[Handy with the Steel]

Doing shoot houses in the army, i was taught to look threw my m68(red dot) both eyes open and pull the trigger when the optic(not necessarily the dot) was center mass. A lot of times that close you could glance down the side or just over the top of the barrel of your m4 and hit what you needed to hit.

What about for my g17? Ive been watching videos of pistol fights and one thing that seems to be common is people getting low behind cover, pointing in the general direction of a threat and letting rounds fly. Obviously turning your head and shooting is going to result in few hits if any but even those that are confident enough to fight facing the threat eyes open seem to just point and shoot.

So i guess my question is, when rounds are coming at you would you try to obtain a good sight picture to put holes into heart and lungs, or are there reliable techniques for quickly and accurately hitting general center mass, like the technique i mentioned above with my m4.

[Jeff82]

"Metal on meat," shoot.

[Blaster]

Do you want to actually hit your intended target or just scare it with loud noises?

You need a 'reasonable' sight picture. Reasonable based on solving the problem. How far, how big is the target & how much time do you have. You can't miss fast enough to win.

[Handy with the Steel]

Originally Posted by Blaster

Do you want to actually hit your intended target or just scare it with loud noises?

You need a 'reasonable' sight picture. Reasonable based on solving the problem. How far, how big is the target & how much time do you have. You can't miss fast enough to win.

Got it, get to the range, thanks.

[Jeff82]

Originally Posted by Blaster

Do you want to actually hit your intended target or just scare it with loud noises?

You need a 'reasonable' sight picture. Reasonable based on solving the problem. How far, how big is the target & how much time do you have. You can't miss fast enough to win.

Do yourself a favor and get some FoF training in.

[HK Dan]

Right on Jeff. All of these use the sight, assume the classic weaver stance, breeeeaaaaathe types get an education rather quickly. Use the sights? Yeah, if you have time. You probably won't, at least more than a rudimentary glance. Now, on the bright side, if you see the front sight in the notch you'll probably hit somewhere around there--that's good enough in a fight.

What is a combat accurate hit? Any hit that negatively impacts the threat's ability to do you harm. Could be the sternum, could be the elbow if he has a knife.

Like so many things there are too many variables to give you a real answer. Yeah, use the sights quickly if you can, no don't use them if you can't. How do you know if you can or can't? You don't.

Practice your draw to the point where the sights are lined up with your eyes closed (not necessarily on target, just lined up with each other). This should take about a half an hour. Draw, open your eyes, adjust your grip. Repeat. When you have it nailed, it'll be an eye opener--now whatever you look at while you draw has the sights lined up on it subconsciously. Do I need to see my sights? No. I know by feel if I have the proper grip, and if I have the proper grip the sights are lined up. If the sights ae lined up, they are pointing at what I am looking at.

Does that make sense? Btw this is a perishable skill, but it comes back QUICKLY. dry fire it for 5 minutes a day once you have it and it'll always be there.

Dan

[Fairshake]

I'm now 65 and a former 4th ID soldier from the Vietnam era and I also became a Deputy sheriff on a large department.
I worked narcotics for over 6 years and became the sniper and firearms instructor for the department. I attended the FBI schools for this and other firearms schools for advanced training.
My reason for telling you this is that in a real firefight, all of this goes out the door.
Your real hard training will have your body revert to muscle memory as you develop tunnel vision.
You have to be in this type of action to fully understand that your body will revert to what it knows best when you are in a fight or flight situation.
You will not hear the loud blast of the guns and it will not hurt your ears even when a gun is fired from beside you by another person.
I don't recall ever seeing the sights and doing what I have taught for many years. Sight aligment, sight picture, trigger control. Your body will do this on it's own if you have put in the training to develop the needed musle memory.
It all goes back to the 7 P's. Prior Proper Training Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

[MotoGlock]

Thank you Dan and fairshake. Great posts.

[Handy with the Steel]

Thanks dan, fairshake, i fully understand the importance of training in regards to muscle memory, i have never been an active shooter during a gun fight. However i have been in several fist fights in and out if the ring(amateur mma) and i know how you revert to muscle memory when you get clocked real hard or are put in a bad position on the ground.

Thanks again dan, your drill is the kind technique i was looking for.

[FFR Spyder GT]

Originally Posted by Fairshake

I'm now 65 and a former 4th ID soldier from the Vietnam era and I also became a Deputy sheriff on a large department.
I worked narcotics for over 6 years and became the sniper and firearms instructor for the department. I attended the FBI schools for this and other firearms schools for advanced training.
My reason for telling you this is that in a real firefight, all of this goes out the door.
Your real hard training will have your body revert to muscle memory as you develop tunnel vision.
You have to be in this type of action to fully understand that your body will revert to what it knows best when you are in a fight or flight situation.
You will not hear the loud blast of the guns and it will not hurt your ears even when a gun is fired from beside you by another person.
I don't recall ever seeing the sights and doing what I have taught for many years. Sight aligment, sight picture, trigger control. Your body will do this on it's own if you have put in the training to develop the needed musle memory.
It all goes back to the 7 P's. Prior Proper Training Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

+1

Practice and training.

When the SHTF everything except your training goes out the door.

Spyder

[Blaster]

Everyone is different in their reactions to stress. Just because some say they never saw their sights does not automatically mean you won't either. Many probably did see and use their sights but the stress of the event has prevented the ability to recall doing so.

Bill Allard, Jim Cirillo's partner on the old NYPD Stakeout Squad vividly remembers seeing his front sight in most all his encounters. Remembers it to the point of being able to tell you how many serrations were on the sight.

