Download This Issue - US Concealed Carry

The Balance of Speed &
Precision Target offers
several opportunities for
different levels of deviation
control and variations on
commands to fire all on one
piece of paper. Waiting in
front of this target for any
of a number of commands
will force the shooter to
process information prior to
shooting, just like in a real
situation.
stances we will be fighting (related to the
answers to many of the questions posed
above) will place us where we should be.
I find that approach to be akin to saying,
“You can’t really practice the right thing,
so we’ll just give up and practice something
that makes us feel good.” Shooting
a nice tight group or seeing your shot go
“right between the eyes” does make you
feel good—no wonder this approach
has been popular. The fact is that the
time component of defensive shooting
is always going to be “as fast as you
can.” Training to shoot one-inch groups
means that you will condition yourself
to shooting well at that pace. That pace
may not stop the bad guy fast enough
when the answer to question #9 is, “No.”
In the competition, the emphasis on
time as the measurement of success has
placed at the top of the list an emphasis
on performing a known task under
controlled conditions as quickly as possible.
Again, knowing that the answers
to the questions above will be very different
in a truly defensive shooting
situation (especially questions 2 and 3)
changes everything. Look at steel shooting
for example: Things like plate racks
or speed runs on large steel train us to
swing our gun through a known pattern,
timing our pressing of the trigger based
on prior experience. The human body
has the capacity to get very, very good at
MAY/JUNE 2011