me to provide 1000s of pages of documents and further explanations while he has to provide nothing other than opinion.
No medical study
No high duress force on force study
No real world statistics
No documentation through video
Not even the empty promise to be able to get people to use sights when they should regardless of the duress in training
Yes I know about flinching in this case the body doesn't even have time to evaluate the threat and it is a pure instinctive response. The Siddle and other studies I cited confirm the squaring of a threat. He is obscuring the argument. Applegate says to eye level. In my opinion, since he is dead, that is the top of the slide more or less to eye level, with the eyes looking over the top. Focus is on the threat, not the sights with peripheral awareness of gun alignment. People will keep it outside of that cone, the bulk of the gun does not obstruct direct vision. Point shooting is done more out of the level of duress than the range to the target.
Additionally the basic thing that indicates practicing point shooting will make someone better at point shooting than having to wing it from sighted fire is called "specificity." It a concept in motor learning that says your performance and skill is best when your training is closest to the task.
Additionally not having competence in point shooting then having to perform it in life and death situations creates as awkwardness that could actually increase stress because the person is under demand to do something unfamiliar.
Does it make any sense that someone who practices point shooting is going to be worse at than someone who doesn't? The answer is obvious. Shouldn't you practice as closely as possible what you will actually do under the conditions in which you will do it? Can he prove the opposite, because common sense, logic, and the entire motor learning world is on my side.
I am not going to provide any more facts or research, because he has provided not a shred of evidence. Once again, the man writes almost a page and can't pull out a single bit of empirical evidence. I would just ask him for more evidence other than because "so and so said so."
Trevor
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That is ONE FAT COP
It is unbelievable that they would allow him to continue to work in such a physically demanding job.
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It is unbelievable that they would allow him to continue to work in such a physically demanding job.
Google "Chris Parent Bellevue". The Dept tried to fire him due to his weight and inability to pass the firearms qual. Ended up being overturned in court and cost them a bunch of money.
- Shawn
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Sean/Tom:
Seems like the Two of You have at least one collaborative Self Defense book between you. Probably more.
It would be beneficial to Everyone in the Self-Defense Realm if you would work together to write that book and publish it. [You already have about half of it written up above.]
You both don't actually have to agree on SD methodology, either. Both of your various viewpoints contain reams of validity. The book could be written point/counterpoint. Let the readers sort it out for themselves.
All I ask of you is Attribution Credit for the Idea in the foreword. And....I'll even buy a copy.
sfg
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Its easy to try to attack someone's statement's, especially when they are concise, but once again, he never provided a shred of evidence to support his belief. As usual, you have received nothing. Everything is waiting for me to provide 1000s of pages of documents and further explanations while he has to provide nothing other than opinion.
Perhaps Trevor is unused to actual discussions in which the person making the claim needs to provide the support?
I asked where your data was. And I provided commentary on what was initially supplied, including pointing out areas where the logic failed, where the logic didn't not cover the conclusions stated, and asking about definitions for the sake of clarity.
Trevor made some fairly absolute statements, and said he had research to back it up. As the person making the assertions, it is actually normal in standard debate (and logical argument) for that person to then have to 1) show their research sources, and 2) actually be able support their argument with logic.
No medical study
No high duress force on force study
No real world statistics
No documentation through video
Not even the empty promise to be able to get people to use sights when they should regardless of the duress in training
Are you saying what you didn't provide? Or what I should have provided?
Because, you see, I started off by asking you about what you meant---because, for example, one of the things that Trevor said was directly contradicted by one of his sources, so first, attempting to clarify what "point-shooting" means to Trevor was rather important.
Secondly, even if his own personal experience is completely and utterly true and can be generalized to the entire population, there were some logical gaps between the observation of "people don't use sights as close distance" to the conclusion of "people should teach point-shooting instead of sighted shooting." As such, asking for research data supporting the large gap in the middle seems pretty straightforward.
You made the assertion. As such, I'm trying to understand how you reached your conclusions given those gaps.
Yes I know about flinching in this case the body doesn't even have time to evaluate the threat and it is a pure instinctive response. The Siddle and other studies I cited confirm the squaring of a threat. He is obscuring the argument.
No, there is more than one standard instinctive response to attacks and assaults. If you are assuming there is just one, then you are ignoring a significant amount of research regarding fight/freeze/flinch responses. If you are trying to say that your contentions are only with regard to people undergoing the "square up to them" instinct, then simply say so. If you are trying to say that your contentions are true for everyone, then you are simply wrong.
Applegate says to eye level. In my opinion, since he is dead, that is the top of the slide more or less to eye level, with the eyes looking over the top. Focus is on the threat, not the sights with peripheral awareness of gun alignment. People will keep it outside of that cone, the bulk of the gun does not obstruct direct vision. Point shooting is done more out of the level of duress than the range to the target.
Hmm. That isn't what you said earlier---you said people wouldn't raise the gun up. If that has turned into "well, they won't put the WHOLE gun into your sight line" then that is something different. After all, if the "top of the slide more or less to eye level" doesn't that actually put the sights in front of your eyes?
Level of duress as opposed to range? Aren't those two things related? Or are you saying that in response to someone shooting furiously at you from 50 yards people will draw the gun and point shoot back?
Additionally the basic thing that indicates practicing point shooting will make someone better at point shooting than having to wing it from sighted fire is called "specificity." It a concept in motor learning that says your performance and skill is best when your training is closest to the task.
So, again I ask: You say that you have trained lots and lots of people whose only training was sighted shooting, and they point-shot under specific circumstances. These were people you said did lots of training---so, did they have any difficulties point-shooting?
Again: Do you have any data comparing competency between groups who were only taught point-shooting, groups who were only taught sighted shooting, and groups that were taught both?
