Cowards and Psychopaths

People willing to commit mass murder are not going to be deterred by more laws. They are willing to murder dozens, if not hundreds, of people. This is the most heinous crime our system of justice has, yet they are perfectly willing to slaughter human beings for racial, religious, sexual or political bigotry. What law is New York going to pass that could possibly scare suicidal terrorists hell-bent on mass destruction? Don’t rack your brain, there isn’t one. People who are willing to commit mass murder will not be deterred by a misdemeanor weapons charge. They are evil criminals, they don’t care about laws; that’s the definition of evil criminals. You cannot legislate your way out of a confrontation with evil men. These aren’t people who run red lights, or go ten over the speed limit. Laws will not deter them. Murder is already illegal. In fact, it’s the oldest crime in the world, yet people still commit it. More laws aren’t going to stop that. You know what stops a murderer? A better defender. Ask any battered spouse with a restraining order that some piece of garbage walks right through on the attack; paper doesn’t beat rock. It certainly doesn’t beat bullets. To beat a rock, you need a bigger rock. Meaning, you have to be more dangerous and more capable at violence than the criminal predator. The laws they want to pass actually make society more dangerous. They want to write a piece of paper that bans good people from having rocks at all, and so only the bad guys have them. The bad guys don’t care at all about another law on another piece of paper, and they aren’t giving up their rocks. In between the previous paragraph and this one, the Uvalde, Texas shooting occurred. The terrorist shot nineteen elementary school kids. So, I’m going to stop arguing about guns. This is about a willful disbelief in evil. I don’t understand how people can not believe in evil. How else could you explain a lunatic shooting nineteen children between eight and ten years old? It’s not a matter of the mental health crisis in this country, which is obviously real, or bullies, it’s simply evil. This person was not raised with a moral compass to know that you don’t murder children. That seems like a pretty obvious and simple rule to follow. We can debate a lot about varying degrees of right and wrong, but you’re going to have a hard time finding the person who thinks murdering school children is a gray area. So, this was a broken psychopath with no remorse for innocent life. “He was bullied as a child because he had a lisp,” one report said. Well that certainly justifies murdering nineteen children ten years younger than him. Are you kidding me? He was bullied? Everybody is bullied in school at some point; you don’t get to go murder innocent children because of it! I was bullied as a kid, you know what I did with that anger? I joined the Army, got trained how to kill people with everything from a TOW missile to my bare hands to PROTECT innocent people and kill BAD PEOPLE! That’s the constructive way to use that rage and violence, to KILL TERRORISTS, not become one! There is something broken in our society that doesn’t believe in evil anymore. I’m not saying that in a religious context at all, by the way. But something has been lost in how we socialize children to be moral citizens with consciences that preclude the murder of other school children. Part of this is cowardice. We are a society of cowards. This encourages terrorists to conduct attacks. They don’t fear opposition, and they bank on their actions terrifying further the cowards unwilling to oppose them. This is not a debate about guns, it is an indictment of the cowardice now prevalent in our society. That cowardice is what allows these terrorists to succeed. Besides cowardice, the other part is the end of moral education for young Americans. We refuse as a society to parent children. To develop them into moral citizens. Parents want to be liked by their kids instead of respected by their kids. I’m not a parent, I’m sure it’s hard, but where the hell were this terrorist’s parents? Why didn’t they teach him it is evil to kill helpless children? Where did they go wrong? He shot his grandmother first before going to the school. What were they teaching him? What were they failing to teach him about right and wrong? This is the crux of our problem. We’re educating psychopathic terrorists because we aren’t socializing them to be moral citizens. This kid was like a Wild Child who raised himself in the woods with no moral foundations. Maybe we need to start charging the parents of these nutjobs with crimes? Maybe that would motivate them to instill some semblance of basic humanity into their little bundles of psychopathy. The two combined, our cowardice as a society and our immoral training of angry young men, is getting children killed. You can debate gun control forever, we have been, and I don’t give a damn what side you’re on, it doesn’t address these two problems. We are producing evil men without consciences who have no qualms about murdering scores of eight-year-olds. And the vast majority of our society is too chicken-shit to confront such evil bastards when they attack. We cannot continue as a society under these conditions. This is how societies and empires always fall, with moral decay inside to the point they are so rotten that they cannot defend themselves when the barbarians arrive at the gates. If you love your children, you better start turning this around. Raise them to be brave. Raise them to channel anger or rage towards evil. Be Galahads not Gandhis. Pacificism is the Virtue of the Victim. Courage is not hard when you accept that there are things more important than life, like the lives of eight-year-olds or thousands of innocent civilians in some building United 93 was screaming towards. Stop being cowards; be like Todd Beamer and stand up to evil when it attacks. “Let’s Roll.” Soule www.easy6training.com

