The NSSF‘s January 2012 edition of “Pull The Trigger” features a video by champion pistol shooter Doug Koenig on “The All-Important First Shot”

This is true. There’s no more important shot than your first shot. If you need another tenth of a second to ensure a good hit? Take that tenth of a second. As the old say goes, “you can’t miss fast enough”. Or as I prefer to say, you can’t afford unacceptable hits; slow down and get acceptable hits. Accept nothing else.

Tom Givens made me realize there’s more than one first shot. We tend to consider the “first shot” to be the shot fired at the start of the string, or the initial shot fired after we walked up to the firing line. But realize any shot other than an immediately subsequent shot is a first shot. So you draw and shoot? That’s a first shot. While shooting there’s a malfunction that you have to clear; when you come back on target, that’s also a first shot. It’s also a first shot when you come back up after performing a reload.

What’s the most important shot? The first shot.

What’s shot you’re most likely to screw up? The first shot.

The screw up will tend to happen because we’ll get in a hurry. This will be most evident on “subsquent first shots”, like after a reload or malfunction. We know we’re down, we need to get back to business quickly, and so we’ll rush and blow the first shot. You must make a conscious decision to slow down. It doesn’t mean move at a glacial pace, but if you have to take 0.2 seconds to verify a sight picture and ensure a smooth trigger press, then do so. Again, we don’t want unacceptable hits.

An acceptable first shot is of paramount importance in a self-defense context. That first shot may be the one that saves your life. Yes it must be fast, but more so it must be accurate. Do the math. On paper, taking that extra 0.2 seconds to ensure an acceptable hit may seem like too much time — every millisecond matters, right? But what if you didn’t take that 0.2 seconds and had an unacceptable hit? Now you’ll have to shoot again, and that will take more time. In making that second shot, your shooting scenario may have changed (e.g. bad guy moved because they realized incoming lead has the right-of-way) which forces your OODA loop to reset and now you take even more time to get re-situated and get that second shot off. And what of the first unacceptable hit? if it hit grandma, that’s going to be far more costly than the 0.2 seconds.

Yes speed matters, but speed without accuracy is worthless. You should shoot (only) as fast as you can get acceptable hits. In practice, use a timer and find out how fast you actually can shoot to get acceptable hits. Take a drill, any drill (KR Training’s “3 Seconds or Less” is a good one). Or since we’re talking first shots, just start with the gun in the holster, concealment garment if applicable, and work on the drawing and firing off a single shot. Shoot it with no timer, no par times, just shoot it at your own pace that enables you to get a clean 100% score. Make sure you can repeat that clean performance on-demand. The next step is to use a timer to for a starting beep and to record shot times, but no ending “par time” beep — leave it open-ended. You want a starting tone, and by recording your shots you can look at the last time and see how long it took you to shoot that string/drill. You want to see how long it takes you to cleanly shoot the string/drill, but with no time pressures. This will establish your “shooting it cleanly” par time. Once you have that established, now you can put a stop tone/par time on the timer and work to shoot the drill before the closing buzzer. Then next time, drop the par time by some amount, maybe 0.2 seconds. Try again. Incrementally lowering the par time, pushing yourself a little more until you can be faster AND accurate.

Your first shot is your most important shot. Make it count.

This is why I love “The Box O’ Truth” website. Old_Painless does a lot of “put up or shut up” to really see how things work, how things will behave, and puts myths to the test. No, it’s not the most scientific of things, but he goes in with an open mind, willing to be surprised and have his stances changed if the evidence presents itself. It’s certainly better than a lot of people who just go on myth, on hearsay, and other Internet chest thumping “I read it on some forum so it must be true”.

The latest article? Educational Zone #143 – What is the best weapon for home defense?

I’ve written before about home defense tools and referred to the BOT for supporting evidence. Old_Painless doesn’t use this article as a way to spout his opinion, but rather to report on numerous FACTS about home defense weapons, specifically choosing between a handgun, a shotgun, or a carbine (rifle).

He talks about each weapon platform, the advantages and disadvantages they have. Plus he busts some common myths. He’s pretty sound throughout most of the article, and you’d do well to read it. I’m not going to reprint it here, go click and read.

I did want to comment on a few points.

* Pistol advantage of them being convenient. This is true and really the main (only?) reason for a handgun (vs. a long gun). He states how this convenience factor is good because you can carry them on your person. Very true. And that you can conceal them out in public. Also true. But that concealment isn’t a big factor in home defense. Strictly speaking, that’s true. But one consideration implied here is that because you can carry them on your person — you should. Even if you’re not licensed to carry them in public, you can carry them on your person in your home (tho check your local laws). Why do this? Because the most useful tool is the one you have when you need it. You cannot know when someone will bust down your door. Not everyone is able to have a gun spaced every 3 feet in their house. For most people, getting to a dedicated home defense gun will take some time, or maybe some planning and money to ensure enough are laid around the house in accessible places. Tho of course, if you have kids, that accessibility may have to be limited and that could also increase cost. All those precious seconds to get to the shotgun could be costly. But if you have the gun on your hip, you have it right here, right now, no time wasted.

