Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump published on December 31, 2021, was chock full of useful articles including, but not limited to, mobs and mob looting, a check list to review before you intervene in a fight, a look at the new Federal .22 Punch ammo, steps to avoid being robbed while waiting in a drive-thru line, and a lot more. One article in particular stuck out, however, which was a 2011 article with the title "A Felon On Firearms" and published in Law Officer Magazine.
The relevant portion of the article related:
A while back, I sat down with a prisoner who was headed to court on a racketeering charge. The arresting officers knew he was suspected of several contract murders but evidence was lacking, so they went with what they could. I initiated a conversation with him (you don’t talk about their case) and worked my way to guns and his thoughts on them. He started laughing and stated he’d recently seen “a funny show” on cable TV about firearms training. As most of you know, jails are required to offer so many hours of recreation to each inmate and cable TV is a way to help meet this standard.
On the show in question, an instructor was demonstrating movement during a gunfight to avoid being shot. After all, a moving target is harder to hit, right? The instructor showed how to step sideways while drawing, and to move back and forth in a figure eight while reloading. This sounded OK to me but the prisoner didn’t agree.
While telling me about the show, he started laughing and said, “It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen!” Confused, I asked him why. He replied, “Because that’s training for your rules, not mine. Cops worry about where they shoot, street guys don’t. If a cop is dancing back and forth in front of a bad guy, he’s just going to shoot a bunch in the direction of the cop. He’ll hit something; he doesn’t care. Dancing around won’t confuse him long. He’ll just shoot because all he wants to do is get away.” Realizing he was telling the truth, I had nothing to say. Cops train to be the good guys and seldom consider that bad guys don’t have rules.
The author further explained:
Recently, I was teaching a class in Florida and we discussed the possible downside of a single lateral step while drawing. One student (a local instructor trying to be impressive) objected and stated, “It [the move] might keep me from taking a vital hit.” True, but you might also be moving into a shot that would have missed you. How do you know? The truth is you don’t and you never will.
Am I saying not to move in a fight? Of course not! Gunfights are fluid and movement to gain advantage, seek cover, flank or get a better shot is a good tactic. But, is movement for the sake of movement a good idea? The suspect I spoke with didn’t think so and the truth is, like all things in combat, it will be situationally dependent. If you do move, it needs to be aggressive—explosive really—as far as the environment will allow. If you can keep moving, do so because minimal movement won’t interrupt your opponent’s response loop. A single step to the side at 20 feet is a fraction of an inch to the muzzle you’re trying to avoid.
Ellifritz also included commentary on this article, writing:
I talked to Dave extensively about some of the issues he brought up in this article before it went to press. We primarily talked about his discussion with the contract killer about police officers (and armed citizens) training to take a step or two sideways when drawing the gun.
The theory is that your movement will force your attacker to take additional time to adjust his aim before he fires. Hopefully, that gives you time to shoot him. It makes sense, and I have trained shooters in this concept myself.
BUT, as Dave points out here…it only works if your attacker is taking the time to truly aim his weapon at you. Most criminals don’t do that. They just stick the gun up and start spraying bullets. In that case, your movement is just as likely to get you hit as it is to make the attacker miss, When the criminal is just shooting lots of bullets in your direction, without aiming for you, random movement may be detrimental.
Many people will say that training shooters to take a sideways step gets them use to moving on the draw and may stimulate them to KEEP moving towards cover. That makes sense to me as well. Purposeful movement to get to safety is one thing, but I haven’t seen that taking a step on the draw really gets people to think about moving to cover…it just becomes a “tacti-cool” range dance.
I'm not a big fan of doing something just for the sake of doing something--an action should serve some goal. But sometimes, especially when dealing with a surprise attack, you don't have time to think about how to respond. Instead, you may have to fall back on some pre-programmed reaction that will give you a statistically greater chance of surviving. For instance, when we took a drivers education course, we were all taught to steer into a slide if the car started skidding because most of the time that is the best course of action.
In my mind, getting out of the line of attack is one of those things that is statistically the better thing to do. One of the most basic points taught in martial arts is to step sideways and forward at a 45 degree angle to avoid a punch, and then follow up with a strike (or some other action) against your opponent.
For instance, in a 2017 article by Richard Nance, "Getting Off The X," he explains:
When an assailant armed with a contact weapon like a bat, a crowbar or a knife charges you, you might think that drawing your concealed handgun is the first step in your defense. However, immediately going for your gun contains two potentially fatal flaws. First, depending on the distance between you and the assailant, there may not be time to draw your gun. Studies have shown that the average man can close a distance of 21 feet in approximately 1.5 seconds.
Second, assuming you had time to draw your gun and shoot the assailant twice in the chest, his forward momentum will likely enable him to reach you with his weapon. That's because, barring a shot that results in a central nervous system stoppage, it's unlikely the assailant will be immediately halted—even if he received what may ultimately be a fatal wound.
