Tag Archives: commentary

On Faith and Shooting

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Ordinarily, I’d leave the posts on faith to Fishbreath. But this one is quite specific, and there’s an interesting point to be made with it.

Last year, one of my pistol classes had a long-range component. A really long range component. We had plates at 25, 35, 50, 80, and 110 yards. Pistols had iron sights, nothing too fancy. Shooting from the usual offhand1 unsupported position. There was no real time limit. Just you, and your pistol, and a steel, man-size plate.

The first thing I had to learn, having come off a bunch of speed drills, was that my trigger finger had a speed other than maximum. We had trained for the past day and a half on a continuous speed trigger press, and since these were 10 yard timed drills, the correct technique was to grip the hell out of the gun and get on that trigger hard and fast. Now, there were no follow-up shots to worry about. So grip wasn’t as important to manage recoil. And we had to learn how to work that trigger slow without stopping. Stopping tends to mean “jerking” and screwing up the shot.

I was missing a lot, but I was learning a lot too, and getting my hits. And I brought six 17-round magazines for my Glock 34. Prepared. At least until round four. That damned 80 yard plate. Everything went all to shit for me, and I’m not quite sure why.

I can tell you the symptoms though. I was switching eye focus rapidly, between the target plate and my front sight, which was wobbling, and back to the plate. Back and forth. It was odd. There were stops in my trigger press, with the predictable shanking of shots into the dirt like a damned noob. I took a break in frustration, and talked to my instructor.

He said, “The plate isn’t fucking moving. Relax. Pick your aim point, have faith in yourself, and focus on your fucking front sight.”

Faith.

Faith in myself. Faith in my pistol. Faith in those Warren sights I liked so much. Faith in my instructors. Faith in the fundamentals of marksmanship. Faith in my trigger press technique, which had worked well throughout the class. Faith in the cables holding the target in place.

Did I mention faith in me? Yeah, that’s a big one.

So I took a lot of deep breaths. And tried my best to forget all those damn misses. Stepped up to the line, picked my aiming point, and focused on my damn front sight. Like I was supposed to. Took the shot.

“LEFT!”

Okay. No problem. Adjust your aim. Focus on the front sight, nice continuous speed trigger press. Nice and slow. Press and let the gun do it’s thing.

PING

“Just like that!” called out my instructor. I started getting results. I guess those fundamentals meant something. The drills continued.

I’m not quite sure why it took so long to really run into problems that required me to understand what’s really meant by a hard front sight focus. Nothing highlights problems in your fundamentals like long range pistol shooting. It took many more reps to get the trigger press right, but there’s a lot to be learned from my front sight issues.

One of the other shooters ended up exhausting his supply of ammo at the 80 yard target. He was new at this too. My instructor called endex. I checked the mag in my gun. It still had ammo. I asked if I could have a go at the 110 yard target, at least until other, more-ammoed students showed up. And so I went back to the line.

Front sight focus. Constant speed press. BANG!

“LEFT.”

Part of shooting, especially long range shooting, is understanding that you can’t take that shot back. That bullet is gone. Move on. Focus, focus. BANG!

“LEFT.”

Focus. Front sight. Trigger press. Slow. Let the gun do its thing. Maybe that’s what whoever coined the term ‘surprise break’ meant. We’ll go with that. Don’t get impatient. BANG!

PING
“HIT!”

Good. Just like that. BANG!

PING

BANG!

PING

See, it’s working. I might have smiled a little. BANG!

“LOW.”

Ugh. What was that about not getting cocky? I’m even missing in a brand new way! Let. It. Go. Breathe. Are we breathing? We need to do that to live. Breathe. BANG!

PING

Slide locked back. I dropped it, and experienced the awful feeling of running your hand along your belt pouches and discovering they’re all empty. My last mag went splorch in the mud.

I reminded myself to breathe again. And then there was quite a bit of uncivilized whoopin’ and hollerin’ on my part. Because I showed that 110 yard plate who’s boss.

And I couldn’t have done it without finding faith at 80.

  1. i.e. standing ↩

TTPs: Shooting on the Move

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A few of my previous TTP columns have talked about how to use shooting on the move to your advantage in a defensive situation. From these, you might conclude that I’m a fan of shooting on the move. And I am, except when I am not. Which is probably frustratingly zen, so let’s dive in.

First, a brief disclaimer. These are talking about defensive-ish gun uses for the CCW holder or off-duty cop with a gun. We are NOT talking about the following areas:
1. Competition. Depending on the rules and stage layout, shooting on the move may or may not be a good idea in a match stage. I will leave the discussion of stage planning to another time.
2. The SWAT Team/Special Operations Entry Stack. Because there are men behind you in the stack, it is vitally important that you not stop moving, so as not to jam everyone up and cause problems. You had better shoot on the move here.

Okay, that out of the way, let me talk you through a brief experiment that you can do do think about shooting on the move, and help reason when it is and isn’t a good idea. You will need the following items:
1. Some gallon milk jugs full of water.
2. A buddy.
3. A pulley and stake.
4. Some rope.
5. Your pistol of choice, with ammo (duh) and a holster.
6. A steel pistol target.
7. A permissive range bay to yourselves. Private shooting land will also work well.

