A quick search of YouTube et al will result in a plethora of video instruction detailing how to shave a quadrillionth of a second off your shot time by some new tactic which is suddenly the only right tactic to use, forsaking all other ways of using a firearm.  Follow up on that tactic with a quick search of any of the many forums and you ‘ll continue to learn why the tactic in question is the only way to correctly do business. You’ll also learn that a failure to use that tactic will only result in your untimely demise at the hands of a “feeder” or by some highly trained enemy of the state.  The point is that all the focus goes toward a skill or a tactic and the rest of the picture is ignored.

So what is the rest of the picture?  When we talk about training we have to look at each individual skill and decide if it is the best way to do business.  In the gun world we often judge our competency by our speed.  How fast we can perform a skill often seems to be the only benchmark we use to determine success.  Tragically, we are learning that this simply is not true.  Speed does not always equate to success.  Granted, with a myopic view of things we might be able to convince  ourselves and probably even others that we have found the perfect solution to any specific issue.  And in reality…we probably have.  But what we have actually found is that we have only found an effective solution to one little piece of the picture.  A great example is the use of a ready gun position which involves pointing the muzzle of a pistol downrange in preparation to shoot.  This technique makes perfect sense on the “square range” or when facing an array of targets at our local match.  But how smart is it in your own house?  Or at the mall?  At the range our battlefield is quite symmetrical and tightly controlled, there should be nothing you’re not willing to destroy downrange.  Same goes at that weekend match, even if there are no-shoot targets we don’t often get penalized for “covering” them with our muzzle during the game.  But who thinks it is ok to cover a non-threatening person, or something you aren’t willing to destroy, with the muzzle of a weapon?

But are these the habits we need to be learning?  Granted, solving the very small part of the puzzle–being faster to the first shot–it makes sense to use a horizontal muzzle right?  But will that apply correctly to the decisions we will have to make when our battlefield is no longer symmetrical?  I use the old adage of expectations vs. training, in times of great stress we tend to fall to the level of our training rather than rise to the level or our expectations.  Think about it, have you ever looked back on something you did and wonder why you did it that way?  Then maybe even came up with a better way to do it, i.e. your expected response?  That is what I am talking about, doing it one way but realizing you expected yourself to have done it another way.  How can we learn and drill the specific skill set and then expect that we will change that skill set to meet the needs of the situation.  That is simply not gonna happen.   So we need to learn and practice a skill set which will work in as many situations as possible.

Another great example is the use of a slide lock lever on a pistol or a bolt stop/catch on an AR.  Both of those tools are designed to lock the slide or bolt to the rear when the weapon is fired until empty.  There are a lot of arguments revolving around which is the fastest method to close the slide or bolt back over a loaded magazine, reloading the weapon.  Either depressing the lever with ones finger or thumb, or by running the slide or charging handle with ones whole hand.   A lot of practice, video footage and experience shows that as a technical skill, depressing the slide lock or bolt stop with ones finger or thumb drops the slide or bolt faster most of the time.  But does that make it the best method?  Our argument is that no, that is not the best method simply because there are more factors involved than simply that technical skill.  We know that under stress we lose minor motor function such as feeling in our fingertips. It is often argued that  using the tips of our fingers to move a small lever might be difficult to do.  However, triggers are small levers and magazine releases are small levers so that argument may not solidify the issue.  We believe there are two much stronger arguments.  The first being that using the whole hand to run a locked back pistol slide or using the charging handle to run the bolt on an AR allows mechanical advantage to help with the reliability of reloading the weapon.  Simply depressing the slide lock or bolt stop only utilizes the preset tension on the recoil spring or buffer spring.  However, forcing the slide or charging handle fully to the rear before allowing the spring to drive it forward not only adds a small amount of tension to that spring, it also allows inertia to help drive the slide or bolt forward.  Additionally, if you’ve watched enough folks try to reload an empty weapon with the slide lock or bolt stop and have seen that technique fail, what do they do?  Yeah I know, they run the slide with their hand or pull the charging handle don’t they?

But the strongest argument we can make simply drives the point of this article.  Using our hand on the slide or the charging handle is the way we load the weapon each time and every time.  Think about it, no matter what the condition of the weapon and reload we load it the same way every time.  By inserting a magazine and pulling the slide or charging handle to the rear and letting it go.  This one technique works each time, every time and is the only one we have to master.  Thus allowing us to perform perfectly at the level of our training, not the level of our expectations.

So let’s get our eyes checked.  Where should our focus be?  On a small and technical skill?  Or on the bigger picture, the whole?  As long as we continue to keep ourselves locked onto the square range or focused on only a small part of the whole picture then we have a myopic view of our training.  As soon as we realize that our lifestyle of defense involves operating on a asymmetrical battlefield, then we are gonna see clearly and see the whole picture.  That vision should help drive our choices of techniques, equipment and training.  Figure out what works for you based on the whole picture, with clear vision.  Then master that technique or tool and be able to use it perfectly under any condition.  This is what we call “Brilliance in the Basics” and what drives our philosophies and doctrines here at Badlands Tactical!

