I shoot USPSA with a few cops, all of them are instructors of some sort with their dept or train civilians. I’m paraphrasing, but when one of their fellow cops say they are afraid USPSA will give them bad habits, their response is “which part, the shooting really fast or the shooting really accurate part?”
They are spot on.Originally Posted by ECK
I don’t know how embed IG videos here but linked below is a brilliant video made by a guy I shoot competition with locally. By way of background, he’s a combat vet, long time cop and a full time firearms instructor for our local municipal PD (about 2k sworn).
In the video he synched split screen video of USPSA stages with OIS body cam footage and the contrasts that with a short clip of “traditional” LE firearms training.
It perfectly illustrates what your LE / USPSA squad mates are talking about.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ci0RK..._web_copy_link
Last edited by HCM; 09-29-2022 at 12:12 PM.
1) Spot on re: visual processes and shooting.
2) Mike Glover (and many other “tactical celebrities” like Tim Kennedy, GBRS etc) are not where I would look for performance shooting instruction beyond the basic level. Not that those guys don’t have other things to offer but the people from their world that I want to train with are the ones who are dedicated shooters and that includes outside training and competitive shooting. They are not just in that world, but they are the people who are training their peers from the world to shoot.
@HCM I just wish some of the more FUDDy LEO trainers got on board with it. Having more skills and speed doesn’t mean that you can’t take more time for judgement.
Having more skills and speed literally gives you more time for judgement (when there is time).
Conversely your don’t get to pick your fight, it picks you. If you have an “X” second problem, you need X second skills. Better to have more skill than you need…
We have a couple good threads on institutional training. It’s a multifaceted issued - some of it’s the instructors (and how they are produced) some of it’s the students, some is a resource issue (particularly time).
The other day I listened to Matt Prankas Redneck Podcast with Stoeger and Isaac Lockwood, a USPSA CO GM who's also an active cop in far northern California. Good discussion of performance based training, and the problems with LE Firearms training in most places. I'm intimately familiar with that struggle. Spent 4 years fighting that battle. Now that myself and the M class shooter on our staff are both retired, everything has gone back to the comfortably lazy red shirts standing behind the shooters saying "Front sight! Preeeeessssss...." or yelling "Stop slapping the trigger!"
Lockwood did mention the 80 hr time limit for most Academy programs today, and the limiting issues there. But all 3 agreed they would spend those 80 hrs (which after testing and shotgun training is actually closer to 40-50) differently. I would've loved to sit down with those guys with a notebook and asked "okay....here's the schedule. How would YOU use this time?"
It'd be wonderful if they would actually shoot enough to get bad habits from competition because otherwise most of them don't fucking shoot.
It's like somebody sitting naked in a beanbag chair eating cheetos sayin' they don't want to lift weights because it will make them "bulky".
Last edited by TCinVA; 09-29-2022 at 02:39 PM.
3/15/2016
Mike Pannone thinks competition shooting is beneficial:
Well…
Resources drive some of these decisions. For example, I think the method used at FLETC where students alternate firearms and defensive tactics every other day throughout the course of their basic Academy is the best way to do things vs doing a 2 or 3 week firearms block but if your range and academy are in separate location that’s not gonna be a practical solution.
The inordinate amount of training time necessary to teach and maintain confidence with shotguns, is one of the reasons we dropped them from General use. If you teach people to handle and shoot a semi automatic, pistol, a lot more of that transfers over to a carbine, particularly if both are equipped with red dot sights.
Speaking of, my agency’s basic Academy is seeing similar results with RDS to those I previously reported from the Houston Police Department academy. Starting shooters with RDS pistols, and then teaching iron sights as an add-on skill is resulting in people reaching higher levels of competence and reaching them faster. When HPD went to red dots, they had people able to pass their basic pistol qualification at the end of week one in their3 week firearms block versus most not reaching that level till the end of week 2 or beginning of the week 3. That frees up time to work on others skills like vision, return, movement etc. of course if the person design in your program is a typical redshirted two week wonder who’s never done any shooting outside a law enforcement environment it’s all wasted.
This is what I was trying to explain to @jlw when the whole thing about the sub second draw came up.
It’s not about drawing sub second. It’s about having the ability and then tailoring judgment.
So I was at the range today and assembled my new double swinger.
Thought I would couple it to my MGM triple dropper (where the target isn’t “neutralized” until it drops to the lowest level).
At no point were any of the “good guys” in any danger of being hit.
Knowing your skill set and having a robust set is what competition is all about (when done at a high level).
Getting to the point where the shooting is unconsciously competent and having the mental bandwidth to solve problems is a good thing.
To make it more challenging I made the bad guy a zebra. Most of the hits were head shots.
I like the triple dropper because you don’t pick the cease fire. You have to watch for it.
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