Speed is important.

And once you can go at one speed, you want to or may need to go faster.

In working with a student the other day, I realized a need to change my phrasing. And roll with me on this because it’s still a fresh idea in my head that I’m working on.

The scenario was Defensive Pistol Skills 1. In that class, we start to impress upon students the realities of gunfighting and self-defense with firearms. One of those realities is there there isn’t much time. The saying that the typical gunfight is “3 shots at 3 yards in 3 seconds”? That’s why Karl developed the “3 Seconds or Less Drill” as a test and measure of your ability to perform in that realm. DPS1 puts students under pressure, and then ratchets up the pressure by doing drills against a timer.

Most students end up discovering they’re too slow. Buzzer sounds, and they might get 1 shot off before the stop buzzer sounds 3 seconds later. They get better by the end of class because they start to understand a need to go faster, but I started to see how “going faster” isn’t always the right way to direct the students. It’s about the use of the phrase “go faster”, and what impression that leaves, what seed that sows, in the mind of the  student.

Here’s what seems to happen.

Start buzzer sounds. Student moseys their gun out of the holster and gets it up on target, but then realizes OH SHIT! I NEED TO SHOOT AND THERE’S NOT MUCH TIME LEFT! and then doesn’t get a good sight picture, slaps and yanks the trigger hard, and they have a gloriously unacceptable hit. And while they got their unacceptable hit the stop buzzer sounded.

What I believe is happening in the student’s mind is they think that they need to “go faster”. But this seems to be some sort of acceleration curve where they start at zero and just accelerate what they’re doing until the exercise is over. This is not what we want to do, at least, not always and not so simply.

There are all sorts of things that happen between the start and stop buzzer. You hear the buzzer, you recognize it’s time to start and make the decision to start, you start moving, you clear your cover garment, you get a grip on the gun, you draw the gun, you present the gun, you acquire the sights, you press the trigger, the gun goes bang. There’s lots of things that happen here, but often what the student is thinking about is “shooting the gun”, which many times just boils down to pointing at the target and pressing the trigger. But as you can see, there’s a lot more that goes on. They know they have to get the gun out of the holster, they know they have to do all these other things, but they don’t necessarily factor in that it consumes time to do those things.

Consequently, the effort to “make time” doesn’t necessarily mean we have to accelerate in a single linear manner from start buzzer to stop buzzer. What it may mean is that we use the alloted time in the most efficient manner possible.

As an example, in this particular DPS1 class, there was a student that I knew had the marksmanship fundamentals, but when all the time pressures were put on her she was having a hard time hitting much of anything. I took her aside to the small range to work on things. I broke it down. I had her take all the time in the world. Point the gun at a target, get a good sight picture, slow smooth trigger press, and see what happened. She rang the steel every time. When there were no time pressures she could do it all. So once that was established, I stepped it up just a little bit. Now I had her start in a low ready position, move the gun up, then sights, trigger, press off the shot, etc., but again, no time pressure. And she was fine. Next I told her to move the gun up but take a little less time between getting the gun up and getting the shot off. Not to rush anything, just to not waste as much time. To still move at her slow pace, just eliminate time where nothing useful was going on. And she did fine. And this is how we worked for a while, taking “half a second” off here and there, but never moving faster, just eliminating wasted time.

The upshot? The total time it took her to go from start to finish was reduced, but she never “went faster”.

The next step was trying to do some things simultaneously. Before I had her do everything in series: present the gun, acquire the sights, press the trigger. Now, I wanted her to do things in parallel: press the trigger while presenting the gun and pick up the sights as the gun is presented. Multitasking. 🙂  We did have to slow down, but it was about getting her to process the notion and actions. But even tho she moved slower, her total time from start to finish was again reduced because actions were happening in parallel, not serially.

