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In a recent article, one of our writers addressed the use of the eyes in regards to shooting with both eyes open and he advised we all should. An interested reader then inquired as to whether or not he should shoot off the weak shoulder with his strong eye or weak eyed or crossover. Having dealt with this on a regular basis, I thought to give some insight into what we find works and the why’s, as in why we care, why we should train to the task and why it might make a difference.

Although it sounds a bit edgy, have you ever been in a bar or the like and seen somebody sucker punched? As in our about-to-be-thumped dude was looking in one place and someone from another direction zaps him? The use of both eyes open helps eliminate the proverbial tactical sucker punch. Simply close one eye and see what part of the room or your environment you lose visual contact with.

The simple equation is two eyes open allows for more information to be gathered by the eyes — and remember this isn’t always for direct movement. The peripheral visual is one of the few places where true instincts are at play with guns, shooting and fighting as the peripheral vision picks up movement to which the shooter can shift his eyes directly to confirm potential threats and apply sighted fire according to need. Contrary to some beliefs, we can’t shoot instinctively, but we can in fact use instincts in the form of this “hunter’s eye” which catches or gathers movement if you will. You can then address it as needed.

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This is actually not a big deal, as many people are right handed and have a left master eye or vice versa. Probably the biggest eye problem could evolve around a new shooter who might be cross dominant and often sees two or more images. This is most common in handguns. In the use of a handgun, the new shooter may need to feather or shut down an eye until he acquires more skill or simply more exposure to shooting in general with the idea in mind he ultimately will shoot with both eyes open.

More at the link discussing both handguns and rifles.

The doors unlocked and probably had her face in the phone.

I disagree with starting from the low ready. A total change in training and practice needs to take place in the shooter training sphere; always train from drawing. Ranges need to work on this; it requires all of us, trainers, facilities, YouTubers, political activists, and others, to make this switch. Drawing from low ready is a legacy training approach that needs to be abolished. If the IDPA and others want to run competitions from low ready, that’s one thing, self-defense carry needs to be practiced from the draw. This will force competence not just in drawing, time to muzzle on target, and shooting but will force less experienced shooters to consider more seriously the very limited window in which a self-defense encounter can present itself and the best carry option for them, not the easiest, but best.

There are several drills at this link; the two most basic entries are mentioned below.

Do the 5×5 from the holstered position, not low-ready. Attaining 5 seconds may not be doable for the 5×5 drill, but taking longer than five seconds, if realistic for real life, is what better training should simulate and prepare you to face.

Know Your Basics: 5×5

The 5×5 (or 5^5) drill is a true test of your foundational skills. If you do well, it’s a good reassurance that you have your basics covered, and a sign that pursuing intermediate to advanced drills may be a good idea. If you struggle with this drill, it can help you realize where improvement is needed. Remember, as nice as it is to see perfect drills, it’s also good to find out where you need to improve.

It’s simple: starting from a low-ready position, stand 5 yards from your target and fire 5 rounds within 5 seconds. Simple, right? The target usually has a five-inch diameter circle, but not always. The overall goal is to make all shots within the said circle.

If you want an added challenge, draw from the holster or try it four times in a row (passing would be 25 shots without missing).

Don’t Flinch: The Coin/Brass Drill

This drill is super simple and great for beginners. To do this drill you need an unloaded gun and a penny (or, alternatively, you can use spent brass). Rest the penny on [or near] your front sight so it’s balanced. Your goal is to aim and pull the trigger without letting the penny fall. This can be a great way to weed out flinching in beginners and help commit to squeezing the trigger properly. Trigger control is vital to hone, and you’ll find the further you are from a target during live fire, the more trigger control problems will become clear. Say it with us: dry fire is your friend.

This article covers a few different lighting options for handgun self-defense.

It should come as no surprise that most violent crime occurs in sub-optimal light conditions. For centuries, criminals have been using the veil of darkness to conceal their illicit activities, and this trend can be supported by any number of definitive sources. Burglaries, home invasions, armed robberies, muggings and sexual assaults all seem to spike in the evening hours.

