Thanks, @paherne. Always appreciate your input.
I've trained with Mike Panone twice, and would do it again.
That said, I feel like pahern's experience is more relevant to my day-to-day existence than Mike's.
Thanks, @paherne. Always appreciate your input.
I've trained with Mike Panone twice, and would do it again.
That said, I feel like pahern's experience is more relevant to my day-to-day existence than Mike's.
I was thinking about it during a drive this evening after the thread started. Specifically, I was contrasting being in my truck with the SUV I drove my final few years in L/E and the cars before that. In my truck, nothing blocks my movement - under duress - from the driver's seat to the passenger side. Easy peasy. My biggest worry would be keeping my 4th point of contact & head (no, they aren't the same HCM) down.
Contrast that to the front seat of my patrol SUV ... MDC, mounts, and radio, AR in the rack, plus binos & a bandolier, helmet/plate carrier/baton blocks most of the path across the front seats. I'll be swimming, climbing up & over, or through to exit the vehicle in the event of a driver's side ambush (unless I assault through a near ambush solo with a pistol).
To a degree, equipment (the vehicle's interior) drives the techniques that can be used. On a clock, on a square range, there may well be one best option. That option may or may not change when certain variables come into play. Mr. Pannone's video showed a response without those interior variables. Doesn't mean it's wrong, just that they weren't addressed.
Shortly before I retired from full-time L/E in the fall of '19, one of our laterals was in a pretty spectacular car crash. Going at @80mph up Highway 1, he lost control of his SUV on a curve, and it went airborne. He was going to drop 75-100 feet into a near ocean body of water. Fortunately, a bayside house intervened and stopped his descent. Then it got worse. The resulting impact broke his back in multiple places. The car caught fire, which ignited the room he came to rest in. Now he is having to fight his way out of the car. It got even worser; his external vest carrier got hung up inside the car (sorry, can't recall what part on what part). He had to fight his way out of the vest to fight his way out of the front seat of the SUV in the middle of an AwChit situation.
Why am I telling that story? I believe there is a direct application to what we are discussing. It just may not have been something others thought about.
At the end of the North Hollywood bank robbery, when the officer in the right front seat engages the last bank robber from a seated, near supine position as his partners exit and move to the rear of the Metro ride. He then backs across the front seat (no big MDC then, though CRASH cars had them in '91) before going prone under the car's front end to engage that BadGuy.
In the event of a near ambush, regardless of the side, do you exit out that door and abandon whatever intermediate barrier you had? Do you, can you crawl through the vehicle to exit on the far side? (btw, we practiced that a fair amount in Iraq with IBAs and whatever load carriage we used - it sucked & it didn't always work - because of the radio/BFT mount). Do you fight from there, even if its only to return some pressure before your next move?
I can't think of a single class I've been to that I agreed with everything in - either in the moment or a few days later. Sometimes material from one area contradicts experiences in another. For example, Spaulding's Vehicle Combatives class contradicted a fair amount of stuff from Iraq. Why? Dave's material was built around a detective, solo officer, or citizen alone in an un-armored passenger car, while my Middle East trip involved myself, 15-21 of my closest acquaintances in up-armored vehicles with crew-served weapons.
We are all victims of our own perspectives. Even though I never, ever worked traffic, I made a kitten ton of vehicle stops during my career. The vast majority of them were passenger-side approaches - even wrote a research paper & a couple of published articles on that. Were I to see someone teaching, advocating for a driver's side approach as the norm rather than the exception, it would probably negate anything they had to say on uniformed L/E vehicle work based on my experience & perspective. However, they could be spot on in other areas though.
Oh, btw, shooting out of your front windshield while driving, is far from a best practice in most cases. I can only think of two "recent" ones in which I believe it was justified; both are older. IOW, don't do it.
Last edited by Erick Gelhaus; 02-15-2023 at 01:44 AM. Reason: anaddition or two
I've taken both classes, while some of the stuff that VCQB teaches appears to be situationally useful such as shooting under and around vehicles, there is also some "clownshoes" material such as the aforementioned "fighting from a car". I understand that it may be prudent to return fire from the front driver or passenger seat in certain circumstances, but shit like contact front/L/R drills from the driver's seat with a passenger are stupid theatrics that has a very narrow application. If you have time to engage multiple targets and temple index to avoid flagging your partner, you have time to bail and seek a more advantageous position.
