Catastrophic Training Scars From Competition Shooting

July 11, 2021

John Buol SensibleShooter Leave a comment

The “training scar” fallacy is a popular myth that refuses to die. It typically stems from making unsubstantiated claims against some aspect of competitive shooting. El Presidente remains a popular target.


Review how a school like Gunsite uses a drill like this:
https://www.ammoman.com/blog/standard-pistol-drills-the-el-presidente/

https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2018/12/26/skills-check-el-presidente-drill

Set up three silhouette-type targets with an identified and reasonably-sized center zone (about 8 inches across) at around 10 meters away. At the command to start, turn, present, engage each target with two shots, reload, and re-engage each with two more shots.

Use a par time of 10 seconds for self-loading handguns and 12 for revolvers. Score 5 points for hits in the center zone, 2 for shots outside that zone but hitting the silhouette, and 0 for misses. If completed faster than the suggested par time, add a 5 point bonus for every full second faster; if slower than the par time, deduct 5 points for every full second.

Completing the course on par with 12 centered hits scores 60 points. Gunsite Operations Manager Ed Head says, “Jeff Cooper felt anyone capable of performing this drill on demand, with a suitable carry pistol, achieving a score of 45 or better, was probably an expert with their firearm and carry gear.” Gunsite uses 40+ points as “Good” and 50+ points as “Great” for their students.

By practical competition standards, this isn’t terribly great shooting. Shooting in Production division (which resembles carry gear) completing CM99-11 with a Hit Factor of 6 (60 points as described above, which is “Great/Expert” among Gunsite students) will be competitive with C Class shooters, a Level 2 Classification and the second lowest skill bracket.

The only considerable “training scar” impacting most military, law enforcement, and civilian gun owners is a general lack of skill. A simple review of the very low standards that declare one as “qualified” on typical public sector courses exposes this. Very few military, law enforcement, and CCW people lacking competition shooting can consistently hit that 40+ point level Gunsite recommends, and even that would put you with the Level 1 (D Class) shooters.

The potential problems highlighted against competitive shooting are interesting to consider but do not become relevant until a base of ability is built. Using the El Presidente course highlighted here, a handgun owner that can’t consistently pull it off with decent hits (all on the silhouettes, most of them centered) in under 12 seconds can not have a “training scar” because they do not yet have anything resembling training.

Recoil Anticipation

June 10, 2019

John Buol ConventionalShooter, MarksmanshipQualification, MilitaryMarksman, SensibleShooter , , , 2 Comments

I’d argue that recoil anticipation (also known as flinch, pre-ignition push, trigger jerk, and a variety of cuss words…) is the single biggest detriment to novice shooters. Novice here also includes gun owners, law enforcement, and military personnel with years and decades of “experience” that never developed shooting ability beyond passing routine qualification.

Learning how to overcome (or at least greatly reduce) the very natural tendency to react to recoil, noise, flash, and movement of a discharging firearm while attempting to maintain alignment on target is the most single most important thing a firearm user can do to improve proficiency. This also increases the ability to followthrough and call shots, critical to refining a shot process.

The lack of attention paid to this critical element of successful shooting is the biggest reason why many gun owners, law enforcement, and military personnel never progress beyond the elementary, initial, basic skill levels used during initial entry , basic, academy training. Far too many personnel are not even aware of this being an issue and most of them completely fail to actively address it.

For intermediate shooters, DRY FIRE DOES NOT FIX RECOIL ANTICIPATION BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE CHANGES EXECUTION . Here’s the proof right here and this is extremely common. Slight disruption to the gun sufficient to cause a miss as distance increases. At close range, people often chalk this off to sight picture when actuality it’s a slight case of recoil anticipation. Take this back to 15 or 25 yards, it’s a miss. This drill works great with a partner but if you’re working alone, try mixing in some dummy rounds. Facts not opinions is what I am after. Hold yourself accountable and fix your deficiencies.

Note, this doesn’t mean that dry practice isn’t useful and won’t help at all. Continued dry practice will continue to enhance (or at least maintain) the ability to more rapidly obtain sufficient alignment on target and manipulate the trigger without causing disruption. The point is that after a certain point of development, dry practice alone won’t magically fix recoil anticipation because it’s purposely done dry/empty (obviously) and knowledge of that removes that tendency. Only intelligent exposure to live fire, preferably done with dummy rounds (skip loading and other approaches) and perhaps additional feedback from sensors (MantisX, SCATT, etc.), can do this.

