Tactics

Tactics

A favorite writing ploy among gun writers is “Action-pistol-shooting-will-get-you-killed” theme.  The article can generate letters to the editor and each letter is perceived as so many sets of eyeballs reading but not responding.

Here’s my attempt to stir up the embers.

Bad practices, common in action shooting, will surely get you killed or seriously injured.  Period!

Tactics the single person uses are and must be different from the team, just as the tactics used by a military fast company differ from the police and from the armed citizen.  

Many range scenarios start with "you’re doing something and you hear shots" and you respond by getting in a gunfight.  As a responsible citizen, my best tactic may be to simply call the police and be the best witness possible.  The police officer’s tactic might be to investigate and call for backup, while the military may want to set up a squad automatic weapon on high ground.

Each tactic is unique to the situation and the responding person and their resources.  But I do have a few ideas.

Solo Forms

Have a gun and at least one reload.  Without these you’re a witness.  That’s not bad, unless trouble comes looking for you.

Don’t stand in doorways or frame yourself in windows.

Use cover and concealment, always.  Running through a doorway and stopping in the middle of the room may make for fast times and good scores but the cardboard targets aren’t shooting back, are they?  Damm right, they aren’t!

Cover is bulletproof.  It may be big and wide and or it may be a shallow concrete curb.  Cover degrades.  What stops a 9mm HP may not fare too well with a .30-06 hunting round.  I’ve seen a demonstration of a .45 ACP shooting through a hollow concrete block.  It took two rounds to punch a hole.

Concealment is total invisibility.  Remember those old movies where the person hides but his shoes stick out from under a curtain?  Not so funny when it turns you into a bullet magnet. 

Use cover to move somewhere else.  Somewhere the shooter doesn’t know about.  Use that position to OODA-loop your next plan and the plan after that.

Let me sidetrack this monolog for a second.

I recently shot the IDPA Classifier.  Stage three gives you a nod and wink to using cover and concealment if you let it.  This is the point you can separate the people who have been shot at and those of us who have not.  The shot-at-type get down into a crouch with bent knees and stay that way as they move to the bulletproof shadow of the barrel.  Those of us who have not been under fire, bend at the waist and scurry over to the barrel.

We don't move just to move.  We move to a position that is better.  Better has a lot of meanings: more defensible, less exposure on your part, more exposure on their part, closer to the exit, closer to better equipment, closer to someone you must get to.  And it must be nearby.

How nearby?  The Tueller Drill shows most of us can cover 21 feet in around 1.8 seconds.  You can do a lot of shooting with a drawn gun in 1.8 seconds, so it should be closer.  I suggest 10-15 feet max.  It needs to be close or have special properties like obstacles that screen your path (trees, lamp posts, cars, partial walls, piles of rubble…) or some impediment that limits your opponent’s ability to shoot at you. 

One of the bloggers with a police background that I follow suggests a mental count:

He’s down.  I’m up and moving.

He sees me.  I’m going down.

He’s shooting.  I’m already down.

Team Events

Working with a team has advantages as well as difficulties.  The key rule to working with a partner is never get into their line of fire.  

You need to know your team’s hand signals.  This isn’t the time to get confused and think the current hand command is to order a burger and fries.  Your team needs to work together and have the discipline needed to pull this off.  It’s easy to see that someone, confused or perceiving a better/safer location could accidentally cross in front of a shooting team member.  Your pick-up doomsday team isn’t likely to have this skill set.  

Is this Hello or Halt?  It could also mean he needs 5 happy meals.

The second half of Rally Here signal or don't step in the dog shit?

It should also be noted that so many tactics describe actions based on equal number of participants or the much preferable situation of your many against their few.  The third option is you against the team.  The typical advice in these cases is to retreat, a good option, but not always possible.

Oh, damn!  I wanted to stay on basic tactics and got sidetracked.  The problem is using basic tactics almost automatically leads to a second tactic and as soon as you string them together, you’re no longer in the presence of basic tactics.

She's signalling "They paid me money to stand in a silly costume in front of a back drop."  Please note finger on trigger and poor pistol grip.