I have started to train with my own steel targets. Having shot at them before when I was on the SWAT team (and liking it) I always wanted to have some of my own. So not too long ago I decided to buy some 7″ dia. 3/8″ thick steel rounds off of ebay ($20.00 a piece..not too shabby).
They approximate the size of the “Engine Room” (COM) pretty well. I painted one side red and the other yellow so that there is a visual cue when it flips around after being struck. To hang them I thought that some arbor hooks from the local hardware store would be a quick and fairly cheap/portable method.
It works pretty well, but there is a fair amount of swing and flip when struck. Especially with a rifle. Up close with my Glock I was double tapping it without too much trouble.
As with any steel targets, wear eye protection, a brimmed hat and gloves (handgun) to protect from ricochet or jacket splash back. I had zero issues with ricochet, but you can’t be too careful when starting out. I decided to start at 100 yards with the rifle and a minimum of 7 yd for the pistol. Never shoot at severely pockmarked steel and a downward angle on the plate helps direct any splash.
I also cannot state firmly enough my support for a good red dot optic for combat style shooting. Some folks eschew them for irons, but for rapid target acquisition, making aimed shots from odd positions and taking shots from CQC to 100-200 yd’s out, dots cant be beat. But they ain’t cheap. I picked up an EoTech 512 (good old ebay again) at a discount:
Here’s some video of me shooting at this set-up from 100 yd’s standing with an unmagnified 1 MOA dot at this 7″ round. Im using a combat stance (vs a target shooting stance) and a single point sling. The video quality isn’t the best but you can get a good impression of how often I hit vs miss. Assuming that the misses are a few inches from the edge of the target thats still pretty good for standing shots (at my level of current skill) IMO.
PS: 20 shots. 13 hits. 7 misses. I did much better on a later string but my phone cam wedged onto a post at the 50yd line was obviously wasn’t up to the task, so I didn’t bother recording with it again.
My previous post “helen get your gun” spoke about the possibilities of mixing CrossFit style workouts with firearms. I recently received a comment on that thread from Aaron over at Gator Crossfit. They have been doing this sort of training too and have been putting up some video:
I think it’s a concept with a lot of merit. The difficulty is in setting up your own range or finding ranges that will allow this sort of access to their property.
Wim analyzes a video of a street fight thats going around the net. A guy who was getting the “ape dance” lands a beautiful jab that ends the fight but then makes some major mistakes. At the end Wim says:
That’s what my friend pointed out and what I so very much agree with. Many people are stuck in their feeling of righteousness when they’re in a fight and don’t see it when they abandon the civilian mission (get home alive and in one piece). They don’t even notice they’re wandering into illegal territory and afterwards they cry foul because they get arrested and not the piece of shit asshole who started it.
Once again, I totally understand the feeling but if the law says you can’t kick a man when he’s down, then you can’t. If you still do so, fine by me but don’t call it self-defense. Call it “getting even” or something along those lines and I’ll buy you a beer because I’ll probably agree with your reasons for landing that kick. But payback and self-defense are not the same thing.
If you’re an adult of even only average IQ, living in a Western country, you have no excuse not knowing the difference between these two.
Another post to take a look at over at Tactical Arnis. Paul talks about the relationship between “Drill” and “reality”. Drill is simply about honing physical skills. They don’t really mean much unless you can apply them in the real world. Check it out!
With police officer deaths headed toward as many as 200 this year (approximately half of line of duty deaths have been by murder) police trainers are asking themselves some hard questions about what’s going wrong.
Whats going wrong indeed. So far, the end of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 have produced more news stories of Law Enforcement Officers being feloniously killed in the line of duty than any other within my memory. While the question of “why” these people are killing cops is probably beyond anybodies power to determine (beyond the fact that the majority of them are violent offenders and convicted felons that our courts and parole boards have seen fit to unleash on us) , we LEO’s should be taking a serious look at what it is we are doing in terms of training, mindset and officer safety tactics. Shults’ article breaks it down into what he defined as the following reasons:
Lack of Warrior Spirit
Discomfort with Firearm
Ignorance of Biology
Ambush
Fear of the Aftermath
Misunderstanding of the Law
Negotiation Culture
Segmented Training
Uncomfortable Distances
Lack of Research Data
Acceptance of Violence Against Officers
I have a lot to agree with Chief Shults on these. Some recent videos and LEO deaths make some of these categories stand out.