We didn’t get beyond that, but I can talk about another aspect that might actually involve going faster, and that is in fact going faster. But realize that going faster doesn’t mean some constant linear acceleration across the entire task. What might happen is you divide up the greater task into subtasks, and accept those subtasks might move at different speeds. For example, when the buzzer sounds and it’s time to draw, that draw should be as wicked fast as you can draw it. And no matter when nor the circumstance, always draw fast… I can’t think of a time when you want to draw slowly. After you draw, you present the gun. But in this presentation, you may need to move at a different speed. If you’re shooting at less than 5 yards, you probably can get the gun out there as fast as you can and be just fine. But if your first shot is at a target 25 yards away, you cannot blaze away; you must slow down that presentation so you can make the precision shot. Again, it’s quite common to see in DPS1 class that as students are learning to draw from the holster there’s this linear acceleration from start to finish of the whole task, going slow to get the gun out, but once the hand is on the gun they smear the draw from position 1 to position 4, struggle to find their sights, waste time, and end up yanking the trigger all in an effort to “go faster”. In the end, they weren’t fast, nor accurate.

Which brings to another point about how to “go faster”, using proper and efficient technique. While it’s true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and thus likely it’s also the fastest way to get from A to B, the handgun draw does not abide by that rule. The right way to “go faster” is to make an “L” shape, drawing the gun straight out of the holster to the armpit, then straight out from the armpit/face/upper-chest area pressed out to the target. While technically it’s a slower path of travel, getting the gun from A to B isn’t the only factor involved — your eyes need to pick up that front sight. When you do this “press out”, it gives your eyes more time and ability to find and fix on the front sight and get the sight picture you need. When you start to couple that with simultaneous actions like pressing the trigger as you press out, all of these things come together to help you “go faster” without going faster.

Watch Mike Brook as he shoots the F.A.S.T. drill in 4.92 seconds

Buzzer sounds and he’s quick to react to it. His draw is wicked fast (and appendix carry doesn’t hurt either). But then his press out goes slowly — a must since the first (two) shot(s) of the drill is into a 3″x5″ box at 7 yards. Once second shot is over he’s right onto the reload, no dawdle there, and then completes the drill. If you watch, it doesn’t necessarily look fast in the sense of rapid acceleration and “pedal to the metal” shooting. There’s no blazing away. He’s not shooting faster than he can see and get acceptable hits, and at some points it looks like he’s going slow. But he’s doing all of the above in terms of not wasting time, changing speeds, performing simultaneous action, using good technique, and it all comes together for a fast time.

So… for me the thing I’m trying to figure out is a good and efficient way to express this to students. You can see in my above elaboration that well.. it’s laborious to explain. But it’s about how to “go faster, without going faster”. To find the right terms to help the students overcome the notions and help them really get it. Because when we say “go faster”, they’re not necessarily going to think about all the ways they can actually go faster without going faster. It’s not really the right term.

Hrm. Something to continue thinking about.

James Rummel has a cool (ha!) post about temperatures and ammunition.

What with summer pretty much here in Texas and the car interior getting mighty hot, this information could be relevant to some.

In short, it seems like dangers of “cooking off” are unfounded, but it will degrade the ammunition and could actually risk problems if fired when too hot because of pressure increases.

There are numerous ways you can rack the slide on a semi-automatic handgun.

While most of those ways work, there’s a particular way we teach it at KR Training that we prefer because it’s a single technique that can work across a multitude of situations and contexts. This technique is used by other  top”combative pistol” instructors like Tom Givens, Paul Gomez, etc. because of the superior nature of the technique for this context.

If you watch this Paul Gomez video, from about 1:27 to 1:29 into the video he demonstrates the technique:

The video is good for other things, but just focus on those 2  seconds for now. I don’t want to get too much into the specifics of this “over the top” technique, it’s strengths and such, because it’s not germane to the goal of this article.

The key I want to stress tho is to LET GO of the slide. In fact, it doesn’t really matter what technique you use to rack the slide. Pull the slide back, and then LET IT GO.

This was so common during this past weekend’s BP1/DPS1 classes that I wanted to elaborate on the topic.

People want to help the gun.

The gun doesn’t need your help. It’s designed to work in a certain way, so you need to let it work in that way.

Or perhaps they think it might damage the gun to let the slide slam home. Folks, when the gun shoots it’s subject to far more mechanical and physical stress than you could ever inflict upon it. But again, it’s designed to work that way and manage such things.

