Building Gun-Handling Expertise

Repetition and habit | Cornered Cat:

Not long ago, I saw a guy at a gun store take an “unloaded” gun and absent-mindedly press its muzzle against his own left palm as he pressed the trigger while he was talking to the clerk. I have no idea what he thought he was doing. But what he was actually doing was reinforcing a dangerous habit of not paying attention to or caring about where the gun was pointed. That habit could (and very likely will!) reach up and bite him some day — and when it does, he will also likely join the ranks of many, many people who say stuff like, “Well if you just check to be sure it’s unloaded…” But the problem isn’t the loaded or unloaded status of the gun. It’s the deeply built-in bad habit that was caused by repeatedly doing something dangerous with the gun until that motion became something the shooter did without conscious thought. It became a habit.

This is a topic which deserves as much attention as possible, and it's headlined by the story of an incident which sounds very familiar to me.

Fifty plus years ago, my sister's boyfriend (now and for a long time my much beloved brother-in-law) came to the family home to visit her.  She had some things to do, so she left him alone to amuse himself.  He did so by walking into my room (I was out of the house), picking up my .22 caliber CO2-powered pellet gun, and shooting himself in the hand with it.  (Note that the pellet gun wasn't COCKED when I left it there, but there was a pellet in the chamber.)

Apparently, he just wanted to see how powerful the "PUFF" was, so he cocked the gun, pushed the muzzle against the palm of his hand and pulled the trigger.

Not only was the CO2 charge of air more powerful than he expected (it was a new cartridge, fully charged) but it put the pellet clear through his hand.   He cried out, my sister took him to the hospital, and he got a bandage and some antiseptic.

Later, he told me what had happened and said:

"I just couldn't BELIEVE that you would leave a loaded gun laying around the house!"

(In other words, it was my fault.  And BTW, I was the youngest person in the house, and the pellet gun was in my bedroom, and he had no permission to be messing with "my stuff".)

In response, I told him that "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LOADED GUN!"

also, "you're older than I am, you should be more responsible. And I hope you learned something from this and never fuck around with my shit again because the next time ....".  (Thankfully I never finished that sentence.)

The lesson, of course, is that smart people do stupid things.

I still keep loaded guns in my house, but I'm the only one here, and when I have visitors I warn them that there are loaded guns and to please keep their booger hook off the bang switch or else they will bleed.  And yes, I don't that many visitors.

WHICH LEADS ME TO THE OTHER HALF OF THIS TOPIC:

Last Summer I was competing at a USPSA match locally, and a fellow who had only been involved in the sport for a month or so came to sit beside me and ask for advice.

He asked how he could make it faster to load a fresh magazine, because (as I had taught him when he attended my "Introduction To USPSA" safety class a couple of months earlier), reloads are one of the biggest time-wasters in a sport which equates time-elapsed with accuracy of the shots.

I had already noticed, when observing his performance in two previous stages in the match, that he would shoot until his pistol ran out of ammunition.  It always seemed to take him by surprise, and he wasted several valuable seconds discovering that he had to reload, processing the information, and deciding what to do next.

NOTE: We had already discussed this in the class, but he apparently was not listening because the information seemed not to be pertinent.  However, now that he was actively competing, he had learned the lesson the hard way ... Time Matters in IPSC competition.  And he wanted to improve his performance.

We talked for a while.  I noted that shooting to slide-lock was inefficient.  I suggested that he plan out his stage performance before he actually began to shoot the stage, by planning when and how to engage each array and (not incidentally) determining WHEN he would reload a new magazine when he was performing another "time-wasting" activity ... usually, when moving from one shooting position to the next.

I also suggested that this was one of the gun-handling skills which he might practice, to his benefit, and that he already knew how to reload the next magazine ... he only needed to pre-plan his 'game plan' for each match stage, and be sure to walk through the stage so he could program his short-memory game plan and he didn't have to THINK about what to do next when he was in actual "competition mode".