Again from Chief Shults’ article:
Fear of the Aftermath — John Bostain, a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, believes that police officers should be thoroughly trained on post-shooting protocol. A level of comfort with the realities of officer involved shootings could reduce hesitation. Both Bostain and Artwohl cited statistics showing overwhelmingly favorable outcomes for officers who kill offenders, both legally and emotionally despite the common perception that shooting a suspect has universally disastrous consequences. Surveys show that lag time in deciding to shoot is correlated to fears of these kinds of consequences.
…
Negotiation Culture — McKenna noted that there is a common practice of issuing repeated verbal commands prior to using deadly force. He postulated that the practice comes from a misreading of Tennessee V. Garner and the policies that arose from that watershed decision. Officers who face deadly adversaries and refrain from shooting are often rewarded for their restraint. Even in situations where observers would agree it was foolish to take the risk of not making decisive aggressive intervention, restraint is valued over lawful force options. Force instructors seldom use the word “kill,” deferring to euphemisms like “neutralize the threat,” “take care of the situation,” and “we don’t shoot to kill we shoot to stop the threat.”
This video provides an example:
One other thing that has recently stood out in my mind, centers around the recent tragic death of Police Officer Jonathan Schmidt. Officer Schmidt was recently gunned down on a traffic stop while trying to arrest a man with a warrant for an unleashed dog. The man came out of the backseat of the car firing and Schmidt lost his life. A quote from a local news article reads:
Wounded in the neck and scrambling away from a gunman, a young Arkansas police officer managed to shove his sergeant out of harm’s way before dying in a shootout while pleading for his life, witnesses told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The event transpired when Schmidt tried to remove the BG from the back deat.
According to Elumbaugh, when Schmidt opened the rear passenger door where Lard was sitting, Lard lunged at him and started shooting. Schmidt, hit in the neck by a bullet, turned away and pushed Overstreet toward safety.
Once Overstreet was behind Schmidt’s police car, Schmidt turned back toward Lard and began to return fire.
While he was shooting, Elumbaugh said, Lard was cursing Schmidt, saying “Die, (expletive)!”
Now. I’m going to say something here and I want to be perfectly clear that I am in no way impugning Officer Schmidt’s courage, his sacrifice or the heroism that was shown in his effort to shield his brother officer from harm. I have fortunately never had to face this sort of situation and hopefully never will. If I do I may very well do the same as Schmidt and plead for the gunman not to kill me. What I do think though is that it’s an example of a mindset that we would do well to learn from. The mindset of FIGHTING, of getting angry and “Taking arrows in your forehead, but never in your back” needs to start with each and every one of us right NOW. It may sound like bluster, but I believe that if you think enough about something you have far better odds of doing it when the time comes. We have to start thinking about this sort of thing.
It’s my opinion that the “shoot to stop” meme so popular in our profession (and made necessary by attorneys) ingrains in us the mindset of “please stop..please let this stop him…God stop him!!”. In this sort of situation, where a gunman has hit you in the neck and is screaming “DIE F$%^#R!!!” at you…perhaps it should be entering into our minds that it’s KILL or BE KILLED! If he’s yelling “DIE MOTHER F#$@%R!!!” I’d prefer to see officers yelling “YOU FIRST A$$%^!E!!!” through a barrage of bullets.
As risking ones life is part and parcel of being a warrior, a person on that path has to reconcile themselves with the possibility (and natural inevitability) of their death. The Samurai wrote about it fairly constantly. If death on the battlefield didn’t claim them, the possibility of being ordered to commit seppuku was always around the corner.
One of those writings, the Budoshoshinshu, has the following to say about it:
“One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through to the night of New Year’s Eve.”
