If that's the case then my mistake. What I've heard and seen many times in the past -- and admittedly it's been years since I was competing regularly at a national level -- is an acceptance and de-prioritizing of that skill in practice. And I'm not even being critical of that, because if you really are consistently hitting .25's under stress on a 7yd wide open A-zone then it probably does make sense to focus elsewhere. But it doesn't mean there aren't gains that could be made.
I may be misunderstanding you, but if you meant that once people hit that physical limit wall, the couple hundredths of gain or loss is trigger related then I agree. My point is that some people -- including some outstanding shooters -- simply can't shoot sub-20 splits no matter what gun you put in their hand even if they're just shooting blindly in the berm. Other guys can pull .11s under those circumstances. I don't think it matters beyond the point where you can control the gun and get hits, but if you've got a 0.22 finger and 0.18 eyes...I wonder how much trigger type has to do with this. I don't know the answer, but it seems like the trigger mechanism might account for a few of those hundredths.
Like Jeff, I think you're mischaracterizing what I said. I didn't say "improving one's performance as applied in competition shooting" is bad. I said that the priorities in competition are skewed and need to be considered in a rational light when we're trying to decide what is and isn't important beyond those constraints.If the conventional methods for improving one's technical performance as applied in competition shooting are not useful for the streets, then what do you suggest as an alternative to improve technical performance on the streets? I realize that might be a large question.
We're in complete agreement. It's the specifics of "those skills need adjustment" that is at point here.Admittedly, those skills need adjustment for the WBE/tactical environment/whatever. But the technical skills and abilities are a fundamental base.
Watch police shooting videos. Read OIS reports. There are plenty of times when a BG is behind (or in front of) something that you don't want your bullets to hit instead of him, when angles prevent getting a full width torso as a target, etc.I agree with you guys from the philosophical and self-improvement standpoints...but I ask where the evidence is.
With all due respect to Claude, I don't think he has access to enough details about those incidents to draw a conclusion about what kind of shots were or weren't necessary (when shots were necessary at all), nor does the dataset represent the myriad instances in which someone might have survived but didn't because of lack of skill, nor -- to borrow a concept from Tom Givens -- does it really show us what might have happened if more people with more skill were walking around with guns to begin with.I mean, think of the body of research amassed by Claude Werner insofar as he has studied citizen self-defense incidents,
I don't recall the details of Tom's data enough to say whether full frontal straight on targets were the norm.and think of the Rangemaster data set.
No question, but as I said earlier, short of shooting real people with real ammo everything is a compromise on some level. Combining live fire and FOF seems to be the best solution we've seen so far.That's a good start, but it seems like lack of recoil might be a significant factor in that exercise with a SIRT.