Threat management interview on Ballistic Radio
John Johnston of Ballistic Radio and I spoke on the air last weekend about Threat Management.
Threat Management is a topic that is woefully under-represented in most people’s skill set. Going to the range occasionally only helps develop the shooting skills. In contrast, how much time do folks spend on the skills that lead to ‘non-shooting?’ A short list would include, but is not limited to:
Verbalization,
STOP! Don’t come any closer!
Making the shoot/no shoot decision,
And adversary identification
Learning and practicing those skills can help us keep a situation under control before shooting and hopefully prevent a shooting at all.
Here’s the permalink to the interview. http://content.blubrry.com/ballisticradio/140824_BALLISTICS.mp3
SCCY pistol first impression
I was given the opportunity to shoot a SCCY CPX-2 pistol today. The pistol has been of some interest to me because of its small size, double action only mechanism, and relatively low price point. Many people are price constrained about what they can buy, so inexpensive but serviceable pistols are always of interest to me.
In the past I owned a Kel Tec P11, to which the CPX-2 bears a strong resemblance. I thought the P11 had promise as a pocket pistol for me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The trigger was so bad that I could never get a split under .50. And it had the annoying tendency to not ignite +p ammo, which made no sense to me but was a well known problem at that time. Finally, I gave up and sold it to someone who really wanted it.
So the SCCY had to have a lot better trigger than the P11 to fill the bill for me. The only real way to test that is to shoot it. Through an unexpected coincidence, a meeting was arranged with the local representative, who met us at Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range with several pistols. He had a number of guns in a large laptop bag, just like I am prone to use as a range bag. He explained some of the features of the CPX-2.
- Very important to me was that it can be dryfired, which some KelTec pistols cannot.
- It also has a second strike capability, which I like. Although the standard doctrine upon receiving a click is to tap-rack, gunowners who are not well regulated don’t know what that phrase means, much less how or when to execute it. Having a second strike capability will allow an untrained user the opportunity to simply press the trigger again and maybe get a bang.
- It’s very easy to disassemble, which cannot be said for the Kahr, another popular DAO compact gun.
- The CPX-2 has a polymer front sight and a steel rear sight, unlike the P11. The rear sight has two huge white dots on it, which are much larger than the dot on the front sight. I dislike this ‘feature.’ If I bought one, a black Sharpie would be the first thing I would put to it.
As an initial benchmark, I shot a variant of the LAPD Retired Officer Qualification Course. The course consists of 10 rounds shot at seven yards on a silhouette target. My variation is to use two magazines of five rounds each, one of which has a randomly inserted dummy round in it. Shoot five, reload five, and clear the dummy wherever it happens to show up is how I do the drill. I was easily able to shoot the course at speed with only two hits outside the 10 ring.
Although most personal protection incidents occur within seven yards or less, the need to shoot at longer distances is not unknown. My colleague Tom Givens, has documented several armed citizen shootings at distances from 15 to 22 yards, which represent about 5% of his students’ encounters.
To test the SCCY at distances like this, we set a target at 15 yards and fired a five shot group on the torso. I was able to shoot a five inch group, despite the distracting dots on the rear sight and the indoor lighting. Then I moved the target out to 20 yards and fired a five shot group at the head. Although it was only about four inches, it was centered slightly to the right of the head. I fired another group while really concentrating on the rear notch. This group was more satisfactory, with all the rounds hitting the head in a five inch circle. This exercise confirmed for me why I dislike three dot sights so much.
I finished by shooting five rounds at seven yards Strong Hand Only, followed by five rounds Weak Hand Only. The group was slightly larger but still acceptable.
The pistol’s handling qualities were good and we experienced no malfunctions. The only issue we encountered was with the slide failing to lock back when a friend shot the pistol also. This occurred because my friend doesn’t have the proper grip habit of keeping his thumb away from the side of the pistol.
