by Mark Bunch,
Royal Gorge Gun Club, Lincoln Park Pawn
Part 3
Combat Handgun
Training Techniques
Now that you have your chosen gun, ammo and the basics of handgun marksmanship all set, you are ready to concentrate on advanced combat handgun tactics. The best way to start is shooting at paper silhouette targets so you can see where you are hitting vs where you are aiming. You can of course get your pistol sighted in off of a bench rest and sandbag, but once you have a zeroed handgun, if all you do is shoot it off of the bench you will actually hurt your ability to defend yourself with your combat handgun. You need to learn to be proficient in all sorts of different situations, and I have yet to see a bench rest anywhere in the Walmart parking lot, or your doctor’s office, at the movie theater or your job, or the post office, or driving down a deserted road late at night. You will need to practice all of these techniques frequently to develop muscle memory and to also develop your combat mental state of mind.
For example, if you are driving down the road and suddenly a child runs out into the street chasing a ball right in front of your car, you instantly stomp on the brakes without any thought of having to do it. You have done this so many times it has become an autonomic response, and this is exactly what you need to learn with your combat handgun.
I teach my students to start at three yards, drawing their combat handgun from the holster and firing just one round in under two seconds using paper silhouette targets with graduated scoring rings. We do this until they can hit 10 for 10 in the X or 10 Ring before increasing the distance or difficulty. Once we master this first drill in two seconds, we do the same thing using a double tap in two seconds or less until we can do that 10 for 10. After this one is accomplished, we do what I call ‘Two and One’: Two in the body center of mass, one in the head, all drawn from the holster. Allowed time for this is five seconds or less.
I teach my students to do this same Combat Drill at seven, 15, 25 and 35 yards. Once students are proficient doing these drills, i.e. able to be at least 90% proficient or better on this total course of fire they are ready for shooting from cover, combat reloading, malfunction drills and running targets.
Combat Reloading
This is the huge downfall for students who have chosen to use a revolver as their combat handgun. Perhaps the fastest person I have seen do this in a long time is one of my gun club members, Walt Wallis, who is pretty fast combat loading his Smith 625. He hangs pretty tough in our combat handgun matches but I am sure he would tell you that he works on it a lot.
For my students, they are completely at my mercy as I load their magazines. Sometimes they have 1 round, sometimes they have four, sometimes they are full, sometimes they have empty cases somewhere in their mag. Nothing increases the pressure on you as the shooter more than not having any clue what is going to happen when you pull the trigger. I still expect my advanced combat handgun students to be able to be 90% proficient or better before they advance to more complex training scenarios.
Malfunction Junction
Tap Rack Bang, over and over and over, also with empty cases and empty chambers entirely at my whim as the instructor.
Running Targets
Static training is necessary and valuable, but come on, once you start shooting at someone they are going to be running and crawling, jumping, hiding, anything they can do to not get shot. You as the shooter have to be aware of this and your combat handgun training has to take this into account. I teach my advanced students to fire at various distances at various size targets, and to be able to move and reset their combat stance from cover and on the move. I am sure you have all read or heard stories of gunfights at point blank ranges where nobody got shot, and the reason this happens is because once the shooting starts nobody just stands in one place. At least the smart ones don’t. lol.
Running targets make you shoot at where the target is going to be at, not where it currently is at. The average walking speed of a human being is about three mph, but you don’t really care about that, what you care about is that a normal walking human is moving at about 4.5 feet per second. To make that point a little more salient for readers, if you remember our first drill, drawing your combat handgun and getting off two rounds in two seconds or less. In those two seconds a human target walking toward the three or nine o’clock position will likely cover nine feet or more from where they were at when you started to draw your pistol, even at three yards. If you are a superstar Xbox freakazoid, you might be able to do this in one second, but even if you are, and even if you can, your target will have moved 4.5 feet or more from where they were at when you recognized them as a threat and drew your weapon.
As the distance increases to your target, your lead time will have to increase as well. Running humans on average can make 12 mph or about 17.6 feet per second. Personally, I think that anyone you start shooting at can beat 12 mph but that’s just me, lol. Some of my fat and sassy redneck gun club members might be faster walking, however, just saying.
We are constructing running pistol and rifle targets for gun club members to shoot at, and for advanced combat handgun training techniques and classes and I am positive that this is going to be a huge eye opener – for even accomplished combat handgun shooters. I teach one additional thing to my advanced students –and I will save for those who take my class.
(The author, Mark Bunch is an NRA Certified Law Enforcement Combat Handgun and Police Firearms Instructor and has taught over 2,000 students in his career as a Firearms Instructor. He owns and operates his own gun and pawn shop Lincoln Park Pawn with his partner and gun club VP John Hudson and 1 mile gun range in Cañon City Colorado. Mark, John, Sam and Myra Smallwood, Jon and Donna Hoff, Bill and Linda Herlth, Mike Konty, Steve Rando, Jock and Pat Harmon and Buddy Moore are also the Fremont County NRA as well.)