Ox here with 4 myths about firearms accuracy that bad guys believe and you shouldn’t
MYTH 1. You can’t shoot accurately with a (fill in the blank) pistol.
Normally, I hear this argument about subcompacts, pistols/revolvers with long heavy triggers, or pistols that have a long double action for the first round and a single action thereafter.
The fact is that all of these make firing fast and accurate groups more difficult, but it shouldn’t be an excuse for poor performance. Even the tiny belt-buckle sized North American Arms .22 revolver can be shot accurately at targets several yards away.
If you have a sub-compact pistol or revolver that shoots large groups, I challenge you to put it in a gun vice, shoot a few rounds with it at 10-15 feet, and see just how precise and accurate it really is.
9 times out of 10, when you shoot using a vice or have a solid shooter shoot your gun, you’ll find that it’s capable of sub-inch groups at 10-15 feet…you just have to “drive” it correctly.
And once you can do it with a subcompact or a gun with a “difficult” trigger, you can perform with ANY pistol or revolver.
MYTH 2. It’s better to practice spreading your shots rather than shooting 1 hole groups.
The logic here is that, as you’re practicing on paper targets, you should TRY to spread out your shots so that you’ll do more damage to more organs and hopefully stop your attacker faster.
In practice, it’s vital that you are able to shoot slow, tight groups at close targets. It’s a basic test of whether you can line up the sights and press the trigger…and most people are wildly overconfident in their ability to shoot tight groups. In fact, only about 10% of shooters who carry regularly can show up to a range, stand on a line, 6-10 feet from a sheet of paper and shoot a 5 round 1″ group with no time constraints.
What I like to say is that the bigger the difference between how you’re training and reality, the tighter and more precise your groups need to be.
If you’re shooting slowly in sterile conditions, you should strive to drive nails.
If you’re doing low light force on force facing incoming rounds and shooting while moving to cover, then just getting hits on target is awesome.
The more speed, movement, stress, and cognitive load you add to your training, the larger your groups will be, but you always want to be able to come back to being able to line up the sights, press the trigger, and make a precise hit.
MYTH 3. All fine motor skills will fail under extreme stress.
I LOVE this argument, mainly because I’ve been passionate on both sides of it. I used to be passionate that all fine motor skills failed under extreme stress…until I had enough people who’d been in combat multiple times tell me I was wrong. Fine motor skills don’t fail under stress, PEOPLE fail under stress and people can train and inoculate themselves to stress to the point where they can respond calmly and precisely in situations where others default to gross motor skills or freeze.
This is kind of tricky and fuzzy, but suffice it to say that there’s a gauntlet that you have to go through before you respond calmly in situations where others get over-amped up or freeze and you won’t know that you’ve made it through until you’ve been tested and had one or more successful outcomes…be it simulated (realistically) or real.
What you’ll find is that the more you’ve practiced a given fine or complex motor skill, the longer you’ll be able to perform it at higher pulse rates and higher adrenaline (among other brain chemical/hormone) levels. In other words, it’s more accurate to say that fine motor skills that haven’t been practiced enough will fail when you have an extreme reaction to an extreme stress event.
MYTH 4. You fall down and stop fighting or die when you get shot.
At the beginning of OEF/OIF, people were getting shot with non immediate life threatening wounds, not realizing they were shot (and still fighting) and then, when they saw that they were shot, falling on the ground screaming like what they’d seen people do on TV and sometimes even dying.
It’s what we see on TV & movies. When you play paintball and get hit, you raise your gun and yell “I’m hit” or “I’m out” and stop fighting. Same with airsoft. Same with MOST wax bullet and simunition training. It’s not reality.
There’s a 90%+ chance that you’ll survive a single gunshot wound…and that’s without body armor. If you are conscious and realize that you’ve been shot, regardless of the number of times, there’s a 90% chance that you’ll survive. SO KEEP FIGHTING IF YOU GET HIT and finish the fight!
Something else to keep in mind…if someone is shot and drops to the ground due to a drop in blood pressure, going horizontal might compensate blood pressure enough for them to get back in the fight.
