Techniques & Training
The Double Tap.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
At SHOT I made a passing comment to Pharmacist Tommy that, in the context of defensive shooting, practicing double taps was a tacit admission that a person wasn't able to control their gun. He looked at me quizzically, as I'm sure you're doing right now.
(Let's get some terminology out of the way. Most people shooting double taps are firing two rounds in quick succession with one sight picture. Adherents to the so-called "Modern" Technique would scream that the term is used incorrectly, and that they are actually shooting 'hammers'. I'll concede the point, in the same way I concede that the Battle of Bunker Hill was in fact fought on Breed's Hill - you'll note it's made no difference in elementary school history lessons, however. I'll continue to use Bunker Hill and double tap to describe what the majority hold that they describe, because arguing the point wastes my time and doesn't change the outcome anyhow.)
Let's start with a question: why practice the double tap as a defensive tactic? When I watch surveillance and dashcam videos, regardless of the training level of the shooter, I don't see the stylized double tap. What I see instead, very consistently, is a string of fire without artificial pauses. After all, bullets are what stops bad guys -- and the faster those bullets get to him, the better.
If you need to shoot your attacker six times, and choose to do so with three double taps, that means the half-second pause between those strings gives him a full second to hurt you more. How many bullets can come out of his gun in one second? How many critical stab wounds can he inflict? How far can he move? Giving the bad guy any extra time is counter to your own self interest.
How about double-tapping, then assessing (as is still the recommendation in some training backwaters)? The answer is that there is no way to know ahead of time how many shots it's going to take to make your bad guy go away. That being the case, why on earth would you stop shooting at an arbitrary point if a threat is present? The time to asses is after the threat is no longer in front of your gun, whether that takes one, two, or five rounds. Practicing to always do that at two rounds means that if your fight goes longer and you stop to make your well-rehearsed assessment, you're exposing yourself needlessly to danger.
I could go on, but my point is that the double tap makes no sense in the context of surviving a lethal attack. The logical practice routine would be to always fire a random-length string of shots: two, three, four, and perhaps even occasionally five or six. Mix 'em up; don't get locked into any one pattern.
The double tap really doesn't have a use in defensive shooting, yet people all over the country continue to practice it. I believe the answer is simple, and I've observed it in action: if you ask any random shooter, regardless of his or her proficiency or training level, to shoot a string of three or four or five rounds at the same cadence (with the same "split time", or elapsed time between shots) as the double taps they're flinging downrange, the chances are almost certain that they won't be able to do so.
What usually happens is that the first two shots land in acceptable proximity to each other, but the third will climb significantly and the fourth is usually off the target. In order to land all their shots inside whatever reasonable target area is chosen, they need to slow down - sometimes significantly. In other words, they can't control their gun at that inflated rate.
Now, just about everyone will be faster at the double tap than at an extended string of fire. The point is that the longer strings of fire are what are most likely in the context of a defensive shooting, because the natural reaction is likely to be shooting until the threat goes away. If the gun can't be controlled in such a realistic or plausible shooting scenario, then that shooter needs a different gun (or much better technique) instead of gaming his or her practice to artificially inflate competence.
Shooting double taps instead of more realistic strings serves as proof that one cannot control the gun for the use to which it is likely to be put. It's up to the shooter to recognize, admit, and change.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Comments
Finishing an experiment. Maybe.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Early last year I embarked on something of an experiment: carrying my gun not on my belt, as I've done for more years than I can remember, but in my front pocket. Exclusively.
I've carried in a pocket holster from time to time, usually when wearing a suit, so I'm not at all unfamiliar with the concept. I've never done so as my default method, and I wanted to see what it was like. What kinds of problems would I encounter?
My constant companion was one of a pair of pretty much identical, save for color, S&W Airweight Cenennials: a blued Model 042 and the dull silver-gray 642. Both of these are stock guns, meaning that I've done nothing to either one. (No, really!) I tried several holsters, and found that most of them really weren't terribly well thought out. I ended up using a cheap, cheesy, but serviceable Uncle Mike's pocket holster for the vast majority of the time. I carried my spare ammunition in Bianchi Speedstrips.
Why did I do this? For some time now I've been talking about the concept of congruency: that students should train with the guns that they'll actually be using to defend themselves, and further that instructors should be using the guns their students will be using. The problem, of course, is that people generally don't do that, and as a result instructors allow themselves to believe that their students really do conceal full-sized Government Models in their workaday world -- because that's what they bring to class. It's a delusional feedback loop.
In reality, most of the people I talk to who are carrying medium- to full-sized autoloaders in class sheepishly admit that during the week they tote a compact auto or a five-shot revolver in their front pocket, because that's what they can easily get away with in their place of employment. As a fraternity, instructors are not doing a very good job of getting past this deception; I don't think they really want to know. Classes are structured to artificially favor the larger autoloading pistols, because that's what usually shows up on the belts of students. The students, for their part, feel compelled to "up gun" for the class so that they can perform well and save face. The loop intensifies.
What the instructor carries every day is irrelevant; it's what the student carries that needs to be the primary consideration in curriculum design. I decided that I wasn't living up to my own criticisms, and resolved to spend the majority of 2011 carrying not what I like to carry, but what an awful lot of people who look to me for advice and guidance are going to be carrying. (No, I didn't make the "I carry a 'J' frame as a backup, so that counts" rationalization. This was to be my primary, and only, carry piece. Just like everyone else.)
Save for one instructor's conference, where I used a Glock because a) I hadn't had any serious autoloader trigger time in a couple of years and b) had no one to negatively influence, I carried and taught with those compact revolvers for the year.
I liked (actually loved) the ease with which I could dress around the gun. I liked that I could carry in sweatpants in the same place and manner of my street clothes. I liked that wether I wore a suit or work pants, my gun was in the same place all the time. I learned a lot about deploying the gun from that carry position, from the difficulty accessing it at speed to the occasional instances of the holster and gun coming out as a unit. I came away with some very specific ideas on how a pocket holster for a revolver should be made and marveled that almost none of the holster makers have figured this out yet. (Then again, it’s hard to find really well designed revolver belt holsters, a lament that I made in my book.)
Did I ever feel under gunned? No. I remain unconvinced that it’s necessary to carry a 51 rounds of ammunition just to survive a criminal attack, an idea that has great support amongst certain segments of the training industry. (I'm still looking for all those cases in which someone involved in a private sector defensive shooting incident was injured or killed because their gun didn't contain enough bullets. Haven't found any yet, though I keep asking people to forward them to me.)
At the end of the experiment, I'm finding it very difficult to return to my belt-mounted carry pieces. I'm actually happy about that, because I think I've now got a solid understanding of the limitations (and the freedoms) that my students experience. Suppositions have been replaced by evidence.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to decide between blue or plain aluminum for today.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday Meanderings: Happy Holidays, looking forward, and the gun goes mainstream.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Welcome back!
I trust everyone had a good weekend, and I hope your Christmas was a joyous and meaningful time with family and friends.
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From news stories it was apparent that firearms were a major item this year. Various explanations have been suggested for this, from concern about new purchase restrictions to fear of economically-inspired criminal violence, but I prefer to think of it as a sign that the pendulum has inevitably swung: guns are once again becoming socially acceptable.
Those who remember the 1950s and 1960s will recall that shooting was a big thing amongst the Hollywood crowd, and thus with the general public as well. Actor Robert Stack, for instance, was a champion shotgunner, and many recognizable names participated in 'quick draw' competitions as a hobby. This stands in stark contrast to recent decades when Hollywood has been the source of virulent (and hypocritical) anti-gunners.
I’m not yet convinced that the era of guns-as-common-recreational-objects will be resurrected, but they at least seem to have shed the worst of their manufactured reputation as evil objects to be avoided. The gun seems instead to be assuming the role of the speciality tool: something you own or use to do a specific task. The days of the anthropomorphized, self-propelled mayhem machine appear to be waning, and none too soon. Many people - yours truly included - have been equating the gun with the fire extinguisher or first aid kit, and I'm hopeful that those analogies are helping to fuel this resurgence in gun ownership.
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This last week before New Year's Day is a good time for reflection and contemplation. From the standpoint of you and your family's safety and security, I hope you'll give some thought to getting good training in the coming year.
What is "good" training? Training which is congruent with the kinds of situations in which you anticipate using your gun. If you carry a handgun for personal protection, a course that teaches the best response to a surprise criminal attack would be advisable; if you keep a gun for home defense, a class on how to handle the scenarios you're likely to face in your own house might be in order.
There are any number of quality classes and instructors available today, more so than probably any time in history. (Permit me to toot my own horn in this regard!) Resolve to make 2012 the year that you increase your knowledge and skill level with the guns you own.
(If you're an instructor yourself, there will be opportunities for you to advance your teaching skills and professional standing. Take advantage of them.)
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And now, a little tease: the first Friday of the new year will feature a really neat Ed Harris article which I just received. All I'm going to say is wait until you see what he got for Christmas!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Keeping ourselves honest - with ourselves.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Kelly Muir at the Instructor Revolution blog put up an interesting post the other day. She was at a shooting class* and saw someone she knew, a martial arts instructor of some renown. She was impressed with the fact that this fellow enrolled in a class where he was a real student, amongst students (and probably an instructor) who didn't know who he was or what he did.
The reason she was impressed goes well beyond the "always a student" phrase so many instructors use (and mostly don't really mean.) It's one thing to be a shooting instructor and go to another shooting class; it's a very different thing for a shooting instructor to go to an archery class, or a Tai Chi class, or perhaps a calligraphy class as an absolute beginner.
It's not so much what is learned, though that may be beneficial, but rather the attitude that is developed. It keeps us honest; it keeps us from believing our own bovine excrement.
Kelly puts it beautifully:
The idea that we as instructors need to place ourselves at risk for looking silly, making a mistake or simply not knowing, is a critical component to our own effectiveness.
I've more than once watched in horror as a shooting instructor, being asked a question to which he/she simply did not know the answer, made up something stupid on the fly to quell the inquisitive student. That's the kind of hubris that develops if one is not open to admitting that one is not infallible. It’s bad for the teacher, it’s bad for the student, and it’s bad for the rest of us who are tasked with cleaning up the resulting mess.
Unbridled conceit is an inhibitor of growth, either as a teacher or simply as a human being. Putting ourselves into a position where we actually are a student, learning something about which we don't really know anything, is a great antidote for that conceit.
Go read the whole thing. It's worth your time.
-=[ Grant ]=-
* The class was the first ever interactive simulcast shooting class which I talked about a few weeks back.
Real data from the mean streets.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tom Givens is someone you should know. Tom and his wife Lynn run Rangemaster down in Memphis, Tennessee, where they teach people to protect themselves with a handgun.
Now, Tom and Lynn aren't your average instructors; while you may not have heard of them, they command respect from the rest of us in the defensive training field because of the top-flight instruction they provide to their students. Rangemaster occupies a very interesting place in the self defense universe because their students have been involved in (at last count) over 60 self-defense shootings -- with stunning results.
Memphis, as Tom tells me, is a very violent city that exists inside of a strong self-defense gun culture. The result is that bad guys in Memphis very often come up against legally armed good guys, and if those good guys (and gals) trained at Rangemaster they almost invariably come out on top.
Tom has taken the time to interview those students who had to pull the trigger in self defense, and today has the best database of private sector defensive shootings that exists. He's very thorough in his debriefs, and because of that the rest of us have hard data on which to base our training.
Recently Tom sat down with Rob Pincus and produced a DVD in the Personal Firearms Defense series. Titled "Lessons From The Street", it details ten of his student's incidents with lots of detail and lessons learned. I recently got a copy, and it is definitely worth your effort to acquire.
The realities that he presents may change your perceptions of what actually happens in a fight, and can help you evaluate (and perhaps change) your own training to reflect the realities of a criminal attack.
Tom tells me that he’s still got a few copies left, and you can get yours for $14.95 plus postage. To order, get your credit card ready and give Rangemaster a call at 901-370-5600. It’s a terrific and unique resource that you shouldn’t be without.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday Meanderings: 2012, training, and a couple mysteries.
Monday, December 12, 2011
2012 is shaping up to be a very interesting year. Lots of stuff I can't yet discuss, but suffice it to say that there are intriguing things afoot on several fronts. Stay tuned.
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One thing I can talk about: I've had requests for a lever action rifle class, which I plan to work into my offerings this year. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos and read a lot of articles and blogs about handling the lever action, and I'm surprised at how poorly conceived most of them are. The lever action is different from other types of rifles and needs to be handled on its own merits. Trying to make it into an AR-15 is just as silly as doing the opposite, and this new class will teach techniques and procedures tailored specifically to the lever action. I'll have a section for this class added to the training page sometime in January.
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Speaking of training, I'm still open to booking classes for 2012! Check out my training page for the courses I'm offering, and read the page about hosting a class. Remember that no class happens until someone steps up to the plate to hold one -- maybe that someone is you?!
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If you like the writing of Ed Harris, and if you like the .45ACP, you won't want to miss this Friday's blog! (Trust me, it's not what you're thinking. No, I'm not giving you any more clues -- you'll just have to wait until Friday!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
A gun safety failure that goes deep into training methodology.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
From Washington state, our neighbor to the north, comes an interesting news article about a fellow who managed to put a round into a neighbor's abode while practicing his "quick draw".
There's a lot to say about this incident beyond just the safety failures. What struck me, however, wasn’t his gun handling stupidity; is was the erroneous training decisions he made before he ever committed a safety violation. It's one of those decisions that I want to discuss today.
First, an illustrative digression: many years back I was in (ironically) Washington state shooting a "tactical" match. One of the stages had the shooter standing in front of a single cardboard target with simple directions: at the buzzer, draw and put one round into the IPSC "A" zone as fast as you can; re-holster, and repeat for a total of five shots.
I was using a Colt Python in a straight-drop tunnel-loop holster and realized that I could easily 'game' the stage. The target was set abnormally low for a person of average height, which made it just right for me. All I needed to do was pull the gun from the holster, raise the muzzle to place it parallel with the ground at roughly my mid-torso, and fire. I never reached extension; it looked very much like an old FBI point shooting technique. My first draw and fire was .85 seconds and they got a little faster from there. If my memory is accurate, the fastest was something like .70 seconds. All were hits.
It was an interesting exercise and I'm sure that there are those out there who think it a good defensive shooting drill, but it's not. I was standing in front of a target which had been identified for me, the area of precision I needed to hit was predefined, I had already determined exactly what I was going to do, and I had my hands in the perfect place waiting for a buzzer which I knew was my permission to shoot. It meant nothing other than I was really fast under those artificial conditions, regardless of the importance given it by anyone else.
The fellow from the news account made a similar error of concluding that his "quick draw" was a significant thing to practice -- so much so that he absolutely needed a realistically weighted magazine to make the drill complete. There are legions of people out there just like him, oblivious to the reality that how fast one can draw is really of little importance in a defensive shooting encounter. Far more important is the ability to first recognize that an attack is happening, then efficiently process that information and recall the skills necessary to respond appropriately. The time sink isn't in the execution of the learned skills -- the quick draw -- it's in the recognition and recall.
Practicing the drawstroke by itself is called “skills in isolation", and it's a common error people make in practicing for defensive shooting. Is getting the gun out of the holster important? Yes, it is. But learning to react to a threat stimulus, efficiently process that information and develop the mental linkage which allows relevant skills to be performed without cognitive thought, is more important. Skills need context, a real relationship to the circumstances in which they'll be used, in order to be useful.
Draw practice, pulling the gun from the holster after getting ready and knowing ahead of time what you're going to do, is a simple mechanical action. It's an athletic skill, nothing more, and relative to all the other things you need to do in a critical situation not even the most important. Figuring out that you actually have a situation where you need to shoot, and figuring out WHO you need to shoot, is more important and usually the most time consuming.
How should one realistically practice? Read the last two sections of this article over at the Personal Defense Network. A good defensive practice routine involves processing information and making decisions. It requires a random start command, one that forces the shooter to think about what he's doing, identify what he's dealing with, recognize the precision required, and recall the skills necessary to make the shot(s).
Can this be done at home? To a certain extent, yes. Having a training partner, or a smartphone app which randomizes the target calls and rounds needed, is a must. Couple that with one of the laser shot designators which are affordably available allows the kind of contextual training which is actually valid to developing self defense skills.
(There is a caveat: this is no substitute for doing the exercises in live fire. Shooting multiple 'shots' without recoil and muzzle blast is of no use. This kind of training is really only valuable to the extent of developing the necessary processing skills and verifying that the first 'shot' hits.)
The way I see it, this fellow set himself up for failure by insisting on practicing something of relatively minor importance, and doing so without any context to a real need. Forget about the safety rule violations for now -- his first mistake was making a poor decision about what he was going to "practice". The rest was simple negligence.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday Meanderings.
Monday, November 21, 2011
This being a holiday week, I'm going to refrain from any major articles. Black Friday, however, will feature an interesting piece by Ed Harris! If you're tired of shopping, be sure to check in for his exploration of a load that most of us know nothing about.
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If you live near a Gander Mountain store, listen up! They're building Gander Mountain Academies into many of their stores, and you need to check them out. They haven't gotten a lot of press yet, but the GMAs are state-of-the-art shooting facilities unlike any others. Combining both live fire and computer simulation ranges, they provide a shooting experience that very few places can. These are major investments, and they show that Gander Mountain is serious about firearms training.
All of their locations can be video conferenced together, which is (to the best of my knowledge) the first time any shooting facility has done so. The great thing is that they can have a senior instructor in one location who can watch people in all other locations, and provide two-way feedback on what they're doing and how to correct errors. This is going to give people across the country far greater access to top-flight instructors than has ever been seen in this field.
The first such class is going to be with Rob Pincus, who will be teaching Dynamic Defensive Handgun on December 17th and 18th. If you've got a Gander Mountain Academy near you, take advantage of this opportunity to be at the leading edge of shooting education!
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Have you gotten your copy of the Gun Digest Book Of The Revolver yet? It's my new book dealing with all aspects of owning and shooting the double action revolver, and it's getting rave reviews. Even my lawyer said that he didn't expect a gun book to be this good! Get a copy now for yourself, and be sure to pick one up for each of your shooting friends. (Remember: orders over $25 at Amazon ship for free! There’s also a Kindle version!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Data sets, plausibility, and defensive shooting.
Monday, November 14, 2011
As I sat eating lunch last week I found myself perusing a gun forum with which I'm not all that familiar. On it I ran across a post from a fairly well known trainer, one that most shooters would not recognize but those familiar with the training world might. I've never met the guy, let alone trained with him, but his comments left me distinctly perturbed.
The statement was in reference to some particular techniques that he finds important to teach. In defending his approach, he wrote "I know, statistically, it is unlikely that you'll ever need these skills. Of course, statistically, it is unlikely you will ever need a gun at all."
I’m not at all sure that he understands the implications of what he said.
Let me start with some perspective. The American Cancer Society tells us that approximately 1.5 million cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year. With the U.S. population standing at a tad over 307 million as of the last census, that puts those patients at about .48% of the population. That’s right - less than one-half of one percent of the population of the U.S. can expect to be diagnosed with cancer, which one would have to say is a pretty small number. (As it happens, it's still quite a bit smaller than the percentage of people that Kleck and Gertz tell us will use a gun in self defense the same year, by roughly half. Keep that in mind.)
Those numbers make it statistically unlikely that any one person will develop cancer in any given year; the total number of cases is small compared to the whole population. Even though cancer of all types is not terribly common, we all know that not all cancers (nor diagnoses) are equally likely, let alone have the same outcome. Some cancers are far less prevalent than others; salivary gland cancer, for instance, occurs in perhaps 6,000 people per year - compared to nearly a quarter-million who develop who develop prostate cancer. That’s a huge difference despite the fact that neither is likely to occur.
What medical science doesn't do is to flail about and proclaim that since any cancer is "statistically unlikely" to begin with, they’ll throw the same treatment at all of them in hopes that something works. That's not how science is done, and it's not how lives are saved.
Within that small data set of cancer cases there is a huge range of probabilities and outcomes. It's that very fact that enables medical science to classify each case and use the best treatment approach based on where it falls in the data matrix. Since not all are alike, all do not get the same treatment.
This extends to the research realm as well. We don't spend as much time and money developing cures for salivary gland cancer as we do for prostate cancer. We put our research resources where they will do the most good, where they will save the most lives.
Am I saying that defensive shooting is the same as cancer? Of course not. What I am saying, though, is that just because an occurrence of an event is unlikely doesn't mean that all such occurrences are the same. A small data set does not imply homogeneity; even in small data sets there are differing circumstances and results. To imply otherwise is ignorant (or manipulative.)
Of course it's statistically unlikely that at any given time you'll need to use your gun. This is not news. Needing to use a gun to defend yourself is about twice as likely as you developing cancer this year, mind you, but it's still unlikely. Just because it's unlikely, however, does not mean that all skill sets related to a defensive shooting are of equal value!
Just as some cancers are more common than others, some defensive scenarios are more likely than others. For instance, how often in private sector self defense incidents are people called on to make 100-yard hostage rescue headshots with a handgun? It may have happened somewhere or at some time in history, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single case - let alone any sort of trend. Is that of equal probability to dealing with a simple assault in a parking lot after dark? Of course not.
Should we train equally in the skills necessary to deal with those two disparate events simply because neither is "statistically likely"? I don't think so.
When we look at defensive shooting threats and scenarios, there are some that are possible but have rarely (if ever) happened; there are some which happen occasionally but not often, making them at least plausible; and there are those which happen often enough that we can see some sort of likelihood, a certain probability of occurrence. Our problem as students is that none of us has the unlimited time or resources necessary to train for everything which is merely possible. We have to take into account the likelihood, the plausibility, of what can happen when we make training and technique decisions.
Using the "statistically unlikely you will ever need a gun at all" argument in relation to training is a smokescreen, a way to ignore the concept of plausibility. It's an attempt to deflect the student's attention, to get them to suspend their critical thinking so that they don't question the actual value of the technique. Yes, it is unlikely that you'll need to use your gun - but saying so doesn't magically transform "possible" into "likely", and doesn't elevate a rarely needed skill into something which is vital to learn.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday Meanderings
Monday, November 07, 2011
It's odd, really. This is the time of year that I pine for the long days of summer that are sure to come, and in the heat of that season I wish the early darkenings of winter would get here sooner. I guess I'm just never happy with the here and now!
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The whole zombie schtick has long since jumped the shark, and my thoughts on the utility of a .410 shotgun revolver are well known. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that someone would combine the two, and likewise it won’t be a difficult task to figure out what I think of the thing. (Thanks to Tam for ruining my breakfast with this news.)
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Trying to catch up with emails, snail mails, parts orders, and everything else around the shop isn't being helped lately. You may remember that my wife decided I needed someone to keep my company during work hours, so she brought in Shop Kat. Turns out that SK is a girl, which we learned when she finally grew up enough to go into heat. When that happened I decided to take her in for a little surgical modification, but as it happens that can't be done until she's out of heat. I thought that if I kept a close eye on her during her infrequent and short outings during that time things would be under control, as I'd seen no stray cats in the neighborhood. You can guess what happened next.
I now have a pile (seven, to be precise) balls of fur who are about six weeks old. They're constantly underfoot, seem to think everything exists for their own amusement, and are generally making the shop difficult to work in. I wear an apron while I work and they seem particularly amused by the parts of it that they can reach. Anyone want a free kitten (or two?)
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I've got a couple of interesting articles by Ed Harris which I'm going to run on coming Fridays in place of the Friday Surprise. Ed's got some great stuff and addresses areas of the shooting world that aren't in my normal purview. I think you'll find them interesting.
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In the next month I'll be working on my teaching schedule for 2012. If you'd like to book a class now's the time to start the process!
Of course I'll be teaching my flagship Revolver Doctrine course; if you liked my book, you'll love this class! I take you through the revolver, showing you how to shoot it, reload it, manipulate it with one hand, and more. It's a one-day class that can be held on nearly any range, and doesn't require drawing from a holster. It's a great introduction for anyone who is new to the revolver, regardless of their past shooting experience.
I'm also available to teach Combat Focus Shooting classes, both one- and two-day. CFS teaches you the most efficient ways to defeat a threat, ways that work with what your body does naturally. CFS classes are open to revolvers and autoloaders (much as I hate to admit it, I do know how to run an auto. Let's just keep that between the two of us, OK?)
A great combination is what I call the Defensive Revolver Weekend, which combines Revolver Doctrine on the first day and Combat Focus Shooting on the second. RD teaches you how to operate the revolver, while CFS teaches you how to use it to protect you or those you love. This is a great way to take these classes, as there is some overlap which is eliminated when they're back-to-back. The result is that we get in more material than we would if the classes were separated. (This combined version of Revolver Doctrine does require drawing from a holster.)
I’m available for classes all over the western U.S. How do you go about booking a class? It's easier than you might think, and you can train for free just by hosting at your local range! Email me for the details.
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Looking even further ahead, I'm considering teaching a master class on Colt revolver gunsmithing. This wouldn't happen until at least 2013, but I'd like to throw out some feelers now to see if anyone might be interested. If so, drop me a note; if I have enough interest, I'll develop the course tailored to your interests.
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Well, I think that's enough for one Monday. I'm going to return some emails then go do battle with some very intimidating kittens!
-=[ Grant ]=-
A (long) Combat Focus weekend.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
I returned yesterday from a long weekend at the 2011 Combat Focus Shooting Instructor Conference. (If you were wondering why there was no blog on Friday or Monday, now you know.)
The annual Conference is a chance for active Combat Focus Shooting (CFS) instructors to get together with peers to exchange ideas, learn new concepts, develop skills, and have a little fun at the same time. In this conference we looked at some of the latest information about how attacks happen and how the body reacts to them, and asked ourselves how that changes what we teach and how we teach it. We learned and we grew.
This DNA-level commitment to progress is one of the things that sets the CFS program far apart from others. In any field of human endeavor perspective changes along with knowledge, and defensive skills are no different. Collectively we learn more every day about how to survive deadly encounters; the problem is that so very few instructors or programs are truly committed to evolving with that increasing knowledge.
Let's face it: humans are often resistant to change, particularly when that change means admitting that we are in some way wrong. When we have a lot of ego investment in what we do and how we do it, it becomes darn near impossible to make substantive changes even when they're really necessary.
For instance, I've always considered myself reasonably fit. I'm no athlete, but owing to the heavy work I do around our homestead I'm in better shape than at least half of the people my age. As I learned this weekend I still need some work in that area, and it's important because fitness is critical to long-term survival. Being fit not only helps you survive a deadly attack, but also helps you to survive equally life-threatening but far more common things like heart disease and diabetes. Only by stepping away from my ego am I able to see that and make the changes I need to make.
In CFS we're able to make progress, to evolve our program, precisely because of this lack of ego. Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of Type-A personalities in our group, but very little ego. I know that sounds contradictory, but it's not! One can be very committed and very driven with regard to a topic without the exaggerated self importance that comes from ego.
Colleague Ricardo Pipa put it best: “we lack ego, we are collaborative." We acknowledge that sometimes new knowledge makes old positions untenable, and we change those positions to the benefit of our students and the defensive shooting community as a whole. That's what makes CFS, in the words of founder Rob Pincus, the most progressive defensive shooting program "on the planet."
On a personal note I progressed toward a couple of additional certifications: one for the rifle (Combat Focus Carbine) and one for a new program aimed at absolute beginners in the defensive shooting world (more on that later.) I don't yet know if I passed either one - CFS instructor certifications are notoriously difficult to acquire - but I hope to hear good news later this week.
Regarding my fellow CFS instructors, I don't wish to be maudlin. I'll close simply by saying that they are, in the words of the original Hawkeye Pierce, "the Finest Kind."
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: The Great Communicator.
Friday, October 07, 2011
President Reagan was given that nickname during his tenure in office, but all Presidents before and after have needed to stay in touch with the world around them. Lots of stuff to deal with when you're the CEO of a superpower, and being able to reach out and talk with anyone and everyone is pretty high on the priority list.
Seems simple in the days of cel phones, but it's not. The President needs fault-tolerant communications that work even where he can't get any bars on his iPhone, which is why he’s usually accompanied by a communications team. Back in the 1960s, that team - and their huge amount of radio gear - took up an entire rail car. And then some.
These pictures, from the JFK library and hosted at cryptome.org, are of the Presidential train communications car shortly after President Kennedy's inauguration. The White House Army Signal Agency, which in 1962 was eliminated and its functions transferred to the Defense Communications Agency, was responsible for the operation and upkeep of the assets.
Known as the General Albert J. Myer Car in honor of the first commander of the Army Signal Corps, it contained all of the radio and telephone equipment needed by the President and his staff while on the train. When stopped at a station the car’s switchboard was hooked into the local telephone exchange. While underway, all communications were handled via high frequency (HF) radio. It even had a separate (locked, of course) cryptography room!
Presidential train travel had effectively ended during the Eisenhower administration, and I was unable to find out of the equipment was ever actually used by Kennedy's staff. The Myer car was still being held in a ready state in Harrisburg, PA as late as 1970, but its fate beyond that point is uncertain.
It was reported to be awaiting restoration at the Gold Coast rail museum in Florida when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, and later was rumored to have been transferred to the custody of the National Park Service's Steamtown historic site. Today no one seems to know where it is or even if it still exists.
(To correct a piece of misinformation: the train itself was NOT called the Ferdinand Magellan. That was the name of the President's private Pullman car, which was sold to the Gold Coast museum in 1959.)
It is a fascinating glimpse into state-of-the-art communications in the early '60s.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Defensive training. iPhone. What's the connection?
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Yesterday Apple announced a new iPhone, and with it an advanced software to add voice control to that phone. (“Siri”? Who names these things?)
Almost immediately the blogs and tech sites were abuzz with inevitable comparisons to the competition, complete with tables breaking down the products feature by feature.
I found it amusing that they all had one line that said 'voice control', with a simple "YES" or checkmark on each product. Some of the more adventurous would take pains to point out that the competition had 'voice control' for some time, and Apple was just catching up. What they failed to take into account was the relative sophistication and integration of the feature on all the products; love 'em or hate 'em, Apple's new voice assistant goes well beyond the simple "call Bill at work" kinds of control that phones have had for years. The software anticipates and evaluates natural language requests in a way that hasn't yet been done on a consumer device, and interacts with the phone's functions in a wider way than we're accustomed to.
(My best friend was the founder of a software company which did pioneering work in the field of computer control via voice recognition. Even he's impressed with how far Apple was able to push this technology, and he's about as jaded an expert in that field as you could ever find. He’s also one of the best shooting instructors I know, which gives me the perfect segue into this article’s actual topic!)
My point is not to sell phones - personally, I don't derive my self-worth from what I buy or what you don't buy - but rather to point out the folly of making bullet point comparisons. If you just looked at the bullet point of voice control and saw the checkmark, you wouldn't come away understanding the vastly different ways in which that feature has been implemented.
This goes well beyond phones, as lots of people do the same thing when they take defensive shooting classes. I call them "checklist students" - people who make decisions as to what school or class they'll attend by looking over a list of topics being covered. I've actually talked to people who have chosen one class over another because of the number of topics covered, without understanding the depth of the instruction or the unique approach of the instructor.
I've also seen students request refunds from instructors when the simple number of things they learned wasn't the same as in other classes they've attended, even though the student made no effort to understand or become competent in those things that were taught. The checklist is in control, not their desire to learn nor their appreciation of their own skill development.
There are instructors out there who will throw a million different topics into a class and give the students perhaps a couple of minutes with each, then dash on to the next item on the agenda. There are other instructors who cover a fraction of those topics but cover them thoroughly, giving students time and opportunity to really start to develop some proficiency. Unfortunately, the former tend to be the more successful - checklists, it would seem, sell classes as well as phones, cameras, cars, and just about everything else.
If you buy a phone via a checklist, the worst that happens is that you don't have the functionality of another phone. You can always get another. When it comes to your skill development, particularly the ability to successfully defend your own life, the stakes are a little higher. Make your training decisions based not on an ambitious list of topics, but on an understanding of what, how and why your instructor does what he/she does.
Leave the checklists to those who would rather brag than learn.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Context, perspective and gun testing.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Something I've noticed in the last year or so: as I've incorporated the concepts of reality-based training (RBT) in my teaching and practice, my point of view has changed. I'm not really aware of it until I'm around people who haven't had that exposure, and then the contrast becomes stark.
The realities of how attacks actually occur and our reactions (instinctive and intuitive) affect not only how and what we train, but what we train with. My upcoming article over at the Personal Defense Network examines this idea with regard to the seemingly banal process of holster choice, and this weekend it cropped up during an informal gun test in which I participated.
I was assisting with a rifle class and one of the other instructors brought in one of the new uber-compact 9mm pistols that are all the rage. We all got a chance to shoot the thing, and the results were telling.
Most people's approach to testing a new gun is to get set into a 'proper' range-based stance, carefully line up the sights, and make a slow, smooth shot; repeat until the magazine is empty, and declare it a wonderful gun. Everyone at this range did that, and I used to do that too, but lately I've been testing guns under the conditions I expect to use them, conditions that are congruent with the gun's purpose.
For a defensive gun that means shooting as if I'm being attacked.
I'd already played with the thing, so I was familiar with how it worked and how the trigger broke. In terms of the gun's operation there were no surprises. I chambered a round and, from the high compressed ready position, extended and pressed the trigger repeatedly and rapidly. I shot at a pace that was consistent with how I shoot an Airweight 'J' frame, which frequent and realistic practice has taught me would deliver the balance of speed and precision needed to put rounds on the target (the ring in an IDPA silhouette) at the distance I was standing (about 5 yards.)
The results were awful. This particular gun is so slim and flat that the grip panels do not appreciably contact the palm of the hand, and the only points of real contact - the front and backstraps - were polished and finished in a smooth gloss. The result was an alarming lack of control when shooting at a realistic pace. My first three shots landed in the target area, but the final three drifted far to the right as the gun rotated against the pressure of my hands.
I inserted a second magazine and consciously tried to counter the torque of the little monster. The results were a little better, but the extreme amount of physical force I applied to the gun brought my group down and to the left. As long as the gun was shot sedately, like on a nice friendly target range, it performed. Pushed into a more realistic shooting circumstance, it simply failed because of design flaws - the people who built it didn't understand the context in which the gun would likely be used. They built a miniature target pistol, but they’re selling it as a fighting tool.
