The Balance of Speed, Accuracy and Assessment

[Tom Givens]

Tom, thanks for that example!

It seems that "contact ready" was justified in that case, but using low-ready instead may have helped deescalate the situation.

Would you say that is an accurate statement?

Low ready worked fine in this case. I'm not a fan of what most people call contact ready. If your gun is that high it makes it a lot harder to see the other guy's hands, which is exactly what we need to see to make a shoot/no shoot judgement. In this case my gun was never pointed at Dude, but Dude got the message loud and clear.

[okie john]

As expected of this forum, a truly informative post and discussion.

Yes. Thanks be unto God for all of the non-bullshit to be found here.


Okie John

[NH Shooter]

In this case my gun was never pointed at Dude, but Dude got the message loud and clear.

Yes, makes sense - thanks again!

[ER_STL]

Low ready worked fine in this case. I'm not a fan of what most people call contact ready. If your gun is that high it makes it a lot harder to see the other guy's hands, which is exactly what we need to see to make a shoot/no shoot judgement. In this case my gun was never pointed at Dude, but Dude got the message loud and clear.

As I remember the story when it was first told on the site, Dude was simply looking to get directions to a local church to which he had been invited, as he was late for choir practice. Probably not justified in pointing a gun at him in that case.

[Tom Givens]

As I remember the story when it was first told on the site, Dude was simply looking to get directions to a local church to which he had been invited, as he was late for choir practice. Probably not justified in pointing a gun at him in that case.

Yep. He was basically a good boy, who had been running with the wrong crowd, and had just got his life turned around.

[Clusterfrack]

About ten years ago a buddy of mine was HOA president at his condo development. He was delivering a final warning to a homeowner about noise and too many vehicles in the street. The owner's drunk boyfriend was working on one of the vehicles, and after a brief conversation, chased my friend down the street with a torque wrench. The pursuit ended with my buddy trapped at a dead end driveway. He drew his CCW at low ready and said something like "Back up, I don't want to have to shoot you." The drunk guy stopped immediately and backed away saying something along the lines of "Ah, I was only joking. It's cool man." Charges and evictions followed, and my friend resigned from the HOA.

[Guerrero]

Tom, thanks for that example!

It seems that "contact ready" was justified in that case, but using low-ready instead may have helped deescalate the situation.

Would you say that is an accurate statement?

I seem to remember @Dagga Boy in an interview advocating exactly the same thing for the same reasons

[GJM]

From a pretty smart guy (and familiar contributor):

I was having a conversation today with one of my heroes in this world and was explaining the basis for what we teach and thought it would be worth sharing those thoughts. This is not a debate, it is simply what we preach, and folks are very welcome to find a different way if it isn’t important to your world. It is important to ours.

We always hear about the balance of speed and accuracy. It is a continuous battle for many to find a balance and that will change for many based on “acceptable target”. That is great, and the size of the acceptable target can often change between various types of competitive shooting sports and is really what defines the difference between the competitive shooting sports. When it comes to shooting in the combative world, the balance of speed and accuracy gets to be a real issue when the target is capable of shooting back or has a means to inflict significant injury. All of a sudden, the speed you can deliver an accurate shot to an acceptable target becomes different because the acceptable target is the size of a grapefruit in the upper chest or head...period. Anything outside of that area with a pistol will likely require additional shots which requires a full reassessment to press that trigger again. Complete misses endanger innocents and as Wayne likes to say, “They all hit something”.

This gets to the left-out part of the equation which is assessment speed (which requires the assessment to be accurate as well). Nobody ever wants to delve into what is an equal leg in the triangle of balance. You have to balance Speed, Accuracy, and Assessment. For defensive shooting within the borders of the United States, every press of the trigger must be based on a strict level of assessment in order to be a justifiable use of lethal force. This is going to have to pass legal requirements, often ethical standards and for those in professions like law enforcement they will also have agency policy requirements. Wayne and I often preach that on top of mechanical skill you also need to be morally, ethically and legally right with every press of that trigger. Think about this in regard to how we train. If you are leaving assessment time and problem solving outside of your training, you are not training for proper application of lethal force, you are training to simply “shoot”. This is fine for fun, sport, recreation, and as a complex technical skill. For those interested in defensive shooting, the failure to account for the assessment component is neglecting the third leg of a balanced triangle.

Many courses of fire I have used and developed over the years are based on courses developed by the firearms cadre at LAPD SWAT in the 1980’s (a group with a very unique make up of environment, skill, and experience). I find people with great technical skills who discount the times and accuracy standard we use as too easy. I find this to be an indication of a focus on strictly technical skills for accurate and fast shooting. They have excelled at two thirds of the equation for solving real world use of lethal force problems. On the other side we have those who cannot handle the shooting demands of these courses. In this case they are lacking at two thirds of the equation and likely lacking in the whole equation. Our goal is to build a sub-conscious shooter who under duress and crisis can pull a rapid solution on the shooting side (accuracy balanced with speed) to allow the brain to work the incredibly complex assessment side. Based on our experience this is how to both win the gunfight and the legal and post shooting fight when your actions will be scrutinized at a level unfathomable to most people. It is why when you talk to folks who have been in multiple successful shootings with the entire triangle in perfect balance you will find they have very different answers to how to train and what is important to those folks who have never been tested in the entire process of a shooting and the subsequent investigation to those who have theories only confirmed on a range.

I have given up on arguing about most of this stuff. It mostly falls on deaf ears and sometimes you reach an age and place in life where you just smile. I am there as I am sure many of those in our closest circle of trainers. With that said, there is some who want to really be ready to solve entire use of force problems and not just the shooting part. For those, we continue to try to pass on hard earned insights from the study of the realities of the use of firearms in solving lethal force with firearms in a legal, moral and ethical manner. A term we use for this perfect balance is “a righteous shooting”. There are many folks who have mastered righteous shootings in our history of using cartridge handguns as a means of protecting ourselves. The take away for me has been to attain and maintain the ability to be a righteous shooter and have a solid balance of speed, accuracy and assessment.

This is a very interesting post and thread, and I have the utmost respect for Wayne, Darryl, Tom and others. I am not qualified to teach tactics. I do have some questions about this.

As said by Steve Anderson, you want to train accuracy, or train speed, but not at the same time. I see many shooters trying to learn how to “shoot at a speed they can assess,” but I wonder if this is not counterproductive. Why not train speed separately from accuracy and both separately from assessment, so you can independently evaluate your speed, your accuracy and your assessment ability. Otherwise, it is hard to know where you are on each of the three. Then bring it all together with drills that require accuracy, speed and assessment. By the way, hunting big game seems like a great way to practice speed, accuracy and assessment.

[Clusterfrack]

@GJM, exactly. Train in Assessment Mode to practice assessment.

[blues]

I think "don't outdrive your lights" applies...at least to me. Perhaps it's what got drilled into us (without using the term) as LEOs. Of course, speed and accuracy are important, but knowing why you decided to break leather and took the actions you did subsequently are paramount.

I don't want to be dead, nor do I want to be destitute or incarcerated. I'm all for "balance". And when you've drawn on hundreds of individuals over a period of years, it reinforces how important it is to be right (each and every time).

I speak only from my own experience. Not from a text or because someone espouses one philosophy or another. I'm sure there are scads of folks here that can out-shoot me, but my instincts / situational awareness, judgment and ability have yet to let me down. (And, knock wood, hopefully never will.)

YMMV.