Pretend that there is no minimum standard or lowest, yet acceptable, score. Pretend, just pretend, that how you train today may be the difference between life and death tomorrow. Would the arbitrary minimum standard established by your agency ensure a win when faced with an adversary hell-bent and—laser-focused—on killing you?
To some that first paragraph might sound like a cliché, and to many it may be, but it is still an accurate description of both training programs and personal philosophies by too many law enforcement officers around this country.
I am beyond blessed in so many ways, and one of those blessings is the opportunity to interact with more than 10,000 law enforcement officers every year as an instructor and owner of Calibre Press. Several years ago, at a Street Survival Seminar, an officer recounted a harrowing experience he had that involved a gun-battle with a very violent felon. He won the fight but at the end of the story he told me this: “I realized afterwards that all the training in my entire career was actually teaching me how to lose a gunfight.” That comment stuck with me, as I held a belief for years that there was a serious lack of realistic training in our profession.
So let’s address REALITY!
Question: “If an attack on you is a violent act: What is the only way to overcome that violence?
Answer: More violence!
What is so unusual about that question and the subsequent answer is that they both use a word that is almost totally absent in law enforcement training: Violence. And why don’t we use that word? It’s too harsh. Too abrasive. Too politically incorrect. In short; the word violence is just too, well, violent.
But a physical assault is certainly a violent act, and more violence is absolutely necessary in order to overcome it. Not mindless endless violence, but violence none-the-less.
And here we come back to training expectations established by the powers that be. These are administrative expectations; but what about yours? What about your family’s expectations of you winning a violent encounter. Are those standards the same? Does your family just assume you are prepared?
Do some self-assessment: How are you training? Really.
I was a Master shot for a good portion of my career; and when I wasn’t I was at expert level. But master and expert are just words, monikers that described an ability to attain a certain score during qualification. And I was pretty damn good during those qualifications. I never had less than an Expert rating.
But an expert at what? Well, realistically, shooting a piece of paper that was just hanging there minding its own business and waiting to get shot.
My expertise came from repetition as we qualified twice a year and practiced qualification two more times every year. So I was shooting the exact same qualification program every three months. Within a couple of years I figured out the timing, the distance, the necessary ocular and muscular skills needed to hit the paper and get a good score.
It didn’t take me long to figure out how long six seconds was. I could, within those six seconds: find my fronts sights, put a round in the ten-ring, readjust, find my front sights again and put another round in the ten-ring from 21 feet away every time. Ta-DA: EXPERT!
But again, expert at what? Shooting a piece of innocent paper that meant me no harm, wasn’t shooting back and wasn’t moving. I realized very early on that what I was really learning was how to get myself killed in a gunfight. Virtually none of it was practical or realistic, and in fact it was damn dangerous.
Chuck Remsburg, the author of the original Street Survival: Tactics for Armed Encounters and first owner of Calibre Press wrote, “Under stress, in a crisis, you will instinctively revert to the way you trained.” What we follow that quote with in the Street Survival Seminar today is: “If that is true then you damn-well better evaluate the validity of your training.”
I can tell you that the majority of departments in this country mandate shooting two times a year at best. And what are they doing when they shoot? Qualifying. And why? To prove they can take the gun out of the holster, point it in the right direction, pull the trigger, hit a target, decock the weapon and reholster without shooting themselves, other officers or some innocent piece of furniture.
Unfortunately most officers accept this bare minimum requirement.
Think about what many of them do when it comes to range practice. They begrudgingly report to the range, take off their jackets, maybe their body-armor, stretch their arms, put on their “ears and eyes”, get themselves in the right frame of mind, maybe practice drawing and aiming, and then finally, when physically and mentally prepared they raise their hands and say “Ready.” Which is exactly how real gunfights happen.
Most programs—not all—but most, operate contrary to reality. Think about it: When on the range, where are you standing 95% of the time you fire your weapon? On the 7–yard line, while standing still, in the wide open. And what are you aiming at? Center-mass! And how are you finding center-mass? Using your front-sights!
So what are you really learning? How to get yourself killed in a gunfight!
I’ll never forget when my department started doing Simmunition and Airsoft training in the late ’90s. We videoed each scenario. What shocked the trainers was how often officers involved for the first time in dynamic training, stood still and/or broke cover when they fired their weapons. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why; we trained them to do that.
Officer Joe Wagner became our range master because of the way he answered this question: “What would you do differently as far as range training?”
Joe talked about many things that at the time were as innovative as they were foreign to our department: having officers move while they fired their weapons, bringing car doors down onto the range, building walls and hallways, and implementing more dynamic training like Simmunitions and airsoft. But what really sold me on Joe was his answer to this question: What would be the first thing you would do? His answer: I’d talk to all the other range officers, they all have great ideas.
That’s what law enforcement has to do collectively. We have to start thinking outside the box, research and enlist ideas when it comes to training. And when I say “we” I mean both administrators as well as individual officers. Each are responsible for training and preparation to battle the violent.
Let’s not do what government does best: ignore reality until an event happens and hits you right between the eyes. Do we really need an officer death before we examine whether training is effective and based in reality? For you individuals out there who are saying as you read this; “Yeah dammit, somebody should do something about this!” Wake up, because that somebody is you!