Are there some people who might be able to make it work under realistic conditions? Perhaps, but no one else that day even tried; the closest anyone got was to do a sequence of double-taps/controlled pairs (a shooting method which illustrates that a gun can't actually be controlled for a realistic string of fire) and the results weren't a whole lot better. Would more practice - familiarity - with the gun improve my results? Experience suggests this is unlikely, as the first couple of magazines/cylinders out of a new-to-me gun are almost always my best.
I’ve covered this before, and it bears repeating: any shooting you do has to be in context. Are you practicing for an IDPA match, or are you practicing for the time when you're surprised and in true fear of your life?
What I see when I watch videos of actual shootings isn't the carefully measured BANG.....BANG.....BANG.....BANG.....BANG.....BANG of the target range, and It usually isn’t the contrived BANGBANG.....BANGBANG.....BANGBANG of the shooting match. What I see consistently, when people are surprised and in true fear for their life, is BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG. That's because the human in full reactive survival mode wants the threat gone as quickly as possible, and knows that the only thing which will do that is rounds on target.
Whether or not he/she can control the gun in those circumstances is the variable, which is why I insist on training in context so that I know I can do so.
When training isn't congruent with the realities of the fight, or if the equipment doesn't work well in that context, the needed hits won't be there. We call that 'inefficient' - using more of our own resources (time, energy, ammunition, space) than necessary to achieve the goal (making the bad guy go away.)
Ironically, in these very small guns a lesser cartridge, like the lowly and maligned .380ACP, may actually be the better choice if it allows the defender to shoot with a balance of speed and precision that achieves the necessary efficiency.
The only way one can know for sure is to practice and test realistically. On this day, I did and it greatly affected my opinion of the hardware. If it weren't for the understanding of context in training, today I'd be telling you what a great little gun it is.
Just like everyone else.
-=[ Grant ]=-
King of the road.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Over a year ago I read a review of a training course on one of the gun forums. It's been long enough that I don't remember what the course was, or who the instructor may have been, so I don't think I have any dog in the fight. Besides, it's not the particulars that matter in this story; it's the student's attitude that I find most intriguing.
The person in question had taken a weekend course at some gun school and was very critical of the instruction received. As I recall, it wasn't the material itself about which he was complaining - it was the instructor's attitude. The writer was upset because the instructor had insisted that his students perform the drills as he taught them, rather than as they were used to doing. According to the reviewer, the instructor took a "my way or the highway" approach to the material being taught. This, apparently, was a Bad Thing.
My thought was (and still is) that this illustrated not a poor instructor, but a poor student.
Why does one take a course? To learn a new skill, I should think. If all a student wants is validation of what they've already been taught, then he or she should simply repeat the courses already attended. Taking a new course will naturally expose the student to new material, and doggedly resisting that exposure is counter productive for both the individual and the other students.
If one is going to learn a new skill one must first be exposed to it and then take the time to practice. If someone goes to a class and decides immediately that they don't want to do that, what's the reason for being there in the first place? If you take a class, you do it the teacher's way - that is, after all, the whole point of the event, is it not?
Ultimately the student - not the instructor - is responsible for his or her own competence. The instructor's job is to present material competently, logically, clearly, and factually, but it's up to the student to take advantage of what is being provided. An instructor who insists that, while in the class, the student practice only what has been taught isn't arrogant. (As long as the material has been clearly presented and the students have been given an opportunity to seek intellectual clarity and comfort with that material, of course.) An unyielding commitment to structure provides the proper environment for the student to become competent if he/she so chooses.
Whether or not one "likes" new material is irrelevant, as we've all had the experience of disliking someone or something until we got to know them/it better. Part of the process is habituation, which only occurs with repeated exposure. If the instructor doesn't insist on that exposure, letting the students do it their own way, how are they going to really know if it's for them? What other frame of reference can one use to make any sort of a judgement?
Note that I’m not considering the quality or applicability of the material in this argument. If the student deems the techniques or processes are silly or illogical or superfluous relative to his needs, he is always free jettison them after class has ended. During the class, though, they need to be done the way the instructor is teaching them - and he should insist on it.
(I am not addressing the very real instances where a physical issue prevents the student from doing something the way it’s been taught. That’s a separate issue, and the instructor should be willing and able to accommodate the student’s limitations.)
"My way or the highway", to me, is simply an instructor's insistence that a student pay attention and get in enough reps to at least start on becoming competent. I think a student should look for that attitude in a trainer, not complain about it!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Hyperbolic training.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Sadly, I’ve seen it before: tactical 'expert' pronounces that if you don't use his pet technique, "you're going to get hit". A variation: "well, if you don't want to take a bullet you'd better do this."
Whether or not I agree with the technique being presented, I hate that method of getting a point across because everyone knows (or should know) it's nonsense.
Take, for instance, moving off the vector of an attack (which some refer to as "get off the X") while at the same time shooting at the threat. This has been raised to a religion in some schools, and one such congregant recently defended the idea by saying "people who stand still get shot."
Really?
If that's true, then there should be a whole lot of people around (whether alive or deceased) who can be used as examples. Humans have been defending themselves with firearms for more than a century, and the huge overwhelming majority of those people had no formal training before doing so. Since they were likely not trained to move, how did they manage to survive not getting hit? The fact that they generally did leads us to question the logic behind the statement.
I'm sure that with enough digging you could find one or two, but this fellow's absolutist statement would require that there be a whole lot of those folks - and I think even a little searching will show that there aren't.
This is the case with so much defensive training: when there really isn't logic or fact behind what's being taught, instructors will sometimes fall back on hyperbole to prevent the student from asking the hard questions. There may in fact be a benefit to a certain technique, but the benefit is less than the cost; there may, in fact, be zero benefit. It's up to the student to recognize when hyperbole is being used to mask a deficiency, and respectfully ask for a logical explanation of what's being taught.
Do I believe there is a benefit to moving offline during an attack? Yes. Do I believe that it is always a good idea to continue that movement while I shoot back? No, and I think that I do a pretty good job of explaining “why” to my students without insulting their intelligence or trying to scare them into compliance. There is a cost/benefit ratio with any defensive move, and I think it’s a disservice not to communicate that to a student.
Reason. Fact. Ask for them by name. Politely, of course!
-=[ Grant ]=-
A different take on handgun stopping power.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
An article by Greg Ellifritz, titled "An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power", caused some waves a few weeks back. Like all such attempts at quantifying shooting incidents, it suffers from a distinct lack of properly filtered data and a marked lack of understanding of statistical principles and methods ("confidence interval? Never heard of it!") I could go on, but suffice it to say (like Marshall & Sanow's publications before him) that one must be extremely careful about applying any such information in a prescriptive manner.
There is, however, one piece of data in his compilation that I think is interesting from a training standpoint, even if it isn't necessarily a reliable predictor: the number of people who failed to be incapacitated by the shots fired. His figures for all calibers remain remarkably consistent, hovering around 13%, right down to the lowly .380 ACP. Below that, the numbers more than double but again remain surprisingly consistent.
The reason this is interesting is because today's training emphasizes engagement until the threat ceases activity. In the old days, when lots of people believed that certain calibers were magic wands, the common training was to shoot two rounds and assess the situation. This was aided and abetted by the bogus one-stop-shot percentages that were all the rage at the time (and continue to be in certain circles.)
Thankfully that changed as more and more people noticed that bad guys didn't always stop with the first round, and that the best course of action was to keep shooting until he did. That's the norm today: shoot until the threat ceases (though there are still some backwaters where the outdated techniques are still taught with gusto.)
If we’re going to shoot until the threat goes away, are there any calibers which won’t reliably achieve that goal? Not as many as you might think.
If his data is reliable it would tend to support my long-held view that there is a floor beneath which calibers are not terribly effective for self defense, and that the floor is probably lower than most gunnies will admit. I know more than one gunstore goon who sneers at the .380ACP, yet I've met people who've used it quite successfully. Ellifritz's article suggests that their successes were not unusual.
Those same people think I'm daft for loading my revolvers with "only" .38 +P rounds instead of the .357 Magnum, but I'm more than comfortable with my choice because I know it's based on a rational assessment of its performance over a long period of time.
One thing to keep in mind: a lack of incapacitation does not mean that the rounds failed their job! Even though not incapacitated, the bad guys may have changed their minds and stopped their activity without being physiologically forced to do so. That's just one of the problems with blindly applying data from these kinds of studies, because the lesser calibers might in fact be more useful than this would suggest. Still, it is a different way of looking at the issue.
Bottom line: pick your gun based on your ability to use it efficiently, practice frequently and realistically with it, and you'll be far more prepared than the average gunshow denizen who loudly proclaims that all good self defense calibers must begin with '.4'.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Change is inevitable. Growth? Not so much.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Rob Pincus asked one of his favorite questions on the (members only) U.S. Concealed Carry forum last week: "what have you changed your mind about?"
It's a simple question, and it's amazing how many people couldn't answer it. The most common reply sounds like something from a cookie-cutter PR firm: "Of course the world is in a constant state of change, and the prudent man, woman, or transgender individual is best advised to take note of such change and incorporate that which is applicable to his or her current situation to prepare for the future." Reading some of the responses reminded me of the old joke about the politician talking about prohibition: "some of mah friends are for it, and some of mah friends are against it. I tell you here and now, that I stand forthrightly behind mah friends!"
The question isn't concerned about what's changed around you, but rather in what has changed inside of you.
We all make decisions and adopt opinions based on any number of inputs, including raw evidence, our emotional reactions to factual information, and (all too often) what someone else thinks about those things. The problem is that we tend to treat those opinions and conclusions as static even as the world around us shifts. At some point our original positions are likely to become outdated, and some will be downright wrong. It's whether - and why - we make a conscious decision to amend or replace those positions that's important. If we're observant and engaged, we change our minds about things. If not, we persist in beliefs and practices that may not be congruent with the current realities.
Prejudices are like that. My late father grew up in a time and a place where anyone with white skin was deemed to be of lesser intelligence, honesty, and motivation. ("Stupid, lazy liars" in the vernacular.) Over the years he would be put into contact with one ethnic group after another and be forced to change his opinion of that group. Unfortunately he wasn't able to extrapolate those experiences to cover all ethnicities, but he was at least able to find common ground with Japanese, Hispanic, American Indian, and Chinese people. He changed his mind based on his first-hand experiences.
That kind of change is hard for some of us because it means admitting that, in some way, we're wrong about something. That might be because we misinterpreted something along the way, or it might mean that new facts or evidence were uncovered. It might mean that we relied too much on others to shape our opinions for us, or it might simply mean that we've grown up. We might have been right at one point, but the growth of the rest of society rendered our original position untenable.
Whether we changed or the universe changed is irrelevant to this discussion; what's important is how we ourselves adapt to that change. Can we accept new facts and evidence, or are we going to bury our heads in the sand?
Case in point: for a long time I've held an opinion about Taurus revolvers that is now evolving, based on their increasing levels of quality. Am I ready to put them on the same level as the market leaders - S&W and Ruger? Not quite, but I am willing to admit that perhaps they are making headway in product quality. I'm revisiting my opinions in response to what's going on around me, and I look forward to the day when I can say I've changed my mind about them.
Don't assume that I'm talking only about physical things (people, guns.) I'm also talking about concepts. How and what we train is subject to the same dynamic of change. For instance, I used to practice and teach one-handed shooting with the gun canted strongly toward the centerline. The idea is that it straightened the wrist (which it did) and increased recoil control (which it also did.) The problem is that it's much harder for the eye/brain combination to correctly align the gun on target when both the x- and y-axis are in abnormal positions. This is especially true when shooting quickly, as it significantly degrades one’s balance of speed and precision. The increase in recoil control, which enables the shooter to get back on target faster, is negated by the increased time required for the shooter to recognize and apply the necessary deviation control.
My opinion was wrong because I focused on an overly narrow aspect of the shooting task. I changed my mind based upon a broader understanding of what I was trying to achieve, and as a result no longer teach or practice that technique.
What specifically have you changed your mind about? What do you consciously believe or practice today that's different than, say, a year or two ago? Why?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday Meanderings, Aug. 22 edition.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Omari Broussard talks about 'cool' techniques over at his blog this morning, and I agree with him.
About four or five years ago I took some heat from other instructors over the term 'Walter Mitty Training', which I used to describe techniques and courses that weren't grounded in reality. It's the kind of training one takes to pretend to be someone else (or somewhere else), because preparing for plausible scenarios just isn't a whole lot of fun.
Truth be told, I'd class most of the 'tactical' training out there as Walter Mitty or very close to it. There's a big difference between performing a tightly choreographed obscure skill after making ready, and trying to decide between fries and onion rings when you're unexpectedly forced to defend yourself.
Context. Plausibility. Two words that are absent from far too much training.
---
Someone emailed and asked about the new Charter Arms Pit Bull revolver chambering .40S&W without the need for moonclips. My reply: "Ummm, OK. Why?"
As I see it, the only compelling reason to use autoloading cartridges in revolvers is because they require moonclips, making for blazing fast reloads. I suppose there might be some argument for the fellow who owns a .40 autoloader and wants a revolver to play with without the bother of stocking two kinds of ammunition, but really: how many of those people are out there?
The claim that it can be used as a backup to an autoloader and thus benefits from sharing ammunition doesn't compute: if you need the backup, it's probably because you ran out of ammunition for your primary gun. If that's the case, what are you sharing ammo with? It didn't make a lot of sense a couple of years ago when it was announced, and hasn't gained much in the intervening time.
---
Jeff Quinn over at GunBlast did a review of a special edition Ruger GP100. The Wiley Clapp edition features non-standard dovetailed sights, an interesting matte stainless finish, and - hold still my beating heart! - a return to the original GP100 grips with inserts, dolled up for this gun.
(One of the dumbest decisions to come from Ruger’s management lately was replacing their perfectly usable grips with the execrable Hogue Monogrip. Glad to see they didn't throw away the molds!)
I'm not sure about the claim that the gun is "built for defense" - I'd have done things a bit differently and I see at least two important features missing - but it's a nice treatment of the old warhorse and an indication that Ruger still takes their revolvers seriously. Just wish they'd do so more often!
---
Everyone, it seems, has their name on a gun lately. The Firearm Blog tells us that Mossberg recently brought out the Thunder Ranch Model 500 shotgun. Supposedly designed by Clint Smith, it features a shorter stock (12-3/4" length of pull) and a stand-off door breaching muzzle. In fact, very little other than the aforementioned muzzle and the much-appreciated shorter stock. And that huge TR logo with the expected higher price.
Seriously, a door breacher on a defensive shotgun? Someone has finally jumped the shark, but I can't decide whether it's Clint or Mossberg.
(It's my considered opinion that the perfect home defense pump shotgun would be an Ithaca Model 37 Defense in 20ga with a few minor enhancements. The Ithaca is the smoothest, easiest-cycling pump I've used and is a joy to shoot. You listening, Ithaca?)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Silliness redux.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
On Monday I commented about a video from an outfit called American Defense Enterprises (ADE.) In it, a group of black-clad aspirants show us what they can do with guns. It was apparently so embarrassing that ADE actually pulled it from YouTube, but luckily someone managed to snag a copy and put it back up (and with a far more appropriate soundtrack!)
The whole video looks like a Hollywood caricature of firearms use; the word that kept popping into my head was 'choreography'. Hmmm....sure enough, ADE is headquartered on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles. That would go a long way to explaining why the video looks more like a video gamer's wet dream than realistic defensive shooting.
You really need to watch the video, as it illustrates some vital principles about how you should NOT train. How plausible are the scenarios they're setting up? Look at the safety aspect of some of their drills - is there a benefit that outweighs the not inconsiderable risks? My answers would be ‘not very’ and ‘no’.
I'll go out on a limb here: it's damn near impossible to produce an exciting video clip of quality defensive shooting instruction, because at its core it is boring. Learning to shoot efficiently doesn't lend itself to flashy room clearing footage, and how one deals with a real threat doesn't look anything like an exciting team assault. Defensive shooting is as much about concepts and processes as it is techniques, and when was the last time you saw a blood-pumping video of a concept?
If you want to see good defensive shooting videos, you can find them at the Personal Defense Network. If you want entertainment, watch the video under discussion.
Just don't confuse the two.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Progress before our eyes.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Back in April the Personal Defense Network published an interview with yours truly, wherein I opined that the future of defensive training would be integration: a fluid combination of both armed and unarmed responses. This month, we've been greeted with a big endorsement of that trend with the appearance of Rob Pincus on the cover of Black Belt Magazine.
The Black Belt article on Rob deals specifically with why and how unarmed combatives trainers should include armed responses in their repertoire. It's a good article, and you should pick up a copy of the magazine and read for yourself. I'm sure that there are some pure martial artists who will wail and gnash their teeth at the prospect, but the trend is now clear -- both sides have observed the same dynamics, and are headed in (roughly) the same direction.
Black Belt has published a Q&A with Rob on their website, where he answers questions about Combat Focus Shooting, what martial artists can bring to the table, and why novices need to train. Definitely worth the read.
-=[ Grant ]=-
The dangers of unbridled emulation.
Monday, July 18, 2011
There is a certain segment of the training community that makes quite a fuss about teaching techniques randomly collected from SWAT teams, Special Forces (ours or someone else's), or SEAL Team Six. (It's always Team Six, because they're apparently the coolest. And the only one which the average Mall Ninja recognizes. Good for marketing, you understand. I feel for the guys on Teams One through Five though, suffering with the knowledge that they're not nearly as cool.) These classes are usually sold to the public as being "full strength" or "not watered down for civilians" or some such twaddle.
I have two concerns with such courses. First is the applicability to prIvate sector self defense and the resulting drain on our training resources. Many of these techniques, such as shooting while running toward a threat, are offensive in nature and require either attaining initiative or being part a large enough group to be able establish and maintain sectors of fire. No matter how convoluted the logic (and I've heard some twisted justifications), this doesn't have much to do with the kinds of self defense incidents that you and I are likely to face. They are a lot of fun, I'll concede that point, but we need to keep in mind that we all have limited training resources (time and money.) If one spends precious training resources doing things that aren't at all applicable to the task at hand, it means that something which is really needed won't get trained.
The second issue I have is that of safety. For any drill or any technique, the benefit of the activity needs to greatly outweigh the perceived risk. Perception, I need to emphasize, is relative. What is risky to a real-deal SEAL is very different than what is to you or me! A SEAL puts himself in extreme risk on every active mission, and as a result his training is correspondingly riskier. That doesn't mean that they take foolhardy chances, but it does mean that the nature of their job requires them to practice things that are far more dangerous than what you or I need to practice. A drill that would seem boringly safe to them may in fact expose us to an unnecessary -- and correspondingly unacceptable -- level of risk. A downrange drill (one where students are downrange of other students shooting), for instance, has some value to those guys whose job it is to kill people and break stuff; in my never-to-be-humble assessment, it has near-zero value to those of us who face criminal threats here at home.
Getting hurt in a training drill that has no plausible application to the average citizen's life is a double fail. How to avoid it? Be discerning in your training. I realize the overwhelming desire to relate one's reality-show-like adventures to the guys in the office on Monday morning, but being practical will make you better prepared. It will also ensure that you leave the class sporting the same number of orifices with which you arrived.
-=[ Grant ]=-
The snakepit of groupthink.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Every so often I'll have a spare moment and just happen to be sitting near the computer. It's at those times that I visit one of the gun forums (fora?) just to see what's up with the world. More precisely, what's up in some very small portion of the world, one which is usually severely skewed.
One such moment happened last weekend while I was waiting for dinner to finish cooking. (Actually, I was waiting for my wife to finish cooking dinner since my culinary skills are limited to "I'd like to place a to-go order".) I dropped in on one forum where the main topic of conversation appeared to be the emergence of flash mobs for nefarious purposes.
Up until lately flash mobs existed to do stuff like umbrella dances and public sing-alongs. I'd always found them charming in an urbanites-need-something-to-take-their-minds-off-the-cage-they're-in sort of way, but over the last several weeks they've come to be used for criminal activity. It was, in hindsight, inevitable.
The discussion on this particular forum centered on how to protect oneself from a flash mob attack. It started out with a discussion of how much ammunition you should be carrying on your person (naturally there was the obligatory picture of one guy's carry rig with the proud explanation that he'd found a way to tote over fifty rounds, ready to go at a moment's notice.) Talk quickly devolved to OC grenades and how many of them you should have in your car. Some were even wondering if they were legal for concealed carry.
Yes, grenades. Yes, they were serious.
You can't prepare for everything, if for no other reason than you can't carry everything you'd need for all contingencies. Like Steven Wright says: "You can't have everything -- where would you put it??" You have to decide what are the likely threats you'll face and pick your skills and equipment to deal with those situations. Whatever level that may be is going to be different from others, because the probabilities are dramatically influenced by your environment and your habits.
Just because some anonymous nut on a forum is carrying OC grenades doesn't mean that you need to. Remember, a dispassionate review of the risks involved would probably lead to the conclusion that HE doesn't need to either. Finally, keep this in mind: whatever hardware you decide is appropriate for you, it needs to be such that you can carry it all the time. Loading up for the Apocalypse on the weekend but having a .380 automatic in your pants pocket for the bulk of your week isn't consistent, and it's probably not congruent with the threats you're really facing and where they're likely to occur.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Marketing. Someone's gotta do it.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
I saw one again the other day: an after-action review of a "snubby" shooting class. I think I'm missing the boat.
A snubnose revolver is fundamentally no different in operation than a non-snubnose revolver. It will have increased recoil, a shorter sight radius, and generally be a little harder to efficiently reload than a larger wheelgun, but that isn't sufficient difference to drop them into their own special class. Apparently some disagree, because the snubby classes are a rapidly growing subset of the training business.
This tailoring of classes to fit a specific demographic is all the rage these days. Actually, that sentence is a little generous; it's more the tailoring of the title of the class to fit a specific demographic. My general rule of thumb is that a class whose enrollment focuses on a factor external to the skills being taught is probably more marketing than anything else.
That having been said, I might someday decide to compromise my beliefs and promote a snubnose class of my own. Should that happen, I promise to feel slightly guilty on my way to the bank.
-=[ Grant ]=-
My newest article is up at PDN!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
My latest project, "New Concepts of Precision in Defensive Shooting", is now available at the Personal Defense Network.
This piece is probably going to be controversial, because it takes a fresh and different look at how we think about accuracy and precision in the context of self defense. In it I make the case that shooting 'better' shouldn't be our goal -- shooting more appropriately should be. If I may be so bold, I think it's one of the more important things I've written.
It's a longish article that explores these concepts at a deeper level than you're going to find in the gunzines. Read it thoroughly and consider carefully the issues raised.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Someone is spying on me.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Here's how things work around here: I collect interesting snippets of information that are relevant to the topics of this blog (namely revolvers, shooting, and self defense) and write posts inspired by those snippets. Sometimes it's a news story that sets things in motion, sometimes it's my own experiences, and occasionally it's a remark by another blogger.
I usually write something up and hang on to it for release when I have room. For instance, Fridays are always devoted to an off-topic surprise so I hold any topical things for the following Monday. This week the CenturioGroup nonsense about lumens popped up and I was so excited to comment that I bumped the article I'd planned to today. It was based on a post last month at another blog, but there was no hurry because it wasn't any sort of current event.
In the meantime several other bloggers jumped in to comment, making me look like a Johnny-come-lately. This isn't the first time I've been scooped, though; I've lost count of the number of times I've thought "I'll get to this next week", only to have the entire blogosphere jump on the topic while I was busy doing more important things -- like earning a living.
Just so you know: I wrote the following last week. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
--
Miguel over at The Gun Free Zone recently wrote a piece defending the 'shoot me first' vest -- that item of clothing, usually attributed to photographers, which is often the choice of the IDPA crowd. I don't like the things. Not necessarily because a bad guy will target the wearer of such a vest (there is no evidence either way on that assertion), but simply because they are an affectation. They always have been.
Back in the early 1980s I was working in a camera store and selling gear to actual working photographers. We had 'photographers vests' for sale, but rarely sold any -- and never to a real professional. Everyone considered them a mark of the dilettante, and no one I knew would be caught dead in one. Flash forward to 2011 and they still look silly.
That's not to say that you can't wear one (it is, after all, a semi-free country), but it's advisable to do so only if it's not out of place in your environment. I'm a big believer in blending in whenever possible, of not calling any more attention to oneself than necessary, and the 'photographer's vest' is almost always anomalous. Off the top of my head I can’t think of an environment where one wouldn’t stand out, save an IDPA match.
The funny part is that if one is fixated on concealing via a vest there is almost always a style that will look right at home. Here in the Northwest, wool vests from Filson hit just the right balance between casual and business formal and look right at home in a wide variety of settings. For women, a patterned vest of some type usually looks good with just about any pants outfit. Canvas work vests are common in the trades, and in the trendier areas one can still occasionally find an argyle vest (though I think of them as quite hipsterish.)
When you get asked if you're a photographer or a fisherman that's not proof that you've pulled off some great feat of concealment; it's a sign that you've stood out enough to make people question your presence. I remain (while admitting that my Stetson occasionally puts me in that situation) of the opinion that such an event is not a Good Thing.
-=[ Grant ]=-
A great training weekend!
Monday, June 06, 2011
I spent this weekend up at the Firearms Academy of Seattle teaching Combat Focus Shooting with Rob Pincus. This was the last leg in Rob's cross-country spring training tour, and a chance for me to see how he's pushed the state-of-the art forward in the year since we last taught together.
I've said that all instructors should jump at the chance to teach with (or at least observe without the distraction of being a student) a better instructor than themselves. It's especially useful to pick an instructor whose style -- and even material, in some cases -- is very different from one's own. It gives a fresh perspective and reveals the blind spots that we all develop over time.
This weekend was no exception. I came away with a whole bunch of new ideas that I hope to incorporate in my own work.
We had a good group of students, including one who had just recently bought his first gun. I always get a thrill out of watching someone go from zero to doing pretty complex tasks in just a couple of days, and this fellow really gave it his all. Two of the students were experienced instructors themselves and found that their first exposure to the advanced CFS exercises was as challenging to them as it was to everyone else.
Because the students were at various stages of ability, some came with bad habits from prior training. They weren't bad in the sense of being unsafe or dangerous but rather in the sense of not being appropriate to the task of surviving the sudden, chaotic events on which CFS focuses. We were able to have a good conversation about this important idea of context: that skills need to be judged in relation to the goal (efficiently making the bad guy go away after he's surprised you), and not to some separate and arbitrary measurement.
Marty and Gila Hayes, who run the Academy, are great hosts who bring in programs like Combat Focus Shooting in order to give their students a well-rounded view of the defensive firearms world. Even though CFS doctrine doesn't always agree with theirs, they know that perspective is important in this field. There are very few -- if any -- schools who are confident enough in the quality of their own programs to expose their students to new ideas. That's why FAS has evolved and stayed fresh over the years where other schools have become insular and hidebound.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to treat a badly sunburned elbow; apparently I missed a spot when applying the sunscreen!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Appeals to authority work both ways. Badly.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Stan Kenton was a standout iconoclast in a field of music that is, by definition, iconoclastic. Some of his albums were a difficult experience because they demanded so much of the listener. If one is not conversant with at least a little music theory, much of what goes on flies right over the head.
I remember reading, somewhere in the intertubes, a critical review of a Kenton album from just such a person. The writer opined that Kenton's music just couldn't be any good, because none of his personnel had successful solo careers.
Aside from the sheer ignorance of that comment, it struck me that this person suffered a common logic fault: looking for some sort of validation of worth or quality based on an external factor. This fellow wasn't capable of assessing the music as it stood, but instead looked to a unrelated metric to back up his opinion (a metric that was't even correct!)
This happens frequently in all fields, to include that of shooting (specifically defensive shooting.) Rather than consider the logic of a technique or concept, many will evaluate what's presented to them on the basis of who else has adopted that same point of view. I've seen the question asked in all kinds of courses with all kinds of instructors: "what police agency/military branch/well known school teaches that?" A declarative version of the question is "so-and-so teaches something else, and he was a Navy Seal/in Desert Storm/on a SWAT team."
If one doesn't understand the material being presented, either due to not putting forth the effort to do so or because the instructor isn't taking the time to explain things, then one is left to rely on an external 'authority' to make decisions. If the context in which the authority evaluates something is different from the student's, it may not be relevant. It may not even be workable.
If you don't understand what you're being taught, and why, the burden is on you to ask questions. Respectfully, of course, but you still need to ask and get intellectual clarity on the subject. If your instructor himself uses the appeal to authority, justifying what he's teaching by telling you about the large police agency or secret military organization or champion shooter that uses it, that's not the answer you need.
When it comes to protecting your life, techniques and concepts need merit -- not endorsement.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Relevance and role models.
Monday, May 16, 2011
A few weeks back I saw a picture of a defensive shooting instructor which bothered me. I couldn't put my finger on why, but something about it gnawed at my subconscious. I know the fellow only by what he's written (and by his association with a much better-known trainer), so it isn't anything that would stem from a personality conflict, and yet the feeling remained.
It finally hit me the other day. In the picture this fellow is wearing what is apparently his 'normal' complement of two autoloading pistols, both carried appendix style: one for the strong hand, one for the weak hand. Of course he had the requisite spare magazines and folding knife clipped in a pocket.
What's wrong with that? It's a free country and people should be allowed to carry whatever they want on their person. I agree wholeheartedly. The problem I have is role modeling, and it's one that I've become increasingly concerned with over the past few years.
Many instructors (and I'd say all of those with any reputation), to include yours truly, live the instructor lifestyle: we spend a lot of time around guns and shooting ranges. What we wear, what we can get away with wearing, is not what most of the people reading this blog can wear on a daily basis.
When you live on a shooting range you get to dress casually as a matter of course. Oh, there is the occasional donning of more 'dressy' apparel for an event, but such things are few and far between (and the 'gunny' is usually cut some slack for having a suit that is not of the highest quality nor properly fitted.)
Contrast this with what most people wear to their jobs everyday. I don't know many who can get away with wearing the untucked polo shirts that are all the rage amongst the appendix-carry crowd, let alone the IDPA vests and other accoutrement that a lot of folks in this industry wear on a constant basis.
In my own family there is a hospital administrator, a media anchor, and a speech pathologist -- none of whom can adopt the kind of weaponry and the style of carry that the majority of trainers espouse. My nephew could possibly get away with wearing an unbuttoned tropical shirt over a colorful t-shirt, but only because he works for a company famous for producing such tropical shirts. The rest of my family? Not a chance. My wife’s family? No. My huge extended family (over 30 first cousins on my mother’s side alone)? Less than a handful could. My neighbors? Not in their jobs. In fact, almost no one I know outside of the shooting industry could; their lifestyles, jobs, or environments just won’t permit it.
This is important because students tend to emulate their teachers, adopting not just their techniques but also their weapons and dress. The problem comes when they spend their weekends training with what I call 'guru gear' (I ought to trademark that) but switch to their actual daily carry equipment at the beginning of their week.
Training with ultra-fast appendix carry of a high-capacity autoloader on the weekend, but defaulting to a 'J'-frame in a pocket holster during the week, is not training in context: in the manner in which something will be used. Training courses are too often set up to reward the use of specific equipment, which gives the student a false sense of their abilities with the equipment they usually tote.
Walking around a range and showing students the kind of gear they can't carry, in a manner that they can't in their workday lives, isn't encouraging them to train in context. Doing so tends to influence them, through aspirational psychology, to train with gear that is different than what they'll actually be relying on come Monday morning.
I'm not sure that's terribly responsible, and it’s why the picture -- which could be of most instructors -- bothers me.
-=[ Grant ]=-
What happens when a competitor goes to a tactical conference?
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
He discovers that maybe he didn't know as much as he thought he did. Great writeup of the NE Shooters' 2011 Summit over at The Tactical Wire.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Someone is talking about me. Oh, wait, it's me!
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Over at the Personal Defense Network, they've put up a profile of yours truly. Based on an interview I did recently, it covers my views on teaching and the state of the training business. Hope you enjoy it!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Another self defense blogger appears on the horizon.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
I keep my ear to the ground for new self defense blogs, and a colleague recently alerted me to this one: Kicking Sacred Cows. Written in a distinctive style, the author says that the blog is about change and evolution in self defense and martial arts training.
It presents some interesting ideas. I'll be checking it regularly.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Some more thoughts regarding 'force on force' training.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
The limitations of the equipment that we discussed in the previous installment aren't the only things that affect the utility of force-on-force training. The way that drills and scenarios are approached is important as well.
I'll use two terms to describe broad categories of FOF training. Drills are man-against-man tests of mechanical or physical skills: drawing the gun, moving off the vector of the attack, and so on. Scenarios, on the other hand, test decision making and information gathering skills. They may also include a physical/mechanical component, but their primary purpose is to test judgment.
At the top of the list, as it always should be, is safety. FOF training demands a sterile, segregated environment. Any course that doesn't enforce both should be avoided at any cost. The risk of accident is too high to trust anything other than a rigorous, and rigidly enforced, exclusion zone for live weapons. That means all weapons: firearms, knives, chemical and electrical weapons. The only weapons allowed inside the FOF training area should be simulated - and that goes for the instructors, too! If you encounter a FOF course where the students are required to disarm but the instructor(s) aren't, that's your cue to leave. Vociferously, I would add.
As I mentioned last time, a drill or scenario which continues past the first shot is suspect. As I’ve pointed out, the lack of ballistic effect on both ends of the muzzle means that multiple shots from a simulated handgun have little to no value. If the scenario or drill is set up so that the gun serves as a marker, a device to signal force has been used and how successfully placed that force might be, then there is no need for more than one shot. If, on the other hand, it is set up so that some predetermined number of shots have been fired or - worse yet - unlimited shots are allowed, then its value as a teaching tool must be questioned. Remember that any simulated munition has value only in that it provides first round accountability; after that, it's just recreation.
It’s common to see FOF drills that attempt to teach something which is affected by a student's foreknowledge. For instance, a student knows that he's in a FOF class, he's got a loaded sim gun in his holster, and he knows that the drill is testing his reaction time or ability to do a specific task. His anticipation of the need to shoot is sky high. If the technique works, all it shows is that the student could do it when he had advance warning of the event. Would it work if he wasn't already primed for action? The trouble is that this can't be tested in FOF, because there will always be that anticipation. FOF drills must be carefully selected so that the skill being developed or tested isn't negatively affected by that anticipation. They also can't be used to justify training that benefits from anticipation, a fault I see all too often.
I've seen FOF courses that employ students as both attackers/antagonists and defenders/protagonists. With the possible exception of what might be akin to a martial arts flow drill, where the same pattern is repeated multiple times to build familiarity, I don't see the point in letting students fight things out. The antagonist in a FOF drill or scenario is the agent by which the protagonist, the student, learns whatever lesson is being considered. I don't see where the learning occurs if both parties are ignorant of the lesson.
