Via John R Lott Jr. @JohnRLottJr:
Forty-yard shots, on a (probably) moving target, who will be returning fire with a rifle if you miss and getting eight hits out of ten shots is awesome!
I think we have a new USPSA stage design coming out this weekend.
Awesome shooting indeed. The stress factor can’t be under estimated. And, the Sheriff stated his return of fire was ‘tactically sound’. Which says a lot. I wonder if the Good Samaritan had any such training or whether he’d thought out such a scenario prior? In any case, between him and Rittenhouse…. These younger generation self defense icons are doing their generation proud.
“I think we have a new USPSA stage design coming out this weekend.”
About time, but it may require a rules re-write – I seem to remember an IPSC rule (or, it might be a USPSA modification to the IPSC rules) stipulating 35 yards as the maximum target distance on a stage. IIRC, there’s a 35-yard max in ICORE, but in less-than-official “club” matches we’ve gone out to 50 yards (I pushed for 60 yards but that would have required tunneling into the berm….).
There seems to be a Set of Standard Fixations on things like “living room distance,” “bad breath distance,” along with “3 feet, 3 shots, 3 seconds,” etc. within the Self Defense Community to a near total disregard for the practical distances and circumstances we encounter daily and which we may have to deal with. In this event, it began at ~40 yards and required more than the “usual 3 shots” to resolve.
In any case, periodic individual testing to longer distances is a Good Thing, whether it’s done in matches or private training and practice; knowing one’s limitations, and especially having the desire and ability to overcome and expand them, is beneficial.
Any pistol shooter should already know, through repeated practice, his capabilities out to 100 yards. There’s simply no excuse for not having practiced out to that distance. All hunters do it with their rifles, and therefore you can do it with your pistol, and at several distances in between your standard 25 yards and the 100 yards.
That is, for the standard service calibers. For true magnum pistols, that distance should be double. For the heavy, scoped revolvers, even farther.
And besides, who wouldn’t want to at least try his plain-Jane 380, 9mm, etc. at 100 to 200 yards anyway? It seems to me it’s all part of the fun of being out shooting, trying new things and learning your capabilities and limitations.
I’ve fired my G20 at 500 yards. It was completely and utterly ridiculous, of course, but now I know just how ridiculous. I also know that if I really, truly had to harass someone, you know, for distraction and whatnot, I could probably do it OK with a 10mm pistol at 500 yards.
I’ll take raw beginners out to 30 yards (the max distance I can get at my most convenient location) on their first day of pistol shooting, and they all (100%) do just fine at that distance. It really builds confidence in a new shooter, which is important. We’ll start at the 5 to 7 yards, but within minutes we’re shooting at 30, and it doesn’t matter the handgun type or caliber.
If you haven’t shot past 25 yards, you do NOT know where your sights are regulated for those greater distances! I’ve had shooters with decades of experience say things about their gun’s capabilities that turn out not to be true AT ALL once I get them out to 50 yards or more. The point is, dial your sights in at 50, or 80, and they’ll still be perfectly good at 25, but it does NOT work the other way around, for reasons that should be immediately obvious.
You know what, Lyle?
I’m not doing that.
My capabilities with a handgun are not that good, I don’t really practice as much as I’d like to anyway—let alone enough to get myself up to that degree of skill—and I’m OK with that.
Yes that limits me from being useful or heroic in certain edge cases (such as this one)—but, again, I’m OK with that.
I can shoot a handgun, and reliably hit a torso sized target, out to about 10 yards. I can also do a pretty darned good job at handgun weapon retention during a disarm attempt (actually happened once. To me. No shots were fired, accidentally or on purpose. The other guy spent a night in jail).
I’m FAR more comfortable, confident, and skilled with a rifle. And I prefer to use my practice time on rifle & shotgun skills.
I love Elmer Keith!
500 yards? Certainly the projectile will travel that far, but at what accuracy level? I do understand “distance” – some years back I won a bet by hitting an IPSC silhouette-sized plate at 300 meters with a Model 60 discharging 148 grain wadcutters (took 48 rounds to do it), and I used to shoot groundhogs (the dumb ones….) with a K-38 and deer with a 629, and earned a few kudos in IHMSA some years back, but there is a reason for the quite significant differences between “handguns” and “rifles”. You might inquire of our host why Boomershoot doesn’t attract herds of shooters with Security Sixes, 1911s, and Model 351s.
