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Posts Tagged ‘Gunfighter Moment’

Gunfighter Moment – Larry Vickers

Saturday, November 26th, 2016

I often say you can learn more about shooting in one day on the range with quality instruction than you will learn in a month reading about it online. The process of zeroing your rifle is a perfect example; the skills and knowledge you gain from actually doing it, instead of reading about it, are immeasurable. You will also learn very quickly with quality range time that a) many of the techniques you might think are valid are actually stupid and b) a whole lot of the gear you might buy and think is cool is trash. Get some training before you go out and waste a bunch of money on equipment that is solely designed to separate neophytes from their money.

LAV out.

Larry Vickers
Vickers Tactical Inc.
Host of TacTV

Larry Vickers of Vickers Tactical is a retired US Army 1st SFOD-Delta combat veteran with years of experience in the firearms industry as a combat marksmanship instructor and industry consultant. In recent years he has hosted tactical firearms related TV shows on the Sportsman Channel with the latest being TacTV of which Bravo Company is a presenting sponsor. Larry Vickers special operations background is one of the most unique in the industry today; he has been directly or indirectly involved in the some of the most significant special operations missions of the last quarter century. During Operation Just Cause he participated in Operation Acid Gambit – the rescue of Kurt Muse from Modelo Prison in Panama City, Panama. As a tactics and marksmanship instructor on active duty he helped train special operations personnel that later captured Saddam Hussein and eliminated his sons Uday and Qusay Hussein. In addition he was directly involved in the design and development of the HK416 for Tier One SOF use which was used by Naval Special Warfare personnel to kill Osama Bin Laden. Larry Vickers has developed various small arms accessories with the most notable being his signature sling manufactured by Blue Force Gear and Glock accessories made by Tangodown. In addition he has maintained strong relationships with premium companies within the tactical firearms industry such as BCM, Aimpoint, Black Hills Ammunition, Wilson Combat and Schmidt & Bender.

With over 300,000 subscribers, his Youtube channel features a new firearms video every Friday. 

Larry Vickers travels the country conducting combat marksmanship classes for law abiding civilians, law enforcement and military and works with Aztec Training Services to coordinate classes to best meet the needs of the students attending the class.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

BCM Gunfighter Moment : Warrior’s Heart

Saturday, November 19th, 2016

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MISSION 22

Wars do not end for Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Air Men because they have returned home. For the people who have fought our wars, their fight does not end when they step off a plane onto the tarmac outside a war zone.

Today, twenty American veterans kill themselves, everyday, in the United States. Making this singular truth known to all Americans is our purpose. From this truth, Mission 22 inspires others to take up the cause of Veteran’s Suicide by creating or supporting efforts in their communities that can insure the people entrusted with fighting our wars, have the support at home that they need to come home in both their hearts and minds.

Founded by US Army Special Operations Combat Veterans, Mission 22 was started by warriors facing personal battles with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) during and after their service with the military. When Mission 22 started, twenty two veterans were committing suicide every day. Mission 22 has reached millions of Americans with their message and as Americans learn the truth, they are taking action.

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WARRIOR’S HEART

Co-founded by Mission 22 co-founder, Tom Spooner, Warrior’s Heart is a facility built specifically to treat Post Traumatic Stress and substance abuse issues facing veterans today. Built on the former site of the Purple Sage Ranch, northwest of San Antonio, Texas; Warriors Heart is a private facility with on-premises lodging, private therapy suites, group therapy spaces, fitness areas, recreational spaces, dining, and over 543 acres of Hill Country for exploration and private reflection.

With so much under one roof, Warriors Heart is able to provide physical, emotional, spiritual and cognitive healing for our veterans and first responders in one place. With their official opening on October 15, Warriors Heart is working to heal dozens of Veterans and First Responders who have come to the facility seeking a way to come home and connect with who they are.

