Appropriate programming

[SouthNarc]

I am adamantly opposed to any defensive shooting program that teaches people to just point the gun and hope for the best. I believe that technique is irresponsible, especially in today's litigious society. Just pointing the gun in a training environment historically has led to nothing more than miss after miss after miss in the field. All of those bullets go somewhere.

In our training programs we stress that every shot fired should be fired with the gun in the eye target line and visually indexed, unless there's actual physical contact, in which case we shoot from retention. From a basic permit class to our highest level class, every round fired is aimed, using the sights, again unless from retention. As far as I can tell, this has done very well for our students. We are running about a 95% hit ratio in actual shootings and the misses have all been under highly unusual circumstances. I can't tell you if the students are actually using their sights, but I can tell you that's the only way they train and they're getting their hits in the field. Craig, you have seen the photos from our little Thai female student shooting a holdup man. She has the gun in two hands in the eye target line and hit the guy in the chest. Did she use the sights? Nobody really knows. Was she trained use the sights? Yes. Did she get her hit? Yes. Given the hit ratio I suspect that if we had more of our civilian students caught on camera we'd see more of the same thing.

If you insist that students always use the sights, that means they have to at least get the gun into the eye target line where they can see the sights. This builds a habit of getting the gun in between their eyes and the target. This leads to hits. Sighted fire can degrade into effective point shooting, but point shooting will never upgrade into precise hits under stress.

Using the sights religiously forces the student to learn to present the gun to the same place in the eye target line consistently, so that a sight picture can be acquired. Thus, before long the gun starts coming up with the sights already pretty much aligned on the target. If the sights are actually visually used, it is to verify alignment --not to achieve it. I suspect that the majority of our students that have been involved in shootings fall into the category of people who do not practice monthly. In fact, from my debriefs with them I found that many of them had not practiced at all after the class they took one, two, or three years ago. However, all of them were taught to get the gun into the eye target line and look at the sights. Apparently, that works

And I agree with you. But...I'm really curious about this from a program design standpoint. Any program...not just shooting.

Do I as a trainer take the Mitt Romney approach and say "Well at least half of the people who train won't train with me"? Know what I mean? And should I develop tiered programming for people like that? I can do that and have. I don't really like doing that though and I'm at a point now in my life where there's very little that I do that I don't like doing.


Sooooooo......ya'll continue.

[EPF]

If I had just a couple of hours and a few rounds in which to get someone into barely OK with a handgun I'd likely use a modified Shanghai Police training program.

This is something worth thinking about

[JJN]

Craig, I do think there should be a delineation between training for dedicated vs. Non-dedicated folks. Ayoob struck me as someone who gave a lot of thought to that. Some of his stuff, gripping the heck out of the pistol, loading shotguns with strong hand, things like that, would limit a high-end shooter, but would work pretty well even if you never practiced it again. I think of some things as a crutch or maybe like a brace. If you're actively rehabbing your leg at some point the crutch will hold you back, but if the leg isn't ever getting better, you'd be ill-served by instruction that doesn't provide a crutch. Vast majority of defense-minded folks are better served with Ayoob or Pincus and something like Krav Maga than competition shooting/MMA based instruction. I'd love to see you run a "diet ECQC" that a 40-something housewife and a 70 year old fellow could do easily. I wouldn't see that as selling out at all.
I also think there is a place in the "tactical" world for folks to function as "ambassador" between the T-rexes and the masses. A lot of the more tame training venues are tame because the instructor(s) are old, and therefore likely behind the times, e.g. Gunsite. I'd really appreciate if some of the cutting edge guys would consciously work on a "for mass consumption" version of their curricula.
Jon

[LSP552]

And I agree with you. But...I'm really curious about this from a program design standpoint. Any program...not just shooting.

Do I as a trainer take the Mitt Romney approach and say "Well at least half of the people who train won't train with me"? Know what I mean? And should I develop tiered programming for people like that? I can do that and have. I don't really like doing that though and I'm at a point now in my life where there's very little that I do that I don't like doing.


Sooooooo......ya'll continue.

I think it's hard to tell who won't make changes to their practice habits so I don't like automatically writing them off. If you give them the tools to improve on their own, as an instructor you have done your job. I've seen a few marginal shooters decided to improve on their own, and remember being surprised because I didn't expect them to do so.

I completely agree with Tom about getting the gun to eye level and using the sights beyond contact range.

[NickA]

I'm pretty sure there was a thread here a while back where a fairly well known trainer caught a bunch of flak for teaching the Weaver stance. IIRC part of his reasoning boiled down to: most students will only train sporadically, if at all. But they've spent a lifetime seeing Weaver every time they watch a cop movie or TV show, so that's what they'll remember and probably go to anyway. Might as well go with it.
Makes a weird kind of sense, at least for stance, where Weaver may not be considered ideal anymore but it's not the end of the world either.

[SouthNarc]

Craig, I do think there should be a delineation between training for dedicated vs. Non-dedicated folks.
I also think there is a place in the "tactical" world for folks to function as "ambassador" between the T-rexes and the masses. A lot of the more tame training venues are tame because the instructor(s) are old, and therefore likely behind the times, e.g. Gunsite. I'd really appreciate if some of the cutting edge guys would consciously work on a "for mass consumption" version of their curricula.
Jon

Jon as usual you provide great feedback and always give me pause. Thanks for that.

[Tom Givens]

Not really. It's not a point shooting versus sighted fire thread and that's not really where I want this to go.

"I'm personally of the belief that if you're not going to practice at least monthly, then bothering to teach people to use their pistol sights is nothing but hopeful folly."

Craig- How is this anything but a sighted vs unsighted argument, given the quote above from your original post? Intentionally dumbing down training just results in dumber performance. You mention Pincus and his program. "Extend, touch, press" is his mantra, with no mention of sighting, visual verification, visual indexing or whatever you wish to call directing bullets from Point A to Point B.

[orionz06]

Would it make sense to consider things from a level of dedication? Disinterested spouse to training junkie to focused multidisciplinary participant?

[SouthNarc]

"I'm personally of the belief that if you're not going to practice at least monthly, then bothering to teach people to use their pistol sights is nothing but hopeful folly."

Craig- How is this anything but a sighted vs unsighted argument, given the quote above from your original post? Intentionally dumbing down training just results in dumber performance. You mention Pincus and his program. "Extend, touch, press" is his mantra, with no mention of sighting, visual verification, visual indexing or whatever you wish to call directing bullets from Point A to Point B.

That's a fair point and in the conversation I had with Todd that was but one in several in the broader idea of what we'd like people to do, and what they will do and if there's a middle ground. I should have probably clarified the original post with more.

[SouthNarc]

Would it make sense to consider things from a level of dedication? Disinterested spouse to training junkie to focused multidisciplinary participant?

And from my perspective should I do focused training for less dedicated people in the hope that it might inspire them to become more dedicated? OR should others do that thus leaving me to focus on those who have already made the choice?