Guns

Overcoming distance

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Watch the video in this news article. I wish I could embed the video, but the link is all I have. (h/t KR Training)

In short, 2 guys trying to rob a store. They failed because the shopkeeper and employee fought back. But in watching the video, one thing really stood out to me.

Fencing.

The shopkeeper was trying to fend off the robbers by using a baseball bat. Not a horrible choice, but it was generally ineffective. It didn’t really deter the robbers until their second attempt, when the guy with the gun jumped over the counter (probably to get a key or some such to unlock the front door) and then the owner could get some better hits in. All this “fencing” did was kinda keep the robber at “arm & bat distance”. The swings didn’t connect, nor was there anything behind the swings (if they did land, they wouldn’t have done anything). The robber kept pressing his attack, trying to grab the bat or at least swat it away, and the “fencing” really wasn’t doing much.

Here’s the thing.

The bat didn’t do much because the gunman was out of (effective) range of the weapon.

Of course, the gunman could have easily overcome this by shooting, but he didn’t. From how he was shooting and behaving, I reckon he can’t shoot worth a damn and figured he had to be up close in order to try to hit anything. So, that works in YOUR favor because yeah, most bad guys with guns can’t shoot (but don’t count on that since some studies and surveys have shown that many criminals actually practice more than cops).

That’s a strong advantage of a gun: the ability to overcome distance.

Many people advocate other weapons: knives, baseball bats, tasers, pepper spray, as some means of effective self defense. But the reality is, do you really want to get up close to the bad guy? I mean, if this guy would only shoot at close distance, since he obviously had no reserved about grabbing people by the throat… do you REALLY want to get up close with this guy? Because up close is the only way for those other tools to be effective.

But a gun? It traverses distance. Distance is your friend in self-defense encounters: creating as much distance as you can works in your favor. I mean, isn’t that what fleeing is about? creating a LOT of distance between you and your attacker? So in a case like this? Yeah, a gun would have been more effective than a baseball bat.

The store owner is quite fortunate, and I’m glad he fared as well as he did. The main reason for that was his choice to not be a victim and to fight back. Next time tho, choose a more effective weapon.

More from the police

/ hsoi

Sheriff Shayne Heap of Elbert County Colorado. Notable is that he chastised all politicians, regardless of political affiliation — it’s more about their intent.

(h/t ENDO)

Yeah… a lot of recent posts based upon the words of law enforcement. But I figure if you’re going to talk about crime and violence, maybe those that deal with it every day might be worth listening to. I mean, going to Joe Biden for leadership on violence issues is like going to Fred Phelps for leadership on gay rights issues.

 

Well, that was useful

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

After the last class I took some time to work on my own shooting.

Per my latest self-assessment, I need to work on my “visual knowledge”. Again, I know that I can shoot at different distances, at different sized targets, with different types of sight pictures (see Brian Enos) and still get acceptable hits. And while I do it, my brain still screams “THIS IS WRONG!”. It gets so ingrained to have that textbook sight picture. I know I don’t need it, I do shoot as I should, but I want to get my brain to stop objecting because the objection, the doubt, it holds me back and creates uncertainty.

So, I just need to shoot a bunch and burn it into my brain as to what it looks like and that this is OK.

So instead of trying to do everything right with sights and trigger, checking the holes on the paper, checking the timer, and worrying more about the location of the holes and if I made time, I need to do it the other way. I have the timer beep to start and record times, but I really don’t care about the times nor the target, at least while shooting. The goal is to shoot “fast”, focus on nothing but the front sight and what it’s doing, and just take in what I see. After I shoot, look at the target. Was anything outside the -0 or A-Zone (depending what target I’m using)? No, then good enough. Now look at the timer, see what the splits and overall time was, realize “OK, that’s what it takes to get that”. So, it’s kinda a backwards approach, but it’s about caring what the front sight is doing, then using target and timer validation to say “OK, that’s what you get”.