Virtues

Patriotism may be the "virtue of the vicious" as Oscar Wilde said, but Pacifism is the Virtue of the Victim. There have been two and half successful instances of pacifism changing the world for the better, and only one side was being non-violent at the time. Gandhi's revolution in India was a success, but thousands upon thousands of Indians were beaten, bludgeoned and shot in the process. The Civil Rights Movement in America was largely successful due to Dr. King's stance of non-violent protest...then he was shot. The half is the Christian "revolution" that took three hundred years of being fed to lions before a Roman Emperor finally converted. I wouldn't call that one entirely successful, especially since the symbol of the revolt got crucified. I respect the morality of Jesus, Gandhi and MLK, but the vast majority of times when evil has been defeated in the world, it has come by force. In interpersonal violence, pacifism is suicide. Anti-social predators are not impressed with the morality of turning the other cheek, they simply prey upon the weak and take whatever they want. That can be your belongings, your money, your body, your limbs or your life. The only thing that stops them is more effective violence. In a world without the professionals to whom we outsource our violence, like cops and soldiers, the citizen is left to a world full of predators without a protector class. German Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, for the most part, believed God would never allow the evil that they were witnessing right in front of them (but denying) to happen to them. That is why when the State of Israel was founded--by force--that it adopted the motto "Never Again." European Jews, who founded Israel, had learned the horrible lesson of pacifism in the face of unspeakable, uncaring and methodical evil. The Israelis are not pacifists. Pound for pound, the Israeli Defense Force is the finest fighting force on Earth. Despite all of the wars and attacks on them, trying to finish what Hitler started, they fight on each day and continue to survive. Yet, they are defending a religion of peace, in the holy land, with ground sacred to three of the five major religions on Earth by killing and dying for it. They may be vicious. They are not victims. And they Never Again will be. The difference between the Israeli people and the American people is this: Israelis believe in evil. Many European Jews did not believe in evil. They denied to themselves what was going to eventually happen. And millions of them died. The survivors, who founded Israel, never again made that mistake. By contrast, when America was attacked on September 11, 2001 by unspeakable, uncaring and methodical evil, a shockingly large segment of our population denied it happened the way it did in order to continue to live in the delusion that evil is not real. Another large segment of Americans blamed America for being willing to defend Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, angering the evil lunatics who founded al Qaeda, because it's easier to blame yourself--like a rape victim--than confront the fact that there are evil people in the world. They will kill you, rape you, rape your children, burn families alive in hellfire atop crumbling skyscrapers, all because they HATE YOU, whether you did anything to them or not. I wonder if American Individualism, which I love, causes us not to be able to understand these days why people would hate us as infidels even though we had never met those people before? Or if it's something more pathological that we just cannot live outside of our illusory bubble of protection? So that when it is shattered, we retreat into a state of denial? I think that's probably more likely, but either way, it's delusional. Because there is evil in the world. There are evil men who do evil things to innocent people everyday. The average American has been protected from that evil by professionals for the last 80 years, so they don't believe it is real. But the people in our society who live in poverty, they understand violence, and are not delusional about it. The inner cities of this country are failed states, where armed militias control the streets instead of the governments. They aren't pacifists. It's rich and middle class white folks in this country who are utterly brainwashed into believing that violence can never find them or hurt them, and that evil doesn't exist. They are the pacifists. And therefore, they are the victims of their own virtue. There are hyenas in the world. Be the lion. It takes a lot of hyenas to take down a lion. In other words: Be Armed. Be Ready. Be More Dangerous than Predators! Like and Share! Brian Soule Easy6Training.com

