Usable Power for Personal Defense: Part 2

In Part 1, we examined how physical fitness training and handgun and ammo selection should be geared toward personal defense preparedness if that is your goal, as opposed to just indulging a hobby. Now let’s look at some other considerations for anyone who’s serious about personal defense.

Gear Upgrades

The most important upgrade you can make is to the human weapon system. The first tools to be purchased should be selected based on their usefulness to improve the system. Training, ammo, and range and mat time are at the top of the list. The following upgrades come next.

Laser Dry-Fire Pistol Replicas

The Shot Indicating Resetting Trigger (SIRT) Pistol is an example of a laser dry-fire replica and is a tool for dry-fire corrective trigger control training. It provides an optional light that activates when the trigger begins to move. This provides visual feedback of muzzle deviation during this phase of the trigger press. A secondary light activates when the trigger is fully pressed to the rear, indicating any muzzle deviation during the follow through.

Sighted Aim: Sighted aim with laser dry-fire pistol replicas provides feedback of your trigger control while improving how you align your sights over your sight picture.

Kinesthetic Aim: New shooters often have difficult consistently aligning the muzzle in and parallel with the line of sight. Laser dry-fire pistol replicas provides valuable ammo-saving feedback with how you are mechanically aligning the pistol to your line of sight, thus improving your kinesthetic alignment while also improving trigger control.

It is critical to learn how to quickly evade danger and quickly arrive at a trauma center. Driving your vehicle solely on throttle mashing for top speed leads to over-driving, where the linear momentum of your vehicle over-powers the ability for directional change. Quickness is the result of managing the upper limits of traction by way of steering, brake, and throttle inputs relative to vehicular feedback.

Most (though not all) driving classes are exclusive to law enforcement or security drivers, leaving drag racing, track driving, and auto-cross as available resources to the general public. If we measure public racing paradigms for relevance to emergency driving dynamics, we can define which hobby better mirrors training.

Drag racing is irrelevant. Track driving may have some usefulness, but the higher track speeds are rarely seen on public roads. Auto-cross is the most technical course, with speed and cornering demands more closely reflecting the smaller windows of reaction time found on public roads. Auto-cross can teach you how to slalom out of a road-rage brake check, recognize how throttle and steering inputs push the limits of traction, and how to efficiently negotiate turns for optimal quickness.

Some auto-crossers are passionate about tuning but new to driving. Before upgrading the car, it is critical to upgrade the driver. Leaving the suspension soft enough to induce recognizable yaw and weight transfer is critical for the driving student to develop a sense of when to brake, steer, and throttle. Stiffening the car’s suspension will provide much less feedback, which may be recognizable by seasoned drivers but is rarely discernible to new drivers.

In choosing a training method for lethal force encounters, we need to understand critical incident dynamics as a whole, including stress physiology, circumstantial variability, psycho-motor skill development, and more. Simply buying big guns and going to the range are the equivalent of buying a muscle car and racing the quarter mile. It might perform well in isolation, but it won’t help you be a better driver, and the car would be nearly useless in any other context.

The topics discussed here and in Part 1 are just a few examples of what should be taken into consideration when distinguishing a hobby from training. Before rushing out and purchasing upgrades, upgrade the end-user. Distinguish which hobbies you enjoy, and which enjoyable hobbies mirror training. Choose your training method with respect to context, and tune the human weapon system for usable power.