Favorite Drills

[criterion01]

Thank you for your insight on survival; ability to 'draw fast' and shoot 6 rounds in 1.6 seconds on paper, facing your target, prepped stance, focused on the A zone. real brave. Before you start giving 'life saving' advice perhaps a little Force Science Research on the '21 foot rule' and how 'Cops and prosecutors' hate taking their 'kills'.... folks like you get people killed

The reality of civilian handgun use is most attackers doint have a gun. Do NOT shoot knife wielders beyond 10 ft, guys. DRAW and point at them but do not fire, at longer distances. You're not a cop, your lawyer is not free of charge and you will NOT have a sympathetic jury, judge or prosecutor. Cops and prosecutors HATE it when you intrude on their monopoly on violence. They very much want you to be disarmed and dependent upon them. Speed of draw has 6x prevented me from having to fire. Airsoft guns and a timer for same make it very cheap, easy,, safe and fast to acquire a superfast ccw draw. Until you get that gun out and on target, none of the other gun training means a thing. Quite often, if you can draw fast enough, you dont have to fire at ALL, which saves you 50-500k trying to stay out of prison and un-sued. Get the double ace timer for your wristband, so it works for both airsoft and live ammo. ou need that feedback of whether a draw truly was fast, or just felt that way, due to lots of wasted movement. If I can reliably draw and hit the chest in .70 second openly worn rig and you need 1.1 seconds to do the same, guess who's got more time for 5 more hits on the Bill drill, in 2 seconds, eh? You have .90 second for 5 more hits, I have 1.3 seconds for those same hits. Who is more likely to have 5 nice hits, me or you? Who is more likely to be able to get all 6 hits in 1.6 seconds, me or you? :-) Who is more likely to be un-shot and getting those hits? The speed of draw has to come first.

[sinister]

I drew up this rifle-pistol drill for my friend George Clendenin of Integrity Firearms Training in College Station, Texas. I call this "sinister's RASH" (Respond to Active Shooter) drill. The name kinda makes me want to scratch my bits.

The training lieutenant for one of the local police departments asked George for a carbine and pistol drill -- with the caveat they were shooting up expired rifle ammo, and had minimal pistol ammo. We wanted to give them a non-typical (not a "Yawn. Boring, I've seen it on youtube before") exercise. George presented this particular drill and the audience (consisting of a mix of academy instructors, firearms instructors, and one SWAT officer) gave positive comments.

Use this crawl-walk-run drill to train and eventually test or qualify individuals or pair teams, using 40 rounds (30 rifle, ten pistol) per turn. You can do this on a standard 100-yard rifle range with bullseye or turning target frames, or you can use IPSC-style stands. I used cardboard IPSC targets because they're common and available, but you can use GI cardboard E and F-type silhouettes. We're looking for hits. Since each go uses 40 rounds, I just transferred Army numbers -- 30-35 is good / passing, 36-40 is Expert. We're going for the sweet spot balancing power (hits), accuracy (dead), and speed (overall time).

Set up your target bank to look like this:



At the 100-yard line we parked a patrol Ford Exploder and a 4x4 side-by-side ATV. At the 75-yard line we put up V-TAC barriers so each shooter has cover, concealment, and support. At 50-yards we stacked two blue plastic dishwasher soap drums on top of each other to provide concealment but not sturdy support. At 25-yards we have simple orange cones.

We set up two parallel lanes so each respective left and right shooter has his own work space (a shooter and a safety pacing with him/her), and as we advance we can shoot as a side-by-side pair (a shooter/advancing mover while the other covers during the leap-frog / bounding overwatch).

We start at the 100-yard line. If department protocol says the carbine or rifle is in the rack or in a bag in the trunk, that's how we start.

I had the fellas start the car, shifter in drive, then hit the wail on the siren. Shooter then puts the car into park (or stand by for hilarity), grabs his carbine (or un-asses the car to the trunk and gets his weapon out of the soft case) and gets into the fight. If he has to don plate carrier over soft armor, he does so now.

He then gets support off the vehicle, nearest cover and concealment object, or the ground, and shoots five long-gun rounds at the full-size target on the left. He moves to other side of the vehicle and shoots the full-size target on the right.

He advances to the 75 and repeats five on the partial target on the left, switches cover side and shoots five on the right.

He advances to the 50-yard drums and takes a knee around cover and shoots the semi-obscured left target, switches sides, and shoots five on the right target.

He un-holsters his pistol and advances to 25 yards, and fires five rounds to lock-back -- reloads, and fires five rounds while advancing to close the distance.

We demonstrated, then everyone did it once, un-timed. We repeated, individuals against the stopwatch. We did it a third time as buddy pairs for fastest teams/most hits.

Fastest and highest scoring was, surprisingly, the new lieutenant with a standard 16-inch carbine. We had guys with short Mark 18-style CQB carbines, and the SWAT guy had a suppressed carbine with light and laser.

[gaijin]

Excellent Sinister, this hilights some vital “real world” skills IMO.

We do something similar a couple times a year, using different cover at decreasing distances, movement; advance/lateral, transition to handgun and sometimes back again to Carbine. I like to throw a “hostage” target or two in the mix on the partials. This causes shooter(s) to focus more on precision, particularly past 25 yds.

The downside is difficulty of course set up. While usually shot on a private range we must schedule with the “club” in advance.
There are only a dozen or less that practice these skill sets on a regular basis.