Chapter 20

TRAINING IN CONTEXT

Perhaps the most important word in this book, as it relates to the what and how of your training, is the word context. As I mentioned earlier, context means the circumstances or conditions under which something can be fully understood or applied. It acknowledges that there is a relationship between a concept or idea and the specific kinds of situations in which it can be used (or for which it makes sense.)

Understanding context is important because without it, it’s easy to make bad decisions with regard to your training. Everything that you learn or practice has a context from which it came, and therefore a context in which it works and makes sense. If the context under which you’re likely to use it doesn’t match that where it originated, it’s possible that it won’t be as efficient (or even effective) as it should.

Something which works under one context often doesn’t work well under another, but there are situations under which it might. Understanding the context in which you’ll use it, as well as that of where it came from, is how you can decide whether it makes sense for you.

THE SHOOTING GAME CONTEXT

Competition shooting has been the source of a lot of innovation in the shooting world, innovation which has migrated to many other uses: hunting, military engagements, and even defensive shooting. That’s not to say that the things done in the context of a game are universally applicable to defensive shooting, however.

Some of the advancements in competition shooting are context-neutral. For instance, competitive shooters helped develop the most efficient grasp for an autoloading pistol. For too long, auto pistols were gripped the same as the revolver, and given their very different designs this meant that they weren’t being used as efficiently as they could be. Competitive shooters, in their continual experimentation, found the thumbs-forward grip works best for autoloaders - and that is the grip which is overwhelmingly taught by defensive shooting instructors, including yours truly.

The closer a concept or technique gets to commonality between two contexts, the more likely it is to fit. For instance, the grip works in both competition shooting and defensive shooting because in both cases the shooter needs to control the gun while shooting rapid, multiple rounds; the need is the same, regardless of the environmental differences.

Other advancements aren’t context-neutral. In the chapter on dealing with multiple threats, I showed you why the competitive ‘swinging transition’ technique doesn’t translate well to the defensive shooting world.

The reason the transition technique doesn’t work is because there is very little commonality between the two contexts. The environmental differences (live attackers versus static targets, surprise attack versus known and planned response, performance anxiety versus body’s natural threat reactions) and the differences in goals (make good time at all costs versus survive the attack) all serve to make the techniques fail when crossed over.

Even something seemingly simple like using the sights suffers under the environmental variables. In a shooting match, even under the stress of the clock it’s pretty hard not to be able to use your sights. In a defensive shooting, the visual changes due to your body’s reactions make it physically unlikely that you’ll be able to use them. In the shooting match there’s nothing to prevent you from using them; in the defensive shooting, your own body doesn’t want to work that way. In the former you train to use the sights quickly, in defensive shooting you should train to use them only when you need to - the default being not using them.

THE MILITARY/LAW ENFORCEMENT CONTEXT

While I have been a competitive shooter from time to time, I’ve never been in the military nor have I been a police officer. That means I’m in no way qualified to talk about how they do their jobs, nor am I qualified to evaluate their shooting techniques relative to those jobs.

Because I’m an avid student of and instructor in the means of surviving the criminal attack, however, I am somewhat qualified to evaluate how applicable their techniques are to private sector defensive shooting. This has been made possible by the large number of their alumni teaching in the private sector, and the material and techniques they’re teaching being widely known.

The jobs of those in the public sector (police/military) are different than those you and I have. For instance, in the military their job is to defeat the enemy and take ground (or, as some have pointed out, to kill people and break things). In law enforcement, the task is to apprehend the suspect (hopefully without casualties on either side). In those contexts, doing things like walking toward the enemy/suspect with the gun in a firing position might be a good way to do those jobs. Shooting while walking forward would be a related and thus needed skill.

In the private sector, I can’t for the life of me imagine a plausible situation where I’d want or need to shoot at an attacker while walking toward him. This is a skill that public sector trainers often spend quite a bit of time on in their private sector classes, even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense in our context.

The same is true for shooting while walking backward. There may be some argument for it in their world (though I’m not sure what it would be), but again in the private sector it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny: moving backwards slowly enough to be able to maintain a good balance of speed and precision doesn’t really gain you anything against someone with a contact weapon (knife/club), as he’ll be able to run toward you much faster than you can backpedal away from him. If he’s armed with a gun, there is no physical way for you to move far enough backwards, fast enough, to significantly impact his ability to shoot you.

The idea that you can be ready or proactive is something that comes from a lot of law enforcement training. In their job, it makes sense: they get a call for a man with a knife, and as they head to the call they have the luxury of being able to think a bit about their response and steel themselves for what might happen. When they roll up on the scene they have the advantage of being able to get out of their vehicle while drawing their pistol, ready for action.

Shooting while walking forward may have a law enforcement or military application, but for the rest of us it just gives the bad guy more time.

In the private sector, as I hope I’ve shown, the usual incident is a surprise. You don’t have any of those luxuries and must instead be able to respond without any sort of preliminary preparation, either mental or physical. Any technique or concept that relies on that sort of proactive posture simply isn’t a suitable or realistic way to train for the kind of threats we face - and drawing your gun because you think you might need it is a good way to get arrested.

GOOD TRAINERS, BAD TRAINERS

None of the foregoing is meant to denigrate the earnestness with which some of the competition shooters or public sector trainers present their material, or to suggest that they aren’t good at what they do. Some of them do understand the contextual difference between what they do in their ‘day job’ and what their private citizen students need. Unfortunately, many more do not.

You need to examine what you’re being taught and think about whether it really applies to the threats you’re likely to face. Shooting while walking forward and backward, for instance, is a lot of fun to do and gives you a great feeling of accomplishment when you do it well. It even seems like they should be valuable skills, but when you sit down and analyze how attacks really happen in our world they suddenly don’t seem all that important. That’s because they aren’t.

I’ve found that when someone tells me something outlandish is a ‘vital skill,’ what they often mean is that it’s vital to something other than defending from a criminal ambush attack.

DEFENSIVE SHOOTING - IT’S MORE THAN MARKSMANSHIP

Some of the more experienced shooters in the audience probably just had a heart attack, but the fact remains that efficiently defending yourself from the criminal ambush attack isn’t just about the shooting. It’s about understanding what your reactions will be, learning to make decisions more efficiently, shooting well in relation to the target (as opposed to some arbitrary standard), using intuitive techniques, and so on.

Defensive shooting is about dealing with all the stuff your attacker is doing, all the stuff that you’ll be doing naturally, and all of this in whatever environment you find yourself. You’re going to have less control than most public sector trainers anticipate, and far less than the competition shooters can imagine. Train under the assumption that you’re not going to have full control; if for some reason you find yourself in a situation where you have more control than you expected, you’ll be ahead of the game!