Shooting at an accountable/assessment speed

[fatdog]

Back in 2002 during my LFI III class Mas made us aware of this incident where the real basis of the case against a police officer (politically motivated fake manslaughter case by some far left prosecutors) was that the officer did not stop firing in time, and was therefore guilty of manslaughter.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/1%3A4...g.-a0127868354

http://www.gainesville.com/news/2003...sel-not-guilty

In that class in Live Oak, we ran some drills that Mas filmed where we had a bunch of folks running the gun as fast as you could nail A zone hits against a target from the start signal with par time, but you had to stop firing on the second beep. Almost no one could stop in time without breaking a shot after the stop signal.

The whole case and especially the exercise made an impression on me and caused me to think about the difference between max speed and practical speed.

Legalities aside, the whole concept of running at my best Bill Drill speeds and dumping the whole mag before the violent criminal actor actually drops in a defensive shooting, and “burning down” my opponent is not part of my strategy these days. But I don’t know the answer to what we need to be striving for in terms of an “assessment speed”

I just noticed this article that was highlighted in the IDPA's newsletter and it made me think about the whole subject. http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/con...fense-security

[GJM]

Back in 2002 during my LFI III class Mas made us aware of this incident where the real basis of the case against a police officer (politically motivated fake manslaughter case by some far left prosecutors) was that the officer did not stop firing in time, and was therefore guilty of manslaughter.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/1%3A4...g.-a0127868354

http://www.gainesville.com/news/2003...sel-not-guilty

In that class in Live Oak, we ran some drills that Mas filmed where we had a bunch of folks running the gun as fast as you could nail A zone hits against a target from the start signal with par time, but you had to stop firing on the second beep. Almost no one could stop in time without breaking a shot after the stop signal.

The whole case and especially the exercise made an impression on me and caused me to think about the difference between max speed and practical speed.

Legalities aside, the whole concept of running at my best Bill Drill speeds and dumping the whole mag before the violent criminal actor actually drops in a defensive shooting, and “burning down” my opponent is not part of my strategy these days. But I don’t know the answer to what we need to be striving for in terms of an “assessment speed”

How about if your opponent was a brown bear charging you from 15 yards and your dog was tied to your pack beside you, or three terrorists with AK rifles shooting at you and others in an open area with a clear backdrop?

Like many things, it seems very difficult to generalize without knowing the exact situation. I can think of reasons to shoot once and evaluate before shooting again, like when picking one zebra out of a group, and reasons to shoot as fast as you can press the trigger and make successive hits. So when someone says they are shooting at accountable or assessment speed, it tells me literally nothing about the speed they are shooting, whether that is an appropriate speed, and what their skill level is.

[GOTURBACK]

Regarding accountability and assessment I thought this might be relevent, we have a practical action shoot weekly and did a completely "Blind" stage a couple weeks ago, basically all targets and obstacles were hidden from the shooter until the timer start the shooter then passed through a closed doorway to begin assessment and engagement, the gamers were not happy. It was quite interesting we ran it twice and I had nearly identical times and threat neutralization on both runs with zero hits on the non-threats I was satisfied in the context given with my ability to manage my shooting.

[fatdog]

How about if your opponent was a brown bear charging you from 15 yards and your dog was tied to your pack beside you, or three terrorists with AK rifles shooting at you and others in an open area with a clear backdrop?

I think I stipulated "a" as in single, violent criminal actor which is statistically likely to be my only defensive use of a handgun. I live >1000 miles from the nearest brown bear and I consider the later a fantasy scenario, neither is really at all interesting to me. And as I stated I don't know what constitutes assessment speed, and I can't even articulate what accountable speed means, but I look forward to everyone's thoughts on the matter, and my only interest in this subject (slowing down for a feedback loop other than my front sight) is in that context I described.

[JustOneGun]

Back in 2002 during my LFI III class Mas made us aware of this incident where the real basis of the case against a police officer (politically motivated fake manslaughter case by some far left prosecutors) was that the officer did not stop firing in time, and was therefore guilty of manslaughter.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/1%3A4...g.-a0127868354

http://www.gainesville.com/news/2003...sel-not-guilty

In that class in Live Oak, we ran some drills that Mas filmed where we had a bunch of folks running the gun as fast as you could nail A zone hits against a target from the start signal with par time, but you had to stop firing on the second beep. Almost no one could stop in time without breaking a shot after the stop signal.

