Paul Gomez
Member In Memoriam
Over the Memorial Day Weekend, I attended an Integrated Threat Focused Training course taught by Robin Brown. Some of you may know Robin better by his internet nom de guerre, Brownie. The class was held on a private range outside of Knoxville, TN and was attended by fourteen people. Weather was hot and humid, but everyone dealt with it without complaint. Class makeup consisted of broad range of people from all walks of life…working cops, corrections officer, health care workers, engineers, homemakers, a construction worker, a river hippie and a training bum.
The purpose of this course was to show the students how to utilize a diverse series of techniques that could be described as ‘other-than-front-sight-focused’ shooting to deal with defensive shooting problems at close range. While a small amount of firing was done beyond 21 feet, the emphasis was on the 2 to 7 yard envelope.
Class began with the Elbow Up, Elbow Down technique for drawing the gun. This consists of grasping the gun and lifting the elbow up only to the point that the muzzle clears the holster. Once the muzzle has cleared the holster, the elbow snaps down and makes contact with the floating ribs. The gun is parallel to the ground and forward of the shooter’s torso in a position that some may recognize as the Fairbairn/Sykes ½ Hip position or the Applegate Body Point. The expressed purpose of EUED is to allow the most rapid shots from the holster possible.
EUED was the core presentation or drawstroke utilized throughout the course.
Following the introduction of EUED, the shooters were introduced to the QuickKill hip shooting position which has the elbow positioned further forward than the traditional ½ Hip but still in contact with the body [unlike the ¾ Hip where the elbow has moved forward of the torso, but the gun is still significantly below eye level].
Having developed a basic functionality with these techniques, we moved on to 1 & 2 Handed QuickKill. The core component of pistol QuickKill is understanding the relationship between the front of the gun in your peripheral vision and the downrange threat. Gun positioning for either one or two handed QK is at extension with the gun held between the nose and chin level. Sound familiar? This position is seen again and again in dashcam footage of officer involved shootings and in Force-on-Force events. If you check out the article on F-o-F training at Tac Pro in the current issue of SWAT, you’ll see several pictures illustrating this fact. Utilizing an awareness of the front sight and front end of the slide in the peripheral vision, the QK muzzle reference struck me as a more refined version of weapon silhouette or ‘metal on meat’ aiming. Another way to think about the QK muzzle reference is its’ being roughly analagous to the line of sight/line of bore issues when dealing with an AR15 inside of 25M.
The EUED draw and compressed range shooting from the hip coupled with one and two handed QuickKill from extension were the primary threat focused tools utilized throughout the weekend.
Movement to the left and right obliques was covered, as were shooting threats to the rear [both standing and grounded] and shooting while closing aggressively. Closing aggressively was done in both a linear fashion [charging the threat], in a flanking or spiraling fashion and while working on level changes.
The ‘Hammer’ is a variation of EUED where immediately following the initial pair of shots from the holster, the hips are shifted to allow the third round to impact the head without changing the relationship between the gun and the torso.
The ‘Zipper’ begins with EUED and the shooter continues to advance the gun while firing so that the rounds track up the torso until the gun hits its final point. When done correctly, the bad guy is ‘zippered’ from navel to head.
I did not shoot the entire class, as my primary role was to function as a range safety and to trouble shoot any problems that came up, but I did get to observe the entire weekend and participate to the tune of 700 rounds or so. The QK index is an interesting way to get the concept of ‘other-than-front-sight’ sighting is still sighted fire across to people. It’s not exactly what I do, but it is certainly a way to accomplish the task.
The things that I found to be the weakest in the class are the same that I have found to be a weak link in a lot of training…
The drawstroke work was not very detailed. ‘Elbow Up, Elbow Down’ may serve as a short synopsis for the detailed task of drawing the gun and firing under pressure, but it doesn’t give the new student a whole lot of information to evaluate exactly what they are doing and that lack of detail in draw work is often the proximate cause to people shooting themselves when practicing from the holster. I don’t care, particularly, what draw is taught but I think that extra attention to detail in that area is never time wasted.
Accuracy standards need to be addressed and maintained consistently. While first working with the QK material, a standard of 4 to 6 inches was maintained. At the end of the second day, shooters ran a magazine from 3, 5 and 7yds utilizing two handed QK. The best student group was 1 1/8 inches and the worst was around six inches. However, throughout the weekend, that standard was not continually reinforced. Changing the targets after each rotation, so that the shooter has a virgin target, goes a long way to instilling confidence in his ability with a given technique.
Overall, I enjoyed the weekend and found it refreshing and reaffirming on several levels. First, if more people treated their interactions on the internet as though they were sitting around the table, there would be a lot less heartburn and a lot less controversy. I think it has to do with the perception that the internet is a consequence free zone so some people feel like they can be an ass simply for the sake of being an ass. From a training perspective, Robin’s presentation simply reinforced my perception that we are all much more similar than dissimilar in what we are teaching. As Bruce Lee said, sometime last year, ‘We all have two arms and two legs, until something changes with the form, there are only so many ways to do things.’
