Raw speed

[GJM]

Leaving aside luck, which fortunately or unfortunately can play a big part in the outcome, I see pitfalls on both end of the spectrum.

One, I think of as a "GM with a j frame," where someone overestimates the value of their technical ability at a game, and applies that to a lethal encounter. Two, is the timmie that believes mindset is a substitute for developed technical skills, and will somehow allow them to rise to the occasion. I like that Barrett Tillman quote, which more or less is "that in an emergency, you will default to your level of training."

[taadski]

Sticky material, dude.

[JHC]

Sticky material, dude.

PHRASING!!!

[taadski]

😳


No not pass go, do not collect $200...

[JustOneGun]

Lots of good info in this discussion. Thank you all.

I agree that we should be training on the edge of our ability including speed. Raw speed certainly matters. What balance we use for ourselves is complex. I can't prove it but believe many people fail during their LEO shootings because their mind overrides their training and demands that they shoot at a speed greater than they ever have. i.e. they are trying to do something that they've never done before in training. Law enforcement trainers often mention that the shooter just, lost their cool or sprayed and prayed. They say this as though it's the person's fault who is trying to save their own life or the life of a third party. God forbid that we would ever blame the trainer that didn't demand that the officers shoot faster during training.

Another reason for being faster in our presentation and shooting is to help compensate for the things we can't control. A look at a bell curve of a group of people's draw to first shot speed and a look at the bell curve of a groups reaction time to move away from the gun, shows a large overlap in movement right before the first shot is fired. No matter how good a shooter you are, if I as the bad guy happens to move as you break the shot your shot will not go where you planned. One way to control that is to compress the time between when the bad guy first believes you are going to shoot them and when you actually shoot them. i.e. being faster shortens their ability to think and react.

I did an experiment with some SWAT Officers. They were going through some FoF training with regular patrol officers. They were a bit bored. So as they brought up their gun I simply tried to sidestep as they fired the pistol. Some missed me. Most shot me in the arm. None of them hit me anywhere between the nipples. None of them stopped pulling the trigger and began tracking my movement in order to hit me. They all fired, then tracked me and fired again, hitting me with good center mass hits. I then sidestepped on the next FoF (they now knew I was going to move) and twisted sideways. Most missed me entirely.

My above point is that speed minimizes the time the bad guy has to move. This is heavily involved with the stop shooting command, when the bad guy decides to start moving, why they decide to stop moving. This is even more true of officers who had their pistol in the holster when they decided to draw and shoot. For that reason it's even more important to civilians who typically start their shooting from the holster.

IMO this is even more important a consideration when discussing shooting the head first. If you get a friend or family member to stand in front of you and then just randomly run away from you, you might see them do a few standard movements:

1. Step off in a sideways direction while twisting their torso in that same direction. That sounds a lot like my experiment with the SWAT officers. Step and turn.
2. The second thing you might notice is that at the end of #1 their head will be a bit lower than it was when they were standing still. How fast and how big the first step impacts how much that head drops.

That movement makes a head shot hard for people who have trained for it. IME as a trainer, it makes it almost impossible for a person who hasn't trained for it. Most good shooters don't include training with bad guy movement.
Another problem with going to the head first is our movement as the good guy. That makes a head shot difficult. Combining ability, movement of one or both of the fighters and a head shot first is, IMO, almost impossible. Even if a person disagrees with me, certainly the things I've mentioned will make a person's raw speed much slower for a successful head shot. How slow can we make it before the bad guy now has a time advantage that might allow them to win a fight before we even get into it?

[GJM]

Another consideration in shooting speed is the difference in time to guarantee A hits (gamer shorthand for an acceptable hit, however you define your vital zone) versus the time to shoot for A hits. Truly guaranteeing hits turns the shooting into bullseye speed, which may not be an appropriate speed for close range fighting.

[Mr_White]

As a developmental consideration for an enthusiast, I think it is important to divorce the concepts of accuracy from speed, in the mind. I'm not saying there isn't a practical relationship there in many instances. Often there is, but in many other instances there isn't/doesn't have to be. And it's very limiting to a shooting enthusiast's development to believe that in order to be faster, they will be less accurate, and in order to be more accurate, they will have to be slower.

The actual, measurable difference in time between an aimed and an unaimed shot can be negligible or nonexistent. The true difference is a sharp and overriding mental intention to aim the shot, instead of not especially bothering to aim. So the trick becomes to move the body at the full speed it can go, but be mentally deliberate and committed to firing an accurate shot. I feel like I have read that somewhere lol.

[Mr_White]

To me, these are both particularly excellent quotes:

The day (moment) I realized that I could shoot an A, and know I shot it, as fast as I could hit the target, changed my entire perspective.

But until you reach this realization on your own, you will try to slow down, try to go fast, try to call your shots, or try to calculate how fast you should shoot. And all this trying is not bad, because the struggle will eventually lead you to the ultimate realization of what it’s all about.

When you understand, the concept of speed will be one you will have nothing to do with.

When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight. Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean.

[JustOneGun]

As a developmental consideration for an enthusiast, I think it is important to divorce the concepts of accuracy from speed, in the mind. I'm not saying there isn't a practical relationship there in many instances. Often there is, but in many other instances there isn't/doesn't have to be. And it's very limiting to a shooting enthusiast's development to believe that in order to be faster, they will be less accurate, and in order to be more accurate, they will have to be slower.

The actual, measurable difference in time between an aimed and an unaimed shot can be negligible or nonexistent. The true difference is a sharp and overriding mental intention to aim the shot, instead of not especially bothering to aim. So the trick becomes to move the body at the full speed it can go, but be mentally deliberate and committed to firing an accurate shot. I feel like I have read that somewhere lol.

Well said. If I'm understanding you correctly, the mental portion can be explained the same as the physical. I think for an up an coming shooter there is a lot of value in understanding that a super fast (insert movement) is actually a set of movements that are at a maximum speed for each movement but all of the individual movements are not at the same speed.

For the mental, if one can hit a two inch object in the chest then a head shot at the same speed should be the same. Often forcing oneself to shoot at that speed in training is the only way to improve and to actually do it in real life. Having said that, I am a big proponent of going to the body first as insurance. Sometimes our error (where in our 4/6/8 inch zone we hit) and fate(bad guy movement, etc) combine to make us miss by an amount that would ensure a miss to the head but still get bullet to chest on the body.

[JHC]

Another consideration in shooting speed is the difference in time to guarantee A hits (gamer shorthand for an acceptable hit, however you define your vital zone) versus the time to shoot for A hits. Truly guaranteeing hits turns the shooting into bullseye speed, which may not be an appropriate speed for close range fighting.

I remember Pat Mac circulating an exercise he used in classes. It was a D1 to a headshot (can't recall for sure but IIRC he used a 3x5).

The exercise was to execute it with excellent process and not chase the time outcome but the hit had to be certain. Certain. His context was lives depend on you hitting, and lives depend on you not missing. His contextual standard was to strive for 2.5 sec, again IIRC.

10 out 10 standard. If you could shoot 10/10 faster, cool.