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ART THERAPY

From its beginnings, Mission 22 created public and private art pieces that both raised awareness of Veteran suicide as well as helped the creators, combat veterans, on their path to healing. These pieces were designed to live in the everyday, where Americans worked and lived. These pieces were put in place to remind everyone who saw them, that there was a human cost to protecting our nation.

At the Warrior’s Heart facility, Mission 22 maintains a creative workshop space where “clients” can express their experiences and themselves through art. Providing raw materials and the tools to craft them, warriors have crafted personal works that they take with them at the end of their journey or leave on the campus to be displayed throughout the grounds of Warrior’s Heart.

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SERVICE DOGS

Operation Overwatch works with the clinicians at Warriors Heart to train service dogs specifically to what is needed in the treatment process for a veteran or first responder actively in the healing process. Post traumatic stress can be cued by smells, sounds or even the weather. Service dogs can be trained to recognize these triggers and intervene to help their person before an event can occur or to stop an event in progress. Additionally, these Service Dogs can be trained for mobility assistance and as companion dogs. To date, all dogs have either been rescues or “owner surrenders”, and often times clients can relate their personal struggles with that of one of the hand-picked shelter dogs. Group classes and private sessions are offered where clients learn training, husbandry, structure and communication skills vital to not only personal healing, but relationship building as well.

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THE WAR AT HOME MEMORIAL

Conceived of and built by Mission 22, the War at Home Memorial features twenty Coreten steel plates, each with water jet cut silhouettes and dog tags of real American veterans that lost their battle, here at home. Arranged in a phalanx, these are the silhouettes of fathers, brothers, sisters and friends; killed by shots fired from the other side of the planet, in battles that ended long ago.

Debuting to the public at the Warriors Heart Opening, this memorial is unlike others, built in place and seen only by those who go out of their way to pay their respects. The War At Home Memorial has been designed to travel, so that it can find it’s way into the population centers of the United States where it can be seen by everyone and that they can know the truth about Veteran suicide in America today.

To arrange for the War at Home Memorial to come to your city, contact Mission 22 at www.mission22.com/ contact-us-1

Learn more about Warriors Heart and see how you can help here www.warriorsheart.com.

Learn more about Operation Overwatch and service dogs here www.operationoverwatch.org.

Gunfighter Moment – Mike Glover

Saturday, November 5th, 2016

Redefining The Modern Combat POI

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In Special Forces, nothing is given and everything is earned. Fresh on a team as an 18 Bravo (Special Forces Weapons Sergeant) and hungry to show how valuable I was to the detachment, I wanted to bring the tactical capabilities of my unit a step up. I had seen other 18B’s running pre-deployment range work ups for their teams, but their programs seemed so vanilla and rudimentary. “Ready up” drills and basic lateral shooting with some depth movement; essentially, comfort food drills.

But we were Special Forces. Why wouldn’t we go beyond what was taught in the regular Army?

I laid out a plan to my Team Sergeant. I could make our guys better tacticians as well as better shooters. Starting with marksmanship from static positions at fixed distances, we would progress into both linear and lateral movement, eventually incorporating weapons manipulation on the move and under stress before applying these skills in “real-world” settings.

Taking my team through that process, I got to see first hand, exactly how other pro-end users learn. I would build on that to continually refine my POI (Program of Instruction), through the rest of my career in the US Army but there was a bigger lesson ahead…

When we got in our first gunfight, there were a number of tactics we had trained for on the flat range that proved impractical in combat. Trying to assume a “correct” marksmanship position took a backseat to necessity when the shooting started. Quick and accurate fire came from shooting in natural positions, not fighting the body’s center of gravity and orienting plates to the threat. In real world direct action missions with simultaneous clears, we discovered coming in high gun meant the M4 could be used to push, pin or drive a threat out of a threshold, whereas in the shoot houses, high gun was frowned upon as something SEALs did.

In combat, that hubris went out the window. We were fighting with rifles inside of rooms, dealing with anywhere from zero to fifty people who we had to immediately identify as a shoot or no-shoot so if something didn’t work consistently or wasn’t repeatable under fire, it got dumped. Immediately. End of story. Successful repeated application of a technique in combat was and is the only thing that counts.

