Sinatra877
10-20-2007, 02:48 AM
I'm typing this slow so you all can keep up....:kickrock:
The difference between Target to Combat shooting is almost the same principle except, you're not concerned about absolute precision and you have much less time to shoot your target. So with these listed Combat shooting tips below, we'll all be working on the same page. When I eventually write about CQB/CQC work, you will understand it quicker. It'll work for you, it may not make sense right now but it'll help you help yourself.
Everyone should be up to date on their proficiency. It is a perishable skill and you will lose it if you don't practice in a regular fashion. If you can slow fire and keep all your hits within a 4" circle at 7 yards you can already do it. Those who cannot slowfire their rounds into a 4" circle at 7 yards needs to practice. For instance, in slow fire, I can put all my rounds within 1" at 7 yards but that's me. I shoot roughly 400 rounds of pistol ammo out to 7 and 15 yards and 200 rifle rounds out to 300 yards every week to keep my skills sharp. I also practice long range rifle out to 600 yards to keep up with my BW Defensive Marksman rating. Just a tidbit, pistol shooting to 7 yards, one doesn't really need a sight picture. I will go into that later.
The binding principles for pistol fire is still the same. The Triangle of Shooting remain the same; Stance, Sight, Trigger Control. Those are the basics, another subcomponent are breath control, grip placement and trigger finger placement. Assuming that all of you shoot pistol, you may be familiar with these standard principles. Also challenge yourself, if you can already shoot into a 4" circle in slowfire at 7 yards, and try for 3" instead...from 3" too 2" and so on. You may of course use your sights for this exercise. Train hard if you are going to train at all.
Many folks can do one or two of these fundamental disciplines quite easily. However, it takes an amount of focus to accomplish all principles all the time. That is when you become a disciplined shooter rather than a guy with a weapon making alot of noise as Toe' will tell you. You will build Muscle Memory and it will become second-nature too you.
In most combat shooting disciplines, we shoot to incapacitate the target by aiming at the center of mass. At BW we also practice alot on headshots. If one goes to any shooting school, you will practice failure drills until you are blue in the face before you actually fire a pistol.
Here are my tricks that I employ religiously and it trully helps. First, I have had friends that have loaded .45, .40 and 9mm loads...about fifty each without the powder nor a percussion cap/dead percussion cap. This will give you a training round that looks like any other FMJ round that you may be shooting. Let me elaborate. Once when I was teaching failure drills to Police recruits, we were using those red or blue expensive training rounds. They are highly visible and will not fire. I don't like the snapcaps or the multicolored because you will always have a recruit that will try to circumvent the process and deliberately load a snapcap every four rounds on purpose. Therefore they'll know when to perform a failure drill. The lesson is to learn how to react to a failure to fire rather than how to load a snapcap in a pattern in a magazine that you can predict. Besides, snapcaps are expensive and some of them won't work properly for some reason but the "dummy" rounds will fit in all weapons of that caliber either way and it looks like any other "live" round.
This a pic of my training dummy rounds from 9mm, .38 Special, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. I even have .223 Rem/5.56 mm NATO rounds to train with AR's/M16's. It works better on the AR rather on my FN FS2000 because of the FN's unique brass ejection system.
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd191/Sinatra877877/PracticeRounds.jpg
When I was at Camp Butler with MPRI in Baghdad, I was one of the pistol instructors there and I had the armorer load about a 1k worth of those "dummy" 9mm rounds without powder and cap. Since it looks just like a standard 115 gr. FMJ that we used. I would keep good track of these "dead" rounds and dropped a 4:1 mix of these dead ones with live ones and the Iraqi recruits didn't know which one was which. All they knew was that there was "dummy" rounds and that they were to perform a failure drill without guidance or instruction.
On a quick note on safety, one needs to understand that the nature of this exercise is to perform a failure drill. It is not done with the strictest of safety in mind. This posted thread should not be confused with actual training with a qualified Firearms Instructor. So the AGO forum nor I will take any liability if any of you get hurt. Especially by not recognizing a hangfire round.
