Appropriate level of skill to carry concealed, responsibly?

[RevolverRob]

In a country where professional gun toters regularly have NDs after dozens or hundreds of hours of PAID familiarization practice. I have zero hope of ever creating achievable, universal, standards of any kind. And therefore, the correct answer is, "Whatever you deem appropriate, because I can't tell you what is appropriate for your life."

I vote we shitcan all the standards and just roll on with (not so) common sense. If you fuck up and ND and hurt/kill someone because you're a retard, get ready to defend yourself in court (at minimum civil court).

Why am I opposed to 'standards'? Simple. They are a gateway/tool to allowing or continue to allow rights suppression.

[MVS]

I come at all of this from a pure civilian perspective, and what was most surprising to me is that there isn’t a clear metric out there for when a person is “good enough” at shooting to carry concealed. Of course, there’s a lot more that people should be prepared for (legal considerations, willingness to disengage from a disagreement, etc), but here, I’m just talking about marksmanship.

To be clear, this is about personal standards, or perhaps what you’d suggest for a friend new to concealed carry—not about legal requirements. It’s my sense that the vast majority of people who carry concealed not only have no standard, but they don’t have a clear idea of their level of skill.

Here are some preliminary thoughts:

• No one is ever really “good enough.” No one leaves a defensive gun use thinking they spent too much time training, and you should always be aiming to improve your abilities. Still, it’s helpful to have some base level of standard to measure yourself against so you know when you can reasonably start carrying.
• It’s tempting to think that any carry is good. But if you can’t hit a B-27 at 3 yards 100% of the time, you’re not good enough. There must be some level of skill beneath which a responsible citizen would choose not to carry, even when legally permitted.
• If a CCW issuer has a marksmanship qualification, it’s invariably too easy. See the new SFPD CCW qualification, for instance.

Here are two that come to mind, as well as my rationale (based on my understanding):

1. The 2019 FBI Handgun Qualification. Focuses on closer distances, but touches on distance. Target is quite large, but there will probably be a bit of time pressure on particular strings. Used by the FBI, so it has a degree of national legitimacy. FBI hires a lot of lawyer types and trains them from scratch—this isn’t an HRT qualification.
2. The Five-Yard Roundup. Low round count. Focuses on the most common types of defensive gun uses, per Tom Givens (5 yards; 3 seconds). Probably somewhat more challenging to reach 80% on than the FBI qual, due to the time constraints. No exposure to long distance shots.

To the experts here: if you were a new shooter, but you knew what you know now, what standard would you set for yourself? Or put another way, if a friend was a new shooter and asked you this question, what qualification would you suggest for them?

To do my best at answering your actual question, (though I don't claim to be an expert) it sounds trite but when I teach new shooters, and remembering back to the lack of how much of this I had early on, I teach safety first. Safety in everything from handling the gun, to storing the gun, to carrying the gun. When I look back at all of the unsafe things I did early on, I shudder. I then go on to being able to hit a sheet of paper at various reasonable distances. Think 3-7 yards. Some new shooters are only looking for home defense and not carry. If they are looking for carry then we go on to accessing the pistol and safe ways to carry it. None of this is timed in the beginning. Once they can keep all of their rounds on target and can safely draw and reholster, we go on to actual drills and qualifications if they are still interested. This usually takes numerous range sessions. One of the quals I use for new shooters is the MCOLES in service qual. It is very easy by the standard of most here, but it is something and is what is used by LE in our state as a minimum. Because a lot of the people I work with are either family or want to qualify to carry at church, I try to get them to the FBI qual. Most don't get past that, if they get that far. There are some that I work with on an ongoing basis, but they don't do much if any work on their own so improvement is slow. Us enthusiasts really are as Karl Rehn puts it, the 1%.

As a side note, personally I like the 5 yard round up as a metric to see how I fit with a gun and whether it would be sufficient for carry. It is far beyond the "average" CCW person. I think I am moving to the Rangemaster 7 yard standards as my CCW test gun go to.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

More thoughts - some of the standard proposed are from a gamer viewpoint of speed, not all but some. Is that appropriate for real life carry of most?