"B****, I OPERATE!"

This video: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CPS6i3En9WH/ (link below) is a video that Dakota Meyer posted several years ago. And EVERYBODY lost their crap about it. If you look at the comments on IG calling him....a Medal of Honor Recipient....just horrible, and patently disgusting things, you realize he is exactly correct. I own body armor. I own (too small) camouflage. I own a chest rig. I own a couple of AR's. I owned them when I was in the military, and I trained with them a lot to get better at my job. I don't anymore. I shoot the rifles maybe once or twice a year. I try on the body armor maybe once a year to make sure it still fits my middle aged beer gut (It doesn't really). When I go to the range for fun, I wear a white shirt and non-camoflauge cargo pants because they reflect the sun. When I teach a class, I wear a bright red shirt so other people can always see me (and I don't get accidentally shot by a nervous student). I used to wear a drop leg holster; I don't anymore. Why? Why don't I wear the drop leg holster or a chest rig or a plate carrier? Because I don't walk around town with that crap....anymore. I did walk around Baghdad with that crap, in a camo uniform, with a kevlar helmet that had a mount for night vision goggles on it, and a Yarborough knife that I didn't earn but was given to me (and my brother) by a Green Beret...and you know what? It SUCKED! The hottest I ever saw in Iraq was 146 degrees; in "full battle rattle" that BLOWS!!!! But I don't do that for a living ANYMORE. My "EDC" these days is a subcompact 9mm, a pocket knife and a keychain with pepper spray on it (maybe some other stuff). So, unless you are a SWAT cop, training with all that extra crap is a waste of your limited training time and--more importantly--budget! That money you spent on a plate carrier and a "war belt" and everything that 5.11 sells, could have been better spent on ammunition for the concealed carry pistol you ACTUALLY CARRY EVERYDAY! Dakota is correct. Taking all that crap to the range is Live Action Role Playing gaming. Time. Excluding teaching, I spend about four hours a month on a shooting range just practicing. I can spend that four hours practicing drawing my pistol from concealment and putting shots into a man-shaped target from a realistic distance, adding in some movement and maybe some reloading drills, because that is what I am ACTUALLY GOING TO HAVE ON ME if I ever have to shoot at somebody again....OR, I can waste my time playing a dress-up game and shooting zombie targets with an AR in "full battle rattle" doing transition drills and PRETENDING I am getting good at "Operating." That's bull crap. If you don't believe me, PLEASE watch the Active Self Protection channel on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsE_m2z1NrvF2ImeNWh84mw In thousands upon thousands of shootings caught on security cameras and cell phone footage, NONE of the civilian self-defenders were dressed like Navy SEALs! They used concealed carry pistols that they had practiced with as much as they could/would to get to a level of competence that made them effective SELF DEFENDERS! We are DEFENDERS, we are not OPERATORS doing raids on enemy safe houses! Stop spending time and money on FANTASY bull crap, and instead buy target ammo and invest the training time shooting the tool you are ACTUALLY GOING TO HAVE! The last thing I will say is this: 99% of all self-defense shootings are not done by SEALs, Green Berets or Recon Marines. Those guys don't tend to get mugged or raped all that often. Self-defense shootings are done by ordinary civilians with ordinary guns (WEARING ORDINARY CLOTHES) who don't have plate carriers and gas masks and machetes strapped to their belts! Self-defense shooting is a martial art, like Karate or Kung Fu, it is NOT tactical warfare! Tactical warfare almost always involves military units conducting highly rehearsed missions based on intelligence, unit training and a hundred other things that happen BEFORE the first shot is ever fired. That's not self-defense. And if you get those two confused, you are going to prison, because as self DEFENDERS, we have to be legally justified in protecting ourselves and loved ones, which means you can't be a vigilante going out HUNTING "bad guys." Please watch the video. "Stop LARPing!" -Dakota Meyer, USMC, MOH Be SIXuationally aware. Be armed. Be more dangerous than the scumbag! Soule Easy 6