The CPX-2 has a full size ‘Slide Hold Lever’ and if the thumb is not kept away from it, the pistol is not going to lock open on the last shot. It would also be easy to bump it up if the thumb were positioned under the lever. The rep said a flat lever was available from the factory.
There is also a laser available from ArmaLaser. The laser comes on when the pistol is gripped and requires no manual pressing of activation buttons.
Overall, after 100 rounds, my impression was quite favorable for an Every Day Carry piece. I may get one and try it out in IDPA to see what I can do with it.
Using pepper spray effectively
The second class I attended at Paul-E-Palooza 2 was OC and “less-lethal” for CCW folks given by Lt. Chuck Haggard of the Topeka Police Department. There was a little humor about the class title because to many attendees, ‘OC’ means Open Carry rather than Oleoresin Capsicum. As a result Chuck had to explain he was talking about pepper spray.
Chuck has extensive training and experience with pepper spray. He is a National instructor for the National Law Enforcement Training Center and an Adjunct instructor for Strategos International. He has also been featured as a guest on Ballistic Radio. Chuck stated that he has been sprayed with OC about 60 times, in the training context, and has sprayed somewhere around 1000 people. Most of his sprayees are Police Cadets since his department has a mandatory exposure to OC policy for its officers.
I wanted to take the class because I am a firm believer in carrying what I call ‘Intermediate Force Options.’ Pepper spray is one of those weapons that give us a response to predatory behavior not requiring deadly force. As I state in all my classes “Lacking an intermediate force option while you are armed with a firearm implies that all you are willing to do to protect yourself is kill someone.” That’s not a position most reasonable people would be comfortable in taking, given a little bit of thought.
The class began with a lecture including a review of OC history, products, training and best practices. It then moved on to aspects people need to know for effective use, carry and deployment. Once the lecture was completed, the class moved into the open for practical application with inert trainers. No live weapons, ammo or OC were allowed in the practical exercises. Dummy guns and inert pepper spray canisters, which sprayed water only, were furnished. Eye protection was also furnished to the students.
Once again, as at the Rangemaster Tactical Conference, I had the distinct honor and pleasure of beginning the demonstrations by spraying Chuck in the face with an inert container. We demonstrated two scenarios. In the first, Chuck began to encroach on my personal space while I attempted verbal dissuasion. When he continued to advance, I gave him a good dose and then quickly moved away while he simulated remembering a previous appointment. In the second scenario, after I sprayed him, he became irate and threatened me with a training knife. At that point, I transitioned to my dummy gun and gave him a good cowboy “Pow, pow, pow” while maneuvering away.
The second scenario was especially interesting for me because I ended up with the pepper spray container in my left hand and my dummy pistol in my right. I shot one handed while maneuvering away from him. I’m not sure how things ended up that way because I started with the can in my right hand. I’m curious whether I transferred the can initially or if I did a ‘Border Shift’ with the can when I started to draw my pistol. I do remember seeing my sights while I was shooting. My dummy pistol has a rear sight notch cut in it because I cannot abide a pistol without sights, even a dummy pistol.
After our demonstrations, the students then split up into two groups. Initially, one group played the predator while the other played the role of the defender. Then the groups switched roles. The students enacted both the non-lethal and lethal scenarios while spraying each other. The class concluded with a critique of spraying and maneuvering.
I don’t practice as much as I would like with my personal OC, a Zombie Spitfire from Sabre. The class gave me a little tuneup, as well as some interesting background on the evolution of pepper spray as an Intermediate Force Option.
Tactical Decision Making (Part II)
There are numerous definitions of Wargaming. Most of them are too elaborate for our use. The definition I am using now is: The process of evaluating your options in light of your situation and the circumstances. Wargaming is a way determining if:
- Your tactics work.
- The tactics employed contribute to your strategic end goal.
- There are significant possible negative outcomes
Wargaming has the following characteristics:
- Evaluates a possible Course of Action against opposing adversary.
