I spent the past weekend in Indiana, speaking at an LE conference. During my non-teaching time, I stopped by the FATSish shooting simulator they had setup. I played around on some of the marksmanship drills and also ran a couple of scenarios. While I was happy with most of my performance, I really flubbed one scenario even though I possessed all of information to have handled it better. When I was reviewing my performance I immediately thought of some of Darryl and Wayne's philosophies of gunfighting.
The scenario was that of escorting a prisoner to a courthouse. There was a large crowd gathered on the steps and a news reporter approaches. From the background, a female subject extracts a pistol from her purse and attempts to engage the subject you are escorting. My attention was drawn to the approaching reporter and I felt like I really had to make up time to get out of the hole that I was in.
When they played back my scenario, I had fired a very tight group just slightly to the right of the suspect and into the face of a bystander. (Given the size of the group I shot and my recollection of where the sights were, I suspect that the laser wasn't exactly calibrated for the tightness of the shots but I'll call them misses anyway) In hindsight, I made a classic blunder - shooting too fast and TOO MUCH for the difficulty of the shot I had to make. Instead of firing two or three disciplined shots, I allowed the impression that I was behind to make me rush and shoot way faster and fire more rounds than I should. Given the density of non-shoots behind the threat, this was definitely the time for a more precise shooting cadence and no more than two or three rounds, not the six or seven I fired. Just because you can shoot at a faster cadence doesn't mean you should.
My last shot was a classic "unable to stop quick enough" as well. I was very aware that when that shot broke, my threat was no longer covered by my sights but I simply couldn't stop shooting soon enough. That round went into empty space behind the threat but had anyone been standing behind her, they would have caught the bullet.
The other point I found interesting was that I had no idea that the threat had successfully drawn the pistol and engaged the threat. I was so focused on my sights that all of her actions were covered by my sights and gun in my line of vision. Such a pity to ruin all of that concentration and focus and ruin it by shooting way faster and firing more rounds than was appropriate.
The whole scenario reminded me that of all the difficult skills, getting on the brakes, not the gas, is the real problem in most scenarios. The experience also confirmed my long held believe that video has a lot of teaching potential if done correctly. The ability to present complex shooting problems and immediately "reset" the scenario and allow it to be completed properly has a lot of merit. No IDPA match or IPSC match has ever offered the real-world complexity of what the video simulator delivered.