In the end, a gun is merely a hunk of steel with springs and levers and inclined planes and other simple machines cobbled together in a very ingenious way. These springs and levers are put together in a very precise way and need to work in their finely tuned orchestration in order to run right. One of those is the amount of tension and force required to strip a new round off the top of the magazine and load it into the chamber. Try this. Take a full magazine and hold it vertically in your hands. Now use the tip of your index finger, apply it to the back of the top round, and push it forward out of the magazine simulating how the round is stripped from the magazine and fed into the chamber. It’s kinda tough to do, isn’t it? Requires some strength, some force. Now, take your empty/unloaded gun and pull the slide back. If you hold on to the slide and ease it back down, there’s not much force generated; you could stick your finger into the ejection port, ease the slide down onto it, and it wouldn’t hurt much. But if you hold the slide back and then let it go, a lot of force will be generated; I’m sure you wouldn’t stick your finger in the way of that! It’s a simple equation: force = mass x acceleration. The mass of the slide is constant, but the acceleration changes. As you saw when you tried to push the top round out of the magazine, a high level of force is required to strip that round out of the magazine. So if you need a lot of force to strip the round, the only way you’re going to get that high level of force is to have a high level of acceleration. How are you going to get the slide to move its quickest? By using the maximum range of motion (pulling the slide ALL the way to the rear of it’s range of motion — something releasing with the slide lock lever won’t let you do), and allowing for maximum force… which means

DON’T HELP THE SLIDE FOWARD. LET IT GO.

When you pull the slide back, just open your fingers. Let the slide go and let it slam forward. It’s designed to work that way. Do NOT move your hand at all. Or if you are moving your hand, let your hand continue to move in the direction of the rearward slide (e.g. up towards your shoulder). Your hand should NOT change direction and start to move forward with the slide. If you do this, if you do not let go of the slide, you will slow the slide down, it will not generate enough force, and the gun will malfunction.

And I saw lots of malfunctions all DPS1 class long because people kept riding their slides (yes, we constantly remind them, but old habits die hard). The slide would not fully close thus the gun would not fire. Or the top round wouldn’t chamber thus the chamber was empty and nothing would fire (tho some of that was also caused by magazine problems such as old/weak springs and/or sand blocking the follower from moving). Or they’d cause the top round to only partially feed and seat, causing a larger malfunction. And this is why you need to run the gun like the machine was designed to run.

Let the slide go. It doesn’t need your help.

Another day, another group of enlightened students. 🙂

May 5th was a bit of a different day for us, having Basic Pistol 1 in the morning and Defensive Pistol Skills 1 in the afternoon. Usually we’ll run BP2 and DPS1 back-to-back, or BP1 and something else entirely unrelated in the afternoon (e.g. AT-4). And apart from being unseasonably hot out, it was a good day.

There are a few things I want to talk about that came out of the two classes, but after thinking about them on the drive home I realized they’re going to make for whole articles unto themselves, so I’ll be writing about them in the coming days. But for now, I can discuss a few small topics.

One thing I always like to point out is demographics. We had men and women, and a lot more women than usual especially for a DPS1 class. We had young folks and old folks. We had folks of various ethnicity/race. We have people of different political persuasion. I point this out because so many people want to stereotype gun owners as redneck, knuckle-dragging, old, white, men. It’s just not the case. Gun owners are all types and kinds, and no question the largest growing demographic is women. Frankly I’m thrilled to see more women shooters coming out for classes beyond basic classes, because all too often they get the basics and stop for whatever reason. Seeing more taking true self-defense classes, not just fundamental skills classes, is wonderful.

Since I have my new M&P Shield, I brought it out. I wanted BP1 students to try it to see how it fit and how a variety of people could manipulate it. And in the afternoon, there was a student that borrowed it for the whole class. She had come out previously to a Basic Pistol 2, had a Sig in .40 (IIRC), but all I recall was it being too big for her petite hands. I let her my M&P9 that day and she fared much better, but even that was still a wee big for her, so we lent her the Shield for the day. This Shield stuff will be topic of another article.

