Keep Your Head in The Fight--Pat Rogers Article

[Ed Lawrence]

I really liked this article. It covered way more than staying in the gunfight and had a lot of other important things from target acquisition and target engagement, sight allingment, delivering shots, and various shooting sequences from controlled pairs, to hammers, failure drills, non-standard response, propper way to scan after the initial target is taken care of. It was a good review of some of the concepts he covered in his carbine class as well as an overview for someone who will attend his class in the future.

[Pat Rogers]

Thanks for the kind words Ed.
As most people who own guns rarely shoot- and even among those wo do shoot, they are not using them as a fighting tool- the subject of mindset and training is alien (and perhaps way out of their comfort zone).
For those that do carry/ use a gun for a living, it is a different world, and i'm fortunate to be able to influence attitudes and keep the good guys alive.

[Denny Hansen]

A few weeks back I was killing time at the local gun store. I overheard a fella who purported to be an “instructor” tell another patron, “If you can hit the target on the indoor range here, you’re good to go in a gunfight.”

I had neither the time nor the inclination at the moment to get into a genital measuring contest with Mr. Gunshop Guru, so simply made the statement, “A range is not the street” and left. I never cease to be amazed that some folks don’t make that simple connection.

Brother Pat-
Great article, (as usual).

Denny

[Ed Lawrence]

I think that was a good response, Denny. After you got finished straightening out that person (and it would have taken a considerable amount of time to have a chance of getting him to change his thinking) you would probably need a nap.

It's good that people like Pat and SWAT are making that knowledge available to the general public--both in the form of article and training. Some people may buy SWAT for the articles on guns and then wind up reading some of the other important articles.

I remember a time when you could not find such items in gun magazines (you still cannot for the most part--I consider SWAT to be a gun & training & tactic & mindset magazine). And people who were not fortunate enough to know someone knowledgeable and experienced, or go to one of the few gunschools, the only thing out there was gunstore commandos and friends with questionable knowledge. Even if you did find someone, what you got might have been regurgitated outdated tactical doctrine.

Info that the range isn't the street has been out there for a while, but it was not nearly as prominant as it needed to be in the general gun press and books and it certainly did not get the attention it needed.

The Handgunner's Guide by Chic Gaylord circa 1960 has a short chapter on The Psychology of Gun Fighting: "Unless a man has made up his mind what he will do in combat, he may fall easy pray to panic. A recent survy, conducted in a large metropolitan police force, showed that in tha majority of cases where police officers were engaged in gun duels, they were shooting wildly Yet many of those same officers had expert ratings on the target range. It is not unusual to read of running gunfights during which more than fifty rounds were fired, all of them misses! One well-aimed shot could have wound things up in the beginning."

[OBIWAN]

AMEN....Pat's article and the column by Louis should be required reading for all the armchair commandoes out there

Including me

Too many people think that a gunfight is (will be) something out of "High Noon" with two gunmen standing facing each other and drawing at the same moment on a nice well lit street

The square range is a great place to practice, but what works when your hands are sweaty may not work as well when they are bloody

Good stuff...as usual