Originally Posted by
Dan Lehr
I agree, straight forward or rearward does nothing to get the shooter off the threat axis, diagonal movement forward is the best if you do the geometry. As far as lateral, one side-step, not so much, we always had shooters moving three steps.
My partner and I designed the firing line portion of our range - there were 15 target points for a reason - to limit the number of students they could throw at us at one time. At any one time we had 8 to 10 firearms instructors on staff and used adjunct instructors because our schedule didn't allow for all the firearms guys to be on the range, some of them would be doing EVOC, or crime scenes with the other teams. Some of our adjuncts were pretty good instructors, others might be classified as more of a safety officer. Not all folks have a knack for instructing, and as you know, a full-time instructor who isn't retired on duty can see things the shooter is doing wrong at glance, things that a part-time/adjunct may not notice.
We always tried to have a ratio of 2 to 1, settled for 3 to 1 for normal training. For shooting from the vehicle, aggressive movement, any turns, one of our staff instructors was on each student.
And yeah, the past is the past.