[Fairshake]

Blaster, Please read the last four lines in my last posting. I myself don't remember having everything required to put my shots where they needed to go. It was through very hard training that my body took over and because of this I'm here today.
There is plenty in a live fire fight that later seems to have moved in slow motion but doing the basics of shooting was not one of them for me.
A classic example of what I'm trying to convey took place over 150 years ago at a place called Gettysburg.
Many of the new young soldiers had been drilled on how to load fast during a heated battle, it was pushed hard on them that they needed to know this so that they may survive a battle.
After the fight was over, many rifles were found with as many as 10 charges in the barrels. They just kept loading and never fired as this is what and how they had been trained.

[redbrd]

Front sight?

[Hour13]

Originally Posted by redbrd

Front sight?

Ya, that's what you're supposed to focus on, for the "basics". Stance, sight picture, etc... You focus on the front sight, let your perephrial vision handle the rest. Found to be the fastest way to re-aquire sight picture for follow up shots.

Again as stated above, all fine and dandy if you actually have time for that. But muscle memory trumps everything else.

[Blaster]

Originally Posted by Fairshake

Blaster, Please read the last four lines in my last posting. I myself don't remember having everything required to put my shots where they needed to go.

There is absolutely no doubt that a conditioned response will take over in a stressful situation. This is why those of us who take it seriously practice religiously.

Originally Posted by Fairshake

There is plenty in a live fire fight that later seems to have moved in slow motion

Commonly referred to as Tachypsychia.

Originally Posted by Fairshake

A classic example of what I'm trying to convey took place over 150 years ago at a place called Gettysburg.
Many of the new young soldiers had been drilled on how to load fast during a heated battle, it was pushed hard on them that they needed to know this so that they may survive a battle.
After the fight was over, many rifles were found with as many as 10 charges in the barrels. They just kept loading and never fired as this is what and how they had been trained.

I am quite familiar with those muskets and I have even seen a few of them at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site during a backroom tour.

It is Lt. Col Grossman who surmises that what you are describing above was caused by man's innate inhibition to kill another of the same species. I don't believe he lends any credence to loading drills being a contributing factor.

However, I believe it was the FBI back in the day of the 'six shooter' that kept barrels for spent casing next to range firing positions. Kept them there until they realized that agents involved in a firefights needing to reload were so conditioned to dumping empties into the barrel that they attempted to do so under fire. You will fight as you train!

[Fairshake]

It was the FBI that came to that conclusion as I attended many of the schools put on by them and have as friends, the instructors who did the schools. That is my exact point.
As far as your Gettysburg response, I myself doubt the gentleman's take on the loading of the rifles.
Some of the best historians have come up with some unreal analysis on what took place.
I do agree with his statement about killing another human being. Having been in those situations there is no feeling of wanting to kill your fellow man, and in fact most men become very sick and throw up after such encounters.
I'll stick with my beliefs and he can have his.
In the real world of live fire combat, your body reverts to it's training and you go on auto pilot. If well trained you stand a chance of survival.
Your posting about the New York cop is one man and one encounter and just like Baskin Robbins has the different flavors, so do we as human beings. Your reaction and memory of a incident will be quite different from mine and that is based on thousands of cases not one.

[Jeff82]

The goal is to marry the physiological stress response with the requirements of putting lead on target in a timely manner. Working against the reactions of the body and mind, and not even mentioning the differences between "square range" training and dynamic real life encounters, is only putting you further behind the reactionary power curve.

Also there is a big difference in preparing for a SD (reactive - being ambushed) encounter and a stake out (active - ambushing) situation. The level of SA present also makes this a sliding scale.

[Misty02]

Originally Posted by Jeff82

Do yourself a favor and get some FoF training in.

Agreed training will help with that. In two of the classes we attended they taught point shooting. Unfortunately I didn’t take to that technique as well as my son did. Actually, it seems I was among the few (ok, only one) in the class that wasn’t good at it where distance was involved. Others were putting good hits on the targets from distances of 10+ yards and beyond (my son included) within minutes of being taught.

.

[Misty02]

Originally Posted by Hour13

Ya, that's what you're supposed to focus on, for the "basics". Stance, sight picture, etc... You focus on the front sight, let your perephrial vision handle the rest. Found to be the fastest way to re-aquire sight picture for follow up shots.

Again as stated above, all fine and dandy if you actually have time for that. But muscle memory trumps everything else.

Images may help explain it. For sighted shooting, start on page 17 http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_...rain_Guide.pdf

For the focus mentioned, see bottom of page 18 of the pdf and the images and explanations that follow.
.

[Hour13]

Originally Posted by Misty02

Images may help explain it. For sighted shooting, start on page 17 http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_...rain_Guide.pdf

For the focus mentioned, see bottom of page 18 of the pdf and the images and explanations that follow.
.

Good link!

[Matthew Courtney]

The combat techniques taught in the military work for those that have all the training and reps in the basic skill sets that those techniques are based upon. Once one has had similar basic skills training and quality reps in pistol shooting, defensive concepts like flash sight picture and compressed suprise break can be taught with a pistol. There are no shortcuts. Combative techniques are built upon a foundation of basic skills sets that have been rehearsed enough to be executed without conscious thought.

[jhon]

Originally Posted by Misty02

Images may help explain it. For sighted shooting, start on page 17 http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_...rain_Guide.pdf

For the focus mentioned, see bottom of page 18 of the pdf and the images and explanations that follow.
.

Thanks... Excellent link