- It is an iterative process of action, reaction, and counteraction.
- At a minimum, it should start if you go to Condition Orange. When you’re on the ground, in a pre-contact situation, the wargaming will not be very in depth. But the better your grasp of your end goals, possible options, and negative outcomes, the quicker and simpler it will be.
First, you have to decide what your end goal is. This should be done before you walk out the door of your home each day. Deciding your end goal does not mean saying “I would do this.” That is just one step of the process and not the first.
In my previous post about Tactical Decision Making, I listed some end goals and some possible negative outcomes. Both of those lists, and any additions you may have to them, are worth reviewing from time to time.
It’s extremely important to take into consideration the possible negative outcomes. Failure to consider consequences is a huge gap in most people’s analysis of the situation. Some of the consequences are legal but not all of them are.
Some concrete examples of negative outcomes are:
- Zimmerman shooting – Extensive and costly interaction with legal system ($2.5 million in attorney fees)
- Theodore Wafer shooting, Detroit – Murder conviction
- Jerome Ersland, Oklahoma City pharmacist – murder conviction, life sentence in prison
- Petit murders, Connecticut – Loss of wife and daughters under horrible circumstances
- Joseph Robert Wilcox, Las Vegas – murdered trying to stop an active killer
- Joe Hendrix, Georgia – shot an elderly man with Alzheimer’s – consequences to be discovered in the future
There are three areas you must consider as part of your wargaming. They are your situation, your options, and the circumstances; i.e., your surroundings and the event. We’ll discuss these in the next installment.
Tactical Decision Making (Part I)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-– Inigo Montoya
My main presentation at Paul-E-Palooza 2 was entitled Tactical Decision Exercises. I wanted to do it because I have come to feel we in the training community concentrate on teaching marksmanship and manipulation skills at the expense of tactics and decision-making skills. As strange as it sounds, coming from someone of my background, I think that’s a problem. When I look at incidents that have had negative outcomes for the Citizen, it’s rarely because of a failure of mechanical skills. Most of the time, the failure is due to a bad decision, poor tactics, or a combination of both.
Trainers often refer to the Holy Grail of achieving ‘unconscious competence.’ However, good decision-making is usually a thoughtful conscious process. Consequently, I’m not sure that focusing our training methodologies on an unconscious process helps our students develop the thinking skills they need to make good decisions under stress. We need to have our mechanical skills adequately developed so we don’t have to focus on them but we also have to realize that they are an end to a means.
In our Grand Campaign, our ultimate object is to wage successful war on land in the heart of EUROPE against the main body of the GERMAN strategic reserve. It is true that we have to cross the enemy’s beaches, but that to us must be merely an episode. True, it is a vital episode and, if it is not successful, the whole expedition will fail. We must plan for the crossing of the beaches, but let us make sure that we get that part of the plan in its right perspective as a passing phase.
—General Morgan, Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander, 1943
It’s not hard to find examples of ‘what if’ questions about personal protection situations on Internet forums and some respondents refer to ‘wargaming’ these hypothetical situations. The problem is that the term ‘wargaming’ is frequently used, but what it means is often misunderstood. What most people do when presented with a hypothetical ‘what if’ scenario is ‘brainstorming,’ not wargaming. Wargaming takes brainstorming at least two steps further by including the elements of consequences and an adversary, who also makes decisions about what to do.
The management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton consults regularly for the Department of Defense and other large clients about the wargaming process. Their website contains much useful information about the fundamentals of the process.
In order to wargame effectively, it’s important for us to understand the difference between strategy and tactics.
- Tactics – doing things right, which is what most training classes focus on.
- Strategy – doing the right things. This results from a thinking process, hopefully done ahead of time.
- The dividing line is physical contact. Once you make contact, you’re going to execute tactics, hopefully that support a strategy you have already developed.
