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It is.But I'm not messing with "Perfection"...

I have had a similar progression.

My winter gun is a 4" M&P 2.0 compact. I shoot it better than my G19.

Shield+ with 13+1 is sooooo much easier to conceal and I shoot it better than a 365 or Hellcat.

Here’s how I got to where I’m at.

Depending on target size, I can fire accurately 4-5 times per second. And it’s reasonable to assume, based research and anecdotal evidence, that the....Start firing—Threat reacts—Perceive the threat is over—Brain tells me to stop firing—I stop shooting....cycle would take about a second. That’s 4-5 rounds per threat.

So I consider everything in multiples of 5. If it’s a 6 round revolver, that’s one bad guy. I assume there’ll be two bad guys, so a 10 round mag is a minimum for me, and 15 is where I feel comfortable.

That’s not scientific, but it does have more thought in it than “this is probably enough”.

Baby steps, huh? Point taken. I appreciate your very constructive comments to me and others on this thread.

Mike, thanks for starting to make an attempt to address my question.

You're quite right, all knowledge bases change with time, and sometimes that happens for the better. However, I strongly disagree with your characterization of this a HUMAN evolution. Biological evolution takes generations to take place, which means since Jeff Cooper's "Modern Technique" of the pistol was written in the 1960's, we have barely completed one generation.

Humans are biologically no different, no more "evolved" than we were in the middle of the last century. We could really go down a rabbit trail here, but you and I BOTH know that the overall physical fitness and educational level of American humans has gone waaaaay downhill in the past 60 years, so if we have "evolved" physically at all, it's been negative.

Similarly, the evolution of training and equipment for gunfighting in the past 60 years has been significant, and for the most part, I agree with you that it has improved. Coppers went on duty in 1961 armed with 38 Special revolvers loaded with standard pressure LRN bullets, and if they were lucky, they had a shotgun in the trunk. The weapons we have today are a lot better than they were back then. The tactics, though... I'll get to that in a minute...

As for medical changes, I've been around long enough to know that many of the "advances" in medical treatment that have come along in the past 30 years have been discarded as useless, or even harmful. For example, I've seen the drug Amiodarone come into fashion no less than 3 times, endorsed by the American Heart Association, then discarded, then re-adopted, then discarded AGAIN, and re-instituted YET AGAIN. Why? Because knowledge evolves, and as we gain experience with stuff, we get a better idea what works great, what doesn't work so great, and what sucks.

THE SAME phenomenon has been happening in firearms training and tactics. Much of the high-speed, low-drag, way-cool stuff that has come along over the past 60 years has turned out to be bull s h i t. And some stuff that has been good has been cast aside.

Here's what I know, at age 67, about the "advances" in modern medicine: stuff comes and goes, but the basics remain the same. People still need to breathe, they need a perfusing heart rhythm, they need a decent blood pressure. Those things haven't changed. The ways we address this have changed somewhat here and there, but for the most part the stuff I learned to do in my residency in the early 90's still works today. And a lot of the stuff the new residents are coming out of their training with doesn't... because they are so heavily indoctrinated into the concept that the Old Ways don't work. So when they come in as new baby ER docs and start slinging their New Ways around and find out it's not so s h i t-hot as they were taught, and that the OId Guys are able to do better work using the Old Ways with a few new wrinkles thrown in, they start their actual practical learning in medicine.

It's the same with firearms and gunfighting. I've spent extensive time with a few guys like Jim Cirillo and Pat Rogers and guys of that generation, on the range and over beers after the guns are put away. Pat Rogers was a great example of an Old Guy who continued learning and adding tools to his toolbox up until the day he died. (And yes, Pat killed a LOT of people in his career.) But Pat said many times over that the fundamentals of defensive shooting have never changed: always have a gun; always pay attention to your threat environment; always put your rounds downrange early and often; never give up.

The fundamentals haven't changed. I've taken training from more than one new hotshot, including some oh-so-sexy ex-Navy SEALs, who have killed a lot of people (they say) that was absolute garbage because they denigrated the fundamentals and insisted that their New Way was the only way to train and fight.



Now you're finally giving some specifics. Yes, some of that stuff is garbage. But some of it wasn't and isn't.

