"Good enough"

[Tamara]

Yep....Goes right along with if you carry one round less than I do you are woefully unprepared but if you carry one round more you than I do you are clearly lugging around a bunch of junk you will never need.

That's what I said.

[ronin0829]

Just some useless trivia to add...at one time they asked Clint Eastwood to play the role of James Bond but he turned it down. He told them they should use someone "british".

Back on topic, I see this as a Police Officer with the other Officers that I work with. "Well gun XYZ is good enough for that Officer, so it must be good enough for me", and "that 70% that I shot on the qual course is good enough for me cause I'll never have to use my gun".

[TCinVA]

If I shot 70% on the typical B27 based qual they use around here I'd probably have to be put on suicide watch from the shame of it.

[nycnoob]

On a related note there is an issue of "you don't know what you don't know".

There is a famous Chinese saying that "it is better to spend 10 years searching for the right master then to waste 10 years studying with the wrong one". It is hard to argue with the sentiment, though of course when starting out, you have no idea which is the right master or what the actual study of the material will look like.

I argue that it is better to start studying under most any master than to look for "the best master" when you are just starting out. In this context I am arguing for asking the SME "what is good enough?" if only to have a starting point for my own opinions. I think this is related to SouthNarc's saying of "Do the Work" (based on a book by that title which advocates getting started doing and not wasting time with endless research).


A quick anecdote about choosing your own "good enough":

I took AFHF last spring. The first drill was slow fire 5 shoots into a 2 inch circle at 5(?)yards. I remember looking at the target and thinking to myself "I did not know my gun could shoot so precise". So if left to make my own "good enough" standard before the course, it would have been very different then after the course.

[Chuck Haggard]

If I shot 70% on the typical B27 based qual they use around here I'd probably have to be put on suicide watch from the shame of it.

As it should be.



ETA;

I am sicktated even worse every time I have to run our quals for the local merchant guards. You would be too at the sight of a guy who passed a course at dead on 70% on the second attempt. Yup, he's good until next year.

For context, the KS C-POST course we use;
http://www.kscpost.org/target.php

At least for our own folks we require 75%. All of the cool kids make every effort to keep all shots in the "pie plate" area. I like to play with the qual and do all three shot strings as a failure drill, which works since everything in the scored area counts the same for points.

We cheat and use this target for the qual to cover up the 'milk bottle' area, scoring lines are almost invisible past the 5 yard line;
http://www.letargets.com/estylez_ite...item=IALEFI-QR

[JonInWA]

My latest article for Caleb is about the concept of "Good Enough." The idea struck me when I saw a preview for the new Bond movie and noticed in it that 007 is once again using the PPK. I then happened to glance over to my DVD collection and Dirty Harry was plainly visible. I got to thinking how James Bond and Dirty Harry had very different ideas about what was "good enough" in terms of their chosen sidearm.

...and thus began a long and winding pattern of thought that started to look like an article once I met a guy in a gunstore looking for a gun for his mother.

Good Enough

Short version:

James Bond and Dirty Harry had completely different ideas about what was "good enough" as a sidearm. If we assumed both were real, both would have had ample experience to back up the idea of their preferred solution being "good enough" for their purposes.

I contend that "good enough" is properly understood as the conclusion reached after rational consideration of all the relevant factors in play...the right-now answer one has based on their understanding of the problem they're trying to solve, the resources available to them to solve it, the information they've sought out, and the constraints of their environment. When any of these factors change, so too does the definition of "good enough".

This concept applies to everything from firearms to unarmed skills to fitness. "Good enough" is often used as a means of evading effort, and so it tends to have a negative connotation. It's true, however, that there is a point at which some piece of equipment or skill is actually "good enough" to accomplish a given mission when all other relevant factors are considered. "Good enough" shouldn't become a hammock for the lazy, but neither should rational people be unwilling to accept "good enough" solutions. In many instances we're forced to. You probably aren't driving the best car in the world...you're driving one that's good enough. You probably don't have the fastest computer or cell phone available...just one that's good enough. It does what you need it to do...