We saw this in the St. Cloud Mall stabbings. If someone drops to the ground due to their pelvic girdle being hit, they may not be mobile, but they can still trigger a bomb (like we saw in the Istanbul airport bombing) or shoot a gun.
People can also drop to the ground temporarily for psychological or electrical reasons and quickly get back in the fight. So if you get shot and go to the ground, don’t think you’re out of the fight. If you shoot a threat and they drop to the ground, it’s not a guarantee that they’re out of the fight, so stay frosty.
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It’s designed to help new shooters become experts at a record pace, and former tip of the spear guys regain and keep their edge without needing an unlimited ammo and training budget. It’ll help you get more out of live training classes you have coming up and lock in lessons learned from classes you’ve had in the past. Check it out now by clicking >HERE<
38 Comments
Lance H
October 3, 2018I still vividly remember my first high-risk takedown back in the 80s as a rookie, of an armed offender who was supposed to have an Uzi with him. I experienced all off the stuff they talked about in training – tunnel vision, time distortion, problems hearing, etc., my heart was pounding wildly, and I’m damned glad that I didn’t have to get in a gun fight, the results might not have been pretty. Later, I ended up on a street drug team that routinely did high-risk takedowns of armed and damned dangerous offenders, and with every arrest the stress became more controllable, to the point where I was alert, calm, and ready to perform at maximum, riding the adrenaline rather than letting it control me. In the decades since, like most cops, I’ve experienced every kind of human misery and horror imaginable and become pretty blasé about it, and seen all the different ways people respond to overwhelming stress – blind panic, rage, robotic behavior, etc. All I can say is practice how you’ll play, because when you’re redlining on adrenaline for the first time as a person who’s never faced a life-or-death stressor, all the “I’ll be a total badass if I ever get into a shootout” will go out the window. You’ll do whatever you’ve done every time you’ve shot, good or bad, and odds are, you’ll do it clumsily.
Good luck from Canada. L
Sean F. Alexander
October 3, 2018Brilliant….nothing is like Hollywood
Jackie
November 17, 2017Ox,
Thanks to your DFTC and video trainings, plus the “shoot the bad guys on TV” practice and trigger finger exercises on the steering wheel, I can now report the following.
One hole groups of four and five of five with multiple pistols off the stand in front of me at the range.
Everything from an M&P 40 to a High Point 45 acp. After those successes at 7 yds, I went for the gusto and put three of five inside the triangle of the A at 3 yards with a NA Charter Arms 22 mag. Trigger discipline and sight picture!
True, the five rounds were in 3-4 seconds, but form first and speed next. My son standing in the next lane with a Walther P99 45 looked at me and said “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” I said “Hey, I bought you a deck of DFTC the same day I got mine.”
‘Nuff said!
Ox
November 20, 2017Awesome, Jackie!
Caribou
April 24, 2017Richard Page,
You say that you trust in God to protect you, I concur. Have you considered the possibility that God might have steered you here and to other sites so that you might develop the skills to protect yourself.
I’m not much of a bible man but I seem to remember something about selling your cloak and buying a Glock. I think that is in “The Really Really New King James” version. God provides for your food but he doesn’t put it in your refrigerator. You need to grow it or do something else to get it to your table. When God provides, sometimes he just provides the means.
Sorry, I don’t have Facebook, I hope you get to see this.
John Remka
April 24, 2017Nice article right on.
Firehawk
March 24, 2015Repetitive training…….! The gun I was carrying several years ago was a 1934, .32 cal. Beretta. I had trained drawing from behind my right hip and thumbing the hammer to cocked position. One nite as I left my sister-in-laws, I opened the drivers door to find a man on the passenger side floor boards crouched down. He had broken the collar lock on the steering column intent on stealing my car. I am sure he must have thought I was someone who was going to walk by to another car. Surprise…! He bolted from the car and I had that firearm in a two hand stance with it cocked before he had even cleared the car and I don’t even remember doing it. I tossed a shot into the nearby tree with no intention of shooting the man. But you shoulda seen him get a “kick” as he ran for his life. Repetitive training-muscle memory. Do it!
