I regularly see people posting pictures of their range
targets on their social media, showing what good shots they have become. To all of you who have done so, I say, “Well
done!” Now your range experience is
finally ready to begin.
Hitting your target under range conditions is the first step in becoming
proficient. But is it practical in real
life? Here’s what’s going to happen
when the shit really hits the fan:
Before you aim the gun, you’re going to have to get it out
of your holster or concealed carry stowage. You’ll have to cock it, turn the safety off, and if you don’t keep one
in the pipe (why not!!??) you’ll have to chamber a round. If you fail to hit or stop your target before
running out of ammo, you’ll have to reload. Your firearm may malfunction and jam, and you'll have to clear it to
continue firing.
All of these things require precision movements that have to happen or you won't be able to engage the target to even worry about hitting it. When the actual time comes that you may have
to employ your weapon in real life, you'll be scared out of your wits,
confused and experiencing subjective time compression. None of your precision motor skills are going
to be working.
Daniel Grossman made several key observations in his excellent book On Combat. Repetition creates muscle
memory, which will be all you have available when the shooting starts. This will not be the time to start familiarizing
yourself with which position the safety needs to be in to fire. You will be incapable of coherent thought,
and your body will not be able to move in anything but gross motor movement –
EXCEPT for the tasks you have performed so many thousands of times that you no
longer even think about them.
Grossman cited a case where a large city’s police officers routinely emptied
their revolvers into their hands at the range and placed the spent casings in
their pockets, because they didn’t want to police up their brass after
shooting. In many cases after a live
shooting event, officers would unexpectedly find empty brass in their pockets,
where they carefully placed them in the
middle of a firefight, because that’s what they trained to do.
Your range time is training time. Yes,
be accurate. Learn to hit the
target. But also use it to drill the
rest of the firing task. Load your
weapon with two or three rounds, and practice reloading and resuming fire. This can be a complex set of movements,
depending on your weapon type. Have a few
dummy rounds with no powder load, and have a friend load your weapon for you
using one of those rounds, so you don’t know when to expect it, and practice
clearing a malfunction. I prefer a 9mm, and I sneak a .380 round into the mag occasionally for training. A .380 and a 9mm are the same bullet, but the .380 usually doesn't have the oomph to cycle the action fully, causing a malfunction.
Tape over your sights. When the shit hits the fan, your vision is going to be one of the
casualties, and you’re not going to be able to see your sights very well. Get used
to being reasonably accurate without them.
Don't shoot at target circles. No one has ever had to defend themselves against a target circle. Target circles are great for zeroing your weapon or figuring out what you're doing wrong. Get large targets of people. Not man-shapes, but people. Be used to shooting at people when it comes time to shoot. I know of at least one range in my local area that prohibits the use of targets with faces or people portrayed. Shake the dust off your shoes from places like that. They're not helping you train.
Bring a bunch of pictures of familiar movie stars or some other familiar group of items. While engaging a target, have a friend hold a
random picture to the side of you and slightly behind, so it’s out of your
field of vision, for a few moments between shots or shot groups. After you've finished
your engagement, you have to tell him what the picture was. This will train you to look around between
shots, not develop tunnel vision, but to maintain situational awareness outside
of your target.
At home, being very sure your weapon is unloaded, practice
drawing and dry-firing your weapon. This
will include the draw, cock, safety and fire motions. Do it over and over, until your spouse tells
you to stop. Ignore them and keep doing
it. After you've done it a thousand
times, you’re starting to be ready. Don’t
stop practicing. Muscle memory decays.
When life goes pear-shaped and you have to employ your weapon for real, you'll do exactly what you've trained to do. Nothing more, nothing less. After the smoke clears, you'll probably have no clear recollection of what you did.
Another thing you should insist that all members of your
family do: Place your cell phones in
airplane mode and practice dialing 911. Over
and over. When a real emergency comes,
you may not have the manual dexterity to
perform this simple task unless you’ve practiced. I know someone that this happened to.
Always carry a set of emergency phone numbers in your
wallet. In a crisis, you may not be able
to remember a phone number that you dial every single day. You can’t trust your
cell phone to do it for you. It may be
damaged, lost or out of battery. This has happened to me. I had my wife’s phone number memorized and
could rattle it off with no problem. I
had an auto accident – no one was hurt – and my phone’s battery was at 2% and
wouldn’t turn on. I couldn’t remember
her number to save my life.
Stress does funny things to people. Congratulations
on mastering marksmanship. Now use your
range time to train yourself to employ it.