Karl suggested I just shoot Bill Drills. I set up at 3 yards because I wanted to start there (I figure, start at the beginning… a very good place to start. Figure 3 yards, then move to 5, 7, 10, 15, 25). Set the timer for a 3 second start delay, then go. I ripped off a bunch of Bill Drills as fast as I could. Start from full press-out so this is nothing but visual focus — eyes can start focused on the front sight, and I’m just ready to go, nothing but working the eyes. I was pulling off 0.15 to 0.20 second splits and having no problems. What did my eyes see? A lot of bouncing. But I saw the sight picture was never textbook perfect. I did see front sight, it was basically where it needed to be, just not like a textbook. I played around a few times and tried slowly down and getting a better sight picture. I found those tended to have consistently 0.20 second splits and felt really slow (weird).

I then stopped doing 6-round Bill Drills and just emptied the magazine. It was about getting more feedback. I’d fire 6 shots and my brain would start to parse things, but then the shots were over. So basically I just kept going to let my eyes and brain have a lot of information flowing in. It was more helpful to shoot longer strings; more input.

Karl then came over and told me to alternate between the near and far target (so about 3 yards and about 8 yards). I did slow down a bit on the far target, but it wasn’t enough shooting to actually register precisely how much sight I was seeing. I just didn’t have enough ammo to run this so I stopped. But all holes were acceptable, so obviously at 8 yards I still don’t need to see as perfectly as I expect, but obviously more perfect than 3 yards. But then, maybe not… maybe I can go faster… that’s still TBD.

What’s next for me? I need to do 1-shot drills from the holster. Same basic drill, just from the holster. Again, it’s about finding how fast I can push myself and how much sight is needed and how much isn’t. Letting my brain know and have permission to do it that way.

After that, I figure repeat the same at 5 yards, tho I might just skip back to 7. And so on from there.

Dry work is going to be much of the same: draw, press out, click. Working on speed and “one shot” drills.

on first response

/ hsoi

Fine. The gun nuts are nuts. The NRA is fucked. Ted Nugent is fucking nuts. Don’t listen to them.

It seems to be accepted that it’s OK for police to have guns. We seem to be alright with the notion of relegating our protection and safety to them. We consider them the experts. Everyone I speak with and hear from that’s anti-gun seems to agree with the above. So let’s go with that premise. (BTW, I started writing this before the PoliceOne survey came out, and frankly in light of that, I think that survey and this article go together to say maybe we should consider what the police have to say, instead of Joe Biden; you know, people that have a clue instead of those that don’t).

How do the police react to mass shootings?

The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help.

That’s from the New York Times. I’ll be using bits of the full article throughout. The article continues:

The shift represents a “sea change,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recently held a meeting in Washington to discuss shootings like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.

The traditional advice to the public has been “don’t get involved, call 911,” Mr. Wexler said, adding, “There’s a recognition in these ‘active shooter’ situations that there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with.”

The change started after Columbine. Traditional response was to have everyone assemble outside, set of a command post, wait for backup, wait for SWAT, then go on. All that waiting? Too much time. It allowed too much time for more people to be killed. It allowed too much time for more damage and death to be done. It was unacceptable to wait. Police procedure changed to the whole “first responder” concept, that whomever gets there first you must engage swiftly and immediately. Yes we’d all like to wait for backup, but who knows when that’s coming. We do know “you” are here now, and if you don’t act immediately then more people will die. And it tends to work out in the modern “active shooter” scenario because in the majority of cases the moment any sort of resistance appears, the shooter offs themselves. However we get them to stop, they stop and that’s the goal. Thus, we must respond and act as quickly as possible.

It’s about time we stopped preaching that the correct response is to be a victim and “just give them what they want” (but then, isn’t that what modern social thought and politics is all about?).

But to Mr. Wexler’s last point… “they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with”. There are ways to remedy that, and I’ll discuss them later on.

The article continues:

Research on mass shootings over the last decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life.

In an analysis of 84 such shooting cases in the United States from 2000 to 2010, for example, researchers at Texas State University found that the average time it took for the police to respond was three minutes.

I’ve discussed this point many times: we cannot yet bend the laws of space and time, so it still takes time for other people to get here. But do you know who is “here” right now? You.

