Shooting from the ground

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JohnKSa

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Interesting video showing an off duty officer shooting from the ground in a robbery.

The robbers put him on the ground and patted him down but missed his gun.

When their attention turned from him, he rolled over, sat up and began shooting immediately. Unfortunately he never had chance to get into a good sitting position. He was off balance and was pushed farther off balance by recoil. You can see him jackknifing trying to stay in a sitting position while also dealing with recoil. That jackknifing action brought his feet/legs up into his field of fire (fortunately he didn't hit them) and it also meant that his whole upper body was also moving around a lot which is not a good thing if you're trying to make hits.

He wanted to shoot with both hands on the gun which is usually a good decision, however in this case, he would likely have been better off keeping one hand on the floor behind him as a brace and shooting one-handed. Or maybe rolling over on to his weak-side elbow and shooting from that position. Either of those options would have kept his feet and legs from bouncing up into his field of fire when he tried to counter the effects of recoil. It would also have kept him more stable overall, likely contributing to better hits even with the compromise of shooting one-handed.
 
Excellent topic, given how likely an assault is to leave you on your butt for one reason or another.

I don’t recall the Tampa self defense shooter, the one who got 25-Life, having the jackknife issue, but he fired only one round.
 
Shooting from the ground is one of the things we tried on a pistol course in South Africa. We covered a bunch of scenarios, ranging from being knocked down with a drawn pistol, to shooting seated and lying down.
One thing we picked up fairly fast, was the fact that you need to splay your knees sufficiently, not just to avoid shooting them, but also to see where you are aiming. We did that exercise from a position almost identical to the officer in the video. He has done almost exactly what we would have done in the short time allowed. It doesn't look like he had as much time to sit up as we did on the course, so he is flatter than we were, but here are the advantages:

1) Both hands on the gun. If you are in a shop where innocents might be present, you want to be able to aim accurately
2) As erect a shooting position as possible. This most closely approximates what you are used to doing in practice
3) The folded legs offer a small amount of protection between you and return fire

I can't fault what the officer did at all, given the circumstances.
 
The book Street Survival not only covers the topic of grounded shooting it also points out less than obvious cover available when you're in that position outdoors (gutters, curbs, mail boxes (if there still are any...) along with clear photos to illustrate the points they're making.... That book was my bible in the late seventies and still has some great info that wouldn't come to mind otherwise (at least for me...). One serious downside to shooting on the ground - if you're on a hard surface... is that any rounds striking the deck or concrete flooring will slide your way (not bouncing up off the surface like a ball would... If you're on the ground any cover at all is much better than being out in the open...
 
1) Both hands on the gun. If you are in a shop where innocents might be present, you want to be able to aim accurately
I think you have to look at the overall situation. If a person has so little stability in their shooting position that their upper body is bouncing up and down, then holding the gun with two hands isn't providing much accuracy. Taking one hand off the gun and stabilizing the upper body provides a solid platform for the gun arm and I think the resulting stability will more than make up for having only one hand on the gun.

Put another way, having two hands on the gun doesn't improve accuracy if what the arms are attached to on the other end from the hands is bouncing all over the place. Keeping the torso stable is much more of a benefit than having two hands on the gun.

Think of it this way: Which will give better results on target? A strong, two-handed grip on the gun while running and shooting at the same time, or a one handed grip while standing still?
 
I think you have to look at the overall situation. If a person has so little stability in their shooting position that their upper body is bouncing up and down, then holding the gun with two hands isn't providing much accuracy. Taking one hand off the gun and stabilizing the upper body provides a solid platform for the gun arm and I think the resulting stability will more than make up for having only one hand on the gun.

We tried it, whilst firing fast. The two handed grip was superior, even from that shooting position.
 
You shot while in a sitting position and jackknifed your body open and closed while shooting, kicking both feet into the air simultaneously and repeatedly during the process? And doing that with a two-handed grip was better than shooting from a stable sitting position one-handed?