Item 6 might be the hardest for you to acquire. Fear not. After I detail the setup, I’ll walk you through the results that I got when I did this. Also note that a shot timer is optional but extremely helpful.

The setup is as follows. First, we’re going to look at, of course, shooting on the move. Set up your steel at the end of the range, and then mark out a line for you to move across the bay at a spall-safe distance from your steel (7-10 yards). Warm up by shooting that steel at your marked distance. Now, do a few runs across the bay, gun holstered. Get an idea of how quickly you can move across your bay. Try to put a couple in as if your life depended on it. You can probably do this pretty fast if you’re not all that fit.

Now, shooting on the move. Draw your gun and move along the line as best you can, shooting the steel. Move as quickly as you can and still get some hits, and shoot when you think you can guarantee a hit. Don’t hose. You have a buddy there to mock you to keep you honest. He should also do his best to keep you on that path. You’re probably going to move off of it.

Even with proper, bent-knee, ‘rolling-heel-toe’ gait, you’ll find you moved across the range a lot slower. And you’re probably shooting a lot slower than you did in the warm up. That’s expected. Or at least, that’s what I got. I had decent technique but not a lot of practice. If I had more practice, I could probably do better. But I’d need a lot more.

Okay, now for some more fun. Place a gallon milk jug at one side of the range, and the pulley at the other. Mark off a firing position in the middle of the range, at about the same distance you were from the steel. Tie the rope to the handle of the jug, run it through the pulley, and then down the side of the range to your buddy. For safety, your buddy will stand behind you, holding the rope. When he wants, he’ll run away from you, pulling the rope. When you see the jug move, draw and shoot it before it gets to the other end of the range. Have your buddy vary the speed of the jugs on different attempts.

Shooting a moving target is difficult. Some will find it more difficult than others. I didn’t find it too bad. What I did find, as did most other people who tried this with me, was that we could hit the jug when it was moving faster than we moved while shooting. So moving and shooting didn’t help us avoid incoming fire all that much. A dead run to cover was a lot harder to hit, but then we wouldn’t be shooting back either.

It’s something to think about. Does this mean you should never shoot on the move? Certainly not. Hopefully it has also convinced you that there are times when shooting on the move might not be the best plan ever. There are no easy answers. There are no simple answers. Shooting on the move is fun to practice, and can be useful, but there are a lot of other techniques out there that you should practice too.

On the .40 S&W

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.40 S&W is an interesting cartridge. It started as a shortened version of the reduced-power load of the 10mm Auto round, and it’s often been branded as “short and weak”. On the other hand, it’s been a bridge in the caliber debates between .45 “size/weight guys” and 9mm “capacity/velocity guys”. It’s now fallen out of vogue somewhat. Let’s take a look.

The .40 S&W has been a super popular law enforcement caliber for the past twenty years or so. The FBI led the adoption. In the .40, for a round a trifle bigger than 9 mm, cops got a more powerful round that was a lot more effective. But the overall length was similar to that of 9 mm, so you didn’t need a big frame like 10 mm auto did. This meant that smaller hands had a chance of controlling guns firing the .40 round with good technique. And it could happily pass all of the FBI’s ballistics tests where 9 mm generally couldn’t.

But technology advances. By now, 9 mm hollow point rounds have caught up with .40, and can also meet the FBI’s ballistics test standards. This makes the advantages of the 9 mm round readily apparent:

  1. More rounds1
  2. Lower cost
  3. Lower recoil

That said, the .40 still holds some advantages over the 9 mm round. Clearly, if you are a LEO, your agency might issue something in .40. In which case, it behooves you to carry and practice with .40. And if you just like the round, by all means. Carry it. I’m not going to stop you.

  1. Makes Major power factor easily
  2. Does very well against intermediate barriers.

Let’s pull these apart. For USPSA and similar competitions, shots landing outside the A-zone of the target are penalized less if your power factor is high enough to “make major.” Power factor equals bullet weight in grains times velocity in feet per second divided by 1,000. Presently, it must be over 165 to make major. It is possible to do this with a 9 mm round carefully loaded, but this is somewhat dangerous, as you’re exceeding the pressure specs for the cartridge, with all the hazards that entails. Most commercial .40 loads will easily make Major, and it’s also a lot easier to handload .40 rounds that make major. As a result, .40 S&W is a popular caliber for competitors.

Intermediate barriers are pesky things you need to get to in order to reach your target, like auto bodies. For a CCW holder, this probably won’t be an issue that often. But it might be for law enforcement agencies, and it’s a reasonable consideration for issue weapons.

So, while 9 mm might make more sense, .40 is still an effective choice. If you like it, rock on. If you don’t, there are other choices that work well too. And it’s a great way to make major.

For the curious, I own an M&P 40, and might make another for open division gun games. I usually carry and train with 9 mm.

  1. Two more rounds in Glocks and M&Ps, more in some other designs. I don’t think two rounds difference is all that much better. It is better though. And other designs have a bigger spread, which might become significant. ↩

On Iron Sights

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While I’m slaying sacred cows, let’s talk about iron sights on rifles. Pistols are a topic for another time.

