Re: Calm in battle

> Ken Winland Wrote:
>
> Yup.	Most police snipers engage targets at 40m, rather than the
> 300+m that military snipers train for.  This is why in the last 5
> years, police snipers have been going to dedicated firing schools that
> meet
> their needs, rather than training with the military.
>

BTW as I'm sure you know, (just to expand on the point w/ some detail)
police snipers have a different clientel (sp?) and are held to a
different standard to some extent than military snipers. Police snipers
have to make relatively VERY short range shots but they have no margin
for error. (i.e. an HRT sniper has to make a shot at 70 yards on a guy
holding a knife to someone. He only has a face to aim at). A military
sniper is normally firing on targets at longer ranges (300-800M)
man-sized targets with no friendly fire concerns and also the
opportunity
for multiple rounds to get the target.)

The same goes for pistol shooting. Combat pistol shooting, as we do it
for real life close range situations, bears little resemblance to
whatever people here on the list may be doing on the range. (BTW for
those that don't know,	until recently I was running a SF team
specializing in Close Quater Battle) For us, we dedicated very little
trigger time training for shots over 7 meters. (Even though the standard
army pistol qual course is fired at like 25m, in a standard day of
pistol
firing we might do one or two line drills at 25m and the other 20 at 15
and (mostly) under to include 3m and some actually starting out touching
the target! (part of weapons retention drills). On a standard two day
train-up, (say for instance before a bodyguard job), day one will be
just
pistol work, day two will be just M4 (rifle) work at the exact same
ranges.

In all of these drills there's it little aiming beyond "front sight,
front sight, by god, front sight" (our mantra).  Everything is about
engaging the target quickly "instinctive firing". AS a illustration,
when
Delta was first put together, (back in late seventies), the  army was
trying everything to screw them out of existance, and in one episode, a
bunch delta operators actually flunked or did very poorly at the
standard
army pistol course, though each of them could put two rounds intpo
someones face at room distance with less than a secons acquisition time.
Two different skill sets (which obvioulsy can reside in the same body)

Thomas Barclay wrote:

> ** I'd agree here that how calm you are has more to do with how you
> shoot. Supposedly Doc Halliday was incredibly calm and that was what
> made him a deadly gunfighter, not lightning speed. A trooper who is
> (if you could be) blase about being shot at is probably a better shot
> with his rifle than a range champion who doesn't get shot at much and
> is all excited about the flying lead.

And we have one last saying: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast....

L:os <grin>