Defensive Shooting fundamentals

The power stance
offers a stable, mobile,
and balanced fighting
platform.
ARMED SENIOR CITIZEN
Defensive Shooting
Fundamentals
[ BY BRUCE N. EIMER, Ph.D. ]
In my practice as a defensive firearms instructor, I
work with many students of all ages on a private basis.
O
ver the years, numerous students have come to work with
me to learn advanced defensive
shooting techniques. In many cases, initial evaluation of their shooting skills revealed that they were terribly incompetent with a handgun and often unsafe as
well! In almost every case, these people
had never gotten the basics down. This
is remarkable given the fact that many
of these students reported that they
had attended multiple tactical shooting schools before coming to me. This
phenomenon left me wondering how
they had missed the boat. I was also left
wondering how it was that some “big
name” firearms instructors with whom
they said they trained, in some cases privately, never straightened them out!
In each of these cases, it was necessary for me to take them back through
the basics. A shooter must understand
and be able to perform the basics before
he or she can expect to move on to develop competence in advanced shooting
skills and tactics. In addition, if you are
going to carry a concealed handgun, you
must develop advanced competence.
The purpose of this article is to provide
a blueprint for learning the basics well
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A power stance such as this one is
the position from which you want to
begin and end a fight.
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so that you can then move on to develop
advanced competence with the defensive handgun. However, recognize that
you cannot learn this material from a
magazine. You must practice, and ideally, you should work with a qualified
shooting instructor.
Noted police and civilian firearms instructor and writer Massad Ayoob has
been a pioneer in teaching people the
fundamentals of defensive shooting
in ways consistent with what happens
physically and psychologically when you
are fighting for your life. In the 1970s, he
developed the Stressfire system, and it
has evolved and been refined over the
years. Ayoob’s Stressfire books are highly
recommended reads.
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Ayoob studied what happens to the
human mind and body in the “stress
flood” of a fight-or-flight scenario. Based
on what he learned, he created techniques that not only wouldn’t fall apart
under stress, but instead, would feed off
the effects of the body alarm reaction
and become more effective under stress.
The Stressfire shooting program emphasizes techniques that depend on
simple gross motor skills as opposed to
complex fine motor skills, since fine motor skills deteriorate under life and death
stress. Also, gross motor techniques can
withstand the tremors and increased
physical strength attendant to the bodyalarm-triggered adrenaline dump into
the bloodstream.
You must learn the basics well
Think about it. In order to produce accurate hits with a handgun, you need to
do all of the following: grip and hold the
handgun securely and firmly; maintain
a stable and balanced stance; keep the
muzzle on the target—that is, aim the
handgun properly and maintain good
aim for follow-up shots (this is called
follow-through); control and flow with
the handgun’s recoil; and operate the
trigger in a controlled manner.
Massad Ayoob’s Stressfire System emphasizes a five-point checklist which
comprises the fundamentals for accomplishing the above: power stance,
high hand, hard grasp, front sight, and
smooth roll of the trigger. This checklist
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ARMED SENIOR
Grasp the handgun high on the back
strap so that the tang of the handgun
pinches into the V-notch of your
dominant strong hand.
provides a blueprint for practicing the
fundamentals of marksmanship.
1. The power stance
Defensive handgunning is about fighting with a handgun. To gain the advantage in a fight, you need to adopt a stable, balanced, and mobile stance. Your
stance needs to be stable and balanced
so that you are not thrown over by the
gun’s recoil or anything else. Your shooting/fighting stance needs to be mobile
so that you are not cemented or planted
to the ground. You must be able to move
to achieve dominance and to avoid being the recipient of blows or shots from
your opponent.
More times than not, when I work
with shooting students, I have to correct
their stance. Many initially stand with a
backward lean. Many stand too rigidly
or too floppily. Some stand like a pole,
and many stand square to their target
with both feet parallel. None of these
stances are aggressive fighting stances.
Sure, you may have to shoot in a rapidly
unfolding dynamic gunfight from an
unorthodox and non-choreographed
position, however, you must start from
an aggressive and powerful stance that
gives you a solid foundation.
A power stance gives you a wide base
for stability and balance. It keeps you
from being pushed backward by the
firearm’s recoil or by your opponent.
It entails leaning aggressively forward
from the hips (head in front of shoulders
and shoulders in front of hips). Knees
should be slightly bent to absorb shock
and facilitate mobility. The non-dominant foot (the one opposite your strong
shooting hand) should be forward, and
your dominant foot should be rearward,
digging into the ground.
This power stance can be applied
while static or while moving. It will be
familiar to anyone with experience in
wrestling, boxing, or the martial arts.
As stated by Massad Ayoob, “… it allows
the fighter to deliver and receive impact
without losing balance or the ability to
continue strenuous physical activity.”
