Brownie
06-03-2006, 02:45 PM
The subject has come up in the last couple of classes about group size when training others in the various techniques shown to them.
Many of the people who have never seen this before and have been strictly sighted fire shooters get discouraged when they see a group that covers 4-8 inches on the chest of the target. I know they are discouraged with their groups as they'll shake their head in dissatisfaction.
This very situation happened in Knoxville recently with two sheriffs deputies. One while I was standing just off his shooting arm watching him perform the two handed Quick Kill technique.
I asked him what the problem was and he explained he thought his group should be smaller, he was accustomed to shooting for groups and could usually hold around 3 inches or less from that distance with sights.
I also had one fraud investigator in Santa Fe, NM make the same claims when he was training with me yesterday on their police range, so lets discuss this and get peoples ideas about what is acceptable and what is not, and more importantly WHY, in either case.
I'm sure some have heard the idea that if you are shooting tight little groups, you are shooting too slow, and if you are shooting much over 12-14 inches COM you are shooting to fast. Lets look at this idea.
Do we acknowledge that 4-8 inch groups with 5-8 rds is acceptable to begin with on the streets when you have to use a firearm in a gun battle? Do we want to train to the smallest group we can get from any given distance until we can drill neat little holes within the same amount of rounds COM?
Here's my idea on the subject and how I explain the acceptability of 4-8 inches COM to students at any given distance in the courses I run with threat focused methodologies, based on several factors to come to this mindset I am going to explain.
When people need shooting, they usually need shooting RIGHT NOW, not seconds later. How we get that done and the time it takes to do so can determine whether we live or die on the streets.
With that thought, time seems to be an important factor in determining survivability. Sorta like saying the firstest with the mostest will usually prevail. Time to rds on threat----hhm----that would seemn to indicate that techniques that help us get rds on threat fast would be good things to know.
Relative time, if we take it to find our sights, or even the front sight when it is unnecessary to do so, we are setting ourselves up for real potential failure unnecessarily. What techniques get rounds on threat the fastest?
EU/ED, QK hip, which both lead to the hammers, and zippering techniques working off the principle of orienting the gun horizontal as soon as it leaves the holster and firing. I've not seen anything faster than the EU/ED and QK hip shooting under 12 feet. I think I'll use them for their real world advantage of speed to hits. That solves one equation to surviving an encounter with a gun.
The second part of the equation would have to be where those multiple rounds land with the speed thats possible using these techniques. Afterall, it is useless to be fast and not cause enough trauma to get the other party to cease and desist their intended actions against us.
If we can't get COM hits reliably with a particular technique, we are wasting time. I think the time element is pretty much a given here. The less of it we take to get it done, the better for us and the worse for the other poor soul who has chosen to enter into life and death decisions, forcing us to react to them to stay above ground.
What constitutes good hits is a mindset issue. What is acceptable for me may not be acceptable for another, as in the students cases I related above. Lets look now at where the rounds need to be COM and why.
My thoughts on the subject run toward anywhere COM on threat, all rounds landing inside an 8 inch diameter area. They could also be 12-14 inche groupings that have rounds landing at the waist or pelvic area and up into the neck as well as all the way across the chest.
If we shoot for the torso of an average human being, we have about 14 inches across from arm pit to armpit and about 21 inches from the top of the shoulders to the lower portion of the hips. Thats a 14 x 21 inch area that we can shoot for and stay on the torso.
If I can put 4-6 rds into that 14 x 21 area in less than two seconds from the time I start to draw and start firing, I think that is acceptable. Here's the mindset behind why I make that statement which is the physiological factor in the equation of getting er done.
Blood pressure----rapid loss of blood pressure, it's that simple. Now lets look at blood pressure in relation to this subject for a bit. If I take more time and give a person 4-6 rounds to one organ, say the heart, I have damaged one organ. The persons blood pressure will immediately drop to some degree [ from the vessel/organ leaking out blood ] and rapid decrease in blood pressure is key to people reacting as we want them to [ getting them to STOP their actions ].
If I take the same 4-6 rounds and get each one of them into a seperate organ on the torso, not worrying about the group size with the exception of staying inside that 14 x 21 area, what is then happening to his blood pressure?
Since taking the wilderness first responder medical training recently, I was given insight into rapid loss of blood pressure and it's effects on the human body.
More holes leaking at the same time means more rapidity in the loss of blood pressure and the consequences of that increased rapid loss should be obvious here. The person who has several organs/vessels pumping out of their circulation system, the faster the blood pressure drops and the faster they will succumb to that rapid loss which means better results where getting them to stop their actions against us are concerned. Thats the pysical side of the equation.