If you want to get stronger, you need to subject yourself to the stress of lifting heavier weight, preferably done with intelligently-programmed increases. If you want to eliminate recoil anticipation, you need to subject yourself to recoil, preferably done with intelligently-programmed intermittent exposures (training partner loads as demonstrated below, dummy rounds, intermix shooting with lower recoiling firearm/cartridge, etc.)

https://www.facebook.com/114008039194217/videos/vb.114008039194217/435200330372416/

More on this:

https://firearmusernetwork.com/grooving-bad-habits/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/training-and-habits/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/misplaced-tactical-training/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/pistol-shooting-questions/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/head-shots-are-still-misses/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/shooting-basics-uspsa-idpa-ipsc/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/dummies-steal-dummy-rounds-smart-shooters-use-them/

Krag-Jørgensen History

April 5, 2019

John Buol MilitaryMarksman, SensibleShooter , , Leave a comment

The Rifle That Help Make America a Superpower

Nice article in National Interest about a classic Norwegian-designed American issue rifle.

Krags are still used in the Norwegian practical rifle competitive shooting event called Stangskyting (Stang shooting, named after Colonel Georg Stang) Competitors in that sport also developed speed loaders as well.

Can You Shoot Better Than A Cop?

January 25, 2019

John Buol Guest Article, SensibleShooter , , , , , , 2 Comments

From Tamara Keel

Can You Shoot Better Than A Cop?

He cites a published study that “…broke down the shooters into three classifications: expert, intermediate, and novice. Experts had either finished the academy shooting course or had been trained in the military while intermediates had no formal academy training but had shot before in either recreational settings or had military rifle training. Finally, the novices were just that. Many of them had never even held a gun in their lives.”

You can see the problem already, right? Military handgun training, outside of a handful of job descriptions, is laughable. The handgun training from a typical LE academy is better than that, but still unlikely to turn out any pistol wizards, either.

Then comes the part that doesn’t automatically follow, which is that us non-po-po shoot better than that. Well, we probably do… assuming we’re an active competitive shooter and/or have had some formal training ourselves.

But as far as the general run of the mill shooting public? I go to the public shooting range. A lot. I see how the general shooting public shoots. It’s not very well. The average shooter at a public range finds the 7 ring of a B-27 at seven yards to be a less than clout shot.

I am not a very good shooter. I’m the special ed student at gun school. When I walk the prize table at a match, I find myself wondering if the tablecloth is not the most valuable thing left on the table, since I already have a Bore Snake and a three ounce bottle of CLP. But when I go to the public range of a weekend? I’m almost always a veritable ninja compared to the shooters on my right and left.

The average shooter is never presented with an opportunity to find out how bad they are, because things like scores and timers are foreign to their experience. It is possible to go to the range monthly for years and years and never see any meaningful improvement because it’s hard to improve that which you do not measure. There’s a lot of Dunning-Kruger in the shooting world.

It’s worth noting that Dr. Dunning’s solution to the cognitive bias experienced by novices that bears his name is to do exactly what Tamara Keel recommends here.

Competitive Shooting: Not Just a Game

September 25, 2018

John Buol Guest Article, SensibleShooter, TacticalPractical , , , , Leave a comment

Field Notes Ep. 13, Competitive Shooting with Robert Vogel, Not Just a Game.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Vogel won his first national championship using the same firearm he carried on duty as a law enforcement officer.

More from Robert Vogel:
https://firearmusernetwork.com/tag/robert-vogel/

Get Gun Owners To Be Shooters

August 25, 2018

John Buol Promotion, SensibleShooter, Shooting Leave a comment

https://ricochet.com/422134/taking-it-off-the-streets/

Taking It Off the Streets
By Kevin Creighton

There’s been a tremendous increase in gun ownership in the past few years, but that gun-buying bubble will pop unless those new gun owners find something to do with their guns other than keeping them unloaded under their beds and hoping they will keep the bad guys away.

Owning a gun should not be a fad. CB radios went away because people found out that there was little to do with a CB except talk to truckers. If we want guns to be something other than tactical pet rocks, we need to introduce gun owners to activities they can do to improve their ability to use a gun under stressful conditions, without throwing them into the ring of competition right from the start with little or no training.

Enter Shoot and Scoot Range Days, put on by Step By Step Gun Training.
https://stepbystepguntraining.com/ssgt-scoot-and-shoot/

This event features simple, easy to follow practical shooting stages that use reactive steel targets to give instant feedback on whether you hit the target (or not) and easy-to-follow courses of fire that use shooting boxes to delineate what targets must be engaged from which positions. The round counts are low (under 25 rounds per stage) and most importantly, the focus of the Range Day isn’t on winning a match, it’s on improving your skills and getting comfortable with carrying a gun in a holster.

A typical Shoot and Scoot Range session consists of two pistol-shooting bays set up for easy-to-shoot courses of fire for people who want to work on drawing from a holster and safely moving with their gun and a bay with a more advanced course of fire that brings in the defensive use of a rifle into the mix. In addition to range officers (who get a big discount on the practice fee in return for their services) on each stage, there’s also a instructor dedicated to teaching first-time attendees how to safely draw from holster and move with their gun. The sessions are three hours long, which is enough time to run through all the courses of fire at least three times, and while timers are in use on the stages, scores are not kept, and the time is used more to gauge personal improvement than who recorded the fastest time on the stage.