Balancing Preparation vs Preppers

haven't written in a long time, 2021 was kind of a down year for Easy 6 Training, so I wasn't teaching much or writing much. But, as I am looking around the world today, I feel the need to write a bit about how things have changed in the last two years. It has gotten more dangerous. Cops are quitting in droves, and they are not being replaced. Crime is skyrocketing for a number of reasons I may get into more in detail in later blogs, but basically the lack of cops, political changes in the prosecutor profession, economic uncertainty due to the pandemic and prison releases due to the pandemic. In addition, since my last blog, we lost the war in Afghanistan and gave hundreds of thousands of fully automatic weapons to terrorists, and an air force. The new political leadership has thrown the southern border wide open to them. Truckers on protest. Russia has invaded Ukraine. North Korea is testing ballistic missiles every week. China is preparing to invade Taiwan. "Dogs and cats, living together! Mass Hysteria!" Don't get hysterical, but also don't be naive. Arm yourself somehow. If you live in a place that doesn't allow the carrying of firearms, you are in far more danger than people who live in free states, but you can still have something. If you can carry a knife, do so. If you can't, carry a kubaton, preferably one that's pointed, or a heavy steel pen. Or a stun gun. Or pepper spray. Or even something like this self-defense key

Remember, the first rule of unarmed combat is DON'T GET INTO IT! Be armed. The cops are not coming to save you. What few cops there are left in our cities are terrified to lose their job because some cell phone camera footage gets edited to hell to show cops as evil racist thugs who randomly attack minorities. If that's the public perception, why would a cop save you and risk that video? They won't. So, you are your own first responder. Being armed is the best way to do that. If you live in a free state, and you can buy and carry firearms, you need to get a rifle. I have been preaching about pistols for years. I carry a handgun every day, and I have sworn up and down that 99% of any self-defense situation could be solved with a handgun. I am not being a hypocrite; I am saying the level of threat in this county has gone up. Now, I'm not advocating walking around town with an AK on your chest to prove some point. I'm saying you should have one at your house, with a decent supply of ammunition. It doesn't have to be an AR or an AK, or any sort of "modern sporting rifle." It could be an old lever action 30-30, or a .243 hunting rifle. The point is you want something with some range beyond a pistol. You don't have to adorn it with crap, either, like lasers, lights, tactical scopes or any of that crap. An AR with iron sights is good out to at least 300 meters with the bare minimum training. A hunting rifle, even farther. Have a few boxes of ammunition for it. Get a good Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK) that you can throw in your briefcase or your purse. I carry a tourniquet, a trauma bandage and a pair of medical sheers in my coat pockets. I wear coats with a lot of pockets. I can put extra mags in them. I put a flashlight in one. I put a cigarette lighter in one (probably the most useful survival tool). And I carry a 3.5" tactical folding knife in another pocket; that length is legal in my state, some states it's longer. This knife is a weapon, not a tool, for that get a leatherman or gerber multitool and throw it in your vehicle with the IFAK. Take a First Aid class! Take a rifle class. Take at least a self-defense seminar, if you aren't already studying some form of martial art. Lastly, most importantly, take a concealed carry class, get your permit, AND CARRY! The best martial arts instructors I have ever known all say carrying a gun is the best form of self-defense out there; they train people for when they can't have a firearm. A note on shotguns. If you are good with a shotgun shooting rifled slugs at long range, then I would say it's even better than a rifle, because it can also be amazing at close range with shot shells. But, if you don't have a rifled barrel, or are not competent with it at long ranges, I would personally recommend a rifle instead. This is my opinion, and obviously some people will disagree and say shotguns are the best all-around self-defense tool. There is merit to that argument, but new shooters I feel can much more easily learn to handle a rifle than a shotgun. But, if you have the means, get all three, a concealed carry pistol, a shotgun for home defense, and a rifle if things get very serious. I'm not trying to sound like a prepper. I don't have food buried in the yard, or geo-cached in the hills, or urine-purification equipment. But I have enough canned goods to last me a month if the truckers go on strike. I have several fully loaded magazines for a rifle in my safe and my concealed carry pistol, and I do have a home defense shotgun loaded with bird shot so I'm not shooting my neighbor's dog. I'm not trying to prep for the end of civilization--I have no desire to live in some post-apocalyptic Mad Max world, folks--I am trying to be prepared for temporary disruptions in our civilization. Like violent crime entering our lives. Like terrorist attacks (which I think will skyrocket in the coming years). Or even strikes of essential services like trucking, farming, power generation, etc. It's not about killing zombies or Russian paratroopers like so many idiots fantasize about. It's about being armed and prepared enough to wait several hours for first responders to get to you. That's the balance I'm looking for. Be Armed. Be Aware. Be More Dangerous Than Him. Thanks, Soule Easy6Training

