Thoughts on Training for Defensive Pistol Shooting

[OldMarksman]

I started shooting various types of handguns back in the early nineteen sixties. My technique was to mimic the pictures in an article on target shooing that was contained in the very first (1944) issue of The Gun Digest: one faced a bullseye target at an angle and fired slowly, single action and one handed. The objective was to get as many hits into the X-Ring, Ten Ring, Nine Ring, etc. Everyone with whom I went shooting did the same thing.

At some point I read Ed McGivern's Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting and realized that speed of fire was important, but my attempts at double action shooting left a lot to be desired.

After I started carrying, and that was about seven years ago, I started practicing at an indoor range, standing still and firing two handed at torso targets at seven yards and at longer distances. Just about everyone else at the range was doing about the same thing.

It occurs to me that when that is what one has been doing, one might well be inclined, when hearing the phrase "shot placement is everything", to believe that one could, when faced with the gravest extreme, choose what one believes to be a critical part of the body and shoot at it--even if one has been advised to shoot at "center mass". One can be excused for that misconception. After all, we have been shooting at stationary targets facing us that are marked to show the best places to shoot.

The lack of realism of that kind of practice will be very evident to anyone who thinks about it.

First, when we leave the restaurant for the car, or leave the car for the treck across the parking lot to the supermarket, we are not heading toward a place where we know we will stand to shoot at a target, which will be located "down range", and we are not going to be given a command to shoot, and we will not be scored by a timer or the number and placement of hits, nor will our score be reduced for misses or hits out of sequences. No! We are not heading out to shoot at all. That is the farthest thing from our minds.

But, should the unlikely and unexpected and worst occur--an ambush, if you will--we will have to make some rapid cognitive decisions on our own, observe, react, recognize, and respond. That is not the time to rely upon improvisation. It is the time to utilize basic skills learned in training.

There's more: our "target" will likely be moving very fast indeed (think five meters per second), requiring us to shoot several times very rapidly to have any likelihood of hitting anything critical and effecting a stop, regardless of what we are shooting.

That target may be as close as three to five yards from us when we are able to start shooting. That is a daunting thought.

Finally, the critical parts of an attacker's moving body will be contained in a three-dimensional envelop and not visible to us. Hitting them will be a matter of statistical chance.

Around five years ago, a friend recommended an advanced defensive pistol shooting course. The instructors--two per student--were ranked IDPA competitors. We fired at one, and then three, steel plates at seven yards. What I learned from that was how to transition from one target to another and to shoot much, much faster than I ever had before. From that standpoint, I think it was worthwhile.

Last year, I had the good fortune to attend a two-day course called Combat Focus Shooting, on the I.C.E. Personal Defense Network Tour. The same course is available at Gander Mountain Academy locations under the name Dynamic Focus Shooting.

The course involved developing and layering the skills required for reacting quickly to and dealing with a surprise threat from any direction; drawing fast while moving; and shooting several times at the target, achieving a balance of speed and precision. "Precision", when the scenario involves an ambush at close range, can be described as scoring hits anywhere in the upper chest area. "Speed" means shooting as fast as possible without missing.

I highly recommend it.

Not everyone can avail themselves of that course, but there are others, such as Tom Givens' courses, to cite just one example.

I really do think the investment in money and time is worth while, even if one has to travel a day or two.

My personal experiences have made clear the truth of something that Claude Werner says: one does not know what it is that one does not know.

I will not be engaging in very much more training per se--I no longer have the physical stamina to stay on my feet and move around for two days or more. My challenge now is to practice the skills.

[g.willikers]

Well said.
Hope folks are listening.

[FireForged]

Sounds great! Its sounds like real training. I am certainly a proponent of training that includes the proper context, tactics and strategics.

[Mainah]

Great post, thank you.

[raimius]

Excellent post.

There is a lot more to defensive shooting than simply accuracy and speed. That said, without accuracy and speed, the rest is pretty much a moot point.

I like to emphasize accuracy first, speed second, then add movement. Additionally, things like proper target identification, shoot/no-shoot decision making, backstop considerations, proper draw stroke, retention, and emergency medical skills/equipment can all be vitally important in a defensive scenario.

I greatly enjoy shooting as hobby and sport, but I hope people realize that sport shooting and defensive shooting is similar to going from a go-cart track race to a police high-speed pursuit through a residential neighborhood!

[OldMarksman]

Raimius, those are all good comments.

Not long ago there was a piece on The Best Defense that showed the importance of having a good backstop. After showing some scenarios that turned out poorly and some that turned out better, they went out and showed movement to avoid hitting bystanders and to get in front of a backstop.

On the one occasion when I stumbled into a robbery about to happen, I automatically di just that. Fortunately the perp noticed me and took off.

Adding that would add quite a bit of time and expense to a course for basics, but it would be desirable.

I failed to mention that the I.C.E. PDN CFS training that I attended was conducted in an area with a three sided berm. As individual skills were introduced all of the students fired at the same time, but the last part involved one student at a time, walking around so that the possible targets were at varying distances and at different angles.

For those who cannot attend that, there is a home study kit available, but one does need to have a facility.

Another possibility is laser facility training, Gander Mountain Academy locations have that. There are a lot of scenarios. On shortcoming is that a hit is a hit. In the real world one would likely have to score two or three hits or more extremely quickly to have a reasonable chance of hitting anything critical before being overcome..