Essential Skill Sets?

[itgoesboom]

I am curious as to what everyone considers to be essential skill sets for home defense (carbine, pistol and shotgun) as well as CCW (pistol only)?

What type of goals should be set?

By this I mean not only what should the average person who only plan on HD or on CCW and HD train on, but what standards should be met as well.

Thanks.

I.G.B.

 

[Jeff White]

This probably isn't the answer you want

Training is expensive. It consumes a lot of time and resources. It's hard work. If you enjoy it, it can be pleasant work, but it's work none the less.

It would be easy to sit down and write out a list of tasks, conditons and standards that I feel you should have to be proficient in. But it really wouldn't be a valid list because I don't know your exact circumstances.

You really need to make up your own list of tasks, conditions and standards. It's almost impossible to train on every thing that you could possibly have to do with any type of defensive firearm. So take that huge list of every possible defensive scenario and cross off those situations you will most likely never find yourself in. You're probably never going to have to clear a room that has both hostile targets and friendlies after conducting an explosive breach of the wall. So it's probably not a good expenditure of your time to train for it. (even though it might be fun) Now take your much shorter list and seek out as much knowledge as you can about what is needed to win in those scenarios. Remember that any standards you find published will be minimums. Good enough often isn't. And luck sometimes jumps in and messes up all your training and planning. You can do everything right and still lose.

Jeff

 

[El Tejon]

1. Cardio, stay in shape, essential. It will help in running (to or from battle) and when wounded (if you fight, you will get hurt).

2. Drawstroke and presentation from both hands.

3. Flashsight picture.

4. Malfunction drills.

5. Verbal compliance.

6. Moving with weapons (it's all about the footwork, then it's about the bling bling), to include moving about house and dialing phone with weapons.

7. Unarmed fighting including grappling (fights even with guns go to clinch and then to ground), including retention of weapon.

8. Reloading weapon.

9. Lowlight--performing all of the above in lowlight.

10. I consider one hand shooting, handling, inter alia to be essential, others disagree, I respect that. IME, in my profession I see a lot of one handed shooting so I advocate real life training. So be it. Got to crawl, walk, run.

 

[itgoesboom]

Good answers so far.


I was purposfully leaving my question very open because I intend the answers to be a good guide for those who are new to this, as well as help me.

So for example, I get to train very little. Due to cost of the mortage and a new baby on the way, I can very rarely afford to shoot like I would like to. I also no longer belong to a range, partially due to cost, but also because of the fact that it was too static. There was no draw and shoot, no movement, no shooting from different positions ect.

So if I want to train, I need to drive 45 minutes to 1 hour to the national forest, bring homemade target stands, and shoot out there.

While that allows me a lot of freedom in how I shoot, it isn't conducive to me shooting every week, not that I could afford the ammo anyways. My shooting budget has shrunk considerably over the last year, to where I have to squirrel away a few bucks here and there to cover ammo costs.

So it goes without saying that attending a profesional training school is not going to happen anytime soon.

So what can I work on, by myself (since I don't have many friends who are into shooting) that would improve my skills?

So this is really a two part question, what are the skill sets that the general shooting public should strive for, and what are the things that I personally can do, on a budget that will help me achieve those skill sets.

Thanks again.

I.G.B.

 

[El Tejon]

Then dry practice. Get an area, get a routine, and dry practice.

Sights, trigger control, over and over and over.

Get some dummy mags and rounds and practice your reloads and malf drills, over and over and over.

Practice your drawstroke dry, over and over and over.

Repitition is the mother of skill.

Then get a jump rope and a pair of running shoes.