So if a “bad thing” is happening “right here right now”, who do you think is the person able to respond first? YOU! Police arriving are technically the second responders… well, that is if you respond at all. If you curl up in a ball and wait to be murdered, well…. I guess that’s a response. But you can choose to die, or you can choose to not die.

In the absence of a police presence, how victims responded often made the difference between life and death, Dr. Blair said….  “The take-home message is that you’re not helpless and the actions you take matter,” Dr. Blair said. “You can help yourself and certainly buy time for the police to get there.”

Emphasis added. Dr. Blair’s study shows how people’s choices made a difference. Those that chose to be a “fish in a barrel” died. Those that chose to flee or fight, lived. Some even chose sacrifice of their own lives, to buy time for others to flee and live. Your choices matter and affect not only if you live or die or if others live or die. This is what we’ve learned and can see by studying all the mass shootings we’ve had so far.

Your Actions and Choices Matter

As further example of how your choices — and preparation — matter:

Kristina Anderson, 26, who was shot three times during the Virginia Tech attack, said that every situation is different but that she thinks it can help for people to develop a plan for how they might act if a mass shooting occurred.

“Everywhere I go now, I think about exits and doorways and potential places to hide and things to barricade and fight back with,” Ms. Anderson said. “Some person has to take action and lead.”

Instead of using her victim-status as a way to lobby for increased victimhood, Ms. Anderson has learned and grown from her experience. She doesn’t live in a fantasy world. She doesn’t live in “condition white”. When she goes somewhere, she looks for exits, she looks for ways to be able to manage the situation, should it happen again. Paranoid? If you want to define it that way, I guess. I think she’s a person that went through a horrible experience, is wiser for the wear, and realizes that even something with a remote chance still has a chance and it would be horrible to be caught in (again), so she’d rather not. She’d rather be prepared for what life may bring. Think how much better off she and others could have been if they knew before what they know now. So perhaps, be wise yourself and learn from her experience instead of repeating the mistakes of others.

So yes, fighting may be the right solution. Some people cannot fathom that, but I think it’s only because of the societal structure we’ve created. I know it, I was raised in it. We learned early on that “you don’t hit other people”. That hitting is wrong and not the way to solve problems. When I first became a parent, I preached the same mantra. But eventually I realized my hypocrisy in teaching this to my children, when I spent time learning martial arts and firearms and so on (because my wife had been sexually assaulted, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again) — I understood that sometimes you have to hit, that sometimes you have to engage in violence because the cost of not engaging in it could be worse. So I no longer teach or say “it’s not/never OK to hit”. Instead, I teach that it’s important to give the appropriate response. If your sibling took your cookie away, no, hitting them is not the appropriate response. If someone is trying to rape you, hitting them is a very appropriate response. What we need to shift in our culture is to accept that violence is OK, appropriate, and even our duty to utilize under the right circumstances. We need to stop  understand when it’s right to utilize.

Susan Riseling, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the Virginia Tech episode changed her thinking about how to advise students because it was clear that Mr. Cho had “one goal, and that seemed to be to kill as many people as possible before ending his life.”

The department’s video, screened during training sessions around the state but not available online, tells students to escape or conceal themselves if possible, but if those options are not available, to fight. In the video, students are shown throwing a garbage can at an attacker and charging at him as a group.

“If you’re face to face and you know that this person is all about death, you’ve got to take some action to fight,” Chief Riseling said.

So according to Police Chief Riseling, here’s one of those right circumstances. Remember, the premise here is that the police are our protectors, they are the people our society grants such authority to, and we defer to as the experts on such matters. Thus if the experts and the authority are saying we should react this way… maybe we should listen.

Appropriate Response

Consider however that it’s again about appropriate response. The appropriate response may well be to flee. None if this negates the “beer & TV maxim“; in fact, it flat out encourages the maxim! You are certainly going to be able to enjoy more beer and TV if the best response for the situation is to flee! Your goal is to live, and if fleeing is the right thing to do, then do it. In fact, sometimes the right response might be to just give them your wallet. Say you have a dummy wallet with $5 and some fake cards on it; you throw that at the mugger and take off. You live. Is that a wrong response?

