Reload Video?

[Jshuberg]

No one argues that you lose fine motor skill under extremely high stress situations. What people argue is that moving your thumb from up to down is such a much more precise fine motor skill than aligning sights, pulling a trigger without disturbing the sight picture, hitting a mag release button, or performing all the steps rquired to sling shot the slide as Duane described. It's just silly.

Actually, if you read some of the statements above, people *are* in fact arguing whether a loss of fine grained motor skills occurs, or that training is able to overcome the effects of this loss.

I do recognize that with the types of pistols that most people compete with, dropping the slide with the slide lock is a simple gross motion of the thumb. However, with the types of compact and subcompact pistols that are typically carried for self defense, deactivation of the slide lock can often require much greater dexterity. In this circumstance, using the palm of the hand to rack the slide is less error prone, more fumble proof than fidgeting with a slide lock.

As to the fact that clearing a double feed requires fine grained motor skills, it does. I don't see that's any evidence that fine grained motor skills go bye-bye though - unless you can demonstrate that people are able to remediate a double feed during a lethal force encounter without fumbling. Most LEO instructors I've trained with have acknowledged that if a person has a double feed in a gunfight, it pretty much takes them out of it. A person could probably clear a double feed using only gross muscle motions, but they will likely be fumbling with it longer than the typical gunfight lasts.

If a person has a double feed in a defensive situation, they'd be *extremely* lucky to be able to clear the malfunction and eliminate the threat before bad things happen to him. Just sayin'

Edited October 17, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Duane Thomas]

Okay, you say you need more than anecdotal evidence. But where do you think Grossman got the info on which to base statements like, “The debilitating effects of combat stress have been recognized for centuries”? Anecdotal stories. This is all we have, the statements of people who’ve been out there on the sharp end of the stick. And if you ever got your study of what happens when highly skilled and trained shooters get in gunfights, all you’d really have would be a whole bunch of anecdotal stories.

Did you read the part in Grossman’s work where he’s quoting Ron Avery, who is both a black belt martial artist, a veteran street cop, and a USPSA Grand Master, when Ron is talking about Condition Black and he says that, for him, the adrenaline dump of a real fight gives him an extra surge of energy and speed that makes him perform better under stress? One-size-fits-all statements like, “Under stress you will yank the gun out and point it in the general direction of the target, and start convulsively mashing the trigger, and you’ll stab at slide stops and magazine release buttons and never use the sights” just don’t cut it because highly trained competitors don’t react under stress like people at the lower skill levels.

Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran, street cop, firearms instructor and legendary SWAT trainer Ken Hackathorn has commented that – and he has seen this again and again in the people he’s talked to who have actually been in gunfights – one of the predictable responses of those involved in violent encounters is that they will almost never attempt to do anything they don’t already know they can do WELL.

Don’t overlook the importance of this portion of the Marine Combat Marksmanship Coaches’ Course doctrine:

“a. Physical aspects. In a high stress situation (fire fight) a Marine will encounter many physical changes. Awareness of these physical changes will enable the Marine to compensate for them in actual combat." (Emphasis added.)

Massad Ayoob states that, at the Bianchi Cup, one of the competitors, a gunfight winner himself, told him that shooting the Bianchi Cup was more stressful than his gunfight. Severe stress is something that you are, to a certain extent, proofed against once you understand what’s happening, once you know you can handle it and still perform. Serious competition shooters know that when the chips are down, the match win hangs in the balance, the chance to be a hero or a zero looms, your heart is pounding so hard you can hear it in your head, you’re sweating, your breath is coming short, and your hands are visibly shaking, we can still deliver the goods, shooting skills-wise. Those who’ve never tested themselves in competition don’t.

Eventually you get to the point where you’re so good at dealing with stress that those symptoms lessen or even stop entirely. But that’s not because competitors don’t have to deal with real stress. It’s because we’re so good at dealing with stress it simply doesn’t hit us like it does other people.

For all the dire aspersions that those who’ve never done either like to warn people about the idea of being a competition shooter who gets in a gunfight, the truth is that, in the real world, serious competition shooters who get in gunfights excel. Jim Cirillo was involved in 17 gunfights and other armed encounters during his years with the New York City Police Stakeout Unit, and not only did he survive, not only did he win, he never missed a single shot. Why? Well, in addition to impressive fortitude and strength of character, he also had the skill at arms, and self-confidence in his own shooting ability, that came from being a state champion PPC shooter. Jim wasn’t afraid to take what most people would consider “hard shots” in a real gunfight because he already knew, from his competitive experience, that he could make them.

