Focusing on -> shooting at the assailant's weapon

[MattInFla]

Had a chance a while back to spend some time in the Pro V Sim 180 at Gander Mountain in Lake Mary, FL. Had a blast, and noticed some interesting things.

First, a bit of background. The simulator is a set of video screens set up in a 180 degree arc (they also have a 300 degree surround set, but I haven't tried it yet). You have a Glock 22 that has been converted to cycle the slide with CO2 and has a laser for tracking POI of your shots.

Among the scenarios they have is an office setting where various individuals come out of doors and hallways. Some are armed and hostile, and some are bystanders. There's a Teuller drill-esque scenario with different endings, a convenience store robbery, and a home burglary scenario - each with alternate endings selected by the computer.

Interestingly, I found on reviewing some of the engagements that I was focusing on what was in the person's hand to the extent that I was delivering my shots there. It took a bit of self-correction to force myself to get the gun to the upper chest.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing / developed a training technique to counter it? Or am I just an oddball?

(I know which answer my wife would pick....)

Matt

[BigT]

I've been on the receiving end of this phenomenon. An attempted home invader had a round hit my trigger guard and then my social finger of my right hand. Fortunately didn't notice it until later. I can only assume he was locked onto my gun while I drew. As the hit happened before I got my weak hand on the gun.

It is ,I understand , a common event. Agent Doves pistol was hit in the Miami shootout as I recall.

I think this gives another advantage to sighted fire as IMHO you less likely to lock onto a weapon and sling lead at it if your focusing on your front sight.

[phil_in_cs]

Simple FOF with airsoft shows how common this is - look at all the welts on people's hands. At some level your brain is saying "the gun will kill me - look at the gun". As with most things, you point where you look.

It isn't hard to train out of, but you do need to train it.

[Odin Bravo One]

This is a very common phenomenon. We see it often with shooters in similar FATS type scenarios as well as Force on Force training.

The following is simply one man's opinions and observations:

From the moment we begin any sort of offensive or defensive firearms training, be it LEO oriented, private citizen, military, or all of the above, we are taught to identify the threat before engaging with lethal force. In many circles and training arena's, this starts with the mantra of "look at the hands", or "it's what is in the hands that will hurt you". Certainly this identifies whether or not a particular subject represents a lethal threat to us at the moment of observation.

But what we see during these drills, and often times in the reality of actual shooting events, is that we have programmed our minds to react to what we perceive as the threat......i.e., the OBJECT that can do us harm, vs. the SUBJECT that possesses the intent to do us harm.

In a sense, we become very similar in our programmed response to many of the anti-gun people on the planet. On an intellectual level, we understand that the gun/knife/baseball bat is simply an object. But at the moment that our adrenaline dump hits our brains, we discard intellectual thought and replace it with fear of an object, along with a certain amount of pre-programmed instructions ("look at the hands"); because we know (or reasonably expect) that particular object to be capable of causing death or serious physical injury, so that is what gets our attention, and subsequent focus when our brain figures out is time to shoot.

Something to consider, and just a thought......but the object itself can do nothing without input from an outside source. A pistol on the coffee table of my house doesn't scare me enough to shoot at it. If a LEO clearing a room during a building search see's an unattended shotgun propped up against the wall, he is not going to start blazing at the shotgun. Not if he wants to continue working as a LEO anyway. Yet, we allow ourselves to be convinced that when in the hands of someone who means us harm, the object itself is the threat.

The threat is, and always will be the person holding the object that can readily cause serious physical injury or death. The object is solely what gives them the means to inflict it. This can be overcome, but we need to re-program our brains accordingly.

[DocGKR]

Sean what you wrote above is OUTSTANDING!

[dookie1481]

Paul Howe wrote somtehing about this in one of his newsletters. I'll see if I can dig it up.

[BWT]

The above and... how many of you are that confident in your pistol marksmanship that you'll hit a moving pistol in a life and death situation and maybe incapacitate it?

I'm to the point I think I'd be okay aiming at a human size target, a pistol? Under that kind of pressure? Moving? and shoot well enough to hit the striker/hammer mechanism?

No.

[MDS]

The threat is, and always will be the person holding the object that can readily cause serious physical injury or death. The object is solely what gives them the means to inflict it. This can be overcome, but we need to re-program our brains accordingly.

This makes a lot of sense. Do you have any specific advice, drills or etc. about how to re-program our brains for this?

[ToddG]

I would offer a couple of thoughts in counterpoint.

First, in FOF, you need to consider the participants. If the guy you're shooting at has been trained to bring his gun up in front of his face in a two-handed grip, then his pistol -- and his hands -- are more or less covering his upper torso and face. So if you are aiming for those areas, you have an increased likelihood of hitting the hands, arms, or gun.

Second, while it is certainly true that officers get shot in the hands, it is not nearly as common as we see in FOF. Nor do officers seem to hit BGs in the hands as often as we see in FOF.

I'm not disagreeing with Sean. The first time I ever went through a shoothouse against photorealistic targets, I shot many of the "threats" in the gun, gun hand, or gun arm because I had a threat-weapon focus. But as I've practiced more and become more habituated to aim/hit the upper torso and head, I find that I don't do that anymore. The last time I shot someone in the hands during a FOF encounter, he had his hands right up in front of the part of the body I wanted to hit. And while his hand was in the way for the first shot, it wasn't in the way anymore for the second, third, and subsequent shots.

[Dropkick]

Simple FOF with airsoft shows how common this is - look at all the welts on people's hands.

My experience with FOF airsoft got me wearing gloves because of how painful it is to get popped in the fingers, but in general I got shot just as much everywhere else on my body just as equally.

I would offer a couple of thoughts in counterpoint.

But as I've practiced more and become more habituated to aim/hit the upper torso and head, I find that I don't do that anymore. The last time I shot someone in the hands during a FOF encounter, he had his hands right up in front of the part of the body I wanted to hit.

I remember at the practice session you did on target id and low-light, and how you evaluated the group targets on the photo-reals. The key comment you made that stuck out in my mind was how the group generally didn't shoot the hands / weapons.