Should you “master” iron sights on rifles before moving to optics?

Hell no. Next question.

Iron sights are outmoded. Obsolescent. There are better choices right now, namely optics. For any given purpose, there is an optical sight that will perform better than iron sights on long guns.

Close range shooting? Red dot or low-power variable. Boom. Faster than irons.

Long range shooting? Get you some magnification. Make the targets bigger. Done. Better than irons.

Now, optics don’t magically make you a better shooter. They do take out one component of shooting: sight focus. Iron sights give you three focal planes at three different distances from your eye: the rear sight, the front sight, and the target. Your eye is physically capable of focusing on one plane at a time. So you acquire the target, then focus on your front sight. It’s not intuitive. It’s not easy, especially when your target isn’t easy to see. Then you have to align the front sight with the rear sight and the target. And then you have all of the other trigger control issues, steadying the rifle, dealing with recoil, etc.

With optics, the sights are in the same plane as the target. So you look at your target. That’s intuitive: you want to shoot that. Then you align the sights with the target. Which is a lot easier, because they’re in focus too. Same plane and all. You can see your sight (where the bullet is going, more or less) at the same time as you can see the thing you want to shoot. Then, trigger control time. Recoil management.

I’m always in favor of making my life easier. As is just about every other serious user. Choose a special forces unit, they use optics on their rifles. Most militaries of repute and with some ambition issue optics for all of their rifles. If rules allow optics, competitive shooters put optics on their rifles.

And they’re one I like to pick on, because they’ll do anything (at least, anything not prohibited by the rules) for an edge.

Optics are better. There basically isn’t a downside. Hell, most new rifles don’t even come with iron sights these days, whether they’re flat-top ARs or slick new hunting rifles. And do you know how hard it is to actually kill good optics?

Okay, now that I’ve said all that, let me preempt a few comments.

I’m not saying iron sights won’t work. They’ll do the job if you can and do. Optics will make your life easier.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t know how to use iron sights at all. They are on most pistols, after all. Plus they’re on all manner of old rifles, like an M1 Garand or the Lee-Enfield. And shooting old rifles is plenty of fun. But you’re probably not going to use those as your primary longarm. So focus on your primary. Which has an optic.

What about using iron sights as a way to “get better at shooting”? Well, if you can use iron sights, you can certainly use optics. True. And irons are way harder. Also true. My turn for a question: what is the goal?

If your goal is to get better with iron-sights, perhaps for an iron-sight competition like the National Matches, rock on. Mission is driving the gear train.

If your goal is to get better with your optic-equipped hunting/defensive/competition rifle, you should probably be training with that. You know, the gun you’re actually going to use. Familiarize yourself with the quirks of your optic. Familiarity brings comfort. Remember, all of the other things you do when shooting are there. You still have to work on those. Optics are one of the few ways to reduce the complexity of the shooting problem.

Iron sights aren’t a thing you can work in isolation. You make the sight alignment problem more complicated, but you still have all of the other issues. For most of us, misses occur because of a combination of factors. We didn’t do just one thing wrong, we did a bunch of things wrong. Put them together, you get the (bad) result. If you’re very good, you can figure out all of the problems. More likely, you can figure out some of them, but not all of them.

You can get great at shooting with optics. You can probably even do it faster than with irons, because you have fewer difficulties.

What about durability?

Modern optics are extremely durable. And most shooters don’t abuse their weapons. The vast majority of optics will happily survive moving from gun safe to bag to car to range to car to safe with no issues at all. And if you abuse your optics, buy accordingly. My Aimpoint Comp M4, for example, is stupidly durable. Go google some “test videos” where people do dumb things like hit it with a hammer or set of explosives nearby. You can probably find a way to kill it, but your gun (and you) will be similarly out of action. So don’t worry about it.

Mindset And Equipment; Equipment and Mindset

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A shooter’s performance in competition or combat can be broken down into two big categories: internal things (mindset, training, skill, and confidence), and external things (what gun, caliber, etc.). There are a lot of stupid arguments on the internet about which is more important.

And they’re stupid precisely because they’re very difficult to tease apart.

Clearly, internal factors are super important. If Jerry Miculek and I were in a shooting match together, and for some bizarre reason Jerry had a box-stock Hi-Point, Jerry would still outshoot me. Wouldn’t matter which gun or how many mods I put in it. Jerry is that much better than me.

That said, while Jerry could beat me with Hi-Point, he doesn’t shoot one at matches. For one thing, they don’t sponsor him. Smith and Wesson does. So he’s shooting out a super tricked out Smith and Wesson. Set up just the way he likes. See, he’s competing with a lot of other hardcore guys like Max Michel, K.C. Eusebio, and Rob Leatham, who are also very skilled and have tricked out guns. They’ve got guns set up the way they like to maximize their skillset. Lighter triggers are easier to shoot well for example. So the hardcore guys have hardcore equipment.

Let’s look at another case. The infamous 1986 Miami shootout, between two criminals and a number of FBI agents. The guy who had the most combat experience and the most will to win, Platt,1 also came with the most gun. He had a Ruger Mini-14 chambered in .223, plus two revolvers chambered in .357 Magnum. Once again, skill and equipment go hand in hand.