Today, the POI I teach is Fundamentals of Gunfighting vs. Fundamentals of Marksmanship. Marksmanship proved to be the easiest technical element of gunfighting, honed with proven isolation drills and repped out consistently for sustainment. However it is the application of marksmanship, combined with immediate target discrimination and maneuver, that pays the bills. Entering a relative unknown and being able to immediately solve problems is the true hard skill that requires consistent good reps under oversight to improve, and that is the point of all of this. Create a path for improvement as a team and individual – because improving to the point where we kill the enemy and they don’t kill us is the whole reason we train.

– Mike Glover
FieldCraft LLC

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www.fieldcraftsurvival.com

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Ken Hackathorn

Saturday, October 29th, 2016

Magazine Madness

Of all the issues I see with users of the AR15/M4 weapons platform, two issues create the most problems. First is lack of lubrication. You must keep these firearms lubricated to work properly. Second is the problem of failing to seat the magazine into the weapon securely, when the bolt (moving parts) is forward.

Whether it is military, police, or private sector users, they try to top off their AR by putting a magazine that has 30 or often 31 rounds loaded into their carbine with the moving parts forward and in battery. With 31 rounds it will not lock into the weapon period, and with 30 rounds it will often be nearly impossible to get the magazine catch to engage in the magazine notch without beating the hell out of the magazine. This is especially the case with GI issue magazines. Some newer designs such as the Magpul polymer magazine has enough over travel in the spring that it can often be inserted and latched with 30 rounds in place. Yet, even with the Magpul I see many users fail to get it latched into the carbine properly with 30 rounds loaded.

The result of this failure to get the magazine secured into the weapon is that when the weapon is fired, the bolt carrier will fail to pick up the next round and you’ll get a click instead of a ‘bang’. In some cases the magazine will drop out of the weapon. Either way it is an ‘Operator Malfunction’ that can be easily corrected by first down loading any 30 round AR magazine to 28 rounds, and using a technique to insert the magazine with force, then give the magazine a tug to insure that it is securely latched into the weapon.

For half a century, the method of loading an AR magazine down to 18 rounds in a GI 20 rounder, or 28 rounds in a GI 30 round magazine was to insert the rounds into the magazine with the top round on the right looking at it from the rear. Press down on the top cartridge in the magazine with your thumb until the base of your thumb nail is even with the top of the magazine feed lip. Remember, top round is always on the RIGHT as you can load 31 rounds in the magazine; the 31st round will be on the left.

Now it gets interesting as the ‘Green Machine’ has converted to a magazine with a tan follower that will now have 30 rounds with the top round on the left; so much for 50 years of doing it one way, why not screw up the system? Again, remember it is the ‘Green Machine’; if you have been part of it you understand.

So, if you have the new tan follower GI magazines or Tango Down AR magazines, think top round on the left, thumb nail down to top round.

Now, which AR magazine is best?

Simple, whatever is free.

I like GI magazines with Magpul followers. I have Magul Gen 2 and Gen 3 mags, they are great. Nov 9th is coming, so make sure you have a good supply of quality serviceable 30 round magazines, and load them to 28 rounds.

– Ken Hackathorn

Old Guy With A Blaster

Ken Hackathorn has served as a US Army Special Forces Small Arms Instructor, Gunsite Instructor, and NRA Police Firearms Instructor. He is currently an FBI Certified Firearms Instructor, Certified Deputy Sheriff with Washington County SO, Ohio, and a SRT member and Special Response Team trainer. Ken has trained US Military Special Operations forces, Marine FAST and SOTG units and is a contract small arms trainer to FBI SWAT and HRT.

Ken has provided training to Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies and been active in small arms training for the past 25 years. He has written firearms related material for Guns & Ammo, Combat Handguns, Soldier Of Fortune, and currently American Handgunner and contributed to at least six other gun/shooting journals. Ken was also a founding member of IPSC and IDPA.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Ken Hackathorn

Saturday, October 15th, 2016

Red Dot or Optic?

