Shooting Practice for a Criminal Encounter
The second installment of my Shooting Illustrated series about organizing your shooting practice is now online.
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/content/shooting-practice-for-a-criminal-encounter
I always include more photos with my article submissions than can be used. After this paragraph in the article, I included what is possibly my favorite shooting photo of all time.
Shooters often blast an entire box of ammunition at the target without checking and then marking it consistently. This is one of the worst mistakes that can be made when practicing for marksmanship development and self-defense.
Sadly, along with several others, it was cut for space reasons. The photo is of a target that was left up at my gun club years ago. Every time I look at it, I literally Laugh Out Loud. I call it the ‘goober target.’
That is not the way to learn how to shoot to hit anything. Another photo that was cut shows how to mark your target with masking tape every few shots.
As mentioned in the article, checking and marking your target regularly will help you improve your marksmanship. Blasting away and creating a goober target will not.
Here is the Pump target. No one can say you’re practicing to shoot unarmed people if you have a representation of a gun on your target.
It’s getting to be a wild world out there; be ready.
Fundamentals and Training Aids (Part 1)
#fridayfundamentals
Revisiting the series about the Fundamentals of Pistol Shooting https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/fundamentals-of-pistol-shooting-part-1/ brings to mind the subject of training aids. Training aids are other pieces of equipment you will find useful for marksmanship and gunhandling practice. Your pistol shouldn’t be your only practice tool. There are a wide variety of readily available and inexpensive training aids.
An Inert pistol replica is the most valuable training aid you can own. Having a replica of your real gun is the best but it’s not absolutely necessary. This picture shows a small portion of my collection of inert pistols. No trainer worth his or her salt lacks at least one inert pistol for demonstration purposes.
The rubber 1911 is the first training aid I ever acquired. I carried it on field exercises when I was a 90mm M67 Recoilless Rifle Gunner in the Army and didn’t want to clean two weapons every time I came back from the field. I’ve had it for 50 years now.
The orange and blue camo inert pistol was purchased from WalMart for less than $10. If no replica of your personal pistol is readily available, at least there’s something that can be used. It also makes a satisfying pew-pew noise when the trigger is pressed.
A SIRT Pistol is a useful option but expensive. Only three models are available; Glock 17, S&W M&P, and a generic subcompact model that reportedly only fits a holster for a Springfield XD-S.
An inert pistol can be used in a variety of ways. Among other things:
- Draw practice, especially for those who are reluctant to practice with their real pistol at home.
- Checking the solidity of your grip by having a partner hold the front of the slide and try to move it around.
- Practice getting your pistol out of its safe storage location quickly.
- Introducing others to holding a pistol without intimidating them.
- Doing demonstrations without endangering others.
There are also a number of other training aids that can improve your shooting.
How to use these other training aids will be covered in future installments of this series.
Tactical Professor books (all PDF)
https://store.payloadz.com/results/337896-tactical-professor
Negative Outcome from Opening the Door
Bottom Line Up Front
Do not open (nor even unlock) your [exterior] door[s] until you’re confident this person does not represent a threat.
John Farnam
Excellent advice on many items in John’s post.
Also read this post about ‘Castle Defense.’
http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=18502
Forewarned is forearmed.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – December 2023
Rather than my usual boring rants about Serious Mistakes, Negative Outcomes, and excruciatingly detailed analyses of Armed Citizen incidents, I’ve decided to do something different for 2024.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is an iconic movie in American cinema and arguably the best of the ‘Spaghetti Westerns.’ A new feature in 2024 for my Patreon page is a monthly post based on this theme; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It will feature a Good incident by an armed citizen, a Bad incident resulting in a Negative Outcome, and a stupid and unbelievable Ugly happening.
My Patrons get first look at it on the last day of each month. The following month I’ll unlock the Patreon post on the last Monday and link it here for my blog Followers. Today’s the day to unlock the December 2023 edition.
My hope is to make it both educational and entertaining. I’m very excited about the idea and hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed researching and writing it. The movie soundtrack is outstanding so a snippet from the soundtrack will be part of each month’s post also.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/good-bad-and-95600517
Enjoy!
The GBU isn’t drawn from The Armed Citizen column of the official NRA Journals but the December edition of The Armed Citizen is attached. Rather than an obsessive interest in ‘the worst case scenario,’ it shows what the vast majority of Defensive Gun Uses really look like.
A Way of the Wheelgun
#wheelgunwednesday
In 2022, I created a four month Patreon series for developing shooting and gunhandling skills with snub nosed revolvers. There are a total of 65 articles in the series and it is the online equivalent of a book. All the articles are now available as a Collection on my Patreon page. Unlike a book, you can read it at your leisure on your Smartphone.
The basis for the Series is the principles and techniques of the Snub Nose classes I taught for decades and the two DVDs I made about snubs. Also included are examples of what went right and wrong in several real life incidents involving snubs.