The dangers of equipment is the thinking that you can buy skill. You can’t. Good equipment will mean you can use your skill to the best of your abilities. Focusing on one kind of equipment will let you have some constants to make developing skills easier. Always chasing the next best thing isn’t the best plan. There’s quite a bit of maturity in knowing when to stick and when to jump. For example, in most applications, the difference between a revolver and a semiauto is very significant. The difference between semiautos is much less so.

So some basic “good enough” satisficing will help you in the short term. You can save the optimization for later once you know what you like in a gun. Or once you have a big company like Smith & Wesson paying for your stuff.

  1. One of the criminals. He was a Ranger in Vietnam. Note that better equipment and mindset weren’t enough to prevail. C’est la vie. In this case, it’s a good thing. ↩

Abrams Additions

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Earlier, I talked about the US Army’s latest improvements to their Abramses, the M1A2 SEP v3 program. Which is great, because as they start to take deliveries, I’ve heard no concrete orders for further Leopard 2 upgrades, or anything about the vague, pie-in-the-sky new MBT to be developed by France and Germany. Given that it’s multinational, it will probably be overbudget, late, and contain a bunch of stupid compromises. So good on you, US Army!

This program, combined with the M829E4 APFSDS round development, plays to the traditional strengths of the Abrams: well designed armor piercing rounds, heavy frontal armor, and excellent fire control.

Unsurprisingly, I am not satisfied. There are a few more things I’d like to see in the short term. No, these aren’t dream weapons like a rail gun. These are doable things. They are in order of urgency (and also affordability, amusingly enough).

  1. An Active Protection System. Since this term gets kicked around a lot, I mean a proper hard-kill one. CIWS for a tank. There are a lot of good options. The US Army is currently “investigating”. Yawn. They should have a competition and pick the winner. Or just take Trophy, because it works pretty well at stopping incoming RPGs and ATGMS. No, it won’t stop APFSDS rounds. Oh well. Yes, it can be dangerous to nearby infantry. It’s not perfect. I don’t care. It works, and unlike a lot of other systems, it’s been combat tested, and a bunch of bugs have been beaten out of it. So what I’d really like is to just add Trophy. Plus the cost is reasonable. That whole “in production now” thing really helps with that.
  2. Extra roof protection. This isn’t too terribly difficult to add, but you’d need to do quite a bit of reworking, and probably add a power-assist to the hatches. Weight is also a concern. To be clear, we’re looking for a specific, limited protection upgrade. We want roof protection from DPICM-type submunitions, and maybe EFP submunitions if practicable. It is not feasible to protect against top-attack ATGMs with armor, so we won’t try. On the one hand, all those optics are toast in a submunition storm. On the other, we can at least keep the crew alive, and they’re more important. Tanks are reasonably easy to salvage. Crews, not so much.
  3. New engines. I’m not going to spill a lot of ink here, over type. You could give the existing, worn AGT-1500s a rebuild. You could (at least in theory) use the LV100-5 from the canceled Crusader program. You could switch to diesel. Given a diesel engine, you’d have to rework the rear suspension to remove the last set of torsion bars. You’d have two off-the-shelf engine choices:1 L3’s AVDS-1790 1,500 hp variant and General Dynamics’ GD883.2
  4. Situational Awareness improvements. The Germans have prototyped day/thermal camera arrays around the turret to improve situational awareness while the crew is buttoned up. Given the new 1080p displays added in SEPv3, these would be welcome and helpful, especially in urban settings. A radar or other missile approach warning system would be nice too, but that would come with the active protection system.

So there you have it. A few more ways to put more improvements into your M1A2 SEP v3 Abrams tank. I know Big Army is working on number one as I write this.

  1. Using the reasonable constraint of “1,500 hp diesel engines that are made in America” ↩
  2. A license built MTU MT833. Made in America so the Israelis can buy them with US Aid credits and use them in Merkava IVs. ↩

TTPs: On Tueller and His Drill

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Back in 1983, Sgt. Dennis Tueller of the Salt Lake Police Department posited a fun problem. Suppose you are a police officer with a gun in a duty rig1. Suppose that in front of you, there’s an evildoer with a knife. He will take his knife and charge you.2 As he does, you will draw and shoot him. Clearly, when he is far away, you will shoot him before he gets to you. And clearly if he is very close, he will stab you before you get your gun out. What’s the distance at which you will tie? I.e. you shoot him and he stabs you.

Sgt. Tueller worked this distance out to be about 21 feet.

Which isn’t a lot. Let’s look further. Clearly, Tueller couldn’t actually run the test as written. Officers aren’t likely to want to get stabbed or shot. So he had officers draw to a man-sized target at a given distance (say seven yards) away, and another officer that same distance behind the shooter. On a buzzer, the first officer would try to draw and shoot, and the second officer would try to tap the first one on the shoulder. Ties happened when that distance was seven yards, or 21 feet.

