Differences Between Defensive Shooting and Competitive Shooting

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. So we've taken a look at the different types of competition that someone might wanna get involved in at home. Of course, we've talked about how you were able to excel, given natural athletic and mental abilities, and then applying a large number of reps, a lot of ammunition, and a lot of time to really getting to compete at that world-class level. As someone gets ready to take what we've done here even some of the skill development stuff and apply it to joining a local competition league, what else is something that we might want them to think about? What other things do we need to talk about when it comes to the differences between that competition experience and preparing for defensive use?

The competition experience will get somebody incredibly comfortable with their firearm and their ability to handle their gun and manipulate it. There's nothing else that will get them to that skill level. Everything isn't a one-to-one, it doesn't go across. In competition shooting, we shoot each target two times and move to the next target, shoot it two times, and move to the next one, shoot it two times. And if it's a piece of steel we shoot it one time, and come what may, we do that and go to the end, and we come back and score.

In real life, that doesn't come across because I believe you guys teach, "There's a threat coming. "You shoot to stop the threat, "and you continue firing on that threat "until that threat is down, "and then move on to the next thing." Right, in most competition, any reactive target, those dropping steel targets poppers, are supposed to go down with one good hit. So you don't have to worry about visualizing like we do when we're training for a defensive situation, whether that threat is continuing, and that volume of fire idea is so important to preparing for defensive firearms use, and it will really just slow you down if you're worried about how many times or where you hit the target in a competition environment. Yeah, when you're shooting paper, you know you fired twice and go. The steel, it is reactive, so you do get immediate feedback.

So you get some sort of crossover of shooting the steel, and if it goes ding, and you move on, and a lot of times, you have the visual that the picture of what it should be, you pull the trigger, you hear the ding. You don't get the visual feedback, you move on. And then if you come back, and it's still standing there, then something's wrong, and you need to take a look at the piece of steel, and assess what happened, but you don't get the luxury of doing that afterwards because something going wrong in real life is far more than a five-second penalty. Yeah, absolutely, it can be the difference between life and death. What other differences should people be aware of?

Like we talked about shooting in competition, you know where the other targets are, you know what you're gonna do from one to the next. In real life, you may only have one target in front of you, and you can take care of that threat. Then you have to assess, see if there's another one, take care of that one. If there's one, there may be two, and if you accomplish two, you can't just unload your gun, make it safe, put it away, and go out to score, and see what happen. It's the real world.

It's 360 degrees. You don't know what else is out there. So you just need to know that you don't know and be prepared for what else there could be. Right, always come back into that, high compressed ready position, or whichever ready position you use, protect the firearm, look around, assess your environment. And of course, one of the biggest differences between some competitions and the real world is concealment.

Now, there are absolutely competitions which encourage concealment and encourage you to carry firearms just exactly like this. We talked about International Defensive Pistol Association but the competitions that allow you to do this, it's very unlikely that you can take a simple concealment garment, something like this pullover, throw it on, and be able to cover up what you've got there. Yeah, even if you put that pullover on, you'd see this in the mall or cruising around, but for IDPA, a garment like that, that you can pull up, get your firearm out of, or a vest, something that you can sweep back and get your gun, conceals your items, but allows you easy access to them. Right, so something like this, it doesn't have to be a big photographer's vest or some parka that you wear to cover up your compact firearm. At this point, I could either reach across, clear this garment, or learn to do it with this hand, if this hand were busy pushing someone out of the way and still have a really good grip on the firearm, be able to access it, and then of course, come up on this side, and get that spare magazine when the time came.

So understanding that your gear configuration for a competition may be dramatically different than what you're going to actually use in a defensive environment is important because that consistency, just like when we talked about reloading from the pocket versus reloading from exactly the same place, exactly the same angle every time, is going to be different. If you draw from a firearm carried this way with that dramatic open front holster or even just a big speed cut, it's gonna be very different from when you actually carry inside the waistband, and you have to think about coming up, and then orienting, and punching out. Even if we compromise that a little bit like we did for speed, where I'm sweeping forward, it's still dramatically different from coming out to that open front in a competition holster. So the gear's gonna be a little different. The pattern of shooting and volume of fire is gonna be different.

Multiple targets, coming back and assessing is going to be different. But I think when we really look at it and break it down, there's an awful lot of overlap, there's a lot of similarity when it comes to simple firearms-handling skills and raw shooting ability. Absolutely, like we talked about any one person that can shoot phenomenally but has no idea what's going on, not gonna work out so well or someone who's great tactician but can't shoot, you need that blend. Even if it's just a little bit of each, that blend makes a great person out in the world. Listen, one other thing I wanna mention is we've known each other for a long time, we get along well, we understand the way each other think to a certain extent.

And people may be surprised to see me, the defensive shooting guy who doesn't go out and compete, standing here with a world-level competition shooter, and maybe vice versa. The fact is that shooting is shooting. If you go to a gun range, like the Scottsdale Gun Club or whatever gun range you have in your area, and you go look for someone that understands shooting, enjoys shooting, and wants to help you get better, it probably doesn't matter if their passion is the competition side or the defensive preparation. When you go to develop your skills, when you go to choose your firearms, when you choose your equipment, you choose the venue in which you're going to practice. Shooting is shooting, firearms are firearms, and of course, that right to keep and bear arms supports both sides of the house.

Mark, I appreciate you being here with me on the Personal Firearms Defense video series. Thanks for your insight. Congratulations on all of your accomplishments. And I'm looking forward to watching you continue to compete, continue to score well, and continue to help us train for that defensive firearms moment. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.