And there’s “liability,” that thing lawyers and bureaucrats salivate over; given even the reduced MOA variability of extremely-gunsmithed handguns in the hands of a highly trained shootist where those shots land is fodder for a lot of lawyers’ brand new boats and vacation cottages. Juries and jurists, after all, are not selected from USPSA and IHMSA membership lists.
Publius (above) makes a useful point in roughly paraphrasing from one of Mr. Eastwood’s characters: “A man has to know his limits.” To that end, it’s quite useful to engage in serious work from the standard 20 feet out to whatever the maximum practical distance is for the shooter/gun/ammunition/environmental combination to learn exactly what one’s limits are.
In the case at hand, we know the gentleman’s capability at ~40 yards – 100% for the first shot, with an 80% success rate for the total, a passing grade anywhere. Could he repeat it at 60 yards? 100, perhaps? I do not know but I suspect he does. Which is the point.
Agreed. But to me it’s always been practice at aim small, miss small.
Playing at a 100 yards with your 9mm carry gun is a good confidence builder.
And will make hitting targets much closer under stress that much easier.
This sort of thing is also a good reason to move up firearms better suited to the fight. As not all confrontations are going to be in your face.
Not only did he fire and hit at 40 yards, he did so while moving towards the shooter, waving people back behind him.
Dude did an amazing job.
That is indeed impressive.
And something of an argument against magazine capacity restrictions.
Either that kid has a very interesting background, or his shots were aimed by God or whatever higher power you believe in, or both.
I need to do some research…
On the God part, or the previous experience part? 🙂
One article I saw said his grandfather taught him to shoot.
Wonder what the shooter’s FBI handler thought, watching his carefully prepped wind-up toy getting dropped that fast?
To funny!
And in a sane world Glock would be hiring the guy for commercials.
I was deliberately vague for “reasons”. 🙂
Not only a standup guy. And a good shot. But his girlfriend was some kind of nursing student that started helping the shooting victims.
The absolute best of Americans. And the reason why the communists can’t win.
They get smoke-checked the moment their little psycho-asses break cover.
And once again it’s proven the only thing that works against the element of surprise, is the element of surprise.
Thank you, Eli!
Going to name the stage after him, Joe? The Dicken’s challenge?
I have been ruminating on this engagement as well as Kyle Rittenhouse’s run. Neither of these incidents come close to any standard training that I know of.
One common thing to both though is that both guys for the most part seem to have been self trained with non professional help, probably in a way that most firearms instructors would disapprove of. There’s a thing here that needs to be developed I am thinking. Joe suggestion of a new stage is only the start.
Yup. For sure. But we’ve known about these kinds of things for decades. This is just a reminder. One fairly big problem however is that of the “lawyer-whipped” mentality. Once it sets in at a gun club or range facility, it’s impossible to purge.
Therefore I believe that, for the most part anyway, to get practice at some of the longer distances and scenarios, a person will have to eventually get away from the formal ranges and develop his own practice methods.
Formal ranges are good, don’t get me wrong. They teach, and demand, safe handling, which is indispensable, and other things, but they are understandably very, very limited.
Also, in the field I lose a lot more of my brass than one would lose at a formal range. Deep brush and snow will eat up your cases.
Serious pistol practice will often involve a stand-mounted spotting scope and a spotter, as in Boomershoot.
In many cases steel targets with white paint on them can reduce the need for a spotter.
What I was using for a few years was the 40 yd tin-can range at an outdoor range. I only use steel drink/juice cans. Don’t bother with aluminum cans, as they do not respond to hits.
I was shooting DAO .38 snubbies. Most of the grips I had for the snubbies were too small. I ended up cutting down some rubber grips to about frame length, with the backstrap covered. I’m unsure if it is my hand size that was the problem, or inherent in shooting small revolvers. The small grips had a target hit dispersion that was DOUBLE the size of the bigger/fuller grips. That dropped my headshot distance to ~20 yds with the more concealable grips.
I don’t recall seeing anyone shooting a carry size/caliber handgun on that tin can range. That gun range actually has a 100yd tin can range, but I suffered an injury that has kept me from shooting for some years now.
When they put my chemo port in, they neglected to ask me which side. I can’t practice with my rifles now. Hopefully soon it will be taken out as I no longer need the infusions.