2. The high hand
The lower a handgun’s bore axis, the
easier it is to control the gun during
recoil in order to deliver accurate follow up shots. One can make the bore
axis sit lower in the hands by gripping
the handgun with one’s master hand as
high up on the back strap as is possible.
This increases your control over the gun
whether you are shooting with one hand
or two.
3. The hard grasp or
“Crush Grip”
You cannot grip a handgun too hard or
too strongly. In real combat, defensive
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shooting means you are fighting for your
life. Are you going to be relaxed at such
a time? The answer is, of course not. You
are going to be holding onto your life
support system, your weapon, as if your
life depends on it—and it does. Get used
to it now. A crush grip or convulsive grip
will make your handgun more difficult
for your opponents to take away from
you. A crush grip will help you control a
powerful handgun’s recoil or the snappy
recoil of a not so powerful mouse gun.
Additionally, a crush grip will help you
better isolate the movement of your
trigger finger so that you have more trigger control. Conversely, a light grasp on
the handgun encourages milking, which
is likely to make a right-handed shooter’s shots go to low left.
As Massad Ayoob points out, the crush
grip or hard grasp may be applied with
the thumbs in virtually any position, but
it will benefit most when the thumbs are
curled tightly down. When you curl your
thumb down over your other fingers–as
when you make a fist—you can squeeze
harder. Try it and see for yourself.
4. The front sight
The bullet will go where the muzzle is
pointed. To assure that the muzzle is
pointed where you want the bullet to hit,
you must have a reliable way of indexing
the muzzle on target. That is the purpose
of the front sight. The front sight helps
you align your handgun’s muzzle with
your point of aim on the target. This is
usually accomplished in coordination
with the rear sight. Verifying that the
front sight is centered in the rear sight
notch is called sight alignment, and superimposing your aligned front and rear
sights onto your point of aim on the target is called getting a sight picture.
The more precise your shot or shots
need to be, the smaller your target, or
the greater your distance from your target, the more precise your sight alignment and sight picture need to be, and
the more time you will need to take
those precise shots.
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name of article here
When you maintain a maximum strength, crush grip or “gorilla grip” on the handgun,
you may see the whites of your knuckles. That’s how you know you are gripping hard
enough, thumbs curled down, thumb print over thumb nail for greater strength.
Sight alignment and trigger control
are the two most important features of
marksmanship. Trigger control helps
the shooter maintain sight alignment
and therefore muzzle alignment as the
gun is fired and immediately afterward.
Afterward is called follow-through. It
means giving the bullet enough time
to exit the barrel by keeping the gun directed at the point of aim while breaking
the shot, and subsequently, recovering
your point of aim after the gun travels
through its arc of recoil so that you can
prepare for a follow-up shot.
The goal of defensive marksmanship is to achieve combat accurate hits
as fast as possible. Combat accurate
hits are defined as shots that inflict
disabling damage on the opponent.
In any fight, the fighter who lands the
first good hits on his opponent has the
edge. In a gunfight, this translates into
shooting well placed bullets into your
opponent before he hits you! It is foolish to sacrifice accuracy for speed. You
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can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight.
Factoring out the variable of a shooter’s confidence in his shooting ability,
the closer the distance, the faster the
shooter can afford to shoot, and the less
reliance is needed on a perfect sight
picture. At close (bad breath) distances,
point shooting is the way to go. To learn
to shoot for combat accuracy in a gun
fight (defensive shooting), the shooter
must learn to shoot both with and without their sights—the latter being point
shooting.
As Massad Ayoob points out, “… a
firearm is a remote-control drill, and
must be indexed or the hole it produces
will be drilled in the wrong place. The index may be precise or coarse, depending
on the nature of the shot that must be
taken. Distance, target size, and speed
are all factors in that determination.
The shooter may have the precise sight
picture of the conventional marksmanship manual. They may have a similar
image in line of sight, seen quickly and
less than perfectly (Col. Jeff Cooper’s
concept of ‘flash sight picture‘). Out to
roughly seven yards with a handgun, the
front sight sitting above the rear sight is
adequate for a heart-area hit, and can be
indexed even in secondary or tertiary focus when the shooter is focused primarily on the threat (StressFire’s ‘StressPoint
Index,’ champion Todd Jarrett’s concept
of ‘shooting out of the notch‘). In poor
light at extreme speed, it may suffice to
simply see the silhouette of the handgun superimposed over the area of the
threat that the officer wants to hit (Jim
Cirillo’s ‘gun silhouette‘ concept).”
5. The smooth roll
Good trigger control is the most important aspect of getting good hits. It
becomes even more important under
stress. Poor trigger control is one of the
biggest reasons for dropped and errant shots. It is logical that to keep the
muzzle on target, the shooter needs to
smoothly operate the trigger. Erratic
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ARMED SENIOR CITIZEN
trigger control will drive the muzzle
away from the shooter’s point of aim.