Allowing two students to go at each other, no matter how well coached, seems to invariably devolve to the the equivalent of a dodge ball game. This is exacerbated by the lack of ballistic effect which we discussed last time. Students as counterparts works; students as teachers, I'm not at all sure of.
Scenarios that test decision making are a natural use of FOF. Here, too, care must be taken to ensure that there is actual instruction. One flaw I see is that scenarios are designed with arbitrary outcomes, and the student spends his or her time not evaluating the environment for what it actually is but rather for what the instructor wants it to be. In other words, the scenario becomes a puzzle where the student is figuring out the instructor, not the situation. This is very common in 'tactical' shooting matches, and is part of the reason that even the best stage design isn't all that realistic. The scenario has to be designed so that the situation, the interactions, and the conclusion are all plausible.
That's easier said than done! It is very difficult for a scenario designer to avoid bringing his or her idiosyncratic biases into the design. Scenarios shouldn't be puzzles and shouldn't be difficult to figure out, but it seems that many people are intent on making them so. If the student is forced to examine vague and misleading clues in order to arrive at the 'correct' solution, how does that in any manner relate to a plausible real life interaction? It doesn't, and that's the point.
At the same time, the people playing the antagonists in scenarios have to be good actors. A thug on the street behaves in ways that we all recognize (or should recognize), and the person playing a thug needs to be able to replicate that behavior. If he/she can't, then the protagonist is back to figuring out the puzzle rather than reacting to a real stimulus. The actors must be well practiced and disciplined - again, another strike against students being used in such roles. (Heck, it may even be a big strike against many instructors. I know how a crackhead acts, but I also know I’m not a good enough actor to recreate one realistically enough to teach a student what such an interaction is like!)
This is true even in drills. The antagonist already knows what the student is going to do, or at least has a very good idea. That foreknowledge allows him to act and react in ways that a real attacker couldn't or wouldn't. This skews the results of the lesson, and requires that the instructor both take the role and be able to play it as 'straight' as possible.
It sounds like I'm not a fan of FOF. That's probably true on some level, because I don't think it has the wide application that so many think it does. I think that it has some use in very specific circumstances, but not as a general teaching tool. Its utility is probably in well thought out scenario training, and less so - perhaps much less - in simple mechanical drills. To be valuable it has to be carefully conceived and implemented, something that doesn't seem to happen all that often. It's not the ultimate test of defensive preparation, as some contend, but properly and sparingly used it can be valuable.
If, of course, it's done with care.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Some thoughts regarding 'force on force' training.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Force-on-force ('FOF') training has become all the rage in the last couple of years, with some instructors making it a hallmark of their courses. Everyone, it seems, is buying Airsoft pistols and touting their FOF credentials. Supporters of the concept have done a very good sales job, as I routinely am asked if my courses have a force-on-force component.
Such questions remind me so much of my college days working in a camera store. People would walk in, look at a lens, and proceed to ask how many elements it contained. That's a useless bit of information to anyone other than an optical engineer, but these folks had been told by someone, somewhere that it was an important question to ask. They didn't understand the question, and certainly didn't know how to interpret the answer, but by golly they were going to ask anyway!
I've played with FOF a bit (yes, I bought the requisite gas-powered Glock lookalikes.) Understand that I don't claim to be guru at FOF, nor am I a super-tactical-high-speed-low-drag-tier-one-operator kind of guy. I am, however, fairly intelligent, reasonably well informed, and possess an inexorably analytical mind. I can truthfully claim to be a good diagnostician - figuring out how things work and, more importantly, why they don't. I also don't believe everything I'm told, no matter how well sold it may be.
What I see too often with regard to FOF promotion is a certain lack of critical thinking about the concepts, and it starts with the equipment used. FOF naturally is limited to the ability of the equipment, so it's important to know what the gear does and does not do.
Whether AIrsoft or simulated munition, FOF guns all do one thing: to the extent that they mimic a gun you actually own, they give you first shot accountability. That's it. Read that again, because it's important to the discussion. This is all they do!
When you discharge an Airsoft in a drill or scenario, where the first round hits will probably be pretty close to where it would have hit had you used a real gun (within the range limitations of the pellet, of course.) In other words, if you used a simulated Glock 19 and you regularly carry a Glock 19, you can be reasonably sure that the first simulated round would be representative of a real round.
Understand that this is only true if the guns match. If you use the Glock Airsoft in FOF training, but actually carry a Beretta 92, the value of that first round has been diminished. You don't know for certain that you would have shot your Beretta just like you shot the Glock simulant.
Beyond the first round, the predictive value drops to near zero. This is because of a lack of ballistic effect, from the standpoint of both the shooter and the shootee. Simulated rounds don't have the recoil and muzzle rise of a real gun, so each additional shot can be made much faster, with greater precision, than can real rounds; the shooter's balance of speed and precision is skewed. If the technique you're learning in FOF only works when you can discharge 10 rounds in under a second, how valid will that be when you're using a real gun with which you can't?
Just because a person can land multiple, fast shots with an Airsoft does not mean that he'll be able to do so with a real gun. At the very least, he'll shoot a real gun slower and with greater deviation than a simulated gun. Any conclusions drawn from the second, third, fifth, or ninth shot with Airsoft or Code Eagle has virtually no predictive quality with regard to a real gun with real ammunition.
The first time I picked up an Airsoft and started doing drills this became clear. As I was going through the exercises I thought "I'm kicking butt!" I quite literally put down the Airsoft, picked up a real Glock, and tried the same thing on the same target. Surprise! I couldn't shoot nearly as fast, with nearly the deviation control, that I could with the Airsoft gun. What, then, was the value of those extra simulated shots from the standpoint of the physical shooting skill?
The lack of ballistic effect is important on the other end as well. The pellets - be they Airsoft or paint capsules - don't stop people. There is no effect on the target other than a small sting (if that), and there is no cumulative damage. This means that where a real bad guy might start slowing down with the first shot and might be on the ground with the third, the simulated opponent can continue full speed, full power charges through the tenth, twelfth, or fifteenth round. The rejoinder, of course, is that one never knows how many rounds it will take to stop an attacker (true), so one should keep shooting until the threat goes away.
This also is true, but we have to go back and reconsider the lessons from the preceding paragraphs: you can't shoot a real gun that way, and the target won't react that way, so where's the learning happening? It's a vicious circle: with simulated guns, the more rounds you fire in an attempt to be 'realistic' the less 'realistic' the exercise becomes.
This is the basis for my belief that, in most cases, force-on-force drills which continue beyond the first shot are probably not of great value. They may be fun, may be exciting, but one has to critically examine whether they're really teaching us anything that is relevant to an actual encounter.
Next time we'll look at the structure of FOF drills and scenarios, and some of the issues they raise.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Attitude Change, 2010 Edition.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
I've been actively interested in the topic of self defense training since the early 90s. Over the last decade, particularly in the last five years, a lot of my original opinions regarding self defense have changed. This isn't because I'm wishy-washy and unable to hold on to an opinion (just ask my wife!) Rather, such change is brought about by being exposed to new information, or because new research alters original assumptions.
As this year winds down, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at just a few of the things about which I've changed my mind in the last decade.
- The value of competitive shooting: back in the mid '90s I was part of a local group looking to advance our defensive skills through "tactical" competition. We tried rules, targets and procedures from USPSA, IDPA (as soon as it was formed), and even early versions of what would become The Polite Society rules. All of them had serious flaws, and we ultimately tried to develop our own rules and even specialized targets. By about 2000 we'd abandoned the effort altogether, and I shot my last "tactical" match of any sort in 2002. At the time I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but it just didn't seem that it was possible to get actual training value out of a game. Eight years later I'm better able to articulate the "why" than I was back then, as I learn more about both actual defensive encounters and how the mind reacts to them. Today I tell my students that competition may be a fun hobby, but there are serious scientific and practical reasons why it's neither training nor good preparation for self defense. Some gaming adherents react with predictable vitriol, but I've developed a sufficiently thick skin.
- The .357 Magnum as a defensive cartridge: at one time I was a huge proponent of the .357 as a "manstopper". I stopped carrying the load in 2004 or so because I came to the realization that all handgun cartridges are relatively weak, and expecting a single shot to reliably stop a determined attacker was sheer folly. From this came the realization of what ends fights: rapid, multiple, combat accurate hits on target. It was clear to me that I could not deliver that kind of performance given the recoil of a Magnum cartridge, and elected to give up sheer power in favor of controllability and recoil recovery.
- Night sights: all my friends had them, and I too was once convinced they were the be-all and end-all of defensive shooting. Oddly it took me some time to realize a simple fact: if there was enough light to positively identify my target, there was enough to get a visual alignment of the gun (using the sights or otherwise.) If there wasn't enough light to get a solid visual index, I probably couldn’t be sure of my target. Playing around with these ideas on darkened to downright dark ranges pretty much confirmed my suspicions. Looked at in this light (yes, I worked hard to make that pun) my conclusion is that night sights don't have a lot of value.
- The importance of changing your mind: in the last few years it’s sunk into my thick head that if you are putting yourself out there, stretching your intellectual muscles and exposing yourself to new ideas and concepts, you are going to end up changing your mind about something. You have to, if you're intellectually honest! If one is to assume to any degree the appellation of 'professional' in regards to training, one has to be able to grow and progress intellectually. To grow, one must change; it can happen in no other way. Doggedly sticking to an opinion for no other reason than inertia (or dislike of the person presenting new information) is inherently unprofessional; it stifles growth. I've met people, some students and some instructors, who simply could not accept that perhaps there was an objectively better way of doing something, or a factual reason why another approach might be more relevant than their own. I've resolved not to be so intransigent - how about you?
So much for 2010! On Friday I'll have the weekly surprise, and next Monday I'll kick off a new year of what I hope will be even more illuminating, annoying, challenging, informative, entertaining, infuriating, and progressive blog posts. I hope you'll continue to tag along!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Rhino Revolver. ProArms Podcast. Yours Truly. What could go wrong?
Monday, November 22, 2010
I recently recorded an interview for the ProArms Podcast, and it's been released. The first half is the ProArms gang discussing the Rhino, and the second half is my discussion with Gail Pepin about the gun. If you've been waiting to find out what I really thought about the Rhino, have a listen!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday catch-up.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Whew! What a week I had! I’m actually glad it's Monday, as I might finally be able to catch my breath!
I spent a few days last week helping to teach a Combat Focus Shooting Instructor Development (CFSID) course in Washington (as in 'state', as in WA.) We had a great group, all of whom were there to learn how to teach progressive, reality-based shooting in both the public and private sectors. Rob Pincus was the lead instructor, and I had the pleasure of interacting with three other Combat Focus instructors who were also there to help out. Teaching something is the best way to learn the subject, thus teaching how to teach makes one a better teacher. (Seems almost circular, doesn't it?)
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One of the take-aways from this session was a new way of looking at the concept of precision in combat. You'll be hearing more about this as I flesh out my thoughts.
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Speaking of Combat Focus Shooting, I've received a number of emails showing interest in booking classes for next year. Some of them have been from sunny or very scenic locations out of state, which is much appreciated, but I'm also looking to do more courses here in Oregon. If you'd like to see either Combat Focus Shooting or my Revolver Doctrine class come to your town, let me know - perhaps you could be the one to host it!
Here's something to consider: host a Revolver Doctrine class on a Saturday, followed immediately by a Fundamentals of Combat Focus Shooting class on Sunday. The former teaches you how to run your revolver properly, while the latter shows you how to use it efficiently to protect yourself. It's a great one-two combination!
If you're interested, email me for the details. (Remember that while I love teaching in Oregon, I will travel in the Western states to hold classes.)
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Last week was particularly full because I was working feverishly to finish my Chiappa Rhino review for Concealed Carry Magazine. Deadline was Sunday, and I managed to slip in under the wire. The review turned out to be very long - over 3600 words - and I'm concerned that it will need to be heavily edited to fit into the magazine's allotted space. (Lots of pics, too.) My editor at CCM, Kathy Jackson, has her work cut out for her!
I'll be posting the next installment of the blog's series covering the technical features of the Rhino on Wednesday. Coincidentally, I'll be recording an interview about the Rhino with the ProArms Podcast folks that day. I'll certainly let you know when that gets released.
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One of last week's frustrations was my outgoing mail server. It stopped accepting my login name and password, thus no mail went out for about four days. Qwest's technical support (the pride of Bangalore) was of no use: "I'm sorry that you're not happy with your service, Mr. Cunningham. First I'd like you to turn off your computer and turn it back on again." I swear that if you called them instead of dialing 911, they'd respond to your request for an ambulance by telling you to turn your computer off!
I tried valiantly to get them to escalate my call to someone who wasn't translating a script from Hindi to falsely accented Southern American English. I failed. The problem finally resolved itself sometime Saturday. For that I am grateful, even if a bit puzzled.
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On a personal note, I'm very happy that tomorrow evening all of the campaign advertisements will cease. (How do you tell when a politician is lying? When his lips are moving!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Training opportunities!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
I'm starting to book teaching dates for next year. If you're interested in hosting a Combat Focus Shooting or Revolver Doctrine class, drop me an email and we can discuss the details.
Of course Oregon is my preferred venue, but I'll travel anywhere in the Northwest and I could possibly be convinced to go to California. (Since that's the only place to get Sparky's Root Beer, it might not be hard to get me down there!)
I also have some very limited dates for private instruction, which need to happen in western Oregon. Range facilities for private instruction can be less developed than for a class, as long as we have a safe area to shoot.
Check out the course descriptions, look at your calendar, call your friends, and get in touch with me.
-=[ Grant ]=-
It's not Monday; some more safety stuff.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday - I was occupied with more pressing matters. The series on the Rhino revolver will resume tomorrow.
I couldn't let this pass, however. Seems that Alan over at Snarkybytes wants to do away with Traditional Safety Rule #1, "all guns are always loaded" (or variants thereof.)
Welcome to the club, Alan - I've been saying the same thing for over three years now, and caught the same flak that you're now getting.
The comments over at his place are very similar to the comments that I got (and continue to get.) For whatever reason, people are convinced that the more 'rules' they have to follow, the safer they'll be. (Of course they'll argue the opposite about gun laws, the irony being lost on them.) They present all manner of convoluted arguments and frantic re-wording to avoid the very thought of doing with fewer gun handling guidelines despite the logical probability that those fewer guidelines would prove more effective.
(There is that rabid subset of Cooper acolytes who oppose any change simply because The Colonel didn't approve of it, but their numbers appear to be dwindling.)
I have a couple of nits to pick: "Keeping the finger off the trigger" isn't specific enough for my comfort level; I prefer "finger out of the triggerguard", as simply ‘off the trigger’ does nothing to prevent stumble/grasp accidents. Second, while I understand his argument (and even agree with it to a great degree) about knowing your target and what’s behind it, I believe there needs to be something that addresses things like aerial shotgunning and proper backstopping for dry fire practice. Hence my third rule, though I’m willing to consider that I’m being needlessly redundant.
My modest proposal is that safety rules should be taught thusly:
Alan's chart is pretty good, though, and I wish I'd thought of it!Never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you are not willing to shoot.
Keep your finger out of the triggerguard until you are ready to fire.
Know where your shots will land and what they’ll touch along the way.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Your point of view?
Wednesday, September
22, 2010
Head over to the Personal Defense Network forum and check out the discussions on 'realistic' training. Feel free to jump into the discussion, as this is a topic which is important to all defensive training.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Recoil and reflexes.
Monday, September 20,
2010
A video of a petite woman shooting a S&W .500 Magnum made the rounds last week. At issue was an uncontrolled (negligent) discharge, occurring as a rapid “double tap.”
Watch the video, and you’ll see that as the gun recoils from the first round, a second round is ignited. The barrel is nearly vertical when the second shot fires, raising all sorts of concerns about its eventual landing place.
The various comments made (not just on The Firearm Blog) indicate a lack of familiarity with the forces at play.
If one observes new shooters closely, it's very common to see them release the trigger immediately after the sear breaks. This is particularly true where the reset force significantly exceeds the pull weight, as it does on most S&W revolvers in single action (especially the X-frame .500.) The strong rebound spring quickly, almost instantaneously, sends the inexperienced trigger finger back into the battery position.
As the trigger/finger reach full reset, the recoil has caused the muzzle of the gun to arc backwards toward the shooter's face. The shooter, who has not expected this level of violent reaction to the cartridge firing, finds that the hand does not have a firm enough grip on the gun. The hand muscles - all of them - instinctively tighten to maintain a grip and control the gun.
The problem, of course, is that as those muscles tighten so do those of the trigger finger, which is now sitting on a trigger that has reset and produced a gun that is in battery. The hand squeezes and the trigger is forced back, firing the gun again.
It's not a gun problem, and having a longer trigger travel or a heavier trigger as some suggest won't prevent this from happening. What would prevent it is proper instruction from a teacher who understands the whole issue, and is smart enough to do a couple of things: first, have the shooter dry fire the gun so that he/she understands what the trigger is going to do. Second, put only one round into the gun until the shooter is comfortable with the recoil/muzzle blast/trigger control.
The most important thing to take away from this is that it is a predictable, and therefore preventable, occurrence - assuming that the person in charge has the knowledge base necessary to do so. Some time back I took heat for having the temerity to suggest that a good shooting coach needs to have a passing familiarity with physiology, psychology, physics, and engineering. This incident illustrates why that opinion remains unshaken.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Wednesday wanderings.
Wednesday, September
08, 2010
I haven't done a Wednesday Wanderings post for a while, but since I took the holiday off what would have been posted Monday got shuffled to today.
So, what's going on in the world? Well, Tam continues her slide to a greener lifestyle. She's almost to the point where she could move to Portland and lobby for more bike paths to further clog traffic. (I'll bet she's developed a taste for tofu, too.)
The Firearm Blog recently posted a great old television commercial for the Mattel "Tommy Burst" gun. Someone I knew as a kid had one of these, though for the life of me I can't remember who it was nor do I remember the commercial. I do, however, remember the sound the bolt made as it was pulled back. Fun toy that would cause apoplexy of sold today. (Readers of a certain vintage will recognize the voice of the narrator and the face of the bad guy as both belonging to Hal Smith, the great character actor and voice artist.)
Gabe Suarez recently posted an interesting article of the value of simplicity in training. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but his point about not having unlimited time to train is spot-on. That point alone deserves an entire article.
As if the Judge phenomenon couldn't get any sillier, I give you the Tactical Judge. Make of it what you will.
Rob Pincus recently returned from a teaching stint in South Africa, where he made this video of a Glock suppressor that he (and I) didn't even know existed. Square (of course), made of plastic (what else?), and disposable (!!), it fits on a special barrel that Glock also sells.
Cool stuff, but why in 'repressed' South Africa are these things freely available, but here in the 'free' United States are they demonized and heavily regulated?
Happy Wednesday, everyone!
-=[ Grant ]=-
You need to read this. Seriously.
Wednesday, September
01, 2010
One consistent theme amongst the less informed is that all you need worry about in a defensive encounter is that it’s a “good shoot.” Nothing else, according to these keyboard commandoes, matters - you can do anything, as long as the shoot is "clean."
The trouble is that neither you, nor they, get to decide what's "clean" and what's not. In my state, a Grand Jury makes the first decision, and if they say it isn't "clean" it then goes to a trial jury to make the final decision. They're the ones who will scrutinize any self defense shooting, and the pseudonymous self-appointed experts from your favorite forum will be conspicuously absent.
You see, what looks "clean" to you may not look "clean" to another person. Even if you explain it in detail they may still not see it your way, especially if it's a jury weighing your explanation against someone else trying to convince them of the opposite. Malicious prosecutions and lying witnesses exist, and they don't make that job any easier.
For those of you who still don't get this concept, I urge you to run over to the Armed Citizen's Legal Defense Network and read this month's Journal. It is devoted to the story of Larry Hickey, who just recently won his freedom after two trials that stemmed from a defensive shooting. His ordeal, recounted in complete detail, serves as a caution to all those who still believe in the myth of the "clean shoot."
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that you necessarily need to indulge in some fearfully exaggerated lawyer-proofing of your defensive preparations, but you do need to understand that you can’t run around like Rambo, either. This article dramatically illustrates the the value of knowing how to interact with the police after you’ve been involved in a shooting, the need to be able to articulate why you did what you did, and how evidence can be ignored, lost, or even turned to your disadvantage.
The article runs twenty-two pages, and I believe it to be invaluable for anyone who carries a gun for self defense - and should be required reading for anyone who pontificates about legal issues on gun forums. The Journal is in PDF form; here's a direct link to that file.
Don’t brush this off - go read the article.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, August 30,
2010
Someone sent me this link to a tale of a Ruger Redhawk whose barrel had parted company from the frame. It's an old story; not this particular occurrence, but the problem in general.
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Seems that a certain Canadian manufacturer of simulated munitions now has some competition. I've always disliked the existing company's elitist insistence on only selling to police and military buyers, and Speer, the maker of the new product, looks to change that. Their new product, Force On Force, will be sold not just to the public sector but to "professional instructors" as well. They've even got portable enclosed shoothouses available! Cool stuff from a solid, responsible AMERICAN company. (Thanks to Fear & Loading for the tip!)
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DPMS was apparently the prime sponsor for a match called the "Tri-Gun Challenge", which was recently cancelled. What's interesting isn't the match, but rather why it isn't going to happen this year. The range on which it was to be held was slapped with an order prohibiting the firing of handguns on the property. When the range/club was founded 30 years ago, they allowed all kinds of guns to be shot. In 1995 they were issued a conditional use permit for a trap and rifle range, and their neighbors apparently are alleging that the shooting of handguns violates that permit!
This is hardly unusual. My wife and I belonged to a gun club a few years back, a club which had been in existence since 1952. The conditional use permit under which we operated stated that no camping was allowed. Once a year, however, the Boy Scouts used the club facilities for a two day shooting party, with a sleepover the intervening night. The kids camped out in the classroom, but a couple of the den mothers brought camping trailers (for obvious reasons.) One particularly nosy neighbor, a recent transplant from another state, spotted the trailers and notified the county. We were hit with a similar order for violating the CUP.
People with an irrational fear of guns will always find a way to cause problems. Don't believe for an instant that because we won in the Supreme Court, the gun prohibitionists have been defeated.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Here we go again.
Wednesday, August 25,
2010
The blogs are alive with talk of women and guns (and not a single mention of the excellent magazine, sadly.) Bane, Giddings, and Andrews have, amongst others, weighed in on the topic.
But there is something oddly...familiar about this whole meme. Could it be because I covered this over a year and a half ago?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Dealing with revolver malfunctions.
Wednesday, August 18,
2010
My latest article for the Personal Defense Network has just been posted! This time I detail a malfunction drill for the revolver.
It's fair to say that severe malfunctions with a revolver are much less common than with autoloaders. Balancing that out is that fact that the malfunctions that can occur are often more serious, in that they can tie up the gun enough to make it non-functional for the duration.
In this new article I present a non-diagnostic drill that will clear the vast majority of the likely revolver malfunctions as efficiently as possible.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Instructions without instruction.
Monday, June 28,
2010
Shooting Illustrated recently posted an article about how to shoot a snub-nose revolver. I’ve generally found that shooting a snubby is exactly like shooting any other double action revolver, save for the shorter sight radius, but apparently I’m now in the minority. (That, or I just don’t know how to sell articles and classes effectively.)
The author suggests dry firing for 20 days as a good way to learn trigger control. Unfortunately, he never tells you just how to achieve said control, let alone what it is, asserting that dry fire will magically take care of those little details. You should already know my feelings on this subject.
May I humbly suggest that you read this article over at the Personal Defense Network instead? I think you’ll find it far more useful.
Now, about that "hip shooting" nonsense...
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday update.
Monday, June 14,
2010
I'm recovering from a BUSY weekend.
On Friday and Saturday I did my annual duty at a local high school's all-night graduation party. For several years I've volunteered as part of their security detail, making sure the kids stay safe from both internal and external threats. (This, despite having no children of my own! How did I get talked into this?) It starts every year at about 10:pm and goes until breakfast the next morning.
I usually get a long nap Friday afternoon before the event, but this year I couldn't do it. Not in the sense that I didn't have time, but because I just couldn't fall asleep in the middle of the day! The net result is that I ended up going 24+ hours without sleep, and I'm just not used to that kind of thing! After it was over I crawled into bed and dropped right off to sleep. Saturday was essentially toast.
Sunday I worked my way up to The English Pit range in Vancouver USA to help out at a Combat Focus Shooting/Advanced Pistol Handling class with Rob Pincus. Jeff Varner, one of my fellow Combat Focus instructors, hosted the course at what is his home range. Great class.
After class Randy, the club's owner, brought out his Mateba Unica 6. Rob thought the Unica to be mythical, but here is a picture of him shooting the .44 Magnum beast as Randy looks on in amusement:
(I have another pic of Rob which is far more embarrassing. I'm keeping that one in my files as "insurance"!)
Non-related note: the best arrangement of the tune "It Might As Well Be Spring" is on the 1961 Stan Kenton "Adventures in Jazz" album. I don't have the liner notes handy, but I believe it's a Gene Roland arrangement.
-=[ Grant ]=-
What I did on my days off.
Monday, June 07,
2010
I spent the weekend up at FIrearms Academy of Seattle teaching a Combat Focus Shooting class with "the man", Rob Pincus. We had one bright, sunny day (got the sunburn to prove it!) and one exceptionally wet, cold, dark day. That's life in the Pacific Northwest!
We had a diverse group of just under 20 students, some of whom were "advanced practitioners" and some who were significantly less experienced. From the comments in the mandatory end-of-class debrief, everyone came away learning something about themselves and about how to survive a deadly encounters. How fortuitous that the course is designed to do exactly those things!
(If you're an instructor, one of the best things you can do is to teach with another instructor, preferably one who style is very different from your own. I learned as much about my ability to teach as the students learned about their ability to shoot. It pushes your limits, identifies areas where you need to improve, and gives you a different perspective on the art of teaching.)
One of the best weekends I've had in a long time.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Book Report: Combat Focus Shooting - Evolution 2010.
Wednesday, May 26,
2010
Rob Pincus' original book on Combat Focus Shooting was published in 2006, and in a very few pages - 120, give or take - managed to present an entirely new way of looking at defensive handgun training.
Instead of forcing contrived techniques onto a fight, techniques that might not be appropriate or even effective, CFS offered a radically different perspective: pay attention to how the body reacts to a threat, base your techniques on what works well with those reactions, and train in those techniques as often and as realistically as possible. It was a concept-driven philosophy, and stood in stark contrast to the majority of training that was (and remains) technique-driven.
CFS sounds simple, and at its core it is. The concepts that back it up, however, draw from many fields, and explaining them in writing takes a bit of space. The brevity with which the original book it was written meant that some parts of the program didn't get the exploration or explanation they deserved.
At the same time the Combat Focus Shooting courses, which were the origin of the book, were evolving. Much new material was added, and there were changes to the way the program looked at certain aspects of defensive handgunning. It was time to update the book.
What an update Pincus has brought us!
"Combat Focus Shooting - Evolution 2010" is not just a simple edit. It's been greatly expanded, now over 210 pages and with very little fluff. Gone is the minimalist treatment of the concepts that underlie the program; the new book feels luxurious in comparison, with every facet of the Combat Focus philosophy explored and explained. The new edition makes it easier to understand what CFS is all about and especially why it's different from other courses. It's much more readable and closely follows the path of a live CFS class.
Of course nothing beats taking a CFS course in person, but this book will give you a good grounding in the concepts and science behind intuitive shooting. If you want to develop defensive shooting skills that reflect the realities of actual encounters, "Combat Focus Shooting - Evolution 2010" should be on your reading list. It's a must-have for every serious student of defensive handgunning.
Of course, it's available in my Amazon bookstore!
-=[ Grant ]=-
You might have noticed something new.
Wednesday, May 19,
2010
Did you see the new "Training" tab in the menu bar?
I've been teaching on a semi-private basis for some time now, but with the recent addition of Combat Focus Shooting I decided to make the offerings a little more visible.
I’ve also added a new class, which I call Revolver Doctrine. It is THE class to take if you want to learn how to run the revolver efficiently and accurately! (If you’ve taken one of my public or private Revolver 201 classes, ‘Doctrine’ is an expanded version of that course. While coming from a self-defense perspective, it’s not a dedicated defensive course like Combat Focus.)
Please explore, and if you'd like to book a class - public or private - just email me!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, May 10,
2010
Winchester's top sellers: The Firearm Blog reports that Winchester recently released their top five (even though there are six listed!) pistol cartridges. The 9mm is not surprisingly in first place, and that favorite of law enforcement, the .40 S&W, is justifiably in the number two slot. Coming into third place is a bit of a dark horse - the venerable .38 Special.
What's most curious is the .380 ACP in fifth place. According to a Federal rep I talked with a few years back, the .380 wasn't a big seller. If I recall the conversation correctly, they only made a run of that caliber every other year, as they could easily warehouse enough for the intervening period. I suspect a combination of many new guns chambered for the round, and the big buying frenzy that resulted in widespread ammo shortages, conspired to create a pent-up demand. Once everyone has gotten their box (or two) of the 9mm Corto, then sales will drop back down to normal.
A little problem at Gunsite: According to AZcentral.com, a man was shot in the abdomen at Gunsite a few days ago. If you’ve seen pictures of their facility, you’ve seen the shoothouse with catwalks above which allows observation of the proceedings. Apparently a man was on the catwalk and silhouetted by overhead lights; the student saw his outline and shot it. Luckily the man survived the incident and is recovering.
Gunsite says that students are instructed not to shoot toward the catwalk, but the excitement of playing searchg-and-destroy games often leads to instructions being forgotten. If you have a facility in which you've hidden shoot targets, then challenged someone to find and engage those targets (especially under any artificial time constraints), such forgetfulness should not come as a total shock.
Yes, the guy who pulled the trigger is responsible for his rounds, and I am in no way excusing his behavior. However, it's the instructor's job to ensure that the benefit of any training outweighs the risks. I'm not sure what the benefit of having a live observer perched on a catwalk in view of the shooter is, but setting up a bank of monitors and some cameras with 2-way audio capability brings the risk to nearly zero. In this age of cheap, remote-controlled IP cameras, the practice of having people suspended above a line of fire is decidedly antiquated.
-=[ Grant ]=-
I MADE IT!
Thursday, April 29,
2010
Better than I could say it.
Wednesday, April 28,
2010
One of the people in the CFSID class last week was veteran trainer Robb Hamic. He posted a recap of the class on his blog.
Being fundamentally lazy (which I now realize to be 'efficient' - CFS students will get the joke), I'm just going to let you read his great thoughts while I attend to other matters.
Enjoy!
-=[ Grant ]=-
What I did during Spring Break.
Monday, April 26,
2010
I just returned from a visit to Virginia Beach, where I attended the Combat Focus Shooting Instructor Development (CFSID) course. I've been searching my brain for a one-word description of what the class is like, and this is the only thing that even comes close:
OhHolyCrap.
We spent 4 days and just shy of 60 hours learning the ins and outs of Combat Focus Shooting so that we could accurately and efficiently communicate the program to students. We spent the first of those day on the range...no, that's not quite right; for any other course it would have been the first day, but for us it was roughly half of the first day, as the entire session ran well past 9pm. The rest of the week was spent not on becoming better shooters, but learning to be better teachers.
We studied a little of everything: anatomy, physiology, neurophysiology, psychology, philosophy, and more. By the end of the fourth day, which is when testing was done, my brain was fried. I don't even remember the final written test, but I do remember nearly passing out somewhere on page three (serious blood sugar drop, complete with tremors and sweating.)
Apparently I finished it. At least, I think I did!
This isn't like most other instructor courses. Most of the time, an instructor certificate is a matter of showing up, shooting well, and having your check clear. CFSID is different; Rob Pincus is committed to producing good teachers, not just good demonstrators. That showed in the caliber (pardon the pun) of the people who were there, as I'd be confident in recommending any one of them as a competent and knowledgeable instructor.
There's a reason that, historically, less than 50% of Combat Focus Shooting instructor candidates pass the course. It's that tough, and takes a phenomenal amount of mental discipline just to make it through.
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As it happens, my return trip routed me through Chicago, where I spent nearly three hours waiting for my next flight. Turns out that Tam was in Chicago at the same time. Wish I'd known, I'd have loved to finally meet her.
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We also got to study some (unintentional) modern art, courtesy of an ancient video projector that refused to hold a sync signal with Rob's new MacBook:
Yes, that's Rob Pincus getting all Warhol on his students.
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I don't usually plug local businesses, but this one deserves it.
The day before I left, I discovered that my old camera had died. It powered up, but none of the controls worked. (It will still take pictures, but the exposure control is fried and the autofocus appears to be only sporadically active.) We had planned to upgrade our camera later this year, but this forced our hand: we needed it now.
I spent that day not packing, but running all over Western Oregon to find the camera I'd decided on. I finally found the body, but the lens I wanted wasn't in stock anywhere. I decided to pick up a used optic as stopgap measure, while I waited (and recovered financially) for the one I really wanted. Trouble is that none of the camera stores I called carried much (or any) used equipment. About that time I remembered seeing a yellow pages ad for a little one-hour photo place located in a small town fairly close to us. I had it in my mind that the ad said something about used cameras, and since phone calls are free I dialed their number. A pleasant young lady answered the phone and said that yes, they had used gear and that they had several suitable lenses for me.
What I found when I walked into Focal Point Photography blew me away. This is a tiny shop, located in a small farming community in a rural area, and it is filled with photo gear. From Speed Graphics to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, these folks have a little of everything. Piles of used gear (literally), a surprising selection of lighting equipment new and old, even darkroom stuff, all stuffed (literally) into a two-story building in little ol' Dallas, Oregon. It was like going back in time, to what camera stores used to be before the age of big-box homogenization. I don't know if they do mailorder, but they're so accommodating I suspect they would. If you're looking for just about anything photographic, particularly if it's out of production and now hard to find, give them a call: (503) 623-6300.
I have no affiliation other than as a satisfied, if somewhat amazed, customer.
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Now, I'm back to catching up on your emails!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Your decisions need to be your own.
Monday, March 15,
2010
After last's weeks column on school rivalries, I was reminded of an email I received some time back. The writer had asked my opinion on training with a specific instructor. He was concerned because, though he'd researched the instructor's program and thought it worthy of attending, something he read in a forum gave him second thoughts.