The thing is, a lot of folks are going to assume my solution is: get a gun. That we all should have guns, and bring back the OK Corral. Well, I do agree that firearms are useful tools and sometimes it’s the right and only tool appropriate for the task. But I am also aware that you cannot play golf with only one club in the bag (thank you, Tom).

Pepper spray can be a useful tool. It’s not necessarily going to stop an attacker, but if it enables you the window you need to escape, then it’s an appropriate and useful tool.

You know what’s even more useful? Awareness. Instead of having your head down in your iPhone and your ears plugged up with music, keep your eyes open, up, and scanning around; keep your ears listening for things. Do you know what most criminals want? an easy target. Do you know what most people say after an attack? “They just came out of nowhere.” No they didn’t, but it only seemed that way because you were unaware, they knew it, they took advantage of it.

Awareness can be even more mundane. When you enter a new building or room, look for the exits. Rather, look for the OTHER exits. Everyone knows about the exit they came in through; consequently, if something bad happens — like a fire — everyone stampedes for the door they came in. There have been more than enough stories of hundreds of people dying in club fires because everyone tried to go out the door they came in (dead bodies piled at the front door), but the back and side entrances were empty. It costs you nothing but a few seconds to find the exits, it doesn’t impede your life, and if something bad happens well… those few seconds spent are sure going to enable your life.

Do you have any medical training? Can you handle basic first aid like burns, cuts, bee stings, heat exhaustion, shock? Can you handle slightly larger issues like severe bleeding, broken bones? CPR? Heimlich Maneuver? (shout out to my buds at Lone Star Medics). If someone is choking, bleeding, or otherwise on their way to dying, again YOU are “right here right now”, YOU are the first responder. It will take time to dial 911, talk to an operator, talk to a dispatcher, convey all the information, get an ambulance dispatched, for them to fight traffic and drive to your location, to park, to come in, to assess the situation and orient themselves, then to act. It all takes time, time that may not be available to the suffering person. But what can you who is right there right now do to help?

Being Trained and Equipped to Deal With It

So this isn’t about “having a gun”. It’s about having a lot of things. It’s about being prepared. As Mr. Wexler stated at the top:

There’s a recognition… there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with.

No one is asking you to be a hero. No one is asking you to rush in and save the day. What is being asked is to accept that the world can be full of unexpected unpleasant undesirable things. Many of these things are time-critical, where the first response is vital, and since those “right there right now” are the ones that can respond first, wouldn’t the world be a better place if citizens perhaps were trained and equipped to deal with those situations? Be it training in first aid and equipped with that knowledge and a small med kit in their purse, or training in how to run and equipped with a good pair of Nikes so you could flee, or in knowledge of how to operate a handgun and equipped with the right tools and mindset for its use.

There’s this notion of “finding common ground”. There’s this lip-service to “meeting us halfway”. To that, I offer this. We appreciate “first responders” because we know the first people on the scene are the ones that will save lives. That lives are saved because people have the knowledge, skill, and ability to act swiftly in the face of a bad situation. That the sooner the responders can respond, the better the chances are of lives being saved. That when it gets down to it, the person “right here right now” is truly the first person able to respond. Thus, shouldn’t we all work to be able to be a first responder? How you choose to respond, that’s up to you. But at least let’s come to find common ground on the premise that first response is vital to life, and there’s no one that can respond faster than those immediately there. There’s no one that can respond faster than you.

Qualifications

/ hsoi

There is something seriously wrong when the only people who are deemed qualified to educate peoople about violence are those who have either never experienced it or aggrandize themselves for having been a victim.

– Marc MacYoung

 

1 in 1,000,000? Not so much.

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Everyone wants data. So, here’s some data and perspective that derives from that data.

We all go through life dreaming of winning the lottery. We all go through life hoping to never be the victim of a violent crime.

We like to think being the victim of a violent crime is “a one in a million” chance of happening. Now, I don’t think anyone actually believes it is truly 1:1,000,000 chance; rather, it’s being used as an expression to say it’s a very remote possibility it will ever happen to me.

Let’s look at numbers.

