Movement during an Engagement with Pistol or Rifle
Movement during an Engagement with Pistol or Rifle
I have experienced officers learning some other special skills to augment their shooting skillset. While I'm not speaking about the employment techniques of combatants whereas all I want to do is touch base on the simplistic technique of movement without tripping. Because once you have a weapon in hand, you are a combatant.
If there are military readers out there you will already know the difference between cover and concealment. You will also be familiar with overwatch and bounding overwatch towards an objective. Amazingly, this simple skill is not only imperative to one's survival, it is also one of the hardest lessons to teach in a live fire exercise. Most often, one shooter bounds to a lane of fire that their buddy is covering and you have a blue-on-blue shooting. Meaning friendly fire...which isn't friendly.
I remember when I joined the steel-pot Army in the 80's and learned this skill while in Infantry School. I remember we employed that MILES (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System) gear and we played with blank ammunition with facepaint on and foilage in our helmet covers. We thought we were bad ass and confident in ourselves since we were about to graduate. I learned a very important lesson that week...bullets have no brains and can't tell who's a good guy or bad guy. I was also very thankful that we were employing blanks and lasers for I would have gotten myself killed a few times.
If one works in a team, be it the fella you just met or that team member you know so well that you can tell that it's him by the way he walks in the woods. Communication is the key. From simple verbal communication, hand/arm signals and from my overseas days where I could look at a team member and they would know what I was going to do next. Communicate. Shoot, scoot & loot. Shoot, move and communicate.
Overwatch and Bounding Overwatch has only one difference. In one technique, you bound...meaning you move to one position, cover the sector, let your team know and they will then bound to theirs and so on until you get the bad guy. Simple right?
Easier typed and read than done. Some do that David Carradine - Kung Fu shuffle but usually falls on their ass with a loaded weapon so don't do it. I advocated a simple movement called the Stomp and Scoot. It's KISS simple and looks funny but it works. If you have a pistol or rifle and you're shooting, one would assume you want to move forward to your objective. Move your support leg forward...stomp and then scoot your strong leg up. Sounds stupid huh? Just little steps to move one forward but just walk towards your objective. It's simple but the most simple things can get one hurt.
Kinda like shooting as a whole. There are some that have great sight pictures with lousy trigger pulls, others...great breath control and a horrendous grip. It takes practice to do all things correctly at the same time. I would ask you to try moving around while squeezing the trigger if you're able to. Some get it right away...some will take practice...some will forever be just a turret in place and reactive to the threat rather taking the fight to the threat.
Remember in a furball, you will have to move eventually either to maximize your tango's liabilities or you move to minimize your liabilities. Targets don't move but folks do. Try to incorporate that skill into your kit. Attempt to just walk forward, back, left and right while engaging a target out to 7-25 yards. Don't be fancy...just attempt to move. Slowly transition yourself and eventually you will be faster and faster and more graceful everytime.
In every technique that I've taken the time to write about remember above all that shooting accurately is a perishable skill. It must be practiced once learned and eventually it will set in your muscle memory as it is in me. I'm still practicing 25 some years later and I learn something new everyday. A few hours learning it but a lifetime of practice. I encourage you to do the same. Shoot straight and safe.
Reload Drills and Tactical Reloads
The simple art of reloading. No...not how to make your own rounds at home nor am I writing about the simple task of putting rounds in a revolver or a magazine in your pistol to shoot.
Tactical Reloading is a misnomer. It simply means to top off your weapon with a full or close to full magazine before you engage a Tango. It's simple logic. Going into a furball with three rounds left in a weapon equals Darwinism.
What I'm writing about is the "simple" task of doing reloads and tactical reloads under stress fire conditions in a furball. You would think that most shooters would know how but during stress shoots, muscle memory plays a huge part in how fast and where we reload from.