Ox
March 24, 2015Glad it ended well for you. You’re absolutely 100% correct on repetitive training 🙂
Please don’t take what I’m about to say as a criticism…it’s not. Times have changed and if you draw a firearm on someone who’s running away from you, you risk being charged with brandishing, and if you fire a gun in a city without a lethal threat, you’ve got all sorts of potential legal trouble headed your way.
Danno.
March 23, 2015I would like to say just one thing here.
If you ever need to use your guy, and shoot someone.
REMEMBER VERY WELL. VERY VERY WELL.
Have you hands out in front of you. Stand still.
DO NOT! DO NOT TALK WITH THE POLICE UNTIL YOU HAVE A LAWYER WITH YOU.
Just give them your name. And say I was in fear for my life. I want a lawyer.
Say nothing more until you have a lawyer with you. Know your rights,and use them.
You can be 100% in the right all the way. But you are going to need to prove it 100%.. Have a lawyer with you. The police are going to turn it all around, upside down. You name it..
Be safe. Have a lawyer with you…
Just saying..
Xenolith
March 21, 2015I was shot by a .12ga shotgun in my right shoulder two years ago. I never even felt it. I stood for at LEAST the first 10 seconds and calmly stated: I just got shot. The whole time looking at the hamburger that use to be my right shoulder.
My point being, except for the fact that I WAS knocked backward a bit, had I been in an attack position, i still would have continued before realizing the severity of the damage.
You’re right on the money on this one, Ox!
mike kilgore
March 20, 2015I think it’s not how many as much as how fast but a key think is distance to target. 17 rounds is dumb. it should not take you 17 rounds to stop someone. Accuracy is the beginning and then speed.
I shoot expert with rifle shotgun pistol and machinegun. I run 700 to 1000 rounds a week. Get a timer and get your one shot draw down to under 2 seconds and hit.
Ox
March 21, 2015(I’m making a guess here since the article didn’t refer to 17 rounds anywhere that Mike checked out http://www.1holechallenge.com and his comments are in regards to that.)
That’s an interesting opinion, Mike…if 17 rounds (1 mag) is dumb for the drill, how many rounds is “not dumb”?
You might have missed where the article says it, but the 17 round, 1 hole group drill is not something to do in a defensive situation, but a great litmus test that quickly reveals opportunities for improvement.
Great numbers! Are you doing dry fire as well? On the timers, if you don’t have one, you might want to check out the Double Alpha Academy wrist timer…it’s awesome.
Bob R
March 20, 2015I have hand-activated (Crimson Trace) laser sights on all my pistols that light up when I squeeze the grip. In you experience, does that increase accuracy at close range, or are they a waste of money (already spent)?
Ox
March 20, 2015laser sights are AWESOME and not a waste of money at all. People can have a problem with lasers when they use them as a crutch and as an excuse not to practice, but when you practice regularly without the laser, develop good fundamentals, and add the laser to the equation, they’re great.
With arms outstretched, I’m actually faster without the laser than with, but I really like them for shooting from the hip, during the drawstroke, and around barriers.
Marty
March 20, 2015You must practice with the Crimson Trace. Practice trigger control. Many jerk the trigger when they see the laser dot. I have a Crimson Trace pair of grips that I received when they were still in the trial phase. They are great, but practice, practice, practice. For low light handgun shooting, they’re the best.
Bob R
March 21, 2015Marty;
I agree that you have the tendency to jerk the trigger (resulting in an upward jerk of the pistol) when using the laser. It happened to me when I first installed them, but quickly learned to pull the trigger as if the laser was not installed. I initially purchased one pistol with a LaserLyte installed but found that turning on the laser was cumbersome, and reaching the on/off button was nearly impossible for my wife’s smaller hand. The Crimson Trace turns on without even thinking about it, or without searching for the on/off button.
Rick Anderson
March 20, 2015You are right on on all 4 points . Reread #4 As someone who has taken 2 rounds (5 holes) I can tell you from experience , you can live and keep firing! Trust your training and watch your front sight.
Ron Halfhill
March 20, 2015I totally agree and thank you for saying it: Fine motor skills do not have to disappear upon confrontation with stressful events. Practice, practice, practice makes the difference along with mindset. Control is what makes the difference.
