I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Hitting Things

Yes, we need to “shoot things“. But more importantly, we need to hit things.

If you have to shoot, you have to hit.

So sayeth The Givens.

It seems so simple, it seems a “no-brainer”, but is it really? Look at how many times we shoot and miss. Oh sure, maybe you hit paper, but look at how we’ll rationalize our crappy shooting to satisfy our egos. Can you get your hits inside an 8″ circle at 25 yards? or a 3″ circle at 5 yards? 3 shots in a 3″ circle at 5 yards in 3 seconds? Can you do it on demand? Always?

You have to have the ability to deliver fight-stopping hits. The goal is not to kill, it’s to get the other person to stop. If you can do that without ever firing a shot? Great. If you can do it without drawing your gun? Great. If you can do it by avoiding the area and situation entirely? Great. But if you have to shoot, you have to hit.

It’s not just fight-stopping hits, but that you are responsible for any bullet that doesn’t hit the intended target. A good number of the confrontations Givens’ students were in? Public areas. Shopping malls. What are in shopping malls? Lots of non-involved people. You don’t need one of your bullets ending up in one of them.

During one qual course I shot one weak-hand-only shot that totally missed. It hit paper, but completely outside of any target area. There was no excuse. I saw the sights, I called the shot, but I still let the round go… because of pressure, because being ingrained that the shot has to get off, whatever. And all I kept thinking to myself was: oh shit! That wasn’t just a miss… that was a potential hit on an innocent person… maybe even my Wife or Kiddos.

Let that sink in on you.

When you practice, don’t shrug off your misses, because those misses could have even greater cost and impact than your hits.

Train to eliminate missing. Train to improve your ability to hit. Givens mentioned how almost every qual course out there he can clean. Seems a reasonable goal to strive for, doesn’t it? You can’t clean it if you miss even one shot.

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Shooting Things

What do you do? Do you shoot at things? or do you shoot things?

Stop shooting at things. It’s the wrong mindset.

I don’t punch at the guy, I punch the guy. You don’t throw the football at the receiver, you throw to the receiver. You don’t shoot the basketball at the basket, you shoot the basket.

Shoot things.

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

3 Shots, 3 Feet, 3 Seconds

The phrase goes something like that, that on average a gunfight is 3 shots, within 3 feet, and lasts 3 seconds.

Is there truth to that? To a degree, and of course it makes for a catchy mantra.

But here’s the problem with that.

It’s an average.

If I have two incidents, one with 1 shot, one with 5 shots, that averages out to 3. Another two incidents, one with 0 shots and one with 6, that averages to 3. If I have three incidents, 1, 4, 4, that averages to 3. You get the idea. Three may be the average, but that doesn’t mean it will be what it will be.

I touched on this in my previous article, “Jenny’s Got a Gun“. She read a web comment saying:

who really needs a 20-round magazine when you’re defending against a stalker? “Six or seven bullets will do you just fine”

She should have Googled further to see if 6 or 7 would be just fine (answer: maybe, but it’s your life… play with it as you wish. I carry 15+1 and a spare mag).

Tom Givens recounted to us a story of a man in prison. He had nothing better to do with his day and had access to a law library. So he worked up a case to sue the police claiming they used excessive force against him.

Why?

Because they shot him 62 times (I believe that was the number).

Let that sink in a moment. Because you see, that he was working up a counter lawsuit? That means he got shot 62 times and lived. Apparently gunfire from both handguns and rifles.

Yeah.. those 6 or 7 bullets may not be just fine. The human body is pretty resilient, and your pistol rounds suck. Of course, 62 times also means he wasn’t shot in any vital area, but that’s another topic. (BTW, his case was thrown out because protocol is to keep shooting until the threat stopped… on shot 62 he stopped, the police stopped, case thrown out).

Another story from Givens. One of his students was sitting in a chair on the lawn with his mother, little children playing in the yard around him. Some teenage boy came up, student told the boy to leave. Boy leaves, goes home, retrieves a gun and starts shooting it across the street at them. Student gets up, moves behind cover (car), returns fire and hits the dude in the chest ending the confrontation.

It was a 22 yard shot.

The student recounted that he never thought that he was the statistical anomaly, just that he had to take care of business.

Another story of a husband getting attacked in the driveway of his home. Wife retrieves the gun, goes to the second story window of their house and shoots the attacker from 15 yards away.

Go measure your house. Pace off various distances within your home. I bet some of those are beyond average (be it 3 feet, or the 0-5 yards often quoted for self-defense shooting). Now picture your spouse or child being held across that room. Make that shot, you have only one shot, one chance.

Averages tell us something and we can certainly learn from them and should not ignore them. But we must keep in mind they are averages and that means there are some on one side of the average, some on the other, and some at the extremes. Don’t get caught in training just to the averages.

Ask your average person on the street about the ability of people to carry a gun.

Generally speaking, they will believe that a person whose job it is to carry a gun, like a police officer, will be highly proficient with their gun. They will generally believe that a private citizen will be of lesser skill or has no business carrying a gun because they’ll only be a danger to themselves and others.