The goal is to smoothly press the trigger all the way rearward without hesitation until the shot breaks and then to
ride the trigger forward as the trigger
resets for the next shot. As Ayoob points
out, “… each activation of the trigger
is done with a single-stage movement.
We use the term ‘roll the trigger’ to convey the smooth, even, uninterrupted,
straight-back rearward pressure on the
trigger which we seek.”
If the handgun fits the shooter’s
hands, poor trigger control is typically
caused by a combination of factors.
These can include: poor isolation of
the trigger finger (also known as “milking” the gun), inadequate placement of
the trigger finger on the face of the trigger, an inadequate or unstable grip on
the handgun (poor form, gripping too
loosely, having to re-adjust the grip after
each shot), flinching, anticipating the
shot, jerking the trigger, trying to stage
the trigger, and not keeping the finger
on the trigger throughout a string of
shots.
Trigger control can be practiced
through dry fire in addition to live fire;
so can the other fundamentals of marksmanship. An excellent dry fire drill for
practicing all of the fundamentals is the
Wall Drill.
The wall drill
This dry fire drill requires sustained focus and concentration. This drill builds
a muscle memory or motor memory of
the key marksmanship fundamentals.
Make sure that the handgun is unloaded, that there is no ammunition in
the room, and that the backstop is safe
and in a safe direction.
Pick an aim point on the wall or surface in front of you and point your triple–checked, unloaded handgun about
an inch away from the aim point such
that your front sight is right over the aim
point.
Go through your pre-flight checklist
of marksmanship fundamentals as discussed earlier: power stance, high hand,
crush grip, front sight, sight alignment,
sight picture, and smooth roll of the
trigger.
Think to yourself front sight, keep
your sight alignment and sight picture
steady, and say to yourself, smooth roll
as you smoothly press the trigger all the
way rearward and then let it reset for the
next shot. Your aim is to keep your gun
steady as you press the trigger.
Live fire focus drill
Live fire practice of the marksmanship
fundamentals is essential. The following
live fire drill is called the One Hole Drill.
This drill makes use of the principle that
if you aim small, you will miss small.
Start out at a reasonable distance
from your target. Don’t be ashamed for
this to be three yards; that is nine feet!
Pick a small spot on your paper target as
your point of aim. You can draw a oneinch circle in black magic marker to
mark the spot.
Go through your pre-flight checklist
of marksmanship fundamentals as you
focus on your aim point. Punch your
handgun out toward your aim point, as
you focus intently on your front sight
and acquire a sight picture. Your front
sight should be in sharp focus as contrasted with a relatively slightly blurred
target and rear sight. Recognize that
you can only visually focus sharply with
your eyes on one object at a time.
Keeping your gun steady (you should
be in a power stance, with a high-handed, two-handed hard grasp on your
handgun), smoothly roll your trigger
rearward as you stay focused on your
front sight. Watch your front sight as the
shot breaks and through the gun’s arc of
recoil. Don’t peek over your gun to see
the shot!
Hold your trigger to the rear as the
gun recoils and then ride your trigger
forward until it resets as the gun settles
back on target. Now, prepare for your
next shot by taking up any slack in the
trigger.
You can run this drill in either one of
two ways: One way is to take a string
of shots without checking where those
shots went, and then after shooting the
string, lower the gun to a ready position
and check the results of your work. The
other way is to drop the gun to the ready
after each single shot or pair of shots.
Your goal is a perfect one inch group.
You want to exercise your fundamentals
at the target distance at which you are
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working until you attain a perfect one
inch group, and when you do, you can
then move backward to a greater distance (e.g., 5 to 7 to 10 to 12 to 15 to 20
to 25 yards, and so on). You keep moving
backward (increasing the distance) until
you can no longer shoot a perfect group
at a given distance, and then you stay
and work at that distance.
This drill will increase your accuracy
and marksmanship skill in live fire.
The front sight should be in focus; the
rear sight and target slightly blurred.
Summary
Without a solid foundation in the fundamentals, advanced shooting techniques
fall short. Defensive and combat oriented shooters need to create the discipline
to practice their fundamentals regularly
in order to keep their edge and maintain
their advanced skills. H
Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D., psychologist and
NRA Certified Law Enforcement Firearms
Instructor, trains law abiding citizens in
the defensive use of firearms. His company, Personal Defense Solutions, also runs
the classes required to obtain the Florida,
Virginia, and Utah non-resident multistate CCW permits. To learn more, visit
www.PersonalDefenseSolutions.net and
www.DefensiveHandguns.com.
CONTACTS
Stressfire, Vol. 1 (Gunfighting for Police:
Advanced Tactics and Techniques), by
Massad Ayoob. Concord, NH: Police
Bookshelf. 1986.
Massad Ayoob
www.massadayoobgroup.com
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