Another thread on this Forum brought me back to this one, with regard to our practice targets.
In that thread, there was a bit of discussion about marksmanship and the threat template, and I wanted to bring that across to the current discussion, here.
I wrote in that thread that one of the reasons why I practice what I can (since it is expensive to do so) with my defensive ammo is because of my desire to maintain marksmanship standards with said ammo:
The other main worry is then external ballistics. I have to know with-certainty how that shot will print downrange. I absolutely need to know what that bullet will do in relation to the POA/POI. Two inches on the vertical axis (or just one inch displacement) puts me outside the eyebox (
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?4597-Targets&s=374c73be6a0a1f2f0453d345e4c3ee70). The heart is but a fist-sized organ. This marksmanship template only gets more demanding when the body is in-motion in 3-dimensional space, and we've seen time and again in recent events that while the 3-ft/3-shots/3-seconds rule may be "good enough," oftentimes, good enough is not good enough in the real world.
I wanted to expand on that, by also putting up the following:
From the late Louis Awerbuck's teachings - for those of you who are unfamiliar, his "Mirage Target System" (of the former Yavapai Firearms Academy, which he headed) ranks right up there with the Rogers Reactive, and is unique in simulating a real-world, dynamic, encounter, complete with backdrop and foreground concerns - we understand that a dynamic, real-world confrontation in which both parties are moving will make marksmanship considerably harder: that there is a very physical/mathematical reason why even trained individuals miss at close range (a closer target on the move actually provides a bigger angular displacement than that same target, farther away).
Furthermore, Awerbuck presented in the free Panteao Productions "Tactical Tips" segment (abstracted from his full-length DVD, from the same source) the following:
^ and we're later given from this same video (albeit not as a free preview/tip) that the actual "vital area" for a human target, high-center-mass, is really no wider than ~9 inches, full-frontal,
no matter how big the person. That this "breast-plate," as he calls it, essentially shrinks when the target is presented to the shooter at an angle.
You can visualize this "shrinkage" quite easily simply by holding up any two-dimensional printed target tilting it away from you. For example, the width of an 8 and 1/2 inch wide sheet of common notebook/copier paper becomes an apparent 6 inches, with only about a 20-degree shift. Additionally, Mr. Awerbuck points out that shooting at a side-profile of a person, you only have a 4-inch wide target to work with, that by the time a target is bladed away from you by 45 degrees, this is all you have of their vital zone. This is alluded to when he presents the "folded" printed target in the "Target Selection" free "Tactical Tip" from Panteao, again available on YouTube as an abstracted segment:
Additional complications arise from anatomic concerns when the body is rotated in space, and these considerations are not visualized with standard 2-dimensional targets.
In June of 2015, this video popped up on the PDN -
https://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/video/firearms-training-angles-with-3d-vs-2d-targets-008333/# - Similarly, Mr. Claude Werner's excellent article "Why I hate the -3 Zone" also applies here, in-spades:
https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/why-i-hate-the-3-zone/
So with this in-mind, let's go back to that "skull shot." Let's look at the CNS shot - typically portrayed in various two-dimensional targets as either the "eye box" (VTAC and Opsgear), "triangle of death" (what we called it in medical school - and is shown by targets such as those for The Reston Group and the Federal Air Marshal Service) or "the fatal T" (Glockstore/Lenny Magill head-shot overlay).
We are reminded by Awerbuck that this "kill zone" zone as it is printed on paper is only valid when the target is directly facing us in much the same manner that we view a flat-range 2-dimensional paper target. Why? Look at the anatomy: look at what we are actually shooting: we're not shooting "the brain" as a whole - that critical "eyebox/death triangle/fatal-T" delineates an area not only of material weakness in the bony structure that is our head, but also has further implications in terms of the areas of the brain which govern the vital functions that keeps us, as humans, alive. To-wit, Representative Gabrielle Giffords was "shot in the brain."
A schoolboy archer had a narrow escape after being shot through the eye by a friend.
www.telegraph.co.uk
And let's not forget this one - showing just how much difference a fraction of an inch - or even a variance in individual anatomy - can potentially make:
https://www.today.com/news/florida-woman-survives-gunshot-between-eyes-wbna23914454#.V8Mm06ISPpF
We should remember that similar implications carry over to the vital organs and large vessels in the "high center chest" critical area - that depending on how that target actually presents in real-time, in 3-dimensions, taking that "high center chest" shot may actually not produce the result we want (i.e. incapacitation) - that maybe the shot needed to have instead entered through the abdomen or even the crotch, or, in going back to the CNS example, maybe through the neck area in order to reach the anatomy that we need to disrupt.
Marksmanship is never a bad thing.
In addition to the above anatomic/physical considerations, Awerbuck also reminds us that the physical circumstances of the fight can also be used to explain why even trained shooters miss at even close range - that the inverse proportions and simple angular geometry can demonstrate that a dynamic, moving target can well be easier to hit at 13 yards than it is to hit at 3, and that furthermore, at closer range, that angular deviation open up more of the backdrop, making Cooper's "Rule 4" all that much more important when shooting in the "real world." [ Having a hard time grasping these concepts? This link:
https://activeselfprotection.com/de...-bystander-while-shooting-at-fleeing-thieves/ and thinking about the recent UPS truck hijacking shootout that led to cvilian casualties -
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...hijacking-florida-richard-cutshaw/2680768001/ ]
So, as-usual, this is my embarrassingly long way of coming to the point that I want to make.....
It's all too easy to say that "combat effective" shooting is more than sufficient for "the real world."
But this was the real world, too:
https://www.thearmorylife.com/forum/threads/head-shot-at-50-feet-in-6-seconds.106/
That flat-range 2-dimensional target we're shooting at is far from "the real world," and getting "combat effective" hits on it does not translate to what we know of either anatomy or physics. "Combat accuracy" is not a measure of how well one can shoot. It's what the end-result is, after an actual defensive event in which we have discharged our firearm. It accounts for our movements, that of the threat, and the four-thousand-and-one other factors that go into ahat defensive shootout that makes it so much more stressful than even the hardest drill/test we have run on the range. It's what our performance FALLS TO, from the height of perfection that we have attained and truly mastered in practice.
One of Clint Smith's "Clintisms" is that mediocre shooting is often all that's needed to win a gunfight. A corollary to that is the Clintism that we train to magnificence so that we can fall to adequate when under pressure.
If one can only attain adequate or mediocre performance when under training stress, what will he/she fall to, when faced with a violent confrontation?
No-one ever wished they shot slower or were less accurate.
Yes, shooting more rounds, faster, inherently biases the BSA template and compromises accuracy.
That is true for everybody from the completely-fresh-to-shooting novice all the way to the most badass of ninja-killers and even top-tier competition shooters.
But our shots have to count, as Mr. Jack Wilson so bravely demonstrated.
We should take up his clarion call to get more training, better training, better practice.
So many of us have hailed him as a hero. Let's honor this hero's words and take up his challenge.
