The Police Marksman provides today’s law enforcement officials with current reviews of police firearms & accessories. In addition, we cover firearms training, competition & law related topics. We’re dedicated to keeping our fellow officers safe.
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andgun shooting stances are taught and reinforced through hours and years of training. Creating a stable shooting platform, from the soles of the feet through the hands, is necessary to obtain the hits on the target or, more vitally, on the Threat. Stances are performed with the legs comfortably bent, spine with a bit of a forward lean, with the arms either pushing and pulling, creating the dynamic tension for which the Weaver Stance is known, or pushing the hands forward symmetrically to form the Isosceles Stance. It is important to focus upon a proper stance in order to be more successful in surviving shootings, right? H Well, no, not really. Early formal stance training may be useful to a developing shooter. However, concentrating on perfecting a stance is generally counter to prevailing in a shooting. Most shootings take place at extremely close distances involving very large targets. Tey are very abrupt and extremely violent. Many ofcers fnd themselves in awkward positions—including on the ground and under something, e.g. a car—when the gunfght begins. Te relationship of the handgun to your eyes is much more important to survival. Stances May Be Counterproductive in a Gunfght Te mere mention of a "stance" automatically causes the legs to freeze into a solid, well-balanced base supporting the upper body as it fres the weapon. Marksmanship tends to require a strong foundation. However, accuracy, and thus the need for marksmanship, is contextual. In most gunfghts, what the legs are doing is irrelevant to marksmanship needed to survive. Training to stand solidly in the open and trade shots with a murderous suspect is a sucker's game—every bullet fred in your direction may end your life. While being a static target may theoretically have the possibility of increasing your accuracy, being a stationary target defnitely assists the bad guy with his marksmanship and putting bullets through you. Standing still with bits of red hot lead zipping past while being thumped by muzzle blast generally decreases any shooter's 18 The Police Marksman Nov-Dec 2013 Cynthia Williams, Cutting Edge Training, LLC u The Modifed Isosceles Stance is characterized with squared upper body, both hands pushing forward, elbows generally straightened. accuracy potential. Te more vulnerable you perceive you are, the less physically and mentally functional you are likely to become. Accuracy is more a factor of being able to cope with and overcome your perception of immediate personal vulnerability. While you are not likely to instantly afect the suspect shooting you (most bullets take time to cause the body to react), you can create a sense of more time, possibly increasing your ability to lay sufciently accurate fre on the suspect to save your life. Te tactical responses proven to likely increase your survivability is either sudden angular movement or moving to a corner and fghting from there. Static stances have no place in this lethal environment when you are behind the suspect in the gunfght and need to stretch time to efectively respond. Developing the capability for precise fre is a necessary skill for any shooter. However, precision is rarely called for in an actual shooting. "Combat Accuracy" is all that is necessary for survival. Paraphrasing Rob Pincus, combat accuracy can be defned as "Any round disrupting the imminent threat to life." Tis may mean a www.policemarksman.com