For instance, I carry a 1911 more often than I carry a Glock. I shoot my 1911's better than my Glocks. And no, it isn't from lack of training or trying. Shee-it, I have actually worn out at least one Glock shooting the mofo. I still shoot 1911's better. And yes, I carry my pistol on my strongside hip, "at 4 o'clock". It works. It's tried and true. I can still draw from concealment in under 1.5 seconds on a shot timer.

Do I care about 9mm vs 45 ACP? Nope. Not even gonna get into that. What I WILL say is that the quality of the good carry ammo we have today is miles better than what we had in 1985, and we all know it. Guess what? Even the Old Guys that you trashed earlier in this thread know this, and carry good quality JHP ammo.




Yeah, no. There are plenty of "modern warriors" who are all hat and no cattle. Just like every generation, there are people today who study and learn with a critical eye to what actually works, and turn around and pass that on to the rest of us without making it all about themselves. And there are a bunch of others who grab hold of a piece of the truth, attach their enormous egos to it, and then make it their mission to knock down every other idea and trainer who they perceive as a threat.

Speaking of which, and I'll preface this by saying I gotta agree with you on the nonsense of "any hit is a good hit" (I thought we had put that one in a deep grave decades ago, but no...) I was at an IALEFI-ATC in 2013 or 2014 and one of the high-speed low-drag way-cool sshitt-hot New Guys Who's Killed a Lot of People In The Sandbox was teaching a class and looked me directly in the eye and said my Tactical Anatomy training was garbage and that any hit is a good hit, and he was gonna shoot the s h i t out of Center Mass because "that's what really works". As you may guess, I smiled and told him to have a nice day and walked off "his" range then and there, but a whole lot of guys who worship at the altar of Guys Who've Killed A Lot of People stayed and soaked up every word the man said.

Training people to make effective hits, which is what my training system does, improves OIS outcomes. We have data on that from major LE agencies that have incorporated it. They not only get vastly improved hit ratios, they get incapacitating hits, and they put more armed felons into permanent dirt-nap status. But like sheep in Orwell's Animal Farm, there is a segment of the gun world that can't learn anything more complicated than "any hit is a good hit".

Oh, and speaking of old guys who can shoot with surgical accuracy, have you noticed that Mas Ayoob still regularly shoots IDPA matches, and scores very well?



Here's where we are gonna part ways.

I understand you train to a pretty hard and high level. More power to you, I'm serious about training, too. I know how quickly my pistol skills degrade if I don't train. Most people have no idea how much speed/accuracy they lose, because they don't use a timer, don't score their hits, etc. So they go to the range and do some pew-pew-pew, admire their targets, and go home thinking that's "good enough".

Now, that won't work for me, because I have standards that I train to maintain. But I think it's foolish for me to expect every Tom, Dick and Harriet out there with a CCW license to train to my personal standards. (Most people aren't able to meet those standards, anyway. It takes years of training to get to that point... just like most people couldn't run a half-marathon, either. It's no insult, they're just not able to.)

But the plain fact is, most people will never, ever get into a gunfight. Most of them won't even use a firearm for defensive purposes their whole life long. So why should I or you or anyone else insist they train to a high standard of performance? Moreover, why should you or I care WHAT standard they train to? It simply doesn't matter to me. I train to please me, and they have every right to do the same.

Folks send me articles and stories about self-defense shootings quite often. American Rifleman has a column about them in every issue. Most of the time, I look at these tales, and I'm no longer surprised by the success some folks have defending their lives when their training and equipment is so bad. But that's life, and they made their call, and they survived.

I guess they thought they were good enough, and it turned out they were right. YMMV.

Funny thing, there's a kernel of truth in every one of those (except the slow is fast one... ), but they have been twisted by mindless repetition into nonsense over time.

If I'm not mistaken, the "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, so slow is fast" mantra came out of the speed training of USPSA Master David Elderton. He never uttered such nonsense, but people who didn't understand what he was teaching thought he said it. When I first met Dave, his speed on the draw was incredible, or so I thought. I've since seen a lot of folks who are faster.