Quite often the question as to whether the red dot sight or magnified scope is better for use on an AR/M4 style firearm is best comes up. The answer is really quite simple, in that you should choose the sighting system that best serves your mission requirements. Typically the M4 style of firearm in 5.56Nato is pretty much a 400 meter max range blaster. It can be used effectively at greater distance, but for the most part engaging targets successfully beyond 400 meters is not common when you are involved in any situation where all conditions are not ideal, like when the bullets are coming your way. For most folks, the AR in police and private sector markets is a 150 yard or less weapon. Even military engagements that result in successful placed hits is generally limited to 250 meters or less.

If you can clearly articulate your AR/M4 needs to 150 yards or less, the red dot sight is probably your best choice. Note that most urban use will much less than 150 yards. If your mission is likely to be in terrain or environments of 150 to 400 meters, the optic scope can provide a much wider benefit.

If your evaluation of needs reflects your needs will be in the 150 yards or less, a good quality red dot has much going for it. I recommend a Aimpoint Micro as the way to go. There are many red dot sights on the market, you can pretty much match price with quality. For general range use where the red dot is mostly for pleasure sport shooting, the less expensive versions may have merit. I have a few that fall into this need, and they provide for my needs. For anything that you may be staking your life on, don’t buy cheap; all my serious carbines have Aimpoint Micro T1, H1, or T2 red dots installed.

The fact that you can turn them on and leave then that way for 4 or 5 years is proof of their value, plus they are pretty much bomb proof. Pick a mounting interface that is rugged and reliable. My current favorite is the Scarlarworks Aimpoint Micro mount. I generally mount my Micro over the ejection port far enough forward that my breath will not fog the lens during cold weather.

For a magnified optic, I highly recommend a good 1X4 or 1X5 scope. You must have a low power setting for use at close range, CQB, or low light operations. Some folks demand a true 1 power setting, others do fine with the lowest settings at 1.25 or even 1.5. It depends on your eyes and how well you can focus quickly with both eyes open. Most of the time, your scope will be set on 1 power, or if working in more open terrain, you may click up to 2 or 3 power. One major advantage the magnified optic has over the red dot is in the area of target ID. There are often times that a target beyond 100 yards is not really clear or exposed well enough for clear identity, simply twisting the power ring up to 4 or 5 power will easily allow you to see what you need to know.

The problem with good 1×4 or 1×5 optics is how much to pay. You can spend the equivalent of a good used car, or just a few hundred bucks. I own a 1×4 S&B that has great optics, as well as some rather inexpensive varieties like Primary Arms, Weaver, and Leupold 1.5×4 1″ tube versions. The Trijicon 1×4 T24 is a great optic, and I have a few of these on various carbines. I am not so sure that the most expensive variables are worth the money for my needs. In some cases they can be grossly overpriced. Oftentimes end users choose first focal plane optics, which great for much higher magnification sniper scope use, but terrible for close range carbine applications. At 1 power on a first focal plane scope the reticle will be small and hard to see in low light or dark background environments.

Yes, illuminated reticles can fix this problem, but note that the battery life of most of these models is extremely short compared to a Aimpoint or even the ill famed EOTechs. Remember, the need for a ranging reticle on a 400 yard carbine is a real waste. You can deal with most every ranging issue you have with just hold over out to that distance, even to 400 meters, the trajectory of the 5.56 round is pretty easy to master by adjusting different aiming points. You want an simple easy to use reticle, and you DO NOT need target adjustment knobs on a carbine scope; hey get damaged easily, and move position far to easy with bumps and rubs against gear.

Pick a good rugged mount interface to your carbine. In some cases this may be a quick release throw lever design. Sadly, most of the current offerings are heavy. Everything you add to a 5.56 carbine adds weight. The last thing I want to lug around is a heavy carbine: handy means lightweight.