Competition vs Combat vs Self-Defense: Conclusion

 First, to clarify, I have said for years that the definition of Self-Defense is "a legal determination made after the fact by a criminal justice authority" (Tim Larkin, When Violence is the Answer).  I absolutely still believe that; what I am referring to in these last few columns is the distance at which self-defense shootings occur.  If a situation is determined to be self-defense after the fact by a criminal justice authority, it is typically going to happen within a certain distance, because there has to be some element of imminent danger to be determined as Self-Defense.  Sorry if that confused anybody.

So, having said that, allow me to go back to confusing people by misusing my own terms again.  What makes good self-defense shooting?  In the past few weeks, I have written about how the fundamentals of marksmanship either apply or don't to self-defense shootings in close proximity.  Breath control is useless.  Slow and steady trigger squeezes are unimportant if you have a proper tight grip on the gun.  Aiming is not optional outside of gun-grappling range because of the risk to bystanders,  Stances are irrelevant because in a six-foot fight, your stance will never be what you practice.  That covers four of the NRA's five shooting fundamentals.

The one I didn't cover is Follow-Through, because it confuses the more important aspect of successful defensive pistol shooting: speed!  The purpose of engaging with a handgun when your life is threatened is to "stop the threat."  What does that actually look like?  Well, what I teach students is that the goal is to put the enemy into shock, INSTANTLY!  That is the critical aspect of winning a self-defense encounter of any type; cause Damage to the attacker as fast as you can.  Now, if you shoot somebody in the chest with one 9mm bullet, he will eventually go into shock, he may even die.  What most people don't understand is that "eventually" means he is still functionally able to hurt you before he goes into shock.  That is why it is so critical to shoot fast into the ribcage and put him into shock, instantly.  That means putting two to five shots into his ribcage in under two seconds.  Which can only be achieved if you GRIP the gun correctly and pull the trigger as fast as possible without moving the point of bullet impact outside of the attacker's ribcage ("accurate enough" shooting). Second point, the precision of the shooting in a ribcage with a handgun is not nearly as important as the volume in achieving the objective of putting the enemy into shock, instantly.  Hitting somebody three times in the lungs or liver or spleen in one second will actually have greater medical effect on the enemy than hitting him once in the heart in that same one second.  Both of these scenarios are survivable, despite what Hollywood says, but the three less-accurate shots in one second will cause greater shock and systemic shutdown, ending the fight more quickly.  That's the main objective in self-defense shootings: end it QUICKLY.

