Wrong or Inferior?

15 June 07

"Wrong," or just "Inferior?"

Any weapon operational procedure, administrative or tactical, "works," to one degree or another. However, we instructors gravitate toward those methods that are (1) quickly learned/absorbed/practiced, (2) easy to teach, (3) forgiving, that is, the technique will "work," even when not done exactly right, (4) universal, that is, the technique is neither gun-specific nor situation-specific, and (5) can be accomplished with gross, body movements, rather than precise, finger movements.

Complicated, unforgiving, gun/situation-specific techniques may look great in the movies, but, in the inadequate amount of time we have to work with students, they must come away with something that has at least some chance of being successful, even when they are involved in a gunfight that very night!

An example is teaching students to close a locked-back pistol slide by depressing the slide lock/release lever. The technique "works," but the slide lock/release lever varies from pistol to pistol in both shape and location. Once you teach your thumb to sweep down the lever on a Glock, then you are subsequently compelled to use a SIG, you'll unhappily discover that the same lever on the SIG is in a location with which you are not acquainted. In addition, when the slide is forward on an empty chamber, depressing the lever, in any fashion, will accomplish precisely nothing! So, this technique is not only gun-specific. It is also situation-specific. Thus, not recommended!

As such, the technique is not "wrong," but it is inferior to yanking the slide all the way back and then letting it go. That procedure involves only a gross, non-precise, body movement, will chamber a round on any pistol I know of, and the starting position of the slide will be irrelevant.

I rarely accuse a technique of being "wrong," and, even thebest techniques, the ones we currently teach, are still not perfect. It is incumbent upon us instructors to identify the best of the best, even when we didn't personally invent any of it, always acknowledging that better methods are doubtless still yet to be discovered. Of course, we need to avoid superficial fads,but, in order to relentlessly advance our Art, which is our charge, we must instantly recognize genuine advances, no matter what their source, and be prepared to embrace them.

"If thou would not be forgotten when dead and rotten Write something work reading, or read something worth writhing."

/John