The FBI maintains this nifty database called the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. As of this writing, the latest data is from 2010. Let’s see what the UCR reports regarding violent crime (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) across the US in 2010.

I generated the table and saved it as a screenshot because it was the easiest way to get it here into the post. Let’s extract and look at the summary numbers.

In 2010, there were 308 million people living in the US, and there were 1.25 million violent crimes reported.

So what was the crime rate? There were 403.6 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Or about 1 in 247.

Really though, it’s lower. Consider there’s a number of folks in the population that are extremely unlikely to be either the perpetrator or victim of violence, like infants, the infirm, etc.. So really, chances are what? 1 in 200? Maybe even less? Really hard to say. Plus, this is only reported violent crime. There are crimes that go unreported (especially rape), so you can be sure the actual number of violent crimes committed is much higher. So simple math says if we’re calculating with less population and more crime incidents, the ratio gets smaller. We’ll have to base upon 1:247 since that’s the best number we can calculate, but keep in mind the ratio is likely smaller.

Let’s put this in perspective. I found this article from 2007’s NY Times that contained numerous ways to die and the chances of dying from them. The data apparently comes from the National Safety Council and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Heart disease – 1 in 5
  • Cancer – 1 in 7
  • Stroke – 1 in 24
  • Car accident – 1 in 84
  • Accidental Poisoning – 1 in 193
  • Falls – 1 in 218
  • Drowning – 1 in 1,134
  • Air/space accident – 1 in 5,051
  • Sun/Heat exposure – 1 in 13,729
  • Lightning – 1 in 79,746
  • Fireworks – 1 in 340,733
  • and my favorite —- worldwide, 62 people died from shark attacks, but 150 died from falling coconuts.

This infographic from PopSci.com gives some other interesting chances:

  • Chance of getting cancer – 1 in 2 (the above seems to be dying from, vs. this just getting it)
  • Being selected on The Price is Right – 1 in 36 (but you have to be in the studio audience)
  • IRS audit – 1 in 175
  • Getting injured and dying in the next year – 1 in 1820
  • Going blind after laser eye surgery – 1 in 85,714
  • Dying in an airplane accident – 1 in 354,319
  • Being struck by lightning – 1 in 700,00 (again, this is struck, the above is dying from)
  • Winning $1000 in McDonald’s Monopoly game – 1 in 36,950,005
  • Winning Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot – 1 in 49,836,032
  • Winning Mega Millions – 1 in 135,145,920

Given this data, it seems we should primarily care about our general well-being: eat right, exercise, mind your sun exposure, etc.. We should also keep our taxes in order.

When you put the UCR number in there, it’s really not too remote a possibility to be a victim of a violent crime.

Think about this.

More people on a daily and weekly basis put more effort into playing the lottery than they do keeping themselves healthy and well. Whether it’s eating right and exercising, or it’s having a ready-means of defending themselves against violent crime, people put far more effort into something that has almost no chance of happening than effort into something quite likely to happen.

Does that make sense?

We could also make the case for something like abolishing the TSA, where we put 2-tons of effort and billions of dollars into an unlikely event, but the .gov works hard at keeping the citizenry from being able to address things they are far more likely to die from on a daily basis! But that’s another topic for another time.

Certainly make your own value judgment here about what’s important to you and how you wish to utilize this data. I just think it’s important to look at the general chances of various things happening, and take it as some perspective and reality. You’re far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than you are to win the lottery; it’s far from a “one in a million” chance. I mean, winning the lottery technically would make you the statistical anomaly, and how cool would it be to beat the odds, right? Well, even if being the victim of a violent crime was a “one in a million” chance, you still accepted that it might happen, and you have to admit it would really suck to be the one that beat the odds.

…but what do they know

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Seems to be generally accepted that listening to the police is A Good Thing.

I mean, these are the people actually out there, dealing with crime and criminals on a daily basis. They might know a thing or two. Certainly when your job causes you to get shot at on a semi-regular basis, you might know something more than someone that lives in an Ivory Tower surrounded by armed guards and never has to look violence in the eye every day.