That is:  (a) learn the skills of efficiently reloading a new, full magazine into your pistol; and
(b) at the pre-determined "reload points", go ahead and reload even though you may not really need to do so 'yet', but you have "dead Time" and you can do so without penalty.  (EG: You're moving during that phase, and while you are moving you can reload without wasting time.)

He nodded his head.  Did whatever he hear make an impression on him?

No, he did not. For the rest of the match, he continued to shoot to "slide lock" and then spend from 3 to 7 seconds reacting, and then reloading, and (usually, because he had gone to 'slide lock') racking his slide to load the next round in the newly reloaded magazine.

That man never came back to compete again.  Probably, because he allowed himself to become  inundated with "information overload".    The skills which he might have learned during the class seemed unimportant to him; but in 'real life' (during a match competition) he discovered that he had failed to develop important skills .... and he just shut down, rather than learn from the negative experience and IMMEDIATELY attempt to incorporate new information into his game plan.

Lessons Learned:

After 30+ years of competition, and 10+ of teaching, I have learned that you can never have too much training, or too much experience.

Too much ammunition, or too many magazines.

That is why I carry much more ammunition, in many more magazines, than I could possibly "need" to complete a stage exercise.  I may lose a magazine; I may flub a reload; I may have inadvertently 'short-loaded" a magazine, and need to do more reloads than I had expected.

During  competition, I may experience a jam; the best way to clear it is to drop the magazine (perhaps rack the slide to clear the chamber) and load a new magazine.  If you don't  have an extra magazine, you are reduced to bending over to retrieve a previously loaded magazine.  This is time wasted.

Note that this does not only apply to Competition: it also applies to self-defense.  Except that in self-defense, you not only lose time, you may lose your life because people are active engaging (SHOOTING AT!) you.

I USE TO COMPETE in "Open Class", where I had the luxury of using magazines which would  hold 18, even 26 rounds of ammunition.

Now I compete in "Limited Ten" class, where I can have no more than ten rounds in my magazine.

This teaches me to plan reloads ... expect them ... and always be prepared for a situation which doesn't fit my "Game Plan"

Self Defense:

This approach is applicable to Self Defense.   If you expect to have 20+ rounds available to you in competition, you will expect (even if subconsciously) to have that many rounds available to you In Real Life (IRL).  So, unless your "home defense firearm" is going to be a pistol with a very large capacity magazine, there is no problem.  With experience in Competition, you will learn to intuitively know when your magazine is low on ammunition, and you will change to a new, fresh, fully loaded magazine without even thinking about it.  That's A Good Thing!  You will learn to keep track of your ammunition expenditure subconsciously, and when you begin to feel fretful that you are low on ammunition you will perform a reload without consciously thinking about it.  When it is convenient, of course, and when it does not expose you to return fire in a defensive situation.

But if you train to expect no more than 7 or 8 rounds (as when you are shooting a single-stack pistol of the 1911 variety), you will learn to keep track of your rounds-expended (if subconsciously) and automatically perform a reload from your reserve supply of ammunition when it is appropriate.

There is no substitute for Practical Experience.
The old saying "Train Like You Will Fight"  and fight like you train .... is an eternal verity; it's always true, and if you follow that guideline you may still go wrong.
But those .. unexpected surprises ... are more likely to happen as if you train (compete) to have  25 rounds in your gun and are surprised when you shoot eight rounds and your gun goes to slide-lock .. unexpectedly.

Train to have 8 rounds in your gun, if that's the reality, and fight to reload every time you can.  And have LOTS of extra magazines, and LOTS of extra ammunition.  (and never lose track of a magazine  that isn't completely "empty" .. one or two rounds can made a lot of difference in the resolution of a gunfight.)

There's an old saying that "IPSC CAN GET YOU KILLED"
That's bullshit.

IPSC will teach you safe, fast, reliable intuitive responses to a variety of surprising situations.

But you still need to be aware of cover and concealment, retention of partially-expended magazines, and round-count in all of its manifestations.

It's a jungle out there.

Be the evilest man in the valley.  And survive.