He sent me a link to the discussion, and it boiled down to something like "where's he been? What's he done? Nothing." There was no consideration of the program itself, or of the instructor's ability to communicate effectively with students. It boiled down to, once again, "my Dad can beat up your Dad."
The premise of the discussion was that having a certain number of years of military/police service was somehow essential to being able to teach defensive firearms use, and those who didn't possess such experience were unqualified to approach the subject. That struck me as illogical, and a quick search provided a proof: the "what's he done?" guy had once commented on a course given by an Israeli shooting instructor, calling it - in essence - nonsense.
If you've made "experience" a litmus test, intellectual honesty says that you can't cherry-pick the experience to include. In the case of the Israeli course, it was taught by someone with an operational background - that is, he's shot at people. Yet that experience wasn’t sufficient to earn the commenter’s approval.
Fast forward to the current discussion, and suddenly the instructor in question didn’t have “experience”, so he too was disqualified from consideration. So, you not only have to possess experience, but it has to be the right kind of experience - experience that doesn’t conflict with what the critic has already been taught.
Do I find the various incarnations of Israeli shooting instruction (of which I'm passingly familiar) useful? No. There is precious little there that has any direct application to private self-defense in this country. It serves the Israelis well, but for us it's a curiosity. The point I'm making is that their techniques, even though borne out of experience, are of no use in our context; their experiences are theirs, not ours. Their techniques have no validity relative to our needs, but if your only basis for comparison is “experience”, you’d have to give them due consideration.
How much better it would be to base an evaluation of any instructor or program based not on some arbitrary standard of where someone's been or what he's done, but rather on objective and rational analysis: does it make sense; do the techniques reflect reality; is the curriculum the product of hard data, or simply wishful thinking; is there more innuendo than fact in what’s being taught; most importantly, can the person actually teach?
Those are the questions I'd ask long before I'd concern myself with an idiosyncratic curriculum vitae. Remember the Israeli example: just because someone has "been there and done that" doesn't mean it's somewhere you'll be going, or something you'll be doing.
-=[ Grant ]=-
School spirit.
Wednesday, March 10,
2010
Rivalries among neighboring schools are nothing new. They start in high school, and continue into college: here in my slice of heaven, it's the Oregon State University Beavers versus the University of Oregon Ducks. In Texas, it's the Aggies and the Longhorns. Alumni from the respective schools can get downright cantankerous when discussing the "other" team.
So too with shooting schools. Graduates of one school (or, more commonly, one instructor) hold their alma mater or guru to possess the "true way" and refuse to even acknowledge that others exist. In the worst cases, the arguments end up sounding an awful lot like "my Dad can beat up your Dad".
This came up the other day in a discussion I had with AFGWWWTRA. The term that sparked the conversation was "disciples", and I think that conveys the thought quite nicely. Once one has invested time, effort, and money into an area of interest it's hard to accept that there are other, competing, interests in the world which might just have validity as well. The guru becomes infallible, because if he/she isn't the disciple has wasted time, effort, and money - and who is ever going to admit to that?
I'm not immune; I went through a mild episode of school spirit some years back, but since then I've progressed a bit. I'm open to new ways of thinking and new methods of doing, and my attitude has gone from "so and so says this and it is immutable" to "show me why." The litmus test of any technique or opinion is not the logical fallacy of argument from authority, but rather that it makes sense given an open and agreed-upon criteria.
In an odd coincidence, I just started reading a book that explains this behavior, and as it turns out the concepts involved may have profound implications for self defense. They go well beyond the guru, school, stance, grip, or anything else, and deal with our behavior at a surprisingly base level. In other words, discipleship in and of itself, irrespective of doctrine or dogma, may affect how one performs in a violent encounter.
I'll have more to say when I finish the book.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Pincus on stances.
Wednesday, February 24,
2010
A while back I shared my concept of the shooting stance, about how it was really a type of scaffold - a device by which one can build skills, and of limited utility past that point.
Well, it turns out that I'm not alone at the Blessed Bovine Abattoir - Rob Pincus has a new video up at the Personal Defense Network giving his take on the concept of the stance. Watch it with an open mind.
-=[ Grant ]=-
A uniform is scant protection from stupidity.
Monday, February 22,
2010
Today we have two tales of poor gun handling. Pharmacist Tommy sent me this story about a police officer who shot himself in the head.
From Carteach's blog we get the tale of an Army soldier whose buddy shot him. The young man is quite lucky to be alive.
What do these two incidents have in common? People do stupid things with guns they perceive to be unloaded. (The problem isn’t that the gun is or is not loaded, but that people are doing stupid things with them in the first place.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
The revolver is not a low-capacity autoloader.
Monday, February 08,
2010
Over the years, a number of 4x4 vehicles have come under fire for being "prone" to rollover accidents: the Suzuki Samurai. The Jeep CJ. The Ford Explorer. The Isuzu Trooper. While the government probes their safety and juries award inflated damages, one pertinent fact is conveniently ignored: a four-wheel-drive isn't a family sedan, and can't be driven like one. The results are predictable.
Guess what? The same relationship exists between the autoloader and the revolver.
In the last couple of decades, the revolver has become the red-headed stepchild of the shooting world. Since autoloaders became the dominant handgun platform, the necessary skills to efficiently run a revolver have fallen by the wayside. Many instructors, particularly in police service, have little to no experience with the wheelgun. This lack of familiarity has led to the wholesale adoption of handling and shooting techniques that work fine with autos, but don't work so well with revolvers.
Last week I linked to a little problem that Robb Allen experienced, and used the phrase which serves as today's title. The thumbs-forward grip that works very well on the autopistol is simply out of place on a revolver, as Robb painfully discovered. Robb's singed thumb is the perfect illustration of my contention: the auto and the revolver are different tools, and need to be handled differently.
Autoloader techniques imposed on the wheelgun lead to reduced efficiency, and sometimes more. For instance, trying to emulate the reloading techniques of the autoloader - shooting hand staying gripped on the gun while the support hand does the reloading - forces the revolver shooter to perform a complex, fine motor skill with the hand least suited to do so.
That's not all, though; leaving the cylinder unsupported can result in crane damage during the reload cycle, particularly on the newer light alloy guns. It's much better instead to use a reloading method that is designed from the ground up to work around both the shooter's and the revolver's weaknesses. (One such method, and the one I espouse because it has the fewest operational weaknesses, is the Universal Revolver Reload.)
It's time that firearms training reflected the strengths and weaknesses of the revolver, instead of assuming it's just like an autoloader "except for that round part." I'll have more to say on this in the coming months.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Not feelin' it.
Wednesday, February 03,
2010
Having trouble coming up with anything to say today - a consequence of working too hard combined with some sort of illness (nothing serious, just annoying.)
I'll simply suggest that you first read this little tale from Robb Allen over at Sharp As A Marble, then repeat the following until you attain enlightenment: "the revolver is not a low-capacity autoloader...the revolver is not a low-capacity autoloader...the revolver is not a low-capacity autoloader..."
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, February 01,
2010
MY WEEKEND: It's not often I get to be a student these days, but it's important for any instructor to do so now and again. Last week I got an invitation from Jeff Varner, one of ICE Training's certified Combat Focus instructors, to sit in on his class in Vancouver. Unfortunately I had to cut out a bit early due to a prior commitment, but I enjoyed the class nonetheless. Thanks, Jeff, for the invite!
DRAW FAST, HOLSTER SLOW: Tam alerts us to a ND that happened at a Todd Green class. In his commendable reporting of the incident, Todd says "Never be in a rush to holster your pistol. We all know it, we say it, we teach it. Not all of us do it." So true.
As instructors it's easy for us to forget that reinforcement, and sometimes enforcement, are necessary parts of our job. Especially when we're dealing with "advanced" students, we tend to go easy on the reinforcement of fundamentals for fear that we'll be resented for belittling their ability or experience. We have to resist that tendency, and we need to do so consistently. When warranted, enforcement (up to and including ejection from class) has to happen.
The only instructor I've ever seen who is absolutely consistent in this regard is Georges Rahbani (TBRIYNHO.) Even in his advanced rifle classes, which are invitation only and have stringent prerequisites, you will hear "safety on" and "finger in register" (index, if you prefer) commands at the end of a string of fire. He never wastes an opportunity for reinforcement at any level of training or ability.
When Georges encounters failures to heed commands or instruction, he has a way of bringing the point home to the student: he/she has to publicly deposit a dollar bill into a pot. (The students have a friendly shoot-off at the end of class to win the pot.) This has a non-confrontational, yet still very chastening, effect on both the offending person and the rest of the students; I've seen it work on countless occasions. I don't know where the idea comes from, but I'm giving Georges the credit.
THE PROBLEM WITH ELECTRONIC SCALES: I recently sat down to work up a new .308 load. I turned on my RCBS electronic scale, waited a couple of minutes, and starting weighing charges. Much to my surprise, the weight of the charges thrown by my powder measure increased each time! I'd forgotten that electronic scales need protracted warmup periods before accuracy and repeatability can be expected. After a half-hour of warmup, it settled down and gave correct readings. Word to the wise: keep your mechanical scales around to double check the electronic ones, or buy a set of check weights.
HERE COMES DA JUDGE: From The Unforgiving Minute comes this gem:
"The inexplicable success of the Taurus Judge still depresses the hell out of me. Taurus keeps cranking out new versions, each more grotesque, hideous and nonsensical than the last, and people KEEP BUYING THE GODDAMN THINGS. Just another sign that our culture is doomed, I suppose."
(The opinions of the contributor do not necessarily reflect the views of the Management of this blog. Then again, they just might.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
An exciting new personal defense resource!
Tuesday, January 19,
2010
This week is dominated by SHOT Show news, and in the midst of all the shiny new goodies it's hard to remember that self defense isn't just about hardware. Guns and ammo are easy to write about, so that's what most people concentrate on. As a result, you find lots of sites that deal with hardware, but precious few with the software so necessary for survival.
That situation is about to change: the Personal Defense Network has gone "live"!
PDN is the new source for self defense articles, tips, and video lessons on the net. Rob Pincus, the Managing Editor, has gathered some of the best authorities from around the country to staff PDN, with a simple goal: PDN aims to be the leading destination of high-quality, personal defense content online, as well as a no-nonsense gathering place for those serious about arming themselves for defense in every aspect of their lives.
This isn't the same old "9mm vs. .45ACP" stuff you find in the magazines or on the gun forums - the information at PDN is at a higher level. You'll learn some new techniques, some refinements of your existing skills, and some vital topics that other sites just won't touch (check out "Dealing with a Gun Shot Wound During Training Class".)
It isn't all about guns, either; self defense is more than simply shooting people, and PDN delivers vital information to help you expand your hand-to-hand and less lethal skills ("Don't Bring A Gun To A Knife Fight" is a great introduction to why the gun isn't always the right answer.)
There's lots more, from fitness to legalities to tactics, all written by some of the best people in the business. You'll hear from master trainer Rob Pincus as well as such renowned experts as Tony Blauer, Michael Janich, John Brown, Marty Hayes, Andy Langlois, Kent O’Donnell, and Paul Haberstroh. (Oh, and some guy named Grant Cunningham - anyone know who he is?)
Check out the site, watch the videos, read the articles, and join the forum. Check in often, as there's a lot more great content coming at PDN.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Massad Ayoob's new gig.
Monday, January 11,
2010
I got an email from Massad Ayoob recently, in which he told me about his new venture: the Massad Ayoob Group (MAG). He's got a great website where you can read the official announcement.
While the curriculum will be new, the principles he teaches aren't. No one knows more about the legal and ethical side of deadly force, and his updated classes will build on that expertise. I asked Mas about how the new curriculum will translate to his old courses:
"I'm trying to keep the new curriculum such that, say, an LFI-I in a previous course will be acceptable as a prerequisite for second level with [the Massad Ayoob Group.] The analog to JUDF, for example, will be MAG-20 Classroom, with the suffix indicating the hour number. The commonality goes two ways: just as I'll structure MAG-80 so it will be suitable for an LFI-I graduate, I'll make sure MAG-40 gives the student strong enough a foundation to be an acceptable prerequisite for an LFI-II."
For those not familiar with his work, 'JUDF' refers to 'Judicious Use of Deadly Force' - perhaps his best-known course and the gold standard on the topic. The live fire accompaniment to that will be MAG-20/Live Fire, and the two combined - what corresponds most closely to the old LFI-1 - in updated form will be called MAG-40.
The Massad Ayoob Group also signals a new emphasis on teaching lawyers how to handle self defense cases. In conjunction with the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, he's initiating his Continuing Legal Education (CLE) classes. First in the new schedule is "Defending the Deadly Force Case", already on the calendar for Anchorage and Seattle this year. He tells me that more are in the works.
That's particularly important news, as it ensures that there will be more properly trained counsel to help you and me if we ever find ourselves in court. This is the kind of class that Mas is uniquely qualified to teach, and it's great that he's taken up the cause.
Check his site; if he's teaching anywhere near you, take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one of the good guys.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, January 04,
2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2010 is finally here, and I'm still surprised about that. Back in 1979 the twenty-first century looked sooooooo far away that I thought I'd never see it. Here we are in the second decade already; where did the last ten years go? (So, this is what it's like to age....)
I took a four-day weekend for the New Year, though it wasn't really time off: I spent the time doing work around the farm, to the screaming protest of my muscles and joints. This brief respite reminded me that it's been many years since my last vacation (which, as it happens, I spent in a shooting class), and I think it's high time for another. I say so every year, but this time I'm going to do it. Of course, I say that every year too!
S&W GOES PRO: Remember a year or so ago, when I wrote about a limited run of no-lock Model 642? At the time S&W claimed that they'd "found" a stash of pre-lock frames and decided to put them together for sale. Apparently they were popular enough that the company has managed to "find" some more NOS frames, as they've brought out a couple of new editions: the "Pro" series 442 and 642. They're just like the non-Pro models, except they have no locks and have cylinders cut for moonclips. There are a whole lot of questions one could pose about the decision to bring these to market, but I'm glad to see them all the same.
(I do wish they'd get consistent with their naming conventions: they have the 642 PowerPort Pro Series revolver, which has a ported barrel AND a lock, but no moonclip capability. The only thing these models have in common is a matte black finish, which harkens me back to the days of selling high end camera gear: you could get many cameras in either chrome or black finish, the black models inevitably referred to as "professional". At least they're not calling them 'tactical'!)
SPEAKING OF MOON CLIPS: I get several queries per month regarding moonclips for a carry revolver, and I recommend to all that they be limited to range use. Yes, they are faster to reload (the margin depending on the cartridge) - but I don't believe that outweighs the fragility of the clips themselves, as even a small bend will tie up the gun. (There's always someone who writes back "well, I've carried moonclips in my pocket for years and have never had a problem!" I'm sure that's true, just as I'm sure that someone, somewhere has a perfectly reliable Colt All American 2000. I'm not willing to bet my little pink bottom on either one, however.)
MORE SMITH NEWS: The regular Model 642, along with the 637 and 638, will now be available with 2-1/2" fully lugged barrels instead of the 1-7/8" tubes. I always liked the .357 version of the Model 640 for its slightly longer barrel, and am glad to see it come to some other models. That little extra weight up front helps with control on the lightweight frames, as well as providing longer extractor travel. (Sadly, they are still afflicted with the silly lock.)
WELCOME TO OREGON: This holiday season saw three groups of people lost in the Oregon woods - thanks to an over-reliance on GPS navigation. This should serve as a cautionary tale: ceding your health and safety to something (or someone else) is an invitation to disaster. Take responsibility for yourself; make sure your brain is always engaged. You'll notice that these are consistent themes here at The Revolver Liberation Alliance, and they have application well beyond protecting yourself from human predators. (Oh, and buy a decent map when venturing out of the confines of the suburbs.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Book Review: "Personal Defense for Women."
Wednesday, December 30,
2009
Personal Defense for Women: Practical Advice for Self Protection
by Gila
HayesIt is only now that society is beginning to recognize what those of us who've been married for decades know all too well: men and women are different. 'Equal', as it happens, does not mean 'the same', and we are slowly coming to realize this. (Back to the future!)
Because we're different, it's difficult - if not impossible - for a man to understand, let alone sensitively address, the feelings and fears that women experience as they approach the very concept of self defense. "A good man always knows his limitations", says Dirty Harry, and all men have this one. (Any man who believes he doesn't is in denial.)
Recognizing my limitations requires that I refer the women in my life to the best source of information for their personal safety. For the last decade-and-a-half, that source has been the book "Effective Defense" by Gila Hayes. It deals with the gritty details of self defense from that particular perspective only women possess.
Last year, Gila was given the opportunity to completely rewrite her landmark tome, to bring it up to date and expand on many of the topics. The result is "Personal Defense for Women", and I'm happy to say it is even better than the original. That, folks, is saying a lot.
Though the word "defense" is in the title, Gila's book is a comprehensive guide to women's safety, which goes well beyond what we think of as defense. Gila explains: "...I earnestly advocate crime avoidance over fighting, and escape over shooting. Safe housing, safe behavior, and awareness of danger when you're at home, work, in your car or in public, are among the first survival lessons I want to emphasize."
This is evident just by looking at the table of contents: the first nine chapters deal with avoidance, not shooting. Gila tackles things that would be taboo for me to even broach; for instance, the delicate topic of drawing unwanted attention with a revealing wardrobe. She points out that certain activities are inherently more risky than others, and the aware woman needs to acknowledge that choosing some pleasures may carry larger risks than less exciting options.
Gila talks about responsibilities as well as rights, gently pointing out that the self-reliant woman chooses her safety level through her actions. This sounds simple, but as she expounds on the topic the power of that concept becomes evident.
The rest of the book deals with the active defense - fighting in all forms. She starts with information on empty hand defenses, and moves through various less-than-lethal tools before starting a particularly comprehensive discussion about firearms. Gila is a renowned trainer and champion shooter, and her fluency with the subject is obvious. Women just starting out with firearms could not be in better hands. She provides authoritative and clearly articulated information about guns, ammunition, shooting techniques, and even a great exploration of the merits of the home defense shotgun.
One chapter I liked very much was devoted to the use of the Taser, and one very needed chapter deals with dressing around a handgun. (Men have it incredibly easy compared to women, and we always fail to appreciate the difficulties they have concealing a pistol!)
While all the chapters are good, there are a couple of standouts that make it a "must buy": one deals with safety on school and college campuses (including the active shooter scenario), and the other is a sensitive discussion of rape prevention and survival. These are important topics, and Gila deals with them in the way that only she can.
If it seems that I like this book, I do - very much. It has instantly become my new recommendation for all women interested in self defense, and I can hardly think of a better gift for a wife, girlfriend, sister, mother, or daughter than "Personal Defense for Women."
Now a disclaimer: At Gila's request, I provided some of the pictures in this book, and my name appears in a couple of places. Many of the actors in the pictures are people that I know well. It would seem that I am biased with regards to the merits of "Personal Defense for Women", and you're right - but it's because I've been consistently and actively recommending its predecessor for 15 years! The old book was good, and this edition is even better. I'm proud to have played a small role in its production.
This is a worthy update, and there is so much new information that owners of "Effective Defense" would be well advised to pick up a copy of "Personal Defense for Women."
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, December 28,
2009
THAT TIME OF THE YEAR: I hope everyone had a great (as in safe and happy) Christmas weekend. I hope you'll accept my sincere wishes for a happy New Year - may 2010 be a darn sight better than 2009!
HERE WE GO AGAIN: Maryville, TN has had a couple of accidental shooting deaths in the past weeks. Both incidents involved guns that (brace yourselves) people thought "were unloaded." The Maryville Police Chief, one Tony Crisp, concludes that people just weren't pretending hard enough:
"Treat a gun as always being a loaded gun," he said. "Once you cleared it, check it again."
A more nonsensical statement I cannot imagine! I hope that you will save me the trouble of tearing it apart by seeing for yourself the logic failures therein. How much better it would have been had he taken the opportunity to do some real education by saying something like: "never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you're not willing to shoot. Don't let anyone around you do so, either."
SOMEONE ELSE FOR A CHANGE: A couple years back I made an offhand remark about Charter Arms guns. That one little sentence generated a ton of hate mail, including some from Charter's president/owner and their largest distributor. Well, M.D. Creekmore over at thesurvivalistblog.net made a more pointed statement regarding Charter's "quality", and he too heard from Charter's owner. It's in the comments; scroll to the bottom.
-=[ Grant ]=-
What safety standards?
Wednesday, December 23,
2009
I've just had an interesting email exchange with an instructor. Said instructor read my articles on safety, and opined that anyone who didn't teach the 'industry standard' was opening himself (or herself) up to liability problems. "Everyone teaches the Four Rules for a reason", he concluded.
I've heard this argument before (more than once, in fact) and it makes less sense each time I hear it - on several levels. I'm sure this view is quite common, so let's tackle the subject head-on.
First let's address the very notion that there is such a thing as an industry standard for firearm safety (and by extension that there is a version of the Four Rules which can be held to be that standard.) There is enough variance regarding the wording of the Four Rules that I'm not sure you could hold up any one and say "this is the standard, but these other similar examples are not." To be a standard requires consistency, and the Four Rules are hardly consistent in their wording, interpretation, or application - particularly Rule One, which is the one I take most issue with.
Second, even if the wording of the Four Rules was consistent you'd have to establish that they were in use by the majority of instructors in the business of teaching firearm safety, and further that they were being taught to a majority of firearm students. This isn't even close to being true.
I submit that the only candidate for establishment of an industry standard would be the NRA. The NRA has more instructors teaching more students every year than (probably) all the independent training venues in the country combined. As a certified NRA instructor, I know that the NRA has its own safety rules, and they are not the Four Rules. I further submit that if one is not teaching the NRA safety rules, verbatim as presented in their course material, one is in fact NOT teaching anything remotely resembling an industry standard and the argument/defense is moot. (This should not be construed as either an endorsement or criticism of the NRA safety curriculum.)
Third, even if the Four Rules were consistent among all their users AND it could be shown that they were being taught verbatim by a majority of instructors to a majority of students, the industry standard argument is simply an admission that one can't be bothered to seek anything better. 'Industry standard' is not the same as objective standard!
Back in the early '80s, the photographic industry was rocked by several high profile suits regarding handling of hazardous chemicals in photofinishing plants. The common defense was that the industry had its own standards with regard to safe handling, and that they were being followed. That proved to be no defense at all, and several companies paid out large settlements and/or fines. The government stepped in and required that the industry's standards be replaced with up-to-date and independently verified practices, and a for a while there was a small boom for businesses who provided compliance packages tailored to the industry. (I should know, as I was one of those entrepreneurs who made and sold such packages.)
Were I sitting on a jury in a liability case, I'd want to know if what the defendant did was the best that could be done. If the answer was no, regardless of how widespread the behavior happened to be, would cause me to find in the plaintiff's favor. Relying on a defense of compliance with 'industry standards' when there are demonstrably better practices is probably not going to win any juror's favor!
Integrity says that It's not enough to show that you do what everyone else does; you have to show that it is the best thing to do, and that there is nothing better. I'm a big believer in excellence over compliance; of going above and beyond when possible, particularly in the area of keeping people safe from harm.
Bottom line: defending the Four Rules using the 'industry standard' argument is roughly the same as a teenager screaming to her Mom "but everyone else does it!" No, they don't, and even if they did it's irrelevant. That didn't work with my parents, and it doesn't work with me.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, December 21,
2009
AN ADVENTURE: Spent some time last week working on a project with Rob Pincus. You'll have to wait a while to hear the details, but a good and educational time was had by all. (Yes, Rob, it's still raining here.)
LUBRIPLATE COMES THROUGH: Got an email from Alex Taylor, a District Manager at Lubriplate. They're now selling the superb SFL #0 grease in consumer quantities in their online store! Comes in a 14oz can for $23.01, plus shipping. Glad to see them recognizing the firearms market; now let's see if we can get them to sell their FMO-AW oil in small quantities too!
THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN EVERY DAY: Remington recently announced that they've produced their ten millionth 870 series shotgun. I knew they were popular, but ten freakin' million? I would never have guessed anything close to that. The shotgun, it appears, is alive and well in America.
THIS IS JUST WRONG: I'll take some of what I just said back: certain shotguns are alive, but not well. Apparently trying to out-silly the S&W TRR8, Stoeger recently announced the availability of the Double Defense - a tactical side-by-side shotgun. Yes, a SxS with a fore-end rail. Black, of course. (Folks, I couldn't possibly make up something like this. It takes a marketing department to do so.)
I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW: A University of Alabama prof has claimed to have invented a revolutionary sighting system that promotes "intuitive aim." Knowledgeable readers will recognize the concept as being eerily reminiscent of the Steyr "trapezoid" sights as used on the 'M' and 'S' series pistols, which have been available for a decade now. Hmmm...
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, December 14,
2009
GETTING THE MESSAGE: I've been harping on the failures of "Rule #1" for some time now, and it seems that the attitude is catching on. Slowly, but at least progress is being made.
IT ISN'T JUST ME: I've recently expounded on the issue of dogmatic teaching in the self defense world, and I'm not alone in my criticism. Check out this post from Roger Phillips over at warriortalk.com, then read the entire discussion. (I've never met Roger, don't know him from Adam, but he makes sense. Can't say that about everyone.)
POCKET COMPANION: no, not a J-frame! From Dustin's Gun Blog I learned of a new iPhone/iPod Touch app called Legal Heat. It's an interactive version of their printed guide to concealed carry and gun laws in all 50 states, written by attorneys and instructors. It' a great idea, and something that's needed. Unfortunately, despite the viability of the concept I cannot in good conscience recommend this particular app.
There is a big issue with Legal Heat's usability. The pages are just images of the book, which means they're pictures and not text. This sounds inconsequential, but it's not. When you bring up the laws on a state, because it's showing the whole page the text is tiny; unreadably small. To read it, you need to magnify the image by pinching. (The usual double-tap doesn't work, because it doesn't work on full-frame images!) Once you magnify the image to read the text, you have to continually scroll back and forth because images don't wrap text. Finally, the app doesn't support screen rotation; it only displays in portrait orientation, which exacerbates the scrolling issue.
Frankly, iPhone users are accustomed to a higher level of application quality than Legal Heat delivers. If they would simply make their pages actual text and enable screen rotation I'd be comfortable recommending it. As it stands, even at $1.99 it's not worth the hassle.
DEAL ALERT: My background in commercial photography has left me more than a little anal retentive with regards to optics, particularly when it comes to binoculars. I'm a fan of porro-prism designs, as they a) have better three-dimensional perspective, b) are brighter, and c) cost less than roof-prism types for any given level of optical quality (resolution/contrast.)
Minox makes some of the best porro-prism binocs. The optical performance is exceptional, and the build quality matches the glass. They make an 8x and a 10x version, and at a street price of roughly $550 they are something of a bargain; you'll need to spend roughly twice as much to get a roof prism of comparable performance, and you still won't get the perspective advantage that the porro-prism design gives you.
Despite their advantages, porro-prism designs are distinctly unfashionable these days and don't sell well regardless of brand. Roof prisms are what people buy, and Minox has bowed to the market: they've discontinued the 10x model. SWFA is closing them out at $299.95, which has to be classed as a screaming good deal. You won't find anything even approaching their optical performance for that kind of money. (Yes, I grabbed a pair - for that price, I wasn't about to pass them up!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Circumstances change. Hardware doesn't. That's a problem.
Monday, December 07,
2009
Last week I heaped scorn and derision on AR-15 foregrips ('Pharoah's Beards'), and feedback suggests I need to expound on the subject.
The issue with foregrips is that they limit how you interface with your rifle. That's a fancy way of saying that they get in the way; instead of the hardware (the rifle) allowing flexibility in use, it becomes more specialized - less flexible. The rifle no longer responds to the user's will, rather the user now must adapt to the accessory's limitations, in addition to the rifle's.
As long as the AR-15 is being shot from a standing, squared off position, the Pharaoh's Beard feels like a great invention. A real incident, however, may demand more. The shooter may have to contort himself into a stable firing position because of the surrounding cover; the opponent may be at a radical angle (in any direction) from the defender's point of view; rapid fire from a compromised 'stance' may be needed as the defender rapidly moves relative to the attacker.
When any of those things happen, the changed body position requires a modified relationship to the rifle. With a plain forearm, the support arm simply moves to the necessary position and the shooting commences. With some sort of foregrip hanging off the rifle, one of two things will happen: the shooter will doggedly maintain a grip on the thing, all the while trying to get his body to do things that it isn't structurally capable of doing, or the shooter will realize that the grip isn't working, and try to maneuver around it to get to the best placement. Sometimes he can, more often he can't, because that accessory is taking up the very space he needs. Bottom line: less-than-optimal shot placement and less-than-optimal response times.
Most people test these things in a range-perfect stance of some sort; they don't push themselves or their equipment. In such undemanding circumstances, foregrips seem to work well. The further from that ideal world, the less well they work. You can decide for yourself if that's meaningful to you.
I see this frequently with students in class. Georges Rahbani, who I've mentioned many times in this blog, runs his 'Fighting Rifle' course as a triad: three separate 2-day classes, based on real-life encounters, that rapidly ramp up critical survival skills. The first class has the students working on fairly traditional range platforms: standing, kneeling, etc. Foregrips seem to work in that environment, because they're designed to facilitate just this kind of handling. The environment isn't asking much of the shooter, which is important to understand.
By the time the second class rolls around, students discover that they're not in Kansas any more. The environment now asks much more of the shooters; the concept off 'ideal' is dispensed with, and 'field expedient' becomes the new paradigm. As that occurs, the students who showed up for the first class with gizmos and gadgets on their rifles find themselves hurriedly removing them during breaks.
Why? Because they've discovered that their options are limited, not increased, by added hardware. They've learned that the situation dictates their response, not the other way around. The more universal their equipment, the easier they can adapt their response to the situation; the more specialized the gear, the less they're able to do so. Conceptually, this is the same thing I said last week; substitute 'gear' for 'technique', and the same lessons apply.
There is also an issue with attitude, with perception of the rifle's role. Georges asks his students: "Is your rifle a fun toy, or a serious tool?" If it's strictly a recreational object, a ballistic tinker toy, go wild - hang whatever you want on it. (Tacticool accessories, it must be admitted, are a heck of a lot of fun and building just the "right" configuration can be an enjoyable hobby in itself. Machined aluminum is like bacon - it makes everything better!)
Otherwise, save that money and use it to buy more ammo. You'll be better off.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 8: building blocks.
Monday, November 30,
2009
In a previous episode, I talked about doctrine, dogma, and cliché. One particular subject is very often the source of instructional dogmatism, and sometimes spills over into cliché: the shooting stance.
Since we're talking about self defense, let's start with the conclusion: as I study surveillance films of actual shootings, and as I play with the concepts of force-on-force training, I'm struck by the fact that violent encounters rarely involve an identifiable stance. The players, especially the defender, are shooting from whatever position in which they happen to find themselves.
If that's the end result, do we even need to worry about stances? Why do we bother spending the time working on the isoceles, Chapman, or Weaver stances when we're probably not going to be using them when reality comes barging into our lives?
Over Thanksgiving I was discussing this with Georges Rahbani ("The Best Rifle Instructor You've Never Heard Of".) For many years his 'Fighting Rifle' triad has started with basic stances ('platforms', in rifle-speak) and ended up with shooters using whatever stance they happened upon in the course of the encounter. He explained that a basic stance allows the student to do two very important things: first, to eliminate a variable that keeps them from focusing on the necessary stuff like trigger control and sight picture. Second, it helps to develop the level of confidence necessary to be able to control the shot no matter what. Once those have been achieved, the notion of a stance can be jettisoned on the way to a better understanding of a violent encounter.
Some may immediately think of the term 'training wheels', but I prefer to call the stance a 'scaffold': a temporary device that allows us to build something. In the case of a defensive shooter, we're building a skill set. Without the support of the scaffold - the solid, repeatable stance - it's difficult, if not impossible, to build those skills. With it, the student can focus on the truly important things, secure in the knowledge that they are operating from a stable base.
The problem comes when the instructor doesn't understand the true nature of the shooting stance. In those cases, the stance becomes an end unto itself: it drives the instruction, rather than serving as an instructional tool.
A few years back I had an encounter with an instructor who didn't understand this. He went to great lengths explaining why his preferred Weaver stance was the "only stance anyone should ever need." When queried about physical makeup, gun/hand fit, and other variables that affect the success or failure of any given stance with any given student, all he could do was sputter that the Weaver was "proven" to be superior. His dogma was well on the road to cliché.
I've met many shooters who were victims of such shortsighted teachers. More than once have I observed graduates of multiple shooting classes displaying the necessity of getting into just the "perfect" stance in order to shoot. Forced out of that comfort zone, they literally cannot hit the target. Their teachers were so focused on stance that they forgot about the rest of the act of shooting. The stance had become a destination, rather than the journey which it should be.
Roger Phillips, one of the new breed of fight-focused instructors, puts it very well: "Situations dictate strategies, strategies dictate tactics, and tactics dictate techniques……techniques should not dictate anything." Yes, you need to learn a stance that is comfortable and repeatable for you. Understand, though, that when shooting for your life your favorite stance is more than likely going to be abandoned for whatever position the situation allows. Wouldn't it be a good idea to train for that eventuality?
Use a preferred stance to build your trigger control and sighting skills; once that's done, learn to shoot from a 'non-stance'. Get used to being able to deliver combat accurate hits from any angle, any position, while still or moving. If you've used the basic stance properly, you'll find that you no longer need it (at least, for this kind of shooting.)
Ironic, isn't it?
-=[ Grant ]=-
What is the true value of "dry fire"?
Monday, November 16,
2009
A few weeks back, I took some flak for suggesting that a working knowledge of cognitive science - especially neuropsychology - was a valuable instructional tool. Such knowledge allows an instructor to better serve his/her students, and gives the students the tools they need to self-correct aberrant behaviors. Some apparently don't believe this, or perhaps simply don't understand why.
Some years ago I was having a specific shooting problem, one which I had a great deal of difficulty solving. During a course I approached my instructor, a person of some renown in the business, with the issue. I was hoping to gain an insight as to what I could do to solve the problem, but the response was a curt and dismissive "dry fire." I countered that I had done quite a bit of that, and it wasn't helping. "You need to do it more," was the conversation-ending reply.
As it happens the problem couldn't have been helped by any amount of dry fire, but it took me quite some time to figure that out. In retrospect it was obvious, but only because I'd gone to a great deal of trouble learning how the brain works (without which I'd never have found the solution.)