So with that, PoliceOne surveyed 15,000 law enforcement professionals about gun policy.

Bottom Line Conclusions
Quite clearly, the majority of officers polled oppose the theories brought forth by gun-control advocates who claim that proposed restrictions on weapon capabilities and production would reduce crime.

In fact, many officers responding to this survey seem to feel that those controls will negatively affect their ability to fight violent criminals.

Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.

The officers patrolling America’s streets have a deeply-vested interest — and perhaps the most relevant interest — in making sure that decisions related to controlling, monitoring, restricting, as well as supporting and/or prohibiting an armed populace are wise and effective. With this survey, their voice has been heard.

You can read the complete survey questions and results here.

KR Training – 2013-04-06 Report

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

This is the time of year where it’s awesome to be outside in Central Texas.

Come August, not so much. 😉

So we’ll enjoy the days on the range while we can. And this past Saturday was an ideal day. Temperatures were cool in the morning and mild in the afternoon, a slight breeze all day, sunny. Just a great day.

And so, we had another round of Basic Pistol 1, and also held AT-4 – Pistol Skills Development. AT-4 doesn’t happen all that often, but it’s a unique and interesting class where you get to do a lot of things you don’t do in any other class or can do at many other ranges. Truly a class worth taking.

So what’s my take-home from the day?

Basic Pistol 1

You know what stood out to me the most about that class?

Every student wasn’t just on time, but was early! We were even able to start class a few minutes early, which meant 1. we had more time for class material, 2. we got to wrap up on time.

Yes, unfortunately this is an exception, not the rule. Typically there’s always 1-2 “car loads” that are late, or show up right at start time and don’t calculate the time needed to park, walk in, gear up (depending upon the class), go into the building, hit the bathroom, wait for the person in line for the bathroom ahead of you, finally use the bathroom, orient yourself, take care of paperwork, etc.. Yes, lots of things need to happen before you can just sit and take in the class.

If class starts at 9:00? Aim to be there 15-30 minutes prior to the start time. You’ll be better off and have a better class experience.

I really appreciated this start to my day. Not only because in my own life I strive to be early to all my appointments, but because I know arrival time affects not just you but everyone else involved. So your arrival time to class affects not just your class experience, but the experience of the other students and the teachers as well. Granted, shit happens, Apple Maps gives you incorrect driving directions, and all that. I grant that happens. But I just have to express how tickled I was to have everyone there early and we started so smoothly.

Apart from that, the class itself was fine. Since Karl was at the helm, I took some additional notes and am working to refine my class presentation. I’ll be lead instructor on this class starting next month, so I want to have my act together. 🙂

AT-4

I didn’t get to participate much in the class. Karl’s working on an article and needs to gather data for it, so I got to be his data collector. I don’t want to expose too much of Karl’s article prior to publication, but I can say what I did was take each student individually to the small range and had them shoot a very simple course of fire using their gun and another gun. I recorded their times and hits. I wasn’t there to really teach them or test them, just have them perform the course of fire and record their performance.

That said, since I did get to see them perform, if I did notice something about their shooting that was a problem, I did mention it to them.

With only a couple exceptions, I saw much of the same problem: trigger yanking. One string of the COF was: from the ready, both hands on gun, 1 shot, body, 1.5 seconds. Very do-able, but certainly some pressure. So in a rush to get it all done, the gun got thrown out there, mash the shit out of the trigger, and get an unacceptable hit.

It goes along with what I saw at the start of class, when we had everyone on the line working dry. We had them just drawing, presenting, and “clicking off” a shot.

It was slow.

But over the past some whiles I’ve been struggling to come up with a good way to present and convey what I think is an important differentiator to make. It’s about going faster without necessarily going faster. Here’s some of my preliminary ramblings on the topic (click and read, it’s too much to rehash).

Let’s put it this way. For the sake of easy math, let’s say it takes you 0.5 seconds to press out and 0.5 seconds to press the trigger. If you perform these simultaneously, you will have taken 1 second to press out and shoot. If instead you do these simultaneously, which you can, it will have taken you 0.5 seconds to press out and shoot. So, you’ve performed essentially the same thing, achieved the same goal, and it took you half as much time. Notice however that you never moved faster (or slower) — the press out and trigger press moved at the same speed they always did. But by performing the tasks simultaneously, you moved more efficiently and the overall time taken was less.

