While I continually read about amazing shooters on these forums who can shoot 5" groups with handguns at 100 yards, 1" groups with rifle iron sights, and who can draw and double tap in less than a second or 1.3 seconds. They must all shoot at different ranges than I do. When I have tested shooters at 7 yards, firing cold (no warm up, no previous sight picture, just walk in off the street, put on eye and ear protection, walk to the line, and draw and fire 2 shots when they hear the tone), I find their skills to be consistently and often significantly worse than what they can do after just a few minutes of warmup.
Since we are talking about self defense sorts of shootings, more than likely what we are talking about is street officers who carry open, but with thumb break or other similar retention holsters, or citizens carrying concealed. I have only tested folks carrying concealed, no officers, but from what I have seen, thumb break and retention sorts of holsters tend to hamper the draw a little less than for folks carrying concealed, assuming everything in the draw happens properly in both cases.
While far from scientifically replicated tests, what I find is that shooters drawing from concealment, cold, just after they walk in off the street, have some real issues to overcome in order to be effective in real life. Here are some examples of the problems.
1. entanglement in concealment garment during draw (hand or gun)
2. entanglement in a shirt that has unexpectantly come partially untucked around the gun and under the concealment garment (hand or gun)
3. trouble getting a proper grip as the carry gun has managed to rock slightly during the day's travels and is no longer in the ideal grip and draw position.
4. shots are less than impressive in regard to grouping with groups less than 6" not being common. Some folks even manage to miss with half of the double tap.
5. double taps are not double taps, but a slow pair with as much as a half second or more between shots.
6. shot times are pretty slow and most seem lucky to have the first shot off by 1.75 seconds, but most were at the 2+ mark. Completed times for both shots were in the 2.25-3.0 range.
7. After shooting a box or two of ammo, these same folks could consistently produce groups less than 6" at 7 yards and in under 2 seconds when drawing from concealment and their double taps would be between 0.2 and 0.35 seconds.
Keep in mind that these tests were for people who were shooting cold, but who knew they were going to draw and shoot and were already stationary and facing their target. They are already completely oriented to what they need to do and are not bogged down with issues such as identifying a threat, assessing the threat's potential, assessing what other factors may come into play such as bystanders, etc. No doubt some are contemplating whether or not they really want to try to shoot the threat or if they really feel like they need to shoot the threat.
If you get a chance to see security videos or cop dash cams where some armed conflict goes down, a significant amount of time is lost in the initial orientation of what is going on, even with situationally aware folks. The event starts where the bad guy draws a weapon and is spotted, but there is a time delay before reaction where the good guys are apparently contemplating if what they are seeing is real or if they are correctly seeing what they think they are seeing. In some, you can start counting Mississippis before the good guys get off a first shot, usually somewhere around 4 seconds or more after the threat starts to act.
I look forward to the day when one of those hotshot super stud shooters who can draw and fire a double tap, full power ammo (not the wimpy reduced recoil target loads), from concealment, drawing from standard carry gear (no race holsters), at 7 yards, and produce a shot group of less than 6" in less than 1 second or even in the apallingly slow 1.3 seconds, consistently. When I finally meet that person, I will be contracting him/her for private lessons. So far, those people seem to be more of a cyber space and TV fantasy who never go to the ranges I go to and who certainly are in very low numbers.