Therefore, it's smart to add movement to your draw stroke to get off line of the attack. The most common method for achieving this goal is by moving rearward. After all, that's instinctive when someone is running toward your with a weapon. However, this tactic is comparable to backing up from an oncoming train. You can't move backward as fast as the train moves forward. The same is true for a charging assailant.
* * *
Realizing the shortcomings of backpedaling, many shooters combine one or two lateral steps with their draw stroke. While this is good in theory, it leaves something to be desired in practicality. As Dave Spaulding of Handgun Combatives is quick to point out, a charging attacker need to alter his course only slightly to reach you when all you do is take a step or two to one side.
If you're going to rely on lateral movement, it needs to be explosive enough to get you off the "train track," and you need to be prepared to fire the moment your feet are planted. Not only that, you need to be ready to continue to move to keep the attacker at bay. If there's a physical barrier like a vehicle or even a table, placing it between you and an assailant armed with a contact weapon is an excellent strategy. If the assailant can't reach you with the weapon, you're safe.
Lateral movement is a decent option to employ against a charging adversary but "getting off the X," as it's called in tactical circles, refers to diagonal movement. The easiest direction to move is forward, to your dominant side. Drawing and moving in this manner enables you to move rather quickly and still fire with a surprising accuracy. Of course, the faster you move, the harder it is to shoot accurately.
An example of where a side-step of some sort might have saved a life in a shooting is shown in the surveillance video of a woman and her dog that were shot in a smoke shop in New York City the other day. The criminal came through the door with his gun drawn and ready to shoot. He is believed to have been targeting another black man already in the store, who dove sideways behind a female customer. The shooter apparently tracked him with his firearm but, when he fired his weapon, instead struck the woman that was also in the store. The criminal then worked the action of his slide (remember that Greg Ellifritz has documented that criminals often use defective firearms), and fired one or two more shots, at least one of which killed the dead woman's pitbull. Assuming the woman was not the subject of the attack, if she had sidestepped to the one side open to her instead of trying to move directly away from the shooter, she might still be alive.
I guess what I'm getting at is that not all criminals are going to spraying and praying--at least not for the first shot, and a side-step might be enough for that first shot to miss. Even if you have a 50/50 chance of still being shot with a single side step, you don't lose anything by taking the step. But, as John Lovell points out in the video below, when dealing with someone using a firearm, the X is much bigger than you think.
And this is where the foregoing authors believe the standard training falls down: that a single step may not be enough, and certainly not a half-hearted step. Rather, as the Law Officer author notes, if circumstances allow it, keep moving to get to cover (or at least concealment), draw your weapon while moving, and return fire when able.
In his article, "Top 3 'Getting Off The ‘X’' Myths about Shooting On The Move," Mike Ox states that "In real gunfights, movement does matter." He observes:
A friend of mine is former Army special forces and a current LE trainer in the western states.
He has several cases where students have stepped offline, shot their attacker, and found that the wall or patrol car they were standing in front of had one or more holes in it where they were standing (before getting off the x.)
In addition, I’ve had shooters demonstrate this regularly in force-on-force training. It’s not 100%…but that has to do with the fact that our visual skills change based on stress level and movement and different people process situations differently.
This goes way beyond “tunnel vision,” but in general, the higher the stress level of your attacker, the more movement will help you.
Thus, when responding to an assault, he urges that you "get out of the way of the attack ASAP." I take this to be more than a half-hearted sideways step.
A 2018 article from Warrior Poet Society similarly warns against a single sideways shuffle. The author begins:
I see it all the time on the range and in social media gun videos. Someone in an attempt to get off the x, ‘steps offline’ and draws a gun before shooting a target, or someone ‘steps offline’ while reloading (and oftentimes steps again to return to the same spot). It’s a joke folks.
This silly little range dance does not slow the bad guy down, it just slows you down. Our problem is that we believe the ‘X’ is much smaller than it actually is. Your big step only takes a tiny shift in the bad guys muzzle in tracking you. In short, they can track you much faster than you can move.
He adds:
Now there are some disclaimers we need to work through, and the first is to cut some slack to some ‘step offline’ advocates. It is not safe to have a line of shooters on a range bolting in different directions, so the discerning instructor may ask them to take a single step AS A PLACEHOLDER for more aggressive movement they can practice on their own.
Another disclaimer is that sometimes a single step can help. If a single step lands you behind cover, congratulations well done. Also, some of you martial artists can take a step in when at arms length to close distance and go ‘hands on’. Again, well done.
My main contention is with where civilians get into trouble with ambushing predators — between 2 and 7 yards. I need you to either end that fight in a freakishly small amount of time, or make distance with explosive movement. Remember, every foot closer to Joe Gangbanger’s muzzle and every millisecond you spend in front of it, dramatically increases your likelihood of getting shot.
Folks, we’ve got to be practical.
Time, distance, available cover, and mindset all can dramatically change what our best response to an ambushing opponent may be, but rest assured, doing a 2 step dance in front of a muzzle isn’t turning you into Neo from the Matrix. ...
Combat is dynamic and so should you be.
Take cover immediately behind the nearest fatbody.
ReplyDeleteThat would work provided they are not using full metal jacket.
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