And that is the fundamental difference between combat distances and self-defense distances in shooting.  In combat, you shoot to wound, despite what hostage rescuers preach, because the laws of land warfare are very specific about this point.  The reason soldiers can't modify ammunition to make it more lethal is because the Geneva and Hague Conventions legally make warfare about putting the enemy out of the fight with a single shot wound.  At self-defense distances, I have to shoot until the attacker is incapable of harming me.  Now, whether he lives or dies is up to doctors, our goal is to end the engagement as fast as we can, and the best way to do that is to put him into shock instantly, which requires multiple shots delivered as fast as possible into the ribcage.  Which is why I argue that pistol fighting is a lot more like fist or knife fighting than rifle combat.  It is much more grisly and violent, and the outcomes are usually more gruesome, because the closer you get to an enemy trying to kill you, the fewer options you have.  You have to end such fights as quickly as possible, to minimize your exposure to getting hurt instead.  In a tank battle, miles apart, things can happen more slowly than in a knife fight in a phone booth.  The closer you are, the faster things need to happen to minimize risk.  That is why Follow Through is not worth talking about for Self-Defense distances, because while it might technically happen, it will happen in a fraction of a second between shots if you correctly manage the recoil of the handgun with your grip, trigger pull and aiming.  Proper recoil management is proper Follow-Through, it's just allowing you to shoot much more quickly than traditional understandings of Follow-Through as preached by bullseye shooting at paper ranges.

Be the Gunslinger!

In conclusion: the goal is to end a self-defense encounter as quickly as possible without risk to yourself.  How do you do that?  By incapacitating the enemy as quickly as possible, which medically means I want to put him into shock, INSTANTLY!  What's the best way to do that with a handgun?  Putting two to five rounds into his ribcage in under two seconds.  The faster you can put him into shock, the less risk you are exposing yourself to in a self-defense situation.  Speed is the most important aspect of self-defense shooting and it is achieved by proper grip, trigger pull and combat accurate aiming (ribcage).  Precision is for competition or hostage rescues (combat).  Calmness is for snipers, not self-defenders.  Slow and deliberate decision making is for generals, not gunslingers.  Be the gunslinger. 

Hope you liked these tips on effectively defending yourself with a handgun at close range.  If so, please share this blog with other people you may know who want to learn.  If you totally disagree and think I'm an idiot, please also share and comment.  If you want to learn how to do it for real, give me a call.

Thanks,

Soule

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Competition vs Combat vs Self-Defense: Breathing

Prologue: The premise of this series of columns is that there is a significant difference not just between Competition shooting and Combat, but also a significant difference between both of them and Self-Defense shooting.  Like most instructors, I define Self-Defense as happening within seven yards.  Combat typically happens at ranges greater than that, obviously there are times when combat happens closer than that, but then it more resembles "hand-to-hand combat"/"close-quarters combat"/"extreme close range combat," or whatever the cool-guy acronym of the year is.  All of these buzzwords are talking about the same thing: fighting in close proximity.  The military and SWAT teams make a distinction between close-range combat and long-range combat for a reason, because they ARE different.  I call them "Self-Defense" distances and "Combat" distances as a way of distinguishing the two, but whatever the title, there are differences in how shooting is done in each.  The differences are the premise of this series, resulting in a conclusion that much of what the armed public trains on with firearms is training for Combat or Competition, rather than Self-Defense, which I believe is a mistake.