Other than Central Nervous System [ CNS ] hits, the above is the quickest way to get people to slow/stop their actions. I'm not of the mindset that I can rely on hitting the CNS in a gunfight thats dynamicly evolving. The area available for CNS hits is quite small and can't be relied on with certainty, no matter how good we are with the pistols we carry. CNS hits to me are iffy at best, good if you get one, but not something I'm willing to take the time to go for in a gunbattle.
These tiny little groups to CNS look good on paper on the sqaure range training. In the real world, we are lucky to get them on the streets.
I know I can keep all my shots on the torso of a man [ that 14 x 21 area ] with speed. How I do that depends on distances involved. If I'm 4-10 feet away I can easily use EU/ED or QK hip and the subsequent techniques that work off these two quite effectively like the zipper and hammer. In fact EU/ED works well out to 15 feet with a minimum of practice/training.
If I'm further than that away [ anywhere from 12 to 30 feet ], the requiremnts don't change, the techniques used to accomplish that do. I can still make the torso hits with very good speed with 4-6 rounds using one or two handed QK. I can still be fast at these futher distances as I know I do not need to take the time to use the sights, or even look at the gun. Both take away some time to threat. Both are a form of mental verification that takes time for the brain to tell us we will hit what we are trying to hit.
Now, with all the above, I think I want to get the most rounds into that 14 x 21 area of their upper body in the fastest way possible. What I don't want to do is take more time mentally verifying before I will pull the trigger when it is not necessary to do so.
Learning EU/ED, QK hip, the zipper, the hammer, one and two handed QK allows me solid torso hits of multiples of my choosing [ round counts ] with better speed than trying to mentally verify sight alignment or front sight press [ for all but the most accomplished pistoleros which most of us are not ].
I've explained all this mindset and why we are accepting 4-8 inch groups before moving on to another technique in the last few clases when students were getting discouraged with their groups. All of the students leave understanding the mindset behind the above and accepting they will not wait to verify the front sight press or sight alingment.
More importantly, their mind is no longer the limiting factor.
In a nutshell, I don't worry about group sizes on threat. One to a lung, one to the liver, one to the stomach, one to the heart, one to the spleen, they all help get the antogonist to rapidly lose blood pressure in concert with each other within fractions of a second [ say 3 rds per second or thereabouts ].
Keep the speed of presentation and reaction time to minimums as much as possible and let the bullets fall where they may within the torso/upper body area is where I'm at where this subject is concerned.
Many of the people who have never seen this before and have been strictly sighted fire shooters get discouraged when they see a group that covers 4-8 inches on the chest of the target. I know they are discouraged with their groups as they'll shake their head in dissatisfaction.
This very situation happened in Knoxville recently with two sheriffs deputies. One while I was standing just off his shooting arm watching him perform the two handed Quick Kill technique.
I asked him what the problem was and he explained he thought his group should be smaller, he was accustomed to shooting for groups and could usually hold around 3 inches or less from that distance with sights.
I also had one fraud investigator in Santa Fe, NM make the same claims when he was training with me yesterday on their police range, so lets discuss this and get peoples ideas about what is acceptable and what is not, and more importantly WHY, in either case.
I'm sure some have heard the idea that if you are shooting tight little groups, you are shooting too slow, and if you are shooting much over 12-14 inches COM you are shooting to fast. Lets look at this idea.
Do we acknowledge that 4-8 inch groups with 5-8 rds is acceptable to begin with on the streets when you have to use a firearm in a gun battle? Do we want to train to the smallest group we can get from any given distance until we can drill neat little holes within the same amount of rounds COM?
Here's my idea on the subject and how I explain the acceptability of 4-8 inches COM to students at any given distance in the courses I run with threat focused methodologies, based on several factors to come to this mindset I am going to explain.
When people need shooting, they usually need shooting RIGHT NOW, not seconds later. How we get that done and the time it takes to do so can determine whether we live or die on the streets.
With that thought, time seems to be an important factor in determining survivability. Sorta like saying the firstest with the mostest will usually prevail. Time to rds on threat----hhm----that would seemn to indicate that techniques that help us get rds on threat fast would be good things to know.
Relative time, if we take it to find our sights, or even the front sight when it is unnecessary to do so, we are setting ourselves up for real potential failure unnecessarily. What techniques get rounds on threat the fastest?
EU/ED, QK hip, which both lead to the hammers, and zippering techniques working off the principle of orienting the gun horizontal as soon as it leaves the holster and firing. I've not seen anything faster than the EU/ED and QK hip shooting under 12 feet. I think I'll use them for their real world advantage of speed to hits. That solves one equation to surviving an encounter with a gun.