Closer to home (for me, home being Washington state) we had an incident where a certified psychopath walked into a gun store and tried to kill a cop standing inside it. When the cop’s gun choked at the moment of truth, one of the gun shop employees, Danny Morris, an avid IPSC shooter, drew his concealed carry gun, a stainless steel Colt Delta Elite Gold Cup 10mm loaded with full-power, big bore Magnum-level ammunition, and swiftly shot the bad guy three times in the center of the chest and solved the problem. I have interviewed Danny Morris. I have copies of the police reports. I have copies of the autopsy photos. Beautiful group. Looked like a little triangle.

C-class IPSC shooter.

By competition shooter standards, that not very impressive. Actually it’s about average. But by the standards of the typical “guy with a gun,” a C-class IPSC shooter is a pretty awesome pistolero. When I asked Danny Morris if he thought his IPSC match experience helped him in this gunfight, his reply was, “Compared to what I do every weekend, this was actually a very simple shooting problem.”

Yes, there are basic differences in the way competitors approach their training compared to those whose only emphasis is on self-defense. The greatest difference, I think, is that we work at it just a whole lot harder. Therefore, on average, we have a much higher skill level. We’ve all heard the Jeff Cooper quote that a competition shooter will work harder to win a trophy than most people will work to save their own lives. That’s really, literally true.

You say that it requires an immense amount of work to train-in skills that will survive severe stress. And that’s true. What you don’t seem to understand is that you’re talking to people who have put in that level of work. We have put in the thousands of hours of training necessary to have a skill level that survives stress much better than the typical un-or-semi-trained individual.

Put it this way. If a serious, highly skilled USPSA or IDPA shooter is 100 times better with a gun in their hands than the typical “guy with a gun,” even if, under stress, our skill level drops to one-tenth of what it is normally (not saying that’s necessarily going to happen, I’m just throwing that out there for the purposes of discussion)….we’re still going to be ten times better than anyone else out there.

[Duane Thomas]

I do recognize that with the types of pistols that most people compete with, dropping the slide with the slide lock is a simple gross motion of the thumb. However, with the types of compact and subcompact pistols that are typically carried for self defense, deactivation of the slide lock can often require much greater dexterity.

A good craftsman doesn't blame his tools. And the slide stop on any Glock, whether it's a semi-longslide, full-sized police duty gun, compact or sub-compact, is the exact same slide stop. "The types of pistols that most people compete with" are, if you're talking IDPA, or USPSA Production or Single Stack, the exact same types of pistols we carry every day. My match gun is my everyday carry Glock 17.

I will admit that I recently, after years of running the stock Glock slide stop on my carry guns, went over to the slightly reshaped Vickers Tango Down part. It's not that I couldn't make the stock slide stop work - I did it for years - it's that the Vickers Tango Down part works just a tiny bit better. And that's a good thing.

[Jshuberg]

Eventually you get to the point where you’re so good at dealing with stress that those symptoms lessen or even stop entirely. But that’s not because competitors don’t have to deal with real stress. It’s because we’re so good at dealing with stress it simply doesn’t hit us like it does other people.

That's interesting, and I think I may have misunderstood you before.

I thought you were making the claim that a person can train on a physical skill like pistol shooting to the point where they are no longer effected by the physiological effects of stress, which I simply don't believe. If I understand your statement above though, it's not pistol training per se that makes the competitive shooter less effected by stress, but it's the act of shooting in competition that's being used as a form of stress inoculation. So while weapon training is used to increase skill, competition shooting is used to inoculate the shooter against the effects of stress. Do I get that right?

As for your comment on equipment, while I agree with you in general, the truth is that not all equipment is created equal. The Ruger LCP is one of the more popular carry pistols. The function and manipulation of the slide lock is significantly different than say, a Glock. If a person carries an LCP, they should train on and employ a technique that lends itself to the operation of that pistol under stress.

[steel1212]

You realize this isn't a gun fight right?

Slide lock reload or racking the slide. Which is faster...pick one.

Edited October 18, 2013 by steel1212

[Flexmoney]

Closed. Read the rules. If Duane hasn't found the video and you know it, send him a pm.