The purpose of this course was to show the students how to utilize a diverse series of techniques that could be described as ‘other-than-front-sight-focused’ shooting to deal with defensive shooting problems at close range. While a small amount of firing was done beyond 21 feet, the emphasis was on the 2 to 7 yard envelope.
Class began with the Elbow Up, Elbow Down technique for drawing the gun. This consists of grasping the gun and lifting the elbow up only to the point that the muzzle clears the holster. Once the muzzle has cleared the holster, the elbow snaps down and makes contact with the floating ribs. The gun is parallel to the ground and forward of the shooter’s torso in a position that some may recognize as the Fairbairn/Sykes ½ Hip position or the Applegate Body Point. The expressed purpose of EUED is to allow the most rapid shots from the holster possible.
EUED was the core presentation or drawstroke utilized throughout the course.
Following the introduction of EUED, the shooters were introduced to the QuickKill hip shooting position which has the elbow positioned further forward than the traditional ½ Hip but still in contact with the body [unlike the ¾ Hip where the elbow has moved forward of the torso, but the gun is still significantly below eye level].
Having developed a basic functionality with these techniques, we moved on to 1 & 2 Handed QuickKill. The core component of pistol QuickKill is understanding the relationship between the front of the gun in your peripheral vision and the downrange threat. Gun positioning for either one or two handed QK is at extension with the gun held between the nose and chin level. Sound familiar? This position is seen again and again in dashcam footage of officer involved shootings and in Force-on-Force events. If you check out the article on F-o-F training at Tac Pro in the current issue of SWAT, you’ll see several pictures illustrating this fact. Utilizing an awareness of the front sight and front end of the slide in the peripheral vision, the QK muzzle reference struck me as a more refined version of weapon silhouette or ‘metal on meat’ aiming. Another way to think about the QK muzzle reference is its’ being roughly analagous to the line of sight/line of bore issues when dealing with an AR15 inside of 25M.
The EUED draw and compressed range shooting from the hip coupled with one and two handed QuickKill from extension were the primary threat focused tools utilized throughout the weekend.
Movement to the left and right obliques was covered, as were shooting threats to the rear [both standing and grounded] and shooting while closing aggressively. Closing aggressively was done in both a linear fashion [charging the threat], in a flanking or spiraling fashion and while working on level changes.
The ‘Hammer’ is a variation of EUED where immediately following the initial pair of shots from the holster, the hips are shifted to allow the third round to impact the head without changing the relationship between the gun and the torso.
The ‘Zipper’ begins with EUED and the shooter continues to advance the gun while firing so that the rounds track up the torso until the gun hits its final point. When done correctly, the bad guy is ‘zippered’ from navel to head.
I did not shoot the entire class, as my primary role was to function as a range safety and to trouble shoot any problems that came up, but I did get to observe the entire weekend and participate to the tune of 700 rounds or so. The QK index is an interesting way to get the concept of ‘other-than-front-sight’ sighting is still sighted fire across to people. It’s not exactly what I do, but it is certainly a way to accomplish the task.
The things that I found to be the weakest in the class are the same that I have found to be a weak link in a lot of training…
The drawstroke work was not very detailed. ‘Elbow Up, Elbow Down’ may serve as a short synopsis for the detailed task of drawing the gun and firing under pressure, but it doesn’t give the new student a whole lot of information to evaluate exactly what they are doing and that lack of detail in draw work is often the proximate cause to people shooting themselves when practicing from the holster. I don’t care, particularly, what draw is taught but I think that extra attention to detail in that area is never time wasted.
Accuracy standards need to be addressed and maintained consistently. While first working with the QK material, a standard of 4 to 6 inches was maintained. At the end of the second day, shooters ran a magazine from 3, 5 and 7yds utilizing two handed QK. The best student group was 1 1/8 inches and the worst was around six inches. However, throughout the weekend, that standard was not continually reinforced. Changing the targets after each rotation, so that the shooter has a virgin target, goes a long way to instilling confidence in his ability with a given technique.
Overall, I enjoyed the weekend and found it refreshing and reaffirming on several levels. First, if more people treated their interactions on the internet as though they were sitting around the table, there would be a lot less heartburn and a lot less controversy. I think it has to do with the perception that the internet is a consequence free zone so some people feel like they can be an ass simply for the sake of being an ass. From a training perspective, Robin’s presentation simply reinforced my perception that we are all much more similar than dissimilar in what we are teaching. As Bruce Lee said, sometime last year, ‘We all have two arms and two legs, until something changes with the form, there are only so many ways to do things.’
“river hippie” I’ll tell Ammons he’s tagged with that forever now.
(Don't tell me some of you guys haven't done that.) Fortunately the weapon was unloaded and I was practicing the drawstroke, because now that is the limiting factor. With the techniques learned over the past weekend my hits on target are limitted to how fast I can draw! Amazing!
, when you have the ability to put your bullets where they'll do the most good in the shortest possible time with the techniques you own due to the training last weekend.