Why was dry fire not the answer? Well, Rob Pincus recently wrote a terrific piece titled "Dry Reps can lead to Poor Performance" which answers that question. Rob is one of the few people in this field who has a good grasp of how the brain interprets information and makes decisions, and he's applied that knowledge to his Combat Focus courses.
A little close observation will support his contentions; for instance, I notice that even relatively new shooters have no problem learning how to reload their autopistols. Push the button, the magazine drops out, insert new magazine, release slide using whatever method one prefers. Easy, right? Physically, yes.
The issue comes when it's time to reload during a string of fire. When the gun goes empty, the student usually try several times to shoot again, only slowly realizing that there is a problem. They tip the muzzle up and observe that the slide is locked back, then stop for a second or two while their mind confronts the situation: "Oh, I need to reload!" The physical manipulation of the reload proceeds smoothly and quickly, compared to the awkward moments before the decision to reload was made.
Dry reps will not make the situation better, but rather will reinforce this behavior. Rob explains why.
(Interestingly, I've observed the same phenomenon among some "experienced" instructors. They may have practiced slide-lock reloads dry, but since that practice lacked context they never developed the reflexive sequence of recognizing an empty gun and reloading it efficiently.)
Read the article carefully, as there is some terrific information to be gleaned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 7: teaching styles.
Monday, November 09,
2009
In my experience, those who teach the martial art of the gun exhibit several styles of instruction: doctrine, dogma, and cliché.
'Doctrine' is that core body of concepts/techniques which are (or should be) taught as a cohesive whole. They are the things for which an instructor or school becomes known. At their best, those concepts and techniques reflect reality; they fit together and support each other. They make sense when thought of as a unit. They reflect an overriding philosophy of instruction, and should not be in conflict with that philosophy or each other. Doctrine should be verifiable, and it should stand scrutiny. It should be open to question, and be able to answer for itself. Doctrine evolves, it progresses, as the world around it does.
When doctrine becomes stagnant, or a teacher becomes enamored with his/her own perceived infallibility, doctrine is replaced with dogma. Pronouncements are made, not based on reason or experience or research, but on the strength of the teacher's personality or reputation. Questions are answered dismissively, in a manner that reinforces the inferior status of the student. "Best practices" are replaced by "one true way"; dogma does not evolve, because it is self-reinforcing. Learning, in the sense of adoption of the dogma, may happen - but understanding rarely does.
The worst form of instruction occurs when the teacher has neither doctrine nor dogma. Instead, he relies on cliché: pithy sayings and one-liners that replace dialogue and reason. The cliché is delivered in such a manner as to take on a life of its own, as it has no context. It allows neither questioning nor independent thought, but rather aims to eliminate both. Its relationship to the world at large is tenuous at best; it is the perfect embodiment of the famous quote from Mythbuster's Adam Savage:
Cliché travels far and wide, because it's easy to remember. People may not understand it, but they sure can repeat it!
It's rare that an instructor spends all of his time in one style. He may switch patterns or incorporate elements of another style, depending on his goal and talent. The doctrinal instructor, for instance, may use cliché as a memory aid or mnemonic tool to help his students retain information, while the dogmatic instructor may use it instead to quash dissent or inquiry that threatens his authority. Every instructor will have a primary style, though, reflecting his abilities and grasp of the subject matter.
It's not unusual to find what started as doctrine is presented as dogma in less capable hands. For instance, an instructor may be a devotee of a certain school of arms. That school may have the best doctrinal approach to teaching, but when the student instructor brings the information back to his students, something is lost in translation. The instructor may not have understood what he was being taught, or simply lacks the talent to transmit that information to others. In either case, he may translate the doctrine into dogma and present that to his students. Like the grade-school game of 'telephone', the original intent is garbled.
That is, unless great care is taken to make sure that the student instructor truly understands the material, and is held to the same high standards as the school itself. That's rare in the firearms field.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Monday, November 02,
2009
One of the hardest things to predict in this business is workflow. The shop will be humming along, work flying out the door, then suddenly a few large projects (total customs or heavy restorations) come in and the work slows to a snail's pace. Those bottlenecks seem to come in groups, when they're most difficult to deal with. It makes mincemeat out of the most conservative projections!
---
Occasionally someone will suggest that being a one-man shop is limiting the amount of business I can do, and that I should take on employees. Aside from not wanting the hassle (I was once a corporate lackey with a pile of employees to handle - I know of what I speak), there's also a bit of personal pride involved: if my name is on the work, I think it's important that I actually do said work. If it's good, I want the accolade, and if it's bad I don't want to be reduced to pointing like a 5-year-old and screaming "but it's HIS fault!"
There exists today a well-known gunsmithing concern whose very talented owner used to do all his own work. He "progressed" to having employees, but supervised their work closely. Judging by the recent experiences of several of my clients, he's been reduced to sending out emails explaining why their shoddy work is actually better than the quality product he used to provide.
Personally, no amount of money (or time savings) will convince me to do that - my clients deserve better.
---
I've written about this before, and others continue to make my case for me: people have a different mindset about guns they perceive to be unloaded. You may get tired of hearing it, but safety is so important that I'm going to keep bringing it up: there is a solution.
---
Dog people, I need some advice. We have a year-old Shepherd/Newfoundland mix who won't sleep in the spacious, insulated doghouse we've provided. He'll go in to eat, and he's been known to voluntarily pile his toys in it, but he sleeps on our porch exposed to the rain and wind. One would think that sooner or later he'd get cold enough and wet enough to use it for the intended purpose, but it has yet to happen. Should I just leave him to his misery, since it appears to be of his own choosing?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 6: response "systems".
Monday, October 26,
2009
Last week I mentioned that I'm not a fan of the Cooper Color Codes of Awareness. In fact, I think they're downright silly. Why? Because they serve no purpose, which makes them a distraction from learning something that might actually be useful.
The Cooper Color Code system was popularized by Jeff Cooper, the founder of Gunsite. The four Codes are, as Cooper explained them, "a means of setting one’s mind into the proper condition when exercising lethal violence." They describe "a mental state which enables you to take a difficult psychological step."
Let's start with his explanation: "into the proper condition." Who is to say what the proper mental condition is when facing a threat to one's life? Having talked to a few survivors, and having read the accounts of many more, one's mental state can vary tremendously: some are angry, some scared, some confused. To arrogantly proclaim that there is one mental condition with which to confront an attacker is quite presumptuous, particularly when all of those I've mentioned (and probably more I've not encountered) were sufficient to handle each incident.
I submit to you that the "difficult psychological step", which is the decision/willingness to use lethal force, is made before the attack occurs. In fact, it's one of the first decisions one makes when starting into the armed lifestyle. The sequence for most people looks something like this:
1) You first acknowledge that your life has value to you, and such value is greater than that of the person attacking you.
2) Because of that, you decide that you are willing to use lethal force to protect your own life, and the life of your loved ones.
3) You learn to recognize a threat (stimulus) in such a way that you have time to defend (respond.)
4) You train to perform the proper defense (response) to the threat (stimulus.)
Cooper says that the Codes are "a means of setting one’s mind." This says that they're intended as a guide or a system to achieve a specific result. This requires that one judge any input (the stimulus or threat) against the system (the colored 'conditions'), then adopt the indicated response. Who is really going to do that? "Ooops, I can't go into Condition Red yet, because the situational parameters aren't all in accordance!" Silly, no? Silly, yes!
It also assumes that one is in complete control of one's physiological state. The problem with this line of thinking is that the response activity isn't digital or discrete. It is a continuous spectrum, with many things (including adrenal response and activation of the sympathetic nervous system) completely out of the individual's control. What happens when one component is in one condition, and another is at a different one? Nothing, of course, but a system requires that they must be reconciled - otherwise, of what use is the system?
The Codes are completely arbitrary combinations and ignore the fact that fights are idiosyncratic things, as are the responses of the defenders. The state of mind of the person holding the initiative (say, as a soldier or a law enforcement officer) is quite different than that of the person forced into a reactive response to an attack. Particularly for the latter, the states are quite irrelevant; the only thing that matters is the appropriate response to a specific stimulus at a particular time.
The Codes do nothing in the way of guiding those responses. Cooper himself said that they were not intended to do so, but again: if they are not a guide, of what use are they? If what he says is true, why are there specific response recommendations for each condition - down to whether or not your gun is in its holster? The system, at least according to the originator's own description, is self contradicting.
When faced with a threat a human being performs both instinctive and intuitive actions, the specific combination of which will vary depending on the situation. To try to constrain a person's responses to an arbitrary combination (whether one admits to doing so or not) is the equivalent of forcing everyone to wear size 14 boots regardless of their foot size.
It seems to me that instead of memorizing a bunch of colors, then obsessing about what color you are "in", it is better to spend your mental currency on training appropriate stimulus/response combinations. The Codes sound tacticool as all get-out, but that's about all they do. They serve no real or actual purpose, and in my opinion only obfuscate the situation.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 5: you can't get there from here.
Wednesday, October 21,
2009
Most people go to Gun Skool because they believe it will teach them "how to be safe." As I opined last time, learning to shoot does not necessarily make one safe; learning how to identify and avoid conflict does. These folks are simply asking more of the institutions than they're able to provide.
As I noted in one of the first installments, the market for firearm training is quite small relative to the number of gun owners. If a firearm trainer wants to stay in business, he/she must provide what the market demands, and the market demands SHOOTING!
In class after class I've seen student evaluations come back with a consistent complaint: "not enough!" They want more shooting, more "super ninja warrior secrets", and more talk about 9mm vs. .45ACP. Gun Skools respond by upping round counts and shoehorning in more techniques ("we'll show you 53 different ways to perform a tactical reload!") to satisfy the preoccupation with hardware. This leaves precious little time for teaching any of the 'soft' skills that would actually keep the students safe.
Consider this: the typical class is 2 days long, usually over a weekend. I once roughed out a syllabus for a very basic class in observational skills, one designed to improve the student's ability to gather and analyze the information that abounds in the world around him/her. That's a pretty narrow focus, but even given that - and a reduced number of skill building activities - it still wouldn't fit in an 8-hour day. (I'm very big on actually building skills in class, not just introducing a topic and then dashing off to another topic.)
Now imagine a Gun Skool offering a self-defense class where the students spent more than half their weekend working on things that don't go "bang", are never going to go "bang", and in fact are all about NOT going "bang". I can confidently guarantee that the students would complain to high heaven: "I came to shoot, not sit in a classroom!" A few sessions like that, and the Gun Skool would be out of business.
Because of the hardware-centric curricula, whatever proactive/preventive elements that could be covered usually get reduced to a short and ambiguous lecture about 'awareness' (remember what I said last time?) and a presentation of the Cooper Color Codes (which I abhor - but that's another article for another day.) Again, they are providing what the market demands.
There are also limitations on what they are capable of providing. Sadly, in my experience, most Gun Skool instructors just aren't conversant enough with the concept of proaction/prevention to do it any justice, even if their students would allow them to try.
In order to properly address the issues, an instructor needs to have familiarity with a wide range of fields related to how the brain acquires and uses information: neuroscience, psychiatry, cognitive development, neuropsychology, and emerging fields such as neural hermeneutics. It requires him/her to know about things like thin-slicing, pattern matching, mirror neurons, and conscious and unconscious functions of the brain. That's just for starters.
How many 'gunnies' do you know with that breadth of knowledge, and how many of THOSE are capable of transferring that knowledge in usable form to a student? Not many - if any - I'll wager.
It's the chicken and the egg: without a good institution to teach those topics, there is no place for other instructors to learn them to teach the next generation of trainers. Instead, they focus on what they already know: hardware. The result? More classes that teach people 53 different ways to reload their pistol.
That 'other stuff' is intellectually challenging to study, difficult to present, and on top of that isn't terribly sexy. That's a tough sell.
More to come...stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 4: fundamental misconceptions.
Monday, October 19,
2009
In the last installment we looked at the idea that most people - due to a lack of training and resulting options - tend to use the gun as a first line of defense. To those owners the gun is a talisman, imbued with the ability to keep its bearer safe and sound simply by its presence. The problem with this line of thinking is that the gun, being a reactive tool, cannot keep you safe. It can only help you deal with that which has made you unsafe.
Let's look at the word 'safe'. It means "not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed." The implication is clear: to actually be safe, one must avoid violent incidents in the first place. That's not what the gun does.
The gun's function is to extract the user from an incident once it has begun. Massad Ayoob often says that the gun is best thought of as a "rescue tool", in the same functional league as a fire extinguisher or first aid kit. Neither of those items prevents anything, but they do make it possible to survive something. The gun needs to be approached with the same attitude.
Safety in the personal sense requires layers of protection that are operational before the gun is ever needed, (hopefully) precluding the need to even draw the thing. These layers consist of both early warning (to let you know that something is a potential threat) and deterrence (prompting the threat to migrate to another, easier, target.)
It's important that you not think of layers in broad terms; they are individual things that together are stronger than they are alone. One layer might be a thorough understanding of criminal behavior, another could be the manner in which you walk, still another could be a flashlight to illuminate dark corners or a motion sensing alarm system. Think "micro", not "macro".
You can't, for instance, say that one of your protective layers is "awareness." Awareness isn't a thing that you can acquire in an of itself; it's a state that exists as the sum total of a number of observational or data-gathering skills, some of which are instinctive and some of which are intuitive.
Once the proactive/prevention layers have been breached by the criminal, then - and only then - is it time for the reactive or rescue layers to be brought into action. By now you should guess where this is going: most of us spend our training time on the reactive/rescue skills, because it's a lot more fun than the other stuff. The result is that the 'soft' skills are often woefully underdeveloped. The prevention part of the equation is weak, leaving nothing but the reaction part to pick up the slack.
The result is that no matter how nice and tight the groups are, no matter how fast the draw, an increase in shooting skill probably makes one no safer than the person who didn't get that level of training. The quantity of shooting classes and the number of certifications and master ratings is really quite irrelevant, if the gun is being used for relatively low level tasks. Without security layers interposed between the gun carrier and the assailant, that's what happens.
(Be very clear: this doesn't address the personal gratification that one might get from achieving those things, which may be considerable. We're focusing solely on the safety aspects of increased shooting skills.)
That's because you generally can't learn the proactive/prevention stuff at Gun Skool, and next time I'll explain why.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 3: how much is enough?
Saturday, October 17,
2009
How much training is enough? That depends, of course, on the nature of the training - but it also depends, perhaps to a greater degree, on how it's used.
As I hinted last time, an onion gives us a good framework to both build and evaluate a defensive posture. The onion, as you know, is composed of many layers; to get to the center requires that one remove layer after layer. It requires a certain amount of dedication to do so, because you can't go through Layer #3 without first getting through Layers 1 & 2.
Ideally, our self defense posture should be similarly layered. To breach each successive layer should require more skill and determination from the attacker than the last. The assailant has to be capable of getting through the layers, and must really want to do so. The thinnest layers stop the less able criminals, while the more robust layers serve to thwart those whose skill level is higher.
As it happens, there are more of the former than the latter. For instance, there are lots of people who play baseball as a recreational activity. Go to just about any park and you'll see lots of local league games. Most of the players are better than the average guy off the street, but usually not by a lot. A subset of those might have been good enough to play ball in high school; fewer still on a college team; maybe, occasionally, you'll encounter one who managed to make it to a semi-pro club. The chances of finding a player who ever took the field in the majors is slim to none - there aren't a lot of those people around. The lower the skill requirements, the more people participate.
Criminals are like that, too - there are more petty shoplifters than jewel thieves, because the skill necessary to rip off a DVD from Target is considerably less than stealing a million-dollar necklace from Donald Trump's home.
The outer layers of our defensive onion are those things that serve to discourage the least skilled, and the largest number, of the criminal fraternity. One of those outer layers might consist of a well honed ability to unconsciously make visual observation of what goes on around you, and to predict from scant data an impending assault. This doesn't seem to come naturally; it is learned. Because there is virtually no place where it can be learned (short of a self-directed study regimen), I think most people end up with observational skills that leave something to be desired.
For them, the gun tends to serve as a replacement. It defaults to being one of their outer defensive layers because there is no other outer layer. When it does get pointed at an assailant, it is probably against the least skilled and least motivated of attackers, simply because they are the most numerous. (I am not suggesting that the gun is necessarily used inappropriately, only that it may end up being used in situations that developed outside of the defender's base of knowledge.)
This, I think, partly explains why so many people are able to defend themselves with a gun, even without specialized training. If the situation is relatively simple, with an adversary who is not all that motivated, you just don't need to be a Navy Seal to prevail. As attackers ascend the ladder of skill, motivation, or numbers, so too must the ability of the defender.
Ironically it's the person with the well developed outer defensive layers, the one who is least likely to find him or herself in trouble, who needs firearm training the most. This is because the gun will be one of their inner layers and only exposed to attackers with a superior skill set, the inferior having been put off by the lesser layers.
In other words, the less likely it is that you'll need to use your gun, the more training you'll need in how to use it - because your assailants will be more dangerous.
Unfortunately, most people do it backwards. I'll save that can of worms for next time!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 2: where is the value?
Wednesday, October 14,
2009
Does firearm training have any real value?
(In this discussion understand that I'm not referring to basic handling and safety instruction, such as the NRA famously provides. By training, I mean the defensive or 'tactical' courses provided at various private facilities: Gunsite, Front Sight, Thunder Ranch, and all of the smaller and lesser known schools across the country.)
Getting back to the reason for this missive, I'm intrigued by the notion that if one possesses a gun, then one must have (with the emphasis on must) a certain kind of training in order to stand a chance of successfully using it in a self defense role. History would suggest otherwise.
The wide availability of training in the martial art of the firearm is of relatively recent vintage. Despite practical firearms for personal carry being available for more than 150 years, it's really only been in the last 30 that firearms schools oriented toward self defense have become commonplace. For well over a century, people apparently got along just fine, thank you, with no tactical training at all. Perhaps their father or uncle showed them how to load and unload the gun, and perhaps they got a few pointers on shooting, but that was it.
Even in this day, with quality instruction more available than ever, the number of people who take serious firearm training is still a very small fraction of total gun owners; a niche, if you will. A huge percentage of the gun owning public apparently doesn't feel a pressing need to go to Gun Skul, yet they seem to prevail far more often than not in encounters with criminals.
Why? Because the highest probability of personal attack comes in the form of what can be termed the low-level crime. There are more simple attacks, perpetrated by the simplest of attackers, than complex attacks carried out by skilled criminals. It stands to reason that a low-level attack can be defeated by the simplest of tactics - that of presenting a gun. This explains why so many confrontations are thwarted without firing a shot, and while people without training seem to win with great regularity.
The problem is that not all attacks fit that mold. As we get further out on the scale of attack magnitude, training becomes more important. This opens up a serious can of worms, however: what kind of attacks justify more training? How much training, and of what kind, is enough? Is enough ever enough?
The answer is more complex than you might think, but can be explained just by looking at an onion. Seriously.
Next time.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 1: it starts with attitude.
Monday, October 12,
2009
Last Wednesday I asked you
to consider the concept of self-defense training, specifically as
it relates to the use of firearms. This was inspired by the
comments over at Breda's, some of which I think show
an incomplete understanding of the concepts involved.
Specifically, I'm interested in the assertion that one needs to learn some amorphous concept called 'mindset' in order to prevail in a defensive encounter. In discussions of this nature, one often sees simplistic equations like "gun + mindset = success", along with the assertion that this 'mindset' can only be learned at Gun Skool. Without 'mindset', the proponents claim, the gun is next to useless. (Some stop just short of saying that the gun moves from being an asset to being a liability without it, a belief which comes uncomfortably close to one of the gun-grabber's favorite arguments.)
I've taken - and helped to teach - a few 'advanced' gun classes, and I've sat through many a lecture on 'mindset'. Perhaps it's my own insistence on precise terminology, but I must confess that even my 158 IQ cannot attach a consistent meaning to the term! Trying to derive one from the myriad of explanations extant makes me feel like I'm in the famous Monty Python sketch regarding the Spanish Inquisition:
Let's start at the beginning. When we look at the data brought to us by people such as Gary Kleck, one thing stands out: in the vast majority of self defense cases involving a gun, a shot is never fired. The mere presence of the gun, lawfully presented, is enough to convince the assailant that it would be prudent to select another (softer) target.
The gun, though, is just the medium through which the staunch resistance of the defender is the clearly communicated. Without that desire for and dedication to self preservation, the gun would most certainly be rendered ineffectual. Massad Ayoob has said it best: "Understand that criminals do not fear guns. They are, after all, an armed subculture themselves. What they fear is the resolutely armed man or woman who points that gun at them."
"AHA!", some of you are thinking. "That's the mindset that you can only get with training!" I contend that it is not.
In order to be resolute, as Ayoob describes, one must first possess the innate belief that one's life has value. One must value one's own existence above that of the criminal, otherwise one is unlikely to muster the unwavering commitment to self preservation that so unnerves the attacker.
Domestic violence provides us with the most visible lesson. Part and parcel of the abuser's behavior is to nurture within the victim - slowly and methodically - the idea that her life has no value. Once conditioned, the abuser has no fear that the victim can ever mount an effective defense against his cruelty, because she assigns greater value to her tormenter's existence than to her own.
(Please note that the genders are simply for your author's convenience. I am aware that domestic violence is sometimes woman-on-man, and in gay and lesbian couples there is obviously no gender difference. The dynamic of the abuse/abuser relationship, though, remains pretty constant.)
The unthinking spout "if only the woman would have a gun and proper training, she would never be a victim of her partner!" Here's the reality: it doesn't matter how many rounds she fires, how many mindset lectures she attends, or even if she openly carries her gun. If she doesn't believe, deep down and completely honestly, that her very life has value, she may never be able to defend herself against an attacker - whether or not that attacker is known to her.
Again, this isn't just a female thing. There are plenty of males who lack that basic belief in their own right to self preservation, such attitudes having been systematically denigrated over the last couple of generations. Man or woman, if the belief in one's own value as a human being is missing, it needs to be restored before self defense can become a reality.
This requires some extended time with a mental health professional who understands the issue and can guide the patient to a new understanding of his/her place in the universe. It can't be done in a weekend course with a shooting instructor who barks orders and carries a custom blaster on his hip - no matter how many times he works the word 'mindset' into his collection of cliches.
Am I saying that training has no value? Of course not, but that's the subject of Wednesday's treatise. Stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Specifically, I'm interested in the assertion that one needs to learn some amorphous concept called 'mindset' in order to prevail in a defensive encounter. In discussions of this nature, one often sees simplistic equations like "gun + mindset = success", along with the assertion that this 'mindset' can only be learned at Gun Skool. Without 'mindset', the proponents claim, the gun is next to useless. (Some stop just short of saying that the gun moves from being an asset to being a liability without it, a belief which comes uncomfortably close to one of the gun-grabber's favorite arguments.)
I've taken - and helped to teach - a few 'advanced' gun classes, and I've sat through many a lecture on 'mindset'. Perhaps it's my own insistence on precise terminology, but I must confess that even my 158 IQ cannot attach a consistent meaning to the term! Trying to derive one from the myriad of explanations extant makes me feel like I'm in the famous Monty Python sketch regarding the Spanish Inquisition:
Let's start at the beginning. When we look at the data brought to us by people such as Gary Kleck, one thing stands out: in the vast majority of self defense cases involving a gun, a shot is never fired. The mere presence of the gun, lawfully presented, is enough to convince the assailant that it would be prudent to select another (softer) target.
The gun, though, is just the medium through which the staunch resistance of the defender is the clearly communicated. Without that desire for and dedication to self preservation, the gun would most certainly be rendered ineffectual. Massad Ayoob has said it best: "Understand that criminals do not fear guns. They are, after all, an armed subculture themselves. What they fear is the resolutely armed man or woman who points that gun at them."
"AHA!", some of you are thinking. "That's the mindset that you can only get with training!" I contend that it is not.
In order to be resolute, as Ayoob describes, one must first possess the innate belief that one's life has value. One must value one's own existence above that of the criminal, otherwise one is unlikely to muster the unwavering commitment to self preservation that so unnerves the attacker.
Domestic violence provides us with the most visible lesson. Part and parcel of the abuser's behavior is to nurture within the victim - slowly and methodically - the idea that her life has no value. Once conditioned, the abuser has no fear that the victim can ever mount an effective defense against his cruelty, because she assigns greater value to her tormenter's existence than to her own.
(Please note that the genders are simply for your author's convenience. I am aware that domestic violence is sometimes woman-on-man, and in gay and lesbian couples there is obviously no gender difference. The dynamic of the abuse/abuser relationship, though, remains pretty constant.)
The unthinking spout "if only the woman would have a gun and proper training, she would never be a victim of her partner!" Here's the reality: it doesn't matter how many rounds she fires, how many mindset lectures she attends, or even if she openly carries her gun. If she doesn't believe, deep down and completely honestly, that her very life has value, she may never be able to defend herself against an attacker - whether or not that attacker is known to her.
Again, this isn't just a female thing. There are plenty of males who lack that basic belief in their own right to self preservation, such attitudes having been systematically denigrated over the last couple of generations. Man or woman, if the belief in one's own value as a human being is missing, it needs to be restored before self defense can become a reality.
This requires some extended time with a mental health professional who understands the issue and can guide the patient to a new understanding of his/her place in the universe. It can't be done in a weekend course with a shooting instructor who barks orders and carries a custom blaster on his hip - no matter how many times he works the word 'mindset' into his collection of cliches.
Am I saying that training has no value? Of course not, but that's the subject of Wednesday's treatise. Stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Well, there's something you don't see every day.
Wednesday, August 05,
2009
Did you know your eye dominance can be changed? I didn't!
I recently had a problem with shots hitting several inches off my point of aim (at only 5 yards.) That's odd, I thought, it's as if I'm seeing out of my left eye. But that's impossible - I'm right eye dominant.
For some reason I did a quick dominance test, and I was shocked that it showed I was left-eye dominant! I must have done it wrong, I thought; I did the test again, and it showed the expected right eye dominance. Whew! One more time, just to be sure - darn it anyway, it came up left again. And again.
That's odd. Dominance, as I've always understood the mechanism, is neurological, not optical. Your brain simply prefers the vision from one eye or the other, and it appears to be hardwired from birth. I've always thought it to be unchanging, as most people do, yet mine had definitely changed.
Guess what? Turns out it's not as immutable as I'd believed. According to my ophthalmologist, who I called the next morning, eye dominance spontaneously changes only in a very, very small percentage of adults - usually as a symptom of an underlying neurological disorder.
Neurological disorder? Doesn't that mean...tumor?? YIKES!
As it happens, I'd had a complete physical (including a thorough eye exam by this doctor) just a couple of months ago. I had no other symptoms, and he reassured me that lack of symptoms and my recent positive tests made me an unlikely patient for surgery.
As it happens, he said, eye dominance can be trained away. The usual trick is to wear glasses with some Scotch-type tape on the lens of the dominant eye. The out-of-focus image forces the brain to use the other eye, and in time becomes used to the arrangement - thus changing the dominance.
But, I protested, I haven't put any tape on my glas....oh, wait.
For years I've worn a jeweler's loupe over my right eye. When I'm working, I swing it down so I can look through it and back up when I no longer need it. It's a hassle to swing it in and out of my vision all the time and get it perfectly aligned again, so for the last year I've just sort of looked around it instead of flipping it up. I use my left eye for distance vision, and the right when I need to do closeup work.
What I normally see in my right eye, then, is...an out-of-focus image. It's the same as tape on the lenses, and by doing that I've unintentionally trained away my right eye dominance! At this moment I'm part of the small number of people who have no strongly dominant eye. If I continued using the loupe in that manner I'd end up strongly cross-dominant.
I immediately swapped loupe positions to force my brain to accept the right eye again. It's been a month or so, and I'm already seeing results. Once I'm back to my normal, strong right eye dominance I'll swap my beloved loupe for a binocular magnifier.
Trouble is, I hate those things! Decisions, decisions...
-=[ Grant ]=-
Packing your training trunk.
Monday, June 08,
2009
There is a concept that, in order to properly teach the use of a firearm for self-defense, one must have been in a shootout. The term most often used to describe that state is "seeing the elephant." (I'm not sure how the phrase got corrupted to mean shooting at someone, but I am sure that I find it quite annoying.)
The assertion, of course, is that only those who have drawn blood with their weapon are in a position to talk about it, and anyone else isn't worthy of attention. This harkens back to the days of the warrior caste, when knights were the privileged class and could own mere peasants who weren't supposed to voice their opinions. The same dynamic is in play today, especially amongst a certain cadre of defensive shooting instructors.
I'll admit that I've gone through an evolution with regards to this. There was a time when I thought that only experience counted, but over the years I've come to realize that experience is just another data point, and one point may or may not be adequate to promote a conclusion.
Rory Miller, whose book "Meditations On Violence" I've already gushed over, deals with this up front. As he correctly observes, all fights are idiosyncratic - one will not necessarily be like another. While there are some characteristics that are true of a large number of incidents, there are many more that vary from encounter to encounter. As he puts it, no one person can have been in enough fights to generate enough data to make generalizations. Experience is important, he believes, but not to the exclusion of everything else.
This was brought home to me in a recent ABC News story out of Tampa. A woman was carjacked, and successfully ended the encounter with her own gun - but not in the way you might think. She punched the assailant in the forehead with the muzzle, which caused him to jump out of her car.
She did everything wrong (starting with her beliefs about the use of deadly force), and yet she came out on top. Would you want to emulate her in any way? I would hope that you answer "no"! Imagine this, though: she could start teaching other people how to defend themselves with a gun, claiming authority based on experience. How silly would that be?
If you didn't know the nature of her experience, and/or had no other reference with which to evaluate it, it wouldn't seem silly at all. It's only when you can put her performance up against the experiences of a large number of others can you gain the perspective necessary to draw conclusions. It's what we call 'research', and is just as important as optical observation of the genus Loxodonta.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Use-of-Force Myths.
Wednesday, May 13,
2009
The archives over at Force Science News continue to fascinate. Issue #68 deals with several myths about the use of deadly force, myths that a large percentage of the population (regardless of their level of firearms knowledge) believe. The whole article is interesting, but it's the first myth - that of the Demonstrative Bullet - that is most immediately useful.
The article discusses the myth from the standpoint of those who judge an incident after the fact. However, the material is also of great importance to the person in the incident. The lawful user of lethal force needs to understand that bullets don't act like we see in movies, including the fact that one bullet simply isn't enough to guarantee rapid incapacitation of a determined attacker.
Belief in the "one shot stop" is prevalent at gun counters, in classrooms, and on firing ranges all over this country. The simple fact is that no handgun round - no matter what caliber or weight or velocity - will reliably incapacitate an attacker, immediately, with a single shot. It just doesn't happen all that often, which is why we need to train to put rapid, multiple, appropriately placed shots on our target. Any time, at any realistic distance, one hand or two, in all lighting conditions, from any stance, while moving, in the rain, from behind cover or in compromised positions. Can you? Be honest with yourself.
Yes, it's a tall order, but that is the reality of the situation. I've said it before: you either acknowledge reality and use it to your advantage, or it will automatically work against you! What you can do on a nice range, in perfect lighting, after carefully working yourself into your favorite stance, isn't the same as what you will be called to do when feral man chooses you as his prey. You need to train for the latter, not the former.
Of course it's easier (and cheaper) to simply Believe, which is what most gun people choose to do. Listen, if you want to believe in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, fine and dandy! Those things are inconsequential. Belief in the Demonstrative Bullet, on the other hand, can get you killed. Educate yourself, get relevant training, and practice.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Can you make good decisions - and would your peers agree?
Monday, May 04,
2009
The March issue of Force Science News contained a very interesting article about how police and private citizens differ in their views of "justified" shootings.
While some may see the article as having application to law enforcement only, they would be wrong - it is well worth reading because it deals with differences in perception of a critical incident, differences which are not necessarily "cops vs. civilians" but more like "trained vs. untrained."
Private citizens are both more critical of decisions to shoot, yet simultaneously less skilled in making those decisions themselves. This has grave implications for those who carry concealed weapons for self-defense; it suggests that an untrained person might shoot with less justification, while at the same time be held to scrutiny that is not commensurate with the risks of an evolving scenario.
My take on the research is that it is imperative the person carrying a defensive firearm be very well trained in the judicious use of deadly force. (Sadly, very few are.) At the same time, that person has to retain defense counsel who can educate a jury in the dynamics of a deadly encounter, so that they can judge the defendant's actions more realistically. You need to be able to show the jury what you knew, and when you knew it.
Think carefully: how's your knowledge of the judicious use of force?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Be honest with yourself.
Wednesday, April 08,
2009
In college I minored in music performance. Being just out of high school (read: thoroughly stupid) I thought I was a hot musician, harboring dreams of becoming a professional trumpet player. Like so many other aspiring performers I really had no idea what the world of a professional musician actually entailed, but I was absolutely sure I had what it took.
One of my professors, an accomplished professional trombonist, made it his job to bring us post-adolescents into the real world. Shortly into my freshman term, he was talking with a few of the members of the trumpet section after class. The talk turned to the requirements of a "pro", and all of us were convinced we had the Right Stuff. Our prof had heard this kind of chatter before, and bet our first chair player that he didn't yet possess the bare minimum skills necessary for the job.
Trumpet players are usually narcissistic personalities, the kind who don't back down from a fight, and the kid said "you're on!"
The prof sighed and said simply "get out your horn. I want you to blow a perfect half-note G above the staff" (trumpet players in the audience will understand.) The kid smirked, dropped his case to the floor and pulled out his horn. "Wait a minute", said our teacher. "I said a perfect G. No warmup. Just one perfect note; in tune from start to end, solid attack, no slop or waviness, crisp decay. You have one and only one shot. Go."
I shouldn't have to tell you the kid failed - miserably. Then again, none of the rest of us would have done any better. We were clueless: none of us yet knew enough to understand how much we didn't yet know.
Fast forward a few decades, and the shooting range serves up the same lesson. Georges Rahbani, "The Best Rifle Instructor You've Never Heard Of" , has a way of impressing on his students how they should assess their own abilities:
"You are only as good as you are, on demand."
What you can do right now, without warm up or sighting shots, without excuses or alibis, is the true measure of how good you are.
This is different from how most people gauge their ability. Most folks would take their rifle to the range on a nice sunny day, settle in comfortably at the bench, fire a bunch of rounds, then shoot a 1" group. They're so proud of that group they take the target home and hang it in their garage or office. "I'm hot stuff!", they'll think - after all, they have the target to prove it!