The hands-apart technique shown here allows the user to direct the light in a different place than the muzzle of the gun.

To be truly prepared, our training should address the most likely scenarios we will face. While it is valid that danger can visit anytime or any place, violent assaults often fall into a pattern. The danger unfolds very fast, the distance between you and your assailant is short, and light conditions are likely to be poor. Clearly, darkness handicaps our ability to spot potential threats sooner and make a sound assessment of the level of danger.

One way of tipping the odds back in your favor is to carry a small flashlight on your person and train to how to use it. It’s essential to get familiar with some techniques for working it in concert with your handgun. I feel that if you carry a gun, you also need to have a light with you regardless of the time of day. Real-world data suggests you may never have a need to use that light as a shooting aid, but it can fill any number of other critical roles.

A helpful tip or two within the few techniques discussed is at the link.

The below is not the Bill Drill. Previously at TCJ, this post includes the Bill Drill

Designer: Bill Wilson

I saw this new drill from Bill Wilson online the other day, so I set it up and shot it. He calls it the “Comprehensive Handgun Proficiency” drill, which aligns with our interest in minimum competency and standards generally. It includes a concealment draw, emergency reload, engaging targets at 7 and 12 yards with 12 yard head shots (simulating 24 yard body shots), stationary target transitions within a single target and across a wide space, shooting on the move, and thinking (surprise reload).

It’s an easy drill to set up if you have an outdoor range and space to move. Not a drill well suited to single lane practice at an indoor range. This stage will definitely be set up and run during one of our summer USPSA matches.

CHP DRILL (Comprehensive Handgun Proficiency)

Purpose: This drill is designed to test as many basic defensive shooting skills as
possible with a quick to administer single string of fire and minimal ammunition required,
that can be shot on basic ranges, even indoors.

What This Drill Tests: Draw/presentation, multiple shot control, target transition,
movement under time, shooting on the move, target acquisition after movement,
emergency re-load and precision shots.

This practice starts from the holstered position using IDPA targets with variable scoring for head or body shots. The complete drill is at the link.

There are consequences to both winning and losing a gunfight and consequences still for never taking up the duty to defend your family. Weighing in the balance that winning is the preferred option, how can we prepare? Much of this article, past the introduction, is interesting, and it has many links to excellent primary source material for the conscientious Concealed Carrier. The links and book mentions are one main reason to post it here.

Please do your own research to become conscientious about carrying a weapon; it’s no small thing. Having a weapon lends power, making a man no longer a victim; with it comes great responsibility.

For those who’ve been carrying for a while, we can become complacent. Perhaps mindset refresher training is even more critical than maintaining shooting ability, or at least it’s due an equal time and importance. Most firearms negligent discharges have their root not in any action, but long before that, in a complacent or casual mindset, leading to carelessness.

Mindset is at the core of self defense. From what I recall from the martial arts I studied in my youth, the concept of “mind, body, and spirit” was frequently mentioned and I think that mind being the first element identified by the concept was intentional. Some prominent firearms training organizations include this concept in their slogans and marketing. For example, the first thing one sees on the homepage for Tactical Response is a slideshow with mindset as the first item, that’s followed by tactics, skill and gear. Again, the order is intentional. Another example is Active Self Protection, who uses “Attitude, Skills, Plan” as a slogan in their logo and throughout their content. I suspect attitude in this slogan is synonymous to mindset. Other synonyms might include terms like “mental preparedness” or “emotional fortitude”. Regardless of the term used for mindset, it seems like every philosophy that surrounds every martial art fundamentally identifies mindset as the foundation that is required and necessary in order to win a fight universally. Even various depictions of the Combat Triad introduced by the late Jeff Cooper, which was used to explain the philosophy of violence places mindset as either the foundation of a pyramid or the base side of an equilateral triangle.

