Simplifying Training with Defensive Shooting Techniques

Ken, you've studied a great deal of actual gunfights. You've seen in reality-based training scenarios built on the empirical evidence of how defensive shootings actually happen the way people perform. One of the things that I think you and I agree on is that the shooting level the skill level of shooting in the actual defensive fight probably isn't gonna be up to what most people think of when they think of being a great shooter. How do you address that? How do you help students understand that?

Well, again, I get very controversial with conventional gun people because they make their living out of mystifying gun fighting. I make my living living out of simplifying gun fighting. Just, I look at gunfight as an eye-hand coordination sport of the distances that you're gonna be in a gunfight statistically it's an eye hand coordination thing. You need to be working with simulation technologies even theater of the mind, technologies, Rubber Guns Airsoft Guns, your conventional weaponry, where you're getting your pistol out and delivering accurate fire. It's no different from baseball.

It's no different from golf. It's no different from tennis. When you're playing tennis there's a ball coming in at a hundred miles an hour. Your eyes on the ball, you're running towards where you believe that ball is gonna be. You're not looking at your racket face.

There's no sites on a tennis racket. You're bringing that rack it up to a place where your body knows you're gonna be moving towards a hundred mile an hour ball connecting and directing it with small motor movements in a direction where your opponent is hopefully not gonna be, no set of sights on a golf club, no set of sites on a baseball bat. All of these things are practice to a level in which you're going to do okay. When it can be contradiction to baseball, tennis or golf, gun fighting is baby stuff. To be able to pull out a pistol at three to 10 feet and deliver rounds on a human being until they stopped doing what caused you to do them in the first place.

We over mystify that. And I think that if we simplify the technologies get off the range with conventional AMA where we're building range habits, where on most ranges you can't turn to the left. You can't turn the right. You sure as hell can't run away you can't pick up ammunition on the ground. All of these competition, things that we've been doing just get in the way of the gun fighting realities that we need to train for.

Let's simplify these things and get good enough with the gunfight. I think that is so important. It's refreshing to hear you say that, you know as a firearms instructor, primarily a lot of people can't wrap their head around the fact that I'm not interested in people as good as they possibly can be with a pistol just because they have a pistol for personal defense. It's about being as good as you need to be as efficiently as possible. And I think that your point simplifying the gunfight is exactly where we need to be.

Well, and there's a huge difference between Precision Marksmanship which I believe is important, but for defensive firearms it's so low on the list. And the things that you do for Precision Marksmanship will get in the way of gun fighting. It's different between figure skating and hockey player. You know, if it would be nice to be technically proficient at skating, to be an amazing hockey player but your best hockey players aren't the best skaters but they can sure hit you. And they could sure deliver a puck at close range into that net.

So I think that we need to be able to delineate between the two and spend most of our time learning to play hockey and then refine those skills if we have the time, the money and the energy and desire to do so with Precision Marksmanship. Absolutely training resources are always limited when it comes to developing your firearm skill, make sure that you're developing firearms skill for defensive shooting and not just generic Marksmanship shooting skill