Most of my comments and observations tho are typical for these classes, because much of the same mistakes happen and revelations come to students:

• If you have a CHL, carry your gun. You don’t get to choose when and where the fight is going to happen. The fight will happen unexpectedly, you have to react, you will be behind the curve, and well… if you aren’t prepared, you’re screwed. This isn’t to say if you are prepared you still won’t be screwed, but you need to do all you can to work things in your favor.
• Do not be married to your equipment. This is life-saving material, so ego cannot and should not be involved, nor should money be a barrier. That doesn’t mean you need to go out and buy a $5000 Wilson Combat gun, but don’t buy cheap shit… unless I guess that’s where you value your life. Be willing to discard the gun you have (thankfully most have good resale value) and find a gun that works best for you, THAT FITS YOU (read this), that you can shoot well and are willing to practice with. We work to steer people down this road in BP1. When we get to DPS1, this is where you find out not only that guns with levers and switches and dohickies and gizmos are more problem than solution, but you also find out that your holster sucks, your magazine pouches suck, and you need to do better. Your skill is affected by your gear. No, you won’t be a Grandmaster IPSC shooter on gear alone, but no one made Grandmaster with crappy guns and gear.
• When racking the slide, don’t help it. This is another topic I wish to elaborate on in another article.
• Yes, you have to aim.
  • Bottom line: you need to make acceptable hits. All this fancy self-defense stuff means nothing if you can’t hit what needs to be hit. That means marksmanship fundamentals remain well… fundamental to it all. It’s at the heart of what we’re doing, just that much of the self-defense stuff means you have to do it faster, perhaps a little more coarse on accuracy (but still accurate enough), and with some other flourishes and such. But trigger control and sight alignment are still key.
• If you didn’t shoot as well as you wanted to, at least did you have your eyes opened? Perhaps was it a bit humbling? If so, do NOT consider this a bad thing. You now have an idea of what needs to be done, of the level that you need to attain. Now it’s time to work to get there. Consider it all knowledge and learning.
• In the Texas heat and sun, wear sunscreen and stay hydrated. Also consume some things to keep your energy up. It got into the mid-90’s, so drinking say a 1-to-1 ratio of Gatorade and water would be good, so you keep some sugar, electrolytes, and of course water in you.

As a final point, I got to meet “That Guy” from Rock in a Sea of Chaos. How cool!

Updated: That Guy posted his AAR of the class.

Apex Tactical posted the following to their Facebook page, regarding the M&P Shield.

But instead of me reposting here, just go read the full “Info Release”… it’s long, but worthwhile.

So they are developing a “Shield Carry Kit” (SCK), but I guess it’s not yet a product. Everyone’s asking tho, so they’re releasing info as they have it.

I know one guy that put the regular M&P Apex hard sear in and saw major improvement. Based upon Apex’s Info Release, that seems solid and good to do, at least in preliminary testing. I know some have also applied regular M&P trigger job mods (Google around) and achieved good results. It all makes sense, given the same internal parts.

At this point I’m not going to change from the factory trigger, because I want to see how some novice students fare with the gun in stock form. But I am thinking that I may just get the Apex hard sear for the regular M&P, drop that in, and be happy. If they later come out with the SCK that changes more things and provides more overall improvement then I may upgrade to that too. We’ll see, no rush.

But cool to see things moving in the Shield world.

 

I got me an M&P Shield. I’m one of the cool kids now, right? No… it’s me, I’ll never be cool; always a geek. 😉

I first wrote about it here, then shortly thereafter got to play with one. That left me wanting one, and I put in an order for one. Happened to get lucky and got one.

Yes I know, I should probably decorate this with pictures, but sorry… I’m lazy. 🙂  But now that I’ve taken it to the range, I wanted to give some further impressions on it.

The Gun

It is thin. It’s almost too thin for me. I am going to have to shoot it a lot and dry practice with it a lot to adjust to it. My trigger finger wants to go really deep into the trigger guard, almost to my distal joint. That’s too far, and then it causes me to either push or pull the gun and hit left or right. It all depends, because well… it’s the trigger. Because of the ergos of how much finger I put on it, then when I try to adjust because the trigger is hard, it’s all… rough.

Yes, this will need an Apex Tactical trigger upgrade. I did hear that installing the existing M&P hard sear from Apex smooths things out and improves the trigger a lot, but I’m unsure about installing that until there’s solid word this is OK to do. The tolerances might be just different enough. But honestly, I would reason S&W worked to keep as much between the full-sized M&P and the Shield the same, using same parts, to help keep manufacturing costs down and thus supporting the Shield’s low price-point. Still, word posted on Apex Tactical’s Facebook page leads me to believe Shield parts are coming soon.