Great discussion starter, but you're arguable starting from a flawed basic premise: That "James Bond" and "Dirty Harry" had completely different ideas about what was "good enough" as a sidearm. Let's get real; "James Bond" and "Dirty Harry" quite simply aren't real people, in real situations-their the collaborative fictional creations of author(s) (i.e, Ian Fleming, etc.) and screenwriters...and I suspect that we have a fairly good idea as to how historically/accurately based their creations and props are...The characters didn't have intelligent cognitive ideas-their creators did. And, for anyone who takes the time to read any of Ian Fleming's original works of fiction, there are some fairly spectacular differences between characters and props in the books versus those on the silver screen; and, while some of Fleming's choices might be looked at in askance today, at least he had some active-duty WWII experience in his subject matter to draw from. I seriously question if any of today's screenwriters have any real-world military/LEO/Intelligence experience-I suspect that they're pretty much totally reliant on hired "consultants" for many of their attempts at veracity.

These characters, and the situations that they're place in are, quite simply, entertainment, and driven by their entertainment/money-earning potential. I am very, very suspect of drawing a lot of applicable validity from much of anything that Hollywood come up with most of the time (except possibly for some fairly entertaining movie-based ridiculously high round-count USPSA-type stages devoid of much reality and/or real-world applicability).

Other than that, (yeah, rant off...) I think that your discussion itself is quite good, and very relevant. For most of us, a decent choice of a weapon/tool based on a decent selection protocol, followed by applicable training is far better than an eternal revolving-door selection followed by rapid discarding of one's weapon/tool choice for something only incrementally (if realistically at all) better. Obviously, we should be continuously involved in education and applicable upgrades where they're truly applicable, and to be alert for genuine paradigm-changers, but I think that the basic truth is to make a good selection, and continuously train and practice on it/them, achieving genuine mastery.

Best, Jon

[TCinVA]

These characters, and the situations that they're place in are, quite simply, entertainment, and driven by their entertainment/money-earning potential.

...and useful as a proxy for Sort Of Famous Dude A who says that X is "good enough" based on his experience and Sort Of Famous Dude B who says that X isn't "good enough" based on his experience. Bill Jordan thought that a wheelgun in a "medium" caliber was "good enough". Jeff Cooper did not. Etc.

I wasn't thinking about James Bond and Dirty Harry as real people, but as a friendly and hopefully at least mildly entertaining way to bring up what can be a rather esoteric concept and engage the minds of an audience so I could then hit them with a real life example of a dimwit who didn't understand the rational process of weapon selection, leaving them pretty much in agreement with me by the time I was closing the deal in the final paragraphs.

Plus, and I cannot emphasize this enough, it's a pretty darn good excuse to post a picture of a pretty Walther and type out "Do you feel lucky?" and get paid for it.

[41magfan]

I have my own ideas of what’s “good enough” when it comes to skill at arms – but to tell you the truth, the shooting skills required to survive most encounters really isn’t all that demanding, generally speaking.

Now that belief is difficult to quantify without objectively – really objectively – digesting what really happens in a physical attack. Much the same way 10 eyewitnesses can “see” the same event totally different, so it is with many practitioners that have a basis of knowledge based purely on training and reviewing video tape. Unless you’ve personally experienced the dynamics of violence play out – from beginning to end – it’s really difficult to put certain things into proper context. While it's true that video tape doesn’t lie, it seldom tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In reality, most good guys survive deadly threats in spite of themselves – not because they did anything necessarily correct. I’ve seen A LOT of incompetent shooters survive deadly assaults simply because the bad guys are usually much more inept. The guys that repeatedly – on purpose – come out on the good end of dangerous conflicts do so because they can control their fear, their emotions and can perform at their skill level - whatever that happens to be - with some predictability.

Now having said that, I don’t think you can be “too good” at anything, but I question the absolute validity and relevance of a given performance on a particular drill or COF that has been practiced a million times. Or said another way; I’m of the opinion that the FIRST time you apply your skills to a certain set of circumstances is much more likely to be real-life relevant than the thing you’ve practiced a thousand times.

I’ve been around a lot of dangerous people, both good and bad guys alike, and I have NEVER felt particularly threatened by their hardware or reputed skill – it’s my knowledge of their software potential that always makes my butt pucker.

These are just one man's opinions - feel free to disagree, as my ego isn't invested in any of it.

[David Armstrong]

That's what I said.

You hit it from the macro, I went for the micro!