“As long as you keep death in mind at all times, you will also fulfill the ways of loyalty and familial duty. You will also avoid myriad evils and calamities, you will be physically sound and healthy, and you will live a long life. What is more, your character will improve and your virtue will grow.”
Another passage says:
And all this misfortune springs from his not remembering to keep death always in his thoughts. But one who does this whether he is speaking himself or answering others will carefully consider, as befits a samurai, every word he says and never launch out into useless argument. Neither will he allow anyone to entice him into unsuitable places where he may suddenly confronted with an awkward situation, and thus he avoids evils and calamities. And both high and low, if they forget about death, are very apt to take to unhealthy excess in food and wine and women so that they die unexpectedly early from diseases of the kidneys and spleen, and even while they live their illness makes them of no use to anyone. But those who keep death always before their eyes are strong and healthy while young, and as they take care of their health and are moderate in eating and drinking and avoid the paths of women, being abstemious and moderate in all things, they remain free from disease and live a long and healthy life.
Basically. If you are putting your life on the line, make it worth it. If you keep in mind the fact that if you fight you may be killed, you will choose the proper time and place to risk your life. The knuckleheads killed in barrooms over “respect”, compared to a person who dies rescuing another is a good example of this concept.
The first time I seriously thought that I was going to die was in an auto accident when I was 18, but that happened so fast that it didn’t dawn on me until after the car stopped spinning. The first time I remember thinking “this could be the end of me” was when I was rappelling. I was 19-20 years old at the time. With little training and my gear consisting of nothing but an anchor rope, a carabiner, and a rope harness…dumbass that I was…I went off to a local cliff. I came off the rope, fell down the cliff (50-75 ft/slightly sloped) , bounced twice, and landed hard. Fortunately the rope wound around my arm, burning me pretty badly but slowed me down enough to just knock the wind out of me……then there was the time I tried a slack jump off of a railroad trestle….
Currently my career track has been diverting me farther and farther from “the road” so the odds of meeting my maker on that venue have been somewhat reduced. However I do still manage to get out on the street and lock a person up on the odd occasion so I do think about the possibility every now and then. My hope is that if it ever does happen, that I will “take it like a man”. I have no plan of going out begging for my life or crying and screaming as I have seen in some chilling training videos. I plan to go out angry, swearing and shooting, or at least trying to.
When it comes time for the “we all have to go sometime” moment, the only thing I hope is that it sneaks up on me and is quick. Preferably in my sleep. Otherwise suddenly will suffice.
2011 should be a wake-up call for us all. Instead of thinking “This will never happen to me”, perhaps we should start thinking about what we are going to do, and how we would like to act, WHEN it does. Be that on the Street or on our deathbeds.
Martial artist, blogger and personal acquaintance, Nathan Teodoro has posted a video on his blog; TDA Training. The video shows a few minutes of footage from “Surviving Edged Weapons”, which was a film from the late 1980′s that was designed to prepare police officers for dealing with what was thought to have been “the growing threat of ‘knife culture’ in the United States”.
For those of us familiar with this film, Nathan’s video shows the Dan Inosanto training scenarios; the ones where officers get “knifed” by Dan while trying to draw their weapons. The rest is the illustration of the “21 foot rule”, also known as the “Tueller Drill”. Over the years, people (mostly in martial arts circles) have been pointing to this video as the “proof” of the “supremacy of the knife”. I believe that looking at this video, or the “Tueller Drill”, as proof of one weapons superiority over another is shortsighted and a misunderstanding of Tueller’s original point.