- In my observation and experience, the conscious mind rapidly disappears upon contact, for most people. So, there’s not going to be much strategy development going on once contact is made. If you haven’t thought about the right things to do ahead of time, you’re unlikely to do so once you encounter a threat.
There are various military, police, and firefighting models for wargaming. However, the weakness of applying those models to our circumstances is that they are based on receiving a defined mission statement from a higher level of command. For example:
You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other Allied Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her Armed Forces.
–Combined Chiefs of Staff directive to General Eisenhower for Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of Nazi occupied Europe
However, we, as Private Citizens develop our own mission statements, based on our values and goals. That’s a major difference from the institutional models.
Without a mission statement, even effective brainstorming is difficult and wargaming is impossible because it’s unclear what you’re trying to accomplish. The object of wargaming is learning to make decisions with a positive strategic end goal in mind. And we definitely want to avoid negative outcomes.
Some positive end goals you might consider are:
- Enjoying life with your family and children
- Seeing your children grow up healthy and prosperous
- Participate in enjoyable hobbies
- Build a successful business
- Retire comfortably
Negative outcomes you most likely want to avoid are:
- Interaction with the legal system
- Serious Bodily Injury
- Death
- Misdemeanor or Felony conviction
- Going to jail or prison
- Loss of community and family associations (ostracization or separation)
- Shooting or otherwise hurting an innocent person
When I asked the class to write down their individual mission statements regarding personal protection, I noticed many did not. Please reflect on your goals and possible negative outcomes and then write down your mission statement for personal protection. I’ll discuss how it fits into the concept of wargaming and tactical decision exercises in the next few installments.
Ego defenses
The maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.
While comparing notes from our experiences at Paul-E-Palooza 2, a friend of mine noted how many excuses for poor hits he heard during the live fire block he attended. “I haven’t gotten used to the sights on my gun.” “The offset I have to use at this distance is throwing me off.” “When I shoot pistol in 3 Gun, I smoke it, but I can’t seem to hit these little targets.” Etc., etc., etc. Those are all ego defenses shooters use to avoid saying “When put to the test, it’s clear I’m not as proficient as I like to think I am.”
Let’s compare that with the Facebook commentary of a very smart and honest lady I coached a little during the same block.
After this class I had a live fire with Dr. [Sherman] House. He did dot drills and eye targets. We shot at 3 and 5 yards at these tiny targets. Fact from Dr. House, under stress your shot pattern will double in size. [So,] We might as well practice on targets 1 ¾ inches big. Out of the 30 shooters, I suck because I anticipated recoil. [Obviously, from my point of view, she was far from being the only one whose performance could stand some improvement.] I got a private lesson by “THE PROFESSOR Claude Werner”. … Professor Werner taught me to focus on a slow trigger press. [Actually, I was trying to emphasize a smooth trigger press] When Doc Werner pressed my trigger while I had the sights aligned[,] I hit the target dead center. I know what to work on. I need to dry fire weekly.
At times, we all suck, on a relative basis. The way to get past it is to figure how to “shoot better,” as Bill Rogers puts it. Then accept that we need to do some work on our weakness and get to it without using a lame excuse as an ego defense.
A little coaching can help determine what the problem is. In the above lady’s case, she was very good at using her sights; when I pressed the trigger for her, the round struck exactly where it was supposed to. She just needs to work on her trigger manipulation. She self-identified the problem and the solution. I have no doubt she will work on it vigorously.
Many shooters spend a lot of time, money, and effort refining and changing their equipment in an attempt to improve their performance. It was interesting that even at a training conference like Paul-E-Palooza, during the charity auction, ‘cool’ equipment items sold at a premium to retail while training items sold at a discount to retail. My observation is that the solution usually resides inside the shooter rather than in a hardware solution. As one of my colleagues puts it: “I have a friend who will kill you with a Lorcin and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it.”
Scaling targets
Math is like going to the gym for your brain. It sharpens your mind.