The whole case and especially the exercise made an impression on me and caused me to think about the difference between max speed and practical speed.

Legalities aside, the whole concept of running at my best Bill Drill speeds and dumping the whole mag before the violent criminal actor actually drops in a defensive shooting, and “burning down” my opponent is not part of my strategy these days. But I don’t know the answer to what we need to be striving for in terms of an “assessment speed”

I just noticed this article that was highlighted in the IDPA's newsletter and it made me think about the whole subject. http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/con...fense-security

I was surprised at how wide the degree of ability to, "Stop shooting" existed. I suspect now there is a large genetic ability. What I definitely noticed on the stop shooting ability was that it didn't correlate to shooting ability.

With that in mind, what do you think of ToddG's on demand 100% hit speed as it might relate to assessment speed?

[Mas]

I don't think we'll ever be able to nail this down. The reason is, it is too dependent upon what is happening on the other side of the gun.

We've all seen dashcam videos of bad guys getting shot and showing no reaction, though they later died of the wounds they sustained when we were watching them.

At least at the beginning, the bad guy is the actor and the good guy is the reactor; action beats reaction; and what the actor is doing drives the reaction of the good guy.

What all or at least most of us here at P-F can do is help defense teams explain to juries how fast these things happen, how action/reaction paradigms and OODA loops intersect, and why the law does not demand that the defender be able to react and stop shooting in time frames that we can prove are simply not humanly possible.

[OnionsAndDragons]

To me it is very situational.

My assessment speed is not relevant with a bear charging me. I would also consider it irrelevant if confronted by multiple assailants in a safe backstop area. That sort of situation, I see as a shoot until empty or all downed.

The more relevant for urban dwellers assessment speed, as I see it, is how quickly you can shoot while maintaining 100% or damned near hits, and definitely zero rounds into a zone of high likelihood non-combatant hits.

I think that made sense.

For me, my assessment speed is in the 0.25-0.35 range most days. Rarely better sometimes worse. This is based upon called out assessment targets w no shoots and various traps thrown in.


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[YVK]

In that class in Live Oak, we ran some drills that Mas filmed where we had a bunch of folks running the gun as fast as you could nail A zone hits against a target from the start signal with par time, but you had to stop firing on the second beep. Almost no one could stop in time without breaking a shot after the stop signal.

The whole case and especially the exercise made an impression on me and caused me to think about the difference between max speed and practical speed.

I dunno what to make out of this. Depending on the distance and target size, 0.25 splits seem to be a reasonable, not maximal speed, for me. 0.25 is also considered an average human reaction time, Bill Rogers talks about it and build his time standards about it. So I would not be surprised a bit if I were shooting something at that pace and not able to stop at the beep. Does this experiment mean that if I am shooting at 0.25 and calling my shots, I still have to slow down to build in a full reaction time into my follow up shots so I can stop at the beep? I don't know if this is a realistic, or even desirable, expectation.

[OnionsAndDragons]

Also what @Mas said. Duh.

It's so subjective and individually dependent. As was stated upstream, some people are REALLY good at stopping fast, some people just aren't ever going to be that good because there is only so much wiring we can impact in our brains at this time.


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[Dagga Boy]

I introduced this terminology of shooting at assessment speed during the Tac Conference last year during my "What Really Matters" lecture. Much of that material was based on ideas past on to me by so,e of the most successful folks we have found at processing lethal force problems. Here is my exact quote from that lecture:

"Maximum efficiency at assessment speed on an acceptable target.

"Acceptable Target".....it is a grapefruit.....period."

So we have a formula of efficiency, speed of assessment, and a defined target parameter. Now add in problem solving, decision making, and we come up with something that simply requires some time. It is undefined and situational. As George pointed out his bear problem will be a different problem than a cops problem that is different from a citizen's problem, that is different from a soldiers problem. Where this has been totally butchered is trying to tie a gun type to it. My assessment that certain triggers or types of guns are not a factor in these kind of issues is exactly that....quite worrying about the gun. Worry about if the gun fits your needs.....key word.....yours. There are certain endeavors that require a certain tool or have more optimal tools. These problems are not them. These problems have a ton of factors and are complex.

I don't have he time to get in the weeds on his right now, but I will add some interesting examples when I get the time.