Sgt. Tueller also worked this out theoretically. He and his cop buddies worked on their gunfighting skills, including their draw. They averaged a time to draw and get a hit on a man sized target of 1.5 seconds. And in 1.5 seconds, a reasonably athletic adult (e.g. one of them) could run an average of 21 feet (also their distance to target).

Of course, it’s all a thought experiment. There are many other avenues of attack available to the foe with a melee weapon. But let’s tug at this further.

You might have noticed a bit of an assumption above. The man size target is fixed at the starting distance, when we are thinking or testing. But our hypothetical attacker will be charging. So the target will get larger. By the time we get our gun out and up, he might be only a couple yards from us, and that’s a significantly easier shooting problem.

Since he will be so close, we might also consider shooting without full extension. We might call this a retention position. Specifically, we have the gun in a full, two-handed grip, pointed at the target, only a few inches from our chest. The same position we’re in partway through a draw. Note that the gun should be close to your chest, but not so close that the slide will thwack you. Also, it bears repeating, two hands in a full, firm grip, pointed at the target. If you’re in position Sul, you’re doing it wrong.

Why are we using this position? Well, the target will be close enough that we can get away without using our sights all that much. Plus, it’ll give us time to get a few more shots on the target. We have a pistol. Pistols are not good at making people stop. We can make them a little better at this by shooting often. If he’s worth shooting once, he’s worth shooting a lot.

Okay. So we’ve attacked two assumptions already. There’s another big one here. Have you spotted it yet?

We’re not moving. In the above problem, our shooter is stationary. Probably not very realistic.

If someone is charging you with a knife, it’s not likely that you’ll stand still. You might turn and run. And you could shoot over your shoulder; the knife wielder will be close. But he’s charging. And frankly, I don’t like my odds. I suspect I’ll probably end up getting run down if I tried this.

We might try moving sideways. Now we’re getting somewhere. We’re forcing him to change direction. This will make him slow down a bit, and keep the attacker in front of us, making our shots easier. But we’re not forcing a radical change of direction, and we can’t move sideways all that fast while shooting. Better.

Our sideways move is good because it forces a direction change, which forces the attacker to slow down. Time is our friend. Let’s try to force more direction changes.

Suppose we moved at an oblique angle towards the attacker. So if he’s coming at us on a bearing of zero degrees, move on the 60-75ish degree line. We’ll have to move that way and turn to keep our sights on the target, but that’s fine. We’re going to force the attacker to turn aggressively, since we’re going out wide. And we can repeat the process every time he orients himself on us. Which will look goofy and spiral-like from above, but it will maximize our time to riddle our foe with bullets before he can get all stabby.

This isn’t exactly intuitive, but that’s ok. We train so that we develop correct thinking and proper technique. That is the point of training.

  1. I.e. a holster with retention. Interestingly, for those who practice, draw times from a retention rig are usually about equivalent to draw times from concealment. So the findings still hold for the concealed carrier. ↩
  2. I’m quite aware that this isn’t the only way this could go down. It’s probably not even a very likely way this might go down. I don’t have those statistics handy, and I don’t care. It’s a thought experiment. ↩

On Training Guns

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There’s a notion floating about the internet that to “Get Good” at shooting, one ought to shoot a gun that is difficult to shoot well. E.g. to learn follow through, you ought to shoot a flintlock rifle, as these have long lock times. In fact, you should shoot it offhand (read: standing), so that you don’t have good support to assist you.

Bullshit.

What should you train with? The gun you use most, which is probably a gun you like. If you haven’t a gun, buy something modern and use that. If you buy a hunting rifle, for example, put the sort of glass you’d use in the field on it. If you buy a carbine, mount the red dot or variable power optic you’d want to use on it.

The notion in the opening assumes that you’re a very self-disciplined shooter, that you’re a good enough shooter to correctly understand how to apply the fundamentals in question (in the above example, follow through, but this could be whatever aspect of shooting you please), that you know how to self-diagnose your own errors, and that your other fundamentals are reasonably sound.

So yes, you need good follow through to shoot a flintlock rifle well. You also need good eyesight to use the small irons on a flintlock rifle, and good upper body strength and offhand shooting technique to properly hold the rifle steady. If you lack those other things, your shots will not hit the mark, and you won’t have any idea why.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but if I am honest with myself, or ask my subconcious, whom I cannot lie to, I’ll tell you that the above doesn’t describe me on my best days. If I fired a flintlock rifle as a training aid I would get incredibly frustrated at just about everything. And I’d have a bunch of convenient excuses for my poor shooting, presuming the frustration didn’t make me hurl the thing over the berm and take up golf.

No gun that has ever been called “hard to shoot well” is ever called that for one single thing. It is a collection of many factors. So you’re not isolating a single thing to work on. This isn’t the gym where you get to isolate muscle groups. You’ve got the whole thing. So did you miss with that Kentucky Rifle because it’s heavy and the gun wobbled a lot? Or was it because you couldn’t see the sights? Or because the trigger is heavy and gritty? Or because you didn’t follow through? Or maybe you flinched? See, it could be any one of those things. Or a combination of all of the above.