Come shoot!!!–Rich

I’ve been involved in Law Enforcement Tactical operation in one way or another since the late 80’s.  During that time I’ve seen a lot of new fads come and go.  You’d think that at some point we’d figure out that those gadgets really don’t make our job any easier.  But we don’t do we?  The industry seems to be focused on making money instead of helping us do our jobs better.  Just attend a conference or look in any trade publication.  There is much more space dedicated to selling us gadgets than to making us better at our art.  Have we turned the art of sniping or whatever your mission is, into a commercial venture?  Are we more interested in making money than being successful?

I had a supervisor once who used the term “Brilliance in the Basics” That may have been the only thing he ever said that made sense, but it did and still makes sense to me today.

How many of us believe in some greater level of training or operational capacity?  “High-speed, low-drag” seems to be the pinnacle for all of us, doesn’t it?  Well, what does that really consist of?  And where does it apply to our specific missions?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked to conduct training for someone and been asked to amp it up and do “cool shit” because the students were great operators and were ready for it.  Inevitably though, as soon as we start to move “outside the box” these amazing gunslingers fall totally apart and it becomes apparent that they have no mastery of the basics at all.  They can’t reload their weapon systems; they can’t fix malfunctions; they can’t shoot on the move or shoot and move.  Over the years I’ve come to believe that there is no real “high-speed, low-drag”.  Instead I’ve learned that the best teams and operators simply have an amazing mastery of the basics.  They are able to perform them at a level of unconscious competence.

So what is the first thing that gets blame when things don’t go right?  Their lack of the latest or greatest:  “If I had this” or “I’m gonna get one of those” or “Did you see that on his gun” become common excuses in these situations.  Or the other side of the coin  occurs when it’s those same gadgets which cause the failure because more time is spent trying to make the new toy work than on training to utilize our basic fundamental skills.

Why and how do we fix it?

Let’s look at some examples…..

I think that the Taser is one of the best force options to be offered to Law Enforcement ever.  I firmly believe that every officer who may be in contact with a law breaker should have one.  However, it is also very clear to me that not only is the Taser not used appropriately a vast majority of the time, it has also taken away one of the greatest tools cops have ever had…our brains and our mouths.  My point is that now, instead of an officer communicating with a suspect, talking to him, doing a cop’s job, now we only have to point the red dot and press the trigger and the suspect is hopefully under control.  However, I know we are all painfully aware of the Officer who was recently convicted of manslaughter after shooting a suspect, who was proned out on the ground, in the back with his pistol.  His defense was that he thought he was going to utilize his Taser.  How about optics?  It’s so much faster to just put that little red dot or triangle or whatever on what we want to hit and pull the trigger.  Right?  Well, how can that be faster?  It’s still the same process as far as our eye is concerned.  We have to align an object on one plane (sight) with an object on another plane (target).  Just like aligning the front and rear sight and superimposing them on your target.  The difference is that it takes practice to align those iron sights, get a proper cheek weld and maintain a solid grip on the rifle.  But with practice comes mastery and soon we don’t even have to think about all the moving parts, just align the object on one plane (sight) with an object on another plane (target).  Have you ever washed out a red dot going from bright light to darkness?  Or forgot to turn it on?  Or ever been in a stack waiting for a squeeze when you hear, or even sheepishly muttered yourself “does anybody have batteries?”  Faster??  Maybe, but there has to be a balance somewhere, doesn’t there.   Again, we are finding that we are compensating for our lack of training by using gadgets to fill the void.

I’ll agree that there are many, many useful tools out there and that we should explore every way possible to make our jobs safer and more efficient.  But how many of us really do that with an eye toward reality vs. just what is cool.  LCCDI, Looks Cool-Chicks Dig It, right?

In our world, how many of us still shoot in freezing rain? Or blistering heat?  How many of us spend the time to document every shot we make, and then analyze those shots to learn what our rifles or loads are doing?  Or do we just assume that we can program the distance into our I-Phone or PDA and be guaranteed to make that shot?  Just for kicks someday, take a dozen or so scenarios (shots).  Let’s say from 100 yards to 1000.  Program those shots into the computer of your choice and shoot them from prone, with all the latest greatest mats, bags, bipods, gloves and kit that you can find.  Make sure you’re rested and hydrated.  Make sure your batteries are charged and make your targets nice and big and unobstructed.  Pretty sure you’re gonna have a fairly high hit ratio, huh?  So how do you feel?  Like the shit, right?  Look how well I hit what I shoot at.