Consider what you want your carbine to do; what is its mission? Then, select the sighting system that meets your needs.

– Ken Hackathorn

Old Guy With A Blaster

Ken Hackathorn has served as a US Army Special Forces Small Arms Instructor, Gunsite Instructor, and NRA Police Firearms Instructor. He is currently an FBI Certified Firearms Instructor, Certified Deputy Sheriff with Washington County SO, Ohio, and a SRT member and Special Response Team trainer. Ken has trained US Military Special Operations forces, Marine FAST and SOTG units and is a contract small arms trainer to FBI SWAT and HRT.

Ken has provided training to Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies and been active in small arms training for the past 25 years. He has written firearms related material for Guns & Ammo, Combat Handguns, Soldier Of Fortune, and currently American Handgunner and contributed to at least six other gun/shooting journals. Ken was also a founding member of IPSC and IDPA.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Aaron Barruga

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

Natural Instinct

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A “combat snapshot” refers to how much information a shooter can process in his environment. This is both a proactive and retroactive process. For example, if an individual proceeds into a room from a hallway, he identifies the layout of the new room while remembering the layout of the hallway. This mental process is what helped our ancestors avoid becoming dinner for lions, and is what helps us perform other tasks such as texting while driving.

Our minds default to pattern recognition. If we enter an unfamiliar room (whether in combat or at a dinner party), our eyes will be drawn to motion. Our brains then employ a friend or foe heuristic that indicates whether we can remain calm or if other action should be taken (e.g. get out, there’s a lion at this dinner party!).

The quality at which we perceive information determines whether we receive data that is actionable or just noise. Entering a crowded room, you can scan the environment by simply moving your eyes within their sockets. Moving your head left and right may be necessary to gather data at different angles, but if we jerk our heads too quickly, any information about our surroundings becomes a blur. Another gift passed on to us from our ancestors is our body’s preference for expending the least amount of effort possible to accomplish a task. Unnecessary movement expends precious energy, but can also signal to predators our location.

Excessive movement also distracts our ability to obtain a combat snapshot. Recall any time you’ve been in the woods hunting or just hiking with family. Regardless of being a soldier or civilian, if you hear something that doesn’t sound right, you naturally slow your movement and alter your posture to scan your surroundings. Your eyes scan in their sockets, and your head moves in a methodical manner to assess the environment.

Consider that natural behavior in the woods and apply it to range training. Although tactical shooters are taught a variety of techniques for gaining a combat snapshot or regaining situational awareness, some methods tend place greater emphasis on performing pre and post shooting rituals. Unfortunately these movements provide no advantage in the real world, or worse, actually contradict our natural survival instincts.

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Search and assess theatrics are heavily critiqued among instructors with extensive combat or use of force experience. Although it is important to maintain situational awareness, unnecessary head whipping movements do little to provide a shooter with actionable data. The sister action to theatrical search and asses is a movement I’m going to coin as “spider monkeying”. This occurs when barriers or vehicles are incorporated in flat range training. Rather than reading the terrain and modifying their posture, shooters begin to bob and weave their head around obstacles. This is accompanied by excessive pushing and pulling of a pistol in and out of ready positions (e.g. position three to position four, back to position three, etc).

At full speed, spider monkeying looks like a shooter continuously bobbing and weaving like a boxer, combined with the push-pulling of a pistol into and away from his chest. This behavior occurs for two reasons. First, the shooter is attempting to maximize perceived cover while mistakenly assuming that the extra bob and weave movements are causing the enemy to remain reactive. Second, the shooter knows where all of the targets are located and isn’t required to alter his approach. Instead he can just shoot the scenario similar to a USPSA stage with no regards to application of cover and minimizing his silhouette.

Spider monkeying emphasizes the importance of adding blind shoots to range training. When a shooter must interact with a tactical scenario similar to the real world, it decelerates his movements. Instead of exaggerated bobbing, a shooter obtains a combat snapshot through purposeful action and throttle control. Although a shooter might transition between moving quickly and slowly, these are still deliberate actions as opposed to random head jerking. Why? Because in an uncertain environment, excessive movement will either visually give away your position or inhibit your ability to read data in the environment.