Example: When I was first issued a sidearm, I was given an S&W Mod. 66 .357 Magnum revolver. A six shot wheelgun. That was way back in...hrmph... Anyway, we were taught to wear our speedloaders...you know...that do-hickey that holds six rounds in a hexagon to reload a revolver...on our right side. The technique since I was right handed was to release the cylinder with your right thumb and with your left fingers push out the cylinder through the frame and then eject the casings with your left thumb. While you have positive control with your left hand...you reach down with your free right hand and pull out your speedloader and place the rounds in the cylinder and then twist the knobby to release the rounds into the cylinder chambers. You then let your speedloader drop to the ground as you grip your weapon with your strong hand and close the cylinder completely and re-engage.
Easier said than done for some folks and it took me awhile since the handguns that I learned were mostly the 1911 and the M9 Beretta at that time. A wheelgun is a intricate piece of machinery and you will see little tolerance for stupidity. The benefits of having a wheelgun are that it's a strong design that has played out over 200 years of refinements and there are practically no screw ups with the weapon. The only malfunctions I've encountered comes from two things; operator error or bad ammunition. When a wheelgun screws up...it's a bad one usually.
Enough about revolvers. If you have one, the technique to reload it is written above. If you're a lefty, reverse the hands. That is if you're wearing a duty rig...that's the catch...I will touch base on this at the end so bear with me.
Let's look at something more modern. A semi-automatic pistol. Like a Beretta, H&K USP, Glock or Springfield XD's. You know...your everyday run of the mill semi handgun...everything from cheapie Kel Techs to your expensive Rock Island or Wilson Combat 1911's.
First. Keep in mind that efficiency is the name of the game in a furball. How fast and how accurate can you do things to get you back into the fight. So with that in mind let's look at some simple things that you can do to make your reload drill faster.
As we all know (hopefully), your rounds will fit into your handgun in one way. If you're right handed like me...just keep in mind that 99% of handguns were made for a right handed person. If you're perplexed by what I'm writing or what I've wrote, please feel free to shoot me an PM and I'll do my best to orientate you. Anyway, rounds only go into a pistol magazine and the magazine well in one direction. Business end towards the tango.
If you've ever peeked at a cop's duty rig you'll notice that they will usually carry two magazine pouches on their rig. Right handed guys will generally carry them on their right side either vertically or horizontally and there are some departments that mandate them to wear them on their weak side horizontally. I think it's so they can fit a M26 or X26 Taser on them. Either way, try to visualize them on my strong/right side vertically or horizontally. Bear with me...
OK...you've engaged. You shot your weapon dry, the slide locks back. You immediately start the reload process in a stress shoot. Your right thumb engages the magazine release and while the magazine drops to the floor your left hand is already going for the closest magazine pouch. You index your support/left forefinger downwards the magazine body while extracting it out of it's pouch. You quickly glance at the pistol's magazine well and put the magazine in it's well. You ensure the seating of the magazine again by giving it a firm slap upwards.
Here's the tricky part;
If you slap it too hard sometimes, an older weapon like my Glock 17/1st Generation will be loose enough that the slide will come out of lock and slap forward.
If you don't ensure the seating, the magazine will fall out immediately or will eventually fall out in the next two or three rounds which would not only embarrassing but deadly.
Going from there...here's the kicker. Forget that you have a slide release. FORGET THE SLIDE RELEASE!! I cannot emphasize that more in a written article. I will explain why very soon.
Once you're sure that the mag is seated well, then extend your weapon towards your tango while grabbing onto the slide's rear along the serrations with your support/left hand and pull it to the rear. Once you do, release it and it will immediately spring forwards again while it strips a fresh round from the magazine and seats it correctly into the battery of the handgun. You will be ready to engage.
Here's the reason why;
If you are determined to use your slide release, is it not possible to let the slide move forward without correctly seating your magazine first? If that happens, then your first shot will be a very uncomfortable click. Darwinism!
One could argue that pulling back the slide on an empty weapon would do the same thing and they would generally be correct but generally speaking could one also use the same argument and say that ensuring that the magazine is seated and pulling back the slide will give one positive results 99% of the time? The only variable at this rate would be the ammunition quality.
We muscle trained our recruits and LEO's (Law Enforcement Officers) that this technique is the best way to reload their weapons in a stress shoot environment. If I've done my job, they will only use this technique from they graduate until they die of old age or get drummed out for screwing their buddies wife while they're 10-8.