The next day at the range it's raining, they've had a fight with their spouse, can't get comfortable on the cold bench, and now their best group doesn't even break 3". "That's not me", they'll say to themselves, "I shoot one-inch groups!" The alibis flow like PBR at a fraternity house, and serve to obscure the fact that the 3" group wasn't the anomaly - the 1" group was. The larger one is the true indicator of their skill.
It's not what someone can do when everything is going their way that shows ability; it's what they can do under suboptimal conditions that does. If a person can't shoot until getting into just the right stance, with perfect foot placement and textbook body positioning, then that person still has a lot of work to do to master the fundamentals. (I've seen people who can shoot pretty well on a concrete pad, but go all to pieces on a gravel range. They can't get into their comfort zone.)
This is one thing if we're talking about plinking, but becomes another thing entirely when the subject turns to self defense. The other guy isn't going to wait for us to get into the perfect stance we learned from our guru; we need to be able to deliver rapid, multiple, properly placed shots from whatever position the situation dictates, under whatever conditions it hands us. That requires the courage to admit to ourselves that maybe - just maybe - we aren't quite as good as we think.
Right here, right now, no warmups, no excuses - how good are you?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Wednesday wanderings.
Wednesday, March 11,
2009
Lots of linking to avoid thinking on my own!
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Xavier recently posted a letter from - and his response to - one of his readers. The exchange (and the comments that follow) bring up important issues in the area of Second Amendment activism. It isn't always black-and-white.
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When you've finished reading Xavier, pop over to Breda's place and read this related article she posted about a month ago. (I realize it's a bit late, and I'd meant to bring it up earlier, but just kept forgetting.)
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Rob Pincus is one of the more thoughtful trainers working today. He's got a great post up on the Breach-Bang-Clear blog about putting techniques on pedestals. Highly recommended read.
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Speaking of Rob, I discovered that he has a blog of his own. Good stuff.
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Not just techniques get put on pedestals; equipment does too. There are the 1911 people, the Glock folks, the "any caliber as long as it begins with '4' " crowd, and so on. I suppose one could accuse me of doing the same thing with wheelguns (retro pedestal?), but I'm on record as saying - more than once - that the revolver isn't the perfect tool for everyone and every purpose.
For example, a number of years ago I was engaged in an activity of some risk. For that, I forsook my beloved revolver for a Glock and all the high capacity magazines I could fit under a suit coat. I believe in picking the right tool for the job; it just so happens that, for some jobs, the revolver is at least one of the right tools.
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Rejoice! Tam has finally posted a new article over at The Arms Room. (I was beginning to think she'd given up writing about guns...)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Facing your demons.
Wednesday, March 04,
2009
I used to love shooting steel. The plates dropping, the loud "clang" from a Steel Challenge target - no matter what the venue, reactive metal targets are just addicting. This addiction, I discovered, can be broken - even if you don't want to!
A number of years back I was shooting a Steel Challenge-type match. On one stage I was watching someone else shoot when a piece of bullet jacket bounced back from the steel plate, sneaked around my safety glasses, and caught the corner of my eye. (Mine was not the only injury that day - my buddy Hunter Dan suffered a leg cut from shrapnel, and another fellow caught a piece on his cheek.)
My physical damage was minor - lots of blood, though no permanent damage - but the psychological impact was greater than I could have imagined. You see, I'm somewhat paranoid about my eyesight to begin with; always have been. I don't like the thought of anything heading straight for my eyeball, let alone touching it. (In the old days, when glaucoma exams meant a little pressure gauge touching the cornea, having my eyes checked was absolute agony.)
This close call with the jagged piece of copper left me more than a little skittish around steel targets. Ever since then, regardless of size or distance of the target, shooting a steel plate causes me to blink just as the sear releases. (The problem never occurs on paper targets, only steel.) I can't help it, and I shouldn't have to point out that it makes hitting the target more than a little challenging!
Early last year I resolved to cure this affliction. I'm lucky to have a range on my own property, and last year I acquired a self-resetting, half sized Pepper Popper. Whenever I go out to shoot, I make it a point to do so on that target first. I shoot it repeatedly, and with every shot I consciously force my eyes to remain open.
The first few times I tried this were pathetic; no matter how hard I concentrated, my eyelids always won by doing what they're designed to do - protect my eyes. As time went on, and the round count increased, it became easier to keep them open, though I still have to do it consciously as opposed to subconsciously. (The latter will only occur when my mind has been retrained to accept the idea that shooting a steel target is perfectly safe, and that nothing will happen to my precious eyesight. I'm still working on it.)
I could have just ignored the whole issue and simply avoided shooting steel targets, but a) it's not practical - they show up in the most unexpected places, and b) it's not very much fun. Instead I decided to address the issue, and I'm hoping to be in shape to finally shoot a steel match again this summer.
Whether sports, music, or martial arts, if all you ever do is practice stuff that you've already mastered you'll never make progress. When you go to the range, work on those things that you don't do well. By facing your demons with your eyes open and brain engaged, you can eventually conquer them.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Risk assessment, or lack thereof.
Wednesday, February 25,
2009
I meet many people who possess concealed handgun licenses, but don't carry on a regular basis - let alone every day. The explanation is usually something along the lines of "I carry when I'm in a bad area" or "if I'm going into a situation where I'm more likely to need it, I'll take my gun". There are myriad variations, but the excuse always boils down to confusions between likelihood and consequence.
Likelihood (probability of attack) is variable. Yes, there are areas (and times) in which one is more likely to be attacked. This is what most people base their carry habits on: the less likely they are to be attacked (the lower the probability), the less compulsion they feel to carry a firearm.
While likelihood changes, consequence doesn't. Consequence refers to the impact on the victim of an attack; consequence is a level, a magnitude. An attack that justifies the involvement of a personally carried firearm is, by definition, of extreme magnitude and thus high consequence. For such incidents, consequence is a constant - it is the same for all times and places. Thus, the necessity of response is the same.
The problem is that most people base their carry habits not on consequence, but on likelihood. I'm not sure of the reason, but perhaps it is societal: we have a tendency to defer issues of consequence to others, because facing them is unpleasant. Dealing only with likelihood allows people to focus on the pleasant (the probability is, after all, that everything will be fine) rather than dwelling on the unpleasant.
Acknowledging the consequences of an attack is frightening to a lot of people; not only do they have to contemplate their own death or injury, they also have to consider that of their opponent. It's ultimately about mortality, and that is more than many people can handle.
You'd think that the possession of a carry license would mean that the person had considered these issues, at least minimally. My experience says otherwise. Even serious gun enthusiasts seem to only face up to the realities of consequence when they have to, which is why even they don't carry all the times that they could.
Are you basing your carry habits on likelihood or consequence? If the former, you're not as safe as you believe yourself to be.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Is that gun loaded, and do I really care?
Wednesday, February 18,
2009
In the comments to last week's post regarding safety rules, someone asked why checking the condition of a firearm is never listed in any rules. It seems logical enough - why not check the condition of a gun when you pick it up?
I'd like you to think about that for a minute - really think: why are you checking it?
If you plan to shoot it immediately, I can understand wanting to make certain that it was loaded. If you were going to disassemble it for cleaning, or do dryfire, or some other specific task that would require it to be sans ammunition, I understand why you'd want to verify that it was unloaded. But checking just to be checking? I'm not sure that it keeps anyone safer.
Other than those obvious examples, I can't come up with a good reason for someone to obsess about the load condition of a gun - unless it's because, consciously or unconsciously, they want or plan to do something unsafe.
Look at it this way: why are you verifying the condition if you're just going to pretend it's loaded anyhow? The answer seems to be quite obvious: because you're not really going to treat it as though it's loaded, and the reason you're not going to is because, deep down, you want to do something that you know isn't all that safe.
When I'm handed a gun, unless I'm going to do something that requires a particular state, I don't feel a need to immediate check it. Why? Because I treat all guns to the same standard:
I'm not going to point that gun at anything I'm not willing to shoot, regardless of whether it's loaded; I'm not going to have my finger on the trigger, either, loaded or not. I don't make exceptions, because the Three Commandments neither contain nor allow exceptions. That is why they are superior to any form of the existing "Four Rules."Never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you are not willing to shoot.
Keep your finger out of the triggerguard until you are ready to fire.
Know where your shots will land and what they’ll touch along the way.
There's yet another dynamic at work, which I've observed over the years with a wide variety of people. Those who do the habitual check often display an absolutely frightening tendency: after they've checked the gun, they relax. Visibly. You can see the changes in their body language and facial expressions, showing that they are now at ease - and less vigilant - with that firearm.
I've seen this with new gun owners, and I've seen it with the most experienced instructors. I've seen it with combat vets and with gunsmiths, with gunstore jockeys and seasoned competitive shooters. People check the gun, see that it's empty, and drop their guard. The situation is obvious to anyone who has the courage to look for the signs. You can almost hear them thinking: "don't worry, it's not loaded!"
(Of course, not every single person does this - but you'd be surprised, when you start looking, how large the percentage is and how it cuts across all levels of experience.)
When people are handling firearms, I want to see them completely engaged. Dropping one's guard because the gun has been verified as empty is the genesis of negligent discharges. Never become complacent - the consequences are simply too great.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Yes, I'm repeating myself.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
I've written about this before, but it's getting worse. All across this country are people standing behind gun counters who need to be taught that women are people, too.
I've lost track of the number of times I've run into a woman who was sold (as opposed to deciding to buy) a revolver for self defense. Now it should be pretty clear to even the densest web denizen that this is a revolver-friendly blog, so it should not come as a shock that I think revolvers are a great tool.
They are not necessarily, however, the right tool. As I mentioned last week, the revolver is the easiest gun in the world to shoot, but the most difficult gun to shoot well. That long, heavy (in stock configuration) trigger requires a certain amount of hand strength, without which the gun cannot be fired.
Herein lies the problem: the female of the species, in general, tends to have less strength in her digits than does the male. It's not unusual, therefore, to find a woman saddled with a brand-new revolver on which she cannot manipulate the trigger. I've seen countless numbers of women who actually have to use two fingers to get the trigger moving!
It's not so much a matter of gun fit (though that enters into the equation far too often), but simply the trigger offering more resistance than a slim finger is capable of overcoming. In reality most women would really be better served with the shorter, lighter trigger action of an autoloading pistol, but the wisdom of the gunstore commando is that autoloaders are just "too complicated for the little lady."
Hey, Bubba, I've got news for you: women actually drive cars these days! Yes, automobiles, with their myriad switches and levers and pedals and buttons. Women have no problem figuring those things out, yet you think they can't handle the concept of a slide stop lever?
The usual rejoinder is that women don't have the upper body strength to manipulate the slide of an autoloader. This is fact turned on it's side to bolster a flawed assumption; yes, women tend not to have our arm strength, but that deficiency can be rendered immaterial through proper technique. It's a simple matter, and nearly any female (and a more enlightened male) firearms instructor can teach it inside of thirty seconds.
This whole issue wouldn't bother me so much - and I wouldn't be writing about it again - but the inferiority attitude is so pervasive that some women are themselves buying into the notion that they're not "capable" of handling an autoloader. I've actually had students to whom I've taught the autoloader manipulation techniques (and who've shot very well with one) go out and end up with a revolver. Not because they wanted one, mind you, but because some dolt behind a counter convinced her that it was all she could handle.
Mind you, I'm not some new-age "sensitive man". I'm as big a neanderthal as the next guy; I believe that women and men are different, and you can thank your favorite deity for the difference! I'm just tired of people assuming that my wife, sisters, nieces, and mother are so stupid that they can't handle a simple mechanical device. I'm annoyed that they are doing their level best to indoctrinate women to this nonsensical point of view, and I'm appalled that it actually seems to be gaining some traction among women themselves!
I don't have a prescription for this problem, other than to continue to educate every person - man or woman - I run across. If that means I repeat myself every so often, I'm willing to do so. I hope you'll forgive me!
Yes, revolvers are wonderful, but they're not for everyone. We need to help people to make intelligent decisions, and if that means they choose a self-shucker, so be it. Heretical? No, just realistic.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Guns are not magic wands.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
There is a perception amongst a large percentage of the gun-toting public that guns are magic wands: one shot and the bad guy flies backward, landing in an unconscious heap at the bottom of a wall or tree.
Think I'm exaggerating? Spend a few minutes at a gun counter sometime. Random samples would tend to support the supposition that the majority of people carrying guns get their information from Hollywood, not Paulden.
This incident from east Texas should serve to remind us that real life ain't like "reel" life.
There are, of course, a number of unanswered questions: was the good guy's gun not adequate for effective defense? Was he not able to draw and shoot in time? Did he make an effort to "get off the X" or did he simply "stand and deliver"?
We don't know. Sadly, we may never know. All we do know is that something went horribly wrong, leaving the good guy six feet under and the bad guy getting three hots and a cot.
Let's review how to avoid the same fate:
1) Select a gun and cartridge that are suitable for self defense. (At the risk of tooting my own horn, read my series on this topic.)
2) Learn how to be aware of your surroundings (it most assuredly does not come naturally to modern man); study and memorize the precursors to violent attacks.
3) Practice drawing and shooting from your holster; don't carry your gun in an unaccessible place, and carry it the same way all the time.
4) Break the habit of just standing and shooting; learn to get off the axis of a violent attack. (This is not the old "take one step to the side and shoot" exercise - it is far more dynamic. Love him or hate him, Gabe Suarez has been preaching this for many years, and only now does the concept seem to be gaining traction.)
5) Understand that one shot is quite unlikely to do the job, and that the old "two shots center of mass, then evaluate" doctrine may just give your opponent the opening he needs. Learn how to quickly put multiple, accurate shots on target - while moving.
6) Understand that you can do everything "right", and still lose. This is a concept that seems to be lost to even the best instructors: luck plays a huge role in survival. Do everything you can to put as much of it on your side as possible.
Be careful, stay safe.
-=[ Grant ]=-
My muckraking safety articles
Monday, July 21, 2008
I've been asked to provide a
permanent link to my articles on the failings of gun safety rules.
Happy to oblige; I've added them to the Library as well.
The original article: "On Safety"
Followup article: "Following the safety rules religiously"
Please read them and consider them carefully. Of course, I'm always happy to hear comments from readers!
-=[ Grant ]=-
The original article: "On Safety"
Followup article: "Following the safety rules religiously"
Please read them and consider them carefully. Of course, I'm always happy to hear comments from readers!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Illustrating the concept
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
A reader sent me this link to an old Richard Davis "Second Chance" video. The video has Davis shooting a fellow - who is wearing one of Davis' vests, of course - with a .308 rifle and himself with a .44 magnum revolver. The reader's comment was "if this doesn't show an energy dump, I don't know what it shows."
I agree. With the second part of the statement, at least. Going back to our "Stopping power" series, as I pointed out the term "energy dump" is nonsensical - energy isn't "dumped", it is used to do work.
What is the work in this case?
First, I can guarantee that the bullet itself was grossly deformed in its contact with the vest material. It takes energy to deform the bullet, and that energy only comes from one place: the bullet itself.
Second, there is a huge amount of work being done by that slug. It is trying to part and sever the fibers in the vest material, which are quite tough and designed to resist such force. The bullet does manage to defeat some of the fibers - which is why it's buried between the layers of cloth - but the energy required to do that job, again and again (there are many layers in a vest) rapidly depletes the bullet's stored energy. The result is that all of the energy is used up doing the work of penetrating the vest.
Again, the bullet's energy wasn't "dumped" - it was used. Understand the difference, and terminal ballistics won't seem so mysterious.
(Notice also the second myth busted in the video: that a bullet has enough energy to knock a man down. As you can see, even full-power .308 NATO, at near contact distance, isn't sufficient to knock over a man standing on one foot. Again, there is nothing mysterious at work - simply basic physics.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
The "Holster of the Week" Club
Monday, May 19, 2008
Last week I promised a story. I heard this from "the horse's mouth", and if you knew this particular horse the story would not surprise you...
Anyhow, I happen to know a fellow (I'll call him "Ted") who, back in the '70s, was a Detective in a very large eastern police department. He had just been promoted from patrol, which meant that for the first time in his career he got to dress in plainclothes.
Ted and his more experienced partner were headed to lunch one day. They worked in a not terribly good part of town, and picked a restaurant in the vicinity of their last call. They pulled up in front of the restaurant, just behind a taxicab.
As they were exiting their unmarked vehicle a male climbed out of the cab ahead of them. He drew what Ted described as "a chrome-plated automatic", and started firing at another person who was still in the back seat of the cab.
(Allow me to digress as I explain that Ted, taking advantage of his now much looser dress requirements, had taken to wearing all manner of holsters. He alternated between a shoulder holster, crossdraw, strong side hip, appendix, and even ankle. He made the decision about which one to wear almost on a whim each morning. I'm sure you're beginning to see where this is going.)
Ted, who was exiting on the curb side of the vehicle, was in direct line of sight of the suspect. Being the gung-ho young cop that he was, he yelled "police, freeze!" as he reached for his gun. The perp turned toward the source of the command, and seeing two witnesses in suits raised his pistol in their direction and started firing.
Here's where the story gets interesting: Ted habitually reached for the spot where his uniform belt had always placed his gun. Of course, it wasn't there! I wish I could convey the level of comical panic that he did, but the gist is that he started patting himself all over, trying to find his gun while at the same time diving for cover behind his car door. "I couldn't remember where my gun was," he exclaimed to me. "I suddenly had the horrible thought that maybe I'd left it on my dresser!"
In the meantime his older and wiser partner simply drew his "snubby" revolver from the crossdraw holster he always used, and proceeded to drop said perp in his tracks. Ted found his gun just in time to help clean up the mess.
Ted told me that this incident convinced him to carry his gun in the same holster and in the same place every day. His advice to me was that I should do likewise - and I always do.
A firefight, gentle readers, is not the time to try to remember where you put your gun, or where your bullets are landing relative to your sights. Standardize on your load and your holster, and practice regularly so that you can quickly draw and reliably put your shots where they need to go!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 9
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
(For convenience, you can
access all the installments
at this link.)
Stick with what works
You've all heard of the "Gun of the Week" club, right? That's the term used to describe an "enthusiast", the guy (gals are too smart to engage in such nonsense) who carries or competes with a different gun every time he goes out. (Closely related is the "Holster of the Week" club. I'll post an amusing story about that, soon.)
There is also the "Bullet of the Week" club. Some folks read the gun magazines assiduously, loading up with the latest and greatest "stopper" from the current issue. The next issue (or possibly a competing magazine) tells them about yet another new bullet, and off to their gunstore’s ammo shelves they go!
There are problems with this approach. Aside from the fact that one is unlikely to see any major performance differences between modern designs from major makers, there is a reliability issue. If you're shooting an autoloader (an affliction which elicits my sincere sympathies), you need to fire a minimum number of rounds - some say as many as 200 - of your chosen ammunition to ensure reliability. That's a lot of ammunition to buy and shoot every time you change loads!
Even with a revolver, you should shoot a some of that ammo to ensure ignition reliability in your gun, especially if you've had action work performed.
The other issue is with the sights on your gun. Fixed sights, as featured on both revolvers and autos, will not shoot all ammunition to the same point of aim, necessitating on-the-fly windage or elevation corrections. Trying to remember whether this week's ammunition choice shoots up or down, right or left, relative to the sights is hard enough. Imagine trying to do that with someone lobbing rounds into your personal airspace!
If you have fixed sights, you should regulate them to match the load you'll be using - then use that load, and only that load, for "serious" use in that gun. If for some reason you change the standard load for that gun, have the sights adjusted to shoot to point-of-aim for that load.
That's why I say "stick with what works." Pick a decent load that proves itself to be reliable in your gun, have the sights regulated properly, and just use it. Constantly switching between different bullets gains you nothing, and may in fact cost you in a dynamic self-defense incident. Pick one load, practice with it, and use only that bullet in that particular gun.
I go even further - I've standardized on one load for all my .38/.357 guns, and I've regulated all of them to shoot that load. That way, I don't have to maintain a huge stock of ammunition to fit a bunch of different guns.
I think this finally does it for the "Self defense, stopping power, and caliber" series. I'm just about "talked out"! I hope that it has given you some insight into the task of selecting a gun/cartridge for your self defense needs.
Stay safe, make sensible choices, and practice. It's all you can do - but, as it happens, all you can do is enough!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Stick with what works
You've all heard of the "Gun of the Week" club, right? That's the term used to describe an "enthusiast", the guy (gals are too smart to engage in such nonsense) who carries or competes with a different gun every time he goes out. (Closely related is the "Holster of the Week" club. I'll post an amusing story about that, soon.)
There is also the "Bullet of the Week" club. Some folks read the gun magazines assiduously, loading up with the latest and greatest "stopper" from the current issue. The next issue (or possibly a competing magazine) tells them about yet another new bullet, and off to their gunstore’s ammo shelves they go!
There are problems with this approach. Aside from the fact that one is unlikely to see any major performance differences between modern designs from major makers, there is a reliability issue. If you're shooting an autoloader (an affliction which elicits my sincere sympathies), you need to fire a minimum number of rounds - some say as many as 200 - of your chosen ammunition to ensure reliability. That's a lot of ammunition to buy and shoot every time you change loads!
Even with a revolver, you should shoot a some of that ammo to ensure ignition reliability in your gun, especially if you've had action work performed.
The other issue is with the sights on your gun. Fixed sights, as featured on both revolvers and autos, will not shoot all ammunition to the same point of aim, necessitating on-the-fly windage or elevation corrections. Trying to remember whether this week's ammunition choice shoots up or down, right or left, relative to the sights is hard enough. Imagine trying to do that with someone lobbing rounds into your personal airspace!
If you have fixed sights, you should regulate them to match the load you'll be using - then use that load, and only that load, for "serious" use in that gun. If for some reason you change the standard load for that gun, have the sights adjusted to shoot to point-of-aim for that load.
That's why I say "stick with what works." Pick a decent load that proves itself to be reliable in your gun, have the sights regulated properly, and just use it. Constantly switching between different bullets gains you nothing, and may in fact cost you in a dynamic self-defense incident. Pick one load, practice with it, and use only that bullet in that particular gun.
I go even further - I've standardized on one load for all my .38/.357 guns, and I've regulated all of them to shoot that load. That way, I don't have to maintain a huge stock of ammunition to fit a bunch of different guns.
I think this finally does it for the "Self defense, stopping power, and caliber" series. I'm just about "talked out"! I hope that it has given you some insight into the task of selecting a gun/cartridge for your self defense needs.
Stay safe, make sensible choices, and practice. It's all you can do - but, as it happens, all you can do is enough!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 8
Monday, May 12, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments at this link.)
"So, smarty pants - what caliber should I get?"
I receive many emails asking, in essence, what the "best" self-defense caliber might be. (Those emails, in fact, have served as the motivation behind this series.) The correspondents are probably expecting sage advice, the wisdom of years, a sort of Ballistic Oracle. What they get is a non-committal "it depends!"
If you take nothing else from this series, take this: there is no such thing as "best" - there is only "suitability for purpose."
Why is that? As we learned in the first parts, there is a pretty large envelope - caliber, weight, and velocity - of performance criteria that have shown themselves to work well. Thus, any cartridge you select within that envelope is likely to do the job, as long as you do yours.
That's the most important part: that the gun in question enables you to do your job. It is the first place you should start. You need to be honest with yourself, accurately assess what you can and cannot handle. Remember that a self-defense scenario often will call for multiple, rapid, precisely-placed shots. Can you do that with the guns that you're considering? Really? Be honest with yourself!
I see many people who are talked into a gun that is touted as a "better stopper", but who are unable to handle it to the standards given above. Most of this is technique, and technique can be learned, but everyone has some upper limit. Remember: only accurate hits count, and you should strive to maximize your hit potential. As we've explored, power is irrelevant if it doesn't get to something important!
Once you've passed that hurdle, the choices almost make themselves. In any given cartridge, if you pick a hollowpoint load in the middle of the caliber's normal weight range, you'll generally have most of what you need. There are exceptions, of course: at the lowest ends of the energy spectrum (say, standard .38 Specials) penetration becomes an issue, so you should tend to the heavier rounds. At the other end (the heavy magnums), the more powerful loads often need lighter bullets to limit penetration and enhance expansion.
For everything else, stay away from the lightest and heaviest bullets, pick a decent hollowpoint, and you'll most likely be just fine.
The most important part of this whole selection process is to practice with the load that you've chosen. If the cartridge/gun combination is "too much" for you to do so, that's a sign that you need to pick something else. You need to practice with your safety/rescue equipment, and if you can't or don't want to, then you will be less prepared to face a deadly encounter. The old trick of practicing with Specials while carrying Magnums on the street has been thoroughly discredited, because it doesn't allow the user to get used to the dramatic difference in handling between the two.
(This isn't to say that you have to do all your training this way; I do a lot of work with light loads when I'm diagnosing a trigger control issue, or to help develop a specific skill. When I've got them down, though, I switch to my carry load and train extensively with that.)
So, what do I carry? Most of the time, I load up the trusted and proven .38 Special +P 158 grain all lead semi-wadcutter hollowpoint. I've spoken with many people who have actually used this load against an adversary, and to a person they were all very satisfied with the ballistic effect. Massad Ayoob tells me that his research showed police agencies who switched from that load to hot autoloading cartridges did so not to get "better" bullets, but to get "more bullets." I'm confident in it's abilities, and in my ability to handle the cartridge from any gun under any conditions.
This is a conscious tradeoff. For instance, I really like the .44 Special. It's a great round, but in a concealable gun I just don't handle it as well as other calibers. In fact, a hot .357 Magnum from a Ruger SP101 is easier for me to control than a .44 Special from a small gun, and I consider the Magnum to be too much for delivering multiple, rapid, combat-accurate hits on target. I like the .357 too, but I have to admit to myself that if I want to shoot as efficiently as possible, it’s not the wise choice.
I've picked the most effective round that falls within my personal limitations and practice with it extensively. I think that is the most rational way to approach this whole topic!
Next time, we'll explore some less obvious considerations when picking your "ideal" self defense cartridge.
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Series index: "Self defense, stopping power, and caliber"
Monday, May 05, 2008
Here's the whole series for
your perusal!
Part 1: Introducing the Twin Tasks.
Part 2: If it doesn't get somewhere, it can't do something.
Part 3: Once it gets there, it has to do work.
Part 4: The bullet is more important than the caliber.
Part 5: More energy can be a good thing - as long as it actually does something useful.
Part 6: What would I want with a reputation?
Part 7: There Is No Such Thing as a Magic Bullet.
Part 8: "So, smarty pants - what gun should I get?"
Part 9: Stick with what works.
Part 1: Introducing the Twin Tasks.
Part 2: If it doesn't get somewhere, it can't do something.
Part 3: Once it gets there, it has to do work.
Part 4: The bullet is more important than the caliber.
Part 5: More energy can be a good thing - as long as it actually does something useful.
Part 6: What would I want with a reputation?
Part 7: There Is No Such Thing as a Magic Bullet.
Part 8: "So, smarty pants - what gun should I get?"
Part 9: Stick with what works.
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 7
Monday, May 05, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments at this link.)
There Is No Such Thing as a Magic Bullet
What does that mean, you ask?
One of the last bastions of the snake oil salesman is in the field of ammunition promotion. Claims that would make Professor Harold Hill blush are the norm, and are repeated in gunstores, shooting ranges, and deer camps across the country. They sometimes even make their way into magazines and the internet - though the latter's instant exchange of information has helped to quell the worst of the hyperbole.
Still, many hold on to their belief in "magic bullets" hoping that there really exists something that will transform their .25ACP into an elephant killer. (I exaggerate, of course, but one ammo maker used to claim that their product for the little .25 had the same "one shot stop" percentage as a .45. That, my friends, is a true belief in magic.)
Like many fables, the legend of the Magic Bullet has its roots in reality. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In the bullet world, that advanced technology is the hollowpoint bullet.
The hollowpoint, as we've learned, is a good mechanism to control the penetration and wound profile of any given cartridge. Sometimes, it can work what seems like a miracle - transforming an otherwise unremarkable cartridge into a respectable "stopper."
One of the best examples of this is the .30 M1 Carbine cartridge. Many servicemen had experience with the little Carbine in World War II and Korea, and they either loved it or hated it. Those that hated it often complained about a lack of "stopping power" - enemies who were hit often didn't go down with alacrity. (Some even claimed that the rounds "bounced off" the heavy wool coats worn by the opposition. That wasn't true, and was easily shown as such, but when someone is running toward you screaming his head off a lack of convincing ballistic effect makes the distinction unimportant.)
The .30 Carbine, as it turns out, is a penetrator. Its sleek bullet usually went straight through the target, making a quick-closing wound and doing little damage along the way. (Sound familiar?) After the war, one of the ammo makers got the bright idea of stuffing a semi-jacketed hollowpoint into the casing. When they did that, the entire complexion of the carbine changed.
The penetration was now more controlled, and the expanded bullet had a much larger frontal area that did more damage along its path. So changed was the round that Jim Cirillo, the famous member of the New York Stakeout Squad, proclaimed it one of the two most effective weapons in their entire arsenal - the other being the formidable 12 gauge shotgun. High praise indeed!
He wasn't the only one who made note of the "enhanced" Carbine. The late Gene Wolburg, wound ballistics expert and one of the most knowledgeable people in the field, once said that his home defense weapon of choice was the M1 Carbine loaded with that semi-jacketed hollowpoint.
It may have seemed like magic to the servicemen who had bad experiences with the round, but the effect of the hollowpoint loading was simple physics. It did its job better - it just happened to be a lot better.
A "magic bullet", in contrast, appears to violate the laws of physics, or so skews its sales copy that you think it does. For instance, magic bullet purveyors play up the "energy" of their load, to the exclusion of everything else.
Energy is the result of multiplying the mass of the projectile by the square of it's velocity. Without boring you with the math, what that means is that a small change in velocity makes a big change in the energy of the projectile. In other words, if you drop the projectile weight you can up the velocity, which will make a big increase in energy figures. Sounds great, right?
As we've already studied, energy isn't everything. A light projectile might be moving very quickly, but when it contacts solid matter it loses velocity quickly. That translates into shallow wounds. (Remember the last installment, where we looked at the .357 Magnum? Same thing, only worse.) A projectile needs weight as well as velocity in order to penetrate well, and if you sacrifice enough weight for more speed, you'll fail at the First Task: reaching something important.
Exotic bullets that claim to do something others can't should set off your B.S. detector. Any cartridge that proclaims a "massive energy dump" as the wounding mechanism or pushes velocity over everything else is probably vying for a magic bullet award. Personally, I'm not going to trust my life to that kind of ammo!
What I'm getting at (and have been for this entire series) is that there is nothing mysterious, nothing magical about the way a bullet works. It has to get to something important, and it has to do rapid and significant damage when it gets there. That's it. Any claims that seem to skate around the topic should be looked at with great skepticism, for there is truly no such thing as a "magic bullet."
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 6
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments of this series at this link.)
"What would I want with a reputation? That's a good way to get yourself killed!" - Jason McCullough, "Support Your Local Sheriff" (my favorite movie of all time!)
What about "reputation"? Some cartridges or loadings have reputations for better effectiveness than others. Sometimes that's valid, but other times it may not be.
Let's take the mighty .357 Magnum, one of my favorite cartridges. The 125 grain semi-jacketed hollowpoint loads have the reputation of being superbly effective; some believe that they are the "best" manstoppers ever made. I've talked with people who have actually used them in real shootings, and they were generally very happy with the performance.
But there are also instances of stupendous failures. For those who hold that energy is everything, this may come as a shock. How could all that power possibly fail? Simple - if it doesn't do both of the Twin Tasks!
Let's consider what happens with the 125 grain Magnum loads. Leaving the barrel at nearly 1500 feet per second, the bullet enters the target with a huge reserve of energy. As the hollowpoint fills with fluid and starts to expand it uses up some of that energy to grow dramatically in diameter. The increase in diameter means more resistance in the tissues, which uses more energy and further slows the bullet. Because the relatively light weight of the slug doesn't have great momentum, and thus not a lot of stored energy, it doesn't travel very far before it finally runs out of steam. The result can be a shallow wound - one which doesn't reach something the body finds important.
This is the "ugly secret" that proponents of the .357 125 grain JHP don't want to talk about. Shallow wound profiles with these "barn burner" loads are not unheard of, and occasionally prove to not be as effective as expected. As one noted trainer once told me, when they work they’re superb - but when they fail, they fail spectacularly!
Suppose you've decided that you'd prefer something a bit more predictable, but want to retain the performance level of the round - what’s the solution? Simply go to a slightly heavier bullet, one which carries a tad less velocity and a bit more momentum. Winchester, for instance, has the 145 grain Silvertip bullet, and Speer is now making a 135 grain Gold Dot Magnum load. Both are obviously designed to retain the Magnum's reputation as a fight-ender, but do so on a more consistent basis.
This is a good illustration of the tradeoffs involved in cartridge selection. Speed isn't everything; bullet size isn't everything; bullet weight isn't everything. It's a combination, a concert of all of those (plus good handling qualities as defined by the shooter) that make a round effective. One can't simply say "I've got a Magnum" or "I carry a .45" and smugly claim that one has the "perfect" self defense gun. While it may work, there is always the chance that it may not; handguns, after all, are underpowered things.
Through intelligent selection, you can dramatically improve the performance envelope of your chosen gun, regardless of the cartridge it shoots.
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 5
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments of this series at this link.)
More energy can be a good thing - as long as it actually does something useful.
Last time we discussed the concept of the hollowpoint as a way to increase the frontal diameter of the bullet in the target. I also introduced the idea that it takes energy to expand the bullet, energy that is also needed to push the projectile into something that it needs to reach.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If we want the bullet to expand, it doesn't happen by magic. Somewhere the energy has to be found to deform the metal used in the bullet, and that energy can only be found in the bullet's own movement. If there is too little to start with, there won't be enough to carry the bullet on its path.
If the cartridge has insufficient energy the expanding bullet will stop forward movement too rapidly, resulting in very shallow wounds that may or may not be effective. This tends to explain the lack of expanding bullets for the venerable .38 Special cartridge - there just isn't enough energy to drive a bullet deeply into the target and expand it at the same time.
How do we get around this problem? Well, the first alternative is to simply switch to a cartridge with more energy. In the case of the .38, we could bump up to the .357 Magnum. The .357 certainly has enough energy! Of course, that energy reserve comes at a price: greatly increased recoil and muzzle blast, which reduce the shooter’s ability to deliver multiple combat-accurate shots.