So of course, imagine now if you then moved faster, how much better it could be. I mean, if you took the press out down to 0.25 and the trigger to 0.25, simultaneous becomes 0.25… so you know, it’s really a combination of truly moving faster and also moving simultaneously that brings about decreases in time expenditure.

Of what I saw in the AT-4 students, I think y’all need both.

I think you need to truly move faster when it comes to getting the gun out of the holster. When the buzzer sounds, when you hear the “B” in “BEEP”, you need to start moving. Anticipate the start of the buzzer, don’t wait for the buzzer to finish then move. As well, when you start moving, move really damn fast. Move your hands fast, clear your cover garment, get your hand on your gun, get the gun out of the holster. Move FAST. You have no time no waste, no time to lollygag. If your life is on the line, this matters. If it’s competition, it can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Watch this video of Ben Stoeger (shooting the FAST drill, which was shot during the AT-4 class… so compare your time to his time)

Watch carefully. His hand is on his gun and drawing it before the buzzer finishes. That’s fast. I’m not that fast, and I’m not saying you have to be that fast either, but it demonstrates the concept of getting on the gun, getting it out, and how doing THAT allows you to achieve better shot times.

So for things like drawing? Y’all just need to flat out move faster.

Then during the class dry practice, I would watch the press-out, and it would be a consecutive action: press out then press trigger. Here’s a place where you can gain “speed” by just moving simultaneously. I wrote enough on that above.

Here’s the thing. Everyone tries to beat the buzzer. From the moment the buzzer sounds, time is ticking and you know it. Because you didn’t start out fast, you now are feeling extra pressure because you know there’s not much time left, and so you rush everything and it all falls apart. Don’t rush. Instead, don’t waste time; use your time wisely and efficiently. If you move on the “B” in “BEEP”, if you work to get out of the holster faster, you will find that you have a lot more time to press the gun out and press the trigger. If you press the gun out and press the trigger in at the same time, you’ll get more done in less time. And y’know what’s weird? You’ll notice that you got done WAY before the second beep, you put up a great time, and you’ll find that you didn’t feel rushed at all. It’s a really weird feeling, but a really cool feeling too. It won’t feel like much effort, because now you didn’t rush: you were swift and efficient.

Strive for that.

 

If the ACLU is expressing concern….

/ hsoi

… that’s gotta tell you something.

The ACLU has never been much of a friend to gun rights, so when they come out with some hefty reservations about the .gov’s gun control bill?  that ought to tell you something about how crappy the legislation is.

Again, I know of no gun owner that doesn’t want to solve the real problems. But so far there haven’t been any proposals that actually solve the real problems. We just keep getting crap laws like those being passed in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, and now being proposed on the federal level. Again, if the ACLU thinks the wording of the bill is dangerous, perhaps y’all should listen.

I’ve been a card-carrying member of the ACLU in my past, and I still generally support them because we need groups like them. I wish they weren’t so pick-and-choose about what Constitutional rights they opt to support, but I’m still glad they’re here.

The key to being fast

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

During the Rangemaster Instructor Certification course, Tom Givens showed us a video of him shooting the FAST Drill.

The story is that Tom was hosting Todd Louis Green at Rangemaster. Tom had been out and about, returned to the building, poked his head onto the range to see how things were going, and Todd had Tom shoot the FAST Drill. Tom shot it cold, in his street clothing (heavy coat on, must have been winter), with his carry gear.

He cleaned it in less than 6 seconds.

That’s about as good as you can shoot that test without gaming it (e.g. releasing the slide with the slide latch vs. doing an “over the top” grip rack, which Tom did and will only do).

And of course, Tom makes the point that he’s old and fat and still beats us all, so what’s our excuse! He’s right, you know.

His takeaway? Presentation is the key to being fast.

You may not have to shoot.

You may not have to reload.

You may not have to do a lot of things.

But you will have to present.

Practice it.