Same experience with instructors. It's not at all good enough to virtually wag your head back & forth; the purpose of the action is to literally see what's what and who's who.Originally Posted by Redhat
Same experience with instructors. It's not at all good enough to virtually wag your head back & forth; the purpose of the action is to literally see what's what and who's who.
Years ago I was doing the half-ass scan and asses. Louis Awerbuck stood directly behind me at my 4:30 with his unfolded knife in his hand a few inches away from my head. It took me awhile to get that "there's someone behind you" vibe and see what he was doing. Point made.
http://www.lightfighter.net/topic/sh...om-retention-1
I did some googling and Nyeti already covered it briefly on Lightfighter, and did a much better job articulating his thoughts.
I think too much thought is put into the topic. Apply a little K.I.S.S. and don't try to make it more than what it is. Shoot the threat to the ground and regain situational awareness. There need not be a drill or a standard procedure. Just look around, find cover, move to cover, look around some more, etc.
Trainers will gain a lot more understanding out of their student's if theY reinforce the reasons why and the necessity of regaining situational awareness vs a silly scan drill. A little force or force drills with water guns can drive home the concept. Anyway, my $.02
Last edited by Diamondback; 08-01-2016 at 12:05 PM.
An excellent instructor, that I've trained with a bunch, teaches a scan and assess drill where he will stand at various positions behind the shooters and hold up his fingers indicating how many rounds he wants you to fire on the next shoot command. It teaches you to pay attention and not just go through the "head whip" for the sake of doing it.
Doing a 360 movement in the method Spaulding uses would never fly at the ranges I train on, and I've never had to do a full 360 to safely see what is behind me while not muzzling other shooters on the line. I get what Spaulding and McNamara are saying though and tend to agree with them. There is more than one way to skin a cat and no cookie cutter solutions for any situation.
Last edited by Clobbersaurus; 08-01-2016 at 12:17 PM.
One thing that Paul Howe mentions when scanning is that you are not JUST looking for threats. You might have auditory exclusion and LE could be behind you giving commands. Spin around with gun in hand--in retention position or otherwise--could be bad for you. I prefer to look before I leap, so to speak.
What are we trying to accomplish? Look for other potential threats....so we don't get killed or injured by them. I think we can all agree that is something we need to plan for and practice so it is second nature and we do not get sucked into tunnel vision on the dude we just dealt with and not see other threats.
How do we get students to internalize that? Make them practice it.
How do we do that safely on a square range involving live fire? You have to get them to turn (at a minimum) their head and look , or (arguably better) turn their body and look.The problem is on public (and most private) ranges that is not usually allowed unless in the context of a class taught by an instructor that the range trusts. The other problem is getting them to turn without muzzling everyone else. That can be solved with a muzzle averted ready position.
My own opinion on how to BEST ingrain it is to do it through FOF where there is a physical penalty (pain) for not checking your surroundings. If you shoot BG#1 and don't check surroundings then BG#2 stabs, shoots, disarms you and that is a powerful learning tool. Nothing like "dying" to kick the reptile brain into gear to look for other threats. Unfortunately there are not nearly as many students who want to participate in that as there are ones who think that just being able to shoot is all they need (and it might be). So we can either skip it all together for the shooting only classes and not cover any kind of scan for others . I look at it this way. The class I'm teaching may be the only class they have before they have to use the skills and I bear some moral responsibility to have my stuff together and expose them to the skills they will likely need. I feel looking for other potential threats is a skill they need. Of course you too often get copycat contextually void rote regurgitator instructors just paying lip service to scanning because they read about it in a review somewhere and you end up with students just doing the mindless head swivel or the tactical pirouette (spinning 360 in place looking at nothing) . So if we are going to cover it at all we need to make them look FOR something.
What I normally do (not that it is right, it is just what it is) is ask them what was in a particular student in the other relay's hands or in my hands when they turned and looked.At first I normally get blank stares and no answer (or wild ass guesses) the first time. After that everyone pays attention and looks to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing when asked. Embarrassment is a powerful motivator. If nothing else, I have at least given them some reps of looking for what is in people's hands with some kind of penalty for not really seeing.
The best time was back during the "Great Obama Ammo Drought of 2009" when I was teaching a class that involved both live fire and air soft FOF . Since ammo was hard to come by and everyone in the class had an airsoft gun so I ran some drills letting them use their airsoft guns to get more shooting reps in without expending live ammo.....as we practiced getting off the x , addressing the target and then scanning for others I noticed a lackadaisical effort on the first couple of reps. So I grabbed the 2nd relay for a huddle as the 1st group gassed their guns back up and I had the 2nd group don airsoft masks and NOK trainer knives as soon as the 1st group got back on the line. If the guy in front of them doing the drill did not recognize the knife wielder as a threat and verbally challenge them the knife wielder got to lunge and stab them. Obviously this was not a "beginner level class" and everyone was devoid of any weapons or ammo during this evolution as we had previously been doing FOF drills and everyone had been disarmed and triple checked. It took about 1 stabbing before everyone paid attention to what was in people's hands and what everyone in the other relay was doing. Unfortunately you can't do that in every class.
I agree that it's important to both scan for other threats throughout the space while avoiding losing contact with the known downed threat(s).
Maybe a way to do this is to move in a curvilinear fashion to our 3 or 9 o'clock until we have what WAS our 6 o'clock in view, all the while keeping the downed threat(s) in view( and maintaining a safe distance from him/them). The curvilinear movement allows you to see where you are going with peripheral vision. This can be thught of as a variation of Southnarc's 3/9 o'clock curvilinear movement techniques from his MUC block of instruction.
This technique would involve taking more than a few steps. If, for example, the downed threat is 5 yds away to your north before you start moving, you might move in a curve to end up 5 yds north of him, looking back over him towards what had previously been your 6 o'clock. This is assuming that the situation ( absence of other detected unknowns or threats, physical space to allow the movement, your peripheral vision is working, sufficient lighting to see where you need to move, you have the ability to move, etc) allows such large movement.
There are ways to do it without completely turning one's back to the person they just shot. They can also be done on a square range with a line of shooters, but I'm just a hick deputy from GA and not a big name.
I had an ER nurse in a class. I noticed she kept taking all head shots. Her response when asked why, "'I've seen too many people who have been shot in the chest putting up a fight in the ER." Point taken.
You can "orbit " around the downed opponent (assailant, perp, skel, whatever you prefer) and keep an eye on them and everything else at the same time but some range setups make that difficult or impossible. If your range is a bullet trap with targets on stands in it then this will be a no go for that range. On the other hand if you have free standing target stands that you can put out from the berm a little then you can shoot the target and then have everyone on the line orbit at the same time in the preferred muzzle averted position of your choice.
On the other hand if you have a free standing "knock down" target that you can cover with a "tac man" shell (like John Hearne's DVC targets) then you simply shoot him to the ground and then "orbit around him" like if it was a real guy. You can also accomplish this with some ingenuity in target framing and a balloon to hold up the tac man target until you pop it with gunfire....target falls, you orbit the downed target.
You can also be super simple and just have them step to 3 or 9 like in MUC to see peripherally what was behind them previously. This allows more than just a "head turn" but does not require a full "about face" up range.
But all of those require a range that is a little more ....accommodating...than your typical commercial range. Obviously ALL of this can (and my opinion should ) be trained dry with blue guns or with airsoft or Sims in FOF. That will get you reps when your local range doesn't allow anything other than facing down range and shooting 1 round every 2 seconds.
Last edited by Randy Harris; 08-02-2016 at 04:23 PM.
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