The other alternative is to make a higher energy version of the cartridge we already have. This time-tested approach results in what's know as "+P" ammunition, which is the designation for a cartridge loaded beyond what is considered "normal" pressure. The idea is to increase the energy delivery of that cartridge to accomplish a specific task. Generally, it works pretty well!
You'll see criticisms on the internet of some +P loadings, usually centered on the idea that "it's not much of an increase in power." If you consider what we've explored in this series so far, you'll realize that it doesn't have to be a "lot" - it just has to be "enough"! If a cartridge at normal pressure can't quite deliver an expanding bullet to where it needs to, but a +P version does, then that is sufficient for the task at hand.
Remember: if the energy doesn't do something useful, then it is wasted from our perspective.
Get away from the idea that you need vast increases in power for defensive applications. You simply need enough power to perform the Twin Tasks. Is it better to have a large reserve amount of energy on tap? That's a question that only you can answer, after being honest about your own abilities and needs. Everything comes at a price and needs to be considered relative to the goal at hand.
In the next installment we'll bring together the things we've discussed, and look at the tradeoffs you need to consider to pick your "ideal" self defense cartridge.
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 4
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments of this series at this link.)
The bullet is more important than the caliber.
We know that our bullet needs to do damage to whatever important thing it manages to find. How, exactly, is that going to occur? It just so happens that most animal tissue (including that of the violent felon who has just attacked you) is remarkably elastic, and consequently difficult to damage. Most tissues have a tendency to "close up" around puncture wounds, in the same way that they close up after a hypodermic needle withdraws. If they didn't, every time our doctor gave us an injection we’d spring a leak!
The upshot (pardon the pun) of this is that our bullet needs to die-cut or crush the tissues in its path rather than sliding cleanly through. The reputation of the old .38 Special 158 grain round nose bullet as a "widow maker" was well deserved, as it often went in one side and out the other with very little blood loss. That smooth, aerodynamic profile travels through water-filled tissue about as cleanly as through air, for all the same reasons. It neatly parts that tissue in a way that facilitates immediate closure and minimal blood loss. In our self-defense scenario, that's what's known as "A Bad Thing."
In fact, round nose (or "ball") ammunition is an unremarkable performer in just about any caliber; "they all fall to hardball" is right up there with "the check is in the mail" for statements you should never believe, no matter how authoritatively (read: arrogantly) delivered.
If we can get a bullet to cut or crush a non-closing hole in the target, we stand a better chance of doing the kind of work necessary to cause that target to stop in its tracks.
The amount of disruption that a handgun bullet delivers to the target is dependent on its shape/construction and on the overall diameter (caliber.) A shape that encourages efficient travel through the target is to be avoided; a shape that is non-aerodynamic will generally produce the kind of result that we seek. All other things being equal, flat-faced bullets usually beat pointy bullets.
(Personally, I pay more attention to bullet construction than caliber. Hunting and shooting experience, plus a lot of research with those more knowledgeable in the field of wound ballistics, has convinced me that there is more variation in effectiveness within calibers than between them. In other words, you're more likely to see performance differences by changing your bullet type, rather than changing calibers. )
This isn't news to any old-timers out there! Hunters in bygone days were always told to use flat-pointed bullets over round-nosed varieties, because they delivered more "shock" to the quarry. That was their non-scientific way of explaining why the bullets obviously performed differently, and what they lacked in technical understanding was more than compensated by their acute observations.
Of course there just isn't a free lunch; those flat bullets don't usually work in autoloading actions, and they make speed reloading of a revolver more difficult. There is an answer: the expanding bullet. We can actually enhance the terminal results by using a bullet (usually a hollowpoint of some sort) that grows in diameter as it goes through the target.
A hollowpoint bullet works because, as it enters the target, it expands to a greater-than-caliber frontal diameter and assumes a very flat-faced shape. This means that the bullet can crush a much larger hole than normally possible for the caliber, ensuring the kind of target damage necessary to complete the task at hand.
There are, of course, issues in making these things perform as desired: first, the work of deforming the bullet takes energy. This energy can only be come from the bullet itself, which means there is that much less available to enable the bullet to continue its travel. Second, the resulting increase in drag from that wide face also uses energy at a tremendous rate, and thus also drastically limits penetration. Because of these factors, shallow wounds from hollowpoint bullets are not at all unheard of, both in hunting and in self defense.
The solution is to a) use a different cartridge that has enough energy to spare to begin with, or b) increase the energy of the existing cartridge. We'll tackle those issues next time!
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 3
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments of this series at this link.)
Once it gets there, it has to do work.
In today's installment, we're going to look at the second of the Twin Tasks:
2) The bullet has to do rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives.
It may not be self evident, but kinetic (moving) energy is either used or conserved (stored.) In the case of a bullet, it starts being used simply by fighting the friction caused by traveling through the air. Unless it encounters a target, the bullet will use all of its energy in flight and gravity will pull it to the ground. We're interested in using that energy for lawful purposes before it's wasted in the atmosphere!
I usually refer to the second Task as "doing work", because that's exactly what is expected of the bullet. From the perspective of the target, the kinetic energy in a bullet can only do one of two things: it can be used to do work, or it can be wasted beyond the target.
(There is no such thing as an "energy dump" in a target, no matter how many times you see that nonsensical term. The energy does some sort of work, whether doing damage to tissue or pushing the bullet through the air. The bullet may use up all of the energy available, and stop inside the target, but it doesn't "dump" anything. The energy in such an event is depleted in expansion/deformation and in forward movement, both of which are work. Whether or not the work performed was useful to the goal depends on what it encountered along the way, which brings us back to the First Task.)
As the bullet traverses the target, its energy is used to push it through material more dense than the air it previously encountered. The amount of energy used in this endeavor is dependent upon the shape of the bullet; the more streamlined the projectile, the smaller the frontal profile, the less energy is expended in pushing it through the target. Conversely, the "flatter" the bullet profile, the more energy is necessary to move it through.
Think of a rowboat paddle - easy to move through the water edge first, much harder face first. If the bullet expands in the target, some of the energy is used to deform the bullet itself, and the rest is used to push the much larger, flatter profile through the target. In some cases, it uses up all its energy trying to get through the target and never makes it out the other side. This is why, as we touched on in Part 2, penetration can be controlled through the use of an expanding bullet.
At some point, we hope that the bullet finds something that the body deems immediately necessary for function - and disrupts that functioning. That item could be structural (skeletal) - where disruption causes collapse; It could be electrical, where interruption of signals causes instantaneous nervous system malfunction; or it could be vascular (plumbing), where large leaks cause a loss of pressure that eventually results in unconsciousness.
Whichever system is compromised, the bullet needs to use some of its energy to do the necessary work of disruption. This is why I say that the bullet has to do rapid and significant damage to something when it arrives; if it gets there, but has so little energy left that it is incapable of inflicting necessary damage, then it is nearly as if it had not gotten there to begin with.
(This is not to suggest that the bullet's wound in such a case is benign or trivial! Remember, we have a task for that bullet to accomplish; if it doesn't do so in the necessary time frame, then it is useless to us. The classic example is the attacker shot with a .22 but still able to complete his assault. He might die of peritonitis a few days later, proving that the wound is not unimportant. However, it didn't complete our goal of stopping the criminal before he could harm an innocent, making it irrelevant to our situation. Keep the goal in mind!)
Now that we understand the Twin Tasks, we'll take a look at the mechanisms by which all this might be accomplished. Until next time!
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-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber, Part 2
Monday, March 31, 2008
(For convenience, you can access all the installments of this series at this link.)
If it doesn't get somewhere, it can't do something.
OK, so we know about the Twin Tasks, the two things that a bullet has to do in order to stop an attacker:
1) It has to get to something the body finds immediately important, and
2) It has to do rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives.
Today we'll be taking a look at Task #1: getting to something important.
Let's start by pointing out that the user of the bullet must be capable of putting it on a course that will lead it to something important. If the cartridge in question presents too much of a challenge for the shooter to handle with the requisite accuracy, it doesn't make any difference how "good" the cartridge is! Since a single shot is unlikely to incapacitate an attacker, a shooter needs to be able to control their gun for multiple, combat-accurate shots.
This is only given lip service by trainers and enthusiasts; they'll repeat the mantra "a hit with a .22 is better than a miss with a .45", then in the same breath give some arbitrary limit on "acceptable" calibers for self defense. Folks, there are people in this world who do not wish to, or simply cannot, practice to become proficient with a "correct" caliber. When the time comes that they need the weapon, wouldn't it be better that they possess a bullet that they can send where it really needs to go? Of course!
Step One, then, is pick a cartridge that is within your ability to control for random strings of fire - two, three, four rounds at a time.
Once the bullet is in the air, it has to negotiate all obstacles to reach a vital organ of some sort. This requires that it get through any outer shell (clothing), past the skin (which is a lot tougher than you might believe), and alternating layers of bone and muscle. It has to have what's known as 'penetration'.
Penetration is dependent on several things: the weight of the bullet, the diameter (caliber), the velocity, and the shape. If we were to take two bullets of different weight, but of the same caliber and shape and traveling at the same velocity, the heavier one would penetrate further. We can do the same comparison for any of the factors, as long as the others remain the same. If we had two bullets of different shapes - a round nose and a wadcutter - with everything else the same, the more streamlined bullet (the round nose) would penetrate further. Simple, right?
When we look at expanding (softnose or hollowpoint) bullets, which increase their diameter at some point in the target, the situation changes. The increased frontal are of the expanded bullet acts like a parachute, slowing it more rapidly and reducing penetration. Sometimes penetration can be reduced so much that the bullet will not reach anything important, and we're back to that unreliable psychological incapacitation thing again.
Remember that too much penetration can be as bad as too little. Having a bullet that sails through the target without doing much work, or (worse) encounters another (possibly) innocent target beyond, is not a good thing. Hence it behooves us to have a bullet which demonstrates sufficient penetration, but not an excessive amount.
It's not uncommon to find a cartridge that, when loaded with streamlined, roundnosed bullets, goes through multiple targets - but when loaded with expanding bullets stops inside the desired one. As it turns out, this behavior has major benefits in terms of terminal effects, which we'll cover next time.
<--- Click here for the previous episode ..................... Click here for the next episode --->
-=[ Grant ]=-
Self defense, stopping power, and caliber
Monday, March 24, 2008
I've gotten a bunch of emails recently regarding the choice of an appropriate self-defense handgun caliber and/or bullet. Around this one topic swirls more misinformation - and outright inanity - than any other I can think of. And now, here's mine!
What follows is a layman's understanding, backed by research of available literature and years of hunting and shooting experience, of the practical mechanics of wound ballistics. It is not intended to be a complete and exhaustive study of the subject. Instead, I hope to give my readers - who are, in all likelihood, laypersons themselves - a solid base of information to help make good decisions when choosing self defense ammunition.
Let's start by understanding that in a self-defense scenario our goal is simply to cause the perpetrator of a crime to cease immediately his/her antisocial activities. That's it - we want the miscreant to quit doing whatever it was that caused us to draw our gun in the first place. The closer to "immediately" that this occurs, the better for all concerned.
There are two mechanisms by which this can be accomplished: psychological incapacitation and physical incapacitation.
The first - psychological incapacitation - is the least predictable of the two. Some people will stop and run when grazed by a well-thrown rock, others will soak up all manner of chemical, electrical, and physical deterrents without so much as flinching. Since it's all in the mind, and minds vary significantly (especially when intoxicated in some form), we cannot count on delivering a reliable jolt to a criminal's psyche. We must instead focus on doing enough physical damage to cause cessation of action through reduction of motor skills.
On this subject has been constructed all manner of measures, each attempting to quantify the unquantifiable: "One shot stops." "Knockout index." "Wound channel volume." There are more, and none of them ever seem to agree (at least most of the time) on what actually works.
Well, folks, hunters have known something for a very long time, and it has been proven in the field again and again: to reliably put the brakes on a living entity, a bullet must do what I call The Twin Tasks.
1) It has to get to something the body finds immediately important, and
2) It has to do rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives.
That's it. Either, by itself, simply won't deliver the results we seek (at least, not in the physical sense.) If the projectile fails at either of these tasks, any success that occurs is in fact a product of psychological incapacitation, which we already know to be both unpredictable and unreliable.
Keep in mind that as the bullet traverses the target, it may repeat the Tasks; in other words, it may encounter more than one thing the body finds important. The more times that it does, and then completes the second Task, the faster the incapacitation is likely to occur. (Note that I didn't say "will", only "likely to". Handgun rounds are underpowered things, and with them nothing is ever certain.)
Within certain limits, it doesn't really matter what the caliber is or what the bullet is made of or how fast it travels, as long as it does both of the Tasks. That's why there seems to be such a wide range of calibers, weights and velocities that have shown "good" results in self defense shootings, and why arguments about "stopping power" rage on the gun forums: there is, as the saying goes, more than one way to skin a cat.
Remember, as long as both Tasks are accomplished, the envelope of "how" they are is large enough to encompass a variety of approaches.
The reason that the "heavy and slow" and "light and fast" bullet camps exist is because, generally, their choices just happen do both of those Tasks on a fairly regular basis. Arguing about which is the "better" approach is really quite silly, because when they work it's because they did both Tasks, regardless of the actual mechanism; when they fail, it is simply because they didn't do one (or both) of the Tasks, again regardless of their physical attributes.
It's at this point that someone invariably chimes in "but my cousin is engaged to a girl whose brother-in-law heard about a guy who saw someone shot fifteen times with a 9mm, and the victim was still able to walk into a French restaurant, order a 5-course meal, eat, chat with the sommelier, and stiff the waiter before finally collapsing on the sidewalk while waiting for his cab! That's why I carry a .467 Loudenboomer Ultra Grande - if it hits them in the pinky the hydrostatic shock wave will knock them down!"
I'm exaggerating, you understand, but if you regularly haunt the gun forums you'll recognize that it isn't all that far off.
Yes, small caliber bullets fail. Guess what? Large caliber bullets fail, too. As someone once told me, "put on your big-boy pants and deal with it!"
A good friend gave me a first-hand account of a battle incident wherein a fellow absorbed several solid torso hits and was still able to jump from his vehicle and cross a road before finally collapsing.
The gun in question? A .50 caliber heavy machine gun. Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes, folks, nothing works.
Our job is to choose those calibers and bullets which seem to do the Two Tasks fairly reliably, and prepare to deal with the times that it just isn't enough. With handgun rounds, those times are more common than the gunshop commandoes would have you believe.
In the next installment, we'll take a layman's look at the physics involved.
Click here to go to the next article --->
Or, you can access the series index at this link.
-=[ Grant ]=-
It's not often someone is willing to admit to doing dumb things
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
There are times that I feel
I'm harping on the safety issue, but with the number of grievous
injuries and deaths that occur I don't think it is
unwarranted.
The latest, sent to me by an alert reader, is a self-expose (complete with pictures) of a nasty handgun incident. Short version: this fellow, in an attempt to test a recently installed grip safety, pointed his gun at his leg and pulled the trigger. The sequence of events was predictable. (Warning - the pictures may be graphic for some people.)
Once again, I'm going to place the blame squarely on Traditional Rule #1: "All guns are always loaded", or any variant thereof. He felt free to do something blatantly stupid with his gun, because he was sure that he had unloaded it. Since he was sure that he unloaded it, in his mind the other rules obviously didn't apply. If they did, he wouldn't have pointed it at his leg as he intentionally pulled the trigger!
What bothers me most about this fellow's misfortune isn't that he was injured, but that he still doesn't get why it happened in the first place. He is so clueless about this, in fact, that he cites the classic Four Rules of Firearms Safety, starting with the offending Traditional Rule #1 in his article, and explaining to his readers that they should follow them. This is in fact the wrong thing to do, and is what caused his injuries.
It is my opinion that the more people who follow Traditional Rule #1, the more accidents like his will occur. Again, Traditional Rule #1 leads people to do dumb things with guns, because once they're convinced the gun is unloaded they feel at liberty to ignore the other three. In my opinion, we should instead be teaching people to follow the Three Commandments of Gun Safety religiously:
Let's look at his accident: he violated the First Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
He then violated the Second Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
Finally, he proceeded to violate the Third Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
The result? A large emergency room bill. Lots of pain. All because Traditional Rule #1 allowed him to do stupid things with a gun once he was "sure" it was unloaded!
(It is worth noting that the gentleman in question, one Darwin Teague, is on Usenet record as declaring that he would never carry a Glock, as he considers them to be "unsafe." With all due respect, Mr. Teague, if you do stupid things with guns, loaded or not, all the safety features in the world won't stop you from shooting yourself - as you have found out. I wish you luck, as you seem to need it.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
The latest, sent to me by an alert reader, is a self-expose (complete with pictures) of a nasty handgun incident. Short version: this fellow, in an attempt to test a recently installed grip safety, pointed his gun at his leg and pulled the trigger. The sequence of events was predictable. (Warning - the pictures may be graphic for some people.)
Once again, I'm going to place the blame squarely on Traditional Rule #1: "All guns are always loaded", or any variant thereof. He felt free to do something blatantly stupid with his gun, because he was sure that he had unloaded it. Since he was sure that he unloaded it, in his mind the other rules obviously didn't apply. If they did, he wouldn't have pointed it at his leg as he intentionally pulled the trigger!
What bothers me most about this fellow's misfortune isn't that he was injured, but that he still doesn't get why it happened in the first place. He is so clueless about this, in fact, that he cites the classic Four Rules of Firearms Safety, starting with the offending Traditional Rule #1 in his article, and explaining to his readers that they should follow them. This is in fact the wrong thing to do, and is what caused his injuries.
It is my opinion that the more people who follow Traditional Rule #1, the more accidents like his will occur. Again, Traditional Rule #1 leads people to do dumb things with guns, because once they're convinced the gun is unloaded they feel at liberty to ignore the other three. In my opinion, we should instead be teaching people to follow the Three Commandments of Gun Safety religiously:
Never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you are not willing to shoot.
Keep your finger out of the triggerguard until you are ready to fire.
Know where your shots will land and what they’ll touch along the way.
Let's look at his accident: he violated the First Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
He then violated the Second Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
Finally, he proceeded to violate the Third Commandment, because he thought the gun was unloaded.
The result? A large emergency room bill. Lots of pain. All because Traditional Rule #1 allowed him to do stupid things with a gun once he was "sure" it was unloaded!
(It is worth noting that the gentleman in question, one Darwin Teague, is on Usenet record as declaring that he would never carry a Glock, as he considers them to be "unsafe." With all due respect, Mr. Teague, if you do stupid things with guns, loaded or not, all the safety features in the world won't stop you from shooting yourself - as you have found out. I wish you luck, as you seem to need it.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Defensive ammo update
Wednesday, November 07,
2007
It's been several years
since Speer introduced their Gold Dot Short Barrel Personal
Protection 38 Special +P loading. It looked good on paper, and the
Gold Dot line has a superb reputation for performance, but many of
us prefer to carry well-tested ammunition. Let someone else be the
guinea pig!
Sporadic reports have come in that the Gold Dot load is "working"; Massad Ayoob told me that he's heard around the country that people are "satisfied" with the performance. Still, I'd not been able to run down anything more specific.
That is, until yesterday, when one of my clients called. He's a higher-up in a large metropolitan police department and a long-time revolver carrier. He indicates that his department has had several shootings with the Speer load, and that he personally knows two of the officers who have used it. His verdict? The load performs as advertised - very effective at stopping violent action.
He notes, based on his agency's long experience with the famous 158gn +P loads from various makers, that the new Speer 135gn appears to be very similar in terms of terminal effect. "No complaints", was his succinct summation.
Good news for those who have chosen this load!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Sporadic reports have come in that the Gold Dot load is "working"; Massad Ayoob told me that he's heard around the country that people are "satisfied" with the performance. Still, I'd not been able to run down anything more specific.
That is, until yesterday, when one of my clients called. He's a higher-up in a large metropolitan police department and a long-time revolver carrier. He indicates that his department has had several shootings with the Speer load, and that he personally knows two of the officers who have used it. His verdict? The load performs as advertised - very effective at stopping violent action.
He notes, based on his agency's long experience with the famous 158gn +P loads from various makers, that the new Speer 135gn appears to be very similar in terms of terminal effect. "No complaints", was his succinct summation.
Good news for those who have chosen this load!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Following the safety rules religiously
Tuesday, October 02,
2007
In last week's
article, I mentioned that there was
an ancient religious principle that can help keep you safe from
firearms accidents. Allow me to digress for just a moment to give
you the necessary background.
As you may know, Orthodox Jews have a rather rigorous set of rules that they follow. According to their tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah (their Bible, which consists of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.) Imagine trying to keep track of, let alone follow, 613 commandments!
To make the job easier and to prevent the unintentional transgression of a commandment, they have a concept called gezeirah, which is explained as "building a fence around the Torah." This idea, which goes back roughly 800 years, refers to the additional precepts that one should follow to avoid even coming close to violating a commandment itself. They supply a sort of early warning system; if you know that you've broken the lesser rule, you know that you're in danger of violating the more sacred one.
Now I'm not saying that everyone should run out and become Orthodox Jews (you'd have to give up Saturday morning cartoons and pepperoni pizza, for starters), but the concept of a "fence" around a core set of rules is as good for keeping us physically safe as it is for safeguarding their spiritual well-being.
So, if our overriding precepts are the Three Commandments of Gun Safety:
These additional rules don't relieve you of the need for always following the Three Commandments, and are never to be considered any exception to any of them. They are a supplement. They provide one extra guard, one extra layer of security, before you're put into a situation where the "fail-safe" of the Commandments is all that stands between you and grievous injury. They set up an attitude, a frame of mind, that makes an accident all the less likely.
For instance, I have my own fence: my shop is a sterile area, meaning that there is no live ammunition in the shop area proper. (Need I mention that there are no exceptions?) I still follow the Three Commandments, mind you, but following the rule of no live ammo in the shop area makes the constant handling lots of guns even safer.
Now go and sin - ballistically speaking - no more!
-=[ Grant ]=-
As you may know, Orthodox Jews have a rather rigorous set of rules that they follow. According to their tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah (their Bible, which consists of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.) Imagine trying to keep track of, let alone follow, 613 commandments!
To make the job easier and to prevent the unintentional transgression of a commandment, they have a concept called gezeirah, which is explained as "building a fence around the Torah." This idea, which goes back roughly 800 years, refers to the additional precepts that one should follow to avoid even coming close to violating a commandment itself. They supply a sort of early warning system; if you know that you've broken the lesser rule, you know that you're in danger of violating the more sacred one.
Now I'm not saying that everyone should run out and become Orthodox Jews (you'd have to give up Saturday morning cartoons and pepperoni pizza, for starters), but the concept of a "fence" around a core set of rules is as good for keeping us physically safe as it is for safeguarding their spiritual well-being.
So, if our overriding precepts are the Three Commandments of Gun Safety:
What kinds of rules might constitute our "fence"? Well, they might include the "Seven Rules of Dry-Fire":Never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you are not willing to shoot.
Keep your finger out of the triggerguard until you are ready to fire.
Know where your shots will land and what they’ll touch along the way.
The NRA has a poster of 10 or 12 firearms rules that could constitute another fence, and I'm sure you'll find more. Some may be very general, others may be specific to the range you're using or the particular shooting activity in which you're participating.- Select the proper time and place (alone, no distractions, safe backstop).
- Remove all live ammunition from your training area (including those in your own gun and the gun that you will use for dry fire).
- Go into “practice mode” state of mind. Say out loud: “This is practice time, I am going to practice now.”
- Perform practice.
- When practice is over, go into “reality mode.” Say out loud: “Practice is over, this is real.”
- Put the gun into the condition in which it is normally kept.
- Put the gun away immediately (secured).
These additional rules don't relieve you of the need for always following the Three Commandments, and are never to be considered any exception to any of them. They are a supplement. They provide one extra guard, one extra layer of security, before you're put into a situation where the "fail-safe" of the Commandments is all that stands between you and grievous injury. They set up an attitude, a frame of mind, that makes an accident all the less likely.
For instance, I have my own fence: my shop is a sterile area, meaning that there is no live ammunition in the shop area proper. (Need I mention that there are no exceptions?) I still follow the Three Commandments, mind you, but following the rule of no live ammo in the shop area makes the constant handling lots of guns even safer.
Now go and sin - ballistically speaking - no more!
-=[ Grant ]=-
On safety
Thursday, September 27,
2007
A reader alerted me to this thread over at GlockTalk, where a debate about the first of Jeff Cooper's "Four Rules of Gun Safety" is raging. Specifically, the argument centers on the allowable "exceptions" to Rule #1: "All guns are always loaded" (or, alternatively, "Treat all guns as if they were loaded.")
I feel entitled to comment, inasmuch as the observance of said rule by gunsmiths has been invoked as one of the "exceptions." I take exception to that exception, and in fact take exception to the very notion of exceptions! Allow me to explain, and perhaps start some exceptional controversy of my own.
To be blunt: I don't like Rule #1. In fact, I believe that it is not just unnecessary, but that it actually sets people up to have accidents. I don't believe it makes anyone safer - I contend that it has the opposite effect.
It boils down to this: people do stupid things with guns that they perceive are unloaded. (Re-read that line, focusing on the word "perceive.") Once people have convinced themselves that a gun is unloaded, they treat it differently. That is where accidents occur.
The trouble with Rule #1 is that it encourages such shoddy behavior.
Follow me here: "treat all guns as if they were loaded" tacitly admits that there are, in fact, two states for a firearm - loaded and unloaded. If there were not an unloaded state, it would not be necessary to admonish someone to treat a gun "as if" it were in the loaded state, would it? If unloaded guns did not exist, the statement would make no sense. Therefore, the phrase itself establishes that there exists such a thing as an unloaded gun. Clear so far?
While Rule #1 logically admits that there is such a thing as an unloaded gun, it asks us to pretend that it doesn't really exist. This is important, as the rule only makes sense if the state of being 'unloaded' exists, but it implores us to make believe that such a state doesn't really exist. This situation is called cognitive dissonance: holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. It's a state of mind that humans don't tolerate all that well.
If one accepts the fallacy that an unloaded state doesn't exist, it becomes clear in the mind that the remaining three rules apply only to loaded guns. After all, the first rule says that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun; therefore, the other three rules can apply only to loaded guns, because - remember! - unloaded guns "don't exist."
Here's where that cognitive dissonance thing comes back to bite us. The human mind cannot maintain two contradictory concepts ("there is such a thing as an unloaded gun, but it doesn't exist because all guns are always loaded") without resolving them in some fashion. The way that most (if not all) people apparently resolve this is to apply the rules to all guns, unless they've convinced themselves that the gun in question isn't loaded.
In other words, to resolve the logical conflict that Rule #1 establishes, the mind translates it to say "treat all guns as if they are loaded, unless you've verified that they aren't." The other three rules are tossed right out the window, because they obviously don't apply to unloaded guns!
See how this comes about? If not, re-read the preceding paragraphs.
That, gentle readers, is the crux of the problem! The sad side of Rule #1 is that it implies once you've verified a gun is unloaded, the rest of the rules don't apply to it; you may handle it differently. That's when the accidents come, and is why I say that people do stupid things with guns that they think are unloaded.
Proof? Easy: it is axiomatic that all gun accidents occur with unloaded guns. Those are guns that people had convinced themselves were not in the loaded state, and therefore didn't fall under the rest of the rules. No matter what the experience or training level of the person involved, "I thought it was unloaded" is the first excuse out of their mouths when something bad happens.
Need more? Here's an interactive proof: go into any gun store, and watch as customers (and often the counter clerks) sweep muzzles over everyone in the store. Now complain to a clerk about the shoddy practice; I guarantee the first thing you'll hear from his or her mouth is "don't worry, it's not loaded."
Still not convinced? Ask Massad Ayoob to tell you the tragic story of a well regarded and highly experienced competition shooter who accidentally killed his wife - with an "unloaded" gun, of course. My contention is that he followed Rule #1 like most people, but that its logical failings caused him to treat the gun differently because he was sure it was unloaded. The result was sadly inevitable.
This is why the forum debate runs so many pages, and ultimately devolves into the attitude "of course, Rule #1 doesn't apply to experienced shooters, who understand what the exceptions are." I'm sorry, folks, but I believe that any safety rule that implies or encourages "exceptions" - experienced operator or no - is a "rule" that should be thrown out.
One of the best shooting instructors I know - Georges Rahbani - has done just that. He acknowledged the problem and dealt with the issue by eliminating what I'll call "Traditional Rule #1" from his curriculum. Instead, he teaches that any and all guns, loaded or unloaded, are treated to the same standards, which he calls The Three Commandments of Gun Safety:
There are no exceptions, and thus less chance for the accidents that usually result from them.Never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you are not willing to shoot.
Keep your finger out of the triggerguard until you are ready to fire.
Know where your shots will land and what they’ll touch along the way.
These rules build on and cover for each other; should someone accidentally violate one of them, the other two remain operative to prevent an injury. The goal of gun rules is to prevent injury or death, to the shooter or others; if one follows these rules without exception, whether the gun is loaded or not, it will reduce that risk to the lowest probability.
As you might guess, in my line of work the chances of a negligent discharge are somewhat higher than usual. Consequently, my interest in the safety rules is higher than usual! The online debate mentions that gunsmiths must, out of necessity, violate the Traditional Rule #1 and thus don't need to follow the other rules.
Not in MY shop, bunky!
I follow the Three Rules as codified above. I don't point a gun (any assembly capable of igniting a cartridge) at anything I'm not willing to shoot. That means, in my case, a solid concrete wall in the back of my hillside shop. Because of that, I know what my target is, and what the backstop is. Finally, I don't put my finger into the triggerguard until my sights are on target (the gun is pointing at that backstop.) Yes, all the time and every time; I'm rather fond of my various body parts, and desire to retain them in full operating condition!
I think that's enough pot-stirring for one day. Next time, we'll see how an ancient religious principle can help to reinforce the constant observance of the safety rules.
-=[ Grant ]=-
A different approach to the backup revolver
Wednesday, August 22,
2007
A gentleman wrote in asking
about small backup revolvers - that is, a revolver to carry as a
backup to a primary revolver.
I know that many people carry their primary gun on their hip, with a lightweight (aluminum, titanium, scandium) wheelgun in an ankle holster, and I know a couple of folks who carry a S&W "J" frame in a front pants pocket as a second gun.
This is not what the writer had in mind, though. He was thinking of a very small (smaller than a "J" frame) "subcompact" revolver for a second gun, in the same way that there are subcompact autoloaders (Seecamp, Kel-Tec, etc.) to serve as backups to a larger autoloader. Sadly, the market in this case is pretty limited.
The only one that comes quickly to mind is the North American Arms "Mini" revolver in .22LR and .22WMR. (The Magnum, of course, would be a better choice than the Long Rifle, ballistically speaking.) The trouble with these guns is that 1) I've never seen one that could be even charitably referred to as reliable, and 2) they are harder than heck to even keep on an IDPA target at 7 feet, let alone be assured of a solid hit in the vitals.
Beyond that there are only the much larger S&W "J" frame guns (and the Taurus equivalents, though I'm not wild about them.) However, there may be a "blast from the past" that is worth considering: the Colt Pocket Positive. Never heard of it? Well, you're in for a treat!
The Pocket Positive was nothing more than a scaled-down "D" frame (Detective Special, etc.) After all, the "D" frame was just a scaled down "E" frame (Official Police, etc.) so why not go even smaller? The Pocket Positive was a tiny little gun - considerably smaller than even a "J" frame. (A cylinder on the Colt measures 1.240", while the "J" frame comes in at 1.310". What really makes the difference, though, is the frame - the Pocket Positive is a tiny, almost jewel-like gun, noticeably smaller than the popular "J".) The action is, as noted, of normal Colt design, and should smooth up as nicely as its bigger brothers.
The Pocket Positive was most commonly chambered in the .32 Colt Police round, aka the .32 S&W Long. Now the .32 S&W round isn't terribly powerful, of course, but neither is the .32ACP - a cartridge used and praised in the backup role for many years. The .32 revolver round has a significantly heavier bullet, so it should have better penetration than the .32ACP - always a good thing when shooting a "mousegun." Ammunition is still being made, though the factory offerings are limited to lead round nose.
Pocket Positives have not yet captured the collecting world's imagination, and are still available at reasonable prices. I picked one up a while back for $150, and it's been sitting in my "to do" pile awaiting some spare time. I think I'll dig that out and put it back into working order; I think it may be the answer to the need for a good backup revolver!
(Now if only someone would reintroduce it in titanium...)
-=[ Grant ]=-
I know that many people carry their primary gun on their hip, with a lightweight (aluminum, titanium, scandium) wheelgun in an ankle holster, and I know a couple of folks who carry a S&W "J" frame in a front pants pocket as a second gun.
This is not what the writer had in mind, though. He was thinking of a very small (smaller than a "J" frame) "subcompact" revolver for a second gun, in the same way that there are subcompact autoloaders (Seecamp, Kel-Tec, etc.) to serve as backups to a larger autoloader. Sadly, the market in this case is pretty limited.
The only one that comes quickly to mind is the North American Arms "Mini" revolver in .22LR and .22WMR. (The Magnum, of course, would be a better choice than the Long Rifle, ballistically speaking.) The trouble with these guns is that 1) I've never seen one that could be even charitably referred to as reliable, and 2) they are harder than heck to even keep on an IDPA target at 7 feet, let alone be assured of a solid hit in the vitals.
Beyond that there are only the much larger S&W "J" frame guns (and the Taurus equivalents, though I'm not wild about them.) However, there may be a "blast from the past" that is worth considering: the Colt Pocket Positive. Never heard of it? Well, you're in for a treat!
The Pocket Positive was nothing more than a scaled-down "D" frame (Detective Special, etc.) After all, the "D" frame was just a scaled down "E" frame (Official Police, etc.) so why not go even smaller? The Pocket Positive was a tiny little gun - considerably smaller than even a "J" frame. (A cylinder on the Colt measures 1.240", while the "J" frame comes in at 1.310". What really makes the difference, though, is the frame - the Pocket Positive is a tiny, almost jewel-like gun, noticeably smaller than the popular "J".) The action is, as noted, of normal Colt design, and should smooth up as nicely as its bigger brothers.
The Pocket Positive was most commonly chambered in the .32 Colt Police round, aka the .32 S&W Long. Now the .32 S&W round isn't terribly powerful, of course, but neither is the .32ACP - a cartridge used and praised in the backup role for many years. The .32 revolver round has a significantly heavier bullet, so it should have better penetration than the .32ACP - always a good thing when shooting a "mousegun." Ammunition is still being made, though the factory offerings are limited to lead round nose.
