At this point in my concealed carry journey, I have just over 1,100 hours of firearms training, and that amount is growing every year. This pales in comparison to some of my peers, but I have had, for the most part, pretty solid training, with instructor certifications from the NRA, Rangemaster Inc, Defense Training International and others, along with classes from people like Massad Ayoob, Craig Douglas and John Hearne, as well as multiple trips to Gunsite under my belt.
In addition to this, I’ve shot practical pistol matches at a fairly high level, competing in top-tier matches like the USPSA Area 2 Championship and the Superstition Mountain Mystery 3 Gun match. I am not, however, a top-ranked competitive shooter, nor do I wish to be one. My goal has never been to reach those lofty heights, it was to learn how to apply the skills acquired in a shooting bay at a match to life outside of the shooting range.
One thing I’ve found is that if the words “practical pistol competition” are mentioned in the context of defensive firearms training, inevitably there will be a hue and cry from certain circles about how shooting a match produces “training scars” which will get you killed on the street. But there’s another, more pervasive source of training scars which comes from the legacy of law enforcement training that affects how we train armed civilians.
Right now, a good percentage of you are saying “So? The police carry pistols and need to deal with crime, and the armed citizen carries a pistol and has to deal with crime. It’s the same, right?”
No.
The ideal end state of law enforcement and the ideal end state for the armed citizen are radically different. The job of law enforcement is to pursue the (alleged) criminal until he or she is no longer a threat to the community, which could mean they’re in cuffs in the back of a squad car or some other outcome. Either way, law enforcement is in the fight to win the fight.
The armed citizen, on the other hand, is in the fight until the fight ends. If the (alleged) criminal realizes they made a horrible error in the victim selection process and runs off when we present a firearm, we win. We’re not going to pursue him or her, because our job isn’t to protect the community as a whole, it’s to protect ourselves and those in our care.
This has a profound effect on how we should prioritize our training. What is important to law enforcement, like fast, efficient reloads and the use of cover during a prolonged encounter with a bad guy, suddenly becomes less important for the armed citizen. We are most likely going to be dealing with resource predators who want to take something from us, and when they don’t get it, they end the encounter (or we end it for them). To put it more simply, if the bad guy runs away, I don’t run after him. Therefore, is cover all that important? Movement, especially “getting off the X,” sure, that’s important. Shooting from behind cover? Maybe not so much.
Which brings me to another training scar: The lack of preemptive movement skills. Picture this scenario: You’re filling up your vehicle at a service station, and about 25 feet away, you spot someone who has tripped your “That ain’t right” sensors. He’s by himself, there is no one else around, and he moves towards you. Why not use your vehicle or the pump island or other objects in the environment as a movement barrier to prevent him or her from getting closer to you?
Movement barriers are a bad thing in the world of law enforcement because they make it harder to approach the bad guy and arrest him or her. Our job, however, isn’t to close with and interview the bad guy before arresting him or her, it’s to keep the bad guy as far away from us as possible.
Preferably in another county.
A lack of preemptive movement training isn’t just a holdover from law enforcement training, it’s also inherited from practical pistol competitions. After all, the point of a match is to hit all the targets in as short a time as possible. Unless you’re shooting IDPA, moving to keep something between you and the target slows you down and doesn’t help you win the match.
Preemptive movement and using the environment to hinder the approach of potential bad guys gives us more time, and more time gives us more options. These options allow us to sort out a problem with verbal commands, less lethal or some other tool, rather than wind up in a desperate situation where we are forced to make a life-or-death decision. I train for that moment, but I sincerely hope it never arrives.
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