For Example: "Breath Control," the firearms industry's fancy way of saying breathing, is the next shooting fundamental I want to compare between Competition, Combat and Self-Defense.  But not really, because it's bogus.  Very simply, at long distances or extremely precise shooting (like hostage rescue), breath control is important.  Neither of these should be done with a handgun.  I will grant that on occasion "operators" have rescued hostages with handguns instead of rifles, but that is a much higher level of training than most armed citizens possess.  Also, those are Combat situations, not Self-Defense.  Things like school shootings, or a church shootings, or other types of "Defense of Others Shootings," are clearly NOT the same things as Self-Defense, and are in fact types of Combat operations undertaken by trained military and SWAT personnel.  Back to the point: in Combat at longer ranges, or in precision shooting Competitions, Breath Control is important.  In Self-Defense shooting, it is neither important, nor really very possible.

It is possible to control your breathing while being shot at from fifty yards or greater.  I have done it.  It is impossible, in my opinion, for the vast majority of people to control their breathing in a gunfight at five feet.  Adrenaline floods your system, you are instantly in a fight-or-flight situation, with a heartrate at or above two-hundred beats per minute, and you are gasping for air.  I have done that also, and still managed to shoot a handgun "accurately enough" into a human torso, to survive.  You know what I wasn't doing?  Controlling my breathing!  I do believe there are probably some very elite special operations personnel who could control their breathing in a six-foot gunfight.  I am not one of those guys.  Nor is anybody reading this column.  But it doesn't actually matter, because at Self-Defense distances (from zero to seven yards), no amount of breathing problems will cause you to miss a human ribcage with a modern handgun: the ribcage should be the preferred target for Self-Defense Shooting (see the last column).  In reality, it's not Breath Control that is causing people to miss at these ranges, it is flinching, or "Anticipating the Shot."  It's often blamed on breathing because the bullet impact is above or below the intended point of aim, and in rifle shooting, that usually indicates poor Breath Control.  But with a pistol at seven yards or less, it simply isn't true.  People flinch the barrel up or down, because of anticipating the bang, not because they're breathing "incorrectly."

More importantly, it's a stupid thing to train for Self-Defense shooting.  Now, it is a fundamental of marksmanship that should be taught to new shooters, and if you're going to go to a range and shoot bullseye targets, good Breath Control will make you more accurate.  But when somebody is trying to kill, maim or rape you from six inches to six feet away, you will not be calmly exhaling and slowly squeezing a trigger when the sights are perfectly aligned.  That's myth, it's absurd, and frankly it's dangerous, because it's teaching people unrealistic things.  In rifle shooting, Breath Control is way more important.  In precision shooting, whether in Combat or Competition, Breath Control is important.  Even in long-range pistol shooting, it is important.  But those aren't Self-Defense Shooting situations.  That leads to the next column, which is about what is actually important in a Self-Defense Shooting situation: how FAST you can stop an attacker with "accurate enough" fire.  That is entirely based on Grip, Self-Defense ("accurate enough") Aiming and Trigger Pull and has nothing to do with Breathing or Stance or Precision.

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Soule

Easy 6 Training

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Competition vs Combat vs Self-Defense: Aiming

Sights: Not just there to tacticool-rack on your belt or boot.

 So far, I've talked about the differences in Steady Position (stance and grip) and Trigger Pull in competition shooting vs combat vs self-defense shooting.  Now, I'm going to cover a much more complicated fundamental of shooting: Aiming.  It's very complicated because there are not just three versions of aiming based on the three different situations.  Sometimes in competition, very precise shooting is necessary and thus meticulous aiming is necessary, and sometimes speed is more important than accuracy, and at short ranges "accurate enough" does not require using the sights at all.  In combat, it's slightly less complex, you always aim.  Again, the premise of these blogs is that combat is different from self-defense and both are different from competition, though competition can help shooting in the other two.  That being said, in combat you always use your sights, unless you are in extreme close quarters ("gun grappling" range), which much more closely resembles hand-to-hand combat (i.e. the typical self-defense shooting range of less than two meters) rather than rifle combat of several hundred yards.  A significant difference between combat and self-defense, however, is that "collateral damage" is acceptable in combat.  Which means, even though you are using your sights, the enemy WILL BE moving to avoid bullets, as a result, often in combat, we miss.  Sometimes those misses cause collateral damage.  That is perfectly legal and accepted in war zones.  It is NEVER acceptable in a self-defense shooting situation, which means you have to be absolutely precise in self-defense shooting.  How precise is that?  Good question.  The answer doesn't change in self-defense shooting; it will change in defense of others type shootings like a school or church shooter or a hostage situation.  Again to reiterate, I consider those type of scenarios combat not self-defense.  But in self-defense shooting, the answer to the precision question never changes: the ribcage.  That's how precise you have to be.  From a thousand yards, that's very precise shooting with a sniper rifle.  From a hundred yards with a pistol, that is very precise shooting also.  From a wrestling match in an alley with a mugger or a rapist, that is not very precise shooting at all.  So, the target doesn't change, the difficulty of hitting it changes with distance (and thus the necessary precision of aim required to hit the ribcage).  That being the case, there are three levels of self-defense shooting in my opinion:

1) Within 1 meter (arm's length): Shooting should be done from the hip into the torso of the opponent without any attempt to utilize sights at all.  At this distance, it is difficult to miss.  Shooting From Retention drills.

2) Greater than arm's length, but less than 2 arms' lengths (approx 6 feet).  Shooting should be done from the Compressed Ready Position (meaning gun is in a 2-hand grip, in front of the torso, but arms are retracted not extended) to prevent gun-grappling (opponent grabs your gun because he's within your and his arms length).  Shooting from Compressed Ready, sights are not used, rather the orientation of the body towards the opponent (the Natural Point of Aim) determines the orientation of the barrel.  With the barrel parallel to the ground, oriented at the torso of the opponent, shots will hit somewhere in the ribcage from 1-2 meters out.

3) Greater than 2 arms' lengths.  Use the sights!  Collateral damage CANNOT be accepted in self-defense shooting situations, unlike in a combat zone, which means you are accountable for every round that comes out of the barrel of that gun.  Some people can Point Shoot (not use the sights) beyond two yards, but from a self-defense perspective, there is no reason to, in my opinion.  If you are outside the range at which he can grab your gun, then there's no reason to shoot from the Compressed Ready or Retention (the hip), and the risk to hitting innocent bystanders increases with every inch farther away from the opponent your muzzle gets, which will end it being a self-defense situation to where you can be charged with a crime.

Most competition shooters look at that very differently.  Their perspective is about speed, if they can shoot from the hip and hit the target at longer ranges, that can shave time off of their scores, adding to their points.  That is absolutely the opposite way a self-defender should look at using sights and aiming.  Just as in combat situations, the default should always be to use the sights.  The only time we don't use the sights is when there is a real risk of the gun being batted to the side or taken away from us, in which case shooting from the Compressed Ready or Shooting From Retention are Techniques (remember, difference between Tactics, Techniques and Procedures from my last blog) to overcome the situation that prevents using the sights, but every modern firearm is designed WITH SIGHTS for a reason.  They should always be used unless it's impossible.  Competition shooters do not risk collateral damage and they don't have to be as precise sometimes.

In conclusion, when should you use your sights?  Always, unless there is a defensive reason not to (gun grappling), in which case you use the next best options based on distance.  Just because you can point shoot and hit a steel plate at three meters doesn't mean anything in a real self-defense engagement.  As a final caveat, I will simply say that self-defense situations are dynamic.  A fight that might start a seven meters can very quickly change to one meter or less, so all of these distances I'm referring to are AT THE TIME OF THE TRIGGER PULL.  That means the gun will be moving between these various levels of extension at different times in a gunfight, and that's a good thing.  If a guy is charging you with a knife and you have to collapse your shooting position back to the Compressed Ready when he breaks that two meter line, so that you can KEEP FIRING, then do it.  There's not static cardboard targets, which is why you should always use your sights UNLESS YOU CAN'T.

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