I think Mike brings up some good points in his instagram videos and commentary: A lot of "tactical" training classes are full of "clownshoes" training blocks, where they teach shit that is "entertaining" to people like shooting one-armed with a tourniquet or shooting on your back weak-handed etc. Meanwhile, they conveniently ignore that half of the class can't shoot to reasonable accuracy or speed standards. Not to mention the fact that most of these "tactics" instructors like Mr. Petty have inflated their resumes (per Mike, Petty only has 4 years of experience as an active LE) to make others believe that the stuff they are teaching are things that they have vetted through personal experience and not something they just made up out of thin air. TBH there is a lot of money out there to be made and it's difficult to fill an 8-hour block with pure shooting instruction: if the instructor doesn't have the skill to teach advanced fundamentals then they find "entertaining" shit to fill the time with. From a student perspective, I only will personally spend money nowadays taking purely shooting skill classes, most of the "tactics" type of instruction can be done dry and it's a waste of ammo to take a class without any type of performance standard or expectation. I wasted a ton of money and ammo for years before I came to the revelation that "tactics" heavy classes offer little practical return on investment. I wasted a ton of money and ammo for years before I came to the revelation that "tactics" heavy classes offer little practical return on investment, at least the shitty "tactical" training I receive at my day job is free and the county pays for ammo.....
Last edited by sickeness; 02-15-2023 at 06:53 AM.
YouTube provides verification for this post. Every ex-something is out there trying to make some bucks off new gun owners by teaching them the SEAL/SF/ninja way. At best, it's crappy instruction, and at worst it's potentially dangerous if used in a real fight. My list of trainers I'm willing to pay doesn't have 20 names on it.Originally Posted by sickeness
I didn't take Pannone's video as being LE-centric, but more of a commentary to make people ask themselves whether some training has a useful purpose or is just a fun way to spend a weekend.
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
Like @LJP, I took vehicle specific classes with Pannone and Petty (I was in the same classes he was in). Also have done vehicle work with Paul Howe and John Murphy.
I don't understand all the hate Pannone has for Petty and his curriculum. It all comes off as almost sour grapes that Petty fills all these classes and has gotten all of these PD and Fed contracts. There was nothing I saw in Petty's class that struck me as snake oil.
Having said that, Petty's class was marketed to me by a trusted mentor with tons of real gunfighting experience (including in soft skin vehicles in war zones.....years worth). In addition to using it as an opportunity to learn some tactics, his advice to me was to treat Petty's class as a gun-handling/muzzle awareness class. If you can successfully navigate the drills in that class, your gun handling is "good to go".
Personally, although I really like Pannone and have trained with him more than once, I've had about all I can take of the "mean girls" actions of many in the training community.
Drawing a pistol inside the driver's compartment of a vehicle, as the initial response to rounds coming through the driver's compartment from the exterior, is probably considered by most anyone with a modicum of common sense to be a bad idea.
That being said there are plenty of other occasions where drawing a pistol inside of a vehicle and firing may very well be the best option. Disabled vehicle surrounded by an angry mob that's on the edge of being breached, is a good one for both citizens and lo-vis personnel working OCONUS to think about.
I have a handful of case studies where that exact scenario has played out.
Not an angry mob scenario but an overseas event that's been in the public purview for quite some time is the Raymond Davis case.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ivilian-deaths
The “Corporals Killings” in Northern Ireland are one of the first well-known situations like that that comes to mind for me when thinking about these scenarios.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporals_killings
British Army corporals Derek Wood and David Howes[1] were killed by the Provisional IRA on 19 March 1988 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in what became known as the corporals killings. The soldiers (wearing civilian clothes, both armed with Browning Hi-Power pistols and in a civilian car) drove into the funeral procession of an IRA member.[2][3] Three days before, loyalist Michael Stone had attacked an IRA funeral and killed three people. Believing the soldiers were loyalists intent on repeating Stone's attack,[4] dozens of people surrounded and attacked their car. During this, Corporal Wood drew his service pistol and fired a shot into the air. The soldiers were then dragged from the car and taken to a nearby sports ground where they were beaten, stripped and searched. They were then driven to a nearby waste ground where they were shot dead
Excellent case study.
And then there’s the Daniel Perry case right here in Austin.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07...tin-protester/
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