So, you’ve got your gun… Now you need to learn how to use it. This step is absolutely vital, but sadly it is one that the vast majority of gun owners never fully complete. Many make an attempt at it, but only receive a fraction of the training they really need.
There is a great moment in the movie The Mask of Zorro, where Don Diego de la Vega, played by Anthony Hopkins, is preparing to train his protege Alejandro, played by Antonio Banderas. Alejandro is very eager to get into action, and wields his sword excitedly. De la Vega gestures towards the sword and asks “Do you know how to use that thing?” Alejandro answers, “Yes… The pointy end goes into the other man.” It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that using a gun is easy, just as Alejandro did with the sword.
But there is much more than knowing how to load it, point it, and pull the trigger. Making a hole appear in the target vaguely near where you wanted it is not enough. That’s where training comes in. Proper training shows you what you should be able to do, how to do it, and the level at which you should be able to do it.
The Training Pyramid
Let’s examine the full range of skills that go into defensive shooting. The Training Pyramid that you see below is a visual representation of this skill set, the categories of skills within it, and how those skill relate to one another.
A pyramid is a solid, almost indestructible structure. In the same way, if you build your skill set in the fashion described here, it will be rock-solid, in the top 1% of gun owners.
Just like a real pyramid is supported by a wide solid base, the skills at the bottom of the pyramid serve as the foundation for your skill set. Each level in the pyramid supports the levels above it, so the stronger your foundation, the easier it is to master the more advanced skills.
Weapons Handling
At the bottom of the pyramid is Weapons Handling. This is the foundation of your skill set, and as any builder will tell you; your foundation can never be too strong. These skills must be second-nature to you, because they serve as the basis for everything you will do with your gun. Weapons handling includes:
| Safety
Weapon Familiarity Stance |
Muzzle Consciousness
Operation of Controls |
Trigger Finger Discipline Loading and UnloadingChamber Check and Magazine Check
|
In my experience, the most common training mistake people make is thinking that they don’t need to work on Weapons Handling. In truth, a significant majority of shooting issues, and nearly 100% of safety issues, can be traced back to inadequate mastery of Weapons Handling.
Your foundation can never be too strong!
Marksmanship
Marksmanship, roughly speaking, is the ability to place your shot exactly where you want it.
As a skilled marksman, you should be able to hit your target every time.
Now, you’ll notice I say you should be able to hit your target, but in reality, that doesn’t mean that you will hit your target every time. After all, there are two types of shooters: those who miss, and liars. But as a skilled marksman, when you miss, you should know why you missed.
Well-rounded marksmanship involves shooting at both small and large targets, and both near and far targets. As your marksmanship improves, you should constantly be challenging yourself with further and smaller targets.
So, you might ask, if you can hit a smaller, further target, why then would you need to practice against large, close targets? Because, in defensive marksmanship, you must not only be able to hit your target, but also do so quickly. Speed is an important element of defensive marksmanship, and you must learn to deliver your shots as rapidly as possible, while still ensuring you hit your target.
So your marksmanship skill should include not only the ability to hit a small target from long range, but also the ability to hit a large, close target in under a second.
Defensive Techniques
| Mindset and mental preparation Legal considerations |
Moral and ethical lethal force guidelines Post-encounter actions Carrying and presenting a handgun Reloading procedures Low-light shooting |
Psychological and physiological issues
Escalation of force Using or presenting a rifle or shotgun on a sling Alternate shooting positions Movement |
Defensive techniques are practical application of weapons handling and marksmanship to specific defensive situations. This is an extremely broad and diverse set of skills, many of which don’t even involve shooting, but all of which have a specific purpose or application. Here is just a portion of the skills in this category:
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and there are even subsets within the skills listed. So, you can see how much there is to this category. But if you have trained properly on the weapons handling and marksmanship skills that support defensive techniques, developing this level of skills won’t be difficult.
Dynamics
The capstone of your skill set is Dynamics, which is the ability to effectively apply defensive techniques to changing, unpredictable, and stressful situations. I divide the skills involved in Dynamics into three categories:
- Rapid decision-making
- Tactics (this is, moving in and using your environment to your advantage)
- Stress inoculation
Dynamics can only be effectively trained through stressful, realistic, and unpredictable training. Probably the simplest form of Dynamics training is adding stress through time pressure or competition. More advanced Dynamics training includes scenario-based training and simulators.