“Claude, how do I shrink an IDPA target so it appears as though it is 25 yards away when my dry fire range is 7 yards? Thank you.”
Many people think they will never use elementary algebra once they leave high school but sometimes it still comes in handy. The above question can be simply solved through the use of cross-multiplication.
The first part of the problem is we have to determine the ratio of the two distances and then solve for the correct size (height) of the target. The IDPA target is 30 inches tall and would be full size at 25 yards. How tall would it be at seven yards?
| Height | 30 | x |
| yards | 25 | 7 |
Cross multiplication means the product of the upper left and lower right will be the same as the product of the lower left and upper right. So, 30 times 7 will equal 25 times x. This works out to 210 equals 25x. But we only want 1x, so we then divide both sides by 25. Our answer is 8.4. I.e., a target 8.4 inches tall at seven yards will have the same size ratio as a full size (30 inch) target at 25 yards. Granted, there are depth perception and visual acuity issues that come into play but it’s an imperfect world and we just do the best we can.
The second part of the problem is to make a target 8.4 inches tall out of the images available to us. I did this using crude methods but effective. Using an IDPA target image captured from the internet, I sent it to Print Preview.
The original size was way too small so I took a guess and enlarged it to 400 percent. I then took a ruler and measured the preview pane, which was 2.25 inches tall. This makes a relationship of 2.25 inches to an actual print page of 11 inches. The target image height is 8.4 inches so the task is to find the representative size on the screen. Cross multiples again can provide the answer.
| Actual height | 11 | 8.4 |
| Screen height | 2.25 | x |
This gives us 2.25 times 8.4 equal 11x. 18.816 equal 11x. 18.816 divided by 11 gives us 1.72, the desired screen height. However, the 400 percent image on the screen only measured 1.375, so I needed to find the correct print percentage. Doing another cross-multiplication answers that question.
| Screen height | 1.375 | 400 |
| Desired height | 1.72 | x |
Solving for x gives 500 percent, which I then printed and verified.
Since I do this regularly, I have a scaling spreadsheet set up in Excel. It allows me to do this kind of scaling in less time than it probably takes to read this post.
Teaching the Snub Nose Revolver
No possible rapidity of fire can atone for habitual carelessness of aim with the first shot. —Theodore Roosevelt, (26th President of the United States) The Wilderness Hunter, 1893
Last night I taught my ‘Introduction to the J Frame Revolver’ class. It’s probably the last time I’m going to teach it; the market just isn’t there anymore and it’s hard to get much enrollment.
However, I’ve been teaching the snub heavily since before 9/11 and think I’ve evolved a very workable program. There are still many people who have snubs and some of them may be interested in knowing what they’re doing with it. To that end, I’m going to post my entire Program Of Instruction for anyone who wants to use it. The live fire portion is exactly 50 rounds. What I found was that casual shooters of the snub tend to experience a noticeable dropoff in performance after 50 rounds, so I cut it down to that.
Course Overview – A skill builder short course particular to 5 shot revolvers.
The intent is to show basic techniques and give a methodology for subsequent practice. “I cannot make you an expert in three hours but I can show you what to do and how to practice to increase your skill.”
Methodology
• Explanation of strength and weaknesses of the snub
• Demonstration of proper grip for revolvers. Some modification may be necessary based on an individual’s hands.
• Show different kinds of grips that can be installed on a snub to better fit a person’s hands.
• Explanation of sighting techniques and how range affects them
• Disciplined learning exercises, including ball and dummy and dryfire
• Ball and dummy is achieved by opening the cylinder after a few shots, spinning it, and then closing it without looking where the fired case(s) end up. Do this once or twice per cylinder.
• Concludes with a Qualification Course because everyone should have a benchmark of where they are. Shooters should also be able to demonstrate in court that they have a measureable degree of competency.
