The fight isn’t over
Weer’d Beard has a great post up riffing off a post of Sean’s dealing with the problem of what to do with the problem of muggers. Specifically, what to do with the Hobson’s choice of “Your money or your life”?
The crux of the problem, of course, is that there is no guarantee that the guy threatening your life will abide by his half of the bargain. The deal can very quickly turn into “Your money AND your life,” and as Sean’s post points out, this happens more often than you might like to think.
The key to surviving this kind of encounter is to remember that you are in a lethal force encounter. The face that the person threatening your life says that they will stop if you give them your property is irrelevant. You need to respond the way you would in any lethal force encounter. That might mean cooperating. But rememeber, if you choose to cooperate; the fight isn’t over. It’s not over until you are safe. The approach might be to throw your wallet and run. Or is may be to throw your wallet, then draw your gun when they are picking it up.
Remember, the fight ain’t over until it’s over. I had this beaten into me at Gunsite. When I took 350, we had a force on force scenario. In mine, a man burst out of a room, stabbing someone and shouting. I pulled my gun, shouted at him to drop the knife, then shot two rounds center mass. (I know, mistake one…shoot until they are down.) Stabber starts shouting “Ow! You shot me…why did you shoot me?” I keep repeating “Get away from that knife!” and I came out a bit from behind my cover (mistake two), and of course I caught two rounds, one in the thigh and one just under my arm when the stabber pulled his gun.
In retrospect, I could have made a bunch of choices differently (which is the point of the training, I suppose). I could have walked away, I could have put more rounds into the bad guy initially or I guess I could have shot him again when he ignored my commands to stay away from the knife. The reason that I didn’t shoot him on the ground, however, was because I kept thinking “I can’t shoot him…he’s on the ground….how would it look if I shot him again.” And that got me shot, becasue I thought the fight was over.
My instructor, Charlie McNeese, debriefed us after the drill. His feedback to the class was “most of you didn’t have a plan, and when you have to make it up as you go along you are going to make mistakes.”
Remember, fight, cooperate, or run away…the fight ain’t over until it’s over.
It’s beginning to look…
…a lot like Gunsite!
My 350 class is in less than two and a half weeks. *Contented sigh*.
Training idea
I’ve been spending time lately getting in shape for my trip out to Gunsite for 350 pistol in April. When I took 250 last year, I think I did pretty well, all things considered. I found out that my basic marksmanship needed work, and over the course of the week and subsequent practice, I’ve become a pretty competent marksman. I’ve gone from “I wonder if I can make the shot?” to “I KNOW I can make the shot.”
(An aside, and I know that I have said this before. All over the internet people have asked if spending money on a high-dollar shooting school is worth it. I can only speak for Gunsite, but the answer is an unqualified yes, absolutely. Five days improved my shooting and confidence with firearms more than the previous five years. I think that everyone who carries a gun for self-defense should make that investment. I KNOW now that I am competent in the use of my gun.)
I know that the next thing that I need to work on is efficient gun handling. One of the things that annoyed me about my Gunsite experience was my performance on the “El Presidente” drill. For those who are not familiar, “El Presidente” features three targets at 10 meters. The shooter starts facing uprange. On the signal, the shooter turns, draws, puts two shots on each of three targets, reloads, and then puts two more shots on each target. Misses add time to the score. A score of 10 seconds is considered “par” for the drill.
When I ran the drill for score on the last day of class, I did pretty well, but I fumbled the magazine change. Then, when I put the magazine into the gun, I drive it home, then slapped it on the bottom to make sure it was seated. That action cost me a second, and it cost me par on El Presidente.
In order to ensure that doesn’t happen again, I’ve been practicing my gun handling and my magazine changes. My method is to start slow, and make sure that I do everything perfectly. Little things like that “butt slap” are bad form. If you do your magazine change properly, you slam it home. There’s no need for the additional slap. This video illustrates what I mean:
Which, at long last, brings me to my training idea. One thing that I have been struggling with is dealing with is reacting to stimuli. I wanted my drills to be in response to something. I tried using a shot timer, but that doesn’t really work very well. You have to reset it, and there is really only one stimuli, a buzz. But I recently found this app from Rob Pincus’ ICE training. It allows you to program the timer to respond not with a beep, but with commands. You can also program a delay time (short, medium, long) and number of repetitions. I’ve been putting it to use in dry fire. For example, after taking standard dry-fire safety precautions, put three pieces of paper on the wall, numbered 1,2,3. Program the timer to call out commands “1,2,3″ You can also program the command “UP”, which is Rob’s draw command, and specify the number of “UPs” per interval. On hearing the number, draw and dry fire at the target indicated. If you hear an “UP”, perform a mag change. You can mix it up with colored pieces of construction paper. It’s an amazing dry-fire tool, and very good at teaching you to react under stress.
