Things more important than a sub-second draw....

[Kanye Wyoming]

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

Respectfully disagree. I’m relatively new to this journey, it’s been a little over 5 years since I first picked up a handgun. I’m no GM and never will be but I’ve made significant progress and I’m reasonably confident that I’m getting there as far as my draw mechanics, marksmanship, speed, threat recogntion and avoidance, and decisionmaking. I do and will continue to work on improving but in addition, thanks in large part to this forum, I’m slowly trying to add other pieces to the puzzle. At this last Tac-Con, I attended two 4-hour tactical medicine blocks. I don’t even own a knife but I attended a knife block, and in the course of that realized that what would be really helpful is BJJ, which, when I first joined P-F, I thought was one of the services listed on the sign at a brothel run by a foreign madam who couldn’t spell.

[Norville]

Let’s face it, if you asked each person privately, they would all prefer to have better technical skills AND better tactical skills. Human nature being what it is, people tend to prioritize what they have, and the technical guys typically think technical skills are more important and the tactical guys think knowledge and mindset trumps technical skills. Of course we all know that winning a confrontation takes some amount of technical skills, some amount of tactical knowledge, and some amount of luck.

Jeff Cooper talked a lot about mindset, and a big part of mindset is being confident in your skills. Thinking that you have deficient technical or tactical skills isn’t going to help your mindset, so as humans we want to believe that what we have will prevail.

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

Yeah but it’s the internet. Maybe it’s time for 9mm vs .45 again…

Where is that like button…

[Doc_Glock]

Let’s face it, if you asked each person privately, they would all prefer to have better technical skills AND better tactical skills. Human nature being what it is, people tend to prioritize what they have, and the technical guys typically think technical skills are more important and the tactical guys think knowledge and mindset trumps technical skills. Of course we all know that winning a confrontation takes some amount of technical skills, some amount of tactical knowledge, and some amount of luck.

Jeff Cooper talked a lot about mindset, and a big part of mindset is being confident in your skills. Thinking that you have deficient technical or tactical skills isn’t going to help your mindset, so as humans we want to believe that what we have will prevail.

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

Mindset, gun handling, marksmanship. The combat triad still preaches.

[JCN]

Wish I could "like" this post more than once. It sums it up nicely. Indeed, the fact that @JCN is only just now reading a book like "Straight Talk on Armed Self-Defense" says a lot.

I have a question for @JCN: Where would performance on something like a 1-reload-1 fall in? I don't know what a blazing time would be on this. Say, from low-ready, at beep at 7 yards, firing one, reloading, and firing 1, all in the A zone? One second? 1.5? Less? I have no idea. Whatever a blazing time would be for a Grandmaster such as yourself, would it also, as you say, be a "surrogate" for other skills? I mean, it is a technical shooting skill, yes?

And yet, we know from a pretty big data set (including Tom Givens' students' data as well as the 10,000+ gunfights John Correia has gone through) that reloads in civilian defensive gun uses happen so infrequently that they essentially NEVER happen. So here we have a skill that is probably indicative of other technical skills, that sure as heck is necessary to master for competitive matches, having almost NO bearing on street encounters for "regular" people.

So again, training to perform a slide-lock reload in a "reasonable amount of time" is definitely a good thing. But the person who sits around practicing it all day--day in, day out--in order to get it to that one-second (or whatever) mark should probably--for defensive purposes--be focusing on other things, and he or she is just kidding him or herself that what they are practicing is preparing them for a gunfight.

I think reloads are stupid for civilians. For the reasons you stated.
I don’t carry a reload on the street.

I think reloads for gaming are stupid and it was one of the reasons I refused to get into USPSA for years.

I think slide lock reloads are extra stupid, FOR THE REASONS YOU POSTED. Why practice them at all, if civilians never have to reload much less run their gun dry to slide lock.

The only applicability I have for reloading is that it makes you mindful of your round count and that with experience you can tell your gun is getting dry by how it feels. Also helps in clearing malfunctions and jams.

There are a lot of sport specific stuff that has very little bearing

Let’s face it, if you asked each person privately, they would all prefer to have better technical skills AND better tactical skills. Human nature being what it is, people tend to prioritize what they have, and the technical guys typically think technical skills are more important and the tactical guys think knowledge and mindset trumps technical skills. Of course we all know that winning a confrontation takes some amount of technical skills, some amount of tactical knowledge, and some amount of luck.

Jeff Cooper talked a lot about mindset, and a big part of mindset is being confident in your skills. Thinking that you have deficient technical or tactical skills isn’t going to help your mindset, so as humans we want to believe that what we have will prevail.

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

Just as a point of discussion, this is like my unloaded start video.

I’m not advocating that technical skills trump non-technical skills largely because it’s unwinnable like you said.

I wanted to discuss some of the erroneous assumptions made in the video (like a reliable fast draw wouldn’t help other situations like from a ready position). My point was that you can’t have a reliable sub-second draw without a developed index and that helps in lots of different situations.

Whether there are things more important? Of course there are.

But then you could say why even own a gun.

Most civilians would be better served health and safety wise by eating better and exercising rather than spending any time on defensive training at all.

If I had 10 minutes with a handgun to practice technical things, a draw would be near the top of my list because it works so many things.

If I had 10 minutes to spend on my personal survival, I should go for a jog and eat a salad.

