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Point shooting vs Sighted fire.

Point Shooting vs. Sighted Fire, a Historical

Perspective, by Tom Givens

"Copyrighted Material.

Reprinted by permission of

S.W.A.T. Magazine."

http://swatmag.com

Among those who train in the defensive use of the handgun several debates have raged on for years. These include the “9mm vs .45” arguments, the “revolver vs autopistol” debate, and the “point shooting vs sighted fire” disagreement. In debates on any subject, one side often resorts to what is known as an “appeal to authority”, especially if they don’t have any factual basis for their

argument. An “appeal to authority” typically goes like this, “My side is right, because (insert name here) said so, or that’s the way he did it”. One of the most commonly used appeals to authority among point shooting proponents is that “William Fairbairn used point shooting and taught it to his men in Shanghai in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and during WWII taught it to American OSS operatives”. All that is true. One needs to know a bit more about the back story, however, to understand why Fairbairn used this method and why his reasons are no longer valid. First, perhaps a bit of history will help put matters into the proper perspective, so here goes. Shanghai is a port city on the coast of China. At the turn of the 20th century, European powers forced the government of China to give them control over certain ports, including Shanghai, where the Europeans built modern enclaves for their personnel, who oversaw vast trade empires with the Chinese. In addition to legitimate trade, these ports became centers for the opium trade and human trafficking. In 1936, Shanghai was one

Shanghai Municipal Police markings

on Colt 1911 pistol made in 1927

of the largest cities in the world, with a total population in excess of 3 million. Of those, only about 35,000 were European, but they controlled the city and lived in a modern settlement with race track, schools, and all the cultural amenities they desired. To keep order and protect the Europeans (mostly British, French and German) the Shanghai Municipal Police were organized and run by the British. During the period of the 1920’s and 1930’s, there was a great deal of criminal violence, fueled by opium gangs and other smugglers, gangs that specialized in prostitution and gambling, communist party organizers, and regular criminal thugs. These groups were in constant combat with the members of the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP). William E. Fairbairn joined the Royal Marines Light Infantry in 1901. A few years later he joined the Shanghai Municipal Police, where he eventually rose to the rank of Assistant Commissioner. For many years during the period of the 1920’s and 1930’s, he was in charge of all firearms training for the SMP, and also routinely went on dangerous raids and other operations. This resulted in his personal involvement in literally scores

of gunfights during his career. Working with his associate, Eric Sykes, they devised a hand to hand system known as “Defendu”, as well as a firearms training program for all SMP personnel. As World War Two loomed in the immediate future, both Fairbairn and Sykes left Shanghai and returned to England. For the duration of the war, Sykes remained in England, teaching British Commandoes and members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the British equivalent of our OSS. Fairbairn was sent here to train US and Canadian Commando forces and operatives from the Office of Strategic Services

(OSS), the forebear of the modern CIA. Together, Fairbairn and Sykes wrote a

book called Shooting to Live , first published in 1942. Paladin Press now offers a re-print of this excellent book, and it should be in the library of every history conscious gunman. One of Fairbairn’s students in the OSS was Colonel Rex

Applegate, who wrote extensively about Fairbairn’s methods, and was largely responsible for propagating Fairbairn’s teachings in the United States. Usually, if a point shooting proponent uses an appeal to authority, he will be referencing either Fairbairn, or Applegate. When one delves a bit deeper into Fairbairn’s experience in Shanghai, including reading Shooting to Live with a bit more critical eye, a number of disturbing tidbits of information emerge. First, Fairbairn had a very large force of officers who were unfamiliar with handguns when they joined the SMP and for whom he had an extremely limited amount of time and ammunition for training. Initial training was very brief, and by today’s standards

Colt 1908 Model, showing the pathetic

little sights on guns of the era.