I mean, I'm definitely not going to try the former for safety reasons, so if you guys did and those were the real-world results, I can't dispute them.
 
It is very hard to emulate a high stress shooting with a moving target, when shooting from the ground. The best we could do to train it was mount T-shirts on frames in a line quite close to the berm, and have the instructor call the frames by number.
When shooting from the ground you have a far smaller "safe cone of fire" on a range.

Here's how it went:

Knocked down (with gun drawn). For this part we obviously had an empty gun.

1) When knocked down or when losing your balance or stance is inevitable, immediately drop onto your arse and backwards whilst tucking the pistol in as close retention as possible
2) On landing, splay knees and bring up the gun on target. If you have to rotate, you have your heels to steer

For this part we used a loaded gun:

1) Drop as if pushed from the previous scenario
2) There is an opportunity to fire on the way down
3) With both hands on the gun, aim and fire as fast as you can. You're in a bad position and you need good hits as fast as you can make them
4) When the peripheral T-shirts were called, yes there was a lot of kicking and twisting to manoeuvre into the correct position. It may look awkward but good shots were put on target.
5) Although you are shooting from the ground it is a dynamic situation. Both you and the target can be expected to be mobile
6) You need good control of the gun because you are firing between your legs

In another part of the course we tried single vs double-handed rapid shooting, with static called targets and a moving shooter. The two-handed grip was far superior in most cases.
I'm not saying that a single handed grip isn't ever useful, I'm saying that in the above scenario and those we practised on the range, two hands was better.
 
I still can't tell if you're saying that the shooters were kicking up in the air and jackknifing their bodies repeatedly WHILE shooting (as the shooter in the video does), or if the kicking around was done while getting into position to shoot. The former is what I'm talking about. The latter is not.

You keep talking about shooting from "a position" but the shooter in the video doesn't shoot from "a position". He's constantly jackknifing his body and kicking his legs WHILE shooting. His position is constantly and violently changing while he's shooting, and not in a way that would be considered controlled movement.

From any stable position, using both hands on the gun is clearly best. Even from an unstable position, if there's no way to make it stable, a two hand grip is still best. So shooting while standing still, two hands is better than one. Similarly, shooting while running (to simulate the same kind of violent movement in the video) shooting with two hands is better than one. BUT, shooting while standing still with one hand is going to be better than shooting while running using two hands because the tremendously improved stability from eliminating the violent movement of running is going to more than compensate for the relatively small loss of stability caused by taking one hand off the gun.

What I'm saying is that when shooting from an extremely unstable shooting position (resulting in violent uncontrolled movement as seen in the video during the actual firing of shots), that stabilizing the position (making the body stationary--eliminating the violent uncontrolled movement) with one hand and shooting with the other should give much better results than keeping both hands on the gun and trying to somehow compensate for the violent uncontrolled movement caused by the unstable shooting position seen in the video.

(Not unstable with two hands vs. unstable with one hand. Not stable with two hands vs stable with one hand. Unstable with two hands vs stable with one hand.)

As far as shooting between one's legs, I think that sounds ok for a static target, maybe even for switching between static targets if the position of the entire body is changed when transitioning to the second target. For training to shoot a target that can be expected to move, with the instinct (and necessity) being to track the target with the gun and psycho-physiological effects like tunnel-vision potentially in play in the scenario for which the training was intended to be used, I would be completely disinclined to practice any method that had me shooting at a target framed by any of my own body parts.
 
Well, the shooter in the video is moving and judging by how his aim changed, so was the target.
There was a lot more pressure on him in the shop than there was on me at the range.
I might very well have squirmed in a way that you would be critical of, if I was in the cop's situation.
Looking at it another way, the training I did confirms for me that two hands is the way to go.
You might have different training, but for me I can't fault what the cop did and that's how I would do it.
 