Shoot and Scoot Range Days aren’t there to give people a chance to win a match, they’re to give people the experience of being at a match. Attendees get a taste of what it’s like to safely operate a firearm under a small amount of simulated stress, without the stage fright and anxiety that comes from being judged by your peers on your performance. More importantly, people at this event get a feel for what it’s like to carry a gun around on your hip for hours on end.

You would think that’s a common thing among people who have their concealed carry permits and own a defensive pistol, but you’d be wrong. At a recent industry-only event put on by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, some participants were amazed by how few people within the firearms industry itself had any experience drawing a gun from a holster and putting rounds on-target. [This same problem exists among uniformed military personnel.]

If this is the case inside the firearms industry, imagine what it’s like for those on the outside. If we want “Gun Culture 2.0” to truly become a culture, that means that the having a defensive firearm on you or near you needs to be as natural and as normal has having a smartphone on you or near you at all times.

In Defense of ‘Square Range, Static Target’ Training

June 4, 2018

John Buol SensibleShooter , , 1 Comment

Great article by Greg Moats. Read it!

I’d add that his spot-on assessments here are not limited to younger folks and are not caused because the Internet has become increasingly available and popular. Plenty of older people, including those that should know better, are just as capable of this silliness and were doing so well before ARPANET existed.

In Defense of ‘Square Range, Static Target’ Training — or ‘How the internet is screwing up Millennials’
by Greg Moats

http://www.shootingwire.com/features/679eeb80-dbe2-43a2-9d48-99e4a664f01a/

I’m guessing that many of these instructors don’t know that in the late 70’s and 80’s, a number of the “high-speed, low-drag” organizations went to the square range, stationary target, static position schools of competitive shooting to learn basic shooting skills! I was fortunate enough to have been in the first class that Ray ever ran at the Chapman Academy. Since I lived close, we became friends and I helped him with a few classes. The Navy SEALs came to the Chapman Academy to work with Ray. They also went to Berryville to work with Bill Wilson and to MISS to work with John Shaw, two competitive shooters that never ran a black op nor (I’m guessing) heard a shot fired in anger. Apparently all of the square range, static training didn’t get them all killed as they kept coming back.

Training is a progression, a journey consisting of trips back to the square range to polish skills, as well as learning from simulators.

Circus Trick

June 15, 2017

John Buol SensibleShooter, Video , , , , , Leave a comment

Low skilled people continue to whine about standards drills as not being realistic, tactically relevant, or being a “circus trick.” What they’re really doing is attempting to conceal lack of skill, either their own or others. Rather than blame a lack of fundamental skill for a poor result, it’s easier to blame the evaluation for the poor showing. The fact that such a test is known in advance only serves to make it easier.
More

Tactical Reload

March 1, 2017

John Buol SensibleShooter, Shooting , , , , Leave a comment

http://www.gunnuts.net/2015/07/16/magazines-and-reliability/

Magazines and reliability
by Tim aka TCinVA

Dropping magazines, especially partially loaded ones, on the ground is often very hard on the magazine. Apart from dirt, mud, and other detritus that gets inside the magazine, baseplates and feed lips will sometimes crack, and tubes will sometimes bend or dent. This fact is, believe it or not, where the so called “tactical reload” came from.

I actually discussed this with Tom Givens in his Intensive Pistol Skills class a few weeks ago. In the early days of Gunsite the gun that 99.99% of people showed up with was a 1911. In those days there was no Wilson/Rogers 47D magazine and folks didn’t show up to classes with massive piles of magazines for training. Everyone was using GI or factory Colt magazines in their guns. Dropping these magazines on the crushed granite of the range ended up destroying them to the point of students almost put out of commission because they didn’t have any functional magazines left. If the magazines never hit the granite, then you never have that problem, right? VIOLA!! The “tactical reload” as we know it was born.

Just think: All that arguing about reloads you see on the internet dates back to a practice adopted to get around the fact that 1911 magazines circa 1977 sucked out loud. Stew on that one for a bit without getting depressed. I dare ya.

Guns April 1964
See page 18

Click to access G0464.pdf

Tactical Light Use

February 8, 2017

John Buol SensibleShooter , , 2 Comments

“I worry less about it as the need for a light in the CCW fight paradigm is damn near zero. I note that in exactly none of the 62+ CCW shootings that Tom Givens students were involved in was a light used, or needed. When you have an armed robber in your face the need to PID the target is greatly reduced. CCW folks don’t, or shouldn’t, be chasing people into dark holes.”

-Chuck Haggard

http://www.policeone.com/police-products/duty-gear/flashlights/tips/5322302-Proper-use-of-weapon-mounted-lights/

“I’ve never encountered a civilian CCW holder with a weapon-mounted light that had a clear idea of when to use it or how to use it. Handheld I strongly recommend as a tool for life. WML… get training before you throw on one, then decide. To get them thinking, I ask them how they will feel pointing the gun at their family to identify them.”

-Ken Nelson

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