Snub Revolver Intro Class Practical Exercise (single relay)
Six Circle w/dot target (5 yards)
1) Demonstrate how to load with loose ammo and explain why that’s important.
2) Explanation of Spot shooting and how to pick a spot on your target
3) On top left row, fire a 5 shot group.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/5) (Spin cylinder 2X)
4) On center left row, from high ready, fire 1 shot 5 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/10) (Spin cylinder 2X)
5) Explanation of proper drawstroke
6) On bottom left row, draw and fire 1 shot 5 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/15) (Spin cylinder 2X)
7) On top right row, from high ready, fire 2 shots 2 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (4/19) (Load with four plus fired case, spin cylinder)
8) On middle right row, draw and fire 2 shots 2 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (4/23) (Load with four plus fired case, spin cylinder)
9) On bottom right row, from high ready, fire 5 shots 1 time
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/28)
Tape hits outside of circle (this wasn’t necessary because the class was hitting pretty well)
10) On top right row, fire a 5 shot group, strong hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/33) (Spin cylinder 2X)
11) On middle right row, from high ready, fire 1 shot 5 times, strong hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/38) (Spin cylinder 2X)
12) On bottom right row, fire a 2 shot group, weak hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (2/40)
Change targets [B-27]
13) Shoot the LAPD Retired Officer Qualification Course
a. “The starting position for this qualifying course of fire will begin at the 7 Yard Line. When the target faces, the shooter will draw and fire 10 rounds at a single silhouette target. A score of 70 percent is required to pass the qualification. All rounds impacting anywhere on the body and head will receive full value and rounds impacting upon the arms are half value.” (10/50)
b. I chose the LAPD Retired Officer Course because the LAPD is a respected law enforcement organization, known for its emphasis on firearms proficiency. Since the LAPD considers this Course sufficient for its Retired Officers to demonstrate their ability to defend themselves, I think it’s a good choice for Armed Citizens, as well.
14) Record Student Performance on Qual Course.
15) Show various types of speedloaders and speed strip, where to get them, and how to use them. Explain strengths and weaknesses of each type.
a. HKS
b. Safariland
c. Jet Loader
d. SL Variant
e. Dade
f. Speed-Strips and Tuff-Strips
16) Explain idiosyncrasies of pocket holsters and how to use them correctly.
Adjourn to classroom to award certificates.
Pass out Armed Citizen Legal Defense Network booklet What Every Gun Owner Needs to Know About Self-Defense Law
Conclude with the message that we are more likely to be injured or killed in a car wreck than by a criminal. Mention that a Defensive Driving Course costs only $35 in Georgia and auto insurance companies are required to lower your insurance premium by 10% for taking it.
Some of the coursework is shown on the Personal Defense Network DVD Fundamental of Snub Nosed Revolvers for Defense
Lessons for the Armed Citizen from the Dorner Incidents
A defensive gun use (DGU) by an Armed Citizen is a balance of doing the right things, doing things right, and not doing the wrong things.
Christopher Dorner was a former LAPD Officer who went crazy in February 2013, murdered several people, and eventually committed suicide when surrounded by the authorities. During the manhunt for Dorner, two mistaken identity shootings by police occurred in the Los Angeles area. One shooting, by Torrance Police Officers, occurred near a checkpoint and the other in the vicinity of a LAPD Captain’s home. The home was being protected by a detail of LAPD Officers because the Captain may have been a specific target of Dorner’s.
A recent settlement for the Torrance Police shooting has revived commentary about the ‘trigger happy police,’ etc. I will be the first to admit I wouldn’t want to be downrange during such an episode but there are also lessons to be learned from the mistaken identity shootings. And those lessons don’t just apply to the law enforcement community.
First of all, note that both shootings occurred during periods of limited visibility, i.e., early morning. Humans have a natural apprehension of the dark. Couple this natural fear with the possibility of dealing with a dangerous criminal and our emotional trigger mechanisms can get stretched pretty tight. In the case of the LAPD shooting, the Officers had been on station for several hours already. They had also been recently informed that Dorner had engaged two police officers nearby and murdered one of them.