The sights aren’t that great, but as I said on the full-sized M&P, they are some of the better factory sights I’ve used. At least the front post is narrower than the rear notch, so you do see light on either side of the front post. That’s great! I did take a Sharpie and black out the dots on the rear sight, and while not a wicked awesome set of sights, they are alright and will certainly do. I know Dawson Precision has a Shield in their possession now, so they should be able to figure out all the details to make sights. Just have to stay tuned.

But the big thing is, how does it conceal? Pretty damn well. When you use the short/flush magazine, the butt of the gun is about an inch shorter than my full-sized M&P. The Shield does fit somewhat into my Comp-Tac MTAC holster (the gun profiles are generally the same, and the leather back to the MTAC helps it fit better since it collapses a bit, but by no means is the gun secure), and when holstered… geez… it just disappears. With the extended mag in, it’s a little more obvious. I’d say it’s almost to the point of “might as well carry a full-sized”, but the thinness of the Shield helps to further abate “sticking out”. I was able to see a size comparison vs. an M&P Compact; the height is about the same, the Compact is wider of course.

Carrying it is pretty nice. I wore it in my MTAC for a while, using the flush magazine. You barely notice it, because there isn’t stuff jutting out everywhere. No beavertail jutting into your ribs, the butt doesn’t rub against the back of a chair, no clothing hanging up on it depending how you move around. One thing is that with the gun fully loaded there’s enough “backpressure” on the magazine that the magazine’s basepad it pushed back from the bottom edge of the magazine well, leaving a space. The edges of everything are rounded off, nothing truly sharp, but it did notice this area “scratching” against the skin of my side a bit. Nothing horrible, just a minor irritation, but there. I’ve got sorta sensitive skin, so I wonder how this will fare over the course of wearing it all day every day. I think it’ll be OK, just something to get used to and then the body will tune it out.

All in all, I like the Shield, and will like it a lot more once Apex allows for a better trigger.

Shooting

I didn’t shoot much, only 200 rounds. 50 rounds of American Eagle 124 grain. 50 rounds of PMC Bronze 115 grain. 50 rounds of my handloads. 50 rounds of Gold Dot 124 grain +P. Everything worked fine, and boy that PMC has a TON of muzzle flash (never shot it before today). But everything fed and shot just fine and dandy, and I consider this a good first sign that the gun runs well, especially with my chosen social ammo.

Accuracy was acceptable, shooting out to 15 yards (didn’t try any greater distances). I know I blew some because of the trigger issues, either because I had too much finger and pulled the gun towards me, or too little and thus yanked it because it is a heavy trigger. In a close up fight, it’ll be fine, but for finer control and longer distance group shooting well… I’m back to wanting the Apex trigger. I wish I could convey the trigger over the Internet somehow so y’all could know… it’s not horrible, I’m sure most people will be fine with it. But once you know there are better triggers to be had in the world, you’ll find the factory trigger to be serviceable but with a lot of room for improvement. Which is why Apex has such heavy business. 😉

It is a little hard to control, because it’s hard to get all your hands on it. Of course, it’s more controllable with the extended magazine since you can get your pinky on there, and pinkies play a large part in recoil management. What I really want to try tho is some faster shooting, like Bill Drills. Just can’t do that at the local indoor range. Also try some one-handed and see how it goes. I will probably try something like the “3 seconds or less” drill.

Reloading actually isn’t all that bad… a little hard to seat things because your palm’s in the way, but really not as bad as some small guns I’ve tried. I did notice that, try as I might, it doesn’t auto-forward. I admit the auto-forward is something I do NOT like about the M&P, so if this doesn’t auto-forward I’ll be happy.

Speaking of that… because of the limited magazine capacity, you’re likely to follow the practice of loading the magazine fully, seating and racking to put one in the chamber, then dropping the magazine and topping it off. Thus with that flush 7 round magazine, you can have 7+1. Thing is, when you do that? It’s VERY difficult to seat the magazine; you really have to slam it home, which is kinda hard when your palm is a bit in the way. It’s do-able, but you need to be careful.