So here’s the kicker.  Now shoot the same scenarios but from a real world perspective.  It’s blowing wind and dust, you’ve been on shift all night and are fighting the flu.  The targets are hunkered down behind cover or are moving.  Your only position is braced against a moving tree branch.  Sure you can have your laser or I-Phone, but now you can’t get enough of a reflection off your target to get a range and your batteries are failing fast.  You don’t know how fast the wind is gusting.  So what data are you gonna put into your PDA?  Quick…before the batteries die.  Your bi-pod won’t work because you’re not on the ground.  Your super cool kit with all the pouches and magazines is now keeping you away from that branch because it’s too big and bulky.  How do you think your hit ratio is going to look now?  How are you feeling about it?  Like the shit still?  Or just like shit?

Which situation is the one we are going to practice the most on?  Of course the one where we hit our targets the best, right?  Isn’t that our nature, do what feels good and what we are good at?  How many gadgets did we use in that first situation to make things work for us?  So what’s our programmed response?  Hmmm…I hit a lot of targets, I used a lot of gadgets to do that, I feel good about it.  So….gadgets make me feel good about my shooting.

However, in which situation is it most important to not fail?  When everything is perfect?  Or when everything is a soup sandwich?  Don’t we need to perform our best when our environment and surroundings are at their worst?

As humans we tend to continue to do the same thing until something bad happens when we do it.  The problem is that that most of the time we fail to input the potential for something bad to happen.  We focus solely on the outcome, not the other potential outcomes.  There is an old saying in risk management, “If it is predictable, it is preventable”.  So it’s very predictable that we are going to not shoot as well without our gadgets or within adverse conditions.  How do we mitigate that?  We practice within those conditions, right?  But how many of us actually do that?  We usually continue to do what we do, thinking it’s right because nothing bad happened last time.  Until something bad does happen and then we are very surprised that something bad happened.  Although, the whole time we knew it could and very possibly might.  Strange concept!  But how many of us do it every day with the lives of others or our mission success on the line?

So should we not use the tools available to us?  Of course not, we should use every one of them which may make our jobs safer and enable us to do them better.  But I think it is our responsibility to learn to operate without them.  The only way we can accomplish this is by training and training realistically, without the gadgets first and then with the gadgets.  Train to the point of failure, learn where the tool fails, learn where you fail with that tool.

But be realistic, open any trade magazine available.  How many advertisements for gadgets are there?  Compare that with how many articles there are for training.  Gonna be a pretty big difference, isn’t there?  Do you need all those tools or can you accomplish your mission without them?

So the questions I pose to you are these;  Have you, unwittingly obviously, sold yourself out to the commercialization of our art?  Are you a “Gear Queer” relying on your equipment to improve your competence?  Does it improve your competence?  Or do you train hard and realistically?  Do you constantly strive to master the basics no matter how hard and repetitive? Regardless of your answers are you wiling to change?  To train harder and smarter, to the point of failure of your equipment and yourself?  You’re the only one who can answer that question and the only way you can answer it is to make yourself train hard to ensure that you master the basics and that you can successfully complete your mission, regardless of what it is.

Two sayings come to mind as I write this.  Steve Suttles, renowned Marine Sniper and holder of the longest bolt gun shot in Vietnam tells me often; “Rich, forget the gizmos and gadgets.  Know your rifle, know your load and know yourself.”

The other one I know we are all familiar with, but it holds true over and over.  I don’t know where it originated but it goes something like this;

“Fear the man with only one gun.”

Two popular trends we’ve noticed are small petite pistols, and ones with multiple fire control devices such as safeties or very difficult triggers.  In the first group, learning to shoot and safely manipulate a “pocket” pistol or smaller system is proving to be a challenge to training time.  Pistols are made to be operated with big, strong muscle groups like hands and arms, and should be simple to manipulate.  But many of today’s popular choices have small controls, placed close together and requiring a magnitude of dexterity to successfully operate.  What we see is that much of our training time goes to figuring out how to work the nuances of that specific pistol rather than perfecting the fundamentals of pistol shooting.  The second group includes those pistols which, probably for safety sake, have multiple and complicated safeties or inconsistent trigger pulls, namely double action to single action triggers.  Again, what we are experiencing is that much training time is burned simply trying to overcome the mechanics of the pistol itself.

Now, before you commence to telling me how important or cool or functional many of those options are, let me agree with you.  Each and every one of them has their place and their fan club.  But remember, we are talking about learning to shoot and to be safe and a lot of pistol designs and features tend to be so overwhelming to the new shooter that they really become detrimental to the process.  Additionally, we see shooters with pistols that are a very poor fit for them.  It would make sense that most of the problems come from pistols which are too big for a shooter, especially smaller in stature shooters such as women.  But experience is showing us different, many times we see better results with “regular size” pistols.  This really holds true with most women.  Once the basics of a correct grip are understood, most women are more than capable of handling a full-size pistol and in fact struggle with a smaller system…again, taking away from precious training resources.

