Spaulding has some good points about gun handling positions. What he doesn't get into there are the details that matter to the folks who came up with Sul, or the various other "muzzle aversion" positions that Paul Gomez showed in 9mmepiphany's video.
That is to say, how to move in and around structures with a gun -- AND with "friendlies" or team mates that you NEVER want to cover with your muzzle. If you watch Spaulding's movements, at no point in his video could you safely stand in front of him. He'd either be pointing at your head, your chest, your stomach, groin, thighs, etc, with every one of his stances.
Sul, the raised "3," or the exaggerated "2," all are intended that you can very deliberately and completely prevent sweeping a person who's very close to you while you have your gun drawn. If you move down a hall behind a LEO team partner, or your wife or child who you're trying to shepard to safety, and you use Spaulding's "3rd Eye" position, one trip or flinch would put a bullet right through their back.
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A note on the terms: We keep saying "2" and "3" and that seems to be confusing folks. What we're doing here is referencing the steps of the best-practice "4-count" draw stroke.
Watch Mr. Gomez explain again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NKngkVXMGg You can start watching around 3:00 if you don't need the historic context.
Basically a best, fastest, most secure gunfighting draw is broken down into 4 steps:
1) Establish a firing grip on the gun, in the holster.
2) Draw the gun straight up the side of the chest, while rotating it 90 deg. to point at the target. It stops beside the pectoral muscle, but not much forward of the front of the chest. From here you can fire from a solid "retention" position, including using the support hand to guard or fend off an attacker's advance and blows -- using your body index to roughly aim -- or you can continue to ...
3) Gun is moved to the body centerline and support hand establishes grip on the gun as well. Still held horizontal, pointed at target. Gun may be fired from this position or continue to ...
4) Extension to normal firing position. Gun fires as it reaches your comfortable extension point.
(Developing in yourself the universal use of the 4-count draw stroke will make you faster on target and much more consistent, as well as building the fundamentals of a sound fighting-with-a-gun paradigm.)
So these guard, or "muzzle aversion" positions are all variations on the 2nd or 3rd point of the normal draw stroke.
"Sul" is just the 3-count position flattened against the chest to conserve room and to make the muzzle point at the floor, not your buddy's back, butt, or thighs.
Averted 3, or raised 3, is just that same 3rd count modified to hold the angle of the gun
above most likely danger areas.
Averted 2 is simply the 2-count of the draw, but with the elbow lifted to rotate the muzzle back toward the holster. Said another way, Averted 2 is just stopping the normal draw stroke a split second before you rotate the gun toward the target -- or returning to that position from extension later on.
I certainly understand that jargon can get folks confused but if we didn't choose a few terms to use for some of the common principles, it would lead to terrible complexity as we have to explain each detail every time we want to illustrate a point.