CQB in the latest Shooting Illustrated

Learn to draw from concealment and be able to fire 3 rounds in 3 seconds at 3-yards and have all your bullets hit within an 8-inch target. The overwhelming majority of aggravated assaults occur between 0-7 yards.

Latest figure I saw was that most gunfights occur in 10-20 feet. I do most of my practice at 15 yds or 50 feet (depending how the range is set up). Remember the stress can cause your skills to degrade so your groups can get bigger.

I routinely practice at 25-50 yards with a handgun. The need for this in a SD encounter is almost nil but I want to be sure I can do it.

Shoot for the biggest target you have. Yes shot placement is important but so is hitting the bad guy before he hits you is too.

Almost every run in I've ever had with a Street Rat has been right around at arm's length.

I think it's a good idea to plan to be holding the guy off with one hand while drawing your gun, knife, spray with the other.

It's also a good idea to assume you're only going to have about a second's worth of reaction time.

Training is key- a solid foundation with frequent realistic re-enforcement. Shoot/move is a very perishable skill.

I had the hood fortune to take an instructors course called personal protection . It involved many aspects of self defence . The hand gun test involved first drawing and hitting a 3 inch by 5 inch index card at 7 yards. You had to do so I one and a half seconds. The next test was double tap a sheet of typing paper at 15 yard from draw in 2 seconds. You had to do it at each range session. You had to put a dollar in a pan for each miss. You had to do both 5 times each session. It was on a hot range and you were subject to being hit , dragged down etc while shooting. As we advanced we used Glock pistols with simunitions in real like practice. Getting shot was not fun but it was a good reinforcement for doing things correctly. It was felt that if you could not draw from hover and hit that card in one and a half seconds you didn't have a good chance on the street. It also was an eye opener as to what him and holster work.

.38 Special said:

One thing I notice is that we often talk about the distance at which most gunfights occur. Well, okay, but what is the distance at which most fights occur?

Consider: random guy walks up, asks you what time it is, then grabs you by the throat and demands your wallet. Does it really matter how fast your draw is in that situation?

Click to expand...

Random guy walks up, and before he gets about 10 feet from me I ask him what he wants. No Matter What He Asks the answer is "Sorry, can't help you."

CQB skills are a must to be properly prepared to prevail in a close quarter attack especially a knife attack because the perp is going to get right up to,you before the knife is visible used. It is likely that you cannot draw as fast as the knife is wielded especially if you are IWB or pocket carrying. You must be able to use H2H skills to fend off the attack, get space, draw and shoot. The same could be true of a handgun attack by a willful killer, that is a person looking to kills someone. That perp could operate like an assassin. Get right up close before exposing the gun and shooting. Once again you have to be able to counter with H2H techniques. I have the good fortune to have been trained in the Corps to do those things. I dry run them in my mind every day so the by-the-numbers steps are instantly recallable. The most difficult fight of your life would be a face-to-face fight regardless of what hand held weapons were used. I had the misfortune of having to use those learned skill during my two weeks clearing buildings in Hue City. The fact-to-face encounters were few, but they were the most frightening. Whatever you do be sure that you have some basic H2H skills.

.38 Special said:

We - even us oldsters - would do well to learn a few basic skills which may allow us to create the space and time to get to our guns.

Click to expand...

I'd suggest starting with learning "verbal judo" (I guess now the trendy term is "tactical verbal skills"). If you don't know how to deal with aggressive panhandlers downtown or shady looking gangbangers conducting a testosterone check on you outside the AM/PM Mini-Mart, you're late to the party.

Situational awareness should be a given.

If all one has to rely on is a firearm, never having thought through what an adversarial encounter could look like, or having no less-lethal options, one is automatically behind the curve from the get-go.

You want to learn some CQB skills first? For most of us, our door-kicking days are over. (Although I did watch a re-run of "SEAL Team" on CBS the other night). Most of what you need to know you don't have to pay $350 - $500 for a week-end class to learn. Although the ShivWorks guys do seem really cool, if I could get down there, I'd take one of their classes.

shootall said:

The hand gun test involved first drawing and hitting a 3 inch by 5 inch index card at 7 yards. You had to do so I one and a half seconds. It was felt that if you could not draw from hover and hit that card in one and a half seconds you didn't have a good chance on the street.

Click to expand...

Is "draw from hover" the same as "draw from concealment?"

Because the hand gun test you are describing sounds like expert-level stuff to me. I can't imagine getting that good with a concealed handgun. Of course, I'm a beginner.

I think that this may warrant its own thread, but I'll put it here for now.

I've often seen comments on gun forums that make me think that people are envisioning self-defense scenarios way different from anything I've experienced.

My two self-defense incidents (the only two times I would have been legally justified in shooting someone) didn't allow for holding a gun in my right hand, finding the sights, and aiming. In one incident, the dude's friend had control of my right wrist. In both incidents, I wouldn't have been able to extend my gun arm, because the armed attacker was right in my face.