completely and utterly inadequate. After initial training, each officer was allotted 36 rounds of ammunition per year for training and requalification, a pitiful amount by any modern standard. Initial recruit training was conducted at 2 yards and 4 yards, and the “qualification” standard was 50% or more hits anywhere on a life-size silhouette target! Not too impressive. So, how did this training regimen work on the mean streets of Shanghai? During the period 1929 through 1938, SMP officers fired a total of 3,329 pistol rounds in actual engagements with criminals. These 3,329 rounds accounted for 159 suspects killed and an additional 149 suspects wounded. Thus, the SMP officers fired 10.8 rounds for every criminal casualty they produced. The completely untrained Chinese bandits, during the

exact same period, fired 789 rounds at SMP officers, resulting in 19 officers killed and an additional 67 officers wounded. Thus, the thugs fired 9.2 rounds for every casualty produced. So, the officers trained in Fairbairn’s point shooting methods were actually less effective than their untrained criminal foes. This begs the

question, “Why did Fairbairn persist with such an ineffective technique?” I believe the answer is quite simple, and can be readily illustrated. The SMP issued all sidearms used by its officers, and because they had both European (mostly British) officers and smaller stat-1911’s in .45 and the Oriental officers, who were much smaller, were issued Colt 1908 pocket Autos in .380. All of these handguns were made by Colt in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Fairbairn did not personally care much for the .380 Colts, but he thought they were the best he could do for Oriental men with hands far too small to operate a 1911 well. I happen to have one of the SMP’s 1911 pistols, SMP number 233. This is a commercial

Colt Government Model, manufactured in 1928. It has the “Shanghai Municipal Police” roll mark on the frame, and the Number 233 mark on the frame, slide and barrel. This is a “transitional model” 1911, with some features of the 1911 and some of the 1911-A1. The changes from 1911 to 1911-A1 configuration started in 1927 but many guns built in the next couple of years were assembled from parts on hand at the factory, and these transitional models are seen from time to time. I also have a Colt 1908 Pocket Model like the ones issued by the SMP, although this one did not belong to them. Both pistols have sights that are abysmal from a shooting point of view. The front sight is tiny- low and very narrow. The rear sight has a very small notch, on both the 1911 and 1908 pistols. These sights are all but impossible to see in anything other than perfect lighting, and it is

very difficult to line them up at any kind of speed. Contrast the sights on the 1911 and the 1908 with those on my current carry handgun, a Glock 35. Fairbairn taught point shooting because the sights on his guns were useless. No further explanation is needed. If you have sights you cannot see, you learn to point

the gun. Now that modern high visibility sights are industry standard, it’s time to leave the 1930’s behind.

The sights on the 1927 Shanghai Colt are too small to see in anything but perfect light, and are useless for fast shooting. Modern sights are bigger, blockier, and offer more contrast, allowing a flash sight picture.

Tom Givens, contact info and up coming events

Rangemaster

2611 S. Mendenhall Rd

Memphis, TN, 38115

901-370-5600

www.rangemaster.com 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/234643425923/

2014 Event Calendar

Jan 14-17   SHOT Show   Las Vegas

Jan 25-26   Two-Day Defensive Shotgun, Memphis

Feb 21-23   Tactical Conference    Memphis

Mar 8-9    Combative Pistol 1   Tucson, AZ 

Mar 20-23    AG&AG Conference, Waco, TX

Mar 29-30   Advanced Pistol Skills/Defensive Shotgun    Florence, SC

April 5-6      Combative Pistol       Athens, GA

April 12-13   KR Training, Austin, TX  Combative Pistol 1

April 26-27    Advanced Pistol Skills/Defensive Shotgun   Ft Meade, Florida

May 11           Mother’s day

May 17-18    Advanced Pistol Skills/Defensive Shotgun       Culpeper, VA

May 26    Memorial Day   ATSA Camp

May 31-June 1   Advanced Instructor Course  Memphis

June 6-8    Firearms Instructor  Course   West Elkton, Ohio

June 15      Father’s day

June 21-22  Advanced Pistol Skills/Defensive Shotgun  Nappanee, Indiana

July 4     Fri, Sat, Sun holiday  4^th is Friday

July 18-21  Combative Pistol 1/Defensive Shotgun    FAS, Seattle, WA

Aug 1-3     Firearms Instructor Course   Memphis, TN

Sept 1        Labor Day

Sept  6    One Day Pistol Skills   Eustace, TEX

Sept 7     One Day Pistol Skills    ETRPC, Longview, TX

Sept 13-14     Combative Pistol 1   Americus, Georgia

Sept 19-21 Firearms Instructor Development Course   Chandler, OK

Oct 3-5    Firearms Instructor Course   DPC   Dallas, Texas

Oct  18-19     Combative Pistol II     KR Training    Austin, TX

Tom Givens; You Stopped Shooting,Now What?