For us Christians, the spirit must be the first consideration and the body last. If you have to shoot somebody, you’ll learn the hard way why you should have set your heart right before the God of creation because your mind, sooner or later, for one reason or another, will surely fail to keep you grounded in your prior reality; that’s a promise.

You must have something larger than yourself; that must be God through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Nobody really knows their own spirit until they meet God because He alone is holy, and we, at our core, are full of sin and corruption. May you meet Him before you die; God have mercy on them.

Consider carefully what will become of your mind if you kill a man, even if justified before God and the laws of men; this is why I prefer the translation of “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s easy to tell a man who has never had to take a life if he prefers the word murder instead of kill. If you kill for any reason, you will soon be met with the knowledge of the depths of the curse of sin upon man and earth. Blood in taking a life made in the image of our God upon your hands, for any reason, is no small thing, and you will never fully recover your innocence nor be the same again. Rarely do some men take to war. But it’s also easy to tell somebody who has never been shot at because they ignorantly promote war.

In my opinion, which I’m still refining, mindset is part confidence and part commitment. Both of those components are developed over time as one works on becoming better prepared to deal with a violent encounter including its prevention (avoiding it), intervention (fighting to break contact), and postvention (dealing with the aftermath). Neither confidence nor commitment are things that can be taught. They are things that are built through education, developing abilities, and introspection. Let’s break these components down a little bit more individually.

Confidence comes from having well placed and earned trust in our abilities and tools. Abilities, in my opinion once again, aren’t limited to marksmanship and tactics. It also includes our abilities to make good decisions. Meaning we know in our heart of hearts that we are unlikely to make a serious mistake that could result in a negative outcome that Claude Werner’s work has warned us about. Confidence minimizes doubt which in turn minimizes hesitation.

Confidence also comes from being adequately prepared to solve the self defense problem that is in front of us. This means being competently skilled and familiar enough with our tools while knowing enough about violent encounters so that there is little to no novelty about what is happening. Based on my limited understanding of the research and work from Dr. Paul Whitesell, Jeff Cooper, John Hearne, and Dr. William Aprill, novelty is something that our brain doesn’t deal well with and can trigger the flight, fight, or freeze response that occurs when the limbic system, or “animal brain”, takes over preventing the use of our cognitive abilities during the encounter which can lead to serious mistakes and negative outcomes.

Commitment comes from knowing and understanding what is at stake coupled with having a deliberate game plan. The stakes at a minimum are serious injury or death for yourself and loved ones present. Those are pretty high stakes, but like I said, those are the bare minimum.

The real danger in mindset, the article goes on to explain, is in finding yourself not knowing what to do. You can read the rest at the link. It’s nice to find worthwhile firearms knowledge that doesn’t gratuitously and needless cuss and denigrate. America needs more family-friendly gun knowledge.

This post on drawing a handgun covers a critical skill gap suffered by many concealed carriers. Time to muzzle on target wins gunfights. Or, as this very essential short article points out: draw to a first solid hit is most important.

The most important skill with a pistol, as it pertains to self-defense, is being able to deploy it efficiently, safely, and quickly.  We could say that the draw to a first, solid hit, is most important.  I would submit that the draw itself can be separated out from the first accurate hit to an extent because most defensive gun uses end with a gun displayed yet no shot fired.

Ironically, many self-pronounced practitioners of defensive pistolcraft tend to ignore this skill.  I see at public ranges, all the time, people practicing only from ready positions, usually not even wearing a holster.  Similarly, even some serious shooters who are technically skilled and focus on competitive shooting do practice from the holster, but from a holster that is not applicable to concealed carry.

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The draw needs to be well practiced for any number of scenarios.  Most people who do actually practice the draw tend to focus only on the best-case scenario or performing the draw from a standing position with the hands in an optimal position, with both hands available to work on the task.

At the link, this drill offers 8 different situations or types of draw to practice.