Some would argue that it's BS. It's up too you. All I know is that it works, has worked and will forever work. So it's up too you whether you use it or not. That's how it's done in this region. I know that I was once hooked on my slide release and it has cost me time in the reload process at the range. Thankfully I never had to find out in a real furball so it was a pretty good lesson. I hadn't ensured the seating of my magazine and hit the slide release. All was fine until I heard that uncomfortable click.
So, when using semi's. Forget the slide release. Use your slide itself, pull back and release. When it comes to looking at your weapon, you can practice without looking but lemme be the devil's advocate here...supposed you missed? You will take a extra time to find another mag to do it again...do you think it could happen again? Possibly...plus your first magazine is now on the ground, mud or whatever and those extra rounds are now bye-bye. If you reloaded once, you may have to reload again. Most of us that served on patrol in the US only wear three mags. That's it and if I dropped a mag in a stress shoot, will I do myself and others harm if I took the extra time to look for a dropped mag in a stress shoot? I would argue yes. As an old instructor told me, look at the weapon during reloads. It will take a millisecond and you will get it right the first time all the time. No sense in doing extra work to get the one job done. Slow is fast as fast is slow. You won't be spending much time to take a glance to do it correctly.
Back to the preparedness of the magazines, be it strong side deployment or weak side, vertically or horizontally like old fat men like me. Wear them so that you can easily index your support hand index finger along the front of the magazines with the rounds ...along the mag's frontstrap if you will. Even if you wear them on your weak side, one can still index the mag's frontstrap when going for it during the reload process. It's absolutely amazing too me how many experienced LEO's I've seen that wear them backwards only for them to fumble a simple reload drill because they've failed to properly get their world together. Imagine the cop that had that problem during a real furball. Someone's gonna get themselves hurt, killed or someone else that depended on them.
Little things like this can be prevented and can be avoided entirely.
Just in case some of you speed-read through my articles, here are the bullet points;
- Be prepared. Adjust your mags so they face the right area so you can reload quickly.
- Maintain your weapon. It would behoove you to clean it , no sense having it jam up due to Darwinism.
- Be proficient in your training and learn the right way. Not just the EZ way.
- Although we all strive for speed, don't rush. Slow is Fast. Do it right the first time.
In the beginning, I wrote how muscle memory plays a part into this and I will now explain. I was primarily trained with a duty rig. From muscle memory alone, I can almost do this drill with my eyes closed. I was trained to used the techniques written above. I've also had the extra training on how to deploy, reload and re-engage with mil-spec rigs and tactical drop leg platforms. I'm pretty fast as well. Fast is fine, accuracy is better but guess what happens when I wear plainclothes around with a sidearm around my IWB (Inside-the-Waistband) concealment holster?
As the regular Schmo;
My muscle memory draws me back and wants me to reload from magazine pouches on a duty rig. Problem is that I'm not wearing one in plainclothes. Will that hamper me? It sure does. How did I re-train myself? I've been putting my spare magazine in my support/left pocket. I could buy a doo-dad to strap it onto my belt but then again, it limits how I can wear it without advertising it in Florida where one generally wears a pair of shorts and a shirt for eight months out of the year. Bottom line; I re-trained myself while in regular average Joe clothes.
I recognize the simple fact that most of us will not wear a 25lb. duty rig & body armor for 13 hours a day around but some of you will simply carry concealed. The fact is that it's not that one technique is not harder than the other, it is just different. I've learned a few ways. I encourage you to learn one way well but be open to diversification and be Semper Gumby; Always flexible.
Learn your weapon, learn it's capabilities and tolerances and learn your own. Select the most efficient way to place and reload your piece in the least amount of time the first time.
If you practice this technique, PLEASE USE DUE CARE and NEVER use live ammo. That is if you're home. At the range, try to employ the technique I've written about. Especially take note of the non-usage of your slide release. You will experience that you will become faster. USE SNAP CAPS WHEN YOU ARE HOME. No sense to prove that Darwin was right.
