Looks like a muddle to me..

[Dagga Boy]

I used to be very turned off by him, mainly due to reading on the net. I do not agree with some of his stuff, but I respect where he is coming from, and I had exactly zero issue with either video, and about 90% of it is exactly what I teach. Like many of us, the internet is a learning thing and some of us will never really get it or be able to express ourselves well. I have a feeling that I could sit down with him and both would walk away with "understanding" why we do some things different and be friends because we do a lot the same, in which case everyone else is wrong....

[ToddG]

I don't know DRM well. We've had some serious disagreements on shooting discussions at TPI and there have been some times when it seems like he and I are alone on a raft against the knuckle-dragging MMA studs over there.

He's certainly an accomplished shooter. Some of his students have gone on to become equally if not more successful.

If the shirt in the first video raises any flags, understand that DRM was one of the first guys to take a "hawaiian shirt, not fishing vest" approach to some IDPA matches. Which I would imagine is something that may endear him to the PF crowd.

Perhaps it's my training scars showing*, but the last couple of times I've had to seriously get a magazine in a pistol it was at night and at a dead run. I appreciated not having to look at my handgun in order to get it up and running.

All well and good. Do you think you'd learn to do it better and more efficiently by looking at what you're doing (and then reaching a point where you don't necessarily have to) or do you think you'd get better, faster, by closing your eyes every time you practice a reload?

The reality is that looking at the reload -- just like watching what you're doing when you're threading a needle -- reduces the odds of the fumble he demonstrates. Each one of those "missed the hole" moments costs you about a quarter to half a second. Unskilled bad guys fire unaimed rounds at a rate typically around four per second. So each one of those fumbles caused by looking at him instead of your gun is going to bring you the happy sight of 1 or 2 bullets he gets to shoot while your gun is still unworkable. Good trade off?

* And maybe it's just me, but promoting by running others down (tactical guys fumble reloads) is just tacky. I like to say "this may be a better way" and be a bit gracious about it.

The fact is that what he says is true. Reloading is something that very few people put serious time and effort into. I've met lots of astoundingly good shooters in terms of speed, accuracy, and even draw whose reload times are far away from par for your typical competitive shooter. Now in all fairness, we can question whether that's a huge problem. Why? If you need your gun you'll almost always need to draw it, you'll almost always need accuracy, and you'll almost always need speed. But very few times will people outside of uniformed duty need to reload their pistols.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that since we're going to do a ton of reloads during normal practice anyway simply because we're shooting a lot, we might as well practice to do it as best we can. That way if you are the unlucky son who needs to reload suddenly because you were at the wrong end of the bell curve on Tuesday at the shopping mall, you're making your training time pay off. If I reload my pistol 20-50 times during a practice session and don't work technique that's just wasted opportunity.