The Tueller Drill
The “Tueller drill” was named after Sgt. Dennis Tueller, Salt Lake City Police. In 1983, he published an article titled “How Close Is Too Close” in SWAT magazine. In this article Tueller discussed the results of a series of tests he had run which showed that most people could, on average, close a distance of 21 feet in about 1.5 seconds. Tueller concluded that a person armed with a knife or club (and I would add ANY object that could be used as a weapon) at this so called “intermediate range” of 21 feet, was a potentially lethal threat. Note Tueller did not say anything about any particular weapon being superior to any other. From a Police perspective he was demonstrating why officers would be justified in displaying and possibly using deadly force against non-firearm threats from distances as great as 21 feet or more. Tueller said in his article:
Having analyzed the problem, the following suggestions come to mind: First, develop and maintain a healthy level of tactical alertness. If you spot the danger signs early enough, you can probably avoid the confrontation altogether. A tactical withdrawal (I hesitate to use the word “retreat”) may be your best bet, unless you’re anxious to get involved in a shooting and the consequent legal hassles which are sure to follow.
Next, if you’re “Early Warning System” tells you that a possible lethal confrontation is imminent, you want to place yourself in the best tactical position available. You should move to cover (if there is any close at hand), draw your weapon, and start to plan your next move.
Why use cover, you may wonder, if your attacker is using only a knife? Because you want to make it hard for him to get to you. Anything between you and your attacker (trash cans, vehicles, furniture, etc.) that slows him down buys you more time to make the appropriate decisions, and, if it becomes necessary, more time to place your shots.
I suggest you draw your weapon as soon as the danger clearly exists. There is no point in waiting until the last possible second to play “Quick-Draw McGraw” if you recognize the threat early on. Also, the sight of your “Equalizer” may be sufficient to terminate the action then and there.
The purpose of the pistol is to stop fights, and whether it does so by dropping a thug in his tracks, or by causing him to turn tail and run, your goal is accomplished, is it not?
At this point it might be advisable to issue a verbal challenge such as, “Stop”‘, “Don’t move”, or “Drop your weapon!” It may work, and even if it doesn’t you’ll be developing your legal case for self-defense by showing that you did everything you could to prevent a shooting. If all goes according to plan, the odds are that by now you will no longer have a problem, your attacker having remembered he had a more pressing engagement elsewhere.
Tueller says nothing about any weapon being inferior/superior, the necessity of being trained in knife disarms, or argues the “inherent deadliness of the blade”; it was all about range awareness, tactical awareness and the use of force. What this discovery tells me is that officers should be tactically analyzing the situation they are approaching at all times, they should be looking for non-verbal threat cues, they should be watching an opponents hands, they should use objects as cover when possible and they should never just walk up to a subject as a matter of habit. Police Officers should always maintain a healthy “reactionary gap” between themselves and others but Police Officers cannot be conducting business from 21′, behind cover with a weapon drawn either. “Yes I will get your cat out of the tree ma’am, but first interlock your fingers on top of your head and spread your feet apart!” Unlike non-sworn personnel, sometimes we can’t walk away from any potential threat, it’s our duty to deal with it. What is ultimately most important is adhering to tactically sound officer safety techniques at all times.
Sometime, of course, despite your best efforts, you could find you are suddenly, at close quarters, the intended victim of some lunatic slasher. If you are an expert in one of the many martial arts, you may opt to go at it hand-to-hand, and if you are in this category you do not need advice from me on how to do it. So, we’ll get back to the use of the handgun for solving the problem. What it all comes down to now is your ability to smoothly and quickly draw your pistol and hit your adversary, and do it all reflexively. And the only way to develop these reflexes is through consistent, repetitive practice, practice, practice.
In the clip from Surviving Edged Weapons where Dan Inosanto attacks the cops, the lesson is stated as “you have to use empty hand techniques”. Well if you walk right up to a person acting suspiciously in an empty warehouse instead of issuing commands from range and the guy attacks you with a knife, than yes, I guess you are in deep caca and depending on your gun alone may not be the best idea. However, I think that the ultimate lesson for officers here shouldn’t be “learn martial arts“, as beneficial as that would indeed be, it should be “use better tactics“. But to be fair to the officers in the video, I don’t know exactly how the scenario was presented to them. The narrator says it was framed as “respond to suspicious circumstances in a warehouse at night”. If it was “It’s 1AM, the business is closed, and you find a broken lock…” these Coppers screwed up. If it was “It looks like it may be the business owner”, that’s a different story and they were set-up for the confrontation by the creators. I also wonder if there were any subjects who “won” the scenario that didn’t make the film?