I have experienced officers learning some other special skills to augment their shooting skillset. While I'm not speaking about the employment techniques of combatants whereas all I want to do is touch base on the simplistic technique of movement without tripping. Because once you have a weapon in hand, you are a combatant.
If there are military readers out there you will already know the difference between cover and concealment. You will also be familiar with overwatch and bounding overwatch towards an objective. Amazingly, this simple skill is not only imperative to one's survival, it is also one of the hardest lessons to teach in a live fire exercise. Most often, one shooter bounds to a lane of fire that their buddy is covering and you have a blue-on-blue shooting. Meaning friendly fire...which isn't friendly.
I remember when I joined the steel-pot Army in the 80's and learned this skill while in Infantry School. I remember we employed that MILES (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System) gear and we played with blank ammunition with facepaint on and foilage in our helmet covers. We thought we were bad ass and confident in ourselves since we were about to graduate. I learned a very important lesson that week...bullets have no brains and can't tell who's a good guy or bad guy. I was also very thankful that we were employing blanks and lasers for I would have gotten myself killed a few times.
If one works in a team, be it the fella you just met or that team member you know so well that you can tell that it's him by the way he walks in the woods. Communication is the key. From simple verbal communication, hand/arm signals and from my overseas days where I could look at a team member and they would know what I was going to do next. Communicate. Shoot, scoot & loot. Shoot, move and communicate.
Overwatch and Bounding Overwatch has only one difference. In one technique, you bound...meaning you move to one position, cover the sector, let your team know and they will then bound to theirs and so on until you get the bad guy. Simple right?
Easier typed and read than done. Some do that David Carradine - Kung Fu shuffle but usually falls on their ass with a loaded weapon so don't do it. I advocated a simple movement called the Stomp and Scoot. It's KISS simple and looks funny but it works. If you have a pistol or rifle and you're shooting, one would assume you want to move forward to your objective. Move your support leg forward...stomp and then scoot your strong leg up. Sounds stupid huh? Just little steps to move one forward but just walk towards your objective. It's simple but the most simple things can get one hurt.
Kinda like shooting as a whole. There are some that have great sight pictures with lousy trigger pulls, others...great breath control and a horrendous grip. It takes practice to do all things correctly at the same time. I would ask you to try moving around while squeezing the trigger if you're able to. Some get it right away...some will take practice...some will forever be just a turret in place and reactive to the threat rather taking the fight to the threat.
Remember in a furball, you will have to move eventually either to maximize your tango's liabilities or you move to minimize your liabilities. Targets don't move but folks do. Try to incorporate that skill into your kit. Attempt to just walk forward, back, left and right while engaging a target out to 7-25 yards. Don't be fancy...just attempt to move. Slowly transition yourself and eventually you will be faster and faster and more graceful everytime.
In every technique that I've taken the time to write about remember above all that shooting accurately is a perishable skill. It must be practiced once learned and eventually it will set in your muscle memory as it is in me. I'm still practicing 25 some years later and I learn something new everyday. A few hours learning it but a lifetime of practice. I encourage you to do the same. Shoot straight and safe.
Reload Drills and Tactical Reloads
The simple art of reloading. No...not how to make your own rounds at home nor am I writing about the simple task of putting rounds in a revolver or a magazine in your pistol to shoot.
Tactical Reloading is a misnomer. It simply means to top off your weapon with a full or close to full magazine before you engage a Tango. It's simple logic. Going into a furball with three rounds left in a weapon equals Darwinism.
What I'm writing about is the "simple" task of doing reloads and tactical reloads under stress fire conditions in a furball. You would think that most shooters would know how but during stress shoots, muscle memory plays a huge part in how fast and where we reload from.
