Okay Ron,
You can call me Mike, and I'll explain more later. I remember reading some of your thoughts in previous postings, too.
Why do you still want to carry this on in the public thread, instead of privately?
Anyway, I'm NOT in your league of shooter. And, although I've seldom felt the urge to compete I doubt I'd be similarly skilled, anyway. While I have 33 years in the martial arts, I only have "serious" L/E training since about '90, when I was sent to one of the unusual L/E firearms instructor courses which were considered FBI-certified because they had some instructors participate in them, and the course content was in line with many of their ideals for firearms training. Hell, I didn't even become interested in becoming a cop until '81, and wasn't finally hired until '82. I may have been shooting since I was 5 (and I was born in 53), but there's shooting, and then there's many other kinds of shooting ... and the training and experience to go with them. That's why I said I'd been assigned to be "apprenticed" to senior instructors for the few several years, and received more training, in both personal skills and teaching adults the requisite shooting skills, knowledge, etc.
The only Master class PPC shooters I've ever worked with were some other L/E shooters & instructors, long time revolver guys ... and since I only instruct at an L/E range, I only have them for comparison. All but one of them has since retired. The fellow left is more interested in Cowboy Action events, and isn't working as an active instructor anymore. When they said PPC (and then later IPSC) started out as "fun", and used to be based on relevant training situations and proper skills building, I believed them. They also said it could be done just as fast, and even faster, for specific L/E training ... and that many, if not most, of the skills were becoming more tailored to fit within more regimented sporting conditions ... Well, I believed them, then, too.
The closest I've gotten to IDPA is when working with some of our people that enjoy that as a shooting hobby, and they ask for help and opinions when working with specific scenarios outside what we set up for our scheduled L/E qualifications. No big deal. Standing on the outside looking in, it still seems to be more gaming-oriented than serious training, although it offers the opportunity to use various skills. Fine. It still doesn't interest me at this point in my life. Maybe when I retire and no longer have access to a L/E range.
I haven't focused on the "Bill Drill" overly much. There are more L/E instructors than you might expect who don't even know what a Bill Drill IS, let alone who Bill is ... Why don't we practice it hardly at all? Well, it requires standing still, doesn't it? And most of the training scenarios we devise generally incorporate and encourage (or require) that a regular L/E shooter to be moving, especially if a situation requires expending several rounds, and moving toward cover, or at least offline and farther away.
On some small number of occaisons the subject of Bill Drills has come up, primarily from people reading magazines or having returned from an outside public school. While it isn't used as a training drill for our purposes, for the reasons stated, invariably someone on the staff just wants to know if our skills would be applicable ... and someone brings out the PACT timer and sets up the targets.
When we last timed a similar stationary 6-round drill at the regular 7-yard range, drawing & shooting 2-handed from the regular timer signal, I was pleased to see that I could place 6 rounds into the upper COM outlined inner "square" box of the standard American Target Company TQ-19 target we presently use. (I don't' know how it is where you practice, but on those days when other agencys schedule the use of our range, you can often see 2-3 different styles & designs of silhouette targets being used by that many agencies. I even found some standard B-27's left behind the other day.
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Anyway, the COM outlined "square box" measures exactly 6.5" wide & 4" tall. Is that comparable to what it should be? My times when I was last interested in having it checked hovered consistently (that day) from 2 seconds to a bit less ... but not less than 1.5 seconds. That small box is simply too small from my persepctive at the 7-yard line, for my eyes, and I don't train for that level of performance ability. A slightly larger allowable scoring area (the area in which the box is located) measures approx 15" tall by 12" wide. Hits outside this lightly shaded area considered misses for our purposes, although for public CCW purposes the next larger, darker shaded outside area is scored, as well.
During recent months I've been for a scenario which required 6-rounds fired at a stationary target, while laterally moving to cover (range considerations), toward a "cover barricade" that was located toward our "weak" side (to "encourage" shooting while moving toward a side direection that may be a bit more awkward for right-handed shooters. In a square world, there are an equal number of both right & left corners to move toward from in the open) ... and the maximum time limit was a reasonable 6 seconds, including reaction to the timer & drawing. My times, when measured over the course of the last few months, have averaged in the low-to-high 3 second range. This was found to be the "average" time for the range staff, when doing it so there were no misses. Not exactly high speed, but very reasonable.