Self diagnosis is hard. It’s one of the reasons why training classes are so good. Because it’s a lot easier to see errors in others. And to be honest with what you see in others. It’s hard to be honest with yourself. There’s a gun that’s hard to shoot right there! And we like to lie to ourselves. A trained professional instructor will spot things we’re doing badly, and things we think we are doing well but aren’t.

Or you could set yourself up with a pretty good gun and not have excuses. You don’t need to spend a fortune. Just get something modern and solid. Example: I carry Glocks. I compete with Glocks. So guess what gun comes with me to class and to the range for practice? Yep: A Glock. Now, I don’t put a crazy race trigger in most of my Glocks, but I do like the factory “minus” or the TTI “minus” connectors. And I certainly don’t make myself miserable by putting in an NY2 trigger spring for a 12 lb trigger pull. My Glock 34, for example, has a few optimized controls that I like. And a factory minus connector. The pull was pretty good out of the box. I did my best to zero the sights from a bench. And then, at class, or when I’m practicing on my own, I know that errors are on me. Maybe my follow through needs work. Ok. No problem. I can work on that with the Glock, or any other gun. And as I do so, I’m going to be having fun.

I like shooting my Glocks. They’re fun to shoot. They fit me well. And I’m also quite used to the characteristics of them. All that practice means that they’re very familiar. And, given all the training, I know what I can do with them. Which means there’s nothing more comforting on my hip than the Glock 34 that I took to class. And with that on my hip in class, and sights zeroed beforehand, I knew that any screwups are on me. Could I make it easier to shoot? Sure. But I could also make life suck for myself. And I didn’t. I could have been dumb and taken a brace of flintlock pistols to a class, but I didn’t.

If you like shooting weird and exotic things, knock yourself out. But don’t feel that you have to. Or that its optimal. Truth be told, focusing on one quality platform is almost certainly the optimal route if you want to minimize the time taken. But “minimize” is a relative term. It’s gonna take a lot of shooting to make USPSA Grandmaster Class. So do it on a platform you love.

Also, if you want to occasionally pick up something else, and enjoy shooting it for it’s own sake, feel free. Feel free to enjoy it for its own sake, and don’t feel like it has to be your training tool.

We often remark that it’s the shooter, not the tool, to discourage newer shooters from chasing every gadget under the sun in a vain effort to make up for skill. Well, just like a new Blastomatic 2000 won’t magically make you a better shooter overnight, it won’t make your practice better overnight either. You still have to put in the work, and focus.

Want to make it faster? The right answer is training with a good instructor. Bad equipment will just make you take up golf.

The EDC X9 Is Stupid

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Wilson Combat’s new EDC X9 is stupid.

There, I said it!

This isn’t to say it’s a bad gun, or that you’re stupid for wanting one ‘just cause’. That’s fine. This is America1. A free country. And you can buy whatever you like with your hard-earned money. I won’t stop you. It’s a nifty design from an engineering perspective.

But selling stuff isn’t just about engineering. It’s also about marketing. So let’s review what we know about the EDC X9 and then put on our business-guy hats.

The EDC X9 is a double-stack 1911 design (a ‘2011’), that comes with 15 round magazines derived from those in the Walther PPQ M2. It has an aluminum frame and weighs a bit over 29 oz. empty. The trigger pull should be between 3.5 and 4.5 lbs. And the pistol costs just shy of $2,900.

Now, a double stack 1911 screams competition. That’s where those pistols live. They are most popular in the Limited and Open divisions of USPSA (and IPSC, the parent organization). They’re very popular because you can combine a great trigger with a lot of ammo and plenty of weight. Other popular limited guns include the Glock 35 and the CZ-75 family (including derivatives made by EAA and Tanfoglio). Let’s see how the EDC X9 compares with them.

Caliber: The EDC X9 is chambered in 9 mm. Nearly all serious Limited guns are chambered in .40, to take advantage of Major Power Factor scoring, which is lower score penalties for hits outside the A-Zone of the IPSC target. This lower penalty is pretty significant, and as a result most serious competitors make Major, usually by going with a .40 gun, since it’s easy to make power factor in .40.

Magazines: Magazine length in Limited must not exceed the 140 mm gauge. In this length, a 2011 can fit 20 rounds of .40. Stock full-size .40 Glock magazines hold 15 rounds, and can be combined with an extender to also hold 20 rounds of .40 while staying under the 140 mm length limit. On a PPQ M2, you’re looking at 18 rounds of .40 with the basepad extensions, which is what we could compete with in an EDC X40, if there was such a thing. A little less than ideal.

Size/Sight Radius: Competitors don’t have to bother with concealment, so they tend to go for full size or long slide pistols. The EDC X9 is a compact. Less slide to work with. Less sight radius.

Further, at the price point you’re looking at for an EDC X9, you’re also looking at semicustom 2011s from guys like Brazos. They’ll be able to set up a gun the way you like. Want specific trigger tuning? You got it. Want a superlight slide and a superheavy frame/barrel/guiderod? No problem. Big mag funnel? But of course. The EDC X9 is a pretty specific package, and they don’t have the same kind of options as the hardcore 2011 builders. Entry level open guns are also price competitive with the EDC X9, not to mention ridiculous custom packages for Glocks and CZs. And practice ammo.