The second part of the equation would have to be where those multiple rounds land with the speed thats possible using these techniques. Afterall, it is useless to be fast and not cause enough trauma to get the other party to cease and desist their intended actions against us.
If we can't get COM hits reliably with a particular technique, we are wasting time. I think the time element is pretty much a given here. The less of it we take to get it done, the better for us and the worse for the other poor soul who has chosen to enter into life and death decisions, forcing us to react to them to stay above ground.
What constitutes good hits is a mindset issue. What is acceptable for me may not be acceptable for another, as in the students cases I related above. Lets look now at where the rounds need to be COM and why.
My thoughts on the subject run toward anywhere COM on threat, all rounds landing inside an 8 inch diameter area. They could also be 12-14 inche groupings that have rounds landing at the waist or pelvic area and up into the neck as well as all the way across the chest.
If we shoot for the torso of an average human being, we have about 14 inches across from arm pit to armpit and about 21 inches from the top of the shoulders to the lower portion of the hips. Thats a 14 x 21 inch area that we can shoot for and stay on the torso.
If I can put 4-6 rds into that 14 x 21 area in less than two seconds from the time I start to draw and start firing, I think that is acceptable. Here's the mindset behind why I make that statement which is the physiological factor in the equation of getting er done.
Blood pressure----rapid loss of blood pressure, it's that simple. Now lets look at blood pressure in relation to this subject for a bit. If I take more time and give a person 4-6 rounds to one organ, say the heart, I have damaged one organ. The persons blood pressure will immediately drop to some degree [ from the vessel/organ leaking out blood ] and rapid decrease in blood pressure is key to people reacting as we want them to [ getting them to STOP their actions ].
If I take the same 4-6 rounds and get each one of them into a seperate organ on the torso, not worrying about the group size with the exception of staying inside that 14 x 21 area, what is then happening to his blood pressure?
Since taking the wilderness first responder medical training recently, I was given insight into rapid loss of blood pressure and it's effects on the human body.
More holes leaking at the same time means more rapidity in the loss of blood pressure and the consequences of that increased rapid loss should be obvious here. The person who has several organs/vessels pumping out of their circulation system, the faster the blood pressure drops and the faster they will succumb to that rapid loss which means better results where getting them to stop their actions against us are concerned. Thats the pysical side of the equation.
Other than Central Nervous System [ CNS ] hits, the above is the quickest way to get people to slow/stop their actions. I'm not of the mindset that I can rely on hitting the CNS in a gunfight thats dynamicly evolving. The area available for CNS hits is quite small and can't be relied on with certainty, no matter how good we are with the pistols we carry. CNS hits to me are iffy at best, good if you get one, but not something I'm willing to take the time to go for in a gunbattle.
These tiny little groups to CNS look good on paper on the sqaure range training. In the real world, we are lucky to get them on the streets.
I know I can keep all my shots on the torso of a man [ that 14 x 21 area ] with speed. How I do that depends on distances involved. If I'm 4-10 feet away I can easily use EU/ED or QK hip and the subsequent techniques that work off these two quite effectively like the zipper and hammer. In fact EU/ED works well out to 15 feet with a minimum of practice/training.
If I'm further than that away [ anywhere from 12 to 30 feet ], the requiremnts don't change, the techniques used to accomplish that do. I can still make the torso hits with very good speed with 4-6 rounds using one or two handed QK. I can still be fast at these futher distances as I know I do not need to take the time to use the sights, or even look at the gun. Both take away some time to threat. Both are a form of mental verification that takes time for the brain to tell us we will hit what we are trying to hit.
Now, with all the above, I think I want to get the most rounds into that 14 x 21 area of their upper body in the fastest way possible. What I don't want to do is take more time mentally verifying before I will pull the trigger when it is not necessary to do so.
Learning EU/ED, QK hip, the zipper, the hammer, one and two handed QK allows me solid torso hits of multiples of my choosing [ round counts ] with better speed than trying to mentally verify sight alignment or front sight press [ for all but the most accomplished pistoleros which most of us are not ].
I've explained all this mindset and why we are accepting 4-8 inch groups before moving on to another technique in the last few clases when students were getting discouraged with their groups. All of the students leave understanding the mindset behind the above and accepting they will not wait to verify the front sight press or sight alingment.
More importantly, their mind is no longer the limiting factor.
In a nutshell, I don't worry about group sizes on threat. One to a lung, one to the liver, one to the stomach, one to the heart, one to the spleen, they all help get the antogonist to rapidly lose blood pressure in concert with each other within fractions of a second [ say 3 rds per second or thereabouts ].
Keep the speed of presentation and reaction time to minimums as much as possible and let the bullets fall where they may within the torso/upper body area is where I'm at where this subject is concerned.