Using your sights
On of my takeaways from my Gunsite experience last year was the importance of seeing your front sight. Now, I always intellectually knew that. But this was highly re-enforced during my training. I had a nasty habit of firing a shot, looking at the target, then re-acquiring my sight picture for the second shot. One of the instructors asked me why I was doing that.
“I don’t know…I guess so I know if I hit or not.”
“Why does it matter? If the shot hit, it hit. If it missed, it missed, and you need to deliver another one right now. Just stay focused on your front sight.”
At some point over the week, I came to understand that when they say “focus on your front sight,” they really mean “your front sight should be the only thing in your universe when you make that shot.” And once I realized that, my shooting got a lot better. Still not great, but a lot better.
Now, I know that a poor craftsman blames his tools, but I’ve been thinking about replacing the sights on my M&P for a while now. The three dot system is just too busy for me. So, as an experiment, before I went to the range today I took a black magic marker and blacked out my rear two dots. And I put some white out in the white circle of my front sight.
BTW, that is my interpretation of a perfect sight picture. Blurred rear sight, blurred target, nice sharp front sight.
Anyway, I took my newly modified gun to the range:
Yep, I’ll take that.
Gunsite Day 1
This is part of my series on my Gunsite experience. Part 1 is here.
Lewis and I woke up early on Monday morning to the jazzy music of his cell phone alarm. (Seriously, buddy…5 am? Is that truly necessary?) We both got geared up. I had not brought my range bag due to space limitations, so I stuffed my backpack with everything I thought I would need. Eyes, spare eyes, ears, spare ears, gloves, sweatshirt, gun belt, spare gun belt, two kinds of holsters…I think I over packed a little.
We were not exactly sure where we were going, so we left early. After a few wrong turns (turn left. No, your other left.) we managed to find our way to the road that we needed to be on. We had a little spare time, and so we decided to stop at a reliable breakfast choice: McDonalds. Unfortunately, the woman in front of us in the drive-through must have ordered food for the entire population of Chino Valley, because it took her like 15 minutes to get her food. This put us back behind schedule. We found the turn we were looking for, and got onto West Gunsite Road.
West Gunsite Road is a four mile or so dirt road that leads to the school. On this particular day, it was soaked through with the prior night’s snowfall, and was essentially all mud. Following Lewis’ advice for driving in mud (“Whatever you do, don’t stop!”) got us up to the school, and we got the first glimpse of the gates.
Clearly this picture was not taken on the day in question, but you get the idea.
We made our way to the classroom and got ready to begin.
We entered our classroom, and a pile of paperwork was waiting for us. It was what you might expect…guns are dangerous, don’t sue us, if you commit safety violations we are shipping your ass home.
The demographics of the class were interesting. The class consisted of twenty people, sixteen male and four female. We had two husband and wife couples. I think we had four doctors, three nurses, four computer geeks, two Greek bodyguards, and one DEA agent.
Our rangemaster, Jerry, introduced himself as well as his fellow instructors: LaMonte, Chuck, and Hutch. All of them had impressive resumes, including police experience, SWAT experience and other interesting things. One was a former SEAL. Each of these guys were very professional, very friendly, simply excellent teachers. With such a impressive backgrounds, you would expect them to perhaps be a little intimidating. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were amazingly helpful, and very perceptive on how to correct shooters. More on that later.
The classroom lectures began with a quick history of Gunsite and the goals of the school. Gunsite does not shy away from the fact that they are a gun fighting school. Make no mistake…these guys are teaching you how to defend your life with a firearm.
The class quickly moved into the basics of shooting. Gunsite does not assume any prior experience with firearms. Maybe another way to say it is that they want to get everyone on the same page. Therefore, we began with the four rules of gun safety:
- All guns are always loaded.
- Never let the muzzle cover something you are not willing to destroy.
- Keep your finger off the target until your sights are on the target.
- Always be sure of your target.
These rules are posted everywhere at the school. And I mean everywhere. These guys take their safety seriously.
We also reviewed the proper sight picture, how to press the trigger and how to load and unload the gun. This last part was important. Gunsite runs a hot facility. At the end of each range session, we are told to “put the gun in the condition you want it in when you leave the range.” The school doesn’t particularly care what condition that is, loaded or unloaded. The only rule is that the gun stays in the holster until you are at the range. I was very impressed that attitude, and I never saw any example of unsafe gun handling.
