Deaf Smith,
What do you feel about firing from the hip? This is used when you are really close to your attacker. Basically you step back with your right foot (if you are right handed) and push the attacker away with your left hand. You simultaneously draw your weapon with your right and line up the gun with your body. This allows you to keep your attacker from grabbing your gun, If you brought up the gun as you normally do, the attacker would be able to wither grab or push the gun away. While it is great to have lots of practice, it doesn't hurt to have flexability in your tactics either.
stephen,
First there are several 'versions' of point shooting. From Fairbrain/Applegate to Lucky McDanials, even Cirillo with his Silhouette Point had his own verion where you used the back of the slide to index on. All except the extreme close quarter methods bring the weapon into ones peripheral vision (speed rock, SouthNarcs position 1 of the four point draw, 1/4 hip of Applegate.)
They all require indexing of ones body to get hits. In fact, Applegate himself wrote that the 1/4 hip was not good for targets much higher or lower than the shooter (and that shows why peripheral vision plays a part in point shooting, even if you are not 'looking' for the weapon.) One can demonstrate this by blocking out the weapon from view as it is brought forward. You will see shooters, except the most experienced, do poorly. It's even truer if you put a garbage bag over the target so you cannot see the bullets strike and correct on the hits. Then you sort of have to guess if the rounds are striking or not (and with cloths, it is hard to see strikes on the street.)
Hip/Retention is a must. You can use any of the methods above (speed rock, SouthNarcs position 1 of the four point draw, 1/4 hip of Applegate, and others.) The Speed rock, were you lean backwards is to create distance, not do make any contact with the shooter. SouthNarcs method is to expect a grappling move and to take the impact and still be stable as well as protect the weapon. Applegates 1/4 is just to protect the weapon, not take any impact from a grappling person.
All other forms of point shooting have the weapon in peripheral vision. Like it or not you will see it (in fact McDanial emphasized it.)
My view is one learns a form of sighted fire and retention/hip shooting first. It can cover all bases. The retention/hip can go from 0 to 3 or so yards while the sighted fire can go from 1 to however far you can shoot! Yes an overlap. And yes, sighted fire can be used when one cannot 'see' the sights. One just brings the weapon to the same places (index you might say) and the shoots will be pretty good. Not as good as if you could see the sights but good hits.
Once you have mastered this, if you want to learn point shooting, great, but it's not a 'must' except for those with eyesight problems or totaly zero interest in firearms training (and we know how that will work out!!!)
I find point shooting is not as accurate as sighted fire. Those that say 'big deal' don't see you may have a partialy covered attacker, or one with a hostage, or one with armor all requiring a much better shot that just any 'COM' hit. And we all know pistol ammo is not very powerful, thus shot placement (as many posters here have posted) is number 1!!!!
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