Pocket Positives have not yet captured the collecting world's imagination, and are still available at reasonable prices. I picked one up a while back for $150, and it's been sitting in my "to do" pile awaiting some spare time. I think I'll dig that out and put it back into working order; I think it may be the answer to the need for a good backup revolver!
(Now if only someone would reintroduce it in titanium...)
-=[ Grant ]=-
The case for DAO
Wednesday, August 08,
2007
In the Gunsmithing pages of
this site, I endorse the practice of rendering defensive revolvers
double action only (DAO.) Many people ask why, and I thought I'd
give you my thoughts on the matter.
Let's start with the usual argument for retaining single action capability, which I call the "Walter Mitty scenario": the mythical need for making precise long range head shots. Let's face it, folks - this just never happens in real life!
However, let's say that you're having a Jack Bauer kind of day and are now facing just this scenario. Mightn't that be just a tad bit stressful? Wouldn't that make you even more nervous, knowing that you'll be trying the toughest possible handgun shot under the worst possible conditions? With all that adrenaline now flowing through your system, is this really the time that you want a light, short trigger pull that is very easy to accidentally release? Not me, bunky!
This is the reason for DAO: light single action triggers are great on the calm shooting range, but pose a liability risk for unintentional discharges under stress. As Massad Ayoob says, single action triggers are great shooting tools, but lousy threat management tools.
Now I I know what you're thinking: "OK, but I promise I'll never use it!" I'm sure you mean that sincerely, but It's been well established over the decades that people tend to do in combat what they do in training.
It's human nature to practice what we're already good at, and to do that which is easiest for us. At the range, it's not uncommon to watch someone shoot a revolver at, say 50 feet and become disenchanted with their groups. At that point, they usually switch to the easier pull of the single action, and shoot that way. This imprints their subconscious to use single action when they are unsure of their abilities, and this may be what they revert to under stress.
Once that act of thumbing back the hammer has become habit, another problem crops up: the Hollywood-inspired (and reinforced) act of cocking the gun to show the bad guy that you "really mean it!" I'll refer you back to the second paragraph, with emphasis.
(Yes, I know you'll promise not to do that either. But if you've told your subconscious that cocking the hammer is accepted shooting technique, do you think it'll ask your conscious mind for permission when the time comes - especially if decades of TV and movies has told it otherwise? Of course not! "Besides", your subconscious thinks, "if Tyne Daly can do it, why can't I?")
Removing the SA capability eliminates the chances of any of this happening. (If you make the conscious decision to carry a gun with SA capability, I recommend that you attend the Lethal Force Institute's "LFI-1" class, where you will learn how to defend that choice - and counter any false claims that may arise from it - in court.)
From a gunsmithing perspective, I've found that eliminating the SA capability can, on some guns (Colt and Dan Wesson), give a bit more leeway in terms of honing the double action. Without the need to worry about the single action sear, the double action can be tuned far more radically than is otherwise possible. In S&W and Ruger guns, reducing the DA pull to the barest minimum (as some request) will result in an unconscionably light SA pull - often below 32 ounces. Eliminating the SA notches means that this ceases to be a worry.
Speaking for myself, I didn't start to shoot DA well until I'd gotten rid of the SA capability completely. True story: one day (many years ago), shortly after transitioning to shooting only revolvers, I was participating in a match (Bianchi type.) I was having trouble with missing those little round steel plates they use for one stage, and it was making me madder and madder. At one point the buzzer sounded, and I drew the gun (a Python) and cocked it for each plate. I downed all of them, but my happiness was shattered by a taunting voice of a 1911 partisan that said "hey, Grant, I've got a gun that does all that for me!"
After that I removed the SA from my revolvers and started shooting DA exclusively. It wasn't long before I was beating the guys (including the loudmouth in question) who were shooting 1911s with crisp single action triggers. It can be done!
If you have any doubt as to how accurately a double action can be shot, go watch your local PPC match - there's one just about everywhere in the country. You'll see lots of folks shooting DAO revolvers at up to 50 yards and producing groups that can be covered by your hand. That should be good enough for any defensive use, and you too can do it with just a bit of practice!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Let's start with the usual argument for retaining single action capability, which I call the "Walter Mitty scenario": the mythical need for making precise long range head shots. Let's face it, folks - this just never happens in real life!
However, let's say that you're having a Jack Bauer kind of day and are now facing just this scenario. Mightn't that be just a tad bit stressful? Wouldn't that make you even more nervous, knowing that you'll be trying the toughest possible handgun shot under the worst possible conditions? With all that adrenaline now flowing through your system, is this really the time that you want a light, short trigger pull that is very easy to accidentally release? Not me, bunky!
This is the reason for DAO: light single action triggers are great on the calm shooting range, but pose a liability risk for unintentional discharges under stress. As Massad Ayoob says, single action triggers are great shooting tools, but lousy threat management tools.
Now I I know what you're thinking: "OK, but I promise I'll never use it!" I'm sure you mean that sincerely, but It's been well established over the decades that people tend to do in combat what they do in training.
It's human nature to practice what we're already good at, and to do that which is easiest for us. At the range, it's not uncommon to watch someone shoot a revolver at, say 50 feet and become disenchanted with their groups. At that point, they usually switch to the easier pull of the single action, and shoot that way. This imprints their subconscious to use single action when they are unsure of their abilities, and this may be what they revert to under stress.
Once that act of thumbing back the hammer has become habit, another problem crops up: the Hollywood-inspired (and reinforced) act of cocking the gun to show the bad guy that you "really mean it!" I'll refer you back to the second paragraph, with emphasis.
(Yes, I know you'll promise not to do that either. But if you've told your subconscious that cocking the hammer is accepted shooting technique, do you think it'll ask your conscious mind for permission when the time comes - especially if decades of TV and movies has told it otherwise? Of course not! "Besides", your subconscious thinks, "if Tyne Daly can do it, why can't I?")
Removing the SA capability eliminates the chances of any of this happening. (If you make the conscious decision to carry a gun with SA capability, I recommend that you attend the Lethal Force Institute's "LFI-1" class, where you will learn how to defend that choice - and counter any false claims that may arise from it - in court.)
From a gunsmithing perspective, I've found that eliminating the SA capability can, on some guns (Colt and Dan Wesson), give a bit more leeway in terms of honing the double action. Without the need to worry about the single action sear, the double action can be tuned far more radically than is otherwise possible. In S&W and Ruger guns, reducing the DA pull to the barest minimum (as some request) will result in an unconscionably light SA pull - often below 32 ounces. Eliminating the SA notches means that this ceases to be a worry.
Speaking for myself, I didn't start to shoot DA well until I'd gotten rid of the SA capability completely. True story: one day (many years ago), shortly after transitioning to shooting only revolvers, I was participating in a match (Bianchi type.) I was having trouble with missing those little round steel plates they use for one stage, and it was making me madder and madder. At one point the buzzer sounded, and I drew the gun (a Python) and cocked it for each plate. I downed all of them, but my happiness was shattered by a taunting voice of a 1911 partisan that said "hey, Grant, I've got a gun that does all that for me!"
After that I removed the SA from my revolvers and started shooting DA exclusively. It wasn't long before I was beating the guys (including the loudmouth in question) who were shooting 1911s with crisp single action triggers. It can be done!
If you have any doubt as to how accurately a double action can be shot, go watch your local PPC match - there's one just about everywhere in the country. You'll see lots of folks shooting DAO revolvers at up to 50 yards and producing groups that can be covered by your hand. That should be good enough for any defensive use, and you too can do it with just a bit of practice!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Yes, there are people who still think this is a good idea
Wednesday, July 11,
2007
Xavier Thoughts chronicles the story
of an elderly
gentleman who, using his gun, confronted a burglar in his home. The
outcome was that the perp got sent to jail. Great, right? Well,
maybe not. This may get ugly when the inevitable civil suit is
filed.
You see, the perp was injured because the homeowner fired an unaimed "warning shot" which fragmented and struck the intruder. As if that wasn't bad enough in these litigious times, the gentleman couldn't help running his mouth on television, which didn't do any good in terms of his legal defense.
I'll leave the analysis to Xavier, who does a much better job than your humble correspondent. I will, however, leave you with this thought: this is exactly why I strongly encourage anyone who even contemplates keeping a firearm for self-defense to take Judicious Use of Deadly Force from Massad Ayoob at the Lethal Force Institute. Had this fellow done so, he wouldn't have left himself open for what will probably be a whale of a civil lawsuit.
-=[ Grant ]=-
You see, the perp was injured because the homeowner fired an unaimed "warning shot" which fragmented and struck the intruder. As if that wasn't bad enough in these litigious times, the gentleman couldn't help running his mouth on television, which didn't do any good in terms of his legal defense.
I'll leave the analysis to Xavier, who does a much better job than your humble correspondent. I will, however, leave you with this thought: this is exactly why I strongly encourage anyone who even contemplates keeping a firearm for self-defense to take Judicious Use of Deadly Force from Massad Ayoob at the Lethal Force Institute. Had this fellow done so, he wouldn't have left himself open for what will probably be a whale of a civil lawsuit.
-=[ Grant ]=-
How NOT to spend your training dollars
Monday, July 02,
2007
I admit up front that I'm
not a professional firearms/tactics instructor. I do some assistant
teaching now and again, but I'm no Clint Smith. However, I have
been a student, I have been involved in the teaching side of
things, and I am a general all-around busybody. As it happens,
those are better qualifications than some "instructors" I've
met!
Here's my two cents worth: avoid "checklist" shooting classes. What do I mean by "checklist" classes? Those where the instructor provides a long list of the things that you will (ostensibly) learn in his/her class, implicitly (or explicitly) inviting you to compare how many things he teaches versus how many things another instructor does. It's a variation of the "mine is bigger than yours" game played by adolescents of all ages.
This topic came to mind recently when I read a review of a "tactical carbine" class someone had taken. The student - gushing with praise over how great the class was - had a long list of things that the class had "learned" over two whole days. My assistant teaching experience happens to be in that type of rifle class, and I know for a fact that there is no way to adequately cover even half of his long list in a single two day class. Note the term "adequately."
Just getting proper explanations (lecture portions) of the techniques he listed would take a couple of days, let alone a single repetition of each technique by each student. (A single repetition, you understand, doesn't even begin to develop a skill.) In this case, the sheer quantity of techniques presented would have necessitated a "demonstration only" type of curriculum for many of the techniques. Heck, just doing a proper sight-in procedure with a dozen (or more) students will take a good portion of a day, and sight-in was one of the things he listed!
Beyond that, even those things that were actually treated to live fire would not have allowed time for any feedback from the "instructor." Without feedback, without critique, how do you know how you've done - and how to increase your skill? Isn't that why we train in the first place?
The student who runs his finger down a checklist (see why I use the term?) of things he "learned" in a class will come away impressed - but no more capable. There is a difference between developing a skill (which is what you should be doing in a shooting class) and simply being exposed to the topic (which is undoubtedly the experience of this fellow.) Sadly there are some, both teachers and students, who don't know the difference.
It's that old quality vs. quantity equation all over again. In the immediate area we have a couple of shooting schools; one is of the checklist variety, while the other is more concerned about what their students actually retain. The former trades on quantity, while the latter is concerned with quality. Guess which one I recommend when locals ask me where to train?
When you're shopping for schooling, what you really want to know is if the teacher covers his/her material thoroughly, and is concerned that the students actually make progress - not how many items are on the checklist. It make take a little more effort to find such a school, but your effort will be rewarded.
Unless, of course, you just want to compare your checklist against your buddy's. In that case, there are lots of places that can take your money, and they're a lot easier to find!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Here's my two cents worth: avoid "checklist" shooting classes. What do I mean by "checklist" classes? Those where the instructor provides a long list of the things that you will (ostensibly) learn in his/her class, implicitly (or explicitly) inviting you to compare how many things he teaches versus how many things another instructor does. It's a variation of the "mine is bigger than yours" game played by adolescents of all ages.
This topic came to mind recently when I read a review of a "tactical carbine" class someone had taken. The student - gushing with praise over how great the class was - had a long list of things that the class had "learned" over two whole days. My assistant teaching experience happens to be in that type of rifle class, and I know for a fact that there is no way to adequately cover even half of his long list in a single two day class. Note the term "adequately."
Just getting proper explanations (lecture portions) of the techniques he listed would take a couple of days, let alone a single repetition of each technique by each student. (A single repetition, you understand, doesn't even begin to develop a skill.) In this case, the sheer quantity of techniques presented would have necessitated a "demonstration only" type of curriculum for many of the techniques. Heck, just doing a proper sight-in procedure with a dozen (or more) students will take a good portion of a day, and sight-in was one of the things he listed!
Beyond that, even those things that were actually treated to live fire would not have allowed time for any feedback from the "instructor." Without feedback, without critique, how do you know how you've done - and how to increase your skill? Isn't that why we train in the first place?
The student who runs his finger down a checklist (see why I use the term?) of things he "learned" in a class will come away impressed - but no more capable. There is a difference between developing a skill (which is what you should be doing in a shooting class) and simply being exposed to the topic (which is undoubtedly the experience of this fellow.) Sadly there are some, both teachers and students, who don't know the difference.
It's that old quality vs. quantity equation all over again. In the immediate area we have a couple of shooting schools; one is of the checklist variety, while the other is more concerned about what their students actually retain. The former trades on quantity, while the latter is concerned with quality. Guess which one I recommend when locals ask me where to train?
When you're shopping for schooling, what you really want to know is if the teacher covers his/her material thoroughly, and is concerned that the students actually make progress - not how many items are on the checklist. It make take a little more effort to find such a school, but your effort will be rewarded.
Unless, of course, you just want to compare your checklist against your buddy's. In that case, there are lots of places that can take your money, and they're a lot easier to find!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Are ammo prices keeping you from learning?
Monday, June 11,
2007
Lately I've been hearing from
people who've decided against attending training courses because of
the cost of ammunition. If I may, I think that this is a
shortsighted attitude!
Yes, ammo prices are the highest they've ever been. Yes, the number of rounds necessary to complete a decent shooting class is a significantly higher expense than it used to be. It's still worth it, and it's a bargain that you should take advantage of.
If you plan to carry a handgun, or if you keep a shotgun for home defense, training - proper training - may make the difference between a successful outcome and a tragedy. Isn't that worth the few extra dollars that the necessary ammunition is going to cost? I sure think it is!
By the time you add up travel, lodging, registration fees, meals, and incidentals, that little extra the ammo costs really isn't a big deal. Spend the money - it's important to you, and to your loved ones, that you not miss that class!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Yes, ammo prices are the highest they've ever been. Yes, the number of rounds necessary to complete a decent shooting class is a significantly higher expense than it used to be. It's still worth it, and it's a bargain that you should take advantage of.
If you plan to carry a handgun, or if you keep a shotgun for home defense, training - proper training - may make the difference between a successful outcome and a tragedy. Isn't that worth the few extra dollars that the necessary ammunition is going to cost? I sure think it is!
By the time you add up travel, lodging, registration fees, meals, and incidentals, that little extra the ammo costs really isn't a big deal. Spend the money - it's important to you, and to your loved ones, that you not miss that class!
-=[ Grant ]=-
"It's perfect for the little lady" - NOT!
Monday, April 16,
2007
If
you're here, it's probably because you like (or at least
appreciate) our friend the revolver. My feelings, of course, are
well known: I believe the revolver to be the single greatest
firearm that one could ever hope to own. I believe that people who
shoot revolvers demonstrate themselves to be of above average
intelligence, more refined sensibilities, and generally better
looking than those who do not. (I exaggerate, of course. Except in
my own case, where these things are certainly true. I tell my wife
so every day.)
However, even in my zeal I cannot recommend the revolver to every single person; it is not the best choice for everyone or every circumstance. I've said this before, and I'll probably being saying it again and again as time goes on.
I particularly cringe whenever I see some fellow buying (or hear someone recommending) that the revolver is always the "best choice" for a woman, hinting that women are incapable of operating a semiauto properly. Sometimes the revolver is the best choice for a female, just as it sometimes is for a male - though not always, and not even most of the time!
Not being a woman, I've been at a loss to explain my discomfort in any terms other than "that seems stupid to me." Luckily, over at the View From the Porch, Tam does a good (and concise) job of explaining just why.
-=[ Grant ]=-
However, even in my zeal I cannot recommend the revolver to every single person; it is not the best choice for everyone or every circumstance. I've said this before, and I'll probably being saying it again and again as time goes on.
I particularly cringe whenever I see some fellow buying (or hear someone recommending) that the revolver is always the "best choice" for a woman, hinting that women are incapable of operating a semiauto properly. Sometimes the revolver is the best choice for a female, just as it sometimes is for a male - though not always, and not even most of the time!
Not being a woman, I've been at a loss to explain my discomfort in any terms other than "that seems stupid to me." Luckily, over at the View From the Porch, Tam does a good (and concise) job of explaining just why.
-=[ Grant ]=-
On pairing women with guns
Wednesday, March 07,
2007
This article in the Tennessean newspaper
explores the
"phenomenon" of women who choose to carry a gun for their own
protection. It's an interesting read, and when I saw it I was
reminded of my own wife's journey to self-empowerment (in the
ballistic sense.)
I'm of the belief that women should always be proactive with regards to their own safety. Sadly, our current society has inculcated a fear of weapons into the collective conscious of the female half of the population. It takes real fortitude for a lady to swim against that tide and arm herself, and I salute those who choose to do so.
Drawing from my own wife's experience I've formed some very specific opinions on the topic of introducing women to shooting. Guys, if there is a woman in your life who has decided to travel down the road of self protection, I offer you Grant's Rules For Helping Ladies Who Want To Shoot.
1) Don't try to teach her yourself. Aside from passing on bad habits that you have (I don't care if you did qualify as "expert" when you were in the Army), it's difficult to impart what you do right no matter how sincere your desire to help.
Women learn differently than men; precious few men understand this, and even fewer understand how to teach to it. It's not uncommon for women to become extremely frustrated under these conditions, and give up entirely. It may not happen until the lessons are over - you may never know of the damage you've done. Let someone else - someone who is experienced teaching women - do this for you. It doesn't mean you're any less of a man, and it just might save you some grief.
2) Rule #1 is increased by a factor of 10 if she is your GF or wife! Ignore this at your peril! I am not kidding!
3) If possible, get her to a women's only class that is actually taught by a female instructor. (If you're on the west coast, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the women's only classes taught by Gila Hayes at the Firearms Academy of Seattle. She's tops. Seriously.)
4) Don't pick her gun for her. So many times a woman, bowing to the desires of the man who proffers her shooting advice (solicited or otherwise), ends up with a lightweight titanium or scandium revolver that is incredibly ill-suited for her physical makeup. The recoil is brutal (hey, even I don't like shooting them), and their stock triggers can be difficult for petite forefingers to actuate. Yes, you could send it to me and have that problem eased, but let her decide if it is right for her!
(Listen, if you've read my blog for any length of time you know that I'm a rabid proponent of the revolver for personal protection. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a problem extant that a good revolver can't solve. Even so, I acknowledge an autoloader is often the better choice for a woman.) The very best thing you can do is curb your own opinions and take her to a gun range that rents guns, where she can pick her own way through the models. If she picks an autoloader, it won't hurt my feelings. (Not for long, anyhow.) The important thing is that it be her own choice.
Following these simple rules will result in an excited new shooter and harmony at home (where appropriate.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
I'm of the belief that women should always be proactive with regards to their own safety. Sadly, our current society has inculcated a fear of weapons into the collective conscious of the female half of the population. It takes real fortitude for a lady to swim against that tide and arm herself, and I salute those who choose to do so.
Drawing from my own wife's experience I've formed some very specific opinions on the topic of introducing women to shooting. Guys, if there is a woman in your life who has decided to travel down the road of self protection, I offer you Grant's Rules For Helping Ladies Who Want To Shoot.
1) Don't try to teach her yourself. Aside from passing on bad habits that you have (I don't care if you did qualify as "expert" when you were in the Army), it's difficult to impart what you do right no matter how sincere your desire to help.
Women learn differently than men; precious few men understand this, and even fewer understand how to teach to it. It's not uncommon for women to become extremely frustrated under these conditions, and give up entirely. It may not happen until the lessons are over - you may never know of the damage you've done. Let someone else - someone who is experienced teaching women - do this for you. It doesn't mean you're any less of a man, and it just might save you some grief.
2) Rule #1 is increased by a factor of 10 if she is your GF or wife! Ignore this at your peril! I am not kidding!
3) If possible, get her to a women's only class that is actually taught by a female instructor. (If you're on the west coast, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the women's only classes taught by Gila Hayes at the Firearms Academy of Seattle. She's tops. Seriously.)
4) Don't pick her gun for her. So many times a woman, bowing to the desires of the man who proffers her shooting advice (solicited or otherwise), ends up with a lightweight titanium or scandium revolver that is incredibly ill-suited for her physical makeup. The recoil is brutal (hey, even I don't like shooting them), and their stock triggers can be difficult for petite forefingers to actuate. Yes, you could send it to me and have that problem eased, but let her decide if it is right for her!
(Listen, if you've read my blog for any length of time you know that I'm a rabid proponent of the revolver for personal protection. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a problem extant that a good revolver can't solve. Even so, I acknowledge an autoloader is often the better choice for a woman.) The very best thing you can do is curb your own opinions and take her to a gun range that rents guns, where she can pick her own way through the models. If she picks an autoloader, it won't hurt my feelings. (Not for long, anyhow.) The important thing is that it be her own choice.
Following these simple rules will result in an excited new shooter and harmony at home (where appropriate.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Sad fate for an innocent Anaconda
Wednesday, November 22,
2006
This
article over at the GunZone alerts us to the sad end of a nice
gun. Be sure to read the owner's narrative - and note the reloading press
used.
I've been following such stories of gun blow-ups for several years, and in the cases I've run across a huge percentage - a majority by far - have been the result of ammo reloaded on a Dillon RL550b press.
No, I don't think the RL550b is inherently dangerous, nor do I believe that it should be blamed; blame always rests with the person doing the work. However, that particular machine does make it easier for a momentary lapse of concentration to result in a catastrophic failure, because it doesn't auto-index. Relying on the human being to remember whether or not he/she advanced the shellplate makes it far too easy to end up with either double charges or squibs. I've documented this happening with relatively new reloaders, and with very well experienced reloaders.
If you own an RL550b, you need to make absolutely sure that you are not distracted when reloading; this means no radio, television, screaming children, or talkative friends in the room when you are operating that press. (This is good practice regardless of the press you're using, but absolutely imperative with the 550b.)
Reloading is generally safe and rewarding - as long as you supply the appropriate vigilance!
-=[ Grant ]=-
I've been following such stories of gun blow-ups for several years, and in the cases I've run across a huge percentage - a majority by far - have been the result of ammo reloaded on a Dillon RL550b press.
No, I don't think the RL550b is inherently dangerous, nor do I believe that it should be blamed; blame always rests with the person doing the work. However, that particular machine does make it easier for a momentary lapse of concentration to result in a catastrophic failure, because it doesn't auto-index. Relying on the human being to remember whether or not he/she advanced the shellplate makes it far too easy to end up with either double charges or squibs. I've documented this happening with relatively new reloaders, and with very well experienced reloaders.
If you own an RL550b, you need to make absolutely sure that you are not distracted when reloading; this means no radio, television, screaming children, or talkative friends in the room when you are operating that press. (This is good practice regardless of the press you're using, but absolutely imperative with the 550b.)
Reloading is generally safe and rewarding - as long as you supply the appropriate vigilance!
-=[ Grant ]=-
On reliability...
Wednesday, October 04,
2006
Forgive my deviation from revolver
centrism, but a recent rifle class in which I assisted brought to
mind a topic which is just not understood amongst gun owners:
"reliability."
What is "reliable"? You'll hear all kinds of definitions, all kinds of criteria. My definition is deceptively simple: the next time you pull the trigger, the gun will function perfectly. That means zero, zilch, nada, nyet failures. Every single time, regardless of how many rounds you've just shot. Not just "bang", but feed, fire, eject, and feed again.
Sounds like I'm easy to please, right? You'd be surprised at how few guns actually do perform to this standard. I expect a reliable gun to do this after a full weekend of shooting, regardless of the number of rounds I've shot, as well as right after cleaning. Every single time, without exception.
Note that I don't specify any particular number of rounds, because I've encountered instances where reliability was defined by some arbitrary round count, such as 500 - and when the gun crapped out on the 501st round, it was still deemed to be reliable since it had met the number! Sorry, not in my book.
One test I've heard (for autoloading rifles) is "six magazines of duty loads, fired as quickly as you can change magazines." Sounds great, right? I've seen an AR-15 which would only pass such a test one time, yet the owner decided it was reliable because it met the test criteria! The fact that it couldn't perform the feat again did not dissuade him in his opinion.
The only caveats are that 1) the gun be maintained according to the maker's recommendations and 2) fed ammunition which conforms to industry standards for that caliber. Anything else - such as the ever-popular mud wrestling test, making it into a popsicle, and other such activities - can be considered the ballistic equivalent of a Harlem Globetrotters game: entertaining to watch, but no indicator of an ability to win the NBA finals.
I've seen more than one gun which happily ate a magazine of ammo after being dropped into a mud puddle, but couldn't be counted on to function perfectly at any unannounced time. Mind you, it malfunctioned maybe once every 400 or so rounds, but sooner or later it would fail. Reliable? Not by my definition.
You'll run into many people who will tell you that this is "no big deal - I've got lots of guns that will do that." At the risk of offending someone - believe me, it's not my intention - I will quote Hugh Laurie, playing the namesake character in the TV series 'House': "everyone lies."
When I say "every time you pull the trigger", I mean EVERYTIME. When I say zero failures, I mean ZERO. One fellow of my acquaintance is known locally for his promotion of a particular gun, which he insists is "absolutely reliable." This is a fellow with a good reputation, someone that other people consider honest and, presumably, look up to. Trouble is, he lies - I've seen his gun fail, and I know others who have witnessed it too. Yet, he continues to insist that his gun is "perfectly reliable." In one class, I met someone with an HK 91, supposedly the epitome of functionality; of course, the owner insisted it was "reliable". It suffered a FTF the first day, and an FTE the second. The owner continued to refer to it as "reliable".
If your gun will not function with ammunition that meets industry-standard specs, then it is unreliable. I had an encounter with a gunstore commando a while back; he was going to loan his "custom built" AR-15 to another employee. He gushed that his pride and joy was the most reliable gun he had ever seen - then, almost in the same breath, told the other fellow not to shoot Winchester ammunition in it, as "it won't feed Winchester all of the time." Even if it functioned 100% with everything else (though I doubt it), that it wouldn't work with one specific brand means that it simply wasn't reliable. (Back to revolvers - if your wheelgun won't fire every brand of ammunition in its caliber with zero misfires, it's not reliable!
My favorite rifle instructor, Georges Rahbani, always says that you are only as good as you are on demand - the same goes for your gun!
-=[ Grant ]=-
What is "reliable"? You'll hear all kinds of definitions, all kinds of criteria. My definition is deceptively simple: the next time you pull the trigger, the gun will function perfectly. That means zero, zilch, nada, nyet failures. Every single time, regardless of how many rounds you've just shot. Not just "bang", but feed, fire, eject, and feed again.
Sounds like I'm easy to please, right? You'd be surprised at how few guns actually do perform to this standard. I expect a reliable gun to do this after a full weekend of shooting, regardless of the number of rounds I've shot, as well as right after cleaning. Every single time, without exception.
Note that I don't specify any particular number of rounds, because I've encountered instances where reliability was defined by some arbitrary round count, such as 500 - and when the gun crapped out on the 501st round, it was still deemed to be reliable since it had met the number! Sorry, not in my book.
One test I've heard (for autoloading rifles) is "six magazines of duty loads, fired as quickly as you can change magazines." Sounds great, right? I've seen an AR-15 which would only pass such a test one time, yet the owner decided it was reliable because it met the test criteria! The fact that it couldn't perform the feat again did not dissuade him in his opinion.
The only caveats are that 1) the gun be maintained according to the maker's recommendations and 2) fed ammunition which conforms to industry standards for that caliber. Anything else - such as the ever-popular mud wrestling test, making it into a popsicle, and other such activities - can be considered the ballistic equivalent of a Harlem Globetrotters game: entertaining to watch, but no indicator of an ability to win the NBA finals.
I've seen more than one gun which happily ate a magazine of ammo after being dropped into a mud puddle, but couldn't be counted on to function perfectly at any unannounced time. Mind you, it malfunctioned maybe once every 400 or so rounds, but sooner or later it would fail. Reliable? Not by my definition.
You'll run into many people who will tell you that this is "no big deal - I've got lots of guns that will do that." At the risk of offending someone - believe me, it's not my intention - I will quote Hugh Laurie, playing the namesake character in the TV series 'House': "everyone lies."
When I say "every time you pull the trigger", I mean EVERYTIME. When I say zero failures, I mean ZERO. One fellow of my acquaintance is known locally for his promotion of a particular gun, which he insists is "absolutely reliable." This is a fellow with a good reputation, someone that other people consider honest and, presumably, look up to. Trouble is, he lies - I've seen his gun fail, and I know others who have witnessed it too. Yet, he continues to insist that his gun is "perfectly reliable." In one class, I met someone with an HK 91, supposedly the epitome of functionality; of course, the owner insisted it was "reliable". It suffered a FTF the first day, and an FTE the second. The owner continued to refer to it as "reliable".
If your gun will not function with ammunition that meets industry-standard specs, then it is unreliable. I had an encounter with a gunstore commando a while back; he was going to loan his "custom built" AR-15 to another employee. He gushed that his pride and joy was the most reliable gun he had ever seen - then, almost in the same breath, told the other fellow not to shoot Winchester ammunition in it, as "it won't feed Winchester all of the time." Even if it functioned 100% with everything else (though I doubt it), that it wouldn't work with one specific brand means that it simply wasn't reliable. (Back to revolvers - if your wheelgun won't fire every brand of ammunition in its caliber with zero misfires, it's not reliable!
My favorite rifle instructor, Georges Rahbani, always says that you are only as good as you are on demand - the same goes for your gun!
-=[ Grant ]=-
She "gets it"
Wednesday, August 23,
2006
Tamara K., over at her blog The View From The Porch, says this:
"For what it's worth, I don't carry a gun to protect me from muggers at the mall. I don't even carry a gun to protect me, period. I carry a gun every day despite living in an area where I'm more likely to be hit by an asteroid than attacked by a mugger as a symbol of my refusal to buy into this culture of teat-sucking victimhood for one day longer. I carry it because I can."
Recite this, word for word, next time some busybody asks (with the inevitable sneer) why you need to carry a gun.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Revolver grips: finger grooves or plain?
Friday, August 11,
2006
Many people ask me where to get finger grooved grips for various guns (often for the Colt Python, but the Ruger GP-100 seems to be a common request as well.) Personally, I usually try to talk them out of that style grip, and I'd like to share my reasoning.
First, the grooves rarely fit any given person perfectly; for my hands, for instance, every grooved grip I've ever tried required me to spread my fingers to an uncomfortable degree. If I didn't, my fingers would wind up on top of the separating ridges, making shooting far less comfortable and secure! Women, who often have hands that are significantly smaller than their male counterparts, are particularly sensitive to this problem.
Second, anytime you add spacing between your fingers the combined strength of your grip is reduced. You simply grip harder with your fingers together than apart. There's a reason that hammers don't have finger grooves!
Third, having grooves on your grips slows down your acquisition and draw. No less a personage than Jerry Miculek, in a television interview, eschewed finger groove grips. As he put it, "no one gets a perfect grip out of the holster every time." A smooth, non-grooved grip allows you to get a workable grip immediately, where a grooved model requires that you get perfect finger placement from the outset. That is not what you want on a self-defense firearm!
I could point out that another revolver shooter who was "pretty good" was Bill Jordan, and you'll note that the grips he designed and used don't have finger grooves.
It's possible that if one is accustomed to holding a revolver in a light target-shooters grip, finger grooves may help in control. (I don't, I don't know anyone who does, and it's not what most trainers teach today.) Outside of that, I think they are an abomination and suggest that you not use them!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Speedloaders: which brand is best?
Wednesday, May 17,
2006
Lots of people ask me about speedloaders - as in "what speedloader should I buy?"
Well, there are really only a couple of choices these days: Safariland and HKS. (The superb SL Variant models are no longer imported, the Maxfires don't - at least in my mind - qualify for the "speed" part of the name, and the Australian "Jet" loaders are close enough to the Safariland Comp III that we'll consider them the same.)
Personally, unless I'm using a gun for which they don't have a model, I use only Safariland speedloaders. Here's why.
First, they're simply a whole lot faster to use. Not only are they faster to release their payload, they hold the rounds in a solid, fairly rigid package. That rigidity makes it faster to align the bullets with the chambers than the "floppy" HKS style. This is an important, and often overlooked, advantage.
Second, they're more secure. Over the years I've listened to people bad-mouth the Safariland speedloaders, with the statement that they release their rounds too easily - when in a pocket or dropped, the story usually goes.
I've been carrying Safarilands on my person for about 10 years now, and I've never had a single round released when I didn't want it to. They won't, unless you forcibly jam an object into the release button which is in the middle of the rounds. I've had more than one HKS let go while in the speedloader pouch, let alone my pocket!
Dropping? When this argument comes up I pull out the oldest, most used Comp II that I have. (It's been used for practice for a decade, and I stopped counting when it reached 5.000 reload cycles. I keep it loaded with dummy rounds - regular bullet, case, but no primers- for practice.) I drop it on the floor or ground, then pick it up and throw it on the ground; if there's a wall nearby, I'll either kick it or throw it into the wall. I've done this little demo hundreds of times, and I've never had a round fall out.
However, the only way to get this kind of performance and reliability is to load the things correctly! Safariland doesn't help their case, as they sell competition "loading blocks" that force you into loading the things improperly.
Most people will put the rounds into the speedloader, then turn it face-down onto a table so that they can push on the button to lock the rounds. This is almost guaranteed to leave a round (or two or three) that isn't fully seated, and when the speedloader is dropped it/they fall out. No wonder people think they don't work well!
The key is to hold the speedloader BULLETS UP, and push the button up while simultaneously turning it to the right. You'll feel the rounds "lock in", and they won't come out until you want them to!
UPDATE: I've now seen several guns whose cranes (yokes) have been bent apparently due to the side loading forces of Maxfire speedloaders. I strongly recommend that you not use Maxfires!
-=[ Grant ]=-
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