Well, that saved me from typing. And I will add the shooting while moving is a lot different than shooting while running. I have also found out through the school of hard earned and painful experience that if you are running as a cop with a gun in your hand.....you are likely wrong and moving faster than you can think which often leads to poor outcomes.Originally Posted by Surf
Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".
It's a multi-part question, that deserves a multi-part answer:
1. I would like my shooting while on the move to be as strong as it reasonably can be within the constraints of the training time budget I have available. I see shooting on the move as a fundamental skill, that underpins most room entry techniques. If you can't effectively engage your corner accurately while clearing the doorway and room for the stack coming in behind you, then you are not an effective member of that element. Same for the folks coming behind you and then moving laterally while scanning their sectors. That said, I don't room clear "on the run."
2. Similarly, I see shooting on the run as the natural (extreme) progression of taking a side step during your draw when engaged while flat-footed and away from cover. I want to engage the threat, and I want to use cover. I want both of those things as quickly as possible. If I am suddenly presented with multiple threats, I may use a spread fire technique, or I may engage while moving to cover as expeditiously as possible. With the second option, I will sacrifice accuracy for speed to cover. If possible, I will sacrifice the minimum amount of accuracy possible. I see this as a more likely use of shooting "on the run."
That said, I would have trouble justifying substantial time on getting good at shooting on the run in a limited training budget. In the same way that I won't spend the time to bring my support hand only marksmanship to an unusually high level, I also can't justify training shooting on the run if it will be to the determent of other fundamentals (or broader job proficiency). I would love to have it as a skill, and I can't think of a situation where the ability to move rapidly while delivering accurate fire would not be potentially useful, but I think that for many folks who do not have unusually high amounts of time to spend on the range, it would be at the expense of other fundamental skills. Many of the advantages are filled by the ability to deliver accurate fire while on the move at a more moderate rate.
For the sake of humor, has anyone seen the movie Equilibrium? The gun kata comes to mind.
Last edited by WOLFIE; 04-23-2018 at 05:12 PM.
In 1996 I attended an FBI Officer Survival school. It was a week of a ton of shooting. Shooting on the move was a regular training event. Shooting while running was also taught. For around 5 minutes. As best I can recall it involved dragging a foot briefly and taking your shot in the “pause” that dragging your foot supposedly created. We all tried it once, maybe twice, and that was the end of it. I am pretty sure no one hit much. Basically shooting on the run was presented as a possible thing to do, but not a recommended practice.
Very interesting report - thank you KPD!
There are a couple different mechanical strategies to employ:
1. Smooth the movement as much as possible, have faith in the wobble zone, press trigger continuously and patiently. Essentially, this is simply an adaptation of basic marksmanship.
2. Press the trigger and fire "now" during a moment of less gun-target disruption (a better moment within the wobble zone.) This does work, but requires the shooter to press "now" and not mess it up. This is different from the usual basic marksmanship pattern. The better moment of gun-target alignment is usually when no foot is currently striking the ground. That's when the bounce happens. I wonder if the foot-dragging thing is another way to talk about it/think about it, or if it's actually different foot movement. Either way, same category to me.
When I teach this, I use #1. #2 is worth exploring but I wouldn't start with it in the initial introduction.
I also invest quite a bit more time in it. The main presentation to the whole class is about 20 minutes or so. Then I spend approximately 7-8 minutes working with each shooter individually. This is the only safe way to start building the skill. They each go through a dry/live progression and by the end of that have tried 20-25 repetitions. That introduction is on a full paper/cardboard silhouette at 5 yards. We are absolutely trying for As on all shots, but the large paper gives us plenty of feedback on less than ideal shots so we can hopefully make specific and useful corrections rather than just guessing at what didn't go right. Then the follow on exercise is an informal, person vs. person contest on steel where they get another 10 or 15 tries.
The shooter has to have some marksmanship ability in the first place. That's the main thing. They need to be able to keep shots within 2-3 inches at 7 yards in untimed static shooting and then generally they can get started at doing this.
I seriously doubt any of this is very useful outside a group of enthusiasts who are personally dedicated at least some extent to excellence with their pistols.
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I'm with Gabe on this.
If I am booking to cover with a gun in my control, and discover that there is someone else that thought that the place I am moving toward also seemed like good cover and beat me to it, and shows hostile intent, it is a simpler solution to shoot while rapidly closing than it is to stop and shoot, or slow to a walk and shoot; and definitely better than hoping that my UA underwear suddenly becomes level IV+. Same goes for the movement to cover revealing a necessity to effectively engage that was not a factor when the movement began.
In a chaotic violent encounter, I would consider being effective on an immediate threat while moving at the speed that one moves to cover to be a more relevant skill than one-handed double-feed clearance. Shooting well enough in bad situations wins the day. There's some old quote about "not rising to the occasion, but defaulting to training" that seems relevant here.
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