Defensive Accuracy: Yes or No... Get Hits as Fast as You Can

[Intro Music] Defensive accuracy. Accuracy should be thought of as yes or no. Did I hit my target or did I not hit my target? When it comes to defensive shooting Not more or less accurate. Here's why traditionally I see a couple of people in this room that might be at least as old as I am.

[Inaudible] I said, at least. So, so here we go. Let's think about this. You're at least as old as I am. You probably remember B 27 or B 21 targets.

I know. I see some people in here. It looks like they have some military law enforcement experience maybe some security experience, concentric ovals, right? Bullseye type targets. You guys have seen them there.

The black silhouettes with the concentric ovals at seven, eight, nine. And what was in the middle of the smallest oval, the X, the X ring. Right? So you're going to, you need to get 80%, right? Or 70% depend, 90%, depending on what agency or military or whatever unit you're with.

Let's call it 80%. Last time I had to qualify. I'm one of them. I had to get an 80%. Okay, cool.

You're standing there. You have to get an 80%. Where are you aiming on that? Target the X, right, right on the X. What happens if all your shots go into the X what's your score?

A hundred, right. A hundred percent. So what do you need to get 80? Why am I shooting a three inch group? When all I need is a full hand group.

If we have deemed that everything inside of the end and we know those targets had a center mass as opposed to the high center chest. So today we don't shoot down here. We try to shoot up here. But if I'm, if I need to shoot a pie plate what's the best performance I can do on that test. It's not a hundred.

It's the fastest 80. You can shoot. If I've decided because of physiology, anatomy and empirical evidence of what actually happens when bullets go into the human body, that anything inside of that pipe plate is a good shot. And if it's outside of that pie plate, it's less good. Well, then I want to shoot at the pie plate and I want to get the fastest 80% I can.

And that's what I do. So here I am. I'm there on the line. You know, officer Pincus, your turn, here we go. You're with your group.

And you're going to shoot two shots on the buzzer. Stand by buzz, bang, bang. And you know, I kind of a smart, maybe back then I'm in the holster looking at the guy next to me, like what are you doing, dude, with his extra four or five seconds trying to hit the x-ray right? Because we had seven seconds. And what was the mantra?

The mantra was use all your time. You're ruining the department average, you know then I got on the SWAT team and we had to get 95%. Okay. So I'll shoot a 95%, 96%, whatever it was. Right.

And then the next week we'd have to qualify as patrol officers. I'm the fastest 82. I can then they were really mad, but what's the point of trying to shoot the perfect x-raying shot except for ego bragging rights, right? Why am I slowing myself down? Why am I using a technique to shoot slower than I need to?

Well, why? Because it was more accurate. I was a better shooter. If I hit the X ring than if I just hit the eight ring really fast that was somehow considered sloppy. Now, luckily we've evolved past that.

Right? And so some of you may be police officers and you went through an Academy five years ago and you were shooting on a target that you just had to get a hit on. So you either got your hit or you didn't. And that's the way we run training today. Defensive accuracy, accuracy is a yes or no proposition in defensive shooting.

You define your target and if you hit it, you hit it. Now we just use a rectangle on our primary target but you could use a pipe plate. Anything about the size of your hand eight inch circles, six, six, and a half inch circle 10 inch circle, something like that above the diaphragm just below the collarbone, off the points of the shoulder. That's where we want to put bullets. And we put them in a really fast, right.

Fast as you can maintain your defensive accuracy.