Real world practice.

Anyone using a contact weapon will have to close the distance in order to use it, and any defender will have to prevent that.
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and maybe lawfully mitigating the criminal attack of a person in close proximity does not involve going immediately to your gun. or maybe you need to go to ground and create space to draw.. maybe a person should have some fighting prowess other than with a gun, maybe a person should have more than one plan or method to defend themselves.

I certainly hope to but I do not expect to come out of any criminal attack unscathed. At the same time, I don't count on always being able to use a gun to solve my most immediate problem.

its not hard to construct a scenario that supports any particular point of view and sure.. draw speed may be substantially more important in a circumstance that you describe.

As I said earlier, I am not endeavoring to be slower. Its just that I am not hyper focused on the nuances of draw speed. I will take strategics and personal grit over speed any day of the week. If it were 1898 and we were in a frontier town, I might feel different.

If the "good guy's gun is out", the draw has already occurred. We cannot comment on the speed.
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Anytime there are long moments between drawing the weapon and firing it, .. initial draw speed is not an important factor.
 
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...and maybe mitigating the criminal attack of a person in close proximity does not involve going immediately going to your gun.
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But if you do have to use a gun, you had better be pretty immediate in bringing it out.
 
The whole reason for a concealed weapon is its hidden. If you need lightning fast draw you would not have the gun concealed. The biggest advantage of a concealed gun is the surprise it represents.
If someone, who is out to kill you, wants to kill you then there is no defense that will work. Even Superman has his Kriptonite.

You work with odds when training for self defense. What are the odds that you will be attacked and in what way. What are the odds that someone close to you will be attacked. When, where and how will these attacks occur? What is it that is most likely to happen?

Statistics tell us that between 1 and 3 million times a year people fend off criminals to prevent a crime. Most often no shot is fired. I would be willing to bet that a large majority of these people have had little or no training and that most never thought about training. With the training I have had and the training I continue with I know that there are scenarios out there that I can't survive. I also know that I am determined to expend my last ounce of will to survive. Having the will to survive is more important than proper training. It does not replace training but it is more important.
 
That certainly does not constitute "real world practice".
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You can't square yourself to a target in the "real world"?

But if you do have to use a gun, you had better be pretty immediate in bringing it out.
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"Pretty immediate" is a subjective term.

There's no need to nit-pick everything anyone says.

We can "what-if" every thread into oblivion by utilizing carefully crafted fantasy scenarios, but what would be the point?
 
If someone, who is out to kill you, wants to kill you then there is no defense that will work.
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Yet that is essentially the condition necessary for the justification of the use of deadly force for self defense.
 
OldMarksman,
You know as well as I that there is no defense from a sniper.
The same is true for a lot of different types of attack.
Happily those kinds of attacks are rare and are not on the radar for most folks.
A violent confrontation often allows time for retreat, finding cover or at least concealment and access to ones weapon. I practice drawing from my holster under all kinds of conditions and positions. It is part of training. I am by no means a quick draw artist with my concealed carry but I can get it out and ready before most could react. That being said there are a lot of conditions that I would have to resort to "sleight of hand" to put it on target. I train for that too.
 
Maybe our focus should be less on draw speed and more on draw OPPORTUNITY. There are plenty of videos on the Active Self Protection YouTube channel of good guys who waited until the bad guy's attention was off of them, drew their guns surreptitiously, and got hits on target. Speed was less a factor than watching for opportunities......before the attack or during the attack.

Sent from my HTC Desire Eye using Tapatalk
 
Just in case it hasn't been mentioned before, regarding the first post, there is a difference between game play and unscripted reality. No matter how elaborate the course is, even if the player doesn't see it until the bell rings, it can never approach the same level of chaos that a real interaction can involve. Do the courses ever include having bogies coming in from all corners of the compass, requiring the shooter to actually spin around and shoot behind himself? Do the range officers ever whomp the shooter with a club before blowing the whistle? What about adrenaline, a false condition of alertness brought on by anticipating the competition?

Training and learning how to shoot, gathering skills and versatility, picking up tricks about cover, you have one facet there. You have learned how to aim and pull your trigger and gotten some fundamental ideas about cover and moving, maybe.

Stage two is building versatility. Start from the idea that you aren't going to be mugged by a beer can or paper silhouette, and you probably won't be robbed at high noon at fifty paces.

Your trainer isn't going to walk you through town, explaining how to deal with a carjacking at this corner or a armed robbery at your bank, that is your own responsibility.