Further examination of throttle control can be observed in certain war movies and combat helmet camera footage. This week marked the 23rd anniversary of the events that would become famous through “Black Hawk Down”. Despite the movie’s delineation from actual events, the actors did do justice through their tactical portrayal of Rangers and Delta Operators. Weapon’s handling and fire team movements appeared similar to the real world. No unnecessary head bobbing or peek-a-boo, just methodical clearing of sectors.

Throttle control is also observed by watching helmet camera footage of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. When soldiers make contact with the enemy there is chaos and ambiguity as platoons attempt to identify where the enemy is located. What is not readily observable is unnecessary movement. During the initial phases of a firefight, it is very hard to tell where enemy fire is coming from unless you are amid the enemy’s formation. This is why soldiers minimize their silhouette and scan their sectors to find new data to add to their combat snapshot. Unnecessary movement is not only disorienting, but it might attract the attention of a PKM machine gunner.

Our instincts represent the culmination of handed down survival mindset from our ancestors. Every lion evaded, spear dodged, or musket ball avoided has fined tuned our senses. To our advantage, we are genetically hardwired to avoid threats. In preparing for violent encounters, we should utilize as much of these senses as possible during range training events.

aaron

Aaron Barruga is a Special Forces veteran and founder at Guerrilla Approach LLC. He teaches vehicle tactics and speed shooting for tactical marksmanship.

www.guerrillaapproach.com
www.facebook.com/guerrillaapproach
www.instagram.com/guerrilla_approach

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Aaron Barruga

Saturday, September 17th, 2016

Beyond Benchmarks: Why Tactical Shooters Plateau

I felt like a rockstar the first time I achieved a sub second draw from the holster. In my best Maverick from Top Gun impersonation, I punched my fist in the air while delivering a controlled grin at my GoPro. I looked back at my shot timer and welcomed myself into the pantheon of top tier marksman. What happened afterwards immediately bumped me back down onto the plateau that I belonged.

I fired another 50 single shots from the holster and failed to break one second. No problem, this is easily fixed by shooting another box of ammo, then another…. $50 later and I’m not even burning in anywhere near 1.10 seconds.

Every shooter plateaus in performance and we often delay growth by assuming we can solve our problem by shooting more ammo, finding a better piece of gear, or seeking out more pro-tips on YouTube. Although these behaviors may facilitate some progress, collectively they waste time and fail to address the root of the problem in the development of maintaining a performance-based training mindset.

Mindset is deterred by ignoring general information, focusing on specifics and valuing benchmarks (e.g. sub 1 second draw) as outcomes instead of methods. During training, this manifests as misinterpretation of a single outstanding performance that inappropriately calibrates expectations to an assumed level of expertise (e.g. inconsistent sub second draw). Similarly, valuing benchmarks as outcomes instead of methods can distract from improving overall skills development. This is best demonstrated by a performance phenomena known as “range roboting”.

We “range robot” by executing a high volume of repetitions on a single exercise, but only narrowly increase the scope of our overall performance. For example, shooting an entire box of ammo at the El Prez drill means nothing, if, when the drill is performed in reverse, our skills regress back to mediocre. The solution to the problem is not expending another box of ammo while performing El Prez in reverse. Instead, we must look beyond benchmarks and focus on mindset.

Although benchmarks are important qualifiers in measuring mechanical performance, they are not always a good indicator of how skills transfer to the real world. For instance, shooting a carbine bolt-lock reload exercise for speed can cause shooters to overlook the importance of learning the subtle feeling of a bolt that has not returned to battery. One should never argue that speed is unimportant, but when speed is performed hastily, it is not always the best metric for building well-rounded tactical abilities.