A word of warning about Dynamics training: This is the kind of training that everyone wants to do, because it’s fun, and because it’s a true test of your preparedness. A very common mistake that people make regarding their training is jumping into Dynamics too soon. You must build the supporting skills in the lower three levels to support Dynamics. You can’t build the top of a pyramid without the support beneath it. If you jump into Dynamics before you’ve built the supporting skills, you’ll just be wasting your time.
On the other hand, if you’ve built your pyramid from the bottom to the top, with a rock-solid foundation of weapons handling and proficiency in marksmanship and defensive techniques, Dynamics training becomes easy. Dynamics is simply application of fundamental skills at a high level to a specific situation. The better your underlying skills, the easier it becomes.
Building Your Pyramid Upwards
Now that you understand the Training Pyramid and how these various categories of defensive skills relate to one another, let’s look what this means in practical terms for how you should approach your training.
Like any other pyramid, you’ll need to start by building the bottom. As I mentioned earlier, your foundation of Weapons Handling can never be too strong. Yet unfortunately, a great many gun owners dismiss these skills as only marginally important. Once you’ve built this lower level, you’re ready to move up to the next level, and so on until you’ve constructed a full Training Pyramid of skills.
This is not to say that you must obtain complete mastery of each level before touching anything at the next level. (In fact, for a true student of the gun, you never obtain complete mastery of any of these skills.) However, you must have more than a basic level of knowledge and proficiency at each level before moving to the next.
If you begin working on the next level and you find that the skills at the lower level(s) start falling apart, you’re working up the pyramid too quickly.
Only build up as fast as you can without sacrificing proper performance.
It can be difficult to stay patient, because all of us have the natural tendency to want to skip to the “good stuff”. It’s true, Defensive Techniques and Dynamics are the most fun parts of training. But unless you have the supporting skills below it, working on these levels will largely be an exercise in futility. That would be like a driver’s ed student wanting to jump straight to driving in downtown traffic. Set yourself up for success by building one level at a time.
Training Changes As You Build
Developing the lower levels of skills is best done in more controlled, predictable circumstances that allow you to focus on the details of the technique and repetitively hone your proficiency. As you master the lower levels and start working upwards, your training will become more realistic, less predictable, and more stressful. It will require you to apply techniques dynamically and even improvise to achieve success. And even as you develop your upper levels, you’ll still want to periodically spend some time strengthening those lower levels through more static training. The important thing is to understand the difference between the types of training available and how to use each effectively depending on your current skill set and training goals.
The style of training you undertake will change depending on which level you are building.
When you are building your foundation, the training you’ll undergo will be very controlled and predictable. You’ll probably be on a traditional shooting range, under the watchful guidance of an instructor who is walking you step-by-step through the technique, topic, or procedure. You’ll probably be shooting at a paper target, which may or may not bear a resemblance to a human being. In fact, a sizable chunk of the training will probably not even involve shooting.
Assessing Defensive Techniques
So far, we’ve talked a bit about the skills involved at each level, but what about the specifics of how those techniques are performed? In truth there are many perfectly valid ways to accomplish most items on the list of topics above. However, there is also a right way and a wrong way to do everything. In fact, as an old instructor of mine liked to say:
There are several ways to do something right. There are infinite ways to do something wrong.
If an instructor or school says that their way is the only way, you should probably look elsewhere.
Even though there is more than one way to do things, you will want to find a single method that you use for each task or purpose. Having more than one way to accomplish the same purpose will significantly increase your response time under stress, because your brain has to decide which technique you’ll use at that moment. (This is a principle known as “Hick’s Law”.) Having a single method eliminates this decision point and improves your response time.
So how do you know if a technique is “right”? For defensive shooting, a technique must meet four criteria:
- Effective: Each technique has a purpose. The technique you choose must be expected to reliably accomplish its intended goal. It should also accomplish its purpose without inducing any negative side effects.
- Efficient: You have no time to waste in a gunfight. A technique should accomplish its intended purpose in as little time as possible.
- Practicable: You must be able to reasonably expect that you can perform the technique, without having to warm up, even when accounting for the stress you’ll experience in a gunfight
Justifiable: Your actions must be seen as reasonable by others.
Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing
When training, you should focus on the skills that are most important to you in a defensive encounter; that is, the skills that will apply in the vast majority of situations. It is helpful to keep the Training Pyramid in mind while making this assessment, and remember that the lower the skill is on the pyramid, the more likely you are to need it. Weapon Handling is important, not only in 100% of defensive encounters, but virtually any time you are handling a firearm. Marksmanship is vital in 100% of situations that require you to shoot.
Spend 90% of your training time on the skills you’ll need 90% of the time.