This video is so good that I can't recommend it highly enough. The instructor states that legitimate self-defense scenarios typically involve an attacker who is close to you and is coming closer. It teaches a shooting technique to deal with that:



If anyone thinks that this instructor is going off of a false premise, speak up.

CQB -- Close Quarter Battle -- is exactly the wrong way of looking at self defense. A "battle" implies that you are getting into a fight with the assailant. If you get into a fight, you have already lost. The idea is to put the assailant down as quickly and efficiently as possible. This has nothing to do with a "fight." You apprehend the danger and you shoot first. The assailant won't even know what hit him.

AlexanderA said:

CQB -- Close Quarter Battle -- is exactly the wrong way of looking at self defense. A "battle" implies that you are getting into a fight with the assailant. If you get into a fight, you have already lost. The idea is to put the assailant down as quickly and efficiently as possible. This has nothing to do with a "fight." You apprehend the danger and you shoot first. The assailant won't even know what hit him.

Click to expand...

This opens you up to murder charges. I'm not saying that it should be this way, just that that's how it is.

Personally, I wish it were legal to demonstrate to another person that you are armed, so that he does not attack. But that constitutes a violent felony in most states.

QCB is neither related to defense or offense. It is purely situational and refers to situations in which you are in close reach of the aggressor. It could be 100 feet or face to face. Battle in that context means “a fight or contest between individuals or groups.” Those words can be massaged to mean almost anything one intends to make them mean. However, they are not definitive in terms of intent or outcome. If you get in a “fight,” you are doing “battle.” The words do not matter if and when you are involved in contests that could a have deadly outcome. All that matters is surviving. Than you sort out subsequent problems as they happen.

1942bull said:

The words do not matter if and when you are unable contests that’d ovule have deadly outcome.

Click to expand...

???? I keep reading this sentence and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

AlexanderA said:

???? I keep reading this sentence and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Click to expand...

OOOPS. I should have been more careful watching my typing and the auto speller/correct. It was supposed to say “The words do not matter if and when you are involved in contests that could have deadly outcome. All that matters is surviving. “

Thanks for calling it to my intention.

1942bull said:

Thanks for calling it to my intention.

Click to expand...

No problem. I thought for a minute that your cat was dancing on your keyboard.

AlexanderA said:

No problem. I thought for a minute that your cat was dancing on your keyboard.

Click to expand...

I have two cats and they often polka on my keyboard. But it was human error.

The assailant initiates the incident. YOU initiate the fight. -- Tom Givens

A gunfight is more like a fistfight than a tactical nuclear exchange. -- John Farnum

Trunk Monkey said:

Random guy walks up, and before he gets about 10 feet from me I ask him what he wants. No Matter What He Asks the answer is "Sorry, can't help you."

Click to expand...

Nice in theory but not always practical because bad guys may not follow your script.
Be prepared for in your face situations

Matthew Temkin said:

Nice in theory but not always practical because bad guys may not follow your script.
Be prepared for in your face situations

Click to expand...

Bad guys almost never follow your script.

I've had a few in your face situations. I've never had one that wouldn't have happened if I'd not said anything.

After the second or tenth time some Tweaker decides to pick you out of the crowd you begin to recognize the signs

Some thoughts:

I will never think/assume that a bad guy will respond, as I would wish, to a verbal command. Many of them have one or more of the several recognized Personality Disorders, and will see my “commands” as a challenge, to which they MUST respond.

If I do verbalize, I keep it SHORT, because it is difficult to act and talk at the same time. Better to use a movement that improves one’s positioning, while simultaneously providing a non-verbal “leave me alone.”

Ten feet of space, in an urban environment, is often an impossible goal to maintain.

Yes, indeed, do think beyond one’s gun(s).

Learn to instantly build a “fence.“

Learn default flinch responses, and condition them into one’s reflexes.

Even better, attend Shivworks’ ECQC, and learn to shoot while in a flinch position, without blasting pieces of one’s support arm down-range. (Please, do not try this at home, in the absence of an informed coach/instructor.)

I may not be using the exact terminology that is current in Shivworks’ training, as I mis-remember things, and curricula can change, but I did attend ECQC in 2005 and 2006, when I was younger and fitter, and still keep in touch with SouthNarc. (He recently encouraged me to attend, again, in spite of my moving parts not aging very well.)

I work as a security guard. At least once a day I have to have a confrontational encounter with somebody and no matter how polite I am it is a confrontation. Because I'm either asking you to stop doing what you want to do or do something you don't want to do and people don't like that.

This job has given me a lot of experience dealing with people and recognizing preassault indicators. It's also given me a lot of experience dealing with people who target me because I'm a security guard.

I said all that to say that I've gotten pretty good at picking up on people who have decided to target me and learning how to deflect them.

At work it's not out of place for me to ask someone especially someone who looks like a crackhead to keep their distance or to keep their hands visible. In the bread aisle in Walmart, not so much.

I've told this story before but two guys tried to rob me outside my home one night. As a result, I take someone I don't know approaching me especially at night very seriously and I'm not bashful about making it very clear that I'm aware that you're approaching me and that I'm not comfortable with it.