At the end of a pistol drill string of fire, should handgun return to low ready?

[Erick Gelhaus]

You could do any of a few different things. The one thing I'd caution is NOT racing back to the holster or blowing off the follow-through from the last shot to whip the pistol into a "ready" position, compressed or otherwise, at light speed.

[JohnO]

Is the threat down? It the threat out of the fight? Does the threat have friends?

Until those questions are answered it makes no sense to put your blaster away.

[Utm]

I think I need to paraphrase something here: Most folks don't rise to the occasion; they sink to the level of their training or experience.

With me, I just kind of realized it is pretty much gear dependent:

When playing gun games I pretty much practice this: the only thing you need to ensure 100% in training is indexing your trigger finger high on the gun and slowly holstering for safety reasons I also routinely look my pistol into the holster because the holster is located lower than normal. Same when practicing for gun games.

Follow through on the last shot means that there is a hesitation before recovery, but it's not a scan.

When wearing a duty rig or concealment holster I'm more focused on the aspects of 'shooting to save or survive' and make sure I come back up on threat after a reload, etc. I've also started training myself and folks I shoot with out of a ready position on target or in front of target, instead going to a muzzle down guard/retention/sul position.

JMO YMMV

Not a dig at you, but sul is not a ready position, LE has turned it into that and it's a pet peeve of mine.

[HCM]

Double tap

[HCM]

I don’t get confused when stepping out of my car at work. I lock it.

Versus at home where I don’t unlock it.

I also don’t get confused when getting out of my car after a track session versus going to the grocery store.

I don’t think it matters what you do with your pistol after a drill as long as you do it safely.

If you want to train in a protocol for a self defense scenario then focus mentally on that and go through the mental steps and checklists and let that be your guide for what you do (suspect immobile, sirens coming from a distance… maybe you want to not have a gun in your hands when the police get to you? Maybe you have one hand low ready and motion through calling 911 to alert authorities?)

Run it like a fire drill. But you don’t have to do it for every string of practice or you’ll waste a lot of time.

Not getting confused arriving at work or arriving at home is the correct comparison. It more what you do every day vs what you do immediately after you get into a car accident.

I agree with @Erick Gelhaus that there is more than one answer to this but “practice makes permanent” is a real thing when you run out of conscious “bandwidth.”

[JCN]

Not getting confused arriving at work or arriving at home is the correct comparison. It more what you do every day vs what you do immediately after you get into a car accident.

I agree with @Erick Gelhaus that there is more than one answer to this but “practice makes permanent” is a real thing when you run out of conscious “bandwidth.”

Agreed, at the end of my post I mentioned “run [your real self defense protocol] like a fire drill” so that you do some reps to lock in a “brain freaking out” safe plan. But it doesn’t have to be with every practice session.

[rob_s]

I would agree with anyone above that said “don’t be in a hurry to get it back in the holster.”

I would, and do, disagree with anyone that compares mundane everyday activities to one-off (never-off?) scenarios, other than to say that training to the point that some things become second nature enough to seem like mundane activities may not be a bad thing in all cases.

I think the “conscious competence” thing applies to some degree.

1) unconscious incompetence
2) conscious incompetence
3) conscious incompetence
4) subconscious competence (I never liked “unconscious” in the traditional hierarchy)

At some point (and it’s usually not a point noticed as it happens but a point realized after the fact) anyone that does a thing long enough will reach a stage of subconscious competence about certain aspects. I find that sometimes this is misunderstood as “muscle memory” or “ingraining bad habits” or the like. What I mean here instead is not just having a standard but also having enough subconscious competence around your gunhandling to be able to determine when the routine doesn’t apply.

Thinking about this relative to the low ready, I think that having “end on low ready” as part of your routine isn’t a horrible thing, with a goal of getting to the point that you are subconsciously aware of what you are doing such that you may instead end with further searching, or covering the downed target, etc. Which is also a good example of why I’ve never liked “unconscious” for stage 4. You don’t want to not think about the thing at all, you just want to get to a point where you don’t HAVE TO think about the thing, but are able to call it up to fully conscious when needed.

[JCN]

@rob_s
@HCM

An interesting sidebar discussion about un/sub conscious competence.

I think it’s possible to have unconscious competence in gun handling and shooting while still maintaining ACTIVE awareness of muzzle direction at all times. This sort of thing might come into play in a real self defense shooting where you have elements that are “automatic” but also keen awareness of certain basic safety and self-safety things.

Not that it’s a good analogy, but I dry fire in my house a lot (dedicated dry gun with no ammo and firing pin tip cut). My daughter often runs around and I frequently have to abort or modify a drill to keep with Cooper’s rules.

I think it’s potentially useful to have that extra awareness and processing above and beyond the auto-pilot of drills.

[DDTSGM]

Not a dig at you, but sul is not a ready position, LE has turned it into that and it's a pet peeve of mine.

I am quite aware of sul's origins. You might notice that I linked it to several other similar positions. Correctly performed you aren't lasering any of your own body parts. And as you mentioned, it is widely used as a ready position.

I find that by simply dropping your elbow you press out to the target. Intuitively, this seems faster than have to stop either a lateral or horizontal upward movement.

What are the primary reasons for your dislike of sul as a ready?

[Utm]

I am quite aware of sul's origins. You might notice that I linked it to several other similar positions. Correctly performed you aren't lasering any of your own body parts. And as you mentioned, it is widely used as a ready position.

I find that by simply dropping your elbow you press out to the target. Intuitively, this seems faster than have to stop either a lateral or horizontal upward movement.

What are the primary reasons for your dislike of sul as a ready?

It limits speed and movement if you're having to run a good distance i.e. to the end of a commercial building hallway or one end of a grocery aisle to the other. I prefer a high or low ready where two hands are on the gun if its a true ready position. If I'm having to work a door, I think a high ready or low ready works better because the gun is closer to being oriented to the threat. SUL is also a poor position to defend against a gun grab if you pop a corner and a dude is right there