So Anyway, I Started Blasting
I like competing in practical pistol, and honestly, I don’t do it these days as often as I should. I am much more in the defensive mindset now than I was a dozen years ago, where I would shoot at least a couple of USPSA matches every month. One of the differences I’ve noticed in those dozen years is how a competition shooter and a defensive shooter approaches the task before them, what Gunsite calls the combat mindset. For example, to a competition shooter, there is no downside to going as fast as possible while still getting your hits: That’s how you win the match. As a result, at a certain point, how you lay out a strategy for a stage in order to shave a few seconds off your time is as important as how accurate you are.
A defensive shooter, on the other hand, can only go as fast as they can make decisions about their shots. In a defensive encounter, your head needs to be in the game, 100 percent of the time, or else there’s a good chance you’re going to jail. If you can’t tell your lawyer after an incident why you started shooting, you’re looking at a world of hurt in the courtroom. The same is true as to why you stopped shooting, or what was going on in your head when you missed a shot and hit a bystander.
This is an extension of firearms safety rule #4: Always be aware of your target and what’s going on around it and yourself. In fact, I’d amend that to say “Always be aware of where your sights are with relation to the target and what you are doing with your gun.” Actually, rule #4 could be shortened to “Always keep your head in the game.”
How do we do this? Well, shooting competitions is a good start. Yes, I realize that I spent the first part of this article slagging gun games, but what I was talking about happens at a higher level, like A Class USPSA and above. For the other 75% of competition shooters (and 99% of the whole world of gun owners), competition, even something like Steel Challenge, inoculates you against those “Oh my God, what do I do now?” moments and helps you form and execute a plan in the blink of an eye.
What else works? Well, force on force can definitely help, but it’s expensive and hard to do properly. However, even something as simple as running drills under time pressure will do the job. Given that repetition is the key to success in these things, I’d much rather have my students run drills under the timer every few weeks than go to an expensive force-on-force class once a year.
To sum up, think about the last time you ALMOST had a car accident. What happened? Did you consciously think “Ok, I need to move my foot from the gas to the brake and apply as much force as possible,” or did you just mash that pedal like your life depended on it?
Probably the latter, and even though you’re not a race car driver, you did it successfully because you had acclimated yourself to perform that action under stress. Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the saying goes, but familiarity with good training breeds competency.