On the day I mentioned, however, I ran the course with a 9mm and kept the hits inside the 6.5"X4" box I mentioned, instead of allowing them to spread out in the larger, allowable area, and did it just under 3.2 seconds (the high 3."teens"). I thought that was good, but either you, or the other folks you shoot with, could probably shave off upwards of a second, though, maybe more. And that wouldn't be surprising. But then, we only train our folks to a standard yardstick which involves meeting a minimum shot/hit ratio percentage, and being able to do so within a reasonble time limit. We can hope for more, but we can't require more. Firearms training is a High Liability issue, as you'll remember from your L/E experience, and devising training which satisfies not only the commonly anticipated officer safety concerns regarding likely deadly force situations, but satisfies the guidelines and requirements articulated in the increasing number of court cases which identify what it means to offer insufficient, or negligent, firearms training
What I DID train for, though, considering the variety of commonly reported deadly force/threat circumstances we often anticpate, was typified by how another instructor and I once modified a then-current qualification scenario ... which required the shooter fire 6 shots at 3 separate targets, positioned staggered at fairly close ranges of 3-5 yards. The original scenario had a requirement that the shooters engage each of the targets with a single shot, and then place a second shot on each target (they were all "shoot" targets that day, although not always), but we wanted to use it for something else.
This day the other instructor and I were discussing just how much slower it might be for one of us to draw and fire 6 shots from a concealment OWB holster with a retention/thumb snap, compared to an IWB open-top holster. It was a hot day, and since neither of us had worn anything except a T-shirt to the range, we had no choice but to treat it as an "unconcealed" draw & presentation situation.
Since it was simply straight drawing and presentation speed we were interested in testing, as affected (or not) by the holster design, we aranged the targets staggered at 3-4 yards, we remained standing stationary, and simply doubled each target in the COM, sweeping one side to the other. Not something we'd necessarily "teach", as it didn't reinforce the specificity of kills, goals & learning objectives we try to incorporate into each scenario series ... but we were looking for a specific answer of presentation speed from each holster. Nothing "tactical", strategic or even fancy.
We each started out at a comfortable sub-4.0 second time for the first string, and then since we were alone we decided to time ourselves against each other. After somewhere around the 5-6th run-through we decided that it probably didn't matter which holster was used, as the times were just too close to mean anything significant. His best time was 2.39, using the open-top IWB, and my best time was 2.34, using a leather Hume H726 OWB, with a thumb snap. That's probably sad timing for timed competition events like you enjoyed, though. I also haven't been able to consistently equal that time, let alone best it, when I've gone back and tried to repeat it, but I also don't rise much above 3+seconds, either. What does this mean from the competitive world, though? Another consideration is that we've shown that a surprising number of our people can be trained to shoot similar scenarios in times running in the high 4's to middle 5's, and that's including reaction time.
I haven't practiced an EP for years, and don't think I'll ever need to have that specific ingrained patterned response, either ... not unless I were going to engage in a competition, anyway. Do they still use the EP?
My teachers, peers and mentors have also all been instructors in the L/E field, but only a few of them were also competitors, or casual participants in the area of PPC, IPSC and now IDPA. This may be why I've never felt an attraction to become involved in any of them. If the folks I looked up to felt it was more practical to focus more on evolving defensive service weapon training for our peers (and ourselves), and that we could train & ingrain sufficiently simple skills intended to address most of the commonly observed and reported deadly force situations, and do so for folks that might not willingly train outside of their employment ... well, I felt that was where my focus should probably be, too.
I still think that you mostly objected to my describing our levels of training as "reasonable", and especially disliked how I may have been impying that I thought ALL reasonably trained shooters should be able to do it in similar fashion. Like I said earlier, perhaps you're right. Maybe it should be considered more than a demonstrably "reasonable" level of skill. The times I listed were accurate, though, even if you want to consider the skills necessary to do them as extraordinary.
I'm also sending you a PM ...
Mike
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