When it comes to the mechanics of close range fighting, I agree that backpedaling and focusing on trying to draw your pistol in the face of a knife attack is not a great idea, but I think that telling officers that they should be focusing on disarming an attacker or staying entirely H2H is a mistake as well. Knife defenses and disarms are a “break glass in the event of emergency” situation even for highly trained martial artists, let alone an Officer who will probably be practicing such techniques far less often. What would be best to learn from this video is to not be “in the hole” in the first place. If the officer has no choice, than this video is a good lesson in the need to combine empty hand techniques with basic tactics like lateral movement and CQB oriented shooting styles, which are essential for “in the hole” confrontations versus “quick draw” style techniques.
1. You MUST solve the positional problem BEFORE you try to acquire your firearm and engage the threat. This means you may have to move off the line of threat, or go hands on with the threat until you can improve your position sufficiently to ensure that you have the time and space to draw and deliver deadly force.
2. You must RETAIN your weapon. SouthNarc teaches shooting from a high “two” position, with the pistol tucked in close to the body and the firing thumb indexed along the pectoral muscle. Support side arm in a horizontal or vertical “elbow shield”, utilizing the bone structure to provide sufficient space between you and your threat so you can work the trigger and not get foul the slide or get it forced out of battery.
3. It’s going to be hard, fast, and ugly.
4. If you stand still and try to draw your gun and pull the trigger while a big ape is stacking your sh**, you will not prevail.
5. Movement, strikes, and working to the flank, getting dominant position, and THEN lighting up the bad guy is the goal.
Good stuff.
What It All Means
The Tueller Drill, while a useful tool, seems to have become a set piece exercise with a tendency to be overblown by people who missed Tueller’s point. I believe that the main revelation of the Tueller Drill is the power of initiative and INTENT. In the classic “Knife vs. Gun Tueller Drill” the knifer knows he is going to attack and when. The other person stands there…holstered…and waits. There is no “scenario”, no back-story of why you are in contact with this person in the first place. It never takes into consideration obstacles between opponents, it never considers the officer taking the initiative and drawing, giving commands and or preempting your opponent. The drill is pure physics. A person can cover this distance and strike a person in this given time”.
On the street this boils down to basic OODA . In the classic Tueller Drill the knife wielder is already inside the defenders “OODA loop”, the knifer gets to both DECIDE and ACT before the defender can process the situation. If you allow a little “real world” into this exercise, and the defender in the Tueller drill knows that the knifer is coming for him (which he does = Observe) he should “cheat”. He should run..place an obstacle between him and the BG (Orient) and start issuing commands and/or start shooting before the knifer even thinks to move (Decide/Act). I have always wanted to be asked to participate in a “Tueller Drill” and wait to be told “You stand here. He has a knife and when he moves you react”. I’d ask “he has a knife?” and when told yes draw down, place an obstacle between us and give commands. I know that I would be ignoring the intent of the drill by doing that. The intent being to simply make you aware of the “reaction gap” and the realities of edged weapons, but the Tueller Drill is ultimately an example of math more than it is an example of “combative truth”.
IMO, who decides to attack, who is first aware of the threat and who has a weapon in hand is more important than which weapon is “superior” in this sort of scenario. If you have an enemy who is within 21′ with ANY WEAPON and he gets to make the first move, while you wait to respond…you are in big trouble, be that a knife, a gun, a bottle or a roadside rock.
Close contact stuff is vital and this is a classic drill, but in terms of “realism” I don’t know how well the “toes to toes..step straight back..one COM/one head” pattern translates to real world. Great starting point, necessary for some ranges where “freestyle” just cant happen, but don’t think it’s going to work like that in reality.
"Desforges" Five rounds for time of: 225 pound Deadlift, 12 reps 20 Pull-ups 135 pound Clean and jerk, 12 reps 20 Knees to elbows Keith Nelson 36:59. Post time to comments. Enlarge image U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Joshua Desforges, 23, of Ludlow, Massachusetts, assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditio […]
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