You Stopped Shooting,Now What? by Tom Givens You have drawn your holstered sidearm and fired shots. The fight appears to be over or the practice drill has been completed. What should we do next? Ideally, in your practice routines you should be deeply ingraining habits that will carry over into proper performance in an emergency. Anything you do in practice the same way, over and over, will tend to be what you do under high levels of stress. This applies equally to good habits and bad habits. As an example of bad habits, there are documented cases of police officers in gunfights taking the time to place fired brass in their pants pockets before reloading an empty revolver, sometimes getting killed in the process. This was what they did on the range, and it carried over to the street. An example of good habits is a shooter who brings a handgun to eye level, in both hands, and gets good hits in a fight, because that is the way he practices religiously. We want to structure our practice in such a way that we constantly reinforce good habits, while avoiding the formation of bad habits. For this article, we’ll concentrate on just one topic, that of what to do once we stop shooting. If we develop a standard procedure and practice it every time we finish a drill on the range, we are building a sound tactical habit. A side benefit of this approach is increased personal safety on the practice range. Many people think drawing a handgun from a holster quickly is dangerous. It is, if done incorrectly, but with just a small amount of proper training in the modern four-count draw stroke we can just about eliminate the risk. Oddly, most shooters who are injured while engaged in practicing working from the holster are not shot on the draw, but while attempting to re-holster the handgun at the completion of a drill. Most of the major schools have had students who accidentally shot themselves during training, and darn near 100% of those shootings occurred while holstering. This is typically caused by what we call “speed holstering”. The student fires the last shot of the drill, and while brass is still in the air tries to quickly stuff the gun back into the holster. Whether the trigger finger did not get clear of the trigger guard soon enough, or clothing or some other item entered the trigger guard, the shooter jams the gun into the holster and it goes “Bang”. This usually results in a bullet burrowing down the leg lengthwise, exiting around the ankle. Ouch! That is the training risk created by “speed holstering”. The tactical risk this habit engenders is that of putting the gun away too soon, only to find someone still needs to be shot! In a real fight, we really don’t want to have to draw that gun but once.

To prevent this issue, I suggest you use a brief ritual each time you stop shooting, to prevent speed holstering and its attendant risks. In its most elemental form, the sequence might go like this:
Come down to a “hard ready”. You simply lower the gun enough to be certain you can see the hands and waistline of anyone downrange. The instant the gun breaks the eye/target line, the trigger finger goes out of the trigger guard to its “register” position along the pistol’s slide.
Look at the target(s) you just engaged, then scan to left and right for any additional targets/threats.
Bring your support hand off the gun and back to your chest, to avoid flagging that hand with the muzzle when you bring the gun back.
Bring the gun hand back to your body and holster the pistol, slowly and deliberately.
Different schools have different methods for teaching this skill to new students. The NRA Law Enforcement Training Division, for instance, has shooters come down to Ready and scan, then they give the command to “Holster, reluctantly”. The word “reluctantly” rein- forces in the student’s mind that they do not want to put the gun away prematurely. Make sure the fight is over, then holster.
Andy Stanford has for years taught “The Wyatt Protocol”, named after California shooter Lyle Wyatt. It was codified by Andy Stanford and has been taught, in some form or fash- ion, since the early 90s. It began as a series of steps following an encounter: “Fight! Do I need to Fight anymore? Do I need to fight anyone else? Get Ready to fight again!” Trainers at Tactical Response took the Wyatt Protocol and evolved it into the acronym FAST, or “Fight, Assess, Scan, Top-off”. Adding “top-off” indicated the need to reload your pistol, to return it to full capacity. Recently, Tactical Response added another T, making it FASTT, or “Fight, Assess, Scan, Top-off, Treat”, with “Treat” referring to treat- ing injuries to self or companions. As far back as the 1970’s, I was taught the same thing by the venerable Chuck Taylor, as a series of questions,” Did I hit him? Is he down? Is he out of the fight? Where are his friends?”.
The main point is to get out of the mindset that you “fired a few shots, it’s all over, stuff the gun back in the holster”. Whether in training or on the street, when you stop shoot- ing, come to a solid ready position and evaluate the threat you just engaged. Then look for other threats. If desirable, reload your pistol in case things go bad again. Only then, safely and deliberately holster your pistol. This is one range habit that will serve you well on the street. 