There is a great deal of emphasis in the Series on ‘dry practice,’ i.e., practice without ammunition. There is also periodic live fire (originally monthly) of no more than 50 rounds. The live fire is compatible with either indoor or outdoor ranges because the vast majority (999/1000 by my calculation) of gunowners only have access to indoor ranges.
The first three posts in the Collection are unlocked and available for anyone to read. These initial posts describe Safety Protocols during dry practice to avoid putting bullet holes in people, places, and things where they are undesirable. Tragedies can and do take place during dry practice and we want to avoid those at all costs.
For anyone who owns and/or carries a snub, this is a good program. Anyone who does any dry practice, whether with a revolver or autoloader, will benefit from at least reading the first three posts about Safety Protocols.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/snub-revolver-97045992
Subscribers to my Concealed Carry Skills Tier ($3/month) https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor have access to all the articles in the Collection plus all the articles I write on Patreon about marksmanship and gunhandling. In the financial industry, we’d say the Return On Investment (ROI) is very high.
Organizing Your Shooting Practice – I
Start the new year off right with this easy to shoot, easy to practice drill.
The NRA online website Shooting Illustrated has published the first of my series of articles about using the framework of State Level CCW Qualification Courses as marksmanship drills. The series is geared toward the new gunowner audience but even experienced shooters can gain something from it.
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/content/organizing-your-shooting-practice/
The philosophy behind the series is to give new gunowners at least a small idea of what they can do to gain some degree of proficiency with their guns. While “Do the work” has become a mantra in the training community in the 21st Century; what trainers mean by that is simply unrealistic in the context of most people’s busy lives. The goal of the Organizing Your Practice series is ‘Do Something.’ As my late colleague Paul Gomez said, “Shoot Yor Guns.”
Each of the monthly sessions can be accomplished by going to an indoor range for an hour, buying one box of ammunition, and getting in a short but meaningful practice session. If a shooter doesn’t even shoot the whole Session of the article; that’s okay. At least they know what it’s like when the gun goes off and what the sound of gunfire and the feel of recoil are like. The majority of adults are visual learners. For them, there’s also a YouTube Short about the session at https://youtu.be/AV4HSnAj_rw?si=pSbB0lNG5jILyrmM.
The purpose of the video isn’t really to provide a guide to the session. It’s mostly to show what real shooting looks like as opposed to the foolishness that is usually seen on TV and movies. Although Jennifer Garner frequently looked great on Alias, the shooting was always utterly ridiculous.
As a guide for staying on task at the range, I created an Aide-mémoire (Cheat Sheet) that can be folded up and brought along in a pocket.
If you would like to download the Cheat Sheet and/or cool Upper and Middle Target Sheets, they’re attached.
Attachments
- MCOLES Cheat Sheet
- Upper Target Sheet
- Middle Target Sheet
Since gear is always of interest, the demonstration for this article was done with a Taurus 856 .38 Special snub nose revolver and Blazer ammunition. The laser wasn’t used during the shooting. Reloads were done using the Zeta6 K-Pak2 Speedloader https://zetasix.com/product/k-pak2/ equipped with a Retention ring https://retentionring.com/ .
Very Good Shooting and Enjoy!
Downrange Incident During Home Invasion
From the Armed Citizen http://graphics.nra.org/ac/ac-138.html this month.
Authorities say a man opened fire on a suspected burglar who attacked his wife at their home
Deputies said [the intruder] encountered a 74-year-old woman inside the residence and ‘began to struggle with her physically.’ Her husband heard her screams and saw her struggling with Jackson. The man then retrieved his firearm and shot Jackson in the right shoulder.
This is what I call a ‘downrange incident.’ I.e., there’s an innocent party downrange and in close proximity to the attacker. Incidents where close range precision is required are more common than is realized.
A downrange drill is part of all my private sessions above the beginner level. The shooter has only one round in the pistol. Two IDPA targets downrange with one placed directly to the side of the -0 zone. The shooter can advance to any distance they feel they can make a -0 hit, either head or body, on the first shot without hitting the hostage. Even experienced shooters tend to get somewhere within Social Space (4-12 feet).
It doesn’t have to be an IDPA match scenario
but practicing the ‘downrange shot’ occasionally is worthwhile.
The Cost of Killing Redux
#fridayfundamentals
I’ve written about the Cost of Killing several times. https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2016/07/24/the-cost-of-killing/ Even to someone who is involved but not the shooter, it’s incredibly hard on people.
Here’s yet another sad example.
I-Team: St. Louis family demands answers after double homicide case went from murder to self-defense
Note that the story begins with “Eric and Arron Smith were gunned down following a domestic violence incident,” as if they were innocent victims of a senseless shooting.
A précis of the incident is that a violent domestic abuser and his violent brother, Eric and Arron Smith, were shot and killed in self-defense by the victim’s sister’s boyfriend. The sister had stashed the abuser’s pistol in her purse when the rescue party arrived. The abuser’s brother arrived with his own pistol, beat one of the party with it, and gunpointed the rescuers. At that point, the victim’s sister took the abuser’s pistol out of her purse and gave it to her boyfriend. The boyfriend then shot and killed both the abuser and his gunpointing brother. The boyfriend was arrested, charged with Murder, and placed in Jail with no bond.