Robert Nichols
March 20, 2015I’m no expert in these areas. However, there are things you can practice that will help with that stress and adrenaline rush. One is the Soldiers Breathing ‘thing’. Breathe in on 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breath out on 4 counts and hold for 4 counts. I’m told that by doing this you can reduce the ‘stress’ effects such as tunnel vision and the adrenaline rush.
I’ve never tried it under real stress conditions so I cannot verify results.
Dan Capron
March 20, 2015While I agree with your “myth analysis”, I would like to comment that Practice Makes Perfect. There is a reason why Tier 1 Operators shoot 1000s of rounds per month (or week when working up for deployment). It has to do with “muscle memory”. The more you properly practice repetitive movements, the more likely you will achieve the same result in stressful or real world scenarios. This is evident when you read about police officers and bad guys shooting up the world and not hitting anything or taking 10 rounds to put down the adversary. Law Enforcement usually doesn’t have the resources ($$$) to practice as much as they need or want and the bad guys usually thing a gun and a magazine make them experts.
So, the lesson here is practice, practice and practice. As much as your pocketbook allows. IMH retired military Opinion.
Ox
March 20, 2015Hey Dan,
Thanks for the comments…but I have to disagree with the statement that “Law Enforcement usually doesn’t have the resources ($$$) to practice as much as they need or want.”
I’ve been on a quest to destroy that line of thought for the last few years. The truth is that almost every department DOES have the resources to practice as much as they need or want IF they transition 90% of their training over to dry fire. Dry fire is much more effective/efficient at developing neural pathways and is much easier on the budget. For officers who “get it” and want to master the gun, they can get a SIRT and put in a hundred to a few hundred repetitions during commercials during a half hour TV show each night at zero cost per rep.
G
March 20, 2015Who an afford to “Pratice” shoot these days?
The meek may not inherit the Earth.”
Ox
March 20, 2015Hey G, you must be new here–welcome! Get yourself a deck of http://www.DryFireTrainingCards.com and you can practice for free. To see what kind of performance you can get after doing ONLY dry fire practice for 6 months, check out http://www.1holechallenge.com
DCV
March 20, 2015Right on, you can’t learn new skills in a gun fight. I think I read that somewhere, Jeff Cooper. As an armed citizen I am not in gun fights. Anyway, I find that IDPA and timed police quals (double speed) help expose flaws in technique. I also use the Bill Drill, timed 6-round strings in a IPSC target at 7 yd–finding that slow and smooth is faster and more accurate than my best attempt to be “fast.” Dry firing with a Laserlyte focuses on the fundamentals.
Peyton Quinn
March 20, 2015I did comment on the things I could not accepting your article sir based on actual experience. But there really is a lot RIGHT with it too. My post was too long as it was though.
An amazing idea to some is that many assailants who are shot by a homeowner or CCW person etc, well I have reason to think that some of those attackers stopped attacking not because they could not continue, but because they did not want to be shot again.
But do not count on that because the corollary is ‘handguns rarely kill a person with one shot’
Ox
March 20, 2015Hey Peyton,
I don’t disagree with any of what you said and I don’t believe the article did either. If it did, just let me know and I’ll either clarify or fix it. Here’s a couple of things in particular that popped out at me…
First, I referenced a “determined attacker” specifically in an attempt to address the fact that many assailants turn and run after the first shot.
Second, I am not sure how to fully articulate the concept in a sentence yet in a way that’s not too dry or deep, but there’s 2 groups of people who don’t see their sights in a high stress gunfight…those who don’t CONSCIOUSLY see their sights and those who don’t UNCONSCIOUSLY see their sights. There’s also the instances of using the sights with your eyes, but not focusing the image on your macula…not exactly the periphery, but not focused on the macula.
It’s my experience that when people refer to the sighted shot, they’re talking about consciously focusing the front sight on the macula of the eye and everything else is referred to as “unsighted”, even though there’s a gray zone.
Elsee
March 21, 2015It is in my assumption that you OX are very intelligent I like your group here are you preppers or a tactical group ?
