Israeli point shooting method?

[JHC]

Whether or not it is a stunt is highly dependent on distance.

Bill Jordan, in his book, laid out some clear distance guidelines for the effectiveness of the various point shooting positions that he discusses. If by "half hip" you mean elbow down by the hip, forearm parallel to the ground, Jordan limits that to 3 yards.

Bill Jordan was not someone to be trifled with in a gunfight, and his book is written from that point of view. I would not be so quick to dismiss his advice.

3 yards. Sure. With a ton of practice. Out at 10-12 yards hitting empty soda or coffee cans could be done with practice to impress and that's a stunt. I've done a lot of it in the past and occasionally still do. It sucks. I don't know that this particular technique per se made Bill Jordan someone not to be trifled with.

But the douche (still owes me the $ for the toothpaste, breath mints and disposable camera I ran out to buy him before day one started, but his wallet was always elsewhere all weekend) that taught PS at the first WarriorTalk symposium (2002?) at Rangemaster years ago was doing this out at 7 yards with students and the hits were ankle to crown of head or somewhere. Tom Givens was spitting tacks re the topic during out classroom stuff with him.

[JustOneGun]

I have found that I can "point shoot" with the pistol at shoulder height at 5 yards pretty well--but I've also found that when doing so I'm still looking (somewhat downward) at the front sight. At seven yards it starts falling apart and at ten, forget it. From the hip, my limit is maybe three yards and it ain't pretty.

So I'm not totally down on point shooting, but for me it has to be at very, very close range. Otherwise, I need to be directly looking at that front sight.
.

This is where point shooting breaks down. If you are a genetically normal person, the tunnel vision you will more than likely have will not allow you to see that front sight anymore. Meaning that index will be gone in a gunfight. People did find that bringing the sight up to eye level allowed them to use most of the hand eye coordination, muscle memory, proprioception, kinesthetic awareness or whatever we are calling it now, that point shooting brings, to good effect. That's where flash front sight, target focused shooting, seeing what you need to see or whatever we are calling it today came from. IMHO, if you can't reach out and touch someone, thus shooting from a retention position then you might want to index the front sight is some way.
A second problem with the distances you talk about is that same tunnel vision tends to keep most people from accurately guessing how far they are from the bad guy. So saying you will point shoot from 10 yards and in may lead a person under tunnel vision to shoot from 15 or 20 yards when they think they are at 5. Until you've had tunnel vision it is hard to believe how your ability changes.
The reality is that there are a lot of draw backs to point shooting that can be fully fixed by indexing the front sight in some way. Even the distance problem is mitigated by using the same sights to train at various distances. Then indexing the front sight gives a lot of feed back in a very short amount of time. For me I didn't actually think about how I shot, I just did what I always did with that sight index. I still thought I was at 15 yards but was actually at 45 yards.

[JHC]

This is where point shooting breaks down. If you are a genetically normal person, the tunnel vision you will more than likely have will not allow you to see that front sight anymore. Meaning that index will be gone in a gunfight. People did find that bringing the sight up to eye level allowed them to use most of the hand eye coordination, muscle memory, proprioception, kinesthetic awareness or whatever we are calling it now, that point shooting brings, to good effect. That's where flash front sight, target focused shooting, seeing what you need to see or whatever we are calling it today came from. IMHO, if you can't reach out and touch someone, thus shooting from a retention position then you might want to index the front sight is some way.
A second problem with the distances you talk about is that same tunnel vision tends to keep most people from accurately guessing how far they are from the bad guy. So saying you will point shoot from 10 yards and in may lead a person under tunnel vision to shoot from 15 or 20 yards when they think they are at 5. Until you've had tunnel vision it is hard to believe how your ability changes.
The reality is that there are a lot of draw backs to point shooting that can be fully fixed by indexing the front sight in some way. Even the distance problem is mitigated by using the same sights to train at various distances. Then indexing the front sight gives a lot of feed back in a very short amount of time. For me I didn't actually think about how I shot, I just did what I always did with that sight index. I still thought I was at 15 yards but was actually at 45 yards.

That's really interesting and I can't say I recall seeing that laid down like that before but it sounds totally believable.

[Jeep]

This is where point shooting breaks down. If you are a genetically normal person, the tunnel vision you will more than likely have will not allow you to see that front sight anymore. Meaning that index will be gone in a gunfight. People did find that bringing the sight up to eye level allowed them to use most of the hand eye coordination, muscle memory, proprioception, kinesthetic awareness or whatever we are calling it now, that point shooting brings, to good effect. That's where flash front sight, target focused shooting, seeing what you need to see or whatever we are calling it today came from. IMHO, if you can't reach out and touch someone, thus shooting from a retention position then you might want to index the front sight is some way.
A second problem with the distances you talk about is that same tunnel vision tends to keep most people from accurately guessing how far they are from the bad guy. So saying you will point shoot from 10 yards and in may lead a person under tunnel vision to shoot from 15 or 20 yards when they think they are at 5. Until you've had tunnel vision it is hard to believe how your ability changes.
The reality is that there are a lot of draw backs to point shooting that can be fully fixed by indexing the front sight in some way. Even the distance problem is mitigated by using the same sights to train at various distances. Then indexing the front sight gives a lot of feed back in a very short amount of time. For me I didn't actually think about how I shot, I just did what I always did with that sight index. I still thought I was at 15 yards but was actually at 45 yards.