The reality? One’s profession or lack thereof has no bearing on one’s ability or fitness to carry and/or utilize a gun.

Police departments require their officers to qualify with their guns. How often? Depends on the department. Some may only require them to qualify once a year. That qualification test will consist of 50 rounds. While yes there are some officers that will train to a higher level, a lot of those officers will never shoot beyond their required qualification: thus, 50 rounds per year, visiting the range once.

Think about that.

Could Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France by pedaling around his neighborhood block once a year?

Could Michael Phelps win 16 Olympic medals by just dangling his feet in the kiddie pool on a single hot summer day?

So what makes you think someone who begrudgingly visits the gun range once a year, shoots 50 rounds in a required course of fire, then never touches their gun again will be able to perform under pressure when YOUR life is on the line (let alone their own life)?

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say all cops are inept at gun handling, but the public shouldn’t be under the blind illusion that just because they’re a cop that they’re some sort of super badass.

On the other hand, just because someone doesn’t wear a badge doesn’t mean they have no ability with a gun. Look at the number of competition pistol shooters out there. Most of them are just private citizens and are extremely skilled. In the past Combative Pistol 2 weekend, there were 9 students in the class. I don’t know the full skinny on the scores, but at one point Tom Givens remarked how the class average on one of the qualification courses was 99%. That’s 9 very proficient shooters… from computer engineers to veterinarians. We don’t wear a badge, but it doesn’t mean we’re inept with guns.

Skill is not bestowed by your profession. It comes from your desire to learn, your desire to improve, your desire to excel.

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Ballistic Masturbation

That’s what a lot of people do, and call it “practice”. You’ve seen it, and you’ve probably done it too. You go to the range, throw some lead downrange with no particular goal or purpose. You might feel good afterwards, but you’ve accomplished nothing.

When you go to the range, you need to practice with a goal and purpose. One drill we did in the CP2 weekend involved a target with 3 sections: 8″ circle, 6″ circle, business-card-sized rectangle. The intent of the drill? To teach cadence. When the target is smaller you have to shoot slower, but cadence should still be good. This target taught us transitions and changing up cadence. For instance, start on the 8″ circle and fire 2 shots, move to the rectangle and fire 2 shots, move to the 6″ circle and fire 2 shots. Those first two shots should be fast, the second two slow, and the third two in between.

The final drill of the class involved 9 rounds. Actually 8 live rounds and 1 dummy. It had a par time of 15 seconds. It’s a fairly simple drill:

• Setup: Take 5 live rounds and 1 dummy and put them into a magazine, with the dummy mixed in somewhere (not the top round, not the bottom round). Have one reload on your belt, at least 3 rounds in it. Target is whatever you want, but we used a typical “man-like silhouette” target (you could use something like an IPSC or IDPA target) and I believe we were at 7 or 10 yards… I honestly can’t recall right now.
• Draw and shoot the target. Eventually you’ll hit the dummy, so fix the malfunction and resume shooting. Once you hit slide-lock, reload, shoot 3 more.

That’s all there is to it. It’s a very simple drill. Once you can clean it consistently in 15 seconds (or if you establish your own par average), then try to do it faster. The first time I ran the drill I had one shot just outside the target zone (went too fast) and had to run it a second time. On that second time I did it in 10.7 seconds (Givens did it in about 8.5). So I need to get it down to a consistent 10.0, then 9.5, and so on. The thing is, to accomplish that drill correctly requires a great many number of things, and was the culmination of all we learned that weekend:

• Draw
• Present
• Grip
• Trigger
• Sights
• Movement
• Malfunction clearing
• Reloading
• Not blowing the first shot (because you have 3 first shots in this drill)
• Accuracy
• Speed

So much, packed into one little drill. Really only 8 rounds. Take a box of 50, you can practice this drill 6 times, and it’ll probably take you 5 minutes to run it those 6 times including setup time. So in 5 minutes you’ll get more done than going to the range for an hour and casually throwing lead downrange. Which is more worth your time?

When something unexpected occurs during practice, roll with it. A great example was in the CP2 class, Tom was demonstrating a weak-hand-only shooting drill. He didn’t know how many rounds were in his gun so he got one shot off, slide locked back, and he immediately performed a one-handed weak-hand reload and got back into action. That the demo didn’t go off as planned was fine, because it presented an opportunity to demonstrate an important mental skill: being aware of what’s going on and immediately addressing it.

Do you have magazines that hold a lot of ammo? Instead of loading your mags all the way full, load them somewhere less than full and to random amounts. You do that, you’ll get a lot more practice on your reloads.

Do you have something you hate? Something you suck at (e.g. weak-hand-only shooting)? Spend an entire session working on it. So what if the guy in the stall next to you looks at your target and thinks you suck. What does his opinion matter? Work on what you hate until you love it… that when other people would groan about shooting WHO, you grin and revel in it.

When you go to the range to practice, have a goal in mind. Have a purpose. Have skills and drills to work on. Don’t just waste time and money throwing lead downrange. Work with a purpose, always improve.