A little story. A few days ago I was home alone. Sasha (our Kuvasz) was downstairs barking at something outside. She came up to my office and parked it in a way to say “Dad, there’s something down there”. I said “OK girl, let’s go check it out”. I let her go down the hallway in front of me. Usually she does not stop at the top of the stairs, but this time she stopped — and started barking. This was peculiar behavior. My immediate reaction? I drew my gun to a retention ready position. An instant later, my brain processed that the alarm wasn’t going off so no one should be in the house. Still, I kept my gun drawn and away we investigated. Turned out to be nothing of consequence, but still… I was set into a high degree of condition orange and didn’t have any time wasted going back to fetch my AR-15. Don’t just think of a handgun as a concealment piece. It’s a tool you can carry thus you should carry. A tool is only useful if you have it when you need it.

* Shotguns – ammo. Yes, the Federal FLITECONTROL is the only stuff worthy of consideration. See my investigation of shotgun ammo. Tom Givens prefers the 8 pellet 00 buck. I’ve been using 9 pellet but will probably switch to 8 once I run out of my supply.

If you can, get the low recoil version. If it’s not labeled as such, look at the velocity. The regular loads will be something like 1300-ish fps, and the low recoil is something like 1145 fps.

Oh, and perhaps a controversial stance but, while I personally prefer a pump action, it’s a more complex manual of arms. If you are selecting this weapon for someone who may not be willing to train that much, you might want to consider a semi-auto shotgun. They generally generate less recoil than a pump. Plus, the manual of arms is generally simpler: point and click, and click again, and click again. Sure if they malfunction it’s a bigger mess, but hopefully if you’re entrusting your life to this gun you’ve done the work to ensure it’s reliable and can feed through with a high degree of confidence. If you can get the low-recoil buck to work with it, great, but it may not cycle… so yes, you better do a lot of testing beforehand.

* Shotguns – reloading. After taking Rangemaster’s Defensive Shotgun course, you realize a big part of working a shotgun is reloading. Practice it. A lot. Get dummy rounds.

* “4. Myth – You should use the firearm you are most comfortable with.”

I’ll agree with his general premise here, because while we’re all most comfortable with a little .22, that’s not the most effective stopper thus you ought to get more comfortable with better systems.

But that said, we should accept that not everyone can work a big rifle or shotgun. Some little arthritic elderly woman may only be able to handle a little .22 pistol. If that’s all she can do, just make sure she gets a heck of a lot of practice with it. So sometimes “comfort” matters.

Really tho, that’s more a matter of ability than comfort. Old_Painless’ point is to not use “comfort” as an excuse, because getting seriously injured or killed will be much more uncomfortable.

Anyways, it’s a good article. Presents the facts well. Alas, I’m sure the myths and misinformation will still float around. But please, do your part to be informed and stop the spread of bad information opinion.

I guess some kids these days are really that bored… or that depraved.

Seems there’s a new “game” called “Knockout King” going around:

The rules of the game are as simple as they are brutal. A group – usually young men or even boys as young as 12, and teenage girls in some cases – chooses a lead attacker, then seeks out a victim. Unlike typical gang violence or other street crime, the goal is not revenge, nor is it robbery. The victim is chosen at random, often a person unlikely to put up a fight. Many of the victims have been elderly. Most were alone.

The attacker charges at the victim and begins punching. If the victim goes down, the group usually scatters. If not, others join in, punching and kicking the person, often until he or she is unconscious or at least badly hurt. Sometimes the attacks are captured on cellphone video that is posted on websites.

I’d say I’m appalled, but that doesn’t convey the gravity of how much this sickens me.

They do it to show how cool they are, how tough they are. Yeah, real tough, picking on weak, old people.

But here’s the thing folks. It’s truly random. They aren’t out to rob you or rape you or any motivation other than to just pick someone and mercilessly beat them (almost) to death. Because it’s cool, because they want to get YouTube famous, because it feeds their own ego. Nothing more than that, or so it seems.

There’s really no pattern to it. They just look for an easy target and commence stomping your head into the pavement.

Whatever illusions you had about crime, about your safety based upon the neighborhood you lived in, whatever… all shattered.

Some things I take from this:

• Don’t look like a victim. Don’t look like a grass-easter, with your head down, earbuds in, and otherwise unaware of your surroundings. Like Greg Hamilton says, walk the plains like you are the biggest, baddest lion out there. Send the right message to the jackals.
• Don’t put yourself in situations of disadvantage. Don’t walk alone. Don’t go places you shouldn’t go or that could be risky.
• Trust your gut. If that crowd of teenagers makes you feel uneasy, act upon your uneasiness — take a different route, cross the street, whatever.
• You will be at a disadvantage. By nature, there will be multiple attackers, and I don’t care how badass you think you are, multiple attackers are extremely difficult to overcome no matter how good your muay thai or BJJ skills may be; even running may not save you, if you get surrounded. This is where tools to help you overcome force disparity — like a gun — can be useful. And if you do opt to carry a gun, carry it always, get training, and then don’t do nor go anywhere with a gun that you wouldn’t go or do without a gun.
• And while the gun is useful if we get to that state of last resort, realize that by nature of this attack you may never have a chance to draw a gun. You need skills well before the attack, to work to keep the attack from ever happening and/or you out of the situation. Everyone uses the term “awareness” or “my head on a swivel”, and while that’s part of it, you need skills to be able to actually DEAL with the things you become aware of. This is where training such as Insights Training Center’s Street & Vehicle Tactics and SouthNarc‘s “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC) can be invaluable.

As Sgt. Esterhaus said, “Let’s be careful out there.”