Those are excellent points. Thanks for a well-thought out post.

[KevinB]

JOG, Great post.


Years ago (spring and summer of '92) myself and some Army buddies had the opportunity to play with this with rifles -- Somalia was looming and we had access to a lot of ammo.
After a few months it was very easy to shoot Fig14 (Hun's Head's) out to 100m indexing the rifle and looking over the sights (like 6" over). One of my buddies had a dad with an interesting past, and all sorts of VN era FAG's and former Rhodesian SAS guys came out to help teach (RIP AH, leukemia from time in defoliant areas got him a few years ago).

Looking back on it - it took a lot of ammo to do pretty much nothing faster than could be done with sights, but if you see Taran Butler do some of his things - you can be pretty damn fast and accurate if you have the ammo and time (and I'd never recommend doing it for defensive usage anyway)

I've been told one of the Israeli rationales for the empty chamber was the safety on their P-35's was very awkward to disengage - thus faster and more reliable to draw, cock and fire -- assine if you ask me, but I've not been very impressed by Israeli techniques from much more than damn can they clean a DA site .

[JustOneGun]

JOG, Great post.


Years ago (spring and summer of '92) myself and some Army buddies had the opportunity to play with this with rifles -- Somalia was looming and we had access to a lot of ammo.
After a few months it was very easy to shoot Fig14 (Hun's Head's) out to 100m indexing the rifle and looking over the sights (like 6" over). One of my buddies had a dad with an interesting past, and all sorts of VN era FAG's and former Rhodesian SAS guys came out to help teach (RIP AH, leukemia from time in defoliant areas got him a few years ago).

Looking back on it - it took a lot of ammo to do pretty much nothing faster than could be done with sights, but if you see Taran Butler do some of his things - you can be pretty damn fast and accurate if you have the ammo and time (and I'd never recommend doing it for defensive usage anyway).

Yes, I've seen the videos of Taran Butler. It is impressive to watch. But sometimes he is faster than the competition and sometimes he isn't. Even for him it's no great improvement. So with my previous points translating better to most gunfights I'll stick with a sighting technique that translates well for all distances under sever tunnel vision.
We all think as young studs, or young geeks in my case that we will be the next Taran Butler. But as I'm fond of saying, Just because Taran Butler can do it doesn't mean I should do it. I ain't no Taran Butler. And if you are 99% of all shooters, neither are you.
As a youngster every time I tried to be like THAT GUY, it didn't turn out like I planned, usually for the worse.

[KevinB]

Agreed 110%

[JustOneGun]

Earlier when I said the sight will go away, that would be from my peripheral. I didn't mean that you can't see your sight during a gunfight. That piece of gun lore has been put to rest long ago.

[CR Williams]

I've had training in the Israeli methodology from an Israeli instructor who still goes back to Israel to conduct training about twice a year. I would call it an introduction more than anything else, a good 8 hours worth. My analysis:

First, let me make it clear that the shooting method has nothing to do with chamberless carry and does not require it. Tier One units in Israel load a round up. My understanding is that some civilian schools are teaching condition one as well.

That said, the Israeli method is designed primarily to set up the body structure during the presentation so that the gun is driven straight and level to the target a eye level or close to it. Do it correctly and it's all but impossible physiologically not to drive the gun out level in a straight line. What you find is that the gun 'screws' itself on extension such that there is no arc or dip as you drive forward. Wide stance is built in to provide a stable and solid gun platform. I note that the rotational movement on extension can be partially adapted to the presentation most of us know from training in the US and was interested to see that very thing in a training video of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. that was done I think in the 60s, maybe 70s (the deputies were using revolvers in the film).

There is no shooting on the move. If movement is required, you pull the gun in, move, set, extend, shoot. Turning is done by a pivot on one leg either forward or back. So if you're pointed in one direction it's retract, pivot, set, extend, shoot. With practice this can be done quickly. Preference in movement in the Israeli system is to move to the attack, always the attack. Vertical displacement is also taught as you would expect. Usual mag change and malfunction methods as we see here.

That's the nutshell version of the method as I was taught it.

My instructor told us that what we were taught in one day, the core of the method, is a two week block of instruction in Israel. I infer that there is a LOT of drilling of individual and small blocks of technique and segments of technique involved.

[Al T.]

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