In Police and US Military ranges there is always a fear of a hangfire and the line must be called Cease Fire and the weapon is left to cook off but I had a short time to teach a very large group of Iraqi Police Recruits the Art of Combat Pistolcraft. So, hangfire or not, we conducted failure drills regardless of the circumstances. I am proud to say that I taught a class of 500 every month with a Cadre' of other instructors with only fifteen injuries in that year. Of which three were killed. Out of the millions of rounds that were fired throughout that year, we had less than 10 hangfire rounds but most of the deaths were because of lack of due care of a Recruit and they accidentally shot their buddy in the back or carelessly handled the weapon and shot themselves or their classmates. It's the nature of the beast in Wartime Training/Stampede Training.
It's pretty much the same for all pistols but we were training with Glock 17's. Here is a Golden Rule to remember though...
"FORGET THAT YOU HAVE A SLIDE RELEASE!" (I'll explain later.)
"NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON A TRIGGER UNLESS YOU INTEND TO FIRE IT!"
This is a Basic Failure Drill. Use snapcaps or make dummy rounds that I had written about.
1. Mentally acknowledge that you have a failure. Take your finger off your finger and seek cover.
2. Take cover. Scoot behind something or duck behind something. Bad guys will still shoot at you during a real fight and you will revert to muscle memory training in stress situations so take cover. If you don't practice that and you get into a "pucker" situation. You will just reload your pistol and suddenly become a B2 Target or what I call the Standing Silhouette Target.
3. Once covered, ensure that you have a correctly seated your magazine by giving it a firm slap up with your support hand to ensure a positive magazine seating.
4. Pull your slide all the way to the rear and release it. The slide will naturally slam a fresh round into battery if the magazine is properly seated. If you use your slide release, the slide will go forward regardless if you have a improperly seated magazine or not. If you use your slide, it will only go forward if a round is in a seated magazine.
This is the most efficient way of movement and you will increase your speed after a short time.
Magazine Reloads and Combat reloads will be about the same.
Combat reloads are used to give your pistol a fully loaded magazine when you only have a few rounds left in your current one. Regarding replacing a totally empty magazine, your pistol goes dry and your slide will lock back. Seek cover and push your magazine release and let the magazine fall while your support hand goes for a fresh magazine. If your magazine sticks in the well. Twist your hand that holds the pistol. The twisting will create the centrifugal force that will rip out the magazine from the well without you having to use your support hand besides, the support hand should be getting a fresh magazine now. Forget about your empty. You can get it later after you win the fight. If you don't win, your opponent will take your gear anyway right? Then glance down at your pistol for reference as your support hand reloads the magazine. Give it a firm slap upwards to ensure magazine seating and pull back your slide all the way and release it. By doing this you will learn muscle memory and it will make you faster. Just do it slowly at first and in a short time you will become very fast. Hence the term that "Slow is Fast".
Targets:
Alot of guys will go out and spend a helluva lot of good money for paper they intend to punch holes into. Lemme' give you a hint. Since we are shooting for center of mass for combat, a white piece of printer paper makes a great target. An 8"x11" piece of white paper is about the same size as a human torso target area. You can move it out to 15 and 20 yards for practice as well and the bullet holes will show up very black against the white paper. I train myself and my students with this technique. I put a small dot in the center of the paper and tell them that this is representative of a torso portion of a human body. Their task is to judge center of mass on the paper and attempt to keep all rounds within an imaginaray 4" diameter on the paper. By utilizing this technique, you will concentrate on the targets center of mass rather than a certain point and it is the same with flesh targets too. I have never seen a human being with a target marker on their chest. To simulate a head area at 7 yards, I use a 3"x5" index card. That represents the cranial region of the head. Both these targets will get the shooter to concentrate on the center of mass on a person's chest and brain area. If you can shoot them both in a short period of time, you will have mastered basic Combat Fundamentals.
From a holstered position, I have been able to conduct a failure drill of two shot string into the center of mass of the chest and one round to the center of mass of the head in only two seconds. This was done at 7 yards and I didn't use my sights. See if you can beat it. Safe shooting.
