I appreciate you and JCN saying so. I may be "back lite-ish", but I'm not back with the same level of involvement I had before. I just don't have the time or energy to do so. I seriously do appreciate it, though, and value the time and energy I did put into the forums before.Originally Posted by blues
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
This is gold.
It’s spot on.
PF is kind of a special place where you have students of the pistol… that often have to teach people who are not.
Sometimes ramen cup o noodles is better than trying to make pasta from scratch if you only have 5 minutes to cook and eat.
Well, you're a great example of "quality of quantity" posting, so you've got that going for you....
Great thread, touches on so many points that really do bear consideration.
"And for a regular dude I’m maybe okay...but what I learned is if there’s a door, I’m going out it not in it"-Duke
"Just because a girl sleeps with her brother doesn't mean she's easy..."-Blues
Okay. Lotta thoughts on this, so here goes. First, BBL, you're right that this is an extremely important topic. It isn't discussed nearly enough where it needs to be, which is in LE training circles WITH command level decision makers. In a bit, I'll get to my pessimistic thoughts on.why this situation will NOT be fixed in our current American LE paradigm.
All LE Firearms training, with very few exceptions, is a compromise. The compromise is between time/money and officer/public safety. Time/money ALWAYS wins. There are a few reasons for this. One is that thankfully OIS incidents are relatively rare events, and bad shootings even.more so. That fact very much encourages a 'let it ride' mentality among gamblers...er...LE executives. It's also not their own money they're gambling with.
There's also the reality, that many outside the job don't grasp, that LE leadership just generally don't know what constitutes good training, because they've never experienced it. They.genuinely believe that the waste of time that passes for training most places is 'good to go'.
To the topic at hand: I personally think that both models are 'wrong' in the sense of being incomplete. We have the mag dumps and bad shootings because cops suck at the applicable skills, both 'hard' and 'soft'. They suck at the mechanics of shooting, and their tactics also suck (getting too close too early, not taking positions of advantage, complacency, etc). This situation persists because LE training models generally suck balls. We don't devote nearly enough time and resources to developing life and death skills, but somehow expect performance to be high, or we just accept that it will be dismal. So we get what we get. I think sometimes we even get bad shootings from cops who want to be better because unfortunately their 'training' comes in the form of people shooting fast on instagram....even knowledgeable highly skilled trainers. This happens due to missing context for why they may be 'going fast' on a particular exercise. Some of this was discussed in the threads on Predictive Vs Reactive shootings, or Controlled Pairs Vs Hammer Pairs. Folks are missing that some of the high speed trainers advocating for practicing Predictive Shooting for tactical shooters are very much advocating for it as a training/diagnostic strategy....not an engagement strategy. And you should always return to high accountability/assessment exercises using a Reactive Shooting pace. The goal of doing the former is to make your Reactive Shooting faster and more accountable. I think a LOT of folks are missing that context, and thinking that 'Pedo Splits' are the way to go for an engagement. Training in Predictive Shooting for a tactical shooter should be with the goal of fixing/refining your grip/vision issues. One way we addressed this at my old job was to finish the training sessions with decision making/High accountability exercises and tests, thus forcing a return to a Reactive Shooting strategy. We also used some exercises where their wasn't a set round count, but that mag dumping or excessive Shooting left you unable to engage subsequent targets....resulting in a failure.
Both the shoot two/assess and shoot em to the ground models are incomplete and therefore 'wrong' in that sense. Shooting with high accuracy/accountability until the threat ceases is the way to go. The question is how to train that response. The answer, in my opinion, is to train in performance shooting methods to a high degree of skill, simultaneously using decision making and threat assessment exercises to increase accountability. The problem is that this answer is very resource intensive in terms of time and money, which is why it's rejected in favor of incomplete models or 'check the box' training. There is no free lunch. The knowledge of how to get better is out there, but nobody wants to pay for it. That's my 75 cents. What say the rest of you?