Conclusion

Well… it’s still to early to draw any conclusions. All I did today was start to break it in, throwing lead downrange, some accuracy checking, does it feed different ammo brands, does it function, etc..  The trigger does feel a little better than when I first got it, but it doesn’t matter… it needs Apex improvement. But apart from the trigger, all seemed alright today.

I also want to do more serious shooting with it, like Bill Drills, the 3 Seconds or Less drill, and just put it more through its paces and see how it runs.

Finally, I want to let students try it. I want to see how folks with small hands can handle it. Can they rack the slide? Can they control it? Can they work that factory trigger? All too often small hands also come with “small strength”, so just because they can grip it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good/right gun for them. I had Wife and Daughter try it, and there was a bit of struggle in working the slide, but with better technique (e.g. racking over the top of the slide, bringing it in close to the body like opening a pickle jar) they could manipulate it.

But I’m starting to like it… a lot.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go dry fire for a while. 🙂

I just returned from the southern chapter of the local indoor gun range.

The reasons for my visit I’ll detail at another time. I wanted to write about something else that happened while I was there.

While shooting, two gentlemen came to the adjacent lane to shoot. I overheard one of them express their newness, in asking the RSO for some help in how to load the gun. Yes that was a red flag to me to be more aware and mindful of what was going on a lane over. But to the range’s credit, I’ve been seeing RSO’s actually in the shooting area actively watching what’s going on. I must give them credit for that improvement.

Afterwards, I was able to talk with those gentlemen for a bit as they were parked next to me. They are new and very eager to learn. Of course I gave them a KR Training pen and disclosed my assistant instructor status there. We went back inside to look at a few things, and here’s where I winced.

The guys behind the counter… I guess they’re used to being muzzle swept all day and are jaded and don’t think anything of it, for they had no problem walking in front of the muzzle of the gun I was helping the gentleman look at. One guy behind the counter chimed in, and as this was their house I just let him talk and did my best to keep my mouth closed. To his credit, he gave a lot of good advice. He was spot on about getting a good holster. He recommended larger guns and not compromising. And much of what he said was pretty good stuff. That’s a welcome thing to hear, as all too often the guy’s behind the gun counter don’t know what they’re talking about and dole out bad advice.

But what bothered me the most was his gun handling.

I should have counted how many times I was swept by his muzzle. I’ve been muzzle swept enough, and I still don’t like it and still don’t take it casually. Maybe in my case I know the guns are loaded, and in the store they reckon the guns aren’t, but that’s a little too much complacency for me (Cooper Rule 1 and all that).

The store clerk took what I assume is his carry gun out of a bag, to show his Raven holster to the customer. He was very casual in the handling of the gun. I have no idea if the gun was actually loaded or not, but we all (should) know Col. Cooper’s Rule #1, right? I will assume it was loaded with one in the chamber tho, because the way he spoke implied it was his carry gun, there was a magazine in… and so I’m pretty sure it really was loaded. But again, it doesn’t matter — rule 1.

And that’s why it bothered me even more with how casually he held the holstered gun… with one hand on the grip, and the other hand holding the muzzle. And he kept doing it… just a fiddling thing, like you know how you might punch your fist into the palm of your other hand? it was a motion like that, punching the muzzle of the holstered gun into the palm of his other hand. Just one of those mindless things where you’re keeping your hands fiddling with something, but wow…. what’s Col. Cooper’s Rule #2?  And NRA Rule #1?

I was all ready to be impressed with how things are improving at the local indoor range, and then I saw this sort of gun handling.

The thing is, this customer was coming to these guys for answers. It’s completely understandable for customers to expect gun store clerks to know something about guns. The trouble is, when you don’t know anything about guns, you don’t know if the information you’re getting is good or bad… but based upon what you expect — gun store should know about guns — these newbie customers are going to take what you say AND DO as gospel.

So come on… you know people are coming to you expecting you to be the expert. Behave like one. This is not just what you say, but what you do. Walking in front of muzzles, not respecting safe direction, fiddling with loaded guns behind the counter, violating fundamental gun safety rules, violating your own store policy (that big sign at the front door about all actions must be open…). I was all set to be impressed, but was just let down at the end.