But I can spend 10 minutes on a jog while listening to a self defense podcast and it doesn’t eat into my 10 min of dry fire.

[JCN]

Best I can tell there are at least three distinct concerns being expressed during this series of podcasts.

1. High technical ability without a commiserate level of assessment and accountability may have negative consequences if applied in a defensive shooting.

2. In force-on-force and scenario type training, shooters with high technical ability do not seem to solve problems better (faster and/or more correctly) than those with moderate technical ability.

3. Economics. There is an opportunity cost to acquiring and maintaining (the skillset that provides a reliable) sub-second draw and “jailbait splits.” Beyond a certain point, that time, effort and money is probably better spent learning any number of other skills. 


So I think this is a good topic of discussion and misses some of the nuances that BBI said if you reread closer. I’ll add some anecdotes as well for context.

I agree with #1. When talking about specialized gaming, the better the shooter’s achievement the more able they are for assessment and accountability. They know their limits and don’t push past them. That’s critical to major success.

It’s usually the B class tactical guys that hose past their ability and vision.

For #2, I think you are lumping things in together that shouldn’t be together. For FOF, CQB and ambushes, no amount of technical gun handling will save you. For longer range / LEO / military then increased technical ability does seem to favor those scenarios especially when people understand the limits of their technical ability.

For LEO types, if Bakersfield higher standard training didn’t have any impact then why the reputation?

Also there have been a number of “tactical experiment” videos pitting gamers against LEO/military and the more technical the situation, the more technical skills mattered (duh). Sure these scenarios are rare. But so are civilian gunfights overall.

Re opportunity cost, good point but losing weight and lowering your cholesterol will likely be more protective for most of us health wise. We should go to yoga camp instead of pistol courses if we are really looking for pure survival benefit.

I think a side discussion might also revolve around what scenarios we budget time preparing for.

If I were a hermit living in the remote wilderness, I might plan my defensive time differently than if I had to ride public transportation in the city at 2am.

I’m reading the book now to be educated, but it’s not likely to impact my actual safety and health in a meaningful way because of the environment I work and live in currently.

I spent decades in an inner city before my current life and firearms were not an option. Some situational awareness is built on the street and not in a class. I’ve never even been close to assaulted despite being inner city, but I used common sense to avoid as many of those scenarios as I could. It’s worked so far.

It’s also interesting to note that some of the LEO B class gamers are the worst when it comes to overstepping their abilities and missing / hitting no shoots. So take that FWIW.

[JCN]

@43Under

Also FWIW, when I first bought a gun I also bought and read most of Mas other books.

I also liked Cirillo’s book.

I just haven’t read anything recently and this book is fairly new.

Also, I’ve mentioned this before but as soon as my daughter turns 5, I’m enrolling her in BJJ.

I want to give her as many tools as I can, and I feel it may be very important for her depending on what she does in life. For her, I’d rather have her do BJJ than get technically proficient with a handgun.

[ST911]

Reloading processes and spare magazines are generally more pertinent for reasons of malfunction/stoppage clearance than expended ammunition. Esp with some of the combinations of poor gun, ammo, technique, discipline shooters have.

[Clusterfrack]

It’s usually the B class tactical guys that hose past their ability and vision.
some of the LEO B class gamers are the worst when it comes to overstepping their abilities and missing / hitting no shoots.

Anecdotal 'data' from the clubs I shoot at:

3-gunners are almost all hosers who spray bullets everywhere and rack up a bunch of penalties. Female 3-gun Instagram starlets are the absolute worst. I think one had 50% Mikes on a stage a few months ago.

Serious tactical timmies are often C-B class USPSA shooters, and are typically very accurate. They may not win matches, but achieve a very high level of skill in the ways that count.

The LEOs who shoot at my clubs range from C to GM. The C-B class dudes typically score a very high Alpha count, and few if any penalties. They struggle to break out of 'turtle' mode. Our GM LEOs... I can't think of anyone I know who I would rather have defending my family's lives with lethal force in a crowded room.

[JCN]

Anecdotal 'data' from the clubs I shoot at:

3-gunners are almost all hosers who spray bullets everywhere and rack up a bunch of penalties. Female 3-gun Instagram starlets are the absolute worst. I think one had 50% Mikes on a stage a few months ago.

Serious tactical timmies are often C-B class USPSA shooters, and are typically very accurate. They may not win matches, but achieve a very high level of skill in the ways that count.

The LEOs who shoot at my clubs range from C to GM. The C-B class dudes typically score a very high Alpha count, and few if any penalties. They struggle to break out of 'turtle' mode. Our GM LEOs... I can't think of anyone I know who I would rather have defending my family's lives with lethal force in a crowded room.

I think we would really benefit from more LEO GMs here at our locals as role models and advisers.

One B class LEO in particular is so reckless and easily frazzled that he’s either hosing at M+ speed or missing and crashing and burning. Lacks mental toughness. I wish he had a LEO GM to talk to him.

[mmc45414]

Female 3-gun Instagram starlets are the absolute worst. I think one had 50% Mikes on a stage a few months ago.

Those full size steel targets on the TTI range are honking big, and many of the YT videos shows most of them being used. Except Bob Nolan, he shoots groups. And Butler, he shoots groups. From the hip.