How does this apply to the Armed Citizen? Think about how you might feel if you hear a crash in your home in the middle of the night. Likely, you will have been awakened from sleep, you will not know what the situation is, and very probably your spouse will be providing you with a sense of urgency to determine and fix the problem. If you are like most people, your interior lights are not on, so you are operating in conditions of limited visibility. Now throw in the possibility of a heightened sense of danger, for instance, having a daughter who has recently obtained a Protection Order staying with you for safety reasons. The possibility is high that you will not have the same sense of ease and self-control you do when you go to the indoor range and casually prepare to practice shooting some rounds at a bullseye target.
Second, the Police do not train very much to work in groups larger than two. This point was made very succinctly by my Battalion Commander when we were practicing riot control in the National Guard. Watch any multi-officer takedown of a criminal and it’s obvious they do not operate with a sense of military coordination. Police Officers spent almost all of their time working independently, not as part of a team. Only SWAT units generally are trained to work in groups larger than two.
What does the lack of teamwork have to do with the Armed Citizen? Just as the Police don’t spend much time practicing teamwork with each other; neither do Armed Citizens tend to spend much time practicing teamwork with their families and friends. The probability that your spouse and/or children are not going to do what you want them to or what you tell them to do is high. So don’t be surprised if an incident involving more than one potential victim turns out to be a complicated problem to solve.
Third, communications among the Officers left something to be desired. In the case of the Torrance Police shooting, the victim had been identified as a non-threat just a few seconds before. Unfortunately, this had evidently not been communicated to Officers right down the street. When I conduct training for couples, one of the main concerns they express is their ability to communicate during a criminal encounter. The couples I work with tend to already be ‘switched on’ so this is an area that deserves considerable emphasis in our personal practice.
All this is not to defend or justify the mistaken identity shootings. The LAPD Board of Police Commissioners found the LAPD Officers’ actions ‘out of policy’ and rightly so. Rather, it is to point out that a defensive gun use (DGU) by an Armed Citizen, just as by a Law Enforcement Officer, is a balance of doing the right things, doing things right, and not doing the wrong things.
When we take a gun into our hands for defensive purposes, we have a goal in mind, that being to avoid death or serious bodily injury. At the same time, there’s a good possibility we are threading our way through a series of physical and emotional obstacles while trying to reach that goal. Just as soldiers whose objective is on the far side of a minefield must work their way through the minefield carefully, we, as Armed Citizens, must be cautious of our paths and moves, as well.
The full report of the Los Angeles Police Department Board Of Police Commissioners is available here.
Gunhandling
Marksmanship, gunhandling, mindset. –The Combat Triad originated by Jeff Cooper.
I had two interesting experiences relating to gunhandling last week. Gunhandling is an often overlooked component of the Combat Triad.
The first was the result of shooting the Swiss concealed weapons qualification test. A friend of mine lives there and recently obtained his license. The Swiss don’t have a training requirement, per se; rather they have a testing process consisting of a written test on legal aspects and a practical test (what we would call a qualification course). They are both administered by the Swiss Polizei. The written test must be passed before the practical test can be taken.
He sent me the qualification course that is required to get the license. The material he sent me is in French, so I may have mistranslated it, but I believe all the strings start with empty chamber. Since whether to carry with a round in the chamber or not is frequently a topic of discussion among new weapons carriers, I decided to shoot it that way even if my translation was incorrect.
The course is shot at 7 meters, 5 meters, and 3 meters. At each distance, three strings of two shots each are fired. The time limits are 4.0 seconds, 3.5 seconds, and 3.0 seconds for each string, respectively. Each string starts with the pistol holstered and concealed. The target is a silhouette with a bottle shape on it, which appears to be roughly the size of an FBI ‘Q’ or the IDPA -0/-1 zone. The Swiss score this with a points system. Shots in the bottle count as one point, shots on the silhouette outside the bottle receive zero points, and shots that miss the silhouette result in a one point penalty. Shots over the allotted time also received one penalty point. Fourteen points are required to pass the test.