Second, the 'official' standards proposed are tough for most civilian carriers. Is this playing into the hands of gun banners. Oh, look - here's what the gun world thinks the average Joe and Jill (and whatever) should reach? Obviously, most can't thus, carry should not be allowed for most. You read the narrative of things like the CCIA. Maybe that's a good thing to have such standards just like let's not let ignoramuses vote (or run for office). It's like the 5 is enough crowd reinforcing the mag ban arguments.

[JohnO]

I see a lot of draw from concealment time frame standards.

How about the guy who is smart enough and alert enough to have his gun in hand when needed. Should he be excluded from carrying because he can't reliably meet someone's arbitrary draw standard?

[Mark D]

If this has already mentioned, I missed it...

Riley Bowman at Concealedcarry.com recently had stab at answering this very question. The first part of the article gets a little off track, in my opinion, but he does a nice of job overall.

https://www.concealedcarry.com/tacti...s-good-enough/

[Beast17]

If this has already mentioned, I missed it...

Riley Bowman at Concealedcarry.com recently had stab at answering this very question. The first part of the article gets a little off track, in my opinion, but he does a nice of job overall.

https://www.concealedcarry.com/tacti...s-good-enough/

His chart showing the relative skill levels of various standards overrates POST and underrates IDPA and USPSA. An IDPA Marksman is a pretty high standard and overkill for a minimum self-defense standard. Labeling that as in the bottom 95% of shooters is way off. An IDPA Marksman exceeds most of the standards previously discussed in this thread.

I would encourage anyone carrying a gun for self-defense to aspire to the Marksman level, but it's overkill for what's under discussion.

It's been pretty well documented that merely displaying a gun or even being known to possess a gun deters millions of threats a year. With that in mind, I would encourage anyone to go ahead and get a gun as long as they were trained to the point where they were administratively safe with it and could avoid NDs etc.

Obligatory caveat: More training is obviously better and I'm not discouraging training to a higher standard.

[Mark D]

His chart showing the relative skill levels of various standards overrates POST and underrates IDPA and USPSA. An IDPA Marksman is a pretty high standard and overkill for a minimum self-defense standard. Labeling that as in the bottom 95% of shooters is way off. An IDPA Marksman exceeds most of the standards previously discussed in this thread.

I would encourage anyone carrying a gun for self-defense to aspire to the Marksman level, but it's overkill for what's under discussion.

It's been pretty well documented that merely displaying a gun or even being known to possess a gun deters millions of threats a year. With that in mind, I would encourage anyone to go ahead and get a gun as long as they were trained to the point where they were administratively safe with it and could avoid NDs etc.

Obligatory caveat: More training is obviously better and I'm not discouraging training to a higher standard.

No argument here, but FWIW the chart is originally from @John Hearne .

I agree the chart not perfect, my own skill level crosses several categories, depending on what metric we're looking at. It's a generalization, after all, so it's not going to be exact. But I think it's useful, like most of Mr. Herne's work.

[Beast17]

No argument here, but FWIW the chart is originally from @John Hearne .

Yeah, and the chart was apparently created based off responses to a thread started by Hearne here on Pistol-Forum circa 2014. Without going into the weeds on automaticity (a term I'm not familiar with and admittedly haven't run down the rabbit hole on), I'm not sure Bowman appropriately adapted Hearne's chart.

All of that notwithstanding, I have serious issues with the claim an IDPA Marksman is in the bottom 95% of shooters. That's ridiculous. But I think that's Bowman's assertion not Hearne's.

[JCN]

Maybe I need to sign up for a USPSA COMPETITION.

.

Fixed that for you!

[JCN]

Yeah, and the chart was apparently created based off responses to a thread started by Hearne here on Pistol-Forum circa 2014. Without going into the weeds on automaticity (a term I'm not familiar with and admittedly haven't run down the rabbit hole on), I'm not sure Bowman appropriately adapted Hearne's chart.

All of that notwithstanding, I have serious issues with the claim an IDPA Marksman is in the bottom 95% of shooters. That's ridiculous. But I think that's Bowman's assertion not Hearne's.

I think you’re misreading it.

The bell curve there isn’t bell curve of population

It’s bell curve of skill.

So like if you take USPSA percent for example.

Even a D class 30% shooter is still 10x better than the average shooter.

If you look at his percents, he’s saying that IDPA marksman is BETTER than around 95% of shooters.

But that most shooters don’t have much skill.

This is what the curve looks like in terms of population if you use his percent listings.