The difference between Target to Combat shooting is almost the same principle except, you're not concerned about absolute precision and you have much less time to shoot your target. So with these listed Combat shooting tips below, we'll all be working on the same page. When I eventually write about CQB/CQC work, you will understand it quicker. It'll work for you, it may not make sense right now but it'll help you help yourself.
Everyone should be up to date on their proficiency. It is a perishable skill and you will lose it if you don't practice in a regular fashion. If you can slow fire and keep all your hits within a 4" circle at 7 yards you can already do it. Those who cannot slowfire their rounds into a 4" circle at 7 yards needs to practice. For instance, in slow fire, I can put all my rounds within 1" at 7 yards but that's me. I shoot roughly 400 rounds of pistol ammo out to 7 and 15 yards and 200 rifle rounds out to 300 yards every week to keep my skills sharp. I also practice long range rifle out to 600 yards to keep up with my BW Defensive Marksman rating. Just a tidbit, pistol shooting to 7 yards, one doesn't really need a sight picture. I will go into that later.
The binding principles for pistol fire is still the same. The Triangle of Shooting remain the same; Stance, Sight, Trigger Control. Those are the basics, another subcomponent are breath control, grip placement and trigger finger placement. Assuming that all of you shoot pistol, you may be familiar with these standard principles. Also challenge yourself, if you can already shoot into a 4" circle in slowfire at 7 yards, and try for 3" instead...from 3" too 2" and so on. You may of course use your sights for this exercise. Train hard if you are going to train at all.
Many folks can do one or two of these fundamental disciplines quite easily. However, it takes an amount of focus to accomplish all principles all the time. That is when you become a disciplined shooter rather than a guy with a weapon making alot of noise as Toe' will tell you. You will build Muscle Memory and it will become second-nature too you.
In most combat shooting disciplines, we shoot to incapacitate the target by aiming at the center of mass. At BW we also practice alot on headshots. If one goes to any shooting school, you will practice failure drills until you are blue in the face before you actually fire a pistol.
Here are my tricks that I employ religiously and it trully helps. First, I have had friends that have loaded .45, .40 and 9mm loads...about fifty each without the powder nor a percussion cap/dead percussion cap. This will give you a training round that looks like any other FMJ round that you may be shooting. Let me elaborate. Once when I was teaching failure drills to Police recruits, we were using those red or blue expensive training rounds. They are highly visible and will not fire. I don't like the snapcaps or the multicolored because you will always have a recruit that will try to circumvent the process and deliberately load a snapcap every four rounds on purpose. Therefore they'll know when to perform a failure drill. The lesson is to learn how to react to a failure to fire rather than how to load a snapcap in a pattern in a magazine that you can predict. Besides, snapcaps are expensive and some of them won't work properly for some reason but the "dummy" rounds will fit in all weapons of that caliber either way and it looks like any other "live" round.
This a pic of my training dummy rounds from 9mm, .38 Special, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. I even have .223 Rem/5.56 mm NATO rounds to train with AR's/M16's. It works better on the AR rather on my FN FS2000 because of the FN's unique brass ejection system.
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd191/Sinatra877877/PracticeRounds.jpg
When I was at Camp Butler with MPRI in Baghdad, I was one of the pistol instructors there and I had the armorer load about a 1k worth of those "dummy" 9mm rounds without powder and cap. Since it looks just like a standard 115 gr. FMJ that we used. I would keep good track of these "dead" rounds and dropped a 4:1 mix of these dead ones with live ones and the Iraqi recruits didn't know which one was which. All they knew was that there was "dummy" rounds and that they were to perform a failure drill without guidance or instruction.
On a quick note on safety, one needs to understand that the nature of this exercise is to perform a failure drill. It is not done with the strictest of safety in mind. This posted thread should not be confused with actual training with a qualified Firearms Instructor. So the AGO forum nor I will take any liability if any of you get hurt. Especially by not recognizing a hangfire round.
