Is Time Really an Illusion?

[ToddG]

From another thread:

I have seen very few shootings in real life where a really fast split was important, not that it isn't a good mechanics check to be able to do.

The above reflects conventional wisdom and, in context, there is a lot of truth to that statement.

However, I'd like to challenge the underlying concept. How does one assess whether a fast split or fast draw or fast reload made a difference in a fight? There is no way to replay the same individual combat over and over again seeing if the victor could have got away with slower followup shots, or if the vanquished might have turned the tables by being on the gun and on target half a second faster. Imagine a simple and common scenario of an officer presented with a BG who has a deadly weapon in hand. Is a 2s draw going to be fast enough? There is no way to know. Maybe, maybe not. Will three shots incapacitate the criminal in time, or might it take five? What might that BG do in the space of time those extra two shots take? Or put another way, how much safer might the officer be if he could have delivered five accurate hits instead of three in the same amount of time?

What we do know is that in repeatable tests like man-vs-man plate rack or dueling tree challenges, little differences in speed and accuracy can in fact make a difference. We can evaluate how shooters, under stress, dealing with a live opponent dictating speed, succeed and fail.

Certainly it's not a 1:1 comparison to an actual fight and no square range shooting challenge can hope to encompass all the variables and complexities of a shootout.

But the reality is we have absolutely no idea how many lives may have been lost because someone didn't have a couple extra hundredths of a second to fire one more round, or how many lives have been saved because he did.

[Jay Cunningham]

We do have hard data on % hits/misses and on innocent bystanders hit by misses.

Corollary?

I don't know.

[Mr_White]

Not that it really adds anything, but great post Todd. The questioning you pose on this point is a line of questioning I completely agree with. The answer is probably unknowable, but that doesn't mean the variable of time doesn't make any difference.

[Chuck Haggard]

I think we can extrapolate some things that happen in fights and look at those variables.

Mind you, I am not saying that one having the ability to get really fast splits on the range is a bad thing, but I do see people chase things like what gun, what trigger, how they run the trigger, etc. in the hopes of gaining very, very small margins for a faster split. I used to play with that and got to where I could get 7 rounds per second off. Not sure what that did for me at the time but it was fun.

I have talked to people who chose a gun over another because the trigger system allowed faster splits over a different system, the HK LEM being an example of a slower trigger system. I think that's just silly, especially in the light of such factors as those brought up by DB in the "why LEM?" thread.

In very few fights would one have a target that acts like cooperative cardboard and stands there to be hit by a Bill Drill or similar fast split multi round burst without moving, and often moving a lot, nor does one normally do such drills when they are also moving. All of these variables would serve to lengthen the splits between shots.

If you look at a number of the cases the Force Science folks have had to reconstruct you see where the shooter locked in and started firing, often at a "going cyclic" rate of fire, and it is very common for the shootee to move out of the burst of shots and for several of them to go wide. Just an example of the type of thing in play in a fight.

I guess my point is that focusing on a .18 split when they have a .22 split is just silly unless you are competing in a venue where that makes a difference, especially when we know from guys like Doc that blasting a bad guy anywhere but the CNS often results in them stopping no sooner than 15 seconds or so.

[JeffJ]

Interestingly enough, if you head over to the more competition oriented forums you'll find lots of discussion deriding chasing faster than about .25 splits. Lots of guys shoot faster than that, but trying to improve splits doesn't really do to much for other skills (except maybe sight tracking, maybe) while improving in other areas will usually positively effect split time.

Transitions are where its at

[Chuck Haggard]

Even in multi target transition drills one would have to track targets that have started moving. You blaze the first guy and everyone else is going to be moving in a motivated fashion shortly afterwards.

Think of how much more challenging a plate rack would be if the plates started moving apart from each other on a rail when you hit the first plate, and what that would do to your split times and transitions.

[JeffJ]

I meant "transitions are where it's at to improve in competition shooting"

However, given the reality of common training constraints - multiple target transition drills help with steering the gun to the target so it seems to me, that, short of being able to work with moving targets that multiple target transition drills could possibly help with the skills that may come into play in actual shooting where people don't stand still.

I guess the question that I have is, what time is more important and what drills or type of drills should you focus on to maximize training time developing the "right" skills?

[Dagga Boy]

Here is my opinion based on first hand experience, and a lot of interviews and interaction with officers that had just been involved in shootings.

The weirdest thing that I noticed in several incidents where I was on a dedicated trigger press after a decision was made to shoot, as well as having been in multiple shootings. Time is so slowly and weirdly warped that it is hard to describe. Things tend to be going in such slow motion, that I can see why many "go cyclic" as it seems like nothing is happening. It is that slow. It is why I am such a HUGE advocate of trying to "hardwire" a pace into your brain that is the pace where you can deliver surgical hits with a high level of consistency. There is a lot going on. While the "speed of the film" is on a slow motion pace, what you "see" is bizarrely heightened. It is why I am so excited about the work that John Hearne has been doing as he is a guy who is putting "smart dude" research behind what is happening in a gunfight and what very successful true gunfighters (those who didn't win one encounter on weird luck) have done to be successful. The words we have stolen are "Over-learning". His findings have been 100% consistent with what I have seen. I think we need to be VERY careful with what we are over learning. I think the key is a solid built in response that accounts for the fact the situation will probably develop at a speed that has a ton of potential for the shooter to screw up in multiple ways because of the altered state of how the brain is processing the situation (this can include initiating shooting too fast or too slow, and then shooting too fast, too slow, too much, or not enough).

[Mr_White]

Interestingly enough, if you head over to the more competition oriented forums you'll find lots of discussion deriding chasing faster than about .25 splits. Lots of guys shoot faster than that, but trying to improve splits doesn't really do to much for other skills (except maybe sight tracking, maybe) while improving in other areas will usually positively effect split time.

I was just going to point that out. That near-consensus in the competition world helped head off an obsession with splits I might have otherwise developed. Now I am fine with having ~.2-ish splits. Might revisit it, but waaaay down the line once I am a lot better than now.

Even in multi target transition drills one would have to track targets that have started moving. You blaze the first guy and everyone else is going to be moving in a motivated fashion shortly afterwards.

Think of how much more challenging a plate rack would be if the plates started moving apart from each other on a rail when you hit the first plate, and what that would do to your split times and transitions.

It would be a lot harder, no doubt. I think the pragmatic question though is whether a person with (relatively speaking) lousy splits and transitions on square-range static targets is going to all of a sudden do better when the targets become much harder, and whether the person with (relatively speaking) great splits and transitions on square-range static targets is going to experience any benefit from that when the targets become much harder.

[Mr_White]

multiple target transition drills help with steering the gun to the target so it seems to me, that, short of being able to work with moving targets that multiple target transition drills could possibly help with the skills that may come into play in actual shooting where people don't stand still.

I personally think this is right on. Steering the gun is a great description and I think it still can apply to moving targets. I saw the mechanics of that yesterday on a small scale when I worked transitions on a bank of hanging bowling pins. As the pins were shot, they moved. I still applied my skill at transitioning to the next (now moving) target. No doubt my skill was aggravated compared to what it would have been if the targets were static. It is what it is, but I think better transitions are better transitions.