The prosecutor subsequently hid evidence from the shooter’s defense attorney. When this was uncovered by a Grand Jury and judge, the charges were reduced to Manslaughter, and the shooter was released on bond. Fourteen months later, shortly before trial, all charges were dropped.
The saddest part of the entire affair is that a few days before the trial was to begin, the sister who gave the gun to her boyfriend to protect the rescuers committed suicide. The shooter’s defense attorney didn’t want to speculate why she did that.
“We don’t know what occurred that led her to take her own life.”
Having been a party to the killing of two men she knew and then having to recount all the details in court is a good guess as to why.
“We weren’t trying to start any problems, we were just trying to help my sister,” she told the POlice.
RIP Kaylee Castro
Surveillance Detection Principles
#walkbackwednesday
In the April 1996 edition of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin https://leb.fbi.gov/file-repository/archives/april-1996.pdf/view , Supervisory Special Agent John C. Hall wrote:
“Realistic training does not state general platitudes and then leave officers to figure the rest out for themselves. It provides clear principles to govern the application of deadly force and then illustrates appropriate application through practical examples.” – p25
This could be paraphrased for Private Citizens as:
Realistic [education] does not state general platitudes and then leave [Citizens] to figure the rest out for themselves. It provides clear principles to govern [personal protection] and then illustrates appropriate application through practical examples.
Therefore, let’s consider Surveillance Detection. Surveillance Detection is a preemptive action that we can take to prevent getting into ugly situations at all. The following story is a reminder of its value.
Woman shot in the face in ambush as she’s followed home from store
https://news.yahoo.com/woman-shot-face-ambush-she-153809301.html
“Investigators say the women were driving home from a neighborhood market, and as they pulled into the driveway, they noticed a vehicle had followed them , KTRK reported.
A man got out of the vehicle and fired a single shot, striking the woman in the face, police told the outlet.”
There’s more to this story than stated in the article but that’s irrelevant in the educational context. These are some ‘clear principles’ and ‘practical examples’ of how to perform surveillance detection.
Principle 1
The time to notice that someone is following you is NOT when you turn into your driveway/parking spot as you a sitting duck. You should be aware of their presence long before then.
Look in your mirrors at least three times during turns as you drive home. All three times should be before you make the last turn onto your final approach, i.e., the street you live on. If you see the same vehicle behind you three times, you may have a problem.
Principle 2
If someone is following you, DON’T GO HOME. Or any other place where you will be a sitting duck either. One comment on the article was to go to a POlice station. Especially in the days of officer shortage and defunding the POlice, this isn’t a good idea. Call 911 and keep driving. If you’re in a ‘Hands-free’ State, maybe a POlice will pull you over and then you can explain why you’re on your phone. That should solve the problem right now. Other ideas are in this post. https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2023/09/29/surveillance-detection-after-a-confrontation/
As this poor woman found out, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are NOT out to get you.”
If you like my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor I post a lot of content there that doesn’t go on my blog.
Pocket Carry
Now that cold weather is upon us, pocket carry in an overcoat pocket has some advantages. Pocket carry has both upsides and downsides.
Upsides
- It’s far easier to access a gun in a coat pocket than to undo the coat and draw a holstered pistol. This is especially true when you’re seated in a vehicle with a seat belt on.
- You can put your hand on your gun as soon as you perceive trouble or even walk around with your hand on your gun in general.
- A draw from the pocket, starting with hand on gun, is faster for most people than drawing from a concealed holster.
Downsides
- Pocket carry usually requires a smaller and more compact handgun.
- A separate pocket holster is advisable.
- You may be wearing gloves.
- If you come in from outside and have to hang up your coat in an unsecured area, you’ll need to do something with the pocket pistol to secure it.
- The pocket draw is a little different than drawing from a belt holster.
- Said smaller and more compact handgun will probably become your primary tool in an incident.
Most people don’t practice as much with their smaller guns as they do larger ones. Pocketable pistols are usually both ego challenging and uncomfortable to shoot. Nonetheless, some familiarization is a good idea.
The CCW Practical Exercise from Switzerland is short and uncomplicated familiarization drill. The Swiss are a very practical people.
All shooting is done wearing a concealment garment with a holstered weapon.
- 2 shots at 7 meters in 4 seconds. 3 times.
- 2 shots at 5 meters in 3.5 seconds. 3 times
- 2 shots at 3 meters in 3.0 seconds. 3 times.
18 rounds total. 14 hits required to pass. The hit area (dark area) of their target is roughly equivalent to the IDPA -1 zone. Hits on the silhouette outside the hit area don’t count. They penalize 1 hit for any impacts outside the silhouette.
If you decide to pocket carry, it’s worth doing at least a short tuneup with your pocket pistol. A dry practice session for your draw is a must. A short live fire session to get the lint out of your gun and be sure it works is also in order.
tacticalprofessor 
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