In Police and US Military ranges there is always a fear of a hangfire and the line must be called Cease Fire and the weapon is left to cook off but I had a short time to teach a very large group of Iraqi Police Recruits the Art of Combat Pistolcraft. So, hangfire or not, we conducted failure drills regardless of the circumstances. I am proud to say that I taught a class of 500 every month with a Cadre' of other instructors with only fifteen injuries in that year. Of which three were killed. Out of the millions of rounds that were fired throughout that year, we had less than 10 hangfire rounds but most of the deaths were because of lack of due care of a Recruit and they accidentally shot their buddy in the back or carelessly handled the weapon and shot themselves or their classmates. It's the nature of the beast in Wartime Training/Stampede Training.
It's pretty much the same for all pistols but we were training with Glock 17's. Here is a Golden Rule to remember though...
"FORGET THAT YOU HAVE A SLIDE RELEASE!" (I'll explain later.)
"NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON A TRIGGER UNLESS YOU INTEND TO FIRE IT!"
This is a Basic Failure Drill. Use snapcaps or make dummy rounds that I had written about.
1. Mentally acknowledge that you have a failure. Take your finger off your finger and seek cover.
2. Take cover. Scoot behind something or duck behind something. Bad guys will still shoot at you during a real fight and you will revert to muscle memory training in stress situations so take cover. If you don't practice that and you get into a "pucker" situation. You will just reload your pistol and suddenly become a B2 Target or what I call the Standing Silhouette Target.
3. Once covered, ensure that you have a correctly seated your magazine by giving it a firm slap up with your support hand to ensure a positive magazine seating.
4. Pull your slide all the way to the rear and release it. The slide will naturally slam a fresh round into battery if the magazine is properly seated. If you use your slide release, the slide will go forward regardless if you have a improperly seated magazine or not. If you use your slide, it will only go forward if a round is in a seated magazine.
This is the most efficient way of movement and you will increase your speed after a short time.
Magazine Reloads and Combat reloads will be about the same.
Combat reloads are used to give your pistol a fully loaded magazine when you only have a few rounds left in your current one. Regarding replacing a totally empty magazine, your pistol goes dry and your slide will lock back. Seek cover and push your magazine release and let the magazine fall while your support hand goes for a fresh magazine. If your magazine sticks in the well. Twist your hand that holds the pistol. The twisting will create the centrifugal force that will rip out the magazine from the well without you having to use your support hand besides, the support hand should be getting a fresh magazine now. Forget about your empty. You can get it later after you win the fight. If you don't win, your opponent will take your gear anyway right? Then glance down at your pistol for reference as your support hand reloads the magazine. Give it a firm slap upwards to ensure magazine seating and pull back your slide all the way and release it. By doing this you will learn muscle memory and it will make you faster. Just do it slowly at first and in a short time you will become very fast. Hence the term that "Slow is Fast".
Targets:
Alot of guys will go out and spend a helluva lot of good money for paper they intend to punch holes into. Lemme' give you a hint. Since we are shooting for center of mass for combat, a white piece of printer paper makes a great target. An 8"x11" piece of white paper is about the same size as a human torso target area. You can move it out to 15 and 20 yards for practice as well and the bullet holes will show up very black against the white paper. I train myself and my students with this technique. I put a small dot in the center of the paper and tell them that this is representative of a torso portion of a human body. Their task is to judge center of mass on the paper and attempt to keep all rounds within an imaginaray 4" diameter on the paper. By utilizing this technique, you will concentrate on the targets center of mass rather than a certain point and it is the same with flesh targets too. I have never seen a human being with a target marker on their chest. To simulate a head area at 7 yards, I use a 3"x5" index card. That represents the cranial region of the head. Both these targets will get the shooter to concentrate on the center of mass on a person's chest and brain area. If you can shoot them both in a short period of time, you will have mastered basic Combat Fundamentals.
From a holstered position, I have been able to conduct a failure drill of two shot string into the center of mass of the chest and one round to the center of mass of the head in only two seconds. This was done at 7 yards and I didn't use my sights. See if you can beat it. Safe shooting.