Example: When I was first issued a sidearm, I was given an S&W Mod. 66 .357 Magnum revolver. A six shot wheelgun. That was way back in...hrmph... Anyway, we were taught to wear our speedloaders...you know...that do-hickey that holds six rounds in a hexagon to reload a revolver...on our right side. The technique since I was right handed was to release the cylinder with your right thumb and with your left fingers push out the cylinder through the frame and then eject the casings with your left thumb. While you have positive control with your left hand...you reach down with your free right hand and pull out your speedloader and place the rounds in the cylinder and then twist the knobby to release the rounds into the cylinder chambers. You then let your speedloader drop to the ground as you grip your weapon with your strong hand and close the cylinder completely and re-engage.
Easier said than done for some folks and it took me awhile since the handguns that I learned were mostly the 1911 and the M9 Beretta at that time. A wheelgun is a intricate piece of machinery and you will see little tolerance for stupidity. The benefits of having a wheelgun are that it's a strong design that has played out over 200 years of refinements and there are practically no screw ups with the weapon. The only malfunctions I've encountered comes from two things; operator error or bad ammunition. When a wheelgun screws up...it's a bad one usually.
Enough about revolvers. If you have one, the technique to reload it is written above. If you're a lefty, reverse the hands. That is if you're wearing a duty rig...that's the catch...I will touch base on this at the end so bear with me.
Let's look at something more modern. A semi-automatic pistol. Like a Beretta, H&K USP, Glock or Springfield XD's. You know...your everyday run of the mill semi handgun...everything from cheapie Kel Techs to your expensive Rock Island or Wilson Combat 1911's.
First. Keep in mind that efficiency is the name of the game in a furball. How fast and how accurate can you do things to get you back into the fight. So with that in mind let's look at some simple things that you can do to make your reload drill faster.
As we all know (hopefully), your rounds will fit into your handgun in one way. If you're right handed like me...just keep in mind that 99% of handguns were made for a right handed person. If you're perplexed by what I'm writing or what I've wrote, please feel free to shoot me an PM and I'll do my best to orientate you. Anyway, rounds only go into a pistol magazine and the magazine well in one direction. Business end towards the tango.
If you've ever peeked at a cop's duty rig you'll notice that they will usually carry two magazine pouches on their rig. Right handed guys will generally carry them on their right side either vertically or horizontally and there are some departments that mandate them to wear them on their weak side horizontally. I think it's so they can fit a M26 or X26 Taser on them. Either way, try to visualize them on my strong/right side vertically or horizontally. Bear with me...
OK...you've engaged. You shot your weapon dry, the slide locks back. You immediately start the reload process in a stress shoot. Your right thumb engages the magazine release and while the magazine drops to the floor your left hand is already going for the closest magazine pouch. You index your support/left forefinger downwards the magazine body while extracting it out of it's pouch. You quickly glance at the pistol's magazine well and put the magazine in it's well. You ensure the seating of the magazine again by giving it a firm slap upwards.
Here's the tricky part;
If you slap it too hard sometimes, an older weapon like my Glock 17/1st Generation will be loose enough that the slide will come out of lock and slap forward.
If you don't ensure the seating, the magazine will fall out immediately or will eventually fall out in the next two or three rounds which would not only embarrassing but deadly.
Going from there...here's the kicker. Forget that you have a slide release. FORGET THE SLIDE RELEASE!! I cannot emphasize that more in a written article. I will explain why very soon.
Once you're sure that the mag is seated well, then extend your weapon towards your tango while grabbing onto the slide's rear along the serrations with your support/left hand and pull it to the rear. Once you do, release it and it will immediately spring forwards again while it strips a fresh round from the magazine and seats it correctly into the battery of the handgun. You will be ready to engage.
Here's the reason why;
If you are determined to use your slide release, is it not possible to let the slide move forward without correctly seating your magazine first? If that happens, then your first shot will be a very uncomfortable click. Darwinism!
One could argue that pulling back the slide on an empty weapon would do the same thing and they would generally be correct but generally speaking could one also use the same argument and say that ensuring that the magazine is seated and pulling back the slide will give one positive results 99% of the time? The only variable at this rate would be the ammunition quality.
We muscle trained our recruits and LEO's (Law Enforcement Officers) that this technique is the best way to reload their weapons in a stress shoot environment. If I've done my job, they will only use this technique from they graduate until they die of old age or get drummed out for screwing their buddies wife while they're 10-8.