To get an initial feel for the difference between chamber empty and loaded chamber start, I did five one shot unconcealed draws using each technique. Overall, chamber empty was slower to the tune of .48 seconds average. I was shooting my Beretta 92G Centurion from a Safariland 567 open top holster.
Having established a baseline difference, I proceeded to shoot the Swiss qual course twice, once with the chamber empty and once with a loaded chamber. I used the same gear but also my favorite concealment vest, a construction worker’s fluorescent vest. What I found was that chamber empty was not only slower (0.48-0.67 seconds) but somewhat less accurate than having a round in the chamber. I had to work really hard to get the front sight on target after loading the chamber. Unlike a smooth loaded chamber drawstroke, there’s a lot of rotational movement of the pistol going during the period of driving the gun to the target. I didn’t have any trouble making the times, but it’s not exactly a cakewalk, either. Not long into the course, the safety ears were beginning to hurt my fingers, which may have had some effect on the results, too.
Unchambered
Distance 1 2 3 Average
7m 2.84 2.67 2.77 2.76
5m 2.50 2.60 2.47 2.52
3m 2.17 2.46 2.07 2.23
Years ago, I took a pistol course from Kelly McCann. He said that the Israelis just accept that they are going to throw away the first shot when using the chamber empty technique. After doing this exercise, I can see why. With all the gun movement, and if using the strict Israeli technique, 90 degrees of rotating of the gun, it’s hard to get even the muzzle indexed on target, much less get the front sight on it. Notice also the inclined to the low left classic group, indicating the trigger jerking that was going on. I expect this is because of the amount of complex (gross simultaneous with fine) motor skills that are involved.
Note that I drew the IDPA -0 zone on the target after the shooting for analytical purposes.
The second observation occurred at an indoor IDPA match. There was a blind stage in which the shooter’s gun had a dummy round randomly inserted in the magazine, without being told it was there. While this isn’t strictly legal for IDPA, it did provide an interesting laboratory when watching the shooters’ reactions. I watched about 20 iterations of the stages, so it gave me a decent view across the range of shooter abilities, Novice through Master.
There was a wide range of reactions. Unfortunately, many people were positively flummoxed upon encountering the click. They would just look at their gun and not do anything. The Safety Officer had to tell several to 1) clear the malfunction and 2) how to do it. What I found disturbing was how many people immediately ejected that magazine and reloaded with a fresh one. The follow-on action to the reload was about evenly divided. Half would then work the slide to eject the dummy and resume shooting. The other half would attempt to fire the pistol again without clearing the dummy, which resulted in nothing happening. Then they would work the slide and resume shooting.
After the initial malfunction, which was set up to occur within the first few rounds, many shooters experienced a series of subsequent malfunctions. I wondered about this, so I asked the Safety Officer who was placing the dummy if he was doing anything else to their guns to mess them up. His answer was: “The first one is on me, the rest are all them.”
So, having a malfunction early in the string then produced a cascade of malfunctions for some shooters. Perhaps, this was due to grip issues or incorrect shooting posture, I’m not really sure. Observing this phenomenon gave me some serious food for thought. It’s well known that I don’t think spare ammunition is as necessary for Armed Citizens as is often made out to be the case. But if someone’s first reaction to a malfunction is to jettison their only magazine, that could be a big problem.
These two sets of observations reinforce to me that those who carry or keep pistols for personal protection need to do more practice than simply go to an indoor range and shoot a box of ammo periodically. Pistols are complex mechanical devices that require proper manipulation skills as well as acceptable marksmanship ability. I will talk about practice possibilities in the future.
tacticalprofessor 
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