Police firearms instructors commonly accept any hit on a target/opponent as a good hit; I could not disagree more. In personal defense situations, whether for law enforcement, military or the legally armed citizen, we must rapidly incapacitate our opponent death is beside the point as long as the attacker no longer remains an active threat.
As I stated in a previous column, long guns are far more capable of rapid incapacitation than handguns due to either higher velocities creating a true hydrostatic shock wave through the body (rifles) or a body-tissue overload by striking the body with a number of projectiles at once (shotguns). In addition, handguns lack points of body contact, which makes them less accurate than long guns in armed conflict, and for a handgun of any caliber to bring about rapid incapacitation on an armed opponent, vital organs must be disrupted or destroyed, which requires accurate shot placement.
Precise shot placement typically results in the opponent's death. The best way to think of the body is to see it as a computer and a battery for the computer, the brain being the computer while the heart and its vessels are the energy source/battery. Disrupting either of these components stops your opponent. A hit to any other region of the body may stop the attacker, but a hit to one of these regions is likely to stop them. Note: The human body is tough, and no one in the know will ever offer a guarantee of fast incapacitation. Also, the head is hard to hit and penetrate because it's hard, round and constantly in motion. The chest region is larger, softer and more stationary.
What I call the Primary Neutralization Zone (PNZ) includes the region defined by the nipples and throat up to a triangular area defined by the nose and eyes. A hit, better yet multiple hits, to this region develops rapid incapacitation with as much reliability possible with an organism that is very tough to stop quickly. Defensive handgun training must emphasize hits to this region while strongly discouraging satisfaction with hits to other locations. Granted, any hit is better than no hit, but we do ourselves a serious disservice if we settle for anything other than PNZ hits while conducting our personal training regime. Some people include the pelvic region as part of the PNZ, and at one time I would have agreed with them. But I have come to realize hits to the pelvic region do not create the immobility that some claim. Without a hit to the point where the leg meets the pelvic region, a small ball-joint area about three inches in diameter, the human body will not reliably fall. Again, any hit is better than none, but I'm talking about training law officers to perform at their best under life-threatening situations.
In a recent conversation with Jeff Brown of Law Enforcement Targets (LET), I told him we need a series of targets that emphasize hits to the PNZ. While a number of targets currently exist that emphasize the high chest, none offers a natural progression from obvious target-zone style targets to human-looking shapes positioned in a number of configurations. In addition, these new targets should be made of steel to stop the tendency of many shooters to look over their guns to visually score their paper target, which interrupts the shooting cycle from presentation to follow-through. Finally, a manufacturer should apply this same PNZ to three-dimensional torso targets we can dress with various pieces of clothing and shoot at various angles. After hearing me out, Jeff and LET General Manager Cherie Manning became enthusiastic about such a project and asked me to develop the idea further.
My enthusiasm for the project resulted from my interest in giving small-agency instructors something to work with. Quite often, these instructors do not have a designated training facility and either rely on other departments or use natural terrain, such as gravel pits or dry creek beds. While such arrangements are certainly not optimum, they can prove satisfactory if the instructors are motivated and have portable range tools that help them create a real-world program.
I had these conditions in mind as I developed the targets. My first project was to re-work a target that LET manufactured for a major California law enforcement agency. The PNZ on this target was almost exactly what I visualized, but I wanted several different trigger dots added. I wanted 3" dots for trigger control/reset drills at three and five yards, and 5" dots for the same drills at seven and ten yards. The smaller dots would be located on the bottom of the target in the same general location as the ball joints in the hip discussed above. I also asked LET to highlight the PNZ in a dull orange color to better attract the shooter's attention beyond the front sight. LET named this target the DS Target (DST), an unexpected honor.
Next, I developed a steel version of the DST to allow shooters to know they hit the target without lifting their head, which negatively affects shooter follow-through and multiple-shot capability. The ability to land quick, multiple hits two to four inches apart enhances incapacitation with any small arm, so emphasizing it in training is a sound practice. LET Design Engineer Larry Sandvig recommended we add a plate to the top of the portable dueling tree that I reviewed in an earlier column (Law Officer, November/December 2005). He also suggested we add a swinging head-plate to give the shooter a moving target to track as well as the ability to shoot hostage drills. Placing the PNZ plate on top of the tree also gives the instructor the ability to add or remove the six swinging plates and use them for any number of related drills, further enhancing their program.
While the debate over point-shooting versus sighted-fire rages on, I'm convinced officers can use sighted-fire in a crisis event but only if they train to do so through a training program that requires them to use the sight on moving or swinging targets, making them track the target with the sight in rapidly moving live-fire drills. While a single dueling tree will not totally fulfill this need, it's a step in the right direction for instructors who don't have a moving target system or instruct with the equipment they can carry in the back of their pickup truck.
Once you've introduced the PNZ to a trainee, transition to human-looking targets that don't have the PNZ so well defined. This requires shooters to place their shots. These humanoid targets should present the PNZ from different angles so officers realize their opponents will not always face them and that proper shot placement takes many forms and positions.
The final step: Move the shooter over to three-dimensional targets such as LET's Plastic Man or Tac-Man. Using the paper humanoid and 3D targets, put officers through a number of drills, including lateral-movement, shooting-on-the-move, extreme close-quarter shooting, ground fire, use-of-cover and moving from cover to cover (i.e., leapfrog drills). You can do all of these things without a fancy range facility and remain real-world relevant in preparing your officers for armed conflict.
Since LET developed the DST, I've used it in a basic police academy firearms program as well as several of my own courses with great success. Those who have shot on the target like it and tell me that it makes them concentrate harder, which is certainly a good thing. One of my students commented on how hard it was to hit the PNZ area over and over again. A student standing next to him said, "Hey, remember what Mel Gibson said in The Patriot: 'Aim small, miss small.'" This quote quite nicely sums up what I am trying to accomplish, which is why I named these the Patriot Target Series, though LET may use another name.
My last step in this process is to design a portable wobbler target that will allow instructors to move paper and 3D targets without electricity, further enhancing their students' target-tracking ability. I'm about three-fourths of the way to completing a target stand that will remain small and light enough to transport to the range with the capability of strapping to other targets so you can move an entire bank of targets at one time. Once this is done, I will share the design with the folks at LET to see if they are interested in producing them for those innovative instructors who are limited in time, funds and space, but not imagination. Stay safe and remember to check 360 often!
Contact Info
Law Enforcement Targets
2316 Territorial Rd.
St. Paul, MN 55114
800/779-0182