Whenever I hear mag dump, I think of that saying -- insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Many shooters have the tendency to react to a missed shot by trying to make it up even faster, when logic says your reaction should be to fire the make up shot more carefully since whatever you just did didn't work.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
Just jumping back in to offer an example of folks missing context in the use of some drills/exercises, and thinking those things should be an 'engagement strategy'. The Bill Drill is a super popular exercise for a number of reasons, and it's become popular in some LE circles as a training exercise. I think this can become a problem, because of lost context. When I took over our program, the Bill Drill was used as an exercise in our Plainclothes Firerams course, largely because it had become a shooting course more than anything else. The problem was that it was done without proper context. It was being taught as an engagement strategy, without the requisite accuracy standard. I think the Bill Drill is a fantastic, simple assessment exercise to improve your grip, your draw and your visual engagement, while maintaining accuracy. Unfortunately the takeaway was "Shoot em 6 times as fast as you can!" If you're not striving for the accuracy standard along with the speed, and breaking down exactly where you're failing in one or the other, the whole point of the drill is lost. Now you're just training to mag dump. So we stopped doing it.
Recently after some online discussions, Mike Pannone came up with what I think is a pretty good assessment test, his '10-8' test. It includes a retreating Bill Drill. For the test, I think it's good, but some of the discussion turned to the value of the retreating Bill Drill as an engagement strategy. Now, I think that high accountability shooting while retreating from a threat is likely the single most important and realistic movement skill for LE folks especially, but I'm not sure that the Bill Drill is always the best way to train for engagement. We started doing this a while back, training shooting while retreating, in 3 shot strings. We would retreat diagonally from the threat, getting offline, firing 3 rounds. We'd switch directions, and then introduce cover. The shooter would retreat while engaging with 3 rounds, recognize available cover, move to it and engage with 3 more rounds.
This comes back again to the importance of teaching context for the tactical shooter. I think the Bill Drill, especially a retreating Bill Drill, is a fantastic skills training exercise. But we need to be conscious of specifying that it's an exercise in component skills. I think returning to somewhat 'scenario' based exercises with high accountability is a good way to drive the lesson home, and make the context more clear.
At whatever level you choose to involve yourself, it's good to see you back.
There was an era between double-tap/assess and shoot like a monkey with a machine gun. IIRC correctly it was at some point called a "non-standard response." In other words, if a failure drill was called for, shoot it. If you needed to shoot 3-4, shoot 3-4. Maybe a better way to put it would to shoot until it changes or to lack of effect. This would require shooting slower splits, but if your target hits the deck, assess if you should still be shooting. If your target is running away, maybe it's time to cease fire. If your target is absorbing bullet after bullet, shoot him somewhere else or just shoot better.
I don't think it's a shooting range problem; it's a lack of quality force on force problem. The square range lends itself to time on target solutions, not decision making.
"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...
It's a thorny problem.
In the nut-cutting moment, people intuitively grasp that they've entered a very different realm, where every single tick of time carries the non-zero chance of being killed or crippled.
Then they're told that handguns suck at stopping people, and the only thing you can do is tear up the heart or CNS, and that's likely to take multiple rounds, fast.
Then they're told that each bullet after the offender "stops"(as defined by the uninvolved observer reviewing it at their leisure, and hopefully not acting out of malice or political expedience) is excessive force, up to and including premeditated(you had plenty of time, it's right there on film!) charges for each individual bullet fired.
"Hold on now! Which is it?"
"Yes."
Uh, I think I see why it's a thorny problem.
This is a timely thread. I am in admin now, but former knuckle dragger and still SWAT Commander and head of the Firearms/Tactics Unit. We had active assailant training last week with a hard focus on quick scenarios and getting hits. In our AAR from last year we had way too many misses, SIM warriors and generally people doing things they would not do in real life and missing badly. We put a heavy focus on slowing down your shooting, moving quickly but under control, more scenarios that transitioned from active to inactive and required a good deal of target discrimination this year.
Generally, we saw better hits, this anecdotally as I was not there the entire week. When I was there I saw officers, for the most part, taking more careful shots and slowing down and getting good hits. We have a few guys who can process and shoot and hit fast, and they did. There was a punishment element for misses involving PT, that usually gets cops to chill out and mostly worked. We have spent more time on target discrimination this year in pre-training (we do on shift training in small groups that has proven fruitful). I think overall this is a need in LE firearms training. I did notice more officers keeping both eyes open during engagements, I attribute this possibly to us allowing officer purchased pistol dots and a 2 day training. We don't have dots on the UTM guns yet but are exploring that as we feel it will help bring some things together.
Random thoughts but agencies/instructors need to hold their people accountable.
I think it's an aiming vs panic firing issue. I think aimed shots will have slower split times and time for more assessment. I believe the way to train aimed shots is not necessarily on the range but through regular FOF training. I don't think it's very realistic but I think that is the way to get in ingrained in people.
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