Go to an indoor range and watch the shooters. Most will likely be shooting at 7 yards (police and military handgun training was traditionally done at that distance more than seventy years ago--it had nothing to do with the Tueller drill).
Most will probably be shooting rather slowly and deliberately, with perhaps a one second interval between shots.
The shooters will undoubtedly be concentrating primarily on group size.
That's what I started doing when I stared carrying in 2008. It was little different from what I had done fifty-plus years earlier, except that silhouette targets with scoring areas replaced the old NRA bulls-eye targets.
The gun club brought in some trainers from the Texas Defensive Shooting Association to put on a defensive shooting class. Service-size semi-autos were required, along with OWB holsters.
We shot one bulls-eye target. Then we moved to steel torso targets, three in a row. We were told to shoot at the tree targets as rapidly as we could, while hitting them consistently. They took audio video, and told us to do it again. And again. And again. For the better part of the first day, we did that over and aver again. The goal was to increase rapidity of fire and hit rate. After eight hundred to a thousand rounds each, most of the new students had registered 30+ percentage improvements in each measure.
I had never dreamed of shooting so rapidly. I did not understand the reason, at first. I had never thought about the fact that a fit attacker can cover five yards in one second, and I was not aware that the realities of handgun wounding meant that one might need, say, 2 to 5 hits to stop him.
They went on to add in shooting while moving forward, sideways, and backward.
At the end of the day, I considered myself trained. But these drills still involved shooting at a target in a location which that we already, knew, just like shooting at the target range.
Some time after that, I attended a two-day course with a nationally known defensive shooting trainer. After some excellent classroom lecture sessions, we went out the range.
The range consisted of earthen backstops on three sides. After some preliminary drills to instill the concept of reaching a balance of speed and precision, the real training started.
The student would walk around within the berms, turning in different directions. The instructor would call out something to describe which one of a number of targets represented a threat. Directions and distances varied greatly. Most were well under seven yards away,
The student would look around, determine which target represented the threat, trn toward it, draw while moving off line, and shoot. Sometimes a second target would be called out immediately.
Now, I really considered myself trained.
But--the targets were stationary, and they did not shoot back. And any shoot/no-shoot training was weak at best.
For the last of these, a laser training facility with appropriate scenarios can help a lot.. For moving targets that shoot back, Force on force training with Simunitions or with Airsoft guns can help a lot. I have not done that, because I am no longer sufficiently fit.
The second class described above was useful not only for the shooting, but in what it taught about threats materializing rom different angles. I haven't walked past an alley opening, a dumpster, a parked truck, or a guy standing on the corner with quite the same mindset since that time.
I hope this proves helpful.
Most will probably be shooting rather slowly and deliberately, with perhaps a one second interval between shots.
The shooters will undoubtedly be concentrating primarily on group size.
That's what I started doing when I stared carrying in 2008. It was little different from what I had done fifty-plus years earlier, except that silhouette targets with scoring areas replaced the old NRA bulls-eye targets.
The gun club brought in some trainers from the Texas Defensive Shooting Association to put on a defensive shooting class. Service-size semi-autos were required, along with OWB holsters.
We shot one bulls-eye target. Then we moved to steel torso targets, three in a row. We were told to shoot at the tree targets as rapidly as we could, while hitting them consistently. They took audio video, and told us to do it again. And again. And again. For the better part of the first day, we did that over and aver again. The goal was to increase rapidity of fire and hit rate. After eight hundred to a thousand rounds each, most of the new students had registered 30+ percentage improvements in each measure.
I had never dreamed of shooting so rapidly. I did not understand the reason, at first. I had never thought about the fact that a fit attacker can cover five yards in one second, and I was not aware that the realities of handgun wounding meant that one might need, say, 2 to 5 hits to stop him.
They went on to add in shooting while moving forward, sideways, and backward.
At the end of the day, I considered myself trained. But these drills still involved shooting at a target in a location which that we already, knew, just like shooting at the target range.
Some time after that, I attended a two-day course with a nationally known defensive shooting trainer. After some excellent classroom lecture sessions, we went out the range.
The range consisted of earthen backstops on three sides. After some preliminary drills to instill the concept of reaching a balance of speed and precision, the real training started.
The student would walk around within the berms, turning in different directions. The instructor would call out something to describe which one of a number of targets represented a threat. Directions and distances varied greatly. Most were well under seven yards away,
The student would look around, determine which target represented the threat, trn toward it, draw while moving off line, and shoot. Sometimes a second target would be called out immediately.
Now, I really considered myself trained.
But--the targets were stationary, and they did not shoot back. And any shoot/no-shoot training was weak at best.
For the last of these, a laser training facility with appropriate scenarios can help a lot.. For moving targets that shoot back, Force on force training with Simunitions or with Airsoft guns can help a lot. I have not done that, because I am no longer sufficiently fit.
The second class described above was useful not only for the shooting, but in what it taught about threats materializing rom different angles. I haven't walked past an alley opening, a dumpster, a parked truck, or a guy standing on the corner with quite the same mindset since that time.
I hope this proves helpful.