So how does a new shooter choose a good pistol?  Well this is obviously the elephant in the room, because no one seems to be able to find a “one size fits all” solution.  Again, experience is showing us that most new shooters will change pistols more than once before they decide on a system which works for them.  Also as you can imagine as a shooter gains skill and confidence they will make different decisions about which pistol works best for them and what they like.  Our recommendation is to do a lot of research.  Ask friends, read articles, check out the internet and yes even listen to the gun store guy.  But remember, as a new shooter your goal is to be able to be safe and learn to shoot correctly.   Once you have mastered that anything else will follow, your first pistol doesn’t have to be super concealable, or able to stop an attacking zombie or requiring a second mortgage to buy.  It needs to be simple to operate, safe and something you will be comfortable using for a while.   We tend to see the most success with pretty basic, full-size pistols in smaller calibers.

Something we do at most basic classes is bring several pistols to the range for students to shoot.  After they have gained some confidence in their ability to be safe and manipulate a pistol, we give them a chance to shoot a variety of different pistols and revolvers.  Many students report that experience as being a huge benefit to them as they make future decisions about what to buy.  Unfortunately, buying a gun is seldom like buying a vehicle where you can test drive several models and options.  Most of us kinda know what we like in a vehicle anyway, so we have an educated idea of what we want while we are shopping.  But as a new shooter we don’t usually have that luxury and many times have to rely on the advice and likes of others.  That’s ok, do the best you can and ask a lot of questions.  Your first pistol doesn’t have to be the one you keep forever and in fact rarely ever is and as your experience and skill grows you will gain the knowledge you need to get what you like and what works for you.

As always we are here to help you with any questions you might run into, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Come shoot!!!–Rich

So what does that have to do with shooting and gun stuff?  Well, you guessed it, it’s exactly the same.  I’ve seen so many people spend a bunch of money on the latest and coolest gear to make them shoot better.  Then they dump a bunch more money into an expensive course or school where they are taught some damn cool stuff that they can do with guns, which they start to forget within about 48 hours of their check clearing the bank.  Then they are sent off just to be replaced with the next crop of folks who are trying to buy their way to their goals.  Now, don’t get me wrong….there is nothing wrong with spending money to help you achieve your goals.  But honestly how many people who buy the latest video for  CrossFit or P90X or the newest nordic-flex-bow-kettle gizmo actually meet AND maintain their goals with that equipment or plan?  The answer is easy and you have to look no further than CraigsList or Ebay to see how many used fitness machines and exercise books/videos are on the market.  How many people actually renew their gym membership because they have used it all year?  Not many.

Which brings me to the point.  How do we make firearm training, safety, tactics etc a lifestyle, not just a diet.  Learning to shoot and shoot safely and responsibly should be a lifestyle choice, just like proper nutrition and regular exercise.  Protecting yourself and your family has to be a constant state of vigilance, not a SlimFast shake.   But instead they often seem to be treated like the latest fad diet-get results now, now, now.  But then what?   Do people expect that the very technical skills they learned at the pistol class they took will still be with them tomorrow?  Or next week?  Or next year?  No one knows when those skills are gonna be needed and I can promise you one thing, technical skills are very perishable and degrade immediately without continued and dedicated practice.

This is one of the main reasons we promote basic skills at Badlands.  I tell students all the time that there is no such thing as “High-Speed, Low-Drag” but rather the best of the best simply employ the basic skills perfectly, every time.  EVERY TIME.  That is why when we are your instructors we pick on the every little detail, why we train until each student has it right, and why we stay away from the coolest new gizmo or trick from the latest action movie.  We believe that a “brilliance in the basics” is what makes us and you successful.  Whether that success is taking a trophy Ram, or having the highest ‘X” count, or maybe it is making it home to your family from a long patrol shift or getting your team back to base or stopping the armed criminal from getting through your back door. Those successes are why we choose to do what we do.

So please, make some lifestyle choices that will keep you fit and healthy physically….but then apply those same choices and attitudes to your decisions about firearms, tactics and safety.  Make them a lifestyle that you can live with.  Buy good equipment that will work and not break, get a good solid foundation of training conducted by professionals.  Then commit to continuing that training and always working to better yourself.

Remember, at Badlands you are all part of our family.  And this is the lifestyle of our family, to shoot, train, discuss, we even argue and bitch!!!  But most of all, to stay at it, to keep getting better and to keep you motivated to train and learn!!!!

Come shoot–Rich

Thanks so mouch for all the support and dedication.  And to those out there doing what we do, a huge THANK YOU!!!!!

Come shoot!!!!!—R