And with that, maybe an hour and a half into the class, we were off to the range.
Five days at Gunsite-Prologue
As the plane touched down in Phoenix, I felt a flash of excitement and anticipation. It had been three years in the making, but I was really doing it! I was going to Gunsite!
The story begins last December. I had wanted to make it out to Gunsite for a few years, but with a small child at home it had been a bit of a challenge. I had gotten some downtime, and had some spare cash, and decided that I would finally make it out to Gunsite for a class: 250 Defensive Pistol. I didn’t want to go alone, and so I asked a friend and colleague if he wanted to join me. Lewis had recently begun shooting, and I suspected he might be interested. His email came back in about 30 seconds: absolutely!
I called Gunsite, and spoke to a very nice woman named Jane Ann. She answered all of my questions, and emailed me an application. This presented the first hurdle. Gunsite requires either a concealed carry permit or a statement from local law enforcement that you have no criminal history in order to register. I had my CCW permit, but Lewis did not. Jane Ann said no problem…just bring it with you when you come. Lewis applied for his Washington CCW, and had it two weeks later. (Gotta love Washington…no class required, and very quick turnaround.)
The next few weeks were dedicated to getting geared up. The first decision I needed to make was which pistol to go through class with. I ended up deciding on my Smith and Wesson M&P in .40SW. My M&P compact is one of my regular carry guns, and I thought that would be a good place to start. I decided to bring the full-size M&P, though…no need to be a masochist. Gunsite requires 1,000 rounds of ammo for the class, so I knew that we would be shooting a lot over the week. I thought that the compact would be a bit of a handful for that much shooting. Lewis also went with the M&P, but in 9mm. I talked him into letting me bring him my wife’s full size 9mm rather than him trying to go through the class with his compact. (He thanked me later.)
As I mentioned, Gunsite requires 1,000 rounds of ammo, as well as 50 rounds of frangible for their shoot houses. I decided to buy the ammo directly from Gunsite rather than running around trying to find it locally. If you want to bring your own ammo, you can. You can even have it shipped to Gunsite ahead of time so you aren’t traveling with all that weight. Good thing, too…1,000 rounds of 180 grain .40 weighs almost 26 pounds! You can also ship your gun ahead of time, although I elected to travel with mine. Gunsite also has rental guns available, as well as an on-site pro shop that carries several major brands if you want to buy your gun at the school. They sell basically at cost, and if you are renting and decide to buy, they rebate your rental fee. More than one of the people in my class showed up with the wrong gun and ended up buying replacements, but more on that later.
I had most of the other things I needed: eye protection, hearing protection and appropriate clothing. I’ll deviate from the time line here and make a few gear recommendations. Electronic hearing protection is mandatory. It’s tough to hear range commands without it. I brought the Peltor TacSport muffs, and they worked very well. Eye protection: either bring a couple of pairs or ones with interchangeable lenses. Amber lenses worked well for most things, but it is the desert, and you can get a lot of glare and might want to switch to dark lenses. I’d also recommend shooting gloves. I used Pro-Aim 3/4 finger gloves with the braces removed.
Finally, the day arrived, and I got ready to fly from Charlotte to Phoenix. I had never flown with a firearm before, and I wanted to make sure that I left plenty of time at the airport for the inevitable hassle. I arrived two hours early. I needn’t have bothered. Time elapsed from arrival to air-side: about 6 minutes. It couldn’t have been easier. I went to the counter, told the attendant that I needed to declare some firearms, showed her the pistols, signed a form that they were unloaded, locked the case, and was on my merry way.
After a long flight, I arrived in Phoenix and met up with Lewis. He was brimming with excitement, and brought me a present: a black leather cowboy hat! I felt very dressed for the occasion. The bags and guns came though baggage claim without delay, and we started the long drive up to Prescott. It took about two hours. We stayed at the Residence Inn in Prescott. Prescott is about a 35 minute drive from Gunsite, which is located between Chino Valley and Paulden. There are options that are closer, but we thought the Residence Inn made sense. Rooms are suites with kitchens and a small living room. There are also more dining options in Prescott than there are closer to Gunsite.
It was snowing as we checked into the hotel, and I hoped that we would not be spending the next day on the range in the snow. I was exhausted from the trip, but pumped and excited for the big day tomorrow.
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Do your part!
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