I would suggest this.

Start with a test like the Texas CHL. Work until you can clean it on-demand. Then make it a little harder by drawing from concealment, but otherwise change nothing about the test. When you can clean that on-demand, use a better target like an ISPC or IDPA target, Rangemaster RM-Q2, IALEFI-Q, QIT-99, etc.. Work to clean it on-demand.

Move up to the “3 Seconds or Less” drill. Work to clean it on demand.

After this, you’ll start to move beyond minimum competency. Skills like slide-lock (emergency/speed) reloads, malfunction clearing, shooting at distances out to 25 yards, etc. are going to come into play and are well-worth your time to learn and study. Courses like the FBI Qualification, the Rangemaster Level V, are good for this. But if you want something simpler, I’d say the Farnam Drill is probably one of the most compact tests out there. When you start to get into this level of things, you’ll find lots of drills out there you can use as testing and assessment, so you’ll be able to find what you need.

Note: that doesn’t necessarily mean to shoot these drill as your practice. Rather, shoot the drill and see how you do (test, assess). See what you do well, see what you need to work on. When you identify what you need to work on, your practice time (both live fire and dry fire) should work on the fundamentals necessary to help that. Formulate a plan and a program to help you achieve the goal of cleaning the drill. Work on those skills for a while, then come back and shoot the drill again. Keep notes on your progress.

Keep in mind the Paul Ford “70% of your worst day”. Look at how you’re performing “at your worst” and think about how much worse that will really be. Use that as a guide to establish where you really need your skills to be.

So many things push to a higher standard, and that’s good. The problem with always pushing for higher standards, to have the most uber-tacticool or difficult challenging drill/test/standard is it starts to make you wonder where the baseline is. Everyone’s out to push things high, so how does that look to someone just starting out? Does it make it seem like an unachievable goal? That if it’s going to take me 5 years of dedicated work to get there, how does that help me deal with the death threats I’m currently receiving from my crazy ex-spouse? Or if some standards are setting the bar too low, are people getting a false sense of accomplishment and ability that could wind up doing them more harm than good should they need to call on those skills?

You don’t need to be a Rob Leatham in order to protect yourself. But you likely need to be better than you think you are.

The point I’m trying to make is to not make this the standard to train to , but rather I’m out to bust false senses of ability. I think it’s wise to know what minimum competency is, and to not consider “minimum” to mean either some really low-level that’s essentially equated to “skill-less” or to mean once you’ve met the minimum that’s satisfactory and you can stop your journey. It’s none of those things. It’s merely a way to come to some sort of realistic terms of where your skills and ability lie. When your life is at stake, you need honest assessment. Ego or pretense could get you killed. But sometimes it’s neither of those; it’s simply that you don’t know what you don’t know, so here’s an opportunity to learn.

(I’d like to thank Karl Rehn, Tom Hogel, and Tom Givens for their input, mentorship, and contribution to this effort).

(This post is part of a multi-part series. For now, you can find other published parts of the series by looking at the “minimum competency” tag or category).

Maybe, maybe not – I’m sure there will be folks who take issue with what I’ve written. It seems when we look at what unfolds in a typical incident and what needs to be done to handle that typical incident, you get:

• drawing from concealment
  • And perhaps moving on that draw (like a side-step then stop; not shoot-and-move)
• getting multiple hits
• in a small area
  • 5″ circle? 6″ circle? 8″ circle? consider human anatomy
• from close range
  • Within a car length, so say 0-5 yards
• quickly
  • 3 seconds or less
• using both hands, or maybe one hand (or the other)

In his email to me, Tom Givens said of this:

If I had to list the prime skills for concealed carry, the list might be
Primary:
presentation from concealed carry
shoot with 2 hands
shoot with 1 hand, both dominant and non-dominant
Secondary:
reload, slide forward and empty gun
fix simple malfunctions like failure to eject, TRB.

Everything beyond that is certainly good to know, but unlikely to be used by typical CCW.

When I asked Karl Rehn, his answer is what I expected:

[My] 3 seconds or less [drill] is my answer to that question.

All in all, the same set of minimal skills are being presented.

So what you need is the ability to do the above – at bare minimum. If you cannot do the above, you’ve got work to do. If you cannot do the above, there is no shame in that, if you use it as motivation to get better. However, there is shame in letting your ego continue to lie to you.

Remember that I am working to establish a minimum.

Let me restate the problem: Private citizens being the unfortunate victim of a violent crime. The choice to use a handgun as a tool to contend with their immediate victimization. To use the tool with some measure of effectiveness, one needs some modicum of skill with that tool. And, that you should have a realistic assessment of your skill with that tool, instead of a false impression.

We have to look at what really happens in a violent crime. No, nothing will be perfect, nothing will be absolute, but we can see enough of a pattern if we look at enough crimes, we can then formulate a solution for dealing with it. This is like solving any problem.

That you can plink tin cans in the back pasture is a false sense. That you can pass the TX CHL test is a false sense. You need to be able to draw the handgun from concealment and get multiple fast, accurate hits on a small target within a reasonable distance. You need to be able to do this with both hands, and one hand (each hand). This is the bare minimum.

Tests like Gila Hayes’, the TX CHL, those are good starts but sub-minimal. If you cannot do these, seek further instruction and practice. Tests like “3 Seconds or Less” are a good standard for bare minimum. It might look easy on paper, but I’ve been through more than enough classes where students struggle — yes, more practice is needed. Even a test like the FBI Qualification can be considered a good minimum (can you clean stage I and stage II? maybe stage III without the reload, and stage IV?).