SonOfSam
March 20, 2015I agree with that corollary, whose cousin is the saying:
“Pull the trigger until the gun goes click. Then get another mag in it tutto pronto”
Peyton Quinn
March 20, 2015While there is some truth here sir,I can assure you of two things after training people under true and high adrenal stress in realistic scenarios where they have to make the ‘present or not to present’ decision as well as the ‘shooter don’t shoot’ decision.
And I have been doing this for 28 years almost nobody even ‘knew’ there were sights on the pistol much less were able to use them in the scenarios.. Some people who come here to training were pros, other never saw real gun to they came to my training ,some were cops,a few were Navy SEALS, a few were competition shooters. etc.
The only times,and they are very few maybe 1% who could use the sights was the hostage scenario where they were immediately under the threat. These guys were the SEALS too.
Most people will lose fine motor skills under stress. This is a documented fact. Training can overcome this but only if it is done under high adrenal stress. But at pistol distancesone does not really need any fine motor skills and point shooting is all; most anyone can do. By that they jerk out the gun and shoot.
Marksmanship training for groups on paper will never allow you to realize this truth. But scenario based training with human being as the ‘target’ when they weak and talk and threten and verbally abuse etc and make fast moves will show this reality every time.
I have had scores and score of people in over the years thinking that aimed fire is the only way to go, they were adamant about it. But after one scenario they reverse that position every time. Many times when they come off the scenario with their eyes glazed and their hands shaking I will ask” Did you sue the sights?’. If they can answer the thing I hear most often is “I did not even know the gun had sights’. And yet they could be good marksmanship and have countless hours at the ‘range’.
The more real the training methodology gets to the actual event being trained for,only then do the real problems in doing that actual activity surface. WE sue real guns a low velocity rubber bullets (175 fps soft hollow rubber) and light armor and instructors fire Hollywood blank guns at the students. WE know exactly when,where and if we are hit and respond according. And you are quite correct about handguns being a rather light weapon for an animal as large as a human being. So an instructor hit in shoulder might still return fire on the student. The attendants (students) thus learn to end the threat. Hitting paper targets won’t teach you that realty.
Elsee
March 21, 2015I like your style Peyton, you are a patriot sir
Mike
January 5, 2017Very true about the sights in my case, Peyton.
I have 30 hours of training with an FBI Agent who trains new agents to shoot and he has also been to every top training school as well as trained with most major city SWAT teams. He was also a street cop for 3 years and a Secret Service Agent for 5 before switching to the FBI.
I also have 30 hours of training with a carbine and handgun with a large southern city SWAT team leader.
I learned more about mindset and observation (OODA Loop) from them than precision shooting. Both said, “You will never see the sights – you will look at the threat unless you train so much that you become one of the rare few that sees them.”
I was being surrounded by two guys late at night outside a convenience store asking, and then demanding, money. Two great books are “Blink: The Power of Thinking w/o Thinking” and “The Gift of Fear”. Every nerve in my body screamed from the git-go to get my hand on my weapon under my lower buttoned only, not zipped, jacket. “When one hand goes into a coat it is coming out with a weapon”, and that it did. It never fully came out as I leveled mine into his chest and screamed to show me his hands. Time slowed, I thought of a full criteria of what he must do that will force me to shoot 5 rounds in his chest and turn to the other threat, and I never saw the sights. Thankfully he put his hand back in, both raised their hands, and backed away telling me to “be cool, man. be cool”
2nd event: 10 PM, strip mall, two other cars, and suddenly a car has pinned me into my spot with the building’s brick wall in front of me. I’ve not forgotten in the 6 years since that I was told to always back cars into spots as you see more which is often enough to not pick you.
I sat in the car for what seemed to be 20-30 seconds with the dome light on and weapon atop my right shoulder. They had to see that and didn’t leave. I wasn’t too happy then and said to myself what the FBI Agent said to say, “I will die someday, but today isn’t that day”.
