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Marty Hayes
01-03-2012, 01:25 PM
Here is a link to an article I recently penned for the Armed Citizen's Legal Defense Network's e-journal. It should be interesting reading for this crowd.

http://www.armedcitizensnetwork.org/images/stories/Network_2012-1.pdf

markp
01-03-2012, 01:40 PM
Do you mind if I cross post this to a local forum?
Mark

Marty Hayes
01-03-2012, 02:13 PM
Do you mind if I cross post this to a local forum?
Mark

Not at all Mark. Feel free.

Marty

JHC
01-03-2012, 06:55 PM
Very interesting read. Thanks much.

jmjames
01-04-2012, 12:36 AM
This answered a couple of questions I had in the back of my mind, thanks!

J.Ja

Mitchell, Esq.
01-04-2012, 11:16 AM
Devil's Advocate time...

(No...not the speech at the law office/penthouse about G0D...)

They way competition may be viewed in a negative manner after a use of force incident is that all contextual decisions have been made for the participant, and that competition itself, absent other decision making/context based training, only teaches someone how to use the force, not when it is appropriate or what use of force pathway to take.

Thus, you are Sith, not Jedi. Heavy. Heavy...

You have a hammer and are pushing yourself to use that hammer as best as possible, without any mental processing before the use of the hammer to see if a different way of driving the nail would be more appropriate…or even if it is indeed a nail that needs to be driven.

Drilling the physical skills should be done so that it frees up your mental processing capacity so you can focus on the situation and how it’s unfolding…and when you need to use force, you can do so faster, better and harder…but if it’s not in the context of other training focusing on the dynamics of the situation’s development, then it’s not going to give you what you need so that you can be subjectively and objectively reasonable.

Hard skills are hard skills. They are amoral. Shooting someone in the head is shooting someone in the head.
The fact that you can do it very well under tight time pressure, or even against resistance, is wonderful…it, itself, doesn’t make your use of force any more or less reasonable.

Police don’t only train/qualify on the range, they are also required to have at least some situational training, because without it, they can’t use some of the best words ever written in a police report (Well, other than “Taint”) – “Based on my training and experience, I believed the suspect was about to assault me/flee/grab a weapon…and therefore I…then I had to restrain the suspect’s head and neck to prevent injury to himself as he thrashed about, at which time he lost consciousness…”

So, competition as a piece of training and improving your skill-set: Yes.
As your entire training, or the total focus of your training: No.

Good decision making skills can’t exist without knowledge of the hard skills, and proper application of the hard skills can’t exist without good decision making.

Marty Hayes
01-05-2012, 09:50 AM
No argument from me, Mitchell. I believe that a person should be reading books about self-defense, and taking decision making/law type of training in a manner at least equal to competing.

NEPAKevin
01-05-2012, 10:23 AM
While not the same as a court trial, a LEO who attends our matches had to face a review panel after a shooting and told us that they looked favorably on his participation at practical shooting matches.