yesterday at the range

[federali]

Early in my LE career, I received training from the range staff of NYPD. Now, at times NYPD was close to 40,000 officers and they averaged a shooting incident daily. When the range staff says something about shooting incidents, best that you listen.

They said: you will do on the street what you have been trained to do, conditioned yourself to do or got away with in training. Now, for the horror stories:
1. An officer suffers a stoppage in a gunbattle, stands up and raises his hand.
2. An officer, while taking fire, fires two rounds and reholsters.
3.A wounded officer (New Hall Incident) attempts to finish loading the cylinder of his revolver while his adversary advances to deliver an execution shot.
4. Numerous cases of dead officers found with empty shell casings in their hand or in their pocket.
5. An officer, upon seeing his partner engaged in a gunbattle, does not fire on the adversary as he is located somewhat behind him. Instead, he wastes precious seconds to run around the adversary in order to face him head on, just like the silhouette targets in training.
6. An officer shoots his autoloader dry and to slide lock. He catches the empty magazine to put in his pocket when he should have discarded it and get reloaded and back in the fight.

As a result of item 4 above, trainers did away with brass buckets and retrained their men to eject shell casings on the ground, not in their hand for tossing into the bucket.

In a gunbattle, your conscious mind shuts down and your subsconscious takes over. Program it with good stuff and it responds with good stuff. Best not to develop bad range habits for the sake of convenience.

[Ruark]

"Does this seem to be an abnormal way to train for self-defense?"

I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but it can be counterproductive. In a face to face, life and death encounter, your stress levels will be through the roof. You pulse will be 200+. Your eyes will not focus. You will forget to breath. You might pee in your pants. Your mind will not function normally. What you will do in that situation is your training. If you fire one shot and re-holster in training, that's what you will do in a self defense situation. If you draw and do an instant, point-shoot double tap to the COM, that's what you will do.

Also practice your visual focus. Forget your sights, you will NOT use them in an up-close shooting. Practice focusing NOT no a whole body or target, but a small dot on it. On an individual, that might be a button on his shirt, or his nose.

I know it sounds strange, but it's true. Ask anybody who has actually done it. That's why it's so important that your training exactly duplicates what you want to do in a gunfight. Under the intense, crushing stress of that moment, for better or for worse, you will follow your training.

[MarkDozier]

Public ranges are dangerous places (police ranges are only slightly less dangerous)

Actually if you like at gunshot injuries police ranges are much more likely to have shooters suffer gunshot wounds.
To wit: the last 2 gunshot wounds i am aware were both at police ranges.