A person can choose to expend thousands of rounds of ammo doing drills, but that's not always going to be enough. That's the bottom line here. An Olympic free pistol shooter might make a great squirrel hunter, but does he have the versatility to hunt rabbits?
 
Just in case it hasn't been mentioned before, regarding the first post, there is a difference between game play and unscripted reality. No matter how elaborate the course is, even if the player doesn't see it until the bell rings, it can never approach the same level of chaos that a real interaction can involve. Do the courses ever include having bogies coming in from all corners of the compass, requiring the shooter to actually spin around and shoot behind himself? Do the range officers ever whomp the shooter with a club before blowing the whistle? What about adrenaline, a false condition of alertness brought on by anticipating the competition?

Training and learning how to shoot, gathering skills and versatility, picking up tricks about cover, you have one facet there. You have learned how to aim and pull your trigger and gotten some fundamental ideas about cover and moving, maybe.

Stage two is building versatility. Start from the idea that you aren't going to be mugged by a beer can or paper silhouette, and you probably won't be robbed at high noon at fifty paces.

Your trainer isn't going to walk you through town, explaining how to deal with a carjacking at this corner or a armed robbery at your bank, that is your own responsibility.

A person can choose to expend thousands of rounds of ammo doing drills, but that's not always going to be enough. That's the bottom line here. An Olympic free pistol shooter might make a great squirrel hunter, but does he have the versatility to hunt rabbits?
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Well put.
 
You can't square yourself to a target in the "real world"?
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Of course you can. But it is not very realistic to start out that way and wait for a signal to draw.

"Real world" practice and training should address recognizing a threat from any direction and responding as quickly as possible.

And that involves more than drawing speed.

I happen to like the I.C.E. PDN Combat Focus Shooting (aka Dynamic Focus Shooing) approach. The threat may materialize from any angle. The student must recognize it, turn, move, draw while moving, and fire.
 
One of the baddest gunmen in the world was shot in the back by a little sissy while he played five card draw. He had his back to the rear door. Another was shot in the back of the head while he was doing some light housework. I don't know how many murder victims never see it coming.

I think that it's pretty certain that most of the people killed in automobiles wake up in the afterlife wondering what happened.
 
Most people will get so startled when surprised by a sudden act of aggression, they can't function quickly enough to be effective.
Not many places to train have a way to deal with that.
 
Not many places to train have a way to deal with that.
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True. Many of us have had to travel some distance to get to the training.

With regard to practice, realistic live fire practice may not be readily accessible, but there are other important elements of the drills that can be practiced in many places.
 
You can count on that, it's simply not in human nature to instinctively respond to sudden aggression with equal aggression. That's dangerous, and it has been bred out of us.even animals moderate their responses in absence of absolute certainty that an aggressive act is a genuine attack.

There were studies, experiments performed decades ago. People were put in darkened rooms with a screen and a notebook. Words were flashed on the screen, the subjects wrote them down. When obscene words were occasionally included, the subjects usually saw and answered with other words, such as duck, spit,pitch,etc.

Human nature leads us to hesitate and verify before lashing out at the guy who bumps into us. That hesitation is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes the bad guy does sucker punch you, other times it isn't what it seems.
 
I think paintball is a great resource. You can pick up a marker cheap if you check on MCarter Brown or even Craigslist. Any of the Tippmann Pro-Lites are boringly reliable.

I used to be the airsmith for the Ironmen who, at the time were the winningest team in paintball history. One of their players Marty Bush was the last guy to play with a pump action in the Pros. A drill he started was called the "Marty-Drill" where you'd find to similar sized trees about 25 feet apart and then it was "go-to-it!" and you's be surprised how much that drill feels like a short PPC barricade course. Lots of fun too.
 
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The paintball game seems to be more about military tactics than personal defense.
Paintball guns could easily be used for personal defense scenarios, though.
They leave no question about who got hit.
 
Of course you can. But it is not very realistic to start out that way and wait for a signal to draw.
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No one said anything about waiting for a signal, but if you really want to be "realistic" there will be "signals" that tell you when you need to draw and when it's legal to draw.

"Real world" practice and training should address recognizing a threat from any direction and responding as quickly as possible.
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The student must recognize it, turn, move, draw while moving, and fire.
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No one has said any different.
One can often recognize a threat before an actual attack begins, allowing one more time to prepare.
 
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