Here is a picture close to how I learned to do it...learned the technique from a Austrian mercenary who had previously used it in the field

midwest-training-group-andy-kemp-back-510x414.jpg


We also tested out shooting one-handed and two-handed. Two-handed easier to place followup shots accurately on targets...your transverse is limited by your knees. Shooting one-handed, Creedmore style is ultimately more accurate, but your followup shots are slower and transitioning between targets usually resulted in over-swinging.

I did noticed the "jackknifing" that you've mentioned. That seems to be mostly due to his desire to be more erect...it is likely affected by lack of practice with the technique and maybe a bit of machoism
 
There are more stable positions that can be utilized when on the ground than what is shown in the video. All have their limitations and advantages.

From a prone, face-down position, one could roll and pivot to one side or the other, using the full length of the body with splayed legs for stability as you maintain a two-handed grip on the pistol. It also allows one shoulder and arm to benefit from contact with the ground for added stability.

Staying on one's back while using the lower back/legs to stabilize is another, like the guy in the blue shirt above.

Using nearby structures may also lend itself to stability.

Probably the worst would be attempting to defend from a prone, face-down position of course. While great stability is possible, such scenarios like what we're talking about doesn't involve long distance rifle shooting at or below the horizon of visibility. Very difficult to track and engage moving targets above ground level.

Cool video. Thanks for posting it.
 
From a prone, face-down position, one could roll and pivot to one side or the other, using the full length of the body with splayed legs for stability as you maintain a two-handed grip on the pistol.
Very few defensive handgun training includes the classic prone position...it just isn't very practical for CQB. You'll still see the Rollover prone, but it's mostly a longer range technique.
Rollover_prone_left_side-1.jpg-1.jpg


What you will see is Urban prone
maxresdefault-154.jpg


...and Fetal prone
pic-fifteen-300x246.jpg
 
The off0duty officer, in the video clip, could have easily adopted the Fetal prone, from his position on the ground, by just turning over on his side. That would have given him more stability on the ground for better accuracy and followup shots, while keeping his feet/legs out of harm's way
 
> You can see him jackknifing trying to stay in a sitting position while also dealing with recoil. That jackknifing action brought his feet/legs up into his field of fire
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What I'm seeing is, he started shooting while he was still trying to sit up. Recoil wouldn't be much of a factor even with a big Magnum, even less with anything normally chambered in an autoloader.

As far as the two-hand grip, there are a bunch of shooters, many in uniform, who were taught the One and True Way of whatever two-hand grip was current at the time, and may have never tried to shoot any other way.
 
When I was a teenager working my first part time job, I was at the front door at closing letting the last customers out when I had a gun to the back of my head. Not a good time to resist even if I was armed. The question is when to draw and fight and when to run?
 
One of the best shooting experiences I’ve had was to run a course that required me to run, reload, and shoot at targets of varying distance from numerous positions (from windows, from the side of a wall, under a car, etc)

My takeaways were that cardiovascular fitness is underrated, practicing reloads under stress is good training, and training yourself to identify and use unorthodox shooting positions could have legitimate real world implications.

The world is not a calm, square range. It’s asymmetrical.
 
Oh my gosh, competition matches have nothing to do with real world SD and are not training.

I think this is one of many instances where that thought process gets holes put in it.

I've shot many matches from super unorthodox positions on the ground or otherwise. IMHO it does help with preparing for a situation such as the video.

Although that is the absolute last position I'd want to be in in such a situation.
 
I've used and trained the position attempted by the officer in the video. The "jackknife" effect is from trying to get too much of his body erect. Pull your knees up, roll your shoulders forward and fire with the muzzle between or forward of your knees. Elevation can be changed by the level of compression between shoulders and knees, windage by pushing your feet to rotate the body around your butt.
 
I've used and trained the position attempted by the officer in the video. The "jackknife" effect is from trying to get too much of his body erect. Pull your knees up, roll your shoulders forward and fire with the muzzle between or forward of your knees. Elevation can be changed by the level of compression between shoulders and knees, windage by pushing your feet to rotate the body around your butt.
That is the way I learned it also
 
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