Where do you go from here?

(This post is part of a multi-part series. For now, you can find other published parts of the series by looking at the “minimum competency” tag or category).

I asked Tom Givens, of his 60 students that were involved in self-defense incidents, did any need to reload? Further clarifying, if so, did any reload as a part of the fight? Or was it administrative after the fight was over?

Tom’s response to this question:

John-

None of ours had to reload and continue shooting.

I can think of four off the top of my head that went to slide lock, however, further shooting was not required at that point.

Tom

Think about reloads. If typical private citizen gunfights are 3-5 shots, that’s not even enough to warrant reloading a snub revolver. Of course, that’s average. With Tom’s students, I think the range was 1 to 11 shots fired, but again, no reloads (tho apparently some came close). So do we need reloading as a minimal skill? It would seem not.

For that matter, how about malfunction clearing, be it simple failure to eject, stovepipe, double-feed, whatever type. Do malfunctions occur enough that we need to consider them a minimal skill? Again, data would point towards no. This isn’t to say it’s not useful and good to know, but remember we’re looking at minimal competency.

So if you start to look at tests like the FBI Qualification or Rangemaster Level 5, are these reasonable “minimal” tests? Nope. I would say there are somewhere above the minimum. They cover shots out to 25 yards, which doesn’t fit the bill of a typical gunfight. They cover reloads. They cover malfunctions. They also cover things like changing positions (e.g. going to kneeling). Again, all good skills to have, but beyond minimum.

Look at the FASTest, the Farnam Drill, IDPA Classifier, Gunsite Standard, Hackathorn Standards, the list goes on. At this point, what new skills or techniques are being added? Shooting from kneeling, from prone, around barriers, turn and shoot, multiple targets, transition to a backup gun, disability (e.g. loss of one hand so must do everything with the “other” hand, including reloads), using a light (weapon-mounted or held in the other hand), and the list goes on. Are these skills that are involved in the typical gunfight? Well, maybe one here or there but the exception does not prove the rule. All in all, these sorts of things just aren’t being done in the typical incident. Thus, it’s hard to argue they are part of “minimum competency”.

So have I been able to define “minimum competency” required for defensive handgun use?

(This post is part of a multi-part series. For now, you can find other published parts of the series by looking at the “minimum competency” tag or category).

It seems we have expanded our criteria:

• multiple hits
• in a small area
• from close range
• quickly
• drawing from concealment

To see what else might be necessary, we can also look at video. Hooray for video! Hooray for dashcams, security cameras, everyone having a phone with a camera, and then a willingness to share all of this on video websites like YouTube. You can see a lot of what really goes on.

One thing that happens often? Hands. Shooting with two hands, shooting with one hand. There’s no question you should try to shoot with both hands. Why? You’re faster. This goes back to “quickly”, and shooting slower is the opposite of “quickly”. That said, the reality of life is your situation may require you to shoot one-handed — and perhaps with your weak hand. You may have something in your hands that you cannot drop: like a child. Or another reality is, sometimes you just start shooting with one hand. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it — we know better, but yet something happens in the head and you just start shooting one-handed. It’s good to know how to do it.

At this point, a drill like KR Training’s 3 Seconds Or Less Drill starts to come into play. This drill was intentionally designed around the the “3 shots, 3 yards, 3 seconds” typical gunfight. It works on multiple hits, in a small area, from close range, quickly, drawing from concealment, two- and one-handed shooting.

The drill also adds in another aspect: movement. Do we need to move in a self-defense situation? You betcha. Karl often asks, “is it better to shoot, or not get shot?” not get shot. Some like to phrase it that incoming bullets have the right of way. Thankfully since bullets only travel in a straight line (well ok, an arc, and there’s wind, but go with me here, this isn’t Wanted), a simple but large enough side-step is important. It “gets you off the ‘X'”, it causes the assailant to reset their OODA loop, and well… movement is going to happen.

That’s the thing. Movement is going to happen, or at least, it should. Generally, something happens and people scatter, running away from the source of trouble. This of course is a good thing (distance yourself from the problem). However, it’s really either move or shoot, not shoot on the move. Paul Howe pretty much says to do one or the other:

shooting on the move, it’s a skill all shooters aspire to learn and spend a great deal of time and effort trying to master. I’ve never had to use it in combat. When moving at a careful hurry, I stopped, planted and made my shots. When the bullets were flying, I was sprinting from cover to cover, moving too fast to shoot. I didn t find an in-between. If I slowed down enough to make a solid hit when under fire, I was an easy target, so I elected not to.

As for shooting and closing on a target, it only makes the bad guys accuracy better and walking into a muzzle may help you to test your new vest sooner than you wanted to. Diagonal movement works, but again if you have to slow down too much, you re an easy target, and are generally in the open. Speed can act as your security in this case to get you to a point of cover.

Training to “shoot on the move” with a Groucho Marx walk? Well, nice skill, but is it really important within our context? Howe’s case was military, and if he doesn’t need it there, would we really need it in the “3 seconds” of a private citizen self-defense incident? A little movement, like a quick and decisive (and far enough) side-step on the draw is good. Much more than that? Not really needed.

So now we’re starting to find things we don’t need.

Are there other things we don’t need, in terms of minimum competency?

(This post is part of a multi-part series. For now, you can find other published parts of the series by looking at the “minimum competency” tag or category).