C.A.R. shooting

[cracker]

Saw this on another forum, wondering what the good folks at PF think of this.
https://gunsmagazine.com/discover/wh...-c-a-r-system/

[jlw]

It's like Jaws XVII.

[RJ]

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....er+axis+relock

[peterb]

What does “works for me” mean? Measured by what objective standards?

“Reasonably accurate at contact distances” doesn’t seem like a strong argument.

[Trigger]

In the photo, Right hand shooter. Left eye dominant. I suggest fixing that first.

[MVS]

Not again. How am I going to go to the range today after I had to gouge my eyes out.

[Erik]

In the photo, Right hand shooter. Left eye dominant. I suggest fixing that first.

How? And why, for that matter? As a right handed shooter who was right eye dominant until I lost my right eye, I'm genuinely curious.

[DMF13]

In the photo, Right hand shooter. Left eye dominant. I suggest fixing that first.

Problems with CAR aside, the eye dominance issue does not need to be "fixed.". I'm a "cross dominant" shooter, and can tell you from extensive experience people make way too big an issue of this. Its people who are NOT cross dominant shooters, or were infected by instruction by people who are not cross dominant, who try to turn this into an issue when its not.

When is the last time you heard an instructor mention eye dominance when teaching someone who is NOT cross dominant to shoot with their "weak" hand? When is the last time you heard an instructor tell a cross.dominant shooter they had an advantage over other shooters when shooting weak hand?

Rhetorical question, as we all know the answer is never. Because with pistols you just put the gun in front of the dominant eye, and get to work, no matter which hand the gun is being held. So, if it's not a problem when a non cross-dominant shoots weak hand, then it's not a problem for a cross dominant shooter shooting strong hand. QED.

Long guns are a bit different due to your cheek "weld" on the gun. For me the best solution was to shoot weak hand, and keep both eyes open. However, the only long guns I shoot are AR style rifles, and after putting on an ambidextrous safety an AR is very easy to operate with either hand.

People who are not cross dominant need to stop telling people it's a handicap that needs to be fixed.

One of my motivations for.becoming a firearms instructor at work was to stop the BS being spread about eye dominance.

[Trigger]

So when I start a new Shooter, I always check for the dominant eye first. You are correct in that it makes less of a difference for pistol shooting. But for rifle shooting it is important and for shotgun shooting it is absolutely critical.

When transitioning people from the disciplines of pistol to shotgun to rifle shooting, I find it easier when I don’t have to transition them from right-handed in one discipline to left-handed in the other.

[Default.mp3]

I took one of his 3-day seminars years ago.

The basic premiss of the system is that if you are really, really close to your target and you have a really, really big target and don't care where you hit it, you can pull the trigger really fast. C.A.R. then provides a complicated series of stances and methods depending on whether you're at contact distance, out to 3 yards, out to 7 yards, out to 15 yards, or beyond 15 yards. I may be getting the numbers wrong, but there are literally four or five different stance variations between point blank and 15yd.

Except for the contact distance stuff -- which assumes you will be able to maintain a solid, upright position without much dynamic movement needed -- the shooting technique is all about doing more or less the exact opposite of what we know people will do under stress. You purposely aim with your non-dominant eye (except for cross-dominant people), take up a grip position which is complicated and not at all bilateral (meaning two sides of your body need to operate completely differently), etc.

Because so much of the C.A.R. program is taught shooting at humongous targets from 3yd and within, students shoot incredibly fast ... faster than most of them ever have before. I remember one drill in which the only goal was to pull the trigger at least five times per second. Since so many people associated speed with skill, it feels tactical.

There were also weird techniques for a lot of other things (like one-handed manipulations using your chest as a 'table' to work on) and then all the silly drills like assembling and disassembling your pistol while doing situps.

Yes, while doing situps. Didn't make that up. Promise.

It's flashy and different and has that cult-esque sense of being "in the know" if you drink the kool-aid. But from the standpoint of delivering actually effective fire in a dynamic situation it's certainly no better than more traditional approaches and in many ways it's worse.

Source: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread...210#post399210