Two exited the car from each side only when I did and my Surefire light lit the driver up as I got behind the engine block. He crossed his arms to block the light with a gun in his right hand. The other guy jumped back in the car. With the light clearly blinding him I moved my hand with the flashlight back while keeping it on him and lifted my cell phone out of my shirt pocket. I said loudly into the phone that now joined my flashlight, “This is retired officer Michael xxxxx (cheating and lying is always okay in a gun fight), at the corner parking lot of X and Y and involved in a carjacking in progress. Please send any unit in the area for backup. I’m armed and I’m wearing tan shorts and a white shirt. Suspect is armed and dressed in dark clothing and my weapon is pointed at him”. He jumped in the car, turned off the lights and left. Turns out there was a carjacking each night, but that night, in 5 days within 4 blocks of my location. Not the best part of town, but not really all that bad. Just sort of isolated from the 4 lane road 100 yards away with low lighting and lots of trees.
That carjacking training offered by the SWAT officer came in handy. I just forgot about always backing in if possible.
I looked at my hands immediately after each incident and neither were shaking. While it being real was new to me, training for it was not. So I’ll end with something you know:
You are never ready to carry a concealed weapon until you have taken at least one 10 hour class with a highly trained professional where you fire 500-600 rounds and are told a few key elements of a bad guy’s activities.
Had I, like many of my CCW friends, never taken any training it would be like never seeing a basketball and being handed it and told, “Michael Jordan starts the game in 3 seconds….good luck”. Your chances of winning are damn close to zero if you can’t see what is happening and having a plan to use that you have trained for.
Regards,
Mike
Ox
January 5, 2017Thank you for sharing those incidents, Mike. I’m glad you are here to talk about them 🙂
A couple of things to keep in mind about the statement you made, “You are never ready to carry a concealed weapon until you have taken at least one 10 hour class with a highly trained professional where you fire 500-600 rounds and are told a few key elements of a bad guy’s activities.”
That’s good, and I wouldn’t discourage it, but I also wouldn’t use it as a litmus test.
Please don’t take what I’m about to say as being critical…it’s not. There are maybe only 3-5% of full time instructors who understand the power of what I’m about to say. It’s not hidden information…it’s just not a part of the institutional memory that drives the majority of military, law enforcement, and civilian firearms training–yet.
The stress shooting lab in Minneapolis that I partner with, SEALed Mindset (http://concealedcarrymasterscourse.com), regularly gets new shooters ramped up to the point where they respond to simulated lethal force threats as quickly and effectively as many battle hardened SEALs after less than 300 rounds of live fire.
There are several factors, but here are 2 of them:
First, when you take a 10 hour class, MAYBE 30-45 minutes of it will transfer from short term to long term procedural memory. The rest is just head knowledge that will quickly fade away over the coming days & weeks. A better approach is to spread that 10 hours out over 15-40 sessions over as many or more days. At the end of that time, you’ll retain almost all of the information. That’s why school, all sports, and martial arts are taught in small block sessions rather than with the firehose approach that modern firearms uses.
Second, they found that the best training mix for high performance in simulated life and death situations (and it’s proved itself out in true life and death situations) is 80% dry fire, 10% live fire, and 10% stress inoculation.
In other words, hours and round counts aren’t bad. They aren’t bad at all. But they don’t tell the whole story on how many skills actually get stored in the brain in a way that they can be accessed under stress.
Rambuff
March 20, 2015A pistol is the tool you use to fight your way back to your rifle…
Which you never should have set down in the first place.
NOT a myth, by the way.
Elsee
March 21, 2015Truly cowboy I never leave my pistol or crossbow
William
March 20, 2015Thank you for the consistent high leverage info. I would like to request more info on non dominant hand weapons manipulation. Im a left handed shooter so this makes its off hand for righties but I would be curious to know more about left handed techniques to run faster. Thank you
Elsee
March 21, 2015Even the best, even left handed like me, can’t fix the problems of a right hander I hate scissors
Owen King
March 20, 2015VERY GOOD!
It is about time that the truth got out about shooting, thank you very much.
The good news about Hollywood is that they teach such crappy shooting (for the most part) that the terrorists and other boneheads who emulate them don’t shoot well, unfortunately, that may be changing.
Keep up the great articles!
Elsee
March 21, 2015Ouch, and I’m not in Hollywood, yes I may have been the shooter on the “H” when you said that but all good lol
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