Trigger control, by Tom Givens

Learning Trigger Control
By Tom Givens

As an aspiring handgun shooter, you will soon learn that one of the hardest things to learn for new shooters, yet one of the most important skills, is trigger control. The shooter must learn to keep the sights on the target while smoothly moving the trigger to the rear until the gun discharges. Even in high speed defensive shooting, this process occurs, although the time it takes to complete the process is compressed. With a handgun, yanking and cranking on the trigger is the root cause of almost all misses, if the gun was even roughly aligned on the target when the decision to fire was made.
Larry Vickers, retired Special Operations soldier, former Delta operator, and world class firearms instructor once said, “Why is the rifle so much easier to shoot than a pistol? Easy. The rifle weighs more than its trigger pull, while the handgun weighs less than the weight of the trigger pull.” That is a truly brilliant summation of the whole problem. If you have an eight pound rifle with a two pound trigger, it’s easy to shoot it well. Unfortunately, we often have a two pound pistol with an eight pound trigger pull, hence the difficulty. Thus, proper trigger technique becomes vital.
First let’s look at the different phases of trigger operation. Manipulation of the semiautomatic pistol’s trigger actually consists of four separate and distinct phases, and each impacts our accuracy. These phases, in sequence, are:
CONTACT: The “pad”, or fingerprint, of the shooter’s index finger should contact the center of the face of the trigger. The trigger finger should not touch the frame of the gun. Ideally, the only place the trigger finger should contact the pistol is on the face of the trigger. (That’s why we call it a trigger finger!)
SLACK: Semi-auto pistols have “slack” or “pre-engagement travel” built into the action. This is a bit of rearward movement in the trigger, prior to the actual trigger pull. The shooter can feel a distinct difference in the amount of finger pressure needed to take up the slack as opposed to that pressure needed to fire the piece. Some designs have significantly more slack than do others. As the gun is brought to bear on the target, the slack is taken up, so that the trigger finger feels the resistance of the trigger pull. As the gun goes on target, the trigger finger contacts the trigger and removes the “slack”. When the gun goes on the target, the trigger finger goes on the trigger.
PRESS: Beware of semantics. The words you use form images in your subconscious, and this drives your actions. For instance, if you think “squeeze” the trigger, you will likely squeeze your entire hand while moving the trigger. We call this “milking the trigger”. This results inlow misses. As the lower fingers tighten their grip, the barrel is pulled downward as the gun fires. Instead, we want to “press” the trigger, with steady rearward pressure. We hold the gun with our hand; we fire the gun with our trigger finger. The student must learn to use the trigger finger independently, while maintaining a constant, consistent, unchanging grip on the pistol with the rest of the hand. When enough pressure to the trigger is applied to disengage the sear, the gun fires.
It may help to think of the trigger as the pistol’s “gas pedal”. Using the analogy of a car, which all shooters are familiar with, the magazine is the gas tank, the front sight is the green light, and the trigger is the accelerator. When you see the green light, you apply steady, increasing pressure to the accelerator until the bullet takes off smoothly. If you stomp the gas pedal, the car takes off jerkily and under less control. Same with the bullet. It won’t matter if the sights are on the target if you smash the trigger and knock the sights off the target as the gun fires.
RE-SET: Once the gun fires, the shooter must maintain contact with the trigger. Many newbies will have the tendency to take their finger completely off the trigger the instant the gun fires, and this must be corrected. As soon as the shooter sees the front sight begin to lift, that bullet has exited the barrel and is in flight. The shooter can no longer do anything to affect that shot, so he should forget it and start concentrating on the next shot! The first step is to relax the trigger finger’s pressure just enough to let the trigger return forward to its re-set point. That is normally a really short distance, and there is usually an audible and tactile “click” when the trigger re-sets. There is no need to let the trigger go any further forward than that. Once the trigger is re-set, the shooter can begin working on the delivery of the next shot.
Double-action revolver triggers do not have slack in them, otherwise the process is the same. It is important with the revolver to move the trigger all the way to the rear to fire the gun, then let it roll back all the way out before starting on the next trigger pull. The revolver trigger must go all the way forward or you can skip a chamber or even lock up the action, a process called “short stroking”. The double- action trigger should be pressed all the way through in one smooth motion.
All one needs to do to play a concerto on a piano is to hit the right keys, in the right order, at the right time. It’s a simple process, but it takes practice. All one needs to do to hit anything with a pistol is to keep the sights aligned on the intended point of impact while you work the trigger smoothly to the
rear. Again, a simple concept, but it takes practice.