Some would argue that it's BS. It's up too you. All I know is that it works, has worked and will forever work. So it's up too you whether you use it or not. That's how it's done in this region. I know that I was once hooked on my slide release and it has cost me time in the reload process at the range. Thankfully I never had to find out in a real furball so it was a pretty good lesson. I hadn't ensured the seating of my magazine and hit the slide release. All was fine until I heard that uncomfortable click.
So, when using semi's. Forget the slide release. Use your slide itself, pull back and release. When it comes to looking at your weapon, you can practice without looking but lemme be the devil's advocate here...supposed you missed? You will take a extra time to find another mag to do it again...do you think it could happen again? Possibly...plus your first magazine is now on the ground, mud or whatever and those extra rounds are now bye-bye. If you reloaded once, you may have to reload again. Most of us that served on patrol in the US only wear three mags. That's it and if I dropped a mag in a stress shoot, will I do myself and others harm if I took the extra time to look for a dropped mag in a stress shoot? I would argue yes. As an old instructor told me, look at the weapon during reloads. It will take a millisecond and you will get it right the first time all the time. No sense in doing extra work to get the one job done. Slow is fast as fast is slow. You won't be spending much time to take a glance to do it correctly.
Back to the preparedness of the magazines, be it strong side deployment or weak side, vertically or horizontally like old fat men like me. Wear them so that you can easily index your support hand index finger along the front of the magazines with the rounds ...along the mag's frontstrap if you will. Even if you wear them on your weak side, one can still index the mag's frontstrap when going for it during the reload process. It's absolutely amazing too me how many experienced LEO's I've seen that wear them backwards only for them to fumble a simple reload drill because they've failed to properly get their world together. Imagine the cop that had that problem during a real furball. Someone's gonna get themselves hurt, killed or someone else that depended on them.
Little things like this can be prevented and can be avoided entirely.
Just in case some of you speed-read through my articles, here are the bullet points;
- Be prepared. Adjust your mags so they face the right area so you can reload quickly.
- Maintain your weapon. It would behoove you to clean it , no sense having it jam up due to Darwinism.
- Be proficient in your training and learn the right way. Not just the EZ way.
- Although we all strive for speed, don't rush. Slow is Fast. Do it right the first time.
In the beginning, I wrote how muscle memory plays a part into this and I will now explain. I was primarily trained with a duty rig. From muscle memory alone, I can almost do this drill with my eyes closed. I was trained to used the techniques written above. I've also had the extra training on how to deploy, reload and re-engage with mil-spec rigs and tactical drop leg platforms. I'm pretty fast as well. Fast is fine, accuracy is better but guess what happens when I wear plainclothes around with a sidearm around my IWB (Inside-the-Waistband) concealment holster?
As the regular Schmo;
My muscle memory draws me back and wants me to reload from magazine pouches on a duty rig. Problem is that I'm not wearing one in plainclothes. Will that hamper me? It sure does. How did I re-train myself? I've been putting my spare magazine in my support/left pocket. I could buy a doo-dad to strap it onto my belt but then again, it limits how I can wear it without advertising it in Florida where one generally wears a pair of shorts and a shirt for eight months out of the year. Bottom line; I re-trained myself while in regular average Joe clothes.
I recognize the simple fact that most of us will not wear a 25lb. duty rig & body armor for 13 hours a day around but some of you will simply carry concealed. The fact is that it's not that one technique is not harder than the other, it is just different. I've learned a few ways. I encourage you to learn one way well but be open to diversification and be Semper Gumby; Always flexible.
Learn your weapon, learn it's capabilities and tolerances and learn your own. Select the most efficient way to place and reload your piece in the least amount of time the first time.
If you practice this technique, PLEASE USE DUE CARE and NEVER use live ammo. That is if you're home. At the range, try to employ the technique I've written about. Especially take note of the non-usage of your slide release. You will experience that you will become faster. USE SNAP CAPS WHEN YOU ARE HOME. No sense to prove that Darwin was right.
11 年 前