Scanning

23 Apr 08

Good advice, from a friend in SA:

"We all teach our students to scan constantly, looking for potential threats, but also for cover and disengagement/exit routes. At the risk of contributing to 'scan-overload,' I suggest adding one item,and dropping another:

To add: When you shoot an attacker, and he subsequently turns into a body by falling down, his involuntary assumption of the horizontal is actually excellent therapy for the blood-pressure loss that caused him to fall down in the first place! We thus need to emphasize to our students to include in their scan a continuous sweep across the 'body,' lest the 'body,' unnoticed, becomes reanimated and passionately re-enters the fray!

To delete: When shooting cardboard targets, students quickly, unconsciously acquire the habit of lowering their firearm and scanning the paper target to see where the last round hit. The habit is a poor one that results in inconsistent, slow shooting. In a real fight, of course, those nice, neat holes that our student is accustomed to seeing on paper will be invisible amongst various layers of clothing worn by the VCA. And, we can expect resultant double-take/hesitation on the part of our student when what he expected tohappen is not happening.

All Operators know to hesitate is to die. Accordingly, we need to teach our students NOT to scan for bullet holes. Rather, they need to assess, while moving laterally, behavioral changes on the part of the VCA which will indicate whether on not additional shooting is necessary. This is the best strategy for ending the fight quickly and simultaneously keeping entry wounds out of ' Sunday-School-Johnny's' back!"

Comment: Adding steel targets, such as Safe-Direction's wonderful "Rotators, " to your training program is excellent therapy for the annoying " shoot-and-gawk" syndrome, described above.

/John