Okay. Suppose you’re not looking for the ultimate competition gun. Suppose you want a really good trigger. Maybe for carry. Maybe for more casual competition. Whatever. Well, you can get much better mag availability, and save a lot of money by looking elsewhere and having some modifications done. If you like striker fired guns, you can get some really great triggers in them if you know where to look. For example, if you start with a Glock, or have one lying around, talk to DK Custom Triggers for a phenomenal trigger kit. Professionally tuned, and serious competitors love these triggers. If you like HKs or SIGs (striker or hammer fired), contact Gray Guns. Get an awesome trigger. If you like hammer fired guns, CZ Custom also sets up some fantastic triggers in their guns. And if you’re heart is set on a real Single Action trigger, take a long, hard look at the SIG P226 Legion SAO. You’ll really like the trigger.

Any of those options will come in significantly cheaper than the EDC X9. They’ll have really good triggers. You’ll be able to afford a whole bunch of ammo to get to know your new blaster better. And some professional instruction so you don’t practice bad habits.

And yes, I know EDC is probably intended to stand for Every Day Carry. Very unwise. Get in a shooting, that gun is going to spend some time in an evidence locker. Are you going to want your $2,900 blaster to sit in an evidence locker for a while? Didn’t think so. You’ll carry something cheaper. And I’m not even talking about all those people who think something a bit bigger than a Glock 19 is ‘too much gun for carry’. And all of the above applies if you’re looking for a carry gun with a great trigger too. You can get a pair of matching, tuned pistols from the list above for less than $2,900.

So, whatever you’re looking for, the EDC X9 is suboptimal. Unless you just think it’s cool. Then go for it. Also, feel free to show off that you have more money than sense.

[Editor’s note (11/2020): okay, Internet randos, I spend an awful lot of time cleaning up garbage comments on this post. So, since most of you land here from God knows where, get fired up, and start mashing your keyboards to bang out yet another rage-fueled diatribe like so many before you whose comments I also unceremoniously deleted, I’d like to direct you to our comment policy: you are permitted to be at most one of rude and wrong. We, being the people who go to the effort of running this place, are allowed to be both. Take a look at the existing comments, remember that I’m a lot less patient about this post now than I was a few years ago when I allowed them, and save yourself the trouble of slaving over that assault on English and reason for an hour and so save me the trouble of sending it immediately to the trash can. -Fishbreath (i.e., not the author of this piece, but still fed up with its readership)]

  1. Thanks to The Internet, you might be reading this from someplace that isn’t the United States of America. If this is the case, I’m deeply sorry. ↩

Movie Fight TTP Breakdown: Jango Fett vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi

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I’m a nerd. I love Star Wars. And I also love tactics and training in martial arts. What better way to combine them than by talking movie fights and what they do right/wrong? Let’s take a look at the fight between Jango and Obi-Wan on the Kamino platform. It’s a really exciting fight. Like most movie fights not directed by Michael Mann, it does this without being technically well executed. I’ll break it down into sections and comment on each.

I’ll be covering Jango’s (and a couple things from Boba) here, mostly because my expertise is there. I know a good bit about shooting and punching people. However, I’m not a Jedi, and I don’t know the limitations of the Force. Also, I’m a poor swordsman and a worse force user. So I won’t comment on Obi-Wan’s techniques here.

The fight opens with Boba seeing Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan draws and ignites his lightsaber, and Jango goes for his blaster pistols. Screw talking.

Jango opens fire, and uses his jetpack to get some standoff range.
1.) Jango has a reasonably quick rate of fire here. I might expect better with two guns, but then, I don’t know how well that scales. His times between shots are pretty good here. I’ll save any further snarking about the inferiority of the use of two pistols at once for another article.
2.) Using the jetpack to maintain separation (and get more) is a good idea.
3.) Jango does quite a bit of shooting on the move in the opening. Ordinarily, I’d be very strongly opposed to it. Generally, you give up more in accuracy than you gain in becoming a harder target to hit. Of course, that conventional wisdom assumes an enemy who also has a ranged weapon and that you’re moving on your feet. Given that the jetpack seems to move him in a relatively stable fashion, I’ll give this one to him. His accuracy isn’t affected in much of a negative way compared to his initial volley either.

Jango uses his jetpack to hide behind a column. Having given Obi-Wan a visual slip (and having holstered his blasters), he fires a missile from his jetpack.
4.) That’s a good move. Not sure why he didn’t do that earlier, since he doesn’t appear to need his hands free to do it. The missile is sort of effective–it gets Obi-Wan to drop his lightsaber. As usual, Hollywood has no idea what explosions do. That should have hurt a lot more judging by proximity of the blast and likely fragments. Hollywood explosions are big on pretty fireballs. Real explosions are big on fragments, pressure waves, perforated eardrums, and death. They don’t look as good as a big, gasoline-based fireball.
5.) He really should press the attack once the missile hits. Shock and awe only works if you keep with the up-tempo attacks. Jango is old enough and experienced enough to know better than to sit back and admire his handiwork.