For example, I would think that people who had practice with sighted shooting, thus practice in understanding what sort of gun alignment produced what sorts of hits, who also practiced point shooting (especially Trevor's new revision of point shooting as having the slide aligned with the eyes) would do far better than people who only had practice at point shooting, as said practice would take a lot more work to understand gun and body alignment and how it made a difference to hits. That's just my opinion, though, so I'm curious as to the answers to my questions, above.
Additionally not having competence in point shooting then having to perform it in life and death situations creates as awkwardness that could actually increase stress because the person is under demand to do something unfamiliar.
Does it make any sense that someone who practices point shooting is going to be worse at than someone who doesn't? The answer is obvious. Shouldn't you practice as closely as possible what you will actually do under the conditions in which you will do it? Can he prove the opposite, because common sense, logic, and the entire motor learning world is on my side.
So---what I see is "here's what I believe, I believe it strongly, I have made conclusions based on what I believe, and if anyone asks about definitions or points out gaps in the logic, I'm going to say 'can he prove the opposite' because everything is on my side though I won't produce research data to support my side."
I agree that practice in something will make you better at something. I agree that practice under stress will make you better at handling stress.
I disagree with the contention that teaching only point-shooting will be optimal. I disagree with the contention that teaching point-shooting first (if both are to be taught) will be optimal. Trevor obviously disagrees.
And I'd like him to support his contentions by simply answering my questions. If he isn't interested, that's fine. If he can't provide research support, that's fine. However, this comment below:
I am not going to provide any more facts or research, because he has provided not a shred of evidence. Once again, the man writes almost a page and can't pull out a single bit of empirical evidence. I would just ask him for more evidence other than because "so and so said so."
...is and issue, and here's why. If he can't be bothered to define what he means, if he can't be bothered to fill in the logical gaps pointed out (or if they aren't gaps, refute the argument presented), and if he won't supply the research data he uses (noting that the data he supplied in the first place was the NYPD SOP9, the old original version which has been updated a number of times based on changing training types; an article (not research) about Applegate that directly contradicted something Trevor said about how nothing would ever be raised up into the sightline; a book by Siddle; personal experience; review of videos which don't actually include training data; medical research on survival stress which isn't the same thing as stress conditions during events, unless he is using a non-standard phrase)---in other words, there isn't any actual data showing the effects of TRAINING in point-shooting versus training in sighted shooting.
Which was my question:
What supports your contention that (for all the people you've seen successfully use point shooting in close-range, reactive situations) teaching them solely point-shooting will make them more effective?
All of your points seem to be based on the idea that people use point-shooting at close range. Okay----but it doesn't necessarily follow that only teaching point shooting is actually more effective than teaching sighted shooting, or even better, teaching sighted shooting and periodically having an evolution of close-range work.
If you've got any information comparing groups like I've listed above, I'd really like to see it.
If you don't have it, then simply say so. If you do have it, I'd like to see it, simply because that would be an important thing for trainers to know, wouldn't it? That would be information that lots of people should see and read.
There is a difference between saying "everyone point-shoots under sufficient duress" and saying "if you are only taught point shooting, that will make you better at defending yourself compared to any other training methodology." There is a logical gap there.
Trevor has been asked to fill in that gap. He has said the first part, and I'll just go ahead and agree with that premise. However, his conclusion seems simplistic and based on logical leaps. If there aren't logical leaps, then he should be able to support his contention.
If he chooses not to reply, that's fine. However, that still leaves logical gaps in his contentions.
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Google "Chris Parent Bellevue". The Dept tried to fire him due to his weight and inability to pass the firearms qual. Ended up being overturned in court and cost them a bunch of money.
Interesting.
Stacy fired Parent in 2007 for being overweight and unable to qualify. Seems reasonable.
This, however, does not:
http://www.omaha.com/article/20120219/NEWS01/705019775 (http://www.omaha.com/article/20120219/NEWS01/705019775)
Roger Anderson was 40 days from retirement — and the pension he would have earned after a 29-year career at the Bellevue Police Department.
...
Just as in the Parent case, Delaney said, Anderson will appeal his termination as he tries to salvage the $200,000 he stands to lose from his $550,000 pension fund if his termination is upheld.
The firing came six weeks before March 3 — his 55th birthday and the day he planned to retire.
...
Several days before, Parent, who had lost considerable weight since his termination, called Anderson to get references of instructors who could oversee his firearms test. Parent — in his 29th month of paid leave, per Stacey's order — said he wasn't interested in returning to the force. However, he wanted to take the test so he could continue to carry a weapon after he retired in January.
...
On Dec. 6, after he was done caring for his child, Anderson decided to test out his shoulder at the Bullet Hole, an indoor firing range in La Vista. He called Parent and told him they could meet there for Parent's test.
Parent passed the half-hour test, which requires officers to hit 70 percent of targets from varying positions and distances.
...
Questions about Anderson's status were put to rest, Muldoon said. Despite taking Anderson off its in-house firearms team in 2008, he said, Bellevue police sent Anderson to state training to be recertified as a firearms instructor in 2010. Anderson passed — and is qualified to administer firearms tests till 2013.
I've seen this kind of firing take place at the state level, and for the same reasons -- to save money, even if it violates standing agreements and/or public faith.
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I wish I could find with pic with "Should I make him run" HAHA
(http://i.imgur.com/hNXQB.jpg)
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We live in Bellevue, and my wife was stopped by him once. He got on the PA and had her walk back to his car with her info. ??? No kidding.
- Shawn
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:laugh: There was a ton of pics that day Kyle snapped but it was years ago. It was during 4th of July and he busted Jake with "illegal" fireworks IIRC.