There isn’t a lot of shotgun training available these days. Everybody has gone tacticool, but this is a good primary starting point for an average home defense family. There’s been a recent self-defense situation that’s come up with somebody I know, and the primary weapon selection for their home has been a 12ga pump shotgun. One reason is small children, therefore, a desire for limited penetration. I’m not a shotgunner. Any help in the comments would be appreciated.

This three-part shotgun drill at what some consider a reputable resource looks helpful for starters.

I tried to really give this some thought with regard to what is required to actually work in live fire with a shotgun, since a lot of it can be worked dry fire. Also, to set the context, this is meant to be a basic “I have a shotgun for home defense” type thing. Obviously there are skills above and beyond what is covered in this short range session, but those skills are less likely to be used in this context. So what we have here is a narrow focus on the key aspects of shooting a shotgun for home defense.

• The ability to quickly mount the gun properly, acquire an acceptable sight picture, and fire an accurate shot.
• The ability to manage recoil and fire multiple, quick shots as required.
• Building good habits with proper follow through and maintaining a fully loaded shotgun as much as possible.
• The ability to recognize an empty gun and quickly get the gun back to a fighting condition with an emergency reload.

If someone had the ability to set up multiple targets, or wanted to add movement to these drills, that could easily be done while still shooting the same basic drill. The assumption in this case is that range limitations prevent those sorts of things. For the minimal investment of about $10 in 12 gauge ammunition and maybe 15 minutes of time, that is a lot to check off the list with regard to the shotgun.

Full drill at the link.

Edit: Also see, Understanding Different 12-Guage Ammo at Widener’s. Includes pics of patterns for buckshot and slug results.

As a follow-up to Night Sights: The Key to Fighting the Night from last week, we thought to post this brief discussion about several sights in varying light conditions. Though, in this article, the camera doesn’t capture well the pitch-dark aspect, the pictures are still helpful upon close examination.

Having a handful of different sight setups on a few of my Glocks, I figured it’d be handy to compare them side-by-side in various lighting conditions in a consistent manner. While I had my own feelings going into it, I found it interesting how similar the tritium and fiber options were with blacked out rears. Granted that was just when the tritium front sight came with a day-glo orange ring around it for extra highlighting, but I had expected the narrow fiber sight to have a clear advantage in all situations other than completely dark (which may be difficult to come up with a justifiable circumstance for).

H/T g/@ShootyMcBeardface

I’ve never read Handgun Mag (Guns & Ammo Handguns), but it might be worth a daily or weekly stop to check out; the source of this article is there.

Since criminals obviously prefer to avoid apprehension, it should come as no surprise that criminal activity spikes at night. The cloak of darkness provides fewer witnesses and makes it more difficult for their intended victims to detect their approach.

But darkness isn’t confined to night. Consider being inside a building where the lights are off. If you carry a gun but haven’t practiced with it in a low-light environment, you’re way behind the curve.

Training in diminished light will reveal shortcomings not only in your shooting skills but also in your equipment. The need for a weapon- mounted or handheld light—preferably both—becomes clear. After all, how can you shoot what you haven’t identified as a deadly threat? And if you’ve ever tried to align black sights on a silhouette target in low-light conditions, you probably wished your handgun had nights sights.

I was going to skip posting this commentary until it mentioned training. Preparedness for a low-light situation is an excellent point. This has me curious about the lighted vs. dark self-defense shooting stats; are any actually kept? Indeed, for home defense, low-light fighting skill is a must. Plans and drills are the most important thing for family home defense (and fire preparedness), and if you have a family, a firearm light is also critical. If you have a night job or often travel at night, and in other situations, it’s also essential.

Many night sights contain tritium, a radioactive material that emits electrons that interact with a phosphor gas, generating low-intensity light which is used to illuminate objects that need to be seen in the dark, such as emergency exit signs, wristwatches, or, in our case, gun sights. Night sights provide the shooter with invaluable aiming information, without disrupting night vision.

I’ve used night sights; they’re great. I’m interested to hear of any drawbacks to them. I’ve found none. Also, I’m very interested if anybody knows of specific drills for low-light they would link or share. This could benefit us all.