Boba now gets in on the action by deploying Slave I’s blasters, which knocks Obi-Wan back again.
6.) Not sure why Boba stops shooting to watch. He seems to have done okay using shipboard sensors before. Don’t admire your handiwork! Press your advantage! Boba’s a kid though, so maybe Jango hasn’t gotten this lesson in his head yet. It usually takes a lot of coachly yelling in the boxing gym or wherever you learn hitting for this lesson to stick.

Jango leaves his perch to engage Obi-Wan, apparently closing the distance, blasters drawn. Obi-Wan catches Jango with a flying sidekick, sending his blasters flying.
7.) And you were doing so well. This part makes no sense. Why leave your perch? Why come down? Why close the distance? There’s the column you were hiding behind, another column, and your ship in terms of high places to be. Blasters are ranged weapons. You can shoot the lightsaber-less jedi from your perch. Or from midair. You should not be close enough for a flying sidekick, force-assist or no. Maintain distance on the melee fighter and shoot him. The jetpack should be helping you keep your distance here.
8.) If he wanted to change position, doing it while the ship attacks would have been better. Or in a direction not towards the Jedi.
9.) During his descent, Jango isn’t shooting, even though his blasters are clearly drawn. He was shooting during the ascent, so he can clearly shoot in flight reasonably well. If it made sense on the ascent (and it seemed to) it should here as well. Probably even more so since Obi’s not blocking without his lightsaber.

There’s a good bit of hand-to-hand fighting between Jango and Obi Wan, who are pretty evenly matched. Obi-Wan has some more good kicks, some blocked, some aren’t. Jango has a wild right haymaker that gets blocked and gets separation with a headbutt.
10.) Not sure why he doesn’t fire his jetpack to regain separation here. Unless he’s trying to keep Obi-Wan’s hands occupied. In which case, he’s not doing it well, and he should be going for the wrestling/grappling stuff.
11.) Jango has a very strange arsenal. He seems to carry a shitton of gear, but lacks a knife, which would help a lot in a close fight like this.
12.) Jango does have wrist blades, at least in his right gauntlet. But he does not use them here, and this is the perfect opportunity. Blades are great in a close fight. Admittedly, blades on the side of the forearm look cool but are really hard to actually use.
13.) He also doesn’t use the flamethrower in his left gauntlet. Again, this seems a good time for it. Unless his armor/clothing aren’t flame resistant.
14.) Nor does he use the mini rocket that appears to be on his left gauntlet (but he never uses this ever in the movie, so who knows what that actually is).
15.) It’s also odd to me that Jango doesn’t carry a small blaster as a back up gun, given how much other shit he’s got. If he gained separation with the jetpack (or after the headbutt) he could use a back up gun to good effect.
16.) That wild punch. That is the kind of punch you expect from an untrained dude. Probably a big dude. Jango isn’t big. He’s about medium height (Obi-Wan is a bit taller) and fit. He isn’t super heavy. As someone whose profession depends on his ability to kick ass, he should be a lot more technical with his striking. One telegraphed, wild haymaker is not what I’d expect from him. We should see a tighter combo.
17.) The headbutt was a good choice. Especially because he’s got a helmet and Obi-Wan doesn’t.

Obi-Wan tries to retrieve his lightsaber with the force. Jango activates his jetpack, uses a whipcord to tie Obi Wan’s hands, and starts dragging him.
18.) I don’t understand this either. Clearly lacking another blaster, Jango chooses to use his whipcord to wrap up Obi-Wan’s hands. And then drag him. A more effective choice here given the equipment would be to activate his jetpack and hit Obi-Wan linebacker style. You’ve got a helmet, he doesn’t. It’s gonna hurt him a lot more than it hurts you.
19.) Another good chance for flamethrower usage, depending on its range. In general, Hollywood flamethrowers are propane torches, which look cool, but don’t have the range of the real deal (which use heavier fuel).

Jango drags Obi-Wan along the platform. Obi-Wan wraps the cable around a pylon, forcing Jango to crash and his jetpack to malfunction.
20.) Yeah, still don’t see the point of this, and it lost you your damn jetpack. Fucking moron. Why he doesn’t drag Obi-Wan directly towards the water is beyond me. Or just jettison the cord.

Jango goes for his dropped blaster. Obi-Wan charges him and knocks him off the platform with another flying sidekick.
21.) Jango gets tunnel vision here for that gun. He’s not really aware of how quickly Obi-Wan is closing in.
22.) A backup blaster would be helpful here too. It’d be a lot quicker to get into action than running to retrieve your dropped pistol.
23.) Dealing with the charging opponent is more important than getting your blaster into play. This could easily be a tackle or a takedown. Avoid or stuff that first before getting your gun into action. This is running into Tueller territory, which is probably for another post. Suffice to stay, standing still is a bad idea.
24.) Full arm extension is a poor choice for that sort of shot, given how close Obi-Wan is. A chest index is a lot better for not leaving your gun out there to be grabbed, and getting more than one shot off. This is kind of hard to explain, but what Jango does here is a Bad Idea.

There’s not much tactics to the rest of the fight. Jango falls, dragging Obi-Wan with him, and manages to release the cable before Obi-Wan drags him into the sea. Cue dramatic escape, homing beacon, and another fight, now with starships.