A key activity in developing a performance-based mindset is measuring consistency. “Slow is smooth… and smooth is fast” or the alteration of “slow is slow… fast is fast,” regardless of which version of the quote is more en vogue, we should endorse behavior that encourages relaxed skills execution. This doesn’t mean excluding benchmarks in measuring ability, however, benchmarks should be incorporated during training with the understanding that there is a difference between learning to perform a task consistently versus going as fast as you can. This is most important for shooters that are constantly outrunning their headlights with the assumption that speed is corollary to performance. Scenario based exercises immediately surface this fallacy among other performance inabilities because these shooters are required to combine multiple skill sets, most of which are mental.

A performance based training mindset can be developed through several methods, and the most cost efficient technique is adopting the “less is more” mentality with ammo expenditure. If I exceed 300 rounds per training session, I encourage going through the motions on certain exercises. Reducing the total number of rounds fired forces me to budget my efforts and decreases opportunities for complacency in which I chase a benchmark that cannot be performed with any real consistency.

Visualization is another key activity that allows us to think through different scenarios and develop a performance-based mindset. In the conceptual and developmental phases of tactical courses, some students demand specific sets of rules that need to be followed in order to win a gunfight. If the threat does X, I respond with Y. Tactical encounters are not linear and this is why instructors place greater emphasis on well-rounded skills development instead of excellence in a single benchmark.

A month after my first sub second flat range draw, I trained to the point that I was able to meet the benchmark with consistency by focusing on a single outcome. This required a lot of ammo, dry-fire practice, and neglecting to develop other skills that are essential to being a tactical marksman. Speed is important, but it may be an overvalued metric if the more necessary outcome is being familiar with drawing from concealment from inside a vehicle with a support hand.

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Aaron Barruga is a Special Forces veteran and founder at Guerrilla Approach LLC. He teaches vehicle tactics and speed shooting for tactical marksmanship.

www.guerrillaapproach.com
www.facebook.com/guerrillaapproach
www.instagram.com/guerrilla_approach

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

Gunfighter Moment – Pat McNamara

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

As there are techniques, there are just as many gun related gizmos, gadgets, and gimmicks. Bolt and strap on. Theatrical movements and dance steps. Tales of woe or implausible performance enhancers. Some live long and become center of debate issues while others die off quickly.

One of the things I encourage on the range is discovery or tactile learning. In other words, learn by doing vice taking one’s word for it. One can now make the determination for himself on whether to shit-can or to maintain a technique or piece of gear for he sees that it will or will not offer positive development in a gunfight.

Battlefield multipliers are often the simplest in solutions versus high tech gear or high motor skill movements. My go to Battle Rifle is a 16” BCM KMR and it’s pretty much meat and potatoes. Full length 2-point sling, good optic, good BUIs, good light.

Patrick McNamara
SGM, US Army (Ret)

Pat McNamara

Patrick McNamara spent twenty-two years in the United States Army in a myriad of special operations units. When he worked in the premier Special Missions Unit, he became an impeccable marksman, shooting with accurate, lethal results and tactical effectiveness. McNamara has trained tactical applications of shooting to people of all levels of marksmanship, from varsity level soldiers, and police officers who work the streets to civilians with little to no time behind the trigger.

His military experience quickly taught him that there is more to tactical marksmanship than merely squeezing the trigger. Utilizing his years of experience, McNamara developed a training methodology that is safe, effective and combat relevant and encourages a continuous thought process. This methodology teaches how to maintain safety at all times and choose targets that force accountability, as well as provides courses covering several categories, including individual, collective, on line and standards.

While serving as his Unit’s Marksmanship NCO, he developed his own marksmanship club with NRA, CMP, and USPSA affiliations. Mac ran monthly IPSC matches and ran semi annual military marksmanship championships to encourage marksmanship fundamentals and competitiveness throughout the Army.He retired from the Army’s premier hostage rescue unit as a Sergeant Major and is the author of T.A.P.S. (Tactical Application of Practical Shooting). He also served as the Principle of TMACS Inc.

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.