The Gun Counter

Editor's Notebook: The Importance of Firearms Training
by Rich Grassi


Training is a top-down affair, often with the very top excluding themselves from the festivities. Training is hard. It's been known to cause discomfort, sweating, getting dirty and it generally gets in the way of a good time. We train, those of us who do, because it's necessary to our effectiveness in our endeavors, whether that's investigating a break-in, working a wreck or being in a gunfight.

To win, we have to first have to get the suspect in custody. Thereafter, it's a matter of making the case. If we start with probable cause, that's enough to get our perp in the system. Then we need to help provide enough provable facts to remove reasonable doubt. It's up to the presenter of the case at that point.

There is an outfit is known for making good cases and leaving no stone unturned. They are professionals. Where they collapse is the mindset that "guns are icky" and "fighting wrinkles the uniform."

Ideally, we'd have one group that marches in parades, shows up at meetings and funerals and does PR. And we'd have another group, that one consisting of cops. That's not going to happen.

There's more than one way to run a firearm, but not many more ways. Every time I think I've seen everything, I go to a range and see something new. We have to prepare for what we predictably could need. This includes running the gun one handed - taking the other hand out of play completely. Drills would include loading, unloading and locking open, drawing, firing, clearing stoppages and reloading.

That's hard to do on a range because muzzles necessarily track around a lot. Remember Rule 2 and Rule 3. We have to expand the area where people cannot be. We may have to use dummy ammo - and still keep people out of the way (Rule 1 - All Guns Are Loaded!). We never trust the dummy rounds or dummy guns.

I was recently engaged in a bit of competition at the comprehensive USSA facility in Tulsa OK. Fellow Harris writer Rob Garrett went before me on a "battlefield pickup" involving two positions and a pair of S&W M&P15 carbines. The second position required you to pick up an empty carbine and a magazine (that loaded with four rounds), load, off-safe, and hit four steel targets.

Rob said he'd forgotten his water bottle at the second position and he went back up to retrieve it. When he was out of the way, I started my run. After I'd sprinted to the second position, I snatched up the carbine and magazine. On its way to the gun, I saw that the magazine had the top round in backwards! Without pause, I flipped the round out with an index finger and shot the targets I could with the remaining ammo.

When I looked back, I saw the assembled group laughing as Rob made tracks for the next range.

How did I recover so quickly? I'd been in an organization where instructors (Dick Lee and Dan Rhyne) ensured something would go wrong. They'd go crazy if you stood and stared or put a hand up.

"Fight!" one would yell. "Fix it! Make it go!"

Getting used to such abuse put me in a mind to just carry on regardless of what happened. Make the best out of it. Learn to throw the opposition a curve.

You can't do that without training.

Administrators often seem to think that training's about avoiding liability. That's not it at all.

Training's about not having to bury police officers.

(Rich Grassi is a retired peace officer and a firearms instructor since 1983. He's been a criminal justice adjunct professor, a writer for various firearms publications and is author of POLICE FIREARMS INSTRUCTION: PROBLEMS AND PRACTICES.)