I remember taking Dave's "Speed Skills" class in about 2000 or 2001. He was the first instructor I ever had who taught and broke down every element of the draw, presentation, and trigger press to work on eliminating excess movement; in other words, to make the motions as efficient or "smooth" as possible. He had us work each move of the drawstroke slowly, concentrating on smooth, efficient, motion. Then he gradually sped us up through a series of drills. He actually said you had to go slowly at first to get smooth, then you accelerate your speed while maintaining that smoothness. He never actually said, "Slow is smooth" (he would say, "start slow, for form, then build your speed on that") but a lot of people heard him (or more likely about him) as saying "slow is smooth and smooth is fast".

Anyways, that's an example of how good training and true statements get twisted.

I have very little interest in this thread, but I do have to ask one question.

Do we no longer want to focus on the front sight?

That's a variation on the Gunsite "number of engagements" approach, I think. I learned it from an ex-Gunsite guy named Tim Lau. I don't think they teach it any more, but I think it's a useful concept. The number they used was smaller than yours, 3-4 rounds, per engagement. This results in a normal-capacity revolver being a 1.5-2.0 engagements weapon, a 7-round single-stack being a 1.0-2.0 engagements weapon, a 10-round mag giving you a 2.5-3.0 engagements weapon, and so forth.

The number of rounds you will use in an actual shooting is set by your training, to some degree. There is a lot of research that bears this out, by Force Science Institute among others in the later 90's and early 2000's...people who trained to shoot a double-tap and assess tended to get shot when they lifted their heads to see how well their double-tap had worked. Whereas, people who didn't train much at all, in double-taps or otherwise, tended to empty the gun. People who diligently trained using a "nonstandard response"--since double-taps were "standard" then, anything like an El Prez or a 4-shot group was called "nonstandard"--did better in OIS's than people who fired DT's or who emptied their weapons.

I have been using a 3-round "nonstandard response" as my default in my training for a while now, which is suitable to my preferred blaster, a 1911 with an 8 round magazine.

True story!

The average law-abiding middle-class person has no experience with or knowledge of the hardness of the Bad Guys. I have some knowledge and experience, and I do everything I reasonably can to limit my exposure to them.

In practice, you're going to look at the SOB you need to shoot. But people who have been trained to look for the front sight (i.e. 'Focus' on it) will almost invariably see it, or at least reference it, which results in way above average hit rates and more effective fire. Of course most of this occurred before 9-11 and with pistols other than 9mms, so those fights probably don't count.

Interesting. Thanks. I hadn't thought of it that way. I can see where 10, as a minimum makes sense given that line of thought.

Most excellent post, sir. I guess I need to revert to my G-31!
PS: My "ego" just won't permit me to use a 9mm

Excellent post, Doc and in a nutshell, this is what I grabbed onto...} I shoot my 1911 better than my Glocks and not for lack of trying."....

Staring hard at the front sight is pretty low on my list of priorities. And way, way far down on the list of what I pressure students to do.

Well Blue I think we are missing the gospel that the old guys had this stuff all figured out and that everything since Cooper and Cirillo is just gilding the Lily.

All that is required is a hard front sight focus, don't let your ego allow you to carry a mouse gun and do your best to limit your exposure to real bad guys.

All that other stuff is not an evolution in learning based on actual experience gained in the last 20 years because evolution is only a biological function. who knew?

No wonder the boomers are no longer taken seriously


mike r

Doc, if you really believe that the physical fitness and educational level of modern humans has declined in the last 60 years we are living in different universes.

As to the modern warriors who are all hat and no cattle, actual experience trumps gun camp theorists every time.


mike r

I carry plenty of spare mags, but, the word gunfight, has me in rifle-land, i know, i'm retarded.

Doc is correct and you are full of sh it

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_3293846

People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests

More proof Doc is right

https://youtu.be/xfO1veFs6Ho

I will just throw out that my experience is that where you hit is VERY important.

"Any hit is a good hit" seems like a good way to not stop the threat.

Granted, I haven't killed "a lot" of people, and I did it with a rifle. That alone makes me think accuracy/shot placement is even more important with a handgun.

The people I know that have killed "a lot" pretty much